The Sounds of a Mountain Village in Yunnan, China
A very lush dawn chorus complimented by the sounds of a Buddhist temple – the perfect example of a human-natural soundscape.
On my recent trip to Yunnan in China I spent many days in the mountains, exploring the rainforests on the border with Myanmar. There were lots of highlights but one of my favourite things to do was to wake up early and to listen to the dawn chorus. I was initially put off by the sounds of the village nearby, but soon enough another man-made sound started which was much more pleasant. It turns out there’s a Buddhist temple hidden in a small valley at Baihualing. Every morning they start their rituals before sunrise and they time it perfectly so that the extremely loud cicadas start calling as soon as the monks finish their chanting. The dawn chorus proper starts around halfway through the prayers, complementing the sounds of roosters in the village.
It was very odd for me to hear Common cuckoos in such a setting, having grown up with their sounds in Eastern Europe. This lovely mix of natural and human sounds is a good example of a soundscape that has not been completely destroyed by anthropophony. After a bit of research I found out that this is Guanyin Miao, or the Guanyin temple. Without going into too much detail, Guanyin is a Buddhist deity that has been appropriated by other religions in China. The name is short for Guanshiyin, which can loosely be translated to “[The One Who] Perceives the Sounds of the World”. I just love that, very fitting.