'Leaving Mother Lake' describes little-known corner of the world

Yang Erche Namu was born in the year of the horse (1966), her mother's third daughter, with each child having a different father. Her people, the Moso, live in a remote mountainous area known as the "country of daughters," by Lake Lugu — or Mother Lake — east of the Yangtze River in China's borderlands between Sichuan and Yunnan provinces.

In the Moso's matrilineal culture, marriage is "strongly discouraged." Property passes from mother to daughter. "Only women have their own bedrooms," to which they invite lovers in what anthropologists term "visiting" or "walking marriages." That is, men work outdoors, travel long distances by caravan to trade, and when at home, live with their mothers' families. They are not expected to exchange vows, care for their children or remain faithful.

The Moso, explains anthropologist and co-author Christine Mathieu in her afterword, "were oriented toward Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism," living "almost entirely isolated from the rest of China — until 1956, when the People's Liberation Army turned their world over."

After facing token resistance from the Moso, Namu writes, Communists "reached Yongning, the Moso capital, where our feudal lords had resided since the Mongol conquest of 1256." Soldiers, sent to "liberate" the people, arrived in villages with no running water or electricity. Windowless log homes had damp earthen floors, heated only by cooking fires. A cashless society, most Moso were illiterate, did not speak Chinese and had never seen Han people's "soft, pale yellow skin," short hair and strange clothing.

"In Grandmother's village," Namu continues, "there were no aristocrats or feudal lords to overthrow, and the people already had their fair share of the land, so the revolution was over quickly. But the Communists did not leave immediately. Instead, they hung red banners with large Chinese characters that no one could read all over the village. Then they selected the largest courtyard, where they began to hold daily political meetings in order to re-educate the local masses."

These meetings had mixed success. "The old people got bored," Namu states, but the young were "eager to learn and the least conservative in their thinking."

Indeed, this trait applies to Namu herself. The first half of her fascinating book details stormy times in her mother's house before being sent away to live in a tent with her uncle and to tend his yaks.

Readers understand that men had already walked on the moon by this time, but Namu did not even have shoes. Her uncle shaved her head because she had lice. She was unaware of hardship, and throughout the book, writes in a spare, charming prose style, with mature appreciation for what little she had and remarkable candor about her own fiery temper.

With the onset of menstruation, she returned to her mother's house for her "skirt ceremony," a Moso woman's rite of passage, when she leaves sleeping with siblings and moves to a bedroom where she can invite lovers.

Namu invited no one, however. "Ever since I had gone to live with Uncle, I had watched the birds fly over the mountain peaks and wondered what lay beyond." Her opportunity to find out came when four government officials arrived on horseback with a tape recorder to collect regional music.

In a journey as magical as any fantasy novel, the book's second half deals with singing competitions Namu attended in distant towns, and how she left home, quitting a menial village job once she learned of the outside world's wonders. Eventually, she studied at Shanghai Music Conservatory, China's most prestigious school.

The publishers are marketing this book as "memoir/anthropology." It is those things, of course, but much more. A young woman's life, family and culture are beautifully documented. I'd bet most readers will have encountered nothing like it.