<> == Overview == The State of Lancang is a constituent polity of the Earth Kingdom, governed by an indigenous prince with a nominal allegiance to the Earth King in Ba Sing Se. It is named for the great river system running down its Western valley, which arises in the highlands of Boshan and Lancang and empties into the gulf of Gaoling. The geography is mostly mountainous. Its indigenous inhabitants are the [[Avatar/Shanqi Villagers|Mountain-Air Villagers]], an earth nation who practice a form of the [[Avatar/Air Nomad Religion|Air Nomad religion]] (Angjiao) taught to them by missionaries in late antiquity. They were historically the majority of the population, but their numbers have diminished since the beginning of the war. The economy is mostly agrarian and autarkic, with modest agricultural exports to the cities on the gulf and some textile production in the settlements. == History == === Antiquity === In prehistory, the highlands were sparsely inhabited by nomadic pastoralists of what anthropologists call the Carding Bow Culture, after a distinctive artifact of their material culture (a tool used to process the wool of their goatmarmot herds.) Little is known of the Carding Bow Culture, and they were assimilated by a different group of earthbending nomadic pastoralists migrating from the north of the Boshan (Southern) plateau before literacy reached the region. The recorded history of the Lancang Valley, in the West of the state's present territory, dates to the time of the Di dynasty, though it had no connection to the North or Omashu and was rather part of the cultural sphere of Gaoling. The Lancang valley, in those days, was controlled by small city-states; they had little contact with those highland people they called "mountain barbarians." The coming of Air Nomad missionaries occurred in late antiquity. The Air Nomads introduced literacy to the highlands and actively, though peacefully, promoted their religion, as their restrained attitudes toward proselytism were yet to develop. Deciding that the highlands, though sparsely inhabited, could not pasture large sky bison herds sustainably, most Air Nomads moved on, but they continued to have extensive cultural contact. (Some ethnic air nationals, though still described as "[[Avatar/Ang Pastoralists|Air Nomads]]" by the Earth Kingdom, did settle in the future Poshan State, modifying their lifestyle to suit the local environment.) The highland people came to be known as Shanqi (Mountain-Air) villagers, and began to develop more trade and cultural links with the Valley with the availability of sky bison and the introduction of the Gaoling shallowboat in the 1600s BG. Also of note, the Mau Dai people are believed to have originated in the far East of what is nowadays Lancang, and still live there today in the hill country between the Boshan plateau and the jungles. === Before the War === In 1548 BG, the Kingdom of Zou invaded the Boshan plateau during [[Avatar/Zou-Gaoling War|a war with Gaoling]] over conflicting interests on the Southern coast. The highland peoples confederated to resist the invasion, electing the first Prince of Boshan, Mipham Tenzin, to organize the defense. The invasion was repelled, and the plateau thereafter cast off the suzerainty of Gaoling, which had been weakened by the war; the Boshan Principality even came to control the Lancang valley and its urban population. For the next several hundred hundred years, the Principality of Boshan, which extended into the present-day polities of [[Avatar/Poshan State|Boshan]], Lancang, and the [[Avatar/Kingdom of Zou|Kingdom of Zou]], remained independent, though at times paying tribute to Gaoling or [[Avatar/Kingdom of Great Omashu|Omashu]], mostly the latter. Power was divided between the secular Prince, whose base of power was in the Lancang Valley, and the abbots of the great monasteries, who received tithes and corvee from the Shanqi in the highlands. Over time, the Shanqi adopted more of a settled way of life, as they pivoted from subsistence agriculture to trading goatmarmot wool to the valley folk for food. The Principality was divided into roughly the modern states of Boshan and Lancang, mostly bloodlessly, over a theological dispute between the great monasteries, who disagreed about the particulars of the obligation for laypeople to be vegetarian. In Boshan, the strictures of vegetarianism remained optional from the standpoint of secular law; in Lancang, it became obligatory for all, regardless of religious belief, except for transient visitors. When the armies of the Ting dynasty invaded the South and united most of the modern Earth Kingdom, both of the principalities of Boshan and Lancang submitted to the Earth King without violent resistance. === Since the War === When the Fire Nation attacked the Air Nomads, and began their systematic extermination, many survivors fled to Lancang and Boshan. This was a natural choice as both of these regions had large numbers of sympathetic coreligionists who were, at least theoretically, protected by the Earth Kingdom as its subjects. Unfortunately, this protection was not effective; the Fire Nation began raids into the plateau to target the surviving Air Nomads and anyone harboring them. Even Shanqi with no connection to the situation were sometimes suspected of being Air Nomads and killed by the raiders. Although the geography of the highlands provided some protection, the unwarlike Shanqi were unable to resist the Fire Nation. Earth Kingdom garrisons were understaffed and mostly concentrated in the Lancang valley; they only sporadically resisted the Fire Nation. The Prince of Lancang of the time, Gongzim Tenzin, turned collaborationist despite his nominal allegiance to the Earth Kingdom, and sent his own forces to find Air Nomads and turn them over to the Fire Nation in exchange for avoiding further devastating raids and the slaughter of those whose only connection to the Air Nomads was religious affinity. As a result of the Fire Nation raids and economic damage due to the loss of sky bison transport links, the population of Lancang has declined since its peak before the war, and become more urban. Many Mountain Air villagers have assimilated into the urban Lancang valley. Most of the great monasteries remain closed to this day. These institutions, targeted by the Fire Nation for their role in sheltering the refugees, were heavily damaged; many monastics fled or were martyred. == Climate, Geography and Biology == Most of the modern state of Lancang is occupied by the southern third of the Boshan plateau, a highland region with an average elevation over 3km above sea level. The Lancang river valley runs North to South in the West of the state, and its westernmost extremity contains part of the Gaoling mountains. == Economy == === Agriculture === Agriculture is the main economic activity of Lancang. In the fertile and temperate Lancang valley, a variety of vegetable and cereal crops, as well as some orchards, are grown. Animal husbandry is more limited, partly owing to the popularity of vegetarianism, though there is a riparian fishing industry of note; fish are not included in the state's ban on animal slaughter. Goatmarmot wool is the main agricultural export of the highlands; hardy goatmarmots are indigenous to the Boshan plateau and Gaoling mountains, and were domesticated in prehistory, before even the rise of the Carding-Bow Culture. Despite archaeological evidence to the contrary, it is sometimes said that the Shanqi domesticated the goatmarmot because it was not good eating in comparison to other wool-bearing animals. Non-Angjiao inhabitants of Lancang do sometime eat the goatmarmot, in spite of its musky taste, but its flesh considered a poverty food. It produces fairly abundant, very sweet milk, which is usually also considered an acquired taste, and is sometimes fermented for alcohol. Goatmarmot wool comes in many varieties of texture and color, and is processed into yarn and textiles either as a cottage industry in the highlands, or in water-powered mills in the Valley, often for export. It is considered cooler and lighter than sky bison wool, and takes dye better, so it was even sometimes bought by Air Nomads before the genocide. However, it is then and now mostly exported to Gaoling and [[Avatar/Qinyue Province|Qinyue]], where it is much beloved in the cool mountain regions and considered higher-quality than the local product. In the highlands, mountain barley is grown in most of the arable land; monastic novice earthbenders help to make the most of rocky soil. Still, little more than what is necessary for subsistence is grown, and much of what the highland shanqi trade their goatmarmot wool for is food, for example maize and root vegetables. === Industry === In the urban Lancang valley, there are a number of grain and textile mills. A local boatbuilding industry exists, making mostly small boats due to lack of large hardwood forests in the valley; larger boats are usually imported from the Gulf of Gaoling or from Poshan state. More recently, as immigrant miners from Omashu have become interested in the mineral resources of the Boshan plateau, mineral processing has become a more significant activity in the state. However, smelting and other large-scale noxious industries are opposed by many Angjiao practitioners who consider it to be out of balance and offensive to potentially-dangerous nature spirits. So, currently, most minerals extracted from the Boshan plateau are transported downriver to the Seacoast State and smelted there at facilities on the Gulf of Gaoling, using charcoal from the forests there. Traditional metalcraft and mining are practiced, on a very small scale, by the Shanqi. Mau Dai people living in the far East of the state practice silversmithy, and some of their work finds its way overland to the Lancang Valley, where it appears in markets. === Trade and Transportation === River transport is of critical importance to the Lancang valley; in the highlands most rivers are not navigable or large and overland transport with beasts of burden is the norm. Broadly speaking, textiles and minerals from the Boshan plateau are traded to the valley in exchange for food and finished goods. The state as a whole exports textiles and, increasingly, metal ores, but is predominantly autarkic. There were formerly locks on the Lancang river, to bypass the Thundering Rapids. The building of these locks were initiated under General Ji, subordinate of Qin the Conqueror, and stood incomplete until the reign of the 41st Earth King, who ordered their completion with the intention of building greater trade and cultural links between the coast and interior. The locks were destroyed in a Fire Nation attack in 2 AG, and as yet have not been completely repaired; a fort built to protect them was not garrisoned at the time of the attack but nowadays is an outpost of the Princely Guard of Lancang. == Culture and Anthropology == === Ethnic Composition === Historically, almost the entire population of the Boshan plateau in Lancang, and the majority of the population in the valley as well, were [[Avatar/Shanqi Villagers|Shanqi]], ethnic earth nationals (and oftentimes subjects of Omashu or Ba Sing Se) who mostly follow a form of the [[Avatar/Air Nomad Religion|Angjiao]] religion taught to them by Air Nomad missionaries. In the Valley, there have long been a variety of Southern Earth Kingdom people, including those tracing their origins to the Gaoling gulf, Gaoling itself, and the Seacoast state. The activities of the Royal Earth Army and Omashu have also lead to significant admixture from the Zhongzu and Nanzu. In the highlands, cultural and religious contact with Air Nomads, particularly in the sphere of the Southern Air Temple, sometimes led to romantic affiliations as well, and many Shanqi can lay claim to a few Air Nomad ancestors, though they are reluctant to do so since the genocide and Fire Nation raids. The Fire Nation raids killed a demographically significant number of Shanqi, especially in their great monasteries, which held around a quarter of the highland population. Nowadays, while the Shanqi are still the majority population in the highlands, the valley is majority non-Shanqi. The princely dynasty of the Azure Court is ethnic Shanqi by their rule of patrilineal descent, though the incumbent prince's mother was a rich noblewoman from Gaoling, Peony Beifong (北方牡丹). Some [[Avatar/Mai Dai People|Mau Dai]] live in the temperate jungles of far Eastern Lancang, historically having migrated there to avoid persecution by the Kingdom of Zou. Nowadays, they are functionally independent of the State of Lancang (to say nothing of Ba Sing Se) and live under their indigenous customs of governance. Formerly, there was an overt minority of [[Avatar/Ang Pastoralists|Air Nomads more-or-less-permanently resident in the Earth Kingdom]], many of them monks and nuns in the great monasteries. (The cardinal air temples had deemed the Boshan plateau unable to sustainably support sky bison in sufficient numbers for the usual lifestyle of Air Nomad laypeople.) No one today seems to overtly identify as an Air Nomad in Lancang, for obvious reasons, though it seems likely that some [[Avatar/Kaizhai Air Nomads|survived by concealing their cultural identity and bending]]. Lately, a significant number of miners from Omashu and the Southern Coast have been drawn to the Boshan plateau to prospect for mineral resources, sometimes coming into conflict with the Shanqi over the environmental impact of their activites. Mining franchises are sold by the state government, and miners must promise to respect traditional Shanqi pasturage rights, but the less scrupulous among the miners have found that the Shanqi are not prone to effective resistance and the government in the Valley is not well-positioned or particularly inclined to enforce them. {{attachment:girl_finished.png||width=300}} ''Young Shanqi girl with a goatmarmot.'' === Languages Spoken === The common language of the Earth Kingdom is widely read and written in the urban Lancang Valley, and the Gaoling dialect is usually spoken. In the government and court, a fair approximation of the Ba Sing Se dialect is used. People in Lancang are often bilingual in Boshanese, which is not mutually intelligible with Common. Formerly, Boshanese had its own writing system, but it has fallen out of favor and the language is usually written with the phonetic characters used for teaching the Air Nomad liturgical language, or with Common characters. The latter writing scheme for Boshanese is often criticized by grammarians because it has been developed in a very nonstandard and decentralized way, and the phonetics of Boshanese do not line up well with Common, creating many ambiguities. (In particular, Boshanese syllables have a much wider variety of consonants in the coda than either the Ba Sing Se or Gaoling dialects permit.) Monks and nuns are familiar with the air nomad liturgical language, though it has fallen out of spoken use with the apparent extinction of the Air Nomads. Prayers and services are conducted in Boshanese (in the monasteries and highland shrines) or, sometimes, in Common (mostly in the cities.) === Cultural and Religious Institutions === The form of [[Avatar/Air Nomad Religion|Angjiao]] practiced in Lancang is called the Poshan Sect (泊山教派), this name coming from the former unified polity of the Boshan plateau. Formerly, the Great Monasteries developing this faith were a pillar of religion, culture and political life in Lancang. However, they were left much diminished after devastating raids from the Fire Nation shortly after the beginning of the present war. Their facilities, mostly made of earthbent stone, fared better than their occupants against the Fire Nation, and some have been repurposed for secular uses; others, deep in the Boshan plateau, are left abandoned out of respect (or superstition) by the Shanqi. Only three of the Great Monasteries remain functional in anything like their state before the war: the Pure Mind Temple (清心寺), the Soaring Dharma Temple (昂法寺), and the Golden Knowledge Temple (金識寺). Each of the surviving Great Monasteries passed through the years of the Fire Nation raids differently, and the stories of their survival (and the destruction of others) have passed into folk religion: no refugees had come to the Pure Mind Temple, and such was their reputation for honesty that they were believed and spared; such was the detachment from mundane things of the Soaring Dharma monks that they entirely demolished their grand monastery and hid in caves, rebuilding after the raids ended; such was the ingenuity of the Golden Knowledge Temple that they confounded the raiders by altering the environment with their earthbending and sending them into the trackless wilderness of the deep plateau. However, these stories are all partly legendary: none of the surviving temples were harboring large numbers of Air Nomads at the time of the raids, either because they had never sheltered them or because the refugees had left to avoid endangering them after the first raids formed a clear pattern. With the Great Monasteries mostly destroyed, many of their functions have been either abandoned, taken over by the Princely government, or decentralized to local village councils. Some of the religious have come to see the Fire Nation raids as something of a purification, as those who become monks are not as motivated by the opportunity to live in comfortable (even somewhat grand) surroundings with a secure livelihood, as once many did. Smaller, more modest monasteries with fewer monastics have been rebuilt, and they are supported by almsgiving more than compulsory tithes. Before the raids, at the height of monastic power, about one in four Shanqi were sworn monastics (35% of men and 15% of women); now only about 5% (evenly split between genders) take full vows. Both in the Lancang valley and in the highlands, education has traditionally been the responsibility of the monasteries. Some secular scribal schools, similar to those elsewhere in the Earth Kingdom, are found in cities; they are generally sought by elite families who wish their children to become ranked officials of the Hao Ting, as they are understood to better prepare students for the material found on the Earth Kingdom's civil service exams than religious schools. Monastic schools teach literacy, numeracy, and ethics to all, usually from the ages of eight to thirteen, without religious prerequisites. For this, they receive a subsidy from the Azure Court, often in kind (such as provision and maintenance of the school facilities.) Students willing to keep a behavioral code rooted in the religious ethics of Angjiao can become postulants, and receive further free education until the age of twenty. Topics studied by postulants include, besides further teaching in the basic subjects, logic and argumentation, geometry, history and the Angjiao religious literature as it has been developed on the Boshan plateau. One who completes this curriculum will be literate both in the common language and the liturgical language of the Air Nomad religion. Monastic earthbending training is available only to sworn monks and nuns, though postulants are expected to master the corresponding [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neigong|neigong]]. People seeking an elite secular education generally travel to Gaoling, as there are no secular institutes of higher learning in Lancang or Boshan, except for the King Bumi Medical School in Dongga, founded in 76 AG by immigrants from Omashu. It has an attached hospital, locally called the Nanzu Hospital, which was endowed mainly as a service to injured [[Avatar/Nanzu|Nanzu]] miners working in Lancang, though it sees all patients. Earthbending education outside of the monasteries is mostly limited to the efforts of individual teachers, generally in folk styles; there is a Gaoling-style academy in Deyadrang which is patronized by the state to train combat earthbenders for the Princely Guard. A royal earthbending school, north of the Leilan locks, was shuttered around 5 BG due to lack of royal funding; it is now used as a monastery by a group of nuns whose original facilities were destroyed in a Fire Nation raid. {{attachment:monastery_f.png||width=400}} ''The Angfa monastery following a winter storm.'' === Arts, Fashion and Cuisine === Artistic use of Earthbending is common in Lancang, and in the rocky highlands, many outcroppings have been styled with folk and religious art for centuries. The textile arts are well-developed, including knitting and embroidering with yarn made from goatmarmot wool. The latter has become quite sophisticated and elaborate, and is the usual medium for the creation of religious images. The light cotton or linen flags made by air nomads for decoration are sometimes imitated with paper (made from bamboo which grows in the Lancang valley) or very thin felt. In common with most of the Earth Kingdom, calligraphy and inkbrush painting are well-developed and respected art-forms. The clothing of the inhabitants of Lancang is of two predominant styles, "Valley" and "Highland." Valley clothing is more similar to the Earth Kingdom fashions of the urban Gaoling gulf, but with adaptation to the cooler, less tropical weather of the Lancang valley, typically including woolen overclothes when it is cold. In the highlands, more wool is worn (mostly shorn from goatmarmots) and it is the primary textile. Green is the dominant color, along with the natural colors of goatmarmots (brown, grey and off-white.) A stocky cylindrical hat is common in the uplands, which is called a "shepherd's hat" though it actually originated among the monasteries as a postulant's cap. Especially in the past, many people spent time as monastic postulants to get the benefits of education, and, never renouncing the lesser orders of religious life (which did not include a requirement for celibacy), they continued to wear the hat as a mark of education and piety. {{attachment:postulant_finished.png||width=300}} ''A teenage postulant in the foothills of Lancang State walks to a monastic school.'' Monks, regardless of their affiliation with highland or valley monasteries, wear saffron-yellow robes with green accents, similar to other Earth Nation monastics of Angjiao. Many variations in their habit make it possible to distinguish which specific religious tradition and rule they are affiliated with. In the past, when the great monasteries of Lancang were more of a political force, the rank of monk-officials was reflected in their clothing as well, which was controversial. Nowadays, there are few monk-officials and they wear the same habit as the other religious of their order, special costume having been rejected as anti-egalitarian. In the past, monks wore robes of sky-bison wool, but as it is no longer available, they wear mostly the local goatmarmot wool, with underclothes of either the same material or plant fibers. The Cuisine of Lancang varies by region. Meat is eschewed by most practitioners of Angjiao, but the precise parameters of what constitutes meat vary with religious tradition and have been a source of sectarian controversy (and even been exploited for political gain.) In the Valley, fish and other animals that are not birds or mammals are considered non-meat by most practitioners, though monks still avoid them. By contrast, even laypeople in the highlands avoid all meat, fish and poultry, and the status of eggs was the subject of a major sectarian controversy in past centuries; the result is that in Lancang eggs are avoided by all, but in Boshan, eggs are avoided only as a special mark of piety, even by monks. By contrast, spicy food (narrowly defined as including certain designated vegetables common in the Southern Earth Kingdom) is eschewed in Boshan but permitted for laypeople in Lancang except during certain fast days. A porridge of pounded, roasted barley, complemented by pickled or fresh vegetables, is a common staple. It is often cooked in whole goatmarmot milk, though in the valley, water and oil from oilseeds are used instead. The architecture of Lancang makes heavy use of earthbending to form rammed-earth structures, with monasteries, major public buildings and forts often reenforced with wooden internal structures as protection against hostile earthbenders. Internally, wood is preferred to stone for many purposes, such as flooring and wall coverings. {{attachment:throne_finished.png||width=400}} ''The Azure Throne, a cultural treasure of the State of Lancang'' == Subdivisions and Politics == Lancang State is divided into 22 urban prefectures (府), all but one of which are in the Lancang valley), which stand independently of its counties (縣), of which there are 36. The state remains nominally loyal to the Earth Kingdom, though these days only the two forts guarding the Lancang river in the south are garrisoned, each by a company of about 150 soldiers of the Royal Earth Army. There is also a small detachment of about a dozen soldiers in Deyadrang, but they function as little more than an personal guard for the Plenipotentiary to the Azure Court, a Rank III official of the Hao-Ting who represents the interests of the Earth Kingdom to the Prince and, in theory, might command the court on the authority of the Earth King. In the past, this power was very much operative, but nowadays, Lancang is ''de facto'' independent and this official is once more mainly a diplomat. Except for the ''pro forma'' ratification of princely succession, no Earth King has even attempted to issue an outright edict to the Prince since before the outbreak of the hundred years war, and it is probable that any such edict not already in line with the political will of the court would be "lost" before being read in court. The Fire Nation raids around 1-2 AG broke the political power of the great monasteries; those that remain have limited influence outside their endowments. Large parts of the highland counties, previously administrated by monk-officials of the defunct monasteries, have returned to decentralized village governance under prominent locals. The region remains surprisingly peaceful, though there is some bandit activity in the East. === Capital === The capital is the city of Deyadrang in the Lancang valley, about 20 km south of the border with Boshan. The palace of Prince Tsondul Tenzin II (44AG-present) is located there. The throne of the Prince, inlaid with lapis lazuli, is known as the Azure Throne, with his court being metonymically known as the Azure Court. The capital is the second-largest city, with a population of 38,500 and has been negatively affected by rapid urbanization in the last fifty years, which has overwhelmed sanitary infrastructure. === Major Cities === The largest city is Dongga, in the south of the Lancang valley, with a population of 62,200. It is the principle hub of external trade via the Gulf of Gaoling. Other major cities are north of the Leilan (雷澜) rapids, which large boats could not pass until the construction of the locks during the reign of the 41st Earth King; their fortunes declined rapidly after the locks' destruction and have not really recovered since their partial restoration. === Governance === The State of Lancang is ruled by its prince Tsondul Tenzin II (44AG-present), grandson of Gongzim Tenzin (54BG-10AG). The prince is leader of a counsel of members of the princely family (particularly the incumbent prince's mother), important urban leaders, and representatives of the remaining great monasteries. Nominal allegiance is to the Earth King in Ba Sing Se, and the central government is represented by a scholar-official appointed to the princely court, but the state is ''de facto'' independent and this official now only acts as an advisor or diplomat with minimal coercive power. The Princely Guard of Lancang is approximately 2000 strong, divided into fifteen companies, and is supplemented by two companies of the Royal Earth Army in a pair of forts guarding the Lancang River in the south. Formerly, there were a number of Royal garrisons in the Lancang valley, but they have been abandoned by the Earth Kingdom for many decades. The Princely Guard conduct patrols of the valley and highlands to keep order. Recruitment from among the relatively pacifistic Shanqi is difficult, so most recruits are from the people of the valley or are immigrants from Gaoling and the coast.