Bapan Buyi Ancient Village

Bapan Village boasts a history of over 500 years, with the Buyi ethnic group comprising over 99% of its population. The village’s name, “Bapan,” is a transliteration of the Buyi language, meaning “arrow baldness” in Chinese. The village is renowned for its “four ancient cultural features”: traditional papermaking, ancient banyan trees, ancient stilt houses, and the ancient Eight-tone Music. The traditional papermaking technique, which follows the millennium-old process of the Caihou Paper, is considered a “living fossil” of ancient Chinese papermaking. “Eight-tone Sitting Singing” is a traditional Buyi folk art form, featuring an ensemble of eight instruments and boasting simple, quaint melodies.