Gasa Town 戛洒小镇

About Gasa Town

The town stands where three prefecture-level areas – Yuxi, Chuxiong and Pu'er – and five counties meet, and the county government records that it has long served as a collection and distribution point for goods in Xinping and the districts around it. Its territory covers 488.47 square kilometres and falls from 2,400 metres at its highest to 510 metres at its lowest, a span the county describes as giving the town a markedly vertical, layered climate with mean annual temperatures of 17 to 23 degrees Celsius. The name itself comes from Dai and means market on the sandbank. Xinping county describes Gasa as the home of the Huayao Dai and as the largest Huayao Dai settlement area in the country. At the end of 2023 the town's registered population was 35,700, of whom 29,300, or 81.7 per cent, belonged to ethnic minorities, including 14,500 Yi and 11,600 Dai.

Huayao Dai households here live mainly by farming, growing rice, sugarcane, bananas, mangoes and citrus, and in livestock keeping they are especially given to geese. Their houses are mostly of the tuzhangfang type, which the county's own account sets against the raised bamboo houses of Dai communities in Xishuangbanna. The costume that gives the group its name is assembled in layers from self-woven and self-dyed dark cloth with coloured tassels, silver bells, silver bosses and silver bracelets. In 2021 Dai costume in its Huayao Dai form, nominated by Xinping, entered the fifth batch of China's national list of representative intangible cultural heritage items, where it is called history written on the body.

What to look for

• Huayao Dai dress: layered dark cloth, woven and dyed at home, hung with tassels, silver bells, silver bosses and silver bracelets, inscribed on the national intangible cultural heritage list in 2021.
• Tuzhangfang houses, the earthen dwelling type the county sets apart from the raised bamboo houses of Dai villages in Xishuangbanna.
• The Longxi clan manor, which the county names among Gasa's historic and cultural sites.
• Nan'en waterfall and Shimen gorge, both listed by the county among the town's scenic areas.
• The valley-floor farmland, where the low, hot basin supports two rice crops a year alongside the sugarcane, banana, lychee, mango and citrus orchards the county calls the core of Gasa's agriculture.

Location & getting there

Getting to Gasa Town

Identify the main visitor approach and any separately managed houses, museums or performances. Ask before entering residential spaces or photographing residents.

• Search for 戛洒小镇 with 玉溪市 and 新平彝族傣族自治县.