ABSTRACT
The plain of Dali is under the jurisdiction of the Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture in the Yunnan Province, southwest China. It is neither an administrative unit nor an isolate entity. Xizhou is one of the major rural towns in the north of the Dali plain. The enterprising spirit of Xizhou surely has something to do with its long tradition of trading. During the Republican Era, the Xizhou merchants were so successful that they overshadowed the county seat to the extent that there was a saying: "poor Dali; rich Xizhou." The rich history of Dali suggests alternative modes of connecting to and assimilating the alterities, manifested in the stranger-kingship on the one hand and cosmocracy on the other. As a Cakravartin, a Nanzhao or a Dali king was no longer then an anti-social, barbaric guest like a stranger-king. Neither stranger-kingship nor cosmocracy is about authority over a territory, which is a modern but narrow definition of sovereignty.
