Pashaning in the Yulin + Wanna Eat That Spider?

Thanksgiving Weekend Day III

The next morning I was woken up at 5 (which is really 4 Yunnan time) by the Zhang’s menagerie of animals, specifically their evil rooster that just struts around the yard like he’s hot shit all day and doesn’t make a peep unless it’s dark outside and a time for sleeping. Not that I’m bitter, or anything. But I did sleep really well in our attic hidey-hole ‘till then. When we woke and went downstairs, we found the women in the kitchen preparing breakfast, while the men (Xuedan’s father, brother, and several other relatives and/or village members) preparing to go out to the fields to farm. They were planting beans. Since the village is very communal, they were all getting ready to work the same field. I’m not entirely positive, but I’m pretty sure that no one has private land, except for their homes, in Xiangming, and even the homes are practically public land, the way people come and go. Xuedan’s father was in the front of the house cutting large bamboo strips lengthwise to become trellises for the beans to climb. The rest of the men headed down to the field. Since we, once again, were not allowed to help in the kitchen, we asked the guys if we could help in the fields. They at first refused, and wouldn’t even let us go down and watch. But after some insisting, and after befriending a man introduced to us as Xuedan’s grandfather (who clearly wasn’t her zhende grandfather, and whom we from then on referred to as hao pengyou), they decided they could teach us how to plant the beans and let us help. Our desire to farm, however, continued to baffle them to the extreme. They’re probably still not over it. We were each equipped with a poking stick and were told to poke holes about a fingers depth and place 3 dried black beans into the hole. Then you use the blunt end of the poking stick to sift dirt over the top of the hole, but not pack it down. Each line of bean field was covered with a strip of saran wrap type plastic that we poked through. I was told this plastic was to keep the land warm enough (although I can’t imagine this is a severe issue, as in November the average temperature was in the 70s).
After planting for a bit, Xuedan and her mother called us up to the kitchen for breakfast where we had leftovers from the night before as well as homemade zhou from tea and rice, and discussed our pending rainforest hike. Xuedan asked if we wanted to shower first, but we (wisely in retrospect) chose to abstain ‘till after the hike. So Xuedan gathered her pengyous, and we gathered some granola bars and water (they took none and looked at us weird) and set out. We blindly followed 20 year old men with machetes for a bit before one of them pointed out the small mountain we were to climb. It was beautiful. I’ll post a picture.
We set out on a little marked dirt trail that winded through the back of the village and out through some tea fields before plunging full force into the forest. It sounded like the rainforest café soundtrack, but it was real life, and I kept expecting to see a monkey leaping out at me, but was consistently disappointed. Oh well, I guess there’s no wild monkeys in that part of Yunnan.
We hiked past waterfalls and along side of some treacherous cliffs. At one point we began commenting on all these crazy spiders along the trail. They were huge, and black with neon yellow spots. They were also everywhere. The second our friends realized we were interested, they let out an “oh!” and simply grabbed one down, deftly wrapping up its legs with its own web. It was crazy, within seconds this spider was sitting helpless between Xuedan’s fingers when she offered it to me as a xiaochi – snack. I just stared in shock and managed a few zhendemas. They kept insisting that it was delicious, and that I could either eat it now or take it home and fry it up. I ended up declining, and so did my friends. Xuedan and her friends weren’t hungry either, so before I could say anything, Xuedan just flippantly tossed the spider over her shoulder and into the bushes. It was so sad: that spider, I suppose, will just wait to die there since it’s all tied up so tightly in it’s own web – oh the irony!
After going up and up for a while we hit a riverbed that we followed for quite some time. After a bit of walking one of our new friends decided they needed a smoke break and a snack, so we stopped and rested on some rocks while he went, selected what seemed to be a random lilly pad and yanked it out by the root. He then went and cleaned it off in the river, stripped it down with his machete, and offered it to us to eat. Xuedan busted out with some spicy/salty dipping stuff that we had used for peppers at breakfast. These roots were delicious! They were super sour, which was offset by the dipping stuff, but then had a sweet aftertaste. It was quite the rollercoaster for the tastebuds, and I’m really hoping I can figure out an English name for them sometime.
We continued following the river for a while, but pretty soon the banks severely narrowed and it became a pretty extreme game of hopping from slippery rock to slippery rock. Eventually we had to give in and accept the fact that we were going to have squishy socks. While the squishy sock phenomenon is for the most part uncomfortable, the coolness was quite welcome during the extreme morning heat combined with our intense hike.
Our next smoke break (I’m convinced that every man in China is a chain smoker – great combo with the pollution) we stopped at the village’s bamboo collection site. It was just a little hut where a farmer could live for a day or two while harvesting bamboo. It also served as a bamboo storage site.
After a bit more rock hopping/wading we emerged in some dried up rice paddies. The rice had already been harvested, and it was the start of the dry season, so we were able to just walk straight across the fields. It was here that we walked up to what appeared to be a solid wall of woods climbing a steep hill and were told that the Buddhist place was just through there. We were also told that we couldn’t touch about half of the plants because they were either poisonous or dangerously spiny. Fab combo. This did look impenetrable, but we were told “Meiwenti” and to roll our pants down. They asked us to wait while two of the boys went in with machetes and hacked a path through for us. We had been using those machetes throughout our hike, but this was just extreme. Really, if it weren’t for them, we would never have been physically able to reach the Buddhist site.
A few minutes later the boys yelled for us to come up, so everyone else began the scramble up the hill, which involved grabbing onto tree branches and vines and hauling yourself up. It was only a few meters, but it made Simatai look like child’s play. At the top we came out into a small clearing with a miniature grotto. There was one small grotto with a Buddha in it, quite high up, and a carving of a local god at eye level. I later learned that the local god has the ability to enter the earth and reemerge wherever he feels fit, just seconds later. Pretty sweet power. Above the clearing were some crazy stalagmites (or tites? whichever one grows down from a ceiling). We learned that the vegetation around this area was so extremely thick because it’s only visited (usually) once a year, by children who are bringing offerings for good luck for the year. Here we also pulled out our granola bars to share. The nature valleys went over HUGE with our new friends, so I’ve made a mental note to mail them some when I get home. Maple syrup is not a flavor that exists in Asia.
Continuing on our way, we stopped to say hello to some people working in one of the fields neighboring the rice paddies and pick some wild tangerines and some other fruit that’s a relative of the pomegranate, but I have no idea what it actually is. I didn’t really like the pomegranate thing, but the tangerines were AMAZING. Highly recommended.
After this we kept hiking and eventually reached the summit of our climb. The view was spectacular. In this picture you can see the village of Xiangming nestled in the valley below. Rather than go back through the rainforest, we took the direct, but steep, path down this slope. I only tripped once, but I fell on the tangerine I had been saving for later and completely juiced myself. Along the way we passed tons of these little huts; some even had farmers hanging out in them that we stopped to chat with.

Thus ends a very successful rainforest hike. I saw and learned a lot. It was spectacular. When we returned to Xuedan’s house
her mother made us eat something and take a nap before we could do anything else. After our nap we showered off the rainforest and just chilled with the family for a bit. We did some karaoke in the living room, and taught her brother how to play BS. Then Xuedan offered to show us around her town. It didn’t take long to walk from end to end (5 minutes), but we met a ton of people and played some intense games of badminton with the kids who had just gotten out of school (around 6 – count your blessings, America). Xuedan also taught us how to harvest and eat our own sugarcane and youzi, which grew in some random person’s backyard, but since this is a communal village it was meiwenti that we went in there unannounced and macheted ourselves some sugarcane. Pretty cool stuff.
That night after dinner we went downtown (a 5 second walk) to hang out with our new friends. We sat around Mrs. Zhang’s Shao Kao stand (where she grills a whole range of random items) and chatted. We sat on low stools around a short table made of wood set up on concrete blocks. The boys heard that we thought their motorcycles were cool, so we got rides around town. Basically we just sat around hanging out and eating sunflower seeds for 4 hours while having a good chat.
The next morning our bus left at 8, so we just woke up to the rooster and headed out with little ceremony, although we made the family let us take their picture so we can send it to them later. They have precious few pictures, and those three that they have they clearly treasure, so I think a family picture would be a nice gift. Our bus was uneventful, except for our waiguorenness being commented on every five minutes by the other bus patrons. We made it to Jinghong around noon and found ourselves with the rest of the day to spend before we left for Kunming around 7:30.
Dai food for lunch and market exploration till late fit the bill, as well as a quick stop at the Blind Massage College for a sample, which turned into an hour-long sample. My suspicions are confirmed, however, that I am super ticklish and massages probably are not the best option for me. Cest la vie. One night bus, one plane ride, and one shuttle bus later, and I arrived back at Bei Wai by noon with a whole day to spend recouping and prepping for the next day’s tingxie. A Thanksgiving weekend well spent, and certainly one to be thankful for.

Never Doubt the Kindness of Strangers

Thanksgiving Weekend Day II:

We pulled into Jinghong at 6:30 am, but it looked like 5:30 because China is all on one time zone. This picture of the entry gate was taken at sunrise, so it's a bit dark. The first thing we did was to buy return tickets, since we weren't sure when we would be back in Jinghong, and if then there would be open seats on the bus. Next we went straight to a cafe for some breakfast - crazy overnight busses really take it out of you. We looked at our map of Jinghong that we had brought along and determined that the bus stop was labeled as being on the North side of town and assumed that we would find cafes in the center of town. So we pull out our handy dandy compass to figure out which was is South and set out. We quickly found that this was the incorrect decision, since the buildings started to fade away and the landscape turned into rainforest. We asked a few construction workers which way it was to the center of town. They all laughed and pointed back in the way we'd come. Now, Jinghong isn't very big, but this bus station had been moved obscenely far down, so we were in for a bit of a trek North. Silly outdated maps. We eventually settled into some muesli and discussed our next move.
According to our original plan, we were to head to the bus station on the North side of town (for real - we asked several people to confirm) and buy tickets to Damenglong, get there by 1ish, complete a 6 hour hike/tractor or elephant hitch, and then find a place to sleep. We ran our itinerary by the people who ran the cafe we were in and they agreed that it was a good plan. Fantastic! We make it to the bus station around 10 and inquire about tickets. Not only does the driver try to charge us twice as much as the Chinese people for the ride, we also discover that because of road construction our original 2 hour journey had become a 4-6 hour one. Since we still needed to do a 6 hour hike, the trip just became somewhat impossible. It's not exactly polite to ask around for a place to sleep if you arrive in town at 10ish at night. While we're sitting around in the bus station lamenting and trying to figure out another town to go to, a girl who was helping us fight for a fair ticket price asked us why we wanted to go to Damenglong in the first place. We told her that we wanted to hike in the rainforest, see some Buddhist sites, meet a bunch of minority people etc. She thought for a minute and then said (in Chinese of course) "You know, you could do all that at my place. My friends and I could show you around. I bet my parents would let you stay in the attic." Obviously this sounded like the best plan ever so we quickly agreed. Her bus was leaving in 10 minutes, and as it turned out there were only 4 seats left on the bus - and four of us. It was fate. Suddenly we found ourselves on a minibus for a five hour ride on a dirt road through some of the most beautiful tropical landscape that I've ever seen. (Kyla, if you're reading, I'm pretty sure a Chinese minibus = a Kenyan matatu). Along the way we chatted with our new friend - Zhang Xuedan - and confused the heck out of everyone who boarded the bus and did not ever in their lives expect to find waiguoren sitting in the back seat.
Xuedan lives in a small town called Xiangming. I've since tried to Google this town, and tried to find it on a map anywhere, both with no success. How crazy is that? It's a tiny Yi village, and most of the people who live there are communal farmers. There is a bit of a downtown that stretches along the main road that's comprised of a couple shops, a market and even a KTV, but it only covers a distance of a couple hundred meters. We were the first white people to visit the village in about a decade, and thus the first white people many of the children there had ever seen - it was pretty exciting stuff for them, and they lined the streets to stare and yell hello in our direction (all Chinese schools offer beginning English, so no matter where you go, you're always greeted with a hello of sorts). Xuedan's home was hand made of bamboo, you could see the sky from our attic spot. There was obviously no need for much protection from the elements - it's late November and the average temperature during our visit was about 75 degrees. Since Thursday was Thanksgiving (which we explained to our new host family), Xuedan and her mother cooked up quite the feast in the giant wok that served as the only implement in their kitchen. They wouldn't let us help, but we did observe the cooking process (and took notes on how to do it) and familiarized ourselves with the many animals that lived on their farm.
Our Thanksgiving feast was spectacular. Everything we ate was grown on the farm. The Zhangs are entirely self sufficient. They grow beans and rice and several other veggies. They have fruit trees and sugar cane in the village that are communal. They have several chickens and pigs that are used for meat. They also hunt (they shot down what they claimed was a mouse, although I'm quite sure it was not since when they showed me the head it was quite large, for a celebratory we-have-white-people-in-town meal). Everything was pretty spicy, and the beans (the Zhang farm specialty) were absolutely spectacular. Like really. Who ever would have thought I'd be blown away by beans? After dinner we met a couple of Xuedan's friends, and her father when he returned home from hunting, but since we were so tired we went to bed early with promises of rainforest hiking in the morning.
Xuedan gave us a candle to light our way to the blankets she had laid out for us in the attic, and we fell asleep looking at the moon and the stars through the spaces between the bamboo that made up the roof. It was glorious.

All in all, it was a pretty spectacular and once-in-a-lifetime Thanksgiving. How was everyone else's Thanksgivings? Please keep me posted! I'll write more about my trip when I have the time.

~L

Xiao Chiing in the Eternal Spring City

Thanksgiving Weekend Part I

This past weekend my program asked us to find a friend or two and arrange a long weekend for ourselves. If our itinerary proved to be educational (and if we stuck to it) they would refund us 1000 kuai (an incredibly substantial amount of money - sweet). So, I proposed that my friends and I head down to Xishuangbanna, mainly because I really like the Dai restaurant behind East Campus, and because it's tropical and has elephants and pineapples. Our proposed itinerary was something like this:
-Fly to Kunming, hang out till next flight.
-Fly to Jinghong
-Take bus to Damenglong
-Hike from Damenglong to Bulangshang over about 2 or 3 days, finding homes to stay in as we go.
-Take bus from Bulangshang back to Jinghong
(all of the above villages are Dai)
-Fly to Kunming
-Fly to Beijing.

An excellent plan if I do say so myself. However, it's not entirely how things turned out, although that's probably for the better. Here's the real story of my Thanksgiving weekend:

We flew to Kunming on Tuesday night as planned, however we did not book a connecting flight to Jinhong because it was so expensive. (It cost almost as much for the 45 minute flight to Jinhong as it did for our 3 hour flight from Beijing!) Luckily, we had heard that there was an overnight bus to Jinghong from Kunming for about 180 kuai, so we decided to wing it. So we got into Kunming at about 1:30 am, fought with a cab driver, and eventually settled into the nicest hotel I've ever stayed in for 40 kuai a night. The south is wonderfully cheap.
The next morning we woke up and went straight to the bus station. Fabulously, this rumor about an overnight bus was truth and no rumor, so we bought tickets and found ourselves with a whole unexpected day to spend in Kunming (as our bus didn't leave till 8:30. We spent the day eating (or in my case, eating and totally stressing about this bus situation - 12 hours on a bus?!). First we found a place to eat across the bridge noodles - the local Kunming specialty. The noodles were pretty good, but even better was the catfight that broke out over noodle prices while we were there. A huge crowd gathered and the police got involved. There was hair pulling and spitting and slapping and even shoving people out into traffic. I managed to snap a quick picture, but got many many disapproving looks.
We decided it would be cool to check out this temple just outside the city that is supposed to have really crazy statues, so we began our trek northward to the minibus station just as the fight was getting to be a little too intense and it felt like we should move along. On the road we ate all sorts of tropical fruits, and even found STRAWBERRIES. These wonderful berries, as far as I knew up till this point, didn't exist in China. No one I've met in Beijing has ever tasted one, or even heard of them. They were glorious.

We eventually wandered into a street of wedding candy shops, made a pengyou, and bought pounds of different candies that we either ate or handed out to small children along the rest of our journey this weekend.
Kunming was really interesting in that the south part of the city (where we started walking) felt like one of the more third-world-like cities (I realize that's not so PC) that I've been to in China, but the further north we went the more modern things
became. It wasn't quite the same juxtaposition that I found in Shanghai's old sectors, but it was a pretty quick transition from street side markets and run down buildings to impressive skyscrapers and beautifully cultivated lake districts.




After wandering around Kunming for a few more hours, eating several other kinds of specialty xiao chi, and wandering through a church and a mosque, we found ourselves at this obscenely large market. I like to refer to it as the taste testing market, since pretty much every stall allowed you a free (and substantially large) taste test of what they were selling. It was all absolutely delicious and tropical (although some of the stuff was wicked weird - but hey, this is still China). Later we wandered though another market, but this one was clothes and jewelry rather than food. Before we knew it, the sun was going down and it was clearly too late to get to this temple, so we made our new goal the vegetarian restaurant in Kunming that Lonely Planet absolutely raved about. 3 of the 4 of us are vegetarian (and the 4th willing to make the switch for the trip) so I was in good company. That restaurant turned out to be closed, so we got a recommendation from some monks for another veggie place down the block. It turned out to be quite delicious, and Terra's 21st birthday was a success.
Just after dinner we rushed off to the bus station to figure out what this whole overnight bus business was all about. These buses are pretty well designed. From the outside it looks like a regular coach bus, but the inside has been gutted and replaced with three rows of reclined, bunked, seats - the backs are at about 45 degree angles - and they all overlap each other a bit, so your legs are underneath the person in front of you from the shin down. Luckily we had all bottom bunks (I think I would have freaked out if I were on top) and my friends were kind enough to keep me out of the middle row. In general the bus was a lot less claustrophobic than the train, since it was windows all around, but it wasn't the most comfortable sleeping experience of my life. It was cleanish, however (they made you remove your shoes and put them in plastic baggies before boarding), and they made bathroom stops every 2 hours (so the on board bathroom wasn't ever used, I don't think, and thus no smelliness). I did not sleep incredibly well, although my ipod helped, and whenever I woke up I was greeted with a vision of glorious mountains or beautiful lakes. This picture is the view from my bed. I wish I was better able to capture the bus ambiance. The movie, by the way, was one of the worst movies I have ever seen. It was in English and perpetuated the worst Asian stereotypes ever.
We finally pulled into Jinghong at about 6:30 in the morning (after a bit of a rough patch where the highway was under severe construction for about 10 kilometers and reduced to a muddy, rutted road I didn't think our bus would be able to pull through). It was still wicked dark because of the whole all-of-china-is-one-timezone-phenomenon. But more on Jinghong later, when I have more time to write.