Yunnan Trip Part 2: good food, booze, and a band

Here my story of my trip to the Yunnan province to China will continue
with my visit to the Dai village. After having just survived a horribly
cold night sleeping on rough wooden boards in a room with only three
walls pulling up to the warm welcoming Dai village was very exciting.
The village is on the border between Myanmar (Burma) and China so it is
on the southern most border of the Yunnan province. It was pleasantly
warm and the fields were filled with banana trees. The village was
beautiful with tons of flowers, children running around in the sun, and
villagers sitting outside selling handmade crafts. It was so nice to be
walking around in the warm sun breathing in the clean fragrant air! My
host mother was extremely nice and made us a delicious lunch. We had
sweet sticky rice with peanuts, delicious fresh cucumber, and a bunch of
other dishes that I actually really enjoyed eating. After lunch our host
mother took us on a tour of the village, which included a rice wine
tasting. The tasting started with a “mild” local rice wine which tasting
nothing like wine and was strong enough to make a couple of the girls
with me cough. Then we tried three more wines which increased in
strength ending in a clear “wine” that triggered several peoples gag
reflexes and tasting like drinking rubbing alcohol. So after four or
five shots of progressively stronger liquor the old villager running the
tasting gave us another shot of the first yellow wine we tasted which
now tasted suspiciously good. Needless to say we all left the wine
tasting laughing happily with smiling faces. That night we had another
delicious meal prepared by our host mother and then went to the village
party where we all learned local village dances and danced around a
giant bond fire. We also reciprocated the cultural exchange of dance my
teaching all the children in the village the chicken dance. After the
party I went back to my host house with the other four girls in my group
and we went to bed slumber party style on the floor of the living room.
I feel asleep content, happy that I didn’t have to wear my coat to sleep
and happy to have a full stomach. 

      An old Dai village man trying to get us to drink more "rice wine".

The next village we visited was a Bai village. Unfortunately the food
was not delicious like the Dai village. Instead the dinner my host
mother made me consisted of fish with bones and scales, lard soaked in
spices, and several unidentifiable foods that looked like organs and
worms. I tried most of the food and then tried to kill the awful tastes
in my mouth with some rice. In general I ate a lot of rice in Yunnan,
lots and lots of rice. The Bai people are known for their dances so the
village party was full of beautiful village dances. The village had a
small stage that had a band of local men playing traditional instruments
and providing the music for most of the dances. After the party we went
back to our host house and then went on an epic adventure to go to the
bathroom. We left the house and went down the windy path through the
village, we had to jump over some chasms in the path, avoid the piles of
poop, duck under the low hanging roofs, walk down a hill, go over a
small river, walk on giant paving stones across some muddy grass, and
walk to a field where there was a wooden stall with a hole to go to the
bathroom in. As I was waiting for the other girls I looked up at the
stars and then couldn’t take my eyes off them. The sky was gorgeous! It
was like being in a planetarium with every start in the sky visible and
shining bright. I could see all the constellations and more starts than
I can count twinkling in the beautiful sky. I just stood there thinking,
“Oh my God, I am standing in the middle of nowhere China in a village
staring at one of the most beautiful end to a challenging day of cultural immersion.


The final village we staying in was a Naxi village in Northern Yunnan.
The village is surrounded by mountains, some of which are the beginnings
of the foothills of the Himalayas. The mountains were absolutely
beautiful. The tallest mountain was gorgeous – caped with beautiful snow
with clouds clinging to its peaks looking like all the majestic
mountains I’ve seen on planet earth and national geographic movies.
Also, knowing that on the other side of the mountain lay the Tibetan
cultural region made me more meditative and peaceful. My host mother was
very nice and since all her children had moved to the city to work there
were twenty girls from my program staying in her house. Ten of us slept
in the attic, which was surprisingly warm since she gave us a ton of
blankets. Like all the other villages we had dinner with our host family
and then went to the village party to see traditional village dances and
share some American culture by singing old rock classics and modern
songs like “Dynamite” which Lily (one of our staff members) translated
told the villagers was a song about the celebration of life, which I
guess it kind of is.


It was strange to think that our trip was ending the next day. We had
been traveling through Yunnan for almost two weeks and it seemed like a
different world, a totally different China. Being in Yunnan has made me
rethink how I feel about China and has really changed how I understand
China. Staying with ethnic minorities, especially in their villages, was
an eye opening experience. Although many times the people and places
seemed so vastly different from home in many of the villages I was
struck by the generosity and friendship the people shared with us. And
although they don’t have toilets or heat I found that they like to
celebrate life the same way my giant polish family does back in America –
with good food, booze, and a band. 

                               The Bai village women 

                              Me in the Naxi village

Yunnan Trip Part 1: beautiful and terrifying

I’m back from my two-week trip to the Yunnan province of China. It was a
mandatory academic excursion trip that focused on learning about and
interacting with some of the ethnic minorities in that region of China.
On the trip we stayed with five different ethnic minority groups in
their villages. In each village we were assigned a host family who we
spent the day with and then spent the night in their home. If you
pretend you're watching a national geographic movie where there are men
and women dressed in traditional village clothing dancing around a fire,
pooping in a hole in the ground, and eating bugs for lunch you can begin
to picture some of my experiences in the villages of Yunnan. I’m not
kidding – I’ve become an expert at the squat and go bathroom method.

The first village we stayed was home to the Yi people. This was actually
my favorite village because the food was actually really good and my
host mother was wonderful. The home where I stayed with a traditional
dwelling with minimal electricity (only a couple light bulbs), no heat,
and a rooster to wake you up early in the morning. When had a big lunch
with lots of dishes with local vegetables and pork from the freshly
slaughtered pig. We also had water containing a stick with leaves in it,
which I later learned was a local grass used to make tea. It was
actually really good but I couldn’t help thinking about the Polovick
side of my family joking about eating tree bark. Later we climbed into
the back of some trucks and rode up a nearby mountain to get to a lake
where the Yi women were going to perform their village dances. I
seriously thought I was going to fall off of a cliff and die as we drove
up the winding dirt road standing in the back of the truck with only
each other to hang on to. Fortunately I survived the ride and got to see
the Yi women perform their beautiful dances, especially their famous
dragon dance. I couldn’t believe that I was standing in a village in the
middle of nowhere China watching Yi women perform a dragon dance for
Chinese New Year. It was incredible. After the women finished performing
they tried to teach us the dragon dance. It was way harder than I
thought it would be. The women made it look so easy, but the dragon and
the sticks supporting it were really heavy! Being in the Yi village was
just the beginning of a trip that was like nothing I have ever
experienced before.

The second village we stayed in was a Hani village much higher up in the
mountains, which means that the people often turn to baijiu (a
disgusting tasting clear liquor with a 60% alcohol content). When I got
to my host families house after hiking up a ridiculously steep hill my
host father immediately insisted on pouring me and Emily, the other
student with me, a glass of baijiu. One sip was enough to make me cough,
but we had been warned not to reject the offering since it would be
extremely disrespectful. So we chocked down our glasses over lunch that
was one of the scariest meals I’ve ever seen or attempted to eat. There
were actual bugs in a dish on the table and my host brother was poping
them in his mouth just like they were the peanuts next to them. I ate
another dish which I didn’t know had bugs in it but quickly discovered
was not something I wanted anywhere near my mouth. After lunch we met up
with some local children to hike the rice terraces. The rice terraces
were absolutely beautiful. It was like looking at a postcard only I
could smell the freshness of the air and feel the mushy ground
 under my feet. My captivation of the beauty lasted until the terraces became as narrow as a balance beam and not falling off into the murky rice paddies became my top priority. I was getting a little scared at one point and out of no where a little Hani girl grabbed my hand to guide me on the path. It was so sweet, and such perfect moment of kindness and human connection that at least for a while I totally forgot about my fear of falling. The Hani village was beautiful and challenging and another part of the journey that has opened my eyes to a world I’ve never experienced before. 

The story of this journey will be continued in blogs to come…

你好 Ni hao! Hi!

Learning Chinese is really really really difficult. I think it is
probably the hardest class of my college career so far. The sounds are
different and even when I write in pinyin (American letters) the letters
mean totally different things. For example the letter q is pronounced
“chi” and the letter x is pronounced “she”. I already have a good
study group that meets the night before every class to work on homework
together and study for our dictation quizzes. Aside from my Chinese
language class I am really excited about my other classes. I am taking a
research seminar to help with the progress of my Ricci project and the
professor is extremely knowledgeable, helpful, and encouraging. He has
already helped me to think about what I want to do with my project and
make sure it is really what I want to study. I have decided to focus on
Buddhist temples in Beijing, especially some of the historically
significant ones. My research mentor is also wonderful and has even
offered to drive me to some temples later in the semester. My favorite
class so far is Daoism. The professor has a great sense of humor and has
us meditate in class. I am also taking a sociology class focused on
society and religion in China. The class seems like it is going to be
extremely helpful for my research project and will also be a very
interesting class. My professor is a Pulitzer Prize winner and seems to
be an all around amazing person. He wrote one of the books I have for
class and is going to have the author of one of our other books come and
speak to us about his experience in China. We are also going to get to
go on some field trips! Overall, I am already really enjoying my classes
here and love learning so muchabout China and Chinese culture while here
in China. My classes have been keeping me very busy.

I’ve also been preparing for a two-week trip to the Yunnan Province of
China. It is a mandatory educational study trip sponsored by my program.
We will be traveling through Yunnan for two weeks and five of the nights
we will be in minority villages spending the nights sleeping in the homes
of minority villagers. Unfortunately I won’t have internet access during
the trip so I won’t be able to post any blogs for the next two weeks but
I’m sure I will have tons to write about when I get back!