Looking for New Blog Ideas

So, I'm planning to create a new website to share stories, photos, and whatnot moving forward, and I don't think "Beijing and Beyond" is quite a suitable name  anymore, though I am certainly "beyond".  I'm looking for suggestions for names, features, and anything else.  So let me know!

A New Life

It’s amazing how quickly we can go through life, hardly realizing how much or how little things are changing around us.  Another autumn, a new home.  I had missed the seasons.  Kunming, with its eternal springtime weather, had left me craving the crisp wind and sharp colors of Fall.  The flight back to the States was easy.  I woke up early the next morning (a Saturday) and went for a 5-mile run—the passing energy and optimism of jetlag and a long-awaited change to the status quo.  The air was clearer, the water was colder, my bed was softer, my socks were fluffier.  It was good to be home.

I spent my first two weeks expanding my job search, preparing for interviews, and packing away my childhood.  I visited New York a couple times for interviews and to visit friends.  I went to the gym nearly every day.  I was doing my best to be proactive, not falling into the trap of idleness and laziness.  It worked.  Within 5 weeks of my return to the US, I got a job offer—with Google!  After careful consideration, I decided to take it, and told them I’d move to San Francisco within one week’s time.  Always on the move.

I grabbed a taxi from the San Francisco airport.  I’m so used to sitting in the front seat of taxis from being in China, it felt strange to sit in the back.  The driver was an Afghani man who’d been in the US for 25 years.  He told me how he had a street stall selling goods on the weekend, how he worked so hard to support his children.  I told him how I’d just returned from China, and he went off into a tangent about eating dogs, and how living in a neighborhood with a lot of Burmese, small dogs often went missing.  I retold a few stories, and then, changing the subject, explained to him that it was great to be on the West Coast, that I was really excited, but that I was also going to miss my family a lot—that I have a large family, and I’ve been away from them for so long, that I was really hoping to get to spend more time with them before moving away again.  He stopped.  He took a breath, and told me that out of all the Americans he’d ever driven, I was the first one to express how important family is; rather, that most Americans say how great it is to live in the Bay Area, and that they don’t mind only seeing their families a couple times a year.  He was clearly impressed, and I was somewhat moved as well.

There’s an odd feeling you get during life transitions, when you have moved from one place and not yet moved into another, of being homeless.  Once again, I found my life packed away in 4 pieces of luggage, accompanying me to a new part of the world.  I had a week before starting work, and had made it my goal to spend the interim getting to know San Francisco and finding a place to live.  In the meantime, I’d booked a hotel room, and getting into SF after midnight, went straight to bed.

I had never been to California before, and frankly didn’t know what to expect.  My concept of the San Francisco up to that point had come primarily from popular culture:  Full House, The Rock, Milk—not necessarily the best background material.  But, I have certainly learned how to explore a new place, how to quickly get a lay of the land, and make my way.  I set out on foot the next morning, casing almost every main quarter of the city in my first few days.  (I always like to explore a new place on foot—it helps me understand the layout much better than taking public transportation or group tours).  I looked at over 5 apartments in one night, and kept looking.  Fortunately, I’d reached out to my friends for help, and through a bit of actual social networking found an open room in a three-bedroom house in Haight-Ashbury with two other Googlers.  The place was spacious, with a nice bathroom and kitchen, a back yard/patio, and the location seemed good:  blocks from the historic hippie hangout of Haight Ashbury, walking distance to the Mission, the Panhandle (leading to Golden Gate Park) a block to the north, and Buena Vista Park (with its self-proclaimed spectacular views) a block to the north.  I made a decision, and moved in.

San Francisco is eccentric.  From classical pianists performing on the streets in Union Square to taqueries filled with the aroma of great Mexican food in the Mission, homeless hippies still so high on LSD in the Haight that they don’t realize 40 years have passed, and old black jazz musicians outside Yoshi’s on Fillmore complaining about local politics and Israeli settlements in the West Bank.  It’s an exceptionally interesting place to be.  And, you can be sure that I will write more on the subject.

Google, in kind, is also amazing.  It’s almost like being in college again—smart people, cafeterias (except with good free food), league sports, clubs, gyms, shuttles home to SF, and the list of perks goes on.  Google, which is in Mountain View, is a good 45 minutes to an hour and a half from my neighborhood in San Francisco.  Fortunately , the company provides frequent free shuttles.  I do have more to say, but it’s been a long, eventful day, and the shuttle that I’m on writing this right now is just about there.  So, I’ll stop here for now.

I’m hoping to shift this blog to a new blog—something less China-centric—and I’m looking for name suggestions.  So, leave a comment, and let me know what you think!

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A Train To Beijing

Saturday night in Kunming.  Great weather, beautiful sunset, four packed and stuffed bags, and I’m off to the train station.  A hard-sleeper to Beijing.  38 hours, 2 instant noodle bowls, and many unwanted conversations later, I stumble off the train, lugging almost 200 pounds of my life over the past 14 months into the heat and humidity of Beijing.
There’s a theory of time that says that all events ever, past and future occur at once, and time is just our brains’ way of coping.  If it’s true, I can feel it now more than ever.  It gives real meaning to the term “mixed feelings”.  An instant ago, it seems, I was on my way to China, nervous, eager, then alone, with friends, traveling, content, then getting ready to leave, in limbo.  And that’s where I am:  in between the past and the future, feeling every emotion I’ve had over the past 14 months, and anticipating every emotion I’ll have upon my return.

I’m not quite sure why I came to Beijing so early.  My flight’s not till Friday, and I don’t have much to do here before then, but I guess it seemed to make sense to put a significant buffer of time between the train ride and my flight home in case anything went wrong.  I’ve become so used to traveling that it’s become second nature, and almost feels too easy.  The 38 hours on the train flew by, and I managed my bags with only slight difficulty.  I had to stop myself to make sure I had everything, just  because it seemed like I had too little.  Some friends offered to let me stay with them, but I got in just after 11am and they all work, so I checked into a hostel instead.

It’s been an incredible year.  I’ve traveled a great amount , had sufficient time to relax, learned a lot about the Yi people, seen many animal sacrifices, improved my Chinese immensely, lost 60 pounds, and made some great friends.  I’m looking forward to getting back to the States, also.  I can’t wait to see all my family and friends, eat great food, have warm dry clothes, and start my new life.  I have several job interviews lined up, which I have to prep for more this week, and hopefully I’ll figure the next step out without too much of a gap in between.

Anyway, I know it’s been a long time since I’ve written, and I have a couple un-posted entries partly written from this past summer that I’ll try to upload soon.

Saturday night in Kunming. Great weather, beautiful sunset, four packed and stuffed bags, and I’m off to the train station. A hard-sleeper to Beijing. 38 hours, 2 instant noodle bowls, and many unwanted conversations later, I stumble off the train, lugging almost 200 pounds of my life over the past 14 months into the heat and humidity of Beijing.

There’s a theory of time that says that all events ever, past and future occur at once, and time is just our brains’ way of coping. If it’s true, I can feel it now more than ever. It gives real meaning to the term “mixed feelings”. An instant ago, it seems, I was on my way to China, nervous, eager, then alone, with friends, traveling, content, then getting ready to leave, in limbo. And that’s where I am: in between the past and the future, feeling every emotion I’ve had over the past 14 months, and anticipating every emotion I’ll have upon my return.

I’m not quite sure why I came to Beijing so early. My flight’s not till Friday, and I don’t have much to do here before then, but I guess it seemed to make sense to put a significant buffer of time between the train ride and my flight home in case anything went wrong. I’ve become so used to traveling that it’s become second nature, and almost feels too easy. The 38 hours on the train flew by, and I managed my bags with only slight difficulty. I had to stop myself to make sure I had everything, just because it seemed like I had too little. Some friends offered to let me stay with them, but I got in just after 11am and they all work, so I checked into a hostel instead.

It’s been an incredible year. I’ve traveled a great amount , had sufficient time to relax, learned a lot about the Yi people, seen many animal sacrifices, improved my Chinese immensely, lost 60 pounds, and made some great friends. I’m looking forward to getting back to the States, also. I can’t wait to see all my family and friends, eat great food, have warm dry clothes, and start my new life. I have several job interviews lined up, which I have to prep for more this week, and hopefully I’ll figure the next step out without too much of a gap in between.

Anyway, I know it’s been a long time since I’ve written, and I have a couple un-posted entries partly written from this past summer that I’ll try to upload soon.

A little girl kneed in the butt by her mother (grandmother?) for sitting on the ground.

Two little boys running across the street, one of them falling down in front of a motorbike, which stops just in time.

A 20-some year-old girl on the sidewalk, facing her boyfriend and squatting down, licking an ice cream cone at crotch level.

Four old ladies up an alley sitting on a bench with red pillows in front of an Everquest game billboard ad.

Raindrops splashing perfectly down onto the water of the fountain at Yunnan University.

Water Wheels, Peppers, and Humping Monkeys:Lijiang and Sichuan

Once again, I find myself a couple posts behind.  About one month ago, a friend of mine was down in the Kunming area, and the two of us coordinated a couple short trips to Lijiang and then to Sichuan.  Lijiang is one of those quaint historical towns with winding waterways, cobblestone bridges, and alleys full of photos waiting to be taken.  After receiving UNESCO World Heritage Site status in 1997, however, the town has been incredibly over touristed by Chinese and foreign tourists alike.  Its photos have been captured a thousand times over (mostly by Chinese visitors sporting expensive SLR cameras they don’t know how to use), its alleys have been filled by trinket stores each as identical as the next, and its quaint charm has receded back beyond its main streets and squares.  That’s not to say, however, that Lijiang is not worth visiting, or that its charm is gone.  An early morning stroll or just after sunset shows the Old Town of Lijiang at its best—without the busloads of Chinese tour day-trippers.

We bought last minute overnight train tickets to Lijiang, and headed out on a Friday night.  It was an easy ride, and we spent a large part of it playing Chinese chess, which my friend Shuo had just taught me how to play.  Arriving at just after 7am Saturday, we shared a cab to the Old Town with a Chinese couple, and made our way through the alleyways to the popular backpacker respite of Mama Naxi’s Hostel.  The Naxi people are one of China’s official ethnic groups (like the Yi).  Researched extensively by the famed botanist, Joseph Rock, of interest are their matriarchal family structures and their waning pictographic script (Dongba—sharing a name with their religion).

We settled into our hostel, and went exploring, taking countless photos, and admittedly visiting more than one apparently identical souvenir/clothes shop.  Beyond its main squares, Lijiang’s alleyways are still fairly magical, and certainly worth the visit. Later, we visited Black Dragon Pool park and climbed its hill, rented bikes visiting another touristy village—an offshoot of Lijiang’s Old Town—and biking out a bit into the countryside.  When it started raining, however, we turned around and rode back to town.  For the sake of brevity, I’ll leave my description of Lijiang at that.  We took another overnight train back to Kunming, and rested up before heading to Sichuan for another brief trip.

With limited time in Sichuan (I had a short research trip scheduled for my return to the Kunming area), my itinerary wasn’t overly extensive.  I wanted to spend a day exploring Chengdu, followed by a two-day hike up Emei Shan, another UNESCO World Heritage Site and the highest of China’s four sacred Buddhist mountains, and finally a stop at the monolithic Giant Buddha of Leshan.

We were greeted at the train station in Chengdu by a friend of Shuo’s uncle, who treated us to lunch and showed us a local temple.  I had planned to fly back to Kunming from Chengdu, and accidentally booked my flight for a day too early.  In an attempt to fix my ticket, we went on a wild goose chase through Chengdu, arriving at the address of a Sichuan Airlines office that no longer exists, and eventually being told I could take care of the problem at the airport.  It’s the rainy season in much of Southwest China, and the evening brought torrential downpours.  We held up in a hotpot restaurant to try our tongues at Sichuan’s legendarily spicy cuisine.  Sichuan or ‘Szechuan’ cuisine (for those who know it by this odd and often mispronounced spelling) is famed for its frequent use of chili peppers, garlic, and the strangely numbing Sichuan Peppercorn.  At Shuo’s urging, we ordered a Spicy Frog Hotpot (we’re talking whole frogs, not just the legs), and enacted what Kermit has no doubt had recurring nightmares about.

The next morning we woke up early to grab a bus out to Emei Shan.  With only a day and a half to hike the mountain, we took a bus up to the first tourist stop, and started climbing from there (rather than climbing straight out of town).  My hiking shoes broke early on, and I switched to my boots, tying my shoes to the side of my pack.  Interestingly, the Chinese tourists and locals were fascinated by the worn out pair dangling by my side.  “Wow, look how bad-ass that foreigner is.  He’s already worn out one pair of shoes hiking,” I heard one tour guide say.  Emeishan is known for its resident population of Tibetan Macaques—a large breed of monkeys, who don’t mind hassling intruders for food and bottles of water (which they easily uncap and gulp down).  In fact, a friend of mine had been bitten by one of the monkeys a month earlier, and had had to undergo a long series of prophylactic injections to avoid a disease they’re known to carry.  So, we armed ourselves with large bamboo staffs, which acted doubly as walking sticks, and made our way up the mountain.  We made a wrong turn early on, and ended up several kilometers out of our way at another entrance.  Backtracking, we made it through the so-called “Monkey Zone”, where I witnessed a macaque jumping on a man’s bald head, licking off his sweat and subsequently beginning to hump his ear.  The man was mostly oblivious to the monkeys intentions of aural sex, and the monkey was swiftly shooed away by a clearly bitter middle-aged woman of a ‘caretaker’.  There are two paths up Emei Shan, an easier route, which most people take on the way up, and a steeper, more difficult and more interesting route, which most people take on the way down.  We opted to climb up the more difficult path to get better views and save some time.  Early on, it’s not uncommon to witness spoiled, overweight men being carried around by cigarette-smoking locals in shoulder-born litter sedan chairs like the lazy emperors they wish they were.  After the Monkey Zone, however, the trail becomes steeper, and the crowds of fat Chinese men pay to be carried back to their tour buses.

It was a fairly steep ascent, and we stopped for lunch at a place called the Hard Wok Café, before continuing on.  An hour or so before reaching our intended destination—a monastery mid-way up the mountain, it began to pour.  We slowed down and reached the monastery as the light was beginning to fade.  We negotiated with the monks for a place to sleep (not an uncommon practice), and eventually decided to plug on for another hour up to the next monastery to save time for the next day.  The rain had slowed, but the light was failing.  We powered up the last steep approach and made it to the monastery just as darkness fell.  The monks prepared us a vegetarian dinner, and gave us a room and a place to bathe.  We went to sleep early, the sound of mosquitoes buzzing in the air.



The next day had more steep ascents, but we powered through, and made it to the summit by lunchtime.  Although it was very foggy, the huge golden statue at its top was still extremely impressive.  We stayed for a bit before hopping a bus back down to town.  From Emei, we caught a bus to Leshan, home of the world’s tallest statue of Buddha.  Built in the 8^th century, the giant Buddha of Leshan was the world’s tallest statue at that time, and was built to calm the waters at the confluence of the Dadu, Qingyi, and Minjiang rivers at his feet.  Interestingly, the large boulders dropped into the water from the mammoth cliff carving over a period of 90 years filled pits in the rivers’ floors and indeed had the desired effect of calming the waters—though it’s doubtful anyone knew the true reason at that time.

From Leshan, we headed back into Chengdu, and did some touring, before enjoying a spicy dinner of Rabbit Gan Guo (dry pot).  The next day, my friend headed north to continue his tour, and I (with limited) time, explored a little more before heading to the airport for my flight back to Kunming.  At the urging of the airline, I planned to arrive at the airport an extra hour early to resolve my ticket problem.  The hostel said it would take an hour to get to the airport.  I hopped in a cab about 4 hours before my flight.  It took 25 minutes to make it to the airport.  I quickly resolved my ticket problem, and sat around for 3 more hours till my flight was scheduled to leave.  Chengdu’s nightly downpours did not spare me, however, and the flight was delayed an extra two hours.  I waited some more.  Finally, the airline put us all on a people mover out to the tarmac and left us in the cold, rainy darkness beside the plane.  There had been some miscommunication, and the flight crew would not let anyone board the plane.  The people movers had left, and everyone was there, tired, cold, and wet, standing on the runway for another 20 minutes.  The women and children crowded under the plane’s wing to avoid the rain, and the rest of us went to yell at the airline personnel for such horrible treatment.  Finally, they let us board (with not one apology uttered), and we were on our way.  We landed in Kunming just after 4am.  I should mention, however, that there are NO TAXIS at the Kunming airport at 4am.  So, I strapped up my pack, and walked out into the streets.  It’s a good two to three hour walk to my house from the airport, and buses don’t run at that hour.  I was aggravated, tired, and even a bit amused by my plight.  Just outside the airport, however, a hei che (‘black car’ or illegal taxi), pulled out and offered to have me hop in with his three other customers for a somewhat exorbitant fee.  I began to argue with him and he asked if I was crazy (with no other options around).  Still, not in the mood to argue, he lowered his price and I made it home after dropping off his other customers by 6:30am.

The next few weeks were filled with long nights watching the World Cup, a couple research day trips around Kunming, and other work.  I've uploaded photos from these trips and from a more recent research/hiking trip through Yunnan, which I'll write about in the next few days!

Getting To Know the Nasu of Luquan County

About a month ago, I arranged a research trip to Luquan county, north of Kunming.  Earlier in my time here, I'd begun looking at the Eastern Yi dialect, Gepo, visiting Xundian county and following up with a fair amount of research and contacts.  This trip to Luquan, however, would be my first examination of Nasu, another Eastern Yi dialect, beginning the second phase of my research.  As an official trip, I had several bureaucratic hoops to jump through, and was asked to pay a rather large research affiliation fee, which I had thus far avoided paying.

The goal of this particular trip was to get an understanding of the current sociolinguistic situation in Luquan county.  Since basic word lists and phonemic/tonal illustrations had already been obtained, my aim was to get more of a qualitative view of how Nasu is "changing".  I intended to spend a week in the area, with the majority of my time spent in a fully Yi-speaking village.  My professor agreed to accompany me up to the area, introduce me to his contacts, and get me settled in.  Then, I would complete my research at my own pace, and come home when I was ready.

It was a bumpy two-hour bus ride north out of the city to Luquan.  On the way, I reviewed some basic Yi phrases and syntax with my professor, Zhang ChunDe.  He handed me some more research he'd done on Nasu, and I tried to review it when the bus wasn't clambering through construction zones.  I'd opted to make this a formal research trip primarily because Nasu is my professor's native language, and Luquan is his home county.  His perspective and connections, therefore, would prove to be invaluable.

The bus dropped us off in the middle of town and we switched to a taxi, which swung around at Zhang ChunDe's instruction and picked up one of his colleagues, a local Yi researcher and a former student of Zhang Laoshi's, before arriving at a restaurant for lunch.  It's interesting to see how well respected my professor is, at least 10 of his colleagues taking off to join us for lunch.  There was a bit of baijiu (alcohol), and I drank when I was asked to and proposed a toast or two when it was appropriate.  It's a difficult game, drinking with the locals, and I've made my fair share of mistakes and seen others flounder ignorantly in the face of the Chinese drinking culture, as different as it is from Western drinking practices.  Even more difficult is balancing Chinese and Yi drinking cultures, which differ enough to confuse any outsider, shot after shot, drunker and drunker.  This time, singing was absent and the men went around the table drinking shot after shot of the strong, clear alcohol, showing their empty glasses after each turn.  It was Chinese drinking culture.  Three shots, then five, ten—I lost count.

After lunch, Zhang ChunDe's colleague, who we'd picked up in the taxi earlier led us to a car, where one of his associates was waiting to drive us out into the countryside.  It is impolite in China to thank a very close friend or relative for anything (it's expected that you'd do the same if the opportunity arose).  These men had taken off from work to drive Zhang laoshi and myself around.  Another sign of respect to Zhang ChunDe.  I thanked them for their assistance.

It was almost an hour out to the first village.  I began asking questions to frame my research.  "What ethnic groups live in the area?" ("Yi, Han, Miao, and some Hui.")  "How is the educational system structured in relation to minority languages?" and so on.  They asked me what kind of food I liked.  If I preferred beef or pork.  I explained how since I'm Jewish, I'd grown up eating very little pork.  "Good," they said, "then tomorrow, we'll take you to a beef restaurant for lunch."

We arrived at the first village, and got out of the car.  We approached a home and asked the two grandmothers there if we could come in to talk.  It had been raining and the men were out in the fields farming.  There appeared to be two grandmothers, a grandfather, a mother, and two children:  a very young girl and a baby boy.  They led us into a sitting room, swarming with flies, and set out some stale sunflower seeds for us to eat.  I did my best to ignore the flies, landing on every part of me, and greeted the family in Yi.  Zhang ChunDe explained what I was doing there, and that I was interested in studying Yi and learning about their village.

There were 66 homes in the village, they told me, only 10 of which were Han.  The rest were Yi (Nasu).  All of the residents of the village were bilingual in Nasu and Mandarin, and could switch between the two when the situation necessitated it.  In fact, the mother was Han, but had adopted the Yi culture and language.  She went into the other room, and came out to show me the traditional Yi garb.  We talked for a while and then set out.

When we got back in the car, they told me there was some bad news.  It had been raining all week off and on, and it seemed as though it would continue.  Unfortunately, the mountain roads out to the village that I had hoped to stay in were not paved, and it wasn't safe to go by car.  Instead, my professor suggested that we stay in a hotel that night in the main town, do some more interviews there, and then head to Wuding-a county over to the West the following afternoon.   He asked me if I wanted to arrange for a language consultant to do some phonetic documentation, and I explained that I'd rather continue to do more qualitative interviews.

Back in town, we visited a Yi research office, and I examined some ancient Yi texts and other artifacts.  Later, I checked us into a hotel, and took a nap before heading out to dinner at a duck hotpot restaurant owned by a friend of theirs-a Yi woman, whom they told me sang beautifully.  His colleagues met us again for dinner, and they all played a drinking game involving playing cards.  Someone would specify how many spoonfuls of baijiu to put in a glass, and then they would lay down their cards.  The risk was that if you chose to add more spoonfuls and then lost, the cup would come to you to drink.  I watched for a while and didn't fully understand what was going on, but I got my fair share of alcohol after the food came out.  More toasting.  Someone said to me in 'English', "CHEESE!" before raising their glass.  (They meant to say 'cheers'.)  There was more singing than at lunch-the Yi drinking culture coming into play.  One of the local Yi officials, brought me around to other tables to toast his friends.  They all welcomed me to Luquan, and I thanked them all for their warm welcome, toasting them back.

After dinner, they drove us to an old apartment complex.  On the way, they explained that we were going to visit a Yi expert. "There is no one better at Yi studies than Zhang ChunDe," my driver began, "but when it comes to Yi writing, there is no one better than this man."  Zhang ChunDe proudly nodded his agreement.  The sun was going down, and lots of old men were out with their grandchildren.  Several men, upon seeing Zhang ChunDe, came over to greet him.  We made our way up to the second floor, and entered a small, dark, hard-floored apartment.  A little, old Yi man named Li ChengZhi greeted us at the door with a big smile.  He wore a gray Zhongshan jacket (Mao style), with the sleeves rolled up.  A box of Chinese medicine on the counter indicated for bones confirmed that his jacket had probably fit at some point.

My interview with Li ChengZhi was exceptionally interesting.  He was a lexicographer, in the true sense of the term, a profession which, with the onset of computers, I would wager no longer exists like this in Western society.  This man, however, at nearly 70 years-old, had been working on his dictionary for over 25 years.  The room was lit by a single bulb, hanging from the ceiling.  Li pulled out a drawer packed full of note cards, each one, he explained, listing a word, its translations, and cross-references.  He showed me his 600-page handwritten manuscript, corrected several times over.  He'd handwritten the Yi Characters, their IPA transliterations with linear tone indications, and their Chinese (HanZi) translations.

"With so many dialects of Yi, how do you account for differences in the vocabulary and writing systems?"  I asked him.

He chuckled to himself, as if only he could understand the difficulty of the task.  Then, he showed me how he'd categorized the word listings by dialect.

"What is your motivation to keep working on this dictionary?"

"I don't have an office anymore," he began.  "I work out of my home.  But, with such lacking facilities, it's my spirit that keeps me going."

"Why did you decide to make this dictionary?"

"Oh, I didn't choose to do it.  It just happened."  He went on to explain how after graduating from college in 1961, he'd gone into work as a translator, translating movies into local ethnic dialects.  "There were eight autonomous states in Yunnan," he continued, "and one team member for each state."  He repeated himself a while and stumbled over dates.  In the early 80s, he began studying Yi writing at the Yunnan Nationalities University (where I'm affiliated), and after graduating from that program he ended up working on the dictionary.

He went on to emphasize the problem of standardization.  "Why," he asked, "should Liangshan (in Sichuan Province) Yi be the template for a standard Yunnan Yi script when there are many more Yi people in Yunnan than in Sichuan?"  He explained that the way that provincial and county borders had been established by the Chinese government did not necessarily agree with separations of traditional Yi groups,  and that differences in provincial and county language policies had shaped the development of Yi societies in different areas.

Before leaving, he showed me a copy of his dictionary which had been published.  "This," he said, "is a previous edition."  His Yi handwriting had been scanned in and printed in the book.  He reemphasized how long he'd spent on it.  "And they spelled my name wrong!"

The current copy, he explained, was in its third review.  He was almost done.

"What will you do when you're done?" I asked.

"When I'm done?" he repeated longingly.  He sighed.  "When I'm done, I'll rest."

The next morning, they drove me back out into the countryside.  They stopped the car on the side of the road, and we got out and walked into the fields.  They told me how the winding road we'd been driving on was relatively new, and that the ancient road went right through these fields and over a very old bridge.  We walked for a ways, and I saw that they were building a new highway through the area.  Finally, we arrived at our destination:  an ancient Yi inscription on a cliff wall.  They told me it was at least five or six hundred years old.  I noticed that there were Chinese inscriptions as well, and they explained that they were from a later date and told a different story.  When evaluating the current and future state of a declining language, it's fascinating to see how long and rich of a history has led to its current position.

My professor asked if I wanted to stay in the area or go with him to visit his family in neighboring Wuding county.  I told him I would go with him, having already gotten a brief but very interesting view of the Nasu in Luquan county.  We stopped for lunch at a Hui restaurant for beef (as promised) before heading out.  More alcohol, more singing, and more rain.

Each county in Yunnan has one main town, a county seat.  Interestingly, the Wuding and Luquan county seats are only 7km apart.  They had once been a single town, and had been split by relatively modern political separations.  It fell in line with what Li ChengZhi had been talking about.  The Nasu from these two areas, geographically so close, had historically been very closely related if not the same group.  With political separation, however, it's possible to see how differences in language policy affecting the two counties differently could theoretically cause the Yi of each area to change independently.

Upon arriving in Wuding, Zhang ChunDe told me that we were going to visit his family and then his colleagues at the government offices.  We dropped off our stuff at his family's house, a nice three-story tenement in a residential area of town, and sat eating some fruit and sunflower seeds.  After a while, we set out to the government offices, where we again examined some old Yi documents.  They were very old, and I noticed that they don't store them very well.  I remembered when I'd reviewed ancient documents back at the University of Rochester, and had to enter a special room and only handle the books with special gloves on.  We sat for a while and drank tea.

Later, Zhang laoshi told me he planned to treat everyone to dinner, and that we could catch a bus back to Kunming after that.  A bunch of his colleagues from the government office joined us for dinner, including one of the secretaries and her young son.  I bring two types of gifts with me when I go on field research trips:  cigarettes and candy.  This time I'd brought some premium cigarettes from Yunnan for the men and some American blow-pops that I'd picked up in an expat store in Kunming for the kids.  I gave one of the lollipops to the woman's son (with her permission), and he came back a while later with his tongue turned black.

It was an interesting dinner.  They ordered a bottle of baijiu and a bunch of beer (with me in mind), and I polished off many shots of the former and bottles of the latter.  Everyone got extremely drunk, and it became clear that we weren't heading back to Kunming that night.  The dinner carried on and there were scores of toasts, Yi serenades, plenty of food, and so on.  At one point, they asked me to sing a song in English.  I told them I couldn't think of anything, to which they suggested I sing the first thing that came to mind.  About halfway through the first verse of the Beatles' Help!, I forgot the words and made up a few of my own before giving up and sitting back down.

The sun had long gone down, and everyone stumbled out of the place.  By the time Zhang laoshi and myself were outside, his colleagues had booked us two rooms in the hotel upstairs.  I went up and dropped my stuff off, and then we packed into a car to my professor's "nephew's" house.  He led us quietly through a gate, and picked some berries off a bush for us to try.  Without them being washed, I was a bit wary, and pocketed mine, pretending to put it in my mouth.

Upstairs, we entered his apartment to find his teenage daughter getting ready for bed, brushing her teeth over a bucket in their living room in front of the TV.  His wife, who had been sitting watching television, immediately went to work playing host, washing berries, peeling apples, setting out sunflower seeds and so on.  The man whose house it was pulled out a large, clear gasoline-style jug and poured out more baijiu.  I opted for tea instead, trying to prevent myself from getting too drunk.  We sat for a while making noise, and more men, his neighbors, joined in the fun.  I felt bad for the girl, who'd gone to bed, but for whom it was clearly a school night.  At one point, one of the Yi officials leaned over and asked me, "do you see this kind of home, compared to what you're used to in America, and think that it's lacking or poor?"  I explained that I don't look down on anything I encounter in China, and that it's not more "poor" than what I'm used to in America, but that it's just "different".

They drove us back to the hotel, and I tried to get some sleep.  A few hours later, at around 3am, I was woken up by a mosquito buzzing in my ears.  I got up to splash some water on my face and noticed that my arms were itchy.  In the light, I saw my hands and forearms had been all bit up-not by mosquitoes, but by bed bugs.  There's a clear difference in the marks.  Rather than getting back in bed, I stayed up till it was light, then went for a walk.  After breakfast, we picked up our stuff at my professor's family's house, and then boarded a bus back to Kunming.  All in all, it was a brief but rewarding trip, and certainly gave me some more motivation for my research.

[Photos from this trip are up, and I should have an article on my trips to Lijiang and Sichuan (and their accompanying photos) online soon as well!]