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.

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!]

Cycling Around Lake Dian: The Roads Around Kunming's Polluted Heart

Two weekends ago was 5/1 (May Day), or International Workers' Day, and I had my plan in order:  sleep, watch some movies, enjoy the sunshine, and maybe get some work done.  That was until Friday evening when my friend Abby asked me if I wanted to spend the weekend with her and my other friend Lisa  cycling around Lake Dian (滇池), south of Kunming.  A little hesitant at first, she talked me into it, and I woke up early Saturday morning to go rent a bike.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="361" caption="{Photo of Lake Dian taken from XiShan (I didn't take this photo)}"][/caption]

Lake Dian, a highland freshwater lake, is the largest lake in Yunnan Province, and the eighth largest in China.  It was the model for the much smaller, man-made Lake Kunming at the Summer Palace in Beijing.  It is truly spectacular that such a vast lake is so close to Kunming City, and only makes it all the more depressing that the water is EXTREMELY polluted.  We're not talking just "don't drink the water" polluted.  We're talking "do not touch the water" polluted.  (I was even a little afraid to look at it.)   The water in Lake Dian has been classified Type V (the worst possible rating), meaning the water is unfit for agricultural and industrial uses.  The reason:  prior to the first wastewater treatment plant being constructed in Kunming in 1990, all of the city's bacteria- and disease-ridden wastewater was dumped untreated directly into the lake.  The factories and farms crowding the lake's eastern shore no doubt do not help the matter, and despite billions of dollars being spent to clean up the water, it's been estimated that over 55% of the lake's fish population has died.  It is even more worrisome to see locals out fishing in its depths.

Despite the pollution, I had yet to go down to the lake, and decided a weekend out exercising with friends was better than a weekend spent sleeping and being unproductive.  So, Saturday morning, we got a quick  breakfast at Salvador's, and then set out south down through the city by the canal, passing roadside tattoo artists, coca-cola sponsored police tents, and endless honking cars.  We made it past the airport, heading east (clockwise around the lake), and keeping to local roads.  The city quickly turned into farms and smaller towns, extensions of the city.  After a while, we stopped to ask directions from a few PSB officers, who pointed us towards Chenggong-the main extension zone for Kunming city and home to the new campuses of all the major universities in Kunming.

Past the town, construction was strewn in all directions, new high-rises stood looming over the surrounding agriculture, and the roads were covered with rocks and dirt.  Massive diesel trucks roared by us, sounding their loud air-horns obnoxiously as if their engines weren't enough warning of their approach.  They kicked up the dust in clouds, making it difficult to breathe, and knocking debris flying into the air at us.  When we eventually stopped for lunch, our faces were brown with sunglasses-shaped patches of skin, and our eyebrows were white with dust.  We rode out towards villages,  under bridges, and through the black smoke of slashed-and-burnt fields.  More than once, the trucks were backed up honking at each other, and we did our best to weave in and out between them, dismounting when necessary.  It was a rough ride, if only for the traffic and dust, and I huffed and puffed, climbing up the final set of hills for the day, thankful to be that much closer to our first night's destination.  We zoomed at top speed down towards the southernmost point of the lake, the town of Kunyang (昆阳), over 70 km around the lake from our starting point.

We rode into town, found a hotel, and washed the dirt off our faces.  Every part of me was sore, and it was difficult to walk through the town.  We found a public square honoring Zheng He (郑和)-the famed early 15^th century Hui mariner and explorer from this small corner of Yunnan, who commanded fleets of ships sailing as far as East Africa.  The square was alive with local families and old men flying kites, vendors grilling chuanr, and children delightedly bouncing up and down on small inflatable carnival rides.  Later, we returned to our hotel and played cribbage before calling it a night.  I was exhausted, and my arms had apparently been sunburnt during the ride.  Moreover, with all my muscles aching, I hastily decided to apply tiger balm to my legs, back, and shoulders, falling asleep at around 11pm.  Two hours later, I awoke in a cold sweat, my sheets soaked through, and a text message on my phone.  One of my friends in the adjacent room was very nauseous, and wanted to know if I had any medicine.  I gave her something, took a shower, and went back to sleep, noticing briefly that it was pouring outside.  The next day's ride wasn't looking too promising.

Fortunately, the morning brought a sufficient lack of rain, renewed energy, and easiness in my friend's stomach.  So, we settled our bill with the hotel, strapped our packs to our bike racks, and left the town of Kunyang heading Northwest back around the lake.  The roads around the lake are all under construction-part of Kunming City's 12 year plan to expand and increase transportation routes-and the start of the second day's ride was beginning to seem like a repeat of day 1.  Fortunately, the western edge of the lake is less developed and much more scenic, and the road quickly flattened and became paved.  Just before Haikou on the southwest corner of the lake, we had a choice to make:  stay on the local roads, climbing up into the mountains and around, or sneak onto the expressway, cutting straight across flat roads and the new bridge into town.  We snuck past the toll, a little wary we were going to get chased or yelled at, but we were clear.  We saw the green, polluted waters below us as we crossed the bridge, and made it into Haikou.  We switched to local roads, and we passed donkey-drawn carriages, construction men yelling "Hello! How are you?" in English, local restaurants selling fresh-caught fish from the lake (!), and scenic "tourist" spots with mediocre views.  We made it to XiShan (the western hills), where the impressive cliffs towered above us on our left, a few stray sheep bleating somewhere up above us, invisible.

We stopped for a snack in a small village towards the north of the lake, watching the local stray dogs interact, sniffing each other and lying in the middle of the road, obstructing local traffic.  Asking for directions, we found a main road back into Kunming proper, and rode through town until we were back on familiar turf.  We pushed the last leg up towards WenHua Xiang, and locked our bikes up outside Salvador's (where we'd started nearly 140km ago the previous day) for lunch.

Since this was primary a cycling trip, I didn't take many photos, but I'll throw some up when I get the chance.

Over Land From Hong Kong Back to Kunming:"The Finest Mountains and Waters Under Heaven"

Well, this post is a bit overdue, but I wanted to at least give a brief retelling of my trip through Southern China, from Hong Kong back to Kunming by land.  After the Fulbright Conference ended in mid-march, my friend Laura and I set out back into mainland China by bus, traveling from Hong Kong directly to Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province.  While the primary language in Guangdong is Cantonese, we didn't have any trouble getting by with our standard Mandarin.  The bus let us off after dark in downtown Guangzhou by a Hilton.  We checked the price, but it was far out of our budget.  So, we called around, and it seemed that most places were steeply priced compared to what we were used to in other Chinese cities (possibly due to the high volume of international business and trade conferences in the area).  We finally found a "cheaper" hostel south of the river, and cabbed it down there.

The next morning, we went to the bus station to buy overnight bus tickets to Guilin, a fabled city in Guangxi, Guangdong's provincial neighbor to the west.  We had the day to play, and we walked around a bit, met up with a friend of mine who was also staying in the area, got dim sum for lunch, and visited some sites.  Guangzhou was not exceptionally interesting, and we were glad we'd opted to only stay for one day.  That night, we returned to the bus station, and boarded a sleeper bus, traveling west into Guangxi Province.  The driver told us we would arrive in Guilin around 6:30am, and we tried to get some sleep on the narrow beds.

Around 6am, the bus stopped and everyone shuffled out.  We were told we'd arrived in Yangshuo, an hour or so south of Guilin, and where we'd intended to go after Guilin.  So, we discussed it, and decided to switch our itinerary around a bit, first spending time in Yangshuo.  We checked into a cheap hotel, and rested a bit more till the sun came up.  After a light breakfast of buns and dumplings, we rented bikes and set out into the countryside.  Yangshuo is known for its astounding karst scenery (much like the scenery I encountered in Laos), split picturesquely by the peaceful Li River.  Telling many Chinese people that you're traveling to Guilin and Yangshuo elicits an envious reply.  In fact, there's a Chinese saying: "桂林山水甲天下，阳朔山水甲桂林。"（Guilin's mountains and waters are the finest under heaven, but Yangshuo's mountains and waters top Guilin's）.  China's 20 yuan bill even depicts a scene of the Li River in Yangshuo.

We rode out around the area taking photos, visiting sites, climbing Moon Hill (known for its moon-shaped hole), and riding some more.  With no real map or idea of where we were going, we kept asking locals for directions, and got lost a couple times.  The weather was slightly overcast, and not the ideal for a visit to Yangshuo, but it was still quite an enjoyable day.  Flat roads by tourist attractions gave way to winding roads through vast open spaces between imposing karst cliffs, and then the Li River.  Flat bamboo rafts floated by carrying fishermen, cows grazed the fields, and everything seemed picture-worthy.  We stopped by a chicken farm, and the owner came out to ask us how many chickens we wanted to buy.  (We refrained.)  At one point, the road led right to the edge of the river, continuing on the opposite side, and a local helped us cross and bring our bikes across by raft.

By the time we made it back into town we'd ridden about 40km, and were fairly tired.  We walked around a bit, had dinner, and went to bed, catching a bus north to Guilin the next morning.  Guilin is an interesting city, but not necessarily deserving the above Chinese saying.  We explored, had some snacks, visited a number of different sites, including twin pagodas, one made of copper, the tallest copper building in the world.  For dinner, we had Guilin snails (a traditional dish).  The first one I went for turned out to be pregnant with lots of gritty little baby snails.  After that, Laura refused to eat any more than the foot of each snail.  We finished most of them, and explored some more.  The next day we visited the Longsheng (Dragon's Backbone) Rice Terraces.  I'd visited the Yuanyang rice terraces in southern Yunnan with Ariane, but it had been extremely foggy, and the views had been limited.  Fortunately, our day in Longsheng was a sun-filled one, and we climbed through the terraced hills above the quaint villages, feeling like we'd somehow stumbled out of our world and into the Shire of Hobbit acclaim.

After our day in Longsheng, we returned to Guilin and arranged train tickets back to Kunming.  Lonely Planet listed the travel time as 8 hours, and the ticket salesman told us the train departed at 4:30pm and arrived around 11:30.  We bought hard seat tickets, figuring 7 or 8 hours was not too bad a trip.  Later, however, after some online research, I realized that the train did indeed arrive around 11:30... the next morning!  The 8 hours that Lonely Planet listed had been a typo, and should have actually said "18 hours".  I was a bit concerned, and almost didn't even tell Laura about my realization.  Finally, however, I decided I had to, and with a couple hours left till our train was scheduled to depart, we headed to the station to try to switch our tickets to hard sleepers.  They were sold out.

A man approached us and offered us hard tickets, but we were very skeptical.  A bit desperate, however, we followed him to his tourist office, and made him sign a contract saying the tickets were real.  We didn't have a problem, and made it on the train, 18 hours back to Kunming.

I've left out a lot of details for the sake of brevity, but I've also posted photos.  I also be following this post up with some more recent events.

Hong Kong & Macau: A View from the Top (and the Bottom)

Earlier this month, I attended the annual Fulbright China Research Form, held for a week in Hong Kong and Macau with Fulbright Fellows from China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan in attendance.  I flew into Shenzhen, the  largely uninteresting but prosperous Special Economic Zone in Guangdong Province (Canton), across the river from Hong Kong.  I immediately hopped a bus to go through customs and enter Hong Kong.

International borders have become a routine for me over the past months-exit form: filled out next to my passport photo page, paper clip on my Chinese visa, waiting in line.  China makes you patient.  The woman's eyes darted between my passport photo and my face at least 7 times before she let me pass-a testament to how much I've changed.

Back on the bus, we crossed a bridge and rounded jagged hills climbing out of the sea.  A few floating villages hid themselves in poverty by the border.  Around one hill, and a wall of identical high-rise apartment buildings stood against our approach in the distance-my first view of Hong Kong, and an impressive one at that.  I was beginning to feel the excitement of exploring a new place.

The bus let me off in the middle of Kowloon (pronounced Gaolong), the highly developed peninsula pointing south to Hong Kong Island.  It was dark already, hot-the straps on my pack pressed the humidity hard against my back.  The conference would begin the next day, and in the meantime I had no plans and nowhere to sleep.

I have traveled all over Europe, North America, and Asia, spent long periods of time alone backpacking, navigated countless cities, but never have I been so overwhelmed by a place as I was upon first arriving in Hong Kong.  I walked to an intersection, pulled out a map, and tried to get my bearings.  Everywhere around me were people, lights, cars, smells.  Within 20 minutes or so, I'd made my way on foot south towards the tip of the peninsula, arriving at the infamous Chungking Mansions, a decrepit tenement of low-budget rooms, teeming with African and Indian immigrants.  It was hot, and there was a definite odor throughout the building.  I decided to try a place on the 7^th floor that had received alright reviews.  The line for the elevator pulled away from its door and around the corner, sweating en masse.  I asked for the stairs, and was told to just wait in line.  So, I did.

Thirty minutes later, I'd made it to the front of the line, when an Indian man approached me and asked if I was going to the Pay-Less Guesthouse, presenting me with a business card.  Indeed I was.  I was a little skeptical, but he asked me to follow him-I thought that there might have been a better way to get there than this elevator (the building is separated into a labyrinthine set of blocks), so I followed him, only to arrive at the back of the adjacent elevator line.    He told me we were going to the 8^th floor.  He let out a slight grin to another man, and I realized what was going on.  I told him that the sign had said it was on the 7^th floor.  He told me it was a typo.  I asked to see his card again.  It said "7/F".  I told him I was going to the 7^th floor.  He finally realized his ruse was up, and demanded that I go with him, that the 7^th floor was fully booked.  I politely declined.  I'd lost my place in line, and waited again to avoid any conflicts.

The elevator he'd switched me into only went to even numbered floors, so I took the stairs down a level.  He hadn't lied.  Pay-Less Guesthouse was fully booked.  I spent an hour climbing the stairs up and down, floor by floor, checking each lodging.  This one was full, that one wouldn't go any less than 300 HKD-I was not happy.  I finally found a place with a free room, and managed to haggle with the manager until I was satisfied, paying more than I had originally intended.  He told me I couldn't check in for an hour, so I left my bags with him (locked), and went to get water and find an internet café.  Somewhere in the maze of Middle Eastern, African, and South Asian stores and restaurants jammed within the first few floors of the building, I found an internet café, and joined the multi-ethnic group of customers.  In the corner, an African man was using VoIP to call his home country, almost in tears that they wouldn't send him payment for the 4 out of 14 crates of some unnamed product he'd brought with him and managed to sell.  An Indian woman next to me was tending to her "Happy Farm" on Facebook.  I checked my e-mail, and looked up a place to get food.

After checking in to my room, I went for a walk.  Down Nathan Road, past the grandiose Peninsula Hotel, and to the Harbor at the tip of the peninsula, facing the stunning nightscape of Hong Kong Island.  The stress of the previous hours melted away, and I remembered why I love traveling.  I spent some time sitting, taking in arguably the best and most breathtaking skyline in the world, and then continued my walk.

I am very thankful that I have the opportunity to travel now.  Not necessarily because I don't think I'll have the opportunity again later in my life, but because I have a suspicion (and I say this as humbly as possible) that in the not too distant future I will have too much money, too many responsibilities, and too little patience to effectively experience the underbelly of a city; to arrive with no accommodations or plans, and to wander aimlessly through back alleys for hours.  For Hong Kong, these alleys, the decrepit and infested chambers of Chungking Mansions are as much a part of the city as the extravagant shopping plazas and world-class hotels, the trade conferences and business meetings.

The next morning, I made my way to the Grand Hyatt Hotel to check in for the Research Forum, and had apparently gone from rags to riches in the period of a night.  My room had a great view, and a waterfall shower, which made me quickly forget the heat and humidity of the previous night.  I went downstairs and lay in the hot tub for a bit before hitting the steam room, and then adorning my suit for the opening dinner.  The conference was a place for us all to discuss our difficulties and frustrations in performing our research, to learn from each other's experiences, and to see China and the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau in a new light.

On the second day we were joined by respected Hong Kong journalists and political analysts Willy Lam, Frank Ching, and Mark Sheldon to help us better understand Hong Kong's past, present, and future.  That night, we were invited to a reception at the US Consular General of Hong Kong's residence on the peak of Hong Kong Island.  There was good food, interesting conversations, and some great views.  On the third day, we had lunch with some leaders of groups invested in Hong Kong's development, and then made our way to the ferry port for a jet-foil to Macau.

Macau is a cultural anomaly.  Once a small fishing island, Macau was colonized by the Portuguese in the 16^th century, giving modern Macau interesting melds of languages, architecture, cuisines, and people.  The political clashes between the Portuguese and the Macanese were more violent than many Macau officials would like to admit, and the Portuguese tried to give Macau back to the Chinese during the 1970s.  The Chinese politely refused, fearing how it would affect people's impressions of China's intentions for still British-controlled Hong Kong, and the Portuguese remained in control of the island until the Chinese regained control of both regions in the historical 1997 handover.  In 1962, promising to promote tourism, Stanley Ho, a Hong Kong entrepreneur who'd fled from the Japanese to Macau during WWII gained an official government-sanctioned monopoly over the gambling industry in Macau.  He established several casinos, and maintained his control until 2002, when many Vegas casino entrepreneurs joined in the fun.  The result has been a massive boom in tourism and gambling, bringing in revenues that topple those of Las Vegas.  The casinos overshadow the Portuguese-influenced lanes and alleys throughout the island, and it seems that there's only more growth in sight, with some developers discussing filling in the water between the island and mainland China with land in an attempt to increase tourism and provide more land for casinos.

After sightseeing and listening to presentations during the day, a few friends and I met up with one of my friends' friends, a card shark who's currently living in Macau.  He took us around to several of the free shows in the casinos, and then to a quite infamous room in the Grand Lisboa, one of the older casinos.  As I'd heard previously, the circular room promises one-stop shopping for Chinese prostitutes.  You walk into the room, and the prostitutes strut around the circular wall, waiting to be picked out.  (We, of course, were only curious--not in the market.)  Unfortunately, upon our arrival the girls were lined up outside the room in a shakedown by Macanese police.  We took a few glances before being waved away, and heading over to the Venetian, one of the largest buildings (by floor space) in the entire world.  What better place than one of the biggest buildings in the world to build the Guinness Record-winning world's largest house of cards.  We wandered around for a bit, and then bid farewell to our card shark guide at his office, the high stakes poker area, for another night at work.

Back to Hong Kong the next day by jet-foil, I said goodbye to many of my friends and contacts, and got ready for my over-land trip back to Kunming.  I've posted photos from Hong Kong and Macau, and I'll write more about the rest of my trip and post more photos soon!

Southeast Asia Trip Part I: Over Land from China into Laos

It’s been over a month since my last post, and my what a month it’s been.  I spent the end of December in Beijing dealing with some research leads and spending time with friends.  My friend Ben flew in from New York, and I played tour guide in my free time (along with his uncle, who also lives in Beijing), taking him around to most of the major sites.  It was cold, and our trip out to the Great Wall was very brief due to the bitter cold biting winds.  On Christmas, I went out for brunch at a western restaurant with friends, and then spent time with my friend Ariane, planning our trip to Southeast Asia.  With so much to see, and a limited period of time for our out-of-country leave, we needed to set our priorities and make a temporary itinerary.

In January, we flew down to Kunming, and made the final arrangements for our trip.  We would head south over land from Kunming to [[Xishuangbanna]], from there cross the border into Laos, then down to Bangkok and southern Thailand, followed by a trip to see the temples of Angkor in Cambodia, and finally up to Hanoi and Halong Bay in Vietnam, before crossing the border back into China.  We would take a few flights to fit it all in, and leave plenty for the next time around.

With all of the recent construction and development in Kunming, things in the city have been moving around a great deal.  After a bit of hassle, we realized that the bus station that we needed was a ways out of town.  We had a sleeper bus down to Jinghong, the capital city of [[Xishuangbanna]] (the southernmost prefecture of Yunnan), and upon arrival immediately made our eventual arrangements for the trip to the border town of Mohan to cross into Laos.

In the meantime, we explored Jinghong and rented bicycles to travel out to some nearby villages.  Xishuangbanna is a [[Dai people|Dai]] autonomous prefecture, and Dai food, language, and culture abound in the city of Jinghong and the surrounding region.  With our road bikes strapped up and a very basic map in hand, we rode through the city towards the [[Mekong River]].  The new bridge, however, it seemed was closed for construction, so we asked a group of school kids how to cross the river.  They pointed us upriver, and we rode back through the city until we saw a line of truck and moto traffic, which was clearly heading towards a bridge.  We crossed the river, and started heading southwest towards the village of Menghan or Ganlanba, stopping several times in the city for directions from resting motorcycle riders.  What should probably have been a two or three hour ride took us around four hours on our fixed-speed bikes, including a significant amount of time stopping to take photos.

The highlight of Ganlanba is a section of town, traditionally inhabited by Dai people, which has been turned into a sort of tourist park.  After paying the student rate for entrance tickets (which we managed to pull off without student IDs), we got a mediocre Dai lunch, walked around, and then found a Dai family to house us for the night.  The room was very simple with thin bamboo walls and a surprisingly comfortable mat on the floor in place of a bed.  As it began to get dark, we rode our bikes back out of the park to explore the town.  Despite what we’d read, the town was not overly interesting at night.  A few KTV places, open-door rose-lit brothels, and a smattering of fruit and juice stands seemed to occupy the large percentage of the nightlife.  I spotted a fireworks store, and bought a couple boxes, which we lit off right in the street, the locals encouraging us to buy more.

We headed back towards the Dai park in pitch black darkness, which despite making it very difficult to find our way and see where we were going, provided a spectacular opportunity to see the stars.  I had to tell Ariane several times to look where she was going rather than up at the sky.  The Dai park, in darkness, was unexpectedly large and labyrinthine, and it took some intuition, guessing, and probably dumb luck to find our way back to the particular Dai home where we were staying.  (All the homes there look alike, the people all dress alike, and the family portraits on the walls are all eerily similar—maybe there should be a Desperate Dai Housewives.)  All the Dai homes are elevated, with living quarters on the second floor.  We parked our bikes under the house, waking the dog up in the process, and then went back out to look at the truly amazing array of stars.

The next morning, we started back towards Jinghong on our bikes, not overly enthusiastic about the long ride ahead of us.  To make matters worse, the chain on Ariane’s bike popped off.  We fixed it, and kept going, but it popped off every five minutes or so.  After about the tenth time, we decided enough was enough.  I flagged down a truck, and the driver agreed to take us back to Jinghong.  We threw the bikes in the back on top of sacks of some sort of mineral or fertilizer, and joined the driver in the cab for a relatively short ride back to town.  When we got to town, I offered him money, which he refused.  (Payment is often expected for hitchhiking in China, but many people are too proud or overall too kindhearted to accept it.)  I put the money in his cup holder, and he didn’t complain.  We rode back through the town, and to our hostel, where we negotiated down the rental on the bikes.

We had an early bus the next day to the border of Laos, where we intended to go through the visa procedures and find a bus to [[Luang Prabang]], a town in Northern Laos.  At the second stop in Jinghong, an middle-aged American couple got on.  They were fairly loud and obnoxious, especially at such an early hour, and the bus got on its way.  On the bus, it became clear that it was heading into Laos, beyond the border, to a town called [[Louang Namtha|Luang Nam Tha]].  We discussed our options, and decided to ride with the bus, past the border to Luang Nam Tha.  After Mohan, the bus stopped at the China-Laos border, and we all got off to go through Chinese exit procedures and Lao entry procedures.  Ariane, myself, and a Danish girl named Eva, were the last three to go through, and it took us a significantly longer time than the rest of the bus.  Encouraged by the rest of the bus, all waiting for us, the middle-aged American couple ran back, not to tell us to do our best to get through as quickly as possible, but to warn us rather obnoxiously that if we didn’t get there NOW that they’d all leave without us.  We got through as quickly as we could, a bit miffed, and literally ran down to the bus, which proceeded to drive 5 minutes down a hill and then stop for lunch.

A few notes on [[Laos]]:  The name of the country is pronounced Lao, rhyming with ‘how now brown cow,’ without an ‘s’ at the end—the French added the silent ‘s’ to denote that the country had been made up of several kingdoms.  The adjectival form of Laos is not ‘Laotian’; rather, there are Lao people, a Lao language and culture, Lao development, and a Lao economy, etc.  The Lao people are, on the whole, fairly laid back, although with a quick view into Lao history or a visit to the Laos National Museum, it quickly becomes evident that there is still a bit of anti-colonial and anti-American sentiment.

Upon our arrival in Luang Nam Tha, it seemed that we might get stuck there overnight.  Two [[tuk-tuk]] drivers told us the next bus to Luang Prabang was on the following day.  We approached the ticket window, attempting to buy our tickets.  It was an odd feeling to have to communicate in broken English to get what we wanted, so used to being able to communicate in Chinese.  After a few frustrating moments (for me at least—Ariane claims to have understood fine), it became clear that there was a bus leaving right that very moment to Luang Prabang.  Amazed at our luck, and how smoothly things were going thus far, we quickly got our tickets, threw our things on the bus, and grabbed two seats in the back row.  Outside, a man was curled over vomiting on the ground.  He and his friend boarded the bus, and tried to sit next to us, but we directed them to the seats in front of them instead (a little afraid he might have to vomit again).  His eye was bandaged heavily, some lacerations on his face, and we suspected he’d recently been in some sort of accident, fight, or undergone some sort of operation.  In any case, he was shaking from the pain.  So, we offered him some Ibuprofen and a bottle of water, both of which he immediately grabbed and consumed without the slightest hesitation.

The bus ride was long, hot, crowded, and bumpy.  Picking two seats in the back row proved to have been a horrible decision as the bus hurled around curves in the darkness.  The bus had filled up, and sacks of rice and luggage piled the aisle.  In the five-seat back row, one seemingly well-dressed young Lao guy spread his legs and slept in two seats, leaving two older Lao men squished into the one center seat, pushing right up against me.  With all of the bumps and the heat, having another man’s leg pushed right up against mine, sweating, was just one more factor of my overall discomfort.  Ariane didn’t have it much better, and we were both fairly irritated.  Out the window, it seemed as if jungle went on in every direction, as endless as the bus ride itself.  At every stop, we asked “Luang Prabang?”, to which the Lao men gave us a sign of affirmation.  We stupidly grabbed our bags and lugged them over the rice sacks off the bus, asking the driver, “Luang Prabang?”, to which we got an initial sign of affirmation, then a hand waving ahead down the road, signifying that “yes, we are indeed on the way to Luang Prabang,” but that this was not it.  We got back on the bus, and after several more hours of the hellish ride and several more false alarms, finally began to  see colonial-looking houses, and realized we were actually getting close.

The bus stopped at 2:30am and emptied into the station, which it turned out was in fact Luang Prabang.  We had been on a bus nearly nonstop since 6:30am the previous day, 20 hours prior.  We were tired, hot, sore, and, on the whole, irritated.  A man approached us, offering a tuk-tuk.  I was at first a bit hesitant, as one should be when offered a taxi or other local transport in a station, but our options seemed limited.  We got on his tuk-tuk, and told him the name of a hotel.  He said we had to pay 100,000 Kip upfront.  Unfamiliar with the currency, I still knew that we were probably getting ripped off.  I started to haggle with him, and completely tired and irritated, Ariane gave me a look, and said “is it really the time to haggle?”  So, we paid the man, and went on our way, not realizing at the time how much we were actually getting ripped off.

The tuk-tuk dropped us off at the guesthouse, which it seemed was closed.  As a matter of fact, it seemed that everything in town was closed.  We knocked on the door, but no one answered.  A little confused as to what to do, we looked back at our tuk-tuk, which immediately took off, leaving us at the closed guesthouse, strapped with all of our luggage and backpacking gear.  So, we walked through the town, stopping at each guesthouse, each which seemed to be closed.  Down an alley, we found one guesthouse with a sign that read, “closed door at midnight, customers inquire at door to the left with reception.”  To the left, we found no reception, but tried the door anyway, which was locked (and turned out was a guest’s room).  By that door, however, there was another sign, which read, “please knock on door to the left with window-Thank you”, to which I responded, “It’s a riddle!”  Ariane, looking around, spotted a door with a cloth flap-covered window.  We approached it, and I said, “here?”  Looking up, we saw another sign that said “HERE”.  Then, in true Wizard of Oz style, a tired Lao man popped is head through the window and said, “helloooo…”.  Ariane asked if they had any rooms, and he responded, “ohh…  no, we full…”.  We looked at each other, and then asked if there were any other places around there, and he said he’d call his friend, which he did.  Unfortunately, his friend did not answer, but he gave us directions anyway.  We got to his friend’s guesthouse, knocked on the door, and another tired Lao man answered.  It looked like a nice place, but we agreed that after such a long, uncomfortable day, and with few or no other options, we deserved it.  The room, as it turned out, was only slightly more expensive than our overpriced tuk-tuk ride, and we showered and went to bed.

[Since this is only the very first part of our trip, and I’ve already written far too much, I’ll call it quits for now, for your sake and for mine.  The next segment will come later.  I’ve already posted photos, and by the time I finish writing about this trip, I’m sure there will be something new to write about!]

Yi Festival in EShan (峨山): Dancing, Bongs, & Bees

I went to class for the first time last week—a graduate class titled “Linguistic Field Research Analysis”.  I showed up 10 minutes early just to be safe, and found the class mostly filled, from the third row on back.  I took a seat in the front row all the way on the side by the window so the professor would know that I was there but I wouldn’t be in the center.  By the time the class was about to start, there were only three people in the front two rows:  me and two girls who had come in too late to get seats farther back (they sat behind me in the second row).  I turned around to talk to the girls, but they were intensely preparing for class.

The professor was 10 minutes late, and everyone continued talking while he began.  This class, as it turns out, is a first year graduate class of about 40 students.  Since it is mid-semester already, I expected some interesting discussions about field research or some case studies or something along those lines.  Instead, the professor spent the first hour and a half of the two-hour course individually quizzing each of the students on the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet)—a set of symbols and characters used by linguists to represent every phonetic sound and variation in all natural languages—and then he went into a brief discussion about linguistic tones.  While I found the discussion on tones at least somewhat useful, I was still bored throughout the entire class.  What’s more, every time a student made a mistake on the IPA, all of the students laughed, and the professor looked over at me nervously as if he had to prove himself and his class in my presence.  To be perfectly honest, I was more nervous that he was going to ask me to recite the IPA as well!  After class, I chatted with some of the graduate students and then went with the professor to his office.  There, he introduced me to a retired professor Zhang ChunDe (张纯德), who is a Yi member and an expert in the field of Yi studies.  (He has 7 or 8 books published on various aspects of Yi, including their culture, history, religion, writing, and language).

We had brief introductions, and Zhang ChunDe explained that he had been invited by the government of EShan (峨山—the first autonomous county of the Yi People in China) located in YuXi, about two hours south of Kunming, to the first annual Yi Ancestral Cultural Festival starting the next day, Wednesday, 11/25 and going through Friday, 11/27.  He said he’d asked, and I was allowed to join him.  It kind of threw me off at first, since Thursday was Thanksgiving and I had plans, and it was so soon, and I almost said no.  But, I realized after a moment that this type of event is why I’m here, and it was a good opportunity to make contacts and get involved in Yi society, which I shouldn’t pass up.  I thanked him and agreed to go.

He called me the next morning to tell me that we had tickets for a 1:30pm bus, and would meet at the bus station at 1.  I spent a little time packing, arguing with myself about how much clothes to bring for the three day trip, and eventually weeding down my extra bag, deciding I didn’t need to bring my computer and could manage with one pair of pants and a few t-shirts to wear under .  I arrived a little bit early, and waited.   By 1:20, I was starting to get a little bit nervous that I might be in the wrong place.  I called him, and he didn’t pick up.  Fortunately, at 1:28, he came hustling up to the station.  I grabbed his bag for him, and we ran through the station to find the bus.  (I also want to note that despite the fact that I was so proud of myself for bringing so little, he had with him even less, only a small bag, which it turns out was filled with books to give as gifts—no change of clothes.)

We found the bus, and he said that two other professors were supposed to be joining us.  I waited for him on the bus while he ran around looking for them and calling them.  Finally, the other people on the bus and the driver were getting impatient and threatened to leave without him, so I signaled him back, and we figured that they’d have to take the next bus.  A short two hours later, the bus stopped on the side of the highway and informed us that we’d reached our destination.  We got out and found no way to actually get off the highway (if it were just me, I would have just hopped the fence, but he didn’t seem like he had the interest or ability).  So, we walked a ways till we got to the off-ramp, and down around till we came to a toll booth where a line of girls dressed in traditional Yi costume were waiting to welcome guests attending the conference.  A man with a clipboard came up, and there was some handshaking and acknowledgments that we were there for the conference.  He ushered us into a nice SUV and drove us to another location to register.  There, we presented ourselves to another welcoming committee, who looked for our names in a registration book.  At this point, I realized that this festival/conference was much bigger and more serious than I had expected it to be.  Along with about 800 other professors, bureaucrats, and other individuals with interest in Yi studies, my name was also officially listed in the guest book as an “American Visiting Researcher”.  (It also said that I had a PhD—I didn’t correct them.)

They took us to a village about 10 minutes from the center of EShan, because they said the town was too crowded.  The hotel was nice enough.  I got my own room, and the village is known for its hot springs, so the shower water was naturally hot.  This festival, I spent a little time looking through the gift bag.  It contained a nicely sized wheel of Puer tea, a 120 page hardbound photo It was a bit awkward at first, but people were nice enough and seemed curious about my presence there.  Zhang Laoshi introduced me to everyone, and it turned out that he really knew EVERYONE; or, at least everyone knew him.  I was talking to two professors from Beijing on my own, when Zhang Laoshi came over, and they said they had his book on their desk back in Beijing.

Dinner was interesting.  I was very gracious, (though a bit out of my element) and I admit that I still don’t fully understand Chinese toasting culture.  I had never been at an event or dinner like this before, and at first it took me by surprise.  During dinner, people would get up with a bottle of BaiJiu and their glass, and walk around individually toasting specific people, then refilling both glasses in preparation for a later toast.  Making it worse, everyone was speaking very quickly in either really heavily accented Southwest Mandarin or in Yi.  Having communication difficulties and not really knowing my place, I stayed quiet.

After dinner they took us to a sort of opening ceremony.  The term opening ceremony may even be quite appropriate since they stole some of the music from the Olympics, and the event was held in a large outdoor stadium, with over 2 million USD in lighting, sound, fireworks, and other theatrics invested in it.

The next day we got up early for the unveiling of a large statue of Abudumu (阿普笃慕), the ancestor of the Yi people.  Abudumu apparently lived about 2200 years ago, and had 6 sons with 3 wives.  This festival was dedicated to him.  The large statue of him, along with statues of his 6 sons, was built in April or May of this year, but this was the official unveiling.  It was an interesting ceremony.  The Yi people have a rich culture and writing system, which comes from their shamanistic religion, Bimo.  A group of shamans were on hand to “bless” the statues.  There were also horn players, drummers, firecrackers, and a lot of people.

Later in the day we took part in the Yi Cultural and Economic Social Development Conference.  The first speaker was a Yi woman named Wu Xia.  She had obtained a PhD from a university in Hong Kong, and a second PhD from the University of Michigan.  Her presentation was on comparisons between the Yi people and native peoples of North and South America, with a focus on sun calendars.  (The Yi people use a 10-month sun calendar.)  Her talk was very interesting, and one of the only ones that I really understood, since she spoke in fairly clear Putonghua.  Everyone else was speaking with strong accents.

Later that night, we went to the finals of the Yi Flower Drum Dance (花鼓舞) competition.  The Flower Drum Dance is a famous dance of the Yi people, which includes (you guessed it) flowers and drums.  Often, the men dance with flowers while the women dance and play drums, but there are variations.  The competition included 11 teams, a singing performance, and a Guzheng (Chinese harp) performance by 4 young girls.  The dances were interesting and very enjoyable—a few of the teams included fusions between the traditional dance and modern dances such as hip hop and break dancing, but on the whole, I liked the more traditional dances a lot more.

We were originally supposed to go home the next morning, but the event coordinators offered to give us a VIP tour of the region, so we agreed.  They first took us to the YuanTian Bio-energy Development Company, where the president of the company gave us a tour of the hills growing the plants they use to produce bio-diesel and other oils.  It was very foggy out early in the morning, and there wasn’t much to see.  Later, we visited the Yu Lin Quan BaiJiu (Chinese alcohol) factory/brewery (?).  The company has been around for hundreds of years, and it was interesting to tour the facilities.  I was talking with the Vice President of the company, and he offered to let us all taste one of their very high quality baijius, which had been sitting for 20 years.  They poured it right out of the jugs, and it was very strong.  A bit spicy on the tongue with a strong warming feeling—it burned for a few minutes.

Next, we visited a tea mountain famous in the region for its Puer, green, and oolong teas.  We had lunch there, during which there was much drinking and more toasting.  It seems that the Yi tradition is to sing to each other when making a toast.  I was asked to sing an English song, and couldn’t think of anything appropriate, so I sang a song in Hebrew.  Afterwards, went on a tour of the mountain and tea gardens, and then got to taste three of their teas:  a green tea, a roasted green tea, and a Puer tea.  Normally each glass can cost up to $20 USD, but since we were VIP guests, it was of course on the house.  We all drank a lot, and they kept filling up our glasses.

While tasting the teas, the offered me a bong.  In Yunnan, it is customary to smoke a cigarette or straight tobacco through a large bong.  You can see it all over Yunnan, and it really is quite remarkable the first few times you see it.  I politely declined.

Dinner that night was interesting.  I really regret that I didn’t bring my camera.  On the table, there was a dog meat stew, a bowl of chicken heads, and a plate of fried bees.  I have seen bee larvae served in China before, but this was new to me.  It was literally a plate piled high with bees.  They had apparently been lightly breaded and fried quickly.  Many of them were bread-less.  After a bit of encouragement, I stuck a couple in my mouth.  They were fairly crispy, and not bad.  I was told that it’s an expensive dish.  Based on the trouble it must take to get the bees, I’m not surprised.  After eating a few, someone asked me, “you’re not allergic to bees, are you?”.  I said, “hmm… I really hope not!”

Since we’d stayed the extra day, it was decided that we’d go home the next morning.  All in all, it was an amazing trip.  I met a lot of people, learned a lot about the Yi, got VIP treatment, and had a good time.

On Sunday, I went for lunch at Zhang ChunDe’s house.  I showed up at 9am, and we spent three hours in his study reading books and discussing my research.  He lives with his wife, his daughter, and her husband and son.  His other daughter and her family, and two other couples and their children also came for lunch.  I must say, the boys who were around 7 or 8 were quite the小皇帝(litte emperors—spolied).  They wanted what they wanted and wouldn’t listen to their parents or grandparents without a big effort.  In any case, their parents made them perform their English, which they’re studying in school, in front of me, and then perform the piano.  I also played for them for a moment or so, and one of the boys played the accordion really quite well.  Zhang ChunDe invited me to the Yi Ten-Month Festival this upcoming Saturday, and also offered to take me to a village next week to begin my field research.  We are planning to go out to the village on Monday.  He said he’d go with me, find me a translator, a place to stay, make my arrangements and then leave me up there for the week.  I’m very grateful that he’s been so much help to me.  He’s a great contact to have made.

So, things are getting going.  I have already posted photos from last week, and I have a lot of videos which I will upload at some point.