After my trip to EShan (峨山), my research was starting to look a lot more promising. I was invited to a Yi Ten-Month New Year Festival on Saturday night, and then my professor and I planned on going to Xundian (寻甸) for me to do field research. Per my advisor’s instructions, I submitted a short report to the FAO (Foreign Affairs Office) at my university, letting them know where I intended to go, when, why, and with whom. They glanced over the letter, and swiftly replied that it was very unlikely they’d approve my application to do field research, but that they would work with me to revise my project. I explained how as a linguistic analysis, my project relies on field research, and without it, I wouldn’t have anything to analyze. They told me they’d consider it, and let me know. A few days later, they told me they’d approved my application on the condition that Professor Zhang goes with me, but told me to be very careful. They were apparently very worried about my safety since the area is a Yi and Hui Autonomous County, which has supposedly had some problems with Hui riots (not entirely sure about this).
Saturday night, December 5th, I met my professor and a few graduate students from the Yunnan Nationalities University at a hotel not too far from the campus. The Ethnic Cultures department was hosting a celebration for the Yi New Year. There were a few hundred people at the event, eating dinner together and watching a performance. My professor and I sat in a side room with some of his old friends, so I didn’t get to see the performance, but the singer came in later, toasted us and sang for us as well. I was served the head of the fish (apparently an honor), and I reluctantly accepted and picked at it. A couple hours, and many glasses of
baijiu, later, I headed home to start getting ready for my field research trip on Monday.
On Sunday, while packing for my trip to Xundian, I got a phone call from my advisor. He told me that I should meet him at his office the next day to discuss my trip. I told him we’d planned to leave that morning, but he said we’d have to leave on Tuesday instead. Apparently, while I had gotten both his approval and the approval of the FAO for my field research trip, the FAO had not personally contacted him or provided him with a letter expressing their approval. He said that since they were from two different work units, it was important that everyone was on the same page, and he’d rather push it back a day than risk getting on the FAO’s bad side. So, I stopped packing.
I got phone calls from three different people on Monday afternoon: my advisor, the FAO, and the professor who was to accompany me to Xundian, all asking me to meet in different places at the same time. I decided to meet my advisor first, and showed up at his office only to find him not there. I waited a few minutes, and received a phone call from the FAO, telling me that they were all downstairs waiting for me. So, I headed downstairs, and we shook hands, exchanged papers, and stamped things for several minutes until it was agreed that I could go, but would have to pay a research affiliation fee. Bureaucracy is always fun, even more so when it involves Chinese danwei’s (单位—work units).
Since the fan in my computer had been making noise, I’d called Lenovo, and asked them what I could do to get it fixed in China. They activated my International Warranty Service, and gave me the address of a repair center. In the morning, before heading to the bus station for my trip to Xundian, I walked my computer over. The address turned out to be 5 minutes from my apartment, and I figured they could work on my computer while I was gone. The place was a Lenovo Service Center—the barcode on the bottom of my computer to get the warranty info, and I explained the problem. Within 5 minutes, one of the techs had taken the computer apart in front of me, removed the fan and confirmed that it was broken and needed to be replaced. He told me to come back in an hour. A little surprised by such fast service, I asked him if I could instead come back later that week. This is the first time I’ve ever had to tell a computer company to take their time fixing my computer, and it was actually quite refreshing to have something here go smoothly for once.
After dropping off my computer, I ran around buying small gifts to give to people for helping me with my research—Marlboro cigarettes for the men and Dove chocolate for children. Since apparently all of the men down here smoke, it seemed like a good idea. What’s more, as mentioned in my last post, men often rip off the filters and smoke the tobacco straight through a large bong, which nicer restaurants have on hand.
I don’t know what it is that I ate that day, but on the hour and a half bus ride north to the capital of Xundian, I began to feel very nauseous—not a good thing at the beginning of a research trip. When we got to the bus station at the capital of Xundian, two of my professor’s old friends (meaning both ‘old friends’ and ‘OLD' friends—they were both very short older men in their late 70s) were there waiting for us. They said we’d first go to the government offices to introduce ourselves, and then the local government would drive us out to the village. It’s always interesting walking in smaller cities in China—partly because they’re not as modern as larger cities, and partly because the people there have had very little contact with Caucasians. Many people do a double-take when they see me, surprised at the presence of a white person in their cities (perhaps they’ve never even seen a white person before), but I think possibly the best reaction I’ve ever seen was that of the little girl who looked straight at me, and then dropped her jaw and widened her eyes so much they seemed like they’d pop right out of her head.
At the government offices, we sat. And sat. Drank tea. And sat. My professor talked all about his work, and then we drank more tea, and sat some more. The government official we were meeting with kept bringing in people for us to shake hands with, and presented us each with a thick book all about Xundian County. Apparently, the car they’d arranged for us to take was having problems.
So, we sat, and after a couple hours, the car was finally fixed, and we were ready to be on our way. Somehow I got stuck in the back seat between the two old Yi men, unable to take photos out the window. What I was hoping would be a quick ride out to the villages (I was still fairly nauseous), turned out to be another two hour car ride, past coal power plants, vegetable fields, up hills, and around winding curves. Outside the city, locals were riding in donkey carts, children were carrying vegetables from the fields back home, and dogs and chickens were rushing out of the way of our SUV. At one point, a chicken decided to pass right in front of our car, only to let out its final BUKKKAAAAAAAA under our tire, squawking into death. This raises the question, why did the chicken cross the road (right as we were driving by)?!?!? (sorry)
Our destination turned out to be more of a small town than a village. We were driven right into the government offices there, where we again sat and drank tea. I told myself that this was all part of the necessary bureaucratic process of doing field research in China, but I was starting to get impatient and a little disheartened that such a large chunk of my short trip was being spent in offices. I tried to keep up with the conversation, but it was in the local dialect of Chinese, mixed with a spattering of Yi, and I wasn’t having much luck comprehending. It did seem, however, that the local official did not approve of my being there to do research. He said we could stay in the apartments attached to the government building, have dinner there, and then have a tour of the area the next morning, but that I couldn’t interview any of the minorities in the area. My professor and his friends had some words with him, and I sat back and hoped for the best. They did tell me at one point, to be cautious taking photos. They said in Chinese, “you can take photos, but this is a poor area—you should only take photos of the good things, not the bad.” I agreed, thinking I could probably sneak a few shots of something if it was very interesting.
Still not feeling well, I tried to avoid alcohol at dinner, and failed. Drinking here is a matter of trust and respect; besides, they want to see how well the large American can hold his alcohol. I finally agreed to drink “a little”, which turned into a full glass of
baijiu, and another after that (probably more as well, but I don't remember). My stomach was not happy, and I was feeling fairly buzzed, and pretty tired. So, you can imagine my excitement, when after dinner my professor informed me that I would now have three hours to conduct my interviews. They’d found two speakers of the local dialect to help me go through word lists. They put me in a small office and let me be with my two language consultants. I handed them a pack of cigarettes to smoke, set up my recording equipment, and began. I had done some prep work for the dialect that I wanted to research. There had been some data collected there in the 80s, and I was hoping to create updated phonemic and tonal illustrations, and to analyze the differences. I quickly realized, however, that this was not the dialect I had prepared for. In fact, this was not even the village I had been told I’d be going to. I continued with the interviews for another couple hours, and they eventually degraded when more people came in to help. I appreciated the fact that so many people were interested in helping, but it’s difficult to do recordings and differentiate phonemes when there are five people yelling them at you.
That night I was led to the apartments attached to the police offices. The bathroom had a dirty squatter toilet next to a bathtub covered in hair. The light was flickering, and the place felt like it might have been used for torture at some point in the recent past. (I say this jokingly, but you never know.) It was cold, and I used my sleeping bag on top of the bed to stay warm. I woke up that night shaking with a fever, and realized my nausea was probably being caused by a bacteria or virus of some sort.
The second day was a bit more interesting. They took us on a tour of the surrounding villages. My Yi companions were all intrigued by the large bulls, which evidently cost the equivalent of several thousand US dollars, and are used for bull fights. The area was poor, but not impoverished. We walked into the courtyards of some local homes and my professor talked with the local Yi, amused by the differences and similarities in their dialects. In one home, there was an old dog tied up by a pile of hay. It had sores all over its body, apparently from gnawing at itself, and was shaking from the pain. It was a bit sad, and I couldn’t help staring at him for a while. The Yi owner told me not to go near him. I thought about animal rights in the States and veterinary care, and it made me realize that our concept of dogs as pets is really very modern. For thousands of years, and still in villages like these, dogs have been raised for functional purposes—to scare off intruders, herd other animals, and in some cases, for food.
Later that day, we visited a Yi-Chinese Bilingual school. The kids were all very giggly upon seeing me, and stopped playing basketball to point curiously. The headmaster of the school showed us artwork done by the children. They were being taught to make thread out of local plants (possibly cotton?), and then use that thread to sew traditional patterns. Also, they were given assignments to write in both traditional Yi characters and Chinese characters. Some of the girls, embarrassed, were forced to dance for us their traditional dances, and we walked around looking in classrooms. It is encouraging to see a school like this one. We often hear stories of forced cultural assimilation and language abandonment, but then there are also schools like this one that encourage children to learn Chinese, while maintaining their traditional language and ways of life.
After the school, we headed back to the county capital and went to dinner with a bunch of local officials and professors. I made some contacts, managed to refuse alcohol, and stayed that night in a real hotel. Before heading home on the following day, I was introduced to a 50 year old Yi doctor from the capital, who speaks the dialect I am currently investigating. We talked, and he agreed to help me with my research. I may go back up to the area and meet with him, or may call him and invite him down to Kunming to help. The trip ended up being a bit shorter than I had hoped, but it was a good start. I got a good context to begin my research, made some good contacts, and got several hours of recordings, which will take me quite some time to analyze (there’s a linguists' maxim that says it takes one hour to analyze one minute of recordings).
The weather has been beautiful since I got back. Seventy and sunny each afternoon. For all of you stuck in wintery chaos, feel jealous. (Actually, I miss snow, and I’m a bit jealous, but I’ll be in Beijing for the holidays, and I’m sure I’ll get at least my share of cold temperatures.) Happy Hanukkah to all! Also, photos are up.
All last week the weather was beautiful, which meant that I went for some nice walks. It also meant that the Siberian Black-headed gulls chose last week to reach the Green Lake Park on their annual migration route south, just in time for me to happen upon them. What were always considered a nuisance visiting the Jersey shore while growing up, in Kunming seagulls receive a grand welcome. Their North American cousins may have to swoop down to snatch that piece of Mack’s pizza or Steel’s fudge right out of your hands on the boardwalk, but the seagulls here are hailed by Chinese locals and tourists as honored guests. 
Local vendors set up shop right in the park, selling pieces of bread, which locals toss up into the air and onto the water for the gulls to feast upon. No wonder they still include the relatively small Green Lake on their migration route. What’s more, statues around the park honor the seagulls—a year-round reminder that they’ll be back each winter. One statue even depicts an old man covered with the birds and a plaque below, which explains how he came to wait for the birds each year till he died, spent a good deal of his lifesavings buying bread to feed them, and became their lifelong friend. “They would even come to him when he called them,” it says. It goes to show you, one country’s lonely crazy person is another country’s local hero. What can I say?
Last week was also Hanukkah. The package from my parents significantly delayed by the incompetent Chinese UPS system, I fashioned myself a menorah out of tin foil on a metal tray. I bought red candles by the Buddhist temple, cut them in half, and lit them each night. I also hosted a Hanukkah dinner party last Thursday night, and invited 8 friends. For my first dinner party, I think it went well, although the preparation (and cleanup) was certainly work-intensive. The menu included a Curried Sweet Potato Soup, Stuffed Mushrooms, Bruschetta, Braised Eggplant (红烧茄子), potato latkes accompanied by homemade applesauce, and a rotisserie chicken. For dessert, I bought jelly doughnuts and gelt-like chocolates. The chicken was certainly the most labor-intensive menu item. I bought a small electric oven last week, and realized that it had a rotisserie built in, inspiring me to give it a shot. I picked up a chicken at Carrefour, made a spice rub, and let it marinate overnight. While in the States, the chickens come ready to stick in the oven, this one was far from it. It included the head, feet, and all the internal organs. I googled “how to butcher a chicken” (http://butcherachicken.blogspot.com/ if you’re interested), and went at it. In any case, almost everything came out delicious. The latkes, which I made the night before, were expectedly a little soggy and the eggplant was too salty, but other than that it was great. My friends brought some pasta, tofu, and a couple bottles of wine, and it was a good night.
