My Yunnan Trip!!

Greetings to all.

So my trip to Yunnan was so memorable while it happened that I thought that I wouldn’t forget anything and would be able to describe each day in detail even upon my return. Well of course I was wrong and some of the things I did on the trip are probably lost forever, even to me…but I’ll do my best and if I think of funny anecdotes ever then I’ll for sure tell them. I’m gonna try to divide this up into sections so it doesn’t seem so overwhelming to read all at once.

Kunming:
On 2/22 (so I guess that’s two weeks ago today) I had my first test.  I did fairly well judging by the scores I got back today despite the fact that after I took it I had to pack in a flurry (ish) and get ready for my trip. Armed with my (fake) Victorinox (sp?) Swiss Tote around 4:00 I boarded the bus which took us to the Beijing airport where we got on a plane to take us to Kunming, a city in the center of the Yunnan province about 4 hours plane ride away from Beijing. The plane ride wasn’t eventful I don’t think and we arrived in Kunming and started the trip off right by going out drinking…and almost got followed into the hotel by some creepy Chinese man but Justin warded him off by telling the front desk that he was most definitely NOT our pengyou.

In the morning we had a couple of lectures. One thing I’ve noticed about the Chinese lecturing style is that it does not mesh with the western ideals of what makes an interesting presentation. All language barriers aside, the Chinese tend to believe that memorizing a bunch of dates and numbers and being able to recite them verbatim makes an interesting an engaging presentation. When asked to provide personal insight or opinions they either wonder why that is of interest to you or are too uncomfortable answer. It’s just a cultural difference, but to be honest it makes it really hard to stay awake during Chinese lectures. In any case, we took the day to walk around Kunming and see the sites which included this really pretty park where lots of people were singing and dancing and playing music. I watched this fan dance for awhile and recognized the song, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it is now. We walked around and then came back so we could get on the overnight train to Dali.

Overnight Train:
This wasn’t too awful then I again I refused to use any of the facilities or really even do anything except for sit on my bed. These cars are pretty small and my particular room had six beds (and people) in it. Tip: make sure you get the bottom bed because it has the most head room and is also the easiest to navigate late at night without having to step on other peoples beds. Essentially, I wanted to make sure I slept so I took the Percocet given to me for my knee pain and passed out. I woke up in time to see some pretty scenery and gather my stuff and we were in Dali!

Dali:
Dali is to the west of Kunming and is home to the Bai minority. We ended up staying in Yang Ren Jie (yahng run jyeh=foreigners street) so a lot of what was around was geared toward tourists. Dali is also part of what is called the ‘Golden Triangle’ so drugs are pretty common but also shady and underground. A couple of times innocent looking old ladies would come up to us and ask if we wanted Ganja or Hashish. I did not partake.

The first day our tour guide brought us into a Bai village where we watched Bai cheese making, tie dying, and watched a dance performance and drank the first of our numerous cups of tea. The cheese making was coolish but mostly people liked watching the cute puppy that was living in the house where the cheese was being made. Also, Persephone and I had made a pact early on to NOT get la duzi (la doozuh=ummm ‘sour stomach’—this is a euphemism…I bet you can guess) so I didn’t really taste the cheese but the texture was pretty hard and definitely didn’t taste like anything I’d ever had before. I really liked the tie dye place. We got to watch them stir these big vats of indigo and saw how they hand sew these designs into the fabric so that when it’s dyed it comes out looking really cool. Unfortunately, lots of places sell fake Bai tie dye, and no matter how much he explained I could never really figure out how to tell the difference. We also got to try some indigo tea which was supposedly good for throats and was pretty tasty too. At the dance performance we watched some ‘traditional’ Bai dancing while drinking three kinds of tea, one of which I think had some Bai cheese inside it. I put ‘traditional’ in quotes because this place was clearly geared toward tourists so I’m not really sure to what extent the dances were authentic. It was ok (CAAM and 3C are better) and at the end they asked the audience to join and nobody did except for three of our guys.

The next day was our infamous 80-Mile bike ride around Er Hai (are-hai=ear lake…cuz the lake looks like an ear). So those of you who know me know that my bike skills are limited to non-existent and to put it plainly I don’t know how to ride a bike, let alone break, turn, swerve, etc etc. Needless to say this activity was very ‘special.’ First of all this bike ride was probably closer to 80 km instead of 80miles…probably like 110-120 miles. Second of all this is was not some cake ride on a paved road around a pretty lake, we had to go up hill, down hill, over rocks and through mud and through villages with animals and people…a pretty hard bike ride even for someone who actually rides bikes.
Instead of being able to enjoy the scenery I had to concentrate on the road in front of me, making sure it stayed as far away from my FACE as possible.

Being optimists, IES provided us with only one car that followed us. In this car, which was only slightly bigger than a VW bug, was packed 2 bikes and a driver…so only room for one person and one more bike. Fairly early on, Corey biked down a huge hill and ran into some rocks and injured himself, so he got to sit in the car all day putting behind the slowest biker (not always me!) Around 50-60 miles in I was getting really tired and my knee was literally killing me and I didn’t have enough strength in my legs to pedal fast enough to keep the bike upright. Josie, one of the laoshis, called our tourguide who sent back a rickety autorickshaw to come pick me up and take me to the nearest town where I could get on a bus—the rickshaw was almost scarier than the biking. A couple kids met me in the town and decided that they wouldn’t be able to make it back either and took the bus with me back to town…we made it back to the bike rental place just before the first group arrived, exhausted and sore. I am proud that I made it that far. The next day was a free day in Dali where I just explored and bought stuff.

Simao:
The next morning we got on a plane to Simao which is in the south of Yunnan. Simao is essentially the tea capital of Yunnan (apart from Pu’er which is the home of Pu’er tea, which apparently cures everything and makes you lose weight and whatever whatever). Over our two day stay, we went to two tea plantations and drank a lot of tea. When we got tired of tea we went to the Nescafe plant and drank coffee. At night we went to the store and drank beers—there was a lot of hydration.

Jinghong:
This was  the city where we probably spent the most time…which is weird because thinking back I didn’t really do all that much while I was there. The first day we toured Manting Palace park. It was pretty fun. There were a few animals in a sorry-looking zoo that we decided to feed and also a walk-in cage full of PEACOCKS! For three kuai you could walk around with a bowl and feed the peacocks. Another thing in southern Yunnan— peacocks are seemingly as common as pigeons only actually respected…although perhaps they like to keep them all together when the tourists come. This park also had really funny English translations of signs and a raft that you could rent and go around the lake. While in the park we met with a Hinayana Buddhist monk who was neat but had a really soothing voice so I might have fallen asleep a little while he was talking. He talked about Buddhism for awhile and blessed some bracelets and gave them to us.

The second day in Jinhong we hiked through the jungle to try and find a waterfall. The paths were really narrow and my bag was a little too big and so by the time we actually got to the waterfall my knee was killing me and I couldn’t manage to climb the rocks to the actual waterfall…looked fun though. We then visited a village that was home to a bunch of villagers who had been displaced by the damming of the Mekong river. I had expected this to be one of those ‘eye-opening’ experiences where you realize the costs of economic progress on the common person but it really wasn’t. Most of the people we talked to weren’t very unhappy with the new situation even though they lived farther from the rubber factory where they worked and had to walk to get there—most of them had houses that were bigger than mine at home and nicer TVs too! We talked to them and most  were pretty happy…That night we went to xiao kao (BBQ) and cleared them out of all their pork and almost all their beer. This became our ‘place’ and when we came back to Jinghong a few days later on the way back to Beijing we stopped here a again. 

River Rafting:
To get to our next destination we used motorized rafts. Most of us had pictured ourselves leisurly floating down the river in the sunshine, getting sunburns and splashing eachother. WRONG. When we woke up it was overcast and almost raining and COLD. We got into our raft and after a few false starts we were off. Our boat, which we named “Mad-Dog’s Ship of Pain” (after John, who’s nickname is Mad Dog) was stupid enough to try to play pirates with one of the other rafts. Not surprisingly before we even got to the first check point like half an hour later we were pretty wet and shivering. At the first check point they fed us pineapple and bai jiu (to warm us up) and some people played volleyball on the beach. Before long we were back in the rafts expecting to have a long day of rafting down the Mekong. We were wrong though because after 20 more minutes we started pulling into shore because we were there…ooops. Unlucky Mad-Dog’s Ship of Pain was the last to come in so we got ambushed by the other two rafts and were positively soaking and had to change our clothes before we were allowed to sit on the bus. But we were happy because we were in the tropical paradise of Ganlanba.

Ganlanba:
That same day we found ourselves in Ganlanba. We stayed in yet another touristy place, which as far as I could tell was a village solely devoted to housing tourists and showing them the Dai lifestyle. Whatever though. After settling in for a bit and having a traditional Dai lunch we headed out to the Water Splashing Festival (Po Shui Jie- Poah Shway Jyeeh) Unfortunately some people were deterred from their water splashing for a bit while we watched a dancing show…the guys liked the skimpy outfits… I liked the peacock dancing, but again, I think CAAM is better. I think in this place you HAVE to find some way to contribute to the economy through tourism and if you’re a thin, pretty girl they probably just make you dance even if you aren’t a very good dancer. After the dancing show they herded us into the square for water splashing! Although in this ‘village’ they have Water Splashing Festival everyday (for the tourists, of course) the real water splashing festival is in April and essentially you take bowls of water and splash each other, pretty self-explanatory. They provided us with ‘traditional’ water-splashing outfits and there was a moment of flashback to CAAM days where Teng lao shi would try to get me to fit into tiny clothes from China but surprisingly I didn’t have trouble fitting into what they gave me at all…whew! We had a little parade, including the announcer saying “Everyone come look at the foreigners!” and then we splashed eachother for a good few minutes. I was the only one with a water-proof camera and took a bunch of shots so we didn’t have to pay for the stupid ones that they took of us. We came back dried off and had dinner and explored the town for a bit…finding drunk Chinese guys carrying a dead cow’s head (apparently a wedding present?) and telling us to go with them to a party…I didn’t but other people did—apparently everyone was already passed out.  

The next day we were supposed to have ‘a day in the life’ type deal. We went to the field to help harvest pumpkins, which to me actually looked more like squash. Most of the boys pulled weeds… another smaller group of us went to a different part of the plantation to actually pick the pumpkins…I stood in the truck while people threw pumpkins at me and I piled them up. In the afternoon we met with another monk who taught us how to meditate and those soothing voices were so damn soporific I almost fell asleep. That night we bough more beers and somehow found our way in the dark with only cellphones and one flashlight, through jungle and the huge pumpkin farm to the shore of the Mekong where we drank and talked and were merry.

The next morning we drove back to Jinghong where we had a soccer game with some local Chinese dudes. I wore my flip-flops purposefully so I wouldn’t have to play. We lost but it was a good effort—sorta. That night we went to xiao kao and played drinking games with ourselves and the locals…drunk Chinese people are almost as funny as Americans…especially when they try to speak English.

The day after that we headed home…it wasn’t too eventful… but the next day I pulled an allnighter finishing my presentation and paper and today my IES roomie moved out and my Chinese roomie moved in! Her name is Zhang Ling Xue (jahng ling shweh-soul of the snow) and she is really nice. I'll try to post pics of her and my room later.

That’s my really brief description of my trip! If you want details about anything just ask me a specific question and I’ll answer it!