Yunnan Days 11-14

Day 11: T is for Too Much Tea
We had our final meal at the Aini village, breakfast, at about 7:30 this morning. Nobody had gone into Jinghong for more supplies, so there was about ¼ of a jar of jam and some bread left for breakfast. The people who arrived at breakfast on time, myself included, demolished the jam pretty quickly, and the over-sleepers and hangover-afflicted students who came in late were left with nothing but white bread. This was the cause of much griping among everyone, but none more so than Complainer, who snapped “Shut up!” at some poor, well-intentioned student who suggested that she put ketchup on it to make it a little less bland (for some reason, there were like three unopened bottles of ketchup laying around). I have no idea how someone so inflexible can derive any enjoyment out of travel; I swear I have never seen the girl crack a smile at anything this entire trip, and it seems odd to me that one would willingly come to China and then get all bothered by the constant presence of Chinese food. As I told Jackie, “She could have studied abroad in Omaha instead, you know.”
We left the village with similar fanfare as we’d arrived to. Everyone who could get within touching distance shook our hands, hugged us, and invited us to come back and see them again. Unlike a couple of the places I’ve visited, the invitation seemed genuine. I would be more than happy to come back and see them, but I would have no idea how to get back to their village. The village head told us that aside from maybe twenty people, we were the first foreigners the villagers had seen (I also had the first sunburn the villagers had seen, and was constantly being asked if I was hurt and/or contagious).
We drove back to Jinghong for a lunch at the same delicious place we’d visited a couple days ago, checked into our hotel room for a quick shower, and then set off for a walk in another tea plantation. The Barbies groaned when they heard this, but this time they had a point: we’d visited at least one tea-related attraction every other day, and we were all getting pretty sick of it. However, our teacher chaperone, who we had by this point nicknamed Buzzkill Laoshi, told us all sternly that it would be a nice walk and that there was a 1700-year-old tea tree we could look at, according to Bai Mei.
The tea plantation was a relatively nice, shady walk, but there wasn’t much to see – lots of nondescript tea bushes, but no people. After about an hour, we reached the endpoint of the walk, which had nothing more than a tea bush the size of my family’s camellia plants at home. Buzzkill Laoshi briefly conferenced with Bai Mei, then surfaced and said something like “I’m sorry, she has misunderstood. The 1700-year-old tree died, but this one is still very old. It is 300 years old.” Then, because the group wasn’t quite mutinous enough, Bai Mei got us lost on the way back. Ugh.
We were on our own for dinner, so a big group of us went out for pizza, which we’d been craving since the tea plantation walk. We ended up at a multilingual place called the Mei Mei Café, which could have been torn right out of old-town Dali: barely passable “Chinese” food, menu in four languages, breakfast, internet access, and Western food. To my surprise, the pizza was actually very good. They didn’t skimp on the sauce or the cheese, two common problems plaguing the Chinese pizzas I’ve had thus far.

Day 12: Charlie’s in the Trees
Today we went on another hike, but this one had more of a point – we were traveling along a jungle creek to a waterfall. The trail got pretty ridiculous at some points, and the two guides we went with frequently used their machetes to clear paths out of the overgrown foliage. In multiple places, we had to step on the guides’ hands to clamber up sheer, slick walls of wet dirt, and occasionally the trail would give out when people stepped on it. Nonetheless, we made it to the waterfall in one piece in about an hour and a half, cracking “back in ‘Nam” jokes most of the way there.
The waterfall was indeed worth the hike. The water was cool and clear, and most of the group promptly removed all unnecessary clothes and shoes and jumped into the knee-deep small pool underneath. We all took turns shoving, throwing, and table-topping people under the waterfall, which was very cold, and then some of the guys started playing football with an imaginary ball, which degenerated into more table-topping after multiple arguments over who had the “ball”.
We ate lunch at a local home (delicious, but disappointing because Steve had told me we’d be served pigs’ blood, which seemed like an appropriately Thor-esque thing to eat) and went back to the hotel for free time. Dinner was on our own once again, and a group of about six of us decided to follow Steve’s recommendation and try out Dai* barbeque. There were four or five similar-looking places in a row not far from the hotel, so we picked the busiest one and headed inside.
Dai barbeque is a simple affair – the restaurant had a huge variety of meats, veggies, and other edibles outside. You pick all the stuff you want, put it in a basket, and then they cook it for you and bring it to your table. We tried to get a good cross-section of what the restaurant had to offer: we got some pork, chicken, and beef skewers, a whole game hen, fish, some duck heads, various veggies, pork fat, and tofu stuffed with herbs and chilies. Some of the more questionable things we did not eat included whole sheep brains, grubs (which I had later, and were completely tasteless but delectably crunchy), and a nest of giant, wriggling wasp pupae. We all pointed at this one, especially Becca, who was horrified by one of the pupae hatching. The waitress noticed her distress and nonchalantly plucked out the wasp, which was the size of my thumb, and set it aside, with its new wings twitching peevishly.
Dinner was delicious, and we wandered around town afterward full and happy. The boys went off to get massages (which were apparently not at all sketchy, quite good, and $4.50 for an hour) and Jackie, Becca and I strolled along the main shopping street, stopping in at one of Jinghong’s myriad Burmese-owned jewelry stores so I could get a jade necklace (multiple people have determined that it is real, and it set me back just over $10) while the others chatted in Chinese with the owners about their home in Burma. My new necklace is a nice shade of milky green, tied on a red thread for good luck, and shaped like an eggplant, my favorite Chinese veggie.

Day 13: The War of the Mekong
I woke at about 4 this morning with an awful stomachache. So far on the trip, I had managed to avoid the dreaded laduzi, the Chinese word for an upset stomach, intestinal distress, etc. Most of the group had already had it for a couple days, and it was the “etc” that was the real killer, as many of the places we visited had irregular access to toilets. Morale, and Immodium, was running low. (Fortunately, I’d brought my own.)
I went to the bathroom, threw up, felt miserable, went back to bed, woke up, went to the bathroom, felt miserable…it was a vicious cycle that lasted roughly until our morning wake-up call. As it turned out, Becca was afflicted too, and so I gave Steve a ring:
“Hello, Steve. It’s Thor. I’m calling on behalf of myself and my roommate, as we are both inches from death.”
Steve trotted upstairs, gave us some antiviral/antibacterial cocktail, and told us to take the morning off. However, I decided to double up my dose of Immodium, suck it up, and go to the morning’s activity anyway. We were going to visit Xishuangbanna’s new, huge Buddhist temple, and as a religion major I’d been looking forward to my visit and felt I’d be amiss if I didn’t go. Becca stayed in the room, planning to meet us after lunch.
It was a quick drive to the temple, and we wandered around for about an hour before meeting three monks for a Q&A session about Theravada Buddhism, the type most commonly practiced in Southeast Asia. Since I’d studied this particular variety of Buddhism, most of the information in the talk wasn’t new to me, but I enjoyed it all the same; Buddhist monks everywhere seem to have a calm happiness to them, and I always like hanging out with them and feel a little more serene afterward.
When the talk concluded, Buzzkill Laoshi translated our guide’s brief introduction to the temple, which had apparently been constructed with financial help from the Chinese government. I asked why the government had chosen to help, given that the Communist Party was officially atheist, and was fed in response the least true thing I’ve ever heard: “The Chinese government supports freedom of religion.” There were so many questions I wanted to ask: then why don’t they let religious people become Party members? Why do they keep arresting people who operate unlicensed houses of worship? Why the constant, ostensibly political crackdowns on Tibetan Buddhists? I didn’t press the subject farther, but it was frustrating to know that I’d never have gotten a straight answer.
After a stop at a tea store (the best tea-related place we saw thus far, but by this point even I was burned out on tea) we went back to the same restaurant for lunch, which gave us a stunning array of foods for the third straight time. By this time, my laduzi was more or less in remission, so I ate away happily. We picked up the people who had stayed behind for the morning (apparently Becca and I weren’t the only ones who didn’t mesh well with the local food) and left for our river raft trip down the Mekong river.
The Mekong, which flows through the center of Jinghong, conjured in my imagination visions of jungles, colorful flora and fauna, clear water, and mighty rapids. The jungle part was pretty spot-on, but the rest of it, as I found out, was bunk. The section we were on was pretty slow, and the entire river was opaque brown (because of mud, not pollution, although there was undoubtedly some of that in the mix too). A little dismayed by the lack of whitewater and white water, I disembarked from the minibus and walked to the dock.
The group was divided into three boatfuls, each of which had about eight people plus a driver (the rubber rafts were motorized, so we got to sit back and relax). The first was named the No Fun Boat, and was populated by the people who couldn’t swim and didn’t want to get wet, including, unsurprisingly, Complainer and Buzzkill Laoshi. This was where we put all of our stuff. The other two boats segregated themselves into Kobe Boat (over the course of the trip, Andrew and T had elevated Kobe Bryant to Chuck Norris-like status), captained by Andrew, and Thor Boat, captained by me. Thor Boat had myself, Becca, Steve, Cody, and some other exemplary people. Kobe Boat got the Barbies, Andrew, T, and, mysteriously, Pei Rei, who by all accounts should have been on Thor Boat. Each boat had on it five or six small plastic bowls, officially for bailing out water, but actually used for throwing water at the people on the other boat. This started quite soon after we left, and everyone was thoroughly soaked within minutes. To make matters worse, Andrew had been carrying a pack of water balloons around for literally ten days in anticipation of the raft trip, and during lunch had filled 25 of them with water and lovingly stashed them in a backpack. However, the balloons rarely broke, so they went back and forth between the various boats with great frequency but little success. The raft drivers were totally in on the fun, and frequently bumped into the other boat on purpose so we could dump river water on each other with reckless abandon. Early on, Steve and Cody also boarded the Kobe Boat in true Viking fashion. The raft drivers took issue with this, so they promptly came back and a no-boarding rule was established.
We also ran into another raft full of Chinese tourists. Both boats had agreed that there would be no civilian casualties, but the Chinese boat drove over to us and started flinging water with great zeal. At this point, they ceased to be civilians, and in celebration of their new Enemy Combatant status, the two IES boats started fighting back. Everyone was having a ridiculously good time and getting super wet, except this one woman in the back of the Chinese boat who was around my mom’s age and kept trying to shield herself with her umbrella. As we pulled away, we resolved that we would get Umbrella Lady, and we would get her good.
After a quick stop ashore for the drivers to have a smoke (during which Becca stole about half of Kobe Boat’s bowls) we continued on, getting very damp and trying to deflect attacks from both Kobe Boat and the Chinese boat. As we pulled toward the endpoint of the raft trip, the Chinese boat came in for one more attack. We all tried to dump on Umbrella Lady, but she shielded herself with her parasol until Cody, in a fit of genius, grabbed one of the Kobe Boat’s water balloons and smashed it over her umbrella at point-blank range.
The umbrella, which was meant to protect the carrier from sun or perhaps light drizzle, folded immediately. Defenseless, Umbrella Lady looked on in increasingly soggy horror as seven twentysomething, vengeful Americans came at her from all sides with bowls full of river water. As we pulled up and put the bowls away, several of us heard her mutter (in Chinese) “I don’t like foreigners”. The rest of the boat shook our hands and congratulated us on a good fight. I considered the entire trip a victory for Thor Boat, as we defeated Umbrella lady, had the only boarding of the day, and stole about half of Kobe Boat’s munitions.
There was little time to gloat, because our next stop was at the local tech school for a soccer match against a Jinghong club team. We’d heard the horror stories about the previous year’s match from Steve and fully expected to be steamrollered by the club team. They beat us 6-3, but we definitely held our own thanks to Cody and Andrew, both experienced and talented soccer players, and the Jinghong goalkeeper, who was about as useful as the Swiss navy.

Day 14: Oh, Thank God
This was the day we returned home. It would be a long one, though: our flight was not scheduled to arrive in Beijing until half past midnight.
We started the day off in Jinghong with a visit to a park (not interesting) and the local fruit market, where I sampled delicious, fresh tropical things that I’d never seen before, may never see again, and don’t know the names of because the likes of them have never been seen in the Western hemisphere. I ended up buying several things to take back to Max and a passion fruit** for myself, but my peers got exotic melons, pineapples, everything. I don’t think I tried anything I disliked.
We had our final lunch (excellent, as always) before the short flight from Jinghong to Kunming, where we went to the city’s famous flower market for a few hours. The flowers were gorgeous, and came in every variety you could imagine, but I didn’t get any, as I’m not into things that are decorative rather than useful. We wandered around there for a while and got dinner (the most mediocre dumplings I’ve ever had – not enough meat, not enough sauce) and then went back to the bus for our final journey to the Kunming airport.
Our flight back to Beijing was an hour and a half late due to lightning, so we were all tired and grumpy when we boarded, and most of us slept the whole way through the flight as well as the bus ride back to Bei Wai, where we divided up our fruit and flowers and went back to our own beds.
Overall, I have mixed feelings about the trip. There were some things I really liked (the Aini village, the chat with the monks) that I wouldn’t have done as an independent traveler, and I had huge amounts of fun at times (the river trip). However, those are ultimately outweighed by the tight schedule and the lack of time to explore on our own and interact with the locals. I feel like my Chinese is worse than it was when I left; since we did everything with the group, there was really no time or reason to speak Chinese, and I’m out of practice. Parts of the trip were also really poorly organized – there were several things on the itinerary that we never got to do due to poor planning. I would have preferred a one-week trip with the group and a week later in the semester for us to travel on our own.
I am thrilled, however, to be back in Beijing. Touching down at the airport felt as much like a homecoming as any I’ve ever experienced, on par with my first trip home from college for Thanksgiving or my return to Northwestern at the start of sophomore year. The Paralympics are over now, but I haven’t noticed any significant difference in traffic or air quality (in fact, both today and yesterday were lovely and clear). The only post-Olympics changes I’ve noticed are positive. There are more street food vendors out and about now, people who were previously driven away by Beijing’s special Olympic public health standards, which is always a good thing because Beijing’s best food is street food. The other group now out in full force are the pirated DVD vendors, who are back to selling their wares out in the open. I got off the bus today and almost immediately had copies of Hellboy 2, The Dark Knight, and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 shoved into my hands, all movies that aren’t out on actual video yet. The Beijing police are supposedly trying to crack down on this, but I see no signs of that happening. They’re just mad because I got a copy of There Will Be Blood for about eighty cents and they don’t have one. It works, too.
Oh, Beijing. You’re beautiful. You’re amazing. I love you. Don’t ever leave me again.

Dumpling Tally: 47

*The Dai are a Thai minority group living in Xishuangbanna. In Jinghong, and possibly all of Xishuangbanna, they’re actually the most numerous ethnicity, outnumbering Han Chinese.

**Passion fruits are the best fruits. If you disagree with me, you are wrong.