Yunnan Days 9-10

Day 9: Village People
We left Pu-Erh in the morning for a drive to a region of Yunnan called Xishuangbanna, where we’d be spending the rest of our trip. This drive took us through a protected nature reserve called Elephant Valley, where, our guide told us, 300 Asian elephants roamed wild and free. Despite her repeated insistences that if we were lucky, we might see an elephant, the creatures were nowhere to be seen, although we were all temporarily fooled by a statue near the visitor center.
After we made it out the other side, it was a short hop to the regional capital of Jinghong, where we dropped our big luggage off (once again, we were instructed to pack only what we needed for two nights) and ate the most delicious lunch yet. Xishuangbanna is known for its tropical fruits, and it became clear why: we were served delicious grilled skewers of pineapple, slices of watermelon, tiny bananas called bajiao, and juicy papayas to start the lunch off. Since the area is so close to Laos, the food is quite influenced by that country’s cuisine, and we had maybe ten or twelve delicious, tropical courses served to us, the best being a delicious Thai-ish cucumber salad.
We finished lunch and then went to one of Xishuangbanna’s two protected cultural sites, an 800-year-old Buddhist temple. (The other was about a two-hour drive away, near the Myanmar border, so we didn’t get to see it.) The temple itself was a pleasant, overgrown diversion, but the tropical heat was stifling and nobody was happy about climbing up the roughly 23409587342 steps to the top. Xishuangbanna was the first outright tropical place we’d been: the heat and humidity were oppressive, and greenery erupted from every available patch of dirt. Everywhere we went, even the streets of Jinghong, was green, lined with banana trees with six-foot leaves, tropical flowers, ferns, the works. The Chinese government is making a huge effort to develop Xishuangbanna as a tourist destination comparable to those in Thailand, and although the region definitely still needs work (people were still living in shanties on the outskirts of Jinghong, and outside the main highways the roads are very poorly developed) it’s coming along quite nicely. I’d be interested to see what the place is like in ten years.
Our final resting point for the day was a traditional village populated by the Aini minority group, where we’d be living for two nights with an Aini family. We were told ahead of time that showers, electricity and running water were not guaranteed (the Barbies and Complainer complained, predictably), so we knew this would not be a touristy place, but everyone in the tiny minibus I took to the village was still impressed by its remoteness. Although it was quite close to Jinghong distance-wise, about half of the drive was on a one-lane, red dirt road rivaling some of the gnarliest I’d seen on my bike ride. As we wound our way through deeper and deeper jungles, you could all but see the thought bubbles popping up over everyone’s heads: “Where are we?”
After roughly an hour and a half, our vans finally pulled up to a wooden gate where we were greeted by about thirty or so Aini villagers in traditional dress. This was actual traditional dress, too, not the fake stuff we’d been assaulted with over the past week. I later learned that the Aini women wove, dyed, and embroidered the clothes themselves, albeit with supplies they’d purchased from the next town over. The cloth was all black, but the embroidery on it was in every color imaginable, patterned with squares, simple shapes, and flowers.
The villagers sang to us and welcomed us into one of the village’s larger homes, where we were served piping hot cups of local tea and offered one of the weirder Yunnan traditions: a cigarette bong.* After being greeted and tea’d for about forty-five minutes, we met the families we’d be living with for the next two nights. I was staying in a group with Becca, Jackie, and Complainer, and to my great joy, our house not only had a TV (with a DVD player), but a fully functioning, clean hot shower. The toilet was basically a ceramic hole in the ground, but it had running water under it to wash everything away. All in all, the house was much better than I’d been led to expect, although ours was one of the nicer ones in the village (a few people did indeed get houses without plumbing, although the villagers were really chill about sharing their toilets and showers). Like all the Aini houses, ours had two stories. The first was open-air and was where the residents kept their stuff – motorbikes, cars (a couple families had them), work equipment, and livestock – and had their toilets. The second floor was where the family actually lived, and contained the bedroom, living room (where we slept on mattresses pushed together), kitchen, and shower. We put our things down and left for dinner in the communal house. The food was more simply spiced than what we’d been eating, but it was also deliciously hearty, and I ate and ate (including another chicken head and something that I found out after the fact was pig skin, but it was really good). Afterward, the Aini women tried performed a drinking song for us, and we responded in kind with a couple American classics: “Don’t Stop Believing” and the theme song from Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

Day 10: Aini, Wo Ai Ni
We were rudely awakened much earlier than necessary by the crowing of chickens and the honking of geese. (I couldn’t help hoping that one particularly loud rooster would end up on my dinner plate.) After a breakfast imported from Jinghong (toast and jam) we left for the Aini tea fields, a ten-minute walk outside the center of the village, to learn how to pick tea. This wasn’t very hard, and most of the bushes had been pretty well picked over, so after about fifteen minutes the entire affair degenerated into people wandering off and eating tropical fruit. And oh, the fruit. I ate things I don’t even know the names of: a giant grapefruit-esque thing the size of a basketball, miniature sour red berries, and a tiny variety of guava that had the unmistakable hint of cilantro underneath the sweet, juicy guava taste. It was all so good, and we munched our way back to the village, plucking fruit off every tree we passed.
We ate a delicious lunch similar to the previous night’s dinner (although I noticed with dismay that the offending rooster was still alive and honking). During lunch, a change of plans was announced. We were supposed to learn to tap the rubber trees near the village, an important source of income for these people, but the villagers were concerned that our delicate Caucasian constitutions wouldn’t be able to handle the heat, and insisted that we have free time until dinner. This went over quite well with most of the group, and about half of them went back to sleep the heat off.
The rest of us went off with various groups of villagers to learn about Aini stuff: there were toys and games, including a top that none of us could work successfully and a game similar to lawn bowling, and traditional weaving and something similar to (but much harder than) crocheting, both of which I tried and summarily failed at. Afterward, I spent time with Steve and Jackie in front of the village’s only store (which, blessedly, sold popsicles), talking to some of the villagers, including the village head, a man around forty who spoke very good Mandarin.** We learned that the village had 600 people, all Aini (although there were no restrictions on who could live there, the Aini are pretty low on the ethnic minority totem pole so most people don’t want to be involved with them) and that the average income had doubled in the last five years, from about US$100 to $220. However, each family had just received 200 rubber trees, which upon reaching maturity in 7 years could be tapped every day. Each would produce 2 kuai worth of rubber a day, so when the trees mature fully each family will make more in a reasonable week’s work than they used to in an entire year. And while their income doesn’t sound like much, where they live it’s enough to live quite comfortably. The majority of homes had satellite TV, everyone had electricity, and because they raise their own plants and animals, there is always enough to eat. Frankly, I was quite surprised that their standard of living was so high – their clothes may be grubby, and the toilet facilities were sketchy in a couple places, but they definitely have everything they need. In fact, my family’s house was built just last year, and many other villagers are planning upgrades as well.
In the middle of the conversation, a girl with a nice haircut and dye job, about my age, rode by on a motorbike with her boyfriend. “Does she live here?” Steve asked, impressed, as we all were, by her trendy clothes and haircut. “Yes,” said the village head. “They go to Jinghong for college, and they come back dressed so differently.” I couldn’t help but think of my own newly found affinity for $100+ jeans when he said that. In this area, the generation gap is especially large: most residents over 40 have never been to Jinghong.
After our chat, we moseyed over to the village’s newly poured concrete basketball court for an impromptu match between five IES guys and some Aini students. We beat them, but it was a close game – the village guys were quick on their feet, even those playing barefoot, and the competition got intense, with Americans and Ainis screaming happily at each other by the end. (We also taught the villagers some showboating victory dance techniques.) When the game was finished, we ate another dinner (and I ate another chicken head, because by this point it was just expected) and went back to the basketball court for a “dance party”.
Things started off simply enough: the village women dressed in their traditional clothes again and performed some Aini dances for us. The whole village had turned out to see us, and eventually they clamored for some American songs, which Andrew and T fulfilled by doing an a cappella version of “99 Problems”. Then the private party began: most of the villagers left, and we were all seated around low tables and given barbeque and pineapple. The women came around and gave all the guys extensive massages, which was awkward because about half of them were people’s host moms. The men got out their cigarette bongs and gave each table a homemade bottle of baijiu, the infamous Chinese moonshine. The teacher accompanying us promptly took them away and scolded both us and the givers, which I thought was pretty rude (and many other students took issue with this, though not for the same reason). Music was pumped over the tinny stereo, and as the villagers and many of the students got progressively more inebriated, dancing began. Oddly enough, the town’s police chief was among the drunkest, and he asked me to dance no less than three times, each less coordinated than the last. Around midnight, the village head broke the party off, and we headed back home for a good night’s sleep with these kind, giving people.
I’ll finish writing about the trip (and post pictures) tomorrow – I have a fair amount of work to make up tomorrow, and, more importantly, today is a criminally nice day and I want to go exploring outside.

*This is exactly like it sounds. You put water in the bong, take the filter out of the cigarette, put it in the small tube outside, and inhale massive amounts of smoke. The villagers were very good at it. The few students who tried were not.

**Most of the people under forty in the village spoke Mandarin, albeit with a weird accent that made them kind of hard to understand. The older people spoke an Aini language that nobody could understand a word of.