The Ruralest Ruralist (A Final Three-Day Yunnan Adventure)

Xiong Limei, the young woman who had been my translator but, more importantly, my friend during my Independent Study Project in May, had invited me to visit her family in rural Lanping county for the last few days before my trip back to the U.S., so after saying goodbye to my friends in Fugong, I climbed on a bus and braved an 8-hour trip through roads ravaged by the summer rain. I planned to meet my friends Jackson and Linda and to spend the afternoon with them before meeting Xiong Limei for the bus ride out into the countryside.

It was Sunday, and the city was alive with peasants coming in from the countryside to buy their groceries. I was particularly struck by the many Yi women in their bright clothing. It seemed to me they were everywhere-- in noodle shops, leaning against the open doorways of cell phone stores, dragging their purchases down the street. My previous encounters with Yi outside of Dali during my homestay had taught me that they can be very elusive and tend to stick high in the mountains. As fascinated as ever by this life that must be so different than mine, I watched with excitement as they went about their market routines. There was even an Yi nainai watching her grandchild play in Lanping's city center park.

Yi women out for market day in downtown Lanping


An Yi woman looks on as children play in Lanping park. This was the only decent picture I ever got of an Yi woman in married headdress-- you can really see how big it is


Lama people were also in abundance that Sunday. Here a Lama woman plays with a child (I'm guessing her granddaughter) in the city park, Lanping. I love her headpiece in particular.


Sitting on the street by Lanping park talking in the evening


I was lucky enough to be able to leave my giant suitcase with Jackson for a few days, meaning that I only had a small day-pack to carry as Xiong Limei and I caught the small, beat up transport van thirty minutes outside of Liuku on cobbled roads. She motioned to the driver to stop on a small, roughly hewn wooden bridge over a burbling river. There were no houses near-- we would have to walk to her village, 20 minutes off the road. As we disembarked, a Pumi man in a dirty baseball hat looked at me with a mixture of blank curiosity and shock. He regained himself and climbed in to continue his journey, but later in the week Xiong Limei's sister, who is a doctor in Lanping, told me he had talked to everyone he met about he had seen "one of those people with white skin, like on TV" for the first time in his life.

The hike to the Xiong house wasn't easy. The rainy season had turned the path into thick sludge, and my foot was not yet healed (and would not be for months.) Nevertheless, we slowly made our way up the flanks of a long, large hill (the foothills of the mountains which are foothills to the Himalayas.) When I arrived at the house I was warmly greeted by Limei's father, a spry man with gleaming black eyes, a stubbly chin, and an impish grin, and mother, a beautiful woman with a kind face, her black-grey hair caught up in the turban traditional to Pumi people. Both of them spoke the local Mandarin dialect with thick accents I often could not understand, but they had learned to comprehend Mandarin by watching Chinese TV so we were able to communicate in a lopsided sort of way, with one-way translation required much of the time.

Limei's mother was especially happy to have me visit-- she has suffered from debilitating rheumatoid arthritis since she gave birth to Limei in her early twenties. If she lived in the US she would be wheel-chair bound, but in the remote Chinese countryside she gets around using a pair of low wooden stools. Her basic mode of transportation is to sit on one stool, place the other in the direction she wishes to travel, scoot herself onto the second stool, and start again. She doesn't move around much for this reason, and so in her 50-year life I was the first white person she had ever met, and she was thrilled to welcome me into her home. I was lucky enough to be visiting when she had the one arthritis treatment the family can afford per month, which helps to keep the swelling down. Even a few days later, she showed me the goose eggs developing by her knees and elbows. It was hard to watch and know that I couldn't change the situation for her or her family-- but as soon as I returned home I sent her a grasping tool of the sort given to the elderly in nursing homes here to pick things up from far away when I returned home.

The Xiong house was different from any I had ever been in. It consisted of two long, wodden buildings with a yard in between-- one building for the animals (pigs, goats, a horse) and one for the family. The family house had two levels, with the upper reserved for storage and the lower divided into a bedroom for Limei's parents, a bedroom for Limei and her siblings (if they were home), and an all-purpose kitchen/dining room/living room where the family spent most of their time chatting, preparing dinner using the san jiao (meaning "three legs," a cooking rack) over the open fire, and eating. There were no bathrooms-- while I stayed with the Xiongs such business was conducted in the potato fields or behind the house (depending on what sort of bathroom excursion you were headed on). There was also no running water (the Xiongs get their water from a stream a few minutes down the hill) and minimal electricity, only a few light bulbs to use at night.

Images of the Xiong house





I slept surprisingly well in Limei's extra bed, sheets and blankets wrapped around a wooden board. Limei's father brought us in a couple of bricks heated from the fire to keep us warm in our beds, and we barricaded to door from the inside with a large concrete block to stave off any intruders.

The weather was quite rainy and wet for the time I spent with Limei and her family--it was late July and the wet season had its claws in deep all over Yunnan. This meant that Limei didn't need to spend all of her time herding the family's goats and pigs, as she would have during clearer weather. Instead, after a breakfast of fried potatoes and pork Xiong's mother, father, and older brother (home from medical school just to see the foreign visitor) took turns doing Pumi dances for me and singing traditional songs, sometimes accompanying themselves on a roughly-hewn wooden instrument something like a cross between a guitar and a banjo or pounding the beat on a tightly-rolled up sheep skin that stood in for a drum. The songs and dances ranged from made up on the spot (Limei translated a sad song her mother sang about losing her own mother at age 13) to the thoroughly traditional, to be performed at rituals and on holidays.

For dinner, they killed one of their chickens for me to eat. This was a big deal-- for people living a subsistence lifestyle, a live chicken is a sustainable resource who will provide eggs (for eating and for producing more chickens) throughout its life. A dead chicken is one night's dinner. Thus, killing a chicken for a guest is an enormous honor. So even though I was fairly disgusted by having to watch as they chased the chicken (clearly cognizant of its fate) around the yard, slit its throat, drained the blood, etc, I tried to honor their way of honoring me by not cringing. And in some detached way, it was interesting to watch the process of creating a chicken dinner from start to finish.

The beginning of the process of cooking a chicken over an open fire


Xiong Li Mei and her mother outside their house


Getting water from the giant water vat


After dinner, the songs and dancing commenced again, lasting long into the night and lit only by the fire under the san jiao and the single bare lightbulb.

Xiong Li Mei's mother performs for me

In the morning, Limei was determined to find me some Lisu people to speak to about stories-- my thesis research was focusing on Lisu stories and their relationship with Christianity, and I hadn't had a chance to talk to any Lisu from the Lanping area. We walked an hour and a half down the road. As the rain intensified and I grew tired, Limei insisted that there was no need to take a bus--the village we were walking to was only a few minutes away. My foot was getting sorer and sorer and I was getting wetter and wetter, but I didn't crack until she pointed across the road and said "Okay, now we only need to climb over there." Miserable, I started up a small mountain, my foot throbbing with every step up the steep, muddy incline. As we reached the top I could barely walk, and the rain was coming down in buckets. I was exhausted and overwhelmed and began to cry. Limei was flummoxed, unsure what to do. "Li se," she said to me, "don't cry here. There may be gui around. They will like you too much if you cry." She was referring to a legendary figure in the Pumi and Lisu pantheon, a malevolent, flesh eating spirit that loves to torment humans. Later that night, when I complained of an upset stomach (probably from an overstimulating day and our dinner of roasted pig's head) she wondered aloud if the cause might not be a gui from earlier on the mountain. Regardless, I was finally able to pul myself together when I looked around and found that the worst was over and we had emerged on a level, sandy cow path (with a few cows munching wet hay to prove it.)

The outing unfortunately proved to be mostly fruitless-- we found only a few Lisu home during the summer planting season and were able to convince them to tell me a couple stories, but my black mood prevailed and they didn't have much to offer. Luckily, one of the people at the last house we visited was taking a large load of hay into the nearest village to sell, and he offered us a ride in his huge purple wood hauler. I sat in the cramped passenger seat, with Limei on my lap and the farmer's dog on her lap. Luckily, it was only a 15 minute drive, with the transmission vibrating mightily underneath us all the way, belching diesel.

I was scheduled to leave for Lanping, and then Kunming, early the next morning, but Limei's uncle arrived at the house that night to try and convince me to come to his house nearby for lunch. As politely as I could, I told him that I would be leaving to go back to America before lunchtime but that I really appreciated his generosity. "But," he protested, "I already killed two chickens for you!"

I felt terrible, knowing what a sacrifice those chickens were and what message they sent about his feelings for his would-be lunch guest. But my bus would not wait, and even if I had had the time I doubted I could climb up the enormous hill to his house with my bum foot. The situation was tense-- the family couldn't understand why I wouldn't just postpone the bus trip to honor Uncle, and I desperately wanted not to be perceived as ungrateful or rude. I dodged a bullet by arranging for Uncle Xiong to come for breakfast before I left. He and his two daughters joined with Limei, her brother, and father in showing me a traditional circle dance done at the Pumi New Year. Limei's mother sat on her low stool in the middle of the circle, clapping and singing along, seemingly fine with her inability to dance. Somehow it wasn't as sad as it might have been.

Before I left, we took pictures together and Limei's parents issued a formal invitation for me to return any time with my parents. I was their American daughter, they said. We took our final photographs, then Limei and I left for the first leg of a long trip back to America.

All of the Xiong family, gathered to say goodbye as I leave for Kunming and then the US

Laomudeng Disaster

Ah, the challenges of updating a blog while attempting to maintain one's academic life as a senior in college. Not an easy thing to do, as evidenced by the pace at which I have been posting here. Nonetheless, I think it's about time for a new entry.

So, I left off around the middle of my time in Nujiang. I had been suffering from what was in all likelihood dysentary and was prescribed an assortment of pills only identified by their Chinese names. Ultimately, I called the SIT doctor in Kunming to ask if these pills were okay to take, and it was a good thing I did because several of them could have caused major liver and kidney damage. He recommended the right pill in time for me to make a trip to Laomudeng, where Xiao Cui's family lives. Laomudeng is a Nu stronghold high up in the mountains of the valley, about three hours from Fugong. The drive was spectacular and both tortuous and torturous (word play!). I remember writing in my private journal that it would have been easier to drive on if they had just left it as a mountainside instead of trying to civilize it into a road--an hour and a half straight of jolting in potholes, hairpin turns, and general unhappiness. We soldiered on, however, to a small town called Bijiang, which used to be the size of a city but has since been largely abandoned. The peak of the mountain upon which Bijiang perched afforded a remarkable view looking back over the valley toward Fugong from a beautiful little pagoda.

The Bijiang pagoda overlooking the valley


The spectacular view of Nujiang Valley from Bijiang


Found outside the pagoda-- this statue of Mao now salutes the sky, as it has been pulled down. By nature or by human hands, I don't know. But I found it very intriguing.


While we were in Bijiang, I saw a tall man walking down the street-- a man with blonde hair. I asked some of the people around who he was, and they told me he was a doctor with UNICEF, there doing relief work. Would I like to meet him, perhaps give him a hug? I politely declined. But, alas, we were destined to meet.

For as I wrote almost nine months ago, we then drove back to Laomudeng, intending to walk through the village to Younger Sister's natal house. But during the walk I fell off the steep retaining wall along which the path ran, right into some poor Lisu family's yard. It was a very scary moment, as for awhile I wasn't sure how or where I was hurt. Eventually I realized that I wasn't able to put weight on my left foot and that I was feeling dizzy from what was probably a mild concussion. The lovely strangers into whose yard I had fallen invited me in, arranged me in their living room, and went to get the UNICEF doctor from Bijiang. The living room was a sparse, concrete box. I was lying on the only piece of furniture, a couch running along the back wall, and the only other thing in the room was an enormous TV/DVD system, in front of which a little Lisu child sat. I groggily lay back, drinking some hot water and eating a bowl of rice that was brought to me. In my haze, I heard the unmistakable sound of Rufus Wainwright's voice, and I was sure for a minute that I must have more than a mild concussion, as I seemed to be hallucinating. But when I turned my head, I realized that the Lisu child was watching the Chinese version of MTV, and Rufus Wainwright was performing on a music video. It was a truly bizarre moment, both surreal and transcendant. Here I was, 15 hours from a decent hospital, lying on a stranger's couch in a place where people spoke a language I didn't understand, with nearly no one of my ethnicity miles around. And then there was this reminder of the extraordinary power of globalization reminding me that no matter where you go you're never really far from America.

Eventually the UNICEF doctor showed up. He told me he only had EMT training but was able to guess that my foot wasn't broken and put it in an improvised splint. He also referred me to some Canadian friends of his living outside Fugong, who could provide me with crutches and generally help me out during the next week. I would later find out that these friends were illegal missionaries (Fugong is filled with them), but regardless of their reason for living in Nujiang they were incredibly generous with me, even offering to let me live in their house for awhile.

The ride back from Laomudeng was, to be quite frank, awful. It was, of course, just as bumpy going down as it was going up, but this time I felt every tiny vibration in my injured foot. To make things worse, the county had started a construction project on the road in the middle of the day, creating a blockage for almost two hours. This is an example of the sort of thing that happens in China all the time but would never happen in America. I was furious and sore by the time I got back to the hotel, but Older and Younger sister were very good to me, bringing me food and telling me stories. They would care for me similarly for the next couple of weeks, as would Foster Dad and his wife. Although it was a scary ordeal that made my last few weeks in China infinitely more difficult, my fall actually resulted in a much more intimate connection with the Lisu friends I made in Nujiang, an idea that has ultimately played a central role in the thesis I'm writing this year.

The intricate criss-cross pattern of a wall in a traditional Lisu home near Laomudeng

A Lisu Wedding

One of the wonderful things about having a local translator/ friend is that one gets access to all sorts of everyday cultural events that one wouldn't be able to experience as a run-of-the-mill tourist/visitor. Case in point: Xiao Cui, my Lisu older sister/translator was invited to a traditional wedding on one of the days that we visited her village outside of Fugong to hear stories from the town's elders. Having just read a book about Han customs ("Flow of Gifts: Reciprocity and Social Networks in a Chinese Village" by Yuxiang Yan) in which Han wedding traditions are detailed, I now have considerable perspective on the way Lisu and Han customs were combined within the wedding I attended. For example: the wedding was held in semi-traditional Lisu building with woven floor and concrete walls. But the invitations were lucky red, with a "double happiness" character (if you've ever seen Chinese New Year decorations, that shape of very common). Similarly, there was a table set up out front where every gift of 10 or 50 or 100 yuan was carefully written down on a list (which, I learned in the Yan book, is for purposes of reciprocity), but then guests were greeted in a recieving line by the wedding party in traditional Lisu dress and prevailed upon to drink a cup of Lisu beer.

Of course, everyone at the wedding had other things to do besides pay attention to the waiguoren (foreigner) in their midst-- plus, I wasn't feeling all that well, as I had had stomach upset for the past week or so. So I made myself comfortable in a corner and watched the proceedings. There isn't any particular moment in which a Lisu couple is officially married (no vows, for instance): they just have a big party, everyone celebrates, and by the end of the day they're married. At least, that was the impression I got after repeated questions. The party was basically everybody milling around schmoozing and eating big platters of traditional Lisu food in little circles. The platters were made by going through a buffet line of enormous proportions. The picture below will give you an idea of how much food there was/how many people they expected-- the silver vat on the left is completely full of rice:

Traditional Lisu wedding feast. The food is put together buffet style into platters. Several people sit or squat around these platters and eat the food either with their fingers or (nowadays) using chopsticks





I didn't end up staying at the wedding for very long, as after my first shot of Lisu whiskey (whew, strong stuff) my stomach started to rebel. Also, I think I might have insulted them by not offering a gift, but the situation was just too complex. At that point my spending money was very limited, as I was waiting for a wire from my teacher in Kunming (to my chagrin, my AAA check card, which had worked in almost every ATM throughout Yunnan, was not accepted at any of the three ATMs in Fugong city, and I was forced to borrow money or waste a day taking the 4-hour bus to Liuku and back to Fugong.) If I did offer a present, I would not know what amount would be appropriate and what would be insulting, and I could not afford to be generous. Instead, I took a motorcycle cab back down the winding river road to my hotel, where I proceeded to feel nauseous and contemplate the day's photographs.

The groom in traditional dress


The bride in traditional dress


Father of the bride in traditional dress

A Fugong Family

There are three counties within Nujiang Prefecture-- Lushui (of which Liuku is the seat), Fugong, and Gongshan (Gongshan's county seat has a different name, but everyone pretty much just calls it Gongshan.) Since I'd already spent more than two weeks in Lushui county (mostly in Liuku), and because Liuku was currently horribly hot and humid, I opted to stay there only as long as it took to get in touch with a woman who had helped me during my ISP. She recommended some people who might be able to find me a translator during my stay this time around in Nujiang, given that Xiong Li Mei (who helped me during ISP time) was in classes taking final exams and was thus unable to accompany me to northern Nujiang. With a phone number clutched in hand, I rode the four and a half hour bus to Fugong, the middle county, alone and, frankly, pretty scared. I had forgotten my guidebook and had never been to Fugong before. I had no idea how I would find out where to stay, find my way around, make the beginnings of a life which are neccessary to do anthropological research. I looked out the window at the countryside, which was green almost to the point of ridiculousness, and silently freaked out.

On the way to Fugong




The incredible greenery of Nujiang


When I stepped off the bus, I had neither map nor hotel recommendation, only a brochure I'd been given at a travel agency in Liuku with listings of some places to stay, but no addresses, only phone numbers. I went inside to the bus station desk and asked about the nearest hotel, only to be told that the station itself doubled as a place to stay, for Y50 a night, or about $6.50, the cheapest around. For awhile after I had settled in I considered changing hotels (the place was clean but very worn and a little bit shabby), but it ultimately didn't seem worth it.

Fugong city as it turns into village on the nearby mountainside


The night I arrived in Fugong, I called a contact Lu Laoshi had given to me, and he insisted on taking me out to dinner with a coworker of his, a Lisu woman a little older than I. Unfortunately, she was to return to Kunming for summer term classes the next day, but after an awkward dinner where I picked (my stomach wasn't feeling excellently, having yet to recover from my Kunming upset) and they watched me pick (they had already eaten), my new Lisu friend brought me to a local teahouse, where we drank locally brewed beer and I heard several traditional Lisu stories from her and her friends.

Unfortunately, the local beer did very little to improve my stomach situation, and I spent the next day or two feeling rather cruddy (which would, sadly, become a trend.) I was also really sad that my new friend had to leave so fast, as it seemed like we got along winningly. Luckily, the man who had introduced us had another woman in mind to help me instead. Xiao Cui was a 30 year old traditional dance teacher in the local Cultural Bureau, with an 8 year old son, a husband working outside Nujiang (a fairly common familial set-up), and a 19-year-old half sister living with her. Over the next few weeks Xiao Cui, who I called jiejie, or "elder sister" and her meimei (younger sister) became part of my Lisu family. They took me to the village where jiejie grew up to meet their grandmother. They took me to their cousin's traditional Lisu wedding-- more on that in a separate entry. And when I was sick, they brought me rice, bread, and Sprite (which was, sadly most of my diet for the better part of two weeks.)

My Fugong translator, Xiao Cui (on the left) and her younger sister


For sick I was, and everything seemed to aggravate it in some way, whether I ate bland porridge or fried rice (admittedly a bad idea.) For almost half a month I was able to eat almost nothing, and IV treatments and two rounds of Cipro (as long-term readers of this blog will remember) did nothing. Around this time, Xiang Yang Jiang, the man I shall refer to regularly as Foster Dad made his appearance. He was another cultural scholar I met through the guanxi (relations/connections) system, a friend of Lu Laoshi's friend. But as soon as he heard I was sick he stepped in and became more than a scholarly source. He and his wife would regularly show up at my modest hotel room. "Put on your shoes, we're going out!" they'd say, then bring me to a restaurant and make me sit there until I ate a whole bowl of rice porridge. Foster Dad often gave me fatherly lectures, with topics like "The Importance of Your Health" and "Just Exactly How Unneccessary and Space-Wasting All That Stuff You Brought Here Is." If it hadn't been for the fact that I realized that this was the only way he knew to be fatherly toward me and to the fact that I generally found his behavior interesting and/or entertaining, it would have driven me crazy. As it was, I was occasionally tempted to say "For Christ's sake, I'm in China on my own, let me make my own damn decisions!" Luckily, I don't know how to say "For Christ's sake" in Mandarin. Harhar.

Doing research in Fugong involved a combination of talking to officials in the Cultural Bureau, exploring the splendid once-every-five-days market that took place on the Main Street (and warrants its own individual blog entry), and travelling to the countryside around Fugong to interview elderly sources about life fifty years ago and all the stories they could remember. I would get into one of the motorcycle cabs (modified cycles with rickety red cabs on the back, also known as "cyclos" in some places) with my translator and a collection of gifts (usually rice wine, soda, and an assortment of snacks.) We would whiz down the road that curved with the river, stopping at some village 10-25 minutes outside of town (Fugong has about 10,000 people living in the city and about 80,000 in the countryside) to climb down or up the valley slope to somebody's one-room bungalow. I eventually had intervewied the four oldest residents of Xiao Cui's home village. One man and one woman (called nainai and yeye, grandmother and grandfather, out of respect) were so aged that they weren't sure exactly how old they were-- they were born before the idea of keeping track of time in a linear (rather than cyclical) fashion had come to the area. The man was, by his estimation, around 80. And the woman thought she was probably older than 100-- she says the 80-year-old man was about around 8 or 9 when she got married. It was incredible to hear from them about what life was like during Dynastic China away from the Imperial Eye, about the turbulent times of the Cultural Revolution. I felt so privileged.

The 100-year old nainai


Nainai's traditional Lisu house-- note the woven floor, the lack of furniture, the open fire


When I began to feel a little bit better, I started to take trips to outlying areas of Fugong county-- Laomudeng, center of Nu culture(which gets its own entry, and where I fell off the 5-foot ledge), to farther villages, to a traditional wedding (again, its own entry), and on a sight-seeing expedition to the local geological attraction. Shi yue liang is an enormous hole in one of the local mountains, apparently almost 30 feet tall in person. From far away (which is the only one can view it without undertaking a backpacking expedition), it looks like a big,misshapen moon peeking out of the greenery (the effect is caused by the perpetually misty sky showing through.) That's where it gets its name, too-- "Bright moon in the mountain."

Shi yue liang, the so-called "bright moon in the mountain," about an hour outside of Fugong, and source of many Lisu and Nu folkstories


I ended up spending more time than I bargained for in Fugong, ultimately, due to my extended bout of gastric distress (which was finally mercifully cured by discovering the correct and more extreme anti-biotic-- $1.00 for a bottle) and the fall that left me on bedrest for a week. But it was a good thing, too, because I started to blend into Fugong's everyday existence (which is not to say that I did not get stared at constantly). One of the things I liked to do most was wander the streets and see what surprising things I encountered-- a streetside shoemaker, a small footbridge across the roaring Nu River, a teahouse with Christmas lights festooned across the small patio glowing in the dusk, an old woman in traditional Lisu dress bringing her day's crops from the fields, an old Lisu man smoking his bamboo pipe on a stoop. Fugong never failed to surprise me.

The streetside shoemaker


Wonderful old Lisu man with his pipe


Lisu bags tied to a tree on market day

The Unexpected Roommate and the Unicorn: Adventures in Liuku, Take 1

It's strange to be writing my blog entry about Liuku Trip 1 when I'm back here now, doing Nujiang Trip 2. Says something about my blogging skills, too.

Anyway: when we left off I was on a bus from Lanping, where I had a Western friend, along with several other Chinese friends, some of whom spoke English, to Liuku where I didn't know anybody and had never been before (a first for me.) Luckily, it didn't stay that way for long. As soon as I got off in Liuku, two people appeared eager to help me-- a Lisu man and a Pumi girl about my age. They got me into a hotel (at Y45, or $5.50 a night a little more expensive than I'd have liked to be paying, but less than I paid in Lanping with Tania) and had dinner. The Lisu man had things to do so he got my cell phone number and went his way, promising to bring me to his Lisu village outside the city sometime in the next few days. I was left alone with the Pumi girl, Xiong Li Mei, who was to become my closest friend in Liuku and also my ad hoc translator. She sort of... clasped on and never let go, which wasn't exactly a problem for me, although it occasionally was a little bit suffocating. She stayed with me in my hotel for the first three nights, not needing anything, not even a toothbrush, just curling up and falling asleep-- until I convinced her I really could stay in a hotel by myself.

My friend/guide, Xiong Li Mei, in traditional Pumi dress


It turns out that Xiong Li Mei's story is pretty remarkable. She grew up herding goats for her family, who live in the countryside outside of Lanping, where her mother is crippled but they can't afford a wheelchair. Until the age of 11 she didn't go to school, but she wanted to learn so badly that she kept bothering her parents until they brought an older brother home to herd in her place, and sent her to school. She had to stay in the equivalent of kindergarten for 3 years because she couldn't read, but once she gained literacy she completed first grade through 10th or 11th grade in 6 years. Now she goes to a vocational school in Liuku. Pretty amazing.

The hotel I stayed at was nice, if not particularly remarkable. The one thing I wasn't really big on were the cockroaches. Insects don't bother me most of the time (except in extenuating circumstances-- see below), but cockroaches kind of creep me out. I ended up having a peacable relationship with my cockroaches, however, as long as they kept out of the way while I showered and didn't get into my stuff. I'll admit (although it will make some of you think I'm crazy) that I talked to my cockraoches some. I made deals with them about not bothering me while I was peeing, not coming up onto the bed to steal my mini-muffins. That was the only time of day I spoke English.

The city of Liuku itself is fairly boring, Chinese stock, but the setting was beautiful with the Nu river roaring through and big emerald mountains (You can't really see it in these piectures, but I don't know if I've ever seen a place as green as Nujiang valley) looming all around. The Lisu population was also really interesting to see for the first time, mostly in Western/Han dress but with the Lisu bag, very characteristically colorful woven, stitched, or beaded, acting as a nametag to the world that said "I am Lisu, hear me roar." Or something to that effect, anyway.

Liuku, a city of mountains and a big ol' river




A Buddhist temple on the outskirts of the city


The first night, Xiong Li Mei took me to her vocational school, where her classmates, who are all studying music/art/minority skills (they get tested on things like piano playing, dancing, singing) welcomed me by singing songs from their respective minorities (Nu, Lisu, Pumi) and playing the piano. They were all really, really really excited to meet met (more on that in a minute.) But it was a really cool way to start out the experience, feeling just a little bit like a celebrity, or at least someone important and worth getting excited over.

The next week and a half was a whirlwind of research, mostly faking it: I've had a cloud of amateurishness riding me for months now, and that was the beginning of it. I spent a lot of time feeling like I had no idea what I was doing and worrying about what would come out of it. The anthropological experience is so infuriating sometimes, which is something no one told me about beforehand. The whole thing is based on finding contacts through other contacts, a chain of people-who-know-people which is actually perfectly suited to the "guanxi" (relationship) structure of Chinese society. But what was so frustrating was how many of said contacts were duds. Out of ever four phone numbers I procured, two were out of order, one was incorrect, and maybe, if I was lucky, the fourth person could help me. Oh yeah, and: the first night in town, I managed to lose my cell phone in a cab, and with it the chance to go with the Lisu man I met on the bus to his village (I never saw him again.) Big bummer. Double bummer: the aforeblogged pickpocketing of the phone I bought to replace said lost-in-taxi phone not two weeks later.

Be that as it may, I did manage to talk to over 70 informants in the 3 weeks I spent in Lanping and Liuku, which is pretty damn good if I may say so. In Liuku I talked to government officials, scholars, went to two vocational schools and a middle school, started conversations with people on the street. I talked to many of Xiong Li Mei's school friends, and got to see her school more thoroghly. It reminded me in a lot of ways of a summer camp-- the dorm rooms looked like camp cabins to me; the outdoor warmth of it all (Liuku is pretty much never cold, although I was there in warm season).

A dorm at Xiong Li Mei's school


At the school, I was treated as a major VIP-- actually, throughout the entire city it was that way. I was the only white person I saw for the entirety of my time in Liuku, the only save Tania and some friends in from Lijiang in Lanping. People openly gawked when I walked down the street. I was treated with huge cheers and endless questions about America at Xiong Li Mei's school, people were dying for my phone number, they wanted to know my taste in boys (which was an odd and embarassing question to answer in front of a class of 35.) When I went to the school to teach a class or two of English (I felt very clever for coming up with a curriculum regarding "how to tell a story" and then asking the students to tell me one they knew) people crowded around in the halls to see me speak. It was very, very surreal.

I felt like a unicorn, as in "You really exist?" Xiong Li Mei would tell her classmates and relatives about her new foreigner friend and they actually wouldn't believe her, would insist she was joking. I imagine it will be that way when I go to visit Xiong Li Mei's home village in a week or so. I will be the first white person her parents have ever met. They have also never seen a computer-- Xiong Li Mei has asked me to bring my laptop along.

I also interviewed a Pumi singing expert, a Lisu historian, a Lisu Cultural Bureau worker (who has also helped me find contacts this trip), and many random friends I met along the way. People were drawn to me by my skin, like a beacon, especially those who could speak any English. A shopkeeper, a teahouse owner. One night Xiong Li Mei and I went out for drinks with a math teacher, two soldiers, and two office workers, all about our age. That was a lot of fun, and I got stories into the bargain. Another night I went with Xiong Li Mei to a square alongside the river to watch the people dance, as they gather to do in many places in Yunnan (see my photos of Lanping.) Eventually, she convinced me to join in, which was fun for the short time before I went home and collapsed (field work is really, really tiring.)

Another day, I went with the Cultural Bureau worker to a Lisu church (as I may have mentioned before, many people, especially Lisu in the Nujiang area have been converted to Christianity for generations, since China lost the Opium Wars and missionaries poured in.) It was an intensely interesting place to be, with people coming from the city and the countryside. The entire service was conducted in Lisu language, including a beautiful hymn the assembled people (about 75) learned from scratch, building part by part until they eventually sang in 3-part harmony. With the music swelling all around me I felt this odd combination of closeness and distance and was aware of the forces that conspired to make the occasion-- imperialism, missionary work, smuggling (the Bibles are brought in from Lisu territory in Myanmar.) Fascinating.

A Lisu church (that's Lisu language in the middle)


Worshipping inside the church


It rained every day I was in Liuku, which was extremely frustrating because I was continually being told that I shouldn't be going up the valley (where the other two Nujiang cities of Fugong and Gongshan are) during a rainy period because of the danger. But then Xiong Li Mei and I went to a little village called Luzhang one day for a day trip, and I saw the danger for myself when it started to rain while we were there. On the minibus ride back rocks from the size of tennis balls to shoe boxes were scattered across the road. Not really a fan of the idea of one of those landing on car in which I am a passenger. I was really mad about not being able to go to Fugong and Gongshan, however, and sulked for a few days before regrouping to work my resources and figure out what I could do, which included the aforementioned English classes, as well as another field trip into the countryside.

On the last day before I was scheduled to depart for Kunming, the sun finally came out and I was able to get some nice views of the city not veiled in rain. I took a walk with some new friends to take pictures. That night, the city was filled with flying ants, which I'm told is fairly common after a protracted period of rain. Butterfly-sized bugs everywhere, and I do mean everywhere, I looked. At least 250 around every street lamp, and I really wish that was an exaggeration. Flying around doorways, clustering at the riverside, invading teahouses and convenience stores, waddling on the street. Every step I took I crunched body casings and antennae under my feet. Wings brushed me on all sides. I felt like I was bathing in bugs. It was truly disgusting. It is a credit to the Sanitation Department that there was not a flying ant to be seen by the next morning.

Next time: Liuku fieldtrips up the valley.