Picture Post 3: My Yunnan Exploration Project-- Xishuangbanna

The third entry in my exhibition of pictures from this semester. I've decided I'm going to keep posting only picture posts until I catch up to Liuku, where I haven't written yet. Then I'll be able to write doing both. After, once I get to Nujiang again, well, we'll see from there. But meanwhile, I present to you my trip to Xishuangbanna on the Laos/Myanmar border during our Yunnan Exploration Project. You'd think a person couldn't take a lot of pictures in six days, but you'd be wrong.

Front porch of the Dai-style bungalow I stayed in in Jinghong, framed by banana leaves


Misty countryside outside Jinghong


Monk robes drying at a lamasery in Jinghong


Temples in a park in Jinghong


The countryside Buddhist temple we ran across on Diana's and my bike ride near Ganlanba


Images of the Xishuangbanna countryside, featuring lots of greenery, flowers, and traditional Dai-style houses






Images from the Menghun market






Diana in front of the enormous, beautifully wrought Burmese Pagoda we hiked up a mountain to find


At the Dai wedding to which Lee, Diana, and I were invited


The famous Jingzhen octagonal pagoda, the end of Diana's and my wild good chase through the Banna countryside


The treehouse where I spent my night at Banna Wild Elephant Valley


Sunrise in the Xishuangbanna Jungle






The big tree swings that go out over jungle streams. So much fun to ride!


I didnt' see any wild elephants, but I did see... elephants kneeling!


A wild monkey hanging out, so to speak


One of the Valley's tame monkeys and a baby bear! Snuggling! So cute!


The baby monkey that stole my glasses

Ring Around the Province, Part 5: Kham is Calm

After Sideng/Shaxi came Zhongdian, probably my favorite part of our whole two-week-plus field trip. As I mentioned in my giddy mini-update while I was actually there, Zhongdian/Gyelthang (it's officially changed its name to Shangrila or, in pinyin, Xiangelila, after the eden discussed in the famous book Lost Horizons, but I refuse to call it that. Such pandering to the tourist industry...) is Tibet without actually being in Tibet (which is referred to here as the TAR or Tibetan Autonomous Region.) The ancient Kham kingdom (one of three large regions in ethnic Tibetan territory) extends about 100 km south of Zhongdian, and ethnic Kham people predominate-- that's where the pun from the title comes from, it should be attributed to Ashley-- (at least 50% of the population), along with Han majority and the Lisu and Yi minorities. It certainly felt like Tibet to me-- iron grey skies, a touch of altitude sickness (just a little nausea and being insanely quick to get out of breath), yaks everywhere, big effing snow-capped mountains.

When we arrived in Zhongdian, I think most of us were kind of disappointed. The grey skies didn't do anything to help the plain-Chinese-city streets look cleaner. But gradually I started to see the differences-- the scores of Tibetan women walking the streets in traditional dress, the Tibetan script on the store signs, the prayer
flags hanging from windows or on top of roofs a la weathervanes. The town's Old Section has been thoroughly touristified (they tried to sell me a hair ornament for Y25 that my friend in Lanping later bought me for Y5) but is still incredibly charming. On the first night the program treated us to Indian/Nepalese food, which was incredible (just as I remember the Nepalese food in Shanghai being, and as the
Nepalese food in Dublin was). All of us ate until we felt we were going to burst. Some workers from Khampa Caravan, the local travel agency/general helper-outers taught us something about Tibetan history and Zhongdian's own story. All of them were part of a new generation of Tibetans who are sent to India to study and who, therefore, speak Mandarin, English, Tibetan, and sometimes also Hindi. Hen lihai, as we would say here, (very formidable, basically). They were also all inordinately attractive, if not by general standards, at least in that they were all extremely interesting-looking. The girls in the group drooled accordingly. One of the Khampa Caravan men sang us a gorgeous Hindi/Tibetan song, and in return Ashley got up and started doing some of the Tibetan dance she knows. At the end she had all of the Khampa Caravan crew plus most of the restaurant staff also dancing, or trying to. She was better than a lot of them.

I just loved exploring Zhongdian. It felt very much the a frontier town to me, with all kinds of people coming together-- Tibetan nainais (grandmas) with their turbans, aprons, myriad layers; a couple of Bai businesswomen; a few Yi people I caught sight of; Han tourists; people from Thailand or India; the odd Westerner, all together in the dusty streets, with the occasional view of the rolling hills and towering mountains behind. I almost felt like there should be tumbleweeds. There were a few Western-style cafes (Noah Cafe had the best porridge with bananas ever)but really the heart of the town was Tibetan through and through, with Tibetan pop music (kind of a mix of China, India, and something unplaceable) blaring everywhere, adding to the ambiance.

One day we went to a large lamasery/Tibetan Buddhist temple out about 20 minutes from town. It's modeled after the Potala Palace in Lhasa, where the Dali Lama once lived, and is pretty spectacular. First we went and met a living buddha, which means a person who has reached nirvana but opted to be reincarnated to help others. He blessed us, touching our heads in turn, and gave us each a manifestation of that blessing, a braided thread of red, yellow, and black with knots in it. We were to wear it for three days and then do anything we liked-- keep it, pass the blessing on to someone else, bury it, anything except throw it away. It was a powerful experience. I don't know how many people in the program actually believe in Buddhism actively, but I saw that in the coming days almost everyone continued to wear their threads.

We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the temple complex, and the only word I can really use to describe it is intoxicating. I'm not even sure why. The atmosphere, the sound of beating prayer gongs, the clouds of prayer flags fluttering in the breeze, monks everywhere, incense and dark, close rooms filled with altars and prayer rugs. Tania and I walked all the way to the end of the complex to the smallest temple, dedicated to a Tibetan Buddhist demon/god of death (it's unclear whether this temple was to worship or protect against said demon.) It was smaller, more cluttered, more colorful, and less crowded than the other temples in the complex, and there were no sightseers at all there, only some older Tibetan women come to pray. Outside the temple was a stupa (which can only be described as a sort of white wooden mini-temple with a steeple, but you can't go inside) festooned with strings and strings of prayerflags. I climbed inside the tangle of flags and stood in a nest of colorful cloth, with the flat, green/gray Tibetan landscape peeking through. It was utterly peaceful and in some nameless way, alien.

The next day we went to a similar temple, but smaller and way out in the Zhongdian countryside. The roads there are... rough, to say the least. At one point we actually had to avoid an especially rough patch by driving through the spongy dead grassland that makes up so much of the Tibetan landscape. Yaks and alpine pigs scattered in our wake. From the end of the road it was about a 20 minute hike to the tiny Lamasery in the woods, lined with homemade prayer flags blurry with henna from snow and rain, and with rocks carved painstakingly with sutras in Tibetan script, said to help one's karma and with the balance of good and evil in the universe. The lamasery was again an oasis of strange, pristine calm. I spent a good hour exploring the outlying portions which were, in places, basically just a forest of prayer flags on a mountain flank.

We spent a good amount of time in Zhongdian and did a number of things-- learning about current Tibetan Buddhism from a reincarnated lama; going to a hot springs where Tibetan women come to bathe and where I soaked with Sophie, Tania, Keera, and Ali in a private room for a couple hours; went souvenir shopping with Kailey and John and bought a beautiful Indian cloth hanging and a couple of necklaces. But what I will really take away from that experience is that preternatural calm and the breeze on the empty Tibetan hills.

Next time: Lijiang, the unfortunately put but apt term "bullfrog" and why I had to get an IV, and the beginning of my ISP adventures.

Vietnot Part 2: The Olive Plain

As I write I'm back in Kunming, having hopped a 50-minute airplane flight (as compared to the 11 hour bus ride...) with Lee the day before yesterday. We've moved into our homestays and everything seems to be getting back in gear. But that subject matter is for another time-- I still have 5.5 action-packed Xishuangbanna days to tell you all about.

My first two days in Banna were sort of "warm up" for the rest. I made friends with Zoe and Alex, as previously mentioned, discovered the traditional Dai village hidden inside Jinghong, walked Jinghong's palm-fringed streets exploring, and tried some traditional Dai food (sticky rice in a hollowed out pineapple, SO good; pork and fried banana flowers, intense but excellent.) Diana was scheduled to come meet me on the second day, so I took my time relaxing, planning, and eating breakfast, and then rented a mountain bike from the shop down the street from my hostel. They gave me a map of a good places to bike in the surrounding countryside, and I set off.

I didn't really go where I tried to-- the map was outdated and my sense of direction is famously terrible-- but the ride was great nonetheless. I discovered another Dai monastery (my Bulang friend, Alex, told me that a small period of monkhood is compulsory for all boys in Banna, kind of like the army) and headed out of town, ultimately ended up on a dirt road winding ominously down into empty rice paddies. Before I got too lost I started asking for directions, unfortunately forgetting that they don't call the Mekong River by its Vietnamese/American name in China-- they call it the Lancang. Therefore, asking where the Mekong was was no help to me. I ultimately retraced my steps, but not before enjoying some beautiful countryside views. I next stumbled into a large park on the very south tip of Jinghong, a park filled with flowering trees and more Buddhist temples. My favorite of these temples involved a Buddha whose head was flanked by a flashing neon halo. Taking pictures of Buddha is forbidden (something about pictures stealing souls or taking away hallowedness), but if I could have taken a picture of this crazy collision of tacky modernity and exotic religiousness I would have.

I ultimately tired myself out and took a rest before Diana arrived in Banna at 5 PM. I had been incorrectly informed that there was only one bus to Ganlanba (roughly translated as "Olive Plain" during the day and had thought we would have to invest in a pricey taxi ride, but we successfully purchased bus tickets and, with some difficulty (again, bus stations in China are incredibly confusing and chaotic) found our way onto the minibus (really more like a van) going to Ganlanba.

A word about public transport in China: real busses only go to the largest and most significant Chinese cities. All other public transportation is in mini-buses, essentially shortened and mini-fied, or micro-buses, glorified mini-vans. These busses often take very rural routes and peasants and farmers can stand out on the roads and hail them at any time. It's... unique.

The minibus to Ganlanba was about 45 minutes, and it followed around directly down the Mekong (Lancang) River, as both Jinghong and Ganlanba are Mekong ports. The view during the ride was breathtaking, and we barely noticed that our butts spent more time in the air than on the seat. Getting into Ganlanba, I actually turned to Diana and said, "You have got to be kidding me." The place was way more South Asia than China. Swarms of people ate at roadside stalls, traditional Dai houses lined the street, the air was warm and humid, and palm trees stood everywhere. I decided then and there that a better name for Banna is Vietnot-- It's not China, and it's not South Asia so.... I'm so clever. I know.

We found a clean hotel with bathroom for Y60 for both of us (a little skeezy, though, with rooms available by the hour, special in-room pink mood lighting, and refillable condom dispensers) and set out to explore the town. We had some more traditional Dai food at a restaurant recommended in the guide book, and relaxed. A party was going on in the restaurant, and everyone was already drunk when we got there. As expected, men from the party started coming over to chat with the foreigner and her translator (Diana was, of course, not my translator, but seeing a Chinese face everyone assumed.) We were toasted with bai jiu and asked about American life continuously. One man informed me that "Americans have no love in their heart. Oh, but you do. Everyone else though, they don't." Soon after, he decided I had no love in my heart after all, and then he informed me that Chinese people don't get fat because they drink soup, and that Americans should drink more soup. Diana and I spent an hour or so wandering around nighttime Ganlanba before we turned it. It was awash with spotlights lighting up outdoor pool, poker, and majiang tables; flickering TV sets surrounded by children from the neighborhood; and shifting shadows of palm trees blowing in the slight breeze.

The next day we got up bright and early to find breakfast at a traditional food market, after which we rented bikes and found our way to a ferry point across the Mekong (an amazing minute and a half.) The guidebook had said to go up the hill, turn left, and ride, and that is exactly what we did. From 11:00 until almost 5 we road through the countryside. We passed through many villages, banana plantations, rice fields, watermelon fields, and stopped for a lunch of peanut butter and biscuits in a stand of rubber trees with a fantastic view looking out over the plain. We went through entire villages of traditional Dai Houses, discovered resevoirs coming from tributaries of the Mekong, and saw pigs so huge gray and wrinkly that they looked like baby elephants from the back. My favorite part was the country Buddhist temple we ran across, entirely by accident. I recognized the water serpents ubiquitous in Buddhist temples in Thailand and Banna, and we automatically got off our bikes to investigate. The temple was simply built but still breathtaking, and it felt like a true treasure, a discovery, something just ours.

I was starting to get really tired, so we headed back to the ferry, but on the way we were hailed by some Dai people eating lunch in a lean-to by a watermelon field. They asked us to eat with them, serving us the freshest watermelon I will ever eat-- I watched them use a machete to hack it off the stalk and serve it to me, dripped with juice and cool inside. They also gave us rice-- which I ate, figuring it was safe-- and offered us some of their meal, wild greens and water snake from the local stream. Diana ate, I declined. I did assent to some Guo Jiu (liquor made from watermelon), the strongest liquor I've ever tasted.

Diana's meal was probably not the best idea-- she began feeling sick not long afterwards, but we still had to make the long bike ride back. We had checked out of our hotel, but on the way back we decided to check in to a room for one hour so Diana could rest and I could shower. It was a wonderful idea, well worth the Y20-- I became clean, and Diana had a place to be sick.

Next time: the Menghun market, the temple, and our own personal South Western Chinese Amazing Race.