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

Adventures in Lanping

I don't know what it is with me lately, I'm never in the mood to blog. I guess I just seem to be suffering from a powerful burnout (which is improved by the bright spots that are anthropological field work but is still mightily present) that touches everything from my work motivation to my blog (which, at least theoretically, I'm doing for fun and posterity, right?) In any case I'll make an effort.

So back to Lanping (which is now between a week and a half and three weeks in the past.) The trip from Lijiang to Lanping was supposed to take 4 hours, but about half an hour in we came upon what turned out to be a minor accident (and by accident I mean a single truck with one wheel off the road). But that single renegade wheel meant wall-to-wall traffic for at least 3 miles around. Our bus was stopped in a fairly idyllic stretch of farmland, surrounded by rolling mountains, for more than a full hour, possibly closer to an hour-and-a-half. That's what you get when you try to fit three lanes of traffic in one to one-and-a-half lanes of space, though. China, when will you learn?

Tania and I initially had planned to stay with our friend Jackson (Chinese name: Chun Yong) in Lanping, but May 1st is a major holiday in China (they call it Wu Yi Jie, literally "Five One holiday") and like everyone else in the country his family had friends coming in. Jackson, who is a truly good person and a fantastically loyal friend but who is a smidge overprotective, was convinced that if we were to live in a hotel by ourselves we would be harassed by the police or worse. Things got worse when we went to a multicultural performance celebrating the Wu Yi holiday --complete with lots of different dancing minorities (Bai, Pumi, and Lisu namely) as well as a bad skit by some high school students and a FANTASTIC breakdancing act with teenage Chinese boys in white suits. Walking in, we drew a lot of attention, which made us feel strange but wasn't anything we hadn't experienced before. We were ushered to the second row, behind all the important Communist politicians, but Jackson told us we should leave before the last act because "maybe some people will touch you or say bad things to you." As if we hadn't ever been in an audience with Chinese people before... Tania got pretty annoyed by the end of the first couple days, but I had a nice talk with him and he lightened up eventually. And it was certainly only because he wanted to look after us well.

Chinese people, though... really. It's all very well intentioned, but the constant worrying and the absolute positivity that, given that one is a foreigner, one can therefore do nothing on one's own, it can really get infuriating. Also, Chinese people and food are very odd. The entire nation is obsessed with thinness, almost worse than the US (because so many Chinese people are naturally thin anyway.) And yet, it's considered bad form if the host doesn't continually put food in his guests' bowl, and it's even worse not to clean one's own bowl completely. This means, usually, stuffing oneself inordinately in order not to offend anyone. I think the first Jewish mother took lessons from a Chinese person.

(Incidentally, while we're on the subject of Wu Yi Jie, I forgot to mention in my Lijiang entry that the last night before I left there was a huge pop concert outside my hotel. I was walking home from an internet cafe and came upon it, a big stage set up in a plaza in front of an enormous statue of Chairman Mao. The statue was all crazy and backlit, and there was some famous popstar performing, with a throng of shrieking fans around it. I stood in the throng for awhile soaking it in, but I had come at the end of the concert so really I just got a little microcosm of Chinese popular culture.)

Anyway. Lanping. Right.

I spent a little more than a week in Lanping altogether. Tania and I lived together in a government-run hotel, really too expensive for its own good but the only one where Jackson felt we were safe. During the days we went around and did interviews, often with Jackson's Christian friends (Tania's ISP topic is Christianity and Jackson is a Christian himself.) I hadn't really established a topic and was trying desperately to find a translator to take with me elsewhere in Nujiang Valley, so I tagged along. It was all quite interesting, as we interviewed people of Bai and Lisu nationality who had recently converted. The line between religion and culture and the subsequent ways many of them left their former identities behind was fascinating. I did what I could with the opportunity, framing the information for myself in terms of stories, the one thing I did know I wanted to study.

We met a few friends through these interviews-- Julie and Linda (both their English names) were about our age, maybe a few years older, had graduated from college and recently converted. They were both very sweet and could speak some English. Jackson also introduced us to his own friends, who took to us quite strongly. Before the week was out we had a legitimate group of Chinese friends who would call us to go have dinner, come for a visit, go for a walk, or go to tea houses after dinner. It was a really cool experience to see what that might be like, living in a place with a group of friends just like America.

We attracted friends on the street, too, just by virtue of being there. One woman we interviewed quoted a statistic that said that between 2001 and 2007 4,000 foreigners came to Lanping. Although Liuku dwarfs this number in terms of the rarity of foreigners, we were still something of a curiousity in Lanping. Once, while trying to find a highlighter for Tania, the stationary store shopkeeper struck up a conversation with us, and we ended up going to her family's restaurant in a village outside Lanping for dinner one night. Another time, a man driving a serious, serious SUV (this SUV would beat you up as soon as look at you) stopped and asked in accented but flawless English, "Excuse me, but where are you from? I haven't seen foreigners here in many years."

His name was Adam and he was what they call a "hua yi" here-- an emmigrant to the US. He had lived in California for 8 years in Silicon Valley making a living before returning to Lanping to get into the zinc mining business, which is one of the best in the world. He told us that he plans to work in Nujiang for several more years and then go back to the US to retire. We ended up going out to dinner with him one night, which was really interesting. He had all sorts of things to say about the Chinese upper crust and China in comparison to America ("Americans are much more straightforward and honest," for example.) It was also, in a way, a little bit like having dinner with a Mafia Don. For those of you out there who hate networking, never come to China: the principle of "guanxi" (literally "relationships") is the only way to get anything done here. You get jobs through guanxi, make friends, get around beauracracy, meet potential mates, get yourself out of trouble with the law, do well in the stock market, get good health care. It's all about cultivating relationships. And Adam was pretty much the ultimate source of it: he offered to find me a Pumi translator (an offer I didn't end up taking him up on, although I may this summer), told us he'd love to introduce us to his friends, and told Tania that she shouldn't worry about the police in Lanping because he was "good friends" with them and if we ever found trouble we should just call him. (Christianity is a hotbutton issue, as prosletyzing, or however you spell that, is illegal and they assume any Westerners talking about Christianity are trying to convert people.)

Lanping itself was quite beautiful. The city is nestled amid hills that hump higher and higher into peaks and eventually climb southward to merge with the Nujiang area mountains. It's not even really in a valley, per se, just kind of plopped on a couple of big slopes. There's a park in the middle, quite pleasant, with a little pond, several fountains, and a row of tea houses in the interior. We spent a lot of time there relaxing and talking to our new friends, asking them questions, watching the townspeople dance in the square in the evening-- everyone seemed to know the traditional dances. On days when we weren't interviewing, we went on adventures. One day we went to an ancient temple outside of town; another day, we took a 2-hour ride south to Yingpan, a dusty town by the Lancang (also known as Mekong) River. It was really interesting to see the river approximately 24 hours by bus away from the place I saw it last: in Xishuangbanna with Diana. Rivers are amazing that way-- simple but profound. Our trip to Yingpan was infuriating in a way, because the computer teacher we had befriended in Lanping was decidedly un-Chinese in his insistence that we first go to a water power project he had invested in some 45 minutes outside town. But in the end I got a few connections out of it and some information about Lisu culture. Plus, the town was just interesting to look at.

Another day, Tania, Jackson, and I, along with our new Lanping friends Julie and Linda, decided to go on a picnic. We bought an enormous amount of junk food and took a taxi to a park they new, but the park had changed and where there had once been a lake there was a mossy, smelly expanse. Instead, we redirected the taxi to the nearby river/stream, and located a likely-looking site across it. We proceeded to strip to our barefeet and make our way across the river. At first it looked like we could go from rock to rock, but the current proved a little treacherous and we had to make a few watery detours. Our picnic was great, very peaceful in a little clearing with the sound of water not far off. We played a few Chinese card games (one simple one is called "shei she xiaotou" or "Who is the thief?") and ate plentiful junk food, and then Linda and Julie went off to collect the plentiful wild vegetable that grew around. Chinese people are like that. On the way back, we had an equally tricky time getting across the river and I actually slipped on a mossy rock and fell in, saving my camera but soaking my pants from the butt down. We all thought it was quite hilarious, and now I can say I've fallen in a Chinese river. Hopefully I won't get water worms or anything like that.

On the last night before I left for Liuku, all of our new friends gathered in a teahouse near the park, drank juice, tea and beer; ate watermelon and sunflower seeds; and played cards, as Bai custom dictates. Tania and I taught our friends the American card game known as "B.S." (with a not so nice actual name,) which was neatly translated as "bu shi" ("not so.") We had a great time playing and screwing around until late at night. It was a lovely way to see me off into the next part of my adventure: Liuku.

Next time: The unexpected roommate and the unicorn.