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

Fugong Market Highlights/Christmas greetings

First off, merry Christmas to those who celebrate it. My very Jewish family spent today in Chinatown at dim sum (delicious, as always) and then at a movie. Even though most everyone in Boston's Chinatown speaks Cantonese, it's still a little bit like being back in Kunming, and I have to admit that I do miss it (especially since Xiong Li Mei called me yesterday and I realized how much my Chinese has deteriorated.)

In any case, it's clear that my blog dropped off dramatically after I got home, but I remain set on finishing it. I've just also accepted the fact that it won't be quite as in-depth as the blog I kept up until this point. I have lots of beautiful pictures to share with all of you, and I'll let those do most of the talking, a sort of narrated slide show. So here I present to you, in the first installment: the Fugong marketplace.

China's rural economy is based largely on markets. The largest urban center in a given area (and in really rural places it's not always particularly urban, just urban by comparison) hosts a market every week or so (in Fugong's case ever 5 days, with the 10 days mark being the larger market.) People from all over Nujiang came to buy and sell produce, Lisu jewelry and traditional paraphenalia, and miscellaneous interesting stuff (salt crystals as big as my head, walking sticks, cross bows). Even on the days I was feeling sickest I went to the market to watch the people and take pictures. Lots of pictures.

You said you wanted half a pig? Well, here it is.


Selling traditional crossbows


Young ladies in Lisu garb from Tengchong (an area outside of Nujiang)


Two old ladies gossip on the street corner


Bickering over the price of greens


Traditional woven Lisu baskets


Bamboo pipes (and a charming Lisu nainai smoking one)




Faces at the market






(This might be my favorite picture of all the ones I took in Nujiang)



On the last day I stayed in Fugong, I went to the market and bought a traditional Lisu headdress that I had been eying for the last few market days. There was an old Lisu lady selling it, and she didn't speak any Mandarin so whenever I asked after it I had to ask through a younger woman who wore dirty pink sneakers and bad teeth, and who I assume was her granddaughter. She kept naming outlandish prices for the headdress, and I would try to bargain but she wouldn't budge. It was clear that the piece was well-made and valuable: it had real, hand-cut bone circles along the forehead and half of the beads were clearly antique. I finally decided that this would be my treat to myself from China, but I wasn't willing to pay the Y500 (about $75) she was quoting me. As I stood in the drizzle, I attracted attention from around the market (as I was the only white person there.) People came over to try and help mediate, and they all agreed that the nainai was giving me a raw deal. "Give her a break!" they yelled in a mix of Lisu and Mandarin, but after conceding Y150 she would not yield. I ultimately bought the headdress for Y350 (about $50), with the local price being Y180-200. But I know that that nainai probably ate for months off that money, and the extra $20 was very little to me. Plus, of course, it makes a good story. Later that day I also bought a traditional Lisu skirt (as seen above) for unmarried women-- light blue print with a white stripe down the middle-- and Foster dad brought me a handmade button-down unisex shirt as a going away present. I left Fugong that day well-outfitted and slightly melancholy.

Reunion

So here I am, four months later, done with my raw abroad experience and trying to process it into some sort of thesis and into something managable to think about, understand, and allow in certain ways to affect who I am and the life I'm leading. I'm especially thinking about this in light of where I am: Easthampton, MA visiting my ex-roommate, Tania. Tania's here living with her boyfriend and going parttime to Hampshire while she works on Hampshire's equivalent of a thesis. They've set up a lovely apartment that really rings of home, and it's been nice to finally meet Christopher when I heard so much about him.

We've had a wonderful time catching up and reminiscing, I showed her all sorts of pictures from my research and from Xinjiang, and we've talked about how we adjusted, and are continuing to adjust, to life back in the states. I think this time together (along with the fact that I am officially done with my Fulbright scholarship application for the time being) has boosted my drive to continue with this blog. I have so much more to talk about, and things are still developing-- I spoke to Xiong Li Mei last week over the phone, for one thing. So stay tuned, there's much more to come. I can't wait to share it with you all.

Back After These Messages

As you may have noticed, it's been a few weeks since my last entry. Although I don't intend by any means for this to become a trend, the first month and a half of my senior year is proving very demanding, specifically because of preparations for two fellowship applications which would allow me to continue my wanderings in this lovely world. As such, I'm afraid it is unrealistic to expect that I will have a new entry for y'all (continuing the recording of my adventures in Fugong and beyond) until after October 4, the deadline for the Fulbright Scholarship. So, I suggest you go about your business until that date, and then check back on this very page for a brand, spankin' new account of Chinese hijinks, including but not limited to: the Chinese medical system, my trip to a Lisu wedding, the lovely nightmare that was Laomudeng, and a three-day adventure to proto-Tibet and the wilds of northern Nujiang

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

Kunming, Again

The next two weeks of my stay in China were a mix of procrastination, vacation, and stomach flu. When I first arrived back in Kunming, by myself for real after 5 months of a support network of Thai and American friends, parents, etc, I felt pretty intimidated by the prospect of another five weeks alone in such an alien place. My intimidation wasn't for no reason-- although my ISP experience was wonderful and fulfilling, it was also (at times) horribly frustrating and lonely. I wasn't feeling quite up to facing that with no one to text sarcastically to (after a wonderful mishap which allowed us to hang out for a day, Diana went off to Hong Kong and then Taiwan to finish our her summer), so I tried to make some Nujiang resource connections in Kunming (mostly failing, unfortunately), ate a lot of American breakfast food at Salvador's and other coffee shops on Foreigner Street, and took a mental vacation. During this time, I caught up with Kevin (the Thai-American-Chinese Grad student I'd become friends with over the semester), made friends with an exchange student named Ben from Virginia, had dinner with Lu Laoshi, and met John's girlfriend (and John) at longlast, and had Dim Sum with my Chinese teachers/friends.

My Chinese teachers, Gao Laoshi (age 26) and Zeng Laoshi (age 28), who became good friends of mine, at Dim Sum during Kunming v. 2.0


I looked upon the time as respite from the looming darkness of Research Mode, and for that reason I may have been guilty of staying just a little too long. It was so very tempting-- getting to see John again, and meet his lovely other half, was really nice, and Ben and I had some crazy adventures together, going to the Buddhist temple complex down the street from campus and seeing a Buddhist funeral, using the pool at his apartment, trying and failing to watch "The Graduate" in Chinese.

Part of the temple complex down the street from campus


Unfortunately, that was when stomach flu part 2 (which would eventually extend to parts 3, 4, and 5) set in, and I was forced to stay in Kunming an extra 3 or 4 days, as the prospect of being sick on a 10-hour bus ride was not particularly appealing. That part was pretty frustrating, as I was already a little bit mad at myself for procrastinating so long, but there was nothing to be done about it. I spent my days alternately venturing out to take pictures and enjoy the city and sitting in my room shotgunning Pepto and reading a bad John Grisham book. At least I got to take some nice shots of Kunming street life and my environment there as a whole:



Kunming streets




The little-old-man er hu player who always played at the entrance to Foreigner's Street. He just looks like he should be an erhu player. I think it's the fu manchu.


Green Lake Park


Finally after several days of frustration bordering on boredom, after exchanging my bus ticket three times, I was able to hop a sleeper bus to Liuku. As Liuku in the summer is pretty much as hot, humid, and unpleasant as a place might possibly be, I only stayed there one night, long enough to get hooked up with someone who might find me a translator in Fugong. And then I was off again, to the last part of my journey-- thesis research in Nujiang valley all by my lonesome.

Perspectives from the Eastern Horizon, Column 1

Continuing the run of articles I've written about my experience in China, my first column of a series they're calling "Perspectives from the Eastern Horizon" appeared in The Belmont Citizen-Herald last week.

The inside of this airplane is ordinary—uncomfortable seats that look like they were upholstered by someone locked in a darkened room; flight attendants, starched and smiling; a man in the next row snoring lightly, his chin on his chest. It’s what’s outside that is remarkable. I am flying over Xinjiang, China, an area of savagely serrated mountains and vast deserts with nothing much in between to roll out the welcome mat. I stare out the window at a range of peculiarly ragged sandstone peaks that look like crumpled newspaper ascending from an arid, dusty floor, and think about the places to which this semester of travel and study abroad in China has brought me.

Just last night I was in Beijing, luxuriating in a well-appointed hotel room, an island of quiet comfort in the midst of that smoggy, perpetually hurried city, resting after an afternoon of playing the history student to the city’s many ancient sites. Three days previously I was taking a turn as tourist in smog-choked Xi’an, home of the famous Terracotta Soldiers, an all-clay army one particularly arrogant Chinese emperor had manufactured and buried in his tomb to ensure his continued rule in the afterlife. Two nights before that, I was living the expatriot life in the warm air of Kunming, Yunnan province, in the far southwest of the country, working on a mammoth 36 page term paper while enjoying the triumphant feeling of familiarity with a place that in many ways embodies the opposite characteristics of my homeland. And four weeks before that I was Girl Anthropologist, spending my study abroad program’s independent research period learning about the folkstories of ethnic minorities (similar to our Native American tribes) in the remote Nujiang Valley, an area of towering emerald mountains and ferociously thundering rapids a two-hour drive from the Myanmar border.

Perhaps it is the exaggerated distance from my window seat to the landscape below, the perspective afforded by air travel, that allows me to be struck at this moment by how profoundly disconnected each of those wide-ranging experiences has felt, how independent each one seems from the others--a separate epoch, almost a different lifetime. I feel as if I am a child looking at the different rooms in a dollhouse where the maker has forgot to put in doorways. Each of these experiences is a separate component in one body, a different and discreet view onto the whole vista of my experience. My explorations are united in their role as a part of this whole, but to me they feel as if they have no inherent connections, as if each was completed by a different person. Yesterday night, in that wonderfully cool hotel room in that city many times the size of Los Angeles, I couldn’t sleep. Recalling my adventures in the dark, the thought suddenly came to me: “I’m like a cat, I have so many lives.” Thinking about this admittedly curious gem, I smile a little. There’s nothing so simultaneously silly and profound as 3 AM epiphanies.

Despite the tendency of that hour to produce jewels of absurdity, I do think there’s an important idea to be uncovered here. Growing up, living the way I have, it’s been easy to forget how lucky I am to have enjoyed the opportunities I’ve been offered. The prospect of being to live the lives of so many different people, whether they be expat, researcher, and student or father, lawyer, and golfer, is a luxury that not everyone can afford. The chance to try on so many facets of the world is truly something to stop and contemplate, if not for which to show gratitude.

The plane is now traveling over snowy, craggy peaks that proclaim that they mean business as they cut ragged holes in the cotton wool clouds. I can feel the bracelet I bought while playing explorer on the Laos border resting against my wrist, the grit of sand from a trip to the Gobi Desert wedged in my sandals. And I realize: we are the one piece of evidence that all the lives we live exist in concert, the one place where our pattern of experience converges into something tangible, something concrete.

The mountains look fierce, sharp, and dangerous, and yet from here surmountable, as if I could leap easily, lightly, from one peak to the next. And so it is with my various lives, spread out below me through the miracle of perspective, a distance that will only increase as I grow older. Yet another piece of richness to add to the collection of my experience, then, to have the memories of my many lives to cherish for years to come, to hop from peak to peak in my mind’s eye like so many newspaper mountains.

I'm hoping to write several more columns for appearance in the Citizen Herald once things get in control on campus. Also, for those of you interested in following my writing appearances on other subjects, I will have a piece in The Portland Phoenix coming out in early September-- I'll provide a link here once it appears.