Yunnan

Bob’s Thai Village Visit

Posted on by Laughingnomad

While Jana and I were playing with Chinese teenagers in Ruili in the south of Yunnan, Bob spent some time in an ethnic village in the mountains in Issan Province southeast of Chiang Mai in Thailand. The people were Thai but smaller and darker…probably with a Lao or Cambodian background… and were very concerned about getting too much sun because darker skin color is discriminated against by other Thais.

Bob said he learned something about Thai culture from the people in this village when he hired a pick-up to take him to a Khmer wat (temple) high in the mountains…only to realize that nearly the entire village was going along when he saw them all piling into the back. And of course before the day was over when they all got hungry he was expected to buy the food! After a couple days feeling like he had been gouged, as he puts it, he discovered that it is the custom for the person with the most wealth and social rank (and foreigners are often perceived to be in this category since they have enough money to travel) to foot the bill.

Relationships in Thailand are governed by connections between the phuu yai (big person) and phuu nawy (little person). Ranking is defined by things like age, wealth, status and personal and political power. The phuu nawy is supposed to defer to the phuu yai and show obedience and respect. So Bob got to ride in the front seat of the pick-up but in turn he had to pay for the pick-up and the dinner. While eating dinner (three barbequed chickens and several spicy papaya salads) he received the choicest portions and they wouldn’t let him sit on the ground but gave him a prime position on the mat. The idea is that whatever wealth you come into is to be shared with the less fortunate and this especially applies to friends and family.

The school aged kids just stared at Bob…considering him a novelty…the little ones were frightened as they often are told by their mothers that if they don’t behave they will be eaten by a farang, a semi-derogatory term for a Western foreigner!

One of the villagers was an elderly blind woman in her 80’s who had never seen a farang so she wanted to feel Bob with her hands. She felt the hair on his arms and, touching each of his fingers and exclaimed, astonished, that the “farang hand was just like the Thai hand”…which cracked up all the bystanders. Bob had no idea what was going on until someone translated. He was very touched by her discovery that a farang was not a monster.

The next day Bob had an encounter with Thai justice when he was stopped on his rented motocycle by a police barricade. Apparently the motorbike license had expired. Three hours later and 500 baht poorer, the key to the motorbike was returned and he was allowed to go on his way.

After a few days kayaking and biking on Koh Chang, an island in the south of Thailand, Bob spent Christmas and the next day on a bus back to Chiang Mai. There he picked up a plane for the short hop back to Kunming, China and met Jana and me at the Camellia Hotel.

A Merry Christmas Wish 2002

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Today, Christmas Day, we will take Jana’s Blessing and a van back to Tengchong and catch a bus for Ruili on the China-Burma border.

While we sit here at 7:00am bleary-eyed waiting for the water to get hot so we can take a shower we are wishing each other and you HAPPY CHRISTMAS!!!!

It means good luck, Jana said as we listened to the cricket in our room at the Hot Springs…it was prophetic…we were going to have another adventure!

On the ride into Tengchong I wondered how much the automobile companies saved by not installing shocks on the minivans…another Chinese mystery. Then, eating noodles at a sidewalk stall in front of the bus station, we were delighted when a young girl sat down with her bowl…good morning she said eating quickly…she only had 10 minutes before her bus left for Baoshan…on her way to a rock music concert…oh we wish we could go with you we said…she plays the piano, sings and dances she says…so excited to meet foreigners she laughed…then seriously-English is very important!

Waiting for the bus we saw three of the six people we met at the Myanmar Tea House! Then Li Bing from the T.C.C. Cafe came in to see off a friend…wished us Merry Christmas and we wished him a happy Chinese New Year…

As the bus detoured down a pot-holed dirt road through some vegetable fields and across an old stone bridge to get to the next little town I said to Jana…you know…we piss and moan but I wouldn’t travel any other way. I wouldn’t either she said.

But we no more than smiled at each other over this thought when the guy behind blew cigarette smoke…and when Jana opened her window the guy behind with a mean face closed it again….can see him in the driver’s mirror she said…we could get into a big fight with him if we wanted, I said laughing…that’s all I need Jana groaned. Then we talked about how traveling was a metaphor for life…have to go through a lot of drudgery in order to experience the high points…like marriage or backpacking or running a marathan…but then of course you have a story to tell afterward!

On the way south to Ruili we drove through little Chinese villages…trucks full of firewood, full of sacks with contents of unknown origin, full of rocks…vendors on each side of the road with barely space for one lane of traffic wending it’s way…like through a parking lot…careful not to hit the women in ethnic dress sitting behind their little piles of oranges and spinach. Then through a town full of carved cement slabs for burial markers…ladies with cream-colored towel headdresses…then a pick-up full of ethnic ladies with bright pink dresses & and pink towel headdresses…people barely moving out of the way as the bus honks it’s way through…another whole town making nothing but bricks.

There are so many people in the world I say…everyone thinks they are the center of the universe. The “issues” we thought were so important back home have taken on a distinct perspective. We have it very very good and have no idea how lucky we are to be born in America.

Then ancient terraces full of green vegetables together with modern tomatoes covered with plastic and back up and over the mountain range on a dirt road that threatened to shake the bus into it’s parts. Our laps held a picnic of mandarin oranges, boiled eggs, crackers and water. But when a poor old woman, on her way to visit her grandchildren in Riuli ran out of her tolerance for switchbacks and vomited profusely all over the floor our picnic lay uneaten.

Then the bus stopped behind a long line of vehicles waiting for the construction workers to open up a way for us ahead. Everyone piled out of the cars and buses to sit on a grassy area for an hour and a half…waiting…while we listened to the entire Chinese Men’s Chorus…the chorus of hacking and spitting…incessently…one after the other…like dogs marking their territories we thought! It got to us…now we each have a cold. The women talk loudly…like they are angry…but we don’t think they are. Finally, it is a relief to pile into the bus again and at the summit the road suddenly turned from ancient cobblestone to blacktop again.

Further on it is impossible to discern the names of the towns…we think this must be a little like what the migrant workers from Mexico feel when they are brought to Oregon by the coyotes and sold into bondage to the labor contractors…not knowing where in the world they are.

Christmas At Re Hai Hot Springs 2002

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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We went to Re Hai Hot Springs..a short half-hour bus ride from Tengchong.

The Asian and European continental shift also resulted in over 80 crystalline hot springs…grand Boiling Hot Cauldron…age-old Toad-Mout Hot Spring…Drunk Bird Hot Spring…Pregnant Well…Fairy Pool…Majic Pool…others…jade colored water bubbles and cloudy vapor…Beauty’s Bath…Pearl Bath…boiling hot.

At the bottom of the hill just outside the main entrance was the Jiaotong Binguan for 60 yuan a night for a double…only problem was that the WC was down the stairs and 50 meters away from our room…they had no rooms with bathroom. Showers were in a little room down the stairs and up some other stairs to the back of the main unit with a hot water pool about two feet deep and about 12×12 feet square…one each for men and women. The dreaded evil karaoke downstairs could be heard through the thin walls until late. Restaurant behind a row of triple rooms with no bathroom across the parking lot from the main building was great…they let us in the kitchen to choose ingredients….seeing what we get is part of the adventure!

Monday December 23
However, since it was nearly Christmas we decided to treat ourselves so we walked up the mountain through the park to the Bright Pearl Hotel…finding five giggling girls at the reception desk with no word of English. After a fashion we were able to secure a double room for ourselves…with all the amenities…WC (even if you did have to flush it by lifting the tank lid sideways), hot shower…and can you believe it…my laptop hooked up to the internet!

Tuesday December 24 Christmas Eve (for us on this side of the world)
We spent this day walking through the park in the sun…Jana took a dip in one of the pools…meeting five Burmese on her way back to the hotel. Where was she from and was she traveling alone…they wanted to know. Yes, she said, she was traveling with a friend…she was sorry that her friend (me) wasn’t there because she (me) and her (my) husband had just been in Burma for the month of August which they found very interesting…are you Catholic they wanted to know…surprised by the question she said, well, yes she was. I am a Catholic priest said one…the two women were nuns…and one of the two Chinese was a Deacon. They exchanged Christmas wishes and then the priest blessed Jana with safe travel.

Volcanos in Tengchong

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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A young Chinese woman on the bus had struck up a conversation in English…telling us about the sights around Tengchong. We thought that maybe we could pay her to guide us to the nearby Hot Springs but the plan was aborted after her friend drove us around in a minivan…we paid for an expensive Bai minority lunch…we looked at a hotel we didn’t want…and after the driver took us to a hotel that we didn’t ask to go to…and we still don’t know the name of. The receptionists didn’t know a word of English but we managed to get a double room. The lights dimmed every time someone used the elevator, the dreaded evil kareoke bar was on the next floor down, the telephone rang at least twice a night with no one at the other end of the line. It was ok though because it had a WC and hot shower after 9pm and there was internet down the street a few meters, through some big iron doors and up some dark stairs to a huge room full of young boys playing computer games. There was a girl on each floor with hot water and towels. Supposed to have had dance hall. restaurant, beauty shop but nothing was operating except the dreaded evil kareoke bar and the parking lot inside the hotel compound.

The first day we just hung around the neighborhood and found great homemade dumpling soup made by a very friendly Chinese woman in the market. Bought a CD of a Chinese pop singer and a bag of fresh peas in the pod and delicious tomatoes to snack on…and after some looking Jana finally found an undershirt…in military green camaflage.

We had lunch at the Myanmar Tea House…asked a couple of English speaking Burmese men when they had come to Tengchong…1988 one said…everyone exclaiming at once…one: I fled my country…we saying, oh, since the military junta took over after the last election…told one I guessed he was a University professor in Rangoon and he said laughing…oh, about 30 years ago! I suspect these men may have figured in the opposition during the last election. That night we went back for dinner taking my laptop to treat the owners and their son and a couple young Burmese/Indian patrons with bleached crewcuts to a slideshow of our month in Burma last August.

The next day we struck out for the Tengshong Guest Hotel where there was a map that was promised at the reception desk…first I and then Jana trying to gesture our need for information…seeing the wheels turning in their heads…big pain in the arse Westerners that don’t speak Chinese…until one receptionist gave Jana a card for the T.C.C. backpacker cafe!

After walking a mile with me limping behind Jana, we practically hugged 25 year old Li Bing with his long ponytail and big smile. You saved our lives in Tengchong we wailed. For two hours were reveled in our conversation in English while he cooked us a great lunch…club sandwich for Jana and fried pork with french fries for me…a nice break from the noodle soup we were eating since leaving Lijiang. In his traveler tip book a couple from the Netherlands wrote that both Lonely Planet and Let’s Go guidebooks were useless in Tengshong, “need to put TCC Cafe in those books!!!”

There are over 90 volcanic cones in Tengchong county…22 of them with preserved craters. Jana and Li climbed one large nearby cone called Dakong Shan or “Big Empty Hill” (which pretty much sums it up) while I gave a verbal little three year old girl, Zhou Xiue Ping and her mother, Yang Yong Lai, an English lesson in the warm sun…fireworks, shoes, pants vs the English trousers, ice cream. When I pointed to a picture on my Magellan Point-to-Pictures International Translator and said “tomato” she looked perplexed…finally saying “oh, tomahto!” Jana, having climbed the ubiquitous Chinese steps all the way up to the crater of Big Empty Hill said that the view of the valley peppered with craters was stunning…thinking about what it must have been like millions of years ago…all erupting…

My Name is Zhuy Yu Ping

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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On the way to Tengchong, the bus climbed high up into the Gaoligong Shan Mountain Range on a winding narrow two lane road…dropping down and then higher up again…beautiful valleys down below terraced with jigsaw fields of green winter vegetables. At the top of the Gaoligong Range you can step Eastward onto the European Continent and into the Indian Continent just a step Westward. Hundreds of millions of years ago, when the two drifting continents collided, the Gaoligong emerged from the deep bottom of the sea stretching itself from north to south, according to a Tengchong picture book, becoming majestic and mysterious.

The Range has a vertical climate…that is to say that if you climb from the bottom to the top you will find all four seasons in one day. Traversing the tall rain forest you see Azalea trees, the largest in the world discovered in 1982…25 meters high with a 2.5 meter branch span and a canopy 61 meters across…and Rhodendendrons as tall as trees. Then you see Bamboo groves and finally Pines, Spruce and Fir…snow-laden at the higher elevations.

We were headed to Tengchong, once China’s terminus of the ancient “Silk Road” leading to the Chinese/Burma border. By the side the road you could see weather beaten tomb slabs and deserted pillboxes left after the War with the Japanese. Sitting next to Jana on the bus was a nice Chinese man who suddenly turned to her and asked where she was from. He would ask a question and then become quiet and then ask another question…shy to speak in his little English.

Finally he wrote Jana a note with his name and address and asking her to be his friend. “My name is Zhang Yu Ping…I live in Xian Wei Yunnan of China…I work in factory of Skyworth TV…I want to be your friend…I don’t speak more English…I’m sorry…wait: I study more English…I will write (picture of an envelope) to you of my country and my home anything; and good news to you. I will call you and your home.”

When Jana showed him her picture of her and John by the ocean at Crescent City California he gestured with his hands toward his chest that he wanted the picture…and Jana, feeling like she had no choice at the moment, reluctantly gave it to him…writing her and John’s names and address on the back. He wrote his name on a 10 yuan bill and gave it to her…send to a friend…my name is Zhuy Yu Ping. I live in Xian Na in China…2002-12-19 and gave me a 5 yuan bill…send to a friend…my name is Zhuy Yu Ping. I live in Xian Na in China…2002-12-19. Then Jana gave him some stamps of Sun Yat Sen, the father of the Revolution, that her co-worker, Al, had given her to give to someone in China. I gestured tears coming down my cheeks with my fingers and he shyly smiled. When the bus stopped for gas a lady sold Jana’s friend a half dozen fresh hot boiled eggs through the bus window giving Jana and I each one. And who says the Chinese aren’t friendly!

Domestic Fight in Baoshan

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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The Lonely Planet description for finding Huacheng Binguan was difficult…the hotel name was the same but the street was different…two Dutch travellers sitting in the lobby with their backpacks told us we were in the right hotel…they had spent the day walking in the rain in the town…not much to see they said…and were waiting for the 6pm overnight bus to Jinghong. Our room in the hotel was not good by any standard..grody bathroom, shower pipe dripped on your back when you were on the squat toilet…no towels…no hot water except in a thermos. TV but freezing cold. The thing that saved us was the little kid hot water bottles we bought at a variety store that we filled with hot water and clutched tight to our chests under the covers. Walls thin…don’t know about the clientele…listened to a horrible domestic fight for an hour trying to go to sleep.

Lonely Planet description of where to find restaurants led us all over the place in the rain…we sat down in one street stall on tiny chairs at a tiny table and when we finally realized the workers didn’t know what to do with us we got up and left. We finally ate at a stall where plates of food were displayed and we could pick out what we wanted…eating and drinking our Dali beers while watching a table full of Chinese men play a drinking game that resembled Sticks And Stones. On the way back to the hotel we stumbled onto a market area with displays of fish and seafood but we had already eaten. Stayed only one night and left the next foggy day for Tengchong…the bus leaving just minutes after we got to the ticket window with our backpacks.

Big Noses In The Back Again!

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Bus to Dali
As we pulled ourselves up into the luxury express bus we felt that we were living large…we wouldn’t have local color but we would have comfort for a change. Jana, looking at the TV monitor up front says, oh we’ll have a TV. Oh goody I said sarcastically…another Chinese movie. Then Jana said, “Guess where we are sitting?” Where, I asked looking around? The “Big Noses” are in the back again, Jana gasped!!!

But the road was good and we enjoyed the three hour trip through beautiful terraced valleys dotted with Naxi villages with red brick houses and swooping rooflines. Most houses had big double gate/doors with brass handpulls. We noticed some solar panels and saw one satellite dish on top of an official looking building. Listening to Hotel California by the Eagles, we incongruently flew past women walking slowly by the sides of the road carrying heavy loads of wood and brush on their backs.

The bus dropped us off by the highway near Old Dali before it proceeded up the road five miles to the New Town. Horse carts waited to pick up travelers…we asked to be taken to Yu’an Garden or Guesthouse Number 4 as it is called by the locals…a lovely compound with garden, free internet, homey laundry lines and showers and squat toilets down the walkway. The first chilly night we walked down the street to Marley’s Cafe and, huddled next to a charcoal fire with two other tables of western travelers, ate a delicious chicken soup.

We have discovered that after a day of bumpy bus rides, smelly squat toilets, freezing showers, hard beds in unheated guesthouses, frustrating efforts to communicate, hacking and spitting, ever present acidic gas that burns your nostrils and throats from the burning charcoal used for cooking and heat, a bed will do wonders.

Koor Yi…Ok Ok

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Monday December 16
OK, OK, OK, (koor yi in Chinese) the woman taxi driver giggles as we pull out of Old Town Lijiang on the way to the bus station. Ni hao (hello)! xiexie pronounced shishi (thank you)! we said to each other Goodbye, How are you, she said. She taught us the words for banana (sansha) and apple (pepo), earthquake (juluna) or to that effect. And then that was the end of the Chinese discussion! She did, however, get through to us the fact that all the buildings we were passing were newly constructed as a result of the 1996 earthquake…it was hilarious watching her body language as she tried to communicate that many people were killed and injured! Her fee was twice as high as it should have been (12 yuan or about $1.25) but we figured the extra 6 yuan was for the entertainment! And we were grateful when she rushed into the bus station to find out that the next bus was leaving within the next 10 minutes.

We wonder from time to time how the Dutch couple we met in Lao could have gotten the idea that Chinese people are not nice…maybe their food is a little oily but we have found the people to be nothing but friendly…they have a great sense of humor if you extend yourself to them and they look for every excuse to practice their English with you.

Conversation With Roland

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Had a final dinner at familiar and cozy Sekura’s Cafe in Old Town Lijiang…splurging on Western food…sharing our beer with Roland, a 30 year old economics teacher in a university in Singapore. (Surprisingly and to his delight Jana guessed his age…so many young Asians look much younger than they are.) Roland had attended the University at Flagstaff Arizona and a small business college in Whitewater Wisconsin.

We immediately fell into a discussion about the likely future of China…the cities will eventually be fine but what will give the Central Government trouble, everyone agrees, will be rural China. There is great unequal distribution of wealth…but as Jana says…where isn’t there? Roland said that conservedly 95% of all food, whether horticultural or animal, are genetically altered and we agreed that China will never export food to the United States because of it. A chicken develops from embryo to full grown fryer in six months, he says. Safe ecological methods, it seems, is a luxury of rich nations. Roland has done some consulting for various environmental groups and says that the Philippines has done the most of any Asian country in terms of using ecological methods like crop rotation etc. instead of the overuse of fertilizers. But the bigger problem, Roland says, is that more efficient methods of agriculture do not rise to the surface because of individual initiative as in the United States. China, because of it’s centralized government imposes one unified model, regardless of local needs and conditions, that is communicated to all the villages via satellite TV.

I mentioned the book I had been reading, “The Coming Collapse of China,” and Roland laughed…saying yes, for every opinion you will find economists agreeing or disagreeing largely because of the lack of reliable statistics. China’s problems, the book says, could be solved with political reform but the Communist Party will never let that happen. China insists it’s GNP is growing at 8% but many believe the figures are cooked in order to get that rate, Roland agreed. Yes, the GNP is growing now, but my book says the banks are going broke because the central government is spending at breakneck speed to bring China into the 20th Century world market…last year it joined the World Trade Association. Can that kind of growth be sustained at the same time that the unemployed workers in rural China, who are already demonstrating on a regular basis, cause bigger trouble for the country? And are China’s reserves really as big as they say they are?

Than we lapsed into more esoteric subjects like evolutionary biology and creationism which requires faith…and the personhood of the chimpanzee…which was the subject of Jana’s son Jordan’s Master’s thesis…a huge leap which, Roland thought, also required faith. We ended with a discussion of the probable end of the species…at the very least a stimulating end to the evening.

When we returned to Mr. Yang’s Inn at 11pm Mr. Yang, who has taken very good care of us for almost two weeks, was waiting up for us so he could close the gates…Welcome Home… he said with a smile.

The next morning as we were leaving for the bus station, Mr. Yang told us in his limited English “to take care.” We will miss this gentle man who brought Jana two eggs instead of one to eat when she was sick.

And we will miss Fifi the Lijiang dog and Debu the Beijing puppy who loved us enthusiastically and unconditionally.

Chinese Mysteries

Posted on by Laughingnomad

The Chinese have incredible confidence in themselves…and consider themselves unquestionably the most superior people in the world…mostly due to their long history. We Westerners are the barbarians. (So we don’t need to think we are “all that” as my teenage Latina friends would call it.) And in China, Jana and I have noticed that we are continually being hidden in the rear of the restaurants, buses or whatever.

Hacking and spitting; bad hair on the men who hold cigarettes between their teeth and between their fingers like we hold a pen.

Why is the huge sign on the number 11 Middle School written in English? Because China has recently joined the World Trade Organization and it wants Western tourists to come visit their schools?

What is the Chinese Welfare Lottery? Never found out.

Old rusted framed-in but unfinished buildings…often covered with sheets of dirty canvas.

Internet everywhere…the Chinese ISP is even free on my laptop…love the sound of emailers giggling at their funny messages in the internet cafes.

Signs Everywhere…English Teachers Needed

Conversations…Guy in CD shop with university education; didn’t know what I meant by the term Communist Party…but later found out that he probably just didn’t want to talk about it. He said it was not true what westerners think…that people can say what they want and can talk. The people are told by the Communist Party that the Falung Gong is a cult that leads people away from conforming to their country (they really mean the Communist Party). They are also told that Falung Gong makes some practitioners commit suicide…and when I told one waitress that those people are committing suicide to protest against their government I saw a veil lower over her eyes but she didn’t say anything.

Western Tourists
Met a Canadian couple in Kunming that travel to Mexico every year and stay in bordellos where they can park their recreational vehicle in a fence enclosed area ($2) where they feel safe to sleep at night. I wondered how they tell where the bordellos are…

Chinese Tourists
60’s clothes; smart sophisticated looking girls…probably from Beijing. Platform leather; tennis shoes with stretchy upers, ankle length leather boots with leggings or long skirts-many of them leather. Sweaters to rival those of the Europeans.

Cultural Guffaws
Jana remembered a story about her husband John’s grandmother and grandfather in San Francisco’s Chinatown in the 1950’s. His grandfather asked a Chinese man on the street a qustion…”do-ee youee knowee whereee weee can….” when the Chinese man turned to John’s grandmother and said “lady, what’s wrong with your husband that he speaks so funny?”

A Chinese word we learned: OK is Koor Yi