Along the Edges of World

I was going to talk a little bit about the Philippines, but I have been encouraged to make these posts less "dissertation-ish" so I won't bore yall with the rest of my trip, other than to say that after the 'cruise' with Tao Expeditions we did a few more things: I scubaed on some Japanese ships sunk on September 24th, 1944 in an extention of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, we hung out in the highlands of the Philippines, and then wandered around Manila for a few days. No interesting stories, just "dissertation-ish" observations that can all be found in my mapvivo site:

http://mapvivo.com/journey/10984

After that, I returned to China, and Lisa returned to the US. In a few weeks, I had to start my internship, so I flew down to Kunming, but I still had about two weeks before my internship started. During that time, I had to find something to do. I feared traveling because it was Chinese new year, the largest annual migration in the world. Trains are jammed packed standing room only, and things become more expensive.

So I decided to get as far away from China without actually leaving China. I headed down to Xishuangbanna. This is one of the southern-most counties in all of China, sharing a border with Vietnam, Laos and Burma. I had been here before three years before, hiking with some of my Swedish friends.

Strangely, this part of China is doesn't actually have that many 'Chinese' people. In fact, Xishuangbanna is only one third Han 'Chinese' people, another third of the population is a group of ethnic Thailanders, and the final third is a mixture of different tribal groups.

I took the a series of buses out to some Thai villages, and then on, farther out, to a little village near the China-Burma border where the pavement ends. From there, I just started walking through the bamboo forests, further and further away from civilization. I had some idea of where I was going, a village called Yako. I just didn't know how to get there. Every time I meet someone, I asked them how to get to the village and they pointed me along the right direction. I ran into some guys, and I asked them the same question. They offered to take me half way there in their 'tractor' (it was really just an engine on top a piece of sheet metal and two wheels and two steering poles sticking out of it so the the driver could steer).

These guys were members of the Hani ethnic group, the same ethnic group as the people in the village Yako. The Hani are an ethnic group who live in the border regions along Yunnan, Burma, Laos and Vietnam. They live mostly on the sides of mountains (having been pushed out of the valleys by stronger ethnic groups like the Thai and the Chinese). They lived by slash and burn subsistence farming until recently when they started making (relatively) lots of money by growing tea for Chinese people. According to legends, the Hani used to have a written language that was written on cow hide, but their ancestors were once starving, and, they ate all the cow-hide books in order to survive. From then on, they forgot their written language.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hani_people

The guys giving me a ride told me all this, and then we had to get out of their tractor. They had to chop down some rainforest before the day was over, so they pointed me on towards Yako and wished me a good journey.

I didn't walk but ten more minutes before a truck stopped an asked me if I needed a ride. I told him that I was going to Yako, and he said, "I live in Yako. Do you want to stay at my place?" And within a few minutes of talking to the guy I had been invited to a wedding the village was having a few days later.

As we drove along the windy mountain dirt road, through patches of tea farms hewed out of the rainforest climbing up the mountainside, that was how my journey to the along the edge of the Chinese and Burmese states began.

I'll try and write the rest of the journey soon...