This is my last of three posts about my trip to Xishuangbanna. I'll have others on other things I'm doing here in Kunming and elsewhere, as I continue this blog, if anyone is reading.
During the wedding, my friend and I took off back to his place. I took a nap, tired from all the festivities, and, when I woke up there was an old man in the house who I hadn't seen before. The family had laid some food out on the floor, and the old man was looking at my friend's hand.
Later, my friend told me that he was having his fortune told, and I think he said the ceremony was kind of a blessing. The next day, he would be leaving the Yako village to go down into the valley to work a van driver. I'm not sure of this, but these groups tend to have a fear of the valleys and the oppressive states in valleys. I kind of think that they called in this 'wizard' to bless him as he left his mountain village to go down into the valley.
Later that night, I went back to the wedding. I won't retell the wedding events here, but, when I was leaving the wedding at sometime between ten pm and three am (time is of little consequence in a place without clocks), I looked across the star-lit valley to the otherside and noticed a section of field on fire, burning in patches. These groups practice slash-and-burn (swidden) agriculture, but this is slowly coming to an end.These were some of the last fields that were going to be burned before the Hani people switched entirely over to farming Puer Tea for rich Chinese people in the North, quiting their old ways. For a few minutes, I stood, watching the fire burn it all down.
The next morning, my friend left before I could say goodbye, and I didn't wait too long after him, heading the other direction, up the mountain.
The only way from the Yako's valley to the next valley over was to hike to a road that straddled a ridgeline that divided China from Burma. I was half worried and half enticed by the prospect of visiting this remote border.
The border really only existed on paper. The folks of Yako cross the border like its not even there. "We tend to go over into Burma, not every day, maybe not even every week, but it wouldn't be unusual for someone to go into Burma at least once a week." It was only a few miles away from their village, and it really doesn't divide the people, socially at least. A lot of the guys I was hanging out with at the wedding had come over from Burma that day, relatives or friends of the newly-wed couple. The wife of my friend's brother was from Burma. One of the little kids staying in my friends house was also from Burma. The wife came to get married, but the boy had left his family to go to school here in China. The border didn't divide their families or their societies, but there was a clear divide of the quality of education.
While I walked along the border, a man and his wife passed me by on a motorcycle. I waved them down on the little dirt pathway and asked, "Hey, is this the road to Bulangshan."
"Yep. Just that way." He pointed.
"And is this road the border?"
"Yep."
"And this is Burma." I pointed to the left of the path.
"Yep."
"And this is China." I pointed to the right of the path.
"Yep."
He drove off, smiling. I was stoked. I hopped a few feet into what may have been Burma, and snapped a picture of me in a new country, with Burma in the background. For a few minutes, I stood and looked across the Burma's Shan state's rolling hills.
This is the area that used to be called the Golden Triangle, famous for opium smuggling. It's easy to see why it was used for drug smuggling. The only government presence or evidence of a border was a guard tower I passed on one of the hills on my way into the other valley. Motorcycles passed through two or three an hour with no one there to care. It would have been easy enough to smuggle opium here.
As I passed by that guard tower, the dirt road started to slowly descend down into the next valley. I could see villages scattered throughout the green forests and the brown fields.
At one point on a lonely stretch of the dry, red dirtroad, I stopped to do my personal part to 'relieve the drought,' as the kids say. But the lonely road turned out to be not so lonely. I heard the sound of a motorcycle fast approaching and tried to zip up and arrange myself to look like I hadn't been doing any thing at all. Before I was able to look natural, I heard the motorcycle behind me slowing down and then stopping. I turned around. It was another dude on another motorcycle, like the five or so that had passed me throughout my hike, but this guy was grinning broadly.
He leaned towards me and asked, "Do you remember me?"
I thought for a second. I had to have met him at the wedding. I had met a herd of people in those dark houses, so I just assumed he was one of them. "Yea, the wedding, right? What are you doing now?"
"After the wedding, I wanted to pick up some stuff up at the market. Now I'm heading back home, back to Burma."
He kicked his Honda into gear and sped off, yelling one last thing: "Bai, Bai."
As I walked off, a thought crossed my mind: I've been here, along the edge of Burma and China, for a handful of days, and I'm already running into old friends. I guess I must be doing something right.
Lee
PS - I've put the pictures up for this on mapvivo. If yall want to see pigs deflated of blood, old men checking swine hearts for a baby count, and me 40 inches deep into Burma, check it out at:
http://mapvivo.com/journey/11190
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