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
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Wedding in the Wilderness
Picking up where I left off in my last posts:
On my third day in the village, my friend, the guy who had picked me up from the dirt road, shook me awake at around 9:30 (constantly breathing in smoke makes me tired and sleepy like something else). "Lee Mo" (my Chinese name), "Lee Mo, let's go to the wedding."
We first went to the house of the groom, just two minutes down the main dirt pathway that divided the village. We ate a meal for about thirty minutes, breakfast-ish. Then, everyone in the groom's party, including me, tromped fifteen minutes down into a little gully and then back up the other side to the nearest village.
Here, the groom's troops entered into the bridal family's house. Following local tradition, the bride's family had hidden a little bag of something that looked like parsley somewhere in the house, and the groom's troop's had to tear the house apart trying to find it. For about fifteen or twenty minutes, twenty guys tore through boxes and pots, turned over clothes and searched the wooden rafters while the bride's family looked on, acting innocent, as if they had no idea what we were looking for. Finally a shout went up. Someone had found it, hidden deep in a bag of rice.
"Okay, now they have to feed us," my friend told me. And feed us they did. A few minutes after the parsley search ended, I was roused by a demonic scream, and went outside to see what the ruckus was.
They were carrying a 200 pound hog towards the house. Both of the hog's legs were tied up around a wooden pole they were using to drag it, and he was screaming like he knew he was about to die. "We eat a pig at every wedding," my friend informed me.
They laid him on a tarp in a shallow hole freshly dug and cut his throat open. He continued screaming for a little while as the streams of blood gushed out of him. They collected the blood in big bowls about a foot in diameter as the pigs body deflated. After a few minutes of draining several pans of blood, they reached into the pig's chest and pulled out his heart.
According to tradition, you can tell how many boys and girls a newly married couple is going to have by looking at the heart of the the pig slaughtered during the wedding. I watched as they put the heart on a small wooden plate, and took it into the house. A bevy of old men congregated around the fresh heart, poking and examining in a very scientific manner. A few minutes later, the old men scattered and the heart was taken away. I asked my friend whether the old men examining the heart had determined how many children the new couple was going to have.
"Yes."
"Well, how many?"
He became perplexed a little, as if he hadn't ever really considered the question.
"I don't know." Apparently they figure out how many kids the couple is going to have, but they keep it to themselves.
And then we ate and drank and were merry. The local alcohol is basically fire water, spicy and about 40 percent alcohol, drunk from a bowl (I know this from my last trip to the area, on this trip I was enjoying sprite). Many of the men drank the fire water with one fist, while in the other fist they swigged green bottles of Chinese beer.
And they ate. Peanuts, potatos, noodles, pork rinds, beans, corn, crickets, and of course, fresh pork. It was all placed on a little wooden wicker table that we squatted around.
That meal went from about two in the afternoon until four. After that, we left the bride's house, now with troops from both families tailing the couple. Halfway in between the two villages, some of the groom's family were blocking our path. They forced the groom to drink copious amounts of the fire water on the pathway before being allowed to pass and return to his house.
We returned to the groom's house for another meal, but first that meal had to be prepared. During the prep time, my friend and I returned to his house to nap. That evening, the groom's house was so full, that some of us had to be feasted in someone else's house. Anyways, it was the same old story. Lots of food, lots of booze. After eating, about ten friends of the groom got into a row and, each holding a bowl full of that fire water, forced him to down each and every bowl. Then the bride and groom went around collecting donations from everybody.
After the meal, I went back to the groom's family's hut, and watched. They danced late until the night with old ladies in their long, blue cloth garments and tall black head coveringss, looking on. Before I left, I went over to this clutch of old ladies and toasted each and every one of them. I think everybody got a kick out of that.
But by that time, I was pretty tired, and I'm sure yall are even more tired of reading this. So I'll end it here, at the end of my all-day adventure.
PS - As some of yall may have heard, I'm going to be married in September. I'm considering including the pig slaughter as a part of my ceremony, but I don't know who would look at the heart to see how many kids we will have. Please let me know if yall think this is a good idea, and if any of yall know how to use a pig's heart to predict offspring.
On my third day in the village, my friend, the guy who had picked me up from the dirt road, shook me awake at around 9:30 (constantly breathing in smoke makes me tired and sleepy like something else). "Lee Mo" (my Chinese name), "Lee Mo, let's go to the wedding."
We first went to the house of the groom, just two minutes down the main dirt pathway that divided the village. We ate a meal for about thirty minutes, breakfast-ish. Then, everyone in the groom's party, including me, tromped fifteen minutes down into a little gully and then back up the other side to the nearest village.
Here, the groom's troops entered into the bridal family's house. Following local tradition, the bride's family had hidden a little bag of something that looked like parsley somewhere in the house, and the groom's troop's had to tear the house apart trying to find it. For about fifteen or twenty minutes, twenty guys tore through boxes and pots, turned over clothes and searched the wooden rafters while the bride's family looked on, acting innocent, as if they had no idea what we were looking for. Finally a shout went up. Someone had found it, hidden deep in a bag of rice.
"Okay, now they have to feed us," my friend told me. And feed us they did. A few minutes after the parsley search ended, I was roused by a demonic scream, and went outside to see what the ruckus was.
They were carrying a 200 pound hog towards the house. Both of the hog's legs were tied up around a wooden pole they were using to drag it, and he was screaming like he knew he was about to die. "We eat a pig at every wedding," my friend informed me.
They laid him on a tarp in a shallow hole freshly dug and cut his throat open. He continued screaming for a little while as the streams of blood gushed out of him. They collected the blood in big bowls about a foot in diameter as the pigs body deflated. After a few minutes of draining several pans of blood, they reached into the pig's chest and pulled out his heart.
According to tradition, you can tell how many boys and girls a newly married couple is going to have by looking at the heart of the the pig slaughtered during the wedding. I watched as they put the heart on a small wooden plate, and took it into the house. A bevy of old men congregated around the fresh heart, poking and examining in a very scientific manner. A few minutes later, the old men scattered and the heart was taken away. I asked my friend whether the old men examining the heart had determined how many children the new couple was going to have.
"Yes."
"Well, how many?"
He became perplexed a little, as if he hadn't ever really considered the question.
"I don't know." Apparently they figure out how many kids the couple is going to have, but they keep it to themselves.
And then we ate and drank and were merry. The local alcohol is basically fire water, spicy and about 40 percent alcohol, drunk from a bowl (I know this from my last trip to the area, on this trip I was enjoying sprite). Many of the men drank the fire water with one fist, while in the other fist they swigged green bottles of Chinese beer.
And they ate. Peanuts, potatos, noodles, pork rinds, beans, corn, crickets, and of course, fresh pork. It was all placed on a little wooden wicker table that we squatted around.
That meal went from about two in the afternoon until four. After that, we left the bride's house, now with troops from both families tailing the couple. Halfway in between the two villages, some of the groom's family were blocking our path. They forced the groom to drink copious amounts of the fire water on the pathway before being allowed to pass and return to his house.
We returned to the groom's house for another meal, but first that meal had to be prepared. During the prep time, my friend and I returned to his house to nap. That evening, the groom's house was so full, that some of us had to be feasted in someone else's house. Anyways, it was the same old story. Lots of food, lots of booze. After eating, about ten friends of the groom got into a row and, each holding a bowl full of that fire water, forced him to down each and every bowl. Then the bride and groom went around collecting donations from everybody.
After the meal, I went back to the groom's family's hut, and watched. They danced late until the night with old ladies in their long, blue cloth garments and tall black head coveringss, looking on. Before I left, I went over to this clutch of old ladies and toasted each and every one of them. I think everybody got a kick out of that.
But by that time, I was pretty tired, and I'm sure yall are even more tired of reading this. So I'll end it here, at the end of my all-day adventure.
PS - As some of yall may have heard, I'm going to be married in September. I'm considering including the pig slaughter as a part of my ceremony, but I don't know who would look at the heart to see how many kids we will have. Please let me know if yall think this is a good idea, and if any of yall know how to use a pig's heart to predict offspring.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
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...
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...
Sunday, February 21, 2010
My First White People
As I mentioned I'm going to be making these posts as a series to catch yall up on what I've been doing since January.
I've finished my mapvivo site for this trip, a website that mixes texts, pictures and google maps. If you want to see the pictures from the journey below, just click:
http://mapvivo.com/journey/10984
After travelling in around the Philippines for about a week, we did this cruise thing. I say 'cruise thing' because its hard to call what we did a cruise. The journey took us by boat from El Nido, a small tourist center on the north end of Palawan island, through an tropical archipelago sparsely populated with fishing villages and subsistence farmers over the span of five days. Here's an article on Tao expeditions that might be helpful in explaining things:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2009/jun/13/Philippines-boat-tour-beach-safari
Some of the islands were actually pretty much deserted islands, with rich people living on them for only two or three weeks a year, and then abandoning them for the rest of the year. Others had small fishing villages trying to eek out a living on them by selling their catch in some of the nearby market towns. None of the places we went had roads connecting them, just dirt alleyways of the town, and maybe a few dirt motorcycle paths connecting the village to other parts of the islands.
This is basically a kind of eco-tourism, a new form of tourism that encourages people to travel in environmentally and culturally sustainable ways. Thus, the guy who runs this company has a lot of projects to help the people in the area, and most of the places that we stayed were in huts attached to the villages he was 'sponsoring.' In one village, he was tripling the government salary of a teacher; before the post was unfulfilled since the salary was just too low and no one wanted to work on Bumbleflip Island for next to nothing. Now, the village is building their own school house and Tao Expeditions will soon have a teacher willing to teach there.
This kind of corporate sponsorship has made the company very popular in the area and the boss is the godfather to a lot of people on these islands. On one of the islands we were stopping at, one of his godsons was getting married and lots of folk from other islands were there to attend the wedding. One of the Brits we were sailing with broke out his guitar and we got into a little jamboree, the four British passengers enjoying their rum and the Filipinos crooning away in Tagalog on the guitar. The climax of the night occurred when the captain of our boat stumbled up to us and broke out with Elvis' "My Way." We were amazed that he could sing it so well, but it turns out that the song is so popular that some people have been murdered over the song in Karaoke bouts. See below:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/world/asia/07karaoke.html?ref=world
One final story, in one of those fishing villages, we were walking along a sandy path when we happened to pass by the school house. The second graders turned from the blackboard with subjects, verbs and objects scribbled on it, and the teacher greeted us with a loud, "Hello." We responded and the children also echoed our "hello." Then the teacher informed us that we were the first white people that the children had ever seen. "Look children, their big noses are so..." she paused to think of the most polite thing that she could say "...interesting." We talked to the children for a minute or so and then headed into the village, energized knowing we might be the first Americans who had ever been there.
As we were getting back on the boat, I was just feeling like I couldn't be any farther away from everything I had ever known, like I was on the edge of the world, a world almost untouched by modern society. But I heard a song playing from a nearby radio. It was a song that had been playing everywhere in China, by a Korean Girlband now touring with the Jonas Brothers. Just before, I had thought the world had been quite large, but hearing this K-pop sensation reminded me that in a globalized world, you're never that far from what you know. And its that song that I'm going to end this post with.
Lyrics:
I want nobody nobody But You, I want nobody nobody But You
How can I be with another, I don't want any other
I want nobody nobody nobody nobody
- Nobody by Wonder Girls
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTI1MzcwOTE2.html
I've finished my mapvivo site for this trip, a website that mixes texts, pictures and google maps. If you want to see the pictures from the journey below, just click:
http://mapvivo.com/journey/10984
After travelling in around the Philippines for about a week, we did this cruise thing. I say 'cruise thing' because its hard to call what we did a cruise. The journey took us by boat from El Nido, a small tourist center on the north end of Palawan island, through an tropical archipelago sparsely populated with fishing villages and subsistence farmers over the span of five days. Here's an article on Tao expeditions that might be helpful in explaining things:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2009/jun/13/Philippines-boat-tour-beach-safari
Some of the islands were actually pretty much deserted islands, with rich people living on them for only two or three weeks a year, and then abandoning them for the rest of the year. Others had small fishing villages trying to eek out a living on them by selling their catch in some of the nearby market towns. None of the places we went had roads connecting them, just dirt alleyways of the town, and maybe a few dirt motorcycle paths connecting the village to other parts of the islands.
This is basically a kind of eco-tourism, a new form of tourism that encourages people to travel in environmentally and culturally sustainable ways. Thus, the guy who runs this company has a lot of projects to help the people in the area, and most of the places that we stayed were in huts attached to the villages he was 'sponsoring.' In one village, he was tripling the government salary of a teacher; before the post was unfulfilled since the salary was just too low and no one wanted to work on Bumbleflip Island for next to nothing. Now, the village is building their own school house and Tao Expeditions will soon have a teacher willing to teach there.
This kind of corporate sponsorship has made the company very popular in the area and the boss is the godfather to a lot of people on these islands. On one of the islands we were stopping at, one of his godsons was getting married and lots of folk from other islands were there to attend the wedding. One of the Brits we were sailing with broke out his guitar and we got into a little jamboree, the four British passengers enjoying their rum and the Filipinos crooning away in Tagalog on the guitar. The climax of the night occurred when the captain of our boat stumbled up to us and broke out with Elvis' "My Way." We were amazed that he could sing it so well, but it turns out that the song is so popular that some people have been murdered over the song in Karaoke bouts. See below:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/world/asia/07karaoke.html?ref=world
One final story, in one of those fishing villages, we were walking along a sandy path when we happened to pass by the school house. The second graders turned from the blackboard with subjects, verbs and objects scribbled on it, and the teacher greeted us with a loud, "Hello." We responded and the children also echoed our "hello." Then the teacher informed us that we were the first white people that the children had ever seen. "Look children, their big noses are so..." she paused to think of the most polite thing that she could say "...interesting." We talked to the children for a minute or so and then headed into the village, energized knowing we might be the first Americans who had ever been there.
As we were getting back on the boat, I was just feeling like I couldn't be any farther away from everything I had ever known, like I was on the edge of the world, a world almost untouched by modern society. But I heard a song playing from a nearby radio. It was a song that had been playing everywhere in China, by a Korean Girlband now touring with the Jonas Brothers. Just before, I had thought the world had been quite large, but hearing this K-pop sensation reminded me that in a globalized world, you're never that far from what you know. And its that song that I'm going to end this post with.
Lyrics:
I want nobody nobody But You, I want nobody nobody But You
How can I be with another, I don't want any other
I want nobody nobody nobody nobody
- Nobody by Wonder Girls
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTI1MzcwOTE2.html
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Central America in Asia
It's been a while since I last posted. I apologize. I've been
quite busy. For a while, there wasn't too much interesting to say. I
was just finishing up with finals, writing papers, and what not.
Then, Lisa arrived. It had been 8 months since we had last been
together, so yall might imagine that I was somewhat excited.
After a few days of tying lose ends together, I left Nanjing. Lisa and
I traveled to Macao and Hong Kong, and then on to the Philippines. We
spent almost three week in the Philippines, and then, after a brief
stopover in Nanjing, Lisa returned to the US, and I left Nanjing for
good.
Now I'm in the south of China, just a mile or two from the Burmese
border. But more on that later. The next series of emails will try and
catch yall up on my travels, from the Philippines to here.
While in the Philippines, I was been struck by how much it reminded me
of the trip Lisa and I to Central America in the summer of 2008. Like
Central America, the Philippines was colonized by the Spaniards, but
then was dominated by the United States for most of the 20th century.
The Spanish influence appears widespread. Most people have
Spanishesque names, Romeo, Juan and Gloria. And Catholicism is big.
The few Sundays we spent there, we saw people standing outside of
cathedrals, peeking over the heads of their neighbors, trying to hear
what was being said by the priest.
But the Spanish influence is more superficial, whereas the American
influence runs deeper. American English functions as the lingua franca
in the country where almost 80 languages are spoken, and hotdogs are a
favorite breakfast dish.
This seemed to have created a culture similar to nothing I had seen in
Asia, but instead, something a lot like Central America. Rum is cheap,
$1.30 for a big bottle, and the people indulge in it, much like
Central America. Getting things done is not so important and the
somnolent atmosphere of siesta seems to hang over all activities.
10% of the country's economy comes from remissions of Filipinos
living in other countries, working on cruise ships in the Caribbean,
as nurses in Los Angeles or as maids in Oman. Filipinos who want to
work hard get out of the Philippines, because something about the
country seems to stifle opportunity.
And just in the way Central America took the US boring yellow school
bus and painted the heck out of them, Philippines took American jeeps
and converted them into 'jeepneys', about the size of a short bus but
only as high off the ground as an SUV.
Wandering through the Philippines has been strange, like a journey
back to a place you had traveled before.
Anyways, I'll tell yall more in the next post.
writing 1 mile from Burma,
Lee
quite busy. For a while, there wasn't too much interesting to say. I
was just finishing up with finals, writing papers, and what not.
Then, Lisa arrived. It had been 8 months since we had last been
together, so yall might imagine that I was somewhat excited.
After a few days of tying lose ends together, I left Nanjing. Lisa and
I traveled to Macao and Hong Kong, and then on to the Philippines. We
spent almost three week in the Philippines, and then, after a brief
stopover in Nanjing, Lisa returned to the US, and I left Nanjing for
good.
Now I'm in the south of China, just a mile or two from the Burmese
border. But more on that later. The next series of emails will try and
catch yall up on my travels, from the Philippines to here.
While in the Philippines, I was been struck by how much it reminded me
of the trip Lisa and I to Central America in the summer of 2008. Like
Central America, the Philippines was colonized by the Spaniards, but
then was dominated by the United States for most of the 20th century.
The Spanish influence appears widespread. Most people have
Spanishesque names, Romeo, Juan and Gloria. And Catholicism is big.
The few Sundays we spent there, we saw people standing outside of
cathedrals, peeking over the heads of their neighbors, trying to hear
what was being said by the priest.
But the Spanish influence is more superficial, whereas the American
influence runs deeper. American English functions as the lingua franca
in the country where almost 80 languages are spoken, and hotdogs are a
favorite breakfast dish.
This seemed to have created a culture similar to nothing I had seen in
Asia, but instead, something a lot like Central America. Rum is cheap,
$1.30 for a big bottle, and the people indulge in it, much like
Central America. Getting things done is not so important and the
somnolent atmosphere of siesta seems to hang over all activities.
10% of the country's economy comes from remissions of Filipinos
living in other countries, working on cruise ships in the Caribbean,
as nurses in Los Angeles or as maids in Oman. Filipinos who want to
work hard get out of the Philippines, because something about the
country seems to stifle opportunity.
And just in the way Central America took the US boring yellow school
bus and painted the heck out of them, Philippines took American jeeps
and converted them into 'jeepneys', about the size of a short bus but
only as high off the ground as an SUV.
Wandering through the Philippines has been strange, like a journey
back to a place you had traveled before.
Anyways, I'll tell yall more in the next post.
writing 1 mile from Burma,
Lee
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Merry Christmas and Return to Kunming
I know it’s been a while since I added an entry. My parents came,
and I was spending a lot of time with them, traveling and just hanging
out. Afterwards, I’ve been blizzarded with papers that I have to write
in Chinese.
But I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, at least
for this semester. In less than a month, I’ll be leaving Nanjing and
the University. And I guess that’s most of what this email is about.
But first, I should update yall. Tomorrow, I’m supposed to be getting
a Dvd copy of my performance on the game show. I’m guessing some
people weren’t able to get through all the Chinese and get to see my
performance.
A few of yall might be interested to hear that, while I was with my
parents in Hong Kong and Macao, I happened upon a little bank called
Banco Delta Asia. It’s a small bank that’s only in Macua. What makes
it special? This bank was at the center of a problem that brought us
closer to nuclear war than at any other incident in this decade. This
bank was part of North Korea’s laundering operation printing amazingly
good counterfeit dollars. During discussions on denuclearizing the
Korean peninsula, the Bush administration froze all of North Korea’s
counterfeit money inside this little bank, and Korea threw a
diplomatic fit. To make a long story short, the North Koreans tested
their first nuclear weapon, making it the ninth nuclear power,
partially because of this bank. Anyways, I got a picture of the bank
and asked them how I could open an account (they said I had to do
something evil before I could open an account).
But enough about that. Yall may remember that after my semester here
at Nanjing University, I have a semester doing an internship. I
finally got my assignment. I’ll be returning to Kunming. I guess yall
probably remember, this was the first place I lived in China, in 2006.
I had a good time there, and am happy to return, even if it wasn’t the
first place that I have chosen to live, it was the second or third
place on that list.
What will I be doing? It may sound a little strange at first, but I
will be working with a company that makes exhibits for museums on
China’s ethnic minorities, particularly the minorities around Kunming,
in the province of Yunnan. Other than that, I am still not sure
exactly what they will have me doing.
You might wonder, “Why the heck are you doing that?” Well, in fact, I
had done some stuff with ethnicity while working on my master’s
degree, and I’m considering doing more work, down the line, on Chinese
nationalism and Chinese nationalities. So, this is actually a really
cool opportunity to look at what Chinese people think it means to be
Chinese.
That work won’t start until later in February, after the Chinese New
Year. Until then, I’ll be, not surprisingly, traveling some. Right
now, Lisa is coming out to visit me and we are going to the
Philippines for three weeks. After that I’ve still got about two weeks
before I have to start work. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing during
that time. I may go and hang out with a friend for Chinese New Year or
I may take off to Laos for a little while, since Laos is so close to
Kunming.
I guess that’s about it. Don’t want to bore yall for too long.
Merry Christmas
and I was spending a lot of time with them, traveling and just hanging
out. Afterwards, I’ve been blizzarded with papers that I have to write
in Chinese.
But I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, at least
for this semester. In less than a month, I’ll be leaving Nanjing and
the University. And I guess that’s most of what this email is about.
But first, I should update yall. Tomorrow, I’m supposed to be getting
a Dvd copy of my performance on the game show. I’m guessing some
people weren’t able to get through all the Chinese and get to see my
performance.
A few of yall might be interested to hear that, while I was with my
parents in Hong Kong and Macao, I happened upon a little bank called
Banco Delta Asia. It’s a small bank that’s only in Macua. What makes
it special? This bank was at the center of a problem that brought us
closer to nuclear war than at any other incident in this decade. This
bank was part of North Korea’s laundering operation printing amazingly
good counterfeit dollars. During discussions on denuclearizing the
Korean peninsula, the Bush administration froze all of North Korea’s
counterfeit money inside this little bank, and Korea threw a
diplomatic fit. To make a long story short, the North Koreans tested
their first nuclear weapon, making it the ninth nuclear power,
partially because of this bank. Anyways, I got a picture of the bank
and asked them how I could open an account (they said I had to do
something evil before I could open an account).
But enough about that. Yall may remember that after my semester here
at Nanjing University, I have a semester doing an internship. I
finally got my assignment. I’ll be returning to Kunming. I guess yall
probably remember, this was the first place I lived in China, in 2006.
I had a good time there, and am happy to return, even if it wasn’t the
first place that I have chosen to live, it was the second or third
place on that list.
What will I be doing? It may sound a little strange at first, but I
will be working with a company that makes exhibits for museums on
China’s ethnic minorities, particularly the minorities around Kunming,
in the province of Yunnan. Other than that, I am still not sure
exactly what they will have me doing.
You might wonder, “Why the heck are you doing that?” Well, in fact, I
had done some stuff with ethnicity while working on my master’s
degree, and I’m considering doing more work, down the line, on Chinese
nationalism and Chinese nationalities. So, this is actually a really
cool opportunity to look at what Chinese people think it means to be
Chinese.
That work won’t start until later in February, after the Chinese New
Year. Until then, I’ll be, not surprisingly, traveling some. Right
now, Lisa is coming out to visit me and we are going to the
Philippines for three weeks. After that I’ve still got about two weeks
before I have to start work. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing during
that time. I may go and hang out with a friend for Chinese New Year or
I may take off to Laos for a little while, since Laos is so close to
Kunming.
I guess that’s about it. Don’t want to bore yall for too long.
Merry Christmas
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Journal Entries - Closed Doors
Entry 1
So, Ni Laoshi gave us two topics for our midterm paper. One was called Fall Travel (秋游), and since I had just gone to Korea for the Fall break, I decided to go for that topic. I wrote a paper, I think it is decent enough. It was mostly about traveling around Korea, making friends with several different people.
But today in class, it was clear there was a problem with the content of my paper. Although she did not explain this when giving the topic, the term “Fall Travel” in Chinese implies that you will discuss the changing of the seasons. Of course, I say “she did not explain this” as if she was supposed to explain it, but it is more complicated than that. Chinese culture emphasize the beauty of the changing seasons, particularly in literature, much more than American culture does, so there is an expectation to write include the season as a part of my essay in the Chinese context.
Linguistically, this expectation is etched into the language. “Of course, you have to write about the changing of the season. Why else would I have made the topic ‘Fall Travel’?” Ni Laoshi told me. Of course, in English this sounds a little absurd, but there is a very clear logic.
This is clearly a cultural and a translation problem, but its left me with a low grade for my midterm. But, in the spirit of trying to be more Chinese, I am going to try and concern myself less with grades. I suppose this serves as a notice.
Journal Entry 2
A couple of weeks ago, we went to Huangshan. While we were climbing down, one of my friends started talking to one of the workers, and he dismissively said, “We do not like Americans.” My friend came over and told us what he said. I, half curious, half belligerent, went over to chat with him.
“So you do not like Americans? Why not?”
At this point, his friend, a fellow worker, stepped in. “Oh that, that was just a joke. We were just joking about that.”
I could not really take the conversation any further, but I did try to open it from a few other angles with them. I was not successful and had to go back and sit down with my hiking buddies.
My friend was pretty sure that when he first approached them, the guy was completely serious about not liking Americans.
Why would he suddenly change? I seriously doubt it was the threat of violence. My friend is much taller than me, and he had already left by the time I came to ask them once again. If it was just for face saving, it seems strange that he would have brought up the topic originally.
Journal Entry 3
At the front of our building, the one made for foreigners to study at, are four sets of glass doors. The first day I arrived, late in August, three sets were closed, leaving only one set open. I had seen this before in China, but I still wanted to hear how the security guard, the guy who was in charge of these doors, would explain it. He said, they were closed because classes had not yet started up.
The first day of classes two sets of doors were open. The next day it was back to just one set of doors, and I have not seen them open more than one since then.
I asked my roommate why they do not open the doors, and he said they would open all the sets of doors if, for example Wen Jiabao came to the school for a visit. Otherwise, they would keep them closed because of laziness. He said that having all the doors open was a sign of welcomingness, that if they did not want to offer that message of welcome. Did that mean that to keep all but one of the doors closed was to suggest that they did not really care whether anyone came or went, but they were going to let you come in anyways. He shook his head and dismissed this thought out of hand, but I was not convinced that I was not partially right.
Journal Entry 5
In my last entry, I mentioned that my roommate said the reason the only one door was opened was because the security guards are too lazy. I do not buy that explanation. It takes an extra twenty seconds to open take the locks off the doors. Furthermore, I have seen this elsewhere in China. At Yunnan Normal University, they also had four glass doors and they also only opened one of them. I have since this elsewhere; at the Shanghai South Railway station, three out of every four doors is locked. This is a national phenomenon, not the result of a couple of security guard’s laziness.
Furthermore, if this really is the result of the all of China’s security guards being lazy, there is a real disconnect between China’s architects and it’s security guards. These architects must realize that their doors are not opened, so why do they continue to insists on building them?
After I did not accept his first explanation about laziness, my roommate offered up another explanation. He said it was probably just because Chinese were used to keeping gates closed in their home, so that custom has been transferred to various levels of Chinese society, saying that this is something that came out of traditional Chinese life in rural China. That is true, space in village China is defined by gates and fences. But is it really this rural lifestyle has made its way into this very different part of China’s modern urban lifestyle?
Journal Entry 6
I am suspicious of this “transfer to various levels of society” explanation. If that is the case, I would be surprised that I have not seen this anywhere else in China’s periphery. I spent a summer in Japan and I do not remember anything like what I saw in China. I went to Korea and looked specifically for this phenomenon, but found nothing like it. My friends have not seen similar things in Taiwan. I just went to Hong Kong and Macao, and there was nothing like it there. Hong Kong and Macau were quite similar to the Chinatowns that I have seen in Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Bangkok.
One could argue that these were not built by Chinese, but that does not really hold water. Korea and Japan were built by their own nationals, but they often followed Chinese rural tradition, sometimes so well that they preserve things that are no longer available in China today. Some of Hong Kong and Macao’s large government buildings were built by the British and the Portuguese, but most of their apartments and other buildings were clearly built by Chinese people, and they resemble Penang’s apartments. Penang and Bangkok’s Chinatowns were also built entirely by Chinese people, and I do not even need to address who built Taiwanese buildings.
So, this proves that it was not just external influences acting on these areas’ architecture (and door locking habits), but that they all share something and it most necessarily be from their shared Chinese origin (except perhaps for the Japanese and Korean examples), and that my roommate’s explanation does not pass muster. So why do security guards all over China (but only mainland China) keep three out of four doors locked?
That will have to wait until my next set of journal entries.
So, Ni Laoshi gave us two topics for our midterm paper. One was called Fall Travel (秋游), and since I had just gone to Korea for the Fall break, I decided to go for that topic. I wrote a paper, I think it is decent enough. It was mostly about traveling around Korea, making friends with several different people.
But today in class, it was clear there was a problem with the content of my paper. Although she did not explain this when giving the topic, the term “Fall Travel” in Chinese implies that you will discuss the changing of the seasons. Of course, I say “she did not explain this” as if she was supposed to explain it, but it is more complicated than that. Chinese culture emphasize the beauty of the changing seasons, particularly in literature, much more than American culture does, so there is an expectation to write include the season as a part of my essay in the Chinese context.
Linguistically, this expectation is etched into the language. “Of course, you have to write about the changing of the season. Why else would I have made the topic ‘Fall Travel’?” Ni Laoshi told me. Of course, in English this sounds a little absurd, but there is a very clear logic.
This is clearly a cultural and a translation problem, but its left me with a low grade for my midterm. But, in the spirit of trying to be more Chinese, I am going to try and concern myself less with grades. I suppose this serves as a notice.
Journal Entry 2
A couple of weeks ago, we went to Huangshan. While we were climbing down, one of my friends started talking to one of the workers, and he dismissively said, “We do not like Americans.” My friend came over and told us what he said. I, half curious, half belligerent, went over to chat with him.
“So you do not like Americans? Why not?”
At this point, his friend, a fellow worker, stepped in. “Oh that, that was just a joke. We were just joking about that.”
I could not really take the conversation any further, but I did try to open it from a few other angles with them. I was not successful and had to go back and sit down with my hiking buddies.
My friend was pretty sure that when he first approached them, the guy was completely serious about not liking Americans.
Why would he suddenly change? I seriously doubt it was the threat of violence. My friend is much taller than me, and he had already left by the time I came to ask them once again. If it was just for face saving, it seems strange that he would have brought up the topic originally.
Journal Entry 3
At the front of our building, the one made for foreigners to study at, are four sets of glass doors. The first day I arrived, late in August, three sets were closed, leaving only one set open. I had seen this before in China, but I still wanted to hear how the security guard, the guy who was in charge of these doors, would explain it. He said, they were closed because classes had not yet started up.
The first day of classes two sets of doors were open. The next day it was back to just one set of doors, and I have not seen them open more than one since then.
I asked my roommate why they do not open the doors, and he said they would open all the sets of doors if, for example Wen Jiabao came to the school for a visit. Otherwise, they would keep them closed because of laziness. He said that having all the doors open was a sign of welcomingness, that if they did not want to offer that message of welcome. Did that mean that to keep all but one of the doors closed was to suggest that they did not really care whether anyone came or went, but they were going to let you come in anyways. He shook his head and dismissed this thought out of hand, but I was not convinced that I was not partially right.
Journal Entry 5
In my last entry, I mentioned that my roommate said the reason the only one door was opened was because the security guards are too lazy. I do not buy that explanation. It takes an extra twenty seconds to open take the locks off the doors. Furthermore, I have seen this elsewhere in China. At Yunnan Normal University, they also had four glass doors and they also only opened one of them. I have since this elsewhere; at the Shanghai South Railway station, three out of every four doors is locked. This is a national phenomenon, not the result of a couple of security guard’s laziness.
Furthermore, if this really is the result of the all of China’s security guards being lazy, there is a real disconnect between China’s architects and it’s security guards. These architects must realize that their doors are not opened, so why do they continue to insists on building them?
After I did not accept his first explanation about laziness, my roommate offered up another explanation. He said it was probably just because Chinese were used to keeping gates closed in their home, so that custom has been transferred to various levels of Chinese society, saying that this is something that came out of traditional Chinese life in rural China. That is true, space in village China is defined by gates and fences. But is it really this rural lifestyle has made its way into this very different part of China’s modern urban lifestyle?
Journal Entry 6
I am suspicious of this “transfer to various levels of society” explanation. If that is the case, I would be surprised that I have not seen this anywhere else in China’s periphery. I spent a summer in Japan and I do not remember anything like what I saw in China. I went to Korea and looked specifically for this phenomenon, but found nothing like it. My friends have not seen similar things in Taiwan. I just went to Hong Kong and Macao, and there was nothing like it there. Hong Kong and Macau were quite similar to the Chinatowns that I have seen in Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Bangkok.
One could argue that these were not built by Chinese, but that does not really hold water. Korea and Japan were built by their own nationals, but they often followed Chinese rural tradition, sometimes so well that they preserve things that are no longer available in China today. Some of Hong Kong and Macao’s large government buildings were built by the British and the Portuguese, but most of their apartments and other buildings were clearly built by Chinese people, and they resemble Penang’s apartments. Penang and Bangkok’s Chinatowns were also built entirely by Chinese people, and I do not even need to address who built Taiwanese buildings.
So, this proves that it was not just external influences acting on these areas’ architecture (and door locking habits), but that they all share something and it most necessarily be from their shared Chinese origin (except perhaps for the Japanese and Korean examples), and that my roommate’s explanation does not pass muster. So why do security guards all over China (but only mainland China) keep three out of four doors locked?
That will have to wait until my next set of journal entries.
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