Straight Happiness

After 10 days of a mad sunburn, bus rides of people “prancing” and “frolicking” and beautiful mountains I’m back! Since these past 2 weeks have been Chinese New Year all of our teachers went home so that clearly means we don’t have class, woohoo, instead we went on a trip to one of the southern provinces of China. Yunnan 云南 is where the majority of the minorities in China live. It’s close to Vietnam and Thailand, which reflects in some of the food and also the way people dress. We visited 4 cities on our trip, Kunming 昆明 which is the capital of Yunnan, Dali 大理, Lijiang 丽江 and Xixhuang Banna 西双 版纳 (this is the most fun to say!). It was so interesting between each city the difference in the peoples look. When we were in Lijiang we saw a show that was directed by Zhang Yimou, the director of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremonies, and the actors in it were such a range, some defiantly looked Chinese but others looked more Native American. Now I know what your thinking, don’t all Asian people look the same, false, my friend explained to me that the reason us Caucasians think this is because we focus on different features than Asians do to distinguish people so that’s why we don’t necessarily see the differences (Thanks Coach Haley for this fun fact).
We started our adventure in Kunming. Now brace yourself for this, they are a rarity to come by even in the United States but Kunming has its very own TCBY! In Kunming we took a boat ride on Erhai 洱海 Lake and got to participate in the Bai minority tea ceremony 白族三道茶. They gave us 3 types of tea which represented the 3 stages of life, the first one was bitter, which represents the hard work you put in studying and becoming successful in the beginning of your life, the next is a sweet which represents the next part of your life that you get to enjoy family and enjoy the fruits of your success and finally the last tea translates into “return to the taste” which is the final part that you have memories can reflect back on your life. How people tend to use relationship statuses on facebook to proclaim to the world that they in fact are “in love”, the Bai minority group had different head dressed to show if they are marries or not. That night after the tea tasting we walked around Dali 大理and had the best candy it was basically peanuts/peanut butter wrapped in sugar, two of my favorite things! We found a really nice western restaurant to eat at, the street that it was on reminded me of Mexico, there were all sorts of outdoor restaurants and loud music. At this restaurant there were also some ballin drinkers who were taking back straight shots of Bacardi Breezers, wow now boys don’t get too crazy.
The next day we took a 5-hour bus ride to Lijiang 丽江, the scenery outside was beautiful but inside the bus was a different story; “the sickness” was starting to take its victims. Through out the whole trip about half of our group feel to “the sicknesses” evil doings. We still don’t exactly know what it was I think it was some kind of flu but luckily my friends and I were able to avoid it (I would like to thank my mom for instilling her great hygiene practices for this!). For those of you that have seen a Warren Miller movie, you know when they are in the remote villages and as they walk through the streets with their equipment the local people follow them in awe? Well we were no professional skiers with camera crews but that’s when it felt like when we got into Lijiang 丽江, our buses we’re allowed to drive in so there was a herd of 40 white kids 外国人with giant suitcases parading down the street to our hotel. After we got settled into our hotel we went to lunch where the owner offered to sell his daughter to one of our friends, ya I don’t even know. Something interesting about the different villages that we visited was the different word for boy and girl, in Lijiang they call them pàng jīn gē, pàng jīn mè that is basically saying that being fat is beautiful (I wonder if Peter Paul Rubens ever had his way to China). We got the privilege to be able to talk with a man name Xuan Ke, who is helping to preserve Naxi ancient music 纳溪古 in Jijiang. He studied this form of music when he was younger but when the Cultural Revolution started music was not allowed and he didn’t agree with this revolution so he spoke out against Mao and was jailed for 20 years. Still today, he is very critical of the government. He’s a wealthy man in the area so he donated a bunch of money to help with education and he also brought together a Naxi Ancient Music performing group that has traveled internationally. The men in this group are as old as 78, its very impressive to hear them play, granted many of them kept falling asleep during the performance that’s just a minor detail. Before I came to China I was warned that locals would want to take tons of pictures with me cause of how different I look and I hadn’t encountered that until Lijiang, we would have whole families come up to us to take pictures.
The next day we got to see the beautiful hour of 6:30am to make it to the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain before the lines got long. Since none of us were prepared to play in the snow we rented parkas to keep us warm, best idea ever! This mountain was absolutely stunning, I can’t even being to describe, it reminded me a lot of Colorado. The day we went was clear with the sun out which was great for pictures but not great for my un-sun screened face, Mrs. Flannery would not have approved. After we played in the snow we got to see the impression show I was talking about earlier. They used the mountain as the backdrop of the show. Performances that I have seen in the past, the chorus actors have many roles, which is not how they do it here. This was a HUGE cast the people just kept coming; there was no double dipping on roles here.
The next day we caught a flight to Xishuang Banna 西双版纳, a drug and prostitute hot spot. We were not allowed to go to clubs or KTV or drink mixed drinks, apparently they lace the alcohol with formaldehyde. Also in the past one of the tour guides was in KTV with a group of students and a man approached him asking how much the girls cost, Mom, Dad, Pari aren’t you glad you didn’t know this beforehand! The weather was so warm here so we were able to take a boat ride down to a Buddhist village where we played them in basketball. Now you all know my basketball skills end after the first, or if I’m lucky the second, round of knock out so I was no help to the team but we ended up only loosing by 2. The local team we played though wasn’t wearing shoes either which was impressive! The next day we went hiking, it was like home. And then we took a bike ride from the hike back to our hotel, it was absolutely beautiful, everything was so green.
We’ll if you’re still reading I’m very impressed with you, you are my true friends, ill bring you back extra special presents ☺ . If any of you are planning on coming to China you have to visit Yunnan, I felt so much more at home there than I do in the city. Since I still don’t know how to put up pictures here I have them all on facebook.

Now I’m back so I better be hearing from you all!

Xoxo
Aryn