I just want to post on my rural study tour to Guizhou and Yunnan. If you are on facebook or my email list you have already received this. I will write about some other things concerning the study tour later.
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I just want to give you all an update of my adventures in China. I was away from Beijing for 16 days and visited several villages in China. I was at a Miao (Hmong) village in Guizhou and at a Tibetan area in the Himalayas. The tour was crazy and very challenging. I'm glad to be back in Beijing and sleeping in the same bed.
We were hosted by families in the Miao village, which is farming community in the mountains. I dressed up like they did for part of the time while I was there. Our group worked on repairing the road, harvesting rice and doing some of their traditional craftwork. It's the first time I picked up a shovel, a pick and a sickle. As for the craftwork, it's been a long time since I did any embroidery or beading, and I enjoyed that. The Miaos also love song and dance, so I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I was one of the last few at their singing event, which I also had to emcee in Mandarin (of course). This I had no advanced preparation for. I didn't even bring any water to the event which lasted 4 hrs. By the way, they only drink rice wine (50% alcohol) or beer and I was not going to ask for anything to drink. (I had more alcohol in this village than I've ever had in my life, including beer for breakfast.) I have no pics of me playing emcee as I couldn't take pics of myself. It was intense and I had to think quickly in Chinese...argh!! I had to dig up every Chinese song I remembered from childhood and they'd join me in singing. The ladies out danced us. It was funny watching them dance to techno but it worked. The villagers also enjoyed doing the Hokey Pokey with us, and we had encores of that. Our last dance before we left the village was the Hokey Pokey. The villagers walked with us for part of the hike downhill and then they waited from across the valley until we were totally out of sight. They shouted from across the valley when we were 1/2 into our hike. It was very touching and just indescribable. They will miss us more than we ever could. I was really sad to leave this village.
After the Miao village, we had some down time to do touristy stuff. We went to some caves and Huangguoshu, the biggest waterfall in China. We did take a sleeper train to Kunming city and I managed to give myself some nice bruises slipping of the bunk. I also developed a bad cold while in Kunming. We flew into Zhongdian, which is now called Shangri-La for tourist reasons. We travelled by bus through the Himalayas to Deqin, going over a mountain pass of about 4200m high. You can guess it... my cold and the altitude made it unbearable for me. I couldn't breathe and my head felt like it was going to burst. We rested for a day in Deqin which was at around 3400m. It is an interesting town, somewhat like a frontier town and it was the only place I didn't feel safe walking around by myself. I felt better after sleeping for 12 hrs and taking lots of medicine.
We drove the following day to a small village where the hike to the glacier at Meili Snow Mountain began. The village had vineyards all around it. We had Tibetan guides and mules to haul our stuff. That was really nice as I wouldn't be able to hike with any extra weight. I have been fighting a hip and knee problem for most of the trip anyway. It was a fairly steep and dangerously narrow trail at some parts. I'm glad I am no longer afraid of heights, if not the hike would have been a nightmare. When we hiked in the Himalayas, I camped out for the first time and was brave enough to do it for two nights. We had beautiful weather for the three days we hiked and it was clear enough to see the snow capped peaks. I had the option of hiking down the second day but I didn't. I attempted to hike up to the glacier with the other students but I quit after two hours as there was no trail. They were hacking their way through the forest. I couldn't pace myself and didn't wanted our guide to be dragging me by the hand. I sat in a valley for 4 hrs waiting for the rest of the gang but I enjoyed every moment of it, sitting in the sunshine staring at the mountain peak and chatting with my Tibetan guide. I was the slowest hiker everyday but didn't mind at all. I wasn't sore from the hike and I had our main guide with me the whole time. He had to take me by the hand more than a little. I didn't feel bad to be rather helpless as I had not hiked for ages and couldn't afford to fall.
We stayed overnight at the Tibetan village and something special happened that evening. They danced and sang for us. Tibetans are usually very shy people and rarely do this, unlike the Miao who are incredibly outgoing. This village also had not had foreigners since the early 80s. The other students were really tired out from the hiking but I saved some energy for my dancing feet and so I joined them. We wanted to engage them so I taught them the Hokey Pokey. So somewhere in the Himalayas, in a remote village, they know the Hokey Pokey thanks to me! I also did another simple circle dance with them. We danced and at one point, a friend and I danced a swing & a hustle. It's hard to process all this. As far as food went, they had amazing fruits here: pears, grapes, apples and pomegranates. I tasted my first pomegranate here. The next morning we made our way back to Zhongdian. I could tell our guides were heavy hearted to see us leave. Unlike the Miao village, only three guys saw us off but I could tell it was hard for them to say goodbye. We had danced, drank and ate with them and were just about to have some interaction but we had to go. I hope to go back.. as crazy as this sounds.. I do.
What I wrote is not even half of what happened on the tour, but it's already long enough. I hope the pictures give you a glimpse of what happened on the tour. I will try to recover from wanderlust and hit the books here in Beijing. It is rather surreal to be sitting in a classroom after this experience.
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