Keyi Village

My friend Peng Laoshi brought me out to an Yi village in Honghe called 可邑 Keyi village, at 6,800'. It is home to the Axi branch of the Yi where she has been working for 10 years. She has come out for a conference and a presentation she is making with a couple colleagues on what I am not entirely sure, but something about improving local administrative capacity, working with the local people to preserve traditional culture while encouraging economic development. She's giving the presentation to a group that includes foreigners from NGO's and has hired a translator, and seems like she has brought me here to help the translator out. He's a student in international politics, kind of a know it all but I'm getting better at dealing with these guys. We left Kunming yesterday at around 3pm and arrived here a little before 6. The hall where she's doing her presentation has an exhibit of the tools and articles of daily life: farming implements, builder's tools, wooden cookware and hemp clothing. They grow and eat a lot of corn - making bread, mixing it with rice, and making noodles. They're labeling the exhibit so I helped the translator come up with the English. For some things I was a little lost - for example what do you call a goatskin worn with a strap by the old folks that they use for sitting on? A backside apron? Anyway, I'm taking suggestions.

The fellow who described the museum object is a young teacher who was really nice, and we talked a bit afterwards. I asked him about buckwheat of course, and he told me that some people grow it, he thinks. Not all that promising. There's a buckwheat wine industry in the next county called Luxi 泸西 about 50km awayl. He also says there are small home factories that produce alcohol for sale; no brand name and no packaging, he says, not like in the US. It's a little backward here he explains. you just bring your own container and fill it up. He has never eaten buckwheat himself, though, and doesn't know which kind they grow. Then we talk about the NBA. He watches every day during the season he says. You know yaoming? In houston? We go through his favorite teams and I try to hear the names of American cities in Chinese- is the basketball team the Atlanta Hawks or the Falcons? I can't keep them straight. We've got the Milwaukee 公鹿 gonglu, not that exciting.

I got the chance to walk around a little after that and took some photos and found a little buckwheat growing interplanted, on the edges of the fields in the village. There's been a wind storm and a lot of the corn is lying flat, but the buckwheat looks pretty good. I saw at least two kinds, one that seems wild but allowed to grow, and another that looks planted. The wild one had been cut at the base for fodder- very vegetative and relatively small leaves, possibly 3" x 3". THe other kind had huge leaves, maybe 7" x 7".

In the morning we walked around in the town's sacred forest, which was really beautiful. It was full of big trees and medicinal plants - my hosts also saw and picked some big edible mushrooms, argued about what they really were, and ended up throwing them away. The presentation seemed to go well, although I still can't figure out exactly what Peng Laoshi does, and then we watched a crazy video of this religious ritual where the men and boys strip down, paint their bodies with bright designs, and dance around and burn a big effigy in the woods. Then we had lunch. The villagers danced for us and played instruments, and we ate goat meat and drank Yunnan wine. Then we returned to Kunming.

Back in China

I arrived in Chengdu on Tuesday, after a long couple days on the plane. I had never been here before and ended up at a place I had seen a brochure for last year in Shangrila, called Sim's Cozy guesthouse. It's a great place - big and full of travelers but extremely cozy, as advertised, and amazingly cheap. The couple who run it are a man from Singapore and a woman from Japan, and it caters almost entirely to the global trekker scene.

I came here to meet with a scientist from the Chengdu Inst. of Biology, and I did that on wednesday. He's a funny, youngish guy and introduced me to his lab who were all very sweet. I felt a little sheepish because the professor made a couple of his students present their work to me in English, which really put them on the spot but they were all very good-natured about it. I like Chengdu. It feels smaller than Kunming, and the vibe is lively, but laid back. People on the street have been really friendly. Well after our meetings they took me out to dinner, which was delish - spicy but not quite painful. The lab group seems to really enjoy each other and there was cutting up and teasing over dinner and it was very relaxed. Turns out the next day began a three day holiday so it's a good thing I came to meet them my first day in town. And so then I was free to play.

I found a group of American tourists at the guest house who wanted to see the big buddha at Leshan, some say it's the worlds largest but you get a lot of hyperboyle out here. We hired a van through the guest house and drove a couple hours to the site. Somehow we had forgotten about the holiday that began that day, and we didn't leave as early as the recommended 7 am. The big budda was jam-packed. We waited in a line like they have at Disneyworld, but the only thing at the end of the line is the buddha's big toenail.

The next day I went to the Panda Breeding center. Sichuan Province is the "Home of the Panda" and this center was the first place to breed them live in captivity. There are about 100 pandas there, rolling around eating bamboo all day. The adults are solitary but the adolescents and babies are kept together, and climb on each other and play. It was pretty amazing to see so many of them, and hear them crunching on bamboo. How can they eat that stuff? In other news, this blog is blocked in China and I'm using a proxy to get it out, but I can't seem to upload photos directly. So please bear with me and check out the link below:

http://picasaweb.google.com/scratchfarmer/Chengdu?feat=directlink