Home, pt. 2

“Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life - and travel - leaves marks on you. Most of the time, those marks - on your body or on your heart - are beautiful. Often, though, they hurt.”

― Anthony Bourdain, The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones

 

I believe that travel changes you.  When you take yourself out of a world where you are comfortable, you make yourself vulnerable to the new and unfamiliar.  You depend more on the kindness of strangers.  You learn that your way of thinking is not the only way and is often not the right way.  

 

When I came to Baoding six months ago, I didn't think that I would ever belong here.  I was excited to spend a year living in a strange place, as an outsider.  I looked forward to experiencing new and unexpected things every day.  I looked forward to spending time alone and reading all the books I hadn't had time for in college.  I looked forward to observing Chinese life and learning as much as I could.  But I didn't expect Baoding to become my home.  

 

For me, homesickness is aptly named.  I miss my home and think about it every day.  There are times when my longing for home is incapacitating.  Iola, its people and its heart and its heritage, has an ironclad hold on my heart.  But I believe it is possible to have more than one home, that hearts and minds can expand to hold all those changes that life makes on them.  It wasn't until I left mainland China for Hong Kong last week that I realized how much I had come to think of Baoding as home.  I began to wish constantly that I were home, but in my daydreams lefse and jiaozi were mixed up together.  I felt an odd desire to tell people that I was from China, that the reason I couldn't speak any Cantonese wasn't because I was American, but because I was Baoding-ese.  I honestly couldn't tell which place I wanted to go home to, I just knew that it was time for me to go home.  

When I got to China, I was completely vulnerable.  I didn't speak the language, I didn't know anyone, and I certainly didn't know how to teach.  I am often stubborn and want to figure things out on my own, but in Baoding that wasn't an option.  I needed to ask for help.  I needed to accept kindness and patience from others.  I found that kindness in an old friend from Carleton, in my co-teachers, in my students, in a rickshaw driver who speaks no English, in my American friends.  When I left myself vulnerable, Baoding made an indelible mark on my heart.  

Now I'm back in Baoding and getting ready to start the new semester.  Even though my trip through southern China was the adventure of a lifetime, I am so glad to be home and to get back to teaching.  I still feel homesick for Iola, of course. But it is mixed with a love for this place, and I know that when I do go home in July, I will feel homesick for Baoding. 

Hong Kong Culture Shock

I want to apologize in advance for all of my readers who love Hong Kong. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have become a little exhausted from traveling for so long.  I've met several people on this trip who are traveling for several months or years or around the world, and honestly I have no idea how they can do it.  After three weeks of repacking my backpack and overnight buses, I was longing for my home base in Baoding.  By the time we got to Hong Kong last Friday, after a 15 hour overnight bus ride through Spring Festival traffic, I was running low on energy and enthusiasm.  Added to that was some confusion with my debit card, the exorbitant prices of everything in Hong Kong compared to mainland China, and the unfriendly nature of our hostel.  I spent the first two days in Hong Kong watching Ellen Degeneres videos on YouTube and going to American movies in the mall across the street with my friend Katie.  Despite my best efforts to have a horrible time, Hong Kong started to grow on me, and I know I will be back someday to really see and experience the city.

Hong Kong is very different from mainland China.  It was a British territory until 1997 when it was given back to China, and it still retains some autonomy from China, at least for now.  Because of this, English is very widely spoken in Hong Kong.  In fact, Mandarin Chinese was entirely useless, and it was slightly disorienting to be somewhere where everyone spoke English.  I tried to learn some Cantonese phrases, but for some reason nothing stuck.  I kept thinking in Mandarin, and at restaurants or such places, I would immediately think "xie xie" but stop myself from saying that only to think "thank you" and stop myself from saying that only to hesitantly whisper the Cantonese "m goi " after the waiter had already gone.  
Other than struggling to master even the most basic phrases in Cantonese, I spent my time in Hong Kong eating lots of international food (Korean, American, Indian, British etc.), wandering around various markets and enjoying a few western luxuries.  I did go to Victoria's Peak one day, but I didn't get any good pictures because it was too foggy.  After a few very lazy days and way too much time in Starbucks with the free wifi, I actually started to wish I had more time in Hong Kong to explore after I had recovered from my travels.  But, as with so many other parts of this trip, that is just another reason to go back someday. 

Bamboo Rafts and Li River Models

Here are some pictures from rafting down the Li River near Yangshuo with my friends Lex and Katie:

We spent an day floating down the river and then, after a confrontation with a water buffalo and a shopping spree at a painting store, we biked back to Yanshuo. 

Expats and Espresso

One of the greatest things about traveling is that where there are expats, there is coffee.  Chinese people are not terribly fond of coffee, and it isn't terribly abundant in Baoding, but towns like Lijiang, Jinghong and Yangshuo seem to have a cafe on every corner.  Despite my resolution to save money on this trip by stocking up on instant coffee, the prospect of daily espressos was often too tempting to ignore.

This was especially true in Yangshuo, China's original expat haven, especially because the misty weather followed us from Guilin, and honestly I was starting to get a little exhausted from so much traveling.  Yangshuo is nestled amongst the iconic "gumdrop" mountains and the Li River.  According to the manager of our hostel, it has the highest percentage of foreigners in China.  It is a center for language study, both Chinese and English, and three of my friends actually got offered a job teaching English there next year by a guy they met in a bookstore.  Apparently this is pretty common, and apparently many people decide that Yangshuo is just too lovely to pass up living there, because there really were a lot of foreigners both living and traveling there.  For instance, the hostel where we stayed is run by a family with three daughters, one of whom is married to a Belgian guy and another who is engaged to Paul from the UK (who ran our hostel and had lots of interesting stories about his time in China).

The Li River and karst mountains

 Despite the many western comforts available in Yangshuo, I actually think that it has suffered from the influx of foreigners.  It felt somehow too artificial; not quite Western but definitely not fully Chinese.  I know that I'm a tourist while I'm traveling around China, and I can't escape going to touristy places, but I still think there is a difference between tastefully presenting a place to visitors and filling that place with hawkers and cheap souvenir shops.  I think I'll be happy to trade in my espresso-a-day to get back to Baoding and a more authentic China. 

Three Dragons

Last week my friends and I left sunny Yunnan and descended into the mists of Guilin and Yangshuo.  Which is just my self-indulgent way of saying that it was cold and rainy.  Even though we had to pullout our wool socks and jackets from the bottom of our backpacks, Guangxi Province had some amazing days in store for us, beginning with a day hiking around the Dragon Backbone Rice Terraces north of Guilin.

  After a slightly terrifying three hour drive up slippery switchbacks up mountainous terrain in the rain, past at least three car accidents, we arrived in the town of DaZhai to see the rice terraces there.  Because miscommunication is one of the facts of life here, we discovered upon arrival that rather than leaving at 6pm, we would have to leave at 2:30 in order to be back at the hostel by 6.  I spent a few minutes bitterly sulking before convincing myself to make the best of the situation, and honestly I still wish we could have had the extra hours to hike through the village and the surrounding terraces.  It was one of the places I was most looking forward to for the whole trip, and I hated having to limit myself to only a few hours.  I guess now I just have an excuse to go back someday, because it even more breathtakingly beautiful than I had imagined.  I know that I keep saying that about places we go on this trip, but it's always true.  Southern China is full of stunning scenery, so much that my friend Katie has decided that we are living inside a Chinese painting. 

At one point we actually walked above the clouds

After traipsing around the hilltops for a while and taking deep breaths of clean, fresh air (again, I know I say this a lot, but really, until you live someplace like Baoding you can't really appreciate how wonderful air can be), we relented to a pair of women who had been following us all morning and went to their restaurant, where we ate local dishes, drank homemade rice wine and bought a bunch of useless souvenirs.

Fireworks and Dumplings

Here is a list of my very limited knowledge of Chinese New Year. 

1.  It's a fifteen day holiday starting on the first day of the lunar year.  The entire fifteen days is called "Spring Festival."  In Mandarin, the way to greet someone on the holiday is "chun jie kuai le."

2.  Everyone goes home to see their extended families for at least the beginning of the holiday.  That means approximately 1.3 billion people are using China's trains, roads and airports during the same few days.  The first time we encountered this was last night on our overnight bus to Hong Kong.  Everyone was starting to go home and back to work, so we were stuck in traffic gridlock for most of the night, and our bus arrived over four hours late. 

3. Fireworks.  It is possible to buy and set off fireworks on every street corner and that is what people do. 

Apparently it isn't uncommon for people to buy boxes of fireworks and set the whole box on fire in the middle of the street.  We didn't see too much of this up close because we were actually on an overnight train on New Year's Eve, but we did see many fireworks from the train window, and people continue to set off fireworks throughout the fifteen day holiday.

4.  Red is a lucky color in China, and it is everywhere during Spring Festival.  As many of you already know, red is also my lucky color, so I fit right in.

Spring Festival decorations for sale at a market in Kunming

5. On the night before Spring Festival starts, the Chinese government broadcasts a TV special that nearly everyone watches.  It is called the Spring Festival Gala and this year it featured Celine Dion singing "My Heart Will Go On" in Chinese and many other performances.

6.  A big part of Spring Festival is cooking and eating with your family.  This is just one of the many ways that Spring Festival reminds me of Christmas.  In my part of the country, everyone makes dumplings to celebrate the new year.

7.  Parents and grandparents give children money and gifts on Spring Festival.

8.  My friend Ada told me a few traditions from her hometown.  I'm not sure how widespread these traditions are.  One is that on the first day of the holiday, all of the women go around town to the homes of newlywed couples and then decide which bride is the most beautiful.  Later in the week, teenage boys go around to the same young brides and try to play tricks on them.  I guess that Spring Festival must not be the best time of year for newlyweds. 

9.  The last day of Spring Festival is called the Lantern Festival and people set off paper lanterns into the sky and wish for good fortune for the next year. 

This is an incomplete list compiled only from my own experiences.  Since I didn't really spend Chinese New Year with a Chinese family or my Chinese friends, I know I missed out on some experiences.  Still, Spring Festival is a very colorful and joyful time to be exploring China.  Chun Jie Kuai Le!

The time we were interrogated by the Chinese miliatry

Last night we boarded yet another overnight bus back to Kunming.  The bus left after ten, so it was already quite dark by the time we left, and I was unable to indulge in my normal bus activity of looking at the scenery.  The night was even a little cloudy, so the stars which have been ever present since coming down to Yunnan were also absent.  I started to read Middlemarch.  I was at the part when old Mr. Featherstone was on his deathbed and he was asking Mary Garth to burn his will for him in the dead of night.  Just as I was about to read her reply, the bus stopped.  I expected the stop to be a routine stop for gas or a toll booth or so the driver could buy more cigarettes, but as I looked out the window, I noticed a several Chinese soldiers waiting outside the bus, wearing camouflage and helmets and carrying machine guns.  To my complete surprise and horror, two of the soldiers started to board the bus.  They began checking everyone's passports and residence cards.  They reached my friend Katie first, and when she presented her American passport, they began shouting unintelligibly.  All of us know a little Chinese, but under the circumstances, it shouldn't be too hard to believe that we couldn't pick up anything.  After a moment, the soldier realized Katie couldn't understand him, probably from the look of sheer terror on her face, and said, in perfect English, "Sorry, do you speak Chinese?"  Struck mute, Katie shook her head, and after a few more moments of intently investigating her passport, the soldier moved on to me.  Luckily, my blond hair counts for a lot in China, and he passed by with only a cursory glance at my passport.  Lex and Jess were towards the back of the bus, so we couldn't see what happened after the soldiers reached them.  The two soldiers must have left out the back door of the bus, because after seeing some commotion outside, we pulled away and continued on our journey.

The Buddha's Footprint and Free Bananas

After a few days resting up in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, and catching up once more with our French and English friends, my friends and I headed south to Xishuangbanna, the corner of China that borders Laos and Burma.  While the rest of China is predominantly Han Chinese, "Banna" is only about 1/3 Han.  Another third of the population here is Dai, a group closely related to Thai people, while the rest of the people living in Xishuangbanna is a mix of various traditions, languages, colors and foods.  After several months in a very homogenous, very temperate China, arriving in such a diverse and tropical place made us question whether we were even still in China.

Banana Trees outside in Xishuangbanna

After Leshan, the pandas and the Tiger Leaping Gorge, not to mention two overnight buses and one overnight train, we were all looking forward to relaxing and taking a few days easy.  There is no better place for a few lazy days in the sun that Xishuangbanna.  We stayed in the city of Jinghong and spent a few days exploring nearby towns. 
One day, we went to the town of Da Meng Long, only a few kilometers from the Burmese border.  In fact, our guidebook warned us not to accidentally cross the border.  We walked a bit along a road lined with banana farms before coming to another small village and hiking up to the White Bamboo Shoot Pagoda, which is famous for the footprint that the Buddha left there. 

Beautiful writing that we think is Dai script

While we couldn't find the Buddha's footprint, the pagoda and surrounding village was still beautiful and it had the added charm of seeming to be forgotten and lost in the forest.  After leaving the pagoda, we walked down to the village near the road and bought two "jin" of bananas for two kuai. 
Yesterday, before leaving Xishuangbanna, we were searching for somewhere to eat and struggling to find a restaurant or any street food.  Finally we stumbled across a room with three or four tables in it, a large fridge and two friendly ladies chatting outside.  We were shown a fridge full of various vegetables and meats, and we pointed to a few different ones, not really sure what would happen.

Lunch?

 I tried to watch the women preparing our food, but it was difficult to see what they were doing.  After about fifteen minutes, they started bringing out dishes of vegetables and rice, including one of our favorite dishes, fried egg and tomato.  I guess there was nothing to worry about, because it was all very delicious and cheap, and none of us have gotten sick yet.

Dr. Ho's Wisdom

After the trek through the Tiger Leaping Gorge, my friends Katie and Jess and I decided that our last day in Lijiang should be much slower paced.  So we slept in, updated our blogs, and had a western breakfast at our hostel before taking a public bus to the little village of Baisha about 20 minutes from Lijiang.  Lijiang, the Tiger Leaping Gorge, and most of the villages surrounding the two are home to the Naxi (pronounced Nah-Shee) people, one of China's ethnic minorities.  In Lijiang proper, the Naxi influence is mostly filtered through the lens of tourism, with the streets of the old town lined with guesthouses, souvenir shops and young women in Naxi costume.  Baisha was still filled with foreign and domestic tourists the day that we visited, but it managed to retain some of its charm as well.  After wandering through the streets for a while, and bargaining with some venders, we noticed a small building surrounded by signs and posters.  We moved closer to investigate, and were approached by an old Chinese man.  His said hello to us in English and promised to tell us his story.  So we sat down in front of his clinic while he told us about his life.  His name is Dr. Ho, and he is a 91 year old doctor practicing Chinese medicine.  His philosophy is "live simply, eat simply and above all be optimistic," and he kept telling us to be happy.

Dr. Ho, Jess, me and Katie

After our talk with Dr. Ho and a quick meal at a Naxi restaurant, we started to head back to Lijiang. On our way out of town, I noticed some Naxi ladies selling vegetables and wearing traditional clothing.  I wanted to take their picture, so I had Katie and Jess stand near them.

Apparently I wasn't quite sneaky enough, because they started to wave me over and motion to my camera and to me.  They wanted to let me take a picture with them.  They made a space for me and we got a really good picture, but then one of the ladies started to say "qian, qian," which means something about money, and I knew they wanted me to pay them for taking the picture.  I actually thought it was worth it, but still I hadn't suspected such cute old ladies to scam me.  Anyway, after paying them each 1 yuan, Katie, Jess and I left and returned to Lijiang.

We spent a few days in Kunming, where we were lazy and did our laundry and met up with our French and English friends before boarding another overnight bus to Xishuangbanna, the region of Yunnan Province nearest to Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.

The Most Beautiful Place

 For the past few weeks, my friend Katie and I have been stubbornly insisting that our respective hometowns were the most beautiful places in the world.  Earlier this week, we had to admit that there was someplace at least approaching the perfection of Pittsfield and Iola when we spent two days hiking through the Tiger Leaping Gorge in northern Yunnan.

 

 

Along with a bevy of international friends, we hiked along the top of the gorge for a grueling 8 hours.  Although we only met each other on the bus to the gorge, by the time we had climbed up to the top of the gorge, shedding layers of clothing and pounds of sweat, we had formed a brotherhood out of our struggle. 

Stopping for lunch with our new friends

I took about 300 hundred pictures during the two days we spent in the Tiger Leaping Gorge.  I will only share a few of them with you.  The pictures will be much better than any description I can give.

 

It has been so long since I have been able to run or be outside in the sun for any amount of time, and the pure exhaustion of walking all day in the sun, in such a beautiful place, was the best possible feeling. 
After a full day of hiking, we spent the night at a guesthouse in the gorge.

The view from a bathroom stall at the guesthouse

Although the first day's hike was beautiful and exhilarating, the second day was what really forced Katie and me to reconsider our insistence in our hometowns' unreachable beauty.  After a few easy hours, we reached the end of our hike along the top of the gorge, we decided to walk down to the river.  The path down was quite steep, and there was even a part where we had the choice between a 100 foot ladder and a "safe" path, which bypassed the ladder in a series of sharp switchbacks.  Katie and I, as well as our new friends Jenny and Alex, decided to climb down the "safe path," but we made up for our cowardice by climbing up the ladder on the way back.

Our group of international travelers spent an hour at the bottom of the gorge, mesmerized by the beauty of the river rushing past and resting our shaking muscles.  The climb back up was dauntingly steep, and we spent nearly as much time resting as we spent climbing.  Iola will always be my beautiful home, but it will be pretty hard to beat the Tiger Leaping Gorge for breathtaking scenery.