Sorry for the delay in an update – the Internet server has been down. I have returned from my 2-week trip to the province of Yunnan in southwest China. It was absolutely amazing. It would take too long to describe every little thing that happened and all of the interesting cultural themes I observed and learned about, but here are the highlights.
First off, some basic facts about China and specifically Yunnan: this trip was for my Ethnicity class. China has 56 official nationalities, the dominant one being the Han, who make up around 90-95% of the population. However, over 400 other groups applied for official nationality status last year, and many of the "official" nationalities
(including the Han) have sub-groups that often consider themselves of a completely different ethnic persuasion. The point is, China has plenty of ethnic groups to go around, and around half of the official ones can be found in Yunnan. Hence the trip to see some of them.
Our first main stop was Napa village near the city of Zhongdian, where we split up into small groups and stayed in homestays with Tibetan families. The village is out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by mountains. It was gorgeous. Unfortunately, I got slightly sick the first few days due to the high altitude (around 10,000 ft. above sea level) and had to miss out on a mountain hike. However, I did do all of the other major activities, and had a blast. The people there were super friendly. In the evenings, we often sat around and exchanged a bit of culture - for example, they showed us some Tibetan dances. The food was delicious. I got to try yak meat (delicious), yak cheese (I'm not a huge fan of cheese in general, but it was actually pretty good), and yak butter tea (phenomenal). By the end of the trip, I was ready to buy and yak and eat it whole. On our last day there, they slaughtered a lamb and we had a huge feast. The meal was delicious, and afterwards we threw a party and sang and danced. They sang us traditional Tibetan songs. We sang them some American songs - they'll probably never forget our rousing performance of "You've Lost That Loving Feeling." Our guide has big plans to attract tourism to Napa - we were one of the first test groups. It will be interesting to see if the villagers can keep their culture intact once they are bombarded with foreigners. I hope the place isn't commodified too much - the cultural differences are part of the appeal.
Next, we spent a few days in the city of Lijiang to learn about the Naxi people. After Napa, this was like a taste of civilization. The city is split into two parts, the Old City and the New City. The New City is the modern area, while the Old City is filled with ancient architecture and filled with shops that supposedly sell legitimate artifacts of Naxi culture. In reality, most of these places are just tourist traps - Naxi culture being dressed up and sold. For example, many of the shopkeepers are actually Han Chinese dressed up as Naxi. It's kinda sad, but I guess in the end it's improving the economy. Plus, if you look hard enough you can find a couple of places that actually sell real, handcrafted work.
The last portion of our trip was to Lugu Lake, the area around which is populated by the Mucuo people, a subgroup of the Naxi. I got to celebrate my 21st birthday by taking a 9-hour bus ride to get there. Woohoo! We stayed with Mucuo families. What's interesting about the Mucuo village is that in some ways it's already starting to be commodified to attract tourists, but in other ways, I can see how many tourists would be turned off by staying there. Take my homestay for example. The bathroom consisted of a small shack outside the house that was basically an 8x6 tub filled with...uh... excrement. I heard that once or twice a year it's shoveled out for fertilizer - even so, not exactly a clean, minty-fresh place. Also, two of the guys living in my homestay (there were four of us total) changed houses after the first night when one of them woke up in the middle of the night with a mouse on his head. My roommate and I were woken up by the screams (and the sound of mice skittering through the walls). Good times.
What's really interesting about the Mucuo people, though, is that it's one of the last matriarchal societies on the planet, and its citizens follow what is known as a "Walking Marriage." Basically, the men and women are split up during the day doing their separate work. Men mostly handle domestic duties (like fixing breakfast for guests) and sit around playing cards, while women handle a lot of the actual labor. At night, the husband walks to the wife's house to sleep, hence the term "walking marriage." He leaves early in the morning, and usually doesn't go back until the following evening. This aspect of Mucuo culture has resulted in the women being promoted as loose and promiscuous (which is good for attracting foreign and Han tourists), but we were told that in reality this form of marriage is actually extremely fixed and stable. The rumor has probably only spread due to a number of Han prostitutes that try to pass themselves off as Mucuo. Also, divorce (or rather, a break-up, since this form of marriage isn't officially recognized by the government), is extremely easy. Basically, everyone gets whatever they came into the marriage with. The wife gets the property (it's her house after all) and the kids, since the family name is passed down through her side. If only it was that easy in the USA!
Our last day there, they slaughtered another lamb for us. It's interesting to compare how different cultures kill their animals. A small group of students had traveled to Inner Mongolia early in the semester, where they had bought a lamb and had it killed. Let's take a look at the different methods, shall we?
MONGOLIAN METHOD (the most humane way):
1) Quickly slit open the chest.
2) Reach in and stop the heart. This kills the animal instantly and there is little to no blood.
3) Skin, gut, cook, and eat.
TIBETAN METHOD (the least humane way):
1) Slit the lamb's throat.
2) Leave the lamb writhing on the ground in agony for around 5 minutes while you go get a bicycle pump.
3) Use the bicycle pump to separate the skin from the muscle (hopefully the lamb is fully dead by the time you start this).
4) Cut the skin on the hind legs, and pull the whole skin off over the head.
5) Gut, cook, and eat.
MUCUO METHOD (the somewhat humane but very messy way):
1) Stab the lamb violently through the throat and then rip off a large chunk of it.
2) Use a bowl to collect the small river of blood that is now squirting out everywhere.
3) About 1-2 minutes later, it's dead. Skin, gut, cook, and eat.
Now you all can pick whichever method you like best, and go out and kill a lamb. Enjoy!
However, the trip wasn't quite over yet. We still had to fly back to Beijing, and this proved more difficult than we thought. First, we flew from Lijiang to Kunming (capital of Yunnan). We were only supposed to be in Kunming for about 30 minutes while the plane refueled. We ended up being delayed for about 11 hours. I'm going to send out another email explaining the reasons why in detail. All I'll say about it now is that it was a rather unique event that ended up briefly mentioned on a Chinese news website, though I've been told it was recently pulled (though I have no idea why the government would want it censored). Corporate corruption and protesting occurred. I have about 45 minutes of film footage of the events, and am planning to compile that along with some interviews into a short documentary. It was fascinating, and showed the Chinese people at their finest. Details will be coming shortly.
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