July 9 - Nanhua Miao Village (Journey to Kaili - Part 3)

Ni Hao,

So very much happens here in such little time and I am becoming back logged in keeping up my notes. I have met with my students for two sessions now, and I really want to tell you about them, but I will continue with the Kaili adventure first... and later update you on my students.

When last I wrote, I was speaking of the dinner plans, which included selecting fresh fish and purchasing Yang Mei wine from the woman with a small shop of jug vats on the street. Within minutes of these two purchases, we were sitting around a hot pot of the region's specialty item: sour fish. The hot pot is a very large, sometimes wok-shaped pot, placed on the center of a wooden table that has a heating insert. The insert, supplied with electricity, keeps the contents at a slow boil.

It is difficult to escape the rising steam, as the room is small. As a result, between the spicy hotness of the actual dish and the steam rising, the room becomes very much like a sauna quite quickly. Add a few glasses of Yang Mei wine, and you have the proper picture in your mind. The sour fish speciality dish was very good. Like nothing I have ever tasted.

I am slowly becoming less and less intimidated by the chopsticks. Everyone has their own way of holding them, but the idea is to get the food from your bowl to your mouth, whatever that might mean for you with the chopsticks in hand. The stabbing method works especially well for food that has more of a solid texture, like dumplings. Now I am able to eat most foods with the chopsticks and can actually carry on a conversation at the same time. It reminds me of the joy I finally felt when I was able to drive a car and carry on a conversation with a passenger at the same time. For the first week or so, I felt very clumsy with the chopsticks, thereby having a very distant relationship with the food that was offered.

It is custom here to offer many toasts when drinking the local alcohol. The challenge of "Gan Bei" is often presented, which is equivalent to our "bottoms up." The Yang Mei wine is made from local fruits, deliciously sweet, and very easy to consume. As a result, one doesn't realize how woozy one is becoming after several "Gan Bei" declarations. To make a long and rather dizzy story short, my sour fish dinner ended up back on the table, and two very kind Chinese men maneuvered me down the twisty staircase and out of the restaurant quite a time after it had officially closed. Nancy didn't lose her dinner until we arrived back at the hotel, fortunately for her. However, the night of sour fish and Yang Mei resulted in one wicked tie-over into the morning for both of us.

We were awakened by a phone call from Wang Shan before 7 am, wanting to know how we were feeling. Nancy answered the phone, and he asked her to "touch Marianne to be certain that she is alive." He was very worried, as he is very protective of these two American woman who have arrived in his hometown. He continued to call every 45 minutes or so, making sure we were okay. In his words, he was "terrified all night long" worrying about our health. He was very pleased to hear our voices and know that the only residue was a throbbing headache and a sick stomach. Needless to say, we have sworn off Yang Mei wine.

By noon the next day, Wang Shan escorted us on a bus to one of the Miao villages outside Kaili. As I said earlier, Kaili is the "gateway" to many of the ethnic minority villages. China is composed of approximately 90% people from Han ancestry, and the other 10% are the 56 different ethnic minorities. Each minority has a uniquely preserved culture, often associated with particular clothing, customs, foods, handicrafts, and architecture. We visited the Nanhua Miao Village, which was about 40 minutes outside Kaili. One enters a very different and beautiful world outside Kaili. The homes are mostly constructed of wood. Bridges, too, are all wood, and they are made with joint structures that interlock, rather than using any nails. There is a serenity in this place that is peaceful and graceful. Many of the rooftops curve upward just a bit on the edges, and they lines of the roof are covered in a white material that looks like a sort of muslin or thick linen from a distance. This is the China that many Americans might recognize from photos... the old men and women carrying double sided baskets over their shoulders, the women pounding rugs down by the river, the person carrying sticks or greens inside a triangular shaped basked affixed to one's back, etc...


We entered the village via a wooden bridge, and literally every turn of your head offers a site more beautiful than the one before. The land here is used in creative, ingenious, and lovely ways. Terraced crops are everywhere, with the predominant crops being rice and corn. As we walk toward the town, we climb a gentle mountain path alongside many of the Miao village residents. At the top of the climb, there is a group of young boys playing basketball, which seems to be a very popular leisure time activity here. Rarely, however, do we see females playing this sport.

The village itself is comprised of many small houses nestled into the mountain. The path from top to bottom of the village is very people-friendly: a stone path of steps in the center, with two narrower flat path to either side of the steps. This allows for ease of walking while pulling or pushing a wheeled cart on the smooth surface. A great deal of practical design has gone into the planning of this village, making the daily chores and moving about as manageable as possible. I am so very impressed that practicality and logic go hand in hand with the gracefulness of the whole village.

There is much beauty here. Ascending the path of the village, there are many small shops. Here you can purchase crafts unique to the Miao people: silver jewelry, embroidered tapestries, batik clothing, etc...

Wang Shan is of Miao ancestry, so he shared customs and traditions with us as we walked. With very little urging, we were treated to a traditional Miao song and dance by him when we purchased a traditional Miao flute for him as a gift. Wang Shan also has a most lyrical, light, high, and airy voice, and he shared a few Miao songs with us once we reached the top of the village. Many of the songs are about a young man waiting for his lover, wishing for her to appear in his life or to return to him. I am discovering the the Miao people are very romantic.

As we ascended the mountain, Nancy was curious about the very black hair of the older Miao women. She was wondering what mixture they might use on their hair to keep the gray from showing -- similar to the way some cultures use henna in the hair. We asked Wang Shan to translate, and we discovered that the Miao women do nothing to their hair - it is simply naturally a very dark black, even in old age. The old woman, who was carrying a granddaughter on her back in an intricately embroidered backpack, was very flattered that we found her to be so very beautiful. When I asked if we could take her picture, she paused and asked if she could have a moment to put on her good apron - and then I was able to take a picture of this lovely woman.

About halfway up the path, a little girl of about 9 years old began to follow me. We quickly became good friends, and she loved seeing the pictures in the digital frame of my camera. She stayed with me the rest of the time we were in the village, enjoying making what appeared to be the peace sign with her hands in several of the photos. Laughter is easy and free here, and seeing her made me miss my own daughters even more.

I shared with her a little rhyme story my Nana (my Lithuanian grandmother) used to do for me when I was a child. It is "Vido Vido Cushia" which is the story of a little mouse that is in search of some cheese. I remembered my grandmother's callused fingers making circles on my palms, telling how the mouse was scurrying around looking for food. Then, suddenly, the mouse spies a piece of cheese, and this is represented by my Nana racing her fingers up and down my arm. This story always elicited giggles from me as a child, and I witnessed the same delight in the laughter of this little Miao girl. There are no walls here.

By the way, today is my Nana's birthday. She is 95 years old and currently lives in an Alzheimer's Unit in a coal-mining region in Pennsylvania. Her days are spent listening to radio broadcasts and music from the 1940's, which they pipe into the ward. The theory is that most of the people in the ward are existing in that time period in their minds, so the broadcasts create some measure of comfort, stability, and reassurance. When I visited her in this unit, I felt like I was in the middle of a very bizarre episode of The Twilight Zone.

At the top of the village, there is a pavilion for traditional dance performances. There is no schedule posted anywhere and the performance simply begins when it begins. For about an hour, the elders of the village gather at the top of the village. The men position themselves on the steps, and the women tend to gather on the edges of the stage. Again, everywhere you look there is beauty. This seems to be a very social culture, providing many opportunities structurally in the village for gathering. At the same time, amidst all the sharing and talking, a few people in various directions sat alone. There seems to be a respect granted for whatever an individual needs at any given time, and the flow from being alone to blending with the community appears natural and free-flowing. The sense of community, though, is visibly tangible.

I am reminded of a conversation I had with a man from Bosnia a few years ago when I attended an AP English conference in Vermont. He was the driver who came to pick me up at the airport, so we had about two hours to talk on our journey. He came to the United States to leave his war-torn country. When asked how he liked living here, he told me that he did not understand Americans at all. In his country, people work during the day, and then in the evening, after dinner with their families, they move out into the streets, visiting with one another. He told me it was nothing to take a bottle of wine to a neighbor's home in the evening, just spontaneously, without formal invitation or pre-planning. They share the wine, talk of their day, and enjoy the company of each other. This practice, he told me, allowed all of them to feel strong enough and refreshed enough to return to work the next day. The time with friends in the evening revitalized all the members of the community, enabling them to return to work with a lighter heart the next day.

Americans, he told me, lock ourselves in our houses in the evening. We eat alone and then don't go out, don't visit with neighbors, sometimes don't even know our neighbors. We must be a very sad people, he said, without this refreshment that he knew every night. He felt that Americans are very isolated, lonely people, and he didn't understand how we continue on each day with such loneliness and separateness from one another. This man from Bosnia would be very much at home in a Miao village, where they know and live the value of community and sharing time together.

More later... Now our apartment is being outfitted with mosquito netting for our beds and windows. There are literally thousands of the fragile-winged critters in the apartment, and they frequently buzz around my head. There is always the taste of mosquito in my mouth, as they permeate this space. We are hoping that the netting will help us sleep better at night. Tang Gang, our Bijie University liaison, is taking very good care of us while we are here.