The last day of our stay at
Hong He University (literally "Red River Univ.") was spent doing a cultural exchange program with a group of Vietnamese girls. They met us at breakfast wearing Vietnamese "
qipaos", a traditional silk, white, high collared dress. We spent the morning walking around parks with them and getting to know each other. Then we went to a restaurant for lunch that served
Gou Chao Mian (crossing the bridge noodles). The noodles get their name from a well-known fable about a woman whose husband used to spend all day studying under a tree far from their home. Everyday she would cross a bridge on the way to where he was studying to bring him noodles. Since she lived so far from where he studied, she would add milk to the broth of the noodles to keep them warm. So now
Guo Chao Mian noodles are always served in a broth with milk mixed in. Then they give you dishes of different vegetables, eggs, meats, and tofu so you can customize your noodles.
After leaving the
Guo Chao Mian restaurant we dropped off our Vietnamese friends and headed to the town of
HeKou (literally River Mouth) to start our first village
home stay. This was by far the most memorable 3 days of the trip. After driving for hours through mountains and terraces we turned off a small road into a
Miao village. The
Miao minority is an ethnic minority group of China who have substantial populations in the Southern Yunnan province and
Sichuan province. They have their own traditional beliefs and language which is completely different from the mandarin-speaking Han majority. When we stepped off the bus we saw the kids of the village come out and start staring at us. There were kids, chickens and dogs running around everywhere. A lot of the women were wearing traditional
Miao clothing while the men wore mostly normal everyday clothes. Most of the homes in the village were old concrete army garrisons that had been converted into homes. The buildings sort of looked like motels. A lot of the homes were grouped around each other to form a 3 sided square with the fourth side as an entrance to courtyard area where they kept horses, pigs, and chickens.
We walked up a hill to a large patio where we put our stuff down, rested, and ate some freshly picked bananas. The kids followed us up the whole way and were obviously very interested in us. They were very shy we when first tried to play with them but after a little while they started to open up. One of the first things everyone noticed was a little girl around the age of 6 carrying a baby on her back that
couldn't have been older than 1 years old. It seemed a little odd to us that a six year old was taking care of a baby without any real supervision. Some of the other parents explained that the girl takes care of here sister all day when she's home. During the week all of the kids go to school and live in dorms at the school since its so far from home. It wasn't really clear where these girls' parents were but it seemed like for some reason they were out of the picture so the six year old sister would take care of her sister all day when she was home and the other families would take care of her during the week.
The families prepared dinner for us which consisted of boiled chicken in a broth, a potato dish which resembled hash browns, some spicy tofu, and some kind of onion dish. For the rest of the trip while we were in any village or when we stopped at little restaurants on the way from one place to another we would eat this EXACT meal. Needless to say it got old after a while. The boiled pieces of chicken had huge bones in every piece which made it kind of a chore to eat and the head and feet of the chicken were always thrown into the broth too. It was a little unnerving to dip the ladle into the cloudy broth and pull out a chicken head staring you right in the face or a chicken foot with the nails still intact.
By the time dinner was done it was pretty dark outside. Our guide then began assigning us families to stay with. I roomed with this guy Ben Fox from Boston who I hadn't really spent much time with but really became good friends with after this experience. We carried our stuff to our family's TV room where there were two beds set up for us. Despite the fact that our family was very poor, eating mostly whatever they harvested or raised themselves and had very little in the way of luxury, they had a full entertainment system with speakers and satellite TV. Meanwhile our beds were covered with a bamboo screen and towels because our family
didnt have extra sheets. When we walked into the room the son, who was 20 years old, was sitting watching TV with his grandfather. I
didnt hear the grandfather say two words the entire night. He was very short with fairly dark skin and a stringy little chin beard. It was a very awkward introduction at first. For about ten minutes we were pretty much silent and pretended to be interested in the Chinese show they were watching that we couldn't understand at all. After a little while we started chatting with the son, our "younger brother", and asked basic questions about his age, family, etc. It was a little difficult to understand him at first because we were so unused to his accent but we got used to it. After five minutes his dad, mom, and uncle walked in and said hello. They seemed very excited to have guests. And of course the dad brought in his bamboo cigarette bong and started passing around cigarettes. I'm not a smoker but I wasn't going to risk offending our family so Ben and I both did a round on the bamboo bong. They all laughed as they watched us try it out. It was definitely a good way to break the ice. Afterwards we continued to talk about our trip, our school, what region of the US we were from, etc.
It was getting late and the family started heading off to bed. Before our younger brother left he brought in two large water basins to wash our feet in. People living in rural areas dont have very good showers or sinks and they work out in muddy terraces all day wearing sandals so they use water basins to wash themselves. They're huge on washing your feet before you go to bed. Our brother must have mentioned washing our feet at least three times that night. Also, he pointed out where the bathroom was. Later that night before I went to sleep I walked down a steep dark path with trash all over the place to a concrete outhouse. As I approached the bathroom and shone my flashlight through doorway a rat ran across the floor. "Perfect," I thought. Right when I stepped through the doorway I was startled by a Kylie Minogue ringtone that wasn't mine and I discovered a much older Miao man in one of the stalls. Did I mention there were no stall doors? ... It was a memorable first experience of the village outhouse.
By 4AM the next morning our younger brother was up and getting his day started. His mother came into our room with him to grab some stuff out of the refrigerator to start making breakfast. I couldn't believe how early it was. Around this time the roosters started crowing incessantly and all I could do was attempt to ignore all the animal noises and try to get a few more hours of sleep. I woke up about every 10 minutes from either roosters crowing, pigs squealing, or dogs barking at each other. When I stepped out of our room my village family mother saw me and brought me a basin to wash my face in and offered me breakfast. The whole group had breakfast together up at the main village patio. It consisted of spicy noodles in broth with a fried egg and some rice pudding. This EXACT meal would also be repeated every morning for the rest of our trip until we got back to Kunming. It wasn't exactly our idea of a breakfast of champions.
That morning we left the village to go on rafting trip in the NanXi river. We were told it was going to be a 45 minute trip but it ended up being 5 hours. I didn't realize it at first but as went farther down the river we all started to notice how disgusting the water was. A lot of villages and homes were set up right on the banks of the river and there were piles and piles of trash on the river banks because people in the villages would just throw their trash behind their house. When I looked at the water I could see tiny bits of trash floating around in it as well. It was definitely a way to experience firsthand the lack of waste management and pollution awareness in rural China. The highlight of the rafting trip was that at one point, the river became the dividing line between China and Vietnam. It was pretty cool to see Chinese people on one side wearing certain types of clothes and Vietnamese people on the other side wearing distinctly Vietnamese clothes.
The rafting trip was also a great opportunity to test my theory that a smiling and waving go a long way when you're surrounded by people who are very different from you. Throughout the trip we were being stared at by rural Chinese people whose expressions were kind of nervous and cold. I thought instead of always doing the awkward stare back at them I'd try to lighten the mood by smiling and waving. Usually as soon as I would do it they'd start waving back and laughing. I got some great responses from the people standing on the banks of the river.
When we finally got done with our rafting trip, our guides and teachers, who were just as suprised by the 5 hour trip as we were, made the executive decision to find a hotel where we could take showers. After 5 hours in a trashy river, we were all very grateful for this decision. After we were clean, we went into town and had dinner. Afterwards our teachers told us that the next night we had to make an American-style meal for our host families. This sounds like a great idea in theory but trying to find American food or even ingredients for an American meal in HeKou where we were definitely the only Americans is a nearly impossible task. Ben and I joined up with our friends Joe and Josh and decided that we wanted to make handburgers and french fries. The only thing we found were buns at a bakery. We were told that the only place to find meat and produce was at the morning fresh-meat market which had already closed. Luckily, our teachers agreed to take us back the next morning.
When we finally got back to the village that night, our younger brother brought in fresh pineapples for us. Delicious.
The next morning we went out to an elementary school for rural children located near the top of a mountain. When we got there the school was literally in a cloud which was pretty cool. We caught the kids finishing up lunch. We spent the next hour playing games in the school courtyard with them. It was a lot of fun teaching them American games and watching them get really into them. After a while I did start to notice that some of the kids were wearing really worn out clothing or clothes that were way too big for them. Most of the kids start working at home before they finish high school and college is far too expensive for them to attend. There is also a lot of pressure to come back and help out at home. It was depressing to think of the limited opportunities these kids have but what was important on that day was that they were getting exposed to different people and having fun. After playing outside with them our group got split into smaller groups that went to the classrooms to teach the kids some english words and phrases. Before we left the school, all the kids lined up outside and sang us a song.
From there we went to the fresh meat market in search of ingredients for the American-style meal we were planning on serving our Miao family. I think we didn't read into the "Fresh" part of the fresh meat market. When we got there there were live chickens in cages all over the place and whole sides of beef hanging on hooks. Not exactly frozen meat paddies. I don't know how this happened but our teacher managed to find a guy with frozen chicken breasts. It was the only bag of frozen, already-killed, already-cut meat in the market so we bought all we could. We decided to adjust the plan and go with fried chicken sandwiches and french fries. The market had produce that had been picked the day before and it was the cheapest shopping experience I've had in China. We bought pounds of potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce, seasons, and flour for a couple bucks.
The village was long way from the fresh meat market so by the time we got back, we had to start cooking right away. The kitchen stove consisted of two enormous woks that sat on top of a wood-fed oven. They made perfect friers. Our younger brother brought in a pile of wood and a lighter. He was about to leave but after watching us struggle to get the fire started with a lighter, he laughed and came over to help us get it started. He went over to a corner of the kitchen and uncovered a pile of chunks of dried pig fat. He lit a chunk of it with his lighter and threw it into the oven and within minutes the oven was roaring.
The entire time we were cooking, members of both families kept peeking into the kitchen with looks of total confusion and amusement on their face. They had no idea what what we were making. At one point, the father of one of the families came in and asked us what we were making. When we told him chicken, he ran outside, grabbed a live chicken, hurried back in and held it upside-down over the wok ready to pull the chicken's head off. We all panicked and kept trying to reassure him that we didn't need it and that we already had chicken, but he kept insisting that we use the chicken. Finally, after pointing to the bowl of defrosting chicken breasts several times and telling him there was no need, he gave up and walked out of the kitchen with his chicken. He was completely confused.
I think the mother and father of the family, who had been watching us cook for a while spread the word to the other family about how weird the American meal was going to be, because after we had finished cooking, both families had already made back-up dinners. We set everything out in a family common room and told everyone to come and eat. We had to put all the sandwiches in a large serving bowl because the villagers eat everything out of bowls. The family members arrived one by one and brought in some of their own dishes as well. Our younger brother sat down first and tried to grab a chicken sandwich out of the bowl with his chopsticks. We all laughed and taught him how to eat a sandwich. Every member of the family that came in after him tried using chopsticks on the sandwiches as well so everyone got a good laugh at each other. The meal was a total success and many went back for seconds on sandwiches and fries. Our younger brother in particular really liked the ketchup and when we ran out of American food, started dipping the Miao food in it. The Miao families made a spicy mushroom dish and some boiled chicken in broth (of course). The delicacy of the night was a huge bowl of chicken blood with pieces of chicken liver floating around. I guess the chicken that the father wanted us to use went to good use after all. At the encouragement of both families, I had a bite of the chicken liver. It tasted exactly how you would imagine chicken liver in chicken blood would taste like.
The dinner was a great opportunity to get to know the family better. We shared some beers with the family, they shared some of their baijiu and passed around the cigarette bamboo pipe, and and told us about how the village worked and a little bit about the Miao ethnic group. The fathers of the two families that we had dinner with were two of five brothers whose families all lived in the village. These five families were the central families of the village. By the end of the dinner, all of the brothers stopped by to say hello. They taught us a few words in the Miao language, and we in turn taught them a few words in english. We also told them a little bit about American college life.
After dinner we all went up to meet all the other families at the main village patio area to watch a good ole fashion cock fight. Everyone got really into it but it was all in fun and none of the chickens got hurt. Some of the villagers also played some instruments that looked like a cross between an accoridion and a large flute. It was a great night and I feel like we all got to bond with our families.
The next morning we left the Miao village in Hekou and set out to the next village in Bamei. I will cover Bamei in the next post.
