Around June the 30th, we the teachers of Pengtun Middle School were informed of a 9-day break, from July 3rd-11th, coinciding with the administration of the high school entry exam for the ninth graders and some sort of test for the eighth graders.
Had it been earlier in the year, I would have chilled, gone somewhere for a few days, and chilled/prepped some more. However, the combination of just how soon I’m moving back to the States and just how much I’m trying to keep myself busy instead of staring at my computer led to me going happily for broke.
So it was that, after taking Saturday to relax and grade, I bussed out on Sunday with a couple changes of clothes, showering supplies, school stuff, my journal, and a novel.
First stop was Dali, where I wandered up the now-familiar stone sidewalk from the parking lot on the DaLi Lu up into the touristy clutches of the old town. It was strange. I hadn’t been to Dali since mid-May, at which point there were tourists but not that that many. Early July was a very different story, and more than just feeling a little surprised I felt a little uncomfortable. I didn’t know how best to interact with all the white faces, which set of manners to use. Hearing American English from sources other than Colin, Mark, Arianne, and Hallie threw me off.
Luckily, the German Bakery remained the German Bakery, and I plopped down at a table with a slice of raspberry cake crowned with real whipped cream and fresh berries. It was a quick trip. Less than a couple of hours after arriving I dashed off again, this time into the city of Xiaguan, Dali’s modern counterpart.
I met up with Mark, Arianne, and Arianne’s mother (who’s visiting China for a couple of months), and we got rooms in a hotel near the bus station in preparation for the morning’s journey.
The first leg of our journey, from Xiaguan to Yunxian, was a bus ride we’d actually taken once before, going the other direction, on our way back from the English Teachers’ conference in Lincang. I thought then that I’d never be in Yunxian again, but so it went. The awesome thing about Yunxian is that it is possessed of a most excellent handcut noodles shop, and, as our bus got in around noon, we got to indulge.
It’s a small world in rural China, because as we sat chewing our delicious lunch, who should walk in but Laura, on her way down to Lincang. After sharing pleased hugs, she joined our table, and we walked together to the bus station, where we got to see Kristen and Sean before all three of them jumped onto their bus. I’m super grateful for the random rendezvous, because I didn’t think I was going to get to see those two ladies again before heading back to the states.
The ride from Yunxian to Gengma was a pretty one, southern Yunnan revealing itself in flowing, rich greens—sprawling plant-life filling almost every non-sky inch of space beyond the road. The mountains rose, it seemed, taller than they are up here, although Heqing itself is at a higher elevation than Lincang.
Gengma itself, unfortunately, didn’t exactly impress.
There’s this thing with Chinese cities of a certain size—namely that they’re all organized in a very, very similar fashion. It’s the sidewalks that really get me; they’re all paved in exactly the same way. Yellow dotted tiles, guides for the blind, run down the center of every single sidewalk. Gengma was pretty to walk about, with palm trees and very warm weather, but it was the fields I found, when I wandered to the very back of the town and kept going, that made me happiest. I traipsed, largely ignoring the confused glances of the farmers, although I did get into one conversation with a local who told me that Pu’er Tea (which can be really expensive and generally considered good quality) was not at all good and that I should only drink the stuff from Gengma. We did, in fact, buy a whole lot of really nice smelling, really cheap tea.
Cangyuan, where we went the following afternoon, was not too much more exciting. Because it’s only six or so miles from the Burmese border, we expected a city steeped in Burmese style food and culture. Instead, we found a mostly Chinese place with a few Burmese accents. Certainly there were little things that were different from my part of Yunnan, but on the whole it was in every way a Chinese city. So we wandered, wilting in the heat but pleased by the mountains surrounding, eventually finding ourselves in a grocery store where we purchased ridiculous Chinese sweets with the intention of making ourselves a 4th of July “cake” later. This did not happen but was nonetheless fun.
In the morning, we hiked. Hiked, in this instance, ought to be taken as as loose an interpretation of the word as may be, for by “hike” what I actually mean is bushwack, and by “bushwack” what I actually mean is a pleasant enough trudging through a farmer’s hillside corn fields, followed by not at all pleasant crawling up a muddy slope towards a pine forest. It was really pretty, to be sure, and we enjoyed wandering through the woods.
However, when it was time to get back down to the road again, we basically ended up sliding down a severe slope and ending up covered in mud. It was very exciting indeed. A couple locals strolling alone stopped to watch and pronounced us incredibly badass (as the term 厉害 would perhaps be best translated).
The next day, Mark and Arianne went back to school, but Arianne’s mother, Jean, and I went on up to Shangrila (thus named by the Chinese), a Tibetan area of Yunnan. I hadn’t really experienced any Tibetan culture since my brief but powerful trip to Lhasa in 2007, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. In fact, I was a bit nervous that, because this is more or less a designated tourist spot, the government would have made it a little Tibetan theme park.
However, while there were certainly kitchy touches, on the whole it was easy to see a core of organic Tibetan culture. Monks walked the streets, there was a large, active monastery, and the villages just outside the town were entirely different from those in Heqing and reminded me really strongly of the ones I’d seen in Tibet itself. While it was a short trip, it was so relaxing, and I’m really glad I was able to go. I also bought a small yak wool blanket for myself, woven with Tibetan motifs, that makes me really happy.By the time I got back to school, almost a week after I’d left, I felt incredibly alive and rejuvenated and more than ready to jump into my last week of class.
(I think the sleepy baby yaks helped)
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