Yunnan: Dai Village

Yunnan Trip
DAY 7 (Thursday, February 8th, 2008): Mannuandong Village – Dai People
Today we went to the jungle, well, kind of. We went to a botanical garden and hiked in the woods a bit. On the road we kept passing signs that said that wild elephants lived in the area… that’s wild. We then travelled to the Dai village and met our host families. In this village, they live in houses on stilts… I LOVE these houses because they’re just so neat, the way they’re set up. Underneath the house is open space, except for the stilts, and many villagers parked their cars, tractors, bikes, etc under the house, and had also established homes for their various animals under there. We met our host family and they offered us many fruits (they grow A LOT of fruit) and showed us where we’d be sleeping. They had arranged beds on the floor out of cushy mats and there was a mosquito net draped down over all the ‘beds’ because the Dai village is in a tropical environment, after all. It was hot and humid outside, but inside the house it was cool and comfy. Most families appeared to have many modern conveniences like ‘indoor’ plumbing, TVs, cars, etc. Our family had a refrigerator and what appeared to be some sort of stereo. When I say ‘indoor’ plumbing I mean that they had separate plumbing for each house… the bathrooms were on the second floor with the rest of the house, but you had to go outside to get to it. See the photo album labeled “Dai Village” in Photobucket for a clear picture of what I’m talking about. As I said before, under our stilt house was a (nice) car, 2 motorcycles, chickens, a cow, and a man sitting there, weaving baskets. This man was very friendly and showed us his basket-weaving technique as he worked. Lauren fell in love with the family’s cow – it appeared to be quite young and it was afraid of us, but she managed to get a few pictures of herself and the little cow.
My favorite part of this village stay was hands-down, the family’s 3-month-old baby girl. Once I got to hold her, she was MINE for the time I was there. Literally, I didn’t want to put her down, I felt lonely when I wasn’t holding her, she was just so cute. She had the typical Chinese baby pants on, you know, the kind with a hole in the “underparts”… but they did put a diaper on her sometimes. She was so quiet and cute and smiley, and she even smelled like every other baby smells which leads me to believe that the ‘baby smell’ truly is universal. Even the food was wonderful – we had roasted peanuts, a savory corn dish with lots of herbs, spicy noodles, spicy ‘hash brown’ like potatoes (SO DELICIOUS), and a lot of fruit. We ate dinner with the men of the house, and they kept trying to get us to drink more beer. Chinese beer is not that great to begin with, but it was warm and they kept toasting every 5 minutes… I am being literal when I say every 5 minutes. This family LOVED to toast. It was fun, apart from trying to avoid consuming mass quantities of Chinese beer, and we ate well in the Dai village. There was of course a party with the villagers after we had all eaten with our families, and we all met on the village basketball court… I know that’s a funny concept, but they had one. A bunch of the guys from TBC performed the Backstreet Boys’ “I Want it That Way” for the villagers, and we all laughed so hard because they really got into it. Then they entertained us even more with a medley of dances, from the cha cha and the salsa to step dancing and hip hop moves. I slept well that night until the roosters kept crowing randomly right under the house (‘cause that’s where they live, after all). Before we left after breakfast, the old man of the house tied a string around each of my wrists, and did the same for every other person, and said something in what we presumed was a Dai dialect. Apparently this gesture was meant for good luck, among other things, from what the Chinese people told us.
After a tasty breakfast, we said our goodbyes and left for the village temple. The Dai people are followers of Hinayana Buddhism and many young boys go to live in the temple until they are young men, and then they must choose whether they wish to remain at the temple for life, or return to village life and presumably marry and have a family. Most males choose the latter, and we saw only young monks at the temple. We talked to them through a translator about their lives and then they ‘blessed’ us. As our bus left the village, I got to try a locally grown banana and it was fantastic. Our bus took us back to Jinghong for the afternoon and we were reunited with the other group, Group B, which had done the itinerary in the reverse order that we had. We went to a jade market and I found a rice paddy hat, finally, and had lunch in town. All the men at the market would say “hello” and such and try to talk to us in English, presumably to get us to buy their wares. One of them did ask Lauren for her phone number… she told them she didn’t have a phone.
Then it was off to the Xishuangbanna airport in Jinghong to board the plane to Lijiang in northern Yunnan. I am not lying when I say that this airport was smaller than small. At least, the first part where you check-in was tiny. After you get past security, if you can call it that, then it was bigger, but still, it was a very small airport. Note: carrying around a rice paddy hat all day, including through airport security, is very awkward… people look at you funny because it’s not a normal thing to just be carrying around. In China I should add that for departing flights, you have to wait at the gate and then get on a bus which takes you to the plane, which is parked somewhere on the tarmac. You get off the bus and get in line at the portable stairs that they have wheeled over to the plane parked in the middle of nowhere. It’s kind of funny to me: I don’t know if they do this kind of thing in any other countries? Our plane ride was a bit rough, shall we say, but that’s to be expected…the Chinese are awesome at some things, but flying is not one of them.