oh yunnan

Ok so I’m tired of the Chinese internet. It is always slow.

Anyways…. The next morning we left the Mushan Village and traveled all day to the Jianshui. The bus ride overall was around 9 hours with a break for lunch and dinner. We traveled through the most beautiful countryside and mountains even though at times I was worried that our bus was going to fall over the edge of the dirt road. (mom don’t be scared I am still alive)

Anyways when we finally got to Jianshui a bunch of us went to visit a Confucius Temple. It was built in the Yuan Dynasty and is the second biggest Confucius Temple in all of China. During World War II the city was bombed several times and at one point the temple was actually struck and signs can still be seen. Afterwards we met up with a bunch of the other kids and walked through the city and just outside the city walls. This is where we had our first interactions with fireworks.

I haven’t been afraid of fireworks since I was 10 when I didn’t like the noise and refused to go to the park on 4th of July, but China brought out a whole new fear. Lets first start out by saying that the Chinese celebrate their New Year for a total of three weeks. The beginning of the celebration is a week before the actual New Year and commences two weeks after. This means that by the time we arrived in China the New Year was already under way. The color red and fireworks are used through out this period to ward off evil spirits and they are everywhere. Every street is decorated in red and every sidewalk is filed with stands selling fireworks. Of course being Americans who couldn’t resist the temptations of fireworks that are usually forbidden at home and cheap as hell, the boys bought enough to keep them entertained through the night.

So eventually we all went and got dumplings for dinner and then met back up with the rest of the TBCers to go to a performance at Chaoyang Lou tea house. The performance was a very old local music performance with traditional intruments. Afterwards, back at the hotel we were invited to a wedding reception out in the main courtyard, just another sign of how Meiguorens are treated like celebrities.

The next day we had our last really long bus ride to Jinghong City which is located along the Mekong River and is the capital of Xishuang Banna Autonomous Prefecture. The county is known as having an eternal Spring, climate-wise. Craving food Erin, Jasmine, Ben, Cait and I went on a search for food. Now since it is the New Year season in a lot of main cities stores, shops and restaurants stay closed because the Chinese go back to their hometowns to celebrate with their families. So we found this little hole in the wall restaurant and not knowing any Chinese we just asked for a beef dish and rice. The beef was just well different so we decided to try again with chicken. Bad decision. The next thing we knew we had a plate of chicken probably gizzard with a head and the claws included. Yum.

The next day we went to Nannuo Mountain where we hiked all afternoon. This is the area of the Hani ethnic minority, descendants of a branch of the ancient Qiang people, a nomadic tribe from the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. They are famous for their rubber trees and harvesting of tea leaves from 800 year-old “King Tea Trees.”

When we got back from the hike the tour guides had set up a bike tour around the city for us. But when you get a bunch of college students together with a competitive edge the bike tour turned into a race. We quickly lost about ¾ of the group including our guide and just happened to take the bridge across the Mekong River and outside the city. The road took us along the Mekong river up and over hills with some beautiful sights. None of us wanting to be the first to stop we rode for around 2 hours and we were all completely drenched by the time we found our way back to the hotel. I’m proud to say I led the pack for the majority of the way too.

Later we went to the Mengle Great Buddha Temple. I was really excited about this because it is Chinese religions that have always somewhat fascinated me. However, this temple was not what I was expecting. It was HUGE and I mean massive and covered in gold and it wasn’t old, which is one of my main attractions, but it was beautiful. We were able to witness the monks nightly chants, which I guess was like attending a mass from the outside looking in. It was weird though. The monks were of all ages, mostly children, and came in and out, it seemed, as they pleased. We even saw one little boy take out his cell phone and text someone and another teenager leave to take a phone call. After every couple of chants the monks’ curiousity of the white people in the back of the room overtook their focus and they would turn to look at us, another time in which I felt this wasn’t at all what I thought it would be. Discussing this with a couple of friends later on our way back to the hotel, Kelly made a good point by saying that they are students and while we expected something really religious this was more of just a class to them. Thinking about it this made perfect sense, if they were to come into our classroom they would see exactly the same thing.

That night we went to Meimei’s café and got pizza and looked for a place to go out to for the night. After a good search we ended up at this awesome gay techno club.

Day 6 we started off by rafting down the Mekong River to Ganlanba which was about 2 hours away. It was freezing and we mistakenly got into water fights among the boats, which just made us wet and even more cold.

Next supplement soon…..