Day 5: Part II: The Hostage Situation

Day 5:  A story of its own.

At one of our terrace stops we began wandering down the paths. This path wasn't too easy to navigate which meant it wasn't screaming, "welcome tourists." Tober and I were making our way well down and we came to one point where there was a vegetable garden below and we needed to jump down and back up. Well, I jumped down just fine and when climbing up the other side my foot slipped. As I began to fall, I grabbed the first thing in sight which turned out to be a very unsturdy pvc pipe. Said pipe led water from one of the paddies past the garden and in to the next paddy. The pvc pipe clearly wasn't meant to hold me. It snapped and I slid into the vegetable garden about three feet down. I'm ok, just now filthy with mud. Lucky me, there was a lovely Hani woman working in the vegetable garden below. To say she was displeased is an understatement.
I climb back up as best I can, and Tober, from the other side, grabs the other end of the pipe and we piece it back together. However, the clasp is broken so it isn't staying well and is still leaking quite a bit into the garden below. 
Meanwhile, madame Hani is yelling a stream of what I assume to be profanities in Mandarin, but a dialect I can gather no words from. Of course I don't speak Chinese yet, but being in a country where it's the language I can understand bits and pieces occassionally.
Alicia and Elin were only moments behind us and saw the whole accident. Alicia said, "I heard you yell 'I'm ok,' then see you look up, point to the pipe and say, 'I broke this shit, though.'" 
I feel terrible because I've just caused this chaos. 
The Hani woman follows me up the side I originally came down, and the only thing I can grasp from her anger is she wants 50 yuan. This is competely understandable given I've not only trespassed, but wreaked havoic in her garden. 
I point to my pockets and keep saying "meio." I point up and try to mock going to get money and coming back down using my index and middle fingers as legs on the palm of my hand. She, of course, isn't following. She has a death grip on my sweater and if I move hard enough to free myself of her, she A, falls backward into a rice paddy, or B, falls forward into a rice paddy. Either result leaves her more pissed at me and me becoming an even bigger ass. 
Meanwhile, Elin has gone to get Belinda and I'm just dying laughing at this point and the entire situation. As I'm standing there, Hani woman is screaming, at what I assume to be her husband, in the paddies across the way about what has happened. This man is ridiculously enough called something like "ah su ro," which with her accent, and my ears, sounds like "asshole." 
I just look to Alicia and said, "and this woman's husband's name is asshole." Alicia and I die laughing.
So there we are, she and I, standing on the levee. She continues speaking to me in Chinese and I continue saying, "dui bu qi (sorry)." 
Belinda arrives and I tell her the woman wants me to pay 50 yuan, but I need to get my money. Belinda says she wants it fixed and I point to the now, barely leaking pipe and say I've already fixed it as much as I can with no clasp or duct tape.
Belinda goes back with me and together we place the two pieces of pipe together more. The wishbone stick that holds it in place, however, is not stable because of the now muddy soil underneath that used to keep it in place. I find some rocks and place it around the stick, and like magic the pipe remains together and leak free. For now, anyway. 
Madame Hani still insists on 20 yuan, we pay her and bug off. I feel so terrible for A, potentially ruining this woman's livelihood. B, for dragging Melinda down to the terraces. Belinda thinks it is hilarious and we continued laughing about it for the remainder of the day. The rest of the group warns me every time we're climbing down that if I slip not to grab anything and just fall. So, I'm still terribly sorry for causing chaos in the rice fields, but I can now say I've worked in the rice fields in China. Not to mention, I've got one helluva story to tell, too. 

Of course I have photos for proof. Thanks, Alicia :) 

Day 5: A loss for words

Day 5: A loss for words

The day began at 5:30 a.m. in a van full of strangers: three Israelis, two Swedes, a Venezuelan and an American. By some wonder, the woman who runs the hostel we're staying in, Belinda, speaks incredible English. She has arranged for the seven foreigners staying in her hostel to have a tour of the rice terraces. However, at 5:30 a.m. her brother meets us at the hostel, and in pitch black, we drive through villages over dirt road in off road speed and it ends with him dropping us off in front of a path. We assume the path leads to the rice terraces. We follow it, with only the light of the moon as guidance. It's now 6:15 a.m. and we walk upon a balcony.  Below us, we can only assume there are rice fields. We wait an hour in the dark for the the sun to rise. The moon and stars shine brightly in the pitch black sky and to the east, the sun is slowly emerging from behind the clouds. The sky slowly turns oranges and yellows behind the mound of clouds. The view is like looking at a painting. Aside from the cold temperature, I felt I could've been in a museum staring at a mural. It was so surreal.

When the sun rises as high as it will go, the rice terraces are still barely visible beneath the blanket of fog that covers our immediate vision.
We hang around for 30 minutes or so as the fog slowly creeps away and rice terraces begin to emerge to our right.

After taking a few pictures, the man who drove us emerges and asks if we're ready to go and that he'll take us to his sister now (the woman running the hostel.) The seven of us load up in the van and ride for about 20 minutes toward another area full of hostels and hotels. We arrive at Belinda's second hostel where she prepares a Chinese breakfast for us: noodles. We eat and she tells us to head down the village and we can see some more of the terraces up close.
It is still pretty foggy, but the sun is beaming down and the day is beautiful. We make our way through the village past Hani people working hard, Hani children playing games in the streets and pigs in pins in yards.
The fields are foggy and we can only see three to four directly in front of us. I have spent the entire day spouting out adjectives with Aicia to try and find the words to describe this place, but we come up empty in every language each time. The only way to grasp even a quarter of what we saw is to show pictures. To fully obtain the worth of its beauty, you need to book a trip to Yuanyang and see it for yourself! 

View from Belinda's Hostel

 

Below the village

The fog comes and goes all day, but the sun is trying to shine! :)

 

 

 

We walk around the terraces and enjoy the view, even through the mist. Once we reach the top, back at the hostel, Belinda loads us in the van for the grand tour. Belinda's daughter, Eilene joins for the ride. She is quite the character for a four-year-old. She knows little English, Belinda has Just begun teaching her two months ago. Eilene is an instant hit with everyone. We all quickly adopt her and spend the day entertaining and admiring her.

Eilene rides shotgun in my lap for the day as we ride around to the different terraces and villages.
At the first stop she brings back two tiny pieces of hay and places it abover her upper lip and does a kiss face creating a mustache with the straw. She hands me the second straw and I politely follow her lead. We repeat this for the 15-minute ride to the next stop. I am in love with her instantly. We make the next stop, and since it's too foggy for photographs, the others all make mustache, kiss faces with Eline and the sticks.
We're back in the car and she's still entertained by mustache kiss faces, but soon she begins singing "xiaoping guo," and my heart melts. (xiaoping guo is an obnoxiously catchy and famous Chinese song everyone knows, including the foreigners. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZaDQ6Yc8P8 .) I join in singing with her, of course. She realizes I only know the first few words of the chorus and slows down and waits for me to repeat her the next time I sing along.
After this and the next stop, Eline and I are in the front seat again. I pretend to fall asleep and she blows in my face and I jolt awake. She gestures for me to repeat this by pointing at the window and then me and shutting her eyes. I do as she wishes and pretend to snore and every 15 seconds she blows the hair in my face and I jolt awake completely surprised.
From here on out, she waits for me if I fall behind from taking photos. She comes to me with her hand extended. She trusts me and now we are friends.   

 

 
 

Eline picked me some wildflowers <3

When we arrive at Large Fishpond Folk Village, Eline and I dart down the stone path. Belinda has no worries she is with me. Eline and I turn to the others and say "kuai dian er," which is "quickly" in Chinese.
The others make it to the bottom and we all wander down toward more rice terraces. This place is the most beautiful place we've seen the entire day and it's noon now. The fog is finally beginning to clear and the terraces are visible in multitudes and not just three or four feet in front of you.
The stone path down the terraces is surrounded by water flowing on either side. The irrigation system these farmers have created is incredible. This entire people, landscape and lifestlye can not be put into words.
We take more photos of what we've been waiting all day to see: the clear blue sky reflected in the paddies of rice. The endless rows of paddies extending all the way into the valley.
We made our way back to the village and sat for lunch. Belinda does the ordering and the seven foreigners, Belinda and Eline enjoy a lunch of fresh cooked vegetables and purple rice.
When we finish lunch we venture to yet another famous terrace, Bada. The fog has cleared almost entirely and none of us can believe our eyes. The terraces extend for miles in all directions. We walk down the path created taking photos and admiring the majestic beauty that surrounds us and the way the sunlight hits the paddies.
We stop to video and photograph a man working with the water buffalo. The Hani use the water buffalo to wad through the paddies as they follow behind with a tiller. The paddies are mud and water so the buffalo are strong enough to pull the equipment used for tilling the soil. This type of farming has not been done in America in ages. Farming is still hard work where I'm from, but the equipment is far more advanced and industrialized. The things I saw today I find difficult to blog about because I honestly can't find the words to use.

In case you can't tell, I'm scared to death here. There is nothing stopping us from sliding and falling over this cliff! :/

The crew from left to right: Patrick & Eline. Barack, Tuber, Roi. Me and Alicia. :) 

The sun's reflection :) 

 

We made our way back to the top, passing a family's hut with clothes drapped across hay and the levees of the paddies to dry. We moved to the next and last village: Quinko.
This village was about a mile down a curved stone road. We thought we'd never reach it, but alas we stumble upon a very unique village. The Quinko Village has clearly embraced tourism, wheras many of the previous villages had not. Quinko had a museum at the end of their village for tourists. As we walked through the village, no more than a half mile from start to finish, we walked across lunchtime. The entire population of farmers were gathered around tables in numbers of six and seven eating lunch. The women sat together at one end and the men sat together on the other end. A woman grabbed my arm and extended a bowl of rice to me. I politely declined by saying, "I don't want. I'm full. Thank you," in Chinese. Many of them were saying hello; in English and in Chinese. Children roamed unattended by adults and no one cared. This place was a postcard for village life.

 

 

We hiked back up the mile-long stone path and headed back toward the hostel. Eline had fallen asleep while we were gone. I scooped her up and held her in my arms until we arrived, and then I carried her into the hostel office and placed her on the couch.
We paid 80 for the days tour and all sat around the office for a beer and a wind down. It had been a beautiful day and we'd made five new friends by the end of it. The Israeli boys would travel a month in Vietnam starting the next day and the Sweedish couple would continue through Asia for two more months. Alicia and I said goodbye, showered and caught another sleeper bus to Kunming. The next morning we'd go from one bus station to the next to reach our next destination: The Old Town of Dali.

Belinda's husband (Chinese name only)

(: The whole lot :) 

Day 4: Fog & Bewilderment

Day 4:

We woke up to total darkness and the bus hadn't moved since 1:00 a.m. I briefly remember Alicia saying, "the bus has stopped, there is no driver, and I can see nothing." Clearly, I wasn't too worried because I faded right back to sleep only to wake in the exact same spot six hours later. Apparently we'd arrived at the bus station in Yuanyang at 1:00 a.m. They just park and let you sleep until you wake. I woke to Alicia telling me we had arrived and apparently had done so at 1:00 a.m. when we'd stopped.
We walked out to darkness at 7:00 a.m., and a fog so thick we couldn't see the end of the bus or five feet in front of us. A man was going to take us to the first of the terraces but we needed a bathtroom first. We walked to the hostel with our new Israeli friends and freshened up. With our faces and teeth brushed we were ready for the day only to be informed by the man on duty that the fog wouldn't clear any time soon so we'd see nothing of the terraces today.
We had a coffee with the guys as they ate their porridge discussing their travels, our travels, roots, plans and and all the normal chit-chat between 20-somethings.  Finally Alicia and I decided to get a room and hope the sky cleared by tomorrow morning. Originally we wanted to spend the day at the terraces straight from the bus and be back in town by nightfall to catch another night ride to Kunming. The terraces were high on our list so we decided to sacrifice a day in Kunming to stay.
We checked in and spent time reading and napping until noon. Still foggy, we tried to walk around and see something, if anything, of the village. The fog was still unbearably thick. It was so humid we had dew drops in our hair. We found some lunch then grabbed some beers and chilled in the hostel.
We were not down in spirits, just relaxing and staying optimistic that the fog would clear by morning. If not we were screwed because our tight schedule doesn't allow for time here past 6:00 p.m. Saturday.
We sat chatting and drinking our beers while the sunlight came in and out of the room in waves, all the while, still hidden behind the fog.
Like all the other miracles throughout our trip, at 3:00 p.m. I looked out the window and the fog had cleared 75% since I'd looked out the window 20 minutes earlier.
We practically ran out of the hostel and began trekking through the town. We headed up and passed a school and many fields and small gardens that had been invisible just minutes earlier. The sky was a clear blue with the fluffiest white clouds and the fog was drifting quickly to the west past the villages and gardens below, revealing the mountains in the distance. We walked for an hour and a half with no destination in mind. We walked through countless tiny villages. The mountains above and the valleys below us hold a million shades of green from trees to gardens of wildflowers where even the weeds surrounding them are beautiful. 

We are in Yunnan Province in the southwest part of China. The rice terraces we plan to visit in Yuanyang County are considered to be the most beautiful rice terraces in the world. Yuanyang is home to numerous ethnic groups including Hani, Yi, Miao, Han and many more. The Hani people make up 53% of the 88% total ethnic population and are the dominate population of Yuanyang. They have been here since the Sui and Tang Dynasties; 1,300 years ago. 
Today, you can see traditionally dressed Hani women in the colorful headdresses and black trousers and tops with colorful designs embroidered on them. You can see them walking through the villages, working in the fields and working in the streets in construction. The villages we walked through today were full of women in their fifties to seventies working like dogs. The women carry bamboo sticks across their shoulders with large baskets tied to either side. Other women carry the baskets on their backs like backpacks. They can be seen picking vegetables in the gardens below the main road. Many women are laying brick or shoveling dirt and gravel next to the men. These women work as hard as the men here. The men have no distinguishable clothing on, but they too are in their fifties to seventies with leathery dark skin and wrinkles from years of working in the southern sun.

Just working from a storage unit.

Traditional Hani housing

 

 




The children play with nothing. They run through the streets chasing each other and playing with broken toys and they appear incandescently happy.
We saw a group of children in one of the fields below jumping up and down the hills of the paddies.
The sun was shining and it was a perfect 65 degrees now. We smiled and waved at everyone. Many appaeared happy to see us, as Chinese people often do, but some looked sour-faced.

A sneek peek of the rice terraces

 

As we continued walking up, we crossed a place called Artist Village, which was not yet developed. The signs along the outside wall showed this place would be luxury, five-star hotels with pools designed to look like the rice terraces and bar streets full of neon lights and tourist. Alicia and I are both upset by this. If you can't come somewhere so naturally beautiful, sleep in a hostel, or two-star hotel, run by locals, then you don't deserve to see such a magnificent place. 
The Hani people literally live off the land and still trade goods to get buy. The villages themselves are still building and developing enough homes to shelter their people. They don't need this overly touristic place above their terraces reminding them of how little they have. I don't think they mind they live in such an underdeveloped community without proper plumbing or dinning and luxury buildings. Who needs those things when you can wake up somewhere so breathtaking each day and when all your family and it's ancestors, for the last dozen of centuries, has known is working and living in the rice terraces.
I have honestly, not even in pictures, seen something so incredibly beautiful, natural, functioning and simplistic as this community of Hani people.
After seeing the Artists Village and what it will turn Yuanyang to over the next several years with tourism, Alicia and I know why some of the locals were not as thrilled to see us.
If you want to see a part of the world that is amazing, you need to see it like we saw it today, not commercialized and built to comfort tourists like it will become in the next several years.