bouncing along the roads of yunnan

**this is a post written during our trip, it just never made it to the blog**

thank you, amy, for working so hard with us on our chinese!!

we have just spent a few amazing days in a part of china very few foreigners get to experience. it would have been impossible without being able to speak the little chinese that we do. mostly, we can thank duff and lindsey jackson's excellent listening skills. i have no idea how they do it. i am still having trouble with english listening.

we left lijiang after katie, duff, and i went trekking looking for bus tickets back to kunming. lijiang and kunming are both amazing cities. they feel, if at all possible, like cities in the western u.s. they are newer and beautiful, surrounded by mountains, and the streets are wide and clean, offering good views of the hills. the six of us caravaned to the bus station and attempted to get tickets to shi gu. we wanted to go to a small town north or west of lijiang, where we were certain to climb in elevation and experience more dramatic scenery. i tried to get tickets, but as far as i could tell, the woman was telling me they hadn't any more. i sent duff back into the line to ask, as his listening is better, and he confirmed. we pulled the book out, looked at the map, and picked some other likely destinations. no tickets. it seemed like we should hire a car. duff and i traveled in a car hired by our friend carol in hunan province. she hid us while she was bargaining, hiring a car for foreigners would cost loads more than doing it for chinese. we expected to pay a bunch. i asked the woman at the information desk and she said if i went around the corner i could find small vans to hire to take us to shi gu. this is my crowning moment of chinese listening to date. i cannot believe i understood her! yes!

we hired a car, and went to this beautiful small town nestled in the hills. the trip wasn't long, and the roads were good. we were comfortable as we wound our way along the mountains. the air was so fresh and clean, and at our elevation, it seemed to sparkle. we stopped to see the first bend of the yangtze, it's a lovely spot with a temple nearby.

we got to shi gu and easily found a hotel. i was shocked at the price. we paid 15 kuai a night for the most beautiful rooms. the hotel had a rooftop area where we hung out later that night and looked at the stars. what? is this still china? air so clear we can see the stars?! it was late afternoon by the time we got settled, and we set out for a short walk before dinner. the walk we ended up taking i hope to remember for the rest of my life. the town is built up a hill from a valley where the chang jiang flows. all around the town, the surrounding hills are terraced into fields. they don't grow rice, there isn't really enough water in the area, but they grow a lot of wheat and millet, i think. grains. we were walking through the town, and along the dividers of the terraces with golden afternoon sunlight. i could spend hours describing this, but i'll just add some pictures. i hope they do it justice.

we saw people living their lives. they town had rarely, if ever, seen foreigners before, and it was a sight to have 6 of us trekking through, grinning. the people who lived in the town were obviously not han chinese, a fact very apparent to me, duff, lindsey and meghan. we were traveling in an area with a lot of tibetans and ethnic minorities. people in the town were wearing traditional dress. especially, as always, the very old and the very young. old women sat on stoops of houses chatting, old men crouched against walls peacefully smoking their pipes.

the next morning we attempted to get an early start, but with 6 people, that can be a bit of a challenge. i think we were all a little groggy from the altitude. i never thought that i would get any form of altitude sickness, but i believe i was suffering from it just a bit. i need to do some cardio-vascular prep before i got to tibet this summer. lindsey and i went out to try and buy a map, a task which proved to be impossible. we did get cookies and mulberries. yum.

we decided to go to a town called weixi. it is mentioned in my guide book with the words 'for the more adventurous.' warning: if you are reading a 4 year old copy of the rough guide, and it says 'for the more adventurous' proceed with caution. the rough guide is notorious for having incorrect distances and travel times, and this was no exception. we expected a trip of 80-100 km, on a paved road. we figured that was a good length for a day trip. what we got was a 5 hour drive there (amazing!!!) and a six hour drive back to shi gu (stressful!). we hired a driver, who, while he was good at driving, had absolutely no idea what he was doing. we weren't far out before we realized he hadn't ever been to weixi before. we were in a pretty remote area, and they signs weren't good. i think a lot of the additional hours we spent in the car were due to the driver's total lack of knowledge and navigational skills.

the scenery on the way to weixi was breathtaking. all the hills were terraced, and there were people bent over working in the fields. behind the hills were snow covered mountains breaking through fluffy white clouds and we could see glimpses of brilliantly blue sky. small villages sat on hills with the houses crowded together. the fields were in rotation. some showed brown and other light green and dark green. some were yellow. the road was lined with wildflowers, we followed clear streams with monks washing. we passed groups of young monks in saffron robes, holding hands, walking in this beautiful environment. we saw children playing and old men and women herding goats on the street. we saw water buffalo and donkeys pulling carts. every time we rounded a bend we would gasp and exclaim with the wonder of what we saw. the five hour drive was amazing, the best money i have paid while in china.

at one point we stopped at the edge of a tiny little town to use the restroom. the driver told katie and lindsay to go into a school. after about a minute, the rest of us realized that we should go too, at least to see the inside of the school. the children were wild about the foreigners. they were, as all children in china seem to be, fascinated by us. they screamed 'hello' and crowded around to take pictures. the kids are from the surrounding towns and villages, the school had dorms for them to stay when their homes are too far away. these children were young, but it made me think of how many of my students went to a boarding school for high school. some of my students have never lived with their parents. they were raised by their grandparents and then went to boarding schools for high school, and sometimes junior high. early on in my teaching career, i realized it was useless to ask about the student's parents. i would get much further asking about their grandparents.

when we finally got to weixi, we were shocked. from the guidebook we had all been expecting a sleepy little backwater town. rather, we burst into a metropolis of 200,000 or so. and it was so developed! there were beautiful shops, and nice stores. also, there was a few outfitters. i think it is a stop for chinese tourists before they head up into the mountains or into tibet. it was getting late, and i was nervous about the driver getting tired and being on the bumpy roads at night. we had an amazing lunch of vegetable dishes and hit the road again.

the trip back was far less pleasant than the trip out, so i'll not elaborate. the driver led us to believe that he had driven the scenic route to weixi, but he'd take the direct route back. in the end, it took longer. the road, if you could call it that, was terrible, and the sitting in the back of the van was truly a challenge. i still have bruises from all the bouncing. the driver had to ask for directions a number of times and when we turned around on the narrow roads, i was sure our back tires would drop off the end of the cliff. we returned to shi gu exhausted and rattled after midnight, but with fond memories of the early part of the day.