whirling around yunnan

duff and i are now back in wuhan. we have been back for almost a week, we are sorry to have been out of touch.

i'd like to recount some of our adventures from the may break trip. we went to yunnan province in southwestern china. all the teachers we know who have been there have marked it as one of their favorite spots in china. the guide books tell readers if they cannot go to tibet, they should go to yunnan. everyone is right. yunnan is a fascinating place.

when duff last wrote, we were in lijiang. lijiang is a city a lot like phoenix, in hunan. there is a really well preserved 'old town' surrounded by the modern city. like in phoenix, a lot of lijiang's city has been rebuilt, so the 'old' really refers to the architectural style and not the actual age of the structures. in lijiang, i believe, a lot of the rebuilding has taken place because an earthquake destroyed a good portion of the town a number of years ago. and it is a unesco site. surprise. china has so many of these. i think italy has more, but that's about it.

lijiang was a tourist paradise, for foreigners and chinese alike. we were only there for a day, but it was plenty long enough for me to get the feel of the place. there were six of us traveling together, and i honestly think we could have stayed and relaxed for the rest of the week, but we were ready for some adventure.

luckily, through amy's efforts, our chinese is getting functional. because of this, we are able to attempt more ambitions traveling. it is amazing to me, especially after having lindsay and katie here, how much english there is in india, and the very different traveling skills one needs to develop to explore these places. the six of us decided to get a bus to a town called shi gu, which in chinese means stone drum. it is in a fascinating area, and very important to china. it was while driving to shi gu that we saw the first bend of the chang jiang (yangtze river). this bend is so important because it is what keeps the river in china, rather than having it flow to south east asia. imagine what a different place china would be without the chang jiang. it would be like taking the mississippi away from the u.s.. without the chang jiang, central china would be without hydrologic distinction, and dry, maybe like mongolia. living along the river, we feel how everything in the area, and central china, depends on it, and is effected by it (in some ways now much less, though, since the flooding has largely been controlled by the three gorges dam). the first bend of the chang jiang is a hairpin turn, a very picturesque site. the chang jiang at this point is still muddy and brown. it is so much narrower than in wuhan, and you can see how quickly it flows as it winds it's way through the mountains. by the time the river reaches wuhan, it has even more silt suspended in it, and the water seems thick and heavy.

the other important historical site in the area is past shi gu, where the red army crossed the chang jiang in 1935 as part of the long march. we didn't make it to the actual site, but being in the area was enough to make an impression. it is a huge site for chinese tourists. the surrounding mountains are high and snow capped, and the valleys are deep, with streams along the bottom. these streams are diverted to flood terraced rice paddies, and irrigate other terraced fields that climb the hills, as they have done for 5000 years. the long march was very difficult for the communist party, and it was difficult terrain upon which to fight of the guomingtang. after crossing the yangtze, the long march only got more difficult as the soldiers passed through snowy mountains at high elevation, and trekked across the tibetan plateau, and the the area between the chang jiang and yellow rivers. the long march ended in yan'an, in shanxi province, a year after in began.

i have another post describing shi gu and environs that i wrote while we were there, i will get that up next.

from shi gu we returned to lijiang very briefly, and headed back to kunming. from kunming we caught the train to wuhan (thank you thank you lindsey and meghan for getting us tickets!). the trains in china are a luxury experience. this train to wuhan wasn't as nice as most, but it was still comfortable. while on the train, i started to learn to knit socks. katie, duff, lindsay and i had gone to a market the day before and bought some beautiful (and cheap!) yarn. i have never knitted anything more complicated than a scarf before (one time my grandma helped me add tassels to the end, but that is the pinnacle of my knitting career). i must have looked troubled because one of the train employees sat down next to me and asked me what i was making. i told her i was going to knit a sock. no. she grabbed my knitting from me and ripped out my work and informed me i was not making a sock, but i would make a scarf. she started me on a scarf, and spent the next 45 minutes directing me. luckily i hadn't gotten very far on my scarf, or i would have been really frustrated. the train employee, and another young lady passenger, monitored me as i knit the scarf. when the train employee left, i heard her tell the young woman to watch me, and make sure i didn't screw up (one of the benefits (?) of knowing a little chinese. i can catch what people say about me, but it isn't always good. sometimes i'd rather not know). the girl looked over my shoulder. sometimes she would look at me in reverse and loose it because she thought i was doing a stitch wrong. sometimes i could prove to her that she was looking from the wrong angle, but sometimes she'd take it from me and knit it again, or make me go back and do it over. it was a neat experience, and someday i will finish a scarf that two chinese woman instructed me to make on a train. when the young woman went to the dining car, however, to get lunch, i'd had enough. katie was going to be with us for a very short time and i was determined to make socks. i knit my communally-created scarf from the needles onto a chopstick. the young woman was shocked to see me finishing this when she got back lunch. at first i think she thought i was stupid and just grabbed a chopstick, rather than a knitting needle, by mistake. a language barrier can be difficult sometimes. when you don't speak the same language, occasionally it can be hard to remember that just because the person speaks stupid chinese (or english, we go through this with the students), they are not stupid. i was monitored for a while longer, but eventually the woman lost interest in my sock. they train lady never came back.

and so we are back in wuhan, and looking ahead. with the may break over, we are winding down our second (and my last) year in china. my mind is occupied with classes, seeing friends, studying chinese, and preparing for my ambitious summer travels.