Beginning my research

I was in Chengdu for one night and one day before I left for Yangjuan.

It was take a lot more then one blog entry to explain what it is like to live in Yangjuan for a week, or more importantly what it means to me.

I didn’t take my camera, but my classmates have lot of photos for me. I think I will try to make a better entry about Yangjuan in the near future.

The homes in the village are made of mud or clay and wooden beams, a few are concrete. Almost all of them have some electricity; I saw a lot of televisions. They are built around courtyards and often have a large wall surrounding the home. There was little furniture, but some. They cook in the middle of the central room of the home, sometimes the only room, in a pit in the floor. They use wood for fuel and are very good at changing the temperature of the fire. The homes were smoky and some were full of flies. A French non-profit installed water in the next village over. And I guess it inspired Yangjuan, they built a concrete basin above the village that collects stream water, and many homes have spigots in the yard or share one on the road. The other families collectwater from the river. For us they boiled water or used a filter in the school. The school also has a well and spigots. The roads are dirt or mud if itrains. Chickens, pigs, mules, dogs, and other animals wander around the village so the roads are what you would imagine.

The school Steve helps fund is concrete, it has classrooms and apartments for teachers. I stayed in a bed, with bedding, and had a spigot out my front door for water. It has a shower with water heated by a solar panel on the roof. One of the woman who lives by the school cooked for us three times a day. My stay there was very comfortable. The day to day food we had was actually very good, very enjoyable. Most days in the morning or early afternoon Steven would take us on a hike or walk somewhere, and some days we just went out together, some of the students. I did real research on maybe two days. But the rest of the time my subjects were at school so I went with Laura to her interviews. They were all in the homes of local families, we talked to women and their daughters. It was pretty much a dream come true.

The people I met, and the woman and girls I interviewed, were all very nice. Some of the older woman weren’t shy at all at inviting us to their homes or trying to talk to us. They are Nuosu people, part of what the Chinese call the Yi minority. The adults mostly speak very little Mandarin. The girls were great at being patient and trying to understand my Mandarin. I was really impressed by the voices some of the women had, you can tell they grew up insmoky homes and some even smoke tobacco, they have very rough but interesting voices.

One night Steve gave out scholarships to graduates of the school who can go on to the better middle schools in the area. This meant that that night we had a feast. A yak was killed for dinner, along with goats and chickens. We ate in a medium sized concrete room in the school. Big bowls of meat were placed on the table, the meat and innards all mixed up. Two bowls of yak, one of mutton, and some chicken soup. We also had bowls of rice and chopsticks. We all drank beer, and toasting was a big deal, so we drank a lot. I had a blast. I am not making it sound very exciting. I got to reach into a bowl of yak pieces and findsomething that looked like meat, with my bare hands,and then tear pieces off with my teeth and eat it! At one point I had a beer in one hand, and a huge mutton bone that I had eaten half the meat off in the other hand. I am pretty sure one of Steve’s friends, Li Xixing, took a photo of me. Yak tasted fine, it was made salty. The mutton was very good. The room did smell like insides though, like tripe, etc.

After dinner there was singing. The Yi men sang very well. The American kids kinda sucked. We could think of few songs to sing all together. I did more then my share of singing though. I’m glad I warmed up at karaoke a couple times this summer. I think then it really hit home how unique this experience was. I may have found another opportunity to meet people and even eat exotic meats in remote areas around the world, but this was the only way I would ever meet Nuosu, who would sing Nuosu songs to me.

The next night the woman treated us to traditional dancing around a fire.

Another experience I can share is cute one. I was walking back from a hike by myself. I wasn’t feeling very well. I finally got back to the school as three little kids who I recognized as being teachers kids were walking toward me. They had a tea kettle with them. The loud girl asked me if where I was going, and if I wanted to help them. I was so happy I could understand her that I said yes. I watched this tiny boy climb down around the bridge and go to the river. He and his friend tried to fill up the tea kettle. They were not very good at it. I climbed down and filled up the tea kettle. By the time I got back upon the road the kids had run off. So I carried the tea kettle up to the school and gave it to the woman who was cooking us our dinner. I stood with them and tore the leaves off something green for a while. They were talking in Yi, I just stood and listened. It was hot and I wasn’t feeling very well. But it felt niceto be helping, taking care of the kids, and making dinner, just like I would at home.

I think many of you know what my passions are and how they led up to Yangjuan. But not only that the kinds of things I like and enjoy all led up to the week. I’ve been hoping to travel since I was ten. But more than that for years I’ve been hoping to really get to experience life and connect to people who aren’t like me. I study minorities, education, feminism, development, and development through the lens of feminism (which is actually like studying four different types of development). I love Amy Tan type novels were girls get in touch with their roots. I read travel essays about woman travelling alone. This trip to Yangjuan, the chance to do research there,and really this whole year in China is some thing I have been purposefully and unintentionally working toward for a long time. I am so happy to get to do this. I don’t want to sound over the top, but really, this is something that was meant to happen for me, sooner or later.

Anyways, I’ll get some photos from some friends, and you will all love them.