From My Seat in the Sky Overlooking Southwestern China

I never imagined that I would see it as such a luxury. I guess I always knew it was, but this time I flew on a plane it was incredible. I had a seat, I had room, and that seemed like I had it all. The three hour flight flew by, and soon we arrived in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan. Coming from -5 degrees Fahrenheit in Liaoning to mid-eighties in Yunnan felt wonderful, and to top it off the entire city was incredibly modern. It reminded me of a Beijing that had no pollution, had palm trees, and was not a hassle to walk around. Warren, Gavin and I walked around the city the first night, exploring the darkened allies, trying to find some street food, but instead found a couple walking a Great Pyrenees. Definitely the largest dog I’ve seen in all of China. It reminded me of home, and I played with the dog, getting a bout of temporary nostalgia, before walking on, out of that ally and wandering into a chain restaurant, serving one of the specialties of the south, mi xian, or rice lines, a kind of noodle. My bowl ended up having pig ear’s, baby octopi, uncooked eggs, solidified pig’s blood and other, unidentifiable objects. Warren, Gavin and my bowl all smelled different, mine smelled like wet dog, and tasted that way too, but for some reason was delicious. And pig ears are actually pretty good, but not good for your hearing like some people claimed. We walked back to the hotel and the city was alive with lights. It was beautiful. And we’d only been in the town for three hours.
Our first assignment was a scavenger hunt in the city. The goal was to go to a scenery spot and interview a person about the spot. Warren, Gavin and I went out again, with no intention of using public transportation. We walked out of the hotel and used the small map that was in our books, but ended up trying to walk through the side roads to find places. We stumbled across a Buddhist temple and went in. It was built in the center of a man made pond. There was construction going on inside the temple to refurbish the place. I decided to get my interview out of the way and stopped an old man, spinning his prayer beads through his hands. He told me about the renovations that were going on in the temple. They had just added a whole grove of trees; they were renovating places that had fallen into disarray as well as repainting the place to make it new again. The old man took an interest in me for being able to speak to him, but quickly reverted back to praying and I walked out of the temple and we walked on, trying to find more and more scenery spots, so we could take the whole city in on our last day in Kunming. We wandered through parks, went to the zoo, ran into friends at the zoo, stopped by a local amusement park and went window shopping. We ended up walking off the map of the city. Warren and Gavin ended up leaving and I went out with Chris and Sophie for not local food. I had my fill of it the night before. I have to say, that was the best pizza I’ve had in ages. It’s no Geraci’s, but still. I loaned Gavin my cell phone and room key, so when we got back to the hotel, I had no means of getting in. I wandered out to a park outside of the hotel and sat and looked up at the stars, wearing shorts, and feeling as if this was the beginning of a great trip.
I was awoken in the middle of the night, 1:30, by a call on my phone. My body was so tired from having walked the whole day, and I answered it yawning, not quite awake, “Wei?”
“Your father’s in the hospital! Your father’s in the hospital! He’s having a quadruple by-pass!”
My mind was awake now. I jolted off the pillow, and threw my legs off the bed and into the cold to get me up. “Wha…? Mom?” I gave him a call because he wasn’t having it yet, and I don’t know what I’d do without him. He told me not to worry, and when it the call ended, I just laid awake the whole night, staring at the white ceiling, thinking faster than I’ve ever thought before about what to do, but with nothing I could do. I rolled out of the bed with heavy eyelids and got on the bus for six hours before arriving in Mushan. No, it’s not the one from Mulan. It’s a small village in the middle of their fields. The roads are uneven cobblestones; the houses look like they’re adobe or something along that style. The entire population is 933 people. Most of these people have just started practicing Mandarin, so the older people don’t know it. We got off the bus to be greeted by two lines of women dragon dancing, which is a traditional dance of the Yi people. In China, there are 56 different minorities, other than the Han people, and Yunnan is the most ethnically diverse place in China with upwards of 40 different minorities living there. But back to the dragon dance, the Yi women wore traditional garb and carried sticks attached to a dragon. They waved it back and forth so that the puppet looked like it was alive, and then the lot of us walked between the two rows as the ladies began their high pitched singing. We went to the basketball courts in front of the town square and were divvied up into our host houses. The mayor of the town called a meeting together and we all went. The village is in an autonomous prefecture that allows the people to keep their culture without being forced to assimilate. Another benefit of the autonomous prefecture is that if you’re a farmer, then you don’t have to pay taxes. In the whole town, only three to six people go to college a year. One year there was seven and they were extremely proud of that. But if you go to college, then the town, their home, has nothing to offer them anymore and they don’t return. I played catch with some of the kids in the village, and they began to like me and a couple others, whereas one kid lit a ball of paper on fire and threw it at Ben. We had a basketball game with some of the kids, and I was able to dunk on the hoops. I felt like a superstar, even if I was still really bad. When the evening came around, we had a performance of dragon dancing and singing. It was nearly two and a half hours long, but they let us go up and participate in their ancestral rituals. I danced with the women in front of the whole town. And then in the middle of the performance, the announcer said, “Now it’s time for a song from our American friends.” Apparently Bi Laoshi signed us up to sing, and by us, I mean the Song Dynasty. Chris looked horrified, I was surprised and Gavin was rearing and ready to go. We got up on the stage, and officially went on tour. Beijing, Mushan, where next? We were awful, but the people in the village loved it. They cried for an encore, but we were saving our repertoire for more events. The night got cold and I wasn’t wearing enough, so I went back to the house cold, where our host poured Gavin and me boiling water to stick our feet in. He was a coal department worker in Hunan, but I didn’t retain much of our meeting because my brain was running overtime and I went to sleep.



We said good bye to our host family, had a breakfast of untoasted toast and got on the bus to eat at a Muslim restaurant, before moving on to Tuanshan, a well preserved village, and we wandered around there for a while. Nothing happened, except for a crazy lady, tried to feed us and hug us. It was a bit sad. She crushed an orange slice on Li Laoshi’s cheek before he ran off and she chased him. We got on the bus and arrived in Jianshui. It was a small big city. I could walk everywhere within ten to twenty minutes. Palm trees lined the roads, and traditional Chinese architecture was scattered throughout the rising modern parts of the city. We didn’t have much time to explore because of the time we arrived there, so I went to bed early to prepare for the next scavenger hunt.
Today was one of the best days of the trip, perhaps in my life. I got with my scavenger hunt group and headed out early. Ian, Maegan, Annie and I were out to find everything. We started off at the Confucian Temple where we interviewed old, middle aged, and young people to see how they felt Confucianism affects their lives today. Most of the people spoke with such an accent, that it was barely intelligible, but we managed. They all had the same views, but the older they got, the more in-depth they got with their point. Confucianism played a role in instilling manners in the people and getting rid of the chaos that comes without the basic foundations of the belief. The belief resides in everyone according to the interviewed people. But we soon left the temple and I realized how beautiful the town is. The climate makes it feel like the city moved into the jungle. The scavenger hunt ended and I went and sunbathed out at the park in front of the Confucius temple. Around three in the afternoon, I got more invitations to go have dinner, than ever before. From SYA kids, to random people off the street saying I was a shaui ge. But I had promised Warren to go to dinner with him and a family he befriended. We walked to the train tracks and met the family, a twenty something year old man, an extremely large headed kid, the man’s girlfriend, and his girlfriend’s brother. They walked us back to the main road and we got in a taxi. The taxi stopped in front of a restaurant and Warren and I started heading in when our host grabbed our arms and pointed to an enormous building across the way. There were stairs going up to the entrance, and people lining the sides of the stairs. At the top were a bride and a groom. Warren and I looked at each other dumbstruck. They were taking us to a wedding… We walked up the stairs and wished the couple a happy marriage, before we were led into a room that had one thousand plus people in it; I was the only white person in there. Well, I was more red from getting burnt, but people began to notice. Our host sat us down at a table and we ate. We feasted. There was a performance going on at the front. I watched and ate with Warren. One of our hosts left, but we kept eating. Then from the stage in front of the thousand people, the announcer said, “And now a speech from our American friends.” Warren and I looked around to try and find the other Americans. How come we hadn’t noticed them before? And then came the sinking feeling in my gut… we were their American friends. My host came and dragged us to the stage. And there we stood, next to the bride and groom and in front of 1000 faces all looking intently at the people in front of them. My mind was blank, what should I do? Warren looked at me like you’re Chinese is better. And I thought of something. Wedding Crashers. It was worth a shot. The people then tried to make us sing a song. We then wished them a happy marriage and hugged the bride and groom. We walked off the stage and everyone left. We were the closing ceremony on their wedding. My heart was beating harder and faster than ever, everything felt like it was slowed down. Our hosts led us out and wanted to continue partying with us, so they hailed a cab and drove us to a KTV. Karaoke sounds like it’d be fun. Our host invited his friends over and then tried to match us with a girl from his friend group. They rented a room at the KTV and then placed a box of beer in front of us. The girls got excited and wanted us to sing an American song while they got more and more wasted. Unfortunately this KTV only had Britney Spears songs and Puff the Magic Dragon sung by an Asian man in a cowboy hat. Warren and I sung Puff the Magic Dragon and then sat down, each of us sandwiched by two girls, who were getting more and more handsy with every glass. I endured terrible singing, while they started a drinking game and tried to get us to play. I told them that our beliefs didn’t permit us to drink. We were Muslim. They tried to tell us that our mosque, was all the way in America and we were all the way in Yunnan, China. I somehow got one of the girls fawning over me to take the hits for me and Warren did the same for him. Zhang Lian was taking the hits for me and laughing and getting progressively closer to me; her hand moving slowly up my thigh, and then my phone rang. “Wei?”
“Hi, it’s mom.” I stood up and left the room. Zhang Lian pouted, lost and took another shot.
“How’s dad?”
“He’s fine.” My mind was put at ease and we talked briefly before I went back to the room. One person had started smoking and blew his smoke carelessly. I sat down trying to avoid it but to no avail. Zhang Lian smiled upon my return, and the girl on my other side spilled her drink on me and now I reeked of alcohol and cigarettes. If the teachers smelled this at the meeting tonight they’d be quite pissed. We went back to the game, until we had to get back to the hotel so we could get rid of the smell before the meeting. We managed to get it off and the meeting went off without a hitch, but remember kids, don’t drink and smoke. Bed was a treat after such a long day.




I woke up early and Warren dragged me back to see the family at the train tracks. We sat around their house, they had a German Sheppard on their roof that barked at us as we walked the through their courtyard. We sat around and discussed meaningless things with the family, until they dragged us to go get our pictures taken in front of one of the city gates. There were old people playing chess, some taking a stroll with their caged birds, (遛鸟,) others practiced Taijiquan and more just watched the whole scene. It was an ordeal to get the pictures taken, and we got back to the hotel in time to board the bus for a five hour long bus ride on winding roads overlooking thousand feet drops on a poorly paved road. It felt like the bus could roll off the side any second and we’d tumble to our deaths. I fell asleep, and awoke to a bump that threw me off of sleeping on Warren. The driver liked to pass people on the road that was barely two lanes and you couldn’t see more than 100 feet in front of you because of the curves. It was only a bit nerve wrecking. But the whole ordeal made me wonder who would make a road through this part of China. We got to the town on the top of a mountain, Yuanyang, which is the county seat. And here we stood on top of a mountain, in a town in the middle of what seemed like nowhere, overlooking the start of terraced rice fields. But there was absolutely nothing to do in the town so Warren, Jamie, Gavin, Chris, Nick and I went to a computer bar and played Chinese video games, or games in Chinese. But for some reason the games didn’t do it for me, not even Resident Evil 4 and I left early and went to bed.
I woke up to a world shrouded in mist. This was a mist unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. You couldn’t see anything past ten feet in front of you. And then we boarded a bus to drive us to the start of our hike to Shengcun. We began our hike through the terraced fields and we couldn’t even see the terraced fields. They were all in fog. The hike was mainly white, with trees around the path, and occasionally a break in the fog that showed the fields below, and it looked like Minas Tierith from Lord of the Rings. We stopped for lunch around noon and then the fog blew away. But it didn’t dissipate, it just moved. It was a white wall that just blew around and obscured certain parts of the mountains. And I got my first view of the terraced fields. It was incredible. The people fill each tier with water so that the mud walls don’t break, and all the water acted as a mirror that made the whole world look like sky below us and sky above us, with clouds swirling around us. The wind changed and the white wall of fog came back and enveloped us, but passed again. It did this for a while before we finished lunch and continued on the hike. We walked through small villages situated between the fields. One of them had a wailing man’s voice erupt from everywhere. I asked a person what the reason for the wailing was. They said a person had died and the mourning family had hired him to wail for days. The hike dragged on and the sun beat down hard. I walked on carrying the medicine bag for SYA and my shirts, all three that I had put on that morning. The tops of the mountains gave views unlike anything I’ve ever seen. We finally arrived in Shengcun and waited till the next day to see the market.



The room I was sleeping in was on the top floor of the hotel. The sixth floor had an open roof, so the hallway was actually the roof, which made it easy to stargaze at night, but even easier for the fog to get into the rooms. I wandered the market with Warren and saw a butchered dog. I never felt guiltier for liking something. Dog is delicious. The market was interesting, quite the array of people. But we soon left to hike to a perfect position to watch one of the most beautiful sunsets ever. We hiked through mountains, and whenever I get out in the middle of the wilderness, I feel so in touch with myself. We got to the place we were hiking to as the sun was making its descent across the sky. The places name was Laohuzui, or the Tiger’s Mouth. It was along a road and tripods had claimed all the spots along the edge except one. I got to it and shared it with Lauren. The sun fell from behind the clouds, I began hearing Here Comes the Sun, playing in my head and the sunset had begun. Below us were thousands upon thousands of these terraced fields that reflected the sunlight back up at us, slowly becoming the colors of a perfect sunset. There were practically two sunsets, one from the ground and one from the sky. The ground one looked like a puzzle though, because of the lines from the terraces. It fell behind the mountains and it was beautiful. It looked like a god was dying. I can’t think of any other way to say it than that. The very end of the sunset was anti-climactic, as was anything that happened with Lauren that night. We got to the town of Laomeng in darkness. Guys were in one hotel and girls were in the other. The guy’s hotel turned out to be a sex hotel. I’d feel bad if it was hourly. The walls were stained with who knows what, the floor was sticky, the wall had a naked poster on it, and in the drawers were anquantao’s at five kuai a pop, if you catch my drift. The back of the door had a sign in Chinese saying, “Practice Safe Sex, Don’t Catch Aids. Enjoy Your Stay.” I went to Warren’s room and Ian, Warren’s roommate, had a black light for some reason. After that, I decided this was going to be the first night in four years not to do my push-ups. I went to bed, trying to make as little contact with the bed as possible.
I got up early and explored the town’s market. The market’s we’ve visited and were going to visit happen every so often, according to the lunar calendar. We were lucky that they were all occurring when they did, so that we could see all of them. Back to the market. The people were dressed in their minorities’ traditional garb. I didn’t buy anything, but as I was walking back to the hotel I saw an accident. A child wandered in front of a motorcycle and the motorcycle toppled on top of the kid as the driver tried to avoid her. Before I could go over to help, an entire crowd of people swarmed the scene and was helping the scene. I couldn’t even get close. The child was alright, just scraped up, and bruised. The scene left me stunned. We were ushered onto a bus shortly after and drove for thirteen hours to our destination of Yuanjiang. I was beginning to get a bit sick and went to sleep right away.
We drove for six more hours the next day before arriving in Jinghong. Jinghong is the capital of the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, which is in the extreme southwest corner of Yunnan, sharing a border with Myanmar and Laos. The Mekong River runs through Xishuangbanna and is used as a means to trade with the south. But I find the most interesting thing about the place is the battle for its name. It outbid other places to call itself Shangri-La. I have been to Shangri-La and it was perfect. The climate is mid eighties to nineties all the time. Warren and I went and walked around. Li Laoshi told us that the Dai people, one of the many minorities of China, are extremely beautiful. We agreed with him. The two of us ate at a Thai restaurant before going out and continuing our exploration of the city.
The next day we got on rafts and started down the Mekong River. Our rafts looked like two long cylindrical balloons strapped together with an engine behind it. We began to go down the river; our driver looked like an ex-Vietcong member who turned to helping tourists raft down the river. He had a big straw hat on his head, dressed in a loose vest and had a lit cigarette that I wondered how it stayed lit the whole time. While we were cruising down, one guy going the opposite direction used a bowl and splashed me with water. Our driver smiled, missing a few teeth, and handed me a bowl. Get the next guy. This was my mission. I drenched another boat with SYA kids. Thus the battle of the Mekong began. The drivers, steered wherever I pointed and I would scream out lines from war movies and fighting movies, before the driver would T-Bone another raft and we’d use the bowls on ours to make everyone soaking wet. The other boats had bowls too, and the battle raged on. The teachers made us dock on a deserted beach and give them all the bowls. Bi Laoshi then started a competition for skipping stones. He was incredible at it, and so were a few other kids in SYA. They could get thirty plus skips. I got fifteen once, but that was a complete fluke. You could only get in the competition if you could get ten plus skips whenever you wanted. I went back to the rafts and let the sun warm me up. I took off my shirt and we got back on the rafts, as we headed into periodic patches of white water. The driver then motioned to us and grinned as he pulled out more bowls. Not anymore. We were dry. We landed at a small patch of dirt and headed off to a small village called Manling, famous for producing all of China’s most beautiful women. All the buildings were built on stilts. The under portion of the houses were meant to keep the livestock tied up, and the house part above was for the sleeping and living quarters. It was surreal. We went out and watched the basketball game between SYA and the boys of Manling. It was funny, the Manling team was all wearing New Orleans jerseys, but during the breaks they didn’t meet with their coach like the SYA kids did, they smoked. Got to get that adrenaline pumping. Our team was demolished by twenty points. We went back to the house and had dinner while the basketball court was transformed into a stage for the night’s performances. Apparently the Song Dynasty was scheduled to sing again, but I was getting sicker and sicker, and my voice was reaching deepness approaching James Earl Jones level. Of course everyone knows the limit of one’s voice’s deepness as it approaches terminal sickness is James Earl Jones. I guess I was more on the Batman level. I managed to get the Song Dynasty out of performing, but was instead forced to go and perform in more cultural dances with some of the most attractive Chinese females in China. What a shame. The performances dragged on, switching between those of SYA and those of the village and at the end, we lit rice paper hot air balloons and sent them to space. They looked like stars. We headed back to the host house on stilts and got ready for bed. Chris, Jamie, Erick, Gavin, James and I all had to share one long mat. Gavin went outside to meditate so we decided to play a trick on him. And then subsequently play steamroller. It felt like we were all little kids again.



The next day came after a scary night. In the middle of the night, we heard the sound of a pig being slaughtered beneath us, as it squealed its last breaths away, while an ancient grandfather clock rang out ancient moans from its spot on the precipice it stood on. The noises of the night were unsettling, but we made it through alive. We said goodbye to our hosts and headed back to Jinghong. George, Nick, Gavin and I got Hot Pot and then headed to get Xiangjiao Bing. That’s something I’m going to have to make when I get back to America. Just remind me to get skimmed milk with coconut sauce… I digress. I headed back to the hotel and ran into Karina and Annie. The three of us went out to the Hotel’s pool and sunbathed. I jumped in the pool, thinking I had clothes to change into, but forgot that laundry was still being done and ended up waiting for them to dry the hard way. I hung out with friends in their hotel rooms and then decided I would go clothes shopping with Karina so that I could try and find some dry clothes to wear. On our way to find clothes we ran into an arcade and ended up Easy 2 Dancer-ing and playing Chinese Time Crisis II. Claire came and found us and we headed off to dinner. My clothes had dried somehow. We met up with Annie, Hannah and Josie-Dee at yet another Thai restaurant and had a delicious meal. We went for dessert and an American café and I split a Chocolate and Apple pie with Josie-Dee, as well as Brownies with the other girls. I went back to the hotel and watched TV with a friend in her hotel room till curfew.
We left Jinghong to start a three day trip through villages. We arrived at a market and I wandered it until we headed off to the village we were going to stay at. The village’s name was Manlai. The houses here were also built on stilts. We had a basketball game here with the locals, and I found my way to the roof of a building overlooking the court and announced for the game. “Nicoloff passes the ball to Reddy… who was apparently not ready for that pass.” Just stuff like that. But I wandered off with Tsechi and Warren during it and headed to a water reservoir in the middle of the forest off to the side of the village. There were dead trees reaching out of the water as if they were grasping to the very last bits of air before dying. It was nice; it was completely surrounded by trees and large hills. We just enjoyed the view there before heading back to the host houses to have dinner. My host dad had two kids, because the first was a girl, but he said that some minorities are allowed to have up to three kids, the Bulang people for example. It surprised me that there was this kind of leniency on such a topic. Dinner finished and Erick, Gavin, Warren and I headed back to the secluded reservoir in the shadows of a descending sun. We sat around it and the light disappeared. We just sat out there looking at the water in the darkness, reflecting the one and only star visible from our point of view. A cold breeze rolled off the water and I realized that Valentine’s Day was coming up. *shudder*We walked through the forest using my flashlight to try and find the way back to the village. It became like a Horror movie, Blair Witch Project if I’d guess anything. But we got back and found some SYA kids at the basketball court. We chilled there, and I briefly lay down and looked at the stars with Claire and Karina. There were just so many. Erick and I returned back to the house and watched the family play with their many kids. The girls sang communist party songs and the family just laughed and laughed while their two year old son danced and danced and danced. Erick got a call from his Family in America and talked in Spanish. I haven’t lost my listening comprehension, just speaking ability. Oh well. Went to sleep dreading.



Chi chi chi pa pa pa. Chi chi chi pa pa pa. Friday the 13th. Our host family gave us a thread bracelet to wish us a safe journey wherever we might go. We hiked for eight hours before arriving in Man’gang. Our host was an interesting fellow. At dinner he began to drink. Seven cups of baijiu later he was completely hammered and didn’t even realize he was hosting people and began to try and throw us out of his house after trying to force alcohol down our throats. To no avail. Baijiu is 55% alcohol, just as a reference point. But when he was drunk he said some interesting things, like he could have more children if he wanted to because he was a minority, but he didn’t want to deal with the paperwork, or if America and China got together the world would be ours. And then he’d laugh afterwards, with intermittent vomiting between his wasted giggles. I learned a lot about drinking customs in China. I used Xue bi, (sprite,) and pretended to be in on the festivities. The night ended very late… I’ll just leave it at that. It was a pretty bad Friday the 13th for some.
Well, Valentine’s Day finally arrived. I had no valentine. We left the village and hiked for four hours to get to Manzhao. Manzhao was a fairly developed little village. The houses all looked like condos and outside some of them people were making paper. On top of the mountain-like hill at the side of the village was a monastery for Theravada Buddhism. Warren and I explored the place in order to see the whole town. We went up to the monastery and found a secret path that led to a cliff that overlooked what was either a lake, or rice paddies completely submerged in water. It looked more like a lake. We jumped down the cliff and were wondering where all the pretty girls were in the village when we stumbled across a cache of them. We walked into it and sat down. Warren got a call from a girl in Jinghong and left, leaving me with the girl he had his eye on, but she left, and so did I. I had my eye on someone else. It had been on someone else for a while now. I wandered the streets when the girl Warren was after came up to me and brought me to her house. Warren saw me walking with her and flipped a lid. He wasn’t used to being turned down in China. But I saw his distressed look and continued wingman-ing for him, which ended up with her inviting the both of us into her house, then her bedroom. She told us to lie down on her bed, but Warren and I just looked at each other and I said, “This could be the start to a very bad, gay porno.” To which Warren said, “When is there ever a good, gay porno.” Touché. We decided we were going to stand, and she got on the bed and went to turn the TV on when the fan next to the TV started blowing her hair wildly, like what model’s hair looks like, as she bent over to turn the TV on. It was a bit too… clichéd. Too… movie-esque. I tried to leave them and I did eventually, which earned me Warren’s eternal thanks and ridicule from my other guy friends. But I didn’t care; I was making someone else my valentine. We had dinner with my host family that didn’t speak any mandarin whatsoever and only parroted what we said, before heading up to the Monastery to watch the monk’s performance of their prayers. In the village, all the boys go into the Monastery to study the ways of the monk for three years. After those three years are up then they can go back to school, or continue in the ways of the monk. They chanted for nearly thirty minutes, wearing their orange garb, and then the ceremony was over. I went and talked with the monks for a bit, before deciding that it was too late, and that this Valentine’s Day was a complete waste, like so many before. I walked to the front gate of the Monastery and ran into “Lo” as I shall refer to her here. She was standing there and I started talking with her, when I somehow brought up the secret path that Warren and I had found earlier that day. We began to walk out to the path in the darkness, the only lights were the stars… and boy how the stars looked. I’ve never seen so many in my entire life. We got to the cliff overlooking the terraced lakes and sat down. The stars were reflected in the water. It made us feel like we were sitting on a peak amidst the heavens, among the stars. We stargazed and talked, our arms around each other when a shooting star flashed across the sky. We both saw it and looked at each other, when I said, “Will you be my Valentine?” Clichéd? Yes. Effective? Yes. She said yes and asked what I wished for. I told her it already came true. Sometimes I find the most romantic things are what we don’t say... We walked back into the Monastery, realizing that we were on holy grounds. Blaspheming never felt so uplifting. We ran into Li Laoshi and some SYA students and hung out with them and laughed until curfew. Got a hug from Lo, and then had to walk Li Laoshi home because he was lost. I went to bed with a content heart.
We finished up our three day trip, and returned to Jinghong, after visiting one last market. Chris Sophie and I went and got a blind massage and cupping done. The massage was my first one ever and it was kind of painful. The cupping didn’t hurt for me or Chris, but it sent Sophie into a mini-shock like state. It’s supposed to draw all the toxins out of your body, but it only made me really sore the next day. The way they leave marks on your back is they take alcohol and put it in a cup, light it aflame, and then turn it over onto your back and let it give you the biggest hickey of your life, over and over again.
The cups didn’t let me sleep well during the night, and today was the first day of school at Jinghong Shi Yi Zhong. We were put in the senior’s class who were preparing for the Gaokao. I listened to the whole thing. I was bored out of my mind and I only caught words like Chromosome in Biology Class, nothing in Physics, but Math is universal, so I could follow that to an extent. I started talking with some people at the school about stuff and issues in the world. I asked one kid how he felt about Obama, and his response was, “That’s the really good basketball player, right?” I befriended Li Xinhua because he sat behind me in class. He got a room in the girls’ dorm in the center of the campus because he plays the music that wakes everyone up from the afternoon break. His room has all the sound equipment in it and he showed me what he does, sitting in front of the block of a machine and starting up a trumpet call to arms that boomed across the campus. They take the break in the middle of the day to avoid the hottest hours of the day. His roommate is Ai Dou Wei, or Jack or Jake, he responds to both, and prefers them over his Chinese name. Jake is a monk. But I met more of him the next day. School went back in session, and we had English class, which was in Chinese. School let out at 5:30 and I had dinner before going to bed.
School classes became interesting on the second day, just because I had gotten the flow of how they worked. The students stay in the same classroom the whole day and the teachers come to them. As I said earlier math is universal… the sciences are not. This day I befriended my monk friend Jake. He mouthed off in the back of my classroom the whole time, just making jokes and getting the whole class to crack up. His orange robes separate him from the rest of the class, with their school uniforms. I went to Li Xinhua’s dorm room and Jake said that he had to change, so we went outside and waited for him to change so we could go have fun during the break. He came out exactly the same, orange robes and everything, except he was now wearing sandals instead of tennis shoes. The three of us headed to the Mekong River and began to skip stones with some other students that went there to do that as well. Jake pulled up his robes and knotted them at mid thigh level and then waded into the water. I took my shoes off and went in and we found the perfect skipping stones that had been smoothed and flattened by time and proceeded to waste them with our lack of skills. We headed back to the Guys’ dorm rooms which were a concrete block with four bunk beds for a total of eight people in one room with the laundry hanging from a line going across the middle of the room. We chilled in there for a while when Jake came back in the room, reeking of cigarette smoke and threw the stub over the balcony and into the bushes. The kids pulled out a Budweiser bottle from behind a potted plant and threw it conspicuously in the public trash can outside. Cards were pulled out and played with. It was some crazy variation of Poker. The guys got down to just a tank top and shorts to endure through the midday heat. It was brutal. I went and left them to their games and went and had lunch with Lauren to let my mind recoup from the constant use of Chinese. Li Xinhua went and played the wake up music and classes resumed. Jake skipped English class. He simply didn’t show up. The teacher engaged us in this class, and it became a lot of fun. They were surprised that we spoke Chinese much better than their English abilities, and became instantly attracted to us. The English teacher made us sing the National Anthem, America’s that is, and it was embarrassing… we forgot some of the lines. Then the Chinese students all sung the Chinese one, and it sounded ferocious. It was all in harmony, and it was powerful, not just the melody but the words. Then the English teacher told us that every minority has its own song in its own dialect. So she asked people to stand up and sing theirs. People that didn’t even sit next to each other, never once talked to each other during the breaks, stood up and sang in unison, in such a way that it just made me say wow. That’s all I could think. Jake came back after English class ended and passed notes to people until he fell asleep on his desk. A fellow classmate pointed at him and mouthed to me, “Shui Jiao.” The fact that I could understand Chinese being mouthed across the room made me really happy, and gave me a second wind that got me through class. Li Xinhua introduced me to a girl they called xiao bai tu, or little white rabbit, like the candy. I said nice to meet you, I hope you don’t have melamine in you like the candy. They were a little taken aback at first and then laughed. I was told that Jake was able to smoke and do all the stuff he does, plus more, because he’s a Theravada monk. After class I realized that the class type I was in was the science track. They have the literature track and the science track, science focuses mainly on what it says, whereas the literature course covers history as well. I went back to the hotel and slept. I needed the break to sleep.



The last day of our schooling before a five day break for the seniors. School was long and brutal, and afterwards, Nick and I were invited to go hang out with what we thought was just two Chinese girls, but ended up being nine. The other SYA kids that came with us left and so Nick and I had nine Chinese girls all to ourselves for the entire evening. We walked along the bank of the Mekong until we hit a park that Warren and Ian and I had discovered the night before and dubbed make out point. We all sat down there and they wanted to play truth or dare. I can’t think of a game that can fry your brain faster than playing truth or dare with Chinese teenage girls, speaking only Chinese. Ma Yayun was the ringleader of it, and Nick and I just watched and were questioned occasionally, and questioned other times. They would ask tough questions, like which one of us do you think is the prettiest and why? That’s hard to answer in English! “Well I like cute, humorous and spirited girls.” There were nods all around, “Understandable.” Some of them had already slept with someone before they met us. They bid us goodbye that night and told us they would miss us forever. Nick and I went back to the hotel feeling accomplished.
Our last day of the trip, there was no plans and I had no means of reaching anyone. I had no money left and no money on my phone. I left the room and ran into Ian. We went out and had an early lunch at 10:00 of hamburgers. We wanted to go visit the largest temple in Jinghong and a cab driver drove us out to the middle of nowhere, where we saw a gorgeous temple. He tried to charge us twenty kuai for the ride and we were upset that he was cheating us so. Cab rides everywhere were only five kuai. But he waited outside as we tried to go buy a ticket and then realized that they were 120 kuai each. We turned around and asked him to take us to the nearest free temple. He did, pointed us in and we wandered around until some Chinese people told us that the park wasn’t free and kicked us out because we had no money. We walked back to the hotel and then Ian and I split up, I ran into Nick and we wandered down a market street, where we ran into Ma Laoshi. We all sat around and drank tea when Chris and Sophie ran into us. They had tea with us and then Nick, Sophie and Chris went to hang out with some Chinese friends for dinner at a place that I’d eaten at too many times. But when they left me, I ran into Josie-Dee, Lauren and Hannah, as well as some of their Chinese friends. I went clothes shopping with them down the street. I’d like to say that I have some fashion sense when it comes to fashion. But the clothes they were looking at were traditional Chinese stuff, and I had no idea. Is it supposed to look like that? That’s an interesting look… but would you wear that outside? Aren’t pant legs supposed to be… closed? But it was fun nonetheless. I went home and rested because my brain had been completely fried over the past few days. I went to a barbeque later that night with Jang, James, Lindsay, Natalie and Mary. It was in a sketchy shack on the outskirts of town. I went home early then too, due to me feeling sick. I spent the whole night cradling the porcelain throne so that it’d cool me down. It was awful. Coming out both ends. Sleep didn’t come easy.
We had an early morning so we could get to the airport. We flew to Kunming, and then back to Beijing. I walked the once familiar stretch of road that led to my house with Chris and Nick, but somehow it felt different. Somehow, I had changed.