Nu Jiang Valley

The Nu Jiang Valley is spectacular. Designated as a UNESCO world heritage site, it is home to Lisu, Druong, Nu, and Tibetan villagers and herders who farm and build seasonal camps far up the mountain slopes of the Gao Li Gong Shan and Bi Luo ranges. The fields of corn are almost vertical in slope and are tended by farmers who haul buckets on shoulder poles of water up seemingly endless switch-backs. Perched on plateaued peaks are centuries old wooden homes circling around Tibetan Christian churches. These clusters of homes comprise villages consisting of forty or so mostly Nu and Tibetan families. 

We had the privilege of taking a three-day trek in the spectacular country surrounding the Nu Jiang village of DiMaLuo. Our guide A-Luo, a resident of DiMaLuo and an avid conservationist, navigated our way from DiMaLuo (1,800 meters above sea level) up through the remote village of BaiHanLuo to our summit point at 3,400 meters above sea level. While the students and I plodded our way upwards, A-Luo chatted on his cell phone, pointed out species of flora and fauna unique to the Nu Jiang valley, and made spry sprints up the slopes to point out some of the better valley views. On segments of the trail when it was all that the rest of us could do to wheeze breaths and struggle to put one foot in front of the other, A-Luo would belt out Tibetan balads, holding notes for ages while taking long strides up the path. We all stared at him in amazement. 

Our second night we camped just below the summit. As the afternoon wore on, herders brought their animals down from the summit for the night. One of my students headed off to the ladies room behind a bush to the west of camp- as she readied herself to return to camp she found that her path was blocked by a large and very curious cak (the name we came up with for an animal that is the offspring of a cow and a yak). She was delayed for several minutes, dancing with the cak before it tired of her and headed towards the stream. In the night the caks wandered between our tents snuffling at our packs and boots. 

The final day of our trek Zoe, Emily, Kyuri and I woke before dawn to hike to the summit for sunrise. Though the clouds hung low and prevented us from viewing the east, the reflection of the morning light on Gao Li Gong Shan range to the west was in and of itself enough reward for our pre-dawn scramble. It was amazing. The valley consists of three separate biomes, warmed through the winter by winds that follow the valley up from the Indian subcontinent. Frothy lichen hang from the limbs of 30 foot tall rhododendron bushes and in the morning sun the lichen shines like silver. I could have stayed for a month.

The hike down and out wound through the last of the villages we visited before returning to DiMaLuo. We had lunch with A-Luo's great aunt in the house she was born in 70 years before. The one-loom wooden structure was built on stilts, the inside polished black from the smoke of the fire pit in the center. Through a hole in one corner of the floor we dropped scraps from our lunch of noodles and corn to the pigs who lived in the sty under the house. A-Luo's great aunt lived here alone since her husband died four years earlier. She crossed herself when she spoke of him. Life was harder now, she said.

Down again and back into DiMaLuo. A-Luo's cell phone calls on the mountain had been to relatives to arrange housing for us upon our return to the village. Lear and I stayed with A-Luo's uncle. He welcomed us into his home and fed us beans and cak and a bowl of the spiciest peppers I have ever eaten in my life. He laughed as I drank bowl after bowl of broth trying to douse the burn. After dinner I dodged right and set a pick off the center pole of the house to get to the basin before A-Luo's auntie could reach me and snatch the bowl and wash rag out of my hand. Defeated, Lear and I headed off to the sleeping deck. 

Before bed I headed to the outhouse. The outhouse consisted of wooden shed with a foundation of a concrete slab basin spanned by two wooden planks. The floor of the foundation moved. Upon closer inspection with the beam of my headlamp I found that it was alive with maggots.  As I left, I thought of two of my students who had, the two nights previous, had spent their first-ever overnights in the outdoors. I imagined that this night would hold their first experience with an outhouse as well. Back on the sleeping deck, I climbed under my mosquito netting and was out cold, to tired to let the maggots interfere with my dreams.  

The trip was incredible. It gave the instructors and the students the chance to form a unit under circumstances that none of us had experienced before in settings we could not have imagined. They showed strength and compassion and empathy towards one another and built solid bonds with one another over 57 hours of bus rides and gained perspective on the world that they have left behind and the world we now call home. 

Whew!! A whirlwind! I am here in the NuJiang valley on the border between Myanmar and China. In tow are 9 incredible students and my wonderful co-leaders Mark and Lear. It is a week to the day since the students arrived in Kunming where we held a brief 3 day orientation before piling them onto sleeper-buses (loaded with itsy bitsy bunk beds) and headed up to the 3,500 meter mountain town of Shangri-la. This town, formerly known as Zhong Dian) was a center of the Yunnan lumber industry for ages until early this century when the timber trade was sharply curtailed. In an effort to drum up a tourist industry, Zhong Dian was renamed after the mystical hamlet of Shangri-La... and it worked! This largely Tibetan town has seen a dramatic rise in tourism- and rightly so. It is ringed by sky-scraping peaks crowned by mountain-top temples and at the far end of the Valley lies South Western China's largest monastery- home to 600 Buddhist monks.
Down from Shangri-La. Many sleeper buses later and the dozen of us find ourselves here. The crumbling roads that led us here are carved out of the walls of deep and stunning river gorges. The rubble and residue of landslides presented surmountable obstacles - though slightly terrifying. Our chain-smoking team of drivers encouraged each other as the bus lurched and chugged its way over muddy gashes and around newly-tumbled boulders. I sat on my bunk and focused all of my energy and safety-vibes onto their white-knuckled hands. And it worked! Here we are in the town of Fu Gong. We will hop a van up to Gong Shan and then hike a couple of miles in to the village of Di Ma Luo where we will outfit with a local guide, gather a couple of pack horses, buy a goat to slaughter along the way, and trek off into the mountains for 4 days of intense challenge, stunning scenery, small village visits, and intense group bonding. I can't wait!!

Welcoming

I'm sitting in my hammock looking out over a tree-lined street and the posh courtyard of the gated compound I call home. I have a nice little bedroom with five houseplants that live in a bumped out window- the hammock swings in front of that window. How I found my way in here was kind of funny, and set a nice tone for the semester. 

I was able to get a partial address that Sophie (the Kunming program assistant) sent me which I read from the boosted internet provider "miss pablo" that I picked up from Amie's couch. 26 hours after leaving Amie's couch (my plane arrived an hour early to Kunming) I gave that address to a cab driver outside of the Kunming airport and 20 minutes after that he dropped me off in front of a large gate entering into and apartment complex. Sophie told me she would wait for me inside the house, but her phone number was trapped inside another email she sent after my departure. There was no guard booth at the gate so I sat down on my backpack and thought. 

Thinking did no good, so I put my backpack on and started to wander the midnight streets. I wandered up to an internet cafe, but this particular place only served member card-holders. So I wandered on again and came across a police officer reading a book on a bench next to his scooter- which he had parked with it's lights flashing. I showed the address to the police officer and asked him if he recognized the place. He pointed with his chin towards the direction I had come from and told me to head back down that way and holler for the guard to come let me in. So I did. There was no guard. I hollered again and then heard the sirens of a police scooter pull in behind me. It was the same police officer. He told me I was hollering at the wrong gate. Somewhere in the process a second police officer, this one on foot, had joined the first and I showed him the address and he thought he knew where the building was. He helped me with one of my bags and the three of us headed down the street, two on foot and one on scooter. 

Blocks later we ran into a third police officer who looked at the address and said that he would show us the way. The four of us wound through an alley and around a corner until we found another big gate leading into another apartment complex, but this one had a guard. The guard looked at the address and said that we were at the right place, but the address didn't indicate which of the sixteen buildings in the complex contained my apartment, nor did my address contain an apartment number. The five of us sighed. It was now close to one o'clock in the morning. The guard asked if I had a phone number I could call. I told him I had a telephone number in my email and about the members only internet cafe I had been to. "I'm a member there," said police officer number two, "I'll take you." We thanked and said goodbye to the guard and to police officers one and three and police officer number two and I headed back up the street to the internet cafe. 

We drank cups of tea (a perk of membership) as I wrote down the complete address and the phone numbers Sophie and Lear (my co-instructor) had emailed me. Out on the street police officer number two, who told me his name was Da Xiao Shen, let me use his cell phone to call Lear... who was at the Kunming airport waiting for my plane to arrive. More sighs. With Lear on his way to the apartment in a cab, and Da Xiao Shen and I on our way back to the building on foot, I realized that I was nearing exhaustion. We arrived at the same guard booth and handed the same guard the complete address and he told us we were in the right place and that he would call somebody down to let me in. I thanked Da Xiao Shen and he headed back up the street towards the internet cafe. 

Guard number two came down to the gate to let me in and showed me the way through the courtyard to my building and up to the third floor, number 302. He rang the doorbell. An old, sleepy woman in her bathrobe told us we had the wrong apartment. She shut the door and I told guard number two that Lear was on his way and that if he could just take me to some place where I could sit down and wait for him, that I would really appreciate it. He took me to the security office and guard number three showed me to a big leather couch and brought me a cup of tea. Moments later Lear arrived and all was well. He took me up to 301 and after more tea and some fruit that Sophie had left for me, I went to bed. So within my first hour in the city I, however inadvertently, arranged for myself multiple police escorts, entrance to a VIP internet lounge, and a tour of the security station of my building. 

And I noticed some things about Kunming during my adventure: The city still smells of night blooming jasmine, as I remember it did. When I was sitting on my backpack on an unlit street in the middle of the night, I didn't feel afraid. The balconies above me dripped with ivy and pothos vines ornamented with pots of brilliant pink bougainvillea bushes. In the middle of the night old women were out sweeping the sidewalks and old men in tank tops and slippers gathered on stoops in groups to smoke and play dice. Big iron pots bubbled up noodle-scented steam. The sights and smells were welcoming, and already I'm feeling at home.