9 Items

Looking around the kitchen of my home stay family in the Miao mountain village of Bai Bi Cun, I counted 9 items. 1) A wood-fired cook stove consisting of two large cast iron woks (resting in one lay an oversized spatula for stirring) recessed into a tile unit with a chimney rising up from the middle. 2) A two-basin tile sink fed by a hose running up from outside through the window. 3) A tea kettle. 4) A broom made from twigs lashed together with with twine. 5) A six-inch deep cross-section of tree that was used for a cutting board. 6) A set of three cleavers that ranged in size from large to daunting. 7) A half a wooden barrel punctured by a hole in the side with a cork stuck in it- which I later learned was  still from which rice moonshine was produced. 8) A shovel-cum-dustpan used for loading sawdust, wood shavings, and floor sweepings into the fire. And 9) a stack of small bowls and chopsticks. Nine items in that kitchen. 

Thinking back to Lukin's and my tiny kitchen in Missoula, there were nine items in every drawer, on every surface, crammed into every cabinet. Two of us and twenty forks. The ceramic pot that lived on the stove alone held nine items- spoons of various materials and uses, a spatula for scraping, one for flipping, a plastic one for the non-stick pans and a wider metal one for the cast iron... yet another for the wok. I found myself making a lot of lists and doing a lot of comparisons over the four days we spent in the village. I compared my lengthy showers to the typical Bai Bi Cun method of washing- standing on the road in front of the house and sudzing from a plastic bucket, using a rag to rinse off, and dumping the water in the gutter of the dirt road. 

I compared the meal times and foods with the schedule and variety with which I am accustomed. In Bai Bi Cun, breakfast, usually around 9:00 or 10:00, was served after morning chores and farm work were completed. Family members eat together. Every meal. Lunch was served around 3:00 after another round of chores and farm work, and then, after yet another round of chores and farm work, dinner at 8:00. Every every meal consisted of rice and potatoes. Once or twice we, as guests, we were treated to spicy bowls of fried lettuce and a pile of scrambled eggs- and one very special evening, to fish caught from the rice paddy and served with scales and innards (all but the gall bladder which is called "bitter ball" in Chinese, and removed prior to cooking). Everything we ate was grown or raised or laid within a hundred steps of the kitchen and everything we ate was the same every day. Even the moonshine. I thought about the movements in Missoula and elsewhere to eat locally grown food- how eating can be a significant political and economic act, to the point that weekly columns in the Sunday paper are dedicated to influencing or critiquing the food choices of Missoulians. I thought about the extravaganza that is the Saturday morning Farmers Market and the endless wall of imported spices at The Good Food Store. And I thought about Bai Bi Cun and eating those six or seven things, especially to two main staples, potatoes and rice, everyday for my entire life. Eating locally as a choice versus eating locally without choice are two very different things. As I write this, here in my Kunming apartment, I am finishing off a plate papaya and banana salad, which follows a dinner two hours ago that consisted of several Chinese dishes involving more ingredients than I can list; nothing I ate grew or was raised or laid within 20 miles of me, and I eat something different everyday.  Zero chores- save washing way more than 9 dishes using running hot water and soap- and zero farm work did I contribute to my meal. I eat whenever I'm hungry, regardless of what work I have or have not done. More often than not I eat alone. I continue to mull the comparisons in my mind.

We've been out of the mountains and back in the city for a week and a half now. Half a week more and we hit the road again. Our students are hard at work putting together presentations on the topics they've researched for the last 6 weeks. Their topics range from China's environmental woes to the history and future of tea in Chinese society. Following their presentations on Friday and a weekend celebration with their home stay families, we will find our way by train or bus or air, or some combination of them all, to China's north west- where the Uyghurs are, and where my heart is. I can hardly wait. The province of Xinjiang, where the role of rice will be played by nan bread, and potatoes... well they're still potatoes. I wonder what 9 items I'll find in kitchens there. 

A new return to GuiZhou

I'm sitting here enjoying a rare moment of stillness while the students are in Chinese class. We have fallen into a routine of early morning meetings and language classes, afternoons of independent study classes and optional lessons around Kunming. The students are learning the ins and outs of daily life in a Chinese family, and how to navigate the web of bus routes between the Program House, their home stay houses and the University district. The students are working hard on their independent projects, the instructors are working hard on contacting mentors and arranging guest lectures and the weeks spin by. We are somewhere between a groove and a rut. It's time for us to get out again. (the photo is XiJiang, a village in GuiZhou)

This Sunday Lear and Mark and I will pile the dozen of us onto an overnight train to GuiZhou- the provence due East of Yunnan. We will ride the rails to KaiLi, a city three hours East of the capital city GuiYang, and then find our way into the hills in search of a village to call home for the week and families willing to host our horde. Our aim in this adventure is to break away from the day to day we have come to know and to provide some alternative perspectives on what day to day life means in China. As Lear Mark and I have never been to GuiZhou, nor do we have contacts there, this is an opportunity for the three of us to break away from our own routines and push ourselves to risk a bit and encourage inclusion of the students in the prep and planning, transit-tracking, village-visiting, house-hunting, food-finding, and lesson-learning. I can't wait to get on that train.

We chose GuiZhou, in part for its unfamiliarity and, conversely, in part for my familiarity with planning adventures there. During my studies in Missoula my IYFD cohort wrote a proposal for a Fulbright Hayes group study grant. We proposed to take UM professors and Missoula K-12 teachers on an educational tour through areas of China (GuiZhou) and Laos that are the ancestral and current home of many tribes of the Miao or Hmong people. Missoula is home to nearly 300 Hmong families and we found the idea of helping area teachers understand the ancestral home of the Hmong people an exciting idea. The Fulbright Hayes committee, however, did not. So I have found my own way here and am in the process of reviewing our proposal and recycling parts that have relevance to my students. Funny how life works.

On a different note, yesterday marked the one-month anniversary of our students arrival in China. Time is funny here; though the days seem to crawl to completion, the weeks fly by.  It won't be long now at all until we leave Kunming for good to begin our circuitous travels towards Beijing and then fling away towards new and old homes in the States, Korea, England and India. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, GuiZhou...

National Day

Today is the 59th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. 59 years ago Mao Zi Dong announced from atop the Gate of Heavenly Peace overlooking the tens of thousands of people who packed Tian An Men Square that the Communist Party had defeated the nationalists and a new nation had been born. We will discuss the magnitude of this event with our students when they return to class. Many of them have left Kunming to travel with their host families. One is in a village near the border of Myanmar, another is in the ancient city of Dali, and two others are in the villages bordering the city at the weddings of relatives. I am in Kunming, enjoying a day to myself. 

I woke up late this morning and lay around drinking cups of instant Nescafe and figuring out if I should spend my day organizing the office in the instructor house or preparing my lessons for next week. I was flipping through my educator's resource guide when Lear came into the living room and told me that I should put down my book, forget about doing any work today and get out and spend this day of celebration out in the city. It was a good kick in the pants. I was hiding in the house and not really being in China, hibernating in a bit of culture shock.

So often we tell our students to challenge themselves- to get on a random bus and ride it until you have no idea where you are, get off, and find your way home. We tell them to do something everyday that pushes the limits of their comfort zone. I need to be better at telling myself those same things. Luckily, today, Lear did it for me. 

I wandered out my door and found myself at Yuan Tong Si, a Tang dynasty Buddhist temple. I paid my 4元 entrance fee ($.60) and entered an oasis. Bamboo groves line the walls of the temple grounds and porous rock pillars tower above ponds teeming with koi fish and turtles. Inscribed sutras gleam red from cliff faces pocked with small caverns, homes to golden Buddhas and porcelain Guan yin Bodhisattva's. Walking the slate paths, incense smoke swirls out from giant urns and curls around ankles and calves. I got lost here for several hours, listening to the drone of chanting and the shrieks of children trying to reach the turtles that sun themselves on pond edges- just out of arms reach. 

The brilliance of the red pillars and the greens and blues and fuchsias of the sweeping temple roofs would seem gaudy in Montana or Minnesota, but here they compliment the gold and orange flash of the koi fish, the vivid yellow-green of the bamboo groves and the grey-blue of the rock pillars. I watched families buy incense and burn candles, bow their heads at the feet of the meters tall golden Sakyamuni Buddha. Nuns in grey and monks in saffron swept the incense papers from the ground and tended pots of marigolds and petunias. 

Outside of the temple entrance, yi-ching fortune tellers shook their mugs of yin and yang sticks shouting their prowess and beggars displaying missing or misshapen limbs shook their mugs of coins, murmuring blessings. I took a left and walked until I didn't recognize my surroundings. I began taking rights and lefts depending on which blinking walk sign was in favor. Around one corner I found myself at the elementary school down the street from the program house where we have class. The school was empty of its throngs of uniformed children, now dispersed around the province spending the holiday with family. I walked up the street to the program house, eager to share my adventure with my home far away and my family overseas.