Yunnan Culture and another School Visit

Yunnan is the most diverse province in terms of ethnicity and culture. It's known for many novelities, including cigarette bongs which are massive bamaboo bongs that seem to cover one's face, used to smoke just cigarettes. Seriously, in the first time in bong history, they're strictly for tobacco use. They smoke them on the street, in the restaurant, the bus driver even pulled over to smoke. The one below is the slightly more common steel bong. I wonder how long this has been going on, any why they don't chew tobacco, it would combine two of their favorite things: spitting and tobacco.

The upper half of Yunnan is a major tourist destination such as Dali. It's known for the incredible landscapes and Buddhism presence. The lower half is toured almost never. Lonely Planet had nothing to say about anything close to me, there is pracitically nothing on the internet, and I am constantly stared at as I am one of three white people in the region.

The Food:

Breakfast, like much of China, is noodles, and a very small meal. You walk up to a stand on the street, point out the size of bowl you want, one of three noodles you want (flat, and two different round/spagetti types,) which are then dunked in not quite boiling water for maybe 10 seconds at most. The bowls and chopsticks are kept in a steaming basket, possible to sterilize them a little since they're washed in a large bowl with a hose by the gutter. After the noodles they put in a broth, fresh chopped chives, hacked chicken or duck bits, and what I thougt was purple tofu (pig liver or kidey probably.) It was good. Lunch is rice with simple vegetable and meat fried dishes, and dinner is more complex similar dishes.

Then food poisoning struck.

It's rather mild, as in not like the time in Thailand. But still, I'm cleaned out, and my gut hurts like hell. My body is exhausted. I was lucky though, it only came out of one end, so far. Food is not clean, nor can I really keep myself or my hands clean. I wish I brought a crate of hand santizer, as bad as it is for your hands, I can't wash them. Restraurants don't have bathrooms, or even sinks (like in India.) Surprisingly in India you can find hand sanitizer in heavily traveled tourist areas. However, I am neither India nor a tourist destination.

An adventure to a neighboring village:

It was 7:30 in the morning, raining, and Caitlin and I were trying to share an umbrella walking down the street. We stopped and got some red bean buns which were really good. Then we got a bootleg taxi, paid $2.20, and were delivered an hour and a half a way in Yunxian. From Yunxian we met up with Christine, a young Chinese-American woman doing the same program as Caitlin. She was an absolute character and constantly cracking jokes, which took a lot of stress off the situation. We took bus from Yunxian to 40 minutes away in the town Christine taught at.

The bus took a steep dive off the main highway onto a narrow dirt road that snaked along the moutainsides until it at last it came to a village perched in a pass that gave way to steep slopes on either side. Tea, rice, corn, and other vegetables filled the thousands of terraces that went all the way from the bottom of the valley to the top of the mountain. Across the valley perched on the closest peak was an old monastary that was mostly abandond after it had been used as a military base during the culutrual revolution. Perhaps a few hermits occupied it now, there was nothing else on that mountain.

Christine was housed in a tradition Chinese building made of earth and wood, it was absolutely beautiful. The neighbor, or possibly owner of the house maintained an incredible garden with chickens and one duck (the chickens had accepted the duck as their own,) tucked in the back. Below is one area where staff is housed. The open first floor area is where a coffin maker stores his coffins, chickens, and anything he farmed.

The village itself was tiny, maybe a thousand or two at the most, and certainly almost all farmers. The elementary/middle school (known as a complete school in Chinese,) had about 800 students. To go to high school one must apply from middle school, pretty intimadating for an 8th grader. Unfortunately most of their futures were determind long ago by the government.

Today there was a competition between the boys and girls with using pronouns, which is pretty tough coming from Mandarin. I think the boys won, but not by much. All the girls are super shy in comparison. This girl was looking for a hint from her classmates.

The kids love their photos taken... this looks like a wolf pack.

Later we went on a walk through the village. It was super cloudy, this was one of few photos where you can see some of the village.

Munghau Middle School

White multistory concrete buildings rose out of the red muddy earth surrounded by a green tundra. This is the school Caitlin, my advisors god-daughter teaches at. It's a middle school located in rural China, about four or five hours north of the the Burmese boarder in the province known as Yunnan. The school itself is about 80% minority (700 kids total.)


It's fantastic here -but not exactly comfortable- but still, it's incredible. It's hot, humid, and dirty. The culture is strong, there's no english, and the food is great. I'm currently staying in a guest room on the roof of a retired teacher from the school. 


Caitlin lives in a dorm room on school, maybe 15 x 30 feet, which normally holds about a dozen students. The kids stay at school five days a week and go home on the weekends. If they get days off they make them up with their weekends.


One gem of culture I came across is China's near-nearsightedness, and it's possibly genetic, but honestly we all go blind sooner or later. Mao believed it was from reading and studying all day, so he devised a sytem (which has no medical backing at all,) of eye massages. Every day sometime between 9 and 10am music plays throughout the school and a recording of both instructions and counting plays. All the students rub the top of their eye lids 8 times then move to a different spots. The students are all syncronized to the instruction of the recording, which last for roughly 6 minutes. Then it ends and the students continue their day. Not all the students participate, but many do this.

Caitlin teaches 7th grade english class. It was on the third floor of a worn white concrete building from the 80's. The classroom was pretty much bones of a room: lights, tables, benches, piles of paper on the tables, and a chalkboards... that was it. We went in a few minutes early, there were four students sweeping all of the clutter tossed on the floor from the morning with grass hand-brooms. They filled a large basket then hauled it somewhere out of the room. The class began to fill with the students with two kids on a bench, 3 benches at a table, nine tables, fifty two kids, 20 x 30 foot classroom. The kids stank since they have to pay to take a shower (so therefor did not shower.)

I sat in the front by the door, Caitlin began class:

"This is my friend Max." Caitlin began, there was some hesitation earlier over giving me another name because the only name they new that sounded like that was Marx (pronouce Marc-a-s.) There is no "x" noise in Mandarin, so most of the time when I intorduced myself they just say Ma, which depending on the tone means mother, horse, hemp, scold, or it can be a question maker.I need a chinese name.

The students repeated back in unison of what Caitlin said in Mandarin. Caitlin corrected some of them then continued: "He is from New York. He is a student, like you." Some of the students giggled at this thought, so far they assumed I was another teacher, they had never met a white student to my knowledge. Caitlin continued, the class lesson today was commands in english. As the lesson went on for forty-five minutes she would pause occasionally and explain what was happenings. At one point she explained a point rewarding system on the board. The students were awarded points for being good in class, every 500 mark they hit they got to watch a movie, they were nearing 1500. I laughed at this system, as I had a similar one when I was in school. The class erupted in laughter at my strange sounding laugh, it was definitely the highlight of the day.


Later on towards the end of class when they were slightly more comfortable with me I began to sneak photos. Some of them hid, some of them didn't really know what I was doing, and most thought it was just another weird thing the strange white guy does. Some of the students were rather depressing, they weren't trying at all, and there was nothing Caitlin could do about it. The ones that would fall asleep she would make stand up for a few minutes until awake again. There is really no reason for them to learning english, as not even a handful will ever leave this area, let alone have to interact with a foreigner (I was the tiny exception.) 

I was refering to English class as ESL, but Caitlin said it's much more like EFL. Mandarin is the kids second langauge, there is a local dialect they all speak which has little cross over with Manderin, and english has nothing in common with either. Every town has their own dialect, and they're all different, even if the towns are just a couple of miles apart. Below is a chart posted above the chalkboard in the classroom. The taller column is the class average on a unit test (a unit is fairly short -not like a semester,) and the short column is the kids that passed. They system is against them, and their textbooks suck.


It's a strange struggle -school in China. Basically after 4th grade if you're not in private school or high end public school, it becomes a joke. Caitlin works for a government middle school in VERY rural China.It's difficult to teach when the government doesn't want smart questioning citizens, or when you have to teach an almost pointless subject. But there are a half dozen students that make it, and escape rural Yunnan, and this is what they need.