18 Weird Things about Yunnan

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.

To China!

Backpacking again.

The sun set on JFK...

... I fell asleep looking at clouds...

... and I had this dream...

The Kunming Airport is filthy, but cleaner than most places in this far west in China. I stood still in the middle of the check-in area, a massive hanger type building, with people flowing all around me. A group of women wearing matching outfits of colorful traditional clothing squatted in a circle around a thermos of tea and played cards. My flight was delayed but I wasn't worried, mostly hungry. My checked bag was already lost in Hong Kong with the promise of its return by the airliner, and I had already made it this far, how could I not get there?


I was entering my third day (straight) of travel with all going moderately as planned minus the bag. I rank, but was in a good spirits. Finally after two hours the flight boarded when they concluded the weather in Lincang (Lin-sztang) was acceptable. The ride was an old plane probably retired from a higher end airliner, but still in good condition. The plane must have been from the 80's, six people wide -good size. We seemed to fly in a clouds most of the way, the plane shuttered and jumped during most of the journey. There is something I like about old planes. If there was something to go wrong, it probably would have by now. The pilots in China are rough, and I'm not scared when I fly ever, but... shit... did I grab on when we went down. 


Finally, the plane broke through the clouds in a shaking and rattling manor just a thousand feet above the land closing in on the runway. Water ran over the window, nothing was visable. We landed on a short runway for a plane of this size (and over shot it a bit too.) They used both the engine brakes (which is how I'm pretty sure planes normally brake,) and the wheel breaks, which made a loud noise I had never heard before. The airport was a mountain top they had pretty much leveled.The plane then made a 180 degree turn, drove back up the runway in front of the tiny airport.

After explaining, yet again, that my bag was lost, and making sure they had the whole story, everyone else had exited the airport. Lincang only gets a few flights a day, maybe two. When I went outside all the real cabs had been taken and only the touts where left. I hopped in a cab, did not negotiate a price, and the drivers buddy hopped in the back, layed across the seats, and fell asleep. When I arrived at the bus station the cab driver said 80RMB, I said 50RMB ($9), he said Okay. If you give the legitament price, the touts don't argue since they konw you know better.


The bus costed something like 25RMB ($3.80) for 1.5-2 hour ride. China, like many Asian countries, is a place of grinding metal, burning oil, and noisy, smoking, exposed engines. I had the seat in the middle of the back row sitting at the top of the aisle down the middle of the bus. On the way out of the station we got rear-ended pretty hard by another bus. I found a seat belt (surprisingly,) and clipped in, which made the two chinese guys I was wedged between laugh. The driver got out of the bus to check out the damage, then got back on unfazed by the whole ordeal and we drove off.

An hour and a half later I arrived at Yunxian station, had a bowl of noodles, and waited 2 hours for my next 1.5 hour bus. When I was moving again it was on a road that ran parrelel to the river, since it's about the only relatively flat place (the riverbed.) The water is always on one side, and the rock wall on the other from which they cut into the land to place the road. Goats munching on grass are stuffed in pockets of the rock wall.


It was a complete set up for a Miyazaki movie. On the river there are dredgers and backhoes are ever 100 meters as they are trying to move the river into a certain position then control it by keeping it there. We passed small hydroelectric dams every half hour or so. Rivers are impossible to control, and they flood occasionally, I doubt this will work out. However, for this year it will be fine, as Yunnan has been in a drought for quite some time. There is an incredible amount of errosion as they redirect the water.


We passed a billboard, the only billboard we passed, which was red, had a massive hammer and sicle, and had some chinese letter on it. But, eventually I arrived at my stop, which was not a real stop, you just tell the driver which town you want to be dropped off in, and wandered around until I found the school. As I walked in the kids were playing basketball but they suddenly stopped and stared at me, one kid dropped the ball. I guess there aren't to many white folks around here. After being redirected by a teacher I found Caitlin in her dorm.

Summer so far...

Summer has been interesting so far. A lot of it has been running around trying to get my shit together before I move both in Maine and go on another adventure in 10 days. On my birthday (I turned 21?) I went up to Camden Maine with me Mum and Paul to check out so potential houses. We may have had some luck, we'll find out soon.

View of the harbor from standing on the library

Camden Harbor

Poppies.

The swaddled dog. I'm not sure what she lets me do this.

But maybe it's because I buy her love with walks.

I've also been hanging out with this dude a lot. We may or may not have been doing a bit of this some evenings. It's been fun. I'm not sure why I took this photo, but the angle is interesting. Also, it's my last bit of time with him until pretty much Christmas since I won't be around for the rest of the summer. He will be going to San Francisco Art Institute this fall.

Comandante Rata

I just found a short comic I made in high school...

Also this awesome gift from Maggie from 2010:

The rat thing manifested out of debates over the existence of rat-kings in AP Environmental Science.

Old Speck Adventure

My Dad, Tracy, Oliver and I, went on a hike near Old Speck Mountain along what is called the Eye Brow Ridge, a short but steep hike. We were armed with a staff fitted with a crystal and a purple foam sword. We took some photos too. We're also kind of strange.

I can't remember the name of this falls, but a lot of people watched us climb around.

 

   

Near Moose Cave

 

 

Entering Moose Cave

 

We couldn't swim down the river that carved out the cave to the other side where a pond had formed, it would have required going under a rock, underwater, with no light to guide. We climbed down about 40 feet but had no luck upon further inspection.

Demolition Durby

So we went to the demolition durby for some entertainment. I have to say it was about half disturbing and half awesome metal crunching fun. Here are the monsters:

Team Cosmo?

The Short Bus

45 seconds into the first race:

Later on...

KOOL-AID MAN

Sparky

The show suddenly ended when a volvo bursted into flames after coming to a halt. I hope the driver was okay, there was about a 15 seconds between when the car stopped and the fire really began to go, I still have no idea if he got out. They told everyone to go home when the flames got about 15 feet high. Anyways, it was disturbing fun.