Yangjuan

It's Sunday night here and I am glad to be home after in a week in Yangjuan. Yangjuan is a very small village in Yunnan Province south of Chengdu. There are about 200 people that live there, all of whom are Yi (a nationality in China, kind of like Native American tribes here, except the Han have been around for just as long). They speak Yiyu (Yi language, which is called Nosou in thier language and is impossible to understand). Steve, the program director, went with us to Yangjuan this first time and speaks a little Yi and some people in the village (the ones who have gone to school) speak Mandarin as well. There is a school there that Steve helped to get built and that is where we stay. Now let's start at the beginning. To get to Yangjuan takes a day. We left last Friday night at 10pm on the night train to Xichang. Then we got on a bus that the school had rented to take us to Yangjuan. Before we left Xichang we stopped for breakfast at this little tiny hole in the wall place (everything is like that here) and had noodle soup. I haven't quite gotten used to the spicy food in the morning thing, but I'm getting better. This is a picture of Deborah (a classmate) and Song yi (a Sichuan student who was at UW last year) in the restaurant. Then we drove to Yanyuan, where we stopped for lunch. There we had noodles called doa shao mian (or knife cut noodles). They are noodles made out of mung bean curd that is sliced into chunks. It is served in a spicy broth with meat and it is delicious. I have also now been introduced to a spice Sichuan province is famous for, the Sichuan pepper corn. They describe the flavour as very ma & la. la means spicy and ma doesn't really have a translation in English, but describes the feeling of your tongue going numb (which it does). After 6 hours on some of the curviest, craziest mountain roads I've ever been on, some paved some not, we reached Yangjuan. All the houses there are made out of mud with thatched rooves and are usually 2 or 3 different buildings all facing inward in some sort of complex. All the people here are farmers and live off the land. Steve said that about 10 years ago they were doing apples, then about 4 years ago they switched to hybrid corn. This year we rolled into town and found they had switched to sunflowers. There were fields and fields of sunflowers, more than I've ever seen in my life. They still had a little corn growing, some apples, green beans, potatoes, cabbage, buckwheat, oats, and marijuana (which they call black tobacco). Their other cash crop is huajiao (said hoo-ayy gee-ow) , the Sichuan pepper corn. The school, where we stayed and spent most of out time, is three buildings also. There are 7 classrooms and an office in the first building, teacher dorms and a kitchen and library in the second building. Everyone in the village is so nice. They will always invite you into their house and give you their best while apologizing that they can't give you more. It's amazing. We played basketball with some of the young boys and got killed. It's really hard to run at this high of an altitude (about 7000 ft.). We went on alot of beautiful hikes while we were here also. One day, we hiked up a mountain to see where some people were burning charcoal, which is illegal. They dig out the side of a cliff and pile it with logs and then cover it with rocks so it doesn't get too much air. It had already started one forest fire that year and while we were there three people got arrested. It's sad though because people are so poor and so desperate to send their kids to school they will do whatever it takes to make ends meet. Every morning we ate hard boiled eggs, xifan (this really bland rice soup), and buckwheat pancakes. We also went on a 16 mile hike to Zalashan, the top of a mountain where the yak herders live. We got stuck on the mountain for a few hours and took shelter in these yak herders' house where they fed us lunch. There are also some great limestone caves and sink holes that Matt and I had alot of fun exploring. Because Steve was there to give out scholarships, they had a huge celebratory feast. They killed a Yak, a lamb, and some chickens and we ate rice, meat, and beer one night. Then we had dancing and we learned how to do some of the traditional Yi dances. It was very fun. This is an amazing place and I don't know how to do it justice on paper.