Yangjuan II

I have just returned from two weeks of research adventures and am off to meet the family in Beijing this evening. I can't wait!! But that means I don't have much time to write and I have ALOT to say, so I'm just going to start and get as much down as I can and then finish it when I have a chance. It all started last Saturday afternoon when Matt, Deborah, and I got on the train. It was a little intimidating to be traveling to Yangjuan alone because last time Steve was with us and the trip requires 3 different transfers. But we made it to Xichang, which is about 8 hours South of Chengdu by train, that night just fine and stayed in a hotel near the bus station that had been recommended to us by Deborah's roommate's sister who goes to school in Xichang. The next morning we got up bright and early to head to the bus station and catch the bus to Yanyuan. However, when we arrived we were told that it had snowed in the mountains so there were no buses going to Yanyuan that day. After you are in China for awhile, you get used to plans changing all the time, so we took it in stride and decided what we were going to do that day. Xichang is a smallish city that is known as "the city where spring stays" and has been doing alot of remodeling to try to make itself a tourist destination. It was alot different even then when we came before in September. We called a friend we met on the train who was a graduate student at ChuanDa and was going home to Xichang for the break to see if he had any suggestions. He invited us to eat lunch with his friends in the shopping district of Xichang and then suggested we go check out Lu Mountain and Qiong Lake Park. So we took the bus down to the park, which was newly constructed and not open yet, but beautiful. It was right down on the lake and had really nice walkways and docks out onto the water. There were one part where we could walk down to the water because there was a hotel there. There was also a ton of these little wooden boats that you could take rides in. When they didn't have passengers, they grill shaokao in the boats and sell it to people walking past.
Then we wandered across the street to Lu Mountain. On the mountain there was several monasteries and a museum for the Yi Minority (which is the minority group in Yangjuan). The museum was really interesting and had some beautiful traditional art work and wood-working. On the mountain we stopped at the largest monastery and had our fortunes told, which is a traditional thing to do for the new year. You do it by kneeling to the Buddha and making a wish, then taking this vase full of about 50 sticks and shaking it until just one falls out. If you shake out more than one you have to do it over. Then you take the stick that fell out over to a Monk and each stick has a number on it, which corresponds to your fortune. The Monk then reads the fortune to you and you pay afterwards depending on how much you think your fortune was worth (i.e. more for a better fortune). My fortune was the best of us three. It basically said that I was going to have a really good, lucky year because I had built up a lot of karma in past lives and that something really big was going to happen, but hadn't happened yet. I gave 3 kuai. After that we walked almost all the way back to the hotel and had dinner along the way. After a day of exploring Xichang, I decided that it is my favorite city in China that I have been to so far. It is seems very clean and empty compared to other cities.
The next morning we got up pretty early again and went to the bus station to check for tickets. Today buses were going to Yanyuan, but all the tickets were sold out because they had given them to people whose tickets had been cancelled yesterday. However, they said that sometimes a few tickets would open up and they were thinking about sending another bus because so many people wanted to go so we decided to wait. At about 12:30, finally a few tickets opened up and we were able to get out on a 1:30 bus. We arrived in Yanyuan after a pretty uneventful bus ride over the mountains and found a hotel that some people at the bus station who were also going to Yanyuan had suggested. As opposed to Xichang, Yanyuan seemed much smaller and dirtier than I remembered. After dropping out stuff at the hotel we walked down to a restaurant to get dinner. We decided to eat at a place that had "Foreign Friends Welcome" written on the sign, which I thought was funny considering how many foreigners come to Yanyuan, but I guess it worked on us so that's worth something.
The next morning we got up at 8am and found the bus to Baiwu easily enough, but it wasn't leaving until 9:30 so we got some baozi for breakfast at a nearby restaurant. It took about two hours on bumpy dirt roads to get to Baiwu and when we finally got there I thought I was going to explode I had to pee so bad. We found motorcycles to drive us the 5km to Yangjuan. Yangjuan seems quiet because school was out, but it was very nice to be back.
I did my first sampling the next morning while ZheZhe was making breakfast in her house. There were some problems, of course, but it went well enough. I have also decided that this is my first time doing research and I am by myself in China, so just the fact that I go and do my best, weather or not I get good results, is enough. After breakfast we went to tend sheep with Apu (Grandfather, who is like the leader of the village). It was very relaxing, just walking a little and then sitting for a while to let the sheep wander over. He has 30 sheep, 20 white and 10 black. I love the simplicity of life here. I know part of that is only because I don't have to live it everyday, but I am grateful to be able to come here and experience it. It is very grounding and inspiring. I had also forgotten how nice people are here. It honestly makes me feel bad, like I'm constantly walking on egg shells. They are always giving us food and there is no way to say no. They keep apologizing for the simplicity of the food, which is delicious, and they don't eat until we are finished. So we never knew if we should just eat a little so we left alot for them, but then they might think we don't like it. I wish that everything didn't have to be so polite, but we asked them about it and they feel uncomfortable not treating us "like guests", so what can you do? I guess just be grateful. There favorite winter food to give is roasted potatoes. Anytime you enter someones house they will make you eat at least one potato. I have never eaten so many potatoes in my life. That afternoon the weather started to change and the sky clouded up like it was going to rain so Apu walked Deborah and I back to the school (which he didn't have to do) leaving Amu (Apu's wife who was tending sheep with us bringing up the rear) to bring the sheep home alone. We came back to see that another pair of sheep had been born. When we arrived there was already one mother and two twin calves that were about a month old living in the school courtyard. They let the baby and mom sheep live there until the baby sheep are old enough to go outside and graze with the rest of the heard. The new pair were three days old and so cute. That night I found ZheZhe in the school kitchen making dinner by herself and offered to help. She usually refuses, but she actually let me help this time. I think it is because she is sick, but I was still really happy to be able to feel like I was contributing and not being such a burden. After dinner I felt a little sick too, so I went to bed early. In the morning I awoke to SNOW! And to discover that the power was out. This means that I cannot do any more tests until the power comes back on. So instead, we had a snowball fight with the kids and then Matthew and I went to explore the cave we went to last time and some new ones we saw over by the river up against some cliffs. The caves were amazing. We found Tibetan and Han writing and pictures at the bottom of all three caves written with charcoal. The first one we climbed in was about 75 meters deep. The other two were smaller and more well-explored. There were calcium carbonate crystals all over the walls because they were limestone cliffs and they sparkled like the milky way in the light of the headlamp.
We had to leave the next morning in order to make our train tickets back, so I only got to do one test, but that's OK. I'll just go back again when I get a chance. A taxi (meaning little van) picked us up at the school and drove us all the way to Yanyuan. After a long, slow, bumpy 2 and a half hours we arrived there only to discover that the snow was again blocking the pass through the mountains and no buses were leaving Yanyuan that day. So we went back to the same hotel and prayed for sun. We wandered around Yanyuan a bit, not much to see. We ate lunch in a little noodle restaurant that used coal for fuel. The smell of sulfur was overpowering, it burned your nose and throat and gave you a headache.
The next morning Deborah and I got up a 7 to go try to buy tickets. We got to the bus station at 7:30 and it was so dark outside it still seemed like night time with only the light of the almost-full moon. The streets were empty except a few people gathered around the bus station. Luckily, buses were going today and we bought bus tickets out that morning at 9:30am because we didn't want to be on the first bus. On the way back to the hotel we bought baozi and youtiao (literally "oil stick") for breakfast. Youtiao is like a churro with no cinnamon and sugar. They first were made during the Japanese Occupation as the Chinese people's way of protesting the occupation because they were not allowed to say anything bad about it. The dough is supposed to represent Japanese soldiers that they then fry in hot oil and eat.
We got back to the bus station at about 9:15 and there were about a million buses there because all the buses yesterday had been cancelled. After leaving the parking lot a little late, we proceeded to sit on the street in a line of other buses for another 1/2 or so, I'm still not really sure why. Finally, we were off. But after about 2 hours we reached the highest part of the pass where we had to stop to put on chains, which took a while, but that was OK because we got to walk around and I made a little snowman. His name is Claude.
When we got into Xichang that afternoon we called Zao Laoshi, a woman who works at the foreign friends office in the Communist Headquarters who had bought our train tickets in advance for us. When we got to her office and picked up the tickets, I realized they were for 10:30pm instead of 8:00pm as I had originally expected. That means I would not get back to Chengdu until 8:40am and would miss my 8:00 bus to Jiuzhaigou that Huangjie had already arranged for me. I asked her if I could change to the earlier 7:55 train I had originally thought we were on. She made some calls and low and behold I was able to get a ticket for the earlier train, thankfully. Then Deborah, Matt, and I went out to get our favorite dinner of daoshaomian (knife cut noodles). Our favorite daoshaomian restaurant that Steve had taken us to the first time we came to Yanyuan had closed because of all the renovating that had been going on in the city. It's true all the changes have made the city very nice, but I guess all change comes at a price. Then we played cards in the park with people periodically gathering around us to see what the three laowai were doing until I had to take a taxi to the train station. Unfortunately, we could just change my ticket, so I had to ride home alone. When I got to the train station it was CRAZY!! It was packed with people. I went to the bathroom and it took me like 20 minutes because people kept butting ahead of me in line and I am still too nice to not wait my turn. Same thing with getting through the gates at the platform, I was just swept along with the wave of people rushing and elbowing there way through. This is one part of China a probably will not miss. Well, that's all I have time for now. Stay tuned for Adventures in Jiuzhaigou and Zhongchagou. I'm off to Beijing!

P.S. OK, so I wrote this before I left for Beijing and then I didn't have time to post it, but I am trying desperately to get caught up. You'll see another one soon, I promise.