My Yunnan adventures

The last time I talked about what I did - I was in Shiping. My uncle drove us the 1.5 hours to Gejiu, which included a lot of mountainous roads. On the way, we stopped in Jianshui, which is where a famous Confucian temple is located. Apparantly my great aunt went to school there (its now a normal school - not a confucian school). I didn't get to go, because they said it was boring, but i did got o Zhu Family Garden (朱家园). It is the home of a very rich family - and we also got a guide, which was pretty informative. I learned that I should always get guides when i visit places, because there is no way that I could have learned or noticed all of that stuff on my own. She talked about all the intricate reasons for architecture, like why this drain is in this position and in this shape, and why this door is here and made at this angle. The home was pretty impressive, and the story of the family is pretty sad. They became rich through business, but in the early 1900s, because they supported a miner rebellion, they were forced to flee. Later, they also supported Yuanshikai - the army general who tried to overthrow the imperial order. The family basically lost everything. This story reminds me of the story of House of Red Dreams - and being in the house made me feel like i was back in ancient China living as a girl in that house. It was a pretty wonderful feeling. The guide asked me where i was from and I said US. Later she asked me to write on a guestbook where I was from, and when I wrote US she said - whoa i thought you were trying to trick me!



My grandparents live in Gejiu, a small town whose economy is dependent on tin mining. There is this nationally owned company called YunXi who takes care of the mining and basically is responsible for the development of the town. In Gejiu, I mostly played around, shopping the streets, going to the plaza, strolling around Golden Lake, looking at the statues of people in the tin making process. Because, the ILO kept telling me that they were going to come on a certain day, but then they never came. And they never came. and they pushed it back until I finally got fed up and said - I'm going back on the 20th - if you dont come before then well screw you. Finally they came around the 15th, but they told me only the day they came that I couldnt do the survey with them. So I basically waited around for them in vain! They pretty much did NOTHING to help me. This was after I had already bought 300 gifts, made 300 copies of my survey, and 300 of everything else needed. I was so pissed off. I dont think I ever wanted to work for a large multinational, bureaucratic institution. I used to dream about working for a noble group like the UN, but I am now so disillusioned. Luckily, I was able to get about 1000 myself, and I also contracted the rest of the surveys out to a non-profit group. However, they wanted cash, not gifts, and they also changed my survey a little bit, so that i had to make 300 more copies and the other 300 copies went to waste. Sigh - i am very very annoyed with the ILO. I dont think I want to hear their name again for a while.



There are some good things that cameo out of it though - like, I got to observe an ILO training, and attend a meeting at the CDC with them. However, I feel like they got more from me than me from them - because I helped their intern with Chinese during her interviews.



Other notable things in Gejiu that I did - paint a mud picture - very hard to describe, and also very hard to paint - it's basically coloring with mud, and it took many many hours, probably over 10. Finish a puzzle - that my cousins and i were supposed to do tgoether, but they always fell asleep, so i had to finish it myself on th last day. Develop a wild night life - after my grandparents went to their upstairs apartment (because the downstairs one was too small to fit so many people), my cousins and I would take the key and go out and play - for example - to the internet cafe, to buy food, to watch movies at home, etc. We ended up sleeping during the day for a lot of it. I still havent fully turned my schedule aroudn. it started out with the days before one of my cousins was leaving, we decided to stay up two nights in a row to hang out more. After they left, the remaining cousins and I were so tired all the time. Sometimes at night - i would be doing random stuff for my prof, or for other research fellows who needed me to edit their english. Which is why i am so tired all the time - research in the day, english editing at night.



Some places we went to play were in rural places nearby. You stay there for a day and eat, play mahjong, drink, etc. going with a whole bunch of familes, it is really fun. In some parks, there was a swimming pool, water park, and water slides. My cousin, while sliding down one, made a hole right on her butt in her swimsuit. I also hurt my back, because the slide scratched it. We also went to Forest Park 森林 and it was so boring there, except to ride horses - but the horses went so slowly, they wouldnt let me make the horse run.



I realized that I really like animals, especially pigs and cats. Oh that cat was soo cute! it kept trying to bite me but its teeth were not yet developed. But I did get bit by a hamster, and started bleeding. Stupid hamster.



I also learned how to play mahjong, yunnan style, which is a bit different from hubei style. i found out that my grandparents life after retirement is pretty happy, playing mahjong, smking, drinking, etc.



In Kunming, I did some more surveys, but I found out that people in Kunming are not as welcoming as in smaller cities. They are so fierce, and it was so hard to find anyone willing to do a survey. I also did learn that giving gifts out instead of money is much better - people are less suspicious and more doing it in the spirit of research.



Thats all for tonight, I am so tired and I have to wake up at 5 to go to the Olympic games! yay! I bought binoculars tday!