Man Man Zou

Xishuangbanna- what a cool name. Even though I can read Pinyin, it took me a while to figure out this name- I used to just call it ‘banana’. The Chinese name is just made to sound similar to the Thai name for this southern region of Yunnan province, which borders on Laos and Myanmar.

Xishuangbanna is China’s little Thailand, and it really felt a lot like Thailand. The smells, temperature, and overall atmosphere of Xishuangbanna felt a lot like the old days when I was touring Southeast Asia- minus the beaches, unfortunately.

Before we took the bus to southern Yunnan, we spent a few days in Dali. There wasn’t much to Dali, except a large number of foreigner restaurants because for some reason, foreigners love Dali. While there, I was able to catch up on getting my journal posts posted because we had the convenience of wireless internet in one of the restaurants.

We visited some very picturesque Tang dynasty pagodas in a park that cost a fortune to get into (another one of those ‘20-minutes and you’re finished’ kind of places), and took the ferry across the nice lake near Dali. Though I have nothing bad to say about Dali, I definitely prefer the previous town we were at, Lijiang, because it just had a lot more charm with its old city and nearby villages.

We took a terrible overnight bus from Dali to Jinghong, the main city in Xishuangbanna. Buses in China are often terrible, but I somehow convinced myself that after getting through the rough roads of western Sichuan, there would be no more bad roads for the rest of my trip because the rest of the areas I want to visit are fairly touristy. I was wrong, as the road down south was under construction, and we spent the most of the 20 hours on a windy dirt road, right beside a closed-down superhighway.

We didn’t do much in the city of Jinghong except walk along the Mekong River. We left the main city and visited small towns and villages in the Xishuangbanna region. The first town we went to was Menghun, for the Sunday market. It was there where we finally met Alan.

Alan used to teach English in Taiwan at the same time as we did, and he left for travel in China a few weeks before we did. Since he also likes photography and has a blog, we’ve been in touch a few times over the year, and emailed even more often while traveling through China, though we had previously never met. Over these past few months, we’ve traveled to many of the same places, but always at different times and sometimes within only a couple days of each other. Finally, in his last few days of being in China we ended up in the same place at the same time.

We spent some time in the market, which had a fair number of people dressed traditionally. Since there are so many minorities in Yunnan province, it was hard to keep track.

We often saw people of the Dai minority, which is very similar the culture of Thailand. The women wore the same silk dresses embroidered with gold, the writing looked similar to Thai, and even the wats (temples) looked the same as what we see in Thailand. While in Menghun, Mark and I walked up to a wat and saw monks wearing the same bright orange robes as the monks in Southeast Asia wear- not the burgundy robes that Tibetan monks wear.

Xishuangbanna was hot, even though it’s the beginning of the cooler months. There were juice stands everywhere, just like in Southeast Asia. There were also quite a few old foreigners living in Jinghong and teaching English (for peanuts), also just like in Southeast Asia.

Since my back has been hurting for weeks, I went for a massage at a blind massage place. I’ve gone for a couple massages lately because my back has been hurting since taking all those buses in Sichuan province. So far, the massages I’ve had in China have been quite painful. I think their way of curing a backache is to turn my back into mush with their elbows. My masseuse was excited that I could speak a little Chinese. He agreed that there are a lot of old foreigners living in Jinghong. I’ll never understand why people choose to teach English in China- they can make 4-6 times as much money teaching in Taiwan. On top of that, if they went to Taiwan, they would be treated well by all the locals, live in a much better country, and see what China should be like without communism. I guess in the case of Xishuangbanna, they’re just drawn to the tropical weather and laidback atmosphere- but Taiwan has that too!

Another town we visited in Xishuangbanna was Damenglong. It was a terrible three hour ride from Jinghong, along a dirt road with an inch of fluffy dust on it. All the plants and shrubs near the road were completely covered in dust, without a touch of green showing through. The dust eventually made its way into the bus. With all the closed windows and the hot sun beating through, as well as all the men (and even some women) chain-smoking the entire time, it was possibly one of the worst bus rides I’ve had. Thankfully it was only three hours. I felt guilty feeling like it was the end of the world on the bus because outside were dozens of road workers who have to work everyday, all day, in the hot sun as the vehicles fly by and fill the air with dust and fumes.

Damenglong is right on the Myanmar border, but foreigners aren’t allowed to cross there. Laos is nearby too. We stayed the night in Damenglong, and visited the main wat in town the next morning. As we were walking up to it, we heard drumming at a nearby house in the village. There was a ceremony going on, and we later found out that it was an annual festival for the Dai temple.

We hung out for a while, and then all the people paraded out of the house with their drums and huge offerings and walked up to the temple. We walked with them- they were a very friendly bunch. It was similar to what we saw at festivals in Thailand, the people carried elaborate offerings decorated with a lot of money.

I must admit that I still don’t know what the festival was for and I couldn’t understand anyone who tried explaining it to us- I need Chinese lessons again! We watched the men parade around a giant drum, while the women threw flower pedals and rice at it. All the women were dressed up in their silk dresses.

When we got up to the temple, I was surprised to see another foreigner there- a photographer. He was very uncool and bothered me so much that I almost put my camera away for the day as he was definitely giving us amateur photographers a bad name. Except for the case of a photographer on assignment for a big magazine, I don’t think photographers have the right to interfere much at all in daily life, let alone a religious festival. I saw him tap women on the shoulder and ask them (in English of course) to move out of the way for his shot. I saw him walk right into the center of a circle of women performing a dance in front of everyone to take their photo (I took a photo from the outside of the circle). I saw him turn down some girls who wanted their photo taken, because they were in the shade. He walked into five of my photos. On top of that, he was one of those idiot foreigners who pretend they don’t notice you, even though you’re the only other foreigner around. It was especially frustrating seeing someone like him burn bridges for the next photographers who come through. If everyone photographed like he did, then photography would be banned all over the world. I’m sure his photos turned out great because he crossed the line so many times, but it’s just not something I agree with at all.

Besides the idiot, the festival was a lot of fun. We met some really friendly 20-year old women, all of whom seemed really proud to be dressed up in their beautiful dresses and dancing for the people, and we went to their house after the festival. They told us, with beaming pride, that many of them went to Beijing once to dance in a minority performance. We talked a lot about Xishuangbanna. They told us that everyone in Xishuangbanna is poor, but they didn’t say it in an unhappy way- just as a matter of fact. I asked them about the Dai writing since it looks almost identical to Thai writing, and they said they couldn’t read it- only boys are taught how to read and write the Dai script. The women invited us to watch them dance the next evening, as part of the festival, but we had to turn them down. They really enjoyed showing their culture and talking about being Dai.

That’s one thing I noticed about the people of Xishuangbanna- they are very proud of their culture, and the region as a whole. It was so uplifting to see. So many people we talked to told us that “Xishuangbanna is good”- quite a change from what we’re used to hearing from locals in other areas: “China is bad”. Seeing their attitude made me feel so good about the place. The people of Xishuangbanna are poor, but obviously that hasn’t made them miserable like it has in other parts of China.