le props

...By the way, Katelyn's blog has been excellent as of late (actually it's been pretty consistently great for her whole stay. And she's pumped out like 4 to 5 times as many entries as me in the same amount of time). Tune-in for an interesting view of an American at Chile: http://www.katelynloveschile.blogspot.com/

(she's the one I'm blog-offing against, if you missed that a few posts ago).

-s

Chinese Fuzz: The Presence of Han Authoritee (blog-off entry #4)

To put it frankly: the role of Chinese Heat (fuzz, cops, "the man") is far more focused on appearance than actual substance. Often I have seen pristinely-uniformed fuzz calmly watch an intersection while people run red lights, speed, and jay walk all over the place--but in matters of things that are new, controversial, or in some way or another high-profile, then the cops are all over it. For example, a gorgeous new park--complete with gazebos and ponds and great garden work--opened not far away from where I live. When the park is closed at night, I swear, there are no less than 20 uniformed men and women hanging around and patrolling a space that can be no larger than two city blocks, maximum. During the day time there are almost just as many cops, who patrol the park with megaphones, shouting warnings to those who sit on the bench-like bridge railings.

This model can be applied to larger policies of Chinese gov't. Of course, because of potentially getting in trouble by typing certain words together here on the internet, I'm restricting the things I say a little bit. You've probably noticed that thusfar I've used slang for Chinese _____ (rhymes with o-leese), just to be on the safe side. I've had friends that have gotten their e-mails shut down just for joking about things related to this.

BUT, as I was saying, what I've seen here with Kunming's Finest is right in line with Chinese policies concerning other places, namely T183t (thank you l33t speak). Frankly, the only reason the place was ever inv@d3d was to uphold the image of the c0mmun1st revolution--the idea that the people of T183t had to be L18er@t3d may hold some water in the context of the somewhat brutal presence of the pre-integration feudal system that held sway there, BUT real reasons for inv@si0n were essentially to fuel the nationalistic revolution, and to gain power over one of the most important nexi in the Buddhist religion.

Eh, to be on the safe side, ask me more about these things some other time--preferably NOT via e-mail. But you can get a sense of the issue from what I've said so far, I think. Just like how China is essentially under a capitalist economic structure now, the role of Chinese gov't is to uphold the image of a stratified communist society--without necessarily following through with the substance.


(If you still haven't gotten it by now, I'm talking about these guys. No, not the doves.)

-s

Blog-Off Interlude

By the way, just in case you thought I was lying about what happened on my birthday...

And yes, I am singing the Bob Dylan version of "Man of Constant Sorrow".

...what?

-s

The Kidnapper's Illusion (Blog-Off Entry #3)

"Somebody was kidnapped. By the supermarket." Zhou JieJie's voice scratches through my phone.
"Who?"
"Somebody. I don't know. Lu Laoshi wanted me to make sure everybody is okay. Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. Who got kidnapped? A Westerner or Chinese?"
"I don't know. Just be careful. Don't talk to strangers."
"Okay, yeah, don't worry I'm just at a cafe."
"Okay. See you."
"Yeah, bye."

I think back to a conversation I had with Kelly. She told me: "The only reason I want laser surgery is that I want to be able to see where I am when I wake up, you know? At any time, no matter what. If I have glasses, I might not always be able to put them on".

To wake up and not be able to see where you are. To walk down the street, and get grabbed, stuffed, punctured, taken away, restrained, controlled, demanded. Or, as we've read: to be trapped in a hotel in Mumbai, guns rattling bullets stampeding down hallways through skin blood bone heart stomach lung carpet wallpaper door brain bed air thick with chaos sound hate confusion.

Why?

On one hand, you have the act for what it is: the feeling of control, to make decisions that greatly affect not only your life but the life of others, to claim godhood with the ability to choose the exact moment when someone's life ends, and to use that as justification to make them do whatever you want, theoretically--instant power.

And then, there's what the act represents: it's not the person, but their whole race, country, culture, whatever it is that you want to use them for. Conquer an American tourist, you can conquer America. Same goes with slavery (really, just a more elaborate and lasting version of kidnapping). Conquer a person of another skin color or background, and you assert "superiority" of your race over theirs. Control. Power. Or at least the illusion of it.

What is power? Is it really what it claims to be? Does it actually exist? I'd go as far to say that power, as in power over people, money, property--the most common conceptions of power, the idea of ownership and control--is actually one of the most pointed expressions of insecurity, misunderstanding, and, ultimately, non-control. To claim power over something is to claim possession, and therefore control and understanding. But more often than not, to claim understanding of something is to not understand--to create a simplified replica of what you want to have power over, and therefore to fall prey to illusion, abstraction, non-reality. Power is invented. Money is invented. Property is invented. To fall under the spell of control--to believe that you can really control something--is to displace yourself from what is real. And I'll stand by the fact that what is real is good, and that it's worth dedicating one's life to finding, receiving, creating, living as much of what is real as possible. Y'know, Socrates style.

But I should add a disclaimer. I'm no total anarchist, nor fatalist, because of these ideas. A person does have a certain amount of control in their thoughts and actions in the world. But this thought comes attached with two tags: 1. that real control comes with understanding (at least understanding as much as possible as opposed to claiming complete understanding) and compassion. 2. That nothing can be completely controlled, even the self. Otherwise we'd be gods.

-s

Tibetan Music Videos (Blog-off entry #2)

Tibetan music videos are mesmerizing. Mesmerizing in the way that a car wreck is mesmerizing--you want to look away, but you can't for the fact that you just can't quite believe that this is happening; that is this something that actually exists in the world.

Imagine this: A Tibetan man in a field in a traditional Tibetan coat, with stylish western sunglasses and bluejeans He has one hand on his heart, the other in the air, and then he switches hands, and switches again (this seems to be the entire course of the choreography). The music is a love song, in Mandarin Chinese, with flutes, an electric drum beat, and soul-crushing synthesizers. In the far background of the field are office buildings. In the next shot he riding a horse. In the next shot, he is in someone's driveway. Back to the field again. I am left confused.

The thing is this: in 1997 Zhongdian decided to be doubly-named Shangri-la (after a book written by a westerner who had never been to China--the story is that he envisioned the place after a National Geographic article), in order to draw tourism. Among many other changes, not long after the re-naming did the "ethnic-style" music videos appear, first there essentially for the tourists, to further exoticise the Eastern Tibetan culture, to package up their traditions in a little box for others to see. But then, not before long, the residents of the town decided that they really liked the music videos--so now, tourists or not, you can walk into most households and there's a good chance that you'll see one of these epicly bad works of melodic cinema, blaring in the corner.

And so I get worried: with all of these packaged-up mutilations of the cultural traditions, will the original songs and dances be butted out? It's starting to seem that way. But the second question is this: do I have the right to tell them to do otherwise? America has been a nation of near-constant development and change, and who are we to deny another culture the same thing? And hell, drive around the southwest for awhile and you'll be guaranteed to see a similar packaging and marketing and changing of traditional culture in the resorts and attractions that revolve around many of the glorified tribes of native americans.

But while the Chinese history of invading Tibet seems like a tea party compared United States' history of nearly destroying its now-minoritized indigeneous cultures, the marketing of the Tibetan culture (among other southwest minorities) has reached levels that seem to surpass anything in the U.S.

Tricky things to judge for a foreigner.

-s

A Brazilian Thanksgiving in China. (blog entry to make up for Nov. 27th., aka blog-off entry #1)

"Did he just say--?"
"Yes, yes it is."
"Well, then we have to try it, don't we?"
"Do we?"
"We do."

And so I motioned to the Meat Cowboy, who, with a large knife, liberated one of the 20-odd chicken hearts that embroidered his two-pronged skewer. It dropped onto my plate with satisfying bounciness.

The place was a "Brazilian" restaurant on the eighth floor of a downtown mall in Kunming. Our teacher knows the manager of the place, and offered to pay for a thanksgiving celebration. Like many places I've seen in China, the restaurant was an amalgamation of several cultures. You had Chinese food at the buffet, statues that looked more aztec than Brazilian, and of course, the ever-present influence of American culture: this time manifested in the form of the Tom & Jerry cartoons being non-stop projected upon the wall. Of course, the centerpeice were the "Brazilian Cowboy" waiters (hence, the aforementioned "meat cowboys", adorned with cowboy hats and red neckercheifs, armed with large knifes and two-pronged skewers, from which they would harvest only the choicest of barbequed meats.

But one should note that according to the Chinese, "choicest" means "any part of the animal". For example, let's take a look at how Western culture has for centuries defined the parts of a cow:


Each peice is partioned by the butcher, and a prime rib is usually found in a very expensive meal, whereas, i dunno, a hoof might not. BUT in China, aside from fancy-schmancy restaurants, a meal that claims cow meat usually abides by this sort of diagram:


...which includes things that were seen on skewers last night such as tongue and stomach and so on and so on. I know, many cultures like to use all parts of the animal. Maybe this is a Brazilian thing too. All I know is that I've seen many a happy person chew on a chicken head in this country... and that's great! I mean, I'm not a chicken head sort of guy, but if they give it equal worth with the breast and thigh, then more power to them. I mean, it is a communist country, right?

-s

p.s. how rude of me, i forgot to link katelyn's blog! Here she is: http://www.katelynloveschile.blogspot.com/. And she's a much finer blogger than I, aside from when we're blog-offing. Then, well... I mean, you know. But she's in CHILE. How cool is that? Super cool.

p.p.s. sorry for the second delay, but I thought I'd still have wifi in my dorm, which I don't anymore. Nevertheless, from now on thing's'll be ship'n'shape!

p.p.p.s. And yes, I realize that any place that serves ground beef in America follows the second cow diagram as well.

belated blog-off beginnings

-s

(this post is the prequel. Episode 1 arrives tomorrow (the 27th) in China, but today (the 26th) in the U.S., if all goes to plan)

snapshots

I leave for Lijiang Sunday, and Kunming a couple days after that. Here's a few pictures to give a sense of the past 2 weeks in Zhongdian. More words to come later.

butter candle holders

the compassion buddha


Me, Tomo, Ashley. No, didn't get to keep the sweet threads.


Jake


morning, one of the flower bowls in the courtyard, frozen

the girls of the tanka center

stupa

outside Zhongdian

East & West, buyong & guitar

-s

my mornings

Put yourself in places of discomfort. Go where things are different. Surround yourself with strangers, and slowly, with whatever magic you may have, make them into friends. Wake up early on cold mornings, when getting out of your bed is like prying yourself from between the lock-jaw lips of an oyster. Cold that breath curls out of you like a reluctant ghost, and out of the necessity of waking up slowly before a bowl of steaming rice, your thoughts are simple.

Now that you've awoken, strap your guitar onto your back, sling your buyong--a tibetan fiddle--across your shoulder and walk up the cobbled streets, past the barking dogs, past the make-shift garbage dump, and the abandoned tiny temple, dwarfed by the others in the area. Walk up the hill, through the dry weary grass, and find the tree under which you'll sit, and sing, and play music both western and eastern for the dread-locked cows, the sparrows, the occasional curious passerby. All the while as the city steams below you, shivering loose from the icy night before.

Homesickness, Poop Jokes With Monks

So far I haven't had too much of a problem with homesickness. Little bouts of it here and there, but nothing that ever brought me down so much.

Today is different. It's a little hard to pinpoint why, but sometimes when traveling a person can fall into such discomfort. The lodgings, the food, the surroundings may be just fine--but sometimes there is just too many different things to process. It makes me want to retreat into things familiar, and that is why for a couple hours I have holed myself up in a tourist-aimed cafe, equipped with cups of coffee and the internet. It's not like I'm down for the count or anything, but while some days it's easy to stumble through a rudimentary grasp of a foreign language, and while some days it's easy to make friend after friend out of stranger, and ask them to sing and dance and open up about their lives and culture--but some days, it's difficult to muster that sort of energy. You get lonely. You get hungry for Seattle rain, for Colorado mountains. For people who like to play bluegrass. For madrona trees and western red cedars. For the 71. For Hotchkiss. For musty used-cd stores. For real halloween. For Twisp. For knee-skinning sandstone. For family, for family, for friends, for friends. For Neumo's and SIFF, for King Chef and Mate Factor. For presidents who make speeches that make you want to cry. For the love of people who know where you've been, what you've done. For the loving of them. For thanksgiving. For log-cakes, with one of the first snows outside, maybe, if you're in the methow. For that fast yellow bicycle. For the backcountry. For the books. Even for all the goddamn hipsters.
(Zhongdian)
...So maybe tomorrow, now that I've made this exhale, I can inhale again. Inhale yaks, and strange but beautiful songs, and dances, and revelations, and set-backs, and sharp-edged mountains, and so many new people, and god damnnit it's so hard just to memorize two lines of this Tibetan song, the one about women and sun, the first one I'm learning, that comes off so easily for the locals, so rough and wavering out my own mouth--but tomorrow, steps, baby steps, deep breaths, one-thing-at-a-time goddamnnit you're from the other side of the world but this is still the same sun, this is still the same moon, and you've got the hearts of everybody who's important to you tucked right in there beside your own, and because of that, you've got everything you could ever need, you've got Seattle and Colorado and heck let's throw in Utah, and Montana, New Mexico, Nicaragua, yes, fine, and because somebody said 'wherever you go, there you are', you've got Zhongdian too, you've got it and you've got everything you need.

Now, after all that... As the title suggests, here's the best moment of my time here so far: Last night, Saturday night, the students of the Tanka center, Ashley, and me sat around the monk who everyone just calls "the master". Because it was Friday night, he said that instead of lectures we would tell riddles and jokes. The following was favorite:

One day a little boy was walking down the street when he saw two thieves robbing a vendor. One of the thieves wheeled around, spotted the boy, and pushed him into the mud. 'Don't say anything!' he shouted, and ran away with his counterpart. Angry but helpless, the boy decided to spend the rest of the afternoon by climbing up into his favorite tree. Lo and behold, not five minutes later did the boy spot the two thieves, who had come to sit beneath his tree to count their earnings. 'I'll get them back...' thought the boy. He pulled down his trousers, aimed, and pooped--but not a single fleck of brown fell onto the heads of the thieves. Why?

"...Was he still wearing his underwear...?"

*nod*

ahahahahahahahaha.


(The Master)

-s

Shangri-la la laaaaaaaaaaa

Three, the number of times I've traveled to Zhongdian, the number of kings (as in of orient are), the magic number, as bolstered by De La Soul, Run DMC, and A Tribe Called Quest--because hey, you can't refute the magic in old school hip hop groups comprised of three people.

But nonsense aside, I'm on my second day of my ISP--and unlike what I've previously reported plan-wise, I'm not in Kunming, and I won't be for about another three weeks. Why? Because I decided that instead of holing myself up in a Kunming dorm room for weeks in order to get through and literarily analyze a sprawling Chinese epic, I'd rather zip back up to Zhongdian. But why, Samuel Hart? What tomfoolery are you up to?

...So, here's the objectives of my new ISP:
1. To learn as much as I can about the role and history of traditional Tibetan music, including an attempt at learning to play a traditional Tibetan instrument, whose name I for some reason can't yet get to stick in my head.
2. To use a borrowed recording device to record as many people singing and playing as many Tibetan songs as possible, thereby creating a small sampler-catalogue of Zhongdian-area Tibetan traditional music (I'd probably need months to get a full catalogue).
3. Use what I know of traditional Tibetan music and compare it to the tourism-ispired Tibetan pop music that currently gets blasted in the streets, and go even further to use this contrast as a lense through which to view the effect of tourism on Tibetan society.

With those original objectives in mind, y'know, the ones I came up with two days ago, I've already had to shift my priorities. Today, friday, has contained first a disheartening event, which was then followed by a wonderful one.

To break it down: I came into this thinking that I had a teacher, this guy who was willing to teach me how to play (goddamnnit what is that instrument called? It's like an Erhu, sorta, which is like a violin, sorta) this instrument, but then I met up with him today. Does he have time for lessons? Nope. Does he have an hour or two, just an hour or two, this week or next week, when I can interview him about music, and perhaps record him playing (I also clarified that this was for an educational project and was in no way for sale--oh yeah, and ps, I can pay you for your time!)? Nope. Oh, and what's that? You say that the whatcha-ma-callit is too difficult for anybody to get any good at it in three weeks, so I should give up? Okay, great, thanks...

A little disheartened, I returned to the cultural center. For most of my project here, I'm staying in a wonderful place: a cultural center where a few students (including my program friend Ashley, who is taking classes with them) learn how to paint traditional Buddhist Tankas under a monk/Tanka-master. Usually three meals a day, and really great people. Anyway, I join them for lunch, and relate my defeat, when Somo (pronounced Tsomo), the main cook's daughter who came over to take her mother's place for the day, tells me that her father knows how to play (arrrg, is it pujiam? pujio?) and sing tons of traditional folk songs, and invites me to come visit him. Yes! I shoulder my guitar and we hop on the bus, and soon we're at the town college's campus, where Somo's father has a cot in the gate-keeper's house. We exchanged songs (I recorded four songs from him, two with instrument, two without, and I played him a couple American folk songs). Then he did some traditional dancing steps, and I responded with some tap dance moves (thank you 42nd street!). Somo's mother, the cook at the center, came too, and at the end of all this invited me to visit their home and eat with them on Sunday. And her father told me that I could drop by his gateguard's cot any time to exchange songs and practice on his (yup... whatever it's called). Any discouragement caused from Denju, the would-be teacher, was erased.

So the plan now is still probably more recording and interviews then anything else, but it's at least good to hear that somebody will suffer me as a student. And at the suggestion of Somo, I'm going to try and catch a bus out to a rural village or two next week, where people supposedly have songs for every occasion: cutting wood, building houses, weddings, etc...

So that's what I'm doing here--more on the place itself soon. And yes, some of you may be thinking "But Sam, it's not in the province of Tibet--Zhongdian is in Yunnan!", but this is definately a Tibetan place. The culture, the written language (however the spoken dialect is different), the religion, the mountains, the monks, the yaks, are all the same, given the differences between general areas.

Okay, no more time for writing. I need to buy more long underwear and an electric blanket. I'll try and figure out how to post audio on this thing, even though so far the songs I've been recording have come out a little quieter than I'd have liked... Might buy a better device, we'll see.

Oh, and I almost forgot. Three, the number of names I have in China: Samuel Hart Johnston, Zhang Hai Song (Flat-Object Ocean Wise-Tree), and since today, Lobsang Phadan (Good mind, good heart, who can do anything he wants to do (yes, that is the general translation)).

until next time, happy trails.
-s

...oh, how I hate accidentally deleting full entries just before completion...

21 in Tibet, or, a Tale of Three Families, or, Prayers for Cindy

There was a stage. Sort of. Lights. A microphone. I was wearing a hat, given to me by a classmate, of fur of some ambiguous origin. And there was my mouth, open, air pushing out the longest note that I could muster for the first part of an old folk song. There were people who came up from their beers, with silver-white scarfs that the bar had hung around a peg on a pillar beside the stage--they were for the audience to give to good performers, or, in my case, performers who perhaps had a couple too many drinks to be any good, but since it was their birthday, and since it was Tibet, these things didn't matter so much. Scarves came around my neck, felt like snow, if snow were warm.

The song ends, and soon afterwords I run to the bathroom--wondrous moments cannot be spared a sense of purity on a 21st birthday. When I get back, this has occurred: A program friend, Joe, has gotten up onto the stage to recite one of his favorite rap songs, complete with middle fingers and "Motherfuckers!", but before the lovely ode to Compton has finished, a particularly drunk Tibetan roars onto the stage, grabs the microphone, shouts a bit, throws the microphone on the floor, throws a full beer at another Tibetan--a friend of ours. I get back in the thick of this, and then we flee, escaping into the street with whispers "Oh shit, was it Joe's song? Oh damn, it was the finger, he shouldn't of flipped...", but later we figure out that gangsta rap is not to blame for this one--the belligerent beer-throwing man thought it was his turn to sing when Joe got up. Ah. I am reminded by something Lu Laoshi told us when we first reached Zhongdian: "By the way, don't get into any fights. People in Tibet do not settle arguments with words. They settle arguments with knifes."

or beer bottles, I guess.

The next morning wakes up and I follow, breakfast of noodles and eggs, a bus ride, my head blissfully free of thought, feeling nothing more than the thin mountain air, the warming mountain sunshine (god, isn't it Colorado, Tibet?). And as if my body understood that the next couple hours of morning were to be left good, sacred, whole--my hangover had not kicked in yet. Here, we arrived at the monastery, a special niche in Zhongdian, modeled after the palace in Lhasa. On one hand this place is touristy, claimed by an entrance fee, surrounded by little stands for buying overpriced prayer beads, and people overly-traditonally-dressed, holding baby yaks and demanding that you take a picture of them and give them 10 kuai for it. On the other hand, this is a monestary, gold leaf pressed upon the escarpment statures, robed monks murmuring prayers, a flock of blackbirds spiraling above, an inescapable sense of peace. We walk up stairs, to a small room and here he is, sitting in his robes colored like yellow sandstone and red mesa (again, Colorado, you keep whispering here), a living Buddha, a reincarnate Lama. Questions are traded for answers, and more questions. Some questions, such as things I probably shouldn't mention on a site that can be looked at by certain governments, went unanswered. Some things are still too dangerous. He ends the session by tying a red string around each of our necks, speaking a small prayer with each knot. For three days, we are not to take them off.

The day rambles on, I get a lunch hour in a cafe to computer-talk to my would-be-(nay, will be!)future-shark wonder of a sister, and then to the orphanage.

But that's one family, and there are two other important families which I have neglected to mention: Gao and Duan.

I stayed with the Gao family for two weeks in Kunming. There's mom, dad, grandma and Chen Chen, the girl who during my stay turned six years old--and is more or less a sure example of the Chinese phenomenon labeled as the "Little Emperors".

Don't get me wrong, Chen is a sweet kid--but, she also has more or less free reign to throw fits, shout, and demand whatever she wants. It's a common attitude for kids to assume in urban China these days; due to the infamous One Child Policy, China is fostering a generation of single kids, who are meeting the world with a rapidly developing world that their parents only had dreamt of. Chen Chen's mother, Jiang Yaoxi, for example, received a single egg for her sixth birthday. Chen Chen received an expensive western-style meal (complete with ice cream and cheese-and-fruit pizza), barbie dolls, movies, chocolates, and a toy moose (brought from the US from yours truly). But just like big emperors, little emperors don't get a life of luxuries for nothing--each of these kids faces an immense pressure to succeed: to be number one, to get the best score, to be the best pianist, to uphold the family by themselves. No wonder parents in urban China rear back a little on repremands--how else could they command their children to schooling, sports, tutoring, more tutoring, lessons in piano and english and on and on and on... without crushing them?

Aside from commands from Chen Chen to "HUA HUA!" (paint) with her (meaning, use the paint program on my computer to draw butterflies and dinosaurs) disrupting me from studying, the Gao family showed me more warmth an acceptance than I could've ever expected. Gao Jian, the dad, a wonderfully dorky and kind computer technician, took me swimming with him at a nearby pool, where we would race and laugh about how tired we got. Jiang Yaoxi talked to me in the evenings as she hula-hooped in front of the television about her childhood at a farm near Dali, and I showed her pictures of my family's thanksgiving. Chen Chen and I, needless to say, got along great. The first night I arrived I played Gillian Welch songs in the livingroom while Chen Chen hopped around in a pink unitard.



Fastforeward, past the techno ghost of John Denver and the ganja mistresses of Dali (see last post if you're confused), shot out across Northwest Yunnan in a bus, in an out and Dali, up and down a holy mountain adorned with a pagoda and enwreathed in a sunset too pomegranate tangerine gorgeous to ever be caught and pinned down by a picture, let alone with words, and after that we come to Shaxi (for those mapping events, we arrived in Shaxi a little over a week ago, and stayed 5 nights).

Shaxi, a small town, surrounded by hills full of pine trees and spiders and Buddhist temples, where the inhabitants cross their fingers for an influx of tourism (tourism = money) while they farm wheat and rice in the fields and pick mushrooms in the hills. Here I stay in a house in cobwebs, a square of rooms surrounding a small courtyard where an old pomegranate tree reigns. My room there is next to the pig and goat pens. This is the Duan household, headed by a laughing man with half his teeth left, a wrinkled face and a skill at playing traditional Chinese musical instruments, chiefly the erhu and flutes.

How many people actually are part of the household I never was too sure--rural Chinese families stick together a lot more than urban families, and also don't have the usually One Child Policy to tie them down, so numbers can be large. But because it rained the entire 5 days I was there, I got to sit with the family a lot, trading songs with the Duan Baishan (the patriarch laughing man) and watching bad Chinese soap operas with one of his two sons, a man in his late twenties who suffers from a heavy mental disability. Again, even though in quite a different scenario, I was treated with so much kindness. Happy bowls of noodles were shared over episodes of the Chinese version of the Ugly Betty TV show.


The stay in Shaxi culminated in an exchange of performances: the men of the village played traditional Bai music on Erhus and other traditional instruments, and I played American folk songs: "Paradise" and "Man of Constant Sorrow" (Dylan style, not Soggy Bottom Boys) with my guitar and harmonica. Then the women of the village did traditional dance, and some of the girls from our group went up and sang "Build Me Up Buttercup" a capella, and to top it all off, the aformentioned Joe played my guitar for a shouting-tastic rendition of "Queen Bitch" ("They can't understand the lyrics," he told me after the performance, "so when I screech, they know what it feels like for me when I have to sit through Beijing Opera." If you don't know what Beijing Opera is, think heavily make-upped women singing like the sound when you let air out of a full balloon when you pinch the opening). It was a good farewell, and the next morning we were off to Zhongdian, a tourist hub of Tibetan culture that holds the other name of "Shangri-la", where there were 21st birthdays, living Buddhas, orphanages, and beyond the city, prayers for Cindy.

The orphanage was happy faces, Tibetan children of all ages running around. In the fashion of the Shaxi performances, they sang and danced Tibetan-style, while we, caught off-guard, managed to slop together a rendition of "in the jungle". After that we played soccer and basketball and duck duck goose. Wonderful kids. And even if I only spent a small time with them, I have to put them here as family #3--not a family for me like the last two, but irrefutably a family, another kind, just like the Gaos, just like the Duans.

Later that evening, a night for good food, a performance by dread-locked drum-circled Japanese, and a final switching of my ISP topic (will elaborate later). But the next day, back in the bus, out onto dirt roads that bump and heave us, up to a trailhead where a goat (to whom I bestow the regal name of "Andrew the Majestic (the goat)") accompanies us up to a small temple, halfway up a hill where thousands of prayer flags flap between the pine trees. Prayer flags are a common sight, but here at this out-of-the-way community, the people have a special preparation: before tying up the strings of flags, they take a moment to write the names of loved ones, now gone, upon the sacred colored scraps of cloths. The prayers are for them, and they go out into the wind with each flapping of cloth in the breeze. I bought a strand, and in the morning mountain air, the morning mountain sunlight, I walked up the hill, ducking under and over strands of flags. Nearer to the temple the flags are newer, brighter and taut between the trees. But the further I went, the more faded they got, the more tattered, the more age. And in a spot where the flags must've been older than me at least, where the morning sun got through and through the trees I could see the rolling green of the valley below, I tied up a string of white, blue, yellow, red, green, with Cindy's name on each one. I stood awhile to watch them rustle: their first motions of many. And then, stuffing my hands into my coat, I walked back through a sea of prayers, back to the bus to Shangri-La.



-s