Where the Yao people play

On friday afternoon we went for a tip to Jianghua, a town pretty close to Daoxian. Again, the driving was conducted in the standard Chinese style by our friend Zhoujie, who we went with. Zhoujie is our tutoring student that we see twice a week. We taught that she is a photographer not a "camerist." She is really nice and loves to take us places. I think that over the last few months her English has gotten much better, which is good.

Maybe the funniest/scariest part of the trip was when she took her eyes off the road and turned to us while cresting a hill on the wrong side of the road at 80 km/h and said, "Yes! I very like driving!"   with a gleam in her eyes she put the pedal to the metal roared down the other side.

the Chinese drive like they do because they are not afraid of death...

"Yes we know," we said, as we clutched the handholds with white knuckles while the car shot over the hill. She turned to us again with an excited/manic gleam in her eyes and gave us a big smile as she put the pedal to the metal and thundered down the other side to play chicken with an enormus truck.

With every hill and corner we prepared for death by taking a big breath and sitting up really straight in fearful anticipation. After a while she seemed to notice this strange behaviour and asked,

"What is wrong? You is sick?"

"No, no," we replied, "we're ok."

Anyway as usual we got there safe, which never ceases to amaze us. I can't help getting the feeling that one day our luck will run out.

Our friend Laura mentioned something interesting to us the last time they came for a visit.  She said, "the Chinese drive like they do because they are not afraid of death." Thinking about this I found it didn't really surprise me at all. The Chinese tend to share the honor and glory thing that is so big in Japanese culture in regard to death. But when I thought about it I decided that we aren't really afraid of death either, the difference between us and the Chinese is that we don't go courting it at every opportunity.

Back to the trip. We arrived at the family home of Zhoujie's best friends parents.  Bit random I know, but "Auntie" as we were asked to call her greeted us by dancing and clapping because she was so excited to have Lao Wei (foriegners) at her home. It was nice and they made us feel like royalty as usual by feeding us watermellon until we were almost bursting.

In the loungeroom there was a large picture of this family from 1982.  It was really interesting because they were all in the old Mao suits that everyone had to wear back then. For some reason this picture said so much to me. I think it had an effect on me because it wasn't a picture of anyone famous or historic that I have seen depicted from the Mao era, it was a small family. Here were the actual people involved in the changes of China and who have undoubtably seen some amazing things in their lifetimes.

"Auntie" and "Uncle" were only a few years older than my perents, which was really weird to think about because while my parents saw the 1960s evolve as the time of free speech and revolutionary music in Australia, these people were learning to do as they were told and were witnessing the great leap forward.

Grandfather was 83. 83! Imagine all the things he has seen. He said about two words duing our stay and just drank his cup of Mei Jio and ate his dinner quietly.  He was probably scared of us.

Such different lives.

While my father was roaring from Sydney to Brisbane on his motorbike in search of an easy job and the good weather, "Uncle" was learning to shoot an automatic rifle and protect Tianemin Square as a soldier in the Peoples Liberation Army.

While my mother was living in the alternative communities in Austalia and sharing ideas and leaning Austrology, "Auntie" was teaching primary school students in Beijjing Chinese and the numerous benefits of the communist idology for China.

I think these kind of things are so interesting to think about. The thing is, there is no one place that is better, it is just vastly different. My students are always saying to me, "Australia is better than China," but I always say, "no it is not, it is just different."

Anyway better stop rambling and get on with the travel details. What does it matter anyway, when you travel no one really wants to know about it when you try to tell them. I admit, when other people tried to tell me all about their travels I got really bored because I couldn't imagine it and wish I had of been there. So the only one that will come back to read this crap is me. Good for my own memory and not much else.

Anyway, back to the trip. We were taken to a traditional Chinese massage palor where they thumped and squeezed our feet and backs for 90 minutes. They were such professionals that they didn't even stop when the power blacked out and kept right at it in the complete darkness until a candle was brought in. Oh, yeah. massage by candlelight.

The next day we went to see the Qin Yan cave, which was pretty amazing. Next, we took a boat ride through a part of the cave. At many points the roof of the narrow tunnel that stretched for 1600m was inches above our heads. While the man pushed us through the water the Yao women tour guide sang us traditional Yao people songs.  The songs were really beautiful and in return we sang "As I went down in the river to pray" for them. I think they liked it.

The next day we went to, I quote, "Yao people Number One place." Jianghua is a city first settled by the Yao people, so there are still many of them around living as they used to do before "Libeation." The Number one place was a big temple and recreation of how the Yao people used to live. Pretty interesting place.  We prayed to their lucky idol and were made to drink Yao Mei Jio - disgusting!

The Yao people recreation place also had a little place for dancing. The dancing area has two long bamboo slats running horizontally and two smaller ones close together running the other way. Two people sit at either end of the small slats and bang them together in a rhythum and the dancer must dance through them successfully without beign tripped up. It gets harder and harde as they get faster.  I wasn't too bad at it.

They also made us dress up in Yao clothes and they took lots of photos of us. We noticed that our handouts about the museum place had pictures of our foriegn friends from Ireland who must have visited here sometime ago. I wonder if we will make it onto the next edition?

Before we went home we were challenged to play a game of Croquet with Uncle and Auntie. We can't play coquet, so it was a bit of a shameful affair on our part.

Back in the car to Daoxian. Actually we will leave Daoxian soon for our new job in Tonghua, Jilin province. Into the cold. Five days until we leave! The next entry should be Zhangjajie, where we are going to visit before heading north...