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July 11, 2005

I’m on way home by train. Finally I’ll get some time to relax. The train ride is about six hours. This gives me an opportunity to reflect on some interesting things I encountered during the tours in the last few days.

Sitting next to me on the bus was my old friend RC. He was an MIS professor in a university in California. Being a ABC (American born Chinese), he did not speak much Chinese. I was quite impressed by his knowledge about Chinese history and current affairs. Our conversations were all over the map. We discussed issues such as China’s WTO struggle, Sino-US relations, the anti-Japanese sentiment, Taiwan issue, Chairman Mao’s historical position and the future of China. In addition to his knowledge, he was a sincere and truly nice man.

While on the bus, I met a few professors and students from Taiwan. Taiwan issue was an obvious topic. Most of them were in the moderate camp that preferred to maintain the status quo. I had some deep exchanges with CXY. He was proud of the progress the mainland was making and fond of a great China concept that encompassed Hong Kong, Macau, the Mainland and Taiwan. He pointed out that the future of Taiwan was tied to the mainland. One of his radical thoughts was that Taiwanese political parties should open offices in the mainland and compete for offices with the communist party. This would serve as pressure to push the mainland government to carry out political reforms. Another was that Chinese’s anti-Japanese war during the WWII was a mistake. Japanese should have been let in. After a while, they would have been absorbed by the Chinese culture which had been traditionally proved powerful enough to do so. As a result, today Japan might have been part of China already. I was with him on his first point and not so convinced of his second.

While in Lijiang, we were introduced to the only living language in the world. It is called Dongba that uses shapes and pictures to describe meanings. For example, a tree shape is drawn to convey meaning of a tree. A pregnant woman is described by a picture with a small person within another person. There are in total about a couple of thousands of such characters. The people who live in this area are mainly LaXi minority. They regard fatness as beautiful. This would be a heaven for those in America who could not lose weight. J Their skin mostly looks dark due to exposure to abundant sunshine. Before marriage a man has to spend three years in his lover’s family as hard labor to prove his worthiness. Once passing the test, he would then become the master of the household. From then on he does not have to work any more. All he does the whole day is to eat, drink, play cards, OR study. That is why in general women are the main labor in this area.
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Dongba language is very difficult. A man who is able to write and read it is called Dongba, which means professor. This title is inherited within family and only men can be called so. Due to its difficulty, not too many men choose to become Dongba. There are only hundreds of them left in the world. I hope the language and the culture would be able to survive as more and more influences come from the Han culture, the majority. Young people there are increasingly look and speak like Han.

A similar phenomenon here to in the US was a housing boom. Our guide indicated that some people from WenZhou, an affluent city in eastern China, had come in and started to flip houses. This inflated the housing price. The same group of people was also charged for inflating the artificially high real estate price in Shanghai. But by the American standard the price here was still cheap. Russell and I jokingly said that we would buy some houses here and hire the tour guide as our property manager.

On our way to Shangri-la, we saw many satellite dishes erected on those old farm houses. Information acquisition was deemed very important. The majority of the people in this area are Tibetans. Interesting enough during a pit stop, I met a young LaXi girl who worked in a roadside restaurant. As usual she was dark but pretty. I asked her why she did not wear Laxi costume. She said she did not wear them, period, even during their festivals. How could others know she was Laxi? Her dialect, she told me. I also wondered how she could meet someone for marriage. She said mostly the same as any other places. If a young man found a girl interesting, he would ask her out. She also said that she did not have to marry a Laxi. But her children would be Laxi no matter whom she married. When I asked to take a picture of her, she refused because she did not think she was pretty enough. As a goodbye I told her that I thought she was beautiful.

Our local tour guide was a Tibetan. She was really nice, warm and soft spoken. She was not that kind of girls that were stunningly beautiful. But she attracted people with her sincerity and warmth. She wore a typical Tibetan costume. She introduced us to a Tibetan greeting ZiaXiDeLe which reminded me of the time when I was in Tibet. The population here wax 33,000, of which 33% was Tibetan. There were 9 other minorities and Han people were the minority. I was happy to hear this because it was good for the local people to maintain their identities.

The guide at one pointer mentioned that she was the only one among the five children who graduated from high school. The father was Hui and mother was Tibetan. The first child was a son and the next four were girls. The mother wanted to have another son to accompany the oldest but failed. As minority they could have up to 2 children. For each additional child, the family had to pay a 24 Yuan/month (about $3) fine. Although a small sum, it was rather burdensome for the locals. When the mother was pregnant with the six, government officials came by and threatened to take away their cows and sheep if they could not afford the fine. They had to give up the idea to have the child born.

Education was another problem for the family. At one point only one child could continue their schooling. After many difficult deliberations, the family decided that our tour guide should continue with her high school while the others had to abandon. Due to this fact she managed to find this job which paid much better than other jobs. I was really happy for her. She got married last December and planed to have their first child next year. She said she would want to have two. Many people volunteered to have only two because having too many was a too expensive proposition.

The main business here used to be logging. Not until 1996 when the central government realized the server consequences as the downstream of the Yangtze River became more and more muddy. Logging was banned completely. Now the business focus had shifted to tourism. From what I have seen and experienced thus far in China, I have felt the progress of environment protection. I have seen blue skies, sunshine, trees and greens all over the countries. The government at all levels starts to pay attention to the balance between economic development and environment protect.

Another tour guide spoke perfect English. He spent four years in India studying Buddhism. I asked him whether he met Dalai Lama while there. He became defensive because this was a sensitive topic. The entire Tibetan people here or in Tibet believe in Tibetan Buddhism and regard Dali Lama as one of their spiritual leaders. We joked with the guide that we would shake his hand that was blessed by Dalai Lama.

It was amazing that the minority people we met so far all had beautiful voice. When they sang, you were easily taken by their voice, range, and spirituality. Our guide told us that there were two preconditions for a man to find a better mate: singing and horseback riding abilities. Since I know I couldn’t sing, I had to give up the idea of finding a Tibetan girl here.

posted by Unknown @ 2:37 AM