on a road that switched back and forth from Dirt to cobble stone, to here... Not to mention being in the mountains so the roads constantly bent and turned to conform to the land; something Ken says he never got used to even when taking the motion sickness medicine at the bus station.After about a three hour ride we finally stopped the bus and got off half of the way to the next town in the place depicted in the picture on the right. The house of a man who Ken calls his uncle, which doesn't necessarily mean he is a relative but a man who is around the age of his father and a friend of the family. From here we got to ride in a "tuolaji"which is the tractor in the picture and also the video up on facebook.
The "Tuolaji" is basically a Chinese tractor with the engine on the outside. They are just about everywhere in Yuxi and all the places that I have seen in Yunnan. It has become some what of a dream of mine to ride one for a while now. I can say now that my life is more fulfilled!
After a while the road became two narrow for a tuolaji and we were forced to continue on foot for another 6km before finally making it to Kens house. Ken's cousin helped us carry our bags along with his uncle by taking a stick and hanging my bag on one side weighted down with all my language study material and clothes and on the other side a box filled with presents for Ken's father: a rice cooker, dvd player, hot plate, pots and pans, oranges, and apples! all hanging from a stick that slung over his shoulder.
We maneuvered through sugar cane fields down valleys across rivers up mountains. I was amazed to see Ken's uncle and cousin had no problem the entire hike carrying these things over there shoulders while wearing flip flops meanwhile I was just carrying my backpack with sneakers on and nearly fell several times.
Eventually the Sun fell behind the mountains and we were walking by cellphone light not able to see anything but the ground about two feet in front of us. It was maybe a three hour hike in the mountains before we made it home and I got to meet Ken's father for the first time who met me with us with a big smile and a tea pot full of freshly boiled water. I knew already the next 20 days were days I would never forget...
One of the first things we did at ken's house was get settled in and find out where we would all be sleeping for the next 20 nights. Ken gave me his old room which is in the picture to the right. Inside was a bed that Ken had made himself when he was younger as well as a desk that he rushed to take everything out of the drawers and put in boxes so that I would have my own desk during the time I was there. The hut was also the storage room for grain and other things used for feeding the pigs and chickens. Also you can somewhat see from the picture the cow pen was located directly below.
One of the thing I have noticed during my lifetime and one that a friend named Heather who just arrived in China also said during a recent trip to encourage some English Students in Huaning is that usually the poorest places in the world are the most beautiful!
Ken's father is a farmer if you haven't noticed already and Ken tells me that in a good year he can make around 2,000 yuan or 277$! On a farm its not a big problem where you mostly live off the land anyways but it leaves Ken with not much of a choice in terms of paying for college. Either he must work his tail off to pay for his tuition on his own or all these four years will be a waste since the schools refuses to give him his diplomat at his graduation unless he pays his tuition in full ahead of time!
This trip was great for getting to know my friend Ken. When he was in primary school his mother passed away from eating a poisonous mushroom and he and his father were forced to live with that fact ever since. Though In America single parent families have almost become the norm in China however, its very different. Ken was forever looked down upon growing up and had a ruff time making friends. He spent most of his time simply just doing everything his father asked him not wanting to hurt his father's heart anymore than it was already. His time was consumed with farm Labor and studying growing up. However, today is a different day... His work ethic would cause him to be the first college student in his village!
Here are my Roommates! Ken has about 5 cows 1 that is a calf all of which will sell for a pretty yuan when there old and big enough. Right now there simply another mouth to feed and the pullers of the plow. You can see in the picture right outside the pen up on some wooden pegs is the plow for tilling the soil. I got to try my hand at plowing and found out it isn't exactly as easy as they make it look! You can yell at the cow all you want and he isn't going to listen to you!In addition, I got to help use a hoe to till the soil for a terraced tea field for a couple of weeks and to humorously attempting to carry a banana tree up from the valley. In all the time we were there it rained once and the very day after Ken decided we should climb down the mountain to get a fallen banana tree to cut up and feed to the cows. So we each grabbed a trunk of a banana tree and a bunch of bananas and started climbing up the mud slicked terraced rice field. By the time we made it up I had fallen down 5 times covered in mud and half of the bananas were missing from the bunch. After that incident it was much harder to let them help around the farm with saving face and all...
Here is Ken washing my bedding by hand as is everything washed. With my bed being located so close to the chickens I had some kind of flea that I was not aware of but I later found their bites all over my body my last week at the village. I didn't realize it then but this was why Ken demanded that he wash my bedding.
This is Ken's house made up of three huts: two are made of mud bricks and one of wood. Straight ahead is the kitchen which has two giant woks stuck in cement and a small whole underneath that you can put flaming logs under to heat things up. This actually ended up being the place for the three legged village cat to put her kittens since in all the time we were there we didn't once use the giant woks. On the left is where we spent most of the nights hanging out around a fire and watching T.V. on the porch. Ken tells me that before he went to college there was no TV or even electricity at his house and most nights would be spent singing and dancing around the fire however much of the culture has been lost to the TV. This is also the hut where Ken, his father and gf slept at night. Then on the right the only wooden hut is the hut I slept in from the picture above.
Here is view of most of the rest of the village from Ken's house.
The night after we arrived everyone came to Ken's house for breakfast and together took the biggest of one of the three pigs from the pen and held him down for slaughter and I was blessed to be able to see the entire process! While five farmer held down a big pig and shoved a knife in his throat while the pig's squealing echoed off the mountains for hours.
They drained the blood into a bowl which would latter be served raw with noodles as if it were red sauce! Then they poured the boiling water to remove the hair and cut up everything and put it in salt, not throwing anything out of course. That would be my food for the next month and even when we left ken's father blessed us with a bag of pig meat to take home!
Below are the two pigs who got to live! for now...
Below is our water source. Everybody came here to fill there buckets up with some, high quality H2O, real spring water and carried it back for everything from washing your feet at night, water for drinking and cooking rice in.
Here is the defeathering grounds... Kens father had killed 5 chickens for us while we were home and here Ken and his little cousin are defeathering little birds. Ken spent a lot of time in his Childhood catching birds with hand made bamboo traps. We caught maybe 30 birds during the 20 days all together.
The mourning of Spring Festival I woke up to find a tree planted right in front of my door... Ken told me later it was the Spring Festival tree which weirdly no other Chinese person I have talked to has ever heard of a Spring Festival tree. I think he just was entertained by my confused look when I woke up one mourning and nearly walked into a tree!
This is er cuai, made from rice, its also a tradition supposably for the Spring Festival. It's placed at both ends of the door posts and one was put in the Spring Festival Tree.
Here is Ken's Older Sister fetching some water. She only came home for the few days of Spring Festival. It was somewhat of a relief for me since I finally had some more people who spoke Mandarin meanwhile everyone else spoke a dialect that I couldn't understand for the most part. She is one of the few who graduated from High School and now teaches Chinese at a Primary School in town. Many people have not even made it past or two middle school... One man that Ken calls uncle doesn't know how to write his own name in Chinese and had not even been to Primary School...
This year being the year of the mouse of course we had to eat mice! Well since the word for squirrel and mice are almost the same we settled for that... Compared to the boiled meat soaked in raw blood squirrel was like eating Lobster!
Here is the whole family together the day before we headed back with his father in the center Ken on the left with his cousin on the far left. And on the right was Ken's brother and law and Sisster with there three year old Son.
We got to ride back by motorcycle rather than walking so it made it a little bit more convenient! It took about 4 days to get back home with the Spring Festival rush but we did finally make it back!
