World China Yunnan Lijiang

Su Family Trip to the Americas & Village

Arriving in the village - Yunnan, China Sep 1, 2008

As we packed out things for the next 6 months in the village, we are filled with mixed emotion. On one hand, we are excited about what might be before us in the village. On the other hand, there is the fear of unknown and of leaving our apartment in Kunming that hardly had the chance to stay in after buying it.

After 8 hours of riding on the night bus, we woke up at 7AM and hired a motor cart to carry our 7 luggages to our temporary place in the county town. For the next 2 days, we make arrangements for our home in the village and purchased rice, bowls, cooking oil, seasonings, curtains, and a simple manual washing machine to bring to our new place. During our short stay at the county town, the children really enjoyed the slower pace of life and all the greeneries around. We gave thanks for helping the children to begin adjusting to a different lifestyle.

On Sept 1, Monday, we took a car and after 40 minutes of dirt road, waterfalls, and mudslides, we came to the village which we would be calling home for the next 6 months. It has about 50 households and around 200+ persons. The village is neasled by mountains on the north side and enclosed by a lake on the south side at 2600m. It is located next to the township government, it is relatively better developed, close to a pebble road with small shops and health clinics. There is also electricity (when there is no frequent outage) and we were able to get internet access after few days.

We were fortunate to find a home of a grandma to stay in for the next 6 months as we wanted to live with the community instead in a township gov't dorm. The grandma's parents were kidnapped by the Yi when they were young to be slave here. The Yi used to have a system of slavery. They would go to villages and burn down houses and steal children. The grandma was a slave until she was about ten, when slavery was abolished after the take over of communism.

The home we stayed has a square courtyard, surrounded two sides by rooms and two sides by walls. From the courtyard we get a beautiful view of the mountain and lake. The grandma raises chicken and pigs and has a small vegetable garden. To prepare our living there, with the help World Vision, the grandma repainted a room and fixed the leaking roof. So when we moved in, we were surprised by the newness of the place, which made our adjustment so much the easier.

The kitchen is a simple open pit with blacken walls from the years of smoke soots. Although it doesn't look appealing, there is warmness there and we enjoyed cooking the potatoes and corn inside the pit, which is there main diet. The children really like picking off kernals from the corn cob. They like the food and like the animals. We are thankful for their smooth transition so far.

The house is only 100m away from the village elementry school, where Nathan will be going for his 2nd grade education. Although Nathan is nervous about attending school in a new place with classmates that would be speaking mostly Yi, we are glad that he is not far from home so that we can be there for him.

There is no fridge, we eat off the land and rely on the market days in the town, which is every 2, 7, 12, 17, 22, 27th of the month. Most of the time we eat only vegetables and carbohydrates, which is a good break from the over meat eating culture of the city. Meat is very expensive here, even more than in the city because only the very wealthy and government officials can afford to eat meat regularly. Once a year, the villager would buther the pigs during New Year and preserve them to eat throughout the year.

On Sept 2nd, we witnessed the first market day! It was quite a spectacle to see the many horses "parked" along the road, which were used to carry heavy items to buy or sell. The women dressed in colorful and large head dresses. The vegetables are so fresh and delicious. We bought kidney beans, egg plants, lettus, rice noodles, etc.

We been learning lots of Yi words and used it with whomever we meet around the village. Many smiled back or answered back. The children were more openly curious about who we are. One of the first phrase we learn is "che suo ga ji" which means where is the bathroom.