July 13: In which there is no power but there are some phone calls, a tourist trap, a sad kitten, and some oddly unperturbed cormorants

I woke up pretty early Wednesday AM, despite having gone to bed around 2:30. I've been finding that the relatively hard beds keep me from lazing around quite the same way I might have in a more comfy setting. In addition, of course, I want to explore and see what's around me.

Unfortunately, when I went into the bathroom and flipped the switch for the light, nothing happened. It quickly became clear that the power was out in the lodge, and, in fact, in most of Dali. This was a great disappointment, as I'd been hoping to use the hours before the boys got up (they'd stayed out much later than I, being younger and having more stamina for the late-night partying, it would seem) to talk about the previous day's events here on the blog. Though candles are a pleasant enough alternative to electricity, the lack of internet is quite frustrating on a rainy day.

I decided to test the limits of the magic of international cell phone use with a call to my mom, who was as tickled as expected to recieve it. Shortly thereafter, I made a slightly less happy call to my friend Shosho, to ask some animal-care advice. The night before, toward the end of the music party, I had heard extremely loud meowing that sounded like an unhappy kitten. It, in fact, turned out to BE an unhappy kitten, which wandered in to the open lodge area from the rain outside. it was dry, so I suspect it may have been hiding somewhere from the rain. It was quite dirty, but didn't seem to be starving.

I don't think it's too xenophobic of me to be extremely suspicious of any and all Chinese interactions with the animal kingdom, given that a)dude... the dog-eating thing (sorry, some cultural relativism just doesn't fly with me- I know I should be more bothered by the "exotic" restaurants that serve monkeys, which is like eating a toddler, but monkeys are creepy, and that I am not, myself, a vergetarian, but pigs, cows, and chickens don't, as a dominant trait of their respective species, just want to love you and be your friend, which, sorry to tell everyone, even the sorriest and saddest Chinese dogs certainly seem to, about which more later), b)the poaching/ total lack of environmental or animal-rights regulations, c)there are a billion and a half of them and concern for animals is the province of wealthy westerners, not poor peasants and d)did I mention they EAT DOGS? Yeah. So, I was keeping a wary eye on both the kitten and the lodge staff as re: the kitten. I certainly didn't want to see it turned into kitten crepes, nor did I want to see it trapped and killed like a rat, both of which seemed like possibilities, to my admittedly xenophobic in this regard western mind. No one else seemed to be particularly concerned about the eventual well-being of the kitten, and the kids from the tour group were having a grand time playing with it and cuddling it (which, of course, may not have been the BEST idea, given the Lonely Planet's admonitions about rabies, but it was more reassuring than not, regardless).

The last I'd seen of the kitten, it was curled up on a cushion on one of the lodge benches, and seemed to be in no danger of being molested or sent into the rain by the lodge staff (none of whom, it should be noted, I had ANY ACTUAL REASON to believe might be kitten-killers (unlike Republican Senate Majority Leader and potential US Presidential candidate Bill Frist, who verifiably IS a kitten-killer, and a vivisecionist to boot), so I am in fact guilty of some racism there). It had such a powerful and desperate sounding cry that I thought it must have lost its motherm so I hoped that when the rain let up, it would go find her again.

The next morning, however, the kitten was still around, and still occasionally crying loudly. I tried to feed it some scrambled eggs, which it didn't seem interested in. I was thinking of hatching some kind of scheme where I induced Alan to explain to the lodgekeepers that having a friendly cat around would be good PR with Westerners, but it seemed to me that wouldn't be entirely responsible without verifying the poor thing was disease-free. I have no idea if there even ARE vets in China. In any event, once I damned the rabies torpedoes and picked it up, it seemed to me that the kitten was only about 5 weeks old, and that it was probably dirty because it hadn't yet learned how to wash itself,and possibly was still nursing, hence its lack of interest in my delicious and buttery scrambled eggs, so I called Shosho to ask her advice on what to do with such an animal. She had some useful advice, but we were both struck by visions of my trying to smuggle it around China in my backpack, and agreed that it would be best for me, and possibly the kitten, if it were to go back outside after the rain stopped and find its way back to its mother.

I have no idea if that's what happened, but I didn't see it again after that morning, so I hope it managed to find its way home. It was certainly loud enough that any momma cat in a ten-block radius should have been able to locate it eventually.

After finishing the morning of crankily lazing around (I had unsuccessfully gone in search of more mangosteens), it became clear that the boys and I all had different agendas. Christoph wanted to jam with the drummer he'd met the day before, Alan wanted to hang out at the lodge, and I wanted to see... something! anything! So, I asked Alan to arrange a trip for me to go to a local village where the buildings dated from the Ming dynasty. This he did, in conjunction with the manager of the lodge, and I quickly ended up in a minibus (and I do mean mini) with a cab driver, heading off through the countryside.

Dali is surrounded by bright swaths of what many a Hollywood movie has led me to believe (and Alan later confirmed) are rice paddies, along with other fields containing various crops. I remember my grandpa Barnett telling me once, in southern MN, that he'd always heard as a boy that corn was supposed to be "knee high by the fourth of July" for a healthy crop. Well, either the Dali fields are on a different growing schedule or their corn is super-sized, because it wasn't much past the 4th of July, and most of the corn stalks were easily over my head. Other crops included flowers, various recognizable vegetables, and some low-growing plant with absolutely ENORMOUS leaves. I still have no idea what it may have been, other than possibly some kind of melon. Before I forget to mention it, the rice paddies are absolutely gorgeous, intensely green and lush. I wouldn't want to work in one, of course, but they're awfully pretty.

The real difficulty in not speaking a language AT ALL (well, I can say "hello" and "thank you") is that there's no way to ask all the multitudes of questions that occur to a nosy person such as myself on a regular basis. For instance, above one of the rice paddies, there was a giant concrete trough, suspended about five or six feet off the ground, with a giant red tube running to the ground at the roadside. The trough extended all the way across the field, and I would have thought it was some kind of irrigation channel, but there were no outlets into the field. My seond thought was that it was some kind of safety valve to channel runoff from the mountains away from the fields below, but the trough seemed to stop before it reached the mountains. I am still completely clueless as to what it may have been. My cab driver, of course, spoke no English. Not "no English" in the way of Akbar and Tursun, who have been around it enough and seem to be culturally western enough to generally follow what's being said in tone if not content, and to communicate a little bit without it, but NO ENGLISH as in there will be much pointing and smiling and hopefully things work out.

This led to my being taken to a serious tourist trap of a "cultural center" outside the old portion of Xizhou, a village whose Bai architecure is primarily original to whichever century it sprang from. The tourist center is a large house representative of the way wealthy people lived at the time. I wouldn't ordinarily have paid the entrance fee to the house, which included a song and dance performance and three-course tea, but my cab driver had given me a brochure in the car and smiled, so I looked at it, handed it back to him, and smiled, and this was taken to mean, "yes, I would very much enjoy to see your tourist trap for which to bring me you probably get kickback." I was actually pretty annoyed until I realized that the majority of the entrance fee was for the song and dance show, because the house itself was mostly unfurnished, aside from the plethora of tourist shops on the first floor. I wandered around them, finding little that was different than I might have found in Dali, with the exception of a store that was dedicated to mounted and framed butterflies of Yunnan. I am quite certain that this is one of those ventures that should be frowned upon, as the butterflies on display were astonishing in their variety (and size) and I imagine that some of them must be rare or endangered. I mean, this is a country that emphasizes the tortoiseshell aspect of its combs, so I think my suspicions are not unfounded.

When I wandered back to the entrance, irritated that I'd been hustled, I heard a commotion behind some large wooden screen doors, and realized that I had, in fact, paid for a performance, which mollified me quite a bit. In the event, though the costumes were cheesy and the dancers indifferent, the "authentic" ethnic folk experience was rewarding, primarily because the tacky LED display above the dancers' and musicians' heads displayed information in English as well as Chinese and was actually rather informative. The three-course tea was particularly interesting, consisting of a standard black tea, a sweetened herb tea with slices of walnut floating in it, and a ginger tea to finish. All of this has a metaphorical aspect about the bitterness of life, its sweetneses, and the "aftertaste" that follows its having been properly lived/savored. I'm sure there is a far more elegant and in depth explanation to be had.

I don't think I've mentioned yet that herbal teas here, or tisanes, consist of GIANT CHUNKS of whatever flavoring you request suspended in the recently-boiling water. Each cup of ginger tea I've ordered seems to have an entire ginger root copped up and left to steep. There are also no tea strainers to be found, so I find myself constantly picking tea leaves out of my mouth.

After the ceremony, I again used the ever-popular hand gestures to explain to my driver that I wished to explore the town on foot, which momentarily confused him, but he acquiesced. It was indeed quaint, though essentially a more run-down version of Dali.

Upon returning to the lodge, Alan suggested that we go cormorant fishing. This is an ancient method of fishing the locals use that involves tame cormorants (sort of a cross between a duck and a seagull). The fishermen tie thin reeds around the cormorants' throats so they are unable to swallow, then set the birds free to dive for fish and pull the fish the birds catch from their mouths and put them in a bucket. I was dubious, but Alan assured me the birds aren't hurt.

We ended up in a small village outside Dali, on a lake. Our fisherman was friendly and very amused by Christoph's alarmed reaction to the birds flapping near his head. The fishing boats are about twice the width and a similar length to the canoes midwesterners are used to, though a different shape entirely. The birds (about ten in all) perch on the sides of the boat, while the fisherman and his guests balance on small wooden stools in the bottom of the boat. Given the amount of water that got splashed in my face by the oars and the birds, I was glad to have received my hepatitis vaccines. Once out in the water, the fisherman pushes the birds off the sides of the boat and they dive for fish. When they come up, you can see the bulges in their throats, and the fisherman grabs them out of the water by their necks, squeezes out the fish, and throws the birds back in the water. I can't say it seems entirely humane, but none of the birds seemed to be interested in making a break for it... quite the contrary, in fact. At the end of the day, the birds are rewarded with a certain portion of the fish they've caught.

After the cormorant fishing, we had a very good dinner at a western-oriented reatuarant that featured proper wood-fired oven pizza. It also had amazing fresh-squeezed juices (why, I would like to know, can I find EXCELLENT fresh-squeezed juice ALL OVER THE WORLD AND NOT IN LOS ANGELES? This is a problem, people. If it can happen in Zambia, it can happen in freaking Los Feliz). The latter convinced us to order a bottle of vodka for the mixing.

After dinner, we went to another lodge to join the tour group again for another evening of music. It wrapped up at 2 AM, and we wandered back toward our lodge with Nicole and British Alan, but were distracted by the sounds of carousing western backpackers in the Bad Monkey cafe. This is a proper backpacker's place, prone to reggae and its attendant intoxicants, and everyone was pleasant and mellow, though I did find myself in deep discussion with a French student about the fact that yes, there are Americans opposed to the Bush administration's war in Iraq, yes, they protested it, and no, it is not the fault of the students that the troops are still over there because they failed to live up to the example of the 1960's. All of this happened in French, so I am quite certain I sounded SLIGHTLY like an imbecile, but at least "commodification of dissent" is more or less a cognate. "Maintenant, si vous manifestez, ce n'est pas a cause de votres opinions, pensent tout le monde "normal", mais c'est parce que vous etes seuelement "un manifestateur," c'est votre identite." Yeah. American studies en francais. I did what I could, kids.