Red lanterns add pops of color to the vibrant green of summer rice.
Featured writer: Anna Frisk
“Sleeping, sleeping?” the Chinese woman asked, not stated, in my general direction.
Standing atop a battered ridge, deep in southern China amid rows of perfectly designed and manicured rice patties, she pleaded that I leave the masses and join her.
“Sleeping!” she urged again, with a gesture of unmistakable sign language, her head tilted to the side and her hands placed like a bony pillow below.
In China, anywhere is crowded. On this hilltop view, those that couldn’t walk, but could afford a carrying service, like emperors of dynasties prior, could still share the view with the able.
While this Chinese woman presumably hawked her bed, other enterprising entrepreneurs sold watermelon chucks on sticks, cheap tourist fares such as Buddhist beads and as always, memory cards. Lest someone run out of digital space on their camera. At times, the waves of tour groups swept me away like an ocean swell, carrying me to the next group of hawkers.
Even the manikins beg for attention.
The relentless bed marketer shuffled around the fringes of the groups until she caught the intrigue in my eye. Trapped, she circled around me like a turkey vulture upon the dead. Only an approaching semi-truck could divert her from her promising prey, a foreign girl, alone.
“SLEEPING!” she cried in a manic whisper once more.
“How much? Where?” I deadpanned, the battle ignited.
It wasn’t my first trip to China; I knew my part. Barter like you’re more interested in the tie-dyed t-shirt her friend is selling.
With a cultural identity I only knew as non-Han (91.5% of Chinese are this ethnicity), she played up her role as another tourist product of the region. Pulled together with a ribbon of fanciful color wrapped around her waist and hair coiled in a thick bun, she swayed her skirt to show her difference. Her outstretched postcard, albeit faded from the sun, declared her clan’s secret:
For those that don’t stay at a local’s place, you can dress like one.
long, rear-defining hair. In the photo, five young women soaked under a nearby waterfall, their signature black hair gracing their knees. In this province of southern China, Guangxi, or (广西壮族自治区), the cluster of ethnic minorities is great, with a smattering (at least 8 ) of the government official statistic of 55 “others”.
Her limited English mixed with my travel Chinese, I understood that her village, Ping An, was just a short four hour hike away. Follow her now and I could stay for the night in her home, dinner cooked her included. I was the chooser of the fee, but I had to follow her now; she knew the tourist wiggle-away.
She yanked my arm and pulled me to the curtain of bamboo around the corner. I turned only to see the next wave of earnest elbowing tourists, posed in the camera-ready position. Traveling solo, I had no binding plans, no people to consult, though my host did. In her wicker basket she pulled out a cell phone to make the call to her husband, get ready, I have another.
The curtain of bamboo leads to the path and eventually the village of Ping An.
She chatted easily and pointed out crops that differed from the monopolizing rice with an unmatchable and robust enthusiasm. Maize! Potatoes! Wheat! While I panted with exertion up and down, up and down, the winding terraces. Named Longji, (Dragon’s Backbone), the fields that glisten gold in autumn, green in spring and summer, and white in a dusting of snow in winter, are not a cake walk. Justly called Dragon’s Backbone, the network of terraces comprises just that from a distance, if you let your imagination take rein.
Four hours later in a drizzling sprinkle, we came to the outset of a small waterfall, (the same from the postcard my host declared, and she added, for another small fee she’d let her hair loose under its spray for an idyllic capture), but I declined. I wanted to rest. I could see the wooden dwellings, simple and dreamy like a painting, all raised with wooden stilts for flood protection at a temptingly close distance. One had to be hers.
Chilies. Deep in China’s South, spicy cuisine is a mainstay, along with, of course, rice.
Her neighbors eyed me as I got close, not with curiosity, but with burning envy. To them, I was an enterprise to seize.
“Coke? You want?” a passing stranger whispered.
We snaked by the houses until we arrived. I wanted to slump onto my designated bed for the night, but my host continued to chat in broken English and showed me her photo collage of previous guests. It was comforting to know it was a practiced routine.
Then I realized, as I entered my separate bedroom to change, I was bleeding. Deep in the middle of the Dragon’s Backbone, a four-hour hike to any road, the only link to modern society, I was bleeding and I had no tampon or pad.
A larger house, as said, built on stilts
Shit.
I pulled out my emergency toilet paper (Kleenex tissues), an accessory any female China expat learns to guard like a precious jewel in her purse, and wadded it in my wait for dinner. I read my travel guidebook, I journaled and noted, “Never forget tampons in rice terraces!” and read my book until my concentration waned to spacing out.
Rice came first, steaming and plentiful, the staple food of this home and China’s regional south. While I scooped fluffs of the piping hot kernels in my mouth, a toddler waddled around me. I felt like a giant seated at a squat table sized more appropriately for the child than me. Yet in contrast to the moving and modern China of the cities, this preserved part of history and time felt like a respite from the China outside. I could blend into neither, but in this tourist-accommodating countryside, I wasn’t an alien.
The next morning with my host’s directions I hiked out. At the end of the four hours, I found the wide road and a bus, the link out to modern China, whether I wanted to go or not.
“Sleeping, sleeping?” the Chinese woman asked, not stated, in my general direction.
Standing atop a battered ridge, deep in southern China amid rows of perfectly designed and manicured rice patties, she pleaded that I leave the masses and join her.
“Sleeping!” she urged again, with a gesture of unmistakable sign language, her head tilted to the side and her hands placed like a bony pillow below.
In China, anywhere is crowded. On this hilltop view, those that couldn’t walk, but could afford a carrying service, like emperors of dynasties prior, could still share the view with the able.
While this Chinese woman presumably hawked her bed, other enterprising entrepreneurs sold watermelon chucks on sticks, cheap tourist fares such as Buddhist beads and as always, memory cards. Lest someone run out of digital space on their camera. At times, the waves of tour groups swept me away like an ocean swell, carrying me to the next group of hawkers.
The relentless bed marketer shuffled around the fringes of the groups until she caught the intrigue in my eye. Trapped, she circled around me like a turkey vulture upon the dead. Only an approaching semi-truck could divert her from her promising prey, a foreign blonde girl, alone.
“SLEEPING!” she cried in a manic whisper once more.
“How much? Where?” I deadpanned, the battle ignited.
It wasn’t my first trip to China; I knew my part. Barter like you’re more interested in the tie-dyed t-shirt her friend is selling.
With a cultural identity I only knew as non-Han (91.5% of Chinese are this ethnicity), she played up her role as another tourist product of the region. Pulled together with a ribbon of fanciful color wrapped around her waist and hair coiled in a thick bun, she swayed her skirt to show her difference. Her outstretched postcard, albeit faded from the sun, declared her clan’s secret: long, rear-defining hair. In the photo, five young women soaked under a nearby waterfall, their signature black hair gracing their knees. In this province of southern China, Guangxi, or (广西壮族自治区), the cluster of ethnic minorities is great, with a smattering (at least 8) of the government official statistic of 55 “others”.
Her limited English mixed with my travel Chinese, I understood that her village, Ping An, was just a short four hour hike away. Follow her now and I could stay for the night in her home, dinner cooked her included. I was the chooser of the fee, but I had to follow her now; she knew the tourist wiggle-away.
She yanked my arm and pulled me to the curtain of bamboo around the corner. I turned only to see the next wave of earnest elbowing tourists, posed in the camera-ready position. Traveling solo, I had no binding plans, no people to consult, though my host did. In her wicker basket she pulled out a cell phone to make the call to her husband, get ready, I have another.
She chatted easily and pointed out crops that differed from the monopolizing rice with an unmatchable and robust enthusiasm. Maize! Potatoes! Wheat! While I panted with exertion up and down, up and down, the winding terraces. Named Longji, (Dragon’s Backbone), the fields that glisten gold in autumn, green in spring and summer, and white in a dusting of snow in winter, are not a cake walk. Justly called Dragon’s Backbone, the network of terraces comprises just that from a distance, if you let your imagination take rein.
Four hours later in a drizzling sprinkle, we came to the outset of a small waterfall, (the same from the postcard my host declared, and she added, for another small fee she’d let her hair loose under its spray for an idyllic capture), but I declined. I wanted to rest. I could see the wooden dwellings, simple and dreamy like a painting, all raised with wooden stilts for flood protection at a temptingly close distance. One had to be hers.
Her neighbors eyed me as I got close, not with curiosity, but with burning envy. To them, I was an enterprise to seize.
“Coke? You want?” a passing stranger whispered.
We snaked by the houses until we arrived. I wanted to slump onto my designated bed for the night, but my host continued to chat in broken English and showed me her photo collage of previous guests. It was comforting to know it was a practiced routine.
Then I realized, as I entered my separate bedroom to change, I was bleeding. Deep in the middle of the Dragon’s Backbone, a four-hour hike to any road, the only link to modern society, I was bleeding and I had no tampon or pad.
Shit.
I pulled out my emergency toilet paper (Kleenex tissues), an accessory any female China expat learns to guard like a precious jewel in her purse, and wadded it in my wait for dinner. I read my travel guidebook, I journaled and noted, “Never forget tampons in rice terraces!” and read my book until my concentration waned to spacing out.
Rice came first, steaming and plentiful, the staple food of this home and China’s regional south. While I scooped fluffs of the piping hot kernels in my mouth, a toddler waddled around me. I felt like a giant seated at a squat table sized more appropriately for the child than me. Yet in contrast to the moving and modern China of the cities, this preserved part of history and time felt like a respite from the China outside. I could blend into neither, but in this tourist-accommodating countryside, I wasn’t an alien.
The next morning with my host’s directions I hiked out. At the end of the four hours, I found the wide road and a bus, the link out to modern China, whether I wanted to go or not.
My host with her hair piled high like a hat, chatting on her cell, and me.
Blogging @ http://annafrisk.wordpress.com/
