TIC- This. Is. China.

Confirmation: I am a bona-fide city girl.

 TIC is a phrase we stole from a movie where the main character says TIA- This is Africa. So with our own clever and creative spin, we've constructed TIC.  This phrase cannot be just thrown around.  It is accompanied by a situation where you think "WOW I'm in China!", or when something really weird or crazy happens. 

This is a TIC moment. I was sitting on top of a mud wall after walking to a nearby village.  And suddenly I thought "WOAH. I'm in rural China"

I am currently on a field trip with my class throughout the rural areas of Yunnan.  People who have never seen me outside a city context (which is probably every single one of you) wouldn't even recognize me right now! I'm living with a rural family in the village of Sideng in the Shaxi valley. Yesterday-I farmed, the other night-I slept at a Buddhist monastery, and the night before that-on a Daoist mountain!

The day we spent on the Daoist mountain was probably my favorite day so far during my time in China.  Nothing spectacular happened, but it was just one of those days where everything is just right.  We had a lecture given by a nun, I hiked around the holy mountain for hours, and i played glow in the dark frisbee! It felt like summer camp. 

This is the monastery we stayed at 

The monastery was perched on a beautiful mountain, full of... MONKEYS. 

They were cute, most of the time...but they were pretty aggressive when it came to food. And smart! This monkey unwrapped the candy before eating it. 


There was one time where a monkey spotted me with a handful of peanuts, ran up to me, and tried to get the peanuts out of my hand. This resulted in it grabbing my shorts and tugging them downward.  

No one else was even touched by a monkey! I'm the only one who got assaulted! My contact was involuntary, but of course a monkey would almost pull MY pants down in front of a bunch of Buddhist monks... if he had been successful I would probably have been banned from China for public indecency along with a few curses from the Buddhist mountain. 

Before leaving the monastery I hiked to the top of the mountain in the morning to watch the sunrise! It was the first time I have ever just sat and watched the sun rise, it was incredible. This has got to be one of my favorite pictures of my whole life.  

From the mountain, we hiked about an hour down to the Sideng village valley. Sideng is really cool-everyone knows everyone! And most people are related. Anyone you walk by automatically smiles and greets you. I love this village. 

This valley is GORGEOUS. This picture looks enhanced, but it's not. This is what I am surrounded by every day!

My host family here is great! I have two meimei (little sisters). They are SO CUTE! I adore them, and it's funny to see them interact.  

This is outside my home in Sideng village 

This is my upscale 4star bedroom

This is our bathroom (not-actually-a-bathroom-just-a-wood-building-with-a-hole-in-the-ground). This serves all 10 people in the house. Yeah that's right, 10 people. No bathroom hogging here. You have to walk through the chicken coop to get to the "bathroom", and I usually have to fight off chickens to have the place to myself. No really. I have to battle them for privacy. 

This is the kitchen and dining room. We eat our meals on the benches on the left. In this photo my Waipo (grandmother) is making dinner full of mystery meat.  Eating here makes me want to be vegetarian again.  During my homestay I am continually eating unidentified meat.  Back in the states, I pick off any part of the meat with visible fat; however, I don't want to be rude to my family, so I just grin and eat what they serve. Usually to counteract anything gross I shovel absurd amounts of rice in my mouth to chase the scary meat I'm eating. 

We also have little pigs! However there is no mother. Every time I see them I can't help but wonder if their mom was the mystery meat from the night before...

Here is our garden in the center of the house. The layout of houses here are all identical, with a courtyard in the middle of every house and rooms branching off. 

This is the unidentified protein I had for dinner last night...Although it could be worse. My friend had congealed blood for dinner one night! Yeah, that's right. Blooood (for youtube watchers that was intended to be read in the voice of the little boy in the famous video)

The other day, I farmed. I'm not exactly cut out for the farming lifestyle.  I needed about a 10 foot radius with the hoe in my hands, otherwise it turned into a weapon. 

The only person I can really communicate with is my sister, she is 23 and the mother of my meimei. I really like her, but as I talk to her, I realize how completely different our lives are.  We have nothing in common. She is a 23 year old mother with minimal education, who has barely left her village. She lives in the house where generations of her family have all grown up. She dreams of making the unlikely move to a bigger city with her daughter . I am an American college student with nothing tying me down, who lives a frivolous life in comparison to hers.  She stitches and takes care of her daughter, I play volleyball and hang out with my friends.  There are no links between the two of us.  And yet, I feel oddly close to her.  I really love spending time with her and her daughter, even though it's a struggle to speak to her.  I really will miss her when I leave this village. 

This is the most challenging, but also most rewarding thing that I have ever done.  This is sooo not me, I am DEFINITELY a city girl, but I can handle it this.  I'm proving to myself throughout this semester that I can do almost anything.  Sometimes I feel like I'm having an out of body experience.  This has been surreal, and life changing. I'm unable to pinpoint exactly how I've changed, but I can feel it.  Sometimes I just stop and think to myself "Oh. My. Gosh. I'm in China"- a classic TIC moment. 

"We're the three best friends that anyone could have.."

"and we'll never ever ever leave each other!"

.......even if we wanted to.

So, you know that quote: "Do one thing every day that scares you"- I think that during my spring break trip to the mountains, I made up for every day in my last 20 1/2 years of existence that I have not obeyed that phrase.  

Despite that inspirational introduction, this is not a self improvement blog post.  Just about my CRAZY trip to the Chinese Meili Snow Mountain, where i saw snow for the first time, hung out with some yak, and went without a shower for a week.  Preface: this is pretty long. But there are LOTS of pictures! 

I love Tibet.  I've dreamed of going to Tibet.  Unfortunately, during the month of March, Tibet is closed to foreigners.  So, we had to settle for going  as close to Tibet as possible-to the Meili Snow Mountain that is half in Tibet, half in China. I was beyond thrilled to finally immerse myself in the culture that I had fallen in love with through my studies in Central Texas.  Our 6 day backpacking trip actually turned into a 10 day adventure with a 5 day stop in a less than thrilling town, with some pretty extreme highs and very drastic lows.  

Saturday March 19th:
Kiersten, Stephanie and I arrived in SHANGRI-LA. Not the mythical destination, but a Tibetan city in China. We went to some Stupas, a Buddhist Temple, and a huuuuge prayer wheel. Tibetan prayer flags were everywhere!

Oh and this is me running Tibetan Bay Watch style after posing next to some Yak just walking down the road



Tibetan Buddhism says that if you turn this wheel 3 times, its equivalent to 37.2 billion prayers! The way my trip went- I obviously needed more than 37.2 billion prayers....

This picture is not, in fact, me in my signature teal jacket. Its a local Tibetan woman in her traditional clothing spinning the prayer wheel!

Sunday March 20th:
We departed for some of "Heaven's Villages".  Villages around the Meili Snow Mountain are called Heaven's Villages because the clouds linger making it look like the villages are in the sky. This bus ride was 80 miles and it took us 11 hours. The road was ROUGH. I'm being generous when I say it was about 5% paved. It was a one way road, along the CLIFFS of the mountains. We had to get out of the bus a few times because it wasn't safe enough for the passengers. If China says its not safe, its REALLY not safe. 

During our splendid 11 hour ride we also got caught in a blizzard. This is one of the times we had to deboard the bus, because we came head to head with another truck. There were literally inches between our bus and the truck. Half of me thought the bus was going to not make it across and tumble down the mountain.

Monday March 21st:
We woke up in the mountain town of FeiLai Si (fay-lie-suh) to a winter wonderland! It looked like Christmas!  From FeiLai Si, we made our way to MingYong. Another very small village in the valley of the mountain that is home to the MingYong Glacier- the lowest altitude glacier in China. On our way down there, we passed a Y in the road. The left went to MingYong. The right? TIBET!

We were only a few dozen kilometers away from the border. It was so exiting to physically be soooo close- we considered bribing our driver to smuggle us into Tibet. Just kidding... kind of. 

We hiked to the foot of the glacier and it was absolutely the coolest natural thing that I have ever seen. The pictures of the glacier are not that great because the white snow and ice blended in with the sky and clouds

Because we are traveling during the off season for tourists, the village of Mingyong was a Ghost Town. We were the only foreigners, and only saw one person on our whole hike, who was a local Tibetan woman who showed us a short cut. But we saw plenty of Yak and horses roaming the streets.

Tuesday March 22nd:
On Tuesday morning, we went on another more intense hike to get closer to the glacier. About an hour into the hike, we ran into a small problem.  Well a rather large one. A yak. A wild one. One of our professors gave us 4 words of advice for this situation: "RUN FOR YOUR LIFE". We did exactly that. Sprinted down the mountain!

Except for this part, cause I'm right on the edge. I won't lie I thought I might fall down the side of the mountain during this one.






Tuesday afternoon we arrived back in Deqin to buy our bus tickets to return to Shangri-La. This is where we heard for the first time of many: we were snowed in.  The mountain pass was too snowy and dangerous to let us out of the city. 

Wednesday March 23:
7:30 AM we arrived at the bus station to receive the bad news again that it snowed overnight and the mountain roads were still way too dangerous.  The only other way out of the town was through Tibet.

We went to a Tibetan Buddhist store where all three of us purchased Tibetan Prayer Flags! I bought SO many. Partially cause I love them, and partially because a small bit of me thought that maybe there was some kind of Tibetan prayer to make snow melt faster.

Oh and I also found a little piece of GOLD in Rural China

Thursday March 24:

 7:30 AM we arrived at the bus station to once again receive the news that we wouldn't be leaving Deqin that day.  On the scale of worst cities to be stuck in, Deqin is definitely near the top.  It is a 1 1/2 road town.  The one road is probably about the length of a football field, maybe a little bigger. Besides the surrounding mountain scenery that we COULDN'T see because of the bad weather, i think its safe to say its a rather unattractive town.

To put this in perspective, we got excited when we were able to eat food that expired in December 2010. Literally. We would call out dates to each other trying to find the least expired items, getting excited and cheering when they were as close as last December and January.  One good thing happened on this great day of Thursday March 24th- a shower! The first shower for all three of us in 6 days. The only one during our whole trip. Solid. 

As I stated in earlier blog posts, buildings in China don't have insulation or heat. The only
source of heat is the heated blanket that comes with every room. Problem: Mountain villages=unreliable electricity. Every single night we went to bed and woke up in the morning seeing our breath in front of us. Our heated blankets were our life support during our extended mountain stay.  Upside: Chinese only drink hot water, so my boiling hot water would turn ice cold over night. Downside: cold toes, and any clothes that got wet from snow or sweat, had absolutely no chance of ever drying.

I feel like even if I had on as many layers as this baby, I STILL would have been cold. 

Friday March 25:

7:30 AM. No bus.  We were supposed to be back in Kunming for class at 2:30 this day, but since we obviously didn't make it, our professor asked us to skype (video chat) into the class discussion.  Easier said than done.  There were plenty of places with internet; however foreigners are not allowed to use them.  One time we walked into an internet cafe, with probably about 20 ancient computers. He took one look at us and said all of his computers were broken. Really?! Really.....he could have just said no. It was obviously a lie because he was ON a computer. 

At this point. We desperately wanted to go home, not just to Kunming, but back to America. Our high spirits about being immersed in the Tibetan culture slowly declined, as the temperature stayed low, and the homesickness and chocolate intake levels spiked.  We contemplated exit strategies through Tibet, as we began to ration our money, run out of clean clothes, and dream of worlds with heaters and food that had not passed the expiration date. 

Saturday March 26th:
7:30 AM. No bus. We weren't the only ones stranded. Lots of locals were trying to get out of town as well as hundreds (literally, we counted) of trucks lining the road waiting to leave.

In this picture you can see a fraction of the trucks waiting to leave. If you look closely you can see orange cones set up to block the road from anyone trying to get out. If you were able to bribe the police to let you out, they made you sign a waver that they weren't responsible for your life. No thank you.

Sunday March 27th:
7:30 AM. VICTORY! We got tickets on the first bus out of town! After we bought our bus tickets, we were so happy we walked back to our hostel singing. 

I thought 11 hours on the bus ride in was bad? Psh that was nothing. This return trip took a mere... NINETEEN hours. 80 miles in 19 hours. There was one time were we were sitting in the same place for 5 1/2 hours. That 5 1/2 hour break was not all bad, I made my first snowman!

The roads were horrible, as expected. There was snow everywhere, and it was a one way road, with hundreds and hundreds of trucks and busses trying to make the drive on the first day open. This resulted in countless standoffs and forced problem solving when busses and trucks came head to head on the snowy one way road along the mountain roads. After riding on this bus, nothing on a bus in China will ever surprise me again. People transported chickens on our bus. CHICKENS. Clucking next to our seats.

Monday March 28th:
11:30 PM finally we returned to campus with class the next morning and no homework done. Apparently this is the first time in the 17 years of the program that anything like this has happened to students.  At least we made history?

Next to the snowbank on the side of the road. Almost as tall as me!

Although my tailbone might be bruised from going airborne on the unpaved mountain roads, I took only 1 shower the whole 10 days, I was perpetually cold, and I had the most severe homesickness that I have experienced in China- I am so grateful for the experience. It was something I've never done, and I honestly think I learned more about myself during those 10 days in rural China, than I have during this semester so far.  I really surprised myself, and did some brave things that I would have never expected City Christina to do. It is something I'm going to remember forever: the time I was stranded in a mountain town in rural China. 

you go big, or you return to your home.

Ni qu da, haishi ni hui jia

Because the government here controls... every single aspect of life in China... posting on my blog is proving to be very difficult! Consequently, this blog post is fairly long. Who am I kidding they're all long.

"Go big, or go home" is probably my favorite cliche in American slang.  I use it a lot back home with my friends (especially with the CINCO) .  Since I am not completely familiar with Chinese slang (lets be honest...I'm not familiar with Chinese slang AT ALL), my American counterparts and I have attempted to translated this commonly used American phrase.  We have come up with "Ni qu da, haishi ni hui jia", which literally means "you go big, or you return to your home".  We obviously think this is wildly clever and hilarious, so now we use it alllllllll the time. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the entire country of China is using it by the time this semester is over.  

Alice in Wonderland? Christina in China.
EVERYTHING is smaller in China.
This is a picture of me at a restaurant.
My legs didn't fit under the table.....
Talk about a confidence booster.


This week I almost got hit by a motorbike (oops...), I got homesick for the first time, it SNOWED, and I went to the bird and flower market

The weather here is like Texas. And in that I mean its not really anything like Texas.  They call Kunming "Spring City", because it has perpetual good weather year round-no humidity, rarely any clouds, and the perfect temperature. The ONLY thing that makes it like Texas, is that the weather can change on the drop of a dime. One day it was very warm so I wore shorts and a t-shirt to run, and the next day, it snowed! SNOW?! Bizarre.

This is me and Carl, another American on my program. Because both my grandfather and dad are both named Carl, this name is off limits. I call him Carlos.

So this is me and Carlos next to the fire exit in our dorm, WITH A CHAIN LOCK ON IT, all bundled up because its really cold indoors cause apparently the Chinese don't believe in building insulation, OR fire codes. If you look at my previous post I state that they chain lock the front doors of the dorm at midnight. And I have bars on my window. Putting it together? There is absolutely no way out of the dorm after midnight.

Its so cold indoors I could see my breath in my classroom this morning! Awesome. This is very unnatural weather for Kunming.



To preface my motorbike story: DRIVERS HERE ARE CRAZY and pedestrians have absolutely no rights.  Its like the game Frogger. Except for instead of being played on a Game Boy, its my life. 

Before crossing the street I always look  both ways. In China I look about 18 times because drivers WILL hit people.  So while crossing the street one time, all the cars were gridlocked so I weaved throughout the  stopped cars to cross the street.  On the other side of a big van, there (apparently) was a motorbike coming. I was looking straight forward as the moped was barreling down the shoulder of the road. Generally drivers honk alllllll the time, but this one didn't till riiiiiight when he was about to hit me! The honk scared me! So naturally I flailed my arms, right as he went by me. My pathetic arm flail resulted in me actually punching the driver in the face as he drove by. hahahahaha. I hit him really hard because he was driving so fast!  My hand actually hurt for a while. From that story I have learned to look 19 times before crossing the street, and I am grateful to have all my limbs intact. Okay I won't lie. I'm also happy I punched him. He deserved it.

You've got to be careful here, because if you're not, you'll get mowed by a car, motorbike, bus, bike, and basically anything with wheels. But you have to be aggressive, or else you'll never cross the street. Its a revolving problem.  When I said you'll get hit with anything with wheels, I wasn't lying. My friend got run over by these hoodlums. hahaha.

The bird and flower market is a place where they sell...birds and flowers...but lots of other stuff too! Lots of traditional Chinese things, as well as animals, and pretty much everything else under the sun.  It was like a flea market, on steroids. My favorite part? Puppies!!!

Now I will start with places that I frequent:

Green Lake Park

I love this place! It's probably about a 10 minute walk from school. Things that occur at Green Lake in order of frequency: I get stared at here, I run here, and I do homework here. I love running around Green Lake Park; however, I must run around the park, as opposed to through.  For a variety of reasons.  I get stared at much less on the outskirts of the park-- apparently Chinese people don't run...So I get stared at for 1)partaking in physical exercise 2) for wearing shorts and 3) for being a foreigner. (Although my shorts attract much less attention than my friend Carl, who is a Cross Country runner at his University. Mainly because men's cross country shorts are MUCH shorter than my every day running shorts. HA).

Other downfalls of running on the outside: People at the park just looooove to feed the seagulls. As an innocent passerby I must be honest and declare that I do not support this activity. While people are tossing bread crumbs to the seagulls, I down below am dodging the bombs dropped by their feathery airborne friends. At least I can get some sprint work in? Cause I run FAST through that area! (the usage of the word fast is relative)




Also, because of all the trees and people, I can't run in a straight line for more than 10 yards. We can call it lateral training.

Another reason for my perimeter running route also happens to be one of my favorite things about the park.  Minority people, proud and excited about their culture, come to the park to dance and enjoy the perpetually good weather. HOW COOL!? I wish I could go to parks in the US, bring a stereo, and dance in a circle with strangers and friends. 

This a friend on my program in front of the fruit stand that is right outside the gate of our university. It is AWESOME. I go every few days and stock up on fresh fruit. Not only is it delectably delicious, its cheap! 

This is a common bus stop in China. Busses here are CROWDED. Its literally a fight to get on some of them. But one of my favorite things about this city is the ability to live without a car. That is impossible where I live in the states, but something I've always wanted to do. I'm perfectly happy with riding the mega crowded busses and walking everywhere else. Except for one time on a mega crowded bus when someone was standing reeealllyyy close to me was gnawing on some fried chicken. Two of my least favorite things- people in my personal space, and fried chicken. 

This is "Foreign Street" (Wenhua Jie- literally means Culture Street). I'ts not a very good picture...But its called foreign street cause there are places that serve Western food, and if you're ever going to meet any foreigners, its here. I try not to come here very often because 1) its easier to speak english and 2) its more expensive (and by that I mean its still really cheap). That being said, its still predominately Chinese people on this street. But sometimes it is nice to go to Foreign Street to eat something familiar (consistently-sub-par-western-food-that-no-one-in-their-right-mind-would-pay-money-for-anywhere-else).

This is the front of my school- Yunnan Mingzu Daxue- Yunnan Nationalities University.  Its in the middle of the busy city and the never ending traffic. This is where I engage in most of my real life Frogger playing.

Next week we have a week off from school! I am going up to the Mountains with my two closest friends here. We're going up to Deqing, also known as Shang-ri La, to backpack, hike, and get as close to Tibet as humanly possible (Tibet is closed to foreigners this month :( because March 14th is the anniversary of a huge riot). We'll be on the Meili Snow Mountain that is half in TIbet, and half in China. I've never done anything like this, so I'm extremely nervous- the altitude is 16,000 feet. But if I don't do things that are out of my comfort zone- way WAY out of my comfort zone- while I'm here, I would see my trip as a wasted opportunity. So, I will be out of contact for a little while, hiking to a glacier, seeing YAK(!!!!!), dancing the border of Tibet (don't worry I won't cross), and doing something brave.  My next blog post will be about my mountain time and my new Chinese family that I move in with right when I get back! "Ni qu da, haishi ni hui jia"

Zai Jian!