Portrait of an LBX

By Evan

The valley of sugar cane surrounding Gengma, by Evan

Gengma (耿馬) is a sleepy little County Seat (縣城) nestled up against Burma. It’s hardly worth visiting unless you happen to be going its way, and is in fact much less visited than the much smaller border town of Mengding (孟定鎮) 80 km to its west. It sits at the center of a long， deep valley surrounded by high mountains. This valley is the most exquisite example of that geographical feature I have ever laid my eyes upon. Its boundless rolling hills are planted almost exclusively in sugar cane, surrounded by a ring of bamboo mountains and covered by a perfect blue sky. If Norman Rockwell had done Chinese landscapes, he probably would have painted a series called Gengma.

It is not entirely, however, the physical beauty of Gengma that made our visit worthwhile. As always, it’s the people who inhabit a place who make it worthwhile. The first people we encountered on our drop from the mountains of Cangyuan (滄源) were the Dai (傣族). The houses became the two-story bamboo houses (竹樓), and occasional Buddhist monasteries alerted us to the religious nature of the place. The young women wore sarongs, tight to the waist and bright to the eyes, often complemented by conical coolie hats. The older women generally wrapped their heads in white turbans and their legs in long, black skirts. The Dai had planted over their half of the valley almost exclusively in sugar cane, barely knee-high under the late May sun. It was for the thousands of acres of sugar on their side of the plain that Gengma’s central feature was a monstrous, state-owned sugar factory — a rusty, gated cathedral of confection in the heart of town. (more…)

By Andy

2010/05/25 — 42 km

Devi, you're looking particularly Yi (彝族) today, by Andy

I wake up to the sound of a pitter-patter on the overhang outside the hotel window and the swish of car wheels on wet pavement outside. It’s raining. Evan, Devi and I all meet up in the hotel lobby to do some post writing and picture uploading, hoping the rain will let up.

Rain brings down our pace and our moods. Until today, the rain in Yunnan has come only in the form of monsoons — quick bursts of intense rain that drench us if we get caught in them, but which we can easily wait out without affecting our schedule if we can find shelter. It’s been a far cry from the weeks of steady, depressing downpours we were subjected to in the winter in Fujian province. To go back to the statistics spreadsheet that I’ve mentioned before, the rain in Fujian caused us to average a mere 33 km per day during our roughly one month in the province. In Yunnan, we’ve averaged 52 km per day over nearly a month and a half — and the mountains in Yunnan are much taller! Thinking about it makes the weather today seem all the more gloomy.

But it’s no longer winter, and Yunnan is warm. So when the steady rain turns to a drizzle, we pack up our gear and head out to breakfast. After a meal of noodles at one of two Muslim restaurants in town (which also serves at the only mosque in town), we make our way up to the town’s Buddhist temple where Evan has discovered a study session of monks from six counties is being held.

How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat, by Andy

Unfortunately, after our late start, we arrive just as the monks are breaking for lunch, but as luck would have it, they invite us to join them for lunch. We’re immediately surprised by the lack of discipline in the monks — when we arrive at the monastery, a group of them is standing outside the entrance smoking, and the majority of the dishes at lunch have meat in them. The meat is explained to us as a difference between the local Dai (傣族) style of Buddhism versus the Han (漢族) style, but the smokers outside are just being bad monks. From what we’ve witnessed on this trip, it seems that China has managed to water down the conventions of all its recognized religions — Muslim women don’t wear headscarves, Buddhist monks can get away with smoking, the bond between Catholics and the Pope is basically non-existent, etc. In China, it’s Religion Lite. (more…)