Oct 17/ 08 Rice, Kids & Solo

Rice, Kids & Solo
October 17, 2008

After climbing over terraces after terraces of rice, we finally arrived at the Bai Bi Cun village from Kaili, a Miao village of 1000 families that we deemed too Westernized and touristy for our taste. Bai Bi Cun was a lot smaller Miao village with a population of a little over 100 families, and it was certainly lot more isolated and less touristy than Kaili.
Compared to Kaili where everyone seemed to be engaged in the tourist sector such as providing their homes as hostels and selling Miao crafts, people of the Bai Bi village led a much more rural lifestyle. Most of the families we saw were farmers, growing rice and a few vegetables, and many men worked with wood constructing houses.
Their self-sufficiency was amazing, as they produced all their food and wood, but the only downside was that Charlie and I ate the same food of lettuce soup, rice and pork fat every meal. (No kidding, from breakfast to dinner, every meal was the same except pork fat turned to fried eggs and sadly, protein eventually disappeared from the diet so we ended up eating just rice and lettuce- it's a priviledge have protein on your table and to be eating different food every meal- but then Miao people are also blessed to be eating super local and organic.)
While stalking some friends who were going fishing with their host family, Charlie and I ran into middle-aged man and woman working on the field, and when we offered to help, they gladly accepted. Because we could not work at the wet rice terraces because of Japanese Encephalitis, Charlie and I helped out at a dry rice field from 5:30-6 thrashing rice into a bucket (a lot of fun). To our surprise, we were offered to have dinner with the people we were working with- we had only worked with them for half an hour and they took us strangers to their houses giving us water and tower to clean ourselves, and even offering us a meal. Although we could not accept the offer because we had to get back for dinner at our own house, it was a good illustration of Miao hospitality that we experienced.
The highlight of my stay was the kids. There was an elementary school right in front of my homestaying house, and I spent a lot of time playing with the kids day and night. We had a fake-fight using the broomsticks which made me feel like a Jedi dodging a sea of kids who eventually pinned me down on the ground like a giant wave- (a friend fortunately saved me), running away and hiding from a drunk man who touched and kissed Charlie on the neck, and singing and dancing. These kids were so so innocent but also mischievous, as they loved to hit our butts and we even had to go on an exile into the mountains when we couldn't keep up with their energy. Nevertheless, several of them also invited us to come to their homes an hour walk away.
On our second day at the village, we also had a chance to go out and do a solo. The night before, we had a lesson on class, priviledge, and social responsibility, and as I looked down on the layered rice terraces along the mountain, I couldn't help but notice the class differences that I felt between the villagers and myself. I'm not the one to judge whose life is higher up on the mountain- I may have more materiali and physical resources and more diverse exposure to this vast world, but they seemed to have a very tight-knit community and simple lifestyle free of all the excess of capitalism that often nauseates me.
Although the rice terraces appear independent of each other, they were actually connected by the water flowing down from the top, and similarly, my life and the lives of these villagers that are seemingly unrelated are actually linked by sharing the same planet. The carbon that I put in the air at home affected the climate of this distant village whose existence I was not even aware of until three days ago.
The view from the top terrace was certainly ba little better than that from the bottom, but I was happy with my view from the lower rice terrace, and butterflies came to the bottom terrace just as it did to the top.
I wish I have a chance to visit this village again, and see that the amazing landscape of stacked rice terraces, the mystic cloud that perched over the rice patties, and the smiles of the Miao kids have remained the same.