Kunming- Life & Tea (wrong order forgot about this)

During our final banquet with our homestaying families, Mark threw me the question, "so how was your stay in Kunming?" which was awkward for me to respond, as my homestaying family and others were sitting on the same table and I could not condense my 6-weeks of homestaying to a few minutes. So as much as I love Mark, I just ignored Mark and kept competing with my 8-year-old brother for roasted duck. And as I have been bugging my friends about their college and school lives, some of them have asked ME about my own experience here and if the Dragons trip has changed my life in any significant way. So this yak goes to Mark & all you friends I love. As I thought about my experiences here, the first thing that came into my mind was an advice from a friend who went on the 2006 Tibet Summer program and introduced me to the Dragons: "Looking back on it, I can't say that it was life-changing in a radical way (that I am a markedly different person because of it)--a common trap to fall into is that we expect people will go away on a program like this and come back a totally changed person. However, it made me fully realize my love for mountains and the outdoors and cemented a deep interest that I have now in the region and in Buddhism." Despite countless amazing experiences I've had here, I don't think I've had any life-changing revelations that I recognize yet. For most of the group, China was a culture remarkedly different from their upper-middle class American upbrining, and most of them did not even know how to say ni hao when they arrived in China. I had already made three visits to China before the Dragons and had studied a few years of Chinese before I got here. Korean culture is similar enough to the Chinese culture that I don't have to worry about making any faux pas, and unlike many of my friends who complain that they feel like animals at a zoo being stared at by 1.3 billion Chinese people, I could blend in seamlessly with my golden sandy skin color and sometimes be treated in a more special way thanks to the popularity of the Korean dramas here. (That is not to say I did not learn anything about the Chinese culture though. I had a wonderful exposure to some of the 50+ minorities in China and I was lucky to be in Yunnan which is home to more than half of all the minority groups in China.) One of my friends here told me that learning to balance the needs of herself and the needs of her homestaying family and our group was one of the biggest lessons for her here. Although she loved to exercise, she had sacrificed some of her exercising to spend more time with her family and the group. Likewise, many of my friends report that their families were the best part of their homestay. Unfortunately, I was not so lucky with my families. My first homestaying family had a baby (all my other friends had homestaying siblings around their age) and as they had to take care of the family, they had very little time to spend with me. (But it was a good experience as I learned that babies can cry straight for 2 hours and glimpsed the power of maternal love as I saw my homestaying mom playing the same games with the baby everyday and never seeming to get bored or annoyed when the baby was starting to get on my nerves). And my new homestaying family, the tea cafe owner's family, was better but not by much, as both the parents worked from 8am-8pm (mom) and 8am-11pm (dad) seven days a week. (An illustration of Chinese people's amazing work ethic). They also had very little time to spend with me and only my eight-year-old sibling made some occasional outings with me, and even that was rare because my homestaying brother was going to extra-curricular english, arts and other classes and doing homework. (I went to the World Horticultural Garden, the Golden Temple and the Stone Forest all by myself- which was a good practice for solo travel that may happen later in the year- but me & my homestaying brother did have some awesome sword fights as pirates on the Halloween though). But this independence and relative little family time freed my energy for other creative uses- entrepreurship. In the movie Kungfu Hustle that our group watched together, the protagonist's martial arts qi suddenly bursts in his body after years of dormancy. I don't know what triggered this sudden thirst for entrepreneurship in me (in the movie it was getting hammered by the bad toad-looking guy) but probably always jiangjia-ing (negotiatng the prices) for everything (nothing has a fixed price in China- you can always get a discount) and being violated by the aggressive Chinese street vendors (if you buy an apple, they try to sell you bananas and oranges too and would sometimes even put these fruits in your bag) I don't know if I really have entrepreneur gene or if any of my ideas are any good (the protagonist in the movie get his butt kicked many many times over many many years until he finds his true talent), but I think I may have it. Two of the four are directly results of my stay in Kunming- a college massage delivery place, and a tea cafe. As massage was only like $4 an hour here (compared to 15~30 times of that price in the US or Korea), I often went to go get a massage (this sounds weird but I love the tactile sensation) and having an online-delivering-masseurs-to-college-dorm-rooms-service may be really cool although many barriers such as sketchiness of a stranger coming into your room need to be cleared. Having been massaged my a masseur my age (which was sort of an interesting experience as it made me think more about class & priviledge, and realize how useless I was (I had no skills I can make money with unlike him)), I think massaging would also be a cool vocational training for kids my age who don't have any other economic opportunities and would like to work with NGOs to create a business model out of this. And the second idea is a tea cafe- When I arrived in Kunming, I was surprised by the ubiquitous tea cafes that sort of reminded me of Starbucks and ofter coffee shops in Korea and the US. As I studied tea for my ISP and learned more about it, I began to realize (I know this is very biased but try some good tea yourself) that tea is a much superior product than coffee in many aspects- taste, smell, color, history, culture, health benefits etc. It just needed a better marketing and promotion, and as I became a tea addict here, I'd love to start a tea cafe. So I hung out a lot at one of the large tea markets (these giant markets probably had a close to 100 stores selling every tea-related thing you can imagine- and Yunnan is actually one of the first places in the world to grow tea so good place to get addicted to tea!) in Kunming. One day (one weekend I even spent 11am-5pm both Saturday and Sunday drinking & buying tea), I was called by an owner of a tea-shop who called me up because there was a Chaoxian (Korean-Chinese) person sitting drinking tea. This encounter turned out to be a turning point in my tea life, as he became my mentor and partner in visiting numerous tea shops and eventually buying 50kg of tea, teaware, and tea tables. He taught me the nuances of drinking tea while helping me find good tea, cut down prices a ton through his guanxi and avoid exorbitant prices. He even found me a cheap shipping alternative that was half the price of what China Post wanted to charge me and I sent all my things through him. (But I do realize that there is a little risk that he'll cheat me and I'll never see my stuff again- but he seemed like a nice guy and I know where he lives (he invited me to his house) so I think (hope) he'll be trustworthy). But whether he's a huge defrauder or not, I learned about the power of guanxi in doing business in China because I can't even count how much money he saved me (or lost me if he cheats and takes away all my stuff- in which case I may need to do some experiential learning about the complicated law system in China.) Then there are other parts of my Kunming life that I shouldn't forget to mention. Annie, my Chinese teacher, was one of the best Chinese teachers I've ever had and although she gave me a lot of homework everyday that kept me busy on my 50-minute bus rides, my Chinese improved a lot and the classes were enjoyable as we talked about anything & everything. She also took me to cool places including the flower market where I saw the array of beautiful and colorful natural & manmade flowers and the best thing was that they were so cheap! (I probably bought more than 70 flowers to give as gifts including charming blue roses for the group). Zoe's homestaying sister Wei Wei and Kyuri's homestaying sister Longyun have been wonderful to me in that they added a little spice to my almost non-existent family life by taking me on their holiday trip to a cool lake and to old Kunming, as well as KTV (karaoke) that was even more hip than the ones in Korea. I should stop bashing my family by the way, as they did try to make time to take me to various places and took me to the Kunming botanical garden one weekend. But families shine in need, and my family really saved me on the last day when I really needed help packing 50kg of fragile tea stuff into boxes and we went to bed at very late hours after all the last minute rush packing. My family also made me realize how wasteful I am. Although my family owns a tea shop and an English school with over 20 staff, my homestaying mom almost never eats out and is always taking the bus despite the inexpensive taxis. As cool is environmentalism is around the world, my family save energy more for economic reasons than for environmental reasons. Apart from that, I've also enjoyed forced vacation from my Christian heritage (at home I go to church with my family every Sunday and I attended church most Sundays at school as I lived right across from the church and the Sunday church bell always woke me up) and that may be a spiritual break I needed as my spiritual mentor at school recommended. As I'm in Xinjiang hanging out with the Muslim Uigyurs right now, I look forward to immersing myself in Islam and examining my spirituality more. Overall, although nothing revelational happened, there were myriad mini surprises, delights and inspirations that arose out of my stay in Kunming. As we embark on our 5-week travelling portion of the program, I look forward to doing more treks like the ones in Nujiang Valley and more rural home-stay and service like the ones in Bai-bi-cun. I love the mountains and the kids- and I think I'll love deserts, Terra cotta Warriors, and colder China too as we head north.