Homestay in Kunming Sept 21, 2008

Homestay in Kunming Sept 21, 2008
봄과 꽃의 도시, 가을을 입다 — 곤명

After the ten-day Yunnan trip, our 6-week homestay in Kunming began and we waited in anticipation for our new family in the program house that was both our classroom and the playground. Although having just returned from the hike and the 10-hour bus ride we were like ‘smelly tofu’ Chinese people love to eat, our new families were nevertheless welcoming. As the non-minority Han people are only allowed one child, our homestay brothers and sisters were eager to adopt a new sibling they have been denied by law all their lives.

I was a little nervous that the little princes and princesses that China’s one child policy has bred would be a pain in the butt. And I was also concerned that my skin color that is the same as theirs may not be as interesting to them as white Americans. These worries were unnecessary as they found a Korean boy who could speak Chinese cute, and my home-stay brother turned out to be a one-year-old baby. Although I was initially upset I could not talk and play with my brother as I had envisioned, the young parents’ enthusiasm for hosting me more than made up for it.

My new Chinese dad was a programmer and mom an elementary school teacher (like my Korean mom). My new nest was a two-room apartment in the forest of apartments forty-five minutes north of the city center. Upon arriving home I immediately entered the bathroom to shower and was relieved to see the western style sitting toilet. (warning: skip this section if you are eating). For the first two weeks, I had to squat at countless squatting toilets some filled with maggots underneath and other with pigs underneath. I was always worried that I would slip and fall, or drop it on my pants. I love reading in the toilet but couldn’t enjoy my favorite routine either. They say squatting makes it easier for women to give birth and may be a better idea to keep one’s butt clean in a country with as many people per toilet as China. But I still missed the warmth of sitting toilets. Especially before my stomach became tough when I was still struggling with low p-scale from eating too tasty and inexpensive street food, sitting toilet was especially important.

“P-scale” stands for poop scale and it’s a little embarrassing but stands for the liquidity of number two. The scale ranges from 1 to 10 and 1 indicates complete liquid gushing out and 10 a solid rock stuck inside. The instructors joked that 10 would necessitate a special surgery with gloves to manually remove the blockage and it was genuinely scary at times when some of our numbers got high. In order to maintain homeostasis, high numbers meant a lot of fruits and vegetables and low numbers meant bland BRAT (Bread, Rice, Apple sauce, Toast) diet. During our three months there, we shared out p-scale and w-scale (well-being scale: 1 means i fell into the squatter toilet and 10 means I’m in Shangri-la) every day and the two scales were essential barometers of our physical and mental health. As we were constantly exposed to new experiences and food, our w and p scales also roller-costered up and down. Initially we were uneasy about discussing our p-scale but this routine became part of our lives and eventually we became comfortable enough to nonchalantly share our p-scale over breakfast.

We had a day off after the Yunnan trip. As I was feeling tired with the dreaded low p-scale, I just wanted to rest for a day. Nevertheless, my new home could not be quiet waters as my mom was trying to potty-train my brother and it seemed like the anal stage feels too good for babies to control. Chinese walls are thin and my baby brother’s incessant crying forced me outside in hopes of finding green pastures to lie down on. Fortunately, there was a massage place next to my home and as I laid down for a heavenly hour, all my head and stomach pains disappeared. I love getting touched (I think our society is too scared to admit our love of tactile sensations) but massage was too expensive in Korea and the US so I had very few chances to get touched well. But it was only 30 yuan ($4-5) for an hour here and they even let me take a nap afterwards!

Rejuvenated by woman’s hands, I ventured out to explore the neighborhood. Although 'get on a random bus and get lost' was the recommendation from our instructors for our first day on our own, I decided to check out my own neighborhood first. I am of the opinion one should know one’s own home and tradition first before venturing outside although I was hypocritically traveling around the world when I don’t even know my Korean backyard that well.

As soon as I came out, I was greeted by the plaintive sigh close to a violin. I followed the sound and discovered an old man playing erhu (a traditional Chinese instrument). When i asked if i can try, he gladly consented and I played around with his erhu while he talked. He was a 58-year old math teacher who was visiting his daughter in the apartment, and he asked me questions about everything from what I was doing, what I wanted to be, what my parents do for a living, and how much money they make. Although it felt a little nosy, I knew he meant no harm and it was a pleasant conversation.

On my way out of the apartment complex I encountered the yodel from the flute of my eighteen-year-old janitor friend and I loved the way Chinese people filled their lives with music everywhere. Ambling in Kunming’s Green Lake Park (which is equivalent to NY’s central park), I could hear melodies every corner of everything from saxophones to Chinese instruments to rock guitars to human voice.

I crossed the 12 lane road but as this neighborhood was newly developed, there were no traffic lights or crosswalks. So crossing the street was like playing car-dodging classic game of Frogger and the way to beat this game was to follow the pro local jay-walkers like my mom who could cross twelve lanes with a stroller. I was welcomed into the street by the line of motor cycle taxis urging me to get on, and then I passed ubiquitous fried potato sellers who sold much healthier and yummier version of fries than the McDonald’s ones.

I also passed by a lot of old men playing majiang (Chinese people’s favorite gambling game rumored to have been invented by Confucius), western cards and xiangqi (Chinese chess which may be revealing of Asia’s patriarchal society that there is no queen on steroids who can kick everyone’s ass in Chinese chess). It was rather amusing to see over ten old men huddled around the tiny daqi board, all shouting advices and even moving pieces back and forth. I couldn't even tell who the two people playing were. I have also played xiangqi on a train with a middle aged worker and I learned that Korean and Chinese chess rules were a little different although the pieces were the same. After defeating me without much deliberation, he gave me the chess set telling me to practice.

And then I turned a corner and there was the market square, filled with people selling fruits, vegetables, clothes, snacks and everything else that is made in China under large umbrellas. At the back of the market were a bunch of butchers and it seemed like the Chinese food animals are not faring any better than their American kins in industrial farms. Chickens and ducks were stuffed into a tiny cage reminiscent of photos of packed World War II concentration camps, and they were so crowded that some animals could not even find a place to put their feet down or stretch out their wings and had to sit on top of each other. Right beside the cages were the skinned animals, who had retained their live shapes and were chopped according to the orders.

Fresh blood and feathers decorated the floor behind the counter, and I saw the meat-seller take out a chicken from the cage, which cried for its life and tried to run free. The butcher broke its neck and slit open its throat. The head dangled on, and the oozing blood was poured into a container. The body was thrown into a large basket, in which the chicken continued to run about fanatically and squeak for a few seconds before becoming as silent as a McChicken. It was a R-rated version of the movie ‘Chicken Run’ with a failed run.

At the shop next door, the butchers dipped the skinned ducks in a black tarry stuff to clean them. The butcher and the customer continued their conversation nonchalantly as the chicken concluded its caged life. They all seemed like kind people and none of the passers-by or shoppers were disturbed like I was. Maybe it's just another cultural difference I have to understand, but I could not watch for much longer. Even if animals lack ability to imagine themselves in the future as some claim, I wondered what went through their minds as they watched their mates get skinned. But at least the Chinese were open about their animal executions whereas in the US everything is hidden behind far-away farm factories. Paul McCartney had said “if slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian,” and Ralph Waldo Emerson: “You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.”

Last summer, I had tried becoming a vegetarian for environmental and ethical reasons. I wanted to join the club of great spiritual pacifist vegetarians such as Leo Tolstoy, Gandhi and the Dalai Lama. But I found myself constantly invading and finishing my friends’ meat dishes with the excuse that I was not increasing the demand and therefore not contributing to the killing. Then to fulfill my barbaric protein hunger I was eating too much seafood which is also not sustainable. Although track star Carl Lewis won nine Olympic gold medals on vegan diet, another excuse was that I need meat for my running. In the end my body failed to live up to my mind and the experiment only lasted a month. The sad thing was that I was so cognizant of the implications of my meat.

According to the 400-page 2006 UN report titled ‘Livestock’s long shadow,’ livestock made up 18% of the world’s total carbon footprint and it was a higher percentage than all transportation including cars and planes combined. Such modern ‘industrial farming’ pollutes land and water, uses up huge amount of resources and emits countless pollutants including carbon dioxide and methane that causes global warming and ammonia that causes acidic rain. Most of these greenhouse gases from the livestock are burps and farts of cows and cows are said to produce about ten kilograms of gas (22 lbs) every year.

Currently of all the land on earth that is not covered by ice, about thirty percent is used for livestock. 70% of the Amazon forest has been cut down and turned into grazing land or farms to grow animal feed and overgrazing is desertifying 20% of the current pastures. Most of the corn and beans grown in the world are used to feed the livestock and this process of producing calories through feeding the livestock requires ten times as much grain as eating the grain directly. Currently there are 800 million people with malnutrition worldwide and over ten million kids die every year from hunger. It seems to me a huge waste that we are reducing our food supply to ten percent of what we could have through converting grains to meat. Harvard nutritionist Jean Mayer estimated that if the US decreased her meat consumption by 10%, it will free up grains to feed 60 million people.

Philosophically, I encountered the Aussie Princeton Ethics Professor Peter Singer last summer and his animal rights philosophy also distanced me from meat. He expanded Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism to include the animals and coined the term ‘speciesism.’ Singer starts out that equality is not stating a fact but is a moral concept that difference in ability should not take away from equal treatment. Many people agree up to here, but only a few take the logical next step which is: “If higher intelligence does not allow using others of lesser intelligence as means, what gives humans rights to use animals as means to an end?” Descartes would have answered that because animals lack souls humans are qualitatively superior. But Darwin and Freud have shown that we are not that special after all and perhaps even more psychologically diseased than most animals. Modern science has also revealed that culture, ability to use tools, language and even consciousness may not be limited to just us humans and maybe it is only fitting that we are expanding our rights to include animals.

Obviously Singer’s philosophy is controversial and when he was appointed to a prestigious professorship at Princeton Forbes magazine CEO Steve Forbes stopped donating to his alma mater. When asked if it is not natural that humans put homo sapiens first, Singer answered the racists also put their race first. When asked if for these domestic farm animals life on the farm is not easier than in the wild he responded that advocates of slavery also made a similar argument and the life of freedom is preferable. Asked if killing for food is a natural phenomenon then what’s the big deal he answered that murder and rape also occur naturally and humans should go beyond the natural law. He added that as omnivores humans can survive without eating meat unlike carnivores like lions.

Philosopher Daniel Dennett of Tufts stated that humans’ pain is amplified by higher self consciousness and emotions such as sadness, anxiety, regret, humility and fear. But on the other hand just as knowing why we have to undergo pain when we go see dentists helps us bear the pain, for animals of lower intelligence not knowing why they are used for medical experiment can make the pain greater.

Whatever these philosophers say, even the great Bentham who had predicted the day will come when all breathing creatures will have rights ate meat claiming that the pain is the same for the preys whether humans kill them or other predators kill them. Such calculus may have been correct two centuries ago but just as UC Berkeley author Michael Pollan writes, life on the modern industrial farms is a life without happiness and continuation of pain.

In contrast to the cutting edge technology used in industrial farms, these farms still operate based on the outdated Cartesian notion that since animals lack souls, they feel no pain. Cows in nature eat grass but because eating grain makes them grow faster, cows are fed grains in industrial farms and to counter the side effects they are alway son antibiotics. Their home is filled up to their ankles with their excrement and when they get big enough they are put on the conveyor belt that slaughters 400 heads every hour. Meanwhile chickens get their beaks removed because they get stressed living in tiny boxes and attack each other. Once the hens start slowing their pace of egg production, they are thrown into a dark room with no food and water to squeeze out the last few eggs before their death.

As pigs grow more quickly eating feed fortified with hormones and antibiotics than mother’s milk, they are taken off mother’s milk after 10 days after birth compared to 13 weeks in nature. Having missed their oral stage these pigs retain desire suckle throughout their whole lives and instead chew on the tails of pigs in front of them. Having lost all their will to live after living in metal cages all their lives without ever experiencing sunlight, soil and hay that they love, these pigs just let their tails get chewed up until they get infected. The pigs thus diseased that fail to meet production quotas are killed on the spot.

I think the tragedy of these industrial farms began with the greed of biz-school (like mine!)-graduate producers and apathy of the consumers. To maximize efficiency ethics often gets thrown out the window in capitalism and the producers are constantly pressured to lower the costs. Most consumers are happy if they can eat a lot of meat cheaply and only a few ask where, how, and at what non-monetary costs their meat was produced. I don’t think many people are aware that pigs which turn into ham for Christmas dinner and dogs half of whom get Christmas gifts have the same intelligence. (In Korea and China we eat both so it’s not an issue). A person only needs thirty grams of protein every day all of which can be gained from vegetables and grains but Americans consume 110 grams of protein daily on average. This overdose of meat causes heart diseases, various kinds of cancer and diabetes and someone wrote: “heart attacks are God’s revenge for eating his little animal friends.” We kill to die sooner.

I believe animal rights would be one of the great moral advances of our generation and it is about time too. Tolstoy had written: “‘Thou shalt not kill’” does not apply to murder of one’s own kind only, but to all living beings; and this Commandment was inscribed in the human breast long before it was proclaimed from Sinai.” Then as early as five centuries ago when most of Europe probably just ate bread and raw meat Leonardo da Vinci wrote: “the time will come when all men such as I will look on the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.”

Even within the last ten years there have been a lot of legal progress around the world. Germany became the first country in the world to give animals constitutional rights and the dignity that the state should respect and protect became expanded to animals. in the UK fur farms have been banned and in Switzerland the legal status of animals changed from ‘objects’ to ‘organisms.’ In the EU small pens for pigs have been banned and the tiny cages for chickens will be phased out by 2012.

Just as the labor union laws and the abolishment of slavery made the economy less efficient but more sustainable and just, I similarly hope we’ll see an end to this industrial livestock system soon although it will drive up our food prices. I don’t think it makes any sense at McDonald’s we can get hamburgers for a buck while we have to pay several times that for salads. Such pricing system only kills both the animals and the people. Along with the Golden Arches and all the other burger joints that boast huge meat patties, I think steakhouses are almost sacred symbol of America dating back to the frontier cowboys days. Don’t cows deserve a little bit more respect as in India then?

So many great things that the US is based on-- ancient Greeks, native Indians, Christianity and other religions that make up the mosaic-- all treat animals with dignity and I think sadly we forgot about all after becoming fundamentalist capitalists. In Ancient Greece slaughtering was a sacred act reserved for priests only and native Indians held ceremonies to show gratitude for the animals who died to sustain their own lives after every hunting expeditions. In christianity God commands us to be stewards of his creatures and in the Book of Genesis God already said the world is good even before we humans popped up. We were all happy vegans in the Garden of Eden before we got red carded and Christians should be especially apologetic to animals because it is because of us humans that animals got wiped out during the Deluge. Buddhism and Hinduism forbids eating meat completely, while Jews and Muslims do not eat pork and many other creatures according to their endlessly numerous laws. Along with our proud Disney movies, works such as the Chronicles of Narnia and Alice in the Wonderland (although both British creations) all reflect our longing to return to the days of Eden and communicate with the animals again. I think as technology progresses we will be able to communicate with the animals one day but don’t think they will talk to us ever if we keep eating them.

Realistically, however, it is depressing to hear the projection that by 2050 the world meat consumption will double probably thanks to America exporting its carnivorous habits along with being fat. But on the brighter side, I also saw in my neighborhood what may be a more sustainable future for the urban areas around the world. In the residential area surrounded by the forest of gray apartments, I saw many middle aged men and women working on a vegetable garden. Seeing a farm in the middle of the city may seem strange but in 1982 land artist Agnes Denes purchased two acres of New York Manhattan real estate. She turned the land into a wheat field and farmed for a year as a performance art, titling her work: “Wheat Field: Conflict” to depict the conflict between culture and nature. She commented on our human values and misplaced priorities, and as part of the ‘Art Exhibit to End World Hunger’ she harvested 500 kilograms of wheat and sent it to 28 cities around the world to plant the seed. Even until then urban farming was a symbolic act of an avant-garde artist and hippies but it is increasingly becoming a part of the urban landscape.

Today’s urban farms produce 15% of the world’s total food. In the US these farms serve to create jobs in overlooked neighborhoods and provide opportunities for urban kids to get in contact with nature. Hong Kong produces more than half of the vegetables the city consumes in urban farms and in Moscow 65% of the families take part in food production. Our gorgeous First Lady Michelle also turned 100 square meter of the White House land into a garden with 55 kinds of vegetables and she announced that the daughters and Mr Obama will all have to weed whether they like it or not.

Corporations are also becoming increasingly interested in farming for various reasons and Google, Pepsi, Yahoo and Best Buy all have planted urban farms near their headquarters. The conventional agriculture’s overuse of water and energy and its detrimental effects on climate change are also spurring countless technological innovations within sustainable agriculture (called agriculture 2.0) and many big name venture capital firms are getting interested in this field-- U.S Ventures Partners that have invested in Sun Microsystems and Calloway Golf, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers that have invested in Amazon.com, Genetech and Google are all trying to get a slice of this growing pie.

During the last half century when the soil was healthy, we could increase our production through large scale monoculture farming with pesticides. But as the soil ecology collapses and the soil quality deteriorates, the yields have been diminishing and over 500 species of insects and 200 species of weeds have developed resistance to pesticides. In contrast organic farming prevents soil erosion, does not pollute underground water and helps soil and vegetables maintain their nutrients. German waterworks companies are even paying farmers to go organic because it is cheaper to pay them than remove farm chemicals at the plant. According to the University of Michigan research in the journal Nature organic farming done right can even produce more than conventional farming. 2000 UN report states that in the UK going organic increases the number of bird diversity on the farm by over 40% and ‘non-pest butterflies’ threefold so organic farms also makes the farm more diverse and beautiful.

The average food we eat in the US have flown over 1500 mies to reach our plates so we waste several times more energy on transportation than the energy we get from food themselves. So how much energy can we save if we grew our own vegetables or bought locally? I have worked at farms in Maine, Delaware, New Zealand and Israel and have also received funding from high school to start a vegetable garden. Working at the garden was exercise, fun time for socializing and also a time to slow down, reflect and be close to nature. After harvesting I felt proud to eat the fresh vegetables I grew with my own hands without pesticides. Although when I began I only had a few kinds of carrots and beans but the farm has outlived my time at high school and many universities such as UPenn, Yale, Dartmouth and Harvard are beginning their own on-campus farms. The caged up chickens are intelligent animals who are pros at eating small pests, controlling weed and giving us good manure and colorful eggs. I think we are homo stupidus’s to imprison such helpful friend.

Yunnan Adventure Sept 9-20, 2008

“On ancient maps Dragons were drawn to symbolize the unknown, and to travel beyond the familiar world was to go "Where There be Dragons." (WTBD)

So said the WTBD company course preparation booklet I was reading last minute on the plane to Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan province. But for me, China was not a dragon. I could speak the language, have many Chinese friends some of whom are my closest, and have been to Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai and even Manchuria. However, after three months of urban and rural home-stays, studying the language and the culture, travel, community service and trekking, I realized that China still is a mysterious dragon for me. This dragon was much more magnificent than I had imagined with resplendent colors and shapes. Some parts of her silky body even felt like an independent organism with entirely different culture, people and nature. Just as dragons are depicted as evil and aggressive princess-abducting creatures to be defeated by handsome princes in the West, China also felt a little intimidating and sketchy initially. But China that I discovered was the East’s dragon that is mighty but auspicious, and this dragon nourished me with the rain she provides.

As the mascot of Korea is a tiger and the US a bald eagle, the dragon is one of China’s mascots along with the more friendly cranes and cuter pandas. The first place that made me realize that her body is completely different from the head (capital) Beijing was Yunnan, which means “South of the Clouds.” As the most south-western province of China’s twenty-two provinces, Yunnan shares her borders with Vietnam, Laos and Burma, which makes her the biggest sex and drug trafficking area in China. Thousands of miles away from Beijing, Yunnan used to be the land of exile for Chinese criminals. But just as the English criminals would have been happy to leave gloomy England to arrive at sunny Australia, I think I would not have minded the life of exile in this ‘city of eternal spring.’ Not only are drugs and women plenty here, but this province is a treasure house with majestic mountains, rivers and rich biological and cultural diversity. Yunnan boasts half of China’s plants, mammals, birds species, and twenty-five of the fifty-six minorities recognized by the Chinese government.

Nevertheless, the first skill I needed to master before I could enjoy these natural and cultural treasures was building my bus stamina. As Korea is tiny, the longest bus ride was five hours and even in the US the most I had been in a bus was six hours as I fly long distances. But in China we encountered this smelly invention called the ‘sleeper bus’ which played us the snoring symphony by the Chinese male sleeping troupe all night and my first bus ride lasted twelve hours. I am pretty short so I was doing ok but one of my instructors and friends who were over six feet tall could not even stretch their legs fully.

The bumpy and mostly unpaved road, and the madman driving also didn’t help and we even had to wait for over an hour at a site of landslide. Although the steep precipices and ravines were breathtakingly beautiful, they also gave me vertigo and i felt nauseous. But this virgin long-d ride was a chance for quick bonding for twelve of us on the program and I do not know how I could have borne this ride without sharing my boredom and fear with them. This ride was only the beginning of countless 10-20 hour bus and train rides we would face and we slowly learned to enjoy long distance travel.

Eventually we arrived at a small alpine town called Zhongdian, also known as Gyalthang in its original Tibetan name. As if having two names is not confusing enough, the Chinese government renamed this town Shangri-la after James Hilton’s eponymous utopian novel in order to foster tourism in this quiet Tibetan town. As “Shangri-la” in the novel is ruled by a Tibetan Lama, maybe the Chinese government should consider returning the land to the Dalai Lama if they really want to make this town “Shangri-la.” Gyalthang was in fact part of Tibet until China’s 1950 invasion and forced incorporation. Tibet used to be twice bigger than it is on the map now with many towns in Qinghai, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces also belonging to the rooftop of the world.

Yunnan’s Shangri-la is also not the only one and Tibet, India and Pakistan all claim towns named Shangri-la. Shangri-la is not a physical location but a transcendental, timeless space within the minds of James Hilton and travelers that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Renaming towns like this felt to me like British government renaming some idyllic countryside town to Hogwarts for tourism and felt like a distraction from Shangri-la’s omnipresent spiritual nature.

Whatever I think this renaming marketing strategy worked brilliantly. In 1997 there was only one lodging for foreigners here and no decent restaurants but now the place teems with accommodations, restaurants and souvenir shops. Nevertheless Gyalthang has preserved its Tibetan heritage well for a touristy town and this was my first kiss and the beginning of fascination with Tibet. She also challenged me as I quickly ran out of breath and suffered a little from high altitude sickness climbing up her breast to get to a temple atop a hill as the town was over 3000m (10,000 ft). But all was forgotten watching the multi-colored Tibetan prayer flags dance to the wind and visiting the largest Tibetan monastery in China outside of Tibet.

Songzalin Monastery was built in the 17th century and housed over 600 monks (it used to be over 2,000 at its peak) and many statues of buddha some over 8 meters (25feet) tall. On the courtyard were many kids half my height running around and it made me happy to watch these innocent, mischievous kids. Holden from the Catcher in the Rye would probably also be happy here. On the other hand it bothered me that these kids have already become monks. What if the monastery lifestyle didn’t suit them? Although I on my pursuit of elusive utopia probably had no right to question their bliss in their utopia, did they become monks because they wanted?

I am uneasy about both the child baptism I received and other religious rite-of-passage rituals like Jewish Bar Mitzvah at the age of thirteen. How can little kids that lack experience and intellectual ability decide on such important matter such as faith? Philosopher Rousseau wrote that kids before the age of fifteen, sixteen cannot understand abstract concepts such as souls and argued against the religious upbringing of pre-teen kids saying that it is better to not know about God than wrongly believe.

I am, however, grateful for the exposure to religion from birth. Not for moral reasons-- I have many friends much more ethical than I am raised in secular families-- but for sparking my interest in spirituality and transcendence. I think good theology has aesthetics of good poetry and despite all the evils of religion and especially of organized religion, I think it is easier to start on spiritual path by belonging to a religious group. Whether I like it or not I need religion to appreciate both eastern and western literature, philosophy, art, music and architecture I love. Although churches in Europe are turning into bars and restaurants, religion is growing in most parts of the world, and the world needs more bridges between not only different religions but increasingly between secular and religious people as well.

Just as couples from arranged marriages somehow report to be happier than the freely-wed couples, I wished these kids were as happy and free as the birds flying around the courtyard. Perhaps the elevated minds of these meditating kids are already freer than mine that jumps around like a drunk monkey and uselessly thinks and worries about everything.

After Shangri-la we headed to the Nujiang Valley and hiked there for four days. Armed with twenty five kilograms of rice (55 lbs), five kilograms of noodles (11 lbs), and immense amounts of carrots, corn, cabbage, trail mix on horsebacks, we began our ascent. Although our Tibetan guide tried to teach us a traditional Tibetan song, we were pretty hopeless so we sang English songs. During the hike we passed by countless scenic peaks and unpolluted villages. My only complaint was the ubiquitous food trash-- these mountains are for the seasoned hikers and why don’t they take care of the mountain that they love?

In the villages we passed we ran into many minority groups such as the Bai, Nu and the Tibetans. We home-stayed with these people for a night and I was surprised to see crucifixes and images of Virgin Mary in their houses and a small Catholic church in the village. Just as many people think all Palestinians are muslims despite significant Christian minority, I think most people think Tibetans are buddhists. But all the Tibetans we met in this village were Catholics and they said it was the result of the 19th century Jesuit missionaries.

What was more surprising than the missionaries finding this isolated cloud-hidden village was seeing the vestiges of the Cultural Revolution-- a failed political experiment that put China into a decade-long turmoil and caused the deaths of millions and destruction of innumerable cultural assets. The church had not recovered from vandalism of that period and the wall was still covered with the red sprays of “Long Live Mao.”

Although most of China has recovered from this 20th century Dark Age, it seemed to me that the Cultural Revolution is continuing for the Tibetans. Since China’s 1950 invasion most buddha statues have replaced by images of Mao’s and only 1700 monasteries remain standing from over 7000 that stood before. Currently the worldwide Tibetan population is less than 6 million and out of these over 1.2 million Tibetans have lost their lives since 1950. Just as Chinese children accused and turned in their parents during the Cultural Revolution, the Tibetans still have to denounce the Dalai Lama who is their spiritual and political father. Tibet that had 30-50% of its male population as monks before 1950 is losing herself day by day.