So back to square one.
Then I remembered I was a twin and promptly lay in wait for Sara to come online on Skype and then mugged her for her details and yea, Becka and Louise shall go to Hanoi!
Conveniently our Oral teacher spent her lesson yesterday teaching us about Chinese geography. This included slides and short movies on various areas in China. First off she introduced Shanghai (Shanghainese are not very popular in the rest of China apparently. I suspect their attitude matches Liverpudlian Becka's towards London) with all its fancy skyscrapers and neoclassical archicture. All very interesting but Been There Seen That.
Then she moved onto to the Loess plateau in Shanxi, Shaanxi and parts of Ningxia. The loess, the yellow soil, is very soft and erodes very easily. As China, over its long history, has cut down so many trees there is nothing holding it back from slipping into the rivers and seas. Indeed the Yellow River, which has its mouth not far from Qingdao, and Yellow Sea, are both named after the silt caused by erosion. Originally this area was the birthplace of agriculture but millenia of human degradation have turned it barren, something which the government is now planning to rectify with ambitious damming and reforestation plans. It is an area the size of France and also home to 50 million people, among them the Ningxia minority. The traditional style of house here are in fact cut into the plateau hillsides as cave dwellings.
Next was Yunnan (see above, south-west China). This is a very popular destination in China for several reasons. One is its diverse topography, from mountainous ethnically-Tibetan towns in the north-west to lush jungle in the south. It is home to a great many of China's "56 Ethnic Minorities" and our teacher introduced us to a couple.
First were the 摩梭, Mosuo, minority. They are famous in China for being a Matriarchal society, and for their "walking marriages". The emphasis appears to be on the matrilineal line and normally a house consists of a family from one matrilineal line. Adding a female suffix to a word makes it stronger, while adding the male makes it weaker, hence the female word is "boulder" but "pebble" for male. In a walking marriage, there is no marriage as such. The man and the woman never have a ceremony and both sides can leave whenever they wish. Normally they do not live together, hence the "walking" part by the man, so within one house there will be a grandmother and her brothers, her daughters and sons, and her daughters' children. (N.B. the one child rule does not apply to minorities). Men look after their mother and sisters' children rather than their partner or own children. Our teacher mentioned that some women do not know the father of their child but apparently this is rather overexaggerated. Whilst in theory one could have as many partners as you want, in practice they tend to be very monagamous. I believe this society may have evolved from when the men would have all been far away hunting, serving as monks etc leaving the women in the village to look after themselves.
According to a quote I found: "Our Friend Marriages are very good. First, we are all our mother's children, making money for her, therefore there is no conflict between brothers and sisters. Second the relationship is based on love, and no money, or dowry, is involved. If a couple feels contented, they stay together. If they feel unhappy, they can go their separate ways. As a result, there is little fighting. The system is good because we help our families during the daytime and only come together with our partners at night, and therefore there are few quarrels between us.” One 32-year-old Mosuo woman told the Los Angeles Times, "Outside Lake Lugo, marriage is like a business transaction. The women worry, 'Does he have a good job? can he take care of me? In our village, the girls are strong and take care of themselves. Everything we did is for love."
Which puts an interesting perspective on the institution of marriage.
They all live around 泸沽湖, Lugu Lake.
Which looks rather marvellous. I want to go there.
Next were the 白, Bai, White, Minority. They like to wear white.
Another group, the 纳西, Naxi, have their own writing system of around 1500 symbols, not unlike hieroglyphs. They resemble Chinese characters from oracle bones, found several thousand years ago.
The 2nd and 4 rows are Dongba and the 3rd (平安一生, "lifelong security") is Chinese.
Becka and I are spending 3 weeks in Yunnan in January, with Sara joining for the last week in Kunming. Needless to say Becka and I are now even more excited!
Our teacher also talked about Tibet. Apparently it is a wee bit dangerous to go if you are, or look, Han Chinese as you might get beaten up. Us Laowais are alright though!
So after 2 hours of talking we had hardly covered even a third of China. When you consider that there is also Hong Kong, who still think of themselves as British apparently, and Macao, yum Neoclassicsm, and Sichuan, remote mountains and spice, and Xinjiang, oases in the desert on the Silk Road, and Qinghai, "Green Sea" i.e. one big lawn, and Inner Mongolia, more deserts and prairies with small horses and big eagles, and Beijing and Xi'an, Terracotta Warriers, and 黑龙江, Black Dragon River with its ice cities and not forgetting Guangxi and Guangdong and Amoy and Hubei/Hunan and Henan/Hebei... how am I going to fit it all in????
Last night Becka and I got a pleasant surprise when Vivien, my language partner, and Candy, hers, took us to a concert. Or rather Vivien's parents took us. It was the Macao Symphony Orchestra who performed a mix of Tchaikovsky as well as accompanying someone on the 琵琶, pipa, which is like a Chinese lute. I know nothing about the pipa but even I could see that the musician must be one of the best. Her fingers moved so fast and accurately and yet with such emotion. However, one tiny thing. I am all for innovation and fusion but I didn't think that the pipa, which is a fairly staccato instrument, went very well with a Western orchestra. There would be sweeping strings, honeyed brass and then this twanging sound. I think it would sound at its best as a solo instrument. The rest of the performance was fantastic and I'm very grateful to Viven's parents for taking us. The tickets were free, but it was lovely of them to drive us back. Vivien's mum has invited us to her house which has got us all excited as we studied visiting a chinese home a few weeks ago. I'll have to revise beforehand but I remember you have to compliment them on how big and clean their house is and how lovely the furniture.
The soloist was wearing a qipao but with cut away sleeves. Again, this fusion of western style didn't really work but the fabric was beautifully embroidered. While I'm here I'm intending to buy me a nice a qipao-one full length and a shorter one.
There were a lot of speeches by various people throughout the performance and because they spoke slowly, I actually understood rather a lot. It was mostly, oh I'm so glad to be back in Qingdao this is my 2nd home town blah blah (audience enthusiasticly claps). The head of the Qingdao government was wheeled out in a sharply ironed suit. He looked a bit nervous. I have noticed this with many top Chinese politicians and businessmen is that they all seem rather self concious. Why?
The concert hall was the main one in Qingdao and rather snazzy. It was big and white and futuristic. I'm afraid the pictures aren't so good as I took them on my ipod.
Below is where we go to eat dumplings. It's rather ramshackle and dirty but they had a laptop out today and it just seemd so out of place.
The big menu on the wall:
And Becka eating. Behind her you can see the stacks of bamboo boxes they steam the dumplings in.
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