Christmas Card from China

Where do I begin? It has been a busy couple of days since my last post- as stated, we have been in Yongning, staying with a family. Have not yet figured out internet access there, but we came back to Luoshui this morning so I am back online. The family is really sweet, a young working couple with two kids (4 and 9 years), an older girl (a relative) who helps out around the house, and grandma is staying there at the moment as well. Not a traditional Mosuo family setup, but probably increasingly common as people move into the towns for work. They speak Mosuo around the house a lot, but the couple are both fluent in Chinese. The little girl is monolingual in Mosuo, but her older brother speaks only Chinese at school, and though he understands Mosuo, his mum said he doesn't really speak it now. The older girl living in the house is bilingual and grandma only knows a bit of Chinese. There are definitely some interesting dynamics there.

They have been very hospitable and we have been eating breakfast (Yak butter tea- ugh, steamed buns- yum and boiled eggs- yum) and the evening meal with them (delicious).The house is behind his shop which sells traditional minority clothing and it is quite big. The plumbing is fairly basic- there is one tap in the garden which is used for everything. The toilet is in the back yard, and has a delightful view of the corn paddocks (currently bare) and the Goddess Gemu mountain in the background. We have copper basins in the courtyard for washing. One is designated for face and hands, the other for feet. I don't think we are supposed to wash anything else. We put hot water in them from kettles that are constantly on the boil above the wood burning hearth in the kitchen. Our bedroom is cold as the floor is concrete and the mattress under the blanket and sheet is made of straw. The family has a fridge, but it is empty and switched off (not sure why). Of an evening we watch tv and talk and last night we taught the teenage girl and the little boy to play a card game called 31, gambling with peanuts.

Two days ago, we went down to the school and I met the Tibetan English teacher, who has married into a Mosuo family. She has invited me to come and stay with them, so I may do that in a week or so, when Scott goes. She took us to see her home and the home of her Mosuo mother in law, who lives across the road. There was a minor Mosuo festival on, so we were invited in for lunch around the hearth. We tried the local delicacy, pigs intestine stuffed with rice and blood and fried in slices. I found it fairly bland and not too obnoxious but Scott struggled to stomach it. They were very friendly and taught me some words.

Last night we decorated the fruit tree in the courtyard with tinsel and hung some lollipops from it to give the kids a laugh. We caught a bus out to Luoshui this morning, in the hopes of phoning home but with limited success. I managed to borrow a mobile from a couple of foreigners we bumped in to and make a brief call to my mum before the phone went flat but Scott has not yet been successful. No phones here will take international calls, though they can receive them. We enjoyed a (fantastic) Yunnan coffee in the courtyard, the foreign couple showed us their motel which has showers (Yay) and a double bed (Yay) - only fifty yuan, and then the four of us decided to go on a row boat to a couple of the islands in the lake. They were fun to hang out with and we will join up with them again this evening for tea. He is Israeli and she is German (also speaks Dutch- having lived there for five years) and she is now living near Shanghai. Scott chatted to her a bit in German, and then me in Dutch, which was fun.

Anyway, we got on the boat and it went out to the first little island. Some buddhist monks (lamas) live there, and we climbed up to the temple on the top and what did I see? A massive gum tree, perched next to the temple. I nearly fell over. I didn't come here to smell Eucalyptus! It turned out that it was brought here by Joseph Rock, a botanist who travelled extensively in this area some 60-70 years ago. I think he was originally Austrian but travelled out here from the US and sent photos back to National Geographic at the time. Famous (among other things) for insisting that his claw footed bathtub be carried with him whereever he went through the mountains, etc. So these monks thought it was an American tree. Went on to the next island along and we sat for a long time up the top and I had a good chat with a young lama (couple of years younger than me) who lives up there. Interesting guy.

The boat trip was really beautiful, and the day has been pleasant and sunny. We will be going back to Yongning tomorrow for a few more days, and then it will be time for Scott to go home. He claims he is going to buy a whole christmas ham and chutney as soon as he gets back. I said "You may as well, they will be on special after christmas" but I must admit to being a little jealous.

I gave Scott some sheepskin gloves, a wool/hemp scarf, a hemp shirt and a yak skin wallet for Christmas and he gave me a colourful handwoven woolen blanket and a beautiful leather bound notebook.

Oh, I forgot to mention, just before we left Luoshui earlier this week I met an American woman who is doing linguistic fieldwork on the Mosuo language here as well! That was a little odd. She is planning to write a grammar of the language and has worked with a couple of Mosuo speakers over four or five weeks, eliciting vocabulary and testing grammatical structures. She was really friendly and plans to be here a few more months. This news makes me want to focus more on the other side of my plans, away from doing a grammar and more towards learning to communicate and doing a study of bilingualism and language maintenance in the area, including language attitudes and the impact of tourism. We will probably try to catch up again and work together a little.

I know there is more that I wanted to write but I will leave it at this for now.
Merry christmas all.