Last days

I've been so busy this last week, I haven't thought much about posting blogs. Realise now I have a bit to catch up on!

Lets see... I stayed in Sichuan until Thursday morning, working hard every evening with my friend there. The Norwegian girl had to leave Wednesday as she'd forgotten to bring her contact lenses and after stumbling around all day Tuesday had had enough! Thursday was very hot again, and in the afternoon, N.G. (Norwegian Girl) and I walked over to Zhudi for a farewell party with my family there. After dinner, quite a number of family and friends from the village came around, Dali beer was passed around and everyone started taking it in turns to sing. There was a mixture of Mosuo songs, Chinese pop songs, Tibetan songs and a very fine rendition of "What do you do with a drunken sailor?" by N.G. and myself which got everyone clapping along.

Finally everyone left and then my brother (in this family) and a Chinese guy (who is staying with them at the moment) and I went to the Zhudi disco. This is a large ugly hotel that has been built on the opposite side of the little lake in Zhudi, which has a room with disco lights, sound system and karaoke. And we were the only people there. They obligingly put on the flashing lights and my brother Erche got them to play the Mosuo dance music. Then he, I and the Mosuo girl who works there began to do the circle dancing. Normally there is a huge circle of people dancing in formation, so it looked a little odd with three of us. Still, was fun. Then we switched to disco music and the four of us danced in this enormous room for another hour or so. Then I sat back with (another) beer while they took it in turns to sing karaoke. Stumbled home across the paddocks at 3am (ouch my ankle) back to the house.

Friday morning I helped N.G. interview Erche, my translating skills are improving but I still get stuck on unusual vocabulary a lot. Then N.G. and I walked back to Lige through the heat (30 degrees plus- don't know exactly). At the guest house I changed into a bikini and she found some black underpants and a singlet top, and we walked to the far side of the island (little chance of being photographed by tourists) and went for a swim! Typically, for the half hour we were in the lake, the sun went behind a cloud and we shivered as we crouched in the seaweed. Then something moved next to N.G.'s foot and she screamed and kind of lunged towards me and I slipped too and then swam out to fetch one of her thongs which had come off her foot in all the excitement. We'd had enough by them and got out just as the sun came out.

Went back to the guesthouse where I washed some clothes in the lake and packed up all my stuff. The girl who works there in the kitchen must have thought it was christmas as I doled out a heap of clothes, cups, hot water bottles and other miscellaneous goods that I didn't want anymore. Then N.G. found a packet of tampons and was trying to explain to kitchen girl what they were for. Kitchen girl thought initially that they might be candy. I don't think the diagrams clarified it and N.G.'s level of Chinese is so poor that I had to explain it to kitchen girl. The situations people put me in! Actually, the other day we were talking to my friend in Sichuan about the one child policy. He started laughing and told us that when contraception was first introduced in the area, doctors would demonstrate the method for putting on a condom using their thumb. Apparently more than one angry man went back to the doctor saying he'd worn it on his thumb during intercourse and she still got pregnant!

Friday night N.G. and I went down to Lige village and went along to the dancing. Went to Zhaxi's bar afterwards and sat there chatting with Zhaxi, a few other locals and a French tourist. The 26 year old French guy had been in the village for about 3 days and clearly had a thorough understanding of Mosuo culture. In the space of half an hour he managed to say that "Mosuo people are like children, they have no idea of responsibility" "The Mosuo dialect is probably very simple and unsophisticated" "English is a language without character" and "buying marijuana is very cheap in Dali, I smoke every day". By this point N.G. was so angry she was squeezing my hand under the table in frustration as he arrogantly tried to explain Mosuo culture to her.

We said goodbye to our friends there and went to another little cafe and joined some of the local boys for shaokao (mini barbecue with slices of potato, zucchini and chicken stomach). They made us drink shots of the local Guangdang alcohol (lethal stuff) and we chatted and joked for a while. On our way home to the guesthouse we squatted by the side of the dirt road for a pee under the stars. The lake looks beautiful by moonlight.

Saturday I jumped on a bus to Lijiang with my many bags. I am going to post a heap of stuff tomorrow. As soon as we got there I found a guy with a three wheel bicycle with a tray that I heaped my bags onto and trundled to my hotel. It was very hot again - already missing the lake, so I had a nice shower, got dressed up and went to 'Lamu's house of Tibet' for dinner, where I ordered a lasagne. Got talking to a group of Germans and a Malaysian woman there. All spoke English except for one German guy, all spoke German except for the Malaysian woman and myself, though I could understand a fair bit of the German conversation, and myself and the Malaysian woman could speak Chinese, and a couple of the Germans knew a bit, but not really well enough to converse. Quite a confusing conversation!!

Then I caught up with a few people who had been on the bus with me that day, and they were catching up with Zhaxi (from Zhaxi's bar in Lige) who had apparently come down here today as well. So we all went to a Mosuo cafe in the Little Paris area and drank shots of Dali beer and played dice and chatted. One of the guys was trying to teach the girls a game where everyone flaps their arms and says 'yiqi fei' or 'fly together', etc. The idea is that if you flap at the wrong time you have to drink a shot. I said I'd seen this game being played before in a pub and thought they were insane. (Imagine group of Chinese people chanting and flapping their arms in manner of chicken dance).

The girls asked me what games people from my culture play when they are drinking. I thought for a minute and tried to describe some board games and others like charades. Then I said we play cards and told them about strip poker- at which point they declared that we were the crazy ones!

This morning I slept late. Got some stuff to do today and tomorrow, then getting on a plane on Tuesday. I know I've whinged about this place at times, but there are places and people that I'm also really going to miss. I'm never good at goodbyes.