Wondering and Wandering

We left the Wei family village late Monday morning (February 19th) after a huge and beautiful meal that consisted of so many dishes that the heated table in the front room was stacked two dishes deep.

A parade of people carried our belongings down the hill from the family compound and watched as I packed Sister’s small van with bags belonging to Betsy, Alex, Menghua, Leslie, XiaoWei and his niece Xiao Xing and me. In addition to our bags, I packed a huge bag of rice and two bags full of slabs of smoked pork meat, pickled herbs and beautifully round rice cakes. One bag of food had been gifted to Leslie, Betsy and me by XiaoWei’s parents and the other bag XiaoWei was taking back to Beijing for himself and his sister, Xiao Xing’s mother who had not been able to make the trip home for Spring Festival. The rice was going to Guiyang to feed the parents of a good friend’s of XiaoWei. On the road to Guiyang later, we were able to persuade XiaoWei to take our 50+pound bag of food to this same family. They are destitute at the moment and the rice and food would feed them for a good long time.

After the van was packed, Sister drove the van ( sans us)out of the village by dint of taking a running start at the steep muddy hill that headed out of the village. We all proceeded to walk out of the village and met Sister’s van at the school where pavement met mud. Six adults and two six year olds piled into the van with the luggage and food. It was now mean feat. After hugs and many a thank you, we wildly waved good-bye and headed on to our next village adventure. What a wonderful family and an amazing visit.

Next we were on our way to meet up with another friend of XiaoWei’s who is a television journalist. We met the journalist and his uncle who were traveling by motorcycle on the road and in tandem, we were off to the journalist friend's family home several mountain tops away to have a special lunch. Loaded as we were, the van did not move very quickly up hill and down dale, but it gave us that much more time to admire the lush green of the terraced mountainsides. We stopped to skip rocks at a river and crossed by foot on a rickety board suspension bridge. Sister drove around and across a car bridge and we continued on up a verdant valley to the journalist’s small village. We enjoyed a leisurely and tasty meal and then it was time to head yet another village for a special surprise that the journalist had arranged just for us.

We arrived in this new village. The small cement paths of the village were crowed with people. Given the number of people and the small size of the place, it seems that the entire village had come to greet us. The local performance troupe was going to put on a village opera performance for us. There were men, young and old, in vibrant yellow and red costumes. Brightly painted wooden masks were propped up on foreheads and many of the costumed men held a variety of instruments. There was a small performance stage, but before we knew it, it had been decided that the performance would be done on a hilltop at the edge of town. So we all paraded along with the villagers up to a grassy clearing at the top of a steep hill. What a sight… musicians playing, everyone chatting, kids laughing and running… up the hillside and around the edges of a clearing. People had carried two benches up the hill and nothing would do, but what the visitors sit on them. We were eventually able to squeeze together closely and include several elderly women and then slowly ease off the benches under the guise of taking pictures and bring another elderly woman or two on board. Over the course of the next hour and a half or more, we watched three acts with long intermissions in between acts. It was during the intermissions that we wondered if perhaps we were the show and not the colorful acts we were seeing. Some peopel just stood around looking at us , I had many sweet interactions with the elderly women around me… much hand holding, pats on the cheek and many smiles and lots of nodding.

Yes, I have no idea what you are saying to me, but really I am so thrilled and honored to be here and to be seeing this. I love your hat. Great cane and tell me again how did you get up that very steep path? How will you get back down

A fishing story vignette, a flirtatious dance and a lion dance later and the village performance was over. We posed for a picture with the majority of the troupe and then we proceeded to troop down the hillside and back to the main part of the village. The elderly women that we had made room for on the benches made their precarious way down the steep path… you know there were many years of body memory operating there as they careened on down.

Once down, we said many a good bye and many a thank you and posed and took many a picture and then piled back into the packed van. We hit the road and made our way to the main highway to travel up and down mountains south to the Guiyang airport to take the only daily 8:30 p.m. flight to Guilin. In Guiyang we had a bit of time to spare and Sister managed to call the proprietor of shop that sold Miao batik fabric hangings. The shop keeper opened up for us and in a twenty minute shopping frenzy, we made some amazing purchases before we headed to the airport and made our hour long flight to Guilin.

How could three days be filled with so many rich experiences and such heart warming interactions with people? How could I be so fortunate? Life is good.