My friend Xiao Lin (小淋) invited me to visit her hometown, Yuanjiang (元江), about three hours south of Kunming on the Kunming-Laos highway. Yuanjiang’s at a much lower altitude than Kunming, a result of it being in the Red River Valley. It’s also smack dab on the Tropic of Cancer, a fact announced on billboards upon arrival in town. It’s one of many ethnic autonomous counties in this region of China, the ethincities in this case being Dai (傣族), Hani (哈尼族), and Yi (彝族). Xiao Min is Dai.
In the middle of the bus ride, three angry men suddenly stood up and began beating a man as he crouched into his seat. As they were speaking angry dialect it was hard for me to grasp the reason behind the beating. The bus pulled over to the shoulder as the concerned passengers watched out of the corner of their eyes, while the driver made a modest effort to restrain the men dispensing the beating. When they eventually settled down, one of the beaters sat down in the empty seat next to me. After finding out I was American, he wanted to know why we Americans were always starting wars? Normally I like it when a Chinese person wants to talk politics with me. But this was someone I did not think I wanted to get into a heated conversation with.
In Yuanjiang, I stay at Xiao Lin’s father’s deserted house. Her parents are divorced and father is off in Zhejiang working. Her mother is still in Yuanjiang but her apartment is too small for us to stay there. Instead, we go there for meals. Her mom and older sister are excellent cooks. Each meal I eat in Yuanjiang consists of at least ten different dishes. I don’t know if they always eat this richly, or if it was in honor of my visit. They have an Old English Sheepdog (like the one in the Shaggy Dog movies), which seems quite out of place in their confined urban apartment. Named Shuai Ke, he’s a rambunctious furry fury of energy. He likes to jump on me and knaw at my shoes. That first night, the girls and several friends take me out to the karaoke club. Much drinking is done by all.
With Xiao Lin, her sister, and two male friends we head off to the village of Xiao Man Li about 45 minutes away where the sisters' grandfather lives. It's in a tiny village on a dirt road tucked in a rolling valley of fields, gardens, and flowers. The grandfather lives in a house made of mud with some relatives. The interior is simple, but not spartan. There is a refrigerator and a TV set, amongst the farm equipment, bags of rice, and other dusty accouterments of life on the farm. We have brought lots of food from the city, and began concocting another feast. The obedient granddaughters give the kind old man a haircut and wash his clothes. Xiao Lin explains that she feels great affection for her grandfather, as he essentially raised her when she was young, her parents both having left home to work in other regions of the country.
There weren't many young people in this village of about 30 houses. The kids of school age were all in school, and the kids who were older than school age had left to find work somewhere else, in Yuanjiang city, in Yuxi, in Kunming, or further afield. But there were two little girls remaining in the village, probably too young for school. My presence in the village frightened them at first. They ran screaming from my sight the first several times they saw me (it was a small village, and with not a lot to do in the mud house, I walked around the village a lot). Eventually the girls started creeping around the house to check me out. By the end of the day they were friendly. I asked Xiao Lin if she thought I was the first foreigner to ever come to Xiao Man Li. But she burst my bubble and said no. I was guilty once again of falling into the same trap that I criticized when writing my master's thesis: the neocolonial feeling of needing to be "the first" to "discover" a place.
Back to Yuanjiang city by evening, we go out for barbecue. One of the members of the party tells me how after retiring from the Chinese Army, he was hired by the Myanmar Army to serve in the civil war against the Karin rebels in Northern Burma in the mid-90s. He drove the boat, the fat, gregarious man boasted. After two hours of drinking and barbecue someone suggested we go to a nightclub. Xiao Lin warned me that I shouldn't flirt with any of the girls at the club, for that could spell trouble with the boys at the club. I took her words to heart and didn't think I didn't anything that would constitute flirting. Sure enough, the girls in the club took an interest in me. They wanted to "jing" (敬) me, or toast me. They wanted me to go over to their table. They wanted my number. They wanted to dance with me. I tried to be polite, but stick with Xiao Lin and her friends.
That night after Xiao Lin and I arrived home, there was a knock on the door. Three young boys, maybe 17 or 18, had followed us home from the nightclub. What did they want? They wanted to 吹牛 ("blow the cow") with me, a phrase that can mean "shoot the shit", "bullshit", hang out", or, in this case, most likely "fight". They were from the club. They were jealous of the attention the girls (their girls? who knows?) were giving me. Xiao Lin opened the door quickly and hit one of the boys in the face. He'd been hovering that close behind. She then proceeded to turn on the 甜言蜜语 ("sweet and honeyed words") and convince the boys to go home and leave us alone. In the end, they did and all was fine. But she was quite distraught. They'd been looking for a fight, for sure, she cried. They only were convinced to leave because Xiao Lin had connections in town, too. Her sister knew people. Men bigger and stronger than these 小流氓 ("little gangsters").
That's what they were, she explained. In China, small cities like this all have their share of small-time hoodlums, gangsters, teenagers up to no good. They hung around places like nightclubs, pool halls. They loved to fight and they feared nothing, because they were just dumb kids. They collect protection fees from schoolchildren. Is this any different than your typical bully in an American school? Well, in America 17 year old thugs wouldn't be allowed into the local nightclub. But China has no age limits at that kind of place. I never was too worried, but Xiao Lin thought I should have been. I admitted it was definitely a bit of excitement for this small town of Yuanjiang.
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