through the looking glass

while on an exploration photo walk in the morning, past the drum tower (for which the dong are also famous) and across one of the rivers I was taking a photo, turned around, and a man carrying one end of a mattress set on a stick waved me over and said “lai” (come). okay. so I called hu and we came. rising on stone steps up the very muddy hill I at first thought we were headed simply for a great view and it didn’t occur to me to ask. we lost the guys ahead for a bit, they were amazingly quick considering they were carrying the componants for a bed up a mountain, but we kept stopping to look down or take some pictures. forty minutes later we spot them taking a break a little beyond the spot we’d decided to stop at. cigarettes passed around, we learned they wanted us to come see their town, tongan (called an ecological preserve on the map). how far is it? well, you go over this mountain, over another, around a couple more, maybe 20 chinese km and you’re there. (a chinese km is about half a euro km). oh boy. they went on ahead, we rested a while longer. a quiet man passed carrying only the stick usually used to carry buckets over the shoulder. we continued. my legs trembled a bit as I climbed up the rising stone steps ahead of me, tiring quads occasionally not wanting to grip onto the slippery mud, but no turning back. if they can do it with a damned mattress in tow I can do it carrying half a bottle of juice and a camera. we reached a level path and my body sighed, grateful. though we never did figure out how high we went I’m guessing it was in the neighborhood of 500 meters. not too high, but not half bad for a city girl.

then we got lost.
the path turned into terraces and then into jungle. we checked with a woman hacking away at a tree with a machete (whom we could hear but not fully see) and she confirmed that this was the path. I felt ancient walking this narrow trail through the wilderness. I laughed. half an hour later we were sure we’d gotten lost. back on terraces we retraced out steps and chose another way, though at this point a way could be defined as someplace someone might have walked within the last ten years. we saw no fresh footprints in the mud, no trace at all of the mattress men. well, they had said there were two ways, maybe we were just taking the other one. approximately three hours after departure we heard music. beautiful, calling music. we followed it. around the side of one hill after another, around terraces of rice and cai and nothing we chased it quickly lest it vanish. we saw two old women in the distance and scurried over, the music was coming from xiage they thought, follow the road to tongan and you’ll get there first. we did.

we stepped off the terrace onto another stone walk, back into time. small houses scattered thinly. a young man stood outside one, we asked about the music (gone), he did not know. hu followed the man towards his home. he went in. I followed, hesitant. I wasn’t sure we’d actually been invited, but curiosity took over. no lights, another man, a brother perhaps, worked thinning bamboo by a shaft of sunlight from a hole in the wall. their father, I think, walked back and forth, heavy boots clodding against the dirt floor, carrying water from a wok to a bucket ladle by ladle. the young man asked where we were from. gansu. he did not know where it was, hu traced a map on the floor. a sad light faded in his eyes, he knew this long ago but the memory was gone, taken over by the tasks of life. this embarrassed him. we looked out of place in our outdoor gear and hiking boots, backpacks slung over our shoulders in a house that contained no more than a few stools, one of which was brought down from a little bedroom, a fire, and somewhere in the back of this small house what sounded like a very large pig.

we followed the path that was now a path into the villiage center. houses crowded together along a road of thick mud. we slurped through and made for the community fire burning under the drum tower. men sat circled, smoking. children ran the outskirts. we sat by the fire, warmth. two boys produced a pair of stilts from thin air, hu took a turn. I made faces with the girls and played peekaboo with a little one. we took pictures, they too couldn’t get enough. I put the camera down and played some more. we laughed. but it was getting late, time to move on. I didn’t want to.

tongan was only a few kilometers away at the top of the next hill (hill? mountain? I do not know), a kind man followed us out past the beautifully clear streams running through and pointed us down the right path when we went the wrong way. we thanked him and waved.

the money tongan recieves from the norwegians shows, though what norwegians are doing giving money to the town to preserve their way of life no one seems to know. no mud here, the streets were all stone; water ingeniously terraced and funnelled, first level for drinking and cooking, next for washing, then drained off to the fields for irrigation. it was a pretty place, but somehow lacked the soul, the warmth of xiage. perhaps I’m biased, hu seemed to prefer this place. something just felt a little strained here. after wandering around a bit we sat under their drum tower, and soon after a rehearsal began for another show, another tour group was coming soon. however unlike the show at langde this was a rehearsal and there was laughter as people made mistakes and one old lady badgered everyone good naturedly. the sky faded dark purply blue, late it seemed, and we tried in vain to convince the moto taxis to make a trip back to zhaoxing for us. fortunately a big blue truck showed up, spilling passengers from another trip, and was convinced for a rather high price to make one last run. while trying not to get run off the road by donkeys we looked forward to another good meal at our new favorite restaraunt.