Bound Feet, Baijiu, and Other Dining Adventures

I just got back from a weekend in Tonghai for orientation, which is a small-ish city where we had orientation. (answer to the weather question: it's actually really hot here, probably in the mid-80's or low 90's even. I hope it cools off, because I didn't bring many really light pants.)
So I don't actually know much about Kunming, our home base, but I can tell you about all the adventures we've had so far!

On Saturday, we saw an amazing performance by nine or so 80-year-old women with bound feet doing tai chi, and then tai chi with a sword. (The taiji form they did was almost exactly the same as the one we did in class in the spring, which was pretty exciting!) It was absolutely astounding to me that they could move so gracefully - but then I could also understand why bound feet were so prized, because the women with the very smallest feet seemed to have a sort of dignity about it when they walked that made them really beautiful to watch. Though it was also kind of painful to watch them, and especially bad to hear the official who brought us there talk about how foot-binding isn't as bad as people think, because it's the mens' job to leave the house and the womens' job to take care of domestic affairs. Then (and this might have been the best part) we all got in a circle and they put on music and showed us their version of disco dancing, which involved (understandably) very little foot movement... and really wasn't like our disco at all... but was really fun. Also the woman next to me was about 4 1/2 feet tall and her feet were at least half the size of mine. Pretty crazy.

Yesterday, we explored a mountainside with a bunch of old temples that were really beautiful and peaceful and really made me think about trying to spend my Independent Study period at a monastery.

Then in the evening was the real adventure. Because SIT doesn't want to seem rude, we had a big dinner with the Tonghai officials, where more or less all of them came around to our tables (separately) to sing a toast. (Their toast is in song form - I really want to learn it, because it's loud and fun and pretty amazing coming from drunk people.) And toasts were not just sips, they were mini-shots of baijiu, which translates to white liquor but is really like a very strong ouzo-type beverage - it isn't bad, especially after the eighth local official to come toast you.

The local officials totally drank us under the table, but it was worth it because we were treated to an impromptu rendition of Beijing opera, featuring a totally wasted lanky man with sideburns in the part of the woman (and his falsetto was mind-blowing). So it was a cultural experience not to be beat, and only one of us was even particularly hung over in the morning. So good times all around.

(P.S. I totally tried to drunk-dial you guys, but for whatever reason my phone wasn't working in Tonghai. So consider yourselves drunk-dialled in spirit.)

Today we went to see some more temples, which was nice, and went to a Mongolian village to have some pretty crazy lunch. Meaning, among 15 dishes on our table (all our meals so far have been an incredible amount of food) was eel. Not like the eel in sushi places. Like thin, maybe 10 inches long, curled up whole cooked eels of varying girth. They all have their mouths open, which I thought was pretty cool. To eat them first you have to pull off their heads, and then you peel away the spine (which has meat on it and is soft so you can eat it too), and then you have to pull out the intestinal tract, which is the only part you can't eat, and then you can eat the belly. The sauce was pretty spicy, so I can't really say if the eel itself was good, but the sauce was great and they were really fun to eat so I enjoyed it.

Also, they served us whole duck, including the head with the beak and everything, so for the entire meal we had a duck looking at us.

I will try to think of more things we've done, but so far these have been the highlights. My only complaint so far is that everywhere (except maybe Kunming, around the university area) smells like shit. Literally - their plumbing is really bad, so you can't flush toilet paper, so the dorm bathroom has a lingering bad smell, but worse than that, all the streets in Tonghai and all the little villages we've stopped at smell like human waste. Also, little kids walk around with butt-less pants, so there is often actual human waste in the street. It's pretty disconcerting, because everything else around here is surprisingly clean and well-maintained. There are also pit toilets more or less everywhere except the dorms and the hotel in Tonghai. They flush... but they're still kind of an adventure.

Another interesting thing is the way everyone stares at us when we walk down the street. It's like we're local heroes, only we also came from another planet and have really fascinating horns or tails or tentacles. And children often flee when we say hi. (They are usually curious come back, though - or at least look back at us, laugh, and run away.)

Anyway - we start getting ready for classes (getting textbooks, meeting our Chinese language buddies) tomorrow, even though they don't start until next Monday, so I'll have more news then. We also have a phone number where you can reach us in the dorms, if you feel like calling an international number and factoring in a 12-ish hour time difference (depending on where you're calling from). I forgot to write it down, though, so next time I come I'll try and remember to post it.