Yuangyuan

(Abby)

Today started with a wake up call at 5:30 am and an excursion at 6 am to see the sunrise. Jackie, our youthful tour guide, took us all up to a local mountain to a viewing platform overlooking hundreds of clear rice terraces. The rice growing season has yet to start, so it is an optimal time to view these spectacular creations. While walking through the entrance, we as a group were surprised to see that this viewing of a natural phenomenon cost money whereas that wouldn’t necessarily happen in the States. I must say, however, the view from this platform was rather spectacular in my opinion. This platform zigzagged down the side of the mountain and was packed with people, many who arrived well before our later arrival of 6:30 for a 7:30 sunrise. The beauty of the sun peaking over the misty mountains did not disappoint and after we all took many Instagram-worthy pictures of this lovely sight, we returned to the hotel to freshen up, aka nap until lunch.

Lunch was at a restaurant two minutes down the street and where we all discovered our new favorite vegetable: the lotus root. This vegetable is similar to the potato in texture, but has a lighter taste to make a five-star dish. I will be incorporating it into my diet when I return to the States. 

 
After lunch, Nik and I went out to explore the town. Ola wasn’t feeling too well, thanks to her earlier regurgitating episode in the van, so she stayed to recuperate in the hotel room. While we were out, Nik and I were surprised to see the amount of high quality shops we saw. To be honest, while driving through Yuangyuan, the city doesn’t appear to be the highest quality place one’s seen. Walking along the streets, however, a whole new aspect to the town opened up. Clothing stores display vivaciously stylish ensembles, people weave their way through the crowds to get some street food, sports stores blast G-Dragon and Chris Brown onto the streets, and children run about freely, playing tag and follow the leader. Nik and I also had smiling young kids come up to us on three different occasions to tell us “hello!”, to which Nik and I replied “hello!” or “nihao!”. These children seem to always be in a state of complete happiness and are always carefree.

We returned to the hotel to be taken to a Hani village. The Hani people are the region’s minority and are one of the most beautiful I’ve seen. The women dress in very colorful costumes, with royal blue, black, and hot pink being the main colors. The men also have a costumes of dark blues and black, but they don’t wear them too much these days. Many women wear their traditional clothes today, and whom we all viewed back in the city, but they only account for about 30% of them here. It’s a shame though because these costumes are so beautiful, colorful, and intricate that I don’t want to see them disappear. The costume consists of an top with intricate embroidery around the neckline and sometimes around one shoulder, black pants with a blue stripe around the hemline, and a decorative, ornamental sash that hangs down from the back of their belts like drooping peacock feathers. I would 100% be willing to rock these sashes to DS if I purchased them.

Back to the village, we arrived after a 40-minute drive and were welcomed with 75-degree weather. The people here are known for building what are called “mushroom houses”. The story goes that when the Hani people settled here, they observed ants scurrying up these mushrooms that were growing on the site the people wanted to settle on, so the Hani people modeled their houses after these mushrooms. Mud brick houses with thickly thatched roofs that stuck out a bit made this shape very apparent. Trekking through the village, we witnessed men using water buffalo to plow rice fields and children playing with toy cars in the square. Life was just everywhere to be seen. Jackie also explained to us how most of this hard labor is done by the older generation because the young generation doesn’t want to do this kind of hard work and instead want to move to the cities to get jobs there. This lack of help on farms had led to farmers selling off their beautiful land to hotel and other franchises, which is a shame.

From the village, we directly went to another viewing platform to watch the sunset. This activity, I guess, is very popular seeing as we had to walk 15 minutes through standstill traffic from our van to the gate to ensure we wouldn’t get blocked in afterwards. Once we arrived, we ate some tofu and baked potatoes there from a vendor also, which was an exciting and delicious experience. The vender sat us down at a table propped up on a basket with plastic stools not unlike the ones you would use at a children’s party. It was interesting to see the locals going about their business and eating tofu and boiled eggs off the grill.

The sunset was great and very beautiful, again attracting many to this multilevel platform. It was hard to get a spot at the front lines of the railing, but luckily Mr. and Mrs. Li found two spots from which we rotated taking pictures from. There was at one time, however, where a sly human snuck into one of our spots to take a “quick” picture. We all quickly figured out how to solve this problem, however, when I playfully said “oi!” to Mrs. Li and the man scampered away.

After we ran back to the van and had a late dinner at the hotel, we all tucked in for an early night. We all felt as though we needed it, especially with all the traveling we would be doing the next day!

Zai jian for now!