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civilization found ________ ____________A traveler crosses into forbidden
| e x c e r p t | Yak Butter & Black Tea: A Journey Into Forbidden China
+ + + + + + + + i allowed myself a big breakfast the next morning, a large pan of noodles with the last of my yak butter. I shook out my sleeping bag, which was so stiff with ice I had trouble packing it into its stuff sack. For hours I trudged through the forest. Sometimes I found small game trails, and other times there was nothing, and still there was no sign whatsoever of people. In places the foliage was so high and thick I was forced again to cut my way through with the machete, but as long as I could stay under the tress, the smaller foliage wasn't too thick. The rain forest was a mixture of deciduous trees and huge conifers. Thick moss grew over everything, and deeply veined dark-green ferns wound their way up the trunks of the trees. The soft forest floor, a carpet of pine needles, moss, and decaying wood, completely silenced my footsteps. Early in the afternoon, near the river, I found a single, bare human footprint. It was the first sign of people since the prayer flags in the second pass I had crossed three days earlier. I was reminded of Robinson Crusoe, and probably just as excited as he was when he found Friday's footprints. A little later I picked up a trail along which there were woodcuttings and occasionally the remains of a campfire. The bamboo had been cut back at an angle and afterward had grown back up. There were places where I had to be extremely careful not to trip and fall or I would be impaled. The trail wound along the river's edge, following the path of least resistance. At streams it went up or down until it came to the first natural tree crossing. There was no effort at maintenance, and at times I lost the trail altogether and was again forced to cut my way through the thick undergrowth. In the late afternoon the valley widened, and the trail became much better. Steep inclines were fitted with notched-log ladders, much like in Tibet, and the worst of the logs were cut out of the way. There were more and more footprints, and from these, I began to know a little about the people I had come to meet. They were tiny. Their small feet sank into the soft earth only half as far as mine, and the print was deeper at the toe, indicating that they were moving quickly and nimbly. I hurried on, excited to meet these people who until now had been just a concept: "the Drung People." Eventually I started passing cornfields, all strangely deserted although in various stages of harvest and cultivation. In some places I found stacks of firewood, and although I found wood chippings in the mud that could have been no more than an hour old, there were no people. Where in the world were they? The first indication that they were hiding from me came when I rounded a small bend in the stream just in time to see a tiny head disappear in the cornfield on the hill above. Could I really be that frightening to these people? I asked myself. The trail climbed higher up the side of a canyon dense with foliage before emerging again at a pass from where I could see a village in the widening valley. Like the people, the houses were very small -- square log structures with thatched roofs, through which smoke rose lazily. Trails connecting the houses had short rock walls on either side, and a mist rose from the cornfields and forest on both sides of the river. The whole scene looked like something out of a fairy tale, and I would not have been greatly shocked if seven dwarfs had come marching up the trail, whistling as they went! But again, I could see no one. I descended into the valley and followed the trail until I came to the first of the houses. Smoke rose through the roof and there was bedding hanging from a line, but no people. I circled slowly around the building, taking in my first view of a Drung home. Above the door hung two crossbows, and a little over from them were tacked some monkey hides, flesh side out. The logs were poorly fitted, but there was no chinking. The poles for the roof, the thatching, and even a small rail that ran around the front porch were all cleverly fitted together with notching and grooves and forked sticks, then bound tightly with jute. No nails. At the side of the house was a tiny square window without shutters or closures of any kind, and there was one of these at the back of the house too. I continued around to the opposite side of the building, and here I met my first Drung. Crouched down between the house and a low stone wall, obviously hiding, she was so tiny that at first I thought she was a child. Her back was to me as she peered intently around the corner to the front of the house, which I had just left. Suddenly she turned full about, eyes wide, and for an instant regarded me with a gaze of pure terror. She was an old lady. Wrapped around her body was a strange, one-piece length of cloth, and her face was grotesquely tattooed, especially around the mouth. Perched upon her head was a tiny pointed hat made of gray cloth, held on by straps under her chin. In the next instant she let out a yelp, jumped up, and fled down the trail toward the village, her dog following. I came slowly behind, wondering what I should do now. I had not anticipated that my first encounter with these people would actually be of such a traumatic nature, and I felt some apprehension about what would happen next. Would they, as Pascal had assured me once I'd resolved to push on alone, come out and shoot me full of poison darts from their crossbows? Or would the whole village pack up their valuables and hide in the mountains, as had happened in the lower Drung valley when a Chinese journalist had visited several years ago? I sat down and waited for half an hour before going on into the village so the people would have time to settle down. No one came out to see me. Finally I got up, shouldered my pack, and slowly walked toward the village. I waited for the twang of a crossbow or the screams of terror as the villagers fled before me into the mountains. I thought I was prepared for anything, and yet what happened next again took me fully by surprise. A tiny Drung man wearing a new checkered sports coat and clean slacks stepped out from behind the first building in front of me and, in fluent Chinese, demanded to know what I was doing. I stopped, stammered for a moment, and then told him I had just come down from Tibet and was looking for a place to spend the night. Soon I was in front of the public school of Mudang, one of the remote villages Pascal and I had hoped to visit, drying things out on the wall of a stone fence. A crowd of dirty, barefoot children gathered around me. The man in the sports jacket was the schoolteacher. He had received his education in Kunming. In the beginning he was reserved and distrustful of me, but after a few hours he became much friendlier. Next another man, the village chief, showed up. His legs were wrapped in heavy jute to protect against snake bites, and he carried a Burmese shotgun, the first breech-loading gun I had seen in private ownership here in South China; the others had all been simple muzzle-loaders. He spoke good Chinese, having spent time in Dali, Kunming, and other parts of China. He too was at first distrustful but soon warmed up considerably. Then other villagers came to see me, including the old lady whom I had frightened so badly. Some of them brought me fruit to eat. Inside the school the children recited lessons together in Chinese, and I noticed there was a basketball hoop in the corner of the school yard. After school was out, the teacher, who gave me his Chinese name, Song Li, took me to his house for dinner. He lived in two tiny shacks. In one his wife was busy making cornbread, similar to what the Tibetans made, and stew from squash. More villagers came by to see me and some brought gifts of food. One man reached into a sack, then pulled out and handed me a scrawny, squawking chicken with its feet tied. The old lady I had scared brought me a small basket of roasted and pounded corn, and several other women brought apples and small peaches. A young villager came by with a baby monkey in a bag. He had shot the mother with a poison dart from his crossbow, which was now slung across his back. He tied a light cord around the neck of the little creature and let it out. Each of the villagers took turns grabbing the frightened animal by its head, putting their faces very close to it, and talking to it in authoritative and condescending voices. I asked if they were going to eat it. "No," the young teacher explained. "Not today. I still have the mother to eat. Maybe we will eat it the day after tomorrow." The chief spent several hours talking to me. He told me there were telephones as far as the main fork of the Irrawaddy, that Chinese money was used everywhere in the Drung valley, and that many of the adults and most of the children could speak, read, and write Chinese. Most of the men had been to Yunnan, ridden on buses, and seen movies. Many of the households had a radio or tape player, and Chinese pop music, especially that from Taiwan, was popular. Most of the men had flashlights, wristwatches, and rifles. I thought about Pascal's dream of meeting people untouched by the outside world, and the collection of watches, needles, and plastic jewelry he had carried as gifts. He had spent five years researching for this expedition and the last two saving money, planning, and preparing. Pascal probably knew more about the Drung people and this valley than any other Westerner alive, but the only information available besides a short article written by a Chinese man was over a century old. Early in the 1980s, for a variety of political reasons, China began a massive campaign to improve the living standards of minority people in the remote areas. Food, clothing, and Chinese education were the main thrust of this effort, and with these, the people were inevitably permeated with Chinese culture. Even with its relative isolation from China six months out of the year, the Drung valley had not escaped this effort and had been thoroughly "Chinafied," at least in its outward appearance. Except for a few minor details in the homes and a few articles of clothing and jewelry, the Drung people and their dwelling places were almost identical to those in other parts of China and South Tibet. The scenery was spectacular, but it is spectacular everywhere here. Maybe in a way it is better that Pascal never arrived here, I thought as I ate cornbread and drank tea in the schoolteacher's house. Maybe for him it is better that his dream of coming to the Drung valley remains a dream.
From "Yak Butter and Black Tea: A Journey Into Forbidden China" by Wade Brackenbury. Copyright © 1997 by the Author. Reproduced by permission of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, a division of Workman Publishing Company. + + + + + + + + Select |
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