On two or three of my previous visits, I have walked up the mountainside to visit Lydia’s family in the village proper.  Her parents had moved out of the village into their little house on the public road when she was four or five, but the rest of their extended family still live in GG village, about 45 minutes’ steep walk up the side of a mountain.  Lydia has taken me to visit the homes of numerous aunts and uncles, where I’ve sipped tea in their simple homes, eaten bananas, mangos, papayas picked fresh from the trees, and swapped stories with my hosts.

One of my favorite homes to visit is the home of Lydia’s paternal grandmother.  The times I’ve been there, children pour in and out of her courtyard and front door, a testimony to the dear woman’s love for young ones and their free return of that love to her.  Lydia says that when she and her siblings and cousins were younger, they would go to her house to play during the day and often stay the night, sleeping in her bed with her.  As the mother of six boys and two girls herself, her grandchildren are abundant.

Her grandmother has always welcomed me kindly in the past, but on this visit I was blown away by her anticipation of my arrival.  Lydia had let her family up the mountain know I would be coming, and rather than wait for me to go up to see her, the grandmother walked all the way down the mountain to greet me.  Stooped at the waist and 76 years old now, she seldom walks that distance any more.  Quite unfortunately, she had misunderstood the day of my arrival, and she was two days early to see me.  She walked back up the mountain that evening, after having spent the day at Lydia’s parents’ house, sans Yi Bei Cha.

Her willingness to walk that far for me on aged, life-worn feet humbled me greatly.  I made the trip up to see her this time with even greater gladness and spent the late afternoon with her and Lydia, warming ourselves by a corn cob fire in the corner of her old wooden home.  We sat on tiny stools, close to the packed dirt floor, and she served us green tea and oranges on a small woven bamboo table.  Several of her youngest grandchildren came in from time to time to get a slice of orange, before running back outside to resume their play.

Lydia insisted that we leave as it was getting dark, so that the dear lady wouldn’t try to make us dinner.  I hated to leave so soon, but also didn’t want her grandmother to go without in the days ahead because she served me everything she had, all in one meal.

(…to be continued…)

Next in the “Lydia’s Home” series:  ”The Youngest Grandchild“

Lydia’s brother had his pet birds, and her mom has Dong Dong, a scruffy little dog that stays close on her heels, whether in the kitchen making noodles or in the tea fields picking leaves.

Dong Dong has been a part of their family for nine years—possibly a national record for the life span of a village dog.  Life is hard for village dogs.  They’re rarely vaccinated and often die from easily preventable diseases.  Also, most villagers don’t have the same concept of dogs as pets as we do in the West; dogs are for guarding the house or for eating on special occasions.  Dong Dong, though, is a sweet companion to the family, a truly loved pet.

I, personally, have a very special relationship with Dong Dong.  At meal time, she always sits directly under my low stool at the short table.  Like the good hosts that they are, Lydia’s parents will use their own chopsticks to put food in my bowl for me, whether it’s something I would choose to eat or not.  They honor me as their guest by giving me the choicest organs from the chicken, tough pieces of beef tendon, and quivering chunks of pork fat.

I have become quite skilled at disposing of the food without offending my hosts.  I push the food around in my bowl with my chopsticks, take frequent small bites of rice to appear as if I’m eating at the same pace as everyone else, put bites of meat to my mouth to chew on but not actually eat or swallow—and then comes Dong Dong’s favorite move.

In village homes, bones and other pieces of food that can’t be eaten are dropped on the floor to be swept up after the meal.  After pretending to eat an inedible piece of meat for a sufficient amount of time, I drop it on the floor under the table, and Dong Dong helps me take care of the evidence.

Everyone is happy in this arrangement.  My hosts feel they have shown their guest great respect.  I help them save face by not refusing to eat what they give me.  My stomach is happy that it doesn’t have to digest things I don’t really consider “food.”  And Dong Dong gets to eat the best portions from the table.

Next in the “Lydia’s Home” series:  ”Lydia’s Grandmother“

Though the days are already getting warm at this time of year in GG village, mornings and evenings are still rather cool.  To brace herself against the chill, Lydia’s mom would put on a thick, rough jumpsuit over her clothes.  Lydia pointed out to me the Chinese characters written on the left breast pocket; the jumpsuit had come from the fake fingernail factory where her younger brother first worked in Zhejiang province in the east.  The English name “Art Nail” was written underneath the Chinese.  Her brother had since moved on to a different factory in a different province, and somehow his work uniform had made its way back to Yunnan and into his mother’s wardrobe.

In all the time I’ve known Lydia’s family, her brother (younger than her by four years) has probably spoken a collective twenty words to me.  But he gave me one of the sweetest gifts I’ve received from anyone in China.

A couple of months after Lydia moved into my apartment, she went home for the weekend to see her family.  On the Sunday afternoon when she was to return, I heard a knock at my front door.  Lydia had her own set of keys, so I was surprised to open the door and find her standing in the stairwell with a grin on her face.

“Why didn’t you use your keys?  Are you OK?”

“I’m fine,” she said, glancing to the side with a tilt of her head in an attempt to direct my attention to the small bird perched on her shoulder.

“Hey, you have a bird!”  I stated the obvious, still a bit confused about why she was just standing there in the stairwell.

“It’s for you!”

I had seen her brother’s pet birds on a previous visit to their home.  He would go into the forest and catch birds, bring them home and tame them, and he kept them in the trees near their house.  He fed them fruit and seeds by hand and would whistle and sing to them.  He sent one of these birds to me as a gift, and it rode the entire bus trip back to town on Lydia’s shoulder.

The bird, a deep iridescent blue and green, didn’t come with a cage.  My apartment had a glassed-in balcony, so we put a small cardboard box with some fruit pieces in the balcony for the bird while we were gone to school.  I was teaching full time and Lydia was in school fourteen hours a day, so the poor bird spent a lot of time by itself on that balcony.  It wouldn’t eat regular bird food.  No, this bird was on a strictly fruit diet.  And, without getting too graphic, let me just say that a bird on a fruit diet makes quite a mess on the floor.

After the first day of this, I told Lydia we would need to get a cage.  I just couldn’t have a bird flying around the house, even if it was mostly confined to the balcony.  The bird spent the next week in this cage, lonely while we were at school.  I began to worry that it would die, and I was getting frustrated with having to come home each day and clean up after it…cage or no cage, birds are messy.  Hesitantly, I approached Lydia about the situation.  She was the first national I’d lived with, and I didn’t know the proper etiquette in her culture for how to return a live gift.

We decided that since we both were in school full time, there was no way we could make the trip of several hours to return the bird to her brother.  The next best thing would be to talk to the man who sold us the cage and see if he could help us find a home for it.  Birds are popular pets among old men in China, who carry their cages with them to the park in the evenings so they can socialize with other old men and their birds.  Surely there was an old man in LC who would want this blue-green bird straight from the forest and could love it and whistle to it and feed it fruit better than Lydia and me.

All of Lydia’s brother’s birds are gone now, and this teenage boy who once played in the forest near his mountain village now makes fake fingernails in a factory on the east coast, as cooped up as the little feathered friend he once sent to me.

Next in the “Lydia’s Home” series:  ”Dong Dong“

Lydia’s dad has a younger brother, who happens to be married to Lydia’s mom’s younger sister.  Lydia says this makes their daughter, Wendy, even closer in relationship to her than a cousin.  I’ve watched Wendy grow up over the past few years from a little girl into the seventh grader she is now.  I found out on this recent visit that she is the same as ever—quiet, shy, barely able to make eye contact with me when she first sees me, but as soon as other people leave the room and she has my full attention, the floodgates open.  A river of chatter rushes out of her mouth, until anyone walks back in the room, when she slams the gate shut again.

Wendy doesn’t just enjoy talking, though.  She’s full of questions and genuinely wants answers from me.  More than anyone else in their village, she has wanted to hear me tell stories and sat patiently listening each time we’ve met, both at their village and in my apartment in LC.

The first time Lydia’s mom came to stay with me in LC (the time when I caught her turning my kitchen faucet on and off in fascination), Wendy came along.  At the time, she was about 8 or 9 years old; I asked her if she’d ever been to LC before.  She said yes, rather hesitantly, but Lydia later told me it was really her first time to come to town.  She was too embarrassed to admit it to the foreign lady.

While Lydia’s mom learned to navigate my kitchen, Lydia decided Wendy needed to bathe.  They went in my bathroom, and I could hear muffled voices from behind the door for several minutes before Lydia emerged from the room alone, the sound of running water following her out the door.  “It’s her first shower,” she explained to me.

“Ever?” I asked.

Of course.  If she’s never been to town before and the village doesn’t have indoor plumbing, when would she have ever taken a shower?  Bucket baths were all she’d known.

Thirty minutes later, we realized Wendy wasn’t going to come out of the shower of her own volition.  The luxury of it all was too much for her to leave.  Lydia went in after her and shut down the private party in my bathroom, escorting her out wrapped in a towel.

“I think she tried every bottle of soap and shampoo you have in there,” Lydia said.  “She smells just like you do after a shower.”

Next in the “Lydia’s Home” series:  ”Little Brother“

In addition to asking me to bring my mom back to visit, Lydia’s father told me I can’t wait so long to visit again.  I should come at least once a year for the holiday season, if not twice a year.

He and I don’t have a lot in common to discuss, but he’s always friendly and sits down to chat with me over a cup of green tea, rather than running away and pretending he’s too busy to talk.  Over the years, my knowledge of (if not true interest in) local agriculture has increased, and though I can’t discuss ag matters at a higher level, I at least can ask people like Lydia’s dad what they’re busy with right now in the yearly ag cycles, how this year’s rice crop is producing, and what the current price for tea is compared to last year.

This last question is the most loaded one in this part of the province.  A couple of years ago, prices were sky high; now, most people are saying the price isn’t even worth their labor to pick the leaves off the trees.  Not good in an area where traditionally tea is the only cash crop.

My chat with Lydia’s dad further confirmed what I’ve heard from other tea farmers.  He was also interested to hear from me how the coffee selling business is going and whether we’re actually able to get locals to drink the stuff.

That night at dinner, we had a full spread of several different types of meat (and only one dish of vegetables!).  Lydia’s dad had asked before the meal if I was able to eat spicier food now than in years past.  I assured him I would have no problems with the peppers in the food; my palate has progressed to the point of eating chilies with the best of them.

What I didn’t bank on that evening was, in all the slurping and smacking and chewing with mouths open around the table, getting a piece of pepper in my eye.  I don’t know how it happened, but it burned like a tiny spark of fire as soon as it touched my eye.  Lydia and I dropped our bowls and chopsticks to the table, and she dragged me by the arm to the cooking area in search of a bucket of water.  She began ladling water into my hands to rinse my eye out.

Lydia’s dad followed us into the kitchen to offer his own advice:  you shouldn’t rinse the eye directly.  Instead, since it was my left eye, I should take off my right shoe and sock and pour the water on my foot.  That would take care of the pepper in my eye.

I was thankful at the time that I was stooped head first over a bucket with my hands covering my face, so I could silently giggle unnoticed.  He had such good intentions of being helpful….

Next in the “Lydia’s Home” series:  ”Wendy“

Lydia’s parents have a little three-room house on the side of the public road, where they run a noodle shop out of their kitchen and sell general goods out of the living/dining area.  They are at the junction of two dirt roads coming from outlying villages, so they get quite a few passersby who stop for cigarettes, liquor, and a bowl of noodles.

Her parents sleep in a tiny room to the side of this shop area.  When the three children were at home, they slept in the attic above this room, and this is where I, too, had slept on previous visits.  There is barely room to sit up straight on the wooden slat beds (with no mattresses) without hitting your head on the bottom side of the roof.  The house is right on the edge of the river, and I fondly remember falling asleep to the sound of the water in years past.  Alas, sleeping in the attic has its down side—the sound of rats running along the rafters just overhead.

The three children have all moved out, though—Lydia to college, her younger sister to marry a man in an eastern province, and her younger brother to work in a factory.  Her parents have rented out the attic space to the truck and bulldozer drivers of a nearby road construction crew, so Lydia has had nowhere to sleep during this winter holiday.  Her parents made arrangements for her to sleep in the dorm of a tiny electric plant just across the river, and I stayed there with her during my two nights’ visit.

The director of the plant is an old family friend of theirs, and he seemed very proud to have an American staying at their tiny facilities.  He took us to see the construction of a dam 4 kilometers upstream, a massive project that will have who knows what all effects on the surrounding areas.  I couldn’t pretend to be impressed with the enormity of the project, as I knew the director was expecting me to be, but that didn’t stop him from asking if I would marry his son and stay in the village as his daughter-in-law.  I declined.

(to be continued…)

Next in the series “Lydia’s Home”:  ”Lydia’s Mom“