rice rice rice

So I was prepared for the worst but I’ve been enjoying the food, as long as I am selective. I am provided with lunch everyday at the museum and eat in a nearby Muslim restaurant with the staff, and eat with Nui Nui and friends on weekends. These meals are eaten family style with shared dishes, but unlike back home where you serve your individual plates you pretty much eat off the platters. Each person has a small bowl of rice and cup of tea (or hot water), with your chopsticks you take one or two mouthfuls at a time to your bowl/or mouth.

Because I don’t eat red meat I’ve kind of lucked out and am pretty much eating as a vegetarian here. The meat usually hangs outside the restaurants (so you have to not breathe as you walk in to avoid the smells) and is cleaved into pieces which usually consist of bone with skin and fat. And don’t forget, you eat these with chopsticks – some people opt for the seemingly easier option of just eating the entire piece, bone and all. Avoidances also excludes the insects, chicken feet, jellied meat and unidentifiable meats. 

Lijiang’s local cuisine is incredibly spicy. The dishes that don’t have fresh chili peppers in them have dried chilies. For example, today with my rice I had baked cauliflower with dried chilies, beans with fresh chilies (and pepper), kale, spinach and chilies, and steamed pear. The local specialties include baba (a pancake like bread made out of rice usually eaten with chilies, but the honey braised is quite good), and chicken bean jelly (a grey jell-o like slab seen frying in oil at street vendors).

Unfortunately my sugar cravings are left totally unsatisfied here. Candy here comes mostly in jellied form, and even nice sugary Canadian jell-o has kind of always freaked me out. So, always unsatisfied I continue the search, and usually end up eating anything that’s slightly familiar. Today I found Lays potato chips! Unfortunately the flavours included lime, cucumber, hot and spicy fish soup and numb and spicy hot pot. Popular popsicle flavours include corn and peas. But popcorn is slightly sweet here and I’ve now found two stores in the city that sell snickers bars. 

Working like an ant while living like a butterfly

I’m here in Lijiang working at the Dongba Culture Museum which highlights the regions Naxi people, their culture and religion: Dongba. An ethnic minority group they have lived in this area since the nomadic tribes began settling in 100AD. A main hub along the Tea Horse Caravan Route it became a major city of the western China. The Mu family ruled as chieftain of lijiang for 800 years until the emperor sent a Han governor in 1382.

The Dongba (priests of the Naxi’s religion) are the only ones who can read and write the Naxi pictographic language (the last one still in use). They also excel in chanting, dancing, divination, and the arts, including painting, sculpting and calligraphy. Although they work as farmers they are invited by communities and families in times of need to conduct sacrificial rituals. The major rituals include Worshipping the Heavens, Worshipping of Shu, the Nature God, and Worshiping the Wind Demons/rituals for suicides. These were once commonly performed after love suicides – when the feudal system was adopted and arranged marriages introduced many young couples chose to commit suicide together instead. It is believed that their souls were left wondering the earth and so this five day ritual is carried out to help them move on.

There were once nine brothers, who opened the sky and seven sisters, who opened the earth but the world was chaotic and there was a great flood. Only one brother survived but he had no was to repopulate the world, and so he went to the heavens to find a wife. He married the most beautiful goddess who had three eyes but she gave birth only to animals. And so it was he went back to the heavens to find another bride. This time his wife gave birth to three sons, a Tibetan, a Bai and a Naxi. They gave one the sky, one the earth, and the Naxi were left with the middle – and so they have always had to work hard, to build everything for themselves.

Still today you can see the hardworkingness of the Naxi people. The women do a lot of the manual labour and you see them in the fields or hunched over carrying corn stalks or wood on their backs. And yet they are some of the happiest people you will ever see! On a Friday afternoon you’ll always see them in the parks – playing tile games like mahjong, cards or just chatting. They love flowers and gardening, singing and dancing and picnicking. And so their neigbourhoods are always full of flowers and the sounds of music and laughter. 

Playing tile games in Black Dragon Pool Park