Market Day in Xiding and other Village Visits

              Market Day in Xiding Village ( Jinghong Region)

    Visits to Aini, Ahker, Ahka, Aini Villages and Tea Plantation

Aini Women

These Headcovers are Heavy!

                               

Xiding Market Day

      Xiding is a village about two hours west of Jinghong at 1500 meters altitude. Here we will see two branches of Aini Minority People, Bulang and Dai.

     Typical market with lots of traffic, animals, noise, and great variety of produce.  There were very fewvillagers wearing traditional ethic clothes.

  

                        Market Day in Xiding

After market walked with Aini women to their village.

There we visited with a very crippled weaving woman.  She had woven some wonderful narrow cotton and then dyed it in indigo vats on her back porch.

Very Crippled Aini Woman At Home.  Great Weaver.

Another village with Sara was a Bulang Village near Xiding area.

We watched elementary children on the playground and then walked

Bulang Home

Temple Paintings of Buddha's Life

Bulang Buddhist Temple

 to the newly constructed Buddhist Temple.

                   Akher Village

Demonstrating Head Cover Technique

Akher Woman

    

     Traveling with Greg of Mekong Cafe who prepared a lovely Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimings for some of us from USA.    Lovely wife is Lijuan, son Kai dog LuLu.

    

     En route to village saw fields of  tobacco, coffee,  rubber, tea, poinsettias.  Menghai has a fine reputation for coffee growing.

     Acton Village is close to Dalua near the Liusha River.  Greg said it is the only Akher village remaining.  There are about 1800 people lieft.   It seemed to be a subsistence level life.    As soon as we arrived in the village,a woman was ready to share her wares.  Several other women appeared with textiles and jewelry.  Found a wonderful jacket with needlepoint embroidery for 100 y,  a necklace of beads 20y, earrings 40y, large earrings 200y .large silver necklace 100y.    Lots of choices. Women have large holes in ears from heavy heavy earrings

    We saw some stick symbols as we left the villag village to ward off the evil spirits.  People are animists. They are warm and kind.  One of the woman demonstrated her head covering wrap, A series of photos illustrates this.

    

Bulang Village

Lovely Bulang Woman Demonstrating Head Piece

Invited Us to Lunch

With Children

          Traveling to the Village of Nongyan by the Liusha River we passed fields of tobacco, rubber, pineapple, tea, and poinsettas.  Coffee is also grown in this region.   Interesting to note that most of the village homes we have seen are equipped with solar heating for the home water supply and many of the villages have a paved road entering the village.  I was told that 2003 was the year of the road building and China built more roads in that year than they had during the past half century.

       We were invited to lunch at the  home of a lovely  Bulang woman.  In 45 minutes she whipped together several fine noodle and vegetable dishes.  She also just happened to have a great Bulang bracelet for 400 yuan!

            Women dress in sarongs and tops buttoned on one side.  Fabric and clothing are of inexpensive materials machine made, probably in Thailand.

            This lovely woman (above)  treated us to a lovely lunch of wild green vegetables with spices and a rice dish with another variety of vegetables.  Then she showed how she wrapped her turban.  The clothing she is wearing in photo with children is the special festival wear.  Such a kind woman.

            The village toilet was unbelievable --  not much more than an enclosed garbage pile......but, what is your choice?

Bulang Neighbor

A Neighbor

                                                                       

                       Tea Plantation in Nannuoshan

     Nannuoshan is situated above a group of Aini villages.  En route we passed an Akha vegetable market, and as we climbed it became very misty with Aini villages scattered along the mountainside.  Also passed another terrible auto and truck accident.  We have passed many serious wrecks along our route.  

Aini Spirit Gate Provides Protection

      We learned that tea is a specialty item here, somewhat like wine.  There are many kinds and fermentation or cooking, as they call it, which improves the quality.  Sunsha tea takes 45 days to ferment.

     Below you see tea cake, packaged conveniently to travel the tea road or for long term storage and is a very common way to package tea in China.

We are going to Tea Mountain where there are wild tea trees                                                      

as old as 800 years, still producing.  This mountain above some Akha villages who been living there for many generations.

Ancient Wild Tea Tree.  800 Years Old

Mr. Long, Owner of Dragon Mountain Tea,  Serving Pu'er Tea

            Mr. Long provided a wonderful tea tasting with a quality golden color year-old tea and a red tea called cooked tea of 2006.  We could distinguish the difference in the teas.  Each has unique medicinal advantages. 

            Packaging and containers for tea carry many years of tradition.  Mr. Long makes his own baskets for his teas.  He is such a sweet man and loves his tea...We did buy two cakes for a considerable sum.  Hope we enjoy it.  Mr. Long told us to always throw out the first pouring of green tea, use hot water and never metal to serve the tea.

            Jinghong is filled with thousand of tea shops....and we keep wondering how they ever make any money.  All the shops seem the same to us....But, maybe we will learn to appreciate this special tea!