Saturday, December 10, 2011

Menghai Market,Paper Village,Old Village


Last day in Jinghong Region
            December 3, 2011




                               Menghai Market


     We woke up to jubilation and women singing.  I imagined that it was the continuation of the Akha celebration.  There they were in our little park taking a rest stop on their way to a village festival!


      Market Scenes

Who Knows?


Checking Out the Treasures

Dai Woman

Mushrooms

Tofu

A Great Buy!

Fire Water




Last day in Jinghong Region
            December 3, 2011




                                         














       




                    
                

                               
Menghai Market ranks as one of the top markets we have been able
to visit...It is orderly, quiet, and offers almost everything one would need.  The fruits ad vegetable diversity is way beyond anything I have known. 



Manzao Village - Paper Making  

      Clean, concrete walkways throughout this successful village of about 1300 meters altitude.  Everywhere we saw women preparing the various steps for their mulberry paper making.  The men go to their mulberry trees in the forest near the village and cut the bark off the trees.  Then the women clean the bark, soak it, prepare it for the grinding machine, sack the mulberry paste,  soak it again in order to prepare it for the drying screens, after which the screens with thin or thick mulberry paste are smoothed and placed to dry in the sun standing upright.  The village is also engaged in tea, rice,   and vegetable production. 




Paper Drying In Sun



Smoothing Paper Before Drying

Helpers

Village Center


                Tropical Landscape in Village


Paper Ready to Sell

Temple Paintings of Buddha's Life

Peacocks, Symbols of the Dai People

Dai Village Entry Gate

Cleaning the Mulberry Bark Before Papermaking








        This totally organic product is essential for wrapping the precious Pu'er tea from these mountains.  It's also a geat paper for photo mounting, painting, Buddhist texts, and treasured throughout the world.  I love the smell of it....

    


 








































































Paper Pulp Leaving Blender
































Artisanal Tea Shop
           Tea culture, we have found out, is a most complex process.  It's similar to wine in  many ways.  The various fermentation and aging processes, storage containers, marketing, tremendous pricing variation, health impact, and general mystic.

            I'm going to briefly describe this valuable Pu'er tea of Xiishuangbanna and then list the four basic kinds of teas and a few comments of each. 
            In this region are six world famous tea mountains.  People come from all over China, Taiwan, Japan to buy the organically prepared Pu'er Tea.  The Tea Road has been alive even longer than the Silk Road and still is vibrant in Xishuangbanna today.

            The label for the totally organic tea that we are tasting carries the following location:

Menghai (county) Menghun  (town) Minggu (village) great tea 350y for 200 gram.  The area is very near the Burma border.

           
            There are  four kinds of  tea with various preparations:

            Green Tea

            Black Tea - has a one day fermentation, ages naturally
            Sunsha- is put in cakes and let to ferment or cook slowly
            Shoxa - called cooked tea
           

Sunsha put in cake and let ferment naturally slow

Black tea a one day fermentation and let it age


Man-Diyu-Old Dai Village







Beautiful Setting


Importance of School
Village Story



Community Well








Advice in Dai and Chinese Language

           


Dai Women of Village


            Located outside of Ga-Sa town.
            Charming village marked by Dai traditional gateway with a daily street market alongside the winding walls of the  traditional Dai style home.   Lily ponds, traditional banyan village tree, wall art throughout depicting the right way to live, village tailor, silversmith making the Dai traditional apparel.  On top of the village hillside resides the village Temple..

              Xishungbanna has been a fascinating adventure.  Visiting the little unique ethnic    villages nestled throughout the hillsides was thrilling.  Investigating the ways of making a living added much understanding of village ways and life.  We are so grateful to all the people who helped us along the way: hotel guest house staffs, Mr.Peng, our kind driver, Jacky at Yuan Yang, in Jinghong area, sSara of Forest Cafe, Greg and Pierre, of Mekong Cafe, fellow travelers along the way, and most of all the kind Chinese people who almost always provided us the greatest kindnesses.




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