Man Luan Le

Another opportunity for a homestay, this time in the Dai village of Man Luan Le.

The Dai are buddhist and Man Luan Le, like most towns have a temple.  It looked like this one was being renovated or replacing an older one.

Here's the man who hosted us teachers.  He and I had an INSTANT "bromance." We are about the same age and for some reason he LATCHED on to me.  One reason, for sure is that he and I were able to understand each other.  When he spoke "putonghua," standard Mandarin, the Beijing Chinese teachers were at a loss, but I was totally able to understand him and vice versa.  Score one for having a "southern" accent!

From what I gathered, my buddy lives mostly on his government money, but he also has income from harvesting some kind of organic material from rivers and lakes and then drying them into a salty dried snack, which is what he's holding here.  It's like dried seaweed.

 

He has three daughters, this one is the youngest.  She wanted to see American money and so I found a kid in the our group who had some with him.  When I returned to Beijing, I sent her some Euros I had lying around the house.

Here is a traditional Dai home.  The living area is on stilts.  The area underneath is for storage.

Here's my buddy's house.  It's modernized, but still has some elements of traditional Dai housing.  The living area is partially enclosed.

But the common areas, such as the dining area, is still open, covered, with no windows.  I slept on a bench in the open area and got to witness a huge lightning storm as well and also heard a long siren at the crack of dawn.

Here's a completely modern Dai house.  The Dai are a relatively prosperous ethnic minority.  They have been blessed with flat and fertile land.  Recently, they have turned to growing bananas, which is an economic boon, but also degrades the soil much faster than traditional crops.

Our students spent the afternoon hanging out with the villagers.  Here's were playing a card game and we taught the kid in the middle how to play. After 15 minutes, without any English language skills, he was beating everyone.  It was at this card game when I first met my buddy.  At the time, I didn't know he was the host of the home at which I was staying.....and you could smell the alcohol emanating from his body!

That evening, we again were treated to a performance of local dance.  My buddy's oldest daughter (20 years old and married to a local boy) was on stage.  Everytime she was on stage I had to point her out or my buddy would get mad at me.

After the show, a fireworks display.

And then a homemade hot air balloon was lit.

The next morning, my buddy bade me goodbye and told me he was off to work to help a village friend build his new house.  I asked to tag along and here's what I saw.  Turns out I misheard what my buddy said.  This was the day they were celebrating a village friend MOVING INTO their new home.

The siren I woke up to was to call signal the villagers to come to the new home and start cooking for a communal meal.  It appeared that the men took care of all meat items. The women, as shown in the picture above, were in charge of all rice and vegetable items.

You want to taste amazing meat?  Organically raised, freshly slaughterd and cooked on a open fire.  The flavors were amazing!

I LOVE this about China, and other developing countries.  It's all about pragmatism.  You need to blend something or stir something?  Just use a drill!

Each time I approached a table, I was handed food.  Seeing this village community come together for a huge meal was great.  It was a special, one of a kind "off the beaten path" experience!

And I have my buddy's phone number in my phone.  He and I will reunite next year when we go back to Man Luan Le.