Bengfort.com

From Xuelin we rode to another small village called Danjia, for a total of 83 kilometers on more unpaved, under-construction road. The view was again super beautiful, but the roads were really, really awful. We were really high up in the mountains, at around 2000 meters. The cloudy skies finally disappeared, and there was nothing but blue, blue sky, bright white clouds, and verdant green valleys with patches of bamboo forest, terraced rice paddies and tea trees to really remind you that you are in China, not anywhere else. When we initially set out we got on the wrong road, the road heading to Myanmar. We had to turn around, which set us back seven kilometers, but it was nothing too terrible. My stomach decided that day to revolt at the sight and smell of noodles, which is the only thing that is really available for breakfast. So, I did not eat anything in the morning, thinking that I would be fine until lunch. Turns out that I wouldn’t get to eat a meal until 8:00 pm that night, as there was no food to be had for 80 kilometers. At around the 50 km mark we came across a village in which we thought there would be food, but no luck. The boys manged to buy some instant noodles at a small stand, but again, my stomach, no matter how hungry I was, would not let me eat noodles, so I had no lunch. I pulled into our destination for the day, a village called Danjia, around 6 pm in the evening. I was very low on gas, so my first priority was finding a gas station, rather than eating. There was no gas station in the village, but luckily, gas was sold by the coke bottle by the family of the Vice Party Secretary. After some help from yet another random guy on a motorcycle, I found the family’s house, and bought some gas from a woman named Ms. Zhong, who was the VP’s daughter. Inquiring about where I came from and where I was going, I told her that two friends and I were coming from Xuelin, that my two friends were biking and would probably be a while, and that we would be staying in the village tonight. She promptly invited me into her home to rest while I waited for my two friends to arrive. As she had said that she was unsure whether there was a hotel in the village, I thought it would be a good idea to build up a relationship with her just in case there wasn’t a hotel, and we’d have to try to finagle our way into sleeping on their couch. So, I duly sat with her in their living room (which had three couches), and talked with her and watched the news on TV for two hours as I waited for Andy and Evan.

Turns out Ms. Zhong wasn’t that great of a conversationalist. Every time I asked her about anything, including Wa history, her daughter, her life, the area, neighboring Myanmar, she would either say she didn’t know much about it or that there wasn’t much to tell. She couldn’t even tell me about the traditional clothes and jewelry her grandmother was wearing (who came in after a while but couldn’t speak a word of Mandarin), and just told me that her outfit was traditional and that younger people didn’t wear it. She didn’t even know what material the thick, heavy, metal necklace the grandmother was wearing was made out of. However, she was very nice, and after a while the rest of the family came in. They didn’t seem surprised to see me, and didn’t ask me anything about myself other than my nationality. Ms. Zhong’s father, Mr. Xiao, as mentioned earlier, was the Vice Party Secretary, and he duly invited me (and Andy and Even by extension, who still weren’t there yet) to stay for dinner. Still not knowing whether there was a place to stay, I asked him, and all he said was that there was a place we could spend the night, but he did not elaborate whether that place was in his own home, in a hotel, in a random public building or where. I decided to leave it, as these things tend to figure themselves out on their own.

At around 8 pm, the boys finally arrived, sweaty and exhausted, and we immediately went up to the kitchen (a dark, dank place) to eat dinner with the family. The dinner, as usual, was delicious. We had fried eggs, pork and bitter melon, pea flour cubes (with the consistency of a rice noodle), wild lettuce, and a meat and vegetable soup. All were sublimely delicious (even more so given that it was my first meal of the day). Afterward, we went back and talked with the VP for a little while, and eventually he escorted us down to a hotel about 500 meters away, where we crashed for the night.