Forbidden fruit

I woke up late and went down to take a shower in the cobwebbed bathroom that Simmons described as "shared but clean" (it was neither shared nor particularly clean at the moment). There was no hot water, where depressed me. Not because I couldn't shower, which didn't seem too important in a place this remote, but because the water was supposed to be heated by the solar panels. I stood shivering in the concrete bathroom, with its bilingual posters on sustainability, and decided there was no way I could stay there for the three nights I'd reserved.

At breakfast I asked Mr. He for the cell phone, and told the English-speaking woman I'd like to leave the next day. She didn't ask why or seem disappointed, just asked how I'd like to get down the mountain. I said I'd like to walk but have the horse carry my bag. She said sure, and would I like to go the same way or take a different route down the mountain? I chose the latter.

Mr. He and I set off after breakfast (dumplings and shredded potatoes). I'd thought there were no shops at all in Wenhai, but on the way out of the village Mr. He bought something at a window in a cinder block building. Certainly people find a way to buy things there, judging by the snack wrappers and beverage containers that litter the paths. Probably there isn't much of a trash-disposal system there.

We passed through one tiny Yi village where no one was about. Before we even saw the second village I heard gun reports periodically, which echoed from the other side of the valley like soft thunder. Closer in I thought I heard firecrackers, too. But it was the middle of the day.

As we got closer still I saw a large group of people gathered on a path above the village. The shots were being fired into the air from a field next to them. There was cheering and laughter. Further up the hillside a yak was tied to a tree.

I asked Mr. He what was going on, and he said it was a "si le." This wasn't in my dictionary, but I assumed it meant a wedding. He pointed to the yak and drew the blade of his hand across his neck to indicate it would be killed.

In the village proper a trio of children stared at me, and I stared at two old women in bright colors and hats that had a large black-draped flat rectangle. The hats reminded me a little of the Flying Nun, or maybe of large graduation caps. I could see that the women at the wedding were dressed the same way.

Mr. He and I took a break on a pile of timber off the village's main drag, where we watched the festivities from a distance. In addition to the shots and firecrackers and laughter, there was a strange howl-like singing going on. Eventually the wedding party paraded down the main road through the village, some bearing a white sheet on poles that they' also been holding up on the hillside. When I looked up at the yak again, some men were gathered around it; it appeared to be dead already. I realized I knew how to ask Mr. He whether the villagers dressed like that every day. He said they did.

We moved on, and Mr. He asked whether I wanted to go to another village. I said sure--it was only mid-day, and I'd no desire to go back to the weedy ecolodge. We descended steep goat paths to the valley floor, and started up the other side.

When we stopped for a breather I noticed a plant with a fruit hanging down. It was wedge-shaped, almost as big as my hand, covered in pomegranate-like seeds. Mr. He saw me noticing the plant and indicated it was edible. I was there to try new things, right? I stepped off the path, plucked the fruit, and took a bite of the red seeds. They came off like kernels from a corn cob, except more easily. The taste was sweet, but... very tangy...

Suddenly Mr. He was beside me. "Bu chi" he said ("don't eat"). I spit out the seeds. Mr. He made digging motions to indicate it's actually the root that edible, but it was too late. The inside of my mouth felt stung by a thousand sharp pins. I spit and spit, but moving my mouth just made it hurt more. My eyes and nose watered. I didn't know how long this pain would last, or whether it would get worse. What if my throat swelled shut? But I felt strangely calm, and continued following Mr. He uphill. I discovered that keeping my mouth perfectly still made the pain more bearable, so I did.

A short way up Mr. He sat down for a break. He watched me intently but didn't say anything, and I appreciated his wordless concern. I leaned against a rock nearby. Finally he asked whether I was hungry, and I said no. Eating was the very last thing I wanted to do, but I didn't know how to say that. In fact my lips and tongue felt swollen, which did nothing to improve my Chinese-speaking ability. He gave me a piece of candy. I tried to refuse, but he insisted, and I thought maybe the sweetness would help, so I popped it into my mouth. Ow. Eating the candy required moving my mouth, which was nearly unbearable. When we were within sight of the next village he handed me another piece. I refused harder this time, trying with my burning mouth and bad Chinese to explain that eating hurt, but he insisted harder. I slipped the candy into my pocket when he turned his back to make a phone call. Half of the last piece of candy was still stuck to my molars.

Mr. He talked to someone in Naxi. I thought he was probably trying to figure out what to do with me. We continued into the village, where Mr. He talked to a 50-ish man with glasses who was sitting in his yard. I could tell he was explaining what I'd done. The man went into a building I took to be a kind of workshop--no furniture, with a fire pit in the middle--and came out with a plastic container of what looked like sugar. The three of us walked to another house, where Mr. He told my story to another 50-ish man. We all went inside.

There were no windows, and no doors, just an entrance that was the main source of light at the moment. The secondary source was a fire in a pit in the middle of the room. There were two other rooms, one on each side of the main room. One doorway had a bare bulb handing over it, which wasn't on.

The second Yi man's wife motioned for me to sit on the one piece of furniture in the room, a wooden bed with no mattress. Mr. He and I sat there while the other adults sat on sacks around the fire pit. A boy and a girl, each about 6 or 8 years old, played happily inside and outside the house, dancing, giving each other piggy back rides, somersaulting. A black cat and three identical black kittens went about their cat business, and a couple of lean medium-small dogs wandered in and out. At one point a chicken paid a visit.

The woman communicated through wordless yells and hand signals, and her husband mimed things when talking to her, which confused me. It took awhile for me to realize she was deaf. I wondered whether anyone in a village like this could teach a deaf person to read--probably she is completely without language. We had something in common, although I couldn't even understand the sign language much of the time. While the men talked she watched me, a hand over her mouth. I wondered what she saw.

Potatoes were placed around the edges of the pit to bake. Mr. He took three flat rounds of bread out of his backpack and put them by the fire to warm. He used hot water from the kettle over the pit to make sugar water for me and tea for himself. The sugar water was tolerable, even a little soothing. I drank it slowly and tried to make friends with one of the kittens, which was having none of it. Eventually Mr. He peeled a potato and handed it to me. I tried to say no, but that wasn't working out well for me. I nibbled at it.

The woman put a sort of large wok with no handles over the fire pit and poured batter into it to make thick, flat, pancake-like bread. The host pulled pieces of honeycomb out of a plastic container, and when the first piece of bread was done, Mr. He folded half of it around a few pieces of honeycomb and handed it to me. I still had the potato, and warm honey immediately started dripping from the bread. I asked for a plate, and Mr. He brought me a bowl and chopsticks. By now we were sitting around the fire with everyone else. I felt awfully precious eating out of a bowl while everyone else ate with their hands, but what else could I do with all the food that was foisted on me? As I was using chopsticks to pick at the pancake, Mr. He handed me half a round of the bread he'd brought along. I balanced it on the bowl.

Periodically the men interrupted their chatter to try to talk to me in Mandarin. They spoke loudly and slowly, which helped only a little. Was I staying in Wenhai for two days? Yes, but in China for three weeks. The man in glasses observed that three weeks is twenty-one days. He was the easiest for me to understand. The host asked what time it was in America, and we chatted with sign language about how America was on the other side of the world. They asked me a few times how my mouth was, and I said better, but still not good. Glasses-man told me I wouldn't want to eat for three days, that I'd eat anyway, and that I wouldn't die--tremendously useful information.

The Yi men asked me about my family: Did I have brothers and sisters? Were my parents still alive? Did I have a boyfriend?

The next question: Was I 30? I said no, 28. Later I heard this come up again while they were talking with each other--28. Numbers were the only Chinese words I could recognize in their language.

The woman signaled at me at times, but I couldn't understand her much better. I think she told me that I'm very tall.

The men talked and drank clear liquid for hours. I looked around. Flattened cardboard boxes had been nailed to the back wall. Like everything else in the house, they were yellow-black from smoke. There was an old TV in the corner, which surprised me, but the real shock was the DVD player I noticed later.

At the end of our stay our host pulled a bottle of pink liquid from a corner by the bed and gave it to me. I asked whether it was alcohol; he said yes. I hesitated--I didn't want to use up any more of their best provisions, and I didn't have a glass, unless I emptied out my tea glass. The deaf woman mimed unscrewing the cap. Finally Mr. He took the bottle from me, poured a capful, and handed it to me. That was lucky, since otherwise I would have taken far to much. The taste was tart, raspberry-like, but not unpleasant. Mr. He took a capful after me, but he didn't like it. He handed out a last round a cigarettes, and we were off into the bright sunshine. I took a picture of our hosts in front of their house, and the man asked me to send him a copy. I said I would.

I didn't try to eat anything on the way back to Wenhai. I asked Mr. He whether the Yi language is the same as Naxi, and he said no, he understood only a little bit of Yi. Nevertheless he greeted everyone we met. Women's clothing in our hosts' village was different from what I'd seen at the wedding village; here, women wore long skirts with broad horizontal stripes of color, and pink scarves tied gypsy-style around their heads.

Back in Wenhai, we saw Mrs. He harvesting potatoes. She loaded them up and walked slowly down the road, bent at almost 90 degrees. There was a large bag of potatoes balanced on the basket on her back, which was also full of potatoes. Mr. He carried the hoe. According to Lonely Planet, Naxi culture was considered semi-matriarchal not long ago. I wondered what men did here.

Another meal by myself in the common room. I ate slowly and carefully, but I ate. It got cold quickly, and Mr. He brought in a bowl of smoldering embers to help. I went to bed early, taking a thermos of hot water and drinking glass after glass of increasingly weak tea.