Jinghong: Trek part 1

2nd August 2009
JINGHONG: 2 DAY MINORITY TREK… PART 1

On the morning of the trek we went to Mei Mei’s café to meet our guide Mr Rush. We were late, as usual. The guide looked suitably unimpressed. However, as it was a private trek (just the 2 of us) and we were paying a sizeable amount of cash personally to Mr Rush, we decided were not overly concerned and ordered breakfast. Looking back however, this may have been his motivation for what was to come…

We set off with Mr Rush and his driver. We stopped at a little shop and bought some coke for energy and anything that was edible – which amounted to not a lot. We were only slightly alarmed when we were driven to a motorway junction and told us to get out. This is China afterall.

Mr Rush took us down a little track away from the road and led us through rice fields. After about 10 minutes hiking along side us, he paced off ahead until we could no longer see him. After about 20 minutes apart, we caught up with him. He was standing, waiting impatiently and as soon as he saw us draw near, he took off again. It continued like this for the rest of the trek.

Next it started to rain and then Lizzie’s trekking sandal broke. Luckily, being a technology teacher she is very resourceful and fixed it with a bobby pin! My trusty sandals did me proud with only slight chafe-age for 2 days straight.

The guide continued his practice of walking off and leaving us to walk alone, so we decided to go at our own pace and leave him waiting. There was an underlying atmosphere of resentment from all parties. After walking about an hour and a half we arrived in a little village called Si Tu. Si Tu has a population of 150 people Jinuo people, a minority tribe from southern China.

We were welcomed in to a small family dwelling with a grandma and some children knocking about. The guide told us we would be eating here and Grandma was the cook. While we were waiting, the guide showed us around the rest of the village.

Each home around the village had at least one scary looking guard dog, which lurched and barked ferociously at us as we walked past. Bizarrely, someone had even painted on bright red devil-like eyebrows on one dog. They scared us and we were hesitant at walking past them. Mr Rush got quite frustrated at our dilly-dallying and imparted on us a very ‘reliable’ Chinese anecdote: “barking dogs do not bite”.

At another family home, we were welcomed in by the lady of the house, who offered us freshly picked pineapple and cucumber. She gave Lizzie a massive ancient-Roman looking knife and Lizzie chopped it all up for us. It tasted delicious.

There was a kitten at that home that was so ill and malnourished, that it already looked like it had died. It is so hard to see the way they treat animals here, but our protests about animal cruelty fall on deaf ears. For example, they actually only keep dogs for 3 years, to work as guard dogs – then they eat them…

Back at the first house, Grandma had cooked us about 7 fresh little dishes to eat with our rice: potatoes, radishes and mushrooms in different sauces. No meat. It was quite delicious.

After lunch we set off for the next installment of our ‘easy trek’. We were led through rainforest (old tall/wide trees), jungle (shorter, thinner trees) and newly planted rubber tree terraces. We saw some live deforestation, which was very disheartening. Literally on one side of the mountain it is thick with trees and foliage, the other half, completely barren.

They don’t understand the effects they have on the environment or the future, it is hand to mouth living here and a day cutting down trees will put food on the table.

Due to Mr Rush’s continued his practice of marching ahead, we were left to navigate the jungle alone. The majority of the trek was through tall grasses and forests, none of which actually had paths. You just had to slash or push your way through the dense foliage. It was hot and sweaty and we needed a rest.

You can’t tell because of the dense foliage, but there is a very sharp bank that I’m leaning over. Tricks of the jungle:

The sun was sweltering and my uncovered shoulders had blisters. We had little water and no food to keep up our energy. We constantly had sharp leaves razoring our legs through our trousers and sticks spearing our feet through our trekking sandals. At around 4pm, Lizzie had about given up the will to live.

Astonishingly, I was still upbeat. The 3 months I’d spent before hand in the gym obviously paying off, ever so slightly. I was however, outraged at the fact we had been sold another fake ‘easy trek’ and that we may as well have not bothered with a guide as he pissed off the whole time!

No path!:

Exhausted, we caught up with Mr Rush after another 40 minutes hiking alone. He was sitting in front of a little wooden hut. The hut was on the edge of a hill surrounded by jungle, literally in the middle of nowhere.

Mr Rush was smoking what appeared to be a massive bong. After trying to dodge the question several times about what he was smoking, he told us it was ‘tobacco’. It was clearly opium. The province is well known for growing opium and it did not even look like tobacco. We were not offered any. We could have done with some though!