A Taste of Zhuang Living

Nanning, Guangxi, 8:30pm
Today we took a trip back in time and a visit through the countryside surrounding Nanning. The journey in the "time machine" was courtesy of a visit to the Zhuang Minority Village, sort of an Upper Canada Village but featuring artifacts, recreations and cultural details of the Zhuang people. The Zhuang ethnic group is the largest minority group in China and 90% of the Zhuang live in Guangxi Province, making up nearly 50% of the 44 million people in Guangxi province.

Musicians playing trumpets and wearing traditional garb welcomed us to the village and then we began a journey down cobblestone streets to learn more about Zhuang culture. Besides seeing traditional homes (think house on stilts where you don't live on the first level but store everything below and live on the second or third levels), drinking "3 tastes tea" (bamboo, sugar and ginger) and eating sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves, we also got to try traditional dances...villages held long pieces of bamboo and knocked them rythmically on the ground and on each other, in time to their folk songs. Dancers step lively in between the knocking bamboo, trying not to trip or be caught up in the sticks.

Next we got a chance to lift the average villagers load of sticks...40, 50 and 60 kg. balanced on a pole...not an easy task let alone walk miles with it...I think most of us Westerners would fail horribly as Zhuang peasants. It was a bit different to see white monkeys roaming freely in the village. We were told not to have any food out as they are bold in getting it from visitors. They looked a little fierce so I as wondering if I'd have to run them off away from Genevieve, but the tour finished before I was forced to face down any nasty monkeys.

The outing also included a bit more emotional component with a visit to a typical rural village in the countryside. Because the towns where our children's orphanages reside are too far away, or because the orphanage directors don't wish to allow us in (hard to say which), we aren't getting to visit any of them. This trip to the countryside was to at least to give us a glimpse into the life our daughters might have had if they grew up here.

Rural China is a very hard life for most of its residents. It's grinding out a living on maybe 500 Yuan a month or roughly $75 Canadian. One local woman invited us into her home to see the cement block building where she and her two sons live. They share it with livestock, bare wood table and chairs and no running water or proper drainage system by north american standards. I think we all had a better appreciation of what faced some of the parents of our daughters, when they made their very tough decisions about abandoning them.

Tomorrow is the last day in Nanning, we fly to Beijing in the evening and are that much closer to getting home. I am counting the days, believe me, until I get to see Madeleine and you all.
Michelle