GuiZhou Trip - GuiYang

Page 14

DuYuen (8th Sep)

It's another school day.

Meeting the QS officials again in the morning. I find out that I got "famous" overnight. In GuiZhou, people are happy if you drink with them. The more you drink, the happier they are. So it doesn't matter if you got drunk or not, what matters is that you drink A LOT.

So we arrive at the 2nd school site. Today, I am prepared. I give Lao Cheng my camera and ask him to take a few hundred PICs for me. It would have been better if I could take the PICs myself but again, I got no choice. After yesterday, I somehow have accepted the role of the representative of grandpa.

I figure, if I can't get away, I might as well be a willing representative. It's a very special experience anyway.

It's even grander today. The welcome team lines up for almost 1,000 feet and I got high officials escorting me all the way. What a grand entrance.	A majority of the population here is Miao. So they welcome us in their traditional costume.	Oh yes, I know this formation. It's the "door blocking LIQUOR", again!!!!	With alcohol from yesterday still fermenting in my stomach, I pour another couple of cups down the throat. I wonder if my travel insurance covers death caused by alcohol.
This school is big. They take this ceremony very seriously that they have called in performance teams from neighboring schools to help.	Hi kids.	Ok, I took this PIC myself. It's my fault I didn't say CHEEEEESE so the kids are kind of unprepared.	Parents at the occasion.

The ceremony.

They again put me in the middle of the ceremony stand. On the guest list, I am listed first as "Hong Kong patriot Mr. Kam Leung" with all the officials trailing me. That is probably a little too much attention than a lone backpacker needs. But hey, I am the representative of grandpa now. So it's fine.		With alcohol still flipping my stomach, the hot sun shinning, and me wanting badly to go to the washroom, I give another piece of official Mandarin speech.	What follows is about 10 shows performed by school kids. This is a Miao dance.
Almost an hour has gone by. The performance is nice but Kam still can't leave the stand for toilet. It starts to hurt.	Finally, the partial family portrait.	The Miao costume is too cool to be missed. I pull the Miaos aside for a PIC. See me smiling? That's a PIC after my toilet visit.	So the foundation is laid. Bless the kids.

Besides nice sceneries and original villages, GuiZhou's biggest attraction is minority tribes. It's a shame I don't have time to explore this during this trip. But you can bet I will be back for more.

Front

Back

Yes, I forgot to rotate the PICs. But too lazy to make it up. Please rotate your head instead.

What I want to demonstrate here is the Miao costume. There are plenty of embroidery and silver on the costume. Incredible.

On the way back to GuiYang, I talk and laugh with Lao Yang who is flashing this naughty smile on his chubby face again.

I tell him he has thrown the surprise-est surprise party ever on me, so surprising that it's hard to tell if it's a practical joke. "Lao Yang, you got me big time".

We are back to GuiYang in late afternoon. Lao Cheng invites me to his home for dinner.

Lao Cheng tells me, in 1999, there were very few cell phones in GuiYang. Whereas at that time, cell phones are very common in other big cities of China. 3 years went by. Today, in 2002, you can see every other people carrying a cell phone on the street of GuiYang.

Why China is growing at such an amazing pace?

New ideas are first tested in designated big cities. Since most big businesses are nation-wide companies and there is no political barrier between provinces, when a successful model is created, it's simply copied to other cities. So if 10 cities each find out about one good thing today, there will be 10 cities having 10 good things each tomorrow. It's an nuclear reaction in progress.

And that's how I spend my second last day of this GuiZhou trip.