On the outside looking in

Scattered through the upcoming posts in the next couple of weeks will be a few random pictures of our time traveling in Yunnan this summer. I wrote several posts about our time in Shanghai - mainly because it came first, but also because it was easier to write about. Shanghai was a Big City. A very different and very big big city to be sure, but still, a place with subways and trains and malls and stuff. I know about those.

Rice terraces and rural Tibetan villages and yaks and water buffaloes? Um, I know I grew up in a small town and all, but I have to admit that I'm more than a bit out of my league in these areas. So, those of you reading this blog who know a thing or two about rice terraces? You'll have to forgive my ignorance and cut me a bit of slack here.

Also, I've gotta say it, cultural tourism is a step or two weirder than traveling to see national parks, museums, or historic sites. Chief reason being that this is somebody's home that we're talking about here. How would you feel if a busload of tourists disembarked at your workplace and started taking photos of your office furniture?

And it's not just a workplace that we're essentially breezing through, but a very hard and grueling workplace. Those rice paddies that are glowing so picturesquely green in the sunrise? That's no computer-generated special effect, that's individual feet wading through muck every day, and individual backs bending down to plant the seedlings by hand, one at a time. And a life that has continued this way for hundreds, if not thousands of years. We gasp in amazement at our first water buffalo glimpsed out of the bus window, and I can't help but wonder if the guy working behind said buffalo would really prefer to be driving a tractor instead.

Enormous disparities to deal with, then - economic, cultural, and linguistic. It's one thing to be in a train compartment in Europe somewhere with a second-grade teacher from Stockholm and accountant from Basel (each of whom will probably speak better English than you); it's quite another to be on a falling-apart bus in the mountains of China with an en entire extended family of subsistence farmers that have probably never traveled further than the next county seat, and whose total combined annual income is less than some American families pay for the subwoofer unit in their in-home entertainment systems. Even being in China, it's easy to drift around taking my privilege for granted.



But still, we travel. Because in spite of all the strangeness and difference out there, we're all curious. They stare at us, and we stare at them, and if we're lucky, a smile breaks out. The desire to understand and connect with other people - awkward as it is, and as many times as it fails, it's still what makes us human.