Article written by Ivana Vukovic.
This summer I was part of a group of 13 Whitman students who spent six weeks in China, led by Professor of Anthropology Charles McKhann and Adjunct Instructor of Chinese Wencui Zhao. The main goal of the trip was to give our group the opportunity to study Chinese, so we spent the first four weeks of the program in Kunming at the Yunnan University. Intensive three-hour-long daily classes, time spent with an individual language partner and daily practice on Kunming streets enabled us to greatly improve our Chinese.
Our group also took a course entitled “History of Yunnan People and Province” that helped us immerse into the Chinese culture. During our stay and travels through Yunnan, we were able to witness many things we learned in class. The class challenged our understanding of the word “Chinese” as it presented us with 56 different mingzu (nationalities) living in China today. My language partner belonged to the Yi mingzu. Through my talks with her, our class, and our travels, I was able to learn a lot about this particular mingzu, their traditions, and the traditions of many other mingzu. Despite having very individual traditions as a Yi, my language partner said that she certainly considers herself Chinese.
During our time in China, we learned how the Chinese government dealt with culture in its recent history. We witnessed the implications of government involvement in culture during our two-week-long travels through the Yunnan province. We stayed at several big cities, such as Dali, Lijiang and Shangri-la. There we observed how China treasured its multiculturalism by encouraging preservation of existing traditions and by awakening the forgotten traditions of different mingzu. Although some mistranslations of restaurant names, street names and signs were rather funny, it was apparent that these old towns within great cities were re-built with lots of care. For example, architecture of Dali, once destroyed and rebuilt in the 1400s, resembles the architecture of the previously-existing city.
The group did not only visit large towns, but also small villages. One of the most unforgettable experiences of the trip took place during our one-day stay in a Naxi village. We traveled to the village in trucks, and there we witnessed the funeral of a Naxi woman. Her family invited us to join their dancing and singing. Though they were sad, they celebrated the life of the deceased woman by dancing, rather than crying over her death. We spent our evening singing songs from different parts of the world around a Naxi fireplace, an open fire in the center of the room.
Other activities that stood out included visiting a farmer’s market, observing the process of making Bai dye clothes, visiting Tiger Leaping Gorge, trying numbing peppers and eating green tongue ice-cream. As a group of foreigners, we almost always attracted the attention of Chinese people, and many people took photographs of us. Those we met in China were great hosts who made our stay unforgettable.
