Emily Cole (Fellow ’10, Brown University) spent a memorable Thanksgiving visiting the home of home of her students in a remote mountain village in rural Yunnan. Her account, and accompanying pictures, provide an intimate look into daily life in this remote community.
Leah (刑承月) is on the left, and Yang Wen Qing is on the right. Both
were my 3rd grade students, and both are from the same mountain village. Leah’s hometown is about a 2 hour hike into the mountains. During the week, she lives with her grandmother, little brother, and little sister in a simple house in one of the smaller villages on the outskirts of town. Her younger brother is in the first level of preschool at our elementary school, and her little sister will soon attend the school. Though China has a one-child policy, citizens from the peasant class and ethnic minorities are allowed to have more than one child. Most toddlers I’ve met here are very shy, but
Leah’s little sister cuddled up to me the minute she met me and loved looking at the world through the viewfinder of my camera.
Last year, Leah struggled both socially and academically. She had a an infected lesion on her head, forcing her to wear a hat because her hair had fallen out. She has a really cute grin and an even cuter giggle, but last year, she was lacking in both. This year, her injury has healed and she’s become more outgoing and less self-conscious. While I was at her house this weekend, whenever she sat down to do her homework, she’d get up every ten minutes to feed the goats, take care of the cows, or run next door to play with Yang Wen Qing’s puppies. Corn harvesting and drying season is in full swing, so her parents were out working most of the day. During the school day, she has teachers and classmates who can nag her to get her work done, but on the weekends and at home it is hard for her to focus. This year, her English grades has improved, but her math and Chinese grades are still among the lowest in the class.
We didn’t have class on Friday, so I walked up the mountain with her and a gaggle of
girls who live in the same area. I spent the night at her house in a room filled with pottery basins filled with water where they stored their fresh fruit. The ceiling was a straw-filled tarp nailed to the ceiling, chock full of mice. The next morning when I asked about the mice, Leah said “Oh, our house is full of mice! They love to dance and fight in the ceiling at night!” I couldn’t agree more, there was definitely a lot of dancing and fighting going on while I was trying to sleep. The top floor of her house is an open attic where corn was laid out to dry. All of the houses in the village were covered with piles of bright yellow corn drying in the sun. The compound has a cement courtyard in the center.
One one side is the house, with a smoky, dimly like kitchen in a separate room that always has a small fire blazing. On the other side are the cow, pig, goat, and chicken pens. I slept to the sounds of her goats jingling their bells in their pen, the cows moo-ing throughout the night, pigs grunting, and roosters crowing at all hours of the night.
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