I marrried a Mountain Woman
I’m in LiJiang, China having gone through Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and Kunming already. In Kunming and here, we’ve been visiting some of the more remote mountain sites and I think I like these mountain girls. They’re much simplier, not very materialistic because they have little money. They’re hard workers, bringing in money for their families.
Today we went to a cultural site for the Dong ba people, a minority group in China. At the cultural center, we saw their religion, and experienced their daily lives and culture which included a wedding. When my family got there, they started this dance and took my dad and myself to join them. Then we went through their whole wedding ceremony which included a girl putting this cape on me, then I had to chase her and put a cloth on her head and all these other things. It was quite interesting b/c I had no idea what was going on since I don’t understand Chinese. It was pretty fun and I got this little trinket to show that I’ve married a Dong ba Mountain Woman.
Yesterday we went to Stone Forest and a local girl was our guide. She spent 3 years in Kunming studying tourism and english. Her english was pretty good and she was very nice. She says she gives 1-2 tours every day of the week and each tour is about 2-3 hrs long. Each english tour costs 80 RMB which is 10 dollars and chinese tours 60 RMB. So if she were to give 3 english tours a day each day for a week, she’d make 210 dollars a week. 52 weeks, she’d make 10,920 USD/year at a 8RMB to 1USD conversion. That’s for working ~8hrs/day every day of the year and doing 3 english tours everyday which likely doesn’t happen. She lives by the Stone Forest and most likely sends money back home to her parents who live 45 minutes away in the mountains and farm tobacco. That’s not very much for someone who’s educated and is trilingual (she also speaks her native tongue Sa-ni). People here work so hard and make so little. They’re so nice and serve so willingly without expecting any tips (for the most part) unlike their American counterparts. Hopefully things will improve for people as China’s economy develops.