Tien Chiu

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Hello from Rewalsar, India!

Well! I have made it to Rewalsar, which is a little town tucked away in the southern Himalayan mountains, near the border between India and Tibet. It’s known mainly as a pilgrimage site for Hindus, Buddhists, and Sikhs, and also for a prominent Tibetan lama who lives and teaches in the caves above Rewalsar.

Rewalsar isn’t much of a tourist destination, unless you want to visit one of the many local shrines, but a friend of mine studied here for awhile and recommended it to me. The initial plan was for me to study with one of the yogis/lamas in the cave–but that’s flexible, and right now I’m just wandering around, taking in the sights and meeting people.

Rewalsar itself is tiny, nestled up against a very small lake in the Himalayas, and is full of small but fascinating sights: a knife-sharpener treadling his grindstone, spitting sparks as he sharpens a blade; a pilgrim making his way up to one of the shrines, prostrating himself full-length along the road at every step; old Tibetan women whirling prayer-sticks as they walk around the lake.

A troop of monkeys roam freely about the town, searching through the trash and romping over the roofs; pilgrims and tourists feed giant carp by the edge of the lake, watched over by two beggar-women. Another old woman sits and spins fine goat hair on a tahkli (supported spindle), next to her small shrine selling offerings to a Hindu god. Tibetan prayer flags flutter everywhere; a weaver sits at his loom in one tiny corner, weaving Kullu shawls.

But overall, the effect is of a deep spiritual peace, overlaid by the bustle of a small town. It’s not a tourist destination, but a good place to sit and think.

The Tibetan portions of India have been interesting. One of the first things I noticed is that Tibetan men react very oddly to me. In fact, they stare. Sort of worshipfully, like they can’t tear their eyes away. It’s sort of eerie. Seeing this for the first time at a rest stop at 1am, I started wondering if there hadn’t been something in my dinner chapati (or theirs).

But no; it turns out that I’m just somewhere near the ideal for Tibetan beauty. Between that, the long hair, and the generally confident air, I apparently poleaxe Tibetan guys. Moreover, Tibetan legends are replete with stories about gods and bodhisavatthas disguising themselves as lone travelers, so, umm…I’ve been warned that I may be mistaken for a wandering deity. (Why does this sort of thing always happen to ME??)

At any rate, I imagine this will make for a MUCH more interesting trip. I’ll be VERY disappointed if nothing interesting happens… 🙂

Yesterday, I spent the first part of the day wandering all over town with my drop spindle (announcing my presence, and also encouraging spinners/weavers to come talk to me). The second half of the day, I spent an hour talking weaving with a beautician, and then went off to see a weavers’ workshop with a guy who runs a weaving workshop in town. Since he was running late, he asked if I wanted to stay with his family overnight, and I said sure! because it sounded interesting.

(A word of warning to female travelers: there seems to be an unwritten law that every Indian male, married or not, MUST make a pass at every female solo traveler, unless (possibly) she’s married. A boyfriend isn’t sufficient. I suspect this is because Western women have a reputation for being “loose”, or maybe it’s just because women don’t travel unaccompanied.

At any rate, if this bothers you, don’t go anywhere alone with an Indian guy, because I’ll give you 75% odds that it happens. (I’m 3 for 3 so far.) The good news is that they largely take “no” for an answer, and don’t sulk about it. I get the idea that they’re mostly doing it just to see what happens. But, do expect advances.)

Anyway, after we got that little pleasantry over with, he cheerfully reassured me that I was now his “sister”, which I think meant that he wasn’t planning to rape and murder me that evening. I admit this was somewhat reassuring, although I wasn’t particularly concerned–people with established shops are usually OK, the beautician across from him knew where I was going (and hadn’t warned me about him), and thanks to Lena I had plenty of friends in town. I’d also marked some landmarks along the path, and gotten the overall direction of our travel–I’m not *quite* so stupid as to run off with a total stranger without taking a few precautions. If you call me paranoid, I’ll cheerfully agree, and proceed to do it anyway. It doesn’t cost much, and the potential payoff is enormous.

Anyway, we didn’t find the weaver–though we did take a good look at his workshop–so we went on to visit his family. I hadn’t realized he meant to hike OVER the mountain to get there…

…the view was *amazing*.

I forgot to mention that Rewalsar is nestled in the Himalayas. In California, that would mean it’s stuck on the side of a bare mountain. But here, the mountains are terrace-farmed…so the slopes are broad slopes of pine forest, green fields of winter wheat, the reddish brown of fallow fields. The curved lines of the terraces texture the mountainside, breaking up the pattern of color.

Over it all, the clouds gather; fog boils over the valleys, breaking occasionally to show patches of verdant green. Sunset on the slopes paints the and the hills, and silhouettes the long-tailed birds as they fly. It’s like looking over the top of the world.

We went on, over the ridge, and went over to see his family.

Vijay (the shop owner) lives with his wife, his two children, his brother’s family, and his parents, in two houses atop the ridge. It’s a nice house, as houses go–concrete, not overly well-appointed by Western standards, but nice and neat and equipped with quite a few luxuries: carpets on the floors, nice furniture, a bathroom with hot and cold running water, and a stable underneath where their three cows and angora rabbit live. (He had 200 angora rabbits at one point–for their fur–but gave up most of them.)

I met his entire family, and showed his mother how to spin with the silver spindle–she showed me how to use it as a takli (Indian supported spindle)–and exchanged notes on our knitting projects. We chatted for a bit, had dinner, and went to bed.

(The last beverage we had before going to sleep was hot sweetened milk, which was the best milk I’d ever had. I couldn’t believe it was just milk and sugar–I couldn’t work it out, until I realized that, like most Indian villagers, they kept cows. Super-fresh, straight from the cow. No wonder cows are sacred in India.)

In the morning, Vijay took me up on top of the ridge (maybe 100 feet from his house) and showed me the view on the other side of the ridge. It was indescribable. I stared open-mouthed for fifteen minutes–I took a few photos, but don’t expect them to come out–and only snapped out of it when another of the beautiful long-tailed birds flew by. At least, I *thought* it was a long-tailed bird. Then I realized it was green, and the head looked funny, and vaguely familiar…

…I was standing there, on top of the world, watching the morning mist and the bamboo forest and the pine trees and the snow-capped Himalayas shining in the sun…with parrots flying by.

I mean, really. Have you ever seen a parrot FLY? I’d seen the little conures that got loose in Southern California, but I’d never realized how long a parrot’s tail-feathers are, or how graceful it looks in flight. Parrots are things that sit on perches in bird cages and ask for crackers, not things that *fly*. And these were *big* parrots, not little parakeet-things. Really, really cool.

We watched the parrots for awhile, and eventually walked down the mountain, where we caught a bus into Rewalsar.

Nothing much to report since then; I’ve been chatting with various people, and meeting others. Lena’s asked me to forward Losar (Tibetan New Year) presents to various friends of hers, so I’ll be playing Tibetan Santa Claus for the next couple of days–which should also give me an introduction to most of the Tibetan community. (Thanks, Lena: I owe you one. 🙂 ) At lunch, I ran into a fellow Westerner (David) who’s here for a long-term retreat; tomorrow, he and I are taking the bus up to the caves, mostly to poke around. (He knows a good bit about Tibetan Buddhism, so I’m hoping he can give me an overview and cultural translation, sort of Tibetan Buddhism 101.) After that, we’ll see; I plan to spend the next few days introducing myself around, and we’ll see what happens. 🙂

I also found a Tibetan guy who works in my hotel, who’s trilingual in English, Tibetan, and Hindi–he’s offered to translate for me, as I want to have a conversation with the beggar-woman who spins on a takli. All in all, despite the lack of obvious tourist resources, I think Rewalsar will be a really interesting place to be.

Current plan is to spend three weeks in Rewalsar (with side trips to Kullu and other interesting weaving areas), then two weeks in Dharamsala, poking about and trying to get an audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama (also listening in on the first four days of his New Year’s teachings), then fly home. But really, it all depends on what happens.

cheers–

Tien

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Indian textiles; Delhi tour; off to Mandi!

Well. Today has been sort of amusing.

One of the cool (and maddening) things about traveling is that you never know what to expect. Sometimes you get a great experience, sometimes you get a rotten one, and sometimes you get an experience SO rotten it’s great. Today, what I got was a brilliant scam tour of Delhi. Which was delightfully surreal, although i didn’t actually get to see any of Delhi’s tourist sights. (This completely fails to bother me–monuments and such are pretty boring, anyway.)

So picture this. You’re on a bus, populated largely by Indian tourists, with a gay German couple and an extremely confused Brit (doing the Southeast Asia meditation retreat tour) to spice up the scene. You’re cruising around town, almost completely at random, herded about by a guide who segues randomly between English and two other languages–but is unintelligible in all three languages.

Oh yeah, and the last thing the guy who actually spoke English said, before getting off the bus, was “Memorize our next stop before getting off. If we leave you behind, take a taxi and find us at the next stop.”

Pure delight. just think: the opportunity to be confused, lost, and left behind! All for a mere 100 rupees ($2). What a deal! Everyone else near me paid 150 rupees for the privilege. 🙂

And, better yet, the tour apparently didn’t include a single stop on the advertised tour. this didn’t bother me one bit, since I hadn’t bothered to ask beforehand, but it drove the others nuts (including a lot of the Indian tourists)–I suppose they’d actually planned on seeing something. (Silly gits.)

At any rate, my morning consisted of being herded through various randomly-selected spots, driving past good tourist spots because they were “closed for the day”, and standing around in “scenic spots” waiting for the tour photographer (100 rupees a photo!) to finish taking photos.

The crowning point came at 2pm, when, after a long spiel straight out of Mad Libs (“mmph mmph mmph ‘Australia’ mmph mmph mmph ‘merino lambswool’ mmph mmph mmph ‘Good people never talk'”), we were herded into God’s own tourist trap. This was a “handicraft center” containing the world’s most splendid tourist kitsch, including a life-sized copper deer (it apparently had a horrible skin disease), grotesquely gaudy silver chariots, and (my favorite) a life-sized bronze Spanish Conquistador statue (!). I spent a good ten minutes in there, mostly because i couldn’t *believe* they didn’t have a bronze flamingo or garden gnome.

(And Edouard, you should be grateful for that. I would have bought one for you. 😉 )

They did, however, have life-size, ceramic-and-lacquer yak, so you should all be receiving your gifts shortly. 😉

At any rate, after that last stop, the people who actually wanted to see Delhi were seething. I stuck around for a bit to see if they’d lynch the guide (I was giving 50-50 odds, and preparing to take photos), but after they disappointingly didn’t, grabbed the Brit and took off to Palika Bazaar.

(I’m really sorry I couldn’t have been two places at once. Considering he almost got decked at that last stop, he must have had an interesting afternoon.)

Palika Bazaar turned out to be a real feast for the textile enthusiast. I found the bookseller I’d been looking for, paged through eight books, and reluctantly pared it down to two (one on tibetan textiles and one surveying Indian textiles). And, i found a textile shop selling the most *fantastic* shawls. Kashmir, not too surprisingly, has a long history of weaving cashmere shawls (where do you *think* cashmere got its name?), and the decorated shawls are just stunning.

There are two main styles: woven-border and embroidered-border, both featuring elaborate paisley designs. The antique shawls are particularly nice–the newer ones tend to have sloppier and larger stitches, for economic reasons. Very pretty. When I get back, I must get some.

I am, by the way, getting very interested in tibetan rugs now–they do knotted pile carpets as well as plain weaving. I may try studying that, while I’m up in Himachal Pradesh.

Speaking of which, it’s just about time for me to run catch my bus, so I think I’ll do that.

See you in Rewalsar–

Tien

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Delhi; leaving for Mandi tomorrow; a new milestone!

Well! I have just had my first bona fide proposition. 🙂 A shopkeeper in the bazaar sold me a shawl at undoubtedly inflated prices, talked me into going over to his place “for two minutes” to see something, and then tried to seduce me. It was all quite amusing. I’m even almost not insulted.

(I have to say, after four months of various guides, touts, etc. mooning after me, it’s refreshing to find someone who’s actually willing to come out and *say* it. Even if he’s a cheating SOB whose sole excuse is that it’s been two and a half months since he’s seen his wife, because she’s holding down the fort for him in Kashmir.)

So, anyway, the story on Delhi:

First, it’s apparent to me that there is considerably more violence in India (or at least Delhi) than there is in Thailand, Cambodia, etc. In my first two hours wandering around the streets of Delhi this morning, I saw two fistfights! And, the passersby didn’t seem to think this was unusual–they crowded around, but made no attempt to separate people or intervene.

I’m not sure what precipitated either fight. the first one wasn’t terribly interesting–one guy shoving another around–looked like a straightforward case of male-pattern testosterone poisoning. (For the female version, see this month’s Farang! magazine. 😉 ) But the second fight was just plain *weird*.

It started out as a middle-aged man shoving a woman around, apparently straight into the path of a moving minivan(!). I had clocked it as domestic violence and was wondering vaguely if he was trying to kill her, and whether I ought to intervene (and no, I wouldn’t have–not in a strange country, it’s too dangerous). But then the guy shoved the woman out of the way, and launched himself at the oncoming car (!)–lashing out at its headlights with his fists, as it lurched closer.

Well, I’d never seen a guy hell-bent on murdering a minivan before, and certainly never one who was willing to stand in its path to do it. (By this point, the guy’s half onto the hood and going after the windshield, with his wife hanging onto his other arm, trying to pull him off.) I backed discreetly off about fifteen feet, next to a shop (I am curious but not entirely dumb), and just as i came to a stop, the crowd started shouting again, and I saw the guy in front of a shop, grappling with another seemingly-random man, as his poor wife tried to separate them.

By this point a crowd had gathered, and I started edging off–if there was going to be a riot, i wanted to be solidly on the fringes–but the old woman shopkeeper standing next to me saw me looking nervous and said something reassuring (no clue what–she wasn’t speaking English), so I stuck around. (Little old ladies are the *perfect* protectors. No one on earth is gonna mess with them, and if someone does, they’ll whack ’em with a frying pan. Little old ladies don’t have to do the cute little maiden act anymore, you see, so they’re tough as nails. 😉 )

At any rate, the guy’s wife managed to drag him off, and someone else in the crowd helped restrain him long enough for his intended victim to disappear. I saw his victim pile back into the minivan (oh–ok–he was attacking the minivan to get at the guy inside, but really, did he think that leaping at the front of a moving minivan was the best way to do it? this guy has gotta be NUTS…), and the minivan take off through the crowd, honking. Its windshield was cracked, with a fist-sized star pattern on the driver’s side. The guy (being held back by his wife) lurched after the minivan, shouting and shaking his fist, but couldn’t keep up.

I still have NO idea what that fight was about. the downside to not speaking the language: you get a lot of inexplicable, impromptu scenes like that.

After another hour of wandering around in search of a decent restaurant, I wound up having lunch at the restaurant next door to my hotel. There I ran into a dilemma–I was thirsty, and they served me a plain glass of water.

Now, everyone knows you shouldn’t drink tap water in “Third World” countries. In most of Southeast Asia, though, they know this darn well, so they serve up a sealed bottle of water, empty glass on the side (so you can check the seal yourself). Sometimes they serve a plain glass of water–but in almost all such cases, it really does come from a bottled water supply, and if they tell you it’s safe, it generally is.

But this is India, where the guidebook has two pages of warnings on bottled-water tampering and another two on food-safety issues (including deliberately-induced food poisoning to collect insurance money (!)). In other words, you can’t always believe the restaurant. haven’t been in India long enough to have any real understanding of the dangers, so decided to skip it.

(The lasagne wasn’t particularly edible, either. That’s the problem with eating while traveling–you never know what you’ll be getting. it’s good for losing weight, though…I’ve FINALLY gotten off the ten pounds I put on at Liberate.)

Anyway: after lunch, I went wandering through the Main Bazaar (that’s where I’m staying). Lots of little shops there, mostly selling silver, random handicrafts, money exchange, and so on. The streets are quite crowded, and quite dirty–there are sacred cows wandering around everywhere, filthy beggars, shop touts, street vendors–but not really overwhelming, if you’re already used to Bangkok. I went into two textile stores, and finally wound up in the last one, where I bought the shawl.

That was an interesting place. The guy is Kashmiri, and had quite a selection of textiles. The cheaper stuff was machine-woven wool, but he had some fairly nice handwoven pashmina shawls, and eventually offered to show me the nicer stuff he had in back. Handspun, handwoven pashmina, some of it loosely woven in birdseye patterns. That takes a lot of skill–getting a tight weave even is relatively easy, but doing the same in gauze is tough. I admit cheerfully, I was slavering. I mean, we’re talking handspun cashmere thread finer than sewing thread, here, and handwoven to boot. Light as a feather, beautifully woven, and warm, too. Woo.

However, I wasn’t going to pay $500 for one, especially not until I’d had a chance to suss out prices (I have no idea what prices and quality are like…in three more weeks, I will 🙂 ), so I wound up buying a fairly decent wool shawl for an overpriced but not entirely outrageous sum. (It’s *cold* where I’m going–need something warm to take along.) As we were finishing up that purchase, we started discussing textiles and textile manufacture, and he invited me to have tea with him in the shop. Which sounded fine to me, but then he explained to me that he lived with his family in a hotel room nearby, and he really wanted me to come by the hotel room with him, for just two minutes, because he wanted to show me something.

Ding ding ding! Warning bells. when a guy asks if you’re traveling on my own, how long you’re staying in town, and where your hotel is (I didn’t tell him; just the general area–not *that* dumb), and *then* wants to invite you to his place, it’s a very bad sign. (Potential troublemakers usually “interview” you first, to make sure you’re a good candidate; so flagging certain questions is a good way of identifying Potential Trouble. I’m not *paranoid* about it, just aware.)

But despite all that, the cardinal rule of information networking is to poke your nose into odd places and be friendly, so I did some quick mental arithmetic, decided that I could certainly handle any trouble he posed, and he hadn’t had any chance to recruit friends, so what the hell, I’d go.

(This is the benefit of having taught self-defense for awhile. You can handle more problems, and thus can take more risks.)

There was, of course, nothing much at his place except a sob story about how he hadn’t seen his wife in two and a half months and would it be OK if he closed the door and we did *something* “as friends” (it wasn’t clear what exactly that was–his english wasn’t that good). Uh, no. I took off. I’m still amused, though.

coda: less amused now. another (different) guy just came into the Internet cafe, which is near my hotel (I *did* tell the guy the general area), and asked me if I was the one who’d bought that beautiful shawl. (Or maybe congratulated me on buying that beautiful shawl–I wasn’t listening to the first half of the sentence.) Since the shawl in question is sitting in a plastic bag on the floor, highly invisible, there’s no way he could have known about it unless he talked to the other guy, which makes me a little twitchy. Either I misheard (quite possible), or someone’s looking for me…I’m not sure I like this.

The guy’s gone now–I ignored him–but I think it’s time to take off, just in case, and head back to my hotel (Smyle Inn). the guy who runs the place likes me, and comes highly recommended by Hotel Namaskar next door, which is highly recommended by Lonely Planet and many other folks. So he’s probably reasonably trustworthy…I’ll tell him to keep an eye out tonight, just in case.

tomorrow I’m going on an organized bus tour of Delhi, and am leaving on the bus for Mandi immediately after that, so should be fine.

I’m almost certainly being paranoid, but given the stuff going on today, I’m not sure exactly what’s up–so best to be cautious. Given the two fights i passed by this morning, I’ve already decided to ditch the handbag (or at least keep nothing interesting in it): it’s too vulnerable if I have to do anything sudden.

Interesting place so far: a blend of dirt, extreme poverty, exquisitely beautiful handicrafts, delicate negotiation, and overt violence, all at once. The heavenly fragrance of ripe guavas mixed with the rank odor of stale urine.

Still, I’ll be glad to get to Rewalzar, and the cave yogis, tomorrow. On to Mandi! 🙂

Tien

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Hello from Delhi, India!

Just arrived in Delhi last night, after a moderately tedious set of misadventures at the airport (delayed flight, invalid ticket, etc.). Haven’t really poked around the city yet–just got up and am searching for food, breakfast, etc., and trying to get a “feel” for the city. Mostly all I’ve noticed so far is that when I walk down the street, everyone stares at me. Oh yeah. Right. I *don’t* look “just like Indian people”. I’m going to have to figure out what to do about that–I’m tinkering with my invisibility shield, but I suspect I’ll have a hard time “passing” until I get to the Tibetan regions.

I haven’t quite decided what to do yet about India. I have five weeks, of which the last five to nine days are definitely slated for Dharamsala: the Dalai Lama is teaching in Dharamsala March 19-April 2! My flight leaves March 25, so I won’t be able to stay for the entire teaching, but I definitely want to sit in on a few days at least. I also want to spend some time in the Tibetan region where Lena has friends (learning Tibetan weaving techniques…it will be interesting to compare/contrast them with Akha, Lao, and hilltribe weaving styles, as the Akha are Tibetan in origin, migrating through China and Burma on the way to Thailand). I also want to be in the Tibetan region for Losar, the Tibetan New Year–March 3 this year.

But I don’t know that I want to spend all five weeks in Himachal Pradesh (the province where both those are), so I’m looking through my guidebook and considering options. Agra of course is a draw, as it seems a pity to miss the Taj Mahal, as is Rajasthan, because it has tiger preserves! Going off to see a wild tiger sounds like great fun. The little travelingtiger wants to meet his relatives… 🙂

But, nothing’s decided yet, and won’t be until I’ve had a little time to acclimate. And buy some warmer clothes: it’s cooler here in Delhi, and it’s going to be downright chilly in Dharamsala, I suspect..

Delhi, at least so far, is not nearly as bad as I expected, and not nearly as bad as Vietnam. Okay, at least three people have tried to con me so far, and the taxi driver tried very hard to hijack me to an expensive hotel (they get commissions), and there are people everywhere trying for your attention, but the style of scam here appears to be more deception and pleading than outright intimidation–I find that easier to deal with. But I’ve only been here a few hours–we’ll see how it goes.

off to a cafe to eat breakfast and pick up the “beat” of the area…but welcome to Delhi!

Tien

P.S. I normally hate Indian food, so this should be an interesting part of the trip…but after dog, rat, and scorpion, how bad can curry be??

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akha day 2 – ceremonial pig slaughter

(Apologies in advance for the volume of emails, today and tomorrow–I’m trying to get the Akha trip written up before I leave for India, and I’ve only got a day and a half. I’m going to try getting the Akha photos up on the website, too–probably tomorrow.) ———————————- Sometime in the afternoon, I asked how often the Akha killed pigs. Being a city girl, I am of course fascinated by livestock…after four months in Asia, the novelty of chickens and pigs is starting to wear off, but I’d never seen a pig slaughtered before, and I mentioned that.

As it turned out, they were slaughtering a pig that day! Asaw asked when, and they said, “Right now!” So, we ran off to see.

On the way, Asaw explained to me that this wasn’t a normal slaughtering, but a ritual requirement. This pig had had a very small litter–only two piglets–and they both died. This made it a “bad-luck” pig, which had to be killed immediately and the meat distributed through the village. It also meant that the animal had to be killed outside the village gates, up on the hill used for such sacrifices.

(Akha villages, by the way, have gates that they take very seriously. The legend is that once upon a time, spirits and humans lived together. Then they quarreled, and the gods decided that they should live in different places. The village gates delineate the boundaries of the humans’ place (the village) and the spirits’ place (the jungle). They’re ceremonially rebuilt once a year–the old gateposts are left up, so you can get a rough estimate of the age of the village by the number of old gateposts lined up before the current one. It is taboo for tourists to touch the gates, and if you do, they have to hold a purification ceremony–so I didn’t.)

I asked Asaw to explain what made a pig a bad pig, and he explained that each animal had different standards. If a chicken, pig, or dog had a small litter (1-2 babies), that was a “bad-luck” animal, and it had to be killed on the first good day, and the meat distributed to everyone unrelated to the owner. (For example, Ahta, the Akha wisewoman teaching me spinning and weaving, was related to the owner, so wasn’t eligible. Asaw and I weren’t, so we got some.) A pig/dog who had its entire litter die also had to be killed, but that wasn’t so bad–the owner could sell its meat at half-price.

Similarly, a pig that gives birth in the village, a dog that gives birth in the forest, or a cow that has twins (twins are considered very bad luck among the Akha), all are unclean and must be slaughtered and the meat distributed. Finally, a cow, dog, or pig that gets up onto the roof has been possessed by spirits, and must be killed.

You heard me. A cow on the roof.

This is a neat trick, since Akha roofs start four or five feet off the ground. I could see a dog doing it, if it got a running jump, or a pig (they’re very bright), but a cow??

No one had ever seen it, but apparently the elders assure them that it can and does happen. Apparently the possessing spirit enables the cow to walk around on the roof, but as soon as you see it, the spirit can’t keep the cow up anymore and it comes crashing through your roof. 🙂 Since a possessed cow is major bad news (anyone who’s seen “Christine” can testify to the evils of possessed livestock/autos), it has to be slaughtered.

(If you are looking at this set of rituals and beliefs and thinking “How quaint,” you have obviously never been to a corporate team bonding event, or in fact to a corporate meeting. Any culture that comes up with falling out of trees as a “trust-building exercise” is not exactly in a position to throw stones; I suspect the Akha would crack up immediately if they ever saw the elaborate rites around a corporate meeting. ‘Nuff said. 😉 )

So anyway, this pig had had a litter of only one or two, *and* the babies had died, so it was being slaughtered. I ran up the hill.

The slaughter itself was done in two steps. Normally the throat is cut, but for unclean animals, an incision is made over the heart first. At least, I *think* it was the heart–four or five guys held down the pig (one held its mouth shut), and a man with a machete made an incision partway down the chest. I could see something beating rhythmically, briefly–then they shifted and started sawing at the throat of the pig. (They didn’t stab it in the heart; it was more of a crosswise slice.)

The pig, needless to say, was not happy about any of this and was uttering awful squeals. Oddly, I didn’t find any of it particularly hard to watch–perhaps because I was in journalist mode, trying to record what was going on. The photos are pretty difficult, though–I don’t think I’ll put them up, if you’re interested I’ll email them.

It took a surprisingly long time to saw through the throat of the pig–they kept going through layers of muscle as the pig snorted and squealed–but finally they got through the windpipe, and almost immediately after, they hit a major artery/vein. Suddenly, blood was everywhere. It flooded up out of the throat–the pig gave one or two twitches, then lay still–and into a bowl that a man was holding ready. They drained a surprising amount of blood out of the pig: well over a quart!

After the blood stopped flowing, they turned the pig upside down and carved off the belly skin, exposing the abdomen. They then started pulling out the internal organs, putting them on a banana leaf.

I hadn’t realized this, but the abdominal organs are enclosed in a sheath of connective tissue–so they were easy to pull away cleanly, just tug on the connective tissue. Pulling out the intestines was kind of gross, as they were still attached at one end–the less said about that, the better.

After that, they split up into two groups–one cleaned the internal organs, and one went off with the rest of the pig. I followed the men with the pig (all the slaughterers were male), to where a fire was burning.

They flung the pig on the fire–Asaw explained that this was to remove the hair. After one side was singed, they flipped it over, and started scraping at the carcass with knives and sticks. They flipped and scraped it until the outside was burnt, and not a trace of hair remained. (Which is important, because their pigs are *really* hairy.)

Meanwhile, the other group cleaned out the internal organs, cutting apart the liver, washing out the stomach, and snipping the intestines into tiny bits. This was kind of gross since the undigested contents were still in it (I don’t know what happened to the large intestine, and didn’t ask–some things you don’t want to know!). But, they washed the whole thing out thoroughly, and cut each organ into thirteen pieces, one for each family receiving part of the pig.

(There’s nothing particularly significant about the number thirteen–it could be more or less, depending on the number of recipients–i.e., village families unrelated to the owner.)

I asked if *everything* got cut into thirteen pieces, or if they just weighed it out and approximated–but no, every organ and most of the identifiable muscle meats get hacked into thirteen pieces, so each villager gets a totally equal share of the pig. The only exceptions are the head and feet, which go to the men helping butcher, and the brain and tongue, which (for unclean pigs) must be eaten by old men whose wives are past childbearing.

They brought back the main carcass and hacked it into bits, which they strung on bits of bamboo, skewered on sticks, or put in plastic bags to give to the families, and that was that–a very quick process, maybe forty minutes from live pig to fully distributed pork bits. I was quite astonished.

Oddly enough, it didn’t affect my appetite at all. I had kind of expected the whole thing to be grosser.

On the way back, we saw fires burning outside in the yard of a number of houses, which is unusual–normally they’re inside, in the kitchen area. I asked Asaw, and he said that unclean animals have to be cooked outside and eaten outside–and the utensils used must be left outside overnight as well. Quite serious, here.

We got invited to dinner with the (former) headman, to eat our share of the pig (Ahta, the woman I was staying with, was related to the owner, so she couldn’t get any). He was a really neat guy–he had been headman for four years, but decided it was a major headache, so gave up the position. We ate the pig as larb, which cooked Akha style is a bunch of coarsely chopped bits cooked and mixed with spices, eaten over rice. I’m not overly fond of Akha-style larb (especially since the first thing I got was a chunk of liver), but since the entire pig had to be eaten that day (leftovers had to be discarded), I ate my share. It tasted, well, like pig. 🙂

After dinner, we drank some herbal medicine “to ward off the effects of the bad pig”–this wasn’t an Akha tradition, but a Chinese herbal medicine that the headman’s father/grandfather had bought from a Chinese guy for five silver coins, several decades ago. It’s good for settling the stomach, a good idea when eating an unclean animal. It tasted very nice (which is unusual for Chinese herbal medicines)–like licorice tea.

That was more or less it for the evening; we went back down to DAPA, where I spent the evening. (No hot showers, however. *sigh*)

The following day, I started learning weaving and spinning, but I’ll leave that for another email.

Tien