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About 45 kms downstream from Jinghong on the Mekong river lies the town of Ganlanba also known as Menghan. It is a typical Dai town with a few temples and a sizable market serving mostly the Dai rice farmers of the valley but also some of the Hani (Akha) and occasionally Jinuo people from the nearby hills.
Monks are generally an extremely rare sight in China where historically significant temples are maintained more or less as cultural museums and are visited more by sightseers than by worshippers. Things are different in Yunnan where religion plays a role to maintain the distinct identity of the various minority nationalities. Rice farming and Therevada Buddhism are the principal hallmarks of the Dai identity so it is important for Dai men to have spent some time as monks.
Below, two Hani women, one selling oddly shaped cabbage and the other bringing apples to her fruit stand.
Ganlanba has a number of these handsome traditional Dai wooden houses. Unfortunately no new ones are being built. New houses are built of brick and often faced with white tile that looks like bathroom tile!.
These two kids were so lovable I could not resist taking their picture.
After taking the picture of the children, I was invited to have a quick look inside even though the family was having lunch.
When I stopped to examine the outside of this house, the people in the front yard gestured for me to join them which I did. I sat down and they gave me a glass of mi-jiu (strong alcohol), and some chopsticks for me to share their meal. They obviously had been drinking for a while and were in high spirits. No one spoke a word of English so I thought that it was rather nice of them to invite a complete stranger to what seemed to be a wedding party (from the fondling of a very amorous couple and the joking of the others).
I told them I was a tourist from Canada and they seemed to understand that. Then, the other woman sitting with us started to take a special interest in me, giving me tidbits and filling my glass. I did not object because the mi-jiu was good and she wasn't bad looking but I realised that something odd was going on when the other men started making jokes about us. I laughed along with them until I eventually understood that I had blundered into Ganlanba's house of ill repute when the girl's gestures became too explicit to ignore. Finally, I did not accept her invitation to step through the doorway behind her and I managed to get away without hurting anyone's feelings. I went to the temple instead.
The Menghan Chunman Temple is one of Xishuangbannas' important Buddhist holy places. Besides the golden stupa and temple shown below it has a school where young Dai males study as novices even if they do not intend to become monks.
I am not a believer but I enjoy a exchanging views on the meaning of life with Therevada monks. I like their serenity and the fact that they are capable of testifying to what they believe in without trying to convince you that they hold the Truth. I have found that very few believers can do that! I stopped here for while and chatted with the big monk below who spoke a little English. On the right, a picture of their dormitory.
A little further south was this other temple whose name I have lost because I did not write it down at the time.
I returned to Jinghong in the afternoon for I was going west the next day to see the big weekend market at Menghun. Fellow backpacker Margaret de Bruijn from Australia, who had come down with me, went on by herself on a four day hike trough jungle trails to see the really remote villages tourists rarely visit. She later told me it had been a little rough because of bad weather but that the people she had met had all been quite nice in spite of the language problem.
I'm posting this photo to show all my girl friends that backpacking is not reserved for men and that girls can be a lot more adventurous than I am without any trouble... If you feel like it, do it!
