Teacher Zhang sniffs, wipes the back of his hand across his nose, and adds, “Since you are Hani, you must learn in Hani.” Although the Akha and Hani share most of the same words, the pronunciations and the ways we end our sentences are so different that we wouldn’t be able to understand each other if not for what we’ve been forced to memorize in school. Teacher Zhang looks furtively around the room, as though one of us might report him. “Be grateful. The Hani have their own written language—thirty-one years old. Do you not think it hilarious that it’s written in the letters of the imperial West?” He laughs, shakes his head, and something comes into his voice that I can’t pick apart. “But soon I’ll switch all my teaching to Mandarin, the national language of the Han majority.” He pronounces this carefully, making sure we hear the difference between the Hani (tiny) and the Han (huge, because they make up more than 90 percent of the population of China). “To learn a different language is to learn a different way of living,” he recites. “This, I’m told, will be your way to learn how to cultivate your fields scientifically and appreciate proper sanitation. It will also help with your political indoctrination, which will promote loyalty to the state.”
Sometimes I don’t know if Teacher Zhang is teasing or torturing us with his comments.
He turns to the map with its swaths of green, blue, and brown. He’s marked where we live with a red X, although once, when I was called up to identify the capital of the country, I saw no written characters under the X to mark our villages or the names of our mountains. Even Jinghong, the largest town in Xishuangbanna prefecture, was not on the map. When I asked why, he explained, “Because where you live is unimportant. No one knows you’re here.”
Someone must have known, which is why Teacher Zhang was sent here, but I understood what he was trying to say. It’s only through his maps and posters that I know anything about the outside world. He has described their contents, but why would I need a hospital when I have A-ma? Why would I want to work in a factory so far from the forest? I’ve seen drawings of secretaries, and I wonder why a woman would want to wear the same head-to-toe plain blue jacket and trousers that Teacher Zhang wears.
He now asks for a volunteer to come up to the map and point out the places where the Akha live. A weak man always seeks to hurt those lower than he is, so I suspect he’s going to be tough on Ci-teh and me today. Hoping to protect my friend—she lost her brother and so much more—I quickly raise my hand. He calls on her anyway.
She goes up to the map and studies it. I know the answers and itch to help her, but I’m hoping she’ll remember the stories she’s learned from her a-ma about where our people roam, even if she can’t point out the countries on the map. She surprises me, though, by putting the tip of her finger on the wrinkled paper.
“Here is Tibet,” she says at last. “A thousand years ago, maybe less, the Akha grew tired of the cold.” (This is the story we’ve learned from our elders. Our ancestors were cold.) “The Akha . . . I’m sorry . . . We Hani”—a few of the boys titter at her correction—“walked down from the Tibetan Plateau. Some of us settled in Burma. Some in Thailand. Some in Laos.” Her finger moves from country to country, until finally settling on the red X. “And some came here, to Xishuangbanna prefecture.”
“Is Nannuo included on the list of the Six Great Tea Mountains of Yunnan?”
“No, Teacher Zhang. Those would be Mansa, Yibang, Youle, Gedeng, Mangzhi, and Manzhuang, which lie on the east bank of the Lancang River. But here, on the west side of the river, we have the six second-greatest tea mountains: Hekai, Banzhang, Bada, Mengsong, Jingmai, and our Nannuo. There are even lesser known mountains where tea grows in our prefecture too.”
When Ci-teh returns to our mat, I squeeze her hand, proud of her.
“I did it,” she whispers. “I did it even better than you could have.” Her comment stings, and I pull away. Doesn’t she realize I’m sad too and need her love as well?
Of course, Teacher Zhang saw and heard everything. “Yes, Ci-teh, you’re very smart for an Akha,” he says, using our real designation. This is never a good omen, because he considers everyone in our province to be brainless and crude, and Ci-teh has just proved him wrong. “The world knows that the Akha are the butts of national jokes. Even the Hani are ridiculed as being tu.” It’s a Mandarin word, but one that everyone—including the youngest children here—recognizes. In Mandarin, tu means earth, so we’re considered filthy, backward, and of the dirt. Teacher Zhang continues: “This is where poets and scholars were exiled in centuries past.” (And where artists, teachers, and students like him were sent during the Cultural Revolution.) “If all that were not enough, your proximity to Burma is an added black mark, because the Akha there have built a bad reputation for opium growing and drug smuggling.”
I glance across the room and see the older boys roll their eyes. People like Teacher Zhang can’t know us, just as the Dai, the Bulang, or any other minority can’t know us, let alone the Han majority. Yes, we grow opium and, yes, A-ma uses it in her medicines, but that’s not the same as drug smuggling.
“None of the hill tribes like the Akha,” Teacher Zhang continues. “You’re stupid and violent. Ci-teh here wants to prove them wrong.”
It’s hard to listen to Teacher Zhang when he’s like this, and I wonder if something more personal has happened—and not just mountain gossip about Ci-teh’s family and my behavior in the newlywed hut—that’s pushing him to be so cruel today. Was another petition to return to his home rejected? Did he hear that his wife, who divorced him long ago, remarried? Or is it the rain that’s been coming down steadily for weeks now, leaving everyone and everything smelling of mildew, and all ears tired from the unrelenting deluge that spatters nonstop on thatch roofs and the trees of the forest?
All through the morning Teacher Zhang asks questions related to the map, and for a while I’m distracted from my feelings. “Yes!” we chant in unison. “We live on the Tropic of Cancer.” And, “Yes! The Lancang River flows from Tibet.” The river passes through our mountains, changing its name to Mekong where China, Laos, and Burma meet, before flowing through Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and eventually to the South China Sea. “Yes! It is called the Danube of the East.”
The lunch break comes. The other kids run through the rain to an open-air canopy, but Ci-teh takes my hand and holds me under the overhang that protects the entrance to our schoolroom.
“What’s going to happen to my family now?” she asks, staring out at the muddy landscape. “How will we ever come back from this? And my brother . . .”
I feel sorry for her, and I want to offer comfort, but it’s harder than I thought it would be. Her cap is still better than mine. Her family still has its vegetable and opium fields. Her clan is still better off than any other in Spring Well. Despite my uncharitable feelings, she’s still my friend. I try to offer her some sympathy. “We’ll all miss Ci-do and Deh-ja.”
She presses her lips together, visibly fighting her emotions. Finally, she mumbles, “Don’t say anything more. It hurts too much.” Then she releases my hand for the second time today, steps into the rain, and joins the other kids under the canopy. I wonder what it would be like to be so proud and then have your belongings, reputation, and status taken from you.
I go back into the classroom to speak to Teacher Zhang.
“I hear you had a hard time,” he says somewhat kindly when I approach. “Your traditions can be harsh.”
His sympathy for me, given how he treated Ci-teh, is startling. So is my response.
“Thank you for understanding.”
“Work hard and you could go on to second-level school and beyond. You don’t have to stay on this mountain forever.”