The questions shift to my educational background.
“I didn’t finish third-level school,” I confess, altering my voice to sound as though I’m speaking to a hotel guest. I’ve found that this—and the way I’ve taught myself to move as though I’m a maiden painted on a ceramic vase from Ming times—helps people forget that I’m from a hill tribe. “But at my trade school I learned how to organize files, create a spreadsheet, and send e-mail.”
I make it sound easy, but I struggled with so many things. Learning how to use an indoor toilet? Do you squat facing the wall or the door? Taking a shower? Waaa! And the idea that I could turn an electric light on and off? In my dormitory, we had electricity for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening, but I flipped the switch on and off so many times in the first week that the matron threatened to shut down the power to the entire building for a day if I didn’t stop. My roommates made sure I didn’t touch the switch again, but they let me watch them turn it on and off at the beginning and end of the morning and evening allotted hours. Yes, I was very tu back then.
The man in charge stubs out his cigarette and gives me a hard stare. “Teacher Guo claims you’re proficient in English, but are you really?”
I respond by switching to English. “I can’t be sure why English came easier to me than to the other students. Maybe it’s because I grew up hearing the different languages of the hill tribes. Or maybe—and this phrase I learned from a hotel guest just yesterday—I was in the right place at the right time.”
The other two men snicker, which causes the man in charge to lose face. He writes something on a pad of paper.
No position or educational spot is possible without answering political questions, and they can be tricky. My interrogator thrums his fingers on the table.
“How do you feel about the changes in Kunming?”
I smile, showing enough teeth to appear friendly but not so many that I’m tempted to cover my mouth. “Ten years ago, a man from Hong Kong came to my village.” I lower my eyes to illustrate my modest personality. “We didn’t know what was happening in the rest of China. He told us about the new era of Reform and Opening Up. Everything he said would happen has happened, and more. Tourists have come from all over to see the Great Wall, the Summer Palace, and the terra-cotta warriors in Xian. We can be grateful that later the central government enacted the Opening the West Campaign. As you know, it was intended to boost foreign tourism to the western provinces.”
I pause to weigh how they’re reacting. I feel like I’m not impressing them, which is strange because I’ve already lasted longer than any of the other candidates.
“Then,” I hurry on, “just three years ago, our beautiful province was given permission by the central government to change the name of the city of Zhongdian to Shangri-La—”
“Beating out Sichuan and Tibet for the honor!” the man who sits at the far right finishes for me. “We can now claim the world’s paradise as Yunnan’s!”
The boast is greeted by indifference as the others stare out the window, suck their teeth, examine their pencils.
“May I ask a question?” I can’t help being curious. “Why have a college for Pu’er?”
“Ah! Trying to be a clever girl,” the man in charge says, scribbling again on his pad. Another demerit? He makes me wait as he finishes writing, lights another cigarette, takes a drag, and blows smoke toward the ceiling. “I suppose where you’re from Kunming must seem very modern, but it—and all Yunnan—has been slow in developing, while the world has rushed into Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.”
As he speaks, I remember the posters I used to study on the bamboo walls of Teacher Zhang’s classroom, believing what I saw in them had to be made up. Now I go to movies and watch television. And I do so with very different eyes; all those images—as unbelievable as they appear—must be real.
“The roadways have traffic jams, polluted air chokes babies and the elderly alike, and everyone is rushing, rushing, rushing to get rich,” he continues. “The people who live in those places? They long to visit Yunnan, because the streets are quiet, the air is fresh, and the day-to-day life is peaceful. All of that has become embodied in, of all things, Pu’er.”
I wonder what would happen if I told him how all the changes he mentioned have affected me. Since the Shangri-La renaming, the government has been talking about rechristening the city of Simao to Pu’er. I bet that will happen in a year or so. These new labels, though subtle, telegraph messages to China’s Han majority people, which they embrace as they are meant to do. Today, many of the words that were once used to degrade the province are used as praise. Yunnan is no longer considered a backward province, where the people are tu. That’s not because Yunnan or its people have changed. Rather, the meaning of tu has changed. Now tu means untouched by the evils of civilization. Tourists—Chinese and foreign—started visiting Kunming, Lijiang, Dali, and the Tiger Leaping Gorge. They even wanted to encounter the hill tribes! They begged to participate in the Dai people’s Water Splashing Festival, see Jinuo women’s teeth painted black with the sap of the lacquer tree, and buy Miao weavings. Men—young, with backpacks and few brains—sought directions to Mosuo villages, because in that matriarchal culture, the women choose their bed partners . . . and those women choose a lot of different lovers—whether Mosuo, Han, or foreign—just for their own pleasure. Tu is now so valued that this year on National Day, the government announced a countrywide search to find a set of twins from each of China’s fifty-five recognized ethnic minorities to be paraded four years from now at the Olympics. Since we Akha are grouped together with the Hani, I suspect the government will look to them to find a set of twins old enough to represent us.
“To answer your question in a different way,” the woman in the red sweater comments, “visitors to Yunnan—whether Han majority, German, French, or American—need souvenirs to take home. What better souvenir could there be than Pu’er? A tea cake is small and fits easily into a suitcase. For Chinese people, tea is always an appropriate gift. For foreigners . . .” She sniffs. “They like things that reek of the hill tribes.”
For some, intolerance and discrimination are just a part of their natures.
“Had you heard before of Pu’er?” she asks in her superior way.