As expected, our 2-day "Water Splashing" trip down to Xishuangbanna proved to be everything we weren't expecting. We did a lot of eating - big family banquets with Lao Yang's mum's side of the family (she has seven siblings). Lots of Dai food on offer: sour fish and bamboo soup, fried puffballs, snails, the new season's bamboo shoots, things wrapped in banana leaves, and even some donkey meat. In Jinghong Edie, Freda and Lao Yang were kitted out in Dai Nationality costumes (see photo), and we even fitted in an afternoon's swimming at the Golden Banna Hotel. Apart from this, we didn't experience any water splashing - all that takes place at the Dai New Year round about the 15th of April. On Sunday morning though, it became apparent why we were here - we were going to attend Mengyang's Poshui Jie carnival...

The main road into Mengyang had been closed to traffic and was lined with all sorts of stalls, mainly Dai bbq food, but also fun-fair style shooting galleries and the like. There was even a Freak Show, something probably banned in the UK for being ultra politically incorrect, but here a great crowd-puller (for those with Y2 burning a hole in their pocket). Freda and Edie went in and reported back: one monkey (chained), one giant python (drugged apparently) and various bottled specimens, including a pig with two heads, a dog with two heads, a frog-man (ie. a frog with human-looking hands and feet) and a human baby complete with tail. Outside on the street and in the nearby showground there was a great party atmosphere. Somehow (because we were foreign?) Lao Yang's mum managed to get us through security and into the ground where groups of beautifully dressed "minority nationality" folk were gathering for the show. Xishuangbanna has a high concentration of different ethnic groups, and today's event was all about getting everyone together, having fun, and showing some ethnic harmony to make the Party bigwigs up in Beijing feel better.

The majority Dai People are split into 3 main groups - Shui (water) Dai, Han (land) Dai and Huayao (flower belt) Dai. Also in attendance were Hani (Aini), Bulang and Jinuo people, and probably quite a few other groups I didn't recognise. We spent a happy hour here then retreated up the road to a fish restaurant near Guanping where we ate "datou yu) - big head fish, heads and all. Then an hour's drive back to Mengyang and straight to another restaurant, deep in a plantation of rubber trees. This is the Chinese Way - lots of eating, interspersed with sitting around tea drinking, mahjong twittering, card slapping and sunflower seed nibbling. It can seem a bit strange to those of us who are more used to do something constructive with our spare time (Don't get me wrong - I'm not complaining, merely making a cultural observation!). Anyway, it was nice to sit out the heat of the day and Freda, Edie and Lao Yang had a great time playing with their ducklings. Oh yes, the ducklings. Did I not mention them? More of that later...

Thanks to the generosity of Lao Yang's extended family we had a fantastic time and saw a glimpse of Chinese festival culture that would otherwise have passed us by. They treated us like honoured guests - this is also the Chinese Way.

The trainees are having to cope with many new experiences this week, especially the trainee-centred approaches. One of the many requirements is that participants sit in new groups for each workshop. Not only that, they must make sure they have a balance of English-speakers and non-English-speakers, as well as men and women. At the first meeting all the non-English-speakers huddled together. Quite illogical given that they had nobody nearby who could then help translate, if need be. In fact, I try to make sure that my training methods are very inclusive and nobody gets left behind. If I can't say something in Chinese, someone else jumps in to help. If they feedback in Chinese, they have the responsibility to agree/disagree, approve/disapprove. The great thing is, despite working in two languages, we still managed to finish on time. We have great cooperation and a wonderful atmosphere in class. I might even get through the second day without a migraine too. That would be a bonus!

I seem to have to do everything in haste these days, except for leave Simao that is (see entry below). Our Ninger (Team) Leader-Traininer training course is going very well so far. We have a fabulous mixture of participants this time round - leaders from various schools, training centres and colleges, with backgrounds in Maths, English and Chinese teaching. Not only will we have English model lessons to feedback on, but several teachers have volunteered to give Maths teaching and Chinese teaching demonstrations. This means, of course, that several participants can't speak English but we have ways to cope. By the end of today the trainees knew that they would have to cooperate well with us and with each other, to translate and check that everyone can follow. This will be especially important when Liao Xinli and Hou Wanxia (the Chinese members of our PIE Team) return to Simao tomorrow and leave Sue and I alone!

Ali and the girls have been in Jinghong for Water Splashing Festival, which you will hear about in due course. Ali may mock my coffee machine and hamsters, but I believe they are returning from their excursion with two ducklings and who knows what else!

Why the glum face? Well, Lesley had an hour to fill waiting for the Ning'er Education Bureau car to arrive and she had nothing to do - not something, by her own admission, that she's very good at! The pile of boxes in the background is just some of the stuff that she and Sue have been putting together this week for the course they're running in Ning'er (starting on Sunday). It's a Team Leader-Trainer Training course for Ning'er County English teachers under the PIE (Pre-Service In-Service Exchange) programme umbrella, and this is the first course to take place outside Simao. Let's hope they haven't forgotten anything important! They don't have a kitchen sink, but I do know that their swimming costumes, two hamsters and various coffee-producing machines were squeezed into the car when it eventually arrived at 4pm this afternoon.

Meanwhile, Freda, Edie and I are heading off to Jinghong with Lao Yang and his parents for a couple of days of Water Splashing Festival. These things tend to have a Magical Mystery Tour feeling about them - anything could happen! So stay tuned for an update in a few days...

Ali celebrated his 45th birthday in his favourite restaurant with his favourite people, or so he said! There were 15 of us for the meal, including Cultural Bureau/photography pal Mr Li and his family, Hou Wanxia and Nini, Sue, Zhang Yun with her boyfriend Yu Jian and Freda's own little sweetheart, Lao Yang, and his family. After the main meal we brought out the cakes. Unfortunately a busy day at the TDC (and lack of prioritising on my part?) meant that we didn't have time to make a cake. Instead, we applied our 'creativity' (as Yu Jian kindly called it) to a couple of boxes of Cacao Pies - the only local chocolate cake that tastes like chocolate. Edie's happy, as it means the cocoa powder and syrup will be saved for her birthday cake in a week's time!

Pork and pepper stir-fry was among the several tasty dishes served by Sue at her roof-top terrace dinner party on Monday evening. It's not easy producing a meal for six on a single hot-plate but the menu was extensive - homemade jiaozi (dumplings), spicy potato, aubergine, and tomato salad, all served with rice. Apart from the food and company, of course, the highlights for me were (1) watching the swallows come and go from a nearby nest (2) watching the red sun set over the forested mountains (3) seeing the evening plane come in to land at close range. A great evening, Sue, thanks!

Ba Yan Long is one of the many statues in Simao's Tea Culture Garden, where we hung out for a few hours this morning. A rock nearby has the following, very difficult-to-read, engraving:

"Ba Yanlong was a tribal chief of Bulang nationality. More than one thousand years ago he led the Bulang people to plant tea on a large scale in the Mengmai and Mengjing area of Lancang. He gave tea a special name and up until the present day these ancient 10,000 mu of tea are still full of life."

The Tea Culture Garden is one of the many points of interest Ali writes about in his Yunnan book.

For our fifth Qingming Jie (tomb-sweeping festival) in China we were honoured to be invited to Mohei by our good friend Zhang Yun, to visit her family, both living and deceased. Qingming is a time for remembering ancestors, visiting and cleaning the graves of departed relatives, placing flowers on tombs and burning ghost money. Getting to Mohei was the hardest part, as the rest of Simao was also on the move for this 3-day holiday. Mohei, an old village of wood-fronted houses, lies in a fertile valley half an hour north of Ning'er and is renowned for its salt mining, sausages and location on the Ancient Tea Horse Trail. It's about to find itself positioned once more on a major trade route as the new Kunming-Xishuangbanna expressway blasts through the outskirts of town. 

After a quick lunch - including the best nimeng huang gua (lemon cucumber) I've ever had - we set off for the hills, stopping off briefly to buy all the necessary decorations and offerings. These included tinsel flowers, fake money and gold paper ingots. We also carried a large kettle of boiled spring water, food offerings and peach leaves, to ward off the ghosts (not the mosquitos, as Sue had us believe for a while!).

While Zhang Yun burned the money and the incense smouldered around the tomb, the men (Zhang Yun's uncles and boyfriend) smoked cigarettes, which they stubbed out on the ground and placed on the tomb's mantel. These weren't the only forms of litter we saw left at the tombs on the hillsides. Other graves were littered with plastic bags, paper cups, water melon peel, chopsticks and scraps of food. The first time we saw this, a few years back, we felt somewhat surprised that a tomb-cleaning ritual should end with the discarding of so much rubbish. This year I found myself reappraising the significance of this apparent disregard for aesthetics and the environment. Now I wonder if this litter is left as a mark of rememberance - clear evidence that relatives have paid a visit and the deceased was loved. As we left Zhang Yun's mum, her uncle called towards the tomb: "So, we all came to visit and we'll come again next year. We'll come again next year." The same ritual was carried out at each grave we visited.

Ali hanging out with "First Uncle", "Fifth Aunt" and "Seventh Aunt", at the old family home in Mohei. At 5pm all five living siblings and their mother (Zhang Yun's grandfather's "number two wife", now 86 years old) gathered with their families for a banquet. There were over 30 people there, including us, and all the dishes were prepared on a single solid-fuel-fired wok in a tiny kitchen. Our efforts to help were firmly refused but we did manage to contribute some watermelon and local sausage.

As we re-settle into Simao life it's been great to reinstate some traditions like our Wednesday afternoon student Cooking Club. It's a chance for the students (very bored of canteen food) to cook some of their favourite dishes, and a great opportunity for us to learn something about chinese cooking (and spice up our own repertoire). We kick off with a trip to Lanhua Market then retire to the kitchen for a couple of hours of frantic, conjested kitchen action! Pictured are: (L-R) Sue's nose, Lesley, Michelle, Cisy, Allen and Melon. The students were very modest about their abilities but proved to be excellent cooks!

Sue was keen to cook a local classic called "huang men ji" (yellow braised chicken). Half a chicken from the market chopped into pieces, cooked with star anise, black cardamom, garlic and spring onions. The result was very tasty, almost curry-like! The students efforts were: hongshao yanyu (potatoes in red sauce); qingtang yu (clear fish soup with mint); hongdou zhusuancai (kidney beans with pickled vegetables); fanqie lami (a Dai-style spicy dip for vegetables) and Freda did her trademark tofu tomato dish! All much better tasting than the College Canteen...