I officially rolled off the bed at 10:45am. In my opinion it was too late to go to sacred waterfalls and so I hung out with the construction manager's daughter instead. She's an Aries- Horse. She showed me how to start a fire in the pit. I ended up reciting while I watched for her prepare lunch. I watched how she oiled the pan to with goat lard and knew I couldn't eat it. I watched how she stir-fried rice with pork lard and knew I couldn't eat that too. I watch how she made hash browns with vegetable oil and know I could have that. That was all I ate.
Her father was the construction manager overseeing the additional building being built for tourist. She said she would teach me Tibetan dancing after lunch and we would go to her friend's place. Her father was someone who was suspicious of me or anyone foreign and did not warm up to me. From the complexion in his face and the color and luster in his eyes, he looked like someone who drank too much.
For the meal we sat in their worker’s wooden hut. It was built on open dirt floor. The shower was an open hose that ran onto an open area without partitions. The sleeping area was on top of planks. Everyone slept on that together including my friend, the only girl. There was only enough room for each person to lay neatly right next to each other like sardines. The blankets were all wet and the pillows too. They were wet from the rain and dew dropped in through the cracks. The hut was poorly constructed. I wondered how these people stayed warm at night in damp blankets and pillows with the chilly icy wind blowing in through the wide cracks from the wooden planks. I wondered how much mildew was in the stuffing of the blankets and pillows. I wondered how they continue to live this way when they really didn’t have to. Since they were construction workers, it would be easy to improve their living standard on this job site. Then I remembered the workers on the Great Wall who too slept on the Great Wall in the open in rain and wind. Maybe this is how it is in this part of the world for the construction class.
I was offered a second lunch by Y3 and the school principal, A Rong who was also the owner of the Guest House. It was kabotcha squash stir-fry, I could have that and it was done with vegetable oil. During lunch the conversation got out of hand. A Rong spoke as if he was drunk and talked a whole lot of crap. It really lost respect for him. He expressed his world views on relationships; how a man leans on a wife at home and then out in the world leans on girlfriends. I think he was trying to discourage the union of Y3 and Earth. Since Earth is his only teacher for the only school and he is a volunteer, he had an invested interest to keep Earth around as long as possible. After that conversation, Y3 decided she would head back to Lijiang sooner than her expected departure date.
