Personal Narrative: Yunnan Memoir

Yunnan Memoir

All my life my parents have told me how fortunate I am to be growing up in San Francisco. My immediate reply would always be, “Yes, I know. You have told me a million times”. I used to think that I understood the extent of my privileged life, but I was sorely mistaken. The school trip to Yunnan allowed to experience first hand the drastically different lifestyles people lead in rural China.

During my time in China, I stayed in a rural town called Bi Sang Gu. Unlike most places in the US there was hardly any concrete pavement. Aside from the narrow concrete road everything else was dirt. Around the eighth day into the trip we were told that we would be walking to a nearby farm that was owned by nomads.

As we left the house the next morning, our host mother handed us a few wicker woven baskets. We soon found out that the purpose of the baskets was to pick up yak poop. My first thought was, “GROSS!” However, I then learned that the yak poop was not only

It was not like any farm that I have ever been to. There wasn’t a designated barn, instead there were a bunch of small wooden and stone huts situated in a circle. The group was divided into two smaller groups. The first group went for a tour of the huts and my group started to pick up yak poop. There were no tools or gloves, only a basket. We improvised. We found thin kindling sticks that we used to impale the poop. After filling our basket and dumping it onto the growing pile of poop, we were told it was our turn to view the huts. The hut consisted of a doorway and one room. Inside the room was a basic kindling stove that was used both for warmth and cooking food. At first I couldn’t see their beds. I was later informed by the tour guide that the blankets on top the storage cabinets were there beds. They had no plumbing system, so the outdoors was there bathroom. I would be lying if I didn’t say that I was totally shocked by their living