The Tea-Horse Trail and Basketball on the Corn-Drying Court: Shaxi
We rise, as usual, before dawn. We’ve traveled north and west, so sunrise is earlier, seven thirty now. Dark comes faster, too. But we’re not worried about the dark today; we have the luxury of two nights in the same place. We carry only daypacks as we walk through the streets and squares of Shaxi to the outskirts beyond.
Up the road and through a small village, we find our trail to the ridgeline. Our breath steaming in the morning air, we ascend through pine forest. Two old women descend our trail with overloaded baskets of firewood on their backs. Below us, a haze of white smoke from morning coal fires blanketed the villages of the wide valley.
This story is the continuation of a series that begins here.
Hidden in the rippling hills are shrines, temples, and painted grottoes. Giant Buddhas and ancestor gods peer out from behind screened-off caves. Monuments and small deities line the path. Wooden gazebos make perfect rest points as the sun grows hot over the scrub pines.
Our morning’s loop returns by a river valley back to the small village. In the square, the temple to the town gods is filled with old men and women sitting in the shade. Two tables of men slap down mahjong tiles, flipping out playing cards as bet counters, cigarette smoke curling around their faces. Everyone else watches and gossips from long benches.
The village park has public exercise equipment, built of the same metals you might see on a playground but shaped as elliptical runners: arm strengtheners, weights-free weight machines. Jon tries an arm-pull one, and a tiny old lady, face dark brown from years of sun, emerges from her house. She approves of Jon’s effort with a big smile, a stream of words, and a thumbs up.
We return to Shaxi for lunch. This area is famous for the excellent cooking of the Muslim Hui people, so we seek out a place with pictures of minarets on the walls. Butchered beef hangs from a rack on the floor. We order, as usual, by pointing at vegetables in the glass refrigerator case. Food arrives: Yunnan mushrooms, tender and buttery. Oyster mushrooms; minced beef with green onions; green pumpkin shredded, blanched, and stir fried; peas in flat pods cooked with flaky rounds of roasted red chilies.
Restored, we walk south to our second trail of the day: a section of the Tea-horse Road, also known as the Southern Silk Road.
Our road out of Shaxi follows the river. Reaching a town downstream, we follow the sound of drums and bells. It’s villagers, singing prayers to their ancestors in the temple to the town gods. In the courtyard by the temple, all the aging population of the village are playing mahjong clustered in groups by gender, just as in the village this morning. A tiny old woman with a brown face and wispy white hair licks her lips and smiles hugely as she collects her winnings.
Down the road, a much bigger temple is being restored. We wander through, over newly-laid wires and past locals spreading cement.
Jon has been practicing his Mandarin on every person we pass. “Xia wu hao,” he calls out to a little girl who is holding her father’s hand. Good afternoon. The girl giggles and looks at her dad. “Xia wu hao,” she pronounces, carefully copying Jon’s tone. She giggles again.
We turn off of the main road and onto a path. This used to be the pass, back when this was a major trade route. It’s hard to imagine this dusty trail as significant; it seems just like any other. A goat herder lounges in the grass, tapping at his smartphone while goats stand on their hind legs to nibble eucalyptus trees.
We wind along the path into the valley until the sun dips behind the hills, then turn back. The goats and herder are now on the road. An old man with two remaining teeth is taking a cow home. He smiles and waves a green pumpkin at us, and says a lot of mumbling things which sound friendly but which no one understands.
Our route back deviates through a town, where we come across three junior high-aged boys playing basketball on a half court. As we draw closer, we see why: the basketball court has been appropriated for drying corn kernels. They’re spread in a yellow sea across most of the court. A man is sweeping them into a pile.
“Wo men wan ma?” I ask: Can we play? Rick, Jon and I approach the boys. Rick decides teams, pointing at himself and two of the boys. Jon and I get the hotshot player on our team because neither of us is any good. Rick and Jon are head and shoulders taller than them, and I’m always open because none of them are sure how to guard a girl. I take endless shots that miss.
We’re surprisingly good as a team; I catch the rebounds from our teammate’s missed shots, and pass to Jon when Rick guards me. Two more boys, older join in, and now there’s a lot of slipping on corn; boys fall in corn piles on the basketball court. We play until Ert calls time, then resume our walk back to Shaxi.
A cluster of little boys along the road chorus “Hello!” to us and giggle, holding each other’s arms. Jon calls out, “Wu shang hao!” Good evening!
Back at the guesthouse, the courtyard glows with the pink light of sunset. The moon is up behind the curve of the tiled roof, pure white and waxing gibbous. I sit, drinking tea, and write.
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