Lugu Lake

April 17: Long drive today to Lugu Lake. Most of the day was spent in the bus and I haven't really met my host family yet. The village is very beautiful and the drive in, through five mountains, was gorgeous, although very twisty and bumpy. The lake is large and clear and I think I will like it here. The people who live here, the Mosuo ren, practice walking marriage. In a nutshell, children are raised by their aunts and uncles, without knowing who their father. The fathers live in their own mother's house, raising their sister's children, and visiting their lovers at night.

April 18: Interesting dinner tonight with my host family - women sat on the left and served the men, who sat on the right. There was a Buddhist priest who stopped by and sat on the women's side. Interesting. I put some food on the shrine before eating, as a sign of respect towards their practices. It seemed to be appreciated. Throughout dinner, people just came in and out and left when they finished eating. I ate a lot and it was good. One dish that went untouched all night was a bowl of fried fish, perhaps four inches long and an inch and a half in diameter at their thickest point. Nobody touched them till the very end, when one man, who seemed to be a family member, took one and ate it hot dog style, chewing the whole thing down, head first. He ate the jaw bones, the brain, the eyes, the scales, even the tail fin, everything. I watched to see if he would spit any bones, but he did not. Very cool.

Earlier in the day we also visited a family for awhile that had many sons, but no daughters. Apparently, it will be acceptable for one of the sons to perpetuate the family by marrying one or more women and bringing them into the household. It seems that the walking marriage system has some built in flexibility for such situations. How strange from a Western perspective to think of a family dying out because there were too many sons, and not enough daughters! The sons in this particular family also do whatever it takes to sustain the family economically - they give rides to tourists, and fish when there is no tourism-related work.

April 19: A hike today through some

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