Moni-what?

The literal meaning to Monihei has been translated as Touch you black, my original understanding of what Monihei without the tone markers was that it might have been Rub black mud with the mud and the black switched. Initially, I head of Monihei through Sophie, my Chinese postmate when we were debating places to go for May break. The only problem was that we were never concisely told when exactly May break was. I remembered dimly that when I studied abroad in Beijing in 2007 that May break was long enough so that a group of us could go to Xian and back. Those terracotta soldiers always seemed more exciting when they’re in the midst of an illegal smuggling action Tomb-Raider style heist, rather than sitting in a warehouse in the middle of a shopping complex.

Xian 2007.

After Sophie introduced the idea of Monihei – but I didn’t even consider it truly because I was under the impression that we would have somewhere along the lines of a week’s break and expanded my travel scope accordingly. Guilin? Beijing? Xian? Chengdu? All of that lay dormantly on the table as I realized I still have no idea when my actual holiday was.

We waited slowly, until the Sunday of last week when noticed arrived to our neighboring school, Maolan. Lucas informed me that it would be three days’ break – and in China that actually means the weekend plus one day.

Boo. Extended plans – out the window. Cangyuan and Monihei demanded a closer look. My understanding of Monihei was that it was a mud flinging festival similar to another holiday that we had just celebrated – Poshuijie  - the water flinging festival where you were allowed to douse anyone anywhere with buckets of water – definitely not safe, especially how the Chinese people do it. Still high on my indiscriminate water fight with various villagers and children, I had a feeling that only good things could come from indiscriminate mud fighting.

My imagination expanded as I began to do research. Monihei had been previously attended by an American and her boyfriend from Kunming. A travel company had wanted to raise exposure of the mud festival and wanted to invite some high profile white people to attend. They went, they had a great time, and their experience gave me some prospective on what to expect – how the mud was stored, how the festival would take place – on a field… I rounded up the fellows and with Laura’s help, we took a minibus that held 10 down to Cangyuan, a city super close to the Chinese – Burmese border. Nine am departure on Saturday with a Monday night return – what could go wrong?

The ten of us!