It’s raining outside. I’m sitting on my upper bunk in a dimly-lit dorm and feeling the heat on my ass from the electric blanket while the rest are chatting outside. We’ve just finished having a barbeque for one of the girls’ birthday.

It’s my second night back in Shangri-la. This time as a volunteer at the Shangri-la Handicraft Centre; sponsored by the Yunnan Mountain Heritage Foundation (YMHF). The Shangri-la Handicraft Centre serves as a showcase for the work of local artisans.

It is a non-profit, community-based organization founded to promote projects which support local cultural heritage, handicrafts and eco-tourism in Diqing Prefecture, Yunnan. The Centre supports projects in the areas of handicraft development, preservation of cultural heritage, poverty alleviation and sustainable and ecologically balanced development.

Handicrafts are bought directly from local artisans and the Centre also provides them with ideas on making economically-viable products based on consumer demand, using traditional craftsmanship. The handicrafts can be purchased at the Centre’s store in Shangri-la old town.

The Centre also provides free English lessons for rural disadvantaged youths, which is one of their popular community service activities. In the summer months, they are kept busy each day with more than 100 students. There is a library-reading room opened in 2008 with a collection of English and Chinese books suitable for readers of all ages, ranging from picture books to classic novels to non-fiction and magazines. Besides that, they also have an arts program and movie screenings to help students improve their language skills. The Centre runs with the minimum profit gained from sales of the handicraft and their main source of manpower is from volunteers within China and abroad.

We stumbled upon a simple ‘classified’ looking for volunteers, posted in our guesthouse when we were here in April. Decided to pay the place a visit (took us a really long time to find it since the old town is a web of cobblestone alleyways). Enquired about the “job scope” of being a volunteer and it sounded like something I could do and still have fun at it.

A few weeks later, made some plans and decided that I would spend a month in Shangri-la volunteering while Ed is away. I’ve always wanted to do some voluntary work while traveling and this seemed like a great opportunity – I love Shangri-la for its quiet charm, I could improve my Chinese language skills while I’m here and do something that is beneficial to the local community.

I arrived in Shangri-la after a 1.5 hr direct flight from Lhasa after spending 10 days in Tibet. Took an illegal cab to the Centre and was greeted by the other volunteers who quickly made me feel at home. They immediately whisked me to my bed in the girls’ dorm, chit-chatted with the rest and took a quick tour of the place. It’s a traditional wooden building with the store in front, library at the back while the dorms and kitchen are on the 1^st floor. Small and homey.

I was then “briefed” of my actual job at the Centre. I will be giving English lessons to the more ‘advanced’ students whose English skills are higher so that I can better communicate with them (since my Mandarin is half-baked). Was also given the “ground rules” of staying at the Centre – A lady will cook lunch for us everyday (it’s free but each person will contribute 10 Yuan per week for basic household expenses), dinner is not provided hence everyone will take turns to buy and cook dinner according to a roster, and doors will be locked at 12am.

Currently, there are 6 volunteers: 2 girls from China, 2 girls from Macau, 1 guy from China and myself. It’s been going pretty good so far. I can communicate to the Macau girls in Cantonese while I practice my Mandarin with the rest. But all of them speak pretty basic English as well, so language barrier is not really a problem. However, they are pronouncing my name as “Yee Won” instead of “E-vonne”. Hmph! But that’s fine, better than being called “Ye-vo-neeee”.

This morning, the girls decided to hike up a hill which has a monastery at the top and a good aerial view of the entire Shangri-la. We spent a good 1.5hrs doing that, chit-chatting and camwhoring. Got to know the girls better!

In the afternoon, 3 of us went to the market to buy ingredients for the barbeque. We spent 3 hours buying stuffs! We were on a tight budget, so we were going back and forth between stalls to bargain and deciding what to buy. Ended up having loads of vegetables (cheap!), 9 chicken wings (meat is expensive!), some sauce and chilli powder, soft drinks and a big bag of charcoal which we had to carry all the way back (super heavy!).

Had a really hard time setting-up the fire since it was very windy but finally got the barbeque going. It ended up being a hot plate affair instead of a barbeque. Had a really good time!

I have not started giving out any English lessons yet. Pretty excited on one hand, but also worried at the same time. What if I can’t communicate with my students? Yikes! We’ll see how it goes. Wish me luck!