Mr Jiao, the chieftain of the Yi village, wants to have dinner with us to discuss the shooting tomorrow. I dread these occasions, but it goes very well. He turns up wearing a regulation issue tribal nylon anorak, brings his big brother, who is the designated driver. Our own driver, unlike the sullen anti-socials we have had before, joins the talk (a huge benefit having another Mandarin speaker at the table), and they are clearly pleased with the attention they are getting. The chief is a small, small man with dark brown skin, more Burmese than Chinese, and with a high-pitched voice that could easily be mistaken for a woman’s. He will be interpreting for me, because his mother-in-law, who is the hemp spinner, only speaks Yi, an antiquated version of Chinese that sounds like someone throwing a pot of alphabet soup down some stairs.

The food is Chinese, but recognisably distinct – lantern-shadow beef, fried squid, a soup of river fish and mountain greens. Mr Jiao orders a bottle of Damaijiu, a local malt firewater that is supposedly 45% proof, and from which the crew recoil in terror. It is smooth and tasty, like vodka, and between us we down the whole (small) bottle until he is red-faced and giggly.

Our director looks Chinese, but she grew up speaking Teochew and Malay, and her Mandarin is understandable but error-riddled, such that if she gets tipsy she sounds like the policeman in Allo Allo. On the last shoot, she apparently mixed up her vowels so much that she ended up wishing a departing artist “a trip in which you suffer from permanent influenza.” Our fixer pleads with her not to open her mouth at all. Tonight at dinner with the village chief, she realised that he was making his own personal documentary about his tribe’s way of life, and offered to share with him whatever drone footage we got tomorrow. However, owing to some chance mispronunciations, she ended up saying: “And tomorrow, if you like, we will masturbate all over your village.” I thought he was going to spit out his tea.

But he seems nice enough, and toasts me with a story of his international friends. “You are only the third English person I have ever met,” he says to me. “The second was an ethnomusicologist who came to study our songs. And the first was Margaret Thatcher, your Iron Lady.” Apparently, she came to see some sort of ethnic dance he was in many years ago.

Today we are shooting the collection of wild huocao, literally fire-grass, i.e. tinder. It looks like a white-backed dock leaf, and forms the weft of their traditional clothing. The warp is hemp, which we will also have to harvest.

Mr Jiao has assured us that collecting the huocao is a two-man job. But by the time we set out, we have somehow acquired a dozen Bai Yi women in black wimples and blue tabards, clutching baskets and giggling at the thought of being on telly. The director is ready to blow a gasket, because she knows what will happen next. The Yi women’s love of telly will proceed in inverse proportion to the amount of time they are to stand there, no there, no over here, no, please be quiet. Nobody say anything; please stop moving; go and do that thing again; now go and do it over there. Only one of them actually speaks Mandarin; the rest only speak Yi, which means all the spoken directions wander at a leisurely pace through several stages of Chinese whispers, and are often countermanded before they reach the last in line.

Meanwhile, two men, wearing traditional hemp clothes over their tracksuits, burst into song on the mountainside. It’s a yodelling song, about how happy one is collecting huocao, wondering if there is anyone else on the mountainside of the opposite sex, who wishes to sing a refrain in response. It’s all very idyllic for about ten seconds, but then the women’s refrain drifts up as well, ruining the immediate sound recording. We go for another take, but now the men are singing in response to the women, and by the time we have shut them up, the women are singing back. This medieval tinder hook-up continues until it starts to rain, but Alvin the cameraman grabs some footage of the women puttering around in the grass, and of them trying to teach me their song with comedy clumsiness.

Gwyneth, my name for the only woman who speaks Chinese, is determined to stand close by, because she is the one who can show me what huocao is. Meanwhile, a cowherd wanders across the back of the shot with clanging cowbells. The director is starting to regret ever saying that she was looking forward to shooting in the countryside, since there is soon just as much noise pollution as in a built-up urban area, except here we are also hot and clammy with mosquito repellent and sun lotion, and there is nowhere to have a piss. You would think there would be handy bushes everywhere, but behind every one is a black-wimpled woman in a blue tabard, singing a song about grass.

Dinner is back at their quaint farmhouse, sitting on benches in the courtyard. The women eat separately, chattering in Yi about whether or not this will make them famous. The men dish out the Damaijiu malt firewater, and serve Yunnan food – succulent local ham, chicken and garlic, pumpkins and potatoes, and punguent home-made pickles. A sullen two-year-old boy wanders between the tables, gnawing balefully on a chicken’s head. He’s teething, explains his mother, and the beak is good for him.

“I can’t help but notice,” I say, “that your tribe is called the Bai Yi, meaning ‘white clothed’, but everybody’s wearing blue.”

“Ah yes,” says Mr Jiao brightly, “making the white clothes is such a faff, we can’t be arsed any more.”

Jonathan Clements is the author of A Brief History of China. These events appeared in Route Awakening S02E04 (2016).