Photos at Last

Finally, pictures are up and available on our website. It took a little while of needing to get some distance from them before I could go through them objectively but now I'm at a nostalgic point where I look at them and wish I had more time back there.

Looking back, I wish I had taken more pictures of ordinary city scenes and street life. It's also pretty frustrating that there some of the foggy pictures are affected by gunk on the camera sensor (a problem with digital SLRs), but really perhaps I just wish that the visibility hadn't so often been poor.

http://www.killeburns.com/pics/china07/

Denouement: Hawaii and Home

I've been back at home for three days now, trying to catch up on my affairs and jetlag. The days have flown by without seeming like I'm either getting much done or having time to relax. It feels weirdly like we've never been gone, and the immediacy of our travels is fading quickly.

Unfortunately, Hawaii wasn't entirely relaxing decompression that we'd hoped for. I spent the first two days sleeping constantly, and the next four with a constant fever--one last souvenir from Asia.

Much of that time we were on Molokai, where there isn't actually much to do anyway. Eventually I felt well enough that we could drive around the island and look at the pretty sites. On the last day we did the classic tourist activity of riding mules down the cliffside to the old leper colony; that was quite nice. I really liked Molokai in the end. It was the friendliest, mellowest place I've been in the islands; it felt like what the rest of Hawaii is supposed to be like, and perhaps was like fifty years ago.

Anyway, we're back now and trying to figure out what to do with ourselves. I'm likely going to help move a boat up to Washington this weekend, possibly Tara and I will meet up in Seattle/Victoria for a few days. Later in May, my kyudo group is doing a multi-day archery+zen retreat up in Sonoma. Perhaps we'll do some camping, I dunno yet.

I presuming that now that most of the action is in the past tense, there won't be a ton of readership staying on the edge of their seats. But I will post here when photos finally get up (I've got about a thousand), I might write some more about China for my own amusement, and I might tell continuing unemployment travel stories.

Eastern Capital

After all the stress of China, and as worn out as we were, Tokyo was a real joy--a literal breath of fresh air.

Everything that is intimidating and alien about Japan really just felt like a piece of cake after so much other Asian travel. It was very easy to feel at home there between the comforting first-world facilities and the structured politeness of everyone there.

That politeness is really fascinating; it's a scripted drama, and as long as you play your role (oafish barbarian, but not too rude) within the correct boundaries, everybody is comfortable and happy. But, I'd been craving mannered classiness for so long, that I rather loved it.

From all I'd heard about Tokyo, I wasn't sure I was going to be that wild about it; it's not the historic face of Japan that I'm more interested in touring to be sure. But in the end I was pretty charmed by the way it is a confederation of many neighborhoods rather than a concentric downtown focused city.

I also was very insistent that I got my museum fix Tokyo National Museum, after the fine-arts museum drought in China. And it turned out they actually have quite an impressive Chinese art collection--I kept wondering just how they managed to collect some of those pieces...

Even with only three days in town, we wanted to get out into the countryside. So we took a day trip to Nikko, a shrine complex 2 hours out of Tokyo where the first Tokugawa Shogun was buried. Unfortunately, when we got there it started pouring; I can't really complain too much since it was only our second truly rainy day in five weeks. But it did really force our hand; we had no choice but to have a two hour kaiseki lunch at a local traditional restaurant. That lunch, and in fact the whole day at NIkko was a wonderful experience. Even with the rain, Nikko was lovely with the lavish temples towering sugi trees (Japan's answer to redwoods). Even if Tokyo had been miserable, the trip through Japan would've been worth it for that one day.

But still, I'm not wishing that I'd done more of the trip in Japan rather than China. After this little teaser visit to Japan, I'm much more excited to go back on another trip to the Kyoto/Nara/Osaka area. But for this trip, I wanted to get much further off the beaten path and push my limits. Plus, in some sense I wanted to see China because it is really the cultural source with a deeper history (where it hasn't been destroyed), its changing so fast right now, and the scenery is much grander--at least where I went. Plus, China has all that at low, low prices.

Concrete Reality

The first real feeling I got walking around Beijing was how easy being there is compared to other places we'd seen. On a simple level, everybody is used to foreigners there and they've gotten over yelling at you. More generally, it is cosmopolitan enough that you can feel that comforting anonymity one gets walking around any big city.

The second major realization is that, in general, everything in Beijing is massive and dull. The tourist agenda that covers imperial history is intellectually very interesting, but not aesthetically engaging at all. The rest of the tourist highlights seem to be mainly of interest to travelers who are not seeing any other parts of China.

In the end, Beijing was a bit of a letdown after everything we've seen. This is especially true since they go out of their way to redevelop any place with charm; for example, we wanted to go to lunch in the famous Qianmen district one day, and discovered that every single building on the main street--for a mile--had been knocked down.

The Forbidden City (and especially Tiananmen Square) are big and impressive but not pretty or pleasant by any stretch of the imagination. Everything looks like a big sterile parade ground; all the opulence exists as a display of wealth and power rather than a desire for luxury.

But after all we'd been doing, it was nice that being there was so easy. We really enjoyed the emotional rest. Unfortunately, Tara became quite ill and had to stay in bed for a day or so. Because of that we ended up really keeping a light (for us) schedule.

Our visit was greatly improved by the fact that I connected with a friend from my kyudo (archery) class who is spending the year in Beijing. He showed us around to some nice parts of town and was able to give us a lot of back-story on imperial history that made much of what we saw in town make more sense. He also took us to a truly fine Peking Duck restaurant.

We had been hoping that at least we'd be able to do some shopping in Beijing for obligatory souvenirs and whatnot. But it was as disappointing as the rest of China. Even though everything in the world is made there, it turns out that there isn't actually anything worth buying in China. Handicrafts, art, and antiques are all in short supply. It's just like going to Chinatown in San Francisco and seeing that every single store has the same supply of ticky-tacky junk. It's a mystery, really.

I was also rather disappointed that I wasn't able to see much interesting art around town. The Palace Museum in the Forbidden City apparently has quite a collection, but they do not show it. I saw no good traditional painting at all, neither there nor anywhere else in China. Apparently Shanghai has a good museum, but nothing in the capital or anywhere else we traveled.

And we didn't even visit the Great Wall.

They Let Us Back in

We've just sleepily arrived at Tara's sister's place in Hawaii; so those of you following this blog to make sure we weren't run over by a bus in China (we're convinced the buses were out to kill us) can breathe.

In the next few days, I'll write up Beijing + Tokyo, fill back in some essays I've been meaning to write for weeks, and post some pictures.

Xi'an and on and out

We just completed a 2 day visit to the ancient capital of Xi'an, home to a famous battalion of pottery and some rather impressive walls (gotta keep the Huns out if the Great Wall fails, ya know?). Just as all the guide books say, they've really done a wonderful job of maintaining the ancient feel of the city interlaced with modern progress. The massive city walls hold their own against modern buildings.

Beyond that, despite being a hugely-hyped tourist draw, the Terracotta Warriors really were fascinating. I found you really could stare out at them and imagine how the ancient army must have looked and moved.

In fact, in that vein, the Provincial History Museum really had that effect on me as well. Their collection of ancient artifacts was spectacular. They had 3000 year old bronze pieces with barely any corrosion; the works were so pristine that you really could envision them in use and picture the culture that lived with them.

It amazes me how much more of a feeling of a culture you can get from a really excellent museum than from a standard hodge-podge of a collection--you know, like the Met or something. I had a similar experience with the Pergamom Museum in Berlin, but the ability to see such artifacts is few and far between in the US.

* * *

Unfortunately, our stay in Xi'an was shorter than we had planned and I would really have liked to have stayed another day; but here we are in Beijing. The major problem is that our visa expires on Tuesday, and extending it is much harder than we had anticipated. Basically, they want you to reapply for a visa and they hold your passport for a full week of processing. This does not mesh well with travelling; the idea of having to stay in the same city for a week--with no passport--is not appealing.

Beyond that, we're tired. Oh so tired. We've crossed four weeks now, and our ridiculous pace is taking its toll. So we've faced the decision of staying put in Beijing for a week of senseless bureaucracy, or leaving the country by Tuesday the 10th.

There is quite a lot we would still like to see in China, but we've pretty much hit all the major categories. There are more scenic and holy mountains to climb, more ancient Buddhist carvings to look at, many many more great cities to see (we skipped Shanghai and the entire East Coast for heaven's sake), and a lot more food to eat, but we've seen a broad swath of all of it in this inland-focused trip.

But yet, it would feel like defeat to come home from the trip early (at least in my ego-ridden mind), so we are staring down the dilemma in the only logical way.

We're gonna hit Hawaii on the way home.

Unfortunately, the only possible itinerary called for a 6 hour layover in Tokyo. So we're going to stretch that to a 78 hour layover (and I fear the price shock). After all, I don't have anything on my calendar until, oh, late May or so. For those of you keeping score, I think we get back now on April 23d or something.

Enter the Wu-Dang (36 Chambers)

Wudang Shan is a holy Taoist mountain famous for centuries as a religious retreat/fortress. It is more famous as the birthplace of the internal martial arts (like Tai Chi); it is parallel to Shaolin Mountain, which was the home of external, Buddhist martial arts. Thus, the priests of Wudang have become the kung-fu movie opponents of Shaolin monks; for this reason, a bunch of guys from Staten Island who watched too many kung fu movies named their rap group the Wu-Tang Clan.

Anyway, that background aside, I did not go to Wudang Shan on any kind of martial arts pilgramage. I didn't expect to see any martial arts; there are schools you can go to on the mountain to train, but that's not the kind of trip this is.

We went to the mountain because it's pretty hard to find any kind of living Taoism in China. There is Buddhism galore--and many of my favorite sites on this trip have been Buddhist--but very little Taoism. Wudang is a rare place that has intact 500 year old buildings. The mountain has also always been famous for its plant life.

Unfortunately, that plant life was rather obscured by piles of garbage and swarms of bored touts at every scenic lookout.

As an aside, it's seriously pretty sad that what will probably be the single most enduring memory that we have of China is the touts. They are not any more aggressive than in other poor countries, but they are everywhere. We can be on a mountain-side a mile from any road, and there are still people selling crap every hundred feet or so. And rather than stand quietly, every single one yells "HALLOO" and steps in your path. Every time. It's really passed our tolerance ever since we realized that Chinese people in general don't say hello as a greeting, but rather as a bizarre way to make fun of foreigners.

Aaanyway...the buildings were definitely worth visiting. One develops a fatigue of seeing yet another (usually reconstructed) 18-19th Century temple with polychrome statues. The generic Chinese temple is pretty cool at first, but they really are mostly very similar. The temples here, however do have some variation. Many of the buildings dated back to the Yuan Dynasty (Kublai Khan and sons) and were carved right into caves in the rock.

As for "living Taoism," it was there but what we saw didn't seem so lively. Taoism is pretty esoteric however, so it could just be there wasn't much to see on the surface. But I didn't get any feeling of religious depth there, just lots of pilgrims burning incense in front of idols and getting their fortunes told by priests. The older priests all had really cool beards though.

In answer to the many requests on the comments section last week, I believe that we did indeed find a shrine to Ol' Dirty Bastard. I couldn't read the label clearly, but the bad-ass looking statue flipping us the bird was obviously an homage to ODB. I promise that you'll agree when you see the picture.

Vacation from Vacation

So the cruise down the Yangtze River was really just a joy, despite the fact that the scenary was clearly the worse for the filling of the Three Gorges Dam (which is currently about 2/3 full).

It started out inauspiciously; we showed up in Chongqing (where the cruises start) at about 1pm, and immediately went to work on getting tickets. We could not, however, find anybody who would actually sell us tickets for that evening. In fact, we had the phone number for the company we ended up using, and the travel agents just plain refused to call it. But, after a few hours of running around in the heat with our baggage, we succeeded...but then were taken to the wrong dock...but then, then we finally showed up on the boat grouchily.

The boat we took was fancy fancy for China...and everthing on it was US run--and US　prices which took us some time to adjust to (25 yuan for a beer!! (=$3)). But it really was a haven from the maddness of the wild. We'd gotten so stressed out running around the countryside, that being able to just sit around and eat comfort food was perfect. It was also amusing to be a sheep in the guided tours for once on the shore excursions...maddeningly slow but yet so easy and relaxing.

In the end, one of the problems we have is that almost everybody in China we interact with is an uncultured peasant trying to sell us something (by screaming HELLOO in our faces) or sitting next to us on a bus. About the only people we talk to who are decent are hotel and restaurant staff. So I'd been dying for a touch of class, reactionary capitalist that I am; class was a victim of class warfare. Thus it was pretty nice to sit on a riverboat and drink some beer in the lounge while the river slides by.

As always, someday I'll share the pictures.

Ramble, Ramble

As always, I'm a bit pressed for time and bandwidth (the Internet is sloow out here in the sticks). So all of my overly clever, self-important essay ideas will have to wait longer.

Tonight we are in Dazu, famed for its Buddhist carvings in cliffside grottos. Things out here are old, that's for sure. And this part of the country is remote enough that it didn't get too badly Culturally Revolved. Oddly, out of the two major sets of carvings in the hillside, I far prefered the less popular one (both according to my tour book and the tourist hordes) while less vivid, was older and more thoughtful--and quieter.

Keeping with the theme of doing things entirely the wrong way, yesterday we did our all walking power-tourist thing at the Shunan Bamboo Sea. As near as I can tell, Chinese people don't hike unless it is to see a holy mountain, so the entire place was set up like a big driving-only national park. We had a car drop us at the front gate, and immediately dove into the woods along barely marked trails.

Of course, strictly speaking they aren't "woods." As the name might clue you in, the whole place is nothing but bamboo as far as the eye can see--as seen in House of Flying Daggers and other kung fu movies. After getting not-quite-lost for two hours, we had a nice lunch consisting mostly of bamboo (and weird, weird mushrooms). We then continued to walk along the roads and draw stares from cars and pestering from the endless touts.

Before that we were, as I'd said, mellowing out in the charming city of Zigong. My final impression ended up being a little different than the initial because at this point I'm really sick of how the locals out here in the country treat us. At one point we walked into a tea house, and I swear it was like when the new stranger enters into the saloon in a Western. The player piano stopped and everything--well, maybe not, but we got nasty, nasty looks from everybody and it was clear we should leave.

But that's okay, we're hoping to make a last minute booking on a cruise ship tomorrow, chill out on the river and then be in a fresh province.

Plus, while the food here is really, really good, it is about time for a change in sub-cuisine.

Spicy Sezchuan

Greetings from scenic Zigong; we're gloriously in the boondocks of Sichuan now.

I’ve gotten rather behind on my writing here, I have to say. This is partially because we‘ve been running around rather furiously， and partly because of trouble finding 'net access （very few computers when you sleep in mountain-side monestaries）. It's funny， I didn’t really have much to say about Yunnan; the province was beautiful, but it‘s a beauty that speaks for itself and must wait for pictures. But Sichuan seems to lend itself more to stories.

But I'll still start off giving the dry travel-list up to know so you know where we are coming from here in Sichuan. We started with an afternoon, a day, and a morning in Chengdu, the capital； during this time we walked around a lot of dull city， some lovely temples， and took a day trip to a touristy old-fashioned town. We then moved onto Emei Shan, a holy Buddhist mountain where we hiked around all the "wrong" parts （where crowds were）thinner and stayed in spartan rooms in temples for two nights. Then we went to see the worlds largest buddha statue at Leshan. Now we have taken the road less paved to Zigong--I’m saying that we‘ve left the beaten path for the heavily abused path （our "2.5 hour" bus trip today took 5 hours due to lack of pavement along the entire 120km road).

As I write, Tara is arranging for us to get a car to the Shunan Bamboo Sea for Tuesday. We are then planning to move on to Dazu， home of thousands of Buddhist carvings， and then to Chongqing to catch a boat down the Yangtze through the Three Gorges. And then...uh...maybe Wudang Shan (home of the Wu Tang Clan), then Xi'an (the old, old capital), then we'll see how much time we have left.

But right now, we are sitting in the business center of a nice hotel in this small and charming city. It's far enough out of the way that the act of white folks buying some buns was able to draw a crowd. Zigong was featured (I think) in the book "Salt" as the region where modern drilling techniques were invented centuries ago; the local salt museum was far more interesting than it sounds. There is also a noted dinosaur museum (in situ at the excavation) that we'll check out tomorrow.

But mostly I am enjoying this city because it is so much the opposite of major Chinese cities. It is small and walkable with old buildings, a riverside, and a thriving pedestrian market all jammed together. The air is breathable even. So we are going to unwind here for a day or two and enjoy the Sichuan food and the teahouses.

The Not-Quite-Roof of the World

The area around Lijiang, in Northwest Yunnan near the southeast corner of Tibet, is a flat valley ringed by mountains. It looks like a normal Sierra scale of valley and mountains until you realize that the valley is at 7000 feet. This is pretty muc the "foothills" of the Himalayas.

Lijiang itself is an old town of the local Naxi tribe (who make lovely bread). In the early 90's, two thirds of it was leveled by an earthquake, and it was rebuilt as a sort of traditional-town-theme-park. Our first impression of it was undeniably poor. After an evening of flight delays and tangles, our cab driver dumped us in the main square and tried to fob us off an a porter who would take us to another hotel. It took us over an hour to orient ourselves with respect to the tangled warren of streets and find our hotel. It was 10pm when we then went into town for dinner; we found mobs of drunk Chinese tourists chanting at each other out of the windows of restaurants.

But in the morning, it was all much different. While most of the town feels phony it is still lovely. The endless tourist stores selling the same junk are weird, but it's all part of the game I suppose. And there was some surprisingly excellent coffee to be had.

But we weren't actually there for the town, despite its charms. The scenary is the real draw of Yunnan province. We decided that the best use of time after a day in town was to take a two day guided tour of Tiger Leaping Gorge.

The gorge is claimed to be the deepest in the world, this seems a little unfair to me: what I would call the gorge part (where the river has carved the walls) is no Grand Canyon, it just happens that the sides of the gorge merge right into some large mountains. But it is spectacular. It is also notable that the river there is the Yangtze--thousands of miles from the sea.

Unfortunately, the first day was a really gruelling hike up high along the mountain side above the gorge. There are many guesthouses and tea spots along the way (quite civilized), but we kept passing them in the evening and finally trudged into a hotel down by a round with aching knees just as the sun was setting. The next day was easier: we went down to the river for a short hike in the morning then came back to the hotel for tea. After that we were shuttled to the next part, and hiked down the canyon to an old ferry that took us across the river in an area where there are no bridges. We then had a liesurely late lunch and went back to town.

Tara I blew town and the crack of dawn (+2 hour flight delay) the next morning and are now in Sichuan.

Leaping Tiger, Hidden Troll

I'll continue with the regularly scheduled travel in a moment, but first there is a singular anecdote that ought to be told on its own.

So there we are, on a two day hiking trip through Tiger Leaping Gorge with six of us Westerners, one English speaking guide, and one "English speaking" guide. As we set out on our rather long trek, there are a few people skulking along behind us: two mule drivers hoping for our business and one ragtag guy in a beat up old army jacket. We had no idea what this guy was about, but he looked pretty disreputable and he kept following just behind us until we got to the really hard section of the trail a few hours later. At that point he ran on ahead of us.

When we get to the very top of the hill, right where the Gorge takes a turn, there he is again, slouched against a rock with a hand painted sign reading 9 yuan. There was a lookout point there, and he wanted us to pay him 9 yuan (about $1.10) to go there. The four of us there (two others were trailing behind with the English speaking guide) were pretty annoyed by this, and assumed that as scruffy as he was, he was basically a tourist bandit. The "English speaking" guide was pretty much no help and only managed to convey to us that he always was there and charged money.

Well, the German guy we were with had no truck with this, and went blithely on to the lookout point, took some pictures, came back and started to walk on. The scruffy guy went nuts and started following him and screaming. The guide did pretty much nothing and tried to avoid the whole situation.

We hadn't believed that this guy was legit to begin with, but his behavior really convinced us that it was all a scam. Actually, our English speaking guide later told us that he was a government representative and it was all official. But I'm still having trouble believing that in this modern suck-up-to-tourists China. But that's irrelevant, because that guide was nowhere to be seen.

Being that the crazy toll-taker was off down the trail anyway, Tara and I walked down to the lookout point. And, you know, it really was a fantastic view. I might have even been willing to pay for it.

When we walked back up to the main trail, there he was again. And this time he had put a barrier across the trail--basically a small log supported at waist height. He was mad, and was going to get it over on us. So it boiled down to this: we were being compelled to pay in order to pass. There was a barrier in place and a bully was leering and trying to intimidate us into give him our money. It was the old troll scenario.

This really pissed me off and in an instant of ill considered anger, I picked up the barrier and threw it off of the side of the trail.

He certainly hadn't seen that coming. And he went totally apeshit. The guy ran back to the main trail, climbed up some steps, and picked up two good sized rocks. He stood there, blocking the path, screaming, and threatening to pummel me with rocks. I just stood there staring at him waiting; my intuition told me that this was still all theater and he wasn't actually going to try to break my head.

At this time, the competent guide had just shown up with the last trailing hiker. He ran up and tried to intervene and calm the guy down. But the troll (or maybe gnome) just kept getting angrier and angrier. The guides were holding him now, but he moved forward and got right in my face (he was up on a foot high step), and grabbed on to my camera strap trying to pull me in tight.

This was a knife edge point for me. So often in the martial arts, we practice a technique off of a grab to the chest; I'm always told that nobody will ever attack you like that in the real world but it's just a good way to train. But there I was, grabbed by a screaming maniac who had a rock in his other hand, the perfect scenario. And I came so, so close to making a fight out of it. But thankfully, wisdom prevailed and I calmly waited for my paid proxies (guides) to sort it out for me.

This bizzare deadlock continued with more screaming in Chinese for a few more minutes until he finally let us go. Who knows what the guides told him. I don't think he was paid for either me or the German. We just walked on. I felt like a total schmuck, and had that bitter metalic post-adreneline taste in my mouth for a while.

In the end, I really don't know why I tossed the barrier. I'm not a violent or angry person usually. The only time I ever lash out, it is completely instinctual. I was in a literal sense cornered (it was him or a cliff) and on a primal level there was no question of accepting that. Tara made the comment that after ten years with me, she was totally shocked--I replied that she had never seen somebody try to intimidate me like that.

I'd love to know whether there was any upshot to this afterwards. As I said, in the new almost-Olympics China, tourism is a big deal and this is a major tourist attraction. Having an obviously down-and-out man as a toll taker seems really weird; I'd expect it in the past perhaps, but it seems out of place now. I would think that a scummy toll taker who has assaulted Western tourists would really be a position the government would reconsider.

I realize that this is his job, and it's how he eats. I feel a little guilty for wishing him ill, but he was really wild. A woman on the trip told me that I was wrong to make him lose face, but she seemed less concerned about the assault angle. So this is my "ugly American" moment.

Westwards and Upwards

It's been a few days of travelling around and some grouchiness--none
of which make for exciting writing.

We left Guilin on a morning train to Nanning and the caught an
afternoon-overnight train to Kunming in Yunnan. It is very clear that
the trains in China are designed to move a maximum amount of people
from place to place rather than to conform to any idea of "civilized."
The first leg was noisy and we were packed in tight into seats that
didn't fit me well; we even had to sit across the aisle from each
other and neither of us were able to look out the window and the
marvelous scenery. Of course, there were a few practically empty cars
in the front.

As an interlude, we loaded up on tropical fruit at Nanning.
Apparently, their longans are famous. Personally, I've liked the
rambutans best this trip.

On the next leg we were in soft sleeper which, while still low on
luxury and privacy, was good for scenery looking--many nice pictures
were taken. Tara slept poorly, so when we got to Kunming we
immediately checked into our hotel and slept for a few hours.

We then had a nice day wandering around the city, which our guidebook
describes as the Seattle of China. And the sun was finally
shining--and burning us. However, our guidebook turned out to be
woefully behind the times (published 18 months ago).

Everything in China is changing at an incredible pace. Restaurants
and bus stations move and every time the book says "2 flights a week"
it turns out there are now 2 a day. Unfortunately it turned out that
Kunming's old muslim quarter was mostly missing now--3/4 of it has
been cleared to build luxury apartments. At least we still got a
tasty meal in the remainder.

As is our style, we hiked way too far around town and saw some parks
and a lovely Buddhist temple. One of these days, I'm going to go back
in and fill some photos back in these essays.

The next day I was feeling ill and we were pretty lazy until our
evening flight to Lijiang, up at the edge of the Himalayas. But
that's for the next story.

Spectral Traveling

One of the weird things about traveling in a country where you can't speak the language is that you feel a bit like a ghost, passing through without being able to communicate or interact with those around you. That feeling is, of course, incompatible with the fact that I also feel like a bit of a spectacle at times, but never mind that. There is still that very frustrating feeling that in such a social culture, we are only ever seeing the veneer of things as we float by.

While it has been easier to get around without language than I expected, trying to communicate with phrases has in general been much harder than I thought it would be. Since we are not travelling with somebody who can speak Chinese, we don't have anybody to help correct our atrocious pronunciation. As a general rule, nobody ever understands anything we try to say from the phrase book. Without any toehold in the language, it has been difficult to even learn simple things, so we have almost given up trying.

Instead, we travel around like a pair of deaf-mutes. We point and gesture whenever possible, and get a lot of mileage out of holding up pieces of paper with Chinese characters written on them. Some combination of gesturing, pointing at characters in a phrase book, and trusting people not to screw you seems to be enough to get by rather well.

Actually, rather than a true phrase book, the best aid we brought is a little "Point It" book that is nothing but a collection of big-type characters, and occasionally pictures, to point at when you need something. I'm also trying to learn a few characters every day since that sticks in my head a lot better than spoken word.

I suppose that Tara's previously mentioned knitting-connection struck me so much because it felt like we were suddenly materialized into the real world. The communication with the women was by gesture and a few simple phrases (mostly they would point at the yarn and say "how much?") but it was enough to get a sense of feeling back and forth. Every once in a while, one of the women would turn towards me, smile, and give me the thumbs up.

Gesture based communication is why all travelers love street food so much, you might not know exactly what you are getting when you point at something, but at least you know what it looks like. The vendor then holds up fingers for the price, and you have completed a whole transaction in silence.

Even better was a concept-restaurant in Guilin called Aunt. It was kind of like dim-sum in reverse. When you sat down in the place, you were handed a card. You then went up to a huge bank of chef's stations that had sample dishes placed in front of them; after pointing at a dish, they stamped the card and the item was magically at your table within a few minutes. Even beyond the fact that it avoided the language barrier, it was a really fun way to eat. Seeing the ingredients prepared gives you much more information than a one-line menu description ever can; I probably wouldn't have ordered the bamboo shoots unless if I hadn't seen the preparation and that would most certainly have been a loss.

Really, this all isn't that big of a deal, but I sort of feel some bourgeoisie guilt for not trying harder to be a conscientious language-learning traveller rather than just another ignorant American abroad. Especially here in Yunnan, the backpacking Americans are not the stereotype one wants to aspire to. I suppose I'll just keep working on my characters and trying to become a literate deaf-mute.

Osmanthus

I had never heard of the osmanthus flower until about two years ago when I was ordering tea. The had osmanthus green tea listed as being like jasmine, when I looked it up I found it is a type of flowering olive prized for its fragrance. The tea was lovely and subtle, much more fragrant than jasmine but a bit weak.

The city of Guilin has a name that translates to Osmanthus Forest. Apparently in the Autumn, the whole city is redolent of the flower. We had no such luck, but we did have the local osmanthus tea, which was wonderful, especially when we were exhausted on a rainy afternoon.

Until we left Guanxi Province, we had yet to ever see the Chinese sun. We had come to Guilin for it's famous scenery, but couldn't actually see it when we arrived. So we walked around the river walk, climbed a mountain inside a palace (a rather impressively verticle rock) and had tea. The food around there is good at least.

The next day however, we figured that we'd make a go of doing the big tourist draw and took the cruise down the Li River amount the limestone cliffs and peaks. The rain and fog managed to lift enough to see the peaks and we had a lovely time. Unfortunately, until I can upload some pictures, words don't do it justice. I did however have some rather sweet osmanthus wine on the cruise.

The end of the cruise is the tourist village of Yangshou, we didn't have much time there and it wasn't really our scene. Yet, and the end of a lane, Tara saw some women knitting; she pulled out her own knitting to show them and literally fifteen women immediately mobbed her. They all wanted to touch her work, see how she knit, and what tools she used. The were fascinated by the patterns and cableing she was doing, having never seen such things knitted before. Even though we couldn't talk to most of them, with such a physcial activity it is easy to connect with others. Truly a you-can't-buy-this sort of an experience.

Guilin was really a lovely city that I expect will be mobbed with Western tourists in the next few years. There was even an article about it in the New York Times a few weeks ago. However, it was time to move on and we hopped on a train the next morning for Kunming, Yunnan.

Sunday is Dim Sum Day

I want to start off by saying that, in my unprofessional opinion, the best dim sum in San Francisco, Oakland, and Vancouver is on the level with Hong Kong. However, the little shops selling buns on the street in HK are a world away from little shops in SF. In fact, the most memorable piece of dim sum I had was a sublimely rich custard tart from a little shop next to our hotel (deep, deep in the Western District) right after we first got in.

Now, being in Hong Kong on a weekend, it was obvious that dim sum needed to be a priority. However, after getting in Thursday night, we wanted to skip town on Sunday because
a) HK just isn't much of a town for touring...what seems to be special about it is the people and the culture, which as tourons (tourist + moron) we weren't privy to
b) We were anxious to get on with our trip into Big China (expect a future post titled "Little Trouble in Big China. I think that will need to happen).
c) The weather sucked. Marine fog, yadda yadda, we couldn't take in any sights that required any literal seeing.

So Saturday was there, our intended plans were blown due to weather, so we figured it was big dim sum time; at home Saturday is a busy day for it second to Sunday. After wandering hungrily around some gardens, we descended into faceless connect mall land to go to supposedly the best dim sum in HK...we got there at 11am and found...nobody there at all in a creepily dead building. Totally confused by this, we decided that the can't-fail approach was to go to the fancy-shmancy place in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel (you know, the one that has obnoxious ads every week in the Economist). Man Wah takes dim sum to the high cuisine level. The dumplings were true delicacies; the tofu-skin wrapped goose liver was sublime. But, in the end, the delicate treatment killed the soul of the dim sum. The chaos, the carts, and the pointing at mystery items isn't just half the fun.

So there was hope then that we might make it to Guangzhou in time to have some there for the real experience, but that would have required a normal and swift approach to traveling. Actually, we might have been able to make it if we'd taken the 9am Sunday ferry to a distant suburb of Guangzhou, but that company didn't convince us that they were sufficiently close to the city to make it worth our while. We decided instead to go with the 10:40 ferry to a slightly-less-far suburb that has a brand new metro line. So we went and had some more dim-sum while waiting for that one; but nothing worth more than one sentence (although running clauses might be justified).

Of course, once we got out onto the water, most of what we could see was fog. Two and a half hours of fog with the occasional mind-bogglingly large container shipping port. I really wanted to get some idea of the industrialization of the Pearl River Delta. In many ways it didn't look that different from the San Francisco Bay up by Richmond (maybe it was the fog), but there was so much of it. The ships were fascinating as well; there were a lot of tiny rust buckets and minature container ships which presumably were used for transshipment up the river. The industrialization was also brought home by the two Australian guys sitting behind us discussing at length what color widgets should be on the doodads they were having manufactured; it made me proud to be unemployed.

Once we got to the end of our Conrad-free trip up the river (and I was so hopeful after my earlier Heart of Darkness cracks), we breezed through low key immigration and were shuffled onto a bus to get to the metro station we thought would be at the terminal. It's standard traveller kidnap; you can't communicate with the driver and hope that you can trust the people who put you there. But it was all good, and we got on the shiny new metro (with English announcements no less), went right under the city, and eventually emerged at the train station.

Pure chaos.

We'd wandered randomly in Kowloon markets and shopping malls, lost in mobs of hundreds on single sidewalks (I swear, all of Hong Kong is shopping malls), but this was another level. Hong Kong's chaos felt very organized; it was stressful to stop or think, but there was a sense of order and purpose. I think everyone in Hong Kong knew the rules and obeyed them. But Guangzhou's train station on a Sunday afternoon was an affront to my delicate senses.

It think the best example was the crosswalk on a six lane road across from the station. When the crossing light turned green, the flood of cars increased and we were all almost killed by a city bus. By the time we could walk, the light was red again so the pedestrians just had to block traffic.

So, we took the obvious solution and walked next door and bought plane tickets. We then went across the street to the city's Orchid Garden which were a serene oasis. The gardens we've seen over here are really lovely in general, and they had a formal tea service available at this one as well as orchids galore. It all was a good reminder after the chaos of just why we wanted to come here.

So after all that, we took the ridiculously long shuttle to the airport, sat around for a while, hopped in our first-class seats (all that was available; for $30 more) and flew to Guilin. Once we'd left first class, we humped our bags and checked into a backpaker's hostel. That's how we roll.

Hong Kong: Hard to Leave

So an idea I had in the last post was that I was not in the rhythm of
Hong Kong, and felt somewhat out of sync. Since then, Tara and I have
mostly just walked and walked, and walked some more. A great cure for
jetlag I suppose, but my dogs do hurt. But the one real joy I've
found here is just wandering into random places and seeing all the
stores and the crowds (there were blocks and blocks of industrial
hardware shops...just little storefronts selling nothing but springs
for example).

It indeed is the case that the colonial Hong Kong of myth is long
gone, except for the adorable double-decker trams (but not a rickshaw
in sight; horrors). Indeed, any time I see a barbarian (round-eye)
outside of a hotel or a suit, he or she seems very out of place.

Our one attempt at gentility was high tea, which was not the idyllic
patronising colonialism I'd hoped for. But the art museum across the
street was a joy (for a buck fifty no less).

What is worth seeing here is the Chinese side of things to be sure,
rather than the colonial. So we're thinking it's time to just cut out
and move into China proper.

However, I truly have found that Hong Kong is hard to leave. I'm
trying to get to Guilin (a 1.5 hour flight from here), and it's a real
pain. Sure, we could just buy a plane ticket from HK, but it'd be
about 3 times as expensive as a ticket on the other side of the border
would be. And nobody seems to be able to book me a ticket over there
right now because of the weekend and all. Meanwhile, we had
originally wanted to take a train, but they don't leave from here of
course, they leave from Shenzen (the border town) or Guangzhou (nee
Canton)...actually, the CITS (Communist International Tourist
Shufflers, or something) told me there are no trains from Guangzhou
this time of year, which is odd given that the tracks from Shenzen run
through there...but my real concern was that it isn't possible to buy
a ticket anywhere in HK less than 4 days in advance...it's like
there's a, umm, Chinese wall or something. But they told us we'd have
no problem getting a ticket on the spot; then again, I never believe a
bureaucrat who answers that quickly.

Anyway, standard travel whingeing aside, the point is that if they are
going to make it hard for us to leave town, we're going to one up them
and make it harder....the current plan is to ditch this town tomorrow
morning and take a ferry from here to the edge of Guangzhou, then a
subway into town, then perhaps some Dim Sum, then we'll see how much
trouble we've got ourselves into.

We're going up the river into the Heart of Darkness after all. Wait,
that still doesn't make sense. Anyway, after looking at a bunch of
ink paintings in the museum, I'm very excited to see the inspirations
at Guilin.

China Lite

After high-stress scrambling to try to keep the plants from dying and the house from falling down while we are gone, we managed to find our way on the flight go Hong Kong (with a little chutzpah to help how late we were for checking in).

We arrived late Thursday and discovered that we had a hotel problem, and vacancies were few...it seems that HK is not well suited to the sort of last-minute decision traveling we are looking for. I'm feeling off rythym, but then again I'm jetlagged. But we ended up at a decent place deep in no-English territory...at least the egg custard I had before bed and the congee for breakfast are good out there.

This morning we are just wandering trying to get the lay of the land. We got some forbidden (at home) mangosteens, and are going to wander our way up to the Peak later today.

But the real journey won't begin until we go up the river, to find Kurtz (wrong river...)

Context

As circumstances in life have flowed around, we've decided on rather short notice to go to China for six weeks.

All that we know for sure is that we will land in Hong Kong on March 8th, 2007 and will fly back out of Beijing on April 19th.
So in this time of course, we have to get to know the 3 big cities (HK, Shanghai, Beijing). And we can't miss the big tourist draws that look suspiciously like classical chinese landscape paintings (Guilin/Li River, Yangtze River/3 Gorges, and Huang Shan). And we really want to see the (relatively) unspoilt interior provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan. Oh, and we're told that Xi'an is "necessary" to see. This would, of course require a pace of travel that we could never keep up for a month and a half.

Since it is still winter in the North we are definitely planning to work our way up from the South, all the way down the Yangtze, then to the North over time. The thought as stands is to start in HK, either take the train to Guilin then fly to Yunnan or just skip it and fly straight to Yunnan, take the train to Sichuan through the mountains, take a cruise down the Yangtze from there, go to Shanghai via Huang Shan, the either go to Xi'an (thence to Beijing) or just straight to Beijing. I expect all of that to be jumbled and truncated as we go.

I actually really believe that the point of this trip is to be completely overwhelmed... it's supposed to be a punctuation between phases of my life.

Tara's mileage may vary.

--Spencer