holy shit, my proxy actually worked for blogger...

i've been listening to tom waits’ newest album. My is very like. seems appropriate for chongqing fall weather, sitting in my poorly-lit apartment, looking out on a wet city, feeling slightly unsettled, writing about stuff that doesn’t matter, except for the sake of posterity. 

And the growly man sings.

My next hospital anecdote is written in present tense, but I actually wrote this a few weeks ago, when I was sick—which is not to say I’m not still producing some juicy coughs (I am…). I don’t think the exact day of any of this matters so much. The “when” of hospital anecdotes set in china is never important, I don’t think.

Home sick, sipping on some ‘tussin. Yes, they have robitussin in china. And god bless it. My body feels simultaneously light and heavy. I might levitate. Or gravitate…towards a recap of today’s hospital fun.

I’ve been feeling like shit since the end of September. First it was allergies, then it morphed into cold and never left. the lingering chongqing cough I’ve heard so much about. I believe jules decided last year that her indian name was “lingering cough.” I understand that now. I want a cool indian name, or at least an applicable one.

I’ve been to the hospital in china (of my own accord) twice in 4 years. I went today, hoping for confirmation that something was wrong with me, besides stress, exhaustion and classes of 3-4 year olds. When you think about it, that could be a very real source of some bona fide illness. I’ve seen some crazy fluids come out of my students. Yikes.

I spent most of last night awake, coughing up phlegm, so I thought it wouldn’t hurt to go to the hospital. Except that going to the hospital is a nightmare that I’m sure many foreigners ‘round these parts—with their snobby requisites of hot water and hand soap—can attest to. Here’s how my routine visit went when I, a foreigner in china who is not well-versed in medical vocabulary, required the aid of a Chinese member of staff.

Said staff member and I walked to the hospital in the rain. The last time I was sick—sometime in the summer…migraine—I walked home from school. i am convinced that I actually hallucinated during this rather unpleasant uphill walk. I remember that I tried to go to the hospital, but there was no one around to take me, unless I waited at the children’s school in which I work for an hour and a half. Migraine + sea of screaming children = shitty.

There’s just not the sense of urgency or helpfulness that would accompany a doctor visit back home, probably because health care is so easy to come by here. very very strange. It definitely has trade-offs, but Chinese people go get an iv drip for every sort of ailment. Going to see a doctor is so routine for people, so they get really confused by how resistant foreigners are to go to the hospital when they’ve got the smallest problem.

I think I had insurance back home for about 2 years of my adult life, when I lived in texas and had a “real” job, so it’s so novel to me to imagine getting a uti here or a really bad cold and how easy it is to just go get helped, for 20 rmb or so, as opposed to the upwards of $100 that it was the last time I had any issues back home and was uninsured.

Yes, so today I walked in the rain to the hospital. The jiangbei hospital of traditional Chinese medicine. Great. there’s a former doctor from Australia who works in my school. every time I mention anything about Chinese medicine he just gets this knowing smile on his face, as if to say “that’s total bullshit.” I take comfort in semi-confirmed suspicions.

Anyhoo, once there, I was ushered to a window to pay for a ticket to see the doctor. Just like at a carnival! Yay! So she and the local member of staff talked about me being a foreigner and how novel that was (yes, we alien beings get sick, too). She looked at my throat, checked my heart rate, checked the antibiotics that the pharmacist had given me earlier—over the counter! Nice perk there, aside from it all being prescribed through a translator on my phone. But she said it was fine, and I trusted her, given her position as a doctor at a Chinese medical facility.

At this point I was marveling at how fast this was all going. Next stop: blood draw. This was where I had that “oh yeah, china can be fucking gross” moment. My first Chinese hospital experience, however many years ago, was pretty sobering, because it really was like being in a train station. I’ve gotten used to that a bit more—as far as general cleanliness of facilities—but I still struggle to come to grips with body fluids and things I don’t think I should come into contact with. Case in point: the blood draw window. It really is just like a ticket window or something at the bank with a sneeze shield. You stick your arm under and a doctor on the other side draws your blood. I can appreciate a sneeze shield, provided there’s not blood coagulated on it and the surface on which I rest my arm. But there was. So all this efficiency comes at a price.

But the results are fast. I walked to the hospital, got a blood test and a prescription, took a taxi home and it took less than an hour. That’s crazy. And because I’d purchased some strong medicine before the hospital visit, the only prescription was “drink more water and take vitamin c.” I laughed. If I’d been told to drink green tea I think I might have punched someone…

In other news…I saw a guy washing his dentures in the public water fountain outside the luxury shopping mall in which my school resides. He was a worker type, an older guy wearing a uniform. As I got closer to him, I could see him hunched over the fountain, and I thought I saw teeth, then I thought that was highly unlikely. But as I passed, sure enough, he was rinsing his teeth—the lower set of bright pink gums and shiny white teeth air drying as he washed the uppers. To be fair, I’ve never seen anyone actually drink from those fountains, pristine and shiny as they may be. I think as a general rule of thumb, if you can avoid sharing public facilities with the public in china, do it. hard to do, I know, in my city of upwards of 30 million peeps, but worth the effort.

Busy days at school these past few weeks. We had the grand opening of school 3 here in the chonx. Which meant lots of potential new students, a chef station (chocolate chip cookies with 8 year olds. Fun times…), and general chaos. But it was good. It’ll be interesting to watch a new school grow over a year, from 0 students to whatever the target is. it’s cool, too, because it’s so big. To see a whole hallway of classrooms that have yet to be tainted by the students who will eventually occupy them.

There was also Halloween (at least at school), which came together very hastily, but there were so many kids in the school making masks or skeletons out of q-tips. Let’s just say that a lot of q-tips and paper were/was sacrificed for the sake of our Halloween merriment. Pretty cute to see a room of 3-4 year olds with costumes on, including one tiny little guy with a groucho marx glasses set.

By the end of Saturday I desperately needed an adult beverage. You can only teach kids “zombie” and mime eating brains so many times in one day. I learned that over the weekend.

There was a costume party at the only bar I ever actually go to, so I had the brilliant idea of being “america’s next top modal.” I thought it was funny, but I think everyone else just thought I’d misspelled model. I wore slutty shoes, a shitload of makeup, very short shorts (actually, a “romper”. Yup, romper), stickers with modal verbs all over them and a sash. I thoroughly entertained myself, and looked like a whore while doing it, so that’s always a plus. All the while confusing everyone else. Jules and rory were the white stripes. She wore a tiny hat. He wore suspenders. They looked r-ad.

I’m drying approximately 30 roses in my apartment. Yes, 30. This is not a statement I would have thought I’d ever write. I can count the number of times I’ve received flowers in my life on one hand. I think at least one of those times the provider of said flowers was coerced into buying them.

There are several street food stands out in front of my apartment complex. They get pretty rowdy after 10 at night. me and the peeps went there a while ago. Sesame garlic cucumbers, garlic beans, peanuts and cheap beer. when it’s not raining, this is perfect weather for outdoor beer sipping and snack consumption. This was one of the good nights.

So we sat around for a while, drinking and people watching. A large group of moderately to very drunk folks came to sit down at a table near us. We quickly became their foreign friends and were invited to drink with them. At least one of them was some chief of police type and was very very drunk. I think he ended up kissing pictures of julie’s students on her camera. He also had very bad breath. No matter. We did a lot of drinking with them, out of bowls. It was quite ceremonious. This other particularly drunk fellow had taken a liking to me, I guess, and kept telling me “I love you” or “I like you.” His wife thought it was hilarious.

There are people who come along, selling individual flowers to whichever folks are drunk and gullible. My admirer happened to be very very both. So that’s how I ended up with the flower vendor’s entire bouquet.

So I have them bunched together, drying. What else do you do with flowers that are going to die? My wok is full of rogue petals until I figure out what to do with those. But I found a pretty simple rose perfume recipe online. So maybe I’ll be making rose perfume. That seems like a pretty strange statement coming from me…

Just spent 4 days in chengdu doing some training for school. it was my first experience with any sort of training in my new managerial position. I’ve done plenty of workshops, or attended workshops given by jules and rory, but nothing with higher ups. Let’s just say it was…interesting. I think as DoSes, we worry constantly about the quality control of teachers, and it’s always a battle—motivation to come to china is certainly different for everyone, compounded by the quality of (or lack of) work ethic. It was kind of sobering to see that quality control is also a pretty big headache for the shanghai folks as well. the input was good, and useful and showed that some people actually do know what they’re talking about, even if other people involved seem like tools and/or douchebags. So yes, content was good, if not daunting (implementation! My favorite word! ). I could go into full on judgmental mode here, but for once I’m going to edit myself. And say that I’m so lucky to be doing this work with jules and rory. I’m not saying this in a gushy, sentimental way, but we know what the fuck we’re doing in our schools, and we’re passionate about what we do. Others don’t and aren’t. I’m glad I’m not working with the others.

Besides the training, went to hooters and to a bar/restaurant called the lazy pug. Go there! Very very nice environment, nice people, and it doesn’t feel Chinese. You need that sometimes. And by “you” I mean “i.” but probably you too, whoever you are. Last morning of training was rough, though. whiskey and vodka and beer and hooters, oh my.

Doing something pretty similar (the training, no the booze parade and hooters) in December, but this time in shanghai. I know there will still be douchebags, because they’re everywhere, but I hope to meet some more tuned in people than chengdu provided. We shall see…

final installation of my yunnan vacation recap

this covers dali. i'm going back to dali for the october holiday. should be rad.

Day 5

One other pretty fascinating nugget I didn’t mention from the day before: the fire festival. I didn’t find out exactly what it was until the day after, but apparently it was while I was on day 2 of the gorge. What I’ve since learned is that it’s a festival in which people make fire sacrifices to their ancestors for health and/or luck. So…cool.

When my south/central American family and I were coming back from the gorge, we were all exhausted, but sleep was an impossibility. we sat there, 6 zombies with ipods on, intermittently speaking Spanish, English and Chinese as the driver navigated potholes and washed out roads at recklessly high speeds. He also seemed to be infatuated with his tea. There were many factors that contributed to a general sense of unease as we propelled onward toward lijiang.

it wasn’t until we were about 30 minutes away from the gorge that we started to see people carrying bundles of burning twigs as they walked along the side of the road. I figured it was an apt replacement for electricity out in what seemed to be a pretty remote part of southwestern-ish china. It was starting to get dark, so that made sense to me. And the fact that literally everyone was running with these burning bundles made it seem more likely that it was some functional aspect of everyday life, it just happened to be some minutiae that was incredibly joyful. Eventually it got completely black on these backwoods roads and you could just see little flecks of fire bobbing up and down the hills flanking our shoddy highway. People making their way to and fro with these sticks of fire.

When we got back to lijiang, the driver stopped abruptly, near no one’s guest house and told us to get out and find taxis. Fair enough, it was his holiday, but we still had no idea at this point what was going on. So my family and I parted ways. Their guesthouse was close and I had no idea where mine was. I tried to hail a cab. No luck. Eventually some very old man on a scooter rolled up to help me. I showed him the map, he called the guesthouse and we were off. This is when I realized that there was more to the fire than just light. I’m on a scooter, I’m exhausted and I’m moving in slow motion though a surreal dreamscape of fire and dancing and crowds and fire and more dancing.

At every major intersection, the roads were closed and big pyres/effigies were erected, some with stick men on top. Crowds circled the burning structures, locked hands and danced in a circle around them. this was the case at about 5 intersections we tried to get through. At this point the scooter man was getting a little frustrated because there weren’t any alternate routes to my guesthouse. So I told him I’d give him 20rmb (instead of 10) if he actually got me to where I needed to be. This provided adequate impetus. Ultimately he drove through one of the circles of dancing people. they had to unlock hands to let us through. I felt embarrassed, but it was also pretty great to be among it, even if I was fucking with the sanctity of it all by being on a scooter.

Finally got to guesthouse, they’d given my bed away, stopped serving food. That’s where the last post left off. So I shuffled down the alley about 50 feet to check into the alternate guest house. It was fine. They had warm water and soap. That’s really all I wanted.

I was supposed to spend the next day in lijiang, but I said “fuck this claustrophobic place. I’m out of here.” I didn’t actually say that. But it was nice for about half a day. If I never go back to lijiang, I’m okay with that. Don’t tell that to a Chinese person, though. they’ll think you’re crazy. I learned a few weeks later that lijiang has a reputation for “one night stands.” So I guess lots of chinese singles go there to get their swerve on. I guess I overlooked that part.

Headed to the bus station to catch the first bus out of lijiang to dali.

Stayed at the sleepyfish inn. I highly recommend it. the rooms are great, but the beer/water is a little pricey. But it’s worth it, because they let you just run a tab and pay for it all at the end, this includes bike rental, breakfast, scooter rental, laundry service. All the amenities. I thought it was a great idea. This could be dangerous or convenient, depending on your budgeting/self-control. But the people there were just really nice, genuine people. it was refreshing to stay somewhere owned by foreigners, because there was the tab and they had dogs and there was very much a family feel about the whole place. It’s the most relaxed I’ve ever felt sharing space with strangers. This was the overriding feeling the whole time “I can’t believe how relaxing it is to share a bathroom.” I usually hate hostels or things with communal stuff, but not here. I didn’t really want to leave.

Anyhoo, back to the bus. Another example of random acts of kindness.

There was a young dude sitting next to me. About 10 minutes onto the bus from lijiang I stuck my hand into my backpack, where my razor was sitting, sharp end up. ended up cutting the crap out of my knuckle. He silently handed me a new package of tissues. Before asia, they only person I can recall who used to carry those little individual “servings” of tissue is my grannie. it seems like something a lot of old women would have in their purses, but I just remember grannie always having these little tissue packets. And tons of avon brand chapstick. I can’t remember the exact name of it and that bothers me…

About 2 hours in, before the rest stop, tissue dude gave me candy in the middle of the ride. Again, he didn’t say anything to me, he just gestured for me to take one.

His treatment of me was unfamiliar, especially given his demographic: teenage Chinese boy. Usually they laugh and point or say a very annoying “hallo.” But he wasn’t intrusive in any way. Maybe because he was alone. Maybe because he was just a nice guy. I’d like to think it was the latter.

The bus to dali was surprisingly pleasant. The sky seemed huge (even moreso than lijiang), with sprawling fields of sunflowers punctuating the landscape.

My bus dropped me off in the middle of construction (yup, china), about half an hour ahead of schedule, which is highly unusual. I’d heard that I’d need to take a bus or an 80 rmb taxi to get into dali old town. I asked some security people for help, so they called my guesthouse. Turns out I was right next to the east gate, which was very close to where the sleepyfish lodge was. a woman from the guesthouse came and picked me up. checked in, met the dogs, went wandering. ‘twas grand.

Dali is a very small city. I loved this. for the next 7 or 8 days I didn’t take a taxi. I walked, biked or e-biked everywhere. It was fantastic. You could get from one side of the old town to the other in about 15 minutes, with plenty to see and do and plenty of side streets worth exploring along the way.

So the first day in dali I ended up at the bad monkey bar for some afternoon respite from the sun. I’d actually heard about it while I was in the gorge from peeps who’d already done dali. I initially had my reservations. It was only slightly reminiscent of reggae bar in hangzhou, but somehow not nearly as annoying. The bar itself wasn’t annoying at all, there were some interesting “characters” I met, but that happens at any bar. There were a shitload of dreadlocks in a confined space, and the reggae was definitely a presence as well, but these are not necessarily bad things, so long as the beer is good. And it was. It was also cheap. You could get a large bottle of local beer for 12rmb. And their own in-house beer for 25. a shot of jameson was 18 rmb. I live in a place where a shot of jameson at one of the local watering holes is 40. Seems a little ridiculous. Maybe this is why I have no social life. I can’t afford the booze that makes me fun enough to be around.

Anyhoo, the booze was good, as was the pizza. I am not ashamed to say I went to this bar nearly every night. and I’m not even a hippie! It was fun to pretend for a week, though. i wore hemp pants and batik shirts. And I’m not ashamed! Anyhoo, I met so many interesting people at the bar—tourists and barkeeps alike. Aviram the bartender and entertainer. Choice quote: “she’s not a hippie (lifting up my arm)—she shaves her armpits.” The irish contingent: kiran and gary and sinead. I learned what a “knacker” is. this is useful.

Drinking the bad monkey beers I had a brief hint of nostalgia for lovejoy’s in Austin, tx. micro brew. And the Dog and duck. That’s the name! I’ve been trying to remember the name of that bar for forever. Solomon burke on the jukebox and a very attractive bartender, attractive despite the fact that he kind of reminded me of ray james. Ray james and his one-armed push-ups. “for your love…"

I also managed to find my way to a tailor on the first day. Had more hippie pants made. Aka, squirrel pants. It later became a game: count the squirrel pants.

Day 6

I had intended to rent a bike and just kind of wander around with no plan, but the front desk was unusually busy, so I just started walking. A dutch chick in my dorm room had mentioned the mountains as a nice destination, so I grabbed a map and headed out to cangshan mountain. so I’d heard the hike was great. I assumed that was the hike up, not the hike actually at the top of the mountain. So I spent over 2 hours just climbing straight up to get to the hike. What most other people had done was take the chairlift up, then do the very easy (but beautiful) 11 km paved hike at the top. I didn’t do that.

First stop: i just walked through a cemetery.

Second stop: Wait, I’m still in the cemetery. And it’s a sea of tombs. So many mounds with sprouts growing out of them. hairy mounds. With bones in them.

Third stop: So I’m sitting in the cemetery and I feel a little weird about that. Weirder still is the fact that I haven’t seen another person in at least 1 hour. It’s quiet aside from the buzz of insects and the far-removed din of the city.

Near the top of the mountain, I almost gave up, having no idea how long it was supposed to take to walk up the mountain. Then a monk in full garb and two other dudes passed me on mules. So I asked the monk how much longer. He said 10 minutes. So that was great. at the top there was a little temple. I think maybe people thought I was extremely out of shape because I was so winded. Everyone else had taken the chair lift, and I was panting and sweating like a crazy person. I figured I’d continue my punishment and hike up to higherland inn. I think the next time I go back to dali by myself I’ll stay there. It’s about as zen as it gets. And it’s straight up, even more isolated and in the mountains than everything else. But there was a tiny little restaurant and the owner cooked me some vegetarian curry. Good stuff.

I poked around a bit on the mountain, then began my descent. On the way back to the hostel, I ran into Judith, the dutch girl who had been in my dorm room (I switched to a single room). we made a plan to meet up on the patio later for a pre-beer before street food and the bad monkey.

So we imbibed 2 large dali beers at around 7:30, which became my routine for the rest of my time there. Beer consumption at the sleepyfish marked the beginning of a good evening.

Headed to street food. It’d been a while. I think I ate a little too much street food in hangzhou, so I’ve pretty much done without it for about a year. But it was nice to sit outside in weather that isn’t scorching or uncomfortable, watching pedestrians. This was the first and only time of vacation that someone called me a foreigner. After 5 days without the word, I was shocked to hear it.

Then we went to bad monkey. I believe I did several jaeger bombs. What the hell. I’m 32 years old. But hey, it was vacation.

Day 7

Rented bikes with Judith. The plan was to head to a butterfly park about 25 km away. No problem! She’s dutch, they ride bikes everywhere. I’d lived in hangzhou and ridden my bike everywhere. A year ago.

Started out in the rain. Had to stop about 10 km at a sinopec gas station while we waited out the rain. We were there in the rain for at least 30 minutes. It was funny because this was the exact same spot where she had to turn around 2 days prior due to a flat tire. She was determined to wait it out and actually make it to the park. It ultimately turned out to be a beautiful day.

One of the best meals of the whole vacation came near the entrance to the butterfly park. Just some little hole in the wall place where you point in a cooler at what you want. But really really fresh ingredients and simple veggies combined in ways I’d never had before. Simple and good.

We got to the park and didn’t see a whole lot of butterflies. It was actually a very very nice park, spacious, clean, a lake. So it didn’t make a lot of sense that its namesake was this depleted, depressing mesh house of butterflies. In this sprawling park, the actual butterflies were mostly condensed to a ramshackle little shed. The worst part was seeing all these dead, trampled butterflies on the path and watching little kids sort of snatch them out of the air and crush them.

By this point my taint was really upset that it was in such pain for such little return on the butterfly investment. And we still had the 25 km to go back, biking into the wind. Fuuuuuuucccckkk. It was rough, to say the least. The worst part about it all was not my taint, or the distance, but the fact that the seat raised but the handlebars didn’t. so your ass is in the air, but you have to hunch over to grab the handlebars. So my shoulders and neck were just destroyed. The last 5 km were fucking grueling.

After all that, I passed out early. Felt fine the next day, but it was rough. Definitely a moral here: get the handlebars that you don’t have to bend over to reach. Why the fuck do people even make those. What’s the benefit? Tour de pain.

Day 8

Sore taint in tow, I decided to keep it simple. Thought I’d peruse a little more of the town. So I headed to 88 bakery where I’d heard they had a plethora of cheese. This was true. But in chongqing I’m not really hurting for cheese. A cheap beer, yes, but cheese, no. so I had a Blt and a feta salad. Noice.

I wandered around a bit more and tackled the last section of my book. picked up my pants from the tailor of day one.

Met up with Judith again later. We were on a quest to find this pizza place jules and rory had been to on their trip, but no luck. We settled for dumplings on the street. Which was also a good choice. I ate more dumplings in dali than I’ve eaten during a year in chongqing.

Ended up at bad monkey again, doing all sorts of random shots, including absinthe. It was delightful, particularly as a bomb shot in red bull. I’m sure some purists would scoff, but I’m no purist.

We met some other dutch people there and I was happily surrounded by them. it was just cool to be able to interact with so many strangers in an immediately friendly way—to hear their stories: where they were coming from, where they were going, what their “real” lives were like.

Day 9

This was a pretty uneventful day. Judith’s going away pizza festivities. the pizza, nachos and fried cheese were pretty good at first, but a few hours later I think we both suffered from some sort of food poisoning. I was lucky though because I was able to just chill out at the guesthouse with a bathroom nearby. She, unfortunately, had to get on an overnight bus and start 24 straight hours of traveling to get to India. Yikes.

Day 10

This was a very very exciting day. Had to try to find something to do that I hadn’t done yet. I’d had enough physical activity by this time, so I wanted to do something cool, time consuming and a first. so I rented a scooter/e-bike from the guesthouse. Another reason the peeps at sleepyfish were so awesome. They gave me a tutorial on the little side street out in front of the lodge entrance. It was more than a little scary at first, given the last time I’d tried to drive a motorcycle (in korea. Ultimately the bike fell over and gas started pouring out of it. I was so hungover…). I’m used to using my hands to brake, so it was strange to me that this was also what made you move, sometimes suddenly. But I was able to go out to the little villages by the lake, go to the ferry pier and get lost on the gravel roads on the outskirts of dali. It was pretty great. I did almost hit a dog and get stuck in the mud briefly, but all told it went off basically without incident.

Went back to the fish later. Met up with some irish folks who’d been on the trail and just happened to stay at the same guesthouse as me (cool!). they were a trip! This couple who had been together for 8 years and were just really excited to tell all their stories from traveling and being together for that long. I learned a lot about “knackers” and other irish terms. Very very cool people. I was lucky to meet such interesting strangers on my vacation. They liked the tiny desk concert series and always had speakers for their ipod. My first impression of them was at the gorge when they were doing the 28 steps with sinead o’connor blasting from their little speakers as we all struggled up the hill (and by “we” I of course include my mule). They were a nice excuse to be social and witty and engage in quality banter. These are not things I consider strengths of mine. At least not upon a first meeting.

Anyhoo, met up with them later at the bar for dinner and booze. Holy shit, bad monkey’s pizza were great. I would come to realize just how great the next night when I opted for a café de jack pizza instead. Stupid move.

Hearing the irish folks talk with the Israeli bartender about specific places in Ireland they’d all been was really really cool. By the end of the bartender’s travel stories, the most surprising thing was that he hadn’t been to Columbia, Missouri. Another very late, stumbly night. but good. And no hangover!

Day 11

Decided to revisit the canghan mountain and do it the easy way. Which meant taking a very long, quiet chairlift up the mountain. At the top there’s a paved walkway, I won’t even call it a trail, which covers 11 km or so around the top. It was very easy, very beautiful hiking. I passed very few people in the hours I was up there. The part that struck me as something distinctly unchinese was how accessible it all was. Literally anyone could go and walk/wheel around up there—unhealthy people, people in wheelchairs, people in heels. I thought it was pretty cool that those who might not normally get to interact with nature in the conventional ways weren’t cut off from this environment.

Spent a good part of my day up there, wandered back in the early afternoon. And then it was back to the bad monkey, for an unofficial going away party. Yep, I was so popular at the bar that we had a going away party. I didn’t leave for another day, but this other irish guy was leaving the next day, so we decided to celebrate together.

The night got off to a kind of shitty start when a guy who had put his backpack in the barstool next to me couldn’t find his bag later. Had his computer in it. so he was freaking out. I just kept thinking “well, at least you live here. that’ll make it less of a hassle to deal with your visa and shit.” They found the bag later, but I don’t know if it still had all his stuff in it.

There were definitely some interesting characters there that night. maybe it was a different night when the Scottish guy who was trying to hit on me told me “I have yellow fever, but you’re the first western woman I’ve looked at in a long time.” This was before he invited me to come live with him in hainan. Yikes. Then there was the guy from new york who said he was a pot farmer in the hills outside dali and that he had a gun on him. he also had a wonky eye and wasn’t very socially self-aware (evidenced by the gun proclamations). Weird night.

Day 12

My last full day in dali was definitely a highlight. Took another cue from Judith and signed up for a Chinese Cooking class. It was funny because the meeting point to go shopping with the chef was at the bar. Seems like I’d just gotten home from the bar then ended up there again. Anyhoo, there was a couple my age-ish from Chicago also participating. He was a professor at northwestern (something scientific). She was a professor at Columbia college—film and media studies? These are in the right area. Anyway, they were super fucking cool. Again, I was very lucky to be randomly linked up with all these different people on vacation. They were in china because he was part of some team of artists and scientists who’d helped put in an installation at the Beijing art museum. Some huge thing that used live fish and was interactive. So I got to spend the next 5 or so hours with them. He had proposed to her 2 days prior.

And of course the bad monkey later. An Israeli couple from the guesthouse happened to be there. Of all the things and all the amounts of booze I’d had at that bar all week, this was the night I felt the most fucked, because we did about 4 shots of tequila in a span of less than 20 minutes. Their treat. Sheee-it.

Stayed there far far too late again. Aviram insisted I wait until the bar closed so he could give me a ride on his scooter. So I did. Sleepy. I felt really sad getting off the scooter though and saying goodbye to him. who knew a bar could make me so sentimental… wait a minute, there are quite a few watering holes I know of that make me all nostalgic. But I was already feeling nostalgic and I hadn’t even left yet.

I don’t have a social life in chongqing. This is okay with me for a lot of different reasons. I have my family, I have a job that I’m good at. I know the consequences of too much of a social life (hangzhou and Columbia) and how shitty that can feel when it’s all you have to wallow in. but it was nice to have no responsibilities for over a week. And I guess that’s what vacation is all about. But then you have to come back to reality, and it was pretty refreshing to realize that reality’s not so bad either.

I got a promotion. I’m now officially a director of a school. so that’s pretty cool, I think.

Some random observations:

Madonna’s version of American pie could be the worst thing I’ve ever heard. Ever.

The tall, hot german who I had absolutely no chemistry with. We tried to make small talk, but both gave up and admitted that it just wasn’t happening. That was very strange…

Yunnan vacation: Tiger Leaping Gorge

Day 3
The driver of our mini bus was late, but that gave me time to check out the people I’d be sweating alongside for the next 2 days. It might have been a wiser decision to eat breakfast, but I wasn’t hungry and generally lack foresight.

If folks were congregated in the common area at 8 am, it was pretty obvious that they were going gorging. There were 2 other couples, which was fine, as long as they were around to acknowledge my existence in case anything bad did happen to me.

When the mini-bus finally made it, it was full of other people. the driver assured us that they weren’t going very far, so I think we managed to cram about 10 people in a mini bus that holds 7 (aside from the driver). because I wasn’t in a couple, I didn’t have to sit on anyone’s lap or have anyone sit on mine. But I had to ride shotgun, which is not a promising place to be in china. A lot of space, true, but you also have a too-clear visual of exactly what’s happening on the road outside of that window. And exactly what’s happening in the seat next to you, which is a Chinese driver. Driving and multi-tasking are encouraged. Also, a lot of times if you wear a seatbelt the driver considers it an insult. But I wore my seatbelt.

Took a lot of notes during the ride. It was too bumpy to do much else.

driver managed to change his cell phone battery while driving a stick shift. particularly impressive when going up mountain roads where people like to pass with reckless abandon.

Random cows tethered to trees by the side of the road, content despite their proximity to Chinese drivers.

A wreck on the way—told the driver that’s what happens when you talk on your cell phone and drive.

Military-inspired sweaters, olive green wellingtons and tools for manual labor: standard gear for all the men and women walking along the road, everyone with work and a “somewhere” in mind

Shadows from the clouds cast on the hills, mottled greens and greys scan slowly over the tree sea.

Fruit ladies set up on the back road, because someone will inevitably stop for amazing-looking peaches.

Trucks spitting out black smoke as they struggle with the incline. a smell reminiscent of 4th of july snakes. Little pellets smoking and hissing as they contort.

Incense, some sort of altar—candles haphazardly arranged in a semi-circle on the shoulder of the road. 5 men holding down a dog or a goat. visibility blurred, but the intent is clear.

Donkey/mule crossing though the muddy puddles in a washed out road. Slammed brakes. their keeper is in no hurry and seems to inspire that same ambivalence in their pace.

Gorge! Just get there already! The bus ride is taking longer than it was supposed to.

the last little village before we got to jane’s guesthouse was a trip! I haven’t seen shit like that since Tibet. Just the bustle and commerce and congestion of living bodies and all manner of motor vehicles vying for space in a place where there really isn’t any. Very cool.

We started from Jane’s guesthouse. There were puppies! Bought water. should have bought other provisions, but didn’t. again remembered that breakfast I hadn’t eaten earlier.

We (my mini bus companions: livia, ellie and david, yan and paul) initially overlooked the entrance to the trail, because it looked shady and there were a bunch of loitering types. You hear all kinds of horror stories about people scamming people or robbing people on the trail, so we were overly-cautious. The man who actually sold us our tickets at a very legitimate ticket office told us we were “too careful” when we asked for receipts for our tickets. That’s the shitty thing about china and a haggling culture. your instinct is to trust absolutely no one. So the response to the ticket vendor was “it’s necessary.”

We backtracked to the very small entrance to the high path (but there was a blue sign, yellow lettering), past the riff raff and headed up. I could immediately tell that this was going to kick my ass. I will say this: if/when you go, don’t take a backpack. Put all your shit in your pockets or make a friend carry your bag. Wear light running shoes. I think both of those things would have helped me tremendously. And no, you don’t need to pack a very large book! you won’t read it, unless you plan to stop and read along the trail, which you don’t. no one does that. But hey, my ankles were safe in my moon boot hiking shoes. Safe and heavy.

All excuses of course for why I took a mule up the most difficult part of the trek. Heh heh. No shame in a mule! It was only 80 rmb for about 2 hours. Riding the mule was as terrifying as the trek was difficult. Or maybe it was more terrifying. I was very happy that humans are the only mammals with suicidal tendencies, because there were definitely some times when that mule wanted to end it all. He just didn’t know it. and getting used to the rhythmic jostling of an animal is difficult when you can’t recall the last time you sat in a saddle. The path at that point was a lot of loose rocks, too, so I was second-guessing every step this animal made. Looking down these sheer cliffs from at least 5 feet higher than I would have been walking. Could quite possibly be the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done.

So I’m sitting on the mule, but the mule is being led by a man wearing an army jacket and the equivalent of k-mart off brand keds shoes. So he’s walking up the 28 steps fine, while I sit on his mule. Humbling, yes. But I told him he had to split the 80 rmb 50/50 with the mule. He insisted that he fed it well.

After the 28 steps, it was basically flat, except for that very slight incline up to the halfway house. Which also nearly killed me. My legs just weren’t in it. seriously, not even a hill, just an incline. By this point I was very aware of how sedentary my life in chongqing must be. Had I done this when I lived in hangzhou, I think I’d have nailed it. steady conditioning riding my bike everyday.

the path after 28 steps was quite different from the one before it--forest, pine trees and elm trees and all kinds of trees in the same space. Oddly enough it reminded me of rock bridge, or an amalgam of all the forests i’ve been to in America. a nice, inaccurate, vague bit of nostalgia, rooted in the senses of smell and touch.

halfway house was the goal for the first day—showers, really nice rooms, but no electricity. So a hot shower in the dark. after 8-ish hours of hiking, I didn’t really give a shit about whether I had light or not.

The woman at reception was being kind of cunty about people asking about electricity. But good food, great view, comradery I don’t usually experience/enjoy. Banter on the “inspiration terrace.”

some folks bought “tobacco” off an old woman on the trail, so the bunch I was with were all smoking, aside from me and the germans. someone asked what their names were (the germans) after they went to sleep, and one of the folks answered “dis and dat.” I thought that was hilarious. They’d just spent the whole day hiking with these folks, but had no idea what their names were. I was guilty of that to a certain degree…after a certain point it’s just too late to ask someone what their name is.

anyhoo, sitting in the dark with the light of the tobacco pipe and the mountains hovering in the background. Needless to say, it was very cool. there was a common bathroom. Each stall was 2 walls, 1 door. what would have been the back wall was just open, so you were enveloped by the mountains as you conducted your business.

To bed early. Try not to wake livia (shared a room).

At this point, I can’t wait until tomorrow to get to tina’s guest house at one of the “ends” of the trail. it was all anyone was talking about. There’s sposed to be good food. I’m banking on her having pizza.

Day 4
The second day of the gorge hike, I woke up early, feeling incredibly motivated. After doing the majority of the hike the day prior with a group of people, I thought I’d head out on my own, arrive at my happy zen feeling by myself. It was only two hours to tina’s and all the trails had been fairly well-marked up to this point, so I was confident I wouldn’t have any problems.

Chicken noodle soup and coffee for breakfast. As I was leaving, all the peeps from the day before were waking up. told them I’d just meet them at tina’s and we could get some beers together before we all headed in different directions.

So I head out of the halfway house, and see 2 trails. One is very wide, one is not very wide. I opt for the very wide and start my hike for the day. The very large trail heads pretty sharply downhill, which seemed right, because everyone had said that tina’s was all downhill after the halfway house. Cool. So I head down, and this trail that had been very wide started to get thinner and thinner, and more and more unkempt, and more and more immersed in a corn field. I followed the trail to a precipice where it stopped, so I stopped. At this point I thought “I don’t feel comfortable doing this by myself.” I think I actually said that out loud. so I turned around and headed back up the hill. For fuck’s sake. Figured I’d meet back up with my peeps and just go with them. then we could at least all feel uncomfortable and/or slightly unsafe together.

When I was nearly back to where I started, I saw another guy bouncing along down the hill toward me. At this point, I was relieved, not because there was another human, but because his existence meant that there was less of a chance that I’d fucked up and gone the wrong way. So he approaches me and asks me about the trail. he just so happened to be a very very attractive man, a jon hamm doppelganger with a Spanish accent. And here he was, helping me. He seemed like a bona fide hiker type, in that he had a topographical map (ooh, fancy…) and was wearing a hat. Yeah, that’s right, a hat. He also said that my shoes weren’t appropriate for this sort of hiking (I was wearing my chaco’s at this point, not the moon shoes). I quite enjoyed being scolded by spanish jon hamm.

Anyway, told him I turned around because I was less than confident in my navigation. He pointed to the map and said it was the right way. And I believed him. and felt relieved. I’m not an idiot! So he said he’d head down to the point where I stopped, figure out the trail from there and then wave me down to join him. sweet.

So jon hamm hops on down the hill and gets to where I’d stopped. He looks back up at me and points, like “the trail continues here.” so I followed him. And it didn’t even matter that I’d had to turn around and walk up what was ultimately the steepest hiking of the trek for me (made up for that mule the day before). Because now I was on my way. Yay! At this point another family had started making their way down the hill. And they looked as confused and unsure as I’d felt when jon hamm found me. So I waved them down encouragingly: “it’s okay, we’ve got a fearless, attractive leader who completely knows what he’s doing.” That’s a lot to convey with a hand gesture, but I think I did.

When I got down to where he’d waved me down, he was gone. He’d just disappeared. I yelled, I looked but there was no sight or sound of him. fuck. I didn’t even know his name to yell anything accurately.

I started to frantically wave to the other family to stop coming down the hill. I didn’t really know what to do at this point, so I climbed back up the steepest part of the trek to meet the family halfway. They were a family of 4 guatemalans and 1 girl from Colombia. My central/south American family for the rest of the day. The daughter in the group spoke very very good English and very very good Chinese. So she figured out directions from a farmer. She also promised to help me make some sort of report about jon hamm’s disappearance.

The father looked very very much like ernest hemingway. Lucia (tri-lingual daughter) said he got that all the time. They were amazing humans though. She’d been living in Beijing for 8 years as a graphic designer. It was just very cool to be surrounded by Spanish-speaking people for a change. A beautiful language!

So we headed up the hill again together (this was the second time I’d gone all the way down and then come back up). I felt very bad to make these folks in their 60s turn around and head back up a hill. Very very bad. Plus the chick from Colombia was only wearing some fashionable gladiator sandals with basically no sole. She hadn’t planned on coming to the gorge and just sort of ended up on the mini-bus in a “what the hell, why not” moment. But we got to the top and I traded her shoes. She put on my chacos (that were several sizes too big) and I went back to my hiking moon shoes. At that point the farmer had confirmed the correct way to the trail, so off we went.

We had to cross some waterfalls, but ultimately it was a pretty easy 2 or so hours to tina’s. rough on the knees, but at least it wasn’t uphill. And in 2 days we didn’t get rained on.

Made it to tina’s. no pizza. Goddamnit! But they had beer.

Ran into my friends from the day before who had left after me. They were confused by why I was just arriving. Explained what happened and then remembered “shit, jon hamm!” so lucia and I talked to the front desk of tina’s and tried to get them to communicate with the other guest houses along the trail and keep a look out for a hiker who matched jon hamm’s description. That was all we could do, but my conscience felt a little clearer.

We got some grub, waited out the rain that finally caught up with us and then headed down to middle tiger leaping gorge. This is the part of the trek with all the insane, dangerous Chinese shit. It’s also how you get down to the tiger leaping stone, from whence the legend of the gorge came.

The map said “2 hours.” Bullshit, like everything on the map, this was another time that was grossly underestimated. Sure, it takes an hour to go straight downhill, but when you come back it’s straight up. this was actually some of the steepest hiking we did in the whole trip, and it was listed as just sort of an afterthought. Anyhoo, we made our way down. When we approached the first vertical ladder on the trail, I said “I don’t have to do this.” I watched 7 other people go down the thing before me, and I still couldn’t do it. I think I was still too freaked out by jon hamm’s disappearance to bring myself to climb down a ladder in china nailed to a vertical wall. So my central/latin American family forged on without me. I turned around and walked back up. brutal, but I had no backpack. Significantly easier. I got to the top and waited for my fam.

While I was waiting, some other folks from the halfway house made their way back up. they showed me photos of what I missed after the first ladder, which was apparently a very very sheer cliffface with a wire for a rope and another ladder with about 30 steps to it. I felt happy with my decision to give up when I did. One of the overriding themes of any of my vacations is “don’t die.”

Family made it back up and we headed back to lijiang. Lucia had arranged for a private van to take us back because the last bus to lijiang left at 4. we left at 7. when I finally got back to lijiang, they’d given my garden inn room away. Because they also knew that the last bus left at 4, so I theoretically should have arrived by 7. when I didn’t (despite the fact that my large backpack was there and I’d already paid for the room), they gave my room away. Instead of being happy to see that I was alive they said “oh, we thought you weren’t coming.” Because the alternative to me arriving was that I was dead. At least that’s how I read it in my exhausted, dirty state.

But they moved me to another inn about 50 feet away.
Moral of this story: tiger leaping gorge…DO IT! but remember, no backpacks, no moonboots hiking shoes. and if you don't want to climb a ladder or you do want to take a mule up the difficult parts, don't let anybody be a dick about it.

Yunnan vacation: Lijiang for the first 1.5 days

vacation recap time! going to do this in chunks because it's a long-winded account.

Day 1

After the inevitable gate change and/or flight delay that has come to characterize the jiangbei airport, got to lijiang a mere half hour late. Which would put me at 10:30 in the pm. Excellent! Tried to hail a cab, but it was clear after standing solo in the line for damn near 10 minutes that they weren’t coming.

There’s always that uncertainty of hailing a cab in a new place. Are there certain rules that everyone else knows that I don’t? should I have known that trying to get a taxi at a Chinese airport at 10:30 pm was an impossibility? And you just stand there convinced that everyone else is aware of these unwritten rules except for you. Except maybe they are actually written rules and I just can’t read them.

I remember the first time I got screwed by taxi changeover time in hangzhou. I was just pissed off by the irrationality of it all. Compounded by the fact that I was very publicly an idiot trying to hail a cab during this mystical time. Let’s just say I don’t hide my perceived futility well.

Anyway, called the inn and the chick said the shuttle was the way to go. Fair enough. If I don’t have to make choices of bus or destination, then things are significantly easier. No paying attention required. Just know that when the bus stops, you get off and only then do you worry about another subsequent mode of transportation.

The sign said 22 kms to town, so how long could that take? Really? About an hour over a totally chewed up, muddy road. But I felt my first bout of the random kindness that ultimately peppered my vacation. I had the one big backpack in back and the smaller one wrapped around the front. A very helpful man at the back helped me disengage from my stuff and arrange it so it wouldn’t fall on top of me. I didn’t have to ask or look more needy than I already was. And of course there was the immediate flinching when recalling dark bus horror stories I’ve heard before—pickpockets and other unsavory types!—but I don’t really consider these to be things that would happen to me. There’s definitely a skewed rationale that I’m karmically sound after jiaxing. Nervous laughter…

Anyhoo, 22 kilometers. It looked (and felt) like a war zone. At least what I would imagine a war zone looked and felt like, having never actually been to one. There had been heavy rain the week prior, so everything was washed out, rocky and muddy.

When I got to civilization, most of the taxis rejected me. Again, that feeling of “what am I doing wrong?” I’ve got the address in Chinese and am saying it, but nope. Finally, one dude ripped me off to the tune of 10 rmb. All the other cabbies were looking at me like I was an idiot and at him like he’d just struck foreigner gold, but seriously, 10 rmb. And it didn’t turn out to be some place like 100 yards away, which would have made me feel incredibly stupid. But fuck, it was 11:30 at this point. I’ll take what I can get. He stopped at the edge of a street where the proprietor of the inn in which I was staying was waiting to escort me down the side streets. Another very nice thing that I wasn’t expecting. Kind of strange to get out of a taxi at night and have a stranger in a new city greet you by name and take your bags. That’s alright by me.

An inn is a new thing for me. Like a hostel, but more compact and lived-in feeling. Maybe the Chinese version of a hostel, which just means the courtyards are more elaborate. I’ve yet to pinpoint the distinction, but it’s there.

My room was small and shabby, but charming. The hot water seemed to be unending, which was good because the nights there were actually chilly. Jacket or sweater weather in the evenings! Delightful. Drank a couple of large, local-ish beers, chatted with the peeps who worked there, got the best sleep I’ve had in a while.

Day 2 Having purchased a map, I resolved to go get lost in the labyrinth that is lijiang old town. Mind you, I’d purchased a large bottle of sunscreen and it was ready for me to use. All I had to do was spray it on. I just didn’t. for some strange reason. Chongqing is fucking humid, but I don’t get sunburnt. I was transferring that experience to this one. My bad, which I would realize at the end of the day.

Anyhoo, a mere street over I stumbled upon “Fall in love” café, or something equally suggestive. It was run by a very friendly and helpful former shanghai dude. He directed me up to the roof to drink my yunnan coffee, which he gave me a discount on. Sweet! (another instance of random acts of kindness from Chinese strangers). Blue skies, a breeze, clouds, mountain. Idyllic as fuck. I remember thinking “I don’t know when was the last time I saw a sky like this.” but if I had to guess, I’d say it was the last time I was home for my vacation in Missouri. Midwestern skies are pretty nice, if I do say so…

Sitting on the roof I had a full view of the old city grid spread out before me. Tiled roof after tiled roof. Strong black coffee and a map with intended destinations, including lunch. the man suggested a place with good “organs;” but he saw I was more a fan of bbq and noodles, non-organs. My plans were to eat at a market and head to a temple. Haggled 80 rmb off a 180 rmb bracelet along the way. Saw the same bracelet in dali a few days later. Starting price: 80 rmb. Fuck! But I didn’t let that deter me on my quest to haggle well. Ultimately I think I came out on top. Ate 3 rmb noodles at a market full of naxi women, baskets and babies. Never found the temple—let’s just say that it’s easier to get lost in lijiang’s old town than it is to end up at the place you were aiming for.

Temple substitute was mu’s house. Some famous Chinese dude who had a palace. Go figure. I guess it’s the same with temples. Once you’ve seen a temple or a palace or anything old and Chinese, they all tend to lose their intrigue. i think I had this epiphany after visiting Tibet 5 years ago. Nothing has ever compared to a tibetan temple. But now I’m just being an asshole “I remember when I was in tibet…”

Anyhoo, at mu’s house there was a very helpful guy who bought my ticket to the other park, whatever the name of the highest point in lijiang is. we can see that this is a very scientific record of my travels…

I met him when we were both struggling up some stairs. he wouldn’t tell me his job or what he studied in university. It was all “secret.” But he was nice enough. Funny how receptive one becomes to talking with Chinese people when they’re not constantly singling you out as “other.” Or maybe not “funny” at all. I had a completely pleasant experience with a random stranger because the city itself didn’t make me feel like a total fucking alien, and by “make me feel” I mean there wasn’t the uber-conspicuous pointing, whispering, laughing, or (everyone’s favorite), the slap on the forearm of the person next to you and then the pointing to direct their gaze to me. Or maybe there were all of these things, but people in lijiang have somehow mastered subtlety. both are a credit, and both are okay by me.

So that was nice, and unexpected. to be able to lose the hostility for a day.

I ventured out to eat some of the local food, which was some sloppy dish with a whole chicken and what I can only describe as crinkle-cut fries. I’m sure that’s the technical term. But it was 80 rmb to eat a whole chicken. the people in the shop seemed shocked that I didn’t really care, even if it meant wasting a bunch of food. But I said I didn’t have any friends to eat with and this mother and daughter invited me to come sit and eat with them. but at that point I’d noticed that the whole chicken part of anything with a whole chicken in it in china isn’t actually the greatest. Whole lot o’ beak and feet action. It’s like they take the good parts and hide them. seriously, breasts and thighs, where they at? Heh heh.

Ultimately, dejected and desperate (okay, not really), ended up at a Sichuan restaurant. I have no idea what I ordered. While I waited for the items I pointed at, the waiter just walked up to the fish tank and grabbed one out, no net, no nothing, just bare hands. Or bear hands, maybe that’s it. it wasn’t for me, but it seemed noteworthy.

One of the waiters got a nose bleed and stood there patiently while another waiter very meticulously fashioned a tissue bullet to plug his nose and even inserted it for him. that’s one funny thing about china, no worries about having tissue up your nose. The little kids do it, the adults do it. blood seeping from a wound isn’t something that necessarily needs to halt activity. efficiency rears it’s ugly head in the most random situations.

end of day 2. tiger leaping gorge up next. overall impression of lijiang: not a must-see. if i never go back to this city, i'm okay with that. it's a nice place to buy things and eat, and the sky is beautiful. but as far as actual activity, look at it as a starting point for the gorge. my humble opinion.

what's new pussycat

I miss banter.

Small talk and banter are not the same thing.

I’m going to resist the temptation of resorting to the “I feel disconnected from humanity” train of thought. Because it’s an alarming statement, but I’m actually not alarmed by it. just feeling kind of tired. And missing banter. That’s all.

There are actually some things to talk about. The first of which would go under the heading “what’s in the bag” should I choose to employ headings in my blog, which I don’t. that said…

I was walking to work last week, the same route that I take 4 out of the 5 days of my work week. So I exit through the smaller of the two back gates of my complex, past the wal-mart, to the first intersection (in case you wanted some specifics of what my route entails in this Chinese city). The first intersection presents you with choices. Tough choices. To go straight and then cross the street when it’s all one way on the other side or to cross first, then take the light across? These are the tough decisions I must make on a daily basis. Anyhoo, I opted for the latter, as I refuse to ever run to try to make a light. Same with buses or subway cars. I will only ever run if it’s to beat a taxi thief and then spit on them, or be present while other people I know spit on them, as has happened. Recently, even.

So there I was, in the middle of the street and an old woman was walking toward me. She was carrying a cloth bag that was writhing a bit as she struggled to keep her grip on it. I’ve seen all manner of bagged items, and all manner of bags. My favorite is the duck/chicken bag. You can put 2 live ducks or chickens in it, ass to ass, with their heads protruding from either side of the bag. The ducks or chickens always seem pleasantly relaxed in this state, unaware of their impending (probably inhumane) doom. But the old woman’s bag had no holes in it, which confused me. What was writhing in that bag? Not a fish, because those are usually being peddled on the street in clear bags so you can see what you’re bargaining for. Maybe a child, but probably not. Maybe a turtle or a crocodile, or something else you never expect to see but then actually do with shocking regularity (okay, not in bags, but generally speaking). As she passed me, I heard the contents “meow.” So that was a first. something tells me it wasn’t a pet.

Speaking of firsts, and cats too in a roundabout way, I made my first trip to ciqikou ancient city. Shoot me in the fucking face. Jesus Christ that was rough. I had even woken up that day and made a mental note “I fell like I can be nice to the random rude people I will inevitably encounter today should I choose to actually leave my apartment.” Before I forget the cat segue that made me think of ciqikou in the first place, I should mention there were lots of mangy cats loitering in this place. Mangy? yes. Rude? not particularly. Good jorb, cats.

A bit about ciqikou. It’s a tourist trap in china. I should also add that it was a national holiday, so tourist trap plus holiday equal a very very bad idea. But we went ahead and pursued our bad idea. We=me, jules, rory, and rory’s dad, dave (he’s here for a month).

The taxi dropped us off and we were immediately in the throng of a herd of humans. Anyway you ventured was a bottleneck of Chinese proportions. For future reference, any time I say anything is of “Chinese proportions” it is either a) really big; b) really inefficient; c) really cheap; d) really frustrating; e) really dirty; or some combination of these. Long story short, I got into a shouting match with a pregnant woman (and her withered old mother) who pushed me and then accused me of elbowing her in her stomach. So I was the white devil who goes to public spaces to elbow pregnant Chinese women. Touché. If my memory serves me correctly (and it always does) I only got her in the arm, not the stomach… but it’s very easy to say that a foreigner elbowed you in your pregnant stomach with the intent to kill your unborn child, which makes for a very exciting story on her end. And I just wanted to buy some cheap earrings…

anyhoo, I can only tolerate so much zoo-like pointing whispering and laughing and the general lack of subtlety. I think it’s the last part that gets me. Be discrete. Be subtle. There is an art to it.

In this case I was able to tolerate about 5 minutes worth of such brazen judgment. going to places like this are the times when i’m the most skeptical of china’s perceived role as a superpower. People treat me like I’m sub-human and they’re the next superpower/great economy? It’s not just rude people that make me so skeptical of china’s role in the world, it’s the poverty and the traffic and the grit and the ignorance. Always strange. Usually interesting. Sometimes frustrating. Constant. And yet I’m still here. it baffles me, too….

Not much else to report. Going on what I do believe to be a much-needed vacation. To yunnan. I shall finally hike the gorge.

hair, mold, puppies. in that order.

We can assume by the lack of content in recent days that not much is going on in my world. or that I’ve been napping my life away. not the case, however. I’ve been very busy, and actually very very happy. Or as I quipped to the like-dna “the least miserable I’ve been in a long time.” So it’s not a 100% positive admission, but it’s a shitload better than a lot of other eras of my life.

There are 3 nuggets that I feel are worth sharing. The first one being my haircut. Yup, it’s true. I got a haircut. In china. And not from Julie. My locks were pretty long and stringy. And I’m not the most high-maintenance when it comes to hair care. Despite the fact that I’d been cultivating this length for a few years now, I was still continually surprised and/or bummed out by the fact that I would wake up after having slept on wet hair and it wouldn’t look amazing. What up with that? And I don’t have the patience to actually fix my hair everyday. So there are these aspects of my hair care personality, combined with the chongqing humidity. I was left with no choice.

I printed off some super blurry photos and armed myself with absolutely no Chinese for this adventure. I arrived at the salon and they all looked very very nervous. I guess I’m the kind of foreigner who looks like she doesn’t know any Chinese. And I don’t really, particularly not any related to the “Chinese haircut” lexical set. Or I’m intimidating? I remember when the UPS guy in Austin told me that I looked mean. Innocuous? I think not, since I refer to that incident far far too often.

Anyhoo…a Chinese haircut is an elaborate process that consists of far more than just shears. I really enjoy that word. Reminds me of my former-next-door-neighbor’s-mom’s pinking shears. And that’s noteworthy.

There are salon “technicians” (for lack of a better word) who greet you and escort you to the hairwashing station. They then wash your hair and massage your head for damn near 30 minutes. And that part is very very nice. I think that sometimes they clean your ears, but homeboy just handed me some q-tips. Guess he didn’t want to get all up in my earholes. And who would, really.

So I’m escorted to the chair, awaiting the arrival of my hair expert. I had just enough time to show a pixilated picture of my ideal cut to dudeman before the power died. So we’re sitting there in the dark in silence and I wonder what his next move is. He seemed unphased and proceeded to grab a large clump of my hair and cut. Only after he cut off the hearty portion did he think to ask someone about what the hell was going on. So I sat there, running my hands through the space where longer hairs used to be, waiting for some word from the stylist man. But there was no apprehension or nervousness. He had seemed so nonchalant about the whole thing, ‘oh yeah, here at cloud beauty the power dies all the time.’ Fair enough.

The power never did come back on. I kept thinking it would be an “any second now” kind of thing. Nope. So he cut layers in the dark. No blow-dry, of course, because there was no power. So there was a lot of faith invested in this dude, who ultimately delivered me out of the darkness sporting some lovely shorn locks. Cool. I guess the thought of freaking out never crossed my mind as I have no one to impress here. Chinese people are judgmental, good hair or bad, with or without fashion sense. It’s actually quite liberating. If I were to leave the apartment in my pajamas, I’d garner as many stares as if I left in a slutty dress, or if I looked completely normal, which I’d like to think sums up my appearance. There are times (and believe me, this isn’t all the time) when that unfailing consistency is comforting.

Second thing of note would be a slight mold problem in my apartment. No literal or air quotes there. It really is only a slight problem. The mold itself is no story. Eh. The landlord coming to visit is a story.

School arranged for the landlord to come. I guess is should say landlords. I signed the contract with the wife half of this power couple. But the husband was coming to fix some shit (including my busted washing machine hose). So there’s a knock at the door, I open it and am greeted by a tiny person wielding a giant, plastic mouse filled with fruity gummy treats that doubled as a piggy (mouse?) bank. He shoves this in my face and says “good morning, teacher.” those were the only words he spoke for the next 45 minutes or so. He wasn’t the landlord, but that would also have been a cool story. The munchkin was ushered inside by his dad (yes, the landlord) who also had a gift for me, which was a box of generic fruit loops in an elaborate gift bag. Sweet! Mr. landlord also said repeatedly that I was beautiful (aw, shucks) and that I would have beautiful babies someday. Ok. Cool. Good start to my morning.

Dad proceeds to mangle my washing machine (though I didn’t know it at the time), while his son (4 years old) trails behind him every step of the way, trekking mud from all over my balcony throughout the apartment, which I didn’t really mind. I was overdue for a mopping session anyway.

After the washing machine future debacle it was time to assess the mold. So some other building maintenance dude came to my crib and they jabbered back and forth for a while. Then landlord says he needs to go buy a part. I’m not sure exactly what I thought that part could be—a magical mold-removing device. Seems like if something like that could be found somewhere in the world, it would certainly be chongqing, china. he asked if it was cool if he son stayed with me for the next 15 minutes or so. I said, sure what the hell. He’d been really chilled out for a 4-year-old up to that point, so I saw no harm.

So dad left and it was just me and this 4-year-old Chinese kid. Just hanging out. I think we both had this revelation at the same time. Shit, what do we do now? so I gave him some charcoal pieces and a piece of sketch paper and let him go to town. He produced an abstract work featuring multiple angry faces, a rabbit with a giant dress, the sun and an apparent human of indeterminate gender. it’s a very cool picture. Really captured the rage he must have been feeling having been left in the hands of a foreign stranger.

He had charcoal all over his hands so I escorted him to the bathroom to help him wash them. gotta say, there’s something really awesome about lifting a tiny person up to a sink and squirting soap into their hands. All in the very acute silence of my apartment. And he didn’t mind. Or speak. After that I gave him a whiteboard marker and let him draw on the glass door to my kitchen. That was a short-lived experiment—he just wasn’t feeling it. after that it was a fun game of ‘try to stab jamie’s drying underwear with the laundry hanging pole.” Also short-lived. My decision.

He actually spent most of the time climbing up my sit-up bench and then using it as a miniature slide. I just stood there and watched him do this over and over, at least 20 times. It was the perfect height for him, and just enough of a challenge for him to swing his legs over the top.

Then his dad came back with 2 cheap, floral rugs to put in my bay window where the mold had damaged the frame. So that was nice. And then they were gone. Still not sure what the long-term strategy for the mold problem is, but at least I’m 2 cheap rugs richer. What a contradictory sentence.

The last thing of note happened 2 days ago. I was walking home from school, broad daylight, busy sidewalk with shops and pharmacies and boutiques. This is the rich part of town, folks. I nearly stepped on 3 tiny tiny tiny puppy fetuses, just laying there on the sidewalk. it was kind of jarring. They were clean and pink. They looked like those weird toys you put in water in that expand to 100 times their size. Usually things like dinosaur toys or cars or something. Anything other than actual puppy fetuses. And why were they there? The appeared to have been discarded by someone or some thing, but this particular sidewalk doesn’t afford the discretion needed for something like that to go down. I’m just very curious. And what did the sidewalk cleaners do with them, just wash them away like all the other debris of daily life? Hmm…

chinese new year shenanigans

Hong kong recap. Going to fight the urge to change the font to century gothic. Sometimes times new roman is enough. Classic and whatnot.

Chinese new year, 2011. What to do? it’s a notoriously crazy holiday, as are all national holidays in china—everyone coming/going home, diy fireworks shows, brutal traffic. This year I thought it best to get out of the mainland, so I visited my friend, jake, in his new town of hong kong. Able to leave china without breaking the bank. ‘twas rad. First impressions: super clean public toilets, clean metros, lots of southeast asian folks congregating and playing cards in public spaces, lots of rich douchebags, the same shopping options as luxury malls in china, fewer people staring and pointing at foreigners, less spitting.

Day 1. fly out at 9:10 in the pm. I had a vague idea of where I was going and what I was doing, but it would ultimately involve a lot of stops along the way in places I’d never been before with landmarks I didn’t know and streets that sounded foreign, even more so than regular Chinese ones. Because they were. It all was. I also had to fight the urge to panic prematurely at every stop. Nothing actually went wrong, but I could feel the panic lurking there in the back of my mind. But from beginning to end, it was relatively painless traveling. i had no trouble getting to the airport in chongqing. I thought it would be more difficult to hail a cab than it was, considering it was Chinese new year’s eve, but no issues.

Landed in Shenzhen, saw a student from school. we’d been on the same flight. i thought I recognized her at the airport, but there have been plenty of times when I’ve thought a kid was a student and confused the hell out of him/her by being uber-friendly, only to realize it wasn’t actually a student I knew. But she actually was from the chongqing school and her mom forced her to talk to me in the airport. Funny shit.

At this point I was still able to use my phone to communicate—still on the mainland. So I informed some peeps that I was in Shenzhen, about to begin phase 2 of operation hong kong. Step two was to take a taxi to the huang gang border. This was surprisingly easy. I was probably over charged, but I negotiated with a non-legit cab driver to take me there. After he drove me a bit in his own car, I switched over to an actual cab a few miles from the airport. Then to the border crossing. Pretty simple, I guess. Even for me. I was nervous at this point because once I crossed the border I wouldn’t be able to communicate with anyone in china or in hong kong, because my phone is only for the mainland. So I was going to be in hong kong going through all these procedures and methods of transport with a pretty tenuous time frame/exact meeting point. And all after midnight without a working phone. Poor planning on my part, but it lent the whole thing the air of “the amazing race” or something like that.…

Anyhoo, at huang gang, I filled out a departure card, waited in line, then crossed the border. The hong kong version of the border is lok mau chao. There was some confusion for me when I was figuring out the logistics of crossing the border so late at night, but that sort of cleared things up for me. Huang gang/lok mau chao is the 24 hour one. So no problems. after I got through huang gang, I boarded a shuttle bus to mongkok. I was able to pay for that ticket in rmb, but was concerned about not having any hkd for the taxi that would ultimately get me to friends in hong kong. This was the first time I fought the impulse to panic. Instead decided to worry about that when I got to it, because winging it always works for me. Nervous laughter…. so we take the bus for a little bit, then have to stop and get off, again filling out more forms to cross a border. This is when my phone no longer worked. I was a little confused by all of this, having never crossed a border by bus before. But I assumed that all the other people on my bus were supposed to be going to the same place, so I’d just follow them. again, not a bet that usually pays off. we get through, get back on the bus and are on our way to the general mongkok area. I’m still on the correct timeframe at this point, which doesn’t usually happen for me, even in places I’m familiar with. But it was all pretty easy to do. so I got off the bus in mongkok, still with no hkd, and get a cab. When it came time to pay him at the Olympic metro station, I played dumb and just handed him the total in rmb. It worked. Probably better for him too since the rmb is worth slightly more than the hkd. So there I was, in the general area of where I was sposed to meet the dude with whom I had no means of communication at that point. we eventually found each other, but this was after about 25 minutes of wandering around the metro station, with no real back up plan if we didn’t happen to meet. I was in the right general area, but that general area was large and confusing, so it took a while. But It all worked out, so, cool.

Met jake’s other friends, rita and Stephen. They were visiting from shanghai. We were all staying in his tiny (cozy) apartment. So we walked back. his apartment’s on the 35th floor of a building with 48 or 49 floors. crazy. You have to take 2 elevators to get there. The first one takes you to a meeting point for all the apartments in the complex. Second one takes you to the actual apartment. There was a key card for everything and very friendly security guards who always said hello in English. It was just massive.

When we got in it was about 2 am already. I was welcomed with a giant glass of whiskey and a glass of wine. From California. Not from china. That was nice. Always been a fan of mixing my alcohols, particularly wine and whiskey.
But we stayed up until 4-ish drinking and talking. It’s been such a long time since I drank wine. Wine that isn’t Chinese and shitty. So that was cool. Stephen and rita took the bed (recently-engaged). Jake took the floor, I took the couch.

The next morning we got up and so began the next 3 days of shopping. Or window shopping for me. Chongqing, for a place so seemingly devoid of foreigners, has a lot of foreign comforts. So I never feel like there are things I can’t get. It’s nice, but it could promote some expensive tastes. i bought some small things, including a watch whose performance is questionable. I’ve already developed the nervous ocd habit of perpetual watch winding. I’d like to think it makes me look cool (or just nervous?). Not a good sign if you always need to check your watch’s time against your cell phone. Other than that, some cheap earring (we’re talking 15 hkd) and some sriracha, I wasn’t much for consumerism, other than the traditional things that can be consumed—food and booze. There’s something pretty spectacular about a lack of open container laws (korea, china, hong kong). Because riding around on a double decker bus in a city you’ve never visited is pretty cool, but doing it while sipping on a bottle of strongbow cider at 3 in the afternoon just infuses the whole experience with so much more meaning. Nostalgia is heightened by a nice afternoon buzz. And you can buy cans of Boddingtons in the convenient stores. That IS convenient!

Where we went on each day is sort of a blur. Booze and amount of time passed since I committed events to memory have conspired against me on this one. I also didn’t really plant myself in the agenda-forming process. I figured there were already 3 other people who had a good idea of what to do, best just to trust them. I think that’s why everything was so relaxing for me. I didn’t have to compromise any of my sight-seeing expectations, because I simply never had any. but we went to a lot of different districts, took a lot of different modes of transportation, ate a lot of good food, and did a lot of walking. There was a ginormo dim sum hall involved (seems like an injustice to call it a mere restaurant when we were at table 234. that’s a fuckload of tables and people in one dim sum locale), the hong kong version of times square, gratuitous ferry rides, so ho and Hollywood, the peak, causeway bay, the walk of fame (replete with Jackie chan’s star), st. john’s cathedral, a really great grocery store/sandwichery in one of the malls at a subway stop, a ginormo fireworks display over the harbor. All of these were things the 4 of us enjoyed together. Having just met Stephen and rita [properly] for the first time, I was actually amazed at how well we all got along for the next few days of complete togetherness. It was great. a surprisingly smooth group vacation. And they were just really cool people, so there wasn’t any forced camaraderie or awkward silences that usually color my interactions with other people.

After rita and Stephen headed back to shanghai, had one more night/day, just jake and I, before I had to head back to the direction of chongqing. So after seeing the happy couple off in the afternoon, we got some road beers and hopped on a double decker bus. Took that bus all around the southwestern part of the island. Then transferred to another bus and headed back up toward wanchai. From there we walked around a bit, amidst all the neon, and shiny gold and throngs and general commerce. It was very cool, very big city, but in a different way than shanghai big city. The douchebag contingent was less present in the majority of hong kong. There were certainly some parts with their fair share of them, but those also happened to be the places with good Mexican food. So we ended up there later, surrounded by heavily-cologned older men on the prowl and gap year kids self-consciously drinking booze, waiting for someone to call them out. but the food was good, as was the bucket of beer. Wandered around for a bit, debating whether to make it a big night or not. Ultimately decided against it—booze and a movie.

Next day we got up, packed a bag with some wine and headed to the ferry station. Lamma island was only 20 minutes away and it seemed like a nice day trip. I think I took the most pictures there. We disembarked the ferry and then tried to take a turn off the beaten path, as all the passengers from the ferry were walking en masse through the main street. It was kind of surreal and zombie-like. so we found said beaten path and wandered around for a bit, taking in the subtropical environs of a sort of remote island off the southwestern coast of hong kong. It was downright pleasant. And the whole time we were granted some perfect weather—jacket weather + sandals=goodness. Eventually headed to the beach, popped open that bottle of wine and had a good long chat.
Leaving hangzhou was really good for me, professionally, but I’m someone who hasn’t had a lot of friends in my life, having only ever really needed jules (and rory, in more recent memory). But in hangzhou I made some actual friends, people that I actually felt sad about leaving. Jake was one of those people. I hadn’t had a best friend in such a long time, and someone who was actually present in a current context of my life, and helping to develop that current context. I don’t know how to explain it. seems like when I talk about “friends”, it’s in reference to this sort of hazy past in which nothing current remains, other than the memory of those friends and some awkward encounters on infrequent trips “home.” But even the memory isn’t current, aside from the fact that it exists now, but it’s based in the past and on nostalgia and a time/place and events that become less and less familiar as real, tangible things. time doesn’t erase them entirely, just the edges. But in hangzhou, I made friends. And they are still real to me, and it makes me profoundly sad to think about their eventual/inevitable blurring. So seeing jake made me exceedingly happy, and really fucking sad before I was even gone. Because I don’t get to see him on a regular basis anymore. That sucks to realize, especially when you’re actually in the middle of one of those rare meetings. Sigh.

Anyhoo, hong kong was good. Got me thinking about a lot of things, a lot of which I won’t mention here, but one of which is where to go next. There’s still that trip to yunnan that never happened, and a course in Vietnam I’m thinking about for late summer/fall. We shall see.