So yesterday I was having diner with Alice.  I mentioned her a few posts back, she is an English teacher at my school and maybe the best friend I have here.  A while ago I had given her the address of this website but never heard back from her about it, I suppose I had assumed that she had never bothered to read it.  For some reason, somehow, I don’t remember how it came up in conversation and I said something like “Oh, yeah did you ever go to my website?”  She said she did and she didn’t like it.  The post I wrote maybe last month, Dirt, eating and drinking was where she had the problem.  She didn’t like seeing her country being criticized by the likes of me, an American.  She said that while she agreed with many of the things I said, to her it was insulting coming from me.  I think it is like if you went to my house and I had a dirty floor (which I totally did until yesterday, yes friends I swept on my own accord) and I knew I had a dirty floor.  If you came into my house and said ‘well your house sucks because the floor is all dirty’ I would be pissed because its my house!  This is my take on her argument, of coarse but I think she would agree we talked about it for a long time, you see.  In the end of the conversation, I commented that from her point of view she must think I was being very arrogant and she said that said that this was the word that she had been thinking of but I think she is way too nice to say it.  She is right.  So much is strange here to me that it is easy to focus on the problems and not appreciate the positive.  For the record, I love it here, and I love China.  So I guess I just want to try and make a list of all the things I like and love about China, but in no particular order.  In time I will think up more things I love, I will try to start mentioning them as the arrize.

THINGS I LOVE ABOUT CHINA:

*My friends Alice, May, Gina, Han Xiao Yin, Michelle and Wei

*Smiling faces (much better than American scowls)

*Chinese people can be very direct and honest 

*Taxis made from motorcycles

*Food, even the weird stuff is yummy if you give it a chance.

*traveling by train

*They pay poor people to pick up trash which kills 2 birds with one stone.  In America if they tried this they would have a whole lot of crack heads stealing garbage cans but here it works fine.

*Chinese New Year

*Jackie Chan

*Yau Ming of the Huston Rockets

*My students are the most wonderful inquisitive people and I love a good 95% of them.  With over 1000 kids that says a lot I think.

*Journey to the West (the TV show, I haven’t read the book yet)

*Monkeys

*Pandas

*Chinese Mountains

*The Great Wall

*Chinese History

*Chinese people’s pride in their countries pandas, mountains, great wall, and history.  Among other stuff too.  It is like if someone from another country mentioned mount Rushmoore and you smilied like you had carved it yourself.

*China is such a huge place, and it only has one time zone!

*Ancient buildings

*Yangshou

*Chinese traditional music

*Beijing punk music

*At meal times the streets are teaming with sidewalk food venders, they have wheeled carts with fryers and steamers and bicycles converted into mobil ovens.  It is cheap and it is good good good!  Everyone enjoys their supper sitting in tiny kindergarten sized plastic chairs at tiny tables and drinks beer and laughs.  Now that its hot its all guys sitting around without shirts screaming with laughter.

*quite lazy days spent under a Chinese tree reading a nice book someplace in China

*Guilin

*I don’t have to tip.  If I tried they would think I had lost my fool mind.

*Every time I meet a Chinese person who speaks English the first thing they say is always “My English is not so good.” and it is usually fine.  Always better than my Chinese.

*Riding my bike through China amid the cars and motorcycles is like being on a speeder bike on the moon of Endoor. 

*Children greet me all the time by saying “Hello” which I think is nice

*Little Children react to me in a similar way to the way Elliot and Drew Barrymore reacted to meeting ET for the first time.

*Did I mention the food?

*Dumplings get their own category they are so good

*eating dog (don’t knock it if you ain’t tried it)

*being lost in China is so scary and fun

*I have a Chinese nick name.  Hi lea, which means drinks the ocean.  It refers to my ability to put away pi zhou (beer)

*looking out the window and seeing China

*learning a new language the hard way (although I am still lousy at it)

*Dvds are cheap and bootleg

*I got these great slippers that are so cool, they are just like the ones Chinese guys wear.

*I get a lot of attention, like I’m somebody fancy.

*Spicy food is really really good

*Sleeping on a train

*having cool stuff to write about adventure wise

*digging on another culture, learning the subtle ins and outs of when it is not polite to show up without pants.  (pretty much always it turns out.)

*When I dream I am having crazy I’m in China dreams.

*The Yunnan province is awesome

*So is Hainan

*Meat on a stick

*Chinese fireworks are massive

*I teach kid the hi five and its new

*Last week I taught kids about The Clash and the Ramones and Outcast and Gnarles Barkley. 

*I go to one restaurant where the guy who runs the place knows me and last time gave me a free bottle of bi zhou.

*Many Chinese woman are pia leo

*all prices are negotiable.  Nobody ever pays the named price.

*Tea

*Buddhism

*Young people are so cool

*old people here are cool too (usually)

*The beer is cheap

*They serve steaks on sizzling metal skillets with bubbling eggs.  The steak place is full of high school girls who all want to giggle at me when I walk in the door.  I have been coming in so long now they all wave and come out of the back and scream “hello” laughing and I wave back they really seem happy to see me. 

*People are nice to strangers

*Strangers are nice back

*Yesterday, before Alice and I had Diner (when she showed me the error of my ways) we were riding bikes down the street.  Everything is blooming here and it is hot and the city street is filled with every conceivable thing to look at.  Out of nowhere I heard myself say to Alice ‘I am so glad to be alive.’  I didn’t really think about it before I said it but at that very moment I realized it was true.  God bless you China.

So if I came off as an arrogant jerk to anyone else please let me know, and I am really from my heart sorry.  And don’t get me wrong, of all the things I wrote in that long rambling post I only take back one thing, I regret calling Alice ‘foxy’, I meant it nice but she didn’t apprieciate it, I take that back and I am embarrased and sorry.  Other than that it is all true as far as I can see, but I can also see how someone from China would get their dander up reading such from an outsider.  But I would hate to feel like I neglected to express what an amazing country I have found in China and how great a lot of the people really really are.  I respect that I am a guest in this country and while I feel it is my duty in my writting to say what I feel, I hate to think I came off as hating on China.  It is good here, you should come, you’d like it. 

 This blog symmetrically begins and ends on a sleeper train

2/19/07

In the PM

The beds on the train were bunks stacked three high and facing each other, making a little area of 9 beds total.  The bottom two seem to be understood as the spot where everyone sits and chit chats about this and that in manderin.  I had the misfortune to be assigned the bottom bunk on an earlier train heading some place and it was such a drag.  I remember wanting to strech out and relax in my bed but I couldn’t because four or five total strangers were sitting in my way having a fine time.  So on the night in question, the 19th, I took the very tip top bunk, which you get to by putting your feet on the other peoples beds and pulling your way up.  No ladder.  First thing I did on the train after stowing my gear was to climb up to that sweet sweet bed.   

I wish to point out that Han Xiao Yin and I had been spending every single waking minute of every single day together.  This is way too much time to be around anyone, even someone as cool as my buddy Xiao Yin.  Tensions were starting to seep to the surface, the situation was getting snappy and fast.

Xiao Yin had taken it upon himself to look out for me.  This was simaltaneously very very good and very very bad.  Good in that I had someone making sure I didn’t get ripped off or lost or killed mysteriously, bad because he demonstrated time and again that he had no power to turn it off.  Often he instructed me to eat more, not to buy something, always nagging me not to lose my passport, this sort of thing.  It was well natured and his heart was in the right place, sure.  In a big way I even apprieciated it at times, sure.  He was the only person in the world I could talk to, and I would have been miserable without his company, sure.  We had had some very cool moments so far on this trip in which two virtual strangers shared amazing unforgetable adventures, true.  At times the  comradery was such that we laughed from deep in our hearts like brothers, true.  Other times I was ready to kill him and he was ready to kill me, also true.

So just after I had climbed my ass up to the top bunk and sighed “ahhhhh” Xiao Yin tells me that he thinks I should come back down to the bottom bunk with them.  Actually, he said “I could” go down to the bottom bunk as if granting me generous permission.  There was a couple down there who wanted to give me melon.  I really didn’t want any melon.  I really just wanted to be left alone to lay at the near ceiling summit of the train.  Xiao Yin laughed at my stupidity and assured me that I didn’t have to stay up there.  I let him know that I was fine.  The woman started reaching melon slices to the top for me, I shook my head and waved my hands, smiling.  She climbed higher and stuck it right in my face.  I was eating melon.  So I took a slice and started eating.  Xiao Yin told me “don’t eat the peels.”  I let him that I am 30 years old, and rolled over.  The lady tapped me on the shoulder, more melon.

At least two or three more times Xiao Yin ordered me to come to the bottom bunk, he wanted to show me off to everybody I guess.  By now he was saying “I really think you should come to the bottom bunk.  He wasn’t smilling anymore.  Neither was I.  

The next morning I gave him the silent treatment for a spell, then we talked about it and everything was fine for the most part from then on.  He got bossy sometimes, but I tend to get messugana sometimes too.  You try going on an endless road trip with someone for that long, in China of all places.  So for the record, Han Xiao Yin is a cool friend and all that happened was we got on each others nerves for a second there.  Everything was squashed easy.

So Then we had to wait for two hours at a train station for our connection to take us to the next place.  We sat on the floor against a wall indian style with our stuff pilled next to us.  I wondered if there was any cool way to kill time in a train station.  There wasn’t.  

I went to the bathroom area.  In China they have mens and woman bathrooms just like the states, but the mirror and sink is always communial and located outside the doors to both.  This train station was packed too, and it was around 7 or 8 am.  I squeezed my way through maybe fifty to a hundred poeple chaoticly trying to get close to a sink and mirror to do their morning thing.  It took ages, there were maybe ten mirrors total.  When I finally did make it to the front I stood right behind a couple who huddled close.  I watched them both brush their teeth, then he shaved and she put on make up.  They seemed aware of all the people waiting and they were clearly trying to go as fast as they could.  They handed each other the right toiletries at the right time without exchanging a word, it was almost telepathic.  They just knew each others morning routine so cold that they were both dead on each time.   It was like watching a silent movie version of a surgeory, the part where the doctor instructs the nurse “scaple, drill, flashlight.”  I brushed my teeth and then dry shaved for lack of soap.  I was so far beyond the point of caring.  A good hotel at this point was one with heat and hot water and a good meal was one that was on time.  A good morning was one where I had five minutes to brush my teeth and shave, soap or no.   

I went and sat back down with Xiao Yin on the floor against the wall.  Francis my info man in the Yunnan came and asked for a drum lesson.  I showed him how to paradiddle (RLRRLRLL) on his knee and he picked it up in under a minute.  I showed him basic 4/4 rock beats with his foot hitting on one and three and his hand on two and four.  I counted yi, er, san, si (1, 2, 3, 4) and then switched the rhythms around on him.  He picked up everything so fast.  His brain was a beautiful thing, no wonder he was such a warehouse of historical information.  Have you ever meet someone who only needed to be told once?  smart smart smart, that guy.

 

We then went to another shop, the entrance of which was flanked by guys wearing giant plastic heads that looked like anime cartoons of bald Chinese babies with gigantic eyes.  Yeah I asked for a picture, they said no, I don’t know why.  I would be proud of my gigantic plastic freaky baby head.  You would see me strutting with my big baby head.  

We went to an open air flower market where I was shoved aside by a man who (right in front of me) started punching the hell out of another guy.  For just a fraction of a split second my first instinct was to actually take one step closer, old Eagle Woods reflexes, I used to break up fighting gangsta thug kids for a living. Just for a fraction of a second though, like I said, not long.  The smart guy voice in my head kicked in quick and I took several more steps the hell away from there.  Oh, it was bad, too.  My best theory was that one of them was buying flowers for the other fellas wife or something, but just a guess.  So the cops showed up and drug them off, one guys face was bleeding, chaos and screaming.  

In the parking lot Xiao Yin told me about the show Journey West, which is based on a famous ancient novel.  I have since seen the show, it is all about a monk, a pig king, and super monkey and they are all trying to get to India to retrieve sacred scrolls.  The problem is that all the evil monsters seem to think that eating the monks skin is a really good idea as it will make them live forever, so they are always getting chased around by cool monsters and animal people.  The show was made in the 70s and has crazy sets and martial arts and the story lines make little to no sense even when explained by a Chinese guy.  The one we saw that night in the hotel was about super monkey going to the sky and beating the crap out of everyone there until they gave him a job.  Finally (after he sufficiently beat the crap out of everyone in the sky mind you) the king of the sky said, ok, fine, we’ll give super monkey a job.  The cheeky king tricked super monkey by making him in charge of the horses in the sky and telling him it was a sweet gig.  Really, as the king and all his friends winkingly knew, it wasn’t such a sweet gig.  

I think in order to picture the guy they had playing super monkey, imagine if Jackie Chan and Pee Wee Herman used their sperm to impregnate a baboon.  I hypothesize that if the offspring of this baboon stood upright and wore clothes and was somehow blessed with limitless magical powers and the ability to speak manderin for some reason you would have something very close to the super monkey I saw.

So anyway, super monkey is so happy to have what he thinks is a fancy sky job, he smiles and claps and gleefully hops around all monkey like as they cut to stock footege of horses running, very remenicant of the work of Edward D Wood jr and his buffolo (PULL ZE STRINGS!!!)  Somebody finally spills the beans to super monkey that taking care of sky horses is sort of the sky equivilant of a sky shit job, and so super monkey goes bananas.  Thus the episode I saw of journey west symmetrically began and ended with super monkey furiously beating the crap out of everybody who worked in the sky.  

Han Xiao Yin explained the whole story to me.  I asked him to repeat my favorite part over and over again for the next week, whenever I thought about it.  This was the part where it was explained about how the Pig king came to be a pig in the fisrt place.  Aparently he used to be a regular guy who worked up in the sky but the sky king got pissed off at him about something and kicked him out of the sky.  And so when he fell out of the sky he (for some reason) landed in a pigs uterus and came out a pig.  Yup, thats how it works.

That was Februay and it is now April, I am still searching dilligently high and low for any dvd I can find, even though I don’t think I have much chance of finding it translated.  I don’t care, that is how amazing this damn show is.  

So after the kerfuffle at the flower market we went to the Yunnan botanical expo, left over from some big event back in 1999.  It had a lot of cool flowers and plants, and it was huge, but I think over all sort of ho-hum.    

The majority of the park was small mini gardens, each of which representing a province in China, sort of like a little put-put version.  Many of the gardens of places I had been (I guess) sort of reminded me of the place, but only if I really tried.  Hainan was dead on, they had a little lake surrounded by sand representing the beach and a hut with coconuts you could drink from.  We spent most of the day looking for the Henan (our province) garden.  Finally it started looking like they didn’t even have one.

The Shangdong garden had a mini Tai shan, the mountain Xiao Yin and I climbed a few weeks ago.  In front of the mountain was a sign with a stick figure person climbing a ladder behind a DO NOT DO circle and cross.  The sign read

NO SHINNEY 

Next, we went to the part of the expo which featured the mini earth, several small put-put gardens representing countries.  First we did Spain, which was a green house full of banzai trees.  There was a gift shop at one end and on a wall was a small painting of a matadore fighting a bull.  Traditional Spanish castanet music was blasting louder than a rave.  Next we went and paid a visit to jolly old England, which was enclosed by a brick wall on four sides and filled with lush tropical palm trees.  A sign in the corner explained that this was in fact the England garden so we were not in the wrong place.  England’s garden was next to the Spanish garden and therefor also blasted traditional Spanish castinet music.  Holland had a wind mill at least, which was good.  We tried to find America’s garden only to find out they used to have one, but it was torn down years ago.  Isreal had a garden, and so did Palestien, but they were located several gardens apart from each other, just to play it safe I think.  

At the end of the day we found a little room near the gate behind the bathrooms in which were huddled small photo displays depicting all the misfit provinces unworthy of a put-put garden.  We found Henan, there was a big map.  We discussed different places we could go close enough to Shangqiu to do weekend trips.  It even had a picture of a rinky dink temple on the outskirts of Shangqiu.  It was kind of neat.