I tried, I really did.  It is too fucking long.  I gotta split it up. 

A)I don’t feel like writting all night again and I want to get another blog out.

B)All my hommies are ADHD like me so I better keep it short and sweet.

Here’s the Second part: Yunnan

2/15/07

Well, Ok, so This part of the blog doesn’t actually start in the Yunnan province, it just sort of winds up there, it actually starts where the whole trip winds up in the Guangxi.  If this is confusing hopefully it will make sense soon, or maybe it will just never ever make any sense one way or another, in which case bear with me.  If I had a student who wrote non sense like that I would have a fit.  Here we go.

The over night boat took us to Beihei, the southern most tip of the Guangxi.  After another early morning wake up call, this time in the form of a deafening ship horn; baroooooooooooooooooograhhhhhhh, we were shaken out of bed. 

Beihai might well be a swell town.  The 15th by all rights should have been a great day, but it wasn’t.  It was sort of a waste of time which I  now wish I could trade in for one more day in Yangshou, but we’ll get there. The big problem was not with the city but with the rain.  It was still dark when we climbed off the boat and meet our connection at the pier and already the rain was spraying in large thick drops.  We got in his car, which was a four door sedan of Chinese make with curtains hanging on little curtain rods covering all four windows and the rear windshield. 

The first stop was a sea food resturant which hadn’t opened yet across from silver beach.  We sat under the awning in the shop front for fourty minutes waiting for the rain to let up just a little.  The front of the place was lined with tanks brimming to the hilt with fish, some of which you’d expect, a couple of which were down right bizarre.  There was a spikey blow fish with huge eyes, eels, shrimp, some turtles.  We sat there and watched the rain.  Our Baihai connection and Xiao Yin chatted away pleasantly while I sat quiet. 

Eventurally the sky blessed us with a slow misty drizzle so we went across the street to silver beach.  We didn’t stay long, it was cold and rainy, like I said.  The sand was sparkling white, which was nice.  I later learned that Xiao Yin had been looking forward to this beach, he had heard tell of its white white sand.  Had I known that then I would have tried to stay a little longer but at the time I figured he wanted to get out of the rain like me, so we left pretty fast.  Xiao Yin and I have since conspired to try to make it back to Baihai for another trip mainly just to do this beach.  We’ll see, so many places to go.

The rest of the morning we went from one pearl shop to another.  This is a little more awkward when it is just 2 of us and not a whole bus load.  We politly walked around as the shopkeepers showed us everything they had, they all looked at us hopefully, we didn’t buy anything.  One place took us into a small room and sat us at a table and tried and tried to sell us pearls.  I didn’t want pearls at any price, even though they did have the cheapest pearls, and at this point I would know. 

Around noon we escaped, Xiao Yin wanted seafood because Beihai has a rep as being seafood city.  Our connection took us to a place that had tanks outside, just like the place we had killed time in front of that morning.  The thing was that the really really good fresh still in the tank shit was going to cost us.  Han Xiao Yin being Han Xiao Yin, we hung around arguing and bartering and dickering with the guy until the price dropped to almost where we wanted it.  Xiao Yin prides himself on his price debating skills, and it is so cool to watch the argument go back and forth with no idea what they are saying.  I often try to guess, I flatter myself into thinking that my guesses are usually spot on, but honestly, not always.

So we ordered the food; shrimp, muscles and clams.  Oh and tomato and egg, Xiao Yins all time favorite dish.  No sooner had we sat down when they showed up with a plate of the shrimp I had seen swimming maybe 2 minutes before.  They had taken the little guys, dumped them in the boiling water and bam.  Right on the table.  Oh, they were good too, so fresh and Yummy.  This was the best meal we had had thus far on the trip.  It was just the 2 of us there eating and I can’t help but think this had something to do with the fact that just at the begening of our meal the background music switched from Chinese traditional to Micheal Boltons ‘When a man loves a woman’.  It was certainly a nice thought on their part, but the truth is that I hate Micheal Bolton and believe his mullet to be the living earthly embodiment of uncool personified.  Micheal Bolton was followed by Whitney Huston singing ‘and I will always love you’.  “Madonna” said Xiao Yin, “no, Whitney Huston” I corected him.  This lead to an argument which ended with Xiao Yin conceeding that I was right but I don’t think he was convinced.

The fresh seafood was a welcome relief from Chinese tour group food, which was almost the exact same in every city.  Breakfast would be a bowl of noddles and a rice ball (a soft thing with the same taste as a rice cake,) and proidge.  When we were in Kunming they included dumplings in the mix and I thought I was in heaven.  Lunch would have five dishes, always a couple of vegetables, a plate of whole (head and all) shrimp, always a smattering of some stuff I didn’t understand, and a whole fish which people would rip at with chop sticks like predatory animals huddled around the kill in the sarengeti.  It was amazing how much meat one fish would produce, ten to fifteen people were feeding on one carcus.  And in the end, just a tail and a spine and the boney parts of the head.  The Chinese tour group and I were like pirannas.  I would slop the food all over my little area trying to get to any of it close to my mouth.  Sometimes one of my companions would tell Xiao Yin who would tell me something good or bad about my chopstick skills, I would always smile and open my mouth while pretending to stab myself in the eye with a chopstick.  This would always make everyone laugh.  It is so easy to make Chinese people laugh, and I totally love that about them.

And so after lunch we got on yet another bus full of yet more people, none of whom I have any memory of.  We rode for ever.  I told Xiao Yin about race relations in America, about the N word and why he should never, never, never ever use it.  I taught him the rhyme about I before E except after C.  At some point I used the expression “I’m not just a pretty face” which I had said with intended irony, I don’t remember in regard to what.  He demanded to know how to use this gem of a phrase and he laughed endlessly about it.  This was the funniest thing to him, and he kept repeating it incorrectly until days later when he finally got it.

“I am not pretty face!”

“I am pretty face!”

“I am just pretty face!”

I just am not pretty face!”

and so on.

Needless to say, “I’m not just a pretty face” soon became one of the catch phrases for the trip.

Eventually the bus let us off at a train station is some city, and we got on a train and hunkered down for the night.

2/16/07

The train had 9 bunks per section, 2 triple bunk beds facing each other.  I found sleeping on a train relaxing, the rocking motion while sleeping.  Very nice.  I had wicked crazy dreams on the train too.  One I remember was my friend Carson showed up in China.  He told me that people in China had no one to fix the TV sets.  His plan was we go into buisness as TV repairmen and corner the market and be assured fabulous riches.  In the dream I thought about his idea and told him that I would help on one condition.  I wanted to use eyeball men.  I pointed to an eyeball man who was now in the room suddenly.  His entire body, head to toe was covered in eyes, all looking around and blinking.  Carson shook his head and said, “no, I think they may be too indestructable”.  “No ears!”  I said in argument, and Carson agreed.  The funny part is that if you know Carson, this is just the kind of crazy scheme he is liable to come up with, and I am just the kind of sap who would go along with it.

The train took us to Kunming in the Yunnan province, which is a rather large, although charming city.  Once off the train we hooked up with our connection who took us to meet the next tour group on the next bus.  Seeing a pattern?

They took us to Shilin rock garden, which was touristy but still very cool.  Legend has it that Gods smashed whole mountains to pieces and left a maze for lovers looking to find privacy.  The rock formations themselves are believed to have at some time been underwater, this plus the erosion of time has left a vast labyrinth of sharp rocks sticking straight up to the sky.  Pathways and stairs wrap around one another, up and down and all through the rock formations.  At one point we walked by a thin rock that made a bell sound when slapped.  Each member of our group slapped the rock once or twice as if in thurow  inspection of the rock and its sound.  Me being me I played the solo from wipe out.  It is so easy to make Chinese people laugh, I seriously love them for it.  They are the laughingest people.  I took many many pictures of the rock garden, many of which are now posted on this very site, blog believers.  (See photo page)

On the way back they took us to another shop, this one was a whole complex.  I stayed in my seat on the bus which seemed to irk the bus driver.  He kept giving me diaproving glares from the rearview, I ignored him and focused my attention to the Lonely planet china book.  I found a museum in downtown Kunming that really looked cool, just a few short blocks from the train station from which we would depart later that night.  It seemed to perfect to pass up.  

This time the poor suckers in the shop were gone close to an hour, another deal where they were forced to sit through an endless lecture.  When they got back I showed Xiao Yin the museum in my book and he seemed really into it. 

The problem was this.  The tour guide (who sternly told Xiao Yin to lecture me about not going into the shops, which made me snicker at her involuntarily) told us that the tour company could not have us wandering off on our own because they still weren’t sure what we would be doing that night. 

‘Well what are you talking about?’

Well, they had neglected to get us tickets for the train we would be taking later in the evening.  So they were now trying to last minute us a pair of train tickets two days before the biggest travel holiday in the biggest country in the world.  This on top of the fact that because we spent over an hour and a half at the shop which nobody wanted to go to we got back to Kunming right when the museum was closing.  This drove me up a tree.  The whole tour thing was set up so that in order to get to the next place we had to sit through all their bullshit or risk getting left behind in the wrong city or province.  As nice as the rock garden had been I can’t say that was the only or even close to first choice of things I would have liked to have done in Kunming.  And here we could have almost made it but instead we get shanghai-ed (pun intended) at some god aweful tea/marble/candy/pearl/nick-nack store in the middle of nowhere.  It seemed that my path was clear, it was me vs the tour company.  If we were going to have a groovy time on this junket we would have to take matters into our own hands.

When we got back to Kunming we waited for a while in the tour office for them to figure it out with the train, then we went down the street to a place called ‘The Brothers Jiang’ which specialized in a local famous dish called across the bridge noddles.  Across the bridge noddles is awesome.  It comes in a huge bowl along with an endless amount of side things to dump in there.  We found out later that there is a specific order in which to dump in the stuff which we bumbled, still we thought were so great.

When we got back to the office we learned that we would take a 5 hour late night bus trip to get to Dali instead of a nice, kushey train. 

At this point I would like to point out that it had been Hainan since I had seen a shower or an actuall (not just a hole in the ground) toilet.  I was stinkey and nasty and sick of doing my thing while squatting in midair over holes and I longed to sleep in a real bed that was in no way touching a train or boat and certainly not another seat on a bus.  These were my concerns.

It was on the night train that I first met Francis, my Info man in the Yunnan.  Francis is a very very smart highschool kid who wanted to speak english with me.  Most of the time he taught me Chinese history, a subject which he has an avid knowledge of.  Did you know that the Chinese were growing gardens on ships for long voyages all the way back in the Han Dynasty?  The Han dynasty happened around the height of the Roman empire, European sailers were still dying of scurvy for lack of vegetables and fruit in their diets on long trips in the 1700’s.  My info man in the Yunnan told me all about it.

The ride was uncomfortable and endless, a speaker blarred the music from the tv and the temperature droped.  The bus drove us north into higher and higher altitude and colder and colder air.  I passed the time talking with Francis into the night. 

We got to Dali around 1:30 and checked into our hotel.  This was a classy place.  There was no elevator and we were on the fifth floor.  If the hotel had toilets they neglected our bathroom, another hole in the floor.  The end table between the beds had condoms.  The room had no TV.  This was a classy place.

There was no heat and only a thin useless blanket to cover the bedsheet.  I was so tired.  I tried my best to sleep shivering fully clothed with a jacket on and a ski cap pulled down over my nose.  I was so tired I managed to pass out after a while. 

A few short hours later we were up and dressed and at breakfast.  Francis asked if we were cold in the night like him and his family were.  Two ladies at the table next to ours were screaming at each other so loud I was sure they would fight and one would die.  The hotel manager came and seriously accused myself and Xiao Yin of stealing the missing TV from our room.  I laughed and patted my backpack and said “oh sure, its right here.”  Xiao Yin and I lost it laughing about this and the hotel manager stood there for a second like a fool before he gave up and walked away.  This was a classy place.

Coming soon to the willsanderschinaadventure…

Mountain climbing to reach a Buddhist temple!

Spring Festival!

Lots and Lots of loud explosions that go BANG!

Fist fight!

Snow! 

Public drinking!

And much more!

Stay tuned Blog Believers!

Ok, so I just found out that the city code is 370

so the official as of now last thing is

0 11 86 370 13598065775

This is different from a site I found a while ago, so I am not sure which is right.

So in order to call China you actually have to hit 0 +11+86 and then the number, which once again is

(0 11 86) 13598065775

Sorry, I know my mother has been trying I hope I havn’t caused any other headaches. 

Sorry for the mixup, I am a totall mess sometimes.

w

So I Just got back last night from a trip which lasted just shy of 3 weeks and spanned 3 provinces.  Along the way I made friends with a man I had thought to be a stooge and was adopted into a family and turned 30 and climbed mountains and never wore a hat I wasn’t feeling.  I made sure to keep detailed notes on everything in a daily journal I filled entirely with thoughts and memories which will largly comprise the following series of blogs.  My hope is to hang on to every detail of what happened so as not to let go of a second of my wonderful trip.  So here we go,

 Here’s the first part:  Hainan

2/11/07

I woke up at 7.  I didn’t know when I would be summoned and thought it bad form to be late on the first day.  Hell, I couldn’t sleep anyway, I was too full of happy, like a kid on christmas morning.  I packed and repacked, carefully checking to make sure that everything was in order.  I took a large trail hiking frame backpack for my clothes which weighed about 40 or 50 pounds with enough duds for 10 days.  I would be out for a little over 20, but with any luck a dice roll would land on my being able to do laundry at least once.  I also had a small gym bag the tour co. had given me, (along with the stupid hat).  I filled it with books, learning Chinese, Stephen King (I admit it), China travel books, The Lonely Planet guide to China, Gloves, a water bottle, extra batteries, my ipod, and a bunch of other stuff for long car rides.  I made myself an egg and tomato sandwich and waited.  Eventually the phone rang and the stooge told me to be at the travel agent around noon, already having eaten. 

I got my pack on and put on my hiking boots and went out the door to the tour co. right around the corner.  I got there and met Han Xiao Yin and his parents who were waiting for me.

I had found out the night before after I had written the blog stating that I had mr Han pegged for a stooge that  I would be sharing a room with this guy the whole time.  I had a Lando moment and said “This deal get worse all the time.” 

So the tour co. lady said to Xiao Yin who told me that several more people would be traveling to Zhengzhou with us and would be here shortly.  He asked if I would join him for some food, to which I agreed to go with, but wasn’t hungry.  He took me to a place owned by his uncle which was very close to my school.  The place was linned with wicker 2 person porch swings instead of chairs around the tables.  The strings going up to the cieling were hidden by fake flower xmas tree lights.  Has anyone seen this in the States?  I thought it was such a cool idea, to be able to eat and lazily swing to and fro.  He ordered shrimp dumplings which were pretty good, he insisted I try a couple.

We made awkward conversation at first, still sizing each other up.

“are you excited about our trip?”

“yup, me too.”

So by and by a van showed up full of our travell companions.  I did not know at the time but this van contained my new family for the next several days.  I never was told a single one of there names so I will call them my Hainan Family, Hainan Grandmother, Hainan Mother, Hainan big Brother, Hainan middle Sister, and Hainan little sister.  They are the coolest, nicest, sweetest, folks I have met in a long long while.  My kind of people!  More with them later.

We went to put our stuff in the van and nobody else seemed to have packed near as much as I have.  The Hainan family was only to be with us for the Hainan leg of the trip, (hence the name), and therfor only had a week to think about.  Xiao Yin had a little tiny suitcase with wheels and a handle that raised out of the back.  I had a pack made for Nanook of the north.  In the coming weeks my pack proved much more useful and versitile than Xiao Yins for moving from hotel to bus to train to boat, but at the moment I had horrable visions of the entire trip being ruined for everyone due to my over packing. 

We sat in the back seat, myself, Xiao Yin, and big brother with the back pack riding longways on top of the seat with the bag sticking in our necks.  Its a 3 hour ride to Zhengzhou from Shangqiu.

Along the way Xiao Yin and I discussed politics and Mao.  We talked for a while about different cities in the US.  See, Xiao Yin had sent applications to grad schools in several different places in America; New Mexico, Arizona, Cleveland, Baltimore, and New Jersey.  I told him what I could about each place, trying to make them all sound very nice as he didn’t know which one, if any, he would be accepted into.  He even had a little map which we looked at.

He wasn’t getting paid by the school to come on the trip as I had originally thought, and although he did seem to have an enflatted veiw of his own role as my gardian at times, really the kid wanted to come along with me to work on his english.  He went to sign up on for a trip and the tour co. put us together thinking this way I would not do what ever stupid idiot thing they thought me capable of doing.  As it turned out he did get a huge discount on the trip and was able to go as far as me just by being my roomie, and while I got a small cut in price for him it made the whole trip possible.  The way I saw it at least I would have someone to talk to the whole time.

Eventually I reallized that the bag in the neck was bugging him so I tried to put it vertically on the floor, my legs stradling.  This sent the Hainan family into a fit and they grabbed my bag, each trying to prove that they could put my bag on top of them with the greatest ease.  Hainan Grandmother won in the end and put my bag in her lap in the shotgun seat of the van.  There was no use arguing either, she would ride with my bad and that was that.  All I could say was thank you (or xia xia)

We finally got to the airport in Zhengzhou and had to wait for a few hours.  I saw a few forriegners (new word for white people) for the first time since I got to China.  I found myself starring at them just as the Chinese stare at me.  We would make eye contact and nod at one another as if to say, ‘I know it.  Me too.’

The plane ride from Zhengzhou to Hainan found me sitting by the window of a 3 seat row next to a married couple.  The sunset out of the plane window was spectacular and the lady next to me kept reaching accross my body to put the camera next to the window to try and capture it.  She seemed embarrased at first but I smiled and waved for her to take another.  She even took a shot of my ugly mug.

We watched a little tv moniter which had a period soap opera about political intrigue in an empirial family, no english.  Then the familiar song of the loney tunes woke me from a sleep and my whole face lit up.  Tom n Jerry.  The opening shot was of Tom up late at night on a drawing board designing some elaborate contraption to do what ever it was he had always planned on doing to Jerry if he ever got the chance, which of coarse he never did.  Then the dvd starts skipping and they yanked it in favor of more Chinese soap opera.  Deeb a deeb a thats all folks!  Diner was kurry beef, and not bad, as airplane food goes.

We landed in the Hainan province, an island south of mainland China, west of Hong Kong and East of Vietnam across the Bay Of Tonkin.

The air felt topical and balmy.  We walked out of the airport and into the parking lot, palm trees.  Everywhere, palm trees.  Not like Florida where they have them strategically placed by the airport but palm trees like kudzu vieing for any possible square inch to get around the concrete.

It was dark and we zoomed off in a van, (this time with enough room for my stuff) and I thought about Florida resturants with pink stucco walls and xmas lights hanging over porches which are always filled with tables which sit under umbrellas with beer logos.  Fake saining nets hanging with plastic sword fish, sea horses, and starfish and ship tillers all lie next to strategically placed palm trees.

Heres hoping this will be different.  The place that gave trader vics the idea, the honest to goodness Mckoy.  I feel like I am on a rollercoaster going up the first and always tallest slowest hill, just before the first fall where everything starts happening, the wheels on the track saying tick tick tick tick.

 

2/12/07

(my birthday)

I hadn’t slept well, excitment maybe.  Although sometimes I just can’t sleep for any clear reason.  I have always wanted to have that checked out but never found occasion.  When I woke up and surveyed the strange hotel room with 3 beds (me, Xiao Yin and big brother who was now crashing with us as well) the first realization was that I was in China.  I get this from time to time still.  On the plane from LA to Beijing I remember waking suddenly and not knowing where I was for a full 15 seconds and saying ‘oh, thats right, I am on a plane bound for China’ which is a wierd place to wake up.  Sort of like that morning.  The next relization was that I had lived 30 years.  Happy birthday to me.  I got up and walked to the window.  The tropical city of Haikou in the Hainan province was wiping the sleep off its eyes, cars whizzing around below honking, not quite day yet but not nearly night anymore.

It was 6 am when they woke us up with a phone call, 6:20 when we made it downstairs to breakfast packed and ready.  This is the way life on a Chinese tour would be, up as early as possible run run run out the door and into the bus to run run run to the next thing.  I sat at a great big circular table with the Hainan family still mostly asleep.  Little sister got up and came back with milk boxes for her whole family as well as for Xiao Yin and I.  I said thank you and put mine aside.  Xiao Yin told me that the money she spent to buy us these milks came from selling pencils to her classmates.  I don’t know how long she had been in the school house pencil trade, but here she was lavishing me with the fruit of her young labors.  I stabbed my straw in the little hole on top and took a long smiling drink of milk.  This made her smile back.

The country side consisted of rolling vegetation covered vallies and hills and mountains which would rise crest and sink all within a stones throw of the bus window.

Lush lush lush!

I had been told that the first stop would be floating down the river on a raft.  In my head I pictured apocylpse now without all the crappy doors soundtrack and LSD and guns and Wagner.  This is not what happened.

Here is what did happen:

We climbed onto a large raft made of planks of wood lying across bamboo runners.  We sat in wooden chairs, and were asked to put cameras, wallets, ect into a trash can which would stay dry.  The boat took us about 200 yards out and turned around and came back.  During all of this we are given water guns and sprayed the other boats.  The other boats all seemed to agree that first prize was landing a bulls eye in the center of the white guys face.  Guess who got more wet than anyone.  The man who at the tiller of the boat across from us through most of the brief journey was not only a crack shot but wearing a rain slicker.  You’d think I would have the sense to leave such a man alone.  I did not.  He and I had a showdown.  In the end I think I can safely say that I lost.

The whole thing lasted 15 minutes max, maybe 10.  I was dripping soaking wet when I told Xiao Yin that it wasn’t what I had expected and he told me the same.  He seemed more disapointed than I was, I think he really was looking forward to floating down a river all day.  He didn’t know it but he would have his chance, later though, and not until the Guangxi province.

The next thing was a beach which we got to by boat from across a cove.  We climbed to the top of a sand hill and on the other side was the ocean.  I ran and went in to my waist (already soaking wet from the lame raft, what the hell).  Of the hundreds of people standing on the beach it had not occured to anyone to actually get in the water.  A few small childen ran out to play too, kids always know what to do at a beach, and Xiao Yin got in as well.   When I got out Hainan Grandmother asked Xiao Yin to translate and told me I had a good personality and the heart of a child.  They asked him to teach them to say “you are best” which they told me. 

Aw shucks! 

20 minutes later we were supposed to get on the boat and leave.  I asked Xiao Yin how to say “you are beautiful” in chinese and marched up to Asha the tour guide (who is indeed beautiful, see picture page) and it only took 4 tries at saying the same thing before she understood.  This was a totally cool move I thought to myself.  An even cooler move, I soon realized may have been to have any tiny bit of Chinese to follow this up with, as she quickly demonstrated her lack of knowledge of english.  After a brief yet meaningless non verbal conversation (a lot of smiling and shrugging) we were back on the boat and off to lunch. 

Nei hou pio lia

After lunch (same lunch everyday, more on this later) they took us to a forrest trading post and gift shop.  This was a totally shit place to go and utter waste of time.  Pathways and huts were cut out of dense vegetation, the huts were filled with the same crap I would come to know at everyone of these tourist places.  All the same.  Little people made of coconut shells, magnets that make a rattle noise when thrown in the air, loud hawaiian shirts and pants, ever been to Panama city?  no?  well don’t!  Young girls were everywhere and would tug at your arm, their aim was for you to spend way too much money on a mock wedding!  A mock wedding!  People spend their money to play make-believe wedding with young girls at tourist traps in what would otherwise be amazing lush jungle.  I wandered away from the group and found the bathroom (concrete wall surrounding a very ill smelling hole in the ground) and was accosted by a woman when I came out.  It seemed she wanted money although not a begger, at least she didn’t seem like one, when Xiao Yin found me I said “tell me what this woman wants!  Please she won’t leave me alone!”  He told me that the hole was a pay hole and I owed 1 yuan.

The next stop of the day was a garden with trees which led into a museum of chinese medicine which lead into a classroom with a locked door and bars on the window.  A guy came in and proceeded to spend the next 30 minutes trying to sell us Chinese medicine which would ease the pain of arthritic joints.  Hainan Mother told Xiao Yin she had tried the shit and it didn’t work.

What the hell is this!!??  Had I been taken for a ride?  Had I paid my money for a sales lecture?  What the hell kind of bizzaro time share bullshit was this?  The whole time the other people in the group (the group in addition to me and Xiao Yin and our family was around 25 strong) all sat mesmerized politly hanging on his everyword.  When we were finally allowed to leave Xiao Yin told me that everyone who goes on a tour in China knows they will be expected to sit through these things.  We shall see about that. 

Next we had a drive to get to our hotel.  Xiao Yin told me that if we wanted we could go see (are you sitting down?) Eunuchs from Thailand.  It cost 150 yuan to get in, which is a lot, and I didn’t know what to expect, but Xiao Yin really wanted to go and it seemed if I was ever to see a eunuch show from Thailand this may be my only chance.  Of coarse I went.  Wouldn’t you?   

First of all I couldn’t believe that this was still happening.  Small boy Children are robbed of their important parts and raised as girls by parents in hopes of their enjoying a life of show buisness I guess.  I ask questions and am only told that this is a tradition which is very respected in Thailand. 

We are taken into a giant ampatheater.  Xiao Yin tells me that because there are children present the show will be tame, no showing of scars.  This doesn’t upset me.

The show started just how you would expect it to, 30 people in sequin jump suits acrobatically jumping and dancing to the entire orchestral score of the movie Star Wars.  I asked Xiao Yin if these people were eunuchs and he said no, they were just dancers, we’d have to wait for later for the eunuchs.  Clearly a dumb question. 

The first act was a guy in all black with a cowboy hat doing a bull whip show.  He could crack his 15 foot long whip at pinpoint accuracy, popping balloons, even knocking a cigerette out of an audience volunteers mouth.  Then he did the knife show, with the lady standing on the board and him making an outline of her body with flying knives.  This was very cool I thought.  Then the mc did about 10 minutes of stand up, lost on me, mostly dick jokes I was told.  Then came the Chinese Bobby Mcfarrin/Micheal Winslow, making a motercycle sound, then singing like traditional chinese instruments with spookey accuracy.

Then onto the Eunuchs!

It is hard to describe it, I will say it was like if you could take a bunch of Thailand eunuchs, dress them like drag queens (because aparantly eunuchs dress just like drag queens when the drag queens are really really going for it) and put it all to a singing, dancing, broadway spectacular you would have something close to what I saw the night of my 30th birthday.  Think Eunuch: the musical.  They sang, they danced, they all wore head pieces that towered several feet above their heads and involved floweres, sparkels and rinestones.  Some of them came out with head pieces which required the attention of both their hands just to stay up.  Very much like what I would picture in a Los Vegas show which starred Thailand eunucks.  Busby Berkley had nothing on these eunuchs, well except for one important thing I suppose.

  They had all also been taking hormones for such a long time that they looked like woman, it was very hard to figure out which were the eunuchs and which were the not eunuchs, the fake out eunuchs.  One came out on a throne carried by around 20 people, this was the king of all eunuchs Xiao Yin told me.  Xiao Yin and I tried to take pictures at one point and a security guy ran up and actually tried to take our cameras. He was really really mad.  He quickly learned that he could not get our cameras and left, we didn’t try to take anymore pictures though.  At the intermission the eunuchs lined the lobby and tried to get guys to pose with them for pictures for 10 yuan.  I was trying to get to the john through the crowd when I noticed something interesting.  In a room lined with eunuchs in sparkling evening gowns and me guess who the average Chinese person will stare at.  After all, at least the eunuchs were from Asia.

After the intermission a Chinese woman who had been born a man came out and told her story.  She had wanted to be a woman so bad that she explained (all translated through Xiao Yin) she went to her mother who pulled together all the money from all the family members to pay for the proceedure, even though in China she would be shunned.  This was meet with resounding applause as the theme to the movie Titanic played emotionally.  Then about 20 little boys danced while juggling hats for the big finish.

Asha (the tour guide to my heart) had told us earlier that the town we were in that night was too poor for birthday cakes and I would have to wait until the next night for my party.  I was walking out of the store by the hotel with an arm full of beers when I saw Asha in the parking lot.  I pointed to the beer and to her in hopes of conveying that I would like to buy the lady a drink.  She smiled sweetly and said a bunch of things in chinese that she knew that I knew that she knew I would never understand, and went in the other direction.  I hated to see her leave but I loved to watch her go.

That night Han Xiao Yin and I hung around the hotel getting drunk.  He taught me to curse in Chinese and I taught him about the F word and all its various applications, and importantly when to and when not to use it.  He told me about his girl going to school in Australia and he told me about the one he had before her.  We watched a chinese version of pool on tv which was so complicated I soon gave up on trying to follow.  Xiao Yin walked to the bathroom and from the door called out “what you call when I do this?”  he said pointing to his rear.  “taking a shit.” I replied.  He laughed and darted into the bathroom “I’m taking a shit.” 

He will fit in fine in America.

2/13/07

First thing in the morning we went to a building, no display, no frills, just took us straight into a classroom and started telling us why we should buy their shark oil.  I wanted to cry I was so mad.  I got up and started to go and Xiao Yin said I couldn’t.  He said that it was not allowed.  He said it was my job to sit here.  If I pay the tour co. money then it is their job to work for me, not the other way around I argued.  This is not what I spent my money to do.  We sat in the back and argued the whole time. At one point everyone crowded in close around a table and I could hear them ‘ooow and ahhhh’, I sat in the back alone.  Somehow this shark oil was so special it had melted a hole in the bottom of a bowl.  I told him that I will never sit through another of these again, and so he taught me to say “I won’t go” in Chinese so I could argure for myself.  He agreed with me, to him it was a drag but just part of the whole thing.  It is like if you come from a planet where you could watch tv and there were no commercials in the middle of the program.  You are so used to commercials that you expect them, and before the days of TEVO you would just sit there as your tv tried to sell you things.   this is the best analogy I can think of. 

When the doors opened I stormed out.  I could tell by everyone elses face in reaction to mine that I carried a look of buisness.  God I was so pissed.  Xiao Yin started talking to Asha, (still the tour guide to my heart) they argued back and forth in Chinese.  I was standing right there and they both walked a few steps from me so I couldn’t hear, even though I couldn’t understand what they were saying.  Asha asked (through Xiao Yin) if I would agree to walk through the shops they took me to if she didn’t take me to anymore sales lectures.  Ok, fine.  I agreed.  still wasn’t happy.

See here is how the whole thing works with the Chinese tour company.  They get plane and train tickets and park admission much cheaper than everyone else because the local government wants the tour in their region.  They agree to take the poor suckers to as many of the government run shops as possible.  In order to ensure this happens the tour guide earns no salary, just a percentage from sales at said shops plus a small fee for each head they get through the door.  I knew none of this going in.  I was told where I would go map wise and I was happy to be able to cover a lot of ground, which I certainly would not be able to do traveling alone through china.  I thought they would just say, ok go.  No such luck. 

After a few more shops and a lame chinese sea world, we got to go scuba diving.  This was very expensive, and my favorite part came when they got us in our gear and out on the boat and told us that the mouth piece to connect our mouth to the breathing aparatus would cost another 20 yuan.  My other favorite part came when none of the weight belts would fit me and I had to take a deep deep breath just to get the damn thing on in front of a sea of laughing chinese tourists. 

The diving was wonderful.  The guide I went down with kept sterring me by pulling my shouldiers and pointing my body where he thought I should go.  This was a great metaphore for my whole trip so far.  There was a sunken boat filled with cool fish, and reefs everywhere.  At one point sticking its head out of a crevas I saw a little crab.  Oh wow, I thought to myself and pointed to it for the scuba guide.

If one is not careful even hand gestures may be misunderstood due to major culteral differences, allow me to demonstrate.

When pointing to the adorable sea creature, my intention was to express “hark!  Look at natures wonder.  I was not sure whethor you had seen for yourself so please allow me to direct your attention to this crab so you may join my new found apprieciation of the wonders of the undersea world.”

In Chinese this same gesture translates to: “Please grab that crustation and rip the claw berring apendages which allow it to exhist in its echo system from its body and place it helplessly into the palm of my hand like a broken toy.”

It clung to my fingers for protection which made the whole thing just a little worse.  It may have been my imagination but it seemed to express terror in its black black eyes, which I starred into from behind my mask for a moment.  I then tossed the little guy over my shouldier in pursuit of some fish I think.

We went to several other mind numbing lame tourist shops.  They sold either pearls, tea, or marble.  Always one of the three.  And each place was built up to us as the exclusive heir of the ancient chinese art of making quality whatever and every other place that sold the same whatever was shit.  All the stuff looked the exact same to me.  And I would know as I saw a lot of it.  I started staying in the bus most of the time in protest.

That night we stayed at a place with a balcony you had to climb out the window to get to.  We climbed outside and drank beer and talked about meeting up when we are both in America.

We were interupted that night, by the Hainan family.  The lovely tourguide Asha (tour guide to my heart)  had gone and gotten a cake for us.  The Hainan family and Xiao Yin and I (no Asha) went to the beach.  The blue light from a neon bridge lit up the ocean water below and made the whole bay glow fleurescant.  Xiao Yin told me the light made the moment perfect. 

The Hainan Family had been buying extra fruit for us everyplace we went like we were part of the family.  I had been looking for a chance to get them back and recipricate and it came that night on the beach.  A guy came by selling fireworks and I got an armload of roman candles for the kids.  I know what you are thinking parents and no, here kids are expected to run around hap hazardly with explosives.  It is encouraged.  So we all stood launching roman candle fire balls into the surf.  I started aiming mine and saying ‘you want some of this?  who wants some?  you?  you?  what?  here you go?’ which sent Xiao Yin as well as the kids into histarics.  He later made me repeat it over and over until he got the gyst.

Then we did sparklers and when the sparklers ran out we played in the sand.  The family asked me to sing a song, putting me right on the spot.  I sang the happy birthday song which they all chimmed in on. 

They made a cake out of sand, and used the burned out sparklers as candles.  What was amazing to me was that here was an entire family completely willing to make believe that the cake was real.  Child and adult took part in making the illuison complete.  They then had me blow out pretend candles and took pictures as though the real thing.   

When I got back to the room we had the real cake and after the hainan family left Xiao Yin and I drank more beer.  Xiao Yin wrote a thankyou note for the cake to the tour guide and I copied it as best I could, although he could have had me write anything.  The next day the note made her laugh, although we still had no way of talking to one another.

2/14/07

 First place we went was called ‘Chinese Hawaii’.  The water effected me.  When back in the bus I pulled out my notebook and wrote:

sway (Manderin for water) pure innocent unjaded without ugly or hurt.  A long forgotten secret still whispered by Chinese people in loud Hawaiian shirts the water is a perfect azule blue green.  The waves crash against my knees with absolute perciesion.  I give up on my camera and start trying to photograph in my mind how it feels to wade in somthing perfect. ahhhhhhh.  Sway.

I think I would like to put this second into a jar and keep it.  I’d leave it in a drawer someplace next to highschool yearbooks and comics maybe.  I could dig it out when drinking with friends and show it to everybody and they’d know too about the perfection of this water and moment.  They’d cheer and clap.

So I look as hard and long as I can.  I try to force the smell of the salt and the feeling of the wet sand licking my toes into the jar.  I must have every detail, trying harder and harder to notice and take inventory of every small peice.  Finally my new family calls to me from the shore where they had all been working diligently on sand-tide irrigation system to protect the newly constructed sand fortress.  Time to go.  I walked away taking as much as I could carry, hoping to leave nothing behind.

We went to a mountain with a ski lift, I was proud of the family when they opted to hoof it up, which is what I wanted to do.  I felt like hiking and I am scarred of heights.  I went off on my own, Xiao Yin ran screaming my name just to tell me to be careful and that I did have permission to leave the group, although I hadn’t planned on asking.  My best intrests were in his heart but I gotta do my thing and that is that.  So I hiked on my own, doing my best to avoid areas with tourist tents or crowds.  I climbed a couple of rocks and found some great views, my fear of heights kept me from going too far off.  I did find an alternate way up the mountain which was an actual non concrete trail, just like in the real woods, and much steeper than the rest of the climb.  Little sister and Xiao Yin found me and we went up that way, which was fun.

I had the my very first conversation with a foriegner native english speaker while in China on top of that mountain.  A man from Canada wanted to know where I was from.  He had a Asian wife and little baby.  He told me he came to China 5 years ago and decided to stay longer.  I replied that I could see, pointing to his baby, he said “oh yeah, I know what you mean.  He doesn’t look Chinese.  Good genes.”  He did not actually know what I meant.  Xiao Yin tried to say hello to the guy the whole time, but the Candadian ignored him, refusing even the slightest nod of the head.  Xiao Yin asked his wife if she was from China.  Indignant and insulted, the woman took off her sunglasses and said “Do I look Chinese?”  She told him she was half russian.  The other half?  Chinese.  Wierd people.  So much for the great white hope.  We exchanged emails but I don’t think I will follow up.  People are people, some are good Canadians or good Chinese or good Americans or good half russians, and some are totall assholes.  Same goes where ever.  I love that this is true, it really seems universal.  I also love when I run into people who can’t get there mind around this principle.  It is so obvious and simple to me.  People are people.

So after climbing the mountain I climbed back into the bus, which was slightly warm but not too bad.  Han Xiao Yin wouldn’t leave me alone.  He kept telling me that I should come outside where I would be more cool.  I thanked him for his consern and stayed put.  He could not let it go.  He kept insisting that I was uncomfortable and should go outside and stand in the parking lot where there was no shade.  I didn’t want to.  Finally I got very angry and stormed out of the bus and left.  I wandered off to find someplace where I could sit without being bothered.  Xiao Yin and I later agreed that this was a culture thing, and I know how silly and stupid the whole thing sounds but I am with this person 24 hours a day, our personalities start to clash and I get real tired of being told what to do. 

I think we went to several more tourist shops and got back to Haikou, having traveled all around the island.  We pulled into the same hotel from the first night.  All the sudden everything started getting hectic.  We had to move.  If we didn’t hurry we would miss our boat (yes, this night we would sleep on a boat) back to the mainland.  We had to say a quick goodbye to our Hainan family which gave me a little lump in the throat, I really like these people.  I said goodbye to Asha, the tour guide to my heart.  She told Xiao Yin to tell me that she would call me on the phone.  This was funny for obvious reasons.  We were in a taxi and off.  The whole goodbye lasted two minutes.

We sped across the city of Hainan to uncertainty.  We had been with the same people all week and now we would live on a boat. 

The taxi let us off in the rain at a waterfront warehouse filled with people milling about.  The people didn’t look nice, they looked tough.  We met our connection, he had plastic bags of food for us as well as boat tickets.  We went inside.  We waited in line.  A lot of the peoples baggage were large bags on sticks which slung over the shoulder like the old Hobo in a cartoon.  And the line we were waiting in wasn’t so much of a line as a mob.  Many grimmaced and pointed and laughed when they saw me coming, others scowled.  The doors opened and the hoard of people start making for outside with force.  Getting pushed and shoved on all sides amid hollers and arms and elbows we went with through the door, which was like a fresh wound spewing people.  Outside in the rain near the door sat a bus, the people flow was aimed inside of which with frezied maddening disorder.  The people in front of us were pushing with their whole bodies to get inside.  A man in the front of the bus was screaming bloody murder trying to get people to go as far to the back as they could.  Just when I got to the front of the herd the door of the bus slammed shut and the thing took off.  I learned another would be by shortly.  We managed to get on that one, but not before a woman took her small child and pushed his body in front of mine so she could claim to go first.  ‘Oh no buddy.  Jr says its mama’s turn.’  It occured to me that none of this was rude, it was maximum effieciency.  It would take 10 times as long to get this many Americans anywhere, we are only this organized as a unit when slam dancing. 

The bus was filled to the hilt, where ever the hell it was going at least we would go with it.  It happened to be just around the block to where a long row of boats where docked.  The boats all had emense front hatches in which to park cars.  They looked kind of like giant D Day landing boats just getting to Omaha beach.  A man in a military looking uniform of some kind found us, everyone in China has a military looking uniform of some kind so it begens to lose its effect.  He talked to Xiao Yin and led us inside.  Xiao Yin had been waiting five minutes each time before reminding me again to take special care of my wallet, by the looks of some of the fellas hanging around the dock this wasn’t a bad sounding piece of advice.  We were now going through a labyrinth series of hallways and stairways inside the ships hull, still amid mobs of people all with luggage shoving to get every which way.  Xiao Yin turns to me in the middle of all this and says “don’t wander off” as if I had pressing buisness elsewhere.

We are taken to a metal room inside the ship with 9 metal bunks.  The man in uniform tells Xiao Yin about the nice room which is 200 yuan, his real motivation for wanting to walk us from the bus as it happened.  We both think the price is too high so we start setting up for the night.  I think the real clincher was that there was no place to put our stuff, no locker or closet or rack.  We would have to sleep with our stuff on our bunks and with one eye open in case someone else in the room wants to get sneaky in the night.  So Xiao Yin left again and came back grinning.  He had talked the guy down to 100 yuan, 50 each.  This was very acceptable, especially since the room was as 4 star as this tub went.  Although very small it had a dvd player in the corner which played an action movie from the 80s complete with guys flying through exploding windows and uzis.  I told Xiao Yin he was the king of the art of barganing, which really is true.  Barganing down a price is always held in high regard in China and my travel companion seemed to be a master.  We ate the food out of the bags our contact had given us and watched the flick. 

After diner I wandered around the deck of the ship.  It was a moonless night and blacker than pitch.  I went to the very front (bow? stern?) and stood with the wind in my face starring into the black void of the south China sea thinking if I am ever going to get attacked by a giant monster it will be here.  I sigh in anticipation.

 

This was the first leg of my trip south.  For anyone who is into it I am planning on writting the whole trip in three parts, this has been Hainan, next shall be Yunnan, and finally the Gaungxi.  I had many many adventures and my friend Han Xiao Yin and I started going and doing our own thing and leaving the shops behind which is when we really had adventures.  I will try to get more about it out soon.  In the meanwhile I am back in Henan and teaching again.  I hope you are all well.

w

Ps - when I write chinese words like sway or nei hou peo lea, this is a very flawed pheonetic version of Chinese.  The actuall word would be impossible to print in western script.  Xiao Yin is pronounced Shou yin, like the shoulin temple.  Just know that when I type something in Chinese I am doing the best I can.  Do not try to repeat any of it to anyone who really speaks chinese.  They will think you smoke crack.