Three for the Price of ONE: Baoshan, Dali, Jianshui (and Yuanyang, free!)

Wow, here we go. Here comes three weekend trips in one update: think of that! What a bargain! And yet, what a ripoff in terms of depth of content! Oh well, here we go! Exclamation point!
First stop on our flash-of-a-flashback tour (or should that be Flash-of-a-Flashback Tour?) is a week after my return from Bangkok. And don't worry, that whole part where I get to Bangkok is forthcoming. Presumably.
In order to conduct research for the final paper for my one-on-one class (the topic of which is Yunnan's arabica coffee production), I traveled with my one-on-one teacher, Chen Rong, to Baoshan, a district in the west of Yunnan known for its agriculture and, well, yeah I think agriculture. Apparently there were some great hot springs too, but as far as I'm concerned that is just hearsay.
The bus to Baoshan is a ___ seven hours. The reason I leave that adjective blank is that it is truly a subjective characterization - I would be wont to say "grueling" and leave it at that had I not just, two weeks before, rode the previously mentioned "Kunming to Hekou, via Hell" bus. At the time, I'm pretty sure I found the ride fairly bearable, despite the best attempts of Hong Kong cinema. Getting into Baoshan around seven, the sun still hanging in the sky gave me a view over one of the flattest cities I have ever seen. Baoshan is located in a giant basin, and while China doesn't really have suburbs in the American sense, the residential outskirts stretched literally for miles, with nary a third floor to be found. The downtown wasn't much different, although it seemed to rather large in terms of square mileage. I was put up in a small hotel around the way from Chen Rong's house, and after a nice home-cooked meal with her parents, I took a stroll around the neighborhood. The area we were in was like, honestly, any small-time city in China. The little streetside shops selling spare parts, cheap knockoff clothing, and bootleg DVDs; the street food you buy but soon regret; the motorbikes. It didn't take long for me to get tired, and as I headed to bed I pondered the surprising fact that this city was making me nostalgic for Hekou.
The next day, Chen Rong and I met up with her mother's friend, a certain Mrs. Zhao, whose family owned some coffee land in one of Baoshan's satellite production areas, Lujiangba. Lujiangba is home to most of Baoshan's coffee production, and is a sprawling valley of alternating coffee and tobacco fields. I don't have any photos of the tobacco sections, but as I'm pretty sure you can guess, it all looks pretty much the same. Plants are plants, y'know? But for the sake of a visual, I'm going to hit you with a little shot of the coffee fields near the Zhaos' house, of which 3 mu (I think that's about half an acre) are theirs.



The taller trees you see are called longyan (or perhaps longan, in English), which translates literally as "Dragon's Eye", and is a kind of fruit that bears a startling resemblance to, well, an eye (the heavy importation of longyan could revolutionize haunted houses, and would do great harm to late-October grape sales). The tree has a symbiotic relationship with the coffee bush, and so the two are planted in alternate rows - at least for the Zhao family, coffee and longan sales bring in about equal portions of their yearly earnings.
All this information (and I, as the embarrassed author, realize there is no point I'm driving to) is making me think it's time for another visual. How many of you knew that a coffee plant looks like this?



Maybe more of you than I'd hoped. Well, them red fellas is (coffee) cherries. You break 'em open, and you get a couple of tannish coffee beans, which are of a much more familiar shape. Then you sort of suck on the cherry skin - it's sweet and almost spicy. Kinda makes you wish it really were more like a cherry. I mean, if there wre more fruit there, I’d be wont to dry it and put it in outmeal.
Anyway, after the plantin' fields we returned to the Zhao house, where I got to see where they squeeze out the beans from the cherries, and dry the beans in their courtyard for several days until they're ready for further processing.



In the picture they are sweeping up the dried beans because they were worried it might rain. You can see the kid clearly walking all over the beans – everyone walks on them, that's pretty normal. After all the little things were safely covered in baskets, I witnessed both that little boy and the family dog urinating all over the "drying zone". Now, before you spit out that mouthful of coffee, I can't say I ever saw anyone pee directly ON the product, and I'm also fairly certain there's a roasting step somewhere down the line. So you’re probably safe. Might just
AFter touring the local production facilities, which were of an absurdly small scale - only one roasting machine for a company, for example - I went back to the Zhao house and at a delicious local dinner. And then took this photo to commemorate my visit.



Point to anyone who can come up with the most fitting sitcom name and tagline.

The next weekend, I was off early Friday afternoon in exactly the same direction, although this time I was happily disembarking after just five hours. A short taxi ride and I was in the old city of Dali, one of Yunnan's major tourist sites, and deservedly so. I'm going to blaze through Dali because I'm already worried this post is going to end up as long as the last one.
Dali's main pull, besides its spectacular location beside the large Lake Erhai and ringed by sometimes-snowcapped mountains, is the traditional architecture of a type that is becoming harder and harder to find in China. Granted, a good deal has seen some renovation since an earthquake struck a decade or so past, but grass growing on your roof is generally a trump card in the "my house has more of a rich cultural history than yours" game.



I had planned to go hiking, so after wandering happily around the old town on Saturday morning, I took the chairlift up to a temple on Cangshan mountain, from which it is advised to start your climb to the summit. Unfortunately, it was past one by the time I started, and I had barely begun to get out of the heavy timber before the clouds closed in and it started to rain. I turned back and rushed down before the trail turned into a live-action game of chutes and ladders, minus the ladders. Instead of hopping onto the chairlift in the biting wind and rain – a decision that would have no doubt left me in the grip of some particularly vivid “Wildcat Mountain Flashbacks” - I stayed in the small but friendly "Highlander Inn", one of only two guests. Over dinner I managed to hold my own in a lively Chinese conversation, but I retired to bed early – even though I was only a few hundred meters above Dali, which is the same elevation as Kunming, the altitude was getting me to feel like a sailor on Sunday.

Because the views the day before had been cloudy and obscured by pines, I got up in time for sunrise and watched from the temple below the Inn. It was pretty breathtaking. I also still wanted to sleep.



The rest of the day I rented a bike and rode around Dali's surrounding villages, getting lost in a warren of twisting residential lanes not wide enough for a single car. Oh, and seeking out all the made-specifically-for-this-purpose photo opportunity spots.



I stayed in town until evening, and caught the 11:00 night train back to Kunming. I got in at six AM, in time to stumble to class on about four hours of sleep. Having not even had a chance to prepare our readings, it's safe to say there were trials. There were tribulations.


Wow. Week two done, and we’re speeding up.
Athough the next week had me more exhausted than before (why does it have to build up like that?) it was the date of our group trip to Jianshui and Yuanyang, two of Yunnan’s countless tourist destinations. Jianshui is this old town, sorta like Dali, or maybe not like Dali (is the old town hidden in the new town, or somewhere outside? I’m still not sure!). In my lonely planet I was told there were caves of swallows. In my experience, there were no swallows, but Jianshui was your average semi-developed Yunnan town, with scattered historical sites (a well so old that centuries of use has worn deep grooves for the rope, an old Confucian temple, a bridge.) Check it out, it’s the bridge.



(Can you dig it?!)
Jianshui was fun, what with KTV and a delicious local beverage featuring purple rice, but the most welcome aspect was its distance from both Kunming and Yuanyang – resulting in a four hour bus ride each day, with ample time for naps.
Yuanyang, however, was by far the more spectacular of the two destinations. Located across a series of mountain ridges in southern Yunnan, Yuanyang is, from my experience, eternally wreathed in fog. Given that I was there to see (and not be prevented by weather conditions from seeing) what is hailed as one of Yunnan’s most spectacular sites – expansive hillsides of glimmering rice terraces – this may seem like a negative aspect. I assure you it was not. True, I never got a picture like the ones on Wikipedia, but the fog gave the whole place an ethereal feel unlike anywhere else I’ve been in China.
Although the first impression was all too typical. Stepping down from the bus, we were accosted by a gang of Hani (the local ethnic minority) women, eager to sell us necklaces, postcards, and the ubiquitous little red books. They were also laden with traditional Hani garb, with they pushed upon us as we huddled in the cold mist, unsure of where to go. Unable to refuse the lure of a bedazzled black vest that was thrust around my shoulders, I soon found myself Hani’in it up with my classmates.



Eager to get on to the main event, we returned the clothes, paid the bills, and crept down a mist-shrouded walkway. I say crept because, literally, I was creepin’ – these guys were hanging out overhead, and I was taller than most.



I once saw some children using long sticks to pull these spiders form their webs in some high bushes. It was pretty brutal, but my feelings were definitely mixed. On the one hand, any sort of needless cruelty is never welcome, but when it has a direct negative impact on the spider population in my immediate vicinity, I’m usually willing to let a few things slide, ethically. What really pushed it over the edge was the fact that these spiders were bright red on the inside – as if they really were the mythical bloodsucking, eight-legged freaks of my nightmares and numerous Hollywood flops.
When we got to the viewing platform, however, we were met by a flat white wall – the fog had closed in completely.

We returned to the town of Yuanyang with our spirits slightly the worse for wear, and the announcement that we were to wake up at 5:00 am for a sunrise that was likely to face the same conditions as today did nothing to raise morale. However, walking the two blocks to the nearest restaurant (it was cold) that night, I couldn’t help but feel Yuanyang was a mystical place, and our hotel something of a benevolent younger brother to that of The Shining. It made me think I would like to spend a significant period of time in a fog-shrouded mountain town.
The next day, dark and early, we rose to the rings of our wakeup calls and dozed in the elevator to the lobby. Picking at “breakfasts” of dry, plastic-packaged bread and Chinese milk – which tastes far too cheesy to not convince me it has all gone slightly bad – we arrived at another of Yuanyang’s viewing points, thankfully one with a noticeable lack of arachnids.
The sun had yet to rise, and as we watched the clouds tumble around the surrounding mountains and roll back to reveal silvered terraces, I was truly moved. It was so beautiful. In Chinese art there is a repeated motif of mountains above the clouds – mountains so high that you can’t see the bottom through the clouds – and I was finally realizing that it is no myth. I felt as though I were looking at a vast sea of clouds, broken by occasional the islands of the highest thrusting peaks. In a land whose people are constantly criticized for destroying what natural and historical beauty remains (a criticism I have frequently voiced, I must confess), there are still places to rival any in the world. And Yuanyang, wrapped in clouds, is one of them.










As I finish writing this, it is now almost two weeks since Yuanyang. I have just finished all of my classes for this semester, and have but a handful of tests left before I am through with my studies here. It’s passed all too quickly, but that’s the subject for another time. For now, I’m going to enjoy Kunming for at least one more weekend.
Oh, and as for last weekend: my reckless brinksmanship with exhaustion earned me a few days sick in bed. At least Chinese bootleg DVDs only cost about $1.50

Travails and travels, the tales unravel

I’d like to apologize to anyone who has been hoping I might post on this blog at a reasonable rate. Not only is my sense of duty undermined by an unwillingness to consistently set aside time to write this, internet problems have kept me from blogspot the last couple weeks (it is blocked in China, and my VPN has been having issues). In any case, here is a much overdue first chapter of the Fall Break (Mis)Adventure!

I’ve put off recounting the journey I hinted at in my last posting long enough. Now, perhaps, these stories will be less fresh than they were a few weeks ago, perhaps even tinged with the faintest scent of nostalgia as I long now for the motorbike swarms of Hanoi, the damp jungle heat of Siem Reap, the bustling anonymity of life in the Bangkok megalopolis. Or maybe I’ve just forgotten some things.
Our tale begins on Thursday, the 21 of October. The four actors of our drama, Sam, Taylor, Ryan, and myself, have rushed through our exams, alerted our teachers of our travel plans, bought lonely planets, made feverish internet investigations as to the culture, currency, and transportation reliability of each of the three nations on our agenda: Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand. We have bought tickets for a plane on Tuesday from Hanoi to Siem Reap, and one from Bangkok back to Kunming on the following Sunday.
We plan to take the night bus from Kunming to Hekou. An hour and a half later than planned, we board a taxi for the bus terminal. By the time we arrive at nine, the trail of the last bus is nearly an hour cold. Frustrated and ill-prepared, there is only one solution: to return defeated, go dancing, and leave in the morning.
The morning bus goes much more smoothly, and by ten o’clock we are sailing past Kunming’s outer edges, southbound. I should have said perhaps, that boarding the morning bus goes much more smoothly, as our ride was anything but that. I spent the first three hours intermittently reading and pondering how anyone could consider karaoke good driving entertainment. In true Chinese style were held up at a checkpoint for half an hour as the nonexistent traffic from the other direction was allowed to pass. About an hour before we were to stop for lunch, we were halted by a seven-car pileup on the road ahead. We wandered in the heat, frustrated and hungry.
As the lanes ahead cleared and our bus began to move, we heard a pitiful crying from the rearmost seat. Oh hell no. From the way the mother was gingerly tugging at the child’s pants, but mostly from the foul, familiar stench that began to drift forward toward our seats, it was pretty clear what had happened, and that with the bus just now moving, we were in for a rough ride, a roughness that had nothing to do with the quality of the roads.
At our 3:00 lunch break, the poor little girl had at last an opportunity to get…unsoiled, and we a chance to both eat and breathe deeply of untainted air. Well, briefly, that is. You see, these buses have no sort of bathroom facilities whatsoever, so when the opportunity arises, you grab that bull by both horns with your good hand and hold on for dear life. That last phrase began as cliché fusion, but turned out surprisingly accurate, as you’re about to discover.
Chinese bathrooms are something I have yet to become accustomed to, and in fact a level of general tolerance, let alone intimacy, it is not an outcome I consider in the realm of possibilities. Chinese bathrooms are vile places, and I will be doing you all I favor by stopping at that and letting the collective imagination (Jungian?) take its course. However, I’m way too excited to talk about this to stop now, so buckle into those bull horns, we’re riding this one out into the eye of the storm.
Culture shock would be an appropriate term to describe a Westerner’s first trip into the Chinese Weishengjian (literally, sanitation room), were it not totally dwarfed by general, well, shock. While you try to figure out how to mouthbreathe like you’ve never before, you wonder if they really try to clean it, or just have someone go in every now and then and try to clean the urine off the walls by, well, urinating on the walls (works, right? Right?). The fact that these are all squatters is a minor note, except for the fact that the floors are wet (guess why?) and if you hold your health, or sanity, or simply humanity in any regard you really don’t want to fall. I know a guy who slipped and fell forward out of the stall, ending up in front of the sinks with his pants around his ankles (and no, “I know a guy” is not just a way for me to share some of my worse moments under the umbrella of a convenient unshared acquaintance). If you’re unlucky it’s just the ol’ trough toilet, the porta-potty of yesteryear, with absolutely no stall doors, just a two-foot divider so you don’t have to actually make eye contact with your neighbor while in the act. As you squat awkwardly, cursing your soft Western thighs and recent neglect of wallsits, you will try to think ahead when your next shower could be. You will become further impressed with the ability of Chinese people to withstand hardships. You will become further impressed with your ability to withstand hardships. You will begin to wonder if there are, by any chance, animals in here. No, but really? I introduce you to this general, average Chinese public bathroom so that you may further appreciate this rest-stop ordeal.
From afar, it looked a bit dingier than other bathrooms on the road. Up a small stairway, it was crammed into a small cement structure, which was unnervingly wet. It looked like a cave. I entered, and as soon as my eyes adjusted enough to see clearly I stepped quickly past the old man squatting resolutely inside the doorway. Avoiding suspicious spots on the floor, I scuttled to an open stall in a half-crouch because the ceiling was only about five and a half feet up, and damp. There were spiders. I almost fell. I wondered if I could take a deep breath with my nose and maintain consciousness; thankfully I didn’t experiment.
I escaped (physically) unscathed, but Sam was not so lucky. Somewhere in the dark journey in and out, he had failed to notice one of those “suspicious spots”, and the deep treads of his shoes ensured that we would have the familiar smell of human waste to accompany us for the remaining hours to Hekou.
By evening we were in Hekou, but were too late to cross the border. We bunked down in a little $4 hotel and, after a brief stroll about the block trying to avoid the propositioning stares of the town’s numerous prostitutes, we locked our doors, crossed our fingers, and went to sleep.
The next morning, groggy but growing ever-peppy from our border-crossing nerves, we walked the three blocks to customs and waited outside for border to officially open. When the doors slid open, we marched happily in and lined up behind the familiar yellow line. I stepped forward and handed my passport to the guard, who flipped through it once, then began again, seeming not to have found what she was looking for. I pointed out my Chinese visa, assuming that was what she was looking for. “No,” she said in Chinese. “Where is your Vietnamese visa?” Vietnamese visa? Don’t you, y’know, get those in Vietnam, on the other side? I mean, we have our Chinese visas, isn’t that what you care about? Is there a problem, officer? Just as that final question is always preceded by the knowledge that yes, there is a problem, I was speeding and now I am going to regret doing so, a growing sense of unease was gnawing its way into the exhilarated travel-joy in my brain and building a malignant nest. The line was building up behind us, so we stepped back for the minute to regroup.
Now, we were under the impression that as Southeast Asia is, well, Southeast Asia - a tourist paradise and bureaucratic/anarchic morass, visas were readily available, especially with a few American bills to grease the wheels. And when I say we, I must be up front here and say that this conception was at the very least 50% my own, and this was a fact that was about to make things a little bit uncomfortable for yours truly. We pulled out the Lonely Planet, flipping to the visa section in the back. “At the time of this research, visas were not available at any of Vietnam’s border checkpoints.” Oops.
After tempers had flared, silences had been shared, and we had ceased bargaining with God, we grabbed another hotel room and took stock of the situation. It turned out that the worst that we feared – that we would have to return to Kunming to apply for visas – was not true; a travel agency across from the customs building told us they could take our passports and apply for visas in Lao Cai, the town across the river, all in one day. “Shady,” we thought, “but great! Can you do it today?” “No, today is Saturday. Monday, we can.”
Not ready to accept three days in a place that was most definitely still not Vietnam, we walked on, convinced a better solution could be found. Even if we made it into Vietnam Monday night, we said, could we make our Tuesday afternoon plane to Cambodia out of Hanoi? We began to talk of Laos, of the lax border there, and of the apparently beautiful countryside to be seen from the long, long bus to Bangkok. We sidestepped around the fact that such a bus ride would, given our experiences, involve untold hours of vile odors and cramped legs, let alone the fact that in all likelihood – at least somebody had heard – the Laotian buses had chickens.
It was about this time we were accosted by Li, the local hustler, and his “American” friend/scam associate. First asking us if we wanted to change Chinese RMB for Vietnamese Dong, they soon offered to get us visas by the end of the day. “But we thought you can’t until Monday,” we told them. “Hold on,” said Li, pulling out his cellphone, “I don’t get good reception right here.” As his bald, dirty, and possibly European friend introduced himself as a Floridian with a daughter at school in Michigan, who liked coming to Hekou because people knew who he was, didn’t just say hi just “because of the Bentley”, Li made infrequent appearances, seeming to get poor reception wherever we were. Were our phones blocking his signal? At the point when the ‘American’ explained that they would send someone on the bus to Kunming, apply for visas, and come back on the next bus, getting there that very night by six o’clock, a process that if executed perfectly could not take less than twenty hours, we got up to leave. As we walked away, Li made one last discovery, “Oh, my friend says actually not today. But Monday, I get you visas!” The office of the travel agency across from customs seemed relatively legitimate at this point, so we decided to wait it out for the weekend.
I can tell you honestly that we had a very nice time in Hekou, and feel quite fondly for the town, but this is in no small part due to cognitive dissonance – if we had not managed to convince ourselves that it was a nice little place, and not a veritable “hive of scum and villainy”. Or rather, an empty town not intended for long-term (more than 12 hours) residence, a town that would be a lot more interesting if it actually were a hive of scum and villainy.
We spent the majority of our time between the internet bar, our hotel rooms, and the river, where we would stand and stare longingly out at Vietnam, which we are still pretty sure was a more vivid shade of green. We would glare jealously at the Hekou and Lao Cai residents as they strolled leisurely across the bridge, going to “the other side” for an evening walk. We waited.
And, soon enough (I finished my book, and read a higher percentage of the New York Times than ever before in my life), Monday rolled around. Monday started like any other day, with an early trip to the market for breakfast, and a slow walk along the river. However, by 10 we had nervously handed our passports to the woman in the travel agency, and were left to pass one last day in the town we’d almost grown to love. After a morning spent in the internet bar, the four of us walked to the local elementary school, with the intention of whiling away the afternoon (we wouldn’t get our visas until 6) using our mastery of the English language to help out their (inevitably struggling, of course!) English program. We were surely the only foreigners to think of this, and without a doubt the most fluent English speakers in the town. We would be greeted like heroes.
Preparing ourselves for the welcome we would no doubt receive, we stepped triumphantly through the school gates, and marched up to the doorway. Once inside, however, we realized that the reason for our silent entry was that there were no adoring children to shout excitedly, no harried teachers to thank us profoundly, to weep in happiness at the dedication to their charges education we displayed. Everyone was out to lunch, and would be back by three.
Around half past two an adult wandered in. No doubt a little unsettled to find a handful of dirty white backpackers standing in the lobby, she nevertheless listened politely to our request, and led us up to her office to wait for a higher authority. We made awkward conversation, informing her that we were studying in Kunming, and confirming our hopes that yes, we were the first visitors to make such a request.
But pedagogical stint was not in the cards – the administrator, who arrived ten minutes later, hastily informed us that the students had a plan, and in the strict Chinese style, must follow it absolutely. She was unbending, and when we informed her that the students would nevertheless learn more from our experience and innate talent than from her lesson plan, it was time to leave, and hastily so. The children had returned, and as we passed them on the staircase they would perform exaggerated double-takes, the most excited of them shouting out “Hello!” when we turned to stare at them in turn. When we passed the last classroom in the building, a brief silence was followed by excited shrieking, and a mob of students rushed out into the hallway to greet us.
The administrators had failed to see our worth, but the students, ever more perceptive, clearly valued our presence as much as was due, and with this spiritual satisfaction we departed happily for the internet bar.
It was soon after that we had our strangest experience in Hekou. While Ryan and Taylor sat eating dinner at one of the two same restaurants we’d already over-patronized, who should walk in but the head of our program, Wang Laoshi. I know, we’re already all thinking it: Of all the cheap restaurants in all the world…
It turns out that the visa-at-the-border mistake is not one exclusive to foreigners, and Wang Laoshi and her mother had been in Hekou since Sunday, with the same problem as us. It’s actually more than somewhat odd it had taken as about a day to bump into each other.
In any case, we walked after dinner to our respective travel agencies, and from the doorway watched anxiously as six o’clock passed and no visas were in sight. At 6:15, however, the daily group of travel agents came trotting briskly back across the bridge. Our hearts pounding with excitement and more than a little fear that the visas would prove to be fakes, we walked once more into the border checkpoint, and crossed on through.
We were in Vietnam.

END OF PART ONE: HEKOU

Hot Springs, Hot Hair, Ho'damn!

Awright, champs, I'm back. And because of my habit of neglecting to tell of my adventures for a week+ at a time, thus building them up like some sort of unstoppable, pressing force that just...gets forgotten...I'm going to tell you up front what we got on the schedule for today, partly to give you a preview, but more so that I don't neglect my duty any more than I already have.

AGENDA

7:30 - rise

7:35 - oral hygeine

7:45 - calesthenics

8:10 - breakfast (meagre)

THEN - toufa (hair)

11:45 - mild tea

11:55 - slightly stronger tea

12:15 - stronger still - WHAT IS IT WITH THIS PLACE

12:25 - huffily retire

THEN - hot springs

THEN - the future.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that last week, as a prelude to night of theater, I went 'n' got my hair did. Yeah, you heard that here first. And yes, it was probably a lot like prom, only they manage to cut the two-hour process down to about ten minutes. These guys are masters. And they have half-mohawks.

See, a lot of young Chinese guys are really into dying their hair this vivid chestnut brown and puttin' it up. I can't say I'm 100% there, but it's got a certain pull. A certain...irresistible pull. And so:

There I was, in the chair, praying (a little) that this wasn't some sort of neo-Sweeney Todd establishment that would leave my scalp forever bald and blackened, and (mostly) that the end result was going to be something I could take with me to dinner. I'm in a rush now (I'm planning on leaving for Hanoi in about two hours - story for another time, aka in two weeks) so there's not much editing going on, but if I were to rewrite that last sentence I would do so such that the newer version did not seem to suggest that I intend to date my haircut.

Anyway, after much curling and tufting and tousling and spraying...

Ah, I wish. Although this the real one's just as cool, really. I PROMISE.

See the fear in my eyes?! You can't tell, but my hair is rock-hard. Like, bike helmet status.

Anyway, all this looking totally rude had me a little tired and in need of some relaxation, so I and a few friends took the weekend to go to Anning, to bask in their renowned potentially-natural hot springs.

I don't have pictures, unfortunately, but sight wasn't really the sense you were supposed to prioritize here.

And, to be honest, neither was - do we say 'feel'? that sounds so much like a bad chinese-english translation I don't know to trust myself - 'feel', by far the most exciting stimuli at Anning were the smells. Because these guys know how to run hot springs: none of that nasty sulfur, give us some menthol. Or some skittles lime flavor. Yeah, just what I was looking for. The complex was made up of a hillside of small pools, each with it's own trademark scent. The flavors ranged from the sexy (rose), to the not-so-much (poop, although I'm pretty sure this was not the intent of the establishment, merely the unfortunate consequence of toddlers and excitement), to somewhere in the middle (milk).

I wish I could give you a picture of myself using natural white-man camoflauge to conceal myself in the milk pool, but alas, as mentioned before, no pictures.

I'm going to have to leave you hanging like that, as now we get to the part I above labelled "the future". This grand future is my coming trip to 东南亚, or Southeast Asia, a trip that will have me sprinting through Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand. Wish me luck!

And until then...

再见！

Culture Shocks, Shocking Socks, Something that Rhymes with Shocks and Socks

I'm writing to all of you readers from the eye of the storm - perhaps one of the only sunny days amidst more than two weeks of almost incessant rain. It is, I believe, a textbook example of that perennial Southeast Asian rainy season deluge that I conveniently chose to pretend didn't exist for residents of the "Spring City" - the local nickname for Kunming. My weather widget shows a clean line of rain images for today through Friday, although on Thursday we'll mix it up with a bit o' lightning. GET PSYCHED.

However, I don't want to give the impression that these few weeks are a miserable time - CONTRARILY, the rain just makes my favorite coffee shops all the more inviting, and our lives here at Yunda are really as comfortable as ever. When the rain drops suddenly out of a previously graying but voiceless sky and you happen to be passing the Prague Cafe, it's the perfect excuse to duck in and treat yourself to a Western breakfast-for-lunch and a little bootleg Planet Earth.

But, when the weather is nice, and you should be seizing your only opportunity in the foreseeable future to wash and dry your by now thrice-worn clothes (the moldy socks hanging from the tree beside my dorm provide a constant reminder of the dangers of rainy-week drying), there's only one activity you can imagine doing: buying things! It's time to 买东西, to exercise that good ol' American consumer muscle that is rapidly becoming a part of the Chinese cultural physique.

Today, I and a few friends went prowling for purchases, trolling for trinkets, ogling objects, etc. at the 花鸟市场，or Bird and Flower Market. While it still boasts a veritable smorgasbord (really, now? 'Menagerie' would be much more appropriate) of pets for purchase, including turtles, mice, break-your-heart puppies and birds of, well, a lot of birds, it is also THE place in Kunming to buy baubles, colorful clothing, swords, scarves, possible jade, and just about any smoking paraphernalia you can imagine (tobacco remains Yunnan's top annual export, and is one of the foci of the local economy).

Mostly, though, it's a great place to go and practice bartering. Thanks to some previous training (thanks Hang) I know the general technique: let them tell you their initial price, and then their "special for you price" - always a good deal lower than the original, and then their "lowest possible price" - now we're getting there - before you begin with the back and forth of gradually equalizing suggestions. When you've found a price you're not happy going above, you inform them in no uncertain terms that were they to offer it at that price, you will 肯定，肯定！buy it. Then, as they insist it is too low, you shrug your shoulders, turn away, and... "好！" If it weren't such a reliable system, it wouldn't be so much fun, but it really makes a nice afternoon game. Of course, the price you arrive it is in all likelihood still a little high(especially if you are me), but what do you know - at least it's half of what they said the first time. Definite win-win...win.

My favorite purchase, however, was not bargained for - it was bought at one of the many bootleg DVD shops around Yunda's campus. And no, it isn't the aforementioned Planet Earth - being downloaded from the internet at low resolution and thrown onto some definitely-not-'Blue-ray'-despite-what-the-case-says discs does terrible things to some of the more stunning shots. My best buy is a copy of Fantasia 2000.

Yes, I have heard that it really wasn't the first, and no, I have yet to actually watch it. But this DVD is a wonderful example of the ingenuity/obliviousness/what-the-hell of the Chinese bootleg DVD market. Here is what the cover looks like:

Not, bad, right? But let me just turn it over for you, and tell you how it all goes down. The reverse side appears fairly commonplace - it features several screenshots, as well as a summary, scene index, and a positive review. But closer inspection reveals that the summary references not Disney's visually appealing joining of classical music and animation, but the "handsome and brash Captain James T. Kirk" and his mission to (of course) "boldly go where no man has gone before." The Chinese summary I haven't managed to translate fully, but definitely mentions a king and the year 1940. A little research revealed that the scene index is in fact from the 2000 Kirsten Dunst Romance-flashback movie Deeply, and the review, which states that this "beautiful, startlingly audacious, and often very funny" film "will make you feel deeply about love and war," - which can not possibly refer to any of the previously mentioned films, with the possible exception of the yet-to-be-identified Chinese flick, - is a review for A Very Long Engagement.

The more observant of you may even have noticed a trio of McDonald's arches on the sleeve cover. But that is nothing, however, compared to the treasure inside:

There it is, all dolled-up in M's like it's some sort of fantastic happy meal prize. And of course: Blue-ray. Gotta be lovin' it.

A Brief History of Late September

Hey there team. Time for round four. And this time, I promise there shall be pictures.

Since it's been about three weeks since I last hinted as to my "happs" I figure I'll go ahead and break 'em off with a little preview of the remix...or, rather, a summary.

When last we met I was midway through September and fresh off my encounter with a local delicacy. I can tell you that not long after that I came face to face with another of China's "特菜", or specialty foods: the dreaded, infamous, more-rubbery-than-you-would-expect chicken toes. Verdict: better than the eye, but that is certainly hurtling a very lowered bar.

But, but, butbutbut! I don't want to spend this time talking about the food I have eaten, will eat, or any ensuing processes. I wanna bust out the photey-photes.

Last weekend I journeyed with several of my classmates and their roommates to Xishan (which translates simply as West Mountain), the mountain right outside Kunming's Western (surprise?) city limits. It's pretty great. Aside from it's numerous restaurants and hostels that guarantee a fun-filled weekend trip, as well as the universal accessibility granted by an auto road and chairlift, Xishan boasts a scattered collection of pagodas and the Dragon Gate, a complex and overlapping temple complex (did he just use that word twice in this sentence?) that if you wander long enough would be sure to give you some kind of complex (well, that was unnecessary). But I digress too far into poor linguistic play. I would rather this not be a display of the gradual shrinking of the English part of my brain, but rather a chance for me to put up some images like ohmygodcheckthatout.

Maybe that's actually a little small, but you've got the city there, as well as a whole lotta Dian Chi (the lake). It certainly is breathtaking, but the color of the water really is too good to believe - it's more likely due to extreme pollution than to any magical natural qualities of Yunnan water. From atop Xishan, you can watch the boats as they paint strange murals on the lake with the dark red algae and muck that their wake draws up from the depths. It's pretty, pretty bittersweet.

Continuing on from the Dragon Gate, the terrain quickly becomes harsh and moonlike - apparently a product of the beautiful natural process known as acid rain. After scrambling about on jagged outcroppings for a good half our and getting only about a third of the way into the moonscape, we called it quits, but not before snapping a few more photos.

That right there is the future - the many mountains I shall cli - er, summit (they better have chairlifts) - after Xishan.

And no, I didn't take the chairlift up, but who was I to say no to a little trip down relaxation lane on my... my trip down the mountain... lane.

That's really it for now. The rest is dumplings, failed bike journeys, and, of course, Karaoke.

But wait a second, here. Let's talk Karaoke, or as it's known here, KTV. Why do Americans have to go to Koreatown to find this? It's great! I mean, in China it's pretty fun, but the fact that you are definitely not in Kansas does pose problems for your average expat. First off: the majority of songs are Chinese (so surprise). A lot of them are catchy, and in fact "legitimate jams", but I can only read characters so fast. Luckily Chinese pop songs stick to very strict rhyming schemes, so even if I mumble through the first part of the line I can belt out the last syllable. "mmfdmfdmm bai, mgmmmgmmgm lai, mfmdmfmmfmmd gai, mfmdfmdmfmdmm aiiiiiiiii!"

The second problem is in the selection of American hits these KTV places tend to offer. There's your expected Beatles hits, some Michael Jackson ("Liberian Girl", really?), and something by Rod Stewart you've never heard of. Moving into my own childhood there's ample NSync, Britney, etc. to keep you going, but when you move a little farther forward it gets real messy. The Chinese people seem to have an odd fascination with Rihanna, and a sort of knowledge gap when it comes to several of my personal favorites. It's hard not to be disappointed when the only thing by R. Kelly is two separate versions of "Hair Braider" - what's a man to do if he wants a little Ignition(Remix)?

Okay, really, now I'm done.

Looking at China through the Fisheye Lens (no pictures!)

Lemme tell you all a little story. It's possible that this story has a moral (I have yet to put it together) but it is certainly no fable, as it is a story OF THIS VERY DAY.

I feel like I'm hyping this thing up, and it's probably not necessary. Lemme just begin, lest ye be underwhelmed:

Today we had "中文桌子”, or "Chinese Table" for lunch. This meant a plethora - nay, a veritable smorgasbord (again?!) - of delicious Chinese dishes, including my favorite: sweet and sour fish (called something I can't now remember - luckily most restaurants have pictures, so I can reliably find it). This is a big ol' foot long lake fish that has been doused thoroughly in sweet orange sauce, not unlike that on your good ol' (does he have something against the letter 'd'?) neighborhood takeout place's sweet 'n' sour pork, and then cut so that it forms nice little cubes, still stuck to the spine, or what have you, such that it is both delicious and fun to eat.

Oh, did I mention that once prepared, it doesn't have bones? Boom. But let me tell what it does have: eyes. And now you guess what I was just enticed into eating.

哎呀，at lunch I was sitting next to my enterprising minority studies 老师 (laoshi: professor, teacher) who informed me that there is a local specialty soup made of just the heads of this very fish - a dish that she finds rather enjoyable. She proceeded to demonstrate this fact by pulling out (no easy task with chopsticks) one of the eyes, and quickly popping it into her mouth. Sensing the challenge, and knowing I couldn't bear to let this opportunity pass (I'd already, last weekend, said no to a chicken foot eating contest) I picked up my chopsticks and made several awkward and deeply disturbing forays into the fish's right eye socket. Taking hold of the eye from both sides, I pulled toward me, and the eye, with a gruesome snap, came free.

And now, came the waiting game. I should have just done it quickly, like my professor, but I wished to conceal my horror with a guise of academic fascination.

Of course, what I saw only made it worse. The eye alternated between gray and whitish blobs, was slimy with what was perhaps only 50% sweet sauce, and had an awful white cable dangling from one side, an appendage I couldn't help but realize was the optic nerve.

Let me pause here and tell you a little something about my personal beliefs. I'm not much of a religious person, but I have a couple deeply-held ethical positions. Firstly: that if in the time of Abraham, there should come to the land of Sharandar a man with a limp, and a goat, and clothes of blue linen, and the moon should be at its zenith, then the king should welcome him gladly, else there's a fair chance that the next day shall be cloudy, with a 40% chance of precipitation and wind from the NE. Secondly: that spiders are, in fact, not our friends, but are instead some of the most wicked creatures known to man. Lastly, thou shalt not eat eyes (this is perhaps related to the fact that spiders have - oh jesus - eight of the things).

And believe me, I have been punished for my transgressions. Not only was the eye itself salty, juicy - essentially everything you think an eye might be - but the fish has taken his revenge. He has responded to my violation of his optical orb by cursing me with "la duzi" (pronounced lah dood-zuh, this is not in fact french for "the doozy" - although that moniker wouldn't be amiss), or what you might call diarrheal oblivion.

I'm gonna leave you guys to think on that - Chinese cooking class starts soon. But here's a cultural note while we're at it: in China, I can discuss the movements of my bowels (frequency and consistency - all welcome!) and it is, well, normal. In America, where you are all reading this, that passage above was a little overly personal. Ah well, we only have culture to blame.

Oh, and I got a bike!

Week II: Echo: The Return: He's Back, and We Didn't Think He'd Post Again

Hey there, friends, family, acquaintances, Italian citizens! Week two update here. Kunming is warm, the air is clear (for China), and… the first week of classes are over! The bridge has been crossed, the wall breached, the fiver forded with minimal loss of oxen and laudanum. The classes have been for the most part interesting – if the content is somewhat lacking given our limited vocabulary, at least constantly reading and speaking in Chinese is challenging enough that there is never a slack moment.

I mean, really, no slack moments. If that’s even a real phrase – my grasp on English weakens by the day, and I fear I shall come out of this experience with my English sounding like a mix between bad modern poetry, old British idioms, and Chinese middle school essays.

But to get back to the point – the point, that is, of the utter unslackness of moments – I shall say that while at Brown, in class, my mind doth often wander. We’ve all been there. You go in, sit down, listen with (the wrong?) half of your brain, take some notes, and then straight-up bounce – all while thinking of a veritable smorgasbord of topics related only subconsciously to the lecture you attended. But here in Kunming I’ve had to change my ways. Ten seconds of wandering and you’re going to find yourself on the awkward end of a grammatically and lexically expectant question. After the first two-hour orientation meeting held entirely in Chinese, my brain hurt – I wasn’t used to paying attention to something for that long. Something that isn’t, say, Lord of the Rings.

The day-to-day speaking grows easier, though. I think. I mean, it’ll seem like it’s far too easy speaking with my 同学们, (I must be getting better) but then I try going up to a magazine stand and asking where to buy second-hand bikes – yikes! After a minute of Chinese translations for “Say wha-?” I hope that they’ll mention something with a number in it – I can do that! Even if this number’s context is “you’ll need to drive for fifteen minutes to get there!” As you may have guessed, I have yet to find that bike – the secondhand market eludes me.

Butanywayguys: I gotta run – I’m off to Fuxian Hu in fifteen minutes – it’s one of the deepest freshwater lakes in China, and, to quote my roommate in translation, “totally bomb awesome” and “legit baller,” so this should be fun. Hopefully pictures are forthcoming – I forget my connector cord, so right now it’s a no-go.

Until next time, have a good weekend everyone!