Update

As I write this, I’m sitting in a hostel in Kunming, the capital of southwestern Yunnan province, known for its minorities, tea, scenery, and difficult-to-pronounce-correctly name.

A few updates, since I haven’t written in a while:

1. My Itinerary from Wuhan was as follows: Wuhan – Guangzhou – Foshan – Guangzhou – Hong Kong – Guangzhou – Kunming. I don’t have time/energy/space/an audience to go into everything I’ve done – but I’ll pick a couple of highlights.

a) Guangzhou (The city formerly known as “Canton”) was kind of cool– although I will admit I think I like the north better than the south. Guangzhou was pretty polluted, and there is a frantic pace that southerners seem to have that really isn’t my thing (especially compared to laid back Chengdu). That being said, it was really warm, are there were some pretty areas, like a concession area called “huang sha” meaning basically “yellow sand” Island, which has a lot of old buildings from Guangzhou’s colonial past, and some good seafood restaurants. Chessin and I went to Dim Sum as well, which was worth the high price, and really was amazing. Guangzhou is, after all, dim sum country (although they call it Yum Cha). When we were eating it, we were seated next to some old Cantonese people who insisted on talking to us in Cantonese even though we didn’t understand a word they said, and they laughed at us when we tried to copy their special southern chopstick-in-tea cleaning method. One other cool thing about Guangzhou was the breadth of food options. The myth is (paraphrased from my Lonely Planet) the Guangzhou was founded by five immortals riding, get ready, five goats. They say the goats brought with them rice grains, and bestowed the people of Guangzhou with plentiful rice for centuries to come. The locals say, however, that the goats also taught Cantonese people how to eat; Goats are known for eating anything – including cans, and the people of Guangzhou are known for eating anything with wings or four legs, except tables and airplanes. We visited an outlying city called “Foshan” (Buddha Hill) for a day, but it was pretty industrial and unexciting – there weren’t nearly as many Buddhas or hills as promised.

b) After Guangzhou we made our way to Hong Kong. Ahhhhhh Hong Kong. I can’t begin to explain how refreshing it was being there. When we stepped off the train, there was a loud announcement in Mandarin Chinese (the language of the mainlanders) saying “Please kindly do not spit on the ground. It promotes the spread of germs.” I almost cried tears of joy. I can’t even count how many times I’ve had to listen to the mucosal vibrations and hocking noises of men preparing to spit on the street, ground, floor of bus, floor of subway, etc… It’s just way more accepted in mainland China than on Hong Kong (the pretentious British influence, I think…). Hong Kong really was amazing. The skyline is beautiful, and within 20 minutes you can be in green hilled areas, or on a beautiful Southeast Asian beach - even by subway! Which is the most amazing subway system I’ve ever seen, btw.) I also went to a jazz big band concert, because I was really craving some live music, and it was sold out, although I met a saxophonist in one of the bands, who snuck me back stage where I could watch the whole show right up close- which was great. The food in Hong Kong was also out of control good. About half way through the Hong Kong trip, Chessin went back to Nanjing, and I replaced him with a 6 foot 8 German named Hanns who, if you blindfold him and turn him around 6 times, still knows which way North is. I would say it’s an improvement. I met Hanns at Nanjing University (he was in Chessin’s class) – he’s a super nice guy who really knows what’s going on. He also packed more than I’ve ever seen into a backpack as small as mine. I don’t know how those Germans do it… Anyway after Chessin Left, Hanns and I went to Macau, which is cool (besides the casinos) – it has a really apparent Portuguese influence which seeps into food, architecture, and lifestyle. We also had some Hong Kong Dim Sum, which, I think, trumped Guangzhou’s, although they were both amazing (and wallet draining).

c) After that we (Hanns and I) went to Guangzhou, with the intent of going from there, by train (25 hours) to Kunming. However, when we got to the ticket booth, the lady told us there were no beds left, only the seated train. “well,” we said “I guess we’ll just take that.” “oh, I’m sorry,” she said “we only have standing tickets left.” We had forgotten (or overlooked) the fact that it was the most important holiday of the year – New Year. We had no choice, and took the standing tickets. But, it turns out there were plenty of seats and beds on the train, just not one in particular for the whole trip, so we were able to sleep lying down, and it was totally comfy. Finally, we got to Kunming this morning, and explored the city (not a whole lot going on). But, tomorrow we’re headed outside the city for what is supposedly the most amazing scenery in all of China. From there, we’re going north to Dali and Shangri-la, which should be amazing.

d) One final note: I had to buy a lighter jacket, and sent my huge coat back to Nanjing with Chessin. I bought the shiniest, most Chinese coat possible, and am extremely satisfied. More to come… 再见！ Zai Jian!

The Yangtse is Dammed Gorges

After waking up at 6:30 last saturday, we got on the four hour bus from Chengdu to Chongqing (pronounced "chong ching"), the starting point for a trip down the Yangtse as well as the world's largest city. Our bus ride ended up taking about 6 hours because we had to wait for a giant fog to clear on one of the highways before we could keep going, but we eventually made it to Chongqing some time in the afternoon. Chongqing is a weird, bizarre, interesting city. It has a population of over 30 million people, and the infrastructure looks like a combination of Orwell's 1984, Gotham City, and LA. Giant, concrete suspended roads running everywhere, millions of people, giant steaming pots of food cooking on the street, and every kind of traffic rushing at you in every direction, I could imagine it being really overwhelming if it was the first city I came to in China... it still kind of was.

We got on our boat about 7 that night, and I guess we really got what we paid for with about $150 for four days on this domestic Chinese "river cruise". It was many things - fun, informative, etc. - but it was not comfortable. First of all, there was no heat on the boat (in the middle of the winter on a river), and our room had a hole in the wall that consistently let in air from the outside. Also, the bed was, I think, made of crumpled aluminum or something like that, and they only gave us a small blanket and duvet. The room smelled like nothing i've ever smelled before - I can't even describe it; I can only say it was nauseating. The "shower" promised to us had no hot water (in our sub-zero room), and the floor of the bathroom had a puddle of fetid water that we were careful to not touch the whole time. The boat food consisted of cup of noodles, and a big piece of Cheddar cheese we brought with us.

That being said - the trip was really entertaining. First of all, we got to see the three gorges dam and it's namesake - the three gorges, which were gorgeous. We were woken up every morning at like 6:30 by the screaming, fake-eyebrowed, boat-master, who had us got off at sights along the way, or had us look at whichever gorge we happened to be passing through at that time. The scenery really was awesome, and made us forget about the horrible living conditions. The yangtse mist is really beautiful, and we were surrounded always by huge mountains and peaks with the typical Chinese angle to them, not to mention the gorges that just envelope you as you go through them. They are sort of like the Grand canyon (not quite the same scale), but are clearly chinese, which is a cool asthetic. Also, we got to tour the Dam, which, aside from all the controversey, is really, really, REALLY big. That's all i can say about it. It's just massive, over 2 km long. It's funny though, as you cruise the river, there are signs on the bank everywhere that say "175 M" at a certain point, and houses and anything below them will be swallowed up by the dam's backed up water.

We got into Wuhan last night - the capital of Hubei province - after a four hour bus ride from Yichang, where our boat dropped us off. Got in, had the first shower in four days, and went to sleep like a little baby, after not really sleeping at all for four days either. One thing I will note - all the Chinese people on the cruise had no problem dealing with the no warmth, no shower, stinky conditions - we really need to toughen up. More to come... zai jian!

The Gate to the West

GAH. So much to write. This has been a great few days. Let's start with the immediate. My legs are tired from walking around all day, and I smell like peppers and Yak (get to that later...); and the keyboard I'm writing on requires Schwarzenegger-like finger strength, so please forgive any forgotten lttrs (wink). The hostel we're staying in is actually really comfortable. There is a restaurant, a nice courtyard (with bunnies and cats runnng around), cute Chinese English majors to practice my Chinese with (they're the best, because anything I don't know in Chinese, they probably know in English, but still, like most people I've met here, love to hear foreigners speak Chinese ), a hot, high pressured shower in our room, a really good travel desk to help arrange trips to Sichuan's amazing spots, a gym (of sorts - mostly just springs of different sizes, kind of confusing...), and, most importantly, this computer.

So we got in two nights ago, I wrote the last quick post, took a shower, we had some Mapodoufu and gongbaojiding (Grandma Ma's tofu and kong pao chicken - basically the national dishes of Sichuan.), I went and borrowed a DVD from the main desk, went up stairs, plopped the DVD in, and fell asleep in like 5 minutes in the nice silk-filled comforters (always warm but never hot!). The next morning, I woke at about 8:30 INCREDIBLY well rested, and ready to tackle Chengdu.

My first impression was right about this city; it's awesome. First off, the air is cleaner than any Eastern cities I've been to; there is a definite "wild" feel the second you set foot outside in the daylight. Chengdu, according to most Han taxi drivrs, is the westermost "big city" in China. It's kind of like St. Louis - it was the jumping off point to Tibet, the Gobi, and the Steppes originally, and still has that feel (although I admit I've never been to St. Louis...). Anyways, yesterday morning Chessin and I stepped outside, and grabbed a bus south in this really navigable city to our first destination: People's Park. What an awesome place. It's this huge park in the middle of a bustling city, where goofy chinese brass bands and Taichi masters alike both come to practice. We saw a guy about 55 doing Taichi like I have never seen; it was like a combination of breakdancing and meditation rolled into one, ass-kicking package. Anyway, the park is picturesque and calming, and there are many "tea gardens" and "tea houses" inside, where people just spend the afternoon relaxing. We made a mental note to come back for some tea in the afternoon, and headed out in search of some hot pot, another specialty of Sichuan.

We found it right near the park, and on the way to Tianfu square, one of four Huge Maoist public squares built during the communist toddler-years. One thing I did notice was that upon walking into the restaurant, Chessin and got more than the usual whispered "kan yixia, lao wai!" - "look, foreigners!" from the restaurant goers. They brought us two broths to cook our meats and veggies in - one spicy and one singe-off-your-eyebrows spicy. A cool thing about sichuan spicy, though, is that it's just just hot peppers in the food; there is also a pepper called "ma", which looks like a pepper corn, and when eaten makes your mouth and tongue tingly-numb. The character for this pepper is the same as the one in marijuana and anesthesia. So, we cooked our lamb, pork, beef, mushrooms, fish head, and cabbage in the broth, and then dipped it into a garlic and cilantro oil before placing it gingerly in our mouths.

"goddamn," we said "this is spicy..."

Then we saw the 100 pound chinese woman sitting next, not only eating at a mile a second, but also with ONLY the eyebrow-singing broth, and then dredging her food in crushed red peppers before she ate it, and whatever manly egos we had left went the way of our remaining tastebuds; that is, said goodbye forever...

We then made our way over to Tianfu square, where there is one of the few remaining giant mao statues. They were cleaning it at the time, so we could see how big it really was; the guy cleaning Mao's waving right hand was about half its height. Tianfu is a huge public area, where the new Chengdu subway is to be centered around. The people there ranged from other laowai (who, I'm kind of embarassed to admit, startled me when I looked up and saw them... I guess that's how Chinese people feel when they see me...), to tibetan monks visiting Chengdu. Chessin talked to some Monks while I was in the bathroom - they came from Lhasa (which is usually an hour flight I think) by some sort of overland car, which took seven days. Needless to say, Chessin got their cell number. After exhausting all the possibilities of a maoist square, we headed back to people park to drink some tea and rest our legs. We ended up in the same tea garden Anthony Bourdain (I freaking love him, don't get me going...) sat in when he visited Chengdu. By accident? I think not... We sat down, and ordered some bamboo green tea as well as some sort of jasmine, both of which were really delicious and relaxing. Then, a man bearing some sort of medieval tweezers, a tuning fork, and bunch of cotton swabs approached and asked if I wanted my ears cleaned. I'd seen Bourdain do this, so the answer was an immediate "yao!" He stuck his most likely dirty tools in my ears, scraping my ear drums clear of their wax, vibrating different stuck parts with his tuning fork, and giving me a general, all around, painfully amazing ear cleaning. It was about the point where he had a metal tool in each ear, touching my ear drums, ready to make me deaf if he so pleased, when I remembered I hadn't agreed on a price with him. "how much?" I said. "40 yuan," he said, pressing a little harder on my cochlea.. "fine by me." I quickly retorted. Locals pay 5, I later learned.

After tea, we went to the most famous Mapodofu (Grandma Ma's tofu) restaurant in Chengdu: the long-established, slightly branded "Chen Mapodofu". We ordered, of course, mapodofu, gongbaojiding, some amazing noodles, some cucumbers, and some bull frog. to call that meal spicy would be an understatement, as big of an understatement as to call it tasty. I was beet-red by the end of it, sweating bullets, and in such a state of supreme bliss someone could have stolen my wallet, and I really don't think I would have had a problem with it. The food was so innundated with peppers, it was no use to try to eat around them. The bull frog was spicy and delicious, and had the consistency of a cross between Chicken and fish; the cucumber was refreshing, the noodles were lip-numbing, the gongbaojiding (kongpao chicken) was sweet and spicy and numbing due to a combination of sweet peppers, hot peppers, and "ma", and the Mapodofu was covered in crushed "ma" peppers, and the tofu was the best consistency I've ever had. There is a little story I like to tell Chinese people that I meet - when I first arrived in China, the only chinese dish I knew how to order myself was mapodofu, and so I had it probably 4 times a week; consequently, I fancy myself somewhat of a "mapodofu zhuanjia", a "Grandma Ma's tofu expert." I can say without equivocation this was leagues and leagues and leagues above anything i'd ever had. This was a meal I'll remember for a long, long time. One thing though - the "ma" numbs your mouth so you can eat spicier food than you normally would, and so while my mouth didn't feel it, my stomach certainly did. It also caused a little episode which reminded me of the time Homer Simpson ate the death peppers at the Chili festival in one Simpson's episode - after that meal at Chen Mapodofu I had probably one of if not the strangest dreams I've ever had. It was so hilaroius I woke up Chessin and we laughed about if for about 15 minutes... I won't go into details, but it involved a friend of mine from High school named Quinton Kappel, the Charleston, shin-and-knee-pads, a wall backflip, and a box of gold fish that was also somehow a carton of milk. Call the psychiatrists...

The next morning, THIS mornng, a rooster (not in the hostel brochure, strangely enough...) woke me up at about 5 AM, although I got back to sleep when it was done destroying the peace of the morning (or adding to it?). We eventually got up, had some oatmeal, and headed over towards a big daoist monastery and temple in the south of the city. However we first got on the wrong bus and ended up accidentally at this giant wholesale market, which ended up being one of the highlights of our time here. This market was HUGE. I mean huge. About 4 city blocks large, it had the craziest and most insane traffic I have seen in my life, and I have been living in China for five months. This trumped it all. Lanterns for the upcoming spring festival were being sold everywhere, and you could buy anything from quail eggs to pig brains to pajamas to socks to bags (real gucci!) to giant tacky plastic dogs to mopeds. ANYTHING and everyone seemed to be there. My first reaction, as it is often at junk centers like this i've come across in China, is to think "why would anyone want to buy stuff like this?", but then I realize, if for 35 years your selection was as stifled as it was in this country, and all of a sudden you could buy whatever the hell you wanted, why not just go for it! "30 plastic dogs please!"

The daoist temple/monastery was beautiful and interesting, filled with, as a friend Trevon drably put it, "statues and incense". Chessin and I made a friend with one of the monks there. We decided Daoist monks are basically just hippies with the luxury of history to justify them. Chen, who is 30, and has been living in the monastery for two years, told us the reason his hair was long was because "Dao fa zi ran", "the law of the Dao is Natural." Chen is, needless to say, really laid back. He does Taichi, plays the guqin, and is learning the Erhu. He taught me a little Erhu and also how to burn incense properly at shrines. Again, he got my cell phone number, and as soon as we left gave us each a call just to see what was up.

After experiencing the Dao, the way, we made our way over to Dufu's thatched cottage, a sort of shrine to China's William Shakespeare, Dufu, with some museum exhibits, and a replica of the home he stayed in when he lived in Chengdu while he was in exile during the An Lushan Rebellion, along with some stuff of his excavated from the same spot. The grounds were really enveloping, with giant bamboo forests and trees of all sorts, and a labyrinthine set of paths leading from statue to tree to garden.

Afterwards, wanting to avoid bizarre dreams and stomach problems, Chessin and I decided to, instead of Sichuan food, get some Tibetan food for dinner in Chengdu's "lttle Tibet." Because of its proximity to Tibet, Chengdu has a ton of Tibetan influence. The restaurant we went to was mostly Tibetans, chatting in their bizarrely beautiful, gutteral language, wearing the monk-like, fur lined maroon clothing, sporting wispy beards over dark, altitude-tanned skin, texting on their phones. We ordered a yak meat pie, which reminded me of a meat pie my grandma Ma makes at Christmas and Thanksgiving, some yoghurt (which i secretely suspect was just dannon), some yak dumplings, and some barley and water, which was surprisingly delicious - you eat it with your hands, and it tastes kind of like some sort of dough before it's cooked. Afterwards we made our way back to the hostel, in a typical difficult manner, as the main thing Chessin and I seem to argue about is directions (i'm always right, by the way... And if i'm not it's Chessin's fault.)

Anyways, I've really enjoyed Chengdu. It's got it's own feel. slightly wild, slightly laid back, slightly insubordinate, slightly refreshing, and totally awesome.

Tomorrow we're embarking at 6 am on a boat down the Yangtse to see the three gorges on a domestic Chinese tour boat for four days. We'll see how it goes, but I'm looking forward to it. Until then,

再见！

zai jian!

And we've arrived.

33 hours later, we're here. The train was actually pleasant, although i managed to avoid spending more than 1 minute in the bathroom at a time (which doesn't get cleaned for 33 hours...), and survived on raman noodle and apples; apparently those not wanting horrible stomach problems don't eat train food in China. By the end I was sweating cup-a-noodle. We sat/slept next to some interesting people, including the train's conductor while he was on 12 hour break; he told me driving a train is simpler than riding a bike, and that he'd done this route for 21 years. "I know every tree. Sometimes I'll drive and say 'hey! where'd that tree go?'" he said. He wasn't overly enthusiastic about going back to work... Also, our cab driver on the way to the hostel taught us some of the local dialect, including how to "holler at girls"... Anyways, Chengdu seems like a good city... Friendly cabbies, funny local dialect, huge tea drinking culture, relatively fresh air, and probably the best food in China. I'm looking forward to it. 再见！ zai jian!

And.... we're off

So tomorrow we're leaving. Not for Guangzhou, as originally planned, but instead for Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province (spicy food, earthquakes...) Apparently, if you want to get a train ticket to a popular destination, you should do so in advance. go figure! Anyways, we had to change plans, and instead of going south, west, then northeast, we're going southwest, east, then north. So, tomorrow at 1:50 pm we're leaving on a 33 hour train ride to Chengdu on the last two tickets available - hard sleepers on the top bunk. Fun is not a word I would use to describe what I'm about to experience. From there, we'll go to Yunnan, Xiangxi, and Guangdong provinces, with a possible trip into Tibet or Xinjiang if timing/governmental permits permit. My room in Nanjing is officially packed up. This is it. The home stretch.

再见！