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As I sat on the airstrip in Bangkok waiting for my flight to Kunming to take-off, the moment was punctuated by the airplane intercom blaring a bizarre Muzak version of the Mexican Hat Dance-a very strange transcultural moment. Little did I know that in the upcoming weeks, I would frequently encounter such moments. The flight to Kunming was during the day, so I had a pretty good view of the countryside and the approach to Kunming. We approached from the South over a patchwork of rice paddies and strangely isolated concentrations of multiple-story housing units. From the air it appeared Kunming didn't seem to sprawl in the western sense of suburbia, but rather was surrounded by islands of building groups floating in an enormous terraced sea of rice. As we crossed into China and approached Kunming, I started to get a sore throat and blocked sinuses. Out the window it appeared as though there must have been a forest fire in the area. The sky was extremely gray and hazy. The laid back atmosphere of the Kunming Airport belied a city that was anything but laid back. My first full day in China was spent walking and walking. I hit the sidewalk at 8:00am. To say Kunming is an intense city is a drastic understatement. Kunming is hustling and bustling with an intense energy that caught me completely off guard. Pedestrian and bike traffic was extreme. Fortunately the number of cars didn't compare with the number of bikes, otherwise traffic would have been a continuous jam. For almost 7 hours I wandered without ever looking at a map. Whatever road struck my fancy I took it. I eventually stumbled into the most amazing street market I have ever seen (or seen since). From the looks I got, I certainly felt I was off the usual tourist route of Kunming. I think it was mainly a market of wholesalers. I can't begin to describe the manner in which everything was so mashed together; the vendors and the shoppers walking or on bikes with motorcycles or minivans sloshing their way through the crowd and over 10 inches of trampled produce. Adding to the normal hustle and bustle of Kunming was the fact that the city was in the midst of an enormous face-lift in preparation for a big International Horticultural Exposition opening in May 1999. Preparation for the Expo seemed to include tearing down every building in the city and replacing it with a 25 story "modern" hotel. Well maybe not every building, but it seemed that way. Everywhere I looked there were hundreds of people either demolishing buildings with nothing more than pick axes or building new ones out of little more than chisels and hammers, bricks and concrete, and lots of white tile and blue windows. I couldn't help but start to think of these enormous masses of toiling workers as giant army of ants (certainly not a very politically correct comparison, I know) slowly but surely building new anthills. And like ants, the work went on around the clock and unfortunately was clearly audible in my hotel room. After arriving in Kunming it didn't take me long to realize that there wasn't a forest fire filling the sky with thick gray smoke but rather this was the typical condition of the atmosphere here: 1 part oxygen to 9 parts carbon monoxide. Unfortunately, I also knew that with this degree of air pollution there would be no way I could do serious bike riding. (I must confess, the craziness of Chinese driving was more than a little intimidating as well.) Nevertheless, during my intense walking tour of Kunming, I stopped into several bike stores searching for a mountain bike that would fit me. Contrary to what I had been told on a China discussion board, this proved to be an impossible task, but did provide several storeowners with a good chuckle. The largest frame I could find was still about 10 cm too small. It looked as though I would have to change my bike touring plans-with a sigh of relief for my lungs. After returning to my hotel room, I unwound from my first day in China in front of some Chinese television. I must have tuned into the Chinese equivalent of an infomercial channel. The first 10 minute commercial I saw was for a miracle acne cream which featured terribly broken out girls quickly rubbing the miracle cream all over their bumpy faces then a quick cut to a heavily diffused shot of their clear complexions. That was only topped by the next commercial for a cream that removed nasty scars. They demonstrated how handy it was for those botched suicide attempts. They repeatedly showed scars on slashed wrists being miraculously removed. Not to mention the girl with the bad facial scar who lost out on love due to her hideous disfigurement. Viola! A little cream and presto the world's most confident girl! The next commercial featured the breast enlargement cream, complete with a quick in-and-out-zoom on the anatomical part in question. Capitalism was certainly alive and thriving in the PRC. I could have watched these all night, but I had big plans for the following day so I had to get some sleep. The next day proved to be one of the highlights of the trip. I flagged a cab with the address of a professor at the Southwest Forestry College who did research into improving production techniques for industrial bamboo products. I had found his name on the Internet, but the listing provided no way to contact him other than his address. So I decided I would just drop in unannounced (a normal Chinese practice I was told). When I arrived at the school on the outskirts of Kunming, I took my little piece of paper which had the professor's name written in Chinese and I wandered around showing it to people until I found someone who knew him. A call was made to him and I was put on the line. Professor Zhang Hong Jian spoke fluent English and would be right down to get me. I met his two assistants before we launched into a long discussion about bamboo-its location, people to contact, and the location of some bamboo panel mills. He showed me various samples of bamboo panel products, which he had on hand, and explained the different production problems encountered in their manufacture. After talking and going over maps for about an hour and a half, I mentioned that my next stop was to go over to the botanical gardens, which were near by. (At this point I didn't know about the upcoming horticulture exhibition.) I could not have said a better thing. He immediately got on the phone several times and tried to track down various people and a car. It turns out that one of the professors at the college was in charge of developing the bamboo garden for the horticulture Expo and he was over there right now. Professor Zhang arranged for one of his assistants to accompany me to the garden. He was able to come up with a car so-and I couldn't believe this-he gave us cab fare! (Which, I might add, I repeatedly and emphatically tried to reimburse to no avail.) So we caught a taxi and headed to the Expo. The bamboo garden had been under construction for about 2 years. We talked our way through the gate, which took Zhi (the assistant) several attempts as people who didn't seem to want to believe our story heavily guarded it. Finally, we were greeted by Professor Fan Du who couldn't have been more welcoming if he had to. For over two hours he proudly showed us around the garden identifying the various types of bamboo and writing their Chinese names and Latin names. There were over 200 varieties of bamboo brought in from various parts of China. Some of the large tropical varieties were wrapped in burlap to keep them warm while they established themselves. This made for some rather bizarre sculptural forms looming overhead. There were several traditional bamboo structures as well as a large contemporary building utilizing modern bamboo building materials. Inside the large building, there were about a dozen people busy at work applying bamboo matting to the walls. I was given samples of different bamboo panels and other materials they were using in the construction of this building. I consider myself extremely fortunate have been one of the few outsiders to be given the privilege to visit the garden and receive a guided tour by the man who designed it and is in charge of its construction! I couldn't help but notice that the normal walking pace for the average Chinese pedestrian is about 1/4 my normal gate. It is not just the shorter legs; it is definitely the pace as well-a casual stroll. After noticing I was constantly walking around people, I decided to make a gesture of assimilation and assume the stroll. "Assuming the stroll" was very difficult. I could sustain it momentarily but then couldn't help myself from resuming my usual. I don't know why I felt the need to get anywhere fast. On my way to catch a bus one morning, I was comparing Kunming with the current state of the typical American city. There is not only a vitality and energy on the street that is missing from a lot of American cities, but there is also a tangible sense of community-lots of people hanging out on the street, open markets everywhere, a tight-knit city traversable on bike. Some of this sense of community might have been highly organized. It was Saturday and it seemed to be work brigade day. On the way to the bus, lots of people in red baseball caps were cleaning out flower beds--which are numerous here in the eternal spring city-scrubbing down the chrome railings which separate the sidewalk from the street, and sweeping everything in sight. There was a school brigade of at least 50 kids with buckets in-hand busy scrubbing down the railings of the rather elaborate pedestrian crossing structure. Later, I would learn that this incidence of unbridled cleaning I witnessed was actually a very rare occurrence in China. In fact this would be the only such occurrence in China I would see. Besides the cleaning detail, I passed a bunch of people playing badminton (one-on-one) in a large paved part of a plaza. They used either no net at all or they arranged 2 bikes to serve as a net. The interesting thing was that the players ran the spectrum from old lady to young-teenage-wannabe-hip-guy. I tried to translate this scene into some sort of western equivalent, but couldn't get past the cliched beach volleyball game. Oh well. Of course this vitality and energy is probably to some extent just a natural effect of the sheer density of people crowed into housing blocks around the city. Side effect or not, it is refreshing to see. Absolutely startled by the immensity of the population, I noticed that I couldn't help feeling a sense of relief that they weren't all driving cars, even though I could imagine that nearly everyone would give up his or her bike in two seconds if presented with a car. (Due to the number of people on bikes the actual car traffic in Kunming is not that dense. It is rather wild, however.) The intersection of car, bike, and pedestrian is rather unbelievable if not downright horrifying. In 20 years the auto traffic will probably be a congested mess and every old structure will have been demolished for a new skyscrapper (deliberate spelling). Back to the ant colony analogy: there is little doubt in my mind that-if Kunming is typical - China could run the world one-day. The sheer numbers combined with the fervent capitalism and a dictatorial government is a potent combination. They will eventually build China into one enormous skyscrapper that will provide the perch from which they will monitor their people, protect their market, and dominate the world. A skyscrapper with a gleaming skin of white tile and blue glass on the outside and haphazardly constructed bricks and mortar on the inside. The same facade that puts a high-tech facelift on the skyline does not truly cover a society that is basically impoverished-it merely rushes the appearance of affluence. This brings me back to my point about the price of energy and vitality. It seems to me that the "broad masses" will bare the brunt of all the construction. When China (as well as foreign investors) has spent tons of money and covered itself with enormous skyscrappers, I fear not only that there be hundreds of poorly built, empty office buildings everywhere (which will nevertheless still somehow benefit the elite), but that China's architectural heritage will have been eradicated and the people will still continue to wallow in relative squalor outside. So after my extended stay in Kunming, made even longer by the inevitable and expected illness, I headed up to Cheng Du. My plan was to start up north and work my way down as the weather got colder. After arriving in the unseasonably warm city of Kunming, I was not sure how necessary this plan was any longer. But I was assured that the weather was gray in Cheng Du (and I assumed that meant cold) so I decided to stick to my plans. After buying a coat, I caught an overnight train to Cheng Du. The 22 hour ride was far from pleasant as my 3 burly cabinmates couldn't refrain from spitting and smoking if their lives depended on it. Luckily, I have a high tolerance level due to my extraordinary ability (now being truly put to the test) to tune out my surroundings. The train basically follows the Yuexi He River so there are a lot of little villages and factories dotting the way. As the train wound its way through steep mountains, I snapped plenty of pictures of the landscape that was definitely covered with plenty of bamboo. From my visit to the horticultural Expo, I had a healthy start on what would become a long list of various types of bamboo. I could recognize what I was seeing out the window as chi zhu (zhu meaning bamboo). After the sun set and I could no longer take pictures out the window, I reflected on my early impressions and assembled an eclectic list of possible Chinese principles: * There is
no load too big for the back of a bike. The next morning, with a mere 5 hours to go (the whole trip around the world took less time than this train trip), I was able to determine the train's location on a map as we pulled into a town called Ebian. The air pollution outside was terrible, far worse than in Kunming. Everything, all the trees and buildings, was covered with a thick cover of gray something. The air was so dense with gray something I couldn't see across a river the train was following. Prior to leaving Kunming, I tried to reach a contact in Cheng Du who had been given to me by former Durfee recipient, Doug Hamilton. A couple of days before my departure to Cheng Du, I called my contact's home and spoke to his daughter, Jing, who spoke fluent English. She told me her father was in Beijing and should be back by the time I reached Cheng Du. When I arrived in Cheng Du, I spoke to Jing again and her father had still not returned, but she agreed to help me with my efforts to track down various contacts and to find out about the bamboo industry in Cheng Du. We met with people at the local Forestry Academy. (It is amazing how people at these places are so willing to let me interrupt what they are doing and take up their time as we sip tea and have lengthy conversations about me and what I am up to.) There we were given information about the relatively nearby town of Chongzhou (AKA Dao Ming) where there is a lot of bamboo industry. Jing and I made plans to travel to the town the next morning. In the town of Chongzhou, every other weekend is a market day on the main street and this was one of those days. It didn't take us long to find the bamboo section of the market. There were several bamboo things for sale and we soon discovered a few people at work. We also soon discovered that most people worked at their homes, which of course are scattered all over the place. However, since it was market day, most of the bamboo craftspeople were at the market selling rather than at home making. Understandably, they weren't exactly willing to leave the market to show us what they do at home. We also learned that during May and Oct./Nov. most people are busy working in the fields rather than working with bamboo. At the market, I talked to and photographed a few weavers. Then a 12-year-old girl approached us and said that she knew where some people were working and she would take us there. It was a place where they apply a bamboo covering to boxes that are used for meals. After a quick tour of this little operation, Jing and I stumbled across a large basket factory where they make baskets for meals. (These meal boxes/baskets seemed to be a big part of the bamboo industry here in this town yet I never saw them anywhere else.) Unfortunately, nobody was weaving there at this time of year, but there were two people there looking over the thousands of baskets awaiting shipment and keeping themselves busy by painting white glue onto baskets to serve as a preservative. After our brief factory tour, we returned to the market and visited the area where the freshly cut bamboo culmns (poles) are sold to the various craftsman. The going rate was .70 Juan (about .10US) a kilo. The average bundle weighed about 45 kilos. While watching the selling of bamboo, we were approached by a group of kids who had been keeping a steady watch on us. They said they knew where someone was working and that they would take us there. We-all of us-took a very long walk together along meandering muddy paths. At a very remote house, we met a man sitting on his front porch weaving baskets. From this man and a few others we met that afternoon, I learned how the bamboo was delicately splayed into strips of various dimensions and I was able to try my hand at splaying and weaving. The day in Chongzhou was particularly fun. It also provided a great insight into the working techniques of the bamboo craftspeople of the region. Days later, the next stop on the bamboo tour was the bamboo paper mill in the town of Changning. Changning is a small town a few hours by bus from the city of Yibin which is 7 hours south of Cheng Du. In Yibin, I had the honor of being toured around by the boys in green (why is a very long story) to meet with the director and deputy of the forestry academy. Not much came from the meetings, but I did get the assurance that I would be welcomed into the bamboo paper mill in Changning simply by showing up. So when I got off the bus in Changning, I grabbed a pedicab to the paper mill. A crowd quickly formed as I showed my translated request to the woman at the gate of the mill. She in turn had her boss come in-a tough guy no older than 25-who gave me a prompt NO! I got them to open the gate and let me into the office to make a phone call to a contact in Yibin who spoke English and could explain why I was there. I put Mr. No on the phone and got the impression that he understood what was going on. When he hung up he ushered me out of the gate, down the block and pointed down a street. What the heck he was pointing to I had no idea. Mr. No left. I hoofed it down the street to see if things would become apparent. They didn't. I returned. They let me in. As I was sitting waiting for Mr. No to get off the phone, one of the women in the office handed me a piece of paper with something written in Chinese. I guess she thought if I couldn't speak Chinese, maybe I could read it. Eventually, another woman, who had been watching all this, tried very hard to explain that this said, "go to the middle school." She decided to take me to the middle school and find an English teacher she knew. We got in a pedicab and went to the school. We met up with an English teacher to whom I explained everything to and within 5 minutes we were on our way back to the paper mill. Soon Sun (the English teacher) had gotten the director of the mill to let us in and we were given a very perfunctory tour. Unfortunately, the milling machine WAS NOT WORKING! It was broken that day. The mill probably looked like every other mill. However a difference is that outside this mill are two stacks of bamboo literally the size of apartment buildings waiting to be turned into paper. (I was told they occasionally go up in flames) There was a definite suspicion that I was there to see the pollution caused by the plant, Sun told me as much. The plant was dumping untreated bleach directly into the river, killing anything in the river that had managed to survive to up that point. The river was extremely slow moving (in fact it hardly seemed to move at all), and had formed a thick foam of bleach pollution which could easily move up stream with the slightest breeze. (A superfund site in this country; normal living in this town.) After we left the mill, things got really strange. We took a pedicab to the bus station and as I was standing at the door of the bus to the Bamboo Sea exchanging addresses with Sun, a mysterious, very suave middle-aged man approached Sun and pulled him aside. I was nearly certain that it was the police and it had something to do with how adamantly I had insisted on getting into the mill. Then Sun told me that this man was the head of the Changning Forestry Academy and that he would like to talk to me for a while if I didn't mind. I asked about the next bus to the Bamboo Sea. After I found out there was another in an hour, I agreed to having a little talk. As we walked away from the station, the man offered (using Sun as an interpreter) to take me to the Bamboo Sea. It sounded good to me, but a little too good to be true. We left the bus station and of course a luxury car with driver was waiting. For the second time in as many days, I was being ushered around in an official car, at least this time I wasn't subjected to looking at olive green. The man, later known as Mr. He-but always the Don to me for reasons that became apparent- was probably the most suave guy I've ever met. Soon Sun told me that the Deputy Director of the Yibin Forestry Academy had contacted the Don, told him about me and my problem at the mill, and the Don went looking for me. Luckily I was told all this shortly after getting into the car because images of being interrogated in a back room under a bare bulb were flashing through my mind and the Don looked like he could be tough if he had a mind to. Anyway, we were ripping through town with the requisite honking, when we pulled onto the street Mr. No had directed me down earlier. It turns out that the Don's office was on that short little dead-end street and no doubt this is where Mr. No was trying to get me to go. I don't know for the life of me why he couldn't have just walked me the 100yds to the door. Anyway, after a bamboo conversation in the inner sanctum of the forestry academy we were off to the Bamboo Sea. The Bamboo Sea is an enormous mountainous area covered with large Bamboo called Mao Zhu. At the gate to the Sea, Don had his chauffeur pull over the car and I was asked if I would like to take a boat into the Sea. How could I turn down such an offer? Don, Sun and I walked over to a dock where a man had several boats for hire. He drove us up the bamboo flanked river for about 1/2 an hour then we pulled over (I noted that the Don did not pay-hence his moniker-and I was certainly not expected to do otherwise) and got back into the car which had been paralleling the river. After arriving at the Bamboo Sea I was treated to an enormous dinner and learned the Chinese customs regarding toasting with rice wine. A custom designed to get the guest drunk a soon as possible. I spent several days in the Bamboo Sea wandering around and seeing both the amazing forest and the various bamboo enterprises practiced there. I visited a factory which seemed to make two things-bamboo sandals and what I call bamboo sheets. (I don't know what these are called but they are essentially sheets of bamboo beads that you can sleep on during the hot nights of the summer. The bamboo has a tendency to feel cool against your skin) The little factory was buzzing with people at drill presses and routers. The people in the factory were producing enormous piles of small flat beads for the sheets-piecework from hell. The factory itself was a little more "informal" than I had expected. It was essentially the courtyard and interior rooms of a middle sized single story building-plus a few people were working outside around the building. Other than the hotel and restaurant business-which exists everywhere-and also farming-the main occupations appear to be craft-hawker, craft-maker, bamboo factory worker and professional starer. As opposed to the bamboo craft people, the factory worker definitely has the most tedious occupation. Sitting at a drill press drilling holes in bamboo beads day-in and day-out is one nasty existence. We wouldn't want to think for a minute that capitalism is making everyone in China rich. After spending a week or so in the Bamboo Sea I headed back to the Changning-with the help of the Don's driver-where I stayed with Sun for several days. After arriving at Sun's family's apartment several of his English teaching colleagues came over and we all went out for lunch. It was a rather huge affair. On the menu- frogs, bamboo shoots, bamboo fungus, pickerel, chicken, eggs and of course the ubiquitous rice wine, AKA lighter fluid. After lunch I joined in with the kids on the playground playing basketball. Of course that gathered a huge crowd in no time. Some of the kids were actually really good. After exhausting myself for a good half-hour, I was given a tour of the school. Afterwards, we hung out at Sun's house with his wife and daughter and Sun taught me how to play Chinese Chess-pretty difficult especially for me considering that the pieces are like checkers but with the each piece's name written on it in Chinese. Sun asked me if I would be willing to give a talk the following day (a Saturday) to the seniors of the school about life in America. Of course, I couldn't turn down such an opportunity. We agreed that the English teachers would interview me and then I would take questions from the students. A few minutes before 9:00 the following morning we headed over to the school. I had a chance to meet some more teachers in the office before my talk. There was so much excitement in the air it was amazing. I was regarded as a visiting dignitary. Retired teachers showed up and told me that I was the first foreigner to ever visit the school and I would never be forgotten. All the attention was very overwhelming. When it was time to give the talk we walked downstairs to a large classroom. There were close to 200 students packed in. The room erupted into applause as I entered. I walked to the front of the classroom where there was a table set up with a microphone and on the chalkboard Sun had written: "Everything you want to know about America... by Thomas Lewis." Talk about a little overwhelming. It then became apparent that the English teachers hadn't taken the interview concept very seriously and I suddenly found that I had to start talking off the top of my head. I launched into descriptions of Los Angeles, my family, the American school system, American students, driving in Los Angeles, a lengthy description of Christmas customs, the NBA, women's rights, attractions in the US and what I thought of US/China relations. (The latter three being responses to students' questions.) Afterwards, I was invited by one English teacher to read the day's English lesson to his class. So I read about the restoration of the Angkor Wat in Cambodia. And once again, I was given a huge ovation. It was obvious that my visit was very special for the students. At lunch afterward, the school's headmaster told me that my talk was EXTREMELY inspiring for them in their efforts to learn English. For the sake
of brevity, I am going to skip far ahead and also limit myself
to just a couple more stories. Before getting the bus from Simoa to Pu'er, I managed to get a phone number of an English teacher in Pu'er who I hoped would be able to accompany me to the forestry person. But when I got to Pu'er there was no answer. I thought I would get a room, dump my bag, and try to track down an English teacher. My hotel was a Chinese pit (not a tourist hotel) in the worst way. I was assigned to cell block 204-a single cell with a toilet down the hall. My room had the lovely touch of barred windows that opened onto the hallway and sheets that had never seen detergent! I dropped off my bag and headed downstairs to the phone-still no answer. The girl at the counter, who spoke a little English, got a couple of English speakers on the phone, but they were too busy to help. Finally I got someone who could help. When she finally came over, I explained what I needed and plans were made with the forestry man to come and get us for a meeting. When they finally arrived in their fancy Toyota luxury car, we went to see the forestry person, a Mr. Lu. He was a short fat fellow (one of the few overweight people I saw in China) with a friendly enough face. We sat and talked about the various types of bamboo in that area. He showed me a 3 layer laminated tongue and groove bamboo panel that they had made. I was very excited about seeing a bamboo panel mill at last. But those hopes were suddenly dashed when I asked to see it. I was told they no longer made the bamboo flooring. They used hardwood instead because the government put (supposedly) extreme limits on the cutting of bamboo. I couldn't believe my ears! He said they were using the same shop to produce flooring out of hardwood (beech I believe-probably imported from Laos). So here I was hoping to see the bamboo milling procedure which would provide a great alternative to cutting hardwood and instead I find a lumberyard full of enormous logs and piles of planks everywhere. Adding insult to injury, for what was probably a decision regarding ease of milling and shipping, these huge long logs were milled into flooring planks only about 3 ft long. The actual mill was so dark I couldn't even get a picture. It's strange how they had state of the art milling equipment worth thousands of dollars yet there was barely a single light bulb that worked in the place. While feeling a little frustrated and disturbed by the fact that hardwood trees were being diced up into little floor boards rather then using the ubiquitous bamboo, I was ushered back into the car for a tour of Pu'er. We drove around Pu'er, which of course like every town in China was under reconstruction. We got out for a walking tour and I had my every move documented by the company photographer Mr. Lu, AKA Big Daddy, had accompany us. By now it was apparent that Big Daddy was not a forestry person in the Forestry Academy sense, but was rather an extremely rich lumber baron. I had gone to see a bamboo mill and was being adopted by a lumber baron, who by this time had made it quite clear that I would be staying at his hotel there at the lumber headquarters and would be fed and entertained by him. This brings us to the next event--dinner. Before the serious rice lighter fluid toasting and drinking games could begin, I made it quite clear that I had recently recovered from a bad case of Hepatitis and that the doctor said I couldn't drink due to my extremely weak liver. This was the only thing I could think of to keep from crawling away from the table completely drunk. (Which already happened at the Sea of Bamboo) With a little emphatic insisting, they finally respected my condition and didn't force me to drink. With 7 people at the table, being toasted by each and returning the toast to each would have been incapacitating. At dinner it became apparent that Big Daddy had very questionable ideas regarding women. With comments like "So they have a law in the US that you can not beat your wife...too bad...in China there is no such law and that is why Chinese men are so great HA, HA, HA...If an American man wanted to beat his wife he should get on a plane to Beijing HA, HA, HA..." All the while this was being translated by a woman who was laughing-very disturbing. I started to get the "I'm prostituting myself feeling" and redirected the conversation as I tried to figure out how I could extricate myself from this entire affair. But it only got deeper. I was told that, after I rested we would be singing Karaoke and dancing at the company disco. Oh boy, couldn't wait. With my complete lack of ability to carry a tune, singing with anyone in earshot is something I simply never impose on anyone. In the end, I decided I had no real choice but to endure the evening. Later as we gathered outside the company bar-where we were going to be the only patrons-I was told that the middle school's music teacher was going to be singing for us that night. Well, I liked that idea much better than the thought of me singing. But of course it wasn't that easy. It ultimately proved impossible to get out of taking the microphone in hand. Fortunately, they had only one song with US subtitles, unfortunately it was the theme from Titanic. So there I was squeaking out the lyrics to a terrible song I had been hearing constantly ever since arriving in China. After a little groovy disco dancing under black lights and strobes in the empty disco, the evening slowed down. On the disco floor it became obvious that Big Daddy and the music teacher were an item. I guess maybe Mrs. Lu was home black and blue. Big Daddy said he had business in Simoa the following morning and insisted on giving me a ride to Simoa so I could catch the bus to Jinghong. I reluctantly agreed because a ride in his luxury car, even with his company, was better than taking the bus. The next morning I waited for Big Daddy by the doors to the hotel and there was Music Teacher standing there. I wondered where she spent the night. She was wearing the same clothes. (Which actually doesn't mean much of anything in China) Soon BD pulled up and all three of us were off to Simoa, at least so I thought. When we pulled into a gas station, Music Teacher pulled out a terrible Chinese/English dictionary and told me "I common escort". Somehow, I knew exactly what she meant. She meant "Big Daddy didn't really have any business in Simoa. That was just a tactic to get you to not refuse a ride. Now that you are in the car we are going to take you all the way to Jinghong if you like it or not. And if that's not enough we are going to make a lot of stops along the way so the trip will take up the entire day. Sound like fun?" Of course a car ride on this notorious road is much preferred over the bus ride, but I had more than enough of their company and the thought of spending the entire day with them was enough to make me want to jump from the speeding car. My objections were greeted with a big smile and an emphatic thumbs-up. The matter was closed. Well we nearly lost our lives four times on the relatively short road from Pu'er to Simoa, so I felt certain that death awaited us on the much longer journey to Jinghong. Little did he know that my emphatic objections were based on self-preservation. It was very hard to get off of Big Daddy's lap. So off we went at 60 mph whipping through villages as though they were not even there, tooting the horn 10,000 times and leaving a trail of orange peels in our wake. I was being tossed around in the back seat regardless of my seatbelt (the only one wearing it of course). The image of us with the black car and darkly tinted windows was very disturbing, but not as nearly disturbing as what we were about to do. Well into the trip as the jungle started to thicken and the sky was actually blue, Big Daddy took a sharp right-not to avoid on-coming traffic as was normally the case-but to stop at a nature preserve. I have no idea why we are stopping until we got to the ticket gate and I saw it was a wild animal park. The tickets had a lovely picture of wild elephants tromping through a river! Wow this actually sounded nice! We walked in a ways before I could see some people gathered around something up ahead. What could it be? Well it was several dozen Chinese tourists posing for pictures with trained elephants. Not being a big fan of wild animals trained for entertainment, I just wanted to turn and run, but I realized that I had to be a sport and besides all my belongings were in the trunk of the Big Daddy mobile. So the sport I was. The first pictures of what would prove to be several rolls of film started through Big Daddy's camera as he set about recording the fun they were having with their new American friend. I dealt with the situation by standing one step removed from the whole affair and taking pictures of the Chinese with the elephants. The whole procedure worked like this: You pay at the counter for the privilege of having your picture taken with an elephant. You are handed a green slip of paper. The elephant takes the green slip of paper with its trunk and you pose with him for the shot. He then bows a thank you and runs over to the counter to redeem the paper for 3 bananas or some sugarcane. And when I say run I mean charge! After several moments of posing, there is a show. It was nothing anyone hasn't seen before except for maybe the grand finale. For the last trick they had 5 people from the crowd lay side-by-side on the ground and covered each with a sheet. Then a baby elephant stepped over each of them pausing to massage the breasts of the women and the penises of the men. Yes, it was truly bizarre. And the crowd loved it! After a few more stops on the way to Jinghong, we made it to the city. After a big exercise in diplomacy, Big Daddy finally allowed me to stay at the hotel of my choice rather than the grandest hotel in all of Xishaungbana. The hotel proprietor at my hotel greeted me in English. He and Daddy-O exchanged some words and I had the hotel man thank BD for all his generosity, which was far beyond what anyone could have dreamed, (that statement having a slightly different meaning for me). I was finally off the lap of Big Daddy. At that precise moment, I could feel a transitional shift from weeks of only dealing with Han Chinese and having virtually no contact with other travelers to a casual backpacker environment. I spent an extended time in Jinghong and took several treks and bike tours from the city. Xishaungbana is an incredibly beautiful area (I imagined all of Yunnan would look like Xishaungbana) with very little industry. It proved to be my favorite part of the trip. What follows is a rather detailed account of one of the treks I took in the area. After being in Xishaungbana for a long time and already completing a 5 day bike ride on a rented bike that was 10 cm too small, I set out on a trek, which should have taken 2 days, to reach a Yao minority festival. For the trek, I teamed up with an American woman I met in at my hotel in Jinghong. The two of us felt pretty confident that we would be able to find our way even though our maps were pretty basic. After all we had a compass. What else did we really need? Our plan included taking a bus to the location where would start our hike. When the bus went through the city of Menglun the police told the driver he would have to change the back left tire because it was bald. So the bus had to make an unexpected stop at a mechanic to get a new tire. When they removed the wheel, they found that not only was there absolutely no brake left at all but the entire brake area was completely dripping in oil (of course the source of this oil was a complete mystery). This did not exactly instill confidence and neither did the fact that the replacement brake pads didn't exactly fit. As they busied themselves trying to modify the brakes to get them to fit we were on the next bus which came along. After about half an hour of enjoying an extremely curvy bus ride with people vomiting out both sides of the bus, Julie and I got off the bus at the dirt road we were going to walk. Supposedly after 5k or so on this road, we were to come to a turn off to the right. We never found a turn off and continued down this road for a couple of hours until we came to a village. There, we got the bad news that of course we had missed the turn and had continued way too far north. Fortunately, a bus came and we got a ride to a nearby town. The map we had for the area, which was standard tourist issue, left a lot to be desired. Plus it was not unheard of for small villages to move and it not be noted on the map. Consequently, it was usually very difficult to locate ourselves. It was getting late in the day, so in this extremely small town we tried to find a ride to our original destination for the day. Everyone wanted 200 juan to drive us (most of them were in the middle of eating dinner--which meant they had consumed large quantities of rice wine-- so it might have cost us our lives as well). After talking to every vehicle owner in the town-four of them in all-we found a guy we could bargain down to 150 Juan--still exorbitant. We got in the backseat of his truck. He drove down the street and then stopped and told us he wanted to eat first. OK we weren't going to begrudge this guy his dinner. We waited in the truck about 20 minutes while he ate. When he came back to the truck he had his wife in tow. She got in the truck as well and he turned the truck around. I knew enough to know that he was now headed in the wrong direction. He drove the one block back to where we had gotten into the truck. He pulled over and his wife jumped out of the truck and ran inside a building. When we asked what was going on now, he gestured that she was going to get her hair done. That was a bit much for us, so we just decided we would get a hotel room in this town and continue on the next morning. We had some dinner and then settled into a rather repulsive Chinese hotel (complete with three drunken--but very friendly-- proprietors who wanted to hang out in our room for the evening) which was certainly not intended for any tourists. The next morning we were up early and out on the street awaiting the arrival of the bus, which the restaurant owner had told us about the previous evening. We wandered the dirt street among the pigs, donkeys and piles of rubble until we were spotted by the restaurant owner who took us down the road and put us in the enclosed back of a pick-up truck that was the bus. We were the first on, but soon it was packed. There were only two tiny windows on both sides and a tarp over the back to try to keep the exhaust out. Unfortunately, the driver kept stopping and picking up people until there was absolutely no room at all. We were in the truck for about an hour before it stopped and we were told that this is where we wanted to get off in order to walk to the village we had hoped to reach the night before. We got out and sat on a step near the one store in town. Of course it took all of 5 seconds to start gathering a crowd. We greeted people and interacted in our limited way before I decided to bring out my notebook where I had a lot of questions regarding bamboo traps translated into Chinese. A few people read the questions and one guy went to get one of his bird traps. They showed me how they load the traps and how they attach them to trees. I got some great photos, then after some minor language hurdles I was able to explain that I wanted to learn about any other type of bamboo traps they might have. (Funny how I didn't think to have that question written down and how difficult that idea was to convey with gestures.) The main man who was doing the demonstration invited us up to his house. He then brought out a cane basket trap, which used an ingenious bamboo tripping mechanism. He demonstrated versions of bamboo spring traps, which used bent pieces of bamboo stuck in the ground with a string noose attached to a bamboo tripping mechanism. I was very impressed with the ingenuity of these traps, which had been handed down for generations. The whole experience with this generous man, his willingness to indulge a couple of westerners, and the friendly atmosphere created during this demonstration was one of the single greatest experiences of my trip. There was a moment when there was something of a common realization that even though we come from completely different worlds we are all human and could connect on a certain level regardless of no common language. After the lengthy demonstration and photo taking, the man invited us in for lunch. They quickly cooked us some delicious pork and rice. We tried to explain where we intended to walk and he explained where the trail was but strongly discouraged us from going that way. He kept acting out being caught under falling rocks. That was not very encouraging of course, but after our misguided journey of the day before, we really were determined to walk and not get lost. We found the trailhead without a problem. About 1/2 k into the trail we had to cross a river and then it was up, up, up. We walked for about 12k before we came to a little village off to the left of the path. We decided to stop at this village to see if we could locate ourselves on the map and determine how much further to our destination. At first all we could find were shy little kids who couldn't read. Then we found an older man who took a lot of interest in my camera. He loved to look through it and I let him take a picture of the kids. A short distance off in another part of the village was a small group of men. As we talked to them we were surrounded by a large group of kids. Some of these kids were in bad need of medical attention. A few kids had terrible scalp conditions resembling oatmeal matted to their heads and a lot of the kids were filthy dirty, naked except for maybe a jacket, and badly blistered from some sort of scabby skin condition. The sight of this was extremely disturbing and appalling. The fact that everyone, including the sick kids themselves, seemed completely oblivious to the fact, made everything feel that much more bizarre. When I asked about the village we were heading to, the men explained that we could get to that village by taking a single track out of the village rather than going back to the road we had just left. We walked a short distance out of the village before we ran into one of the kids from the village returning from checking his traps. He had a bird in his head and was willing to pose for a picture. (Actually no one is allowed to hunt or trap in this area but of course they do). So we were off walking again walk, walk, walk, up, up, up. We covered a lot of ground and it seemed to generally be in the correct southwestern direction. Suddenly we could see a small village off on the distant side of a mountain. Then in the middle of this incredibly remote area, we came across a man stretched out enjoying a cigarette. There seems to be somebody everywhere in China. We stopped and asked about out location. He explained that the village we wanted was very far away and it wasn't the one we could see. He urged us to go back to the main road and get a ride. We explained that we didn't want a ride but wanted to go to the village we could see. He seemed to explain that he would take us to that village but we had to make a wide circle in order to reach it. So we followed him. He had a tendency to stay about 40 ft. in front of us. We walked so much that it seemed like we were going well out of our way to reach that village but directions in this sort of landscape are very hard to negotiate. Julie and I started to fear that he was walking back to the main road. Our suspicions were confirmed when I looked back over my shoulder and recognized a fork in the path we had seen earlier in the day. He had led us in a big circle! We were a little frustrated because now it was too late in the day to do anything about it. We still had to walk a good distance before we could see the original village of the morning way down below the mountain we were on top of. After passing back through the poor village our guide disappeared and we walked the rest of the way back to the village. We walked in the dark until we found the little store from the morning. We bought a couple of beers and sat on the step to figure out what we were going to do. It wasn't long before we were recognized. A small group of men gathered around us and took a great interest in our maglites. They had never seen such small flashlights and batteries, so they opened up our flashlights and also enjoyed focusing the beam. Soon our good friend from the morning came walking by (somebody probably told him of our arrival) He didn't seem all that surprised to see us. We bought a couple more beers after I showed them the intricacies of my Gerber tool and had presented a few of them with decks of cards. They told me the Chinese names for J,Q,K,A, then our main man invited us to eat and sleep at his house. We headed up the little hill to his house where we had been earlier in the day. He informed his wife that there was company and that she needed to do some more cooking. They had no electricity in the house (even though there was electricity in the store where there was a Karaoke machine set-up) so they used little oil lamps. His wife cooked over a fire in the middle of the dirt floor room. The whole scene was a little overwhelming. I helped his wife by shining my flashlight on her work and soon we were at the table eating delicious food and sharing a beer. After dinner our host and a few of his friends wanted to play cards. I taught him how to play Blackjack. Even with the language barrier he caught on quickly to the rules. In a few minutes we all knew the card names in both Chinese and English and we each had a go at being the dealer. It was truly a great time, which not only completely calmed my frustration of having been led back to the same village, but also made me glad we were back. Despite not being able to realize our plans, we nevertheless had an incredibly rewarding experience as we passed the evening drinking and playing cards. Again, I had the great feeling of being able to connect with people in this strange faraway land. At that moment I could imagine looking down on us, huddled in that remote little house, as we played cards and struggled to communicate under the dim yellow light of oil lamps. |
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