Sitting here and thinking about trying to account for my time in Shanghai, I'm kind of at a loss as to what I can write about. I spent most of my time being fairly ill, barely able to get up off the toilet or out of bed.
We woke up fairly early in Nanjing to catch the next available train to Shanghai. Since we were on the Beijing-Shanghai line, we were lucky enough to be able to take a Z-class train to Shanghai, which is pretty comfy. I didn't really notice, however, because at this point, whatever I ate in Guangzhou was beginning to really settle in. I was glad we did the last leg by train, because traveling China by train is my favorite way to see the country, sitting with the common people, seeing the countryside pass by, it's something I'll miss.
We rustled ourselves into a nice hostel near the Bund. This time, we had four beds in a six bed hostel room. The hostel's a nice place but full of hostel people, who I have little time for. Once settled, we went to meet my friend Kaity, who's in Shanghai for the summer, by the Bund, which took way too long. Even though she had been there a week, Kaity was more disoriented in the city than I was. The rest of the day was fairly uneventful, we got coffee, and then beer, and then Kaity and another friend of mine, Julia, who's native Shanghainese, took us to the "Duck King". There, we had turtle (pretty good even though the shell was still there, reminded me of a Louisiana dish I couldn't quite pinpoint) and goose. It was a great meal, but my stomach was so bad that I couldn't really enjoy it. We were supposed to go out that night, but we were all kind of tired and my stomach was killing me, so we fell asleep at 11.
I can't even clearly recollect what I did the next two days, besides wake up late and eat very little, and sit on Kaity's couch and read gossip blogs. I bought a bunch of Chinese medicine for diarrhea (of course, I whispered it to the pharmacist and she yelled it across the store). They smelled bad, looked like bird droppings and tasted like metal, but seemed to work in the short term. We also chilled for a while in a park in the French Concession. It was a hell of a denouement for my China experience, but at that point, when you feel that bad, it doesn't really matter. It was also a good easy transition back into American life. It was fun seeing Kaity and Julia's apartment, and generally fun to see what it's like for Chinese people to live in China. Granted, both are Americans, and actually, I had a leg up on them in certain situations because I can read and they can't; a sort of strange scenario. But the bottom line is that Chinese people are treated differently by the natives, and there was a realization on my part of how far I had to go with my Chinese and how, even if my Chinese became fluent, how there were certain barriers I'd never be able to break through. One thing that I realized from taking cabs with them that I didn't realize last time (probably more because I just didn't take cabs last time in Shanghai than any language difficulties) is the insanity of taking a cab in Shanghai. Most of the drivers are from the sticks, which means when you give them an address, they have no idea where it is. Sometimes they will lie and say that they do, and really have no goddamn clue. And you have to watch them like a hawk to make sure they don't scam you. At one point, Kaity asked, you're not giving us the runaround because we're in a cab with whitey? And the cab driver responded, no, for me the Chinese and whitey are alike. Great.
I clubbed a lot my last days in Shanghai, and though I had a fun time, also realized why I never club in the States, and why I don't particularly want to club ever again. Shanghai has all of those usual club features, the greasy white guys, but with the added creep-out factor that all those club greasers are chasing after Chinese girls - and are generally successful with them, no matter how greasy and ugly they are. Some clubs were quite nice though. One place we went to (against Julia's warning, it should be said), was a total nightmare. There was literally no room to dance, and even when we found a little corner, old, poorly dressed Chinese guys shoved us guys out of the way to dance up on our girlfriends. Ecch.
Honestly, not a lot of build up or excitement to my exit from China. I'm not the type who has grand ceremonies about leaving one place or another, and this was no exception. The morning of the sixth, I got up, checked out, had a leisurely breakfast, and caught a cab. I originally wanted to take the bullet train to the airport, but in a great last China moment, the driver pretended he couldn't here me, and then argued me out of it. I was too tired to give a shit, and also knew he was right: it was more convenient for me to take the cab, I just wanted to take the bullet train for the novelty. A long, sweaty, sleepless (when the plane leaves at 3:45, you can't really recalibrate your body) flight later, and I'm back in the States, still suffering headaches and GI pain. Woo hoo.
So far, it's just been sort of weird and tiring to be back in the States. I think I've finally shaken whatever bug I had, which is a relief, but it took a while. I've generally kind of been laid out with jet lag, which hit me pretty hard (a lot of naps, eleven hour sleep sessions). It was very strange the first time I paid for something with dollars again. It's just sort of a weird sensation of the uncanny: everything is strangely familiar and doesn't quite feel weird. I'll wait a week or so to reflect on it, and then give a final post and close up shop here.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
6/2 - Nanjing
We woke up sorta early the next morning to drag ourselves up to the rooms we had originally wanted, and then to set out to the Sun Yat-Sen Mausoleum. By the time we got dumplings and canned coffee, it was around 12. So not a rushed day. I couldn't really tell you what I thought of Nanjing overall, except that it doesn't have a lot of bars that we could find. I mean, my impression was that it was a nice, modern city that reminded me of New York, but I felt drugged and lethargic with a massive headache that whole day, the precursor to the full on blechness I'd feel in Shanghai. Like I said, probably the bad fish at the Guangzhou airport.
We took the convenient tourist bus for about an hour and a half to Sun Yat-Sen Mausoleum, a not particularly attractive but rather impressive edifice for the tomb of the Father of the Country. While climbing the steps to the top, I did a double take when I saw a soldier wearing a Guomindang uniform. I looked around and saw a lot of them. It turned out that they were actors shooting a movie. Still, pretty freaky to see, as if you went to Moscow and suddenly saw hundreds of guys in Soviet uniforms. In general, it's odd to come to the tomb and see so much Nationalist iconography, as it's pretty much taboo outside of the tomb and Sino-Japanese war serials. Once again, I had my set of reflections on Sun Yat-Sen, whether he'd have remained a national/international hero had he lived longer, whether he's someone that deserves praise, having crafted the nationalist framework that the CCP clings to to this day. Hard to say. All I know is that circling Sun Yat-Sen's coffin is one of the only times I have seen the Chinese keep perfectly quiet and fully respectful of anything.
After that, we went to a pretty unremarkable temple solely because it was included in the ticket price. There was a nice nine story pagoda designed by an American that we climbed to get a view of the city. I actually got incredibly dizzy climbing the steps and was terrified by the time I got to the top. The view was also made somewhat less dramatic by the Nanjing haze. Actually, I won't blame it on the temple. I had an awful headache and just felt like a total wreck, and my traveling buddies weren't much better off: at one point, we just lay on the steps leading to the temple while Sarah and Michelle ate corn. For like an hour.
Eventually, we made it down to the Nanjing University area. Nanjing University makes Yunnan Normal University look like a horse barn, real fancy and with a ton of foreigners. I hate seeing other foreigners in China. Partly, it's my own general misanthropy, but I feel like a lot of them have weird reasons for being in China, either to exploit China or because they have weird sexual fetishes, or whatever. I had coffee which enabled me to get through the rest of the night, and then we had some pretty mediocre Korean food next to the university. We immediately cursed ourselves after passing by a million better looking food joints, and crawfish, which I would have loved to have but never got a chance to try in China for whatever reason. We spent the rest of the night wandering around Nanjing searching for a bar, with no luck. It seemed like we were in a damn dry county. Finally, we found The Castle, a bar that seemed to be in the basement of the city drum tower, with the surliest bartenders in all of China (a girl literally threw the bar menu at me). Not the nicest place to have a drink, but they had a good deal on wine and after a few glasses, we were relaxed and spent the night chatting about the trip and life. A pleasant end to an admittedly wasted day.
We took the convenient tourist bus for about an hour and a half to Sun Yat-Sen Mausoleum, a not particularly attractive but rather impressive edifice for the tomb of the Father of the Country. While climbing the steps to the top, I did a double take when I saw a soldier wearing a Guomindang uniform. I looked around and saw a lot of them. It turned out that they were actors shooting a movie. Still, pretty freaky to see, as if you went to Moscow and suddenly saw hundreds of guys in Soviet uniforms. In general, it's odd to come to the tomb and see so much Nationalist iconography, as it's pretty much taboo outside of the tomb and Sino-Japanese war serials. Once again, I had my set of reflections on Sun Yat-Sen, whether he'd have remained a national/international hero had he lived longer, whether he's someone that deserves praise, having crafted the nationalist framework that the CCP clings to to this day. Hard to say. All I know is that circling Sun Yat-Sen's coffin is one of the only times I have seen the Chinese keep perfectly quiet and fully respectful of anything.
After that, we went to a pretty unremarkable temple solely because it was included in the ticket price. There was a nice nine story pagoda designed by an American that we climbed to get a view of the city. I actually got incredibly dizzy climbing the steps and was terrified by the time I got to the top. The view was also made somewhat less dramatic by the Nanjing haze. Actually, I won't blame it on the temple. I had an awful headache and just felt like a total wreck, and my traveling buddies weren't much better off: at one point, we just lay on the steps leading to the temple while Sarah and Michelle ate corn. For like an hour.
Eventually, we made it down to the Nanjing University area. Nanjing University makes Yunnan Normal University look like a horse barn, real fancy and with a ton of foreigners. I hate seeing other foreigners in China. Partly, it's my own general misanthropy, but I feel like a lot of them have weird reasons for being in China, either to exploit China or because they have weird sexual fetishes, or whatever. I had coffee which enabled me to get through the rest of the night, and then we had some pretty mediocre Korean food next to the university. We immediately cursed ourselves after passing by a million better looking food joints, and crawfish, which I would have loved to have but never got a chance to try in China for whatever reason. We spent the rest of the night wandering around Nanjing searching for a bar, with no luck. It seemed like we were in a damn dry county. Finally, we found The Castle, a bar that seemed to be in the basement of the city drum tower, with the surliest bartenders in all of China (a girl literally threw the bar menu at me). Not the nicest place to have a drink, but they had a good deal on wine and after a few glasses, we were relaxed and spent the night chatting about the trip and life. A pleasant end to an admittedly wasted day.
5/31-6/1: Guangzhou
So early on the morning of the 31st, we made it into Guangzhou. In another stressful whirlwind, we stuffed ourselves into two taxis and got over to a hotel that promised us beds for fifty kuai a night. Another city, another "o'clock room". This place was probably the worst hotel I stayed in in China, and that's saying something. As soon as we walked in, we realized that the tile floors were still wet somehow, that the air conditioning and TV didn't seem to work, and the walls were chipped and badly painted. The bathroom consisted of a shower positioned so that you had to stand directly over the squat toilet while you showered, and the squat toilet often didn't flush properly, or flushed only by flooding the entire floor. Also, Max found hair on the bed. On the plus side, vibrating condoms were available for purchase in the room for only twenty five kuai! We decided to rest up until 11, at which point we decided we'd set off for dim sum in Guangzhou, the home for dim sum.
Guangzhou is a strange place, coming from the rest of China. First of all, at that latitude, it's damn near tropical, even compared to Kunming. When I was there, there was a hot, damp heat that reminded me of New Orleans. The parks are filled with all kinds of tropical flora; you sometimes feel like you're in Thailand or Vietnam as opposed to China. Also, in Guangzhou, the primary language (hell, often the only language) is Cantonese, which doesn't even sound like Chinese. It's a weird sensation, walking the streets of Guangzhou and hearing Cantonese and just feeling like you're in another damn country. Also realizing that in certain situations, I might as well speak English to people, since they have just a good chance of understanding English as Mandarin. Finally, Guangzhou has an unusual number of 7/11s. I have no idea what that's about, but no other Chinese city seems to have them, and Guangzhou has tons.
Gotta give it up for dim sum though, which, to be honest, was probably the real reason I wanted to come to Guangzhou in the first place. It took us a while to figure out dim sum at the place that we went to, because of course, being China, nothing was obvious or clear, even though the waitresses were friendly. At first, we couldn't get a dim sum menu; they just gave us a general menu, which confused the hell out of us. Finally, we explained ourselves and they sat us upstairs, in the dim sum section. But dim sum works differently in the states, at least at that place. Instead of the little carts that come around (a much better system), we had to get up and actually pick up dishes ourselves. It took a while for the waitress to explain that to us, and by that time, everyone but me was discouraged. I ended up having to serve all of us. But man, what a meal...great shumai, dumplings, and some kick ass lo mein. Cantonese food is closest to American Chinese food, since most Chinese-Americans come from Guangdong. It was good to have those familiar tastes again, and we left full of a lot of great little dishes.
After that, we took a casual stroll to and around Shamian Island, which used to be the British and French concession, and as a result, is a lovely, leafy place on the Pearl River, extremely walkable and full of grand colonial architecture. Of course, after walking for a while, we settled on a Starbucks on the island, where I got a frappuchino - ahh, neocolonialism. Until you walk a mile in China, don't mock me for my loving-Starbucks ways. As we left, we saw street vendors selling fish (probably from the Pearl River...ecch) on the sidewalk, and then we saw a cop heading their way. We stuck around to see if the cop would beat heads. Instead, he bought a fish from them. Well, that's China.
After that, we spent an hour at the Mausoleum of the Nanyue King. Underlining the insane amount of history in China, a history that still remains to be fully excavated, this nearly intact tomb was only discovered through new construction in 1989. The Nanyue kingdom was a briefly independent kingdom in the Guangdong/Guangxi area during the late Qin/early Han period. A couple of things I took out of it. First, and most superficial, people were damn small back then: the tomb, which we could enter, had door frames that were basically three feet high, and also, the fantastic jade death shroud that had been reassembled by a crack team of archaeologists suggests a man no taller than four foot something. Second, the shock at the insane artifacts that can be found in China as opposed to the States. For all we looted, there's still so many beautiful things left in China: intricate gold work, breathtaking glazes, amazing carvings of mythical animals. Finally, the discrepancy between the concept of a unified culture of China going back thousands of years, and the fact that most of these Qin-era artifacts barely look Chinese at all. When the CCP either falls or really reforms and China opens itself for serious introspection, there will be a serious dissection of the nationalist myths that have long defined the historiography of the Qin and Han periods.
From there, we got a dinner, and not a fantastic one, near our hotel. Actually, most of the dishes were quite good: we had some terrific double cooked pork, mapo tofu and roast goose. But one dish was absolutely no good: a specialty, the "jade chicken", that looked like plain raw chicken to all of us. Thankfully, no one got sick...we think. After that, we headed out to the Guangzhou clubs. A bunch of us weren't particularly in the mood, and Guangzhou turned real weird at night. The streets suddenly swarmed with African and Turkish drug dealers, and cops who looked the other way. We went into just one club, a dead joint with the least interested bartenders I had ever seen that I was pretty sure was controlled by the Russian mob. We didn't stay long, and walked for a while among streets that were weirdly filled with Turkish people.
The next day was kind of a wash out, but we didn't mind. We had a late lunch/breakfast at a McDonalds that was inexplicably swarming with loud children, and then made a snap plan to go to the Guangzhou art museum. When we got there, we found out that the museum was shut down because it was International Children's Day. Really. So we were faced with a Guangzhou that was pretty much shut down and also filled with tons of running, screaming Chinese children. Luckily, the museum happened to be in a park, so we just walked around and relaxed for a while. Eventually, we came upon a lake, and in another snap judgment, we got into a paddleboat and chilled on the lake for a while. Best International Children's Day ever.
After killing time in another Starbucks (I know, shut up) in the lobby of a fancy Guangzhou hotel near our hotel, we schlepped like mad men to get to the airport. The hotel was real nice though, a reminder of how you can actually travel in China if you're not a poor student. Bathrooms with bathroom attendants! The Guangzhou airport bus weirdly enough had ads on the bus that advertised the bus, as if you weren't already on the bus. When we got there, thankfully, my baggage didn't cost me an arm and a leg, although it probably did end up costing about the same as the ticket. The women at the ticket counter provided some fun China racism times as well. She was trying to convince me to cut my luggage bill, and was asking me whether one of my bags had liquid in it. I had no damn idea how to say liquid in Mandarin, and so she gestured to Sarah and said, please help your friend. Sarah, of course, also had no idea how to say liquid in Mandarin. She finally got a translation from a co-worker at the desk. So there, it wasn't me being a stupid white guy. Or maybe it was, but Sarah was stupid too.
We had time for a quick, overpriced dinner of weird Chinese slop at the airport (including some brown fish that I did not know was fish when I ordered it that is now the chief culprit for my current diarrhea/GI pain thing), and we got into Nanjing late at night. We took another airport bus that seemed to drop us off in the middle of nowhere, where we were quickly, literally surrounded by cabs and touts. Hilariously, they seemed totally unaware that we might be able to understand Mandarin, and speculated openly on whether Sarah and Michelle were Korean ("Some Koreans look just like us, only prettier"). We desperately tried to find beds, and then finally agreed (sort of), to a rate quoted by a tout, at which point our bags disappeared into cabs at a terrifying speed, and we had to rush and insist on being on the same cars as our bags. We arrived at another fleabag sex hotel, but were then told that the only room that was available was a weird, spare set of dorm rooms on the first floor. Apparently, the whole city was short on rooms, since the head of the Guomindang (in Taiwan) had come to visit Sun Yat-Sen's Mausoleum the day before. This filthy hotel had also clearly never had American guests; they wanted to see an American dollar bill, and I obliged them, even though it was a weird request at about 1:30 in the morning. Best of all, the dorm room (which was probably just used by the staff most of the time) had no lock, so we were unceremoniously given a chair to wedge under the door knob. I instead barricaded the door with our gigantic luggage, and we all went to bed, safe(ish) in Nanjing.
Guangzhou is a strange place, coming from the rest of China. First of all, at that latitude, it's damn near tropical, even compared to Kunming. When I was there, there was a hot, damp heat that reminded me of New Orleans. The parks are filled with all kinds of tropical flora; you sometimes feel like you're in Thailand or Vietnam as opposed to China. Also, in Guangzhou, the primary language (hell, often the only language) is Cantonese, which doesn't even sound like Chinese. It's a weird sensation, walking the streets of Guangzhou and hearing Cantonese and just feeling like you're in another damn country. Also realizing that in certain situations, I might as well speak English to people, since they have just a good chance of understanding English as Mandarin. Finally, Guangzhou has an unusual number of 7/11s. I have no idea what that's about, but no other Chinese city seems to have them, and Guangzhou has tons.
Gotta give it up for dim sum though, which, to be honest, was probably the real reason I wanted to come to Guangzhou in the first place. It took us a while to figure out dim sum at the place that we went to, because of course, being China, nothing was obvious or clear, even though the waitresses were friendly. At first, we couldn't get a dim sum menu; they just gave us a general menu, which confused the hell out of us. Finally, we explained ourselves and they sat us upstairs, in the dim sum section. But dim sum works differently in the states, at least at that place. Instead of the little carts that come around (a much better system), we had to get up and actually pick up dishes ourselves. It took a while for the waitress to explain that to us, and by that time, everyone but me was discouraged. I ended up having to serve all of us. But man, what a meal...great shumai, dumplings, and some kick ass lo mein. Cantonese food is closest to American Chinese food, since most Chinese-Americans come from Guangdong. It was good to have those familiar tastes again, and we left full of a lot of great little dishes.
After that, we took a casual stroll to and around Shamian Island, which used to be the British and French concession, and as a result, is a lovely, leafy place on the Pearl River, extremely walkable and full of grand colonial architecture. Of course, after walking for a while, we settled on a Starbucks on the island, where I got a frappuchino - ahh, neocolonialism. Until you walk a mile in China, don't mock me for my loving-Starbucks ways. As we left, we saw street vendors selling fish (probably from the Pearl River...ecch) on the sidewalk, and then we saw a cop heading their way. We stuck around to see if the cop would beat heads. Instead, he bought a fish from them. Well, that's China.
After that, we spent an hour at the Mausoleum of the Nanyue King. Underlining the insane amount of history in China, a history that still remains to be fully excavated, this nearly intact tomb was only discovered through new construction in 1989. The Nanyue kingdom was a briefly independent kingdom in the Guangdong/Guangxi area during the late Qin/early Han period. A couple of things I took out of it. First, and most superficial, people were damn small back then: the tomb, which we could enter, had door frames that were basically three feet high, and also, the fantastic jade death shroud that had been reassembled by a crack team of archaeologists suggests a man no taller than four foot something. Second, the shock at the insane artifacts that can be found in China as opposed to the States. For all we looted, there's still so many beautiful things left in China: intricate gold work, breathtaking glazes, amazing carvings of mythical animals. Finally, the discrepancy between the concept of a unified culture of China going back thousands of years, and the fact that most of these Qin-era artifacts barely look Chinese at all. When the CCP either falls or really reforms and China opens itself for serious introspection, there will be a serious dissection of the nationalist myths that have long defined the historiography of the Qin and Han periods.
From there, we got a dinner, and not a fantastic one, near our hotel. Actually, most of the dishes were quite good: we had some terrific double cooked pork, mapo tofu and roast goose. But one dish was absolutely no good: a specialty, the "jade chicken", that looked like plain raw chicken to all of us. Thankfully, no one got sick...we think. After that, we headed out to the Guangzhou clubs. A bunch of us weren't particularly in the mood, and Guangzhou turned real weird at night. The streets suddenly swarmed with African and Turkish drug dealers, and cops who looked the other way. We went into just one club, a dead joint with the least interested bartenders I had ever seen that I was pretty sure was controlled by the Russian mob. We didn't stay long, and walked for a while among streets that were weirdly filled with Turkish people.
The next day was kind of a wash out, but we didn't mind. We had a late lunch/breakfast at a McDonalds that was inexplicably swarming with loud children, and then made a snap plan to go to the Guangzhou art museum. When we got there, we found out that the museum was shut down because it was International Children's Day. Really. So we were faced with a Guangzhou that was pretty much shut down and also filled with tons of running, screaming Chinese children. Luckily, the museum happened to be in a park, so we just walked around and relaxed for a while. Eventually, we came upon a lake, and in another snap judgment, we got into a paddleboat and chilled on the lake for a while. Best International Children's Day ever.
After killing time in another Starbucks (I know, shut up) in the lobby of a fancy Guangzhou hotel near our hotel, we schlepped like mad men to get to the airport. The hotel was real nice though, a reminder of how you can actually travel in China if you're not a poor student. Bathrooms with bathroom attendants! The Guangzhou airport bus weirdly enough had ads on the bus that advertised the bus, as if you weren't already on the bus. When we got there, thankfully, my baggage didn't cost me an arm and a leg, although it probably did end up costing about the same as the ticket. The women at the ticket counter provided some fun China racism times as well. She was trying to convince me to cut my luggage bill, and was asking me whether one of my bags had liquid in it. I had no damn idea how to say liquid in Mandarin, and so she gestured to Sarah and said, please help your friend. Sarah, of course, also had no idea how to say liquid in Mandarin. She finally got a translation from a co-worker at the desk. So there, it wasn't me being a stupid white guy. Or maybe it was, but Sarah was stupid too.
We had time for a quick, overpriced dinner of weird Chinese slop at the airport (including some brown fish that I did not know was fish when I ordered it that is now the chief culprit for my current diarrhea/GI pain thing), and we got into Nanjing late at night. We took another airport bus that seemed to drop us off in the middle of nowhere, where we were quickly, literally surrounded by cabs and touts. Hilariously, they seemed totally unaware that we might be able to understand Mandarin, and speculated openly on whether Sarah and Michelle were Korean ("Some Koreans look just like us, only prettier"). We desperately tried to find beds, and then finally agreed (sort of), to a rate quoted by a tout, at which point our bags disappeared into cabs at a terrifying speed, and we had to rush and insist on being on the same cars as our bags. We arrived at another fleabag sex hotel, but were then told that the only room that was available was a weird, spare set of dorm rooms on the first floor. Apparently, the whole city was short on rooms, since the head of the Guomindang (in Taiwan) had come to visit Sun Yat-Sen's Mausoleum the day before. This filthy hotel had also clearly never had American guests; they wanted to see an American dollar bill, and I obliged them, even though it was a weird request at about 1:30 in the morning. Best of all, the dorm room (which was probably just used by the staff most of the time) had no lock, so we were unceremoniously given a chair to wedge under the door knob. I instead barricaded the door with our gigantic luggage, and we all went to bed, safe(ish) in Nanjing.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
5/28 - 5/30 - Guilin, Yangshuo
After the program ending banquet on the night of the 27th, me, my friends Sara and Michelle (who also accompanied me on the trip to Zhongdian and Xi'an) and my friend Max caught a flight the next day for the beautiful karst geology of Guilin, in Guangxi province. It was kind of weird just up and leaving the hotel room I had lived in for four months, realizing that the staff would just clean it up as if I had never been there and put someone in there, maybe the next day. But I'm not big on goodbyes, I kind of just grabbed my stuff and hustled out of there.
A persistent feature of this trip was my stuff. I had calculated that it would be cheaper to pay airline excess baggage charges rather than to ship, but of course, the other side of that was that I had to lug my stuff on to airplanes, on to cabs, on to buses and trains. Not an easy task, and in fact, a persistent pain - a literal pain when my luggage began to leave bruises on my body. I had one giant American suitcase about the size of a medium refrigerator that ended up weighing an easy 30 kilograms. I also had to withstand every freakin' taxi driver in the country criticizing me for the size of my luggage as if it were a personal failing of mine. But I was right, it was cheaper. So there, I'm not an idiot. Yeah.
The two hour plane to Guilin was unbearably hot, or so I was told. I don't remember any of it, I knocked out as soon as I sat in my seat and barely woke up to get off the plane. Guilin's airport is very nice, evidently very new. From there, Michelle got us into a twenty rmb airport shuttle bus that would drop us off...somewhere. Near the train station, we assumed. We were uncomfortably wedged in with our luggage, the vast amount of which clearly irritated the driver and other passengers. The ride was so uncomfortable that Sarah declared on the bus that Guilin sucked. Once we got off the bus, we were immediately swarmed by a mob of desperate touts who wouldn't take no for an answer. We took our insanely heavy baggage, which probably shouldn't be moved by anyone on foot for any period of time, and walked in the vague direction of a hostel, until Sarah found a tout who got us a good deal on the "o'clock room" at a fairly anonymous hotel near the train station. That was only the first of the many "o' clock rooms" we stayed at during this trip. They usually have hourly rates, and it was clear from seeing couple who avoided eye contact with us in the hotel hallways what they're usually used for. Whatever, cheap and clean enough.
Touts in China are funny. Some of them are definitely trying to rip you off (especially the one in the big cities), but the other ones, the vast majority, are just trying to make a little money and often do actually have the best deals. It goes along with how most capitalist ventures in China are generally highly informal. We used touts twice on this trip, and did pretty well on both occasions. Our tout in Guilin was a woman who basically just looked like someone's grandma, and as suspicious as I was of her, we used her to find a hotel and to book a tour, and she helped us out and didn't screw us over. So bravo to you, grandma tout.
Once we got settled, we started walking in Guilin, and found a place that looked basically good enough and sat down for dinner. We ate like kings in Guilin. At this place (which had a woman dressed in traditional clothing playing the gucheng...fabulous!), we had probably one of the best meals I had in all of China. Delicious roast goose, perfect Japanese tofu, killer eggplant and a marvelous local specialty, Guilin rice noodles, that have this wonderful chewy consistency...really the kind of meal I'll miss here in the states. After that, we walked Guilin for a while.
Guilin is, as far as I'm concerned, one of the nicest cities in China, and definitely the most pedestrian friendly. Fairly laid back and not overwhelmingly huge, with lovely parks and European style cafes that line the rivers that run through Guilin, all surrounded by dreamlike limestone peaks shrouded in mist. I felt like I was in a European city, and for once in a Chinese city, I enjoyed just walking around, especially along the banks of the lovely Li river. We finished the night with a beer in a cafe on the banks of the river, and then called it a night and prepared to see the various sights of Guilin in the morning.
The next morning, under my bold leadership (I had the guide book), we took off for Seven Star Park on the other side of the Li. Guilin is just one of those amazing Chinese cities that seem to have been plopped down in the middle of unbelievable geography, so sheer limestone cliffs and peaks rise right out of city avenues and around apartment blocks. The Seven Star Park is especially lovely, seven peaks in a beautiful, obviously newly renovated park, with clear signs for once. As soon as we walked in, we saw, to our surprise, that there was a zoo with pandas in it, which was great because Michelle and I had yet to see a panda in China. We tromped through a typically depressing Chinese zoo (concrete enclosures with iron bars, filthy animals going crazy, people actually petting a bactrian camel...), and wandered around for a while before we finally found the pandas, in a fairly grim enclosure that could only be viewed in the panda gift shop. The panda didn't look too clean, or too healthy, and was asleep for the ten minutes we saw it. Pretty fantastic animal, if not the most exciting thing in the world. I liked watching the little Chinese kids brought by their parents to look at the panda. But overall, pretty depressing.
After that, we walked over to Seven Star Cave, a series of caverns under one of the big mountains. The entrance to the cave, typically, had giant graffiti from the Cultural Revolution: "The Chinese Communist Party is the guide and benefactor of the Chinese people"). Also, the cave had sets of cheesy colored lights that could only be activated by a tour guide, but were also the only way you could see a lot of the formations, so we had to stick with the Chinese tour. It's strange to me the way that the Chinese seem to need tour guides to explain everything to them. Even when they're looking at natural beauty, they seem to need somebody to say, this is something worth looking at, this is important because it looks like this, etc. But me personally, I had never really been in a cave, so it was still pretty impressive, beyond all the cheese. Seven Star cave is really big too, and has several fantastic formations. I was impressed, in any case.
From there, we visited one last peak, Solitary Beauty Peak, a sheer outcropping with an almost vertical cliff facing, and insanely steep steps that Sun Yatsen apparently climbed by night in 1923. After huffing and puffing on the way to the top, we took a breather and took in the fantastic views of Guilin, a modern looking city surrounded by these dreamlike, unearthly peaks. It is just so hard to believe that places like Guilin exist, but there are just so many of those places in China. After we came down from the mountain, we booked our tour of the Li river with Grandma Tout (actually, Michelle booked it. I'm glad I traveled with the girls, because although I can negotiate in Mandarin if I really have to, I usually can't be bothered). Then, we went to have another Guilin specialty: beer fish, fish marinated in beer and cooked in a skillet right on your table, good stuff.
We then went to a shady webbar and planned the rest of the trip. It was Sarah and Max's plan to just kind of go with the flow and plan things as we went along, which of course, unnerved me to bits, but I kept my mouth shut, and in any case, things more or less worked out. We quickly figured out that we wouldn't be able to visit Wudang Shan and get to Shanghai on time, and so we played a funny game of seeing if there was any point in between Guilin and Nanjing that would be of any interest at all to us. Finally, Sarah found a cheap air fare from Guangzhou to Nanjing (really cheap...around 35 dollars American), so we figured we'd take a night bus from Guilin to Guangzhou, hang in Guangzhou for a day or two, and then fly up to Nanjing. Which is what we did.
We ended the night with a trip to a club in Guilin. Chinese clubs are ridiculous. Part of it is because I never go to clubs in the States, and I tend to think clubs are inherently ridiculous to begin with. But there's something about Chinese clubs...just the way that they're all sort of the same and all over the top and nuts, loud as hell, filled with scantily clad dancers and singers, just the desperate aping of Western conventions. The nightclub in Guilin was notable because it had the worst DJs I have ever seen anywhere, two guys on CDJs who were so incapable of mixing that they just used the submerge effect between every single song, as if to trick us into thinking that they mixed the songs. Also, they played Aaron Carter, "The Time I Beat Shaq". Even the group of Chinese B-Boys, who were desperately trying to keep the party up, left in the end. Also, we saw a three year old running around the club for some reason, I guess the whole family decided to go to the club. It was really bad, but I had fun, anyway.
We got up early in the morning and rushed desperately to get our stuff behind the counter and catch the bus for our cruise down the Li river to Yangshuo. I still think I left my cell phone charger there. Chinese tours are a little nerveracking because you're never quite sure what the procedure is, and if you've explained yourself clearly to the touts and to the tour guides.We could only hope and pray that we'd get on a boat and somehow get back to Guilin in time for our night bus to Guangzhou. Somehow, somehow, we did get on a boat and spent four hours sailing down the Li river. I'm really glad we did that trip: the karst topography that lines the banks of the Li is simply unbelievable, just amazing, and not quite real. It's crazy to see people live in the shadows of giant, towering limestone peaks, as if that were a normal place to live. At one point, the boat seemed to head for a collision course with a small reed raft, but actually, it was a scheme by the guys on the raft to almost collide with the boat in order to pull along side the boat and sell us trinkets. Easier way to make a living, guys. Of course, the boat owners had to blare at us through a loudspeaker half the time, selling tourist photos and other trinkets and explaining just which rock looked like a donkey and why. Also, we fell asleep for the last hour since we were tired from the previous night, earning laughs from our neighbors. The boats were nice little tourist ferries (think nicer circle line boats) with a giant wok in the back, where they made us a half decent lunch. Very nice morning overall, recommended to anyone who visits.
Yangshuo the town was also nice. It's even more romantic and insanely placed then Guilin, an old town very literally built among a set of limestone peaks. Also, it had pizza. We walked along the river, and then shopped in the old town, and then I had a bad chocolate milkshake and a burger that had shao kao spices. Kinda weird but also kind of good. After we found out that our return bus was running late, we took the always fun Chinese option of jumping on a bus that was heading in our direction for fifteen kuai. We watched a great, strange movie on the bus about Jackie Chan landing in jail and then killing people for some reason.
Once we got back, Max and I traded in our tickets for the more comfortable sleeper bus, and quickly went and grabbed our luggage, which was more of an ordeal than you might imagine. They had given us the wrong check tag for our bags, and the fact that Max had his ID on him that matched the name on the bag and that we were the only damn white guests that hotel had probably ever had, it took way too long to convince them that those were in fact our bags. From there, I had to argue with the cab drivers to get them to agree to take our bags to the bus station (at one point, one driver actually started mocking me). Finally, one agreed, and we got to the station, where Sarah and Michelle came with ten minutes to spare to give us one last bowl of Guilin mifen. Then, with a panic and full hands, we rushed onto a bus.
The sleeper bus was mostly fun, and kind of nice. I sleep like a baby on buses, especially when I'm in a bed. Of course, the ride was not without problems. My iPod gave out, and for a few hours, there was a constant beeping from some mechanical alert that threatened to keep me up and drive me insane. A few times during the trip, the Cantonese men seated near me answered their cell phones and seemed only able to scream their reply to their friends and loved ones. When we arrived, our luggage was trapped for about a half an hour as the driver and a mechanic with a cigarette clenched between his teeth (even when working near the gas tank) worked to wedge open the door.
But it was worth it all to travel through the Guangxi karst at night. At night time, those giant limestone humps become even more surreal and dreamlike. It made me think that although we love to call landscapes like that unearthly, all the most unearthly places are really here, on earth. This is a hell of a planet, at the end of the day.
A persistent feature of this trip was my stuff. I had calculated that it would be cheaper to pay airline excess baggage charges rather than to ship, but of course, the other side of that was that I had to lug my stuff on to airplanes, on to cabs, on to buses and trains. Not an easy task, and in fact, a persistent pain - a literal pain when my luggage began to leave bruises on my body. I had one giant American suitcase about the size of a medium refrigerator that ended up weighing an easy 30 kilograms. I also had to withstand every freakin' taxi driver in the country criticizing me for the size of my luggage as if it were a personal failing of mine. But I was right, it was cheaper. So there, I'm not an idiot. Yeah.
The two hour plane to Guilin was unbearably hot, or so I was told. I don't remember any of it, I knocked out as soon as I sat in my seat and barely woke up to get off the plane. Guilin's airport is very nice, evidently very new. From there, Michelle got us into a twenty rmb airport shuttle bus that would drop us off...somewhere. Near the train station, we assumed. We were uncomfortably wedged in with our luggage, the vast amount of which clearly irritated the driver and other passengers. The ride was so uncomfortable that Sarah declared on the bus that Guilin sucked. Once we got off the bus, we were immediately swarmed by a mob of desperate touts who wouldn't take no for an answer. We took our insanely heavy baggage, which probably shouldn't be moved by anyone on foot for any period of time, and walked in the vague direction of a hostel, until Sarah found a tout who got us a good deal on the "o'clock room" at a fairly anonymous hotel near the train station. That was only the first of the many "o' clock rooms" we stayed at during this trip. They usually have hourly rates, and it was clear from seeing couple who avoided eye contact with us in the hotel hallways what they're usually used for. Whatever, cheap and clean enough.
Touts in China are funny. Some of them are definitely trying to rip you off (especially the one in the big cities), but the other ones, the vast majority, are just trying to make a little money and often do actually have the best deals. It goes along with how most capitalist ventures in China are generally highly informal. We used touts twice on this trip, and did pretty well on both occasions. Our tout in Guilin was a woman who basically just looked like someone's grandma, and as suspicious as I was of her, we used her to find a hotel and to book a tour, and she helped us out and didn't screw us over. So bravo to you, grandma tout.
Once we got settled, we started walking in Guilin, and found a place that looked basically good enough and sat down for dinner. We ate like kings in Guilin. At this place (which had a woman dressed in traditional clothing playing the gucheng...fabulous!), we had probably one of the best meals I had in all of China. Delicious roast goose, perfect Japanese tofu, killer eggplant and a marvelous local specialty, Guilin rice noodles, that have this wonderful chewy consistency...really the kind of meal I'll miss here in the states. After that, we walked Guilin for a while.
Guilin is, as far as I'm concerned, one of the nicest cities in China, and definitely the most pedestrian friendly. Fairly laid back and not overwhelmingly huge, with lovely parks and European style cafes that line the rivers that run through Guilin, all surrounded by dreamlike limestone peaks shrouded in mist. I felt like I was in a European city, and for once in a Chinese city, I enjoyed just walking around, especially along the banks of the lovely Li river. We finished the night with a beer in a cafe on the banks of the river, and then called it a night and prepared to see the various sights of Guilin in the morning.
The next morning, under my bold leadership (I had the guide book), we took off for Seven Star Park on the other side of the Li. Guilin is just one of those amazing Chinese cities that seem to have been plopped down in the middle of unbelievable geography, so sheer limestone cliffs and peaks rise right out of city avenues and around apartment blocks. The Seven Star Park is especially lovely, seven peaks in a beautiful, obviously newly renovated park, with clear signs for once. As soon as we walked in, we saw, to our surprise, that there was a zoo with pandas in it, which was great because Michelle and I had yet to see a panda in China. We tromped through a typically depressing Chinese zoo (concrete enclosures with iron bars, filthy animals going crazy, people actually petting a bactrian camel...), and wandered around for a while before we finally found the pandas, in a fairly grim enclosure that could only be viewed in the panda gift shop. The panda didn't look too clean, or too healthy, and was asleep for the ten minutes we saw it. Pretty fantastic animal, if not the most exciting thing in the world. I liked watching the little Chinese kids brought by their parents to look at the panda. But overall, pretty depressing.
After that, we walked over to Seven Star Cave, a series of caverns under one of the big mountains. The entrance to the cave, typically, had giant graffiti from the Cultural Revolution: "The Chinese Communist Party is the guide and benefactor of the Chinese people"). Also, the cave had sets of cheesy colored lights that could only be activated by a tour guide, but were also the only way you could see a lot of the formations, so we had to stick with the Chinese tour. It's strange to me the way that the Chinese seem to need tour guides to explain everything to them. Even when they're looking at natural beauty, they seem to need somebody to say, this is something worth looking at, this is important because it looks like this, etc. But me personally, I had never really been in a cave, so it was still pretty impressive, beyond all the cheese. Seven Star cave is really big too, and has several fantastic formations. I was impressed, in any case.
From there, we visited one last peak, Solitary Beauty Peak, a sheer outcropping with an almost vertical cliff facing, and insanely steep steps that Sun Yatsen apparently climbed by night in 1923. After huffing and puffing on the way to the top, we took a breather and took in the fantastic views of Guilin, a modern looking city surrounded by these dreamlike, unearthly peaks. It is just so hard to believe that places like Guilin exist, but there are just so many of those places in China. After we came down from the mountain, we booked our tour of the Li river with Grandma Tout (actually, Michelle booked it. I'm glad I traveled with the girls, because although I can negotiate in Mandarin if I really have to, I usually can't be bothered). Then, we went to have another Guilin specialty: beer fish, fish marinated in beer and cooked in a skillet right on your table, good stuff.
We then went to a shady webbar and planned the rest of the trip. It was Sarah and Max's plan to just kind of go with the flow and plan things as we went along, which of course, unnerved me to bits, but I kept my mouth shut, and in any case, things more or less worked out. We quickly figured out that we wouldn't be able to visit Wudang Shan and get to Shanghai on time, and so we played a funny game of seeing if there was any point in between Guilin and Nanjing that would be of any interest at all to us. Finally, Sarah found a cheap air fare from Guangzhou to Nanjing (really cheap...around 35 dollars American), so we figured we'd take a night bus from Guilin to Guangzhou, hang in Guangzhou for a day or two, and then fly up to Nanjing. Which is what we did.
We ended the night with a trip to a club in Guilin. Chinese clubs are ridiculous. Part of it is because I never go to clubs in the States, and I tend to think clubs are inherently ridiculous to begin with. But there's something about Chinese clubs...just the way that they're all sort of the same and all over the top and nuts, loud as hell, filled with scantily clad dancers and singers, just the desperate aping of Western conventions. The nightclub in Guilin was notable because it had the worst DJs I have ever seen anywhere, two guys on CDJs who were so incapable of mixing that they just used the submerge effect between every single song, as if to trick us into thinking that they mixed the songs. Also, they played Aaron Carter, "The Time I Beat Shaq". Even the group of Chinese B-Boys, who were desperately trying to keep the party up, left in the end. Also, we saw a three year old running around the club for some reason, I guess the whole family decided to go to the club. It was really bad, but I had fun, anyway.
We got up early in the morning and rushed desperately to get our stuff behind the counter and catch the bus for our cruise down the Li river to Yangshuo. I still think I left my cell phone charger there. Chinese tours are a little nerveracking because you're never quite sure what the procedure is, and if you've explained yourself clearly to the touts and to the tour guides.We could only hope and pray that we'd get on a boat and somehow get back to Guilin in time for our night bus to Guangzhou. Somehow, somehow, we did get on a boat and spent four hours sailing down the Li river. I'm really glad we did that trip: the karst topography that lines the banks of the Li is simply unbelievable, just amazing, and not quite real. It's crazy to see people live in the shadows of giant, towering limestone peaks, as if that were a normal place to live. At one point, the boat seemed to head for a collision course with a small reed raft, but actually, it was a scheme by the guys on the raft to almost collide with the boat in order to pull along side the boat and sell us trinkets. Easier way to make a living, guys. Of course, the boat owners had to blare at us through a loudspeaker half the time, selling tourist photos and other trinkets and explaining just which rock looked like a donkey and why. Also, we fell asleep for the last hour since we were tired from the previous night, earning laughs from our neighbors. The boats were nice little tourist ferries (think nicer circle line boats) with a giant wok in the back, where they made us a half decent lunch. Very nice morning overall, recommended to anyone who visits.
Yangshuo the town was also nice. It's even more romantic and insanely placed then Guilin, an old town very literally built among a set of limestone peaks. Also, it had pizza. We walked along the river, and then shopped in the old town, and then I had a bad chocolate milkshake and a burger that had shao kao spices. Kinda weird but also kind of good. After we found out that our return bus was running late, we took the always fun Chinese option of jumping on a bus that was heading in our direction for fifteen kuai. We watched a great, strange movie on the bus about Jackie Chan landing in jail and then killing people for some reason.
Once we got back, Max and I traded in our tickets for the more comfortable sleeper bus, and quickly went and grabbed our luggage, which was more of an ordeal than you might imagine. They had given us the wrong check tag for our bags, and the fact that Max had his ID on him that matched the name on the bag and that we were the only damn white guests that hotel had probably ever had, it took way too long to convince them that those were in fact our bags. From there, I had to argue with the cab drivers to get them to agree to take our bags to the bus station (at one point, one driver actually started mocking me). Finally, one agreed, and we got to the station, where Sarah and Michelle came with ten minutes to spare to give us one last bowl of Guilin mifen. Then, with a panic and full hands, we rushed onto a bus.
The sleeper bus was mostly fun, and kind of nice. I sleep like a baby on buses, especially when I'm in a bed. Of course, the ride was not without problems. My iPod gave out, and for a few hours, there was a constant beeping from some mechanical alert that threatened to keep me up and drive me insane. A few times during the trip, the Cantonese men seated near me answered their cell phones and seemed only able to scream their reply to their friends and loved ones. When we arrived, our luggage was trapped for about a half an hour as the driver and a mechanic with a cigarette clenched between his teeth (even when working near the gas tank) worked to wedge open the door.
But it was worth it all to travel through the Guangxi karst at night. At night time, those giant limestone humps become even more surreal and dreamlike. It made me think that although we love to call landscapes like that unearthly, all the most unearthly places are really here, on earth. This is a hell of a planet, at the end of the day.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Last Weeks in Kunming
Hey folks,
Sorry for the long absence, but for a couple of reasons, I haven't been able to blog. First of all, Blogger was blocked by the CCP in the last few weeks I was in China, mostly to avoid trouble on the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen, so I wouldn't have been able to post anyhow. But honestly, I haven't been writing anyways. I was just busy doing work and then, since I was traveling with friends, it was hard to get away to the computer for an hour to jot stuff down, especially without a working laptop (GRR). I'm back in NYC now, safe and sound and since I'm unemployed for the summer, without much to do at the moment. I'll try and take a few hours to write about the last few weeks in China, and I'll break it up into two or three posts to make it more manageable. It's obviously not as good as recording stuff as it happens, but oh well, what can you do.
Like I said, most of my last two weeks in Kunming were spent writing and finishing up the two required papers for my class, one based on the field research I did at the mosque, and one that was a literary analysis of Lu Xun's "The True Story of Ah Q". Writing those papers was rather daunting. First of all, I just had limited time, since Chinese class and homework reliably took up most of the day, and pretty much the whole rest of the time after spring break, I was burnt out beyond belief. I really, really do not like language classes. I never have. I see them as a means to an end, and while I love communicating in a foreign language, I just loathe the process, and can never focus in class. That fact really hit me the last couple of weeks, where I just ran out of gas. Also, it's really hard to do good research in China. We had a very, very small English library (and at least I was doing a project focused on a primary text) and our internet resources were limited both by connection speeds and the Great Firewall. Finally, I didn't have a damn computer, which meant sitting in sweaty web bars for hours writing a paper next to a guy playing DotA. Lots of fun. But actually, in the final analysis, I was kind of happy to write my papers. It was the first real culture learning I did there, and it really improves the study abroad experience to have some idea about what has shaped the place you are culturally. Plus, I was reading a lot about the Late Qing/Early Republican period, which I find fascinating and will probably do some work on at some point. They're not the best papers I've ever written by far, but they're far better then they could have been, considering the limited effort and energy I put into them, and the limited resources I had access to.
I actually saw two movies in theaters in my last two weeks in Kunming. The Chinese movie theater experience is interesting and kind of funny. Since most movies come out immediately on cheaper DVDs, almost nobody goes to movie theaters in China. Also, the seats are assigned: you buy a ticket for a very specific seat. It's kinda creepy to see the state film bureau approval screen show, one of the reminders you get now and then that despite your relative freedom as a foreigner, you are in an authoritarian state. And, as always, the Chinese pretty much seem to have no regard for any sort of cinema etiquette. In Nanjing, Nanjing, a film concerning the RAPE OF NANJING, for chrissakes, we heard no fewer than seven or eight cell phones go off, and sometimes, not only would they answer, but enter into prolonged conversations (In Mandarin: "Yeah, I'm watching a movie right now...Nanjing, Nanjing...it's pretty good"). And best of all, at a climactic scene of Nanjing, Nanjing, we heard the predictable hock...and lord knows where that went. I'm just glad I didn't have to clean it up.
So, my first movie experience was probably the most interesting: the Rape of Nanjing movie Nanjing, Nanjing by director Lu Chuan. For the last month or so I was in China, I kept seeing ads for this movie everywhere, and heard about it from pretty much every Chinese person I talked to, including my language partner. It became very clear to me that someone in the government was pushing this movie hard. So I wanted to see it in Chinese theaters to gauge the Chinese reaction and see exactly what messages were being conveyed. I was expecting a total propaganda flick, but actually, Nanjing Nanjing is really quite fine for the most part, with good performances and stunning cinematography, done in a verite style that, it should be said, borrowed heavily from Saving Private Ryan. I thought that the director did a good job portraying the Japanese humanly (an accomplishment that earned him death threats from Chinese nationalists). Almost all the soldiers in this movie on both sides seem like adolescents, scared and confused, trapped in an awful game that they simply cannot fathom. However, even though the film was well made, with a topic this likely to inflame the public, you ask the always tricky question of whether there are some films that shouldn't be made. Also, the film contained more graphic rape scenes than I have ever seen. After a while you wonder if it is appropriate to depict so many of these terrible scenes or if it crosses the line into exploitative or worse, incendiary. Finally, the position of women in this film is particularly interesting. At one point, a woman is viciously criticized for refusing to cut her hair and disguise herself as a boy to prevent rape by the Japanese, and is later thematically punished by getting raped. As is too often the case in Chinese art, the woman must sacrifice her feminine identity for the good of the nation.
In general, I am downright terrified by the Chinese attitude towards the Japanese. The intensity and the blindness of the hatred, and the fact that it is being actively encouraged by the government as cover for the government's own failings (it's no surprise that Nanjing, Nanjing and the government support it received came mere months before the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen). It should also be noted however that it's not fair just to ask the Chinese to forgive and forget, either. I think Americans have little concept of the extent and brutality of the Sino-Japanese war, and also, the bottom line is that the Japanese, unlike the Germans have never apologized or even acknowledged the atrocities (in a disturbing conversation with my Japanese roommate, he denied that the Rape of Nanking ever occurred). But after seeing so many Sino-Japanese war serials, and hearing so many Chinese speak openly of their hatred for the Japanese, you hear the peculiar and terrifying drum beat of a nation that, rather than examine the failings of their own nation, creates a racial scapegoat. It's something we've seen before. And it disturbs me to the extent where I predict that if the CCP were to fall in the near-distant future (which I doubt), it would be replaced not with a democratic government, but with a nationalist/fascist government that would go to war with Japan. And I am quite serious about that.
Also, I saw Star Trek, which was pretty cool. This time, we were the only people in the theater, so there wasn't much of a China experience, although the Chinese subtitles were often very funny (it's amazing the wide variety of English expressions which were translated simply as "haode", which means "alright"). What did I think of the movie? Eh, I didn't think it had much of a brain, it was just action, none of the philosophy or political stuff that draws me to the Star Trek franchise. The plot was pretty simplistic, and I HATE time travel plots. It also might have been that as a Trekkie, I just didn't like to see certain things happen, and couldn't enjoy the movie as a result. Plus, I felt weirdly exposed seeing it with a bunch of non-Trekkies (who didn't even know what the Kobeyashi Maru test was...fuh). Simon Pegg as Scotty and Zachary Quinto as Spock were great casting choices. But in any case, I left with mixed feelings.
Sad saying goodbye to my language partner. I really felt that by the end of the semester we had become pretty good friends, and I hope she feels the same way. It'd be great if she could manage to come out to NYC after she finishes her semester in Canada in the fall, although she might decide that it's too expensive. It really saddens me that it's simply out of the question, even for those who can manage to get a study abroad in the states, to travel to the extent that we did in China. I had one last good moment with her, discussing Chinese history. I mentioned that it was awfully bloody, with a lot of people boiling other people alive (actually, not knowing how to say boiled alive, I said "hot potted alive"). Western media lies, she said. Actually, I countered, I read that in Sima Qian's History Classic. Oh, she said, well, it's not all like that. That's only some of it.
My last weekend in Kunming, I made sure that I got my papers done early so that I could visit my favorite places in Kunming. I made sure to make some time to sit in Cuihu Park for a while and read. Sitting in the peaceful park, watching the Chinese sing folk songs and dance in unison and be their social, quirky selves, I saw how I would very easily miss more than a few things about China. You know, when you're studying and just living day by day all alone, you focus on what's difficult about China, and there's a lot that is. But China is also a lovely country, with some very nice places, and from time to time, it's a great place to be and to live. I also thought about how I could have lived differently in China. I never really got settled in China, and I spent most of my free time hanging out with my classmates, never really reaching out to the Chinese or other expats. That's my fault and it's a sad thing. But then, it's also hard to do that in only four months. Most of the expats said you really have to be in China for a year before you start to love and understand it. It was funny also going to Kunming bars and clubs on my last weekends and seeing familiar expat faces, realizing that even someone as marginally part of the community as me could recognize the expat stars of Kunming. It's an interesting life, I think, and it attracts interesting people, but I could never imagine living so far away from America from so long. But who knows? Every time I told an expat I was leaving, they asked me when I would be back, which always made me kind of laugh, since I was so eager to return home at that point, I couldn't imagine ever coming back. But now I'm back, who knows, maybe I'll come back to China one day. I wouldn't rule it out.
My last week and a half, I traveled from Kunming to Guilin, then from Guilin to Guangzhou (Canton), from Guangzhou to Nanjing, and then finally, from Nanjing to Shanghai. If I can shake off the lethargy inspired by jet lag/American comfort, I'll post about it. Stay tuned.
Sorry for the long absence, but for a couple of reasons, I haven't been able to blog. First of all, Blogger was blocked by the CCP in the last few weeks I was in China, mostly to avoid trouble on the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen, so I wouldn't have been able to post anyhow. But honestly, I haven't been writing anyways. I was just busy doing work and then, since I was traveling with friends, it was hard to get away to the computer for an hour to jot stuff down, especially without a working laptop (GRR). I'm back in NYC now, safe and sound and since I'm unemployed for the summer, without much to do at the moment. I'll try and take a few hours to write about the last few weeks in China, and I'll break it up into two or three posts to make it more manageable. It's obviously not as good as recording stuff as it happens, but oh well, what can you do.
Like I said, most of my last two weeks in Kunming were spent writing and finishing up the two required papers for my class, one based on the field research I did at the mosque, and one that was a literary analysis of Lu Xun's "The True Story of Ah Q". Writing those papers was rather daunting. First of all, I just had limited time, since Chinese class and homework reliably took up most of the day, and pretty much the whole rest of the time after spring break, I was burnt out beyond belief. I really, really do not like language classes. I never have. I see them as a means to an end, and while I love communicating in a foreign language, I just loathe the process, and can never focus in class. That fact really hit me the last couple of weeks, where I just ran out of gas. Also, it's really hard to do good research in China. We had a very, very small English library (and at least I was doing a project focused on a primary text) and our internet resources were limited both by connection speeds and the Great Firewall. Finally, I didn't have a damn computer, which meant sitting in sweaty web bars for hours writing a paper next to a guy playing DotA. Lots of fun. But actually, in the final analysis, I was kind of happy to write my papers. It was the first real culture learning I did there, and it really improves the study abroad experience to have some idea about what has shaped the place you are culturally. Plus, I was reading a lot about the Late Qing/Early Republican period, which I find fascinating and will probably do some work on at some point. They're not the best papers I've ever written by far, but they're far better then they could have been, considering the limited effort and energy I put into them, and the limited resources I had access to.
I actually saw two movies in theaters in my last two weeks in Kunming. The Chinese movie theater experience is interesting and kind of funny. Since most movies come out immediately on cheaper DVDs, almost nobody goes to movie theaters in China. Also, the seats are assigned: you buy a ticket for a very specific seat. It's kinda creepy to see the state film bureau approval screen show, one of the reminders you get now and then that despite your relative freedom as a foreigner, you are in an authoritarian state. And, as always, the Chinese pretty much seem to have no regard for any sort of cinema etiquette. In Nanjing, Nanjing, a film concerning the RAPE OF NANJING, for chrissakes, we heard no fewer than seven or eight cell phones go off, and sometimes, not only would they answer, but enter into prolonged conversations (In Mandarin: "Yeah, I'm watching a movie right now...Nanjing, Nanjing...it's pretty good"). And best of all, at a climactic scene of Nanjing, Nanjing, we heard the predictable hock...and lord knows where that went. I'm just glad I didn't have to clean it up.
So, my first movie experience was probably the most interesting: the Rape of Nanjing movie Nanjing, Nanjing by director Lu Chuan. For the last month or so I was in China, I kept seeing ads for this movie everywhere, and heard about it from pretty much every Chinese person I talked to, including my language partner. It became very clear to me that someone in the government was pushing this movie hard. So I wanted to see it in Chinese theaters to gauge the Chinese reaction and see exactly what messages were being conveyed. I was expecting a total propaganda flick, but actually, Nanjing Nanjing is really quite fine for the most part, with good performances and stunning cinematography, done in a verite style that, it should be said, borrowed heavily from Saving Private Ryan. I thought that the director did a good job portraying the Japanese humanly (an accomplishment that earned him death threats from Chinese nationalists). Almost all the soldiers in this movie on both sides seem like adolescents, scared and confused, trapped in an awful game that they simply cannot fathom. However, even though the film was well made, with a topic this likely to inflame the public, you ask the always tricky question of whether there are some films that shouldn't be made. Also, the film contained more graphic rape scenes than I have ever seen. After a while you wonder if it is appropriate to depict so many of these terrible scenes or if it crosses the line into exploitative or worse, incendiary. Finally, the position of women in this film is particularly interesting. At one point, a woman is viciously criticized for refusing to cut her hair and disguise herself as a boy to prevent rape by the Japanese, and is later thematically punished by getting raped. As is too often the case in Chinese art, the woman must sacrifice her feminine identity for the good of the nation.
In general, I am downright terrified by the Chinese attitude towards the Japanese. The intensity and the blindness of the hatred, and the fact that it is being actively encouraged by the government as cover for the government's own failings (it's no surprise that Nanjing, Nanjing and the government support it received came mere months before the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen). It should also be noted however that it's not fair just to ask the Chinese to forgive and forget, either. I think Americans have little concept of the extent and brutality of the Sino-Japanese war, and also, the bottom line is that the Japanese, unlike the Germans have never apologized or even acknowledged the atrocities (in a disturbing conversation with my Japanese roommate, he denied that the Rape of Nanking ever occurred). But after seeing so many Sino-Japanese war serials, and hearing so many Chinese speak openly of their hatred for the Japanese, you hear the peculiar and terrifying drum beat of a nation that, rather than examine the failings of their own nation, creates a racial scapegoat. It's something we've seen before. And it disturbs me to the extent where I predict that if the CCP were to fall in the near-distant future (which I doubt), it would be replaced not with a democratic government, but with a nationalist/fascist government that would go to war with Japan. And I am quite serious about that.
Also, I saw Star Trek, which was pretty cool. This time, we were the only people in the theater, so there wasn't much of a China experience, although the Chinese subtitles were often very funny (it's amazing the wide variety of English expressions which were translated simply as "haode", which means "alright"). What did I think of the movie? Eh, I didn't think it had much of a brain, it was just action, none of the philosophy or political stuff that draws me to the Star Trek franchise. The plot was pretty simplistic, and I HATE time travel plots. It also might have been that as a Trekkie, I just didn't like to see certain things happen, and couldn't enjoy the movie as a result. Plus, I felt weirdly exposed seeing it with a bunch of non-Trekkies (who didn't even know what the Kobeyashi Maru test was...fuh). Simon Pegg as Scotty and Zachary Quinto as Spock were great casting choices. But in any case, I left with mixed feelings.
Sad saying goodbye to my language partner. I really felt that by the end of the semester we had become pretty good friends, and I hope she feels the same way. It'd be great if she could manage to come out to NYC after she finishes her semester in Canada in the fall, although she might decide that it's too expensive. It really saddens me that it's simply out of the question, even for those who can manage to get a study abroad in the states, to travel to the extent that we did in China. I had one last good moment with her, discussing Chinese history. I mentioned that it was awfully bloody, with a lot of people boiling other people alive (actually, not knowing how to say boiled alive, I said "hot potted alive"). Western media lies, she said. Actually, I countered, I read that in Sima Qian's History Classic. Oh, she said, well, it's not all like that. That's only some of it.
My last weekend in Kunming, I made sure that I got my papers done early so that I could visit my favorite places in Kunming. I made sure to make some time to sit in Cuihu Park for a while and read. Sitting in the peaceful park, watching the Chinese sing folk songs and dance in unison and be their social, quirky selves, I saw how I would very easily miss more than a few things about China. You know, when you're studying and just living day by day all alone, you focus on what's difficult about China, and there's a lot that is. But China is also a lovely country, with some very nice places, and from time to time, it's a great place to be and to live. I also thought about how I could have lived differently in China. I never really got settled in China, and I spent most of my free time hanging out with my classmates, never really reaching out to the Chinese or other expats. That's my fault and it's a sad thing. But then, it's also hard to do that in only four months. Most of the expats said you really have to be in China for a year before you start to love and understand it. It was funny also going to Kunming bars and clubs on my last weekends and seeing familiar expat faces, realizing that even someone as marginally part of the community as me could recognize the expat stars of Kunming. It's an interesting life, I think, and it attracts interesting people, but I could never imagine living so far away from America from so long. But who knows? Every time I told an expat I was leaving, they asked me when I would be back, which always made me kind of laugh, since I was so eager to return home at that point, I couldn't imagine ever coming back. But now I'm back, who knows, maybe I'll come back to China one day. I wouldn't rule it out.
My last week and a half, I traveled from Kunming to Guilin, then from Guilin to Guangzhou (Canton), from Guangzhou to Nanjing, and then finally, from Nanjing to Shanghai. If I can shake off the lethargy inspired by jet lag/American comfort, I'll post about it. Stay tuned.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Week 11: Kunming
Lord, I really don't have much to report this week, and I'm just checking in to check in. Back to Kunming means back to the grindstone, and with final papers on the horizon, that goes double. I'm near the end of my rope now. The many difficult elements of living in China and being in this program are starting to add up and make life just suck. First and foremost, a busted computer that almost certainly won't be fixed until I return to the states means that I spent Saturday and Sunday in a smoky, hot webbar writing a paper next to a guy playing Starcraft, a paper which, although I haven't looked at the draft since I quit working on Sunday, is probably no good. I'm getting really tired of not having my own space. My roommate is nice (honestly, nicer and more considerate to me than I am to him), but I just hate having to negotiate space: for chrissakes, I'm not a freshman, I should get to have my own damn bedroom. Also, it seems that every day something new in the dorms breaks: the shower, the key, the outlet, the toilet. I'm pretty much completely out of gas when it comes to Chinese class. I've never really enjoyed Chinese class; I see it as a necessary evil. I'm damn sick of spending hours a day just on language, it's like a complete brain death. And the novelty of China has pretty much worn off. I don't really have time to travel, so it's the same old greasy food, same old KTV (this weekend included several Michael Jackson songs, Twist and Shout, and If You've Got The Money, Honey), same old hot pot. Bleh. And to top things off, this weekend, I somehow contracted a cold. So, great.
It was at least nice to see my language partner again. We chatted about my travels, and she gave me a whole bag of coffee candy, which is essentially what's keeping me alive at this point. She's also going to Canada as an exchange student, and she's going to try and get a tourist visa to the States, which means she might swing by NYC during Christmas time, which would be pretty sweet. This week, we discussed the Taiwan situation, which was less juicy than you might think. To my surprise, she readily conceded that Taiwan had not historically been a part of China and was functionally independent. Discussing the Taiwan situation with the Chinese is kind of funny, because it means tapping into the stock phrases of propoganda. Every Chinese person knows by heart the party line on Taiwan, that it is "an inseperable part of China", in those same exact words, no matter who you ask, every time. But then she made me explain, in a very convoluted way, that yes, America probably had no right to intervene to protect the Guomindang in Taiwan, and yes, they probably shouldn't have, but now that Taiwan is a democracy and they already intervened, they should probably still protect Taiwan. We also had a funny discussion of democracy where she said that China's congress was elected democratically too, and anyone can run, except that, of course, nobody knows anything about the people who run, and the party more or less selects them. But don't the American parties select their presidential candidates, she asked me. No, I said, and explained the primary system, to which she replied, oh, I guess that is more democratic. To soften the blow, I pointed out that America also has problems with democracy, like the fact that you need money to run for anything here. She's fascinated by the idea that American mayors don't get paid that much, and yet aren't that corrupt, which led us to a discussion of corruption, which led me to tell her about how William Jefferson had ten thousand dollars in his freezer. Good times.
I really don't have much to report, nothing that happened to me this week was new or particularly exciting. Maybe next week I'll have more to report. Hopefully, I'll be in a better mood. Check in later.
It was at least nice to see my language partner again. We chatted about my travels, and she gave me a whole bag of coffee candy, which is essentially what's keeping me alive at this point. She's also going to Canada as an exchange student, and she's going to try and get a tourist visa to the States, which means she might swing by NYC during Christmas time, which would be pretty sweet. This week, we discussed the Taiwan situation, which was less juicy than you might think. To my surprise, she readily conceded that Taiwan had not historically been a part of China and was functionally independent. Discussing the Taiwan situation with the Chinese is kind of funny, because it means tapping into the stock phrases of propoganda. Every Chinese person knows by heart the party line on Taiwan, that it is "an inseperable part of China", in those same exact words, no matter who you ask, every time. But then she made me explain, in a very convoluted way, that yes, America probably had no right to intervene to protect the Guomindang in Taiwan, and yes, they probably shouldn't have, but now that Taiwan is a democracy and they already intervened, they should probably still protect Taiwan. We also had a funny discussion of democracy where she said that China's congress was elected democratically too, and anyone can run, except that, of course, nobody knows anything about the people who run, and the party more or less selects them. But don't the American parties select their presidential candidates, she asked me. No, I said, and explained the primary system, to which she replied, oh, I guess that is more democratic. To soften the blow, I pointed out that America also has problems with democracy, like the fact that you need money to run for anything here. She's fascinated by the idea that American mayors don't get paid that much, and yet aren't that corrupt, which led us to a discussion of corruption, which led me to tell her about how William Jefferson had ten thousand dollars in his freezer. Good times.
I really don't have much to report, nothing that happened to me this week was new or particularly exciting. Maybe next week I'll have more to report. Hopefully, I'll be in a better mood. Check in later.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
5/2/09: Luoyang, Xi'an, Kunming
Hey folks, I'm back safe in Kunming, although my computer still doesn't work :-(. I had a long, sort of interesting day of travelling yesterday, so I'll just write briefly about that.
Luckily, my train back to Xi'an wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, or it very well could have been, thanks to the help of a friendly Chinese woman and her ten year old kid. Indeed, my ticket on the train was a standing ticket, and I still had no idea what to do, but this woman, whose son wanted to play cards with me, ushered me over to sit with them. We played Chinese poker (yes, it actually is in China, although the rules are slightly different) and another game, where certain cards were highs, but I couldn't remember which ones, and they had to keep repeating which ones were trumps to me. The woman was basically playing for me at points (it's been a long time since I've played Chinese poker), which was kind of annoying, since sometimes I was trying to strategize, rather than not knowing what to do. I slept for a good three hours, to their great amusement, and then woke up and taught them Rummy 500, and immediately remembered how tedious that game can be at times. As the mother said when she was adding up her cards, "This is exercise!" They were really nice, exceptionally warm people, and I thank them for making that train ride pleasant.
I had a really terrible lunch of bland noodles in soup with grey beef and bread (a Xi'an specialty, believe it or not), and caught a cab to the airport. I got to the airport ok, and had a fun conversation with the cab driver, where he talked for a while about the different forms of martial arts in China ( I did not know that Taoism and Buddhism had different forms of martial arts). He also had a great line. "You're from where?", he asked me. "America", I said. Then he started making a machine gun notion and jovially announced, "Americans are always fighting wars everywhere!" I couldn't help but laugh and offer a meek "sometimes..." Since you can't check in to the gate until two hours before your flight, I finished Sister Carrie while drinking a seven dollar (that's American dollars...ecch) cappuchino in an airport cafe. Sister Carrie is a very strange book. It strikes me that the socialist-moralizing populist voice is a very American voice thatused to be very common in American literature and has now almost completely disappeared. The book is filled with very irritating moralizing and judgment from the author, and yet it seems to succeed in spite of itself; the fact that the author's moral judgments seem to have no bearing or no actual relation to the events of the novel kind of makes the novel better in a way.
The plane flight was also very painless. I sat next to a girl who had obviously never been in an airplane before. It was funny, because she kept reminding me to put on my safety belt and keep my tray table in an upright position, as if she had been studying up on flying. When I landed, I had another interesting cab ride with a cab driver who loved America, and had very strong negative opinions on Chinese culture and society that I had never heard openly spoken by a Chinese person. Interestingly, as a way of expressing his dissatisfaction with the current state of Chinese society, he said that today's society was not influenced by socialist ideologies, but rather, by Japanese ideologies (his shorthand for capitalism). It was also kind of funny because he insisted on displaying his knowledge of American history, and recited American history from the revolution to the Civil War, as if I had no idea.
So now I'm here, safe and sound. I've got another four weeks of the program left, and accordingly, I'm going back to once a week dispatches. Hopefully, I can figure out my computer, and go back to posting photos. Now I'm here, with the exception of Luoyang and my computer, I feel like I had a pretty good time with it. I can't decide whether I want to travel another week after the program, or fly back home ASAP. I think I might travel another week if Sarah and Michelle are doing something interesting; it's when I'm alone that I get nervous and anxious and homesick. I don't know, I'll see how I feel. Touch base with y'all later.
Luckily, my train back to Xi'an wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, or it very well could have been, thanks to the help of a friendly Chinese woman and her ten year old kid. Indeed, my ticket on the train was a standing ticket, and I still had no idea what to do, but this woman, whose son wanted to play cards with me, ushered me over to sit with them. We played Chinese poker (yes, it actually is in China, although the rules are slightly different) and another game, where certain cards were highs, but I couldn't remember which ones, and they had to keep repeating which ones were trumps to me. The woman was basically playing for me at points (it's been a long time since I've played Chinese poker), which was kind of annoying, since sometimes I was trying to strategize, rather than not knowing what to do. I slept for a good three hours, to their great amusement, and then woke up and taught them Rummy 500, and immediately remembered how tedious that game can be at times. As the mother said when she was adding up her cards, "This is exercise!" They were really nice, exceptionally warm people, and I thank them for making that train ride pleasant.
I had a really terrible lunch of bland noodles in soup with grey beef and bread (a Xi'an specialty, believe it or not), and caught a cab to the airport. I got to the airport ok, and had a fun conversation with the cab driver, where he talked for a while about the different forms of martial arts in China ( I did not know that Taoism and Buddhism had different forms of martial arts). He also had a great line. "You're from where?", he asked me. "America", I said. Then he started making a machine gun notion and jovially announced, "Americans are always fighting wars everywhere!" I couldn't help but laugh and offer a meek "sometimes..." Since you can't check in to the gate until two hours before your flight, I finished Sister Carrie while drinking a seven dollar (that's American dollars...ecch) cappuchino in an airport cafe. Sister Carrie is a very strange book. It strikes me that the socialist-moralizing populist voice is a very American voice thatused to be very common in American literature and has now almost completely disappeared. The book is filled with very irritating moralizing and judgment from the author, and yet it seems to succeed in spite of itself; the fact that the author's moral judgments seem to have no bearing or no actual relation to the events of the novel kind of makes the novel better in a way.
The plane flight was also very painless. I sat next to a girl who had obviously never been in an airplane before. It was funny, because she kept reminding me to put on my safety belt and keep my tray table in an upright position, as if she had been studying up on flying. When I landed, I had another interesting cab ride with a cab driver who loved America, and had very strong negative opinions on Chinese culture and society that I had never heard openly spoken by a Chinese person. Interestingly, as a way of expressing his dissatisfaction with the current state of Chinese society, he said that today's society was not influenced by socialist ideologies, but rather, by Japanese ideologies (his shorthand for capitalism). It was also kind of funny because he insisted on displaying his knowledge of American history, and recited American history from the revolution to the Civil War, as if I had no idea.
So now I'm here, safe and sound. I've got another four weeks of the program left, and accordingly, I'm going back to once a week dispatches. Hopefully, I can figure out my computer, and go back to posting photos. Now I'm here, with the exception of Luoyang and my computer, I feel like I had a pretty good time with it. I can't decide whether I want to travel another week after the program, or fly back home ASAP. I think I might travel another week if Sarah and Michelle are doing something interesting; it's when I'm alone that I get nervous and anxious and homesick. I don't know, I'll see how I feel. Touch base with y'all later.
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