Guangzhou continued...
In a very different part of town street vendors offer all manner of skewered morsals. At a restaurant down the road you can eat anything from snakes to won tons. Elsewhere a market contains every obscure part of every rare, endangered and/or auspicious animal known to man. Near the Vietnamese Embassey is a large park which after dark is full of groping lovers, but if you sit or lay on the grass the park police come and shoo you off. The river breeds a thousand mosquitoes as it lazily sweeps dead fish out to sea. There is a brillaint neon manhattan across the river, but there is nothing to speak of beyond it. Every time we leave the island we have to cross over a small bridge and then play frogger over several busy roads under immense underpasses. There are lots of trees, lots of cars and lots of people.
This is pretty much what my time in Guangzhou amounts to; scattered fragments of a complicated mosaic, hard to make sense of like a puzzle missing many pieces. And I never did find the elusive Classic Cantonese Cuisine.
It's 12:05am and everyone is sleeping. The dorm is a sauna and we only just ate dinner so I'm not sleeping; I'm out in the courtyard, such as it is, writing instead.
Guangzhou is a mystery to me. Ossie is the Map-Bearer and I have little concept of layout and only the tiniest shred off an idea how the places we haunt are connected. What I know is that vast amounts remain unvisited, mainly because the area we are in is on a river and we only ever wander on one direction.
The motel Ossie chose is deep in the heart of pleasantville. Shamian is an island, more correctly a reclaimed sandbank, with splendid foreign architecture born of the concessions and a collection of fascinating yet (or perhaps because?) totally contrived bronze statues invoking/inventing modern China. Three children on hands and knees in a circle peer at something indefinite on the pavement whilst elsewhere an Abe Lincoln lookalike nurses a cup of tea and watches on as a very traditional Chinese man plays mahjong. Three women in staggered formation look steadfastly forward, the furthest standing quietly in a peasant pajamas dress, the second shuffling softly in Cheongsam (aka SHanghai madam dress) and the forward-most walking confidently in hotpants and a singlet, cell phone to ear. Massive (camphor?) trees with great twisted roots and indistinguishable parasitic vines line the concrete slab roads. With paved footpaths, empty roads and endless stretched of park Shamian is a lovely place to walk children, which dozens of aging American couples do as they wait out the compulsory one month stay required following the adoption of a Chinese baby. The White Swan--China's first five star hotel, conveniently located right next to the US consulate--houses most of them and is served by its very own overpass which bypasses the island streets to join the hotel directly to the motorway and in doing so spoils the view for everone else. Countless stores and stalls have sprung up to meet their needs--traditional Chinese costumes in pint sizes, toys, jewelry and laundrettes specialising in the delicate duds of the very young. They eat Australian Beef and New Zealand Lamb at expensive garden bar restaurants, exchange USD for RMB in packs at the local Bank of China and loiter in the streets discussing the price of babies. It's a very strange part of town to be in.
It was nice to start the train journey during daylight hours. One thing I have missed is the sense of moving through the country that comes from looking out the window. So much can be seen out windows, when the view is framed but not directed. Tourist spaces are designed to draw your attention to some things and away from others, but looking out the window of a moving vehicle on a long journey there is so much to notice that is not in the guide book. The recent bus trips reminded me of this and made me realise how much like aeroplanes overnight trains really are. Get on in one destination and off in another, often without seeing anything of the distance between them. Such a pity, however trains are far more practicle for the distances we're covering and the conditions we're dealing with.
While in Quanzhou we got word from Ossie giving us his present location in Guanzhou and advising us that there is, in fact, a train from Xiamen to Guangzhou despite all reports to the contrary. So here we are, on that very train, for an unkown amount of time until Guangzhou. Hurrah!
Quanzhou turned out to be a fairly decent place, although we were really only just discovering how decent when we left. Wandering around the place we finally did find the mosque, and a couple of interesting temples, lots of really interesting residential architecture as well as dozens of interesting looking restaurants and several more conveniently located internet cafes. As we queued for the bus tickets out yesterday we finally discovered the location of the elusive Sacred Tombs of the third and fourth Muslim disciples to China and later on back in Gulang Yu we found a tourist map of Quanzhou which showed an enormous statue of some old geizer, some intersting looking rock carvings and much more besides. Lucky we've given up sight-seeing or else we would have had to go back immediately!
Despite being one of the top ten culturally valuable buildings in Fujian Province the mosque was not particularly well funded and restoration appears to be a slow process. There is a grand model of the projected finished product but it seems a long way away yet. One part of the temple is functional (the wooden section) and clearly in current use for prayer and services, but most of it is still just a stone skeleton with grass growing between its bones. It's quite nice actually, but perhaps for all the wrong reasons. As a ruin it becomes available to and the property of everyone, whereas once fully functional it feels much less appropriate wandering around such things. With government funding though it will almost certainly be rebuilt as yet another Cultural Asset for tourism. It's ironic really because I am one of those tourists foaming at the mouth to see such cultural assets and creating as a by-product an industry fairly accessible and lucrative to a large number of locals; but on the other hand there is a sense in which many of these places are just getting plundered by the government for their tourism-value and themselves becoming less accessible to the people for whom they are not assets but storehouses of religious and/or cultural meaning.
Kaiyuan Temple costs just ten kwai to get into and has the oldest mulberry bush in the world. I'd never seen a mulberry bush before so I don't know what they usually look like but it seemed more like a tree to me. It was incredidibly verdant, vibrant and vital for it's age (~1500 years) and was very obviously cherished by the monks at the temple. Also at the temple were two enormous stone pagodas, so big they had four sets of double gates at equidistant points around the base keeping folks out. They had relief carvings and little alcoves with missing statues and old incense sticks and fresh flowers at the gates. There were lots of big old trees and quite a few of the other visitors were not so much tourists as pilgrims. Unexpededly some random tried to sell us counterfeit money outside one of the halls. At least at a rate of 800 kwai for 50 kwai we assume it was counterfeit.
Something that has been increasingly more common the farther south we go, to the point of being fairly consistant in Quanzhou, is the presence of small shrines in homes, public places and places of business. Often mounted on the wall they are usually constructed of dark, stained, varnished wood and hold statues of various deities--sometimes one, sometimes two or three--and burnt incense offerings. In Xiamen they were fairly common, in Yongding they were abundent, and in Quanzhou they were, without exception, everywhere. Our motel had several and every morning they had a fresh basket of fruit placed on them. By the end of the day the fruit had definitely diminished, although whether due the gods or the staff I cannot say. Meanwhile the temple architecture generally continues to be a more simple but quite lovely style compared with the north and dragons abound. We made an astonishing discovery at Kaiyuan Temple: Buddha and all the bodhisttavas had hair! Long flowing locks swept up into topknots or piggy-tail bunches! We theorised an early local adaptation untouched by the 'refinement' of Chinese Buddhism at the distant Royal Courts.
Made several silly mistakes regarding cuisine in Quanzhou. The first was to eat at an awfully expensive Chinese-Western steakhouse which was just as horrid as we knew it would inevitably be. All steaks came with spaghetti for some unfathomable reason and Lewis' fifty kwai Australian Style steak was indistinguishable from my thirty-five kwai T-bone steak other than by the flimsy shard I assume was supposed to represent the bone in T-bone. Who knew it was possible to fuck up steak infinitely more profoundly than the Koreans do?! That was Monday night.
Ironically mistake number two was to go straight out on Tuesday night and see how badly the Chinese could fuck up Korean Barbeque. We were seated on chairs not on the floor, they used an electric hotplate rather than a charcoal barbeque and the meat was tough but the sides were fairly decent and the service was good. The samjang was a little weak and the toenjang jiggae was a bit thick but it was otherwise fairly convincing. Actually, it was no where near as bad as the steak and neither did it rival Houcaller Beefsteak for expense but it was nevertheless a little disappointing and not really worth the fee.
The third mistake was eating at a smorgasbord style canteen next to the bus station yesterday. Never eat at or near a bus or train station; it will be shit and overpriced. Never eat at a Chinese smorgasbord in China; it will be cold, greasy and skanky, not to mention overpriced. Never accept the exotic looking jar of soup they insist you try; it will be fetid and hideous and double the price of your meal. Why oh why did we not remember these three basic rules?! Enough said. Tails between legs and stomachs carefully cradled we boarded the bus for Jimei.
Long story short Jimei, home to local Mr Tan's extra-ordinary East-meets-West architecture of yore, was actually a pretty naff little resort spot with several man made lakes right next to the sea. The motels had swimming pools and the schools looked like old English cricket grounds so we had some scungy ice creams and even scungier beer looking out over the murky shallows of one of the lakes and promptly caught a bus back to Xiamen.
It was a beautiful day (finally the rain has stopped) so we made a beeline for the beach but by the time we got there it had gotten cold and the sun was fading. Tried again today in the midst of our [collect passports/post postcards/buy train tickets/collect luggage/have lunch/email Ossie/catch 4:30 train] marathon and discovered that even in the middle of a hot day the water is icy cold. Managed about 20 minutes before exiting to avoid frostbite.
Went to an awesome place for dinner last night and had stir fried donkey, great Chow Fen (fried rice) and dumplings accompanied by Tsingdao beer. Nothing flash, just a little place on a market street like so many others, but the difference was in the details. For starters, that meal marked the first time since arriving in China that we have have found soy sauce freely available on the tables. Usually it is vinegar, or a vinegar-heavy soy/vinegar mix. The rice was nothing fancy, just well prepared fried rice with egg and a few diced veggies, but it really did the business especially with soy sauce. The donkey meat was quite tough and beefy, a bit like stewing steak. It was stir fried with soy sauce and mild sweet chillis and it was right nice. The dumplings were, again, fairly simple but very fresh and delicate. There were veges stacked on a table near the door, alongside a sideline of karaoke cds, and they (the veggies I mean) were clean, fresh and good looking. All up it was supurb. So supurb in fact that we went back there for lunch today. I polished off all of my Nuero Chow Fen (beef fried rice) while Lewis ran around trying, to no avail, to find an internet cafe to contact Ossie from. When he returned just forty-five minutes before our train was due to depart we packed his rice up in a stereotypical polystyrene chinese takeaways box and grabbed a cab. You're encouraged to be an hour early for these things but arriving late enables you to miss the queues! And we're away...
It's been a crazy couple of days and I'm quite relieved to find myself in a reasonable motel contemplating several days of relative calm and quiet.
The tour turned out to be all the things we feared: noisy companions, regimented movement, lots of driving, hidden costs. The Hakka buildings and villages and people were really amazing and interesting and touching and fascinating but the tour was unfortunately designed only to expose us to the photogenic side of Hakka history, culture and life. Ever the story of backpackers seeking hill tribes I suppose, but I wasn't really looking for exotic, endangered people in hard to reach locations; just people and some space to connect with them and theirs.
There's not so much to say after the fact other than the buildings were big and round and square and sometimes polygonal and they were many storeyed and many storied and made of beautiful muddy clay and very old wood and housed families of families, grandparents of grandparents and children of children. They smelt like the temple at Panom Rung in Thailand, like old dry bone, and yet they were teeming with wetness from the rain and the rivers. They are closed to the world and open to the sky; strangers in a strange land looking inwards for security and upwards for providence. They whetted my appetite to learn more.
Hakka, itself a Hakka word, means guest or stranger, but this time around it was we who were both guests and strangers. Wandering through villages and homes looking and photographing while they went about their business had a very strange feel to it and I wondered what it was like to live in an exhibit. Amongst all the wonder was an underlying sense of voyeurism that was a bit icky. It changed gears a bit when we returned to the Fuyu hotel for the night. The Fuyu hotel is Mr Lin's family home, one no longer inhabited by any other Hakka families. When we had finished the day's sight-seeing Mr Lin disappeared and left Lewis and I--the only guests in the motel--in the hands of his father and grandmother. The scrap books produced by Mr Lin to recommend his tour are filled with accounts from the 1990s of how very generous and welcoming the Lin family were to Joe and Jane Doe when they stayed there, how they felt less like guests or strangers and more like family members. That was then and this is now. I get the feeling Mr Lin's family are a little jaded by the experience of having so many tourists come through their home turning them into commodities. Just as the Hakka, the strangers of Fujian province, have become a provincial and national commodity so the guests at Fuyu hotel are now just strangers with money. Dinner, ordered off a menu with no prices, was mediocre; tired ingredients thrown together hastily. Poor Grandma Lin probably just wanted to get off to bed. Mr Lin had lost interest in us as soon as he had sealed the deal. The hotel itself was amazing but as it was actually still home to the Lins and their many cats it wasn't really appropriate to wander around. Nor could we wander around Hongkeng village as it was pitch black and pouring and to do so required a fifty kwai entrance ticket that was strangely not covered by the motel bill. After dinner there was not much to do except retire to our room and write postcards.
While Mr Lin was conspicuously absent and Grandma Lin was shy and brusque Papa Lin was a bit more spirited and brought in complimentary fruit, nuts and kumara chips and raised a glass of Hakka glutinous rice wine with us. He seemed distinterested in the business sde of things, passing the buck to his son via telephone when we disputed the bill for the tour. While Lewis and Mr Lin had it out down the wire Papa Lin stamped and signed the postcard of his village and gifted me a pouch of Hakka tobacco. He rolled me a great wedge of a cigarette of Hakky baccy and we smoked in comfortable silence until the negotiations finished.
The bus ride from Hongkeng to Xiamen, and the sequel from Xiamen to Quanzhou were bouncy and manic. After the goat tracks, soft suspension and hard seats of the tour two more such long tail-bone-crushing rides were not what the doctor ordered. Needless to say we are glad to have made it to Quanzhou.
Ossie came to collect us for the schedule walk around the island this morn and confessed that he wasn't feeling to well. Decidedly dodgy in fact, such that a wee ways into the promenade he had to return urgently to the motel. Rumours that he might join us for Yonding and head to Nanning from there were dispelled. Facing a five hour bus ride on bad roads he sensibly passed it up and elected to book into Lizhidao for another night. Just a few minutes ago when we phoned him he had decided not to take the 18 hour bus trip to Nanning tomorrow morning and was considering staying a fourth night. Having been in China going on three months now this is the first time Ossie has gotten sick so he's doing pretty well. We speculated about whether it was the undercooked chicken or just plain too much fat but since we'd all eaten the same food it was all just guessing.
The walk was nice despite the constant drizzle. There were lots of grand old buildings, of course, and large sculptured gardens with entrance fees. A temple on a hill was connected to Sunlight Rock (a rock on a high place by the sounds) by a cable car with a one hundred kwai charge. Beautiful gates, fruit and ice cream stalls with sidelines in 36mm film and AA batteries, golf-cart buses of well-to-do Chinese folks seeing the sights; all the hallmarks of a tourist trap. We discovered the beach and a brave Chinese chap swimming. Lewis was disappointed to have left his swimming gear back at the motel, but I was quite relieved: it was warm, but not that warm.
More interesting was rush hour on the footpaths when many of the actual residents of Gulang Yu headed for the ferry to reach their jobs on the mainland. Perhaps a hundred people materialised out of the mist, herds of marauding umbrellas stampeding for the waterfront. I can't help wondering: who are all these people who live in these amazing old buildings and cruise to the mainland forn work everyday? And again when they all come home, and all the kids in their uniforms. Is this old money, new money, borrowed money, blue money?
Most interesting of all is the current state of the manorial properties left over from the emissorial period. Some are preserved as tourist attractions, motels, restaurants; others are decrepit, ill maintained or just plain abandoned. Many are peoples house. Some are grand houses obviously inhabited by grand people, others are run down, crowded, humble. Significantly, all are somehow very Chinese: something useful cobbled together out of the frivolous debris left behind by self-important people. Historically those people were in fact important, playing a part in the opening of China to the world, but their ostentatious buildings once temples to foreign influence are now testament to the power of a people to absorb and indelibly stamp said influence. Lewis was dead right whe he commented that Gulang Yu is the least Chinese place we've seen in China, and yet it is still China and it is still Chinese. In the context of history one could even say it is characteristically Chinese.
After the walk came the 5 hour bus ride to Yongding. We haven't travelled much by bus so far, we've stuck mainly to trains. not because it's faster (it's often not), not because it's cheaper (it's often not) and not primarily because it's more comfortable (which, unless stuck with hard seats, it most certainly is); the main reason for choosing trains over buses is that they are much safer. Our ride was, thankfully, uneventful; but we did pass a bus going the other way that had somehow managed to wind up bisecting the road. From the reasonably calm demeanour of those exiting the vehicle it was likely a spin not a roll. Good to note that the motorways, such as they are, are wide enough to accommodate a full size bus sideways.
On the bus they played some bizarre movie where every single character pulled a gun on every single other character in the movie at some point. This included what appeared to be a mother shooting her daughter and a young woman killing her boyfriend. In the case of the mother and daughter it seems that the daughter was having a fling with one of the bad guys who may or may not have been holding her mother and father (and some other randoms for good measure) hostage. I think the girl killing her man was the result of some nasty operation the bad guys had performed on the lass, but I couldn't be sure. Toward the end there was a full on gun battle involving an astonishing array of firearms and including a wheelchair-bound rampage by the mother who had shot her own daughter. She had herself been shot earlier (but after she had shot her daughter), but some time had apparently elapsed because she was now all bandaged and wheel-chaired up and sporting a hospital gown. The black hair, flowing white gown, bright red lipstick and twin handguns made for an interesting slo-mo sequence. At the end those still alive cried a lot and I got the distinct impression that guns are baaad.
Our reason for coming to Yongding is to check out the earthern buildings of the Hakka people. These folks fled Henan province during the Qin dynasty and built large, clay compounds all around Fujian province. There is a heavy concentration of them in Yongding county so we checked into a lovely motel called Dong Fu last night with the best of intentions. Dined at S&A, a KFC rip off that used precisely 0 herbs and spices on their fairly average chicken and chips.
The alarm went off at 8am this morn but had little impact. At 9am we got a phone call from a man called Mr Lin who claimed to live in one of these famous buildings and offered us a lift out there for a small fee that got progressively smaller as Lewis tried to explain that we were asleep and din't want to go anywhere just now. Clearly the motel lass had contacted Mr Lin to advise him of our presence hoping for a kickback. Alas for the otherwise nice deskette we declined Mr Lin's kind offer, eventually in quite strong terms as he didn't seem inclined to give up easily.
When we eventually did make it out of the motel it was, of course, much later and after brunch (pork and green beans, pork and noodle soup; quite decent) we decided to leave the Tulou (Hakka buildings) for tomorrow and take it easy. Wandered up a hill through a gate and found an abandoned bathhouse, a pavillion and a temple respectively. The lintels on the pavillion had beautiful three-dimesional pictures on them; actions scenes with men on horses and natures scenes of dragons and tigers and birds. The decoration is much simpler--cruder and of less lofty subject matter--than the lovely but overly lavish pavillions in the north. Dragons are more revered in the south than in the north and they are everywhere. Birds seem to be another common theme, along with people doing stuff. By comparison the decoration we saw in the North tended to be primarily Buddhist, accompanied by very picturesque renderings of landscapes. Folk religion is much stronger down here, and I guess that will only increase as we move further away from the reach of the northern capitals.
Picked up some chips from S&A and a whole roast chicken from a street vendor for dinner. Chicken n' chips and Monty Python. Nice.
Mr Lin phoned again tonight and we met in the lobby to see what he is about. He seems legit; he and his father and grandmother run a motel in their Hakka home and a tour service around the area. He has a bus and does a two day circuit of the region with a stay in his Tulou motel the first night and a drop off in one of several nearby cities at the end of the second day. There'll be three Hong Kongites with us, and it is a nasty group tour, but since we'd have to hire a driver to see any more than the one main village anyway it seems like a good option. Fingers crossed....
In other news an American on the ferry in Xiamen insisted that there is in fact a consulate in Guanzhou so we called Ossie last night after verifying it on the net. He's still not hunner-percent and may hold over another day and then head to Guangzhou on Saturday. Visas in Guanzhou is good news because we all want to go there and thought we were going to have to miss it out all together. Also, Guangzhou can probably do express (three day) visas so it may buy us some time for Guanxi province as well.
It's becoming increasingly difficult to keep on top of the writing and keep track of everything and remember all the millions of thing, small and large, that occur to me. We'll be crossing to Vietnam soon, a big change to offset all the small changes which are lazily forming some kind of pattern in my brain as we progress further and further south. Many anthropologists have commented that it is not until you get some space, literally and figuratively, between yourself and the field that you can really begin to process and integrate what you have seen. I'm feeling the weight of that truth right now, reeling a bit from the zillions of thoughts and fragments of thoughts ricocheting around in my brain. At the moment I am struggling merely to document, hopefully at a later stage I will be in a position to comment. And oh the anecdotes....!
Xiamen is actually an island. It is also The Mainland to the even smaller island of Gulang Yu where only electric powered vehicles are allowed. Gulang Yu is an island that has seen a fair bit of international influence. It is littered with old emissorial mansions and grandiose gardens and is almost certainly a tourist mecca in the late spring and summer months. Right now though it is fairly empty, and all the hotels are renovating and refurbishing. This makes for an unusual situation: rare yet cheap accomodation. The first place we tried was just plain closed, whilst the second had only one standard double and one 'luxurious' double available. Ossie took the windowless standard double at 100 kwai and we snaffled the luxurious double at the princley sum of 140 kwai. Gulang Yu is connected to 'The Mainland' by a short and very cheap ferry ride (free from Xiamen to Gulang Yu, 3 kwai from Gulang Yu to Xiamen) across the ways. It has a raft of very good seafood restaurants and a whole pile of tacky, overpriced souvenir shops. In the on season it would be hell, but we found it pleasant enough: quiet, small, quaint to walk around. Lizhidao--the Beautiful Island Hotel--was quality and we even managed to get all our washing done.
Despite having vague sight-seeing ambitions what ended up taking up all our time was the visa extention we had planned for the Xiamen PSB (Public Security Bureau). Between the consistantly inaccurate Lonely Planet Guide map and an unwise attempt at navigating by committee (inevitably ending in denial of responsibility by all) it took us hours just to find the damn thing. When we did find it we discovered it was closed for lunch between 11:45am and 2:40pm. As I'm sure you can guess it was already after 11:45 but nowhere near 2:40 so we had to amuse ourselves searching and utlising a PC Bang (internet cafe) until it re-opened. When we finally got an audience with His Majesty the Desk Jockey in Charge of Visa Extensions we were informed that a) we needed photocopies of both our main passport page and our current Chinese visa (of course He couldn't possibly copy them Himself) and b) our receipt of registration at a hotel had to be stamped by said hotel, not merely signed as ours was. There was no chance we could fulfill both of these requirements and return before closing that day. Needless to say We were not impressed.
We wandered in the rain looking for beer and a photocopier. Apparently in China it is not possible to get these two things together, so we made the photocopies at a random design store and relocated to a dingy restaurant. Apart from few and far between, swank, overpriced, western-style bars there is no pub or bar culture in China. To get a few quick beers in one must find a cheap resturant and order some kind of food. Unfortunately the cheaper the restaurant the crapper the beer. So we ordered some nasty food and some even nastier beer and discussed irrelevent topics for a bit. In the midst of this reverie I had to make a trip to the ladies room. Alas there was no such facility at the cheap restaurant, so I had to look further afield. The nice waitress pointed up the alley, so up the alley I wandered. When wandering the city looking for PSBs, PC Bangs, cheap restaurants and the like I had seen many a sign sporting the letters 'WC' accompanied by an indicative arrow, but like taxis and police officers just when I needed one there were none to be found. As my urgency increased I decided to retreat back down the alley and head down the main drag instead. I sized up the expensive looking 'Printemps' department store but it was heavily guarded by MIB and I was pretty sure I didn't meet the dress code so I pushed on. About a million blocks and quite a bit of angst later I found a sign pointing off down a different alley and counted my blessings. Alas they hadn't yet hatched: you see, public toilets in China cost money, and I had left my purse in my bag back at the restaurant. Going back for it was not an option, in fact there was only one option: I headed grimly for the WC. The WC Lass was busy chatting to the cleaner in the broom cupboard so I made a dash for the nearest cubicle and took care of business. As I flushed their discussion became more animated and I knew the game was up. I emerged confidently from the stall and strode toward her like I meant to pay, reached into my pocket and put on my best 'oh dear lord you have got to be kidding me' face. Clutching frantically at various pockets I made the internationally recognised gesture for 'I'm terribly sorry but I seem to be fresh out of currency' and edged toward the exit. She knew this was a no-take-back scenario and let me leave with a roll of the eyes. I scarpered like a five-year old kid who has just stolen a chocolate bar and gotten away with it.
Two dinners, countless beers and a bottle of nasty 50% by volume white spirit later we were in a considerably better mood as we sat on the waterfront of Gulang Yu photographing the night lights and speculating wildly about Ossie's ability to last two weeks on Mi Fen (plain boiled rice) alone. Dinner one was really just a snack with beers: chicken drumsticks, random fried meat and veggies and nasty pigs knuckles. Dinner two was a fine affair. Lightly cooked langoustines (we think): a cross between an undersized lobster and an oversized slater that tasted divinely like king prawns. Barely boiled mangrove crabs which proved to be resistent to almost all attempts at accessing their crabby goodness. Lewis of the Levitican seafood allergy (anything that lives in the sea and has legs is right out!) had steamed shellfish instead: green shelled mussels and clams of medium and over-size. It was a very civilised meal until the Baijiu (White Spirit) came out. Two and a half shots each and we were away!
Tired and hungover we yet made it to the PSB before 'lunch' the next day and had our applications accepted for consideration. We were advised to come back Thur 3/30 to pick up our passports. Ossie has had two visa extensions and has never encountered such strict documentary requirements or such a long fermentation period. Later an American would reveal that as Kiwis pay half of what Americans pay for their visas they get cut-price service. You get what you pay for after all.
Actually, the biggest problem with all this is that we still all have to get Vietnamese visa before we can go to Vietnam, and since two extensions per visit is the limit Ossie has to be out of China on or before April 7th. We did some number crunching over a fantastic lunch of chow fen (fried rice), pork and beans and Mi Fen (presented lovingly in a mess tin) marred only by the unidentifiable splays of grey stuff and bamboo dish that I was assured was completely inedible. The problem: how to get from Xiamen to Guangzhou (12 hours by express bus), get a Vietnamese visa (3-5 days but expect delays), then from Guangzhou to Nanning (10 hour bus or 14 hour train), see the sights around Guangxi province, and then get to the border all in seven and a half days. Airfares were mentioned at least once.
Despite the unprovoked attempts of taxi drivers to thwart us we gathered information about bus timetables and returned to our hotel. One significant piece of info resulting from this was that CITS (China International Travel Service) Nanning takes at least a week to do Vietnamese visas. Back at the hotel we whipped out our Lonely Planet Guides for China and Vietnam and made an astonishing discovery: while the Vietnam Lonely Planet Guide claimed there was a Vietnamese consulate in Guangzhou the China guide was conspicuously lacking in such a claim. On the other hand, while the China guide listed a Vietnamese consulate in Kunming the Vietnam guide was suspiciously silent on the matter. Further investigation revealed that the phone number provided for the illeged consulate in Guangzhou was not valid. I suggested we head back to 'The Mainland' and check it out on the internet but the boys were satisfied that the Guangzhou consulate was a hoax. It was eventually decided that Ossie will leave for Nanning first thing in the morning and get his visa there while we will visit the Hakka tulou buildings at Yongding and check out Quanzhou (all near Xiamen) and head to meet up with him in Nanning after we have picked up our passports (hopefully complete with extended Chinese visa) from the PSB in Xiamen on 3/30. We'll miss Canton (now Guangzhou), where the style of Chinese food we eat in New Zealand originates, but we might still get in a bit of Guangxi province (Guilin, Nanning). As we will then be a couple of days behind Ossie in the Vietnamese visa process he will probably have to cross into Vietnam before us and we'll meet up in either Lang Son (the nearest actual city to the border) or Hanoi.
Headed to the mainland for dinner and spent ages trying to find a restaurant yet again. As we have headed south the number of decent budget restaurants have dwindled. It seems to be that age old north/south of the Yangtse divide. Wuhan, divided by the Yangtse itself, was the last place where budget yet delicious small-time eateries were plentiful. Excepting Shanghai it has been mainly dodgy, menuless little places where the ingredients sit on display out the front until it is used and the staff are surly. The prices are not much below mid-range tourist restuarants and the quality is poor. The best times to eat at places like this are just before lunch or just after when the ingredients have just been replenished. In Xiamen there are even few of those places, forcing us to hunt high and low to avoid posh modern restaurants where the food is over-priced and pretentious.
Eventually we found a mid-range place, possibly Cantonese style. We were attracted by the pictures of meaty meat dishes adorning the front and the suckling pig hangin in the window. The roast pork in Chinese red sauce was awesomely good and the roast chicken, though almost certainly undercooked, was lovely. Pork crackling, as ever, is something that seems like a good idea at the time but soon becomes sickening; the first 2-3 pieces were mighty fine. The fried rice turned out to be...er...hawaiian would you believe. Spam and pineapple turned otherwise hard to fuck up chow fen into a culinary catastrophe. Tragic.
I would like to apologise for my photography. What you have to understand is that my camera is set to manual for pretty much everything except focus: that means I'm controlling the size of the aperture, the shutter speed and the light sensitivity. Since I'm an amateur and am still learning the how these things work many of my photos are badly exposed, flat, or just plain out of focus. And it's about to get worse. I have now set my camera to manual focus as well! I suppose I could just turn it all on auto and point and click but it wouldn't be nearly as fun and I wouldn't learn anything from it; so I can live with the dodgy photos and you'll have to too. ;)
Well, having managed to do nothing in Nanjing we made up for it in Wuyishan. Wuyishan is a city/mountain/national park and it's very cool. As we've headed south things have been getting warmer, wetter and greener, and Wuyishan was lovely and green and pungent smelling.
We had a bit of a rude awakening when our train arrived at the station a full two hours before we were expecting it to. The conductor actually had to wake us up and pretty much roll us off the damn train. Half asleep and only half dressed we stumbled from the station, found some fairly basic accommodation at a fairly basic price and proceeded to become fully human. The hotel itself was a gem and you should read Lewis' site to hear all about it: here. Sufficed to say the Wuyishan Hualong Hotel has fallen a long way since its heyday in the brochure. The desk guy appeared to be in charge but clearly had no idea what was going on. He seemed like a genuine guy, just not so bright and a little out of his league. We hypothesised that he was running the place for a mate or relation while they were on vacation.
So, long story short: we had to wait fifteen mins for them to clean the room; the shower was out of hot water; the showers they had us use in other rooms both ran out of hot water in quick succession; the second substitute shower flooded the bathroom; in the end we gave up. Desk guy was accommodating and apologetic but generally quite useless. At least we had showers I say!
Banked, ate and headed to the national park where we wandered around looking at stuff. The early part of the path was flanked by numerous bonsai trees: oaks and something with a wierd name I can't remember. We had no map and the occasional maps and directions carved into marker stones turned out to be pretty useless so we followed the river until the path was terminated by a bloody great boulder covered with writing. I've seen this before around China and it's quite interesting. They carve thick Chinese characters into stone, concrete and the like and then paint the etching with some kind of uber-paint that never comes off or fades. Possibly ridiculously expensive lipstick. Hmmm, something to look into. From what I've seen it comes in scarlet red and, less commonly, royal blue. It is interesting but somewhat jarring against some of the stunning scenery, both natural and cultural, that it adorns.
Backtracked a little and wandered the hillside in search of Da Wang Feng (Great King's Peak) but found only under-construction temples and nunneries. Thought we were on the right track at one point until Ossie was suddenly cornered and menaced by two small-to-medium sized black dogs. He managed to successfully back away while Lewis distracted them and we beat a hasty retreat. Someone's home apparently. Oops.
On our way back to the main path we happened upon a young girl and (presumably) her father pointing excitedly to a crop of bamboo in a pond. Tree frogs! The five of us spotted tree frogs together for a bit until the girl tired of the game and they headed on. We three, however, had not had our fill and spent a good thirty minutes more frog watching and taking photos and just gazing into the murky depths of the impossibly turquoise water. In the background a stand of incense was burning outside a temple building. It was beautiful and peaceful and simply wonderful.
We gave up on the royal peak and decided to make for the water curtain cave, where Lewis was convinced monkey had been born. We managed to deduce from the average of various maps and signs that it was about 6km further along in a different 'scenic area' so we grabbed a taxi. The Water Curtain Cave Scenic Area was Awesome (with a capital A). Towering dark cliff faces of some kind of sedimentary rock running with water constantly. Waterfalls of all shapes and sizes litter the park along with streams, caves, jagged peaks and tea terraces. Several of the small streams we crossed via staggered hewn stone blocks jutting out of the running water. It is still the off peak season for tourism, so once we left the tat stalls at the entrance we were fairly much alone and didn't see a single other person for about the last hour we were there. For those used to the isolation of New Zealand national parks: such an experience is rare and priceless in this part of Asia.
The Water Curtain Cave itself turned out to be a bit lame on account of it being a shelf not a cave and, it not being the rainy season quite yet, there being a mere trickle of water rather than a curtain. Definitely not the birthplace of Monkey. A little disappointed we headed over and down the other side, checked out Eagle Rock and tried to find the famous red tea trees. It was getting late and dark; the park closed at 6:30 and we still had to turn around and walk back out. We persevered: just five more minutes, and then five more. Small birds flew low overhead. Dark, pudgy, flying like butterflies: what could they be? To our delight we realised they were bats. Granted, Ossie was not so blown away but to us kiwis it was a treat. Eventually we ended up at a small but imposing neo-Confucist temple where, in the deepening dusk, we could hear a monk praying alone. It was one of those sensual moments that leaves a profound and lasting impression: the sound, the smell, the towering edifice in the fading light. Ah bliss!
It was here we discovered that we were, in fact, nowhere near the darn red tea trees and gave up the hunt. The path was now classified as a 'non-tour path,' darkness was impending and we had ten minutes to get out of the park before closing. We booted it back along the windy path over the stone block bridges and between the immense cliffs to the calls of the bats and the tinkle of the streams. By the time we got out it was fully dark, raining lightly and there was not a soul around. We basked in peaceful glory for a bit and then stopped short. We had hit an unforseen hitch: how to get back to town?
Just as we were standing contemplating the situation a couple of fortuitous things occurred. Firstly, a woman on a bicycle appeared out of nowhere and passed by, heading in the same direction as us. Just as unexpectedly a ute pulled out of a nearby driveway and came to a stop next to the woman on the bike. We reached the scene just as she had loaded her bike on the back of the ute and was filling the last available seat inside the cabin so Lewis hailed the driver and made the internationally recognised signals for "Can you give us a lift in the back of your ute, mate?" Success! The road was winding and the driver didn't slow down on our account so we held on to whatever we could and enjoyed the ride. It was choice! Twenty minutes later, windswept and slightly damp, we hopped off in town and gratefully waved some money at the driver; he was having none of it. We gave him our heartfelt thanks and set out for dinner.
The Bamboo Palace is recommended by the Lonely Planet guide for its frog and bamboo dish. Now, we don't usually dine according to the lonely planet guide but as we are quite partial to frog we decided to give it a go. The resturant overlooks the river and, as the only diners there that evening, we managed to secure ourselves the riverside pavillion table. Nice. Next came the menu, all in Chinese naturally, and the inevitable and by now familiar round of charades describing respectively what we wanted and what they had. And then came what we actually got. Actually, this was a fairly successful ordering episode. The bamboo dish, despite being conspicuously lacking in frog, was really rather good. The point-and-nod choice of the evening was a plate of chow mien (fried noodles) with some kind of gherkin like vegetable which was strangely sensational. The staff-recommended dish was fish, and we watched the restaurant lad net the blighter himself from a concrete holding tank sunk into the ground. Not ten minutes later the fish came out, ever so lightly steamed and served only with spring onions. It was divine. Not content with our three superlative dishes the boys were still determined to get their chopsticks into some decent frog, so they called the lad back and eventually managed to convey to him that they wanted frogs cooked in any manner the chef pleased. Just to be sure everybody was on the same page said lad came out with sack o jumping kermits and bloody near liberated them on the table. Ten minutes later the frogs were back, this time in a pot of very lightly seasoned water in which they had been very lightly boiled. They were good, and the boys were waxing lyrical, but secretly I'd have to pick the fish as the dish of the evening for I prefer my frogs Thai style; fried heavily in heavy garlic. More than twice the hotel bill for the night but worth every single little kwai.
Day two was the grand finale: cruising down the nine twists river on a bamboo raft. Cost at 100 kwai per person this ~1 hour ride is a huge money making scheme. Take two bamboo rafts, each with own pole-guy and number plate, and lash them together. Further secure six bamboo chairs, three to each raft, thereby creating a double-raft six-seater vessel. Add three large white people and three Chinese ajummahs[1] in plastic ponchos and you have a tourist adventure in the making. At least everyone else thought so. The river was quite rammed with these things, creating a kind of bamboo regatta, and we ended up being the main attraction. Our poleys were slack and chatty, so we got passed by every other raft on the river, and every single last pole-guy wanted to say hello. "Oh, Herro!" they exclaimed "hehe, Engrishey blahblahblah!" Cue chorus of laughter from all Chinese passengers. Nice.
That said, it really was rather lovely. The front pole-guy (the really slack one) talked non-stop, but had a charming smile on his face the whole time. When the rear pole-guy wasn't busy hoiking noisely into the river or insisting that 'hey lady: hamburger rock; photo, okay!" he would sing softly in Mandarin. The constant light rain was quite refreshing and the swirling water in the raft was melodious and didn't wet your feet if you put them up on the chair in front. The river was lovely and clean, and undulated like thick velvety curtains in amazing shades from moss green to azure blue. Where the cliffs met the river were countless pole-end sized holes where countless previous polers had wedged their poles and propelled their rafts away from the edge. Occasionally there were small rapids and the raft would scoot rapidly down the river of it's own accord. There were peaks and shores and tortoise shaped rocks and temples and pagodas and caves where boat shaped coffins had once hung. It was pretty damn cool. By the end Ossie had a sore arse and Lewis was cold and I didn't want to see even one more animal shaped rock formation but it had been a kind of iconic journey through serene Chinese scenery punctuated by incessent Chinese tourist culture.
So that was Wuyishan. As of 4:30 this afternoon we have been on our way to Xiamen, Fujian Province. We're due to arrive about 6 in the morning. The train buzz is pretty much 'same shit, different day' (cards, ramien[2], lights out at ten) except that this time we have the pleasure of the 6 person compartment to ourselves, for the moment at least.
[1] Ajummah: Korean term of address roughly translated as aunty or woman of my mothers age. Used colloquially by Native English Speaker Teachers in Korea to refer to any forty to fifty year old women with grown up children and no real job inclined to have a short perm, wear gayly coloured tracksuits and dark visors, and climb mountains or visit famous temples every other day.
[2]Ramien (also ramyeon): Korean for instant noodles
Finally left Shanghai for Nanjing. Arrived sometime around 2 and didn't get to sleep until after 3:30. Bugs in the bed, trains by the window every ten minutes; didn't sleep well. Finally checked out at one p.m., stopped by the train station on our way to see the sights only to find just one train a day heading to our next destination--due to depart any second, of course. Decision made to flag plans in Nanjing and head straight for Wuyishan thereby creating a ten hour nil return detour to Nanjing and embarking on a nineteen hour train ride without eating, or in my case showering. Tired, coffee deprived and sick of being patronised and/or ignored by rude, ignorant, insecure fucking males. And that's just my travelling companions. Hurrumph. Whose idea was this stupid trip anyway?
Newsflash: Hey! for those who just can't get enough I've just back-filled some gaps with stuff I wrote on paper and only just got around to typing up. It covers the boat from Korea to China and the day in Dandong that followed. I'm working on a quick summary of the events in Beijing between our arrival and Stu and Toni's departure. Cheers, deb/debs/debbie 20060316
Apparently the camera will, in fact, not be ready today. It might be ready tomorrow but Nikon are willing to neither confirm nor deny that. So we spend a third night in Shanghai, of which we are all sick to death, and hopefully head for Suzhou tomorrow, a slight detour on our way to Nanjing.
Shanghai is a lovely place if you have lots of money and a penchant for shopping; we have neither. After some of the places we have stayed and played in China it seems a bit disgusting really: it sounds romantic but I'll take the filth and humility of Wuhan of the wealth and rampant capitalism of Shanghai any day. The lifestyle advertising, commodification and huge elite brand billboards make me sick. The economic disparity they highlight makes me bitter. If Beijing is the modern face of China, and possibly the future, Shanghai is another world, an anomalie, a fairy land. It's not that I don't wish the Chinese prosperity, but if you're going to kill and oppress so many in the name of Communism it is a travesty have Shangahi rise from the ashes a den of everything that is foul and abhorent in capitalism. The whore of the Orient; yes indeed.
Anyway, the rantings of a confused socialist here cease.
The buildings here really are cool and old and classical and all that. Shanghai at night is a sight to behold, and I will endeavour to get some photos of it. I finally had the fried noodles (chow mien) I've been dreaming of just down the road from our hostel. Just beef and noodles, greasy as you like, and all crispy from the hotplate they were served on. Awesome. Yesterday for lunch we went to a place called Song of the Pamirs run by some chaps from Kashgar. They had a couple of friendly tabby cats wandering around the place smoozing for scraps, but curiously they prefereed the bread to the meat. A jovial waiter served us up our lamb shish kebabs, thick doughy nan, barbeque lamb steaks, spiced minced lamb with thin bread and Xinjiang Black Beer with smiles and jokes. It was really awesome. I didn't ever want to leave but we had a date with the local library internet cafe.
Not much else to report except that I can't wait to leave Shanghai and am fairly excited that we are getting closer to Vietnam. Chinese food is the bomb, although very greasy, but I'm looking forward to trying Vietnamese food with that French twist. Yep, I'm just eating my way around the world and it's bliss!
The top bunk has much more sway than the other two, and I'm feeling a little sick. The prospect of kneeling over a nasty squatter toilet keeps the nausea at bay somewhat but laying on my stomach to computerise is not helping.
I'm glad they turned the freaking music off: they had about 5 songs on a loop and at least two of them were Kenny G wannabes. Why is Kenny G so popular in Asia? He was huge in Korea, toured and all, and we've heard a startling array of Kenny style tunes in China too. Come to think of it: why is Kenny G popular at all? No offence to any fans out there but oh my lord will someone take that bloody clarinet off him! I mean I have nothing against clarinets or clarinet players, it's a perfectly valid lifestyle, but Kenny is just so droll.
All Kenny G bashing aside: 19 hours on a train is a long time. We've played a squillion hands of cards: about 5 prolongued races for the back door in Bid Whist (possibly the most stupid, complicated card game ever invented; that said, I've never played bridge), and 1 'all-but' penalty shootout of a game of partners euchre with a random scottish guy called Andy who we met on the train. Now nobody likes a good game of cards more than I, but just recently we've been playing rather a lot of cards and when euchre was traded in for 500 I was thrilled, but then came last night's bid whist marathon and today a rematch. There goes the neighbourhood! Spades is, uptown...no: downtown...aces are low, which is to say they're good...oh crap, misdeal--how do you even deal 12 cards and a 5 card kitty anyway!
So Wuhan is a pretty cool city. Being as it is made up of three cities it sort of has a bit of everything. It was one of the first cities to be industrialised and has always been quite properous so it has some flashy modern shopping zones. It was also one of the areas opened up to concessions so it's littered with old french and russian buildings. We didn't make it to the museum but the three cities date back a ways so it's supposed to be pretty good. We also didn't make it to Mao's villa on the outskirts--we tried but then realised that nobody was actually very interested and we were all going because we thought someone else wanted to go so we flagged it. We took a ferry across the Yangtze this morn on our way to the train station which was cool if a little underwhelming. All in all we didn't do very much at all except laundry, computer stuff, eating, drinking and playing cards. It made a nice change from excessive sight-seeing actually.
So, tomorrow Shanghai. Despite it being well known for being expensive when you ask people about it their very first comment that it is, in fact, very expensive. To be honest it doesn't look like there's too much for us there other than to have a bit of a look around and try to keep our wallets in our pockets. We're not really sure how long well stay; maybe two nights, maybe only one. Lewis wants to go to Nanjing but we've overshot it a bit so it's under review. The general idea is to head down through the coastal provinces, ultimate destination Nanning where we cross into Vietnam. We want to spend a bit of time in Fujian province and may stop off in Fuzhou for several days while Lewis and I extend our Chinese visas, and we're also figuring to hit Guangzhou and a couple of cities in Guanxi province (Guilin for one, and at least Nanning for our Vietnamese visas and as a springboard to the border crossing itself). So that's the general plan. Ossie's second and final visa extension runs out April 7 so we'll have to cross the border before then, but beyond that we're none too clear on the dates.
Well, I'm off to work on my Vietnamese. Chuc ngu ngon!
Another day another city! Wuhan is the provincial capital divided by the Yangzi and made up of three older cities that can be traced to the Han dynasty during which time they vied for political and/or economic power. So far we've not got out much except to have some random food (point and nod ordering), do the laundry, banking, post the snail mail and check the email; all very mundane things. Actually we're feeling a bit over sight-seeing for the moment and arrived this morn at 5:45am after a 9 hour train ride, so we've decided to plan minimal adventures but stay 2 nights and get some well earned RnR before getting on a 17 hour train ride to Shanghai on Monday. Very civilised indeed.
Irrelevent inline footnote: I wish I couldn't smell the PC room toilet from here :(
So Tuesday ended with fried rice and dumplings for dinner and Wednesday started later than intended. After planning our movements for the rest of the week we had Chicken and Cashews, Fried Noodles with Beef and Muju Pork for lunch. The CHicken and Cashews was yummy, and a bit different from what you'd get at home. It was a little spicy and had cucumber in it. The chicken was cubed; curious!
Headed to the museum which was rather good; but another strike out for the Lonely Planet guide--the place closes at 5pm not 6:30. We had to rush throught the last half, but the nice man on the door kept the place open for us, and the shop lady even reopened the tacky souvenir shop when she saw us coming.
Local specialty the 'Water Banquet" for dinner. According to the LP guide you get like 24 courses of soup. I was quite relieved to find it was only 5 dishes, all served together and quite chunky too. Mediocre actually: 6/10. To be fair they were closing and practically ushered us out the door so maybe we didn't get the full deal. Still, I'd rather have random dishes off a dodgy diner's chinese only menu anyday.
Thursday morning we headed to the Longmen Grottos which were just out of this world. Thousands of buddhist carvings in little cave/alcoves spotted along the hillside. Just awesome. So very sad to see that some bunch of twats, quite probably during the cultural revolution, had come along and chipped, smashed or lopped off many of the heads. Easily my new favourite place in the world (sorry Seokurreum Grotto, Gyeongju, Korea; you've been demoted). I could wax lyrical but I won't; photos to follow when I can.
Headed back to Luoyang to book the train tickets to Wuhan, then got a dodgy bus out to Dengfeng which turned out to be less than a thriving metropolis but did have a nice motel. We hit the streets for dinner and ate random chicken and vegetable fry up, random spicy dish and lambs bollocks on a stick. All very nice, except the spicy dish was...well...spicy, until we came to pay the bill: 90 kwai! It cost more then the stupid water banquet! But it was too late (always get the price first) and we'd had too many beers to be very grumpy at that point so we paid up and headed back to the motel.
Next morning we got up bright and, well almost early, and headed for our reason for being in a dump like Dengfeng: Shaolin Temple. We stopped by one of the schools and saw little 7 year old boys balancing on one leg and doing back flips, then wandered past the training grounds where whole squadrens were practising specific moves in unison. It was cool to watch, a kind of rippling patchwork effect being created by the movements of the various groups.
Watched the obligatory show put on by the older guys who knew their shit inside out. Good but sort of flashy and awkward. Not spectacular flashy either, WWF flashy: pained acting and carefully choreographed fights. I felt a bit sorry for the guys actually; they're there learning/doing serious shit and I get the feeling they have to put on this show to keep the tourists, and therefore the government, happy. It's all a bit on the nose really after the place was virtually destroyed during the cultural revolution: now it's being milked for all it's worth, the stupid rubbishy souvenir shops are all new and well maintained while the school buildings themselves are all decrepit. Poo. Anyway, I wondered if performing in the show was punishment for naughty monks and students, especially the 3 boys who spent most of the show balanced on one leg. The two on the side had the walls of the faux temple front to lean on, but the poor sod in the doorway, he must have done something very, very naughty. He wobbled like a wobbly thing but held his position until he was finally allowed to run out, take a bow and bugger off. Needless to say we declined the Have-you-photo-taken-with-the-Shaolin-monks brigade and moved on.
The temple itself was undergoing a bit of construction (isn't everything in CHina at the moment!) and was, erm, templey. The thing is, you get a bit over temples. They're all quite similar you see, for very good reasons of course, but we have seen rather a few of them just recently so... well you know. Next...
Onwards and upwards to the cave where Damo meditated for 9 years after being refused entry to the monastery. It was a bumpy ride up to the bottom of the steps on a motocycle trailer and a helluva climb in a fairly warm temperature to get to the cave. What idiot decided it would be cold on Mount Song I don't know (oops) but my thermal, furry lined pants and thick wooly socks were not appreciated. The mist obscured the otherwise breathtaking view and the buddhit figures near the entrance to the cave were defaced but it was nice all the same, especially the feeling of having made it.
The pagoda forest was cool, trees and pagodas interwoven and people just wandering about or sitting around chilling out. It had a nice culture meets nature feel, but we couldn't soak it up for long because we had to get back to Luoyang to pick up Ossies passport from the PSB
We got a golf cart back to the entrance and, after much negotiation, a taxi bus back to Luoyang in which I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the madness on the roads. Passports in hand we had some beers, some dinner and boarded a train bound for Wuhan.
Which brings us to present: taking it easy and getting the little stuff done. It's nice to take a breather but I'm already itching to get to Fujian to see the Hakka earth buildings...
Got a bus to Luoyang at 10:40 this morning and eventually found a Hostelling International affiliated motel with good clean rooms and private bathroom facilities. Not cheap so we got a 3 person room together to cut the price down. We got it for a total of RMB200 (200 yuan/renminbi) which I think is about NZD30. It sounds cheap, and indeed it is, but by Chinese standards it's not, and we have to think in terms of local currencies if we want to make our money last the distance.
Luoyang has been the capital of like 11 dynasties and has lots of cool old shit. Today Ossie applied for a visa extension at the local PSB (Public Security Bureau) and then we wandered around the city until it got dark and cold. Incidentally, the PSB building looks like it's about to launch for mars and contains "THE DIVISION OF THE ALIENS AND ENTRY AND EXIT ADMINISTRATION." The weather was nice, if a little hazy, and Luoyang is an awesome city so it was a good walk. We are minor celebrities, of course, and made many small children happy just by saying hello, not to mention each posing individually with a random teenage girl for pics. An old man with about 20 live chickens hanging quite calmly off the back of his bicycle endured having his photo taken with considerable good will while passers-by stopped to observe whitie observing, and when we spotted a fleet of pool tables carefully set up outside a temple we drew a fair sized crowd by stopping to have a round. The game turned out to be free but had the unfortunate side effect of acquiring for us a Klingon in the form of a teacher bearing albums of photos of him with random foreigners. He spoke broken English but kept trying to get us on th e phone with the English teacher at his school so she could pass on his request to meet up with us tomorrow. I'm sure he genuinely wanted to spend time with us, for once not a scamster trying to set up a tour or get us into his taxi, but we just didn't feel like being chaperoned around the tourist attractions and/or collected for his photo album so we eventually fobbed him off and kept on moving.
While looking for the Eastern part of the city, dubbed Old City for fairly straight-forward reasons, we stumbled into a pretty dense and dirty residential area and found a smallish market where, to astonishment of the vendor, Lewis purchased a large hunk of boneless smoked cows leg. Apparently it is delicious, if a tad salty. Eventually, despite the best attempts of the Lonely Planet guide to confound us but really through no fault of our own, we found the West Gate of the Old City and were rewarded. It was a bit like stepping into a movie, it was so much more romantically Chinese than the high rises and decrepit red brick rubble of the neon jungle that is the modern Chinese city.
As an aside, I must take some photos of those derelict old brick compounds: they're absolutely endemic. At first I thought they were just in rural areas, bulk built housing to get the peasants sorted and working on the farms, but actually they are everywhere--rural, urban and otherwise. From what I can tell at some point the government went through and built massive numbers of residential compounds, workshops, factories and storehouses using poor quality commie red bricks and as little mortar s they thought they could get away with. They miscalculated and now these buildings are tumbling down all over the place. People collect bricks from abandoned and/or fully collapsed structures to perform running repairs on their own, so there are neatly stacked piles of bricks in every compound, bricks holding down tarps over holey rooves, bricked up windows where glass could not be replaced and nary a drop of mortar in sight. It's quite phenomenal.
Anyway, back to the romantic paved streets of Old City. Not freshly paved mind, and not overly clean either. The buildings were a mix of old and newbut stylistically quite similar. Older buildings showed signs of being patched up but not rebuilt or even much renovated. The little shops were not souvenir shops but seamstresses, musical instruments, smithies, a few restaurants and a smattering of Chinese art stores. They were all modest little shops seemingly owned and operated by the actual producers of the goods. How about that for an idea! It was nice and quiet and interesting and mundane and special all at once. People were friendly but didn't oggle and there was a distinct sense of folks just getting on with whatever they had to get on with. It was tres authentique.
Lunch was Sweet and Sour Pork, Crunchy Rice with Pork and (not so) Spicy Pork. For the record, the sweet and sour pork is just like you get back home. The crunchy rice was like rice crackers only chunky; it was pretty good. Dinner was Fried Rice and assorted Steamed Dumplings. I didn't much feel in the mood for dumplings but I'm led to believe they were alright. The fried rice was a little different to usual with more veggies and some kind of finely cubed spam-like substance. It was average. We all had slightly sore stomachs for a wee bit after but no lasting effects.
Well, it sounds as if we may have got Paul evicted! The apartment manager turned up to install the shower, put up two curtain rails and left. When Paul phoned his agency to find out where his shower was he was told that the apartment manager felt there were too many unsavoury foreigners hanging out at his apartment and too many empty beer bottles in the kitchen. She also mentioned that the place was a wee bit messy. Sounds like a complicated ploy to put it in the too hard basket to me. The place had no washing machine, no cooking facilities and no shower, all of which were guaranteed in Paul's contract, so she had a ways to go to get the place up to scratch.
Having put Paul out on the street we promptly left Tianjin Sunday afternoon and tried to get a train to Qingdao (of the famous beer Tsingdao). Alas the trains for that night were all booked out, so we tried to bee crafty and got a train to Beijing instead. In Beijing we discovered that our plight had worsened, in that there were still no seats available for Qingdao until the next day, but now we were stuck back in Beijing for yet another night.
We got even craftier and decided to switch the trip to Qingdao with the trip to Henan province and head back to Qing dao afterwards. We just sneaked onto the last train to Zhengzhou last night, hard sleeper 9 hours, and arrived early in the morn. We booked into a nearby motel only to discover that it was shit. Now, shit accomodation is not always, or even usually, a problem, except that since Paul had no shower we all hadn't showered for several days and had just slept in our clothes on the train. And it was damned expensive for the (lack of) quality. So we went for a refund on our 'common' rooms and ended up getting upgraded to 'standard' rooms with private facilities at the grand extra cost of RMB16 (about NZD2).
After showering and then washing our clothes in the shower we headed out to explore the city. In the face of blatent inaccuracy by the Lonely Planet guide we still managed to find the remains of the earthen walls of the ~3500 year-old Shang dynasty city. We wandered along them but failed to find the 'ruins' nestled in one corner. We did, however, find plenty of other interesting things like old men playing at spinning tops with special whip things. We watched them for a while, as the rest of the audience turned their attention to us, for they were right cool. One guy was big and mighty but a bit laz. His technique was a bit mediocre, but when he got a good crack man did that top fly! Another guy was a bit of a pro, accurate and measured. A third guys was playing a few cards short of a full deck, but clearly having fun and providing all onlookers with a dose of good-natured amusement. As we moved on we picked up some random ice creams which turned out to be right nice, but when we tried to replicate the phenomenon not ten mins later we managed to pick duds. Ossies appeared to have fallen off the bacl of a truck and been run over. Lewis's was unidentifiable purple flavour, and tasted like it could have been made from wild black rice. Mine, well mine was a treat. It was green water ice in the middle with some kind of french vanilla ice cream wrapped around it, coated in thin manky chocolate and sprinkled with, erm, sunflower seeds. It was a monstrous creation and had to be thrown into the bowels of the earth where it might never surface. Or at least chucked into a nearby protuding pipe/makeshift bin.
After the wall walk we headed for the museum, apparenlty quite a splendid affair, but found it inexplicably closed.
Disappointed we headed for a tacky looking western bar and had a round of overpriced, warm Tsingdao before giving up and heading to a restaurant. The restaurant was swank as hell, and as if we didn't already stand out enough we were well underdressed to boot. We chose it on account of the suckling pig hanging in the kitchen window, but had some difficulty explaining that we wanted to eat it. In the end they served it quarter at a time chopped into little bits and dead fucking cold. It was bizarre, but the mushroom dish we ordered with it was absolutely supurb and the over-attentive staff refilling our beer and jasmine tea every other second provided plenty of amusement.
More beers and Monty Python followed, and we'll be heading to Luoyang, thoretically a much more interesting city, tomorrow morning. Early. Ish.
It's all good
China is a lot like Korea but more. More people, more spitting, more insane driving. More pollution, more filth, more poverty. More asian. It's also radically different to Korea, although I find the nature of those differences difficult to quantify as yet. It's not just obvious shit--language, architecture, cultural artifacts--it's something much more profound and intangible. Something in the faces of the people, something in the air, something involving the intersection of history and economics.
Clearly China is much much more communist than South Korea on account of South Korea not being communist at all. An interesting discussion could be had about whether China is more communist than North Korea I'm sure, but that's a whole other story. To a foreigner in Beijing communism seems far away, like some kind of urban legend with merchandising, the butt of many a joke. Out here in Daofeng, one frayed end of Tianjin, communism is palpable. It hangs in the air assaulting the senses, making your mind reel and leaving a bad taste in your mouth. Shiny new volkswagons parked outside apartment buildings reminiscent of war torn Eastern Europe create a jarring dissonance compounded by well dressed children happily playing amongst rubble. Men and women on trailered bicycles circle the complex all day, singing out their calls for recyclables in unique and haunting ways. Every time a train goes by wind whips through the rubbish strewn burg, whirling organic and inorganic debris about like tumbleweed. The dead cat on the footpath is squashed flat, all except it's head, it's mouth open, teeth bared in garish rigor mortis. It's not fresh, but the cold has drastically slowed it's decomposition.
Looking out the window of Paul's apartment at the drab dilapitated buildings I spotted Catzilla, the most enormous cat I have ever seen in the flesh. Fat bellied yet lithe, and fearfully grubby in his most impractical white fur coat Catzilla is an opportunist. Living on rats and anything not already scavenged from the garbage by the Collectors he has attained the proportions of megafauna but he still scampers through a gap in a window when a person emerges from the apartment building under which he lodges. A hard cat living a hard life he ventures his head out the window and stays on the sill for a moment, enjoying the sun and watching the world go by. He looks like a monster but he has the sweet face of a kitty.
Of course none of this is unique to communism, let alone unique to China, but the plethora of half-built, half-collapsed or half-built and half-collapsed constructions and the endless crumbling red brick compounds--cheap, bulk and woefully inadequate housing for the masses--reveal a country at once growing and distintegrating amidst institutionalised mismanagement. The people are both genuinely friendly and helpful, and incredibly wily and opportunistic. I wonder though: am I really constantly wading in sub-text or is it just an overactive western imagination?
Dandong: population 604600, 6000 years of settlement, 100 year-old Chinese port city stretched along a river border with North Korea.
We disembarked wearily after the 15 hour ride on the Priental Pearl II. It was the proverbail slow boat to China. Unwashed and unkempt we eyed the various uniforms in our welcoming committee with much trepidation, after all this was the People's Republic of China; army, navy, customs and plain old coppers. Under the inspection of such fine gentlemen as these we formed orderly lines and packed ourselves and our luggage, sardine-like, into a small, inadequate bus. Where were we headed? No idea at all. Welcome to China.
It turned out we were headed for the customs and immigration depot yonder. Debussed, x-rayed and freshly burdened with our mighty packs we queued for immigration.
A couple of curious officials paid unusual attention to our passports, but it turned out to be merely because they'd never seen New Zealand passports before. Or so they said, but I noticed one of them was conferring suspiciously with the one on the desk as I went through. But all's well that ends well: stamp stamp stamp, thank you very much, exit order, enter chaos.
Immediately upon our emergence from the terminal we were set upon by all manner of hawkers. They had taxis, motels, restaurants, postcards, watches and DVDs, all of which we apparently desperately needed.
Actually, what we desperately needed was to figure out how to get a bus to Dandong city in which, despite being the ferry destination, this terminal was not.
We wandered aimlessly for abit asking random bus drivers to no avail. FInally some fellow ferry people took pity on us. Ki Tae Min and his mother arranged for a taxi driver to take us to the nearby bus station for ten kwai (colloquial term for yuan). Of course, when the taxi driver got us to the bus station he no longer wanted ten kwai, he wanted ten US dollars. When we couldn't (or wouldn't) produce ten kwai he demanded ten thousand korean won. After much posturing he drove off with twenty kwai and one thousand won, but not before politely helping us don our packs.
The bus to Dandong consisted of 36km of offroad that would make 4WD junkies foam at the mouth. Electing, perhaps wisely perhaps unwisely, not to put our packs on the roof of the bus we somehow wedged them on our laps as positively millions of people were picked up from random locations along the way. 2.5 hours later we dislodged ourselves from the bus having, somewhat miraculously, identified the train station. We booked tickets to Beijing at 6pm that night, checked our packs in storage and set off to discover Dandong.
With the aid of the bus route mapat the station, a bit of logic and Lewis' astounding direction sense we successfully found our way, by foot, to the river front. Keen to catch a glimpse of North Korea we peered across the river...
Nothing. Well, not quite nothing. There were factories and decaying boats, but no smoke poured out of the smokestacks and no people roamed the shore. A large Ferris Wheeel loomeed absurdly on the skyline. At one point I thought I saw a figure run between one clump of trees and the next, but it could have been my imagination.
The only spark of life over there in the ghosttown on the shore was the sporadic glow of arc welding from a point just back from the shoreline. It was bizarre, it was mysterious, but it was also just not very interesting. And bloody freezing. We forewent the sneaky boat tour that allows you to view the not-so-interestingness of the North Korean town-set close up and headed back toward the railway station. The almighty cold pushed us to the downright sensible conclusion that since one section of the Great Wall of China was much like another it was not necessary to hunt down the eastern-most end which terminates somewhere in the Dandong area.
Partwat across town the snow hit. This new onslaught of chill factor drove us indoors to an internet cafe where we emailed away the remainder of the day before heading back to the station to board the train. Farewell Dandong, just the first of many much anticipated non-events on this trip I'm sure.
Sitting on the top deck of the Oriental Pearl surrounded by the Yellow Sea the ink in my pen flows unreliably. The wind is icy but the sun is warm and things are all good.
Except that there's nohing to see at sea, nothing at all. Grey water in every direction, bounded by a grey threatening mist which seems to be edging closer all the time. At 7:40 am, Dandong time, I came here, camera in hand, hoping to sight land; China to the west or North Korea to the east. I considered taking a series of shots to make a 360 degree panorama just to document the emptyness of the view.
Empty, that is, until one minute ago when something emerged from the impending mist. SOme kind of vessel I think. A fishing boat? No sails, low in the water, only one deck. Now there are three and they're close ans getting closer. North Korean military vessels? They don't look threatening. Barges? Hands very cold; initiating gloves. The third ship just passed the second. They're heading south. At least I think it's south: it is my unfortunate affliction to always think I am going north; this time I may actually be right. My pen is getting very difficult to use now.
There seems some significance in our meeting, yet nothing transpires and they pass like...er...ships in the early morning. It's too cold now, time to head in.
[later] On my way in I spotted more mystery boats on the other side, and fishing boats as well. We must be getting close, but still no land.
Make no mistake a fifteen hour boat ride is long. At the start of the trip I was exhuberant: relieved to be finally leaving Korea, looking forward to China, and just generally excited to be on the road. Despite travelling economy class the situation is pretty good: coffee machine, drinks machine (including the all important beer), and water machine; restaurant, duty free shop, snack shop; sea views and Korean cable TV. And after all, it's a night trip so I get to sleep through most of it. Sweeet!
My decline somewhat parallels that of the lavatories. Initially clean, sweet smelling and far more user friendly than those in your average Korean hoff (pub) now the throne is absolutely unusable and the squatters have been reduced to 3am levels in the public stairwell toilets utilised by PC Bangs (Korean internet cafes) and bottom of the line hoffs. In case you are unfamiliar with this phenomenon it translates loosely to 'extraordinarily rank.'
That said, at least the sinks have hot water. An absolute miracle that has people washing their hair in glee. I consider following suit but feel I am out of time. Everyone is packed up and ready to disembark; watching TV and waiting. We must be close.
It is ridiculously hot here in the internet cafe of the Beijing City Central Youth Hostel and the computers are set up for very short people.
So we made it as far as Beijing: no real feat but, naturally, it has still been action packed.
For those losing sleep Bunny was successfully relocated February 17th to a nice man in Seoul who already had other bunnies named Yahoo and Google. As it turns out our Bun-bun was infact a girl, but no matter for between them Yahoo and Google have both genders covered. I only hope Yahoo and Google are ready for Bun-bun.
Stu and Toni arrived from New Zealand at 6 that night and were understandably exhausted so we headed straight back home and turned in. Over the next five days we managed to cram in trips to more than a few places. Gapsa, one of Korea's oldest standing Buddhist temple, was a little disappointing after all the hype, but beautiful nonetheless. Heinsa is the Buddhist Temple which contains the Tripitaka Koreana, and my temple of choice. After three or four visits there it is still engaging and enchanting.
In Busan, southern port town and now Korea's second largest city, we allowed ourselves to be cajolled into a boat ride in a rusty fishing vessel stinking of diesal. It was smelly and noisy and very cool. We also meandered through fish markets and struggled around part of the crumbling wall of the rugged Geumjeongsan fortress. Well, actually Stu and Toni fair flew around whilst Lewis waited patiently for me as I dragged my feet, whinged and stopped to take a zillion photos.
We spent the last day or so in Seoul ice skating, checking out Gyeongbuk Palace and Insadong, and failing to book the DMZ tour. Ice skating was awesome fun, though definitely more for some than for others. Poor Stu was feeling the effects of so much unorthodox food and didn't bother, and Lewis struggled with ill-fitting boots, blisters, and just plain old lack of technique and gave up early. Toni was a natural and was soon attempting all kinds of complicated manoevers. It had been a long time since my roller-skating days, and I'd never fully made the transition to roller-blades so I was quite nervous, but my feet seemed to remember what to do and it wasn't long before I was able to complete a lap or two without desperately clutching the railing. I didn't even fall over once!
Gyeongbukgung was lovely. Respectfully restored, scrupulously maintained and tree filled. Not just that but it had what anthropologist Rodney Needham might have called 'sentiment': thick, ambient, almost tangible cultural meaning and value. That Koreans love this place is evident, and the peacefulness and serenity of its original state is still experientially available. But enought of all that: it was right pretty!
I'm quickly running out of time here and will have to finish this update later, perhaps tomorrow.
Things are good! :)
Well, well, well. Here we are on the home straight counting down, in
fathomable increments, the moments until our departure. In 24 days we will be
sailing idly away from the Port of Incheon; headed, at a leisurely pace, for
the wild blue yonder.
Last update 27 November, so:
I do believe the rest of November wasn't very interesting...
As for December...wound up classes with showings of Monsters Inc. All final
classes passed with minimal fanfare and ambivalent farewells. Only one school
made me meet with their principal and none forced upon me the obligatory cup of
scalding, toxic, Korean pre-mix coffee. I felt strangely offended. At my main
school no-one acknowledged my departure at all, except the photocopy-guy
(technical title) who eagerly acknowledged it about a week and a half before I
was due to leave. I guess he didn't appreciate my handout-heavy teaching
style.
School finished Fri December 23rd, just in time for xmas festivities. What
began as a huge affair, chez nous, quickly dwindled to an intimate affair as
people signed up for overtime and got sick and/or hungover. At one point Lewis
and I looked set to face a whole leg of lamb and an enormous boozy trifle all
on our own, but Tim and Amy came though and turned up from Seoul to give us a
hand. Due to their own illnesses and hangovers it was a very civilised
evening. Eggnog was eschewed in favour of red wine, and intelligent
conversation ensued rather than drinking games. A grand feast of a time was
had by all, and the christmas stockings I made were a hit.
We then worked two winter English camps, two weeks apart. The first, at
Daech'eon beach, started on Boxing Day and finished on New Years Eve. Could
they have selected a worse location and time?! The camp at Daech'eon Beach is
a story all of its own, which I will relate at a different time and place. It
was the epitome of Korean English Kampness (as opposed to campness which, of
course, measures the pinkness of the tents); 13 hour working days, terrible
cafeteria food, mis-communication, misunderstandings, disorganisation and sheer
fucking chaos. The second camp, in Gonju, was a cakewalk by comparison. 9:30
starts, 4:50 finishes and 2 hour lunches in an ancient capital with 6 other
foreigners made for interesting walks, interesting talks and many a drink. The
Gonju Office of Education put us up in a love motel called 'Smile' and gave us
cash to pay for meals so it was all about reasonable accommodation and a
different restaurant every night. Some of the other foreigners were a bit
kooky though (I'm talking to you Jessica!). New Years passed drunkenly in
Seoul somewhere in the middle there.
So, that brings us to Now. Now is a very good time to be in. Now is my
reward for 3 years of hard work and stress. Now is the validation of our
decision, 11 months ago, to just get on the damn plane when things were falling
apart and all we wanted to do was stay in NZ. Since January 20, when the
second camp finished, we have been doing...nothing. It's winter vacation;
school's still out and the camps are over. The last days of our contract
stretch before us filled with nothing in particular. It's bliss. Our credit
card is showing a credit balance for the first time in over 5 years. Our final
pay will be close to 15 000 New Zealand dollars, and that's going to buy us a
lot of wild blue, yonder. My Dad just sent me a colour photocopy of my
recently conferred honours degree; and it says 'First Class.' This year we
celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary and our 10th year together. Things are
good.
I am, right now, completely content. It's a very nice feeling.
Back to three our heroes now brave the land of the lotus eaters: the lazy Laos People's Democratic Republic 20060602-present.
in which the five make their way towards the northern border with Thailand swearing the whole time to cut down on beer ... 20060501-20060528
in which the now five intrepid explorers drink their way southward through Viet Nam to Chau Doc, just short of the Vinh Xuong land border with Cambodia 20060405-20060501
...liminil...
