Sometimes you just Choose the Wrong Song

So... Let's talk about Chengdu.

Friday night I arrived in Chengdu, having left Guilin with promises of one day returning, into the unknown of the Panda's Paradise. After a quick flight, I soon had a bag and was greeted with the barrage of Taxi drivers explaining to me that I couldn't possibly reach the city without their special services, something I was already quite experienced with turning down. A moment later I was rushing along an unknown bus route, bound for the inner ring road of downtown Chengdu.

After approximating my location to be somewhere near the city center, I hopped off the bus and grabbed a cab over to the hostel, a street the taxi driver had never heard of. Sooner or later he dropped me off with vague instructions and a quick point somewhere off the main set of roads into some all walking areas, accompanied with a barrage of Mandarin probably telling something along the lines of "it's somewhere over there... good luck, you'll need it". 60 pound pack and guitar in tow, I managed to walk just about everywhere but in the right direction. Just as it began to get really dark out, I stumbled onto the dragon town youth hostel, and Harrison managed to find me wondering why I didn't just crash at his place.

Confusion aside, I dumped the luggage and we went over to his pad to collect his roommate and get some drinks. Harrison I had met over in Shenzhen during the warm up trip, and I had some idea that the DC based English teacher knew exactly what he was doing when it came to grabbing a drink and talking to a girl. One of his best friends from home, Phil, had decided to leave DC as well and come over to Chengdu to also give English teaching a go, and it took no more than 5 minutes before I was re-immersed in thick American slang, soaking up the sarcasm as the first drop of water after walking across a wide desert.

We hit a couple of places around town, Phil, Harrison and I all of completely like mind in not wasting a Friday night without extracting every bit of adventure and intrigue we could find before the massive intake of alcohol served to knock us out wherever we may have sat down for just a minute too long. Phone numbers, photos, and a terrific hangover the next day served as silent testament to the success of the prior semi-recalled events, Saturday morning.

Deciding not to take it too hard, we took an easy day with the local food and wandering around the general area, Harrison and Phil quietly adjourning to their respective beds, leaving me to my own devices for a while. I wasn't particularly bent on a hard day of exploring the unknown, so I headed back to the hostel to pick up my stuff to move over to Harrison's. I didn't move too fast when I got there, choosing to blame my inaction on the slight rain outside, and plopped down in the hostel common room to watch a movie or two. With a British couple named Ollie and Lucy.

It was their first time in China, having spent the last 2 years or so traveling around the Asian rim. Most recently they had come from India, so we swapped tales and killed time for a couple of hours until I finally gathered enough steam to pick up my pack and head back over to Harrison's, where he had kindly offered me a couch to crash on for the duration of my Chengdu stay. We all decided to call it an early evening, grabbing some local spicy Sichuan street food (they cook everything on a stick right in front of you on portable grills they drag around usually on bikes - the food was incredibly fresh and tasty, and often an entire dinner ran to only 5 - 10 yuan, depending on how much you wanted).

The next day Harrison and Phil set off with my cell to take some pictures for some articles that they were writing for a new Chengdu magazine hitting press for the first issue soon. I opted for another slow day, where I explored some of the nearby Tianfu Square (the central square of the city) with the massive statue of Mao waving to the people, and some of the surrounding area. I soon found the sister hostel to Dragon Town called the Loft, looking to see if they happened to have any bikes available for rent. At the time, I didn't think it particularly odd that I was carrying my guitar around, as it normally doubled as my day bag while I was in strange cities.

The people waiting in the hostel common room had an entirely different notion of that matter, however.

I began with an awkward sweep around the room, taking in all of the facilities and the rough layout, trying to move slow enough not to be noticed by fast enough that everyone who was staring at me would just piss off for a moment, forget I was there, and go back to whatever the hell it was that they had been doing. A group of 7 or 8 Chinese people, mostly women, were gathered around the bar, a long bench set just in front of it filled to capacity, with an unnatural silence and hushed voices suddenly speaking in low tones with at least one or two of them looking off in my direction to wonder at the aberration that had just entered the room. A tall white guy was playing some kind of game vaguely resembling a chess board at a table with a few girls, all puzzling over the incomprehensible movements that seemed to be the norm in the game. A couple of guys were huddled around one end of the pool table talking in newly whispered tones, one or two of which also perfectly tracked my movement as I traversed the length of the room. I was glad to have a moment to pause significantly at the other end, taking in a glassed off smaller room where everyone was entranced in a television thankfully pointing their vision away from my unknown presence not far behind them.

I swept back around, alternately wondering if I should take off or not. Nearly all the seats were occupied, leaving me with the option of either awkwardly introducing myself to one group or the other, or just giving up and leaving the awkward moment to disappear from everyone's collective memories with a shake, returning my presence to the realm of earlier invisibility.

I wasn't going to give up that easily.

I made my way back across the room, and decided to grab a beer from the fridge. Suddenly having a purpose to being in the room, most of the people went back to whatever it had been that they were doing before I entered, the busy keystrokes of people tapping away emails on the two free-to-use computers on the wall providing the only sound above the slightly raised conversational hum that began to return.

"How much," I inquired.

"6 Yuan."

"Thanks," I replied, dropping a 10-note on the end of the bar. I took the new authority of having entered the realm of paying-customers for a spin, and tapped the guy with about 2 inches of free space at the end of the long bench on the shoulder.

"Mind if I sit here?"

"Go right ahead," he replied in slightly accented English, adding perhaps another 6 inches of behind-space for my pleasure, compressing god knows what against the other mass of people somehow occupying just one bench.

"Thanks."

I went on in the time honored tradition of trying to balance the guitar in some fashion against the glass front of the refrigerator door, desperately trying to avoid the guitar's keen desire to slide one way or the other and happily clang itself loudly and noisily on the floor. The guy offering me the bench gladly offered occasional support in the balancing act, pointing when it began to slide one way or the other, before I just resolved myself to holding it with one arm and slugging the beer with the other.

It didn't take very long for the curiosity to overwhelm one pretty Chinese girl sitting nearby.

"Is that your guitar?"

"Occasionally.."

"Huh?"

"Sorry, I meant yes. Do you want to see it?"

"Sure."

You can guess roughly how it went after that. At some point, the tall white guy came over when I happened to hit just the right song, and introduced himself as a Canadian named Dave. Helen and a girl in Electrical Engineering both humored me by acting interested through the set. The Chinese people at the bar loved it. The people on the Internet managed to keep from acting too annoyed from the quiet solitude of Internetting being completely destroyed. And one or two of the people from the pool table starting throwing out requests.

"Mind if I take a few pictures," one guy asked, camera in tow.

"Sure," I called out between songs just as I began starting to play an old favorite, Denis Leary's "Asshole" song, "go right ahead."

"I'm Bill by the way."

"I'm Guy, nice to meet you," I managed before the intro ended and I launched full force into the song.

It didn't quite come off the way that I had expected it to. It damn well didn't come off the way that I had pretty much ever played it. Here I was, winding up to one of my favorites, that usually had the audience in tears or at least good cheer, and when I finished the damn thing, everyone failed to make eye contact and a hushed silence came.

Dave bailed me out. "Love that one, man."

"Thanks, I was wondering if anyone heard it," I managed before the hush resumed in force.

Bill put his camera away and shook my hand again. "I guess I'm going to have to get a guitar for the hostel. You're pretty good, you should have a lot of fun doing this in this city."

"Thanks a lot, really appreciate it."

"I'll put the photos on the hostel website if you don't mind. Still trying to get this room just right."

"Ahh, cool," I muttered, starting to pick up on the hidden mention of authority in his last statement, and choosing not to draw it out. "That's cool. Do you work here?"

"Yeah, I run the place."

"Ah, of course. Thanks for letting me play here."

"Anytime Guy. Gotta run, have fun in Chengdu."

"Thanks Bill. Talk to you later."

And he took off. The silence turned into scandalized smiles as the other people all decided to make eye contact with me once more.

"We all work here," one of them spoke up as the self-nominated spokesperson, "and he's the boss."

"Yeah, maybe that wouldn't be the best song to play," another quietly added.

"Ah well," I replied, something of a pro in the art of whiffing and generally screwing up, "sometimes you just pick the wrong song to play."

They all laughed, and we got back to the business of playing some slightly more general audience kinds of music. The beers started to fly by again, and Dave learned a move or two of Kung Fu from the spokesperson in the empty space behind. The pretty Chinese girl requested a few more songs to perk me back up, while letting me know that she worked at the desk downstairs during most of the morning. She managed to stuff a few pringles in my mouth in between versus as well, since I let her know that I was somewhat starving at the time.

A short while later, the electrical engineering girl retired, and I had broken enough strings on the guitar to make me want to put it down. Someone threw on some hip hop music, and Dave, Helen, and another tall guy had adjourned to a side table to talk about the day and map out some ideas for where to adventure tomorrow.

I joined them a little later, finding out that the tall guy was a Brit named Chris, and had been traveling with Helen since somewhere around Beijing. Helen had studied Mandarin in college for a few years, and was able to translate a few of us out of some corners we'd painted ourselves into during some of the discussion with the Chinese. All and all a good start to things, and it wasn't long before I headed back to Harrison's to rediscover that the guy near the gate that closes off the 3 or 4 apartment buildings where he lived locked the gates every night at about 10, and you needed to tip him a couple of yuan for the trouble of waking him up. Him, Phil and I did a quick recap of the day before I lay down on my new domicile, the couch in the living room, and passed out, knowing that I was in Chengdu now, for real.

Writings of the Soul Weary

Hello my three confirmed (not really) readers.

At least one of you got on my case today about the fact that I haven't
written anything in a while, and now the guilt is keeping me from
thinking about much other than putting something in the blog (though I
admit there were a couple of funny moments in the Chinese dubbed version
of the Karate Kid I, not the least of which was that when Daniel Laruso
was screaming out "WOOHOO!!" at the end of the movie, apparently that
didn't translate as well as the other things they just left alone in
English like "Hey" and "Do it" that seemed to have slipped by unscathed).

I arrived tonight in Changsha in the Hunan province, fairly close to the
birthplace of Mao, much as the plane ticket indicated that I would. On
the plane trip I spent a little time brainstorming about the events of
Chengdu, the place I was for the last week, and found myself stuck on
one or two of the days that magically "disappeared" in the recollection,
promising myself to try cross indexing the notes with the text messages
in my cell when the plane was on the ground. Most of the events were
recalled, so I figured it would be fairly easy to write up the mess, but
something went wrong every time I tried to start the write up.

The events of last night kept creeping up on my mind.

Well, I don't have an editor, so when I spend long enough staring at a
blank text document and nothing starts to materialize, I usually let it
slide and figure that the few readers out there won't particularly mind
a minor setback in the press release time table regularity, and promise
myself to pick it up again later with a fresh mind and let the ideas
roll. Sometimes picking it back up is more like forcing a square peg
into a round hole, but the job usually ends up getting done sooner or later.

I managed to mostly expunge the events of last night from creeping back,
and set myself anew to composing the tales. Then after a long stream of
one focused though after another, I realized that I really wasn't going
to get anywhere. I had a growing feeling of connectedness and sadness
to the world as my range of recollection ran beyond my focus of one
week, and the comments that had been eating away from those outside of
China, those in the US, and those of the new people met tonight and the
ones remet from not long ago began to add up. The walks between the
places we were tonight weighed heavier than they should have, as my mind
wandered to a disembodied third person point of view looking back at me
with the group of few men keeping the honor guard of showing the
entirely too hyped up guitarist one place after another around the
campus of the polytechnic university in Changsha, while the pretty girls
hinted of such wonders as may soon be seen in the city environs and
worried after my comfort with the new confusing surroundings. I kept a
mind to what they were seeing, the energy clear and the curiosity peaked
in this entourage about me, while keeping my thoughts to the sheer
unreality of the whole experience, reminding myself it was all real.

And then we were saying our goodbyes and I was back at the comfortable
hotel. Plans made to somehow wake me up at an absurdly early hour
tomorrow morning.

Leaving me here, with all of you.

It's a heavy feeling, this one I want to show you and yet struggle for
words as to how to describe. I'm getting a lot of flashbacks, small
bits of memories, some good, more not so good, and perfect fidelity in
the mistakes made and the visions of the people missed. It's a feeling
you get when you have something lying in front of you to do on the bed,
but your head is sorta stuck upside and sideways over a misaligned
pillow, and you just can't seem to summon the will to pick up a hand and
begin the process of taking up to do whatever it is that you were going
to do when you put whatever it was on your bed in the first place to be
done. I can hear the notes of the songs I sang coming back to me with
all of the vivid nature as they were actually played in the memories I
recall, complete with the soft scratch of my hand sliding along the neck
of the guitar and the twang when I didn't quite pluck the string at
entirely the right angle with the perfect bit of force. The rich
imperfection of nature, without it's synthesized sounding exactitude,
every single time you play the same note.

I had thoughts of a girl (don't worry, you'll read about Shannon soon
enough), twisted with the comments Enny and Chris left me with when they
listened to the lyrics of my song about wandering. The half formed
image of Phil and Harrison slapping my hand in goodbye sunk into my
deeply sleep filled state, reversely echoing the loud thumping techno
bass beats from Club 7 that left me wanting sleep so badly. A text from
Susie complemented another from Fletcher, with the call to come play
guitar by the Chengdu bar owner icing the cake. When all of these small
little things added up, they added to complete inaction, as I found I
couldn't reach forward and pick up the keyboard to type about any of the
events of last week.

I will, I just wanted to ramble for a little while. Thanks for humoring me.

Greetings from Changsha! So long Chengdu...

To Mail a Wander Blog

Just a quick note / test.

It's been a lot of trouble lately getting the blog to post with the
difficult bandwidth requirements and connectivity issues I've run into
in China, so I decided to poke around the blogger website a little bit
to look for an alternative. It turns out that they have a mail to blog option ( http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=41452 ) which allows you to send your posts as emails, and
publish them for you automagically.

So let's see if this works, and life gets just a tad easier for me!
Talk to you all later.

The Happy Buddha

As you already know, I rose Thursday afternoon in a haze of confusion as my mind stuttered like a rusty old starter motor squaling in protest at the notion of trying to turn the engine in its days well past its prime. Jimmy's comment had the effect of taking a solid hammer and giving it a carefully applied good whack to snap things into operation.

"I-- what--"

"You--"

"Right," I abruptly cut him off, knowing as a man damned by his own hand exactly what he had done, "I forgot. I better go apologize to Mickey--"

He laughed. "Oh no no," he managed between chuckles, "you misunderstand. You need not worry, she thinks you're rather funny. I think they might come out again later, with today being your last night in Guilin."

I had closed my eyes during the flashback of the memory. It seemed appropriate to slowly bring my hand to the bridge of my nose to banish the pain, though for what reason completely escaped me. I shake my hand when I stub my toe to get the pain out, and I suppose that that makes about the same amount of sense, on reflection. None of these actions had the desired effect of undoing what I now knew I had done last night.

"Come on," Jimmy said, coming to my rescue, "Let's go meet the girls, they're at the train station. Then we get some dumplings like you like."

"I don't know if I'm ready to face Mickey just--"

"Mickey? No! Mickey and Kari, they're at work! Lisa and Linda, they come from Yangshuo."

"Oh." This had the kind of motivational effect he desired. At least this was a different kind of trouble I could wrap my head around. Balance in all things, as Jimmy constantly taught me.

We ventured forth from the warmth of the hotel into the strength of the cold that had unseasonably come to Guilin to shake the natural order up a bit. The train station was only a 5 minute walk from my hotel, but Jimmy let me know that the girls might be waiting as I'd taken a little longer than he predicted, so we made it in 2 to head off any trouble. I had taught him the oft-broken maxim to "never keep a lady waiting" as we headed out in the fast-style Hong Kong walk.

Lisa and Linda were already there, and must have observed our racing pace when we arrived before we noticed them. They were all smiles at the brief reunion, and we soon set off for my new favorite dumpling place, the girls recanting their tales of their visit to the ancient city of Xingping, about an hour away from Yangshuo.

As we came to the street where stalls lined the already narrow pedestrian boulevard, a young girl selling flowers approached the group, choosing some likely targets in Jimmy and me seeing us paired with two girls. She moved away from Jimmy as he managed to nonchalantly gesture that he wasn't interested, and began plying me with her surprisingly fluent English.

"Rose sir buy a flower sir perhaps the pretty girl would like a flower," she managed all in one breathe.

"No, I--"

"Buy flower sir only 2 Yuan," she continued, and then suddenly switched gears as she came up very close to me. Her free hand immediately darted out and rubbed a rough circle on my stomach. "Happy Buddha," she declaimed, taking in my smile and belly in a slightly louder voice.

I laughed. The others laughed. I gently disengaged and chose to try out some of my Mandarin with her. After following us for about a block away occasionally correcting my pronunciation, she finally lost interest and began to head back.

The dumplings weren't quite as good as they had been the day before, but you still got a large heaping plate of steamed dumplings for around a buck. The girls let us know that they had to be back in Yangshuo in a couple of hours, so we set out to do some site seeing along the Li Jiang river. We caught glimpses of the glass bridge / gazebo and one of the pretty local parks in Guilin, before settling down for a cup of coffee at a small restaurant set over the river (through the Dragon gate, as they let me know remembering my Chinese name). A middle aged woman had the horizontal harp looking ancient Chinese instrument (the one you hear the blind man play during the fight seen in the movie Hero) and offered to play one of about 20 songs for a couple of Yuan; we took her up on it, gently allowing the fusion of the eastern harmonies with the western liquid stimulant as the sun set over the river. What must have been a few hours later, we brought the girls back to the train station and huffed it towards the main bridge where Mickey was waiting to meet us.

Without much say in it, I was definitely indirectly teaching Jimmy that the whole "never keep a lady waiting" idea wasn't one that we managed to make good on very often. I won't take all the blame for it though, cause Mickey was getting out of work earlier than we'd expected, so we went for the next best thing and came as close to a running walk as we could reasonably manage.

She was waiting with a smile and probing eyes, with the look of an innocent girl wondering what scandal I might cause today. I started to mumble an apology but she brushed it off before I had any traction with it and let me know that she had had fun last night. Conferring briefly, we decided to go for some Korean BBQ, but were interrupted by the airline service letting me know that they were going to drop off my ticket now rather than the time they'd indicated. A quick cab ride or two and Kari met up with us, and we began grilling away food on the small Korean grill set in the center of the table.

Leaving the restaurant, we paused awhile to watch a few kids trying to work out some new tricks on a skateboard, a few ramps and pipes set up to mess around on. There was bar right there we decided to try out, where I set to teaching them an old favorite dice game (7/11/doubles for those of you who've had the misfortune of trying it out). All in all a fun night, but a relatively calm night. And sooner or later it was time to say our goodbyes.

Jimmy met me the next morning as had become his ritual, helping me to avoid catching the late check out fee and managing to talk the hotel into giving me some hot water (they still were shutting the damn thing off somewhere around 10:30 instead of 12 like they promised). We decided to grab some food and chat for a couple hours at one of the sidewalk coffee shops, and then I got a text from Harrison in Chengdu.

"Yeah man, I'm here. Chengdu is pretty cool. Hit me on this number when you get to town."

I relayed the gist of it to Jimmy and then added, "I guess it's time to hit the road."

"Hit the road. I will remember that."

"Take care man."

"Yeah.. And come back like you said!"

He began to show me the way to the airport bus station, when another small kid walked up to me, flower in hand.

"Flower sir? Buy flower?"

"No," I laughed, recalling the incident with the girl, "the Buddha doesn't need a flower."

Perfectly on cue, a small hand darted out and began the same circular motion and programmed response.

"Happy Buddha!"

A Brief Visit to Disneyland -- In Guilin

It took me a few days to find something to write about, after falling asleep Sunday, of what struck me earlier that night as a perfect day, but time barrels on and so did the adventures. Despite the happiness Sunday gave me, I didn't embark on this trip or in life to just search for one day as the pinnacle of being, then throw in the towel (yes, I know exactly where my towel is) and jump off this mortal coil knowing that the job of living was finally done. More has since happened, not to overthrow the perfection of that day, but rather to sneak up beside it to complement it, and just be a little bit different.

Jimmy and I did recognize the fact that Monday morning that it was time to go move on to elsewhere and with little speech reassembled our packs and dropped them off behind the hotel desk after checking out. We managed to catch Lisa (the monitor) and her friend Linda for a leisurely brunch, swapping notes on the festivities last night and making the standard promises to find each other again. They were both coming up on a week break from school and were heading back to their home town of Changsha in the Hunan province, suggesting that I throw it on my near future itinerary. We lingered briefly on the goodbye, and Jimmy and I collected our gear and caught the bus back to Guilin.

The next few days were a blur that a Filipino friend of mine (Douglas) likes to refer to Boy's Kind of Days, after he confessed that he hadn't shown me much of the sites in Cebu, but rather the relaxing massages, the bars, and regional techniques for initiating conversation with the enemy camp (women). We did go for a massage. We did exchange regional techniques. There might have even been a bar or three thrown in for good measure. But after Douglas' confession came to mind at the end of my first time in the Philippines, I was careful to make sure to build in at least a couple of things in the agenda not in the sole province of Boy's Kind of Days.

Jimmy and I began Tuesday with a faint plea that I had to do some work by acquiring an Internet (GPRS) enabled SIM card. This turned out to be a Herculean task of refusing to accept that China Mobile didn't have such a service, as we competed with the long lines of cash bill-payers (most transactions in China are settled by cash-in-person type payments; credit exists, but largely remains in the hands of the few and foreign), to chase down a product that nearly none of the local representatives had heard.

Perseverance proved its worth. It was the third major China mobile store that held the answer, the vaunted 800 megabyte-transfer-per-month GPRS enabled SIM (200 yuan). Finally the dream of being able to hike up the side of a mountain in Yangshou and still be fair game to be yelled at by my boss was a reality, and I could try to earn income while seeing the world in the information age. I'm fairly split on this, remembering the very technologically free neo-luddite travel style of backpacking in Europe as a happy way to go, but it seems like the best bet for now.

The errand out of the way, Jimmy and I set to carousing the endless stalls of the night market, searching for small trinkets of cultural and aesthetic value while trying to avoid the plunge to commercial mania of the endless racks of Beijing, 2008 (Olympics) paraphernalia. One or two things jumped out at me, so I dusted off the bargaining skills to see if they were still sharp.

Jimmy's laughter and the occasional good humored curse but promise to return of a hawker let me know that the skills were still ok, despite dulling a little bit from misuse. While I needed to acquire some presents for the family back home, sometimes I wonder if the only reason that I like shopping in China is the process of actually haggling over the goods, rather than acquiring the goods. And family, you can skip over reading that last bit, of course the treasures that I acquire for loved ones is the sole reason that I go shopping at all.

That night we caught a couple of drinks and decided to change it up a little bit and sing some karaoke. Sooner or later the bed began to call and we passed out at our respective abodes a tad inebriated and more than a little hoarse. Hey, you can't have everything.

Wednesday I awoke to the pounding of Jimmy on my door. I had gone into a deep sleep after stubbornly refusing to rise for the incessant calls of housekeeping, trying desperately and without rest to turn the perfectly nested and comfortable lay of my sheets into a more ordered and tightly made bed; come on, you know how hard it is to get the pillow just right and the cold just perfectly locked away into some kind of cocoon... Let's not be hasty here with imposing the harsh rigidity of order.

Jimmy didn't give up, and soon was sitting in a chair by the window patiently waiting out the difficult process of me coming to rise without the promise of coffee and a bagel. I'll really should pay him for putting up with this crap. Well, you all know I'm not much of a morning person, so I'll let it pass. As consciousness began to form, Jimmy presented some ideas for parks, rivers, and bridges to go see, before running into Mickey at 5 when she got off work.

"Huh," I mumbled inquisitively, a creeping doubt telling me that something was out of place there, but my mind refusing to yield its nature.

"We will go to the park and--"

"Yeah yeah. Something about a friend."

He laughed and straightened with alacrity. "Oh yes, Mickey! Mickey Mouse."

"Like... The Rat?"

"No, he's a mouse, Disney and all--"

"Yeah yeah," my Florida culture overriding euphemism, "The rat. What about Mickey Mouse?"

"Yeah! She's my friend! She's very small, like a mouse, so I call her the Mickey Mouse."

"Minnie is the--"

"No, Mickey."

"Right. We see Mickey Mouse."

"Ok! But not til around 5, she has work. We go to the park find--"

"Right. Let me try the shower, shake off sleep."

Jimmy was half way to the phone when he heard my yell. A few moments later, I stormed out of the bathroom with all vestiges of sleep removed, and a cold look of hatred directed at the world, as I vigorously assembled the guitar and hack.

"You okay Guy? What's wrong?"

"There's.no.hot.water," I mumbled between chattering teeth in a rather flat tone.

Jimmy laughed a moment before deciding that I probably wouldn't immediately see the humor in it, when he quickly cut it off and kindly kept the joke to himself.

We ventured out to get some food (the plates of local pork dumplings are not to be missed) and kill some time before heading over to the large bridge near the famous elephant trunk hill where Mickey worked. The "elephant" is a large rock peninsula rising sharply to form a hill, with a natural spill of rocks falling without motion into the water, giving the surprising effect of an elephant drinking water. After some sightseeing, we headed over the bridge to a nearby park, where a small building to the left of the entrance held a small "pearl museum" and pearl store, where Mickey worked.

Mickey turned out to be quite a little bundle of energy. Clear seeing eyes laced with intelligence looked out from a cute little Chinese girl, flowing black hair echoing her movements with a mercurial demeanor. She had a ready smile and spoke in clear English as she introduced herself, before turning back to Jimmy and explaining away a host of things I couldn't possibly follow in a high pitched Mandarin. This left me to the business of haggling for some pearls, without much intention of making a purchase. The history and dose of shiny were enough to keep me occupied, before we headed outside and hackey-sacked and played guitar for a while.

Mickey soon joined us with her friend Kari, a slightly taller girl with asian style bangs and more than a hint of trouble wafting around the air near her as she walked. Equally friendly, Kari had spent even more time mastering English communication, so naturally we found something or other to talk about while we continued the endless fight between gravity and the hackey sack. Both girls proved themselves as reasonably adept at the game, Jimmy excelling after plenty of practice in the last week or so.

Having the critical mass to make it worth while, we spent some time dipping meat and vegetables in the boiling soup in the center of the table for some spicy hotpot. I knew Sichuan province was around the corner, so it was time to begin boning up on my spicy food intake to be ready for game time. Despite the language barrier, the girls quickly realized I was a joker, and we proceeded to get to know each other in true form, Jimmy obviously happy that the people he'd brought together were hitting it off.

We aren't going to talk about the crazed frenetic packed environment of the LV club later that night. Oddly enough, Jimmy mentioned something to me in the morning ritual of him sitting by the window as I slowly fought away the fog of slumber something that had slipped my memory.

"I didn't realize you were that strong."

Uh oh. "Uh oh," I said on reflection, as I chose to vocalize that thought.

"But then, I suppose Mickey Mouse is pretty light, after all..."

A Perfect Day

As I already hinted at in the last message, I wasn't exactly in stellar condition when Saturday morning rolled around, but at the least I did manage to let the 'rents know I was still alive and managed to set some kind of Yangshou record for staying in bed most of the day. There was a brief attempt to rally late in the afternoon and even to try to stomach more than a couple of bites of solid food, but after stumbling along after Jimmy for an hour or so and a very poor attempt to hackey sack, I called it a wash and went back to the Hotel to nurse my misery.

It may be noted that it really takes a day as useless and crappy as that to truly appreciate what happened Sunday. I agree with Jason Lee's character in Vanilla Sky - you can't have the sweet without having the sour; the sour just makes the sweet sweeter.

The sour was pretty damn low end, even amongst bad hangovers. Something of a leader, that recent memory can recall.

Sunday began with the simple appreciation that I was whole again, and able to maneuver. It was immediately followed by a ravenous hunger that quickly reminded me that I hadn't really had much at all yesterday; after a quick conference with Jimmy (he was already up), we threw some things together and hit the road.

After another failed attempt to get mobile data service (the thought of being able to send the blog in from the side of a mountain somewhat appealed to me) - more on this in the future, Jimmy and I rented a couple of bikes and took off for the countryside. It's been probably 10 years since I've been on a bike, but you know what they say about "Once you know how to ride a bike..." so I figured it was time to give it a shot. Taking pictures from a cameraphone while riding on a dirt road isn't a very exact science, so I definitely lost some of the more vivid images from the journey, but the pictures that I did get (when I figure out how to get them online) will probably give you the general idea of how beautiful it is out there among the valleys and sharp rises of the small mountains. I did manage to sneak one online though - take a look here at Moon Hill.

It's something of a truism to say that a lot of people bike in China, but I wasn't really prepared for the enormity of it. That particular Sunday we raced in and out of tour groups, school kids taking an afternoon, families going for a peaceful ride, and foreigners that I was happy to notice were generally looking a lot more lost than I was. Things being what they are, I tried to remember a couple of my old mountain bike tricks and managed to jump the bike off of the shoulder on a road back to blow by one particular slow going group that'd been giving us some trouble in passing.

What I didn't expect was the middle aged father looking guy dressed in black to come blowing by me clearly looking to race. It wasn't until I saw his cute little daughter smiling in that impish sort of way and give me a wave that unambiguously stated, "haha slow poke" who was sitting in a basket chair affixed over the black rider's back wheel.

That was just not going to stand.

I brought my gearless wonder of a mountain bike to bear on the matter and engaged in the race. I blew ahead of him by surprise until he realized that I wasn't going to take the matter lying down, and soon we were both standing on peddles pushing for all we were worth. I figured his handicap of carrying along the 20 pound cute menace was more than offset by the fact that I hadn't done much physical exertion other than lifting the beer mug to my mouth in a few years, so the race seemed fair by all reasonable accounts. A couple of kilometers later he began to flag after I'd held the front position for a while, despite some of the chinese protests being emitted by his daughter.

At least until his very able bodied niece decided to do something about it.

I didn't even see her coming, but this time it was very clear exactly what she was saying in the international parlance of our time as she proceeded to smoke me and cut me off rather abruptly with a loud more mature tone of "take that!" in her native tongue. Jimmy had just managed to catch up and was explaining to me that I was a bit of a crazy rider on a bike, something I must have picked up from my past, as he smiled from the immediate understanding of whatever it was that the girl had told me in a syllable or two before the abrupt unseating of the front position. He dropped off his philosophizing and only nodded to me and smiled as he quickly saw midsentence my facial expression telling him, "I mean no disrespect to your current dialogue, but I have a terrible need to go racing after that girl and it just can't bloody wait another second". A quick wave and a "go" followed shortly after, but the gesticulation and verbalization only reflected damply off the nearby trees as I was already long gone.

I'll cut to the chase. I almost had her, but she was making me work for every inch of it. And there was no way that I could keep up the long journey back at the level of expenditure I was forced too just to keep my tire in line with hers, let alone to get ahead. I abruptly exhaled my surrender and began to fall off to a more reasonable face.

For a bit of gloating that was well below the level that I expected, she soon dropped back to a reasonable pace and began breathing just 10% less than I was going; it was some small measure of recompense for the loss. Soon the others caught up (Jimmy adding some kind consolation about her incredible skill that he was kind enough to inflate for the sake of my ego) and we rode back the last few kilometers as a group, joking around and one of the guys who was hanging on to the fast girls bike to use as a tow practicing his English with me. All in all, an excellent afternoon.

Back in town, I nearly fell off my bike when Jimmy told me that we'd done about 35 kilometers in a little over an hour, including the breaks for observation and water along the way. I weakly told him that I needed to stick to walking for a while, and we returned the bikes to the shop and began to head back to the waterfront where the hotel was located.

After a quick stop back at the hotel to grab the essentials, we went back out for some entertainment. The people of Yangshuo are very friendly, and soon enough we had a pretty decent hack circle going and some accomplices in crime for the day. The girls invited us to a social of some sort that their school was putting on that night, and we decided to take them up on it.

We met up with a couple of the people we'd run into the first day and visited a couple more of the sites around town. Later that night, we went over to the English school and spent some time doing all the sorts of things that you can imagine one can do at a college level school function that doesn't have fancy attire or anything even mildly resembling alcohol at it. After a few rounds of some odd language games, they pushed me to start playing.

I went at it for perhaps an hour, the audience providing all of the feedback I needed to know there was some sort of musical fit being found. One of the people that I met there was Lisa, a monitor of some sort (I knew from the difficulty that it took Jimmy to render the word that it wasn't the sort of thing to directly translate), who encouraged me to play a few more songs than I probably intended, and all of the students were completely ecstatic for the opportunity to try out their English with a native. I had to applaud their hard efforts, even though it served as a reminder for how little my Mandarin had progressed thus far.

Emails and SMSs swapped, the students had to turn in much not the manner of American college students to make it to class early the next morning. Our hungers for the night far from sated, Jimmy and I proceeded to hit the bar strip for a drink or two before calling it an early night ourselves. That was how we found ourselves at the Red Capitalist Club.

Obvious logical contradictions aside, the place was awash with smoke machine and laser lights that had long been banned from the US and kept to such non-US-frequented destinations such as Cancun. The place was dominated by a large dance floor with a bar cutting out a corner, with two sides forming a U filled with tables. At the corner was a small raised platform with some instruments arrayed, giving at least one backpacker hopes to fill a wild imagination.

After a couple of songs went by, a few musicians got on stage and started to play. The crowd seemed happy by the local tunes, while I tried to put away some drinks and muster some courage.

Suffice it to say, though I doubt the people understood most of what I was saying, the music communicated something or other after the waitress told me it was ok to play a song and I was fed a barrage of "one more song!" every time I tried to put the guitar down and sneak off the stage. We eventually left the club to pass out back at the hotel, taking only a few minutes to reflect on how the day had gone.

"That was it, Jimmy."

"It was what?"

"That.. was a perfect day."

"Yeah. I think... Very good day."

"Night," I muttered, knowing sleep was nowhere nearby after my brain cyclically rehashed the fun of the last 24 hours.

"Goodnight," he replied, with the tone of finality that let me know he, of all people, could actually just fall asleep.

A Midspring Night's Performance

Saying that the vistas of Yangshuo are picturesque is much the same as declaring that water is wet.

I had the impression that this famed city of romanticist beauty would live up to its claims during the hour-long bus ride to its demesnes, and I was happy to find that I wasn't led astray. The mountains seemed to rise up out of nothing, thickly greened with verdant short forestation, abruptly rising with the complete lack of foothills to aide the sharp transition. They are densely clustered about the quickly flowing Li river, leading to the immediate impression of the inspiration behind the brightly colored moving frescoes one might see at a high end Chinese restaurant. To gaze at their splendor is to become entangled in their allure, and not easily will they loosen their grip to go`about your life once more.

Jimmy and I rolled into town in the early afternoon, where we were quickly led off the bus and my pack efficiently dumped at our feet. I lugged the great weight on, and we trudged through a small town full of street vendors and foreigners, and the occasional bent back of an old woman balancing a long stick with two large counterbalanced sacks of produce set much the way of old fashioned scales.

After dropping off the luggage, hackey-sack and guitar in tow, we set off for some much desired food and adventure. As was becoming habit, we feasted like kings on plate after plate of elaborate dishes, adding up to less than the cost of a McDonald's happy meal in the US. Jimmy assured me that the rice noodles, a regional favorite dish, was quite up to snuff with Guangxi standards. A quick walking tour and orientation followed, Jimmy graciously showing me in an hour or so what may have taken days (at best) trying to glean the information from the tour book. With the essentials finally out of the way, we began looking for a bit of fun.

We walked over to a small square, set on the other side of the street across from a small Shakespearean looking pavilion set against the Li river. Without much further debate, I pulled the hackey sack out of the guitar case, and we proceeded directly to the business at hand. Jimmy was growing quite proficient at his new art, so it wasn't much trouble to continue the endless war against gravity and keep the footbag off the ground.

After a few deft words in Mandarin to a couple of playful pretty girls, we soon enlisted some fresh recruits in our unending battles. Jimmy later told me that part of the trick was in getting them to see the opportunity in having a chance to practice English with a native speaker, but to this day I'm quite convinced that he knows some magic incantation to attract girls that can only be spoken in Chinese. It turned out that the two girls were in an English learning program in the city, so perhaps he was telling the truth.

"Is that your guitar," Ida asked furtively.

"Yup."

"Really? Do you play?"

"Yup," I replied, pausing for a moment before working up the courage to say, "maybe I can play a song for you?"

"Yes! I would like this very much," her sister quickly nodding in agreement.

I don't really know how it happened. One minute I was struggling to find a common musical starting point, and the next there was the sound of applause clearly coming from way more than four people. Nervousness usually makes the crowd disappear or eat you to the point where you can no longer play, and since I was still going strong, the how quickly explained itself to me.

We had adjourned over to the river side of the small pavilion, hidden in its shadow had the sun still been up. I looked up between songs to gauge the oversized clapping and found to my dismay about 20 people eagerly staring back at me in the dim light. Jimmy, gaging my perplexity, quickly filled filled in the missing information.

"Her classmates," he said, "they are also studying English.

It occurred to both of us that a disproportionately high number of them were attractive women. It may have been dark, but by no means was it unilluminating.

A young couple on the side asked me rather directly if I knew any calmer songs. I realized then that pretty much every song that I'd played had been progressively louder than the last one, and by this point, my version of "What would you say" might have woken Dave Matthews from the dead, had he found himself in that condition. But I wasn't about to take heckling lying down, under any condition.

"Yeah yeah, I can play a slow song. But it's your fault if everyone falls asleep."

"Oh no--"

"Oh yes," I declared, immediately smiling to show Lavinia the sarcasm as I launched into "Typical Situation."

The audience waxed appreciative, and after a few more songs, started to thin. I decided to take a break and socialize a bit, getting to actually find out Lavinia and her guy friend, Jam's names. Jimmy appeared deep in a conversation with a few of them, so I spent some time wandering around and meeting the others. It was good to see their smiles, the addictive lifeblood of a hobbyist entertainer trying to make people happy and generally have a good time.

A while later, we went out for a few drinks, "few" being defined as my parents being well aware of my previous night's alcohol intake when I tried to conceal such information on the phone. All things being equal, I probably would have put off calling them just then, but according to younger sister they were quite convinced I was lying dead in a ditch somewhere, so all things turned out not to be equal. Ah well, as my friend Kevin likes to say, "quit while you're behind."

A Brief Note on Continuity

Really quickly - for anyone that noticed, yeah, a few days lapsed between leaving Guangzhou and arriving in Guilin. To those concerned, I did head back to Hong Kong that Saturday, on the bus again. I did party hard enough that I'm not going to talk about it for my friend's 18th. There may be a photo or two floating around from the incident. I deny any such photos. I did spend most of Sunday in no stable condition to travel. And I lost a Monday in the inevitable business of inertia that seems to creep up on me any time I'm in Hong Kong and something or other is going on with my depraved friends.

BUT, despite Susie and Neil's pessimism, I did pull it together and head back to Shenzhen Tuesday night, I did visit the Tea lady, I spent more time than I should haggling at the Lo Wu shopping center (couple surprises for you to see), and then I caught the flight back in to Guilin, whereon I passed out as soon as the questionable-morals of the taxi driver saw fit to drop me off at the crappy hotel.

That aside, it pretty much picks up from there as mentioned. So piss off if you want to get on my case about it.

A Red Carnation

I suppose I ought to start this story by telling you about Jimmy.

Jimmy is a Chinese guy from Guilin who happened to notice that I wasn't exactly Chinese. Now walking down the streets of the beautiful picturesque Guangxi city of Guilin, many people happened to notice this particular Thursday morning that I wasn't exactly Chinese, and their reactions to this differed wildly. Most of them tried to sell me something. A couple of girls laughed a bit and pointed, probably noting the caveman-like appearance my beard gives me. One lady even grabbed her small child who ventured perhaps a millimeter too close to me, sharply berating him for the rash action. The beggar kid didn't seem particularly mind my distinct lack of Chinese-ness, and went about his normal course of business, as if I had the faintest idea what he might be saying in Mandarin.

Jimmy, however, took a slightly different approach.

He furtively glanced at me to see if I'd bite, and clearly deciding I was harmless enough, decided to give his hard earned English a go.

"Hello," he declared, quite clearly and with careful attention to accent and intonation.

Alright, so I liked the effort. I decided to humor him. "What's up," I replied, rather noncommittally.

"Walking to town?"

"Yup."

"How long have you been in Guilin?"

"This is my first real day. Got in late last night."

"Ah. I wanted to ask you what you thought of Guilin."

And so I decided to tell him, relating the story of the cab driver from the airport who tried to tell me that my hotel was all booked, but he could find me a much better place and get me some discount tickets to all the attractions. I hadn't realized at the time that the expression "but I wasn't born yesterday" may take some time to explain.

After I realized that Jimmy didn't seem intent on hustling me, we ventured out to look at some of the sites of Guilin. We walked to the Solitary Beauty Peak / royal house, built back in the Ming dynasty. Jimmy carefully inforrmed me to take the left of three staircases.

"The center one is only for the emperor," he explained. "The right is for the path of the writer."

"What's the left?"

"The path of the Kung Fu."

I chuckled softly. "So we take the left?"

"Of course!"

I had a feeling that Jimmy and I were going to get on just fine after that.

We hiked up the solitary peak to gaze at the beautiful (if a tad foggy) vistas of Guilin. Jimmy turned out to be a fan of languages, and was surprised to find I spoke some Spanish. He immediately whipped out his Spanish phrasebook and I helped him with the pronunciation of some crucial things such as, "chica bonita" and "Tu quieres una bebida?" as we wandered back down the cliff into the city.

(It turns out that "May-Nu" is how you say "Beautiful girl" in Mandarin)

Around the corner Jimmy brought me to a place we feasted. We wiled away the afternoon getting to know each other as he provided excellent tour service, dutifully showing me the things to see in Guilin. We caught an amazing afternoon dance and acrobatics performance put on by people of the Yang ethnic minority, giving an insight into their culture and showcasing things that just make you think "ouch" as you contemplate trying to get into some of these positions (without alcohol) yourself.

The rest of the day was spent hackey-sacking (I translated "wandering attention" as "A.D.D." to two young girls kicking the footbag around with us) and drinking tea between occasionally plopping down at an Internet cafe to get some work done. At last, the sunset and the people began to flood en masse to the central square.

After a quick debate that concluded that it was probably too early to hit a club, Jimmy showed me a local bar where we could grab a beer and kill a few hours. The waitress turned out to be a friend of his, and there was a guy picking away at a guitar over at the corner of an outside patio that spilled out onto the street.

Yeah, you probably guessed it. That little detail about the "guy with a guitar in the corner" turns out to be relatively important.

A beer or two in (the Liquan local brew turns out to be pretty good, and I was surprised to find out that the locals quaff the stuff pretty fast), the only guy from a table of all girls went up and conferred briefly with the guitarist. The guitarist nodded, and the guy began singing away something or other in Mandarin that apparently was very well received; at least, the girls at the next table seemed to love it, and that was about the only meaningful definition of "good" that mattered to Jimmy and I at the moment.

He prodded me. "You should play.. You said you play guitar, right?"

"Yeah..."

"Well, go ahead..."

"But... Guitarists don't usually like to let random people just come along and play their guitars when they've clearly already got the gig.."

"Ahh, give it a try."

The waitress-friend of his just happened to overhear the last part of the dialogue.

"You play the guitar?"

"Uh... A little..."

"You should go play!"

"But isn't it his guitar?"

"Is ok, it's not his guitar. You can play if you want."

I waited until he finished off another two songs and layed the guitar down to take a break. Seeing the moment finally arrive, I walked over to him and asked if I might do a song or two. He mumbled something I took to mean acquiescense, and I was off.

The first song went a bit slowly, but then, they always do. I was quite convinced that everyone was struggling through the listening of it at least as much as I was the playing of it, but at the end I received rather more applause than I expected. Getting slightly charged off the energy, I decided to go for something a little more racy.

This time around the applause clearly split the audience in two. Half of the audience believed that I must be Dave Matthews himself and clapped and cheered appropriately. The other half preferred to believe the the first half must have had something odd in the water afflicting their judgment, and preferred to pointedly not make any eye contact with me. After a significant part of the latter half paid their bill and dissappeared, the first half seemed to take the challenge and began calling for "one more song!" as I made motions to put the guitar down. Who was I to ignore their desires?

Five songs later, I broke into a blues riff ("Pride and Joy", Stevie Ray Vaughn) that had people leaping out of their seats, though I was lost in thought wondering exactly what the noise pollution levels might be defined as in Guilin at that hour. Which had become another mystery to me; Jimmy had polished off his large bottle of beer after appearing to nurse it a bit, so I needed to start wrapping things up. I went for a big finish with "El Cancion de Mariachis".

Somewhere in the middle of the song, I heard the earlier group of girls starting to all clap out of time with the music, and heard calls that sounded like they were egging one of their brethren on to do something silly. About a minute later, I saw the nod on the cutest girl of the group, a nod known to anyone who's accepted to do something they definitely would rather not do, but are resigned to carrying out. The girl stood up, and approached the stage.

Concealed in her hand was a Red Carnation.

She stumbled through the words, "You are very good" as she presented the flower to me on stage. I was shocked enough by the moment, that the audience got quite a kick out of it, with poorly contained mirth escaping at every moment. The girl had turned color to slightly match the flower, and I knew that something had to be done to make her know that exactly this sort of behavior should be followed in the future, and not to fall prey to the masses.

So I did the only logical thing I could think of. I bit the carnation in my closest impression of a flamenco dancer, and began strumming a progression taught to me by Ritmo Gitano in Florida, by Aydin himself.

This had more or less the desired effect. Whatever else the Chinese think of us, "crazy" definitely plays rather importantly into the character profile.

After hanging out there for another hour or two, we went out to a local club in Guilin, with me rather eager to see what the local people did for going out on a Thursday. I was pleased to know that they can rock just as hard in the small hidden cities just as well as they move in Hong Kong, even if the town naturally has far fewer people (and venues) at which to rock out. Sooner or later and an adventure in the midst, it was time to go back and pass out, and get ready for Yangshuo tomorrow. That's about the time that Jimmy surprised me again.

I had let him know that I was going to Yangshuo tomorrow. He apparently decided that work wasn't really all that important to go in to (he's a cook at one of the local places) and said he'd accompany me, if I didn't mind. Which obviously I didn't, but I suppose he had just met me, so perhaps it wasn't so obvious at that point.

Sure enough, the next day, we were on the bus to Yangshuo. And what happened there is going to have to wait for another blog.

ttyl

Whiffing and the Zen of Hackey Sacking

I arrived about 2 hours later in the port city of Guangzhou (the current name of Canton as in "Cantonese"), set at the mouth of the Pearl River, at the scene of an argument. I don't know what was being said. I have no idea what they were arguing about. But all of a sudden the driver blew up at the two "bus stewardesses" over something or other, and next thing you know we're pulling off the highway much in the vein of kids driving their parents over the edge (think "one more word out of your mouth and..THAT'S-IT-I'M-PULLING-THIS-DAMN-CAR-OVER" kind of scene), and all the Chinese are hopping out the side with a shake of their head and a clear air of "I hope they cut this crap out someday" with absolutely no expectation that such will ever occur.

This, of course, left me, a baffled looking Indian guy, and a pacifist Chinese freshman-in-college aged youth sharing our bewilderment at what was going on before. Strike that. The Chinese kid seemed to have a pretty good idea of what was going on and was keeping an amazingly neutral face that really was concealing the fringes of laughter, or so I saw when after a particular putrescent sounding verbal barrage rang off and he was looking at me to wonder if I found that as funny as him.

(I probably would have, but my Cantonese sucks. I could tell by how hard he was holding back losing himself in laughter that it MUST have been pretty damn funny. One of the girls, clearly the object of the tirade, even turned her face and concealed a smirk, and he was yelling at her!)

"You uh.. You look confused."

"Yes, er.. A bit. Is this Guangzhou?"

"Of course," he snappily replied. A split second later it occurred to him that it wasn't very 'of course' to me if I were asking, and so he looked for a meaning in the question other than testing him on the obvious. "Oh.. Uh, this is not Guangzhou you need. Uh, hold on."

He tried valiantly for the next few minutes to hail one of the attendants while avoiding stepping into the middle of a hot tantrum before realizing that this probably wasn't going to work. It was about then that I stepped in.

"Let me," deciding to borrow for once all the negative energy pointed at my home stereotype, "I'm an American."

He nodded almost too quickly, understanding the intent without the sarcasm all too well. Well enough, I suppose it's what I wanted for this situation anyway, so it served to fuel my abrasiveness. How's that for the oracle making true the fate?

I stepped about 60% of the way directly into the line of fire. "Excuse me," I declared with perhaps too much gusto, "is this Guangzhou?"

It had more or less the desired effect. Hey, I didn't make the world...

"Huh," the derailed but irate driver mumbled after a moment of stunned silence.

"Er.. Li go hai m'hai Guangzhou ah? Di si, hai bhin do ah?"

"Oh. That way," and pointed in the general direction of the taxi.

"Thanks er.. m'goy." Exit Guy, stage left.

The kid nodded to me as I passed his seat, clearly happy for my part in the little charade. The actors resumed their debate, though much less heated now that the passengers were all gone and the driver had made it clear that he wasn't going a single kilometer/meter/centimeter (I don't know how they reckon these things around here) further. He also helpfully added that there were a lot of other people with my plight and that the bus company had arranged another shuttle to the main station.

When we got off the bus, he showed me over to a queue with just about none of the original passengers from my bus in it, then bid me farewell. I thanked him in English, sparing him the trouble of hearing me debate whether what he did for me was a service ("m'goy") or more of a gift ("daw-shay"). I split the difference and shouted out "shay-shay" (the Mandarin single form) at his back, feeling somehow that the English was inadequate. He waved before disappearing into some nearby unmarked building. Hey, maybe the driver was his father...

I did a lap with the other passengers who ostensibly knew where they were going around the next bus. In the end, we ended up right back where we started. The doors opened up, and the strange lap was seemingly wiped from the collective memory of humanity. The bus sped away to I-haven't-the-faintest-idea-where, and we were in Guangzhou a-bit-more proper.

I hailed a cab, simply wanting to find my hostel as quickly as possible and increase my horizontality as fast as I could manage. After putting the cab driver on the phone with the hotel (it's just easier when you have no idea) and him recovering from some shock or other on the phone, we left the ultimate bus station.

And basically went on a big u turn circle which had the net effect of putting us on the other side of the street.

In retrospect, I probably should have noticed that the ultimate bus station happened to be adjacent to the very large Guangzhou Main Rail Station. Had I noticed that, I might possibly have combined it with the key piece of information that the hostel I had chosen was in the "Train Station Area" portion of my travel guide, and while we're on this hypothetical venture, have then looked at the handy little Guangzhou map included in the chapter clearly indicating that the hostel in question was basically on the other side of the street from the station.

BUT, things as they were, I put none of this together. And had a terrific time trying to explain this to a taxi driver with an amused look on his face in Cantonese, while again wrestling with the correct version of "Thank you" to append to the verbal butchery.

I did, however, manage to pass out fairly abruptly after a brief attempt to rally and see the city which turned more into a brief recon of a few of the surrounding blocks.

Today passed with quite a lot less whiffing. I picked a spot pretty much at random on the subway near what I roughly guessed as a built up part of the city. After a couple of hours of that, I jumped back on the metro to Huangsha and made my way over to Shamian Island, a former enclave of the Dutch, English, and just about all of the old seafaring powers that made their way over to this side of th world at one point or another.

I had been to the bar part of Shamian on my last (and only other) trip to Guangzhou, but Fong and I had had a "get dinner" mentality on our mind at the time which isn't very conducive to wandering about aimlessly. I walked the small island back and forth, stopping about a quarter of the way in when I saw the familiar (and odd) shape of the Chinese hackey sack for sale at one of the local vendor's stands.

"How much," I inquired, cutting through the preliminaries and drawing the young girl minding the shop out of her Gameboy reverie.

"This? This 10 Yuan."

"10? Ok," as I gently placed the sack back down.

"Okok, you make me price." Her rhythm only slightly marred by her lack of experience clearly owing to age. But I wasn't really in the mood to bite, so she had an easy time. I went honest.

"I like 5 better."

"Ok sir, 5 - hey!! You wait for him buy it!"

Right then, much to the dismay of our young negotiator prodigy, her sister bolted around the front of the stand, and proceeded to hack another sack, passing it over to me.

I wasn't one to take that sort of invitation lightly, so I immediately shot a foot out to keep the hack from touching its mortal enemy, the ground. Alas, I could only briefly keep the hack away from its dire quest.

"Here," as I placed my bag on a nearby chair, "Let's do it again."

And off we went; I didn't want the negotiator savant to spoil the fun, so I quickly dropped a 5 on the table before serving the hack.

The girl turned out to be pretty good, but stuck almost solely to her right inside, rather than moving things around. The Chinese hack is a bit strange as I mentioned before because it is basically a stack of plastic 1/8 inch high discs, forming all told about a half inch of "sack". Protruding from the top of this is a plume of feathers, usually four, extending about 5 inches further up. This adds some aerodynamic/distance qualities to the game, but damned if I didn't have the thing land sideways on my foot a slew of times before I started learning to wait for the thing to flip all the way over (and subsequently adjust my kicking style to try to further that agenda).

We went at it for the better part of an hour, much to the amusement of the passing Chinese and foreigners in the area. More than once I heard one of the older people exclaim at the sight of seeing Gweilo hack, I guess it's not the sort of thing that happens around here every day. Or maybe it was my style they were picking at. It better not be the beard...

Finally she begged off, but I knew I wasn't done. I dropped a quick goodbye (skipping over the whole dodgy Cantonese thank-you business) and continued on around the island.

After about 3/4ths of the way all the way around, I was pulled from my idle observer daze by the familiar clack-clack sound of a nearby hack being put to good use. I homed in on the target and found a guy probably 5 years older than me hacking by himself.

His style was entirely different from the girl's. Where I had noted some themes of distinctly non-western origin in the brief back and forth with the girl, there was a fully developed aspect of calm and deliberate passiveness exuding from this guy's presence. And this guy was not limited to the right inside alone. He passed the 4 sides frequently, though clearly favored the toes. But there was a quiet acceptance of the ancient duel between the hackey sack and the ground, and this guy's mission was clearly to assuage the pain of the contest with the barest minimum of effort.

It was the Zen of Hacking.

I weakly tried to get his attention once or twice but failed to pierce the veil of concentration hanging about this man. After what seemed an eternity, he actually dropped the hack, and I took that minute to move in.

When I caught his eye, I pointed at my hack which I had produced off camera to dodge the language barrier. I then looked inquiringly at him and pointed, following by a back and forth gesture between us. He nodded, and I stuffed the inferior hack of mine away and put down my bag efficiently. And then we began.

It went on for hours. I was a sweaty mess by the time I finally begged off, but he smiled gladly and seemed to hint that I should come back some time. We had kicked, we had stalled, we had jestered, we had slapped the late afternoon away, and I had felt completely sated at least within my body's limits for the moment, parting ways in the end. I caught just the barest inkling into this man's world of hacking zen, the calm persistence and accuracy, while still keeping some of the flare for the fun. Movements just so, not over exaggerated. No force misused, nor tiredness hurried on. Just simple hacking.

Word.

"Ok, but I keep the Box!!" (aka "China, Ho!")

..as if it's been a long time, I will say hello once more..

Hello! Or as my Mandarin book just told me, "Have you eaten yet today?"

I haven't gotten the hang of saying "hello" in China yet (Mandarin, Cantonese, or otherwise). I still tend to fall back to an american style "hey" (which I know means something else in Cantonese, since there's even a club in Hong Kong called "Hei Hei") which tends to put people off, but I'm still thrown by the two phrases I've picked up:

1. Ni Hao (Cantonese: Neigh Ho): Literally "You good", not asked as a question. You need to tack on a "ma" at the end in either language to imply you actually want an answer.


2. (don't have the pinyin on me): Have you eaten yet today?

The latter comment is apparently a holdover from some periods of very long famine in Chinese history, and I've been told has fallen into disuse, so I'm not about to whip it out next time I'm lost and asking a person on the street for directions. While I'm probably going to sooner or later get the hang of the first one, I still just jars me when I think of it in psuedo English. "you good". I don't even really like to ask people "how they're doing" in English, preferring things like "word" or "what's up" as openers, and if they want to tell me, they're perfectly free to. I think it ties into my whole heavy distaste for the phrase "good morning". It's morning people. What the f@#k is good about it?

Thoroughly disgusted with technology (see last post if you can digest it), I began reclaiming my stowed-away sense of adventure after crossing through the Lo Wu border checkpoint into Shenzhen, in the Guangdong province of Southern China. I've been to Shenzhen before (if you haven't heard the stories, buy me a beer sometime and we can kick back for a couple hours somewhere), so in some sense it has some familiarity in that I'm not totally disoriented the second I walk through the checkpoint and get out into the semi-fresh air. My initial skills in street bargaining were honed in the Lo Wu shopping center, a massive 4 or 5 story maze nearly attached to the immigration building, chock full of hole in the wall hawkers peddling their wares (though you get used to the shouts of "DVD! DVD! Nolex? Nice Pen? Sir sir! Massage-ee?" when you do a couple of laps around the place). I wasn't up to it then, having hardly slept the last week or so, so I just made a B-line for the GuoMao Metro stop and checked in and passed out at the MyLittleHut hostel as quickly as I could.

(Amy, the hostel keeper, was happy to see me... but that may have more to do with the fact that business is slow now ;) ).

I dove immediately onto the Chinese style rock hard I-guarantee-if-you-sleep-on-your-side-your-arm-will-be-dead-when-you-wake-up style mattress, and passed the bonk out. Sure enough, I woke up with half my body still asleep, but it helps when you know that it's coming.

I assured Amy I'd be staying one more night and made off to wander a little bit in the city, and sort out the rest of junk that was still lingering from work and needed an internet connection. I needed a day to unwind after the madness that is Hong Kong, and here was the opportunity. The bread place was... well, bready. The hand pulled noodles were... hand-pulled. And a brief chat with hostel mate Maya assured me that people were still trying to source components as strongly as ever in China.

I mucked around taking it slow, and passed out again way too early. I rarely control my sleep, so when it comes, I don't fight it. Could you call me a narcoleptic with my single minded passion to seize it when it's available?

The next day after a groggy start and more dead-side-syndrome, I had the energy, so I made for the Lo Wu shopping center. The Tea Lady, an old friend from previous pilgrimages was still at her stall, and we wrangled for a while in my very broken Cantonese and her not so broken English, as we sampled tea after tea and made notes on language in our pocket notebooks. One girl who happened to be working in a stall close by dropped a few pieces of jewelry when she heard me almost get something right in Cantonese. "GuangDongHua?!" she shouted at the tea lady, obviously shocked to hear a Gweilo trying out their language.
"Keui gong!" (he speaks it)
I had to butt in before it got past me, "Hou siu! Hou siu!" (Only a little!)

From a book I just read called "How to Learn Any Language", Barry Farber, a self-confessed linguaphile points out (bad memory paraphrase) that people are generally very happy if you try to learn their language, as long as they get the sense you're trying to give it a go and not just chopping it out any which way you want. He goes on further to point out that this is more common with less "international" style languages, using French as a prime example - if you try to speak French, well, at one point just about everyone was trying to speak French, so it's not terribly impressive to a Frenchperson, especially if you kill the pronunciation. But you go to work in a niche language (he pulls out serbo-croat as his favorite example), he's ended up with being invited to family dinners of strangers and free cab fares, among some of his other tellings. Ok, so the best I've gotten is maybe an extra bag of tea thrown in for free, but hey, you gotta start somewhere...

(In good faith, Barry also HIGHLY advises against learning Cantonese - he's probably right, when all's said and done, considering when I read his footnote in the appendix on it, he pretty much nailed every one of the reasons I'd given for wanting to learn it in the first place and shown their fallacy. But that's not entirely fair either, he does say any language learning is good, guess I'll have to ask him someday..)

I finally left my favorite teashop and went into the throng of Lo Wu proper. I had been noting that in recent times, my shoes were pretty much worn through to the point that they might just spontaneously fall apart at any point. That's about the point when a kid hawking shoes happened to catch me walking by after he shouted out something in Spanish.

I went a full 3 more paces before what just happened hit me. Yup. It was definitely Spanish. I stopped, paused, and then slowly turned around. The action was deliberate enough to completely throw the kid off his usual ramble and pace.

"Did you just say 'zapatos'," I asked him, rather more directly than I intended. I get direct when I'm shocked, it wasn't really his fault.

"Hey sir, shoes, you want shoes? Yes yes, zapa-toes!"
"Za-pa-tozzzzzzzz" I shot back at him.
"Za-pa-tozz" he correctly sounded out.
"Tu hablas espanol?"
"Heehee. No sir. But a little. But you want shoes, you come here."
I slowly glanced down at the disrepair of my footwear. Ok, the kid had spirit, and damned if I know why a Cantonese guy is speaking Spanish, but ok, let's see where this goes.
"You know, I could use a new pair of shoes. These ones are a bit shit."
"Huh sir?"
"DeNG!"
"Oh... hehe.. Guangdonghua... Okok, you come in."

So I went in. We fenced. We bargained. We cajoled. We "my friend!"ed and slapped each other on the back. The kid's sister's were looking on in fine form, watching the dance of lowu canto bargaining take shape. But alas, I think he was the master.

"How many you buy?"
"I think too much money. I can't buy."
"But SIR! Fit is perfect! Good quality, look look!"
"No no, can't afford. I think too much."
"No too much. Very good price."
"I think hou GWAI!"
"Haha.. No, not very expensive. You see. I make you special price. Here, this what I usually charge," as he pounded away at the traditional 4-function large button calculator used in bargaining stalls across Hong Kong and Shenzhen (maybe more!), and tapped in an absurd figure.
I took a look. And just laughed. But if we're acting, I'm going to go for the oscar. Complimenting the chuckle was the perfect nonverbal accompaniment of delicately putting vastly too expensive shoes back into the box from which they came.

"Yup. Hou gwai. Thank you for the fun though."
"SIR! No, I say, I already give you discount."
"I no care discount," (the Chinglish helps in these affairs), "you discount whole thing? No matter! Too much money to discount!"
"Okokokok... this price your price," as he tapped out about 10% off, "but you pay this, you in Heunggong," and slapped the original price plus about 30% on the calculator.
"It's ok. I must be leaving," as I stood up from the chair.
"Okokokok.. You make price. Give me good price, we do deal. I can make more barato."
"BARATO!? Esto no es barato, esto es loco! Tu no sabes la significa de la palabra 'barato'!" (ok, so my spanish is usually a little weak, but I think I got across that he didn't know what the hell 'cheap' meant)
"Hahaha.. no speako spanish. You give me barato price, we make deal."
and on.

and on.

If you're going to have a go at this, you really ought to not be in any particular rush when you're about it.

We riposted. We en garded. We wrangled away and amused the spectators and shopkeeps alike. "Whatever else", they all would later say, "it was worth the price of admission".

Finally, we hit a deal.

"Ok, this is my price," I declared, "I know you can get no trouble with your boss for that."
"Sir! You get me in trouble."
"Ok, but I have to go. Thank you for the fun."
"Ok sir, but I keep the box!"
I laughed. Fair enough, bargaining is about giving, and that box woulda been the first thing that I chucked in the garbage back at the hostel when I put the shoes in my pack away. "Ok, you get the box."

Next thing you know, I was the proud owner of shoes I probably still paid too much for, even considering I got them for 30.76% the price he originally offered them. Ah well, I needed shoes, and my American friends, you'll probably kill me anyway if you found out how far I was nitpicking him down on the damn things.

I took a last stop over at the hostel to say goodbye to Amy, pick up my stuff, and head back to the bus terminal. After a couple of missteps and some very amused bus attendants (after my various attempts to say "which bus go to guangzhou?" I found it, and was sitting on the bus, heading for Guangzhou.

yeah yeah, I knew it would happen, but I left Hong Kong

Alright ye few listeners.

That's right, like the subject says, I damn well knew it would happen. It did happen. As soon as I tried to pin down a date that I would leave for China (a la the last post), I was promising the fates that the day that such action, should it ever actually happen, would absolutely unequivocally not happen on the date that I mentioned.

(but don't worry, I'm not going to leave you hanging forever in suspense... if you read the last page of the mystery novel right now, you'd find out that I am in writing this to you from in China, so bear with me)

I'm going to split this into a couple of posts, so you can skip ahead if you wish. This one is going to be about the bit from getting out of HK, the other(s - we'll see how motivated I am later) will be about going into the Middle Kingdom. So go read what you want!

I suppose I should start with a disclaimer - this Sony microlaptop is a bad ass piece of hardware engineering. But you know that if I'm going to start with a disclaimer like that, it wasn't all peaches and cream since I got it.

When the thing finally arrive (FedEx left it sitting in Norwalk all that weekend after the 8th, so it didn't go on a plane until the 12th, and showed up at my friend's pad on the 15th), my boss decided to fly in to town. What with what's going on in the VoIP world on his agenda, suffice it to say I ended up crunching an average French workweek for hours into Thursday and Friday. I wasn't exactly jazzed to come home and go deal with another large IT problem, so I did the next best thing I could think of - I buried my head in about as much alcohol as I could find.

After the dreadful alcohol shortage of 2007 in Southern China ended (oddly coinciding with when I put the bottle(s) back down in the no-longer-so-wee-hours-of-Saturday-morning), I wasted basically the whole weekend mucking around with the thing. It's really a terribly boring drama, so the summary is that when you get the machine, you have 4 gigs of space left out of the 32 that you were sold. I wasn't about to go try spending a couple months wandering about the world and bringing 4 gigs with me, so I spent all my time (re)learning about win32 debugging and figuring out where the stupid recovery disc creation utility (since every manufacturer of laptops is too cheap to send you actual CDs/DVDs of install media anymore, came about the time of the revolution in non-metallic twist-ties holding the cables together) kept failing so I could reinstall the thing and have more than a pittance of space available.

This dragged on. And on. And keep going. Don't pass go. Then..

..finally. If you buy the same damn machine and get stuck with the same damn problem, send me a comment / email and I'll be happy to walk you through how to do it. Perhaps I should document that somewhere else, since anyone who's not happy with 4 gigs of space on a fresh machine and can't get out of the catch-22 sony traps you in is probably going to have the same problem sooner or later. (hint tech guys - they write out the DVDs from the hidden recovery partition TWICE - first as a folder collection in %USERHOME%\AppData\Roaming\temp (4.4 gigs) and then AGAIN as an iso in the same directory.. I ultimately got around it using an NTFS junction to an external HD, when I stopped looking in the wrong places for the problem)

bah. I want to send Sony a bill for the part of my life they wasted. Ah well, suppose this is why tech people have jobs in the first place - any sane person wouldn't put up with this sort of shit, or just wait out the tech to get better (a 60 gig HD and this is all academic).

I broke with tradition by not formatting the thing linux, but I did bring with me a whole bag of tricks. KNOPPIX boot CD and USB bootable key, an SSH client that works over AJAX / SSL with no install and one time passwords, the NCK from Sony to unlock the SIM card EDGE / GPRS / GSM cellmodem, and enough memory cards to shuffle a 3 player hand of hold-em with.

Enough geek. Probably for the rest of the trip (assuming all this crap doesn't get lost / stolen / broken / etc) you won't really be hearing about it again.. It's finally the idea I had for telecommuting from Tibet on just about any hardware / internet situation; for now on, it's a deus ex machina, just assume I can be yelled at by my boss from just about anywhere (or however you guys define the Employment Situation).

Despite the foregoing, the rest of my premonition was pretty much accurate. I did stay the weekend. I did rock the Wanch with some music that they just plain weren't prepared. My friend Damian (check him out over at nudz.org, awesome domain name dude) just got back into town from NY, so I stuck around for a reunion and some ranting about wandering. Killed the computer problems Tuesday afternoon and then went for the border Tuesday night.

and then, at last, the wandering began.

...I jumped on the Kowloon-Canton Railway for Lo Wu, HK.
...I "alighted" from the left (as the interesting English announcement told me to get the hell off the train)
...I bolted for the sleek air-conditioned automated turnstile precision of the Hong Kong emigration point.
...I calmly walked across the 100 yards of bridge into mainland China.
...I scribbled furiously through the non-working pens and waited in the endless lines of the Chinese immigration checkpoint (the A/C was temporarily off for reasons I couldn't make out)
...and I entered the middle kingdom.

super duper ultimate travel computer!

Hells yeah!

The super duper ultimate travel computer** just arrived in the US! For whatever reason, Silly Sony refuses to admit the existence of this machine in Hong Kong, despite me going to a couple Sony stores and even pointing it out on the Sony website much to the bewilderment of the store managers. I don't know why - it's probably because of the stupid bundled Cingular locked plan they try to force on you with the thing.. I mean, don't they know TMobile's plan is like infinitely better for GPRS data? EDGE is just about no where in the US anyway, so what's the point?

er.. sorry, the inner geek showed a little there. I'll firmly lock him back up.

Anyway, aside from assorted odds and ends for reasons ("it's jam night tonight? Aww, I can't leave Hong Kong during Jam night..."), I've been waiting on the deep incursion into China for this computer to show up on my doorstep. Younger sister has agreed to forward the now-arrived box to HK and Fedex (who seems to lie a lot less than everyone else about shipping) says I can probably get this thing Monday, so I'm sitting tight on venturing out. I definitely don't want to go carrying my HP zv6008cl portable computer and boat anchor in my pack, so I went with something in the UltraMobilePC (UMPC) line. The Sony is a little over a pound, and with big pocket pants(tm), it can fit in your pocket.

So if that thing shows up say Monday, and I manage to sort out the Linux and whatnot by Weds, I'll either leave Weds night or end up caught in the open mic night/friday drinking binge/weekend silliness roundup and then head in next Monday.

We'll see. But the technical element of plan wander looks to be satiated..

---

** (For reference, the super duper ultimate travel computer is probably going to be quickly out super dupered, but for the moment it's a Sony VGN-UX390N. It's a bit overpriced at the moment, but that's probably because they know they've got the only serious contender on the market. Well, at least until OQO gets its act together..)

A Plan Wander, the Creation

Hello readers! All.. er.. well, we'll get around to finding a few of you in a little while. Maybe I'll get lucky and you won't cost too much either.

I created this blog to handle the non theory of whiffing related day to day of wandering, starting off with a current foray to the Far East (Hong Kong at the time of this writing, though I'm planning on heading North pretty soon). Maybe some day I'll get around to integrating it with the regular Plan Wander site, but really, one step at a time.

I'm taking a bit of a break from the road for a moment here in Hong Kong to get ready for the trip into China and beyond; I realized during my short hop over into Shenzhen last week that I wasn't really ready to try maintaining a job requiring a computer and not travel with one, and my bulky laptop was just not the kind of thing that I wanted to be lugging around from hostel to hostel (nor trying to fit into my bag much less be able to pick the thing up). Picked up a few ebooks and one or two movies for good measure (PDA's and Cell phones make for wonderful reading devices after the lights go out without all the weight of lugging the books around), and a couple sets of extra guitar strings.. The last time I tried asking for a string in China, I was told in fairly broken English that I would receive a fine if I tried playing in the station. And that was about the clearest understanding I got on the topic of finding a music store...