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."