Thursday, November 16, 2006

Probably not enough noodles

I have a bit of a cold. I am still on the antibiotics for the stomach problem, so I guess I have it covered in case the cold needs it, but I don't feel that bad really so hopefully it is just passing through. Maybe it's something I picked up from a keyboard in a seedy internet cafe. That's the problem when they let you smoke here. I need to start carrying around those anti-bacterial wetnaps or whatever they are. In any case, I figure each new thing I survive hopefully continues to increase my immune system's capability to super-western-human levels. Right now it's mostly just some sniffles, the occasional cough, and the desire to smoke less.

So before I say anything about where I am, I would like to point out that since Yangshuo, every single internet cafe I have visited allows me to reach the Flickr.com front page, the website where I store my pictures, but not the sign-in page. I have been able to reach the sign-in page from a few computers in hostels, but never from a public internet cafe. My belief is that this access is being deliberately blocked by the cafes or the great firewall, because what else could it be? Most other websites work, I don't think it is a technical problem. Another interesting quirk is that I can get to the site to update my blog, but I cannot get to my blog itself. I do not know what that is all about, but it does pose the problem of remembering what I wrote, although theoretically I can go back and do that through the editing interface, but I digress.

So remembering inadequately, I believe I last updated the blog from Guilin after having visited the Dragon's Spine Rice Terraces or something to that effect, and staying in a few villages in that neighborhood. That place is called Longji Titian by the way, which I think was what I called it last time. So we stayed in Guilin the one night and relaxed the following day, only heading briefly to a nearby temple and vegetarian restaurant with a Japanese traveler we met at the hostel. He was roaming around Asia much as we are, but had plans to head to eastern Europe at some point. His name was Jun, and he's a cook/chef in Tokyo. Apart from the fact that he likes mushrooms, I didn't have much time to learn anything else. There are many of these encounters, some more longer-lived than others, some involving email exchanges and the possibility of meeting up again somewhere down the line, and others with good wishes for a safe trip and that's about it. One guy in Yangshuo we met only briefly, talked a bit, and he gave me a book that he had just finished and thought I might like since the book-trading store was only prepared to give him a pittance for it and he thought donating it to me would be more worthwhile. I regret not getting his info, he was a good guy named Ren or perhaps Wren from Seattle. We almost decided to go to Longji Titian together but he wanted to linger a bit longer in Yangshuo and we'd already been there for a week or so.

Anyway, after Guilin we caught a plane to Guiyang at which the scenery changes pretty rapidly. Guiyang is the capital of Guizhou province, which according to my book is one of the poorest provinces in China. The city of Guiyang is fairly bustling and in many respects resembled many other provincial capitals and large Chinese cities I've visited. There's tons of traffic, tons of shopping, a whole bunch of pollution, and random temples, museums, and town squares sprinkled throughout. Guiyang does not see a lot of western tourists, especially in this season if at all, so once again I was an oddity and Sofia possibly a bit moreso. We got a whole lot of looks as we walked down the street, though at this point I've definitely become used to it although I still notice. She's better at ignoring it than I am. Sometimes I still want to say 'what the fuck are you looking at' when a little kid is staring at me. No, not really. Maybe a little. Most people are really just curious, though the repeated "hello"s do get a little bit annoying somewhere after the 10,000th or so. We had a few nice encounters with locals in Guiyang. The first was actually on the plane. The lady sitting next to me and I started talking. She turned out to be a Chinese teacher to Chinese high school students, teaching them grammar and so on. Her husband lives in Canada and she was soon going to be moving there, so wanted to practice her English. It wasn't bad, but she was at least slightly self-conscious. We spoke a little bit of English and a bit of Chinese. She ended up offering to help us out and we shared a taxi to our hotel which she then insisted on paying for despite our attempts to contribute. She also gave us her phone number and told us to call if we needed anything but we only had the onen day in Guiyang so we didn't have a chance. Later that night, we ate the most incredible street food for like 2RMB each. It was this heaping pile of fried rice with fried potatoes and vegetables, and then I think some tofu and this weird potato patty. On the greasy side, but really great and our cheapest meal yet. In general we've been eating amazing street snacks the last few weeks. Guizhou is apparently next to Sichuan in their appreciation for spicy food, something I discovered rather quickly. "A little" spicy here does not actually mean "a little." I imagine "a lot" means "I would like to bleed from the ears and nose." I did have this amazing tofu though covered with who knows what, though definitely vegetarian. If there's any area in which I'm truly comfortable speaking Chinese, it's about food. I've got it all covered, lard, pork, chicken, animal oil, pork broth, you name it. In general, most of the street vendors seem to use peanut oil or vegetable oil normally anyway, so that has been pretty helpful.

Before I forget, we were on this train from Guiyang to Anshun, about an hour away or so from where we were going to head to this giant waterfall called Huangguoshu and we sat in the "hard seat" class. So there are 4 classes on Chinese trains. Two are for sitting and two are for sleeping. Sleeping is easiest, you have "hard sleeper" which is the cheaper of the two, rows of beds, 3 stacked together, 6 in a compartment with no doors. So basically dorms on a train car. "Soft sleeper" is the most expensive, which is a private room with a door that closes and 4 beds. Bathrooms are at the end of the cars and so far aren't as horrendous as I'd been led to believe, though let's hope I didn't just jinx it. So "Soft seat" is next which I haven't ridden but I believe the seats recline and it is comparable to a nice train seat on Amtrak. Finally there is "hard seat" where you can reserve seats, but don't really have to I guess and a lot of people end up riding on the floor, smoking in the space between cars for the entire ride, or sitting on other passengers in some cases. My book describes this class as "a chance to become acquainted with the local barnyard" but really it wasn't that bad at all. Perhaps in more rural areas. So far I have seen no livestock on public transportation, though I have seen livestock AS public transportation in some of the villages. Anyway, so we rode hard seats for the short trip to Anshun and there were several funny things. One is the mad dash for the 'upgrade counter' which is an area in the front of the car where people can try to upgrade their seats after having boarded the train. I guess depending on how that goes, you can unwittingly end up riding a hard seat for a long time, although it is the cheapest way so some people do it just for that. I met a Taiwanese guy in the dorm today who rode a hard seat from Guangzhou to Nanning (at least 12 hours) and then another from Nanning to Kunming (gotta be 14 or something like that). I guess I'm a giant wuss. The whole point of the story really was they rolled through the hard seat cabins with these carts of food and I don't know what everything was but I saw at least a HEAPING portion of chicken feet available, though I did not inquire how much it was. I'm guessing a bargain.

So let's see, we also met this really nice English student in Guiyang who gave us his number and stressed the importance that all peoples of the world should help each other and we should all be friends. He gave us a lengthy list of tips of things we could squeeze into our day in Guiyang and was generally extremely friendly. We ended up calling him later for guidance. Later in Anshun, Sofia was met by a high school student on the street who invited her to his home for lunch. We then later met them for dinner at their request and we had called the first guy from Guiyang to ask if it was appropriate to bring a gift or anything, but apparently it's not necessary except under certain formal circumstances. That kid and his mom in Anshun were really friendly and took us out for this hotpot. I felt a little bad because they were really, really nice to us but didn't immediately understand the vegetarian thing so we had to get a second pot of broth since the first had meat in it. They had figured we could just not eat the meat. Again we offered to pay and they adamantly refused. Oh yeah, in Anshun we had another free meal. In Anshun we were even stranger sites as we walked down the sidewalk. I mean *everyone* there stared. People were doing doubletakes and turning their heads and stopping walking and all of that. So we went to this one restaurant and got a glorious vegetarian meal with minimal effort, after which the owners sat down with us and chatted a bit. I did my best to keep up, but as it turns out all of these places, basically everyone I've visited, has what is effectively their own language. So in Guiyang they speak Guiyang-Hua (Hua means speech in Mandarin), in Anshun they speak Anshun-Hua, in Yangshuo they speak Yangshuo-Hua. I'm still fuzzy on exactly how different these languages are, but they seem pretty distinct. Now having said that, everyone seems to speak Mandarin with varying degrees of modified accents based on where they live. The result is that most people understand me when I speak, but some people are harder for me to understand than others. I mean, my listening really needs work anyway, but at least several Chinese native-speakers I've met have told me similar things. They even have trouble understanding each other times. So that couple sits down, we chat, they are asking us where we're from, talking about China, Guiyang, places to study Chinese, vegetarian food. I totally bailed out of the chance to explain why I'm vegetarian in Chinese. I really need to memorize a few more words to be able to do that adequately. Instead I just told them it was kind of like a Buddhist thing but not really. Total copout. Anyway, we're leaving that place eventually, it's 30rmb, we only have a 50rmb, they can't find change because it is late at night, so they just say forget it and have a great night. We were in disbelief. Under many circumstances, Guizhou people really impressed us with that kind of hospitality.

One other thing about Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou. If we stopped somewhere for a few moments to do something, a crowd could develop to look. I stopped to buy a drink at this drink vendor, spoke Chinese to him, he was complimenting my Chinese and meanwhile Sofia was buying some Yogurt drink at the stand next to it, and all of a sudden there were like 15 people standing around us all talking to us. The main guy was this maybe 60 year old Guiyang resident who was a former teacher and even spoke a few words of English, but not conversationally really. They all pretty much relied on my Chinese which was desperately holding on for comprehension as I tried to wade through the thick Guiyang accents and a sea of vocabulary I don't understand. We did OK ultimately and had to excuse ourselves because more and more people keep coming up to participate. That happens a lot in China in general and definitely we saw it a lot in Guiyang. If something is going on, a crowd gathers to watch, and eventually to participate. So I sat down on a stool in a small park outside of a store waiting for Sofia to go use the bathroom in a restaurant. I'm smoking and a guy comes up and starts talking to me asking me about my travels, my Chinese, and things like that. A few more passerbys start to stop. Within a few minutes I'm surrounded by ten people all amazed at the foreigner first, and then that the foreigner can actually speak Chinese. This is all generally really good natured and friendly. They offer cigarettes and invited me to drink tea, though it is a little daunting linguistically. I'm improving but some of these older guys have these ultra-thick accents of which I can barely make heads or tails.

So we primarily went through Guizhou for a bit of local scenery outside of the tourist scene on our way to Kunming in Yunnan province. This was easy and successfully accomplished. But one reason we chose these places was because of their close proximity to this giant waterfall called Huangguoshu, about an hour or so by bus from Anshun, which was itself and hour or so west of Guiyang. Many people told us now was not really a great season to go see the waterfall, but those fears proved to be unfounded, it was pretty great and really beautiful. Probably actually better lacking the crowds that I imagine flock to see it during the high season, whenever that is. It hasn't been freezing or anything, but the last few days in Guizhou have been some of the coldest of my trip. I've been wearing my windbreaker which I had really not used since Denver. I imagine these next few weeks in Yunnan will be colder as the altitude increases, but I think for the moment my clothes are doing the trick. Yes, I know, I have a cold, but that's from keyboard gunk, not from the weather. So Huangguoshu was crazy and I'll let the pictures speak for themselves once I finally figure out how to upload them given these insane restrictions I continue to encounter. The hostel's internet is out today but maybe tomorrow or later tonight it will work and I will have better luck from there.

So we took the night-train last night, soft sleeper, from Anshun to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province. Mostly been relaxing today, the trip was easy enough and I slept pretty well but Sofia had some trouble sleeping. The train left at 9pm last night and arrived at 7am this morning, so it's early to be up with or without sleep. We took a walk for food this morning where I had a false alarm on a Hummus sighting and I was sad. I need to do a search for that again before I leave the cafe. I totally miss indian food and hummus. So we're at a youth hostel in Kunming near a really pretty park. The sun has been out today and though it was cold in the morning, it's actually pretty nice now and the air seems fresher than some of the other capitals I've been. This place is reputed to be a very laid-back and foreigner friendly city, the most relaxed of the provincial capitals according to some. So far that shoe seems to fit. There is a university with many foreign and english students and apparently a large ex-pat community of those who find this place and decide not to leave, or at least perhaps to extend their trip. The next plan is to rest, relax, and generally get better before I head anywhere new. I really hope this is the last of these little bouts with illness. I expected it a little bit coming to a distant country with all sorts of new germs flying around, but enough is enough. I'm still working on my plan for what happens next. There's two cities in Yunnan I'd like to see, Dali and Lijiang, and at Lijiang a famous hike called Tiger Leaping Gorge. After that, I think it might be time to seek out warmer weather for the winter. As much as I'd like to see the North of China, I miss the early days of my trip when I was going outside at night with a t-shirt. I'm sure everyone back in New York is very sympathetic about that.

Anyhow, I'll work on the pictures. In general I'm having fun and seeing pretty amazing things. Now that I've caught everyone up on the details, I'll try to make my next blog entry more philosophical since now I may actually have internet access for two days in a row. Hope you are all well, stay in touch.

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