"If You Ever Get Close To A Human...."

...you'd better be ready to get confused."

I spent four nights in Lily’s guestroom, sleeping in moderate comfort on a plywood mattress, my back aching to a lesser degree after I accepted my weakness and secretly requisitioned a few cushions from a nearby chair.   Each day I rode the bus and the subway into and around central Beijing, saw the required sights, and each evening returned to revise Lily’s English essays and watch the World Cup matches.

As a free-lance interior designer and graphic artist, Lily was seldom required to leave home for any reason other than purchasing groceries.    Her flat was almost undecorated and the few concessions to individuality were hung asymmetrically on her white walls: two small, plastic-framed photos (both of Lily, alone) and one wood-framed, cartoon drawing of a corny off-color joke (Sigmund Freud: What’s On a Man’s Mind).   She was a self-taught English speaker and what she lacked in pronunciation, grammar, and listening skills, she made up for in vocabulary, regularly pulling out words like “detest” or “conducive”, but often unable to understand my carefully enunciated responses.   She dressed in a shapeless thigh-length brown dress at all times, except when she went out for groceries, at which time she would change into a fashionable jeans and T-shirt combo, which would be promptly abandoned in favor of the brown dress when she returned.  She told me she detested parties because of the superficial conversation, detested bars because drinking was a tacit admission of life’s emptiness, and detested being set up on dates because she felt love should be organic.  When I asked if she had a boyfriend she told me it was complicated, then spilled out the saga of a bizarre, on and off relationship with a German businessman; a relationship that spanned 10 years of infrequent meetings; a relationship she began doubting when several previous Chinese lovers were discovered (apparently because they wrote about the gentleman in question on their blogs), which she finally ended with an SMS exchange that took place over a year ago.  Two beer bottles displayed on a shelf in the kitchen stood as a monument to his last visit.   

I had planned on staying three nights then heading to a guesthouse and finding a social scene for my final two nights in China, but Lily asked me to stay one more so she could prepare us Peking duck for lunch the following day.   I agreed, we enjoyed an excellent lunch, I did the dishes, and then we sat down with coffee to practice for her exam.  When the time came, I advised her of my intention to leave, not right at that moment, but pretty soon, and she slowly began to cry.   She said she didn’t know why she was crying.  She said she would “close” her couchsurfing profile.  Finally she laughed a little and said, “I’m sorry.  I’m a little crazy.”  I tried to keep a cheerful tone, making small talk, telling her everyone’s a little crazy.  The tears subsided, threatened to break free again, then finally stopped.  Not knowing what else to do, I shouldered my pack, thanked her, and walked to the bus stop.

Mistakes Were Made

Pingyao was an impulse; a choice based more on wanting to visit one more town before I left China than on any desire to see anything that the town contained.  I was in Xi’an and was flying out of Beijing and Pingyao was on the way, about halfway between, so it seemed to make sense to stop there.  It was billed as a nice quiet town, a little touristy but at least small and quaint.  The problem was that I planned nothing.  I found out there were buses approximately hourly, but I didn’t check the prices on tickets, just packed my bags, checked out of my hotel and hopped on a local bus down to the station.  I was a little horrified when they quoted me a price of 22 USD for the 7 hour ride, knowing a train to Beijing was only about 30 USD, but I was already “pot committed” so I bought the ticket and took the ride, the only Westerner on the bus. 

They dropped me off at a crossroads about 4 kilometers from Pingyao.  The driver’s English-speaking assistant gave me a slightly staccato, speech, “ThankyoufortravelingwithYangBusLines.   Wehopeyouenjoyedyourtrip.  Wewishyougoodluckonyourjourney.”  Then she paused and added, “GET OUT!”   After haggling a decent price from a taxi, I managed to find an acceptably priced dorm room and book a two night stay.   From there I found that cheap food (i.e. something that is not geared towards tourists) required a 30 minute walk,  the only train option to Beijing was “Overnight, Standing” class (which is exactly what it sounds like), and the buses were absurdly expensive.   It’s safe to say I regretted my trip to the admittedly quaint city of Pingyao even before I became the victim of theft for the first time  in my 6 ½ months of travel (not counting crimes that take place in my imagination).  Yes, that’s right…wait for it…someone stole my towel.  

Complicating matters was the fact that I had arranged to couchsurf in Beijing with a friendly Chinese woman named Lily and I was determined not to delay.  For those unfamiliar with the bizarre, egalitarian social experiment that is Couchsurfing.org, it’s basically a network of people who don’t mind if travelers crash at their place.  There is no money involved.  You set up a profile and send out requests to hosts who have a “couch”.  The host replies, saying yes or no, and eventually you end up staying with a stranger in a strange land for free.   This was going to be my first “couch” and I wanted it to go well.  Lily had sent me an endearing message, asking if perhaps I would be her “lucky star” and help her prepare for an upcoming English test.  She also added the vaguely disconcerting signoff, “Oh, and of course you will pay attention to hygiene?”  So it was clear she was a nice woman.   If she hadn’t been so nice I probably would have found a cheaper option than the bus and high-speed train combination that cost me 28 USD but was the only way to get to Beijing by date that I had promised Lily. 

The Beautiful People

I stayed my first night in Xi’an in a beautiful, air-conditioned dorm room for 6 USD per night.   It was my second choice due to the price and after a few hours looking around I marked it down as further evidence in favor of my continuing theory: The number of Friendly Travelers in a guesthouse is inversely proportional to the price.  The guests were mainly couples and I found little in the way of conversation so in the morning I moved on, lugging my pack 5 blocks to the low-budget option up the street: Shuyuan Youth Hostel; 4.50 USD for bed, a marginally functional A/C unit, and a free beer with each night’s stay.  I stayed at SYH for five days.  Everyone was going in the opposite direction as me, coming from where I’m headed and going to where I’ve been, and few stayed longer than 2 nights.  For some reason, this situation created a smooth, steady flow of interesting company.  

Meeting people is beginning to be one of the primary joys of travel for me.  I’m not naturally outgoing and I have often found it awkward to get beyond the superficial with someone I’ve just met, but when everyone has travel in common it suddenly seems so simple.  “Where are you from and where are you going?” often seems to be all it takes to start to acquire a new friend.   In my experience this has been strikingly true in China, perhaps because everyone feels a little lost occasionally, more so than anywhere else I’ve been so far.  There is a prevailing sense that we must stick together, that no one should be alone.  At SYH this inclusiveness was taken to another level.  Without warning strangers became close friends, confidants, mentors.   Over five days I rotated through dozens of relationships, some shallow, some embarrassingly deep; groups of companions overlapping and recombining as new arrivals joined the madness and another forty-eight hour friend said goodbye.     

Bouncing along in these swirling connections, I paused one day and found myself hopelessly spellbound by a pair of confident, enthusiastic, achingly beautiful, ultimately untouchable French-Canadians.  I said hello to them, and then let myself float in the wake of a collection of strangers - some hopeful suitors, most just friendly - that the girls pulled gently behind them; a group that contained men and women from a handful of nations and grew from four to six to ten, none of us particularly sober by the time the sun set.  The group solidified and each of us in turn performed the familiar rites of introduction, then drank beer and rice liquor, and finally set out to roam the early morning streets.  We were denied entrance at a posh nightclub for our inappropriate attire and moped momentarily on the sidewalk before finding a perfectly raucous working class establishment where the crowd danced in a weird, tentative, Chinese-style frenzy and our flip-flops were not an issue.  The lovely Quebecois drifted in and out of our midst while we reveled in our cheaply-bought celebrity status and tried without success to hold conversations, or failing that, a couple of dance steps with the few locals bold and curious enough to approach us.  As the standard dictates in Chinese clubs, by virtue of our Westernness, an unseen benefactor purchased all of our drinks.  By the time we tumbled out of the club with the sky beginning to show signs of the approaching morning, I felt a love for my new friends that is perhaps only possible when one knows that they’ll be gone tomorrow.   And perhaps it helps when one has been drinking a little. 

I’m in Pingyao now; a town of 40,000 souls.  It’s quiet and crumbling and beautiful and expensive and I’m the only Westerner in my guesthouse.          

The Good Times Are Killing Me

“Money’s just something you throw from the back of a train.”  - Tom Waits

China is eating away at The Balance.  On the plus side, the food is cheap and I don’t feel I’m overstating things to say that I have mastered the art of eating well for under 3 USD per day.  On the other side of the coin, I’m staying in dorms for what I paid for an air conditioned single room in Vietnam and the transportation costs are sucking my lifeblood.  An 8 hour bus ride is about 12-16 USD, which wouldn’t be so bad if this country weren't enormous.  I’ve taken 6 of these buses (and one train) already and I’ve only been here two weeks.  When it came time to buy my ticket for the 15 hour train from Chengdu to Xi’an I panicked a little when they told me the “Hard Sleeper” class was 34 USD.  I asked for “Hard Seat” for 15 USD, knowing full well that this was an overnight train, 9pm to 12:45pm, and that I would be considering suicide by the time 3am rolled around.  The ticket agent was horrified.  “Haarrd seeeeat?!  It’s FIFTEEN HOURS?!”  I told her I could take it.  She shook her head, “You are very strong!”  I paid, walked up to my room, stood by my bunk for awhile, turned around, walked back down to the desk and told her I’d like to change that to sleeper, if possible.       

Hot-Pot

It was my last night traveling with the Spaniards.  Gabriel and I had been looking for genuine set-your-head-on-fire Sichuan cuisine ever since we arrived in this fine province and although we had enjoyed several fine meals, we had yet to experience anything particularly incendiary.  We felt it was time to look in the guidebook, rather than just wandering into random locations and pointing, so we took an LP reference and wandered out into the darkening streets of Chengdu.  Naturally we couldn’t find the place, but on the way we were intrigued by a crowded establishment furnished with boiling bowls of chilies and oil set into tables, each table surrounded by cases of beers and men with no shirts.  The chilies made our eyes water and throats itch just walking past the door.  We decided without much debate that this was the place, checked with the host, and waited for a table while the other diners bought us tea and ice-cream and asked to have their pictures taken with us. 

We got a little carried away.  Ordinarily Gabriel and I spend between 1 and 2 dollars on dinner, but when they brought us the menu with all manner of strange pictures of food, each intended to be thrown into the chili oil…well…we just kept on pointing at things, running up our tab to a shocking 7 USD each.  We had more food than we could possibly eat sitting before us when the courteous staff brought the huge, two-chamber hot-pot to a rolling boil and helped us to dump our feast into the appropriate concoctions.   

The food did what we asked of it.  Special, round “mouth numbing” chilies set the stage for the roaring taste-bud-fire that was to follow.  We boiled the beef and meatballs and mushrooms and greens and we ate and ate, sweating and coughing and throwing new food into the caldrons until we could take no more.   We paid our ransom and headed back to our hotel, buzzing off chilies and beer and the weirdness of China.   

The Spaniards have gone south now, as is their wont, and I am catching a train north to Xi’an.  We traded email addresses and hugs and music from our iPods and promises that each of us, respectively, has a place to crash in London, Barcelona, and wherever I end up.   Tonight I’ll be catching the train alone, but it doesn’t feel bad.  Short friendships are part of “this thing of ours” and freedom to part ways is the best part of traveling alone.  There seems to be a unique solidarity among travelers in China and I’m looking forward more than ever to the next batch of friends in the next crazy metropolis.  

Hang On Saint Christopher

"I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that my instincts were right." - Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

China is a blur. I don't know whether I've been here 3 days or 10. I see flashes of activity that I have difficulty connecting in my memory. Two blond girls, one American and one Dutch, with whom I shared two, separate, intimate conversations on a rooftop bar while surrounded by revelry seem relevant (although the details of the
conversations bleed together), as does a movie discussion with an American who has taken on the extra challenge of living outdoors during most of his travels. There seems to be an image of a Chinese Michael Jackson impersonator singing in an unbearably loud, but deliciously weird club while the Dutch girl sat across from me awkwardly. I know for sure there was a serendipitous meeting of Spaniards along with a Canadian Of Chinese Heritage and some wandering the streets of a metropolis together, each unsure where we were, each asking strangers to look at our maps and repeatedly getting conflicting advice in the form of directional pointing. I tend to doubt my recollection of the Canadian sobbing in our shared-for-price-not-romance two-bed hotel room after I advised her (since she asked), at 1am after a few drinks, to end her two-year, long-distance relationship with a Frenchman - who in spite of her desperate pleading has stated that he doesn't want to marry her - knowing as she did, with painful clarity, that this advice was obvious and she should have done it already but now, at age 37, she was terrified of being alone. I am almost certain that the one of the lesbians, the one who spoke Mandarin, and the same one who beat the Spaniards and I at Texas Hold 'Em, declared that she had a crush on me when Regina Spektor, The Shins, and Joni Mitchel came up consecutively on a playlist I had made. I am painfully sure that I vomited in my bed that same night, managing at least to lean out and deposit my half-processed soup and hideous Chinese liquor on the floor rather than the sheets, although I have no recollection of the act. A man named Ray may have sang a rock song in Chinese in front of a glowing fireplace in a town called Shangri-La. I know I have climbed mountains (or perhaps hills) with my head throbbing from the elevation. I have helped to turn the largest prayer wheel I have ever seen. I have exited a bus in fog and rain, stepping into a muddy mountain highway, 4 hours from anywhere, because the driver was uncertain if he could both get the bus moving and keep its four wheels in contact with the precarious ledge while it was loaded with passengers. All these things most likely happened, but I can't help feeling there is a strange momentum at play here that has packed this short time with moments which I can barely accept as reality, much less make into any coherent sense. But I love it all. I know that much.

Off The Grid, Again

Off the Grid, Again
Today I'm in Dali; another medium sized city, part smoggy industrial
center, part rural farmland, part recently manufactured tourist
attraction. The city is split into "Old" and "New" sections; the
"New" being the standard ugly offices and manufacturing centers; the
"Old" being guesthouses, handicraft shops, and elaborate gates, all
built in the traditional Chinese style sometime within the last couple
of years. The impression the "Old Dali" gives is one of manufactured
charm, which is not to say it's unpleasant. The city surrounded by
rolling hills and sits on the edge of a massive lake, which my Spanish
and Canadian companions (with whom I have remained loosely affiliated
since our meeting on the bus to Kunming) and I spent the day observing
from the seats of rented bicycles.

When we returned to town "Gabriel" and I went for a bite to eat at a
local restaurant. While we were going through the familiar but
nonetheless arduous ritual of placing our order with gestures, we
heard Mandarin being spoken and turned around to find a couple of
white girls, one of whom was, against all odds, fluent in Mandarin.
We immediately asked her for a little help, which she gave happily,
and invited them to join us for lunch. While we ate, we received a
peculiar travel suggestion, which as Mr. Vonnegut tells us, is a
dancing lesson from god. The girls (Americans who I am all but
certain are a lesbian couple) were going off the beaten track, taking
local buses then renting a van to get to the spectacular geography of
Southwest China, planning to seek shelter in some small villages and
do some trekking in places that do not appear on my Lonely Planet map.
They said we were welcome to join them and share costs. I asked them
if they were serious. They said that they were. I told them that if
they were serious, I was in. We're leaving tomorrow. Gabriel has to
ask his traveling companion, "Emilio" and get back to us. I'll be off
the grid for a week at least.

Welcome to China

Kunming is a gleaming metropolis. A medium sized city of 5 million
souls. I checked into a pristine dorm room bed in "The Hump
Guesthouse" sold to me for 7 USD per night along with a Canadian woman
and two Spanish guys that I met on the bus. We were partners in
confusion getting here. My Mandarin was satisfying to use in
inquiries with locals about exactly where we were, but it was
ultimately no help, perhaps in part because my Lonely Planet is 5
years old. A lot changes in 5 years in China including, apparently,
the location of the bus station. On our second night, a Monday, we
hit the clubs a little along with the cadre of random revelers we met
at The Hump. Chinese people apparently don't ever take a night off
because the town was alive with strange dancing and drinking well into
the wee hours of the morning. I couldn't connect with Yang Yang, my
kind Couchsurfing host, apparently due to a cell phone malfunction, so
I'll have to delay my first CS experience until a later town. So far
China is as strange and wonderful as I had hoped in ways that I never
expected.