October 2008 Archives

The first chunk of peanut cake landed quietly and without ceremony, finding himself the lone legume amidst a dense, moist purgatory of rice, vegetables and flecks of chicken meat in my stomach.

"Nothing to do now but wait," he thought to himself, checking his watch.

He didn't have to wait long. The second mouthful of peanut cake slid down a few minutes later toting a gummy shaped like a lemon.

"Any news from up top?" asked the first.

"He's got the bag of us out in the palm of his hand, sir. Munching intermittently. Could be hours before we're all down here, sir."

"Well, let's get comfortable, then."

One by one, the peanut gang assembled, surreptitiously re-congealing at the back of my digestive chamber. The vegetables started to suspect something but said nothing, perspiring partly with fear of what was to come, partly with shame at their powerlessness to stop it.

Several hours went by. Finally, suddenly, the last crumbs of chewy delicious peanut cake tumbled down. They gave the signal. "He's emptied the plastic bag, sir. Crumpled it. Thrown it away. This is the last of us."

"All right boys!" snarled the captain. "MOOOOOVE OUT!". The heavy peanut log, now whole again in the pit of my stomach, marched forward, down the small intestine with inexorable force, driving the rest of my food ahead like spooked cattle. By the time it hit the large intestine, the glacial mass was dense enough for gravity to take over....

And that's how I nearly pooped my pants on day 6. Anyway, back to day 7, during which David and I found ourselves on the top of Pǔtuóshān, one of China's four sacred Buddhist mountains, this one on top of one of many islands off the coast of Níngbō. We climbed to the top, had a religious experience watching the boats sail in and out under curtain of starlit night, and came back down. Strange to think that, as we gazed over the island from its northern tip, to our left was nothing but cold water, the East China Sea and eventually, southern Japan.

One notable interaction that day happened while I was separated from David: A storeowner whom I asked for directions replied by asking me if I had ever seen a solar oven. It went like this: "You're from America? You guys have so much technology over there! I wish I could go there and look for solar ovens to bring back to China, you know, to save energy! I could start a new business... and retire!" I said that that sounds like a good idea (I guess?). "I can't go to America, though," he said. "You can. Have you seen any over there? Maybe you can look for some for me when you go back." I asked the man if he was sure that China didn't already have solar-powered ovens. "How should I know?" he asked. "Hmm. I don't know either. Maybe you could look on the internet? Do you have a computer here?" I asked, not expecting him to. But in fact, he led me to a desk in the back of the store, where was positioned a laptop. "I never use it," he said. We connected to a wireless network. I got on Wikipedia and found this page, which contains this sentence on the subject of parabolic cookers: "Several hundred thousand exist, mainly in China". I explained this to the man, and he thanked me and sent me on my way, though I can't help but feel like I crushed his dream of selling millions of environmentally-friendly food-preparation devices to his countrymen.

Pǔtuóshān was beautiful and it's too bad we only had one day there. But we did, and the next day we were gone on a ferry just like the one we rode in on, which played Buddhist chant-karaoke on a small TV at the front of the boat. Yes, Buddhist chant-karaoke, which is way less fun than it sounds.

The next day we climbed another mountain. Feeling good, feeling great. Feeling great, feeling good.

Nearing the top, we were stopped by two men in wife-beaters, gray slacks, and jet-black shoes. One was leaning against a sign post wearing an unbuttoned uniform jacket, the other folded his arms and stepped in front of us. "You can't go up there." His belt buckle was wide and there were words on it: People's Liberation Army.

We half-knew it was futile but we had to ask. "Why not? What's at the peak?"

"It's a sensitive area. A military zone. Restricted." Okay.

David and I turned to each other to discuss our options. Should we go back down and try to find another route up? Should we move on to the next... hey wait a minute!

A family of Chinese hikers crunched ahead to our right. The soldiers blocking our path moved aside to let them through. As they ascended into blue and near-cloudless sky, we understood.

"So," said David, turning to the officer who had spoken to us, "THEY get to climb all the way?"

"Yes."

"No foreigners allowed?"

"It's a sensitive area."

"We have residence permits!" I perked up. Look, we're part of your society too! We LIVE here. They checked out our passports and the officer leaning against the post made a phone call.

"Nope, sorry, you just can't enter. Maybe if you had registered before you arrived..."

"The ticket-seller didn't say anything about this. We paid full price."

"Sorry." It was hot. These guys had probably been standing out here all day. Hence the state of half-undress.

"We just want to see the top. We won't take any pictures."

"Sorry." We descended, defeated. I wish I had pictures of encounters like this. 'Excuse me sirs, could I take a photograph of this ridiculous stipulation being enforced?' Obviously if we were really trying to steal military secrets, all we would need is an American with Chinese ancestry to waltz past the guards and take all the photographs he/she wanted. They weren't checking passports, just skin. Ouch.

We descended a bit, took a different path at a fork in the road, deciding to keep walking until someone stopped us again.

Well, whatever it is, they weren't guarding it very well. This man was the only sentry defending the other path, which leads right to the summit we were prohibited from entering earlier:

We could have snuck up behind the officers who spoke to us earlier and tapped them on the back if we had wanted to, but instead, decided not to get arrested. After all, we had a schedule to keep.

Next on the docket was a waterfall:

It was pretty cool, I guess, though we didn't spend much time there. We practically sprinted along the trail. I munched on fried sweet potato crisps:

And overpriced Xinjiang peanut cake:

I have to say, for all the trouble it took to obtain it, the peanut cake was amazing. It was crumbly, crunchy, salty, and sweet and I nibbled on it throughout the day. By "nibbled all day" I mean chewed and swallowed small chunks frequently. There's an interesting side-note to this, but I'll save it for tomorrow.

Evening fell slowly:

The taxi ride to Ningbo took two hours. To make a long story short, we got cheated again. A four-person family joined us in the same cab but paid the same as our party (only two). Tired of arguing, we let it happen, but six people in the cabin (not including the driver) made for quite a squishy ride. My butt, not being squishy, didn't let the rest of my body enjoy it too much. David joked that because we are paying for half the available passenger space we should actually be authorized to force the father to sit on his wife's lap. After an hour and a half of discomfort, however, it seemed less and less like a joke. But we kept our peace. Until the driver told us to get out at the family's stop in Ningbo, several blocks from our destination. We waited in the car.

"Why aren't you getting out?" asked the driver.

"You told us we could go wherever we want," replied David.

"Not my problem. Call a taxi or something, why don't you?"

"WE ALREADY CALLED A TAXI. YOU ARE THAT TAXI! LET'S GO!" David was angry. My butt hurt. We got our way, though the driver wasn't thrilled at actually being forced to perform his assigned task. We found a hotel quickly.

We were tired, aggravated, and hungry. What put us in a little better spirits, however, was that on the way we were solicited for sex three times in the span of two minutes. "Girls? Pretty girls?" asked a stumpy middle-age woman as we walked by. "Girls?" asked another, twelve steps later. The third madam planted herself right in front of us. "Mah-sah-gee? Mah-sah-gee?" she urged us in very Special English. David humored her. "Oh, we'll get 'massages'?" he said in Chinese. "No," she replied. "You'll get sex. Sex with girls. Pretty girls." We laughed a hearty laugh and continued on our merry way, our merry way to dinner. Part of me still wonders what kind of girls they were offering. I like to think they were pretty hideous, but who knows? Maybe we should have asked to see the line-up, like in Rush Hour 2. That would have have made a good photo for this blog, I think. Look Ma, here's the moo shu I turned down!

Morning. Expecting to stand for all 2 hours of our train ride to Wenzhou, we were pleasantly surprised to find open seats on the crowded train. Our large bags and hairy legs piqued the interest of our neighbors, young adults who giggled and stared as if we couldn't hear them giggling or see them staring. At first we ignored them. David pulled out a collection of short stories and started reading aloud from a Guy de Maupassant story that he had tried to describe earlier that morning:

"What are the foreigners doing?" said the young man across from David, whispering sidelong to his partner.

"That one's the teacher and he's reading to his student".

At the conclusion of storytime, David explained to our half-dozen booth-mates that in fact we were both teachers, traveling through Zhejiang during the National Day vacation. Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! went the sound of six brains exploding. "You can speak Chinese?" said the first young man, blood and gray matter dripping from his left ear. After communication channels were open we had some pleasant conversations. Some were migrant workers, some were students. Everyone was in good spirits despite having been on the same train for almost 24 hours (we had only joined them for the last leg).

Arrived in Wenzhou. Emerged from an underground tunnel, to a sunlit square outside the station. Dozens of Uighurs selling dried fruit and delicious snacks. One had a pushcart with nothing on it but one monolithic chewy-peanut cake topped with candies and gummies. It looked really, really good. David asked how much. I became distracted by another man selling golden raisins and started my own transaction. The raisin man began pouring them into a plastic bag.

"Wait, stop! You're putting too much! I only want 8 kuai worth!"

"10 kuai is a nice even number." he said, smiling.

I started to object again, but then I realized something angry was going on behind me. I threw Y10 at the raisin man, took the bag and turned around. An irate beer-bellied Uighur man was yelling in David's face.

"This is what Americans are like, huh? Are you all like this?" shouted the man, who had overheard David's transaction from another stall and had rushed quickly onto the scene.

"70 kuai for one chunk? That's much too expensive, you tricked me!" said David.

"Much too expensive." echoed an onlooker, softly, not wanting to get involved.

"Are you a man or a woman? Are you a man or a woman?" said the bearded scary man with his finger inches from David's face.

"I won't pay it!" said David.

"We already cut it off the block, we can't sell it to anyone now!" was the reply.

"I said I wanted HALF that!" said David. A crowd had formed.

"You Americans are all alike!" said the large man, who was now accompanied by four other men.

"We'll give you 20 kuai for it," said David.

"No, you owe us 70 kuai. Are you a man or a woman?" said another, moving closer.

It was a tense scene. I wanted to interject, but there were no words in my throat, Chinese or English. I wanted Batman. Suddenly a policeman walked up. "Just forget it, guys. It's not worth it." Not knowing what else to do, I pulled Y50 out of my wallet. "Take this." They did (though they acted like it still wasn't enough), and we walked away, shaking, with a sizeable brick of crushed peanuts and gummy candy in a green plastic bag. Over lunch we went over the incident about a thousand times. Did we get tricked? Did we do the right thing? Should we have just walked away? This so-called "Xinjiang peanut cake incident" stuck in our minds for the rest of the trip. Actually, we still talk about it.

In a few hours we were on a bus to Tiantai (Heavenly Platform):

There we executed a now-familiar routine. 1) Buy a map, 2) walk to a central area, 3) find a hotel, 4) ask to see a room 5) check the air conditioning on the wall, the hot water in the shower and the locks on the windows. Repeat steps 3-5 as necessary. That night though, we must have looked at four different hotels and seven different rooms across town before settling on the first one we had seen (the cigarette smell that originally turned us off dissipated when we opened the windows). During our search, two places in particular really creeped us out. In one hotel, the small, severe woman who showed us the room assured us that there was hot water. I turned on the shower. It was cold. "It'll come" she said. I held my hand there for a full two minutes. "It's still cold," I said. "Maybe we should just go try another place," said David. She asked us why we were leaving. We told her there's no hot water. She started screaming. "WE HAVE HOT WATER! WHAT'S THE PROBLEM? GET BACK IN HERE!" Yikes, now we're definitely leaving. We ran down the stairs, her piercing voice close on our heels. The whole staff watched us as we sprinted out the door and around the corner. The next place wasn't much better. After seeing the dismal bathroom situation, we apologized to the owner and started to descend. Then the lights went out. I asked why and got no reply. Thoroughly weirded out again, we ran down the stairs, this time in the dark.

Feeling better after settling into a decent hotel room, we set off to find dinner and found this sign:

狗(gǒu). Dog. Neither David nor I had yet allowed the sweet flesh of Man's Best Friend to grace our palates, but then again why not? What separates the dog from the other animals upon whose shanks and loins we have no qualm to feast? What makes it so notoriously exempt from our Western diet, anyway? Cuteness? Bah. Determined to expand our horizons, we entered the restaurant and bravely ordered two bowls of dog noodle soup:

"Intelligence." David muttered pensively, stirring his half-eaten bowl of hound with a single chopstick.

"What?"

"That's why we don't eat dog meat. Dogs are more intelligent than cows and chickens and fish. They have a wide range of human-like facial expressions."

"Oh. Right." I stopped chewing and scratched my chin, fingering my hint-of-a-beard. The meat was fatty and dark. A dark meat. It made a good broth for the soup, but the bones were sharp. And small. I started to eat slower. Then not at all. I was still hungry, and so was David. "Maybe we could go somewhere else."

We found a nearby vegetable roasterie and attempted to cleanse our souls with tofu and Chinese cabbage. And it was good. I'm still no herbivore, but the experience definitely gave me a deeper appreciation for vegetables:

By which, of course, I mean vegetables cooked and soaked in oil.

Standing at the summit of Huangmao Jian (Yellowthatch Peak) that afternoon, David and I were literally on top of Zhejiang (at 1921m above sea level, it's the highest in the province), though we didn't know it at the time.

Getting there was somewhat arduous, but you couldn't complain about the vistas...:

... or the enchanted woods:

One of the joys of hiking in China, evidently, is getting to climb to the rousing chorus of winded Chinese muttering breathlessy "You guys are so lihai (fiercely awesome)!" Not that I wasn't winded myself, but the constant praise started to go to my head. "I guess I am pretty awesome..." I thought as I climbed these last few steps:

Pumped from the thrill of a mountain well-climbed, we descended like bounding cougars, which is to say, rather quickly. A good thing, considering we needed to hurry a bit to get back to the electric car shuttle which would take us back to the bus to Longquan, a bus we were sternly told will leave promptly at 2pm. At the electric shuttle drop-off point, however, no electric shuttle was to be seen. One of the hikers waiting told us it would be another hour before we saw one.

"We could probably run it in 15 minutes," said David.

I looked up the road, eyes searching in vain for an approaching shuttle.

"Maybe we could just start walking and see if we get picked up," I said to the space of air where David's head had been a moment ago. David was already sprinting down the highway (*this scene has been dramatized for effect*).

We ran with abandon along a curvy road on the side of the mountain we just descended, guardrails separating us from a bushy escarpment and really terrific view to the rice paddies several hundred feet below. If I hadn't been running as fast as Gusly possible, I would definitely have taken a photo. Pants falling down, anti-microbial traveler's safety crotch pocket riding up to my navel, clear skies and lush green valleys to my left, and potential oncoming traffic around every turn, it was surreal to say the least. I caught up to David (translation: I got picked up by a shuttle 3/4 of the way down) just as he reached the place where the bus had dropped us off:

And....... the bus wasn't there. We still had 10 minutes to spare and it had left already. Interesting fact about public transportation in China; when the buses fill up, they leave. Panting, we complained a bit to some lodge staff (who ostensibly were not affiliated with the bus company) and they kindly set us up on another bus, presumably kicking two other poor souls off their ticket back to civilization and perpetuating the chain of injustice.

Back in Longquan, we checked out quickly from our hotel. So quickly, in fact, that not two seconds later, there we were back in the county seat of Lishui. It was already nightfall, but we waited in line to buy sleeper train tickets to Wenzhou. It was then that we experienced an altercation at the front of the queue.

"Gibberish!" said the man at the front, gesticulating wildly at the women behind the glass.

"Louder, shriller, microphone-augmented gibberish!" said the woman seated closest to the glass.

"Gibberish!" said another man, shoving the first man firmly.

"Hey!" replied the first man, who began grabbing at the neckline of the interloper.

"Gibberish, gibberish, gibberish!" David and I looked at each other. There was going to be a fight. Then two uniformed policemen stepped in to the scene.

"Nothing," said one policeman.

"Absolutely nothing," said the other.

More yelling, more indecipherable yelling from all involved, except the police, who were about as useful as a poopy-flavored lollipop. Not being able to do much to the ticket sellers (so that's why that bulletproof glass is there...), the man soon became tired of neck-grabbing and sauntered out with his also-agitated girlfriend. He kept shouting over his shoulder, something along the lines of "You haven't heard the last of me!", and then something about death. This led to a discussion between myself and David of why China needs a Batman. Batman would have let that altercation continue for about half a second before breaking a few ribs and scowling at the onlookers. "You're not much better than this sack of shit," Batman would think to himself as he glides off to stop a mugging in Beijing. Anyway, by the time we reached the counter and bought our tickets, we were so tired that we figured we might as well just stay in Lishui for the night. So we got back in line and returned our tickets.

And it's a good thing we did! We got a super deal at a hotel just 45 seconds away from the train station (the woman knocked off Y100 for no apparent reason), and the room was probably the best we had all week. The one hitch was that we got a phone call from the front desk just minutes after settling in.

"Could you two come down to the lobby so we can take you to the police station?"

"Um.."

"To take care of some paperwork."

"Surely this can be done without going to the police station..."

"We can't register you here, we need to take you there."

We descended to the lobby with raised eyebrows. After several minutes of listening the desk attendant (who was really quite nice) talk to the police over the phone, we discovered the nature of the bureaucratic obstruction: our names.

"We can't register you as guests if you don't have Chinese names," she said apologetically.

"Oh, we have those!" Problem solved. Though it's interesting because neither of our Chinese names are actually associated with our given names in any official documents.... Note to self: make some business cards with Chinese/English names.

Seven seconds later, we were back in our beds, and I was dreaming of sore muscles and this youtiao which I would eat the next morning...

In the morning a train took us away from Hangzhou.

Though we had bought tickets for the sleeper car, David and I sat by the window. Perhaps we might have napped in our bunks if a perpetually recumbent balding man had not been smoking in the bed chamber. Though we exchanged almost no words, this man was clearly a character. At one point, the female train attendant was finishing up the safety instructions:

"...and if there's anything we can do for you, please don't hesitate to let us kn..."

"Yeah, how about a little AIR CONDITIONING in here!" hacked the man from his roost.

Several hours later we arrived in Lishui, a town named for its "beautiful water":

It was here, eating ricey-porky vegetables and looking at a map of the county, that we faced an important juncture. The Lonely Planet China guide only covers the racial minority town of Hexi, but the map reveals at least five other destinations of comparable size and natural splendor. And so our dilemma: Will we follow in the footsteps of boy-loving travel guide writers, or will we don the shining helmets of conquistadors and venture into the uncharted? The decision took narry a nanosecond. David and I grabbed our belongings and our enormous testicles and made for the bus station, there buying two tickets for Longquan (Dragon Springs).

Pointing to a patch of forest green on our map, David asked at least 6 people that night the same question, "How can we get here tomorrow morning?" and got at least 6 different answers.

1. "You can hire a driver. Here, I know a good one you can call!" (never called us back)

2. "You can't. The road doesn't exist anymore." (not helpful)

3. "You can take a taxi for 200 yuan." (too expensive)

4. "I'm going there tomorrow morning, want to come?" (got a weird feeling about that guy)

5. "You could rent a car and drive it yourself." (testicle shrinkage)

6. "There's a bus that leaves tomorrow morning." (hmm)

Asking direct questions about people's lives always feels like pulling teeth (this is noticeable in the HuaFu classrooms too). As soon as the conversation veers past information acquisition and on toward friendly banter...

"Oh, you've been to these mountains before? Do you hike often?"

"Err... yes. Maybe."

... the conversation runs cold. This is from the same guy who was sending his 6-year-olds out to the desk where we were standing to shout "Hello!" at us. "Go tell them 'I love you!'" I overheard him instructing his progeny. A lot of interest in us sprang up everywhere we went that week, but defenses would shoot up when we tried to return the curiosity. Perhaps it was this phenomenon that prevented us from receiving a straight answer about how to reach our mountain, or perhaps it was just a lack of general knowledge about the area. In any case, it was like pulling teeth.

Got this "bǐng" on the way to our accommodations:

"What's the pink stuff?" I asked the woman who seemed to be stuffing the entire periodic table of elements into the bundle of dough that she would later adhere to the inside of an iron pot to cook, foreshadowing the way it would later adhere to the lining of my stomach. The reply? "It's good, it makes it taste better!" Though I begrudged her the evasive huckster reply, she was right; it was one of the most heavenly bread-like substances I've ever metabolised.

Our second day in Hangzhou breaks down into two parts:

1) tour-boating the famous West Lake:

Peaceful as it may seem, make no mistake; throngs of tourists crowded every inch of the surrounding banks and archipelagos. It also would have been easier to move around if one weren't constantly walking in between camera-toting men and their posing girlfriends. Neither one of us having brought our girlfriends, we did not stay long.

2) biking the tea fields:

Easily one of the high points of the whole trip for me was riding a bright orange rent-a-bike up and down the winding green paths adjacent to the lake. Granted, it wasn't like we were riding right smack through the actual tea fields (can't you just see us brushing through the leaves as we pedal over the fertile dirt, soaking in the antioxidants as if by osmosis...), but we could see them from the road on which we constantly dodged chickens, small children and old people laughing at us. "Look at the tall one, huffing and puffing with his knees almost hitting the handlebars!" is what they were probably saying underneath their thick, wrinkly accents.

This is where the mouth of the tea trail led us:

There was even a rainbow, which you can see above David's head in this photo, taken at the precise moment when he realizes we've gone too far:

Not long after we returned our bikes, fellow PiAer Scott (of once-presided-over-my-eating-club-at-Princeton fame) and his girlfriend Natsai met us for dinner at a nearby whoops-that-was-quite-expensive Malaysian restaurant, where we were serenaded by a Filipino band mariachi-style.

"What song would you like us to sing?" the woman asked David, who replied "Do you know 'La Bamba'?" Apologetically, the man with the guitar said "Well, no. But we've got one that's very similar!" and then proceded to lead the band in a really bangin' version of... 'La Bamba'. Hmmm, we thought. Perhaps there was a miscommunication. But that thought was quickly replaced by "LALALALALALABAMBA!"

Later in the meal, something in the kitchen exploded extremely loudly and terrified everyone into silence, each patron either pinching himself to affirm his life hadn't ended or quietly pondering his own mortality. The chef emerged from the kitchen unscathed but visibly agitated. "Oh, he is DONE!" said Scott. "He's outta here." Scott was right. Soon the man who had so lovingly tucked the sweet glazed morsels of pork inside our pineapple was in his civvies and out the door into the cool breezy night, motorcycling off to a safer place. Probably home, or to a bar to tell his friends about how he lost his eyebrows.

David and I slept in Stan's apartment that night, but not before pausing, in our search for a taxi, to note these little chickadees for sale on the sidewalk:

It doesn't take much to start a conversation on Chinese public transportation, and this time, on the 2-hour evening flight from Guangzhou to Hangzhou, all it took was David quietly murmuring to himself, Boeing safety manual in hand, compulsively craning his neck to affirm that the closest exit was indeed behind him.

"Wow!" said the woman to my right, leaning over my lap. "You can read Chinese!"

Never mind the erroneous and depressingly common assumption that foreigners are illiterate, the conversation was underway. For a single-serving friend, she was fairly engaging and open about her own life (rare for the Chinese we met on this trip) as well as curious about ours (not so rare). I would even go so far as to say that I enjoyed this unexpected bit of language practice and cultural exchange, which extended through the disembarking process and on through to luggage acquisition. Then suddenly her phone rang and she bid a cold, hasty bye-bye (Cantonese for good-bye is "bye-bye", funnily enough), off to meet her friend. Her friend, as it turns out (we rode the same shuttle bus to downtown Hangzhou), is a slightly older man, and there was nothing friendly about him. Neither of them spoke to us during the bus ride. Why the rush to get away from us before meeting him? We guessed it was because she didn't want her stony and oppressive lover to catch a glimpse of her flirting with the two fun-loving barbarian cowboys. Actually, there's probably a host of explanations for that situation, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Finding Stan, our contact in Hangzhou (and fellow PiAer (and fellow Lexingtonian(!))) at Zhejiang University of Technology took about 45 minutes, during which time David remarked on the pleasantly cooler climate and greener atmosphere (noticeable even after midnight). Stan introduced us to Leigh, another PiAer whose couches we were to be commandeering that night. Having been awake almost 20 hours, David and I were both exhausted, but unfortunately Stan and Leigh are both very nice people (dang!) and the ensuing catching up and exchanging stories kept us busy for another hour until we finally conked out in Leigh's living room, the air conditioner humming the sweet, low melody of conditioned air.

Last week David (pictured below, atop the giant mantis) and I did Zhejiang, a province in southeast China.



I mean "did" in the sense of "holistically experienced", and I say it that way because we covered a lot of ground. Planes, trains, and automobiles (and bikes and boats) carried us from Guangzhou to Hangzhou to Lishui to Longquan back to Lishui to Wenzhou to Tiantai to Ningbo to Putuoshan back to Ningbo back to Hangzhou back to Guangzhou. In fact, it was so action-packed, I'm going to put all descriptions of my regular life on hold and cover it day-by-day.