Do we left Kunming yesterday on the way to visit a friend from Mut Mee who

is now living an hour south of Guilin in Yangzhou. On the way, we stopped in

Shilin to see a stone forest there. There are a couple of "forests" in that

area, including the actual Shilin Stone Forest about 5km from the train

station...which apparently costs 140 yuan (about $18) to get into. Needless

to say, that seemed a bit pricey to us.

So instead Petra and I started walking down the road, and then decided to

head cross country towards a number of rocks on the horizon. After picking

our way carefully through a number of crop fields, while waving to the

farmers working them, we reached our own personal stone forest. It was

absolutely fantastic, a real fairyland of rock spires and tall spindly

trees. I spen t a couple of hours climbing precariously ovr the rock

outcroppings, exploring various nooks and crannies. It was great fun,

exceptg thast the rocks were uncomfortably sharp and made trying to sit on

them a less than comfortable experience.

It was a great afternoon...and Petra and I had the whole "forest" completely

to ourselves, and for free! Maybe the proper Shilin stone forest would have

been even more impressive, but it couldn't have been any more fun and we

wouldn't have had nearly the same amount of freedom to climb around as we

did in our forest.

Afterwards we headed back to the train station, and after another overnight

train ride are now in Guilin. We came straight to the internet cafe (after

having the previously mentioned highly disappointing "lobster" {expletive

deleted}) in the hopes of hooking up with our friend.

A brief interlude and rant, if you'll bear with me.

We just arrived in Guilin, and were desperate for food after a busy day

yesterday and a night on the train. We stopped in a small restaraunt here

and I was fairly intent on trying the "lobster" for 25 yuan (just over $3).

Of course, it was not lobster; it was crawfish, and obviously Chinese

crawfish at that.

This was Petra's first experience with crawfish, that all-Louisiana staple.

And in every way I feel like I failed her in this all important first

assessment. First off, crawfish are obviously not lobster. I once went to a

Sunday brunch in New York City where I was going to pay $2 extra for the

"lobster pot pie", until I got it (and it wasn't very good, beinbg among

other things /way/ too sweet) and discovered the "lobster" bits were

actyually just crawfish tails. Fort the uninitiated, crawfish are /not/

lobster; I pulled over the waiter and explained this to him loudly and

fairly irately, and the restaraunt "forgave" me the extra $2 that they were

trying to extort from their less informed patrons. Pissed. Me. Off.

So we get here and order lobster, and get crawfish. Now, as any

self-respecting Louisianian (or Louisiana transplant) can tell you, Chinese

crawfish -- although cheaper -- are in every other way inferior to

red-blooded American Louisiana spillway crawfish. Next, the crawfish we were

served here were split in half down the middle, so I couldn't even explain

to Petra the correct way to peel them. And of course there is the entire

false advertising consideration; as I've said, crawfish are NOT lobsters,

period!

But for the first time in almost a year, I'm really homesick. It's the very

tail-end (actually, it is probably just past) crawfish season in Louisiana.

And the small plate of weird Chinese crawfish I just had only whet my

appetite for a sack of the real thing, properly spiced with Zataran's and

boiled with a bunch of potatoes, corn and maybe a couple handfuls of

mushrooms (they soak up the spice wonderfully). And having a dozen crawfish

split in half just cannot compare to the experience of having a sack of

fresh boiled crawfish dumped on a newspaper-clad table and tearing into them

with experienced fingers quickly shucking the delicious tasil meat out of

their protective shells.

At least the 5 yuan (about 75 cents) large beers that I had to console

myself seemed to have done their jobs. But I hope I can show Petra one day

what a /real/ crawfish boil is all about.

Sorry, but of course I haven't been able to read your blog. If you're

getting ready for exams, good luck! If they just finished, I hope all went

well. But I've been really curious to know how your second semester went.

Have things gotten better at university? Did you decide to definitely

transfer? Do me a favour and drop me a quick comment, just to quench my

curiosity. Thanks! ;)

-- It's sort of weird being in a country where the socially responsible

thing to do after drinking a bottle of Coke is to drop the bottle on the

street instead of throwing it in a bin. This was especially noticable in

Jinghong, the first real city we stopped in, but has been true everywhere

we've gone in China. They are serious about recycling here, primarily

because you can get a couple of jiao (pennies; 10 jiao to 1 yuan) for each

plastic and glass bottle, and several jiao for an aluminum can. So there is

always someone digging through trash bins on the street pulling out the

bottles; again, it was even more prevalent in Jinghong because of the large

number of hill tribe minorities, for whom a couple of extra jiao can be a

real windfall compared to their usual income. And while someone will

probably pull your bottle out of a bin if you throw it away, it's just

easier (and more sanitary) to leave it someplace visible on the street for

them.

-- In Dali, there was a small stand across from the nightclub we worked at

that sold only matches. Kind of weird. But even weirder was the fact that

they had the complete Great Mass Murderers of History match set -- the kind

of murderers who make Hitler look like an incompetent also-ran with a bad

mustache. The set contained Marx and Engels (they don't count), Lenin,

Stalin, Mao, and Tito (also probably doesn't make the cut, but I thought it

was nice to include him in order to round out the set). Why anyone would

want matchboxes with these guys on them just sort of escapes me. Kitch gone

haywire?

But just in case you feel like Hitler got short shrift, there was also a

special "Third Reich, Day by Day" box set of, I believe, twelve matchboxes

with assorted Nazi propaganda photos on them. Now all the neo-Nazis -- and

Maoists rebels, for that matter -- know where they can find ideologically

compatible firestarters for all of their fire-bombing needs.

-- In February, Petra and I were felled for an entire week by the Stomach

Bug from Hell. Basically we could not eat for the entire time, as we were

both spending a lot of quality time with the toilet in our house. My

appetite remained slim for quite awhile afterwards, although I think it is

pretty much back to normal by now. But in the intervening months, I was told

repeatedly that I looked like I had lost weight. I knew that; I just

couldn't eat like I usually could. But I guess I hadn't realized exactly how

much weight I had lost. I measured myself recently on a scale I found in

some pharmacy, and I was down hovering around my weight after my year of

chemo some time back. I weighed 66 kilos, which is around 145 lbs. I have to

admit, I was quite surprised by that revelation. So I'm on the anything I

want/all the time diet again (woohoo!), and have switched to drinking two

liter bottles of Sprite instead of my normal large bottles of water. I've

put on a bit of weight since, back up to 68 or 69 kilos, but with the amount

of walking we do it still means I have to have a hell of a calorie intake in

order to keep up. The good news is that I feel fine, have plenty of energy,

and seem to be in great health. Just thinner than I was.

And finally we're up to the present! We headed south a couple of hours to

Jiajiang, which seems not particularly notable except that it had a cliff

with 2400 Buddhas arranged on it.Should be cool to see...but we haven't

quite made it yet. Today it is storming, and the last two days...well, we

just haven't quite made it yet. But we found a hotel we like, and have just

enjoyed kind of lying around and doing nothing a bit. Or a bit more, as the

case probably is.

The general plan is to see the cliff, head another hour south to Leshan to

see the largest Buddha in the world (carved into a mountain, kind of like

Mt. Rushmore only almost certainly /much/ bigger), and then further south to

Kunming -- another big city where we'll have to run some errands. We have to

"leave the country" -- in our case, that means we have to make it to Hong

Kong -- on June 1, and so after Kunming we're just kind of making the rest

of itinerary up as we go along. Although considering how long we seem to

stay in each town we hit (we've probably been averaging at least a week, and

we been in Jiajiang -- which as I said, isn't particularly notable -- for

three days now and still haven't seen theone sight we came to hit), we might

well not get to see too much more between Kunming and Hong Kong. But that's

okay, nice and slow and relaxing is working our pretty well for us, and

generally the longer we stay in a place the cheaper we can stay in it for

since we find the markets and cheap dumpling places and such. Although

disappointingly, we haven't found any dumplings or buns at all here in

Jiajiang. Weird.

At least in Sichuan, though, duck is /way/ more popular and easier to find

than chicken. I just can't quite get over this fact. Duck for me is such a

rare delicacy that it is almost impossible to find outside of Mr. B's or

something. But here, every street corner has some lady with a cart on wheels

and a score or so of fantastic looking ducks hanging from their necks. You

can also just buy a bag of duxk heads, or rabbit heads for that matter,

pre-cooked and ready to go! What you do with these, I can't quite figure

out...unless you just crunch them up whole, bones and all.

Here in Jiajiang, we've wound up eating quite a bit of unidentifiable

internal organ bits. The first days we played menu roulette -- the menu was

in Chinese, so we just pointed to something and hoped for the best -- and

wound up with noodle soup with...something else in it. I'm guessing it was

probably intestines of some sort. But they were pleasantly chewy, kind of

tasty with the soup, and perfectly edible. Yesterday we tried a hot pot sort

of thing, where they bring a bowl of soup out and a bunch of plates, which

you dump in and cook in the broth and then fish out.there was some great

beef, some greens and spring onions...and then a whole bunch of other

things. Definitely some tripe (stomach), but also a wealth of other sliced

organ bits I couldn't place. Again, almost all of them were just chewy

without alot of taste on their own. Oh, also there was a plate of rendered

fat which you could then reheat and choke down. That was the only thing I

just didn't feel like eating, although I tried one piece.

Sichuan food is pretty tasty and kind of spicy, but unfortunately the spice

seems to come exclusively fromthelayer of spicy oil they dump on top of

everything. Which means everything you eat is greasy as hell (with the

consequent intestinal difficulties posed to those not used to eating that

much straight fat), and if you don't want something as spicy it is almost

impossible to get rid of -- you can't just scrape off the peppers or

anything. But the offal seems to be pretty tasty usually, so that is

something at least.

After finally getting our tails in gear to leave Lijiang (the guest house

said they were completely booked with reservations and our room wouldno

longer be available, so we had to find /somewhere/ else to sleep), we headed

east to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan (Sezchuan) province. To get there,

we managed to squeeze a 16 hour sleeper bus ride into just over 36 hours.

Ah, now there is fun: being couped up in a bus with now bathroom for a day

and a half! The smells you discover! Our bus repeatedly broke down, with

numerous flat tires, stops to look at various things,and finally an hour and

a half break to completely overhaul something way underneath everything.

The trip itself should have been fantastic. It started off on switch-backing

roads climbing over the mountains east of Lijiang, where you could look down

into terraced valleys in which rice and other things were grown. Really

beautiful. But at night it got even better -- although we did have a simply

fantastic lightning storm to set the mood as we descended into a city that

looked like it was absolutely ripped from "Blade Runner" or "Mad Max". A

city that seemed to stretch all around a bowl shaped valley, at the bottom

of which was /two/ nuclear power plants as well as some refinery that had a

dramatically huge flame sprouting from one of its towers. From further up on

the hill, there were garishly bright neon signs blinking their slogans in

mysterious Chinese characters, while with a crack of thunder a dozen or so

fingers of lightning at a time would trace their way across the sky.

Absolutely awesome! Actually, the thing it reminded me most of was the

spacedock city in "Serenity" (where River freaks out in the bar) due to all

the Chinese signs.

We got to Chengdu at 1:30am, instead of our 9am ETA the previous day.

Stumbled into a hostel we had picked up a card for in Dali, which only had

one bed left. Tried to convince them that Petra and I did not mind sleeping

together in a single bed but they wouldn't go for that, so I looked extra

exhausted and asked if we could crash in the DVD room they had just off the

lobby. So we got to spend the night for free instead of paying the 15 yuan

($2) dorm bed fee, which worked out even better since they had a foldout

futon in the DVD room.

Chengdu was mostly uninteresting. Very big, an up-and-coming Chinese boom

town. Not a lot of character, or at least not that I could appreciate. Did

get some traditional Sichuan food, which was pretty uniformly spicy but not

nearly as atomic as I would have thought. The best food was a duck soup

place: 48 yuan (about $6.50) for a whole duck in a vat of soup placed on

your table, where you can order extra things to add to the soup and eat

away. We didn'torder anything extra, since one duck is pretty much enough

for two people when you add all the other things already included, and

because we couldn't read any of the "extras" off the menu and didn't feel

like playingmenu roulette that evening. But it was both dinner and

entertainment; the duck was great, and after the big pieces were gone you

had to try and snag the other bits with your chopsticks as they boiled up to

the top before they disappeared back into the broth. We convienently bought

a plastic bowl with a lid right before we stopped to eat there, so we ladled

out a bunch of the broth and the left over duck bits and had a take away

meal for breakfast as well.

Probably Chengdu's greatest claim to fame is that it has the Panda Breeding

and Research Center, which I thought was going to be a panda reserve but

which is actually just a fairly cool zoo with two breeds of animals in it.

It was pretty neat, and you did get to see the pandas right up close. The

giant pandas were real clowns; they looked like they were constantly doing a

John Ritter routine, tripping over logs, trying to get up but instead only

managing to somersault forward, then lying and rolling around until they

finally sit up and looked right at you as if to say, "Did you get a good

picture? How about now, do you like this pose?" They also, inconceivably,

sounded exactly like a doggy squeaky toy. Very strange to hear such sounds

coming out of an animal that big.

The red pandas were also really neat, especially since I had never even

really seen many pictures of them: they looked like huge red raccoons with

long bushy tails. Not nearly as entertaining or personable as the giant

pandas, they mostly kept their heads down and concentrated on eating their

bamboo. You got the feeling that they knew they were the red-furred

stepchildren of the panda world and therefore decided not to play the

tourist game; the gift shop for the zoo didn't have not one single souvenir

with a red panda on it. Stuffed giant pandas everywhere, giant panda

calendars, keychains, lamps, you name it...no red panda anything, not even a

postcard. I'd go on strike, too.

Heading further north, we made it to Lijiang -- another former capital of

something or other. Whereas Dali struck me as Disney World, Lijiang gave me

the impression of a cross between Venice and Bourbon St. It was another town

with lots of people in "traditional" garb, especially outside the various

bars/restaraunts where the staff would sing and dance in a loud and usually

off-key manner. Since Lijiang also seems to be somethinglike the number

three tourist destination in China for Chinese citizens on vacation, the

crowded and noisy atmosphere gave me a bit of a Bourbon St. vibe.

The Venice vibe comes from the countless little streams, wells, and other

waterways criss-crossing the entire historic town center. Not like Venice in

that you need a boat to get around, but ever twisty little street has one or

two streams running along side it. It was actually incredibly pretty in a

very touristy way, but you had to be careful where you walked; all the

streets were made of stone, which meant if you don't have a lot of tread on

your shoes and especially if the streets are wet you really had to be

careful of slipping, as well as if you're not paying attention it is easy to

step and fall into a flowing body of water.

Lijiang was also notable for having the narrow little streets never quite

meeting up how you expect them to. Even after a week there, you'd think "If

I make three left turns, I ought to be back on the same road as I started,"

and that was almost invariably untrue. Which kind of made it fun, since

there were all sorts of little nooks and cranies to explore, always another

twisty little alley you had never noticed. Of course, ifit started raining

and you were trying to rush back to the guest house, it could make for a

very complicated route to get from Point A to Point B.

And that was about it. We spent a week, doing a lot of nothing. Hitting the

ultra-cheap dumpling place for breakfast, heading over to the cafe with

great hot chocolate that also had free internet, wandering a bit, grabbing a

drink or watching a movie at one of a couple of bars we liked, then hitting

the little corner store for snacks to keep us warm and entertained as we

watched the Snooker World Championship or some weird witch/martial arts show

on the tv. We kept meaning to leave earlier, but for some reason we never

quite got the momentum up to do it.

One quicknote: we got to see the new Frank Miller movie "300" at a bar

called the Sexy Tractor. Awesome movie! Completely what I wanted to see!

Almost exactly like "Sin City" set in ancient Greece. If you want something

extra light and fluffy with lots of blood (Amy and CJ!), highest possible

recommendation!

There was one night at Tang Dynasty where some particularly drunk or drugged individual was /forcibly/ removed from the club. I don't know what had actually started it, but the bouncers and every other male member of the staff proceeded to kick the shit out of this guy, who insanely kept stumbling to his feet and trying to charge back into the door. Whereupon he'd be kicked some more, get up and try to get back in, and so on. Finally they got the guy sitting at a table in the quasi-kind of-maybe associated cafe next door (the organizational chart of the greater Tang Dynasty conglomerate was never something I could wrap my head around). Petra and I both wanted to try and convince this guy not to try to get back into the club, and Petra especially did not want to see him get pummeled any more.

We went over and sat down with him, and tried to offer him a cigarette, give him a glass of water and just get his mind focused on something besides making another attempt to enter the club. This fairly quickly failed, and the six-foot-something drunk Chinese guy stood up and started walking back to the club. Petra jumped up, got right in his face and said, "Don't try it! Stop!"

The bouncers absolutely /freaked/. The little German girl was taking on the drunk, which apparently is just Not Done in this country. One of the managers squawked in horror and tried to convey to Petra that he thought her strategy was perhaps ill-conceived by screaming, "No! No! Stop!" at her, not the drunk. One of the bouncers hustled over and grabbed the guy, whereupon Petra grabbed the glass of water and dumped it on the drunks head. This actually seemed to shock the guy back to his senses a bit, and he was finally led away relatively quietly and disappeared into the night.

The story seemed to quickly make the rounds among the rest of the staff. Later that night, the biggest bouncer in the club -- kind of a small sumo wrestler who was actually sort of jovial once you got to know him -- walked out of the club, saw Petra and caught her eye, smiled and wai-ed (bowed) to her in respect.

That's my girlfriend!!! :)

Next we took an overnight sleeper bus twelve hours north to Old Dali City. The sleeper bus was actually pretty great. Instead of seats, there are three tows of bunk beds. The minus is that you really can't sit up very well, but instead have to pretty much recline to one extent or another the entire way. The dramatic upside is that you have an actual bed (if one that bounces and jiggles more than you're probably used to) to sleep in rather than a seat that does not adjust from, a strict 90 degree angle. All told, an infinitely better concept.

Ah, but Dali... For someone who packed his bag in July with clothes to hit Thailand, India and Ethiopia (the three must hit stops for my around the world trip), stepping out of the bus into the mountains surrounding Dali was quite the bracing experience. It was cold, it was raining, and my sandals both have a split in their soles which meant that they don't do much for actually keeping my feet dry. We jogged as best we could to find someplace, anyplace, to stay, and found an alright guest house that was also incredibly cold inside. I stripped off all of my clothes, dried myself off, crawled under the covers of the bed and ceased to exist for several hours. (Although the beds on the sleeper bus are /way/ better than seats for sleeping in, apparently you don't /actually/ sleep as well in them as you would in a normal bed. Live and learn.)

That evening, we donned every piece of clothing we owned and ventured forth for food. Old Dali City is a historic capital of something or other; in fact, every city in China seems to be a historiuc capital of some province, some ancient kingdom or dynasty, <i>et cetera</i>. And it is Disney World, China edition. It is physically beautiful -- an old stone city, still with most of its original city walls, sandwiched between a nice lake to the east and the mountains that mark the beginning of Tibet on the other. And there were people everywhere in "traditional" garb, doing "traditional" dancing, weaving, and the like. Hence the Disney World vibe: everything is a little too perfect, a little too prettified, a little too "traditional" to be true. But Disney World is fun, and so was Dali. Nothing super special, but interesting and colourful and fun.

We stopped to eat at a random place, and were looking around and saw a sign on the wall of the cafe: "Do you like Dali? Want to stay longer? Work 4 hours a night!" Petra and I looked at each other, and asked for the manager.Thus began our tenure at what is purported to be the best known night club in Yunnan, Tang Dynasty. We got room and board in exchange for working 6-10pm. The first two hours invariably consisted of us eating our dinner and reading our books. The other two hours consisted of...well, it was never perfectly clear. But in essence we were the carnival attraction: "Come see the strange and weird foreigners! Practice their strange, outlandish language! Watch the German woman drink any member of your party under the table!!!" Most of the 8-10pm bit usually saw us standing out front trying to encourage people to enter the club -- me trying to get them into the actual dance club, Petra having the cushier job of trying to get them ionto a smoehow-associated pizza joint next door. But I think the real reason we were there was so people could offer to buy us drinks (therefore purchasing more alcohol), and whenever someone offered to do this we were immediately relieved of our duties and encouraged to make friends.

So the first night on the job, I wound up drinking (copiously) with the entire officer corps of the Dali contingent of the People's Republican Army.

Over the couple weeks we spent there, I also drank with the head of a securities firm in Shanghai, the manager of the largest (and purportedly best) pu'er tea factory in China (and learned a lot more about tea, of course), the head of one of the local television stations, and a wealth of other less notables. The main problem was the toasting: Generally they came in in groups. They'd want to buy us a drink, and so we'd join them. Then each one of the group would toast us, and we'd both drink. Then the next member of the group would toast, and that person and I would drink. Then the next member would toast, and so on. The long and short of it is that Petra and I would have to drink six to eight shots of beer before we got back around to the first member of the group, who would then have his second shot.

For a lot of people, the best job ever! For me, kind of a moderate health concern since, due to my cancer treatments, I've got a lot less saliva than most people and drinking a bunch of caffeine or alcohol completely dries up the little bit I have. But still, it was interesting and by no means hard work, and we enjoyed it for awhile.

For me, it was really a bit of a change: I was suddenly wildly popular at a dance club. As in, I actually had a girl come up to me and say, "Hi. I think you are beautiful!" Never, ever happened to me in the States. And there were times when I'd gesture and babble one of the three phrases they taught me, all of which effectively meant "Please come in", and girls would stop, look at me, and hurry into the club. Didn't happen exactly nightly, but probably two nights out of three. and of course everyone wanted to drink with me. Weird, but kind of cool.

The problem was the place we were staying at. There was also a guesthouse somehow probably perhaps maybe connected with the club, and we got a room there for free. But the two girls who staffed it were just indescribably rude and unpleasant. Every morning we had to beg for toilet paper. If we needed a towel, it was iffy we would get one. The guest house advertised "free internet", but we were not allowed to use it -- or could only after a shouting match and me just sitting down at the computer and ignoring them. When we did our laundry, they'd take it off the line and throw it in a ball on whatever dirty surface was available. Whenever we had any question or request, we were just told "No!" loudly and angrily, whereupon the two girls would turn away and mockingly mimic whatever we had just said. We complained several times to our boss, who obviously just did not understand exactly what the problem was or that Petra and I were as upset about things as we actually were.

So in any event, we enjoyed our couple of weeks there and then told them we were moving on. The boss was relly upset to lose us, and the rest of the staff was disappointed to see us go -- apparently we were very good at our jobs, whatever they actually were supposed to have been. So at least we helped out while we were there.