And now?

I'm in Taipei the last 6 days. Looking for work. Pro'lly go to the beach tomorrow.

My flatmates tell me there was a minor earthquake today, but I think I was on the subway at the time so didn't notice. There was also a typhoon a bit earlier but it didn't affect Taipei.

Stopover and Over

Without a doubt Hong Kong is the city I enjoyed the most in China. I spent about eight days there, vacationing and taking care of my Taiwan visa.

This was in no small measure thanks to my friend Annis and her great family, who welcomed me and let me stay in their apartment for my first few days, among many other favours.

I'm not feeling very narrative-minded so a summary of what I did new in H.K.: tried real dim sum for the first time (even liked the seafood dishes), Cantonese home cooking, went to Ocean Park (try the Abyss free-fall ride!), tea-time tapas in Stanley with a view of the sea, saw the HK Space Museum, Art Museum, Hong Kong History Museum (amazingly-thorough), Maritime Museum, crashed a birthday party and met a Cantonese pop star of whose Mandarin I didn't understand a word, had superglorious Indian food, found some brain nutrients in the many fully-stocked English bookstores, took the Star Ferry, shopped at a night market, breathed the humid air of a bit more freedom.

Plenty left for next time.

Wait just a booger-picking minute

(Some random thoughts I had on my last day in China two weeks ago, that I didn't get a chance to complete)

I am sitting in a Guangzhou (Canton) Dairy Queen furnished in the style of a Starbucks. Posted on the second floor is a no smoking sign. There are no ashtrays. Yet, I’m the only customer not smoking.

Today is my last day in the mainland. It’s been 113 days. Yes, I’ve been counting. I’m trying to reify what I’ve learned. To be frank, not much, in so far as China is concerned.

I’ve learned that I am simply not the Swiss army knife of cultural adaptability. Hell, I’m not even the dollar knock-off version the street vendor is selling with the DVDs outside my hotel. I can adapt in some ways, but I realize I have no intrinsic desire to “go native.”

I carry America around with me. I seek refuge in places that remind me of the same level of lard-ass comfort. I go to Guangzhou for a day and end up watching “Superman Returns” in a supermodern Cineplex, after hunting down a Slurpee and the local gourmet version of Pizza Hut.

After this four month tour, I have to reexamine my interests. I don’t think I’m particularly interested in Culture X qua Culture X. I might like Culture X’s music and add it to my play list. I might like Culture Y’s food and add it to my digest list. I might like Culture Z’s women and…no, no, every woman is a snow flake (At least that’s what I have to say that so Culture A’s women don’t get totally pissed with me).

My curiosity isn’t fixated on any particular culture, though through the limitations of language my exposure is selective. It’s about examining what are human universals and what are not. It is about finding the oddities, where the difference vives.

If Booger of “Revenge of the Nerds” wanted to find a different nickname, my studies of comparative nose picking suggest he ought to come to Beijing. On a couple occasions I have been witness to mid-conversation attempts at clearing nasal blockages. It’s inspiring really, people being so comfortable with their bodies. They ought to have a play called the Schnoz Monologues (or to give a Mandarin sound, which sounds just as appropriate, the Bizi Monologues).

On the other, less booger-y hand, I’m thinking to write to the World Health Organization to suggest a campaign for the abolition of the handshake. I’m thinking that the Thai custom would be a more than suitable replacement, lacking the hierarchical mindset of the Japanese bow.

From a financial perspective, I think my experience in China has helped me to be more conscious of bargaining, whereas I have generally not been savvy. I think that from now on I will be far more likely to ask for discounts particularly when it comes to services or big ticket items. I will be more likely to just walk away rather than accept a given price.

Sometimes or most times I just let things slide when a business messes up. But particularly after being intentionally overcharged, I am inclining towards the raising of holy hell and dogged firmness.

In Guilin in the South of China I was charged double or more of the price for a simple meal of noodles and a Coca-Cola in a toilet-paper-“napkin”-class restaurant. The waitress thought I couldn’t read any Chinese. I know it enough to have a foggy idea what I’m getting; the problem is that even if I knew the meaning every character, I would be unfamiliar with the dish I would be getting. What galled me was that she was extra-smiley throughout my meal. The only thing stopping me from getting the menu and calling her on the overcharge was that I was happy enough there was no egg or meat mysteriously materializing in my noodle soup.

Glitz

On a Different Tourist Track

“The cave is very pretty, has lots of colors.” I was sold after the tour agent repeated that three times and said, “Sorry, my English is poor.” I might as well do something while I’m here. (She also gave me her number and said, “You teach me English. How long are you here?” In support of the observation that beautiful women can always get what they want with a smile, I actually bothered to call her but I needed a phone card or something with my hotel room phone. )

After a thirty minute bus ride to the jam packed Silver Cave parking lot, I’m quite literally the only Western tourist in a crowd of hundreds of tourists inside and outside of the cave. There’s not going to be any English on this tour.

The guide who takes us to the cave’s mouth would not have a job in the U.S. The guide in the cave would not have a job in the U.S. Or it’s probably less them personally than that they are expected to stay within a robotic, monotone script, and get the crowds in and out of the cave on schedule.

I realize that I’m used to expecting guides who are personable. “Where are you all from?” at the very least. I’m used to guides who display an idiosyncratic, memorable character. Guides who show a love for what they are doing. But with an individual cave guide guiding twenty people and with tour groups elbow to elbow, this may not be possible. The casual informality with strangers might not exist as much here. Maybe there are jokes the cave guide cracks that I’m missing, since I pretty much only understand an occasional single word that comes out of her mouth.

Like “ice cream.” The only time anybody laughed was when we saw the ice cream formations, and a little kid of four started demanding a taste.

I try to imagine what the guide’s saying at times: “This is an example of a geomorphic kryptonite structure that we nicknamed ‘Superman’s KTV Karaoke inferno’ after lighting it with rainbow colors and Christmas tree lights. Oh, and then adding the overhead disco ball -- no small part of the name.”

In the category of mental projection, one of the formations resembled the Buddha and thus had some votive electric candles and an offering in front of it. A middle-aged woman reflexively made a prayerful motion.

Throughout the tour, the cave becomes a giant photo studio, as two or three families at any one time are taking photos. I rue the terrible invention of the digital camera.
Okay, you were in a cave. Is every stalactite such a dramatically new experience for you that it ought to be a cherished memory for geologic eons?

Already having passed the baijiu chamber, filled with fermenting barrels of liquor, halfway through the tour we come into the chamber, the Chamber of Advertising Secrets. In a bored-away passageway are 30 backlit ads for local businesses. Even though capitalism is no longer underground, it stays underground. In China, it resides in any orifice the world provides or can be made to provide.

I’m looking to translate the word “pristine” into Chinese. Throughout the tour, people touch and brush against formations. The pools are filled with coins. Perhaps it is more honest.

You can’t witness nature and not touch it in some way. It’s just with so many footprints, maybe there is not as much a concept of leaving a smaller one? But I’m not convinced that’s all there is to it.

The guide describes one last formation and then promptly wanders off.
In the last chamber you can buy some of the eye-watering liquor specially prepared within the Silver Cave. A hangover from way down under.

Exiting the cave there is a scenic view of a lake surrounded by limestone hills. But I’m unmoved. I like nature to get away from people, not to be neck to neck and elbow to elbow.

Hot Headed

The View from Here

On-Course Conversations

Let me tell you about my new friend Li Yung of Yangshuo, Guangxi Province.
Where should we happen to meet but in the Guilin bus station! While I was trying to find which line to get into in order to buy bus tickets, Li was all too happy to help a confused foreigner without even being asked. Somehow he could intuit the likelihood that I was also traveling to his hometown.

Although we had only met for a moment, after interpreting the “might as well be hieroglyphics” ticket the counter had given me, Li offered to help carry one of my bags as we made our way to the next bus to Yangshuo. Amazing! The Chinese Tourism Board wasn’t kidding!

On the way to Yangshuo we talked a good thirty minutes or more, alternating between English and Mandarin. My friend Li is 35, married and works teaching two classes of English in a junior high school. The school has 1,500 students or so. His classes have between 35 and 45 students. He knows a Canadian couple who teach English in a private school.

He is Zhuangzhuren, the minority people that are the majority in Guangxi (Zhuang Autonomous Region). He likes reading Chinese newspapers, but doesn’t read too much English literature. He really liked the movie Titanic (for some reason). He has two sisters and a brother.

He has an expensive cell phone but his clothes are much worn. He went to college in Guilin. He went to Beijing for one-week in 1998. The train took 28 hours. He saw the Temple of Heaven, Chairman Mao’s and the Tiananmen Shabangabang.

Did I take a train or plane? Plane. How long? Three hours. How much? ~120 USD. Do I think Beijing is expensive?

He has a marvelous idea that comes twenty minutes into the conversation. His friend has accommodations. Eighty yuan a night (~10 USD). Maybe if I stayed there, we could meet and do a language exchange. One hour English. “Yi ge xiaoshi zhongwen.”

What do I say to Li at this point? Ah, I’m sorry my friend Li, but I told a white lie. I told you that my friend had recommended me a place to stay in Yangshuo, but alas that acquaintance had forgot where she stayed and so could not tell me where to stay. I was really going to look in the tourist guide for a guide to prices and then just walk randomly into a hotel that looked accommodating to a cheapskate like me. I told you to give me the place’s name so I could investigate it if my first option failed and that I would tell them that you had sent me. That was also a lie. I honestly had no intention of even considering your suggestion since it was almost twice the amount I saw in the guidebook, despite your “local expertise.”

Li, you strangely clammed up after that. You watched the slapstick comedy on the tube. You drifted into a nap as we passed scenes of rural China that echo in the heart of every brush painting.

I sensed a rift in our friendship and it troubled me deeply, this friendship with the lifespan of a “moskeeter.”

Then you said: “We’re here.” We arrived in your hometown, and then you were the old Li of two hours before. I had not to fear. Maybe you just needed a rest from a long day visiting your old school chums.

But then we got off the bus, and then right off you suggested again that I could follow you to your friend’s guest house. Ah, but you forced my hand, and so I grappled in my luggage to find a piece of paper and pen to write down the information.

As I was writing your name, I realized I should thank you. Although I couldn’t really explain it, and I doubt it would be interesting from your perspective of trying to make ends meet in a challenging financial situation.

You see, Li, I usually just deflect automatically any “hullos” out of my force-of-bad-habit. But I realized that I’m still curious about people despite my multifarious ways of short-circuiting the satisfaction of my curiosity. So for once, I decided to forego the direct route and just see where the conversation would go.

Even if my toxic cynicism isn’t allayed a whit, maybe one of these days I'll be surprised. In any case, it's the only way to learn about people. And I need a helluvalot more field research.