Want Free Internet in a Chinese Airport?

Don't have a Chinese phone number?  Good luck!

I checked "around Gate 10 or 12" and found nothing.

This Is Why I Never Buy A T-Shirt In Any Language But English

Also seen in China: 

A pimply fat teenaged girl wearing a t-shirt that proclaimed:

ACNE STUDIO

A perky teenaged girl of perhaps 15 wearing a shirt that screamed:

TITTIES & BEER

An old lady wearing a shirt that said:

I WANT TO F*CK RIHANNA!

On the Rail Road Again

On the way to the Hangzhou East Railway railway station the security check in the Hangzhou Metro finally found my Swiss Army knife. Bags and luggage all get x-rayed and and sometimes inspected at Chinese subway stations but my knife had so far avoided detection on the Beijing, Chengdu, Chongqing and Nanjing metros. Often the cops are bored and one behind the screen in Nanjing was sound asleep but an on the ball policewoman in Hangzhou saw my knife on the x-ray scanner and wanted to see it. She asked me something politely several times in Mandarin until I finally pointed to Eleanor. “She wants to see your knife”, Eleanor said. I dug the knife out of my suitcase and presented the contraband to the police woman. She looked at it briefly, smiled and returned it to me. Uighur terrorists bent on butchering Chinese railroad passengers are known for packing bigger blades and don't look anything like Fat White Uncle. A similar security check at the Hangzhou East Railway station either failed to detect my knife or they racially profile and just didn't care about Fat White Uncle and his puny multipurpose blades. I got a quick wanding and was turned loose to get my bags and wait for our train to Xiamen.

We took a few 2nd class high speed rail trips from Nanjing but this time we were headed south from Hangzhou to Xiamen. It's a nearly 7 hour and 540 mile journey so we sprung for an extra $16 US for 1st class tickets. Now that I've seen 2nd class and first class I know that in China 2nd class is the way to go, at least on a CRH train. The seats in 1st class are a bit wider and there's more legroom but our fellow passengers in 1st class seemed a bit more arrogant. They hogged all of the overhead luggage space above our seats leaving none for us which meant that our extra 1st class legroom had to used for some of our bags until the owner of the suitcase over my head relented 2 hours into the trip. If anything they were yelling at each other and bellowing into their cell phones even louder than their comrades in 2nd class. All of their phones were ringing, for awhile it sounded like a telemarketer office. Wall mounted screens were playing a loop of car commercials, an ad for a seafood supply company with a toll free number, shorts extolling the virtues of taking the high speed train; all with a loud soundtrack. My idea of 1st class is leans more to having my pillow plumped and clinking champagne glasses, not that I would know from actual experience.

But this time I had a clear window and could see China whiz by. What I saw were tired looking factories, cranes building gigantic apartment complexes often in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere and a forest of belching smokestacks. All of those smokestacks explain the thick smog that I've seen everywhere in our China travels that cuts visibility and most likely also cuts years off of the lives of the average Chinese citizen.

Any train trip or freeway cruise in the US would reveal that much of the housing stock in the US outside of dense cities consists of single family homes. As China has whizzed by on the high speed train during our trips I'm seeing few single family homes. There must be more single family homes somewhere, I'm seeing plenty of big Mercedes, BMWs, Audis, Land Rovers, Porsches and Cadillacs in the cities so there's plenty of money sloshing around in China for nice homes. What I saw are large clusters of apartment buildings with their windows and decks encased in steel mesh that make them resemble a sad vertical prison. Older apartment blocks often have cracked, moldy and fading facades and look like they're falling apart.  From the outside looking in at night the apartments seem dimly lit.

So China is a country of contradictions. One hand there's the new gleaming modern infrastructure. High speed trains, new bridges, subways are furiously being dug in many large Chinese cities. The stores are full of domestic and foreign food and the streets are choked with cars, trucks and electric scooters. On the other hand many of the houses and factories are falling apart, some goods are hauled with overloaded and beaten up 3 wheeled trucks. I'm surprised at all the sharply dressed women on one hand and the legions of beggars displaying their open sores, burn scars, amputations and pathetic and grotesque infirmities on the other. I'm more accustomed to American women who all too often dress like lumberjacks and American beggars; either sad drunks or able bodied young men panhandling for drug money.  Chinese beggars are hard core but supposedly often members of begging gangs.

We Try CRH High Speed Rail

Greetings from aboard train D5116, China Railways CRH service from Chengdu to Chongqing. CRH means that this is a high speed train, we're occasionally hitting speeds close to 200 km/h, that about 120 mph and cruising at around 150 km/h (around 100 mph). But it's a Chinese train and even though we're in first class it's full of screaming, whining children and adult passengers bellowing into their cell phones and at each other at the top of their lungs. There are 2 TV screens advising people to not take off their shoes and expose their smelly feet, don't make a mess and other loud announcements from cartoon Chinese police about manners and safety.

I thought that perhaps unlike an airplane I'd be able to look out the window and peacefully watch the Sichuan countryside roll on by. No such luck, my fellow passenger have drawn the window shades so I might as well be on an airplane or on a subway. At least the seat is comfortable and there's more leg and seat room than in airline economy class but without my own headphones the din of my fellow passengers would quickly wear me down. 

Our train left from the Chengdu North railway station, a madhouse and another of the many Chinese firedrills we've experienced on this trip. The Chinese have had security problems at railways stations in the recent past with teams of Muslims separatists from their rebellious far west getting loose stabbing and slashing and many have died. We both got wanded and our bags were x-rayed but neither of us are the people they're on the lookout for. I had a Swiss Army knife in my luggage which they didn't bother bringing to anyone's attention.  The men's room was incredibly unsanitary, I wanted to wash my hands but one man hoisted his little boy up to pee into one of the sinks and an old man was submerging and washing several big bunches of grapes in the other. There was no soap available anyway.

There are people in the US that say that the Chinese are ahead of us in high speed rail technology and that we need to build such railways and catch up. In my opinion that would be a very bad idea for the US.  But the financial cost of such a project in the US would break the bank. Oh wait, our bank is supposedly already broken and we already own an existing money losing passenger rail operation: AMTRAK.

When a train line is being built in China and your house or business is in the way the dispute is not settled after a long wait and a court date. The railroad tells you that their train is coming through and you have a certain amount of time to be gone and go live somewhere else. There might be a token financial settlement but ultimately your house will be bulldozed, you will be displaced and displaced rather quickly, the train is coming through and because it's a priority prestige project by the central government it waits for no one. They don't require high cost union labor or women and minority contractors nor do they take into account minority rights or social justice or any of the other niceties that Americans consider necessities.  The work goes on at all hours, often 24/7.  The way to get Chinese style high speed rail in America is to build it the Chinese way.  Would anyone in the US stand for that?

High speed trains can make sense in China because of the population density of the place, these trains are a Chinese solution to the unique Chinese problem of moving a massive and dense population.  China is roughly the size of the continental US but their 1.3 billion people are concentrated in a swath in the Chinese coastal east. It's as if most Americans lived on the eastern seaboard to perhaps as far west as Chicago and St Louis except there are probably 5 times as many Chinese in China as Americans in the US. China has over 100 cities with a population in excess of a million, the US has 5.  The Chinese have people to move, Americans should be glad for our places with wide open spaces.

Behind The Great Firewall/Golden Shield Project

Although I have access to the Internet at hotels in China it's not the Internet that I know back home, it's the Internet with Chinese characteristics. Before coming to China I had read that Gmail and anything Google are banned and unavailable, along with the NY Times, the Wall Street Journal, Wikipedia and Facebook but I'm finding that Gmail is hit and miss (anything Google is mostly a miss). I found something that gets our rooted phones around the Great Firewall and I've been remoting into my PC back home for access to Gmail and Google anything else but it's still a pain in the ass and that's probably the point. Besides, remoting into a PC in another country isn't an option for Chinese citizens

While I truly enjoy sticking to the man and thumbing my nose to his Great Firewall it's ultimately wearing me down. At times my link to my PC back home slows to a crawl and I can wait 15 seconds for the screen refresh of a map to reach me here in China. But strangely enough my US phone number rings through to me here when I'm on WiFi at no cost to me and as long as I'm on WiFi I can place and receive phone calls as if I were at home. And most of the connections have been excellent.

The secret to using the Chinese Internet seems to be in staying away from anything from Google just the way the Chinese government wants me to. That means giving up Google Chrome too. Internet Explorer with Bing comes right up in Chinese and offers the option of English. Bing's local maps come up in Chinese only and can't seem to find my hotel or anywhere I want to go so Bing Maps is useless. Google's maps can find my hotel but can be wildly inaccurate.

Bing's Web searches are quick and government sanitized for my protection. Websites from the US that are Great Firewall approved are slow but they work. A Bing search for the NY Times shows links to various sections of the newspaper but clicking on them delivers a message that says, “The Page Cannot Be Displayed” and implies a connection problem, but not the censorship problem that caused it. That way the user never knows whether the problem is an undersea cable break or censorship and rather than dwell on something that can't be known most users will just go on to something else that works. This is China and you can't fight the Forbidden City Hall. The Internet can be a frustration if you insist on using it in a way that is not government approved.

So I use Gmail, read the NY Times, the Wall Street Journal and my wife uses Facebook here in China. Am I scared of a visit from the Chinese Public Security Bureau? No. Why should they waste their time on me? This isn't North Korea. I'm reading my forbidden websites in English and I know no Mandarin to tell people what I've read. I can't tell anyone what I've read even if I wanted to and in a few weeks I'll be safely out of the country so why should the Chinese fret about me? Besides, the Chinese make allowances for tourists. CNN, HBO, NHK and Newschannel Asia are forbidden for Chinese citizens in their homes but have been available to me in hotels in China.

I'm Back in China

At the supermarket I saw rolls of toilet paper for sale, the brand name is “Face”.   A popular brand of Chinese condom is called "Jissbon".  There's a brand of Chinese made cars with the name of "Riich". I know not whether those are unforced errors, cultural misunderstandings on my part or marketing genius for a unique market.

The more I come here the more I realize that I don't really understand the place. To me some of the food is strange, a distant echo to some of the Chinese food that I enjoy in the States.  The Chinese really seem to like fast food and have Chinese fast food chains, we tried several and they're dreck. Drivers are arrogant, pedestrians are determined but stupid and beat and traffic cops are either blind or don't care so I've seen some interesting near misses along with one entirely avoidable accident (hint: don't make a right turn from the center lane).  Or, as Wikitravel rightly warns about traffic safety where I am now in Chengdu, Sichuan:

Traffic can be insanely hectic and motorists as well as cyclists and other pedestrians often have a complete disregard of you, the pedestrian. Beware when crossing streets; even when the WALK sign is green, (this means nothing to them or to the Police), traffic taking a right or left turn even when they are not permitted to turn will try to run you over or honk at you to make way for them. Accidents are commonplace as are deaths. Look every direction but up. Watch out for taxi drivers, bus drivers and private car drivers who have absolutely no regard for your life. Also watch out for motorists, they are all unlicensed riding silent electric motorbikes coming at you from the left, from the right, from behind and from the front. To stay safe, it is best to walk with a crowd, preferably in the middle.

In Chengdu I watched an old lady slowly cross 6 lanes of traffic lane by lane in a pedestrian crosswalk against a red don't walk sign while pushing an even older lady in a wheelchair.  Cars, trucks and scooters whizzed by blaring their horns, each old lady didn't seem to notice, it was probably just another mundane trip to the store for them.  Those same cars, trucks and scooters would've thought nothing of whizzing by if the old ladies were crossing those 6 lanes with  green walk signal.

Everyone, especially in style conscious Beijing, seems to have an expensive cell phone China is the home office of counterfeit everything so all of the iphones I've been seeing could be knock offs, same with the fancy Samsungs.  I've seen knockoff Birkenstocks for sale here, I call them Knockinstocks. We took the Beijing and Chengdu metros all over and I kept thinking of the term, "Chinese firedrill". Everyone's packed tightly backside to navel and bellowing at each other or into their cellphones.

In Beijing I noticed much less of the the nasty Chinese habit of spitting in public than on past trips. But in Chengdu I hear that regrettably loud throat clearing followed by loud expectoration, or as I've heard it called, the Chinese national anthem, all too frequently and watch out so that my feet don't get splashed.

Eleanor has been indispensable on this trip.  The average pet dog in China understands more Mandarin than I do and I know from past solo trips here that getting anything accomplished when you can't read, write or speak is next to impossible.  Eleanor can't read but she does speak 4th grade Mandarin and that really is making the grade for us.

I had read that the central government in Beijing had a nationwide campaign to rid the country of Chinglish for the 2008 Olympics but they seem to have forgotten about Chengdu, examples such as these are everywhere.  

We'll be in China for another few weeks with more destinations in Asia to come.

Lessons Learned

Now that I’m safely back at home in North America here are some conclusions and lessons learned:

1. Three weeks of a seat of the pants touring may have been too much of a good thing. What I found adventurous when I was younger and more full of piss and vinegar is now more of a grind.  Wandering was more satisfying when I didn’t get sore feet and when I didn’t conk out as easily. But I’m still not ready for a ring through my nose organized tour.

2. Because I arrived in China without maps I had to take the time to find a map in English in each city. That meant seeking out a book store and having Eleanor ask in Mandarin if they carried any city maps in English, a time consuming chore.

3. One nice tool that I had in my travel arsenal was a WiFi equipped cell phone loaded with Fring and Onesuite. When I needed to call customer service to bitch at Orbitz when our hotel in Shenzhen didn’t have our prepaid reservation my 120 minutes of phone frustration to a phone number in Chicago cost me a cool $3. Sprint says that they charge $2.29 per minute (plus taxes and fees) to call home from China so 120 minutes would’ve cost me a frightening $274.80. Fring just reaches down into the contact list of my phone so no editing, no addition and then links you to the SIP provider of your choice. Once I had WiFi I could call any phone number in the US for a cool 2.5 cents per minute.

4. I used Boingo to access WiFi sites in China with mixed results. In Chengdu and Shanghai I was easily able to roam on China Mobile, in Shenzhen only in Starbucks. In Hong Kong outside of Starbucks Boingo was worse than useless. That’s because most of Hong Kong, including MTR stations, is covered by PCCW WiFi. The Boingo app would vibrate and chirp my phone, sometimes every few seconds, to ask me if I wanted to roam on PCCW, only to fail and spit up an error screen.  It would then ask that I send the error report back to Boingo. But without access to WiFi, Boingo’s only purpose, that isn’t possible. Then the phone would chirp, vibrate and start the whole annoying process all over again. 

*Update*  Boingo's customer service folks found this critique of their service almost instantly and as you can see below they requested more information, which I provided.  And I never heard from them again.  When I first signed up for Boingo I had an annoying problem with their software on my Android phone, it totally disarmed all wifi access on my HTC Hero.  The only cure was to wipe the phone and start all over again which I found highly annoying.  I called Boingo and they sounded very concerned and requested a detailed trouble report, which I quickly sent to the address that Boingo provided.  And I didn't hear from them again until they read the paragraph above and commented below.  Result: I cancelled Boingo.  Nice idea, poor execution.  Concerned sounding customer service is no substitute for actual tech support.

5. This ain’t your Father’s communism. I was hard pressed to find so much as a hammer and sickle in China, in three weeks I spotted just one.  Chairman Mao wouldn’t recognize the place.  I’m sure that the Chinese Communist Party is firmly in control of the country and would stomp any and all domestic challengers with the full force of the one party state. Security was tight in spots and being behind the Great Firewall is a great pain in the ass.  But China seems too busy making money or looking for ways to spend it. Who thought that China would be shopping at Wal-Mart or preoccupied with this kind of cultural revolution on state run TV?

6. I may not go back to China. The cultural gulf is so wide and the language so unintelligible that my ability to understand what I see and hear is stunted and more visits might only give me more jet lag on both ends.  At some point I just to have to shrug my shoulders and admit that there’s much I’ll just never understand.  But no organized tour could fill these gaps for me.

China’s 2 Richest Cities – Shenzhen & Hong Kong

For years Shenzhen has been the richest city in on the mainland. It's one of the biggest cities you've never heard of with a population of over 10 million people with a stock exchange, a subway system, parks, luxury hotels. Shenzhen is a factory town, the final assembly point of the iPhone and many other things in your house. The Taiwanese company responsible for iPhone assembly, Foxconn, has 800,00 employees in China, 400,000 of them in Shenzhen alone. 

30 years ago Shenzhen had a population of around 20,000. When Deng Xiaoping took over China after Chairman Mao finally shuffled off to that great collective farm in the sky he probably noticed how prosperous communism free Chinese places such as Hong Kong and Taiwan were and wanted to see what would happen if he allowed some of that capitalist evil in a corner of his kingdom. He did this first in Shenzhen and once the special economic zone was established money, factories and jobs poured over the border from higher wage Hong Kong. This transformed Shenzhen from absolutely nothing to a madhouse migrant city and Hong Kong from a city with a manufacturing economy to a city with a mostly service economy.

There's plenty of wealth out where people can see it in Shenzhen in the form of Audis, Mercedes, BMWs, Porsches and even a few Cadillacs. There's a fair amount of luxury cars tooling around on Shenzhen's wide streets with right hand drive and sets of license plates for both Hong Kong SAR and Guangdong province. While Shenzhen might be the richest city on the mainland it's the poor sister to the richest city in all of China, Hong Kong. It's a gigantic Tijuana with Hong Kong SAR playing the role of Asian San Diego. Shenzhen is a city built on hard work and other peoples money and it's paid off for many of the locals and investors. Glitzy wide shopping boulevards slowly dissolve into migrant laborer alley hells.

The women in Hong Kong are the picture of affluent fashion, their less well to do sisters in Shenzhen they seem to make it up as they go along.  After I saw the third woman in Shenzhen wearing thick, black Larry King frames without any lenses (I saw one woman stick a finger through the empty lens opening to rub her eye) I knew it wasn’t a one off aberration. 

Even with China's one child policy one thing that I've seen all over China are babies and pregnant women and Shenzhen is no exception. But due to the high cost of living babies in Hong Kong are few and far between. By day the familiar bellowing and barking of Chinese dialects on the mainland dissolves across the Hong Kong SAR border into another language. No, not Cantonese, the dialect most spoken in Hong Kong; it's the familiar puck-puck-puck of Pilipino. Hong Kong is packed with Filipinas. Although I'm sure they're out there somewhere it seems most of the male Filipinos are back home in Manila. Filipinas in Hong Kong serve as maids and nannies (as well as ply the world's oldest profession). Just as in Southern California the first words of a rich kid might be in Spanish, in Hong Kong his first words might be in Tagalog.

Unlike anywhere I’ve ever been in China, in Hong Kong you can drink the water straight from the tap. I drank Hong Kong tap and while it might be just a coincidence within 24 hours I had a roaring case of Chairman Mao's revenge. I knew I that eau de tap was graded as fit for human consumption the minute I went to a 7/11. In China 550 ml (roughly a pint) of bottled water can cost under .15 US, in fashionable Hong Kong it's .75 to a $1 US. Hotels in China usually spot their guests 2 bottles of water, in Hong Kong you can get all the water you want straight from the tap.

Hong Kong’s MTR is perhaps the best subway system in the world and riding it is a breeze.  The announcements are in 3 languages; Cantonese, Mandarin and British English.  Click here  and here for samples.

Shanghai – Better City, Better Life

Better City, Better Life. That's the official phrase of Expo 2010. It's plastered in English all over Shanghai along with their rendition of Gumby which they call Haibao. Haibao appears in neighborhood squares sculpted out of bushes, in both male and female form, unlicensed bootleg stuffed Haibaos are sold by hawkers on the stairways down into subway stations. You can buy a tiny Haibao to hang from your cellphone, blow up Haibaos, all sorts of Haibao shirts, there are Haibaos that wear a Mexican sombrero, Haibaos that play the bagpipes; collect the set! Olympic tchotchkes are for sale at official souvenir stands. The Chinese public has been whipped up into a nationalistic frenzy over Expo 2010 in a similar fashion to their fervor over the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The Chinese government supposedly spent the equivalent of $60 billion US dollars on Expo 2010, rivaling or exceeding what they spent on the 2008 Olympics. Thousands of people and business were uprooted from what is now the Expo site, new subway lines were built and brought in. There are Expo information desks staffed with young English and Chinese speakers wearing white Expo 2010 uniforms set up in subway stations, hotels, airports, shopping malls and street corners. Handles for standees on the Shanghai subway bear the Expo logo. There's an official Expo song by Jackie Chan (who also appears in ads plastered all over China and all over town for frozen dumplings, appliances, Canon and some kind of Chinese herbal hair darkening shampoo for men called Bawang. Is there anything that Jackie Chan won't shill?). Attendance figures are updated the days Expo highlights are transmitted to displays inside Shanghai's subway cars on the Shanghai Metro's TV channel every 15 minutes.

So after the Chinese government unloaded their fat piggy bank on Shanghai what's the Expo like? I found it sterile. Security is tight, tighter than any recent US domestic flight I've taken since 9/11. My possessions were x-rayed and I was fully wanded before my $13 US ticket for evening admission was accepted (a whole day at Expo 2010 costs a steep $23.50 US).

The first thing I saw after passing through the turnstile was the China pavilion. It's a massive, in your face, upside down red pyramid of a structure and very popular with Chinese fair goers. I saw no reason to go inside, it had a giant line snaking around it and I was already inside China. For me being in China is sort of like a visit to a giant China pavilion anyway so why brave the lines to see in miniature what was already before me?

The European and USA pavilions were very popular as well with lines snaking around them. But unlike most of the Chinese visitors to Expo 2010 I can probably go to these places if I want to. For most Chinese today world travel is just a dream. It's a dream that's closer to reality for your average Chinese national than it was 20 years ago and China's rich and well connected does travel internationally but for most of China's 1.3 billion it's out of reach and will remain so for their lifetimes. Expo 2010's expensive day pass will be as close as they come to seeing the cultures of the world.

With that in mind I chose to avoid most of the pavilions and exhibits. But while the throngs of Chinese fair goers had no desire to see one particular pavilion, I did. No waiting! The North Korean pavilion was much smaller and more sparsely attended than the one from South Korea but it was the #1 pavilion on my to do list. For a follower of all things DPRK such as myself who has come as close as a cruise on the Yalu river it might be as close as I come to actually experiencing the closed land of Juche. What's inside? Not much. North Korea must be a pretty boring place. There's a model of the Tower of the Juche Idea in front of a large mural of Pyongyang and a few other cheap statues, artworks and recreation. Any good souvenirs for sale? Kim pins are mandatory for DPRK citizens, maybe I could buy one to go with the one I bought years ago in Dandong? Nope, just some postage stamps and a small gaggle of Chinese Expo fanatics wanting to have their Expo 2010 passports stamped. Whoever was in charge of the placement of the national pavilions either has a sense of humor or once worked in the Bush administration, or both. Yes, Expo 2010 has its very own Axis of Evil section. Right next to the DPRK discount house of dioramas was the pavilion of the Islamic Republic of Iran, howdy nuclear neighbor!

Without the Expo Shanghai is a bustling city of 20 million or 25 million, nobody's really sure. There are many more subway lines than when I was last in Shanghai a few years ago and trains are frequent, cheap and backside to navel SRO any time of the day. The food in restaurants ranges from Chinese and American chain fast food to what to North American eyes is most unusual. A sharply dressed middle class is on the move. The women are sharp dressers who tend to wear more cosmetics, higher heels and show more skin than their poorer and more peasant western sisters in Chengdu. Thanks to the Treaty of Nanking Shanghai has more western influence than perhaps any other Chinese city except for Hong Kong. Some of old Shanghai hasn't fallen to the wrecking ball and the historic Bund along the Huangpu river has just completed an expensive makeover.

As when we took the high speed CRH train to Tianjin I had wanted to take a CRH train for a day trip to a different Chinese city. Nanjing is 2 hours from Shanghai by CRH, other cities are closer. These trains leave from Shanghai's North railway station but unlike Beijing's sedate and organized railway station Shanghai's was a madhouse of peasant migrants with stained decaying teeth bearing huge cheap plaid bundles made out of a shiny cheap tablecloth material full of god knows what along with buckets of bottled water and packages of instant noodles for their long journey on the what the Chinese call “Iron Big Brother” to the provinces. Security was tight as it is at most Chinese transit facilities so we couldn't even investigate buying tickets without waiting on long slowly moving security lines where the peasants got wanded and their bundles x-rayed so we gave up, it was simply too much of gauntlet to run.


Shanghai pictures are here
Panda pictures are here

Chengdu – A 2nd Tier Chinese City

Beijing and Shanghai have had billions of dollars lavished on them for recent or ongoing international events and their citizens have been taken to charm school to smooth over bad habits such as suicidal driving, Chinglish and loud public spitting. So what about a large Chinese city that isn't on the prosperous coast and that hasn't had the benefits of the international spotlight?

Welcome to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in China's interior. No obvious sophistication here, the start/end route information on the side of the #6 bus route says it all, and in English: “Engine Plant → Sewage Treatment Plant”. Chengdu has only one real internationally known attraction, the Chengdu Panda Base just outside of town. There foreigners and Chinese tourists alike oh and ah over the local and endangered bamboo eating bears with stubby legs and cute coloring. Otherwise Chengdu is a large city deep in the Chinese interior that hasn't had a reason for the central government in Beijing to put it through finishing school. People fire up butts almost everywhere, smoke free sections in local restaurants are unknown. People spit in a very loud public trumpeting exuberant phlegm clearing way that is so common that it has been described by Western expats here as the Chinese National Anthem. It sounds gross and it is too. Going for a walk? Best to forget the sandals. We rode a packed Chengdu city bus and heard a grumpy passenger go off on the driver. She screamed back at him for the entire ride. Chinglish abounds.

There's no subway yet (it's scheduled to open in October) so we took buses and cabs. Traffic is hellish. The cab drivers all drive like Stevie Wonder, in NASCAR, on meth. Which doesn't really differentiate them all that much from other local drivers. Unlike Beijing there are a fair amount of bicycles, pedicabs, mopeds and three wheeled trucks in the traffic mix too. The driver of the cabs we hailed all seem to like weaving in and out of lanes and cutting over double yellow lines to play chicken with oncoming packed city buses. Near misses seem to be the rule and it's a ballet of organized chaos that all the locals, drivers and pedestrians alike, seem to be in on. I don't pity the pedestrians, they're as fearless as the drivers and have more to lose.

For anyone who melts at the sight of a panda Chengdu is the panda Vatican. It's the headwaters of panda, the home office of cute. The pandas live up to their advance billing too, they are cute, they spend their days in captivity on display in open areas surrounded by people clicking camera shutters. The pandas don't have much to do, bamboo is delivered to them and they spend their days either playing with each other, climbing trees or on their backs chomping bamboo. Keepers dressed in blue smocks enter the enclosures when the pandas aren't looking and whisk away the panda poo. Pandas are cute but they're still powerful wild animals and when a panda decides he wants something he gets it. Tourists come from overseas, stay in nice hotels and are bused to and from the panda reserve in plush tourist buses. I imagine that other than the pandas the overseas tourists have very little contact or interactions with the locals. Just to be different Eleanor and I took a cab to the reserve and took public transit back to town. I didn't come all this distance to be isolated, if I want that I can vacation in a guarded camp.

Other than the pandas there's not much going on in Chengdu for someone who has no other reason for being there, doesn't know the place and can't pierce the language barrier. There's upscale shopping, there's middle class shopping with all of the worlds chains, there's Wal-Mart, Carrefour and their Chinese imitators like Ren Ren Le (which has shamelessly appropriated Wal-Mart's trademarked yellow smiley face) and there's shopping for the poor; a gigantic local market near the north railway station which has nearly everything at dollar store prices with dollar store quality. I bought a few Chinglish shirts but this place has everything you wouldn't want: rabbits and gerbils (rodent: it's what's for dinner), baby chicks dyed in dayglo colors that nature never intended for poultry, stuffed animals, cheap shoes, cheaper clothing, and all kinds of knock off cosmetics that fell off the back of a homemade three wheeled truck.

The food in Chengdu is outstanding and cheap and we didn't even try the local hotpot Sichuan province is famous for. Eleanor speaks enough Mandarin to make sure that we didn't order dog or chicken feet or pig blood pudding any other local specialties that might offend our (well, my) tender North American sensibilities. But some of the locals seem to take a little too well to fast food chain restaurants. KFC and McDonald's are very popular along with some Asian chains (like Dicos) and local knock-offs. Eating at these joints is somehow trendy but a burger, fries and a Coke not only is crap, it costs more than a belly plumping local lunch for two at a nice restaurant. A grande drip at Starbucks costs close to $3 US and most locals drink tea but trendy types manage to drink and be seen with the other local beautiful people at Starbucks.

Except for one slightly surly cab driver the locals were great. The folks at the Buddhazen Hotel went out of their way to help us. When we wanted to take the local bus the hotel manager didn't try to talk us out of such folly, he walked us the 3 blocks to the right bus stop. When we were looking for a nice place to go in the evening the manager took us in a cab with his girlfriend to what turned out to be a fast food chain preserve. But without Eleanor and her grade school Mandarin none of this would've happened. When I'm alone in a place like this I'm like a dog with a wallet. I can buy things but, what? I can't read (she can't either), I can't write and I can't say anything that anybody in a position to help me can understand. I can pantomime but unless you're Marcel Marceau that looks stupid. Besides, I long ago got tired of the various kind of gestures I've thought up when I really need the mens room.

More China awaits. Next stop: Shanghai and the World Expo.

Click here for Chengdu pictures.
Click here for panda pictures & video.

Beijing: It’s at the 中of Everything

Beijing is more colorful, more organized and less Chinglish riddled than I remember. The glow of the lavish Beijing Olympics doesn't stop there, there's much less lusty throat clearing and public sidewalk spit splashing too. For that alone the $50 billion or whatever fortune they spent on the 2008 Olympic games was worth it.
Beijing driving is a bit less aggressive too, it's still dangerous to cross the street but the drivers are a little more Miss Manners and little less Stevie Wonder.  As everywhere in China Beijingers still bellow into their cell phones in public places, on the subway, in parks and restaurants; oblivious of those around them.  The saving grace for me is that I have no idea what they're yelling about.

We experienced no gruesome amputees sprawled across our path on the sidewalk, people with burned off faces and ears and just one dirty Mom begging with a little screaming infant that might or might not be hers and just a few blind grannies working the always crowded subway cars.

In the run up to the Olympics the government tried to infuse the locals with some manners and in some regards such as spitting they've been moderately successful. The subway now has people standing in front of the doors of subway trains telling the waiting masses to queue up on the sides of the opening doors and to leave the center for people leaving the subway car. This works beautifully and unmonitored on the orderly Taipei Metro but so far there are mixed results in Beijing. Some people queue up on the side but to enter or leave a subway car it's still best to put your head down and pretend that you're an NFL linebacker.

In the past I remember sidewalk vendors and storefronts chock full of pirated DVD's, this time I saw just one lone street DVD vendor. Plastic bags? They're not blowing in Beijing's stiff Gobi desert breeze anymore, the government decreed that stores charge .20Y (around a penny and 1/3 US) if you don't bring your own plastic bag with you to the store.

The central government dictates other behavior as well. What else am I too think when the local police look the other way at jaywalkers, suicidal driving and driving on the sidewalk but bans the use of air conditioners by calendar date and not by temperature?

The Chinese government also decides what people can and can't see on the Internet. This has been a minor pain in the ass for me as some of the pictures I upload to Flickr appear to me to be empty blue boxes. There appears to be no rhyme or reason to the logic of the Great Firewall, if I upload 3 pictures of the Beijing subway 2 might be scrubbed while the third comes through unmolested. I can read the NY Times and the Seattle Times but not http://www.publicola.net/. Even though Google left China it functions fairly normally in English but without Blogger or YouTube. There will be no blogging as the Golden Shield Project or Great Firewall has Blogger and YouTube hermetically sealed off from the 1.3 billion people within China's borders. I overcame this on previous trips to China but they seem to have plugged all of the leaks, this Blogger entry had to be uploaded later in the trip on a stopover in Hong Kong.

One positive aspect of a powerful central government is that large building projects get done in a timely fashion, the government simply decides what's best and organizes it unencumbered by lawsuits or the cries of the uprooted people in the way, they suffer for the perceived greater good. People living in the path of an office building, shopping mall or train line are sometimes given a token payment and told to be gone in 30 days. China is currently engaged in a crash program of building high speed train lines connecting its cities.

One of the first to enter service was the Beijing/Tianjin line which covers the 75 miles between the two cities in around 30 minutes at a top speed of 338 kph (observed). That's around 210 miles per hour for us non metric North American types and fast for anyone not used to measuring speed in light years. At first glance this would be wonderful for us in the US but even after having ridden China's high speed rails I'd be against duplicating this in the US. Projects like this would be tied up with lawyers feasting on them in the courts for a generation. China has more than four times the population of the US and they're concentrated predominantly in the eastern half of the country. Imagine a US with more than 4 times the people all stuffed east of the Mississippi river and you'll have an idea of what kind of density is conducive to high speed rail.

Back in Beijing we tried to see Chairman Mao in his glass casket in his mausoleum in Tiananmen Sq. He's open between 8 am and noon Tuesday through Sunday so we joined a seemingly endless line of peasants in cotton shoes and worker cadres with brown and furry teeth but halfway through the fast moving line to the old dictator a Chinese man with white gloves and a megaphone told us in Mandarin and broken English that we could bring nothing in with us. Nothing; no camera, no belt bag with wallet and passport; nothing. Of course they had a budding business of babysitting these things for a fee but I'm not leaving my consumer goodies or passport & wallet with any strangers ever.

So we wandered off to a tourist area just off of Tiananmen Sq selling Chinese tourist tchotchkes. T-shirts, caps, Chinese style blouses, panda refrigerator magnets. Eleanor likes this stuff and she indulged me two tries at seeing Mao without even a whimper of protest so I held my usual disdain for organized tourist activities and shops and did it.  This section of Beijing reminded me of any Chinatown in any city I've ever visited except this one was less than a mile from the Forbidden City, even closer to Mao's glass casket and the Vatican of the Chinese People's revolution. It's a strange world indeed.


Pictures of Beijing are here.

Next stop: Chengdu, home office of the Giant Panda.

Wal-Mart Watch: Thou Shalt Not Steal

In November 2007 I shot a number of picture in China and uploaded them to Flickr. I enjoy visiting Wal*Mart and Carrefour stores in China, they amazing places where I can rub shoulders with regular people. In a remarkable transition these huge Supercenter stores are actually located under the People’s Square of Chinese cities. On the surface are huge statues and murals of Mao and the other heavy hitters of Chinese communism, below is the fruit of consumerism and capitalism. The Chinese people vote with their feet. I posted my picture of the entrance of a Wal*Mart Supercenter under People’s Square in Guiyang, Guizhou Province here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/37118157@N00/2042161021

In August 2008 Walmartwatch.com posted the article Lest Anyone Forget concerning the unionization of the Wal*Mart Supercenter in Guiyang that I had photographed. The author of the piece, Michael Mignano copied and pasted my picture into his article. There’s really no other explanation for this outright theft of clearly copyrighted material.

The Walmart Watch website exhorts the reader “write to congress”, “tell your friends”, “share your story”. You can contact lots of people but you can't contact Walmart Watch. I tried. You can leave them a comment but you have to identify what kind of supporter you are (donor, volunteer, press enquiry) from a drop down box. I demanded that they remove my picture but they've ignored me.

So, who is Walmartwatch? Their "About Us" page doesn't identify them. I had to trace them through their domain registration information: Their domain is registered to:

 

UFCW INTERNATIONAL UNION

1775 K Street, NW

Washington, DC 20006

Contact them there? Ha! From their domain registration information, here's their email address: Administrative Contact , Technical Contact : UFCW INTERNATIONAL UNION no.valid.email@worldnic.net

So let’s recap; A website that advocates fairness on the behalf of the largest retailer in the United States in an effort to unionize Wal*Mart’s employees steals one of my copyrighted pictures but they hide when I attempt to contact them to request that they remove my pictures. I requested just this on their contact page they’ve ignored me.

Taipei: 2 Chinas, Superior System?

The food and language might be Chinese but there are some distinct mainland Chinese characteristics missing. Where’s the homicidal, almost Braille driving? What about the complete deadly disregard of drivers by pedestrians and of pedestrians by drivers? Also thankfully conspicuous by its absence was the Chinese National anthem, the ominously loud, nauseating, guttural phlegm pre-expectoration sounds that mean take cover and watch your shoes because a mighty spit is coming. The subways I've ridden in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen are a Chinese fire drill free for all, when the train stops and the car doors open it’s best to drop your head like a halfback and force your way through an imaginary goalpost to get on or off the subway car. On Taipei’s MRT there are painted lines on the ground on either side of the door openings and people calmly wait for the arrival of the next train. The result is efficiency and order: people leaving the car go straight out while those getting in enter from the sides. There’s very little yelling and bellowing into cell phones as there is on the mainland (Hong Kong too).

Taipei: One China Policy

The US government may follow the mainland’s one China policy but there’s no such policy here at Strange Taste Horsebeans. I’ve visited Hong Kong and it’s a wonderful orderly yet chaotic contrast to the mainland. Hong Kong prospered while the mainland suffered under communist dictatorship and economic ham handedness. At the time of suffering and deprivation on the mainland it was same people, different system. Now Hong Kong and Macau are considered “Special Administrative Regions”, or SAR’s of China. Or as Beijing now describes the curious situation, “one country, two systems”. But there’s still one more China. While the mainland was ruled by the whims of Mao the Republic of China on Taiwan was ruled by Chiang Kai-Shek, the loser of the long and bloody Chinese civil war and only a slightly lesser despot than Mao. Both Chiang and Mao remain only on having their regal mugs on the face of their country’s money but the division between the People’s Republic and Taiwan remain, the mainland still considers Taiwan as a rebellious province of China, Taiwan sees itself as an independent country (others see it differently, it has official diplomatic relations with only 23 countries). And when China was mired in economic Commie chaos Taiwan blossomed into a first world economy of innovation, creation and comfort. Once again, same people, different system. For me the question is simple: what’s Taiwan like and why is it like that?

Bangkok - I saved the Best for Last

BANGKOK

I'm back home and that means that at least I have a good idea what I'm eating and I'm free to drink tap water again. Without knowing I saved the best for last. I had been looking forward to going to China all year long but in the end two weeks in China became something of a chore. Because of language and cultural barriers getting the simplest things accomplished in my daily solo tourist routine such as getting a taxi or shopping or even something as basic as getting a meal just wore me down.

This dawned on me when I came down with a cold and went to the supermarket to buy, among other things, a small pocket pack of tissues. I caught it before I got to the cash register, what I had actually put into my basket a small, purse sized pack of sanitary napkins. Because I couldn't read the goddamn label and for whatever cultural reasons a package of sanitary napkins in China while colorful contains no visual cues, pictograms, frilly pink flowers, much of anything to give away to someone who can’t read Chinese characters what lies within.  Chinese road manners made me fear daily for my life as a pedestrian, Chinese food in the supermarket was a daily mystery, or worse. Chinese restaurant menus were either unintelligible in Chinese or brutally repulsive in Engrish. I love Chinese food but what I found in the home office of Chinese food was usually unrecognizable to me as something I’d want to put in my mouth and made me fear, it turned out for good reason, for my digestive health. Chinglish was whip out my camera cute when I arrived but as my time in China went on dealing with and deciphering it became just another chore in my daily solo tourist life.

But Bangkok and I connected. Is there any place in Bangkok where you can't buy copied software and music? Pantip Plaza is 5 or 6 floors of IT crap and other than the counterfeits (and Pantip’s got plenty of phony everything) the prices are OK, but only if you've never done business with Newegg or any other Internet retailer in the US. In other words, for a US based shopper Pantip prices are lousy, at least for someone like me who can’t do a deal in Thai. There's a 7% VAT in Thailand on most everything but even so the prices are still high. I’ve had my ear’s eye on a pair of Sony ear buds. I bought a pair for about $50 in Tokyo, a city not known for hard shopping bargains. At Pantip Plaza they were either marked at $80 with a small golden genuine Sony sticker on the box or $11 without. In my experience the folks selling copied software at Pantip Plaza deliver service after the sale. The label on my “copy” of Office 2007 promised English but it refused to install because my laptop’s version of Windows XP isn't in Thai. I took it back and got it swapped for English but it meant going back to the Pantip pressure cooker. There's an ongoing constant amplified floor show on the 1st floor that reverberates through the bones of everybody in the place. I packed my MP3 player to successfully dampen the din.

Going shopping seems to pass for sport in Bangkok and there’s lots of it. I went to a fancy mall, MBK Center. Most of it is upscale goods but one whole wing is devoted exclusively to cell phones and copied software and music. They even sell the software and music in the food court. Oh, did I mention that prescription drugs are available over the counter at any pharmacy simply for the asking? Want that certain drug for men that's responsible for the bulk of your bulk email? No problemo, just walk right in and ask for it but don't ask for it by name otherwise you'll overpay. It turns out that there really are generic versions of the stuff, produced in India. You can't get it legally in the US without having Pfizer's lawyers nipping at your nuts but Bangkok ain't the US. Bangkok and I connected on other levels. Depending on where you’re going getting around can be easy and civilized, just go up and take the new BTS Skytrain or down for the new MRT subway.

Without those two the only other choices are taxi or a kind of a cross between a motorcycle/rickshaw called a tuk-tuk. Citizens of Seattle will often tell folks from elsewhere that Puget Sound traffic is among the worst anywhere. Bad yes, but it ain’t Bangkok. Bangkok traffic is a filthy, hellish Blade Runner nightmare of backed up streets and clotted intersections overseen by traffic cops wearing some kind of gray hybrid of a respirator/surgical mask. Street vendors and locals make due with disposable surgical masks. Tuk-tuks and taxis seem to run on compressed natural gas but older city buses and trucks belch blue clouds of life shortening smoke all day long. Oh, here's something from the Skytrain that you don't usually see on mass transit in the US. Some of the women in Bangkok are absolutely drop dead, heart palpitatingly pretty, like God took another crack at His failed recipe for Filipinas and got it right this time. So it’s not surprising to see a certain element in Bangkok of white men of a certain age, like mid 50’s and up with much younger local women. Some even have small hapa kids. Gray haired white guys, some balding, some with pot bellies with Thai women old enough to be their daughters or grand daughters (Less prevalent but still noticeable are older white men with young Thai guys). Perhaps she sees him as a walking wallet and with the help of a certain prescription drug for men maybe he sees himself once again as a stickman and her as a walking vagina. I've overheard some of these guys talk, some are American but many are European and Australian. They're living their dream, I guess. They’ve left their same old used to be on another continent and now they're in tropical Asia where they can spend their days drinking good Thai beer and screwing young Thai stuff. So Bangkok and I connected. It was easy, I don’t know why but not only is the defacto second language English, it nearly always makes sense. No Engrish. Bilingual signs make sense to English speaking eyes and ears. So cars are right hand drive and there’s a functional use of good English, curious since the British never colonized or ran Thailand. Then there’s the King of Thailand. It's good to be the King. I had no idea that the King was such a big deal. His picture is everywhere, he looks like a Chinese waiter and Woody Allen somehow had a son. Yes, he was born in Massachusetts and like Woody Allen he plays the saxophone. I bought 3 yellow shirts with His royal crest on the breast pocket. When they say "Long Live the King!" in Thailand (and it's everywhere, even in English) they ain't talkin' 'bout some guy named Elvis from Mississippi. Thailand’s King is like some kind of benevolent Kim Jong Il, his picture is everywhere both public and private. The King had the cover of the local equivalent of the TV Guide that I found in my hotel room. Bangkok is a great city. I barely scratched the surface, this time.

Sondisa Coffee

OK, The coffee here is awful and Sondisa coffee’s URL doesn't work. In fact, Baidu has never heard of the place and Googling Sondisa Coffee just brings up this picture in this blog posting. But I like it here. There's either free WIFI of the ability to poach WIFI from nearby. The staff here is great, they even found an adapter so I could plug in my laptop. But the coffee part of Sondisa Coffee needs some work. A small cup costs a minimum of Y20, that's close to $3 US. It arrives with small container of a white substance. Milk?  Melamine?  Who knows, it has flowers on it and simply says, "ME".

This gives me time to reflect on Guiyang, capital of Guizhou province. Guizhou is a poor province and I can see that just by walking down the street. Peasants with their baskets cruise the streets looking for work. Or pick through trash. They gather in small groups playing cards between jobs or trash picking gigs or wander aimlessly and spit. Normally only Chinese men spit (and spit up a storm they do) but among the poor in Guiyang loud expectoration is an equal opportunity street activity. Like most of China Guiyang is a mixture of poverty and extravagance, only more so. Peasants pick through garbage cans for plastic and cardboard while BMW's, Jaguars, Range Rovers and the usual gaggle of Chinese knock off cars cruise by. There were fewer peasants on display in my previous stops of Xiamen and Nanjing.

Last night 2 young women approached me and asked in English what language I spoke. They explained to me that they were hungry and wanted money for food. This was laughable, they were well dressed and worldly enough to speak some English. In China that's a marketable skill although begging to gullible tourists might result in a quicker and easier Yuan than bothering to do any actual work. And those here who are obviously dirt poor peasants pay me, Mr. Laowai Walking Wallet, no mind.

Speaking of begging, in Xiamen I saw a man by the bus depot at the SM shopping center with his guts hanging out from a hole in his belly. I'm not sure whether this was some sort of parlor trick or not but I don't know how he wouldn't quickly succumb to a massive infection if it wasn't. It looked so awful and pathetic that I couldn't look twice.

Next stop: Kunming

Pantomine

One problem with seat of the pants wandering around lost tourism is it’s for the young and I ain’t so young anymore. All this wandering around has left me flu-ish and with sore, blistered feet. So I headed back to the drug store, a place I’ll probably be turning to with greater frequency as I age. Maybe I could score some Dr Scholl’s blister pads and keep on keepin’ on. How to explain the problem? Chinese drug stores are divided into two distinct sections with a walled divider. One part of the store is usually full of patrons, it’s the part that's solely concerned with selling soap, shampoos and cosmetics.

At times it has seemed to me that half of the female population of China is employed selling clothes, fashion accessories and cosmetics to the other half. Condoms are available on both sides of the drug store wall (my favorite Chinese condom brand names: "Jissbon" and "Six-Sex"). I've yet to see a male employed in either half of a Chinese drug store. On the side of the drug store wall where actual drugs are sold are prescription drugs, over the counter drugs (conveniently labeled "OTC") and Chinese herbal remedies. I was met on the drug store side of the drug store by three female clerks. I grabbed my left foot and said, "Ow, ow!". All three hit me with rapid fire Chinese, not a word of which did I understand. I shrugged my shoulders, pointed to my left foot and held out my left pinkie finger. My smallest toe is the one giving me the biggest grief. More Chinese, no understanding. I held out my left pinkie and pantomimed wrapping it with tape.

With that I got through. One clerk took me to the part of the store where they sold adhesive tape and band-aids. There's a business opportunity in China for the Dr Scholl company. After choosing my purchases I returned to the front of the store, where upon entering I had seen a display for Viagra. It would be a shame to come all this way and go home not knowing how much OTC Viagra costs. How much? A single dose is Y125. That's just under $17 US. But like everything else in this newly capitalist world there's a discount for buying in bulk. Party time? A box of 5 Viagra tablets sets you back a cool Y499, that's around $67 US. When I popped my eyes at the price one of the clerks brought me something cheaper, some kind of kangaroo extract. I laughed. The clerks laughed. Oh, so how did my purchase work out? Tape or no tape, my toe still hurts.

Guiyang People's Square: Wal*Mart & Mao

This picture shows the state of Communism in China today in a nutshell.  It’s so illustrative that it was stolen from my Flickr page and used without attribution or permission by an anti Wal-Mart website called Wal-Mart Watch.  So much for copyright protection.

This is People's Square in Guiyang. Off to the left and out of camera range there's the omnipresent giant Mao statue. On the other side of People's Square is a large mural showing the Forbidden City in Beijing, if you look closely in this picture you can make out Mao and Deng Xiao Ping, communist party heavy hitters of a bygone and failed era. People's Square has been hollowed out, what lives below People's Square in Guiyang is the largest, most densely packed, Wal-Mart Supercenter I've ever seen.

This is mid November and Christmas at Wal-Mart in China is in full swing. Right under Mao's atheist feet the store has plenty of fake Christmas trees and patrons are bathed in Christmas music, both secular and religious. It's doubtful that any of the patrons understand the lyrics but still, Bentonville would be up to its eyeballs in lawsuits and elitist complaints if Wal-Mart played hymns about the Virgin Mary in their US stores.

Communism stumbled on from 1949 until Den Xiao Ping wised up in 1979 impoverishing and stunting lives in China. The Communist Party and Mao and never give the Chinese people what Wal-Mart and Sam Walton give them every day: variety and low prices with no shortages or rationing. Communism in China couldn't put food on the table, millions died in famines that swept this country in the 1950's thanks to Mao and his state planning comrade geniuses. Political power might flow from the barrel of a gun but Wal-Mart stacks 'em deep and sells 'em cheap. You can't eat or wear the revolution.

Here's the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Kunming:

Update: If you run an trekking outfit in Nepal don't bother to post your ad here.  I will delete the spam that you repeatedly place here so fast that K2 will melt.  If you'd like to place an advertisement please contact Google and they can run your ads anywhere you'd like.  

Chairman Mao's Revenge

This picture was lots funnier yesterday, before I ate or came down with something that might make me a patient. And how fortunate for me, it's only a mile or so from my hotel here in Guiyang. Supposedly the outdoor night market down the block prepares a mean dog but I didn't (knowingly) sample any fillet of Fido or rack of Rover. I had some airline food on my way to a layover in Changsha. The flight attendants gave out little boxes of, well, I'm not entirely sure what was in there. The flight attendant said, "noodle" and it appeared to be wispy noodles with flecks of meat.

In China meat often means pork and not only don't I eat red meat I also watch what I eat very carefully here in China. But I let my guard down and scarfed down the greasy noodles. A guy's got to eat and my problem here in China is: would I rather not know what's on the Mandarin only menu or would I prefer a menu in English? Actually, that menu would be in "English", the last one I encountered in Xiamen used delectable descriptors that I never want to see on a restaurant menu again such as "Worms" and "Clam grease". This dilemma usually sends me to the supermarket. I can't read the labels there either but I know a loaf or bread or a container of sweet corn yogurt when I see one.

When I got off the plane in Guiyang my stomach and other connected organs had formed a chorus of, "Hey! Pay attention to us! Do It Now!". So after checking in I headed to the Beijing Hualian supermarket chain around the corner and bought a 2 liter jug of purified water. I'm sure that's what the label would've said in English. The label had Chinese characters and a picture of a polar bear. Oh, I also bought some already peeled fruit. Mandarin oranges, pieces of Dragon Fruit, melon, apple and maybe a little Ecoli. And maybe some melamine. There was no label and even if there was, I couldn't read it anyway.

So I was up all night pouring water into the top end of me and, well, you get the picture. Up all night wondering what I was thinking in coming here to China. Wanting to be home in my own bed, using my own toothbrush and if I had to be sick sitting on my very own throne. But that's not an option now. I'm off to Kunming on Monday and Bangkok on next Saturday before I come home to Seattle and Eleanor's fantastic and creative cooking. Mmmmm.

Next stop today was a drug store. I needed to stock up on over the counter meds like Imodium (Loperamide). There's a local drug store chain across the square, surely they'd have something for what ails me. I walked in and was met by a pretty clerk with an enquiring, helpful look. I patted my stomach and made a face. I patted my behind. I showed her my last remaining Loperamide tablet. She giggled and took me right over to the Viagra display.

Nanjing Subway Train

Nanjing has gotten the better of me. The language barrier is just too thick and the city is just too vast.

I easily mastered riding the Nanjing Metro. The token machines have an option labeled “English”, just put in Y2, grab a plastic token and tap on a designated strip on the turnstile and you’re in. The stops are labeled in English too. As a form of sheer, brute force tourism I tried just getting off at stops at random and walking around whatever neighborhoods I happened upon. Most of them didn’t have much to offer except stares from the few locals so all I got for my efforts were sore feet. The air in Nanjing is awful. The weather forecasts have called for partly sunny but the rays of old Sol never make it past all of the particulates suspended in the air. The sky here is gray, visibility is severely limited. The air smells like concrete and it probably is concrete too. It can’t be conducive to good health to breathe here but the locals do it and many compound it and smoke cigarettes too. Then again, if the air here doesn’t get ya the local drivers will.

I’m batting 500 on my attempt to take cabs here. My attempt to take a cab to Carrefour last night went perfectly. An available cab drove down the sidewalk (!) and I showed the driver my slip of paper and got in. My attempt to visit a famous huge bridge over the Yangtze was a bust though. Every cabbie I showed my slip of paper too shook his head and gave me a funny look, like I had recited the Gettysburg address backward.

I was at a Metro station and there were about 5 guys on motorcycles. They looked at my slip of paper and gestured to me that I get on the back of a bike. Riding on a motorcycle with Chinese strangers in Chinese traffic didn’t strike me as part of a healthy lifestyle so I patted the top of my head to indicate my lack of helmet. They had helmets, one of them offered to let me wear his. I still didn’t think that this was a great idea so I shook my head and walked away.

Tomorrow I move on. I had wanted to go to a warm city in the south, close to the Vietnamese border called Nanning but there are no seats on the plane so Nanning is a no go. So I've got to make due with next best, Guiyang. I'm thinking of staying in a higher end hotel, I need some of the soft life. Jin's Inn has been OK but it's a bit basic. The bed isn't much softer than the floor. I bought my plane ticket to Guiyang on line this morning, I'm supposed to pick it up at the airport tomorrow. Where at the airport is going to be another problem, here's the email from the company that sold me the ticket. Where do I pick up that ticket again Mandy???

Dear Sir,

Thank you for choosing eLong!

Regarding your reservation 12391623, you can pick up the ticket from the:

您的取票地址：机场2楼东航值机柜台东航万里行窗口

Your ticketing address:Eastern Airline's Counter (Wanlixing window), F2 of Terminal, Nanjing Airport

Best regards, Mandy English Team of Call Center eLong Inc. (NASDAQ: LONG) Tel: (8610)64329999 ext. 6 Fax: (8610)64311239 E-mail: abroad@corp.elong.com Address: 2F, Block B, Galaxy Plaza, 10 Jiuxianqiao Middle Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100016