Icons and Martyrs

This post is my first step away from using this blog merely as a repository of travel stories which is good since I’d like it to become a place for both tales from the Road and reflections on weightier issues.

In the past few days, as I have been following the fallout of the Iranian presidential election in newspapers (my main source of information about the world) I have read repeatedly about the video of Neda Agha Soltan, the young Iranian woman whose final moments were captured by an amateur cameraman on a street in Tehran. While I had read descriptions of this video many times and had come to understand that it had inflamed international opinion and become a symbol for those protesting Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s reelection I did not watch it myself until this afternoon, several days now since it first appeared on YouTube.

This 35 seconds of video is one of the most affecting and disturbing things I have ever witnessed. I was brought to tears. Even though I objectively knew what I was going to see when I clicked play I could never have prepared for the suddenness with which her blood poured across her face and the terrible mortal moment that it signals. Even more chilling for me was hearing the voices of the people around her as they came to realize, in the same moment as I did, that she was dying before their eyes and under their hands. As suddenly as her blood began to pour did the voices of the men surrounding her change from stern and worried shouts to shrieks of desperation. It was that jarring switch in tone that most unsettled me.

Watching this has sent my mind and emotions whirling in many directions. I hope I will take the time to write down all or most of my thoughts, at least for my own sake. But tonight I want to step back briefly from the intense emotional and political implications of the event and take a brief (and I hope not inappropriate) intellectual side trip.

It occurred to me as I thought about this video that the circumstances and the imagery are extremely familiar: an innocent individual among thousands of protesters, struck by a bullet, dying on the ground with someone crouching by their side. Two photographs in particular come my mind. The first is the 1970 image of Jeffery Miller, a student at Kent State University, who was shot and killed by National Guardsmen during an anti-war protest on campus. By his side is Mary Ann Vecchio, a unrelated bystander who rushed to Miller after he fell.

The second photo was one I had been introduced to only recently. It is the photo of Benno Ohnesborg, a young man shot by a West German policeman during a protest in 1967. Cradling his head is a stranger who was nearby.

The Kent State image electrified the US public at the time and continues to be a widely recognized image, even if many people no longer recall the circumstances of the scene. The shot became an icon in the generational culture wars rattling America in the early 70s and Jeffery Miller, one of four students who were killed that day, became a martyr. The photo of Ohnesborg reverberated similarly through West Germany at the time and remains an important symbol of the political upheaval the country was experiencing (I take this interpretation of the photo on faith from The New York Times and The Economist where I read about it after those two newspapers reported on the recent revelation that the West German policeman who shot Ohnesborg was in fact a mole planted by the Easy German Stasi).

As with Jeffery Miller and Benno Ohnesborg, it seems that Neda Soltan is quickly becoming a martyr for the anti-Ahmedinejad protesters. That the images of these three are so similar in composition and context speaks volumes to me about political struggle, journalism, cultural memory and a host of other topics. That it was these images of these individuals that have become icons says much about how people read visual meaning and the nature and fickleness of mass protests of these kinds. I will be interested to know if ten years from now Neda Soltan is still remembered and symbolized as she is today and if this video of her, shocking as it is, will have the proven staying power that these photos, and many others, have had on the world. I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see.

trains, trucks and automobiles

One of the things that I immediately take interest in when I get to a new city is the transportation.  How do people get around a place?  There’s the obvious practical knowledge that this affords but I also think it reflects on and adds to the culture and character of a place, like the super-clean, quiet and punctual subway system in Vienna or the swarmingly omnipresent motocycle taxis in Hanoi and Saigon.  Mumbai’s transport system was crowded and chaotic, words which (charitably) describe the city itself.  Taxis with well-rippled and dented side panels clogged the streets, jostling for space with big red buses with an open back door that people jumped in and out of at their convenience.  Indeed, I rarely saw a bus actually stop to let someone on.  They seemed to operate on a catch-me-if-you-can policy.

The taxis were fascinating creatures.  There are apparently 60,000 of them on the road in Mumbai and it feels like it.  Similar to the ubiquitous yellow cabs here in New York, Mumbai’s black and yellow taxis were everywhere.  They were tiny little things.  I couldn’t sit up straight in either the front of back seats and they were shorter than most modern cars.  Indeed, every part of their design appeared to have been conceived in the 1950s and most of them looked and sounded like they’d been on the road since at least then.  When I first saw them I thought they must be just like Cuba’s legendarily fleet of immortal cars that have been driving for 50+ years.

I learned that they are made by FIAT, and despite all the evidence to the contrary the cabbie who drove me out to the airport explained that his was the 1996 model.  I could hardly believe that, sure that there was some kind translation loss going on, until we pulled over for him to fill up his tank and to my shock he pulled up not to a pump for gasoline, but for natural gas.  I was stunned, and impressed.

The other thing that struck me about the taxis was how insanely the cabbies drove.  Not that they were much different from the rest of Mumbai’s driving public but I think that anywhere in the world taxis exist on the outer limits of reason and the law and these guys certainly did their part in pushing those limits to hair-rasing places.

Tony takes a train.

Then there were the trains.  These were above ground commuter trains that ran out to Mumbai’s northern suburbs.  The target of the terrorist attacks back in 2006.  They transport thousands of people in and out of the city center every day.  This is the inside of one of the cars.  Anthony and I took a couple of short rides one afternoon.  As we were on the train in the middle of the day it was pleasantly empty.  By all accounts they are ungodly crowded during rush hour with people hanging out of the doors which are always open.  This likely contributes to the nearly 4000 average yearly deaths on the train system (according to my guide book).  But, as I said, we had plenty of space, and we didn’t die, and it only cost us 4 rupees to ride (about 8 cents), so it was great!

Of course, it’s not just people that need moving, there are goods to be carried, too!  Enter the “goods carriers,” trucks, autorickshaws and vans of all kinds of shapes and sizes that move what needs to be moved around the city. And, like the cabs, shrines, people and everything else, they are gaily decorated.  They most prettiest smog belching behemoths I ever did see.

It's good to carry.

Going to the chapel, etc…

So it seems that attempting to go about posting about events and experiences in a chronological order is something of a lost cause at this point as I have not been nearly consistent enough so I will approach this more thematically.

Being that I am here in Mumbai for a wedding it seems best to tackle the process of said event before going off on my more general ramblings and adventures.

Rice gets inked

The first official event of the wedding itself is known as Mehendi (men-dee).  Essentially this is an afternoon spent eating, drinking, socializing and getting elaborate henna tattoos for members of the wedding party.  Janki’s mehendi took place in a hall full of cushions with a small army of henna artists ready to curlique and prettify the hands and wrists of any lady who wanted some.

We friends of the bride arrived first which was a good thing because it meant that the ladies of our group got first shot while the henna artists were still fresh.  They each got some beautiful stuff on the palm side of each hand as well as some decorative flourishes on the opposite side.  They spent about 45 min waiting patiently after which they walked the hall gingerly with their hands outstretched so that the henna could dry and stain properly. 

The girls show off

As they sat manually incapacitated the father of the groom approached the gentlemen of the group and laughingly suggested that it was a perfect time for the men to go and grab a drink which we did with relish (delicious Pimm’s Cups).  Interestingly enough the girls seemed to interpret this as a suggestion that we fetch drinks for them and help them sip, though we were of a somewhat different mind…

 

 

Of course, they were able to grasp things with their hands again about an hour and a half after they first sat down while poor Janki, whose mehendi covered all the way up past her elbow as well as both feet had to wait patiently for almost 3 hours!  The end result, of course, was fantastic.

Janki on Wedding Day 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some of the many ceremonial accessories

The wedding ceremonies themselves then took up two full days and involved seperate purifications and prayers for the bride and grooms families on the first day.  Janki and Hrishikesh are both Gutchi, a subset of Gujarati and they decided that they wanted a full-blown traditional (Hindu) wedding.  This involved 6 or 7 hours of rituals over the two days including calming the planets, setting the universe in order, sanctifying the wedding space, blessing the bride and groom, saying prayers for the family, and a whole long list of other ceremonies that we were utterly clueless on.   However, we were not alone, Janki admited to us that she also didn’t know what was going on as the proceedings were extremely elaborate and detailed and the prayers were all entirely in Sansk

Calming the planets

rit.  She, Hrishikesh and their parents and relatives followed the priests’ instructions as they went along and no one bothered to explain much to us westerners about what was happening.  Not that it seemed to matter, unlike the relatively straightforward weddings we are accostumed to in the US (reception, procession, vows, kiss, hooray) where everyone sits in rapt attention, almost none of the hundreds of Indian friends and relatives  seemed to be paying any attention at all.  “Oh well,” they told us, “we’ve seen so many of these and no one really knows what’s going on anyways, so why be bored? Have some chai.”  I like that attitude.

The most fun and “interactive” tradition was a funny little game where members of the bride’s party try to steal the groom’s shoes and demand ransom for their return.  Unfortunately, the groom had linebacker sized cousins on his team and it soon became apparent that this was a full contact tradition so we were not successful.  Instead, we stole Janki’s brother’s shoes, much to our amusement.

Finally, after many, many confusing hours wedding was complete and Janki Khatau became Janki Thackersey.  ::sigh:: And so eras end.

At the end, of course, came the best part: FOOD AND DRINK AND PARTY!  Blessed by huge buffets of both South Indian and Gujarati food (and an Italian Counter), an open bar and some of India’s best nightlife we ate, drank and were extremely merry.

Mumbai Madness

With days 1 and 2 under my belt it’s time to take quick stock.

Believe the rumors: Mumbai is a madhouse.  I’ve been a lot of places and seen a lot of traffic but the cacophony of the intersection outside our apartment has been staggering.  The municipal government has posted signs all around the city calling for an end to the constant horn honking.  “Quiet City, Better City,” they say.  Betterment be damned; Mumbaikars, it seems, like their city just the way it is.

I do, too.  It is dirty and noisy and more than occassionally, um, pungent, but it has also proven to be wildly colorful, melodious and aromatic.  Almost all the advice I have been given about traveling to India has emphasized avoiding the streetfood but I don’t know if I can resist much longer.  There are stalls and stands everywhere selling all kinds of delicious smelling food.  Some of it I know well, like samosas and chutney and pakoras, but most of it is a tempting mystery to me.

Last night was the first night of events in the wedding.  Essentially it was the reception, cocktails and dinner.  There were lots of people there to mingle with, lots to drink and eat.  Somehow no one had any trouble identifying us as the “college friends from America”.  Who knew we would stand out in a crowd of 350 Indians?  For those who are interested we’ve discovered that local names for familiar drinks/cocktails is quite different.  When the waiter offers you whiskey and malt whiskey, know that the latter is scotch.  Also if your waiter offers you to get you something whose name you cannot decipher it will turn out to be a mojito, only with lemon instead of lime.  Trust me, just say “yes.”

Follow up from last post: Parsis are Persian (Iranian) Zoroastrians that have imigrated and emigrated in and out of Mumbai several times in the past 100 years.  Apparently there are very few left in Mumbai any more but their Fire Temples are everywhere and only they can use them.  They also have a special cemetary in the center of the city known as the Tower of Silence.  It’s in a huge, terraced park that you can’t see into from the street but apparently inside dead Parsis are “buried” out in the open to be consumed by vultures and other birds.  Hm.

And the head waggle means “ok”.  Easy enough, though still slightly confusing for me since I keep assuming it means the opposite.

Welcome to Chattrapati Shivaji Int’l Airport

14 hour non-stop flights are not my favorite thing in the world but when the end of your journey is as exciting and interesting as the next two weeks will surely be, I suppose you can only complain about them so much. Our flight passed without incident and we arrived to a dark but still palpably buzzing Mumbai last night.  We were taken to the apartment where we will be staying along with a pack of other friends who are here for the wedding and lay in an exhausted daze before falling asleep.

For clarity’s sake: I am here for the wedding of a friend of mine from college.  Her name is Janki.  So now you won’t be confused when I reference her or her relatives, etc. as I doubtless will in the coming weeks.  I’m sure I’ll also be naming other members of the cast of characters but don’t worry about them too much.  Janki is the key point of reference here.

Anthony and I awoke this morning at around 7:15.  We went to the window of our room and discovered that our apartment is on the west side of the city overlooking the Arabian Sea.  Just off the shore on a small marshy island we saw the Haji Ali Mosque, a local landmark and someplace we are determined to get to soon as we find the entrance to the causeway that leads out to it.

Restless and excited, we took a little walk this morning just to get a sense of the immediate neighborhood.  There isn’t much to see right around our apartment, mostly other large apartment blocks and shops but the street life here is vibrant and constant so it was pleasant just to walk about and see people at their business.  People have been friendly and our initial walk turned up a small Hindu temple to Shiva that claimed to be the second oldest in the city and a decaying Parsi Fire Temple which only Parsis were allowed into.  I don’t really know what a Parsi is so if someone could illuminate me I’d be greatly appreaciative (especially since your advice might help me figure out how to come across as a convincing Parsi so that I might gain entrance and explore the inside!).

But we haven’t yet had much opportunity to offend any local religious communities (give us time) as we’ve met up with Janki’s family and will soon be seeing the bride after she finishes up her pedi-/manicures.  I am currently trying to surmise the correct usage and meaning of the slight waggle of the head that we have noticed is in common non-verbal parlance here.  Until then.

Once more from the top…

So this is the my first post on my new blog.  The Files had an earlier incarnation on another site, but this one I like better.  To get the ball rolling, I am blogging mostly about my own travels.  Backdated posts of my trip to China in summer of ‘08 are below and I will soon be posting about my upcoming jaunt to India.  Hopefully, though, this will turn into something somewhat more than just a travel log (a “trog”?) and include meaningful wanderings of the mental variety as well.  Well, we shall see.

All Good Things and Their Ends

Well Everyone,

the Time has finally come. Time to write up the last update of my trip and sign off. Full disclosure, I’m writing to you not from the Far East but from the New World. Yes, I’ve come back home already so this isn’t exactly an update from the Road but there’s still a few bits of the trip I haven’t reported on yet. So in the interest of Completeness I write on.

Last we talked I had ridden the Desert Train through the deserts of Inner Mongolia. After a few days there seeing old friends we saddled up on the Iron Rooster once again and thundered Southeast towards Beijing, crossing the rugged mountain ranges and the Great Wall to descend upon the Capital like so many Mongol hordes before us.

Ah, Beijing, that sprawling, bloated, steroidal capital of the People’s Republic. As per our plan we arrived there after the Closing Ceremony of the Olympics so those of you who have been waiting to hear a first hand account of Michael Phelps’ 8th gold medal performance will have to forgive me. It must seem odd that we would go to China during the Olympics and make a point of avoiding them. It was an historic event after all and who knows when I’ll get another chance to see something like this again? Well, Beijing is a manic, crowded mess of humanity on a quiet day and we had both learned our lesson about being in town for Big Events before. So we let sleeping dogs lie and waited for the Party to die down.

When we showed up in town things were more or less calm, though the city seemed to be in a little but of an Olympic hangover. The whole place was still saturated in Olympic and Paralympic themed advertising. The subway system (only 3 lines when last we were in Beijing, now 6) was spic and span and I was impressed at Beijing commuters restraint; much less of the old push-push shove-shove mentality when getting on and off. As with any well-appointed bus or train in China each car was equipped with several TV screens. These on the cars offered two programs: 1) repeats of the the Opening Ceremony, or 2) the music video for the official song of the Games, “Beijing Huangying Ni” (Beijing Welcomes You). I have no idea what the coverage of the Games was like in the States so if any of you managed to miss this lil’ gem of feel-good, propaganda-pop have a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skan0yO-qU8.

Don’t think I’m bitter about the Games or anything, or about China more generally. I love this place, honestly, and I hope that comes across when I describe it. But it’s also a frustrating place to be and these highly polished and immaculately produced publicity pieces are designed to convince everyone, inside and outside the country, that China can show a single, unified face to the world. The same thing struck me during the Opening Ceremony when dancers and actors representing China’s ethnic minorities ran around smiling and singing for the sake of Beijing and China. That ain’t the whole story, you can be sure. Ahem, but I digress, this is turning into a political rant. As I was saying…

A dear old friend of mine has been living in Beijing for the past two years and just moved into a brand new apartment. She and her roommate graciously put us up and entertained us for 3 days while we recovered and revisited Our Nation’s Capital.

After Beijing, though, was perhaps the most highly anticipated part of the trip, and the one part that I will have the least to say about. We took the train (a mere 4 hours) to Qinhuangdao, the city where Emma and I had spent a year of our lives teaching English and getting to know the vast and fascinating land that is China. I have little to say about it because what can I say to you all that know nothing of the people and places that we grew to love there? Qinhuangdao is not a particularly notable city in and of itself but it has a lot of deep personal significance for us. I will say that it was one of the best parts of the trip. Getting to see people that we were never sure we’d see again was incredibly gratifying.

QHD had changed quite a bit as well just in the short year that we were gone. A football (soccer) stadium was built there for the purposes of the Games and several qualifying matches were played there, so the city was spruced up and made to look as shiny and nice as possible. One thing we noted was that very few of the stores had changed but they all had pretty new signs out front. As one of my former students observed dryly, whoever was in the sign business in Qinhuangdao must have made a lot of money during thanks to the Games.

Not everyone in town benefitted from the side effects of BJ ‘08. One old friend, had opened a new bar several months before the Games opened. She was unfortunate that her new baby was just a few blocks from the hotels where the athletes were staying. That sounds like a boon for business but the authorities were worried about unseemly incidents of the kind that can happen in and around bars so they shut down all the drinking establishments in walking distance of the athletes’ hotels. Our friend, frustrated, went to speak to some local officials and found that they were ardent devotees of the late Chairman Mao and were extremely eager to collect as many portraits of the former statesman as possible, particularly portraits printed in red ink with the number “100″ next to His likeness. After our friend proffered up enough portraits the local officials suddenly developed a temporary and acute form of blindness which rendered them unable to see her bar. Appearances had to be kept up though (not everyone was blind, after all) so the front door of her bar was kept locked and directions to the back door were passed along the grapevine. After telling me this story, our friend sighed and said to me, “It’s all the same. The Olympics changed nothing.”

Uh oh, think I’m gettin’ on the ol’ soap box again, time to move on….

After our poignant trip down memory lane we moved on to the beating, sweating heart of Chinese Capitalism: Shanghai. In Shanghai we were once again graced with gracious hosts who put us up. We spent our few days in Shanghai walking the streets and enjoying the sights. But mostly we tried to relax during the last few days of our trip and tried not to think about the impending End. One of the highlights of Shanghai, a destination I urge any visitor to see, was the Propaganda Poster Art Center, a small gallery in the basement of an apartment complex in the center of town that displays dozens of original propaganda posters from the Days of Mao. From the founding of the PRC, on through the Great Leap Forward, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cultural Revolution and up until Mao’s death in 1976. It’s a fascinating and very well kept catalog of state-produced art. It was kind of like a sterilized version of the little old man’s house that we visited back in Update #3 when we were in Chengdu. If the Shanghai gallery showed off the government’s official self-portraits of those times, the old man’s house was probably an accurate view into what it was like to actually live thought them.

Finally, we returned to Hong Kong, from whence we had started 5 weeks earlier. We did as little as possible, just trying to recharge and reflect on all that had passed. As a final indulgence we spent our last afternoon on the beach on the south side of Hong Kong Island. The sun shone, the water was cool and the beer was cooler. A fine way to end an amazing trip.

Well, that’s that folks. I apologize for the belatedness of this last update and I hope I didn’t spend too much time rambling on about things you can read much better analyses of in the newspaper. It’s been a pleasure keeping you all up to date on my thoughts and wanderings. I hope that I get to do it again before long! Until then, as we say in China, zaijian!

p.s. If you like pictures I have a few of this trip on my Flickr site. Check ‘em out if you care to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chinagabe/sets/72157607268553920/

The Iron Rooster

Hello, friends and lovers.  My apologies for taking so long to update you on my travels here in the Middle Kingdom.  Much has happened since I last wrote and I have wanted to tell you all about it for a long time.  So let’s not spend too long with pleasentries, there is much to go over!

Last I wrote was from the lovely city of Kunming, known to the Chinese as the City of Eternal Spring.  On our last day the City lived up to it’s name.  The weather was indeed spring-like after may days of typhoon rains and overcast skies.  Beautiful sun, but not too hot.  In our glee we spent the whole day outside enjoying the warming rays on our pale whiteness: strolling, biking, discussing important issues of the day.  And as our reward we got to take away some nasty sunburns as souveniers.  Ah, well, red is a lucky color over here.

From Kunming we plotted a long and winding route to take us from China’s Southwest to Beijing in the Northeast via the Silk Road, or some version of it.  Our thought was to head north via Chengdu (where pandas be) to the dusty provincial captial of Lanzhou, China’s gateway to the West.  The idea was to pull it all off from the back of the Iron Roosters, the old Chinese nickname for the trains.

Unfortunately, we encountered an old friend right from the start.  That friend is called “mei yuo”, Chinese for “don’t have” as in tickets.  No way to get from Kunming directly to Chengdu.  So we decided to roll the dice and gamble on  a slight detour to the city of Guiyang.  Guiyang is the capital of Guizhou province, one of China’s poorest, and unlike Kunming it lacks any major tourist sites or draws.  We were hoping that onward travel from there would be easier since not as many people would be there in the first place.  Well, our little ricochet move paid off, we swooped into Guiyang, bought our tickets for Chengdu and spent the day waiting for the train walking through town.  Guiyang was nicer than people (and our guidebook) had given us to believe and we had a lovely time sitting in a riverside park, sipping green tea and watching people do taichi in the shade of bamboo groves.

But then, it was back on the train.  We arrived in Chengdu and pulled up into one of the nicest hostels either of us had ever seen.  If any of you are ever traveling through Chengdu (a great place to visit I might add) stay at Mix Hostel.  It’s clean, friendly, cheap, cozy, pretty, in an interesting, quiet part of town and it’s full of environmentally and socially conscious reminders to its guests that are instructive yet not overbearing!  What a place!  They even had a little box for recycling batteries!  My jaw hit the floor when I saw that.  So, yeah, go to Mix Hostel if you’re ever in Chengdu.  It’s the place to be.

We had one afternoon in town which we spent at the Secret Little Mao Museum.  This is not a museum in the conventional sense but rather a tiny, grubby apartment in a small, no account street wherein lived a wized old man with a deep personal love for the Great Chairman.  The tiny one room place was covered on every surface except for the floor with dusty, moldy relics of China’s recent past.  Mao buttons by the hundreds, posters, paintings, statues, busts, medalions, books, commemorative plates, all emblazoned with benevolently smiling images of Mao and his powerful associates.  It was a fascinating place and the whole thing was slowly crumbling and disintegrating around the old man’s ears.  But in a way it had more character and interest than any clean, curated museum could of hoped to have.

But Chengdu is a place we have both been before and time is always in short supply so it was onto our next destination the very next day.  That destination being the beginning of our Silk Road journey: Lanzhou.

The capital of the North Central province of Gansu, Lanzhou has long been a major garison town and is the traditional gateway between China’s heartland and the wild lands to the West.  These days, with high speed trains and flights connecting all corners of the globe Lanzhou’s main claim to modern fame is it’s designation as World’s Most Polluted City.  For this reason, and for it’s lack of specific sites of interest and tourism, Lanzhou is given short shrift by guidebooks and travelers alike but we both felt this reputation was unfair.  The city was very pleasant while we were there, with tasty Muslim food and beautiful views of the Yellow River from the steep moutains on it’s south bank.  And as it was not a maven of tourism prices were cheap and people were not jaded about seeing us.  Hooray!  Lanzhou also has a nifty (and very immaculate) museum that displays 10,000 year-old painted pottery from some of the first human settlements in China.  10,000 years-old.  Damn.  Very clean bathrooms, too.  Laugh if you will, but that means a lot out here.

Then came the part we had both been waiting for.  We left.  The reason this was so exciting to us was because we finally got to take our Desert Train.  From Lanzhou we traveled westward to the city of Hohhot, capital of Inner Mongolia.  These tracks took us through the arid landscapes of China’s northern edge, known to the world as the Gobi Desert.  This was exciting, this was territory neither of us had ever seen before.  We have explored many of China’s damp, tropical latitudes, tramping through jungles and huddling for shelter in typhoons.  But this was like nothing we had ever experienced before in China.  We had a taste of what was to come on our trip from Chengdu’s lush, green mountainsides to the dry, brown hills surrounding Lanzhou and the Yellow River.  But the trip west to Hohhot had even more in store for us.  It was stunningly stark, for miles nothing seemed to grow on the harsh rocky slopes surrounding the train but scrub brush.  The only signs of human habitation were the multitudes of small caves carved our of the loose hillsides.  Back in the days of the Silk Road, wealthy merchants would patronize artists to carve Buddhist statues directly into the sides of cliffs.  Many of these caves and grottoes are Western China’s main tourist attractions.  We couldn’t see inside the scores of niches we saw from the window so I cannot say what they were actually used for.  But we couldn’t help but wonder if each one contained a small Bodhisattva blessing its little patch of rock and sand.

Every now and then the train would roar past miraculous acres of corn and wheat fields.  Where the water came from to maintain those crops was beyond us as we didn’t see anything wetter than a dry streambed for hundreds of miles.  We had seen poverty and hard living in China before but it seemed to us that nothing could quite compare with the hard-scrabble existence farmers in this region must live with.

The dry, barren mountains eventually parted and gave way to dry barren flatlands.  And, much to our excitement, for a brief period we skirted the edge of the Tennger Desert, one part of larger Gobi ecosystem that looked the classic image of a desert with rolling sand dunes extending out to the horizon.  But, to our great dissapointment, no camels.  Oh well, there’s always the zoo.

The desert train was beautiful, but it too, must come to an end and the Rooster, tired and dusty finally pulled into Hohhot.  Hohhot was a very interesting town, one that seemed oddly familiar to us.  Perhaps, it was just a symptom of being back in the Northeast corner of China, the one we got to know and love so well when we lived and worked here two years ago.  It might also have been some of the familiar faces we saw there.  Two friends and comrades from those old times are now working in Hohhot and they took us out on the town and showed us around.  It was wonderful to see them again, share a meal and a ganbei (Chinese “cheers”) and catch up on the news and stories of everything that had happened since we parted ways.

But here is where this update must end.  It is too long already and if I continued to add to it now you would stop reading (if you haven’t already).  At the moment we are in Shanghai, enjoying the final week of our trip.  Tune in next time to hear about Beijing and the true nostalgia stop, Qinhuangdao.  Thanks for having the patience to read all of this if you have.  I promise the next one will be shorter and less retroactive.

Until next time, I remain, the Rooster Rider.

Stilllllll Truckin’

Well, last plans I believe I mentioned were our intentions to go deeper into the countryside here in Yunnan province to explore somewhat the quieter, ethnic side of things.  We were greatly rewarded for our choice.

We spent the past 4 days in a place called Ruili, a medium-sized city in Western Yunnan that is the largest border crossing between China and Burma.  This is an active place with lots of commerce flowing in both directions.  From Burma come raw materials like teak, jade and gold and cheap labor in the form of young men looking for work in a land of opportunity.  In the other direction flow finished manufactured goods: electronics, clothes, shoes, motorcycles, furniture, appliances, pretty much all consumer goods.  Smell like a classic colonial trade dynamic to anyone?  Oh, I forgot one other major product: heroin.  Grown in Burma, enjoyed in China.  Ruili once had a pretty wild reputation for drugs, violence, prostitution and gambling.  Something like a cross between Las Vegas and Tijuana out in the middle of a notoriously ungovernable, mountainous, jungly border region.  Spring break, anyone?  Well, Beijing abides nothing ungovernable, so in the past 10 years or so Ruili has been largely sanitized of it’s badass-ness and been made to look, as much as possible, like most other Chinese cities.

But that doesn’t mean that it’s become a boring place.  Quite the contrary, it’s one of the more interesting places in China I have had the pleasure to see.  The coolest thing about visiting the area is the ethnic diversity, something that is sorely, sorely lacking in most parts of China.  The population of Ruili itself is primarily Han Chinese, but the Dehong Prefecture (of which Ruili is the seat) is technically a special ethnic minority autonomous zone.  These are sprinkled all over China (you may have heard of a little place called Tibet) and while their “autonomy” is entirely cosmetic, the designation does reflect the traditional ethnic makeup of their respective regions.  In the case of Dehong it is a Kachin and Shan Autonomous Zone.  The Kachin and Shan live primarily in the regions of Burma that border this part of China but many of them (we heard an estimate of 2-3 million) live on the Chinese side and provide, along with the large population of ethnically Burman merchants and businessmen, a fascinating mix of cultures.

To our great luck and benefit a friend put us in touch with a young Kachin man who in addition to speaking English, Chinese, Kachin and Burmese seemed to have a friend with a hotel or restaurant or bar on every corner so we were given a fantastic insider’s view of town and were taken to the best spots for tasty (cheap!) food and drink.  The Burmese food we had was a special treat for us since we’ve never had a chance to try it before.  Very interesting, lots of fried dough items.  Some served with eggs in a kind of pancake with thick, sweet, syrupy milk as a sauce.  Some served with a delicious savory paste of white beans and sauteed onions.

Perhaps the most interesting dish we got to try was a crunchy mix of nuts and seeds with garlic, chili peppers and a pasty green sauce that reminded us of pesto.  Lots of great, strong flavors.

We also sampled Burmese tea which is very much like Indian chai: thick, milky and sweet.

According to our Kachin friend, munching on these snacks and sipping this tea is a big part of “Burma lifestyle”.  Think I’ve got a new next destination for my travel log.

But, sadly, Ruili too must pass.  We enjoyed ourselves there (even without the smack) but we have many other places we want to be so we had to push on.  Last night we boarded an overnight bus that brought us back to Kunming.  The bus was a sleeper, which means that it’s lined with beds instead of seats.  These beds, however, are designed with the Chinese stature in mind.  Perfect if you’re 5′5″ in stockingfeet.  Here’s a photo of me at my point of greatest stretch for your amusement.

That’s all for now.  Expect more.  Cheers.

All a blur…

Well, hello again Folks.  Gabe here with an update on my travels thus far.  As most of you know (but some of you may not) I have returned to China, the land of my birth, to visit old friends and see familiar places.  I’m hoping to run into a few new ones as well.  Today marks one week since landing in Hong Kong so I felt it was a good point to let y’all know how it’s been going.

Out first few days were in the Cities of Hong Kong and Guangzhou.  Both of them are massive, sprawling and modern with all of the  amenities, comforts and entertainments that one could hope for.  That is, if you can afford them.  Sadly, my traveling companion, Emma, and I cannot, so these two places have been somewhat frustrating places to be.  Also, a typhoon hit Hong Kong while we were there so we got rained on a lot.

Our trip thus far has been marked primarily by moving from one place to another, rather than exploring the places we are in all that much.  Our most recent little epic has been our attempt to get from Guangzhou to the southwestern city of Kunming.  We couldn’t get a ticket direct so we had to go to the intermediate destination, Nanning, a grubby provincial capital that both of us have been to before and remember solely as an unwelcome transfer point while we attempted to get to where we really Wanted to Be.  Sadly for Nanning and it’s undoubtedly lovely citizens we again relegated it to the role of Bump in the Road.  The journey from Guangzhou to Nanning takes about 16 hours and we spent them in a 3rd class seating car, what’s known over here as “hard seat”.  This doesn’t look a whole lot different from what you might expect from an Amtrak train, say, but it does mean that the aisles are full of people who couldn’t even get a seat and must stand or sit on the floor for the trip.  This means a lot of staring, a lot of body odor, a lot of noise and very little space.  Not the worst traveling conditions either of us have endured but not the most pleasant either.  Luckily we were mostly surrounded by pleasant people who were curious and friendly but not too intrusive.  Emma received a little magnetic Chinese checkers traveling game which made us the life of the party for the first couple of hours especially since there were a lot of young kids sitting around us.

We survived the trip and immediately went to the ticket office and bought our tickets to get the hell outta Dodge.  We had the good fortune of securing sleeper berths for the 16 hour onward train ride to Kunming.  Our train didn’t leave until that evening so we spent the afternoon wandering the streets of Nanning, discovering surprisingly tasty food and passing out on benches in the train station.  Fun, fun fun.  Really, it was a far more pleasant day than I expected.  Nanning, you are forgiven.  Some day I’ll actually spend some time with you intentionally.

We are now in Kunming, a city we have both spent a lot of time in (relatively speaking) on our big trip a year and half ago.  While it has been very nice, Kunming is also acting primarily as a stop-over point for us before we head into the deeper, more remote areas of this part of China.  Places like Guangzhou and Kunming are very interesting, no doubt, but Chinese cities can, at times, be a but repetitive and we’re looking forward to exploring some more remote and unique parts of the countryside (which should also cost a lot less).  This province of China, Yunnan, is significant for being the most ethnically diverse part of the country.  While most of the rest of the Middle Kingdom is dominated by one or two ethnic groups, Yunnan as dozens, many of them more closely related to groups in neighboring Southeast Asian countries than the majority Han Chinese ethnicity.

And so we prepare to strike out into the rugged hinterland.  Everyone else here is watching the Olympics on TV.  China is doing very well, it seems.  On Friday, we watched the Opening Ceremony in a bar in Guangzhou.  Very impressive.  Everyone cheered for Hu Jin Tao and Vladimir Putin and booed Sarkozy and Bush.  Ah, all is right with the world.

Hope you are all well and happy, we are.  Until next time.