Every Day is Sunday

The road from Kunming to Vietnam is long and winding.  During our 12-hour bus ride through rural China we saw things that reminded us just how different China is from the U.S., notwithstanding its proclivity toward American style big-box buildings, Times Square-esq advertising and massive shopping complexes.    

We settled in with our travel pillows and ipods and were slipping peacefully into a boredom-induced sleep when a big glittering golden Buddha head caught our attention.  At the apex of mountain was the head of a massive happy Buddha that looked as though it had erupted from the Earth itself.  Further down the mountain Buddha’s large hands extended out as though punching through the earth.  [Buddhism is the unofficial religion of China but not all forms (sects) of Buddhism are recognized.]

It wasn’t long after the random Buddha that our old rickety bus was passed by a truckload of dogs packed together for transport as if they were cattle headed to the slaughter house.  We knew the Chinese ate dog but convinced ourselves that they only ate the mangy ones.  Sadly, that’s not the case. They were really cute.

Even more disconcerting than the truck full of dogs were the 25 black bears we spotted sitting on the hillside overlooking a dirty Olympic sized pool. After much debate, Seth came up with the best theory about the random bears in middle of nowhere China.  Black bears are a delicacy and the Chinese pay thousands of dollars for Bear Paw soup.  Seriously -  these people eat everything.  We’re still trying to figure out the Olympic pool.

Our journey continued through hills, valleys, and a lot of farm land. Descending from a mountain ridge we saw small trickling waterfalls and rows upon rows of banana plants.  Smack in the middle of all these lush green plants was an oil refinement plant spewing toxic fumes.  Although more than a little out of place, the oil plant was yet another example of the massive development underway all over China.  Unlike parts of Africa, you would be hard pressed to find a remote village in China that didn’t have access to petrol, electricity and water.

China wins both the award for best and worst public bathrooms. Thanks to the Olympics Beijing has an immaculate public bathroom every few blocks.  But, as we learned during a pit stop close to the Vietnam border, China also takes “public” to a new level.

EE: From the outside it looked promising - a gleaming white building with proper signage – but the faces of some of the ladies exiting the bathroom gave me pause.  I asked one lady, “How bad?” She looked a bit green and didn’t reply.  Upon entering the ladies side I was shocked and frightened.  It must be the filthiest toilet in the world – it made the toilet from the movie Trainspotting look inviting.  And it was open…wide open. There weren’t any partitions, no doors, nothing. It was pub-lic.  I know that China has a population problem, but give a girl her personal space.  I ran out of there.

We survived public bathrooms, dogs and bears and made it to our final destination.  Driving into Lao Cai, thousands of people were gathered at the river bank for group-exercises. There were young people, middle-aged people, old people all mixed together.  Some were doing Tai Chi, some were doing line dancing, and we definitely heard the Makarena.  It wasn’t the first time we saw the Chinese gather for group exercises, but it was definitely the most elaborate gathering of our journey.   

Last stop - immigration. We got our China exit stamps and started walking towards the Vietnam border when we were accosted by Chinese immigration officers who starting digging through our bags. They weren’t looking for drugs, weapons or ancient artifacts.  They wanted to confiscate China Lonely Plant guidebooks because the Chinese government objected to the way the Lonely Planet talked about Tibet. We knew that censorship is part of life in China, but we couldn’t understand why they would confiscate something as innocuous as a guidebook, especially since we were leaving the country.  After witnessing many things that make China great, our experience at immigration laid bare China’s Achilles heel: its own government.

In Hong Kong we joined up with a tour company called Intrepid Travel for a 12-day overland trip from Hong Kong to Hanoi.

The trip began with an overnight train to Kaili, a small Chinese town of about half a million people (same population as Washington DC).  Although the train offered “soft sleeper” cars for only $6 more, Intrepid booked us into a “hard sleeper” car. The hard sleepers weren’t as bad as they sounded – the berths had mattresses and pillows – but we knew we were slumming it when a shackled prisoner took his spot in the berth next to Seth.

We made way from Kaili to Maliao, a tiny village in the Guizhou province that is definitely off-the-beaten path. Miliao is home to the Miao, an ethnic minority that has resisted assimilation into Chinese culture for the last 2000 years. The Miao are known for their stubbornness and fighting ability, as well as for their colorful garb, architecture, weavings, and rice wine.

The Miao love their rice wine. They love sharing it almost as much as they love drinking it. Our host, a kind old lady nearing ancient status, gave us a true Miao welcome by pouring rice wine directly into our mouths. Rice wine is about as pleasurable as drinking moonshine. It burns. Since our host poured it directly into our mouths, it was hard to control how much we were drinking. Declining was not an option. Our host was 4 feet tall and 75 pounds, but she was wiry and wouldn’t take no for answer.

We stumbled back to our homestay for an evening with our hosts, a local family who let us stay in their upstairs quarters of their house (two levels above the barn). They served us an amazing dinner with, of course, some more rice wine..

We did our best to communicate with our hosts but it was difficult for our one local guide to translate for the entire group. Somebody suggested that we sing songs, but it was impossible to find a common song that we all knew. Jeff suggested that we each sing our own national anthems. It seemed like a good idea so representatives from each country stood and sang the Chinese, American, Canadian, Australian, and English national anthems. Vinny, the group’s sole representative from Ireland, then stood and gave a stirring rendition of Amhrán na bhFiann.  It was really quite moving and he got a well-deserved standing ovation.

Our local guide was a Chinese woman named Ming. To say that Ming was a spit-fire wouldn’t do her justice. She was like the energizer bunny on 50 cups of coffee. She was tiny – a little over four feet tall – but had the energy of a supernova. Her enthusiasm was infectious. Ming put on some music and all of a sudden the dinner turned into a dance party.

We definitely had too much rice wine because Erin decided it was a good idea to carry Ming outside and make Jeff bench-press her.

The next day we shook off our tremendous hangovers and began a four-hour trek from Maliao to Xijiang. When we arrived in Xijiang we were greeting with, of course, more rice wine.

Xijiang is a big tourist destination for local Chinese who come from all over China to see the minority Miao people. In the evening, the Miao don traditional dress, play traditional music, and perform ritual dances.

We wanted to join in on the fun, and so we found some local garb and joined the party. The Chinese tourists loved it – they all wanted to take their photos with the crazy gweilos dressed like the Miao.

That night Ming took us out for a crazy night of Karaoke. A big group of Chinese tourists asked us to join them when they saw that we loved Karaoke as much as they did. We traded-off songs: we sang Frank Sinatra and the Beatles; they sang Chinese love ballads. After too much beer and too much Karaoke we hit the night market for some grilled chicken feet.

We said goodbye to the Miao and started our long trip to the Vietnam border. Between a 10-hour train ride and 12-hour bus ride we stopped in Kunming in the Yunnan Province. We started to grasp how enormous China is when our guide described Kunming as another “small” city of about 6 million people.

We spent the day visiting the Summer Palace and then went out that evening for a Yunnan Province favorite: hot-pot.

Hot-pot is like fondue on steroids. The table had a built-in propane tank, and two pots were placed on the burner in the middle of the table. The inside pot was fire-hot chili oil, the outside pot was hot water. First they brought a series of raw ingredients to add to the hot water to make a broth: potatoes, onions, cilantro, parsley, and fish-heads. We let the broth cook for a while, and then they brought the raw ingredients to cook in the broth and/or hot chili: beef, pork, shrimp, fish, and chicken feet.

We left the restaurant with our bellies full, our mouths on fire, and our pores full of oil. It was a fitting last meal in China.

One thing that distinguishes China from the other countries we’ve visited this year is its strong central government.  We don’t always agree with how they exercise their power (YouTube is blocked on every server in China) but there is no denying that they have the capacity to marshal vast resources to accomplish amazing things.  One example of this power is the modernization of Shanghai.

Shanghai impressed us from the minute we stepped off the plane.  We boarded the Shanghai Transrapid - the only magnetic train in the world - and sped from the airport to the city center at 300 km/h (186 mph).  It took us only 7 minutes to cover the 20 miles from the airport to the city center.

JW:  It’s a cliché for people to say that China is eclipsing America as the world’s superpower, but it’s things like the Transrapid that makes it really hit home.  If you want to take public transportation from Dulles Airport to the center of Washington DC it takes 90 minutes and involves one bus and two trains.  Before we left on this trip the Bush Administration decided to withhold federal funding for a Dulles-DC train.

EE:  Don’t you think it’s a little cliché to talk about clichés? 

Ten years ago, the Pudong area of Shanghai was a soupy marshland.  Through an incredible feat of engineering, Pudong is now home to the dozens of high-rises including the two tallest buildings in Asia.  In order to combat the problem of the soft earth, the builders laid the foundation by sinking thousands of concrete pile-ons deep into the marsh.  We heard this building method described as “sticking a thousand metal chopsticks in tofu.” 

Before the Communists took power in 1949, the Bund in Shanghai was teeming with foreign banks and businesses.  Then for 40 years the area was a wasteland.  In the last two decades the Chinese government has spent billions of dollars so that Shanghai will once again serve as the epicenter of Asian commerce.  Shanghai still has a way to go before they eclipse Hong Kong, but looking at all of the logos on the buildings of the Pudong area (HSBC, Barclays, Citibank, RBS) you can see that they are well on their way.

EE:  Shanghai is the most peaceful mega-city I’ve ever been in.  During the evening rush hour in this city of 25 million people, we sat in Pudong’s version of Central Park to watch the impressive skyline come alive in near silence.  Not one car was honking its horn.  It was blissful.

The Chinese may be great at building cities, but we were unimpressed with Chinese art.  We spent two hours walking around the Moganshan Road art district and couldn’t find anything we liked.  The heavy-handedness of the Chinese government, combined with a society that discourages radical thought and action, has definitely taken a toll on the art community.  We found the art to be as claustrophobic as the culture.

Once again the food in Shanghai posed a bit of a challenge.  At one restaurant we thought we were ordering a simple pork dish and they lit our food on fire.

Whereas the food in Beijing was very oily (our pores can confirm this), the food in Shanghai was extraordinarily spicy.  Jeff suffered through more than a few meals with an intense case of the “face-sweats.”  We started playing it safe and ordering noodles until finally Erin had enough, “I’m over-noodled!” she exclaimed over lunch.

On our last night we took the elevator to the 94th floor of the Jin Mao Tower and went for a drink at Cloud 9 – the highest bar in Asia.  The view was spectacular but the real draw for us was the magician who walked over to our table, sat down, and put on a 30 minute show for free.

We had no idea what the Terracotta Warriors were or why they existed.  All we knew was that they were located in the Shaanxi province and fellow-travelers told us they were a must-see.  So we went. 

Because we didn’t do our homework on the historical or cultural significance of the exhibit before we arrived, we bought an audio guide to give us some context.  The audio guide was utterly useless.  It loved talking about the dimensions of the excavation pits, but it never got around to telling us the “why” of the place – why in 210 BC did the Chinese people construct a life-sized army of a thousand men (complete with real chrome weapons) and bury it underground?

To make matters worse, a fellow traveler had given us the bad advice to start with the least impressive excavation pit (Pit C) and finish at the most impressive excavation put (Pit A).  Unfortunately the artifacts in Pits B & C were so decomposed that we had no idea what we were looking at until we reached Pit A and saw what they were supposed to look like.

EE:  If I were a 12-year old boy who liked to play with action-figures, I’m sure I would have thought the life-size warriors were awesome.

JW: The warriors were cool but left us feeling underwhelmed.  We’ve been so spoiled by all the amazing places we’ve visited lately – the warriors just didn’t stack up.

EE:  I begged the audio guide to tell us something interesting.  Please tell me the emperor built the warriors because he thought they would come to life if the empire was threatened.  Or that the fake warriors were given real weapons so that they could fight the evil spirits of the underworld.  Whatever it is, just tell me something!

JW:  We got nothing from the audio guide.  Everything we know about the warriors we learned from Wikipedia.

There is a story that locals like to tell in Beijing that, loosely translated, goes something like this:

An American man and a Chinese man are driving down the highway.  They come to a fork in the road.  To the left is Capitalism, to the right is Communism.  The American puts his left-turn signal on, and makes a left toward Capitalism.  The Chinese man puts his right-turn signal on, but makes a left toward Capitalism.

Forty years after Nixon opened relations between the China and the West, and one year after the Olympic modernization program was completed, Beijing seems to have a conflicted identity.  Sometimes we experienced a city that was wholly and uniquely Chinese; other times Beijing seemed like any other cosmopolitan Western city.

One area where Beijing has retained its unique character is food.  To celebrate our first night in China and Jeff’s 7th and final continent, we hit the streets of Beijing to find out what Chinese food actually tastes like.  We walked along red-lantern Gui Jie street with its seemingly endless restaurants and food stalls.  Overwhelmed by the smells, lights, and lack of any English, we stumbled upon a little oasis.  Hua’s Courtyard had an extensive menu with pictures and English translations. 

EE:  I’ve never been more excited to see pictures of food on a menu, but I’ve also never lost my appetite so quickly. They eat everything here.

JW:  Unfortunately we had to order two dinners.  “Hua’s Famous Chicken” turned out to be chicken bones with a side of fat, and “Stir Fried Vegetable” turned out to be oily peanuts.  We fared much better with our second order: noodles and spring rolls.

Jeff celebrates his 7th Continent

By our third day in China we started to get the hang of things.  We left the city center in search of Beijing’s best Peking Duck, and found it in an old hutong (neighborhood) southeast of the Forbidden City.  The place wasn’t your typical western restaurant (we walked through the kitchen to get to our table) but the duck was better than anything we could get back home.

By the time we met up with our friend Seth Nickinson for the beginning of his 7-week Asian odyssey with the Wertkinborns, we had become much more adventurous.  We hit the Donghuamen Night Market which is a great place to try scorpion, snake, and to politely decline the sheep’s testicles.

Scorpion on a stick, anyone?

The snake did not go down so well

Another way that Beijingers are unique is their mannerisms.  Chinese people noisily hock loogies and spit on the street as nonchalantly as you might clear your throat.  Also, Beijing men have developed an interesting way to beat the summer heat – they lift their shirts way up (in a bizarre twist on the 1980s midriff look).  This form of Chinese air conditioning seems to be acceptable on the street, in shops, and even in restaurants.

Notwithstanding the food and the mannerisms, many of the streets and shops in Beijing have a distinctly Western feel.  Parts of the city look like Times Square with the same fashion, music, jewelry, and electronics stores selling the same brands that you would find in the U.S. 

Also, there is now little truth to the song “There Are 10 Million Bicycles in Beijing.”  Many still ride bicycles, but the vast majority has traded in their bicycles for cars and other forms of motorized transportation. 

Although the Chinese government maintains a tight grip on politics and speech, it does not centrally control the economy.  Most of the businesses and major industries are privatized and new university graduates compete against each other for jobs at these companies.  We read articles in the English-language press about the growing upper-middle-class and about the serious unemployment problems faced by recent university graduates.  There is no doubt that a capitalism system rules China.

Even the local bars had a Western feel.  We hooked up with a Emily, a Beijing local (who we met through our friends Tina and Anne in Addis) who took us out to a popular hangout for those in the Beijing art community.  It was a very chill bar and a lot of fun, but it could have been any bar back in the U.S. – we drank Heineken and listened to the live band playing American cover songs. 

We had a great time seeing the Chinese Acrobat show as well as exploring Tianamen Square, the Forbidden City, and the Summer Palace.  But by far our favorite tourist outing was our trip to the Great Wall.  We had high expectations for visiting the Wall and it did not disappoint.

After taking the 3-hour bus out to the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall, we hiked for five miles along the top of the wall.  The refurbished parts of the wall made us feel like ancient Chinese warriors protecting our territory from the Mongols of the North.  The crumbling parts of the wall made us marvel at the ingenuity and labor that went into this 7000-year old, 5,000 mile long undulating wall.