A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
No travelogue about China would be complete without a discussion of "Chinglish", a blanket term used to describe the many mysterious and enexplicable ways the Chinese torture the English language on signs and notices throughout the country.

In my observation, these mistakes come in three categories -- simple spelling errors, word spacing errors, and unbelievable errors of translation. The first type are the most frequent, of course. It is not uncommon to eat at a "Restawnt" or take your clothes to a "lanundy". Missing letters are quite common as well: "No Illegal Iscounts", for example. One store advertised "No Barm to the Enviornment". And because English letters are almost as foreign to them as Chinese characters are to us, you often see english words, particularly on buses for some reason, printed backwards as though in a mirror. At least it's harder to determine if they've made any spelling errors that way.

I believe the second type of error occurs because all Chinese words are short, so they take it upon themselves to break English words down into more manageable chunks. So you might go to a "Photog Rap Her Shop" or see a "Fire Exting Uis Herbox". Because the concept of syllables is not a Chinese one, you will also find English words broken at strange points in the interests of space. A sign might say "No Smoki-" then continue with the "ng" on the next line.

But the most entertaining form of Chinglish has got to be the mistranslations. It is painfully clear that no native speaker was consulted in making most signs, both private and public, and in general I doubt that English-speaking Chinese people were consulted either. It is in this manner that you get official signs that say things like "A forest brings endless vitality, and a single spark may needs to its destroy," or "Endeavor for Renewable Entrepreneurship." The giant sign upon entering the Chenglu Expressway is "Welcome to Here Again" and at Zhang Jia Jie park you are warned "No Firing in the Key Protected Area". In Yangshuo, a town that is one of the more accurate actually in terms of its English, I could check in at the Fairy Tourist Center, get my hair cut at the Jia Mei Professional Hair Making, or see local photography at "The Gallery of Tanned Guile Landscape Photographers" I don't even begin to know what they were getting at with that one.

You may thing this mangled spelling and syntax would be trying to a tourist, but at least words in English are open for interpretation, whereas after 30 days in China I still only knew three Chinese characters and six spoken phrases. Believe me, I welcome the opportunity to visit the Fairy Tourist Center.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren


posted by Katy at 12:01 AM

 
Yangshuo, Guanxi Province, China

A combination of sloth, social activity and immersion in a very long book have combined to lead me astray -- no writing whatsoever for four days. The layoff has not been due to anything lacking in Yangshuo or its environs. On the contrary, this place is a tired budget traveller's paradise, clearly catering to the outdoorsy backpacker crowd. The streets are lined with indoor/outdoor restaurants offering both local and western food, souvenir shops selling silks, embroidery, stone name stamps, paintings, and a million varieties of bone and brass knickknacks. A couple of enterprising Chinese girls have even set up a table on the street selling t-shirts with "I SURVIVED SARS 2003" in both English and Chinese.

Yangshuo is actually where I intended to start my trip to China, and in some ways it would have been good to do it that way -- a soft landing in a new country, and an opportunity to take a crash course in traveler Chinese from one of the many enthusiastic capitalists in town. However, it would certainly have given me a warped idea of how difficult it would be to travel here, and it is a gloriously relaxing place to end up before I head back to Hanoi to reniew my work visa.

Either way, it's a great place and it's given me the opportunity to speak English to native speakers again, as apparently this is where all the foreigners have ended up -- at least the ones who haven't fled due to SARS. The area around Yangshuo is gorgeous, very rural with huge tropical tree-covered karst formations poking out of the landscape like small free-standing mountains. In some ways it resembles Halong Bay, but with fields, villages, streams and rivers rather than seawater between each gigantic rock.

My first full day here I rented a bicycle. Now frankly, I'm not much of a bicycle rider. More of a walker, really. A slow walker. A slow, limping walker. Or maybe a slow, limping walker who frequently stops for ice cream bars. Despite that predilection, bicycle seemed like the best way to explore a little countryside on my own, and the bikes looked like they were of considerably higher quality than my bike rental experience in Vietnam. They had gears, even, though not ones that were too reliable. Plus they were shiny, and had pretty yellow paint.

I spent the morning cycling past lovely farms with giant stony backdrops, went to a local market, wandered through the alleyways of a nearby village, and returned with the firm intention of going back out in the afternoon. And I really did start off in the direction of my next destination, but after a kilometer or two I decided the pain just wasn't worth it. Bikes are great for getting your around fairly quickly and peacefully, but the bicycle seat is an instrument of torture to those who don't habitually ride them. So i returned to town and caught a bus. And yes, I know how lame this all sounds to the enthusiastic bikers among you, but I don't care. I think Satan may ride a bicycle, or at least he makes his minions do so.

The bus took me to Moon Hill, one of those mini-mountains with a big hole in the middle that looks like the moon in its various stages, depending on what angle it is viewed. Grueling hike up (see, I'm not totally opposed to strenuous exercise) but fabulous view. I walked back to town down some village paths, where several people offered to let me help with the rice harvest. I declined.

Apart from a river trip I took early yesterday morning (which left at 6:00 am because, according to the guy I booked it with, "It is illegal boat"), I've really accomplished practically nothing since my arrival. Shopping, reading, wandering, chatting, that's pretty much it. Oh, apart from the Chinese cooking course I took yesterday evening. Everything was good (pork w/ green chiles and tomato, eggplant with garlic and spring onions, tofu with tomatoes and garlic, stir fried mystery vegetable), but since I didn't write anything down it is doubtful that I'll be able to replicate any dish six months from now when I finally have a kitchen again.


Click here for a site showing pictures of Yangshuo.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 11:41 PM

 
My Hotel Room, China

Because my night train to Guilin didn't leave until 4:00 pm, I spent my last night in Zhang Jia Jie in a hotel next to the train station with a fabulous western-style room. Well, western-style except for the usual shower that sprays all over the bathroom, but at least it had a regular toilet, hot water 24/7, and a TV with an English language channel. I spent the large part of the next day watching it. Sure, that sounds pathetic, but I prefer to think of it as "resting my ankle".

So what did I learn from my day of watching CCTV-9, the only English language channel on Chinese television? Well, SARS Bad, Chinese Government Good. The bulk of the news programs were about SARS, which would be in danger of violating the government-mandated 70%/30% good news/bad news quotient. However, they were so upbeat about it that the SARS story may, in fact, qualify as good news.

On "After School Chinese" I learned the words for Air Mail, Package, and Overweight. Unfortunately I forgot them all instantly, as I do with all Chinese words.

I learned that the Qing dynasty, the last in China, was driven into the ground by the Dowager Empress Regent Cixi, who harbored a deathly fear of and opposition to railroads until a canny advisor built one from the palace to the place where she liked to have lunch. Of course, it didn't have a steam engine, as you might expect in the 1800's -- it was pulled by eunuchs with ropes. Way to add insult to injury, Cixi.

Finally, I learned that I got out of the Dali/Lijiang area in the nick of time, as they are celebrating a month-long "Tourist Festival". Lord, I can only imagine how many Chinese tour groups would flock to something like that. Whew, narrow escape.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 10:55 PM

 
Zhang Jia Jie, Hunan Province, China , continued

Just a couple more observations about my trip to Zhang Jia Jie today.

****************

During my night train to Zhang Jia Jie we (the red-hatted tour group) were located in the "hard seat" section, pretty much the lowest possible class of train carriage. Far less civilized than "hard sleeper", which I would normally take, and even that isn't all that civilized. On the wall of our hard seat car there were three signs, thoughtfully translated into English for me, the only foreigner on the train: No Smoking; No Spitting on the Floor; and Do not Throw Garbage out the Window. During the first ten minutes of our journey all three were violated just in my little six-man subsection of the car. Maybe those signs are just suggestions.

****************

One alarming aspect of walking around Zhang Jia Jie village was the popularity of live food. Apparently, when Chinese city dwellers go on vacation they like to choose their dinner on the hoof, or on the paw as it were. So each little restaurant features bowls, tanks and cages full of chickens, eels, snakes, river mussels, pheasants, huge frogs, fish, rabbits and some animal that looks like a very large guinea pig. I considered a midnight liberation raid, but was too tired and warm to get up. Several bunnies will meet their maker due to my laziness and lack of adventure.

*****************

One of the walks that Shao Ying (my guide) and I did at ZJJ was called the Golden Whip Brook Fit Tourism Line. The entrance to the 1 1/2 hour long valley path features the following introduction:

Breathing the Oxygen purifies the lung.
Rubbing feet makes you fit.
The bridge offers greatest delight.
Walking on the stone stakes improves health.
Deep valley provides peculiarities.

They later recommend that you take 15 breaths. Why 15? No idea. The "rubbing feet" is a section in which they recommend you take off your shoes adn walk on a 100 yard stretch of the path which was rounded roks embedded into concrete. It didn't actually look that comfortable. Besides, it was cold out.

The delightful bridge was one of those hanging wood and chain contraptions that sways as you walk on it. There are big signs in Chinese that warn you not to try to shake the bridge. Naturally, when we went by we saw two groups of seven or so people facing eachoether tug-of-war style and attempting to swing the others off the bridge. I therefore took the low road, made of solid stone, and thus cannot attest to its general level of delightfulness.

The "stone stakes" were really concrete stakes, maybe 4 inches wide and a foot high and placed all over the path so you could walk from stake to stake. Shao Ying tells me that it's good training for martial arts, and it did look fun as he did it. To me, however, it looked like a surefire recipe for a broken ankle.

As for the peculiarities, I'm not quite sure what they were getting at there. Possibly they are referring to the rock formations to which they have attached fanciful names, like "Scholar reading ancient book" or "Splitting a mountain to save mother". Surely they couldn't mean herds of Chinese tour groups, since there's nothing peculiar about them in this neck of the woods. Regardless of their intention, I plan to embrace the concept of peculiarity as a giver of good health and fitness. It will be much more manageable for me than exercise and eating right.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 10:25 PM

 
Zhang Jia Jie, Hunan Province, China

Wow.

Seldom have I been absolutely breathtaken by scenery, but this place is truly a testament to the power of erosion. The whole park, named an World Heritage Site by UNESCO, is a stunning combination of subtropical forests and gigantic pillars of rock rising hundreds of meters into the sky. China's natural features are so ridiculously over-the-top that it's hard to continually come up with superlatives, but I seriously think this is one of the most beautiful places I've seen in the world. The whole area looks like something Dr. Seuss would have come up with.

Although I was alarmed by the prospect of being part of a matching cap wearing, flag following Chinese tour group, I was delighted to be met at the train station by Shao Ying, who was to be my own personal guide during my trip to the park. My own personal guide!! And I didn't have to wear the hat!

So we spent the next two days hiking up and down mountains (by stairs -- the Chinese love the stairs) and through lovely valleys. My first day we had the traditionally most lovely weather -- misty and mystical, with moving clouds exposing dramatic peaks at the least expected moments. On the second day we had sunshine and blue skies. I've put a website down below with photos, but they don't begin to show how beautiful the whole thing is. It's impossible to capture the scale of these pillars and how dramatically beautiful and lush they are. Oh well, your loss. I guess you should all plan a trip to Zhang Jia Jie.

The other interesting element of my trip was that I was the only foreigner there. Honestly, the only one. It was me and thousands of Chinese tourists, the ones not scared out of traveling by the Chinese government. And I'm told that even when SARS is not a factor, very few foreigners visit Zhang Jia Jie, though it is very popular with Chinese and Korean tourists. As a result, I was something of a celebrity in town, receiving myriad fixed stares (a Chinese habit I've experienced in other cities), "hello"s, and helpless giggles. As we walked past groups, they would be speculating about where I was from and why I was there alone. My guide was quite impressed with all the attention I was getting.

I don't know if you folks do this, but I like to get shots of people and not just scenery when I'm in foreign countries. Thing is, I don't always want to ask them for permission -- the candid nature of the photo is a bit lost after you go through that rigamarole. Yes, I know this is kind of insensitive, but I don't do it with native cultures who have a thing about photographs. Anyway, sometimes I get caught, and I tend to do this really lame thing where I look down at my camera as though there's something wrong with it and I have no idea how it could possibly have been pointing in that person's direction. The act is wholly unconvincing, I feel sure, but I can't help myself.

So here's the point of that story. I actually saw people performing that same maneuver with me at Zhang Jia Jie. I was the exotic person wearing curious garments or with an interesting look about her. I'm even in several videos -- when I caught them I'd wave and say hello.

To top it off, as the only foreigner in town, I was interviewed by the provincial TV station about SARS, my trip to the park, etc. This occured after I returned to the tour company office in ZJJ City to retrieve my luggage, and since none of the staff or TV people spoke any English, my guide performed the interview, with me looking like hell in the same clothes I had worn on the last day of the boat, during the overnight train, and hiking in the park for two days. The best part was that after we were all finished and I put my backpack on to head outside, the cameraman was waiting there to get a shot of me leaving the building. I smiled and waved serenely like I've seen the stars do at movie premieres. Unfortunately the footage is scheduled to run on tonight's news, when I will be on a night train to Guilin, so I'm just going to assume that I looked and sounded fabulous.


Click here for a site showing pictures of Zhang Jia Jie. Book a trip, it's totally worth it!

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 7:15 PM

 
Yichang, China

My next stop is Zhang Jia Jie, and due to sheer fatigue with dealing with connections, hotels, and other details in Chinese, I decided to book a tour. Plus they used the magic words "English-speaking guide".

I was a bit concerned about the tour company I booked with for this trip. They met me at the bus station all right (after a painful but scenic hour-long trip from the boat in which I only had 3/4 of a seat) and after waiting 20 minutes for other people we went to the tour company offices, on the second floor of a hotel in downtown Yichang.

Our escort spoke no English, nor did any of the others picked up at the bus station with me. We were ushered, along with our bags, down a long hallway lined with offices filled with arguing people and men on cell phones, into a room with very uncomfortable orange couches and a rapidly spreading puddle of (hopefully) water seeping out from under one of them. I was ignored, which annoys me no end. They never know what to do with foreigners -- even sign language would be appreciated, but they like to pretend you aren't there.

Once the seeping puddle reached critical mass (covering 3/4 of that and the adjoining room) we were ushered back out, and apparently told to wait standing in a hallway that smelled very much of Chinese Bathroom. In other words, appalling. I tried to endure, but I was getting hungry, or at least I was hungry to get out of that hallway. Plastic stools were delivered, portending a long wait, which I considered my cue to start becoming a nuisance. In surprisingly short order I had my 200 Yuan refund for the cancelled Lesser Three Gorges tour and was on my way, having spoken to the owner and only person in the building who spoke English. Clearly I need to start being more obnoxious -- it definitely improves one's situation around here.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 1:56 AM

 
Three Gorges, Yangtze River, China

Final Report

The scenery on Day 2 got progressively nicer as the day wore on, more rural, higher mountains, and lots of waterfalls, most of which will be submerged. The interesting thing about this section of the Yangtze versus all the other rivers I've been down is that there are very few small homes or shacks with people making a subsistence-level living off the river. The buildings along the way, even when they're buildings in the middle of nowhere, are usually good-sized houses or enormous hideous apartment blocks. Every so often there will be a city high up on the hill, which tens or hundreds of similar personality-free buildings. .

The boat continued to annoy on Day 3. When I headed up to the top floor seating area early in the morning I got hassled again, either for more money or to leave altogether, I'm not sure which. I argued with the girl, neigher of us understanding a single word the other was saying, and obstinately refused to move. I honestly didn't understand this boat's unwillingness to provide places to sit outside your crowded cabin. I created absolutely no additional work for the girl on the top floor -- she spent her whole day playing mahjiang and doesn't even sweep up the floor. I hadn't seen any Chinese pay the dollar fee but then again I didn't see too many Chinese up there at all. They also closed the "dining room" for most of the day, so that was out too. So basically the only place to sit down on this boat (free) apart from your own bunk was the scary lounge on the bottom floor, which closely resembled a bus station waiting room, and not one of the nicer ones. Honestly, would it kill them to provide a little customer service?

The day got worse, as we were supposed to get on a smaller boat to view the Lesser Three Gorges for six hours, but due to overnight rains and high water, the trip was cancelled for safety reasons. So we sat at this hideous dock for 3 hours while they unloaded cargo off the bottom floor, during which they turned out all the lights. I mean geez louise, could they make that boat any more unfriendly?

Fortunately, that was pretty much the low point of the trip. My extreme crankiness of the morning was dissipated as we started through the gorges themselves. They were really beautiful, as I've come to expect from China, with rocky cliffs and vegetation of an amazingly intense green. The area brings to mind old Chinese landscape paintings, vaguely misty with dramatic mountains and amazing waterfalls all over. As we got closer to Yichang, the city nearest the big dam, the terrain began to look like a fairy tale, with impossible shades of green, strangely shaped mountains and trees, and streams and waterfalls popping out of every crevice. Of course, anytime a building was in the frame of vision it rather spoiled the illusion. During the 1950's China welcomed Soviet advisors to assist them in the development of the new Communist state and promotion of industrialization. Sadly, though the Soviet line of communism didn't take here, the Chinese appear to have wholeheartedly embraced the concrete block-style architecture so popular in Russia and parts of eastern Europe. There's nothing at all quaint or attractive about modern Chinese towns and cities. It's a real shame considering their amazing and surreal settings -- the juxtaposition is almost painful to see.

All in all the trip was a bit of a letdown. The boat was inadequate, to say the least, and I didn't get to see the Lesser Three Gorges, which looked amazing in the photos. Of course, the boat looked amazing in the photos, so maybe those are all dumps too. I'm glad I did it, though -- although that stretch of the Yangtze will still be a beautiful area once they raise the water 175 meters, much of the drama will be missing with a wider river and shorter hills, and ancient ruins like the stone chariot road completely submerged. Time will tell if the Three Gorges Dam is the wild success the Chinese predict or the disaster feared by environmentalists and other concerned onlookers.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren

posted by Katy at 1:30 AM

 
OK, if I didn't have six hours to kill before my train I wouldn't be posting quite so much today, but what the hey. It's better than going back to sit at the weird travel agency.

The most interesting part of the rainy drive from Chengdu to catch the boat was at the border to the large special municipal district of Chongqing. After going through the tollagate, all buses were stopped and a masked, lab-coated man with surgical hair covering got on and walked up and down the aisle looking at us and at the luggage, or at least at something over our heads. He never spoke, so we don't know for sure, but there was some speculation that he was checking to see if we had adequate ventilation. In any case, we were all trying like hell not to cough or sneeze in his presence.

Up until this week, the Chinese government has been telling everyone not to worry about SARS, but they're really been kicked in the teeth now. They've closed schools in Beijing, set up border checkpoints, required mandatory checkups for all university students and faculty, cancelled the week-long Labor Day holiday at the beginning of May, and told everyone to stay put and not move around the country. Looks like they're getting a bit more concerned that they were previously willing to let on. Particularly after they were forced to admit this week to massive under-reporting of SARS patients in Beijing -- seems they were shuttling them to military hospitals, which weren't included in the official reports to the WHO. Tsk, tsk.

Apart from the border check, I hadn't really seen any sign that people were concerned about SARS in this area of China until today, unless you count the fact that there were few people traveling on our Three Gorges boat. Here in Yichang, however, which is in a province adjacent to Guangdong province where SARS got started, I'd say about 5% of the people I see are wearing protective masks. It's probably a good thing I'm only going to be here in China another week and a half.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren


posted by Katy at 8:15 AM

 
One potential benefit of the Three Gorges dam is to reduce China's reliance on coal and fossil fuels for electricity and heating, though the price paid in social dislocation and environmental destruction is rather too high. But now that it's basically a done deal, we may as well look at the bright side.

China is highly polluted, due in large part to the widespread use of coal. Currently, over 70% of China's energy is provided by it, adn the result is smog like you wouldn't believe and acid rain affecting 40% of the country, plus Korea and Japan. Nine out of ten of the world's most polluted cities are here in China, and by 2005 China is expected to be the world's #1 source of air pollution.

Though Chinese don't wear the pollution masks common in Ho Chi Minh City, the effects of the dirty air are everywhere, from the respiratory ailments and chronic colds endemic to the region to the permanently gray and dirty buildings in practically every town and city in China. I have no idea why they even bother to paint anything white here -- within 2 years everything looks like a slum. I certainly don't want to encourage the Chinese to pursue future projects as massively damaging and questionably valuable as the Three Gorges Dam, but at least they're starting to get some renewable energy sources that won't pollute the countryside for decades to come.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 8:02 AM

 
I may have neglected to mention, though I guess I did mention it obliquely, that when you picture me on the Red River you should imagine me lumbering down hallways in Frankenstein fashion, stiffly with arms spread out. This is because I managed to twist my ankle again while walking down the hill to the boat. Damn, that's getting old. I'm really going to work on the walking after this gets better. Clearly I need more practice.
posted by Katy at 7:51 AM

 
Three Gorges, China

Well, I'm back at a computer sooner than expected, due to a six hour layover in a very uninteresting town before I catch my 3:00 AM train to Zhang Jia Jie park. So here we go!

The Chinese love big projects, and the Three Gorges Dam is a doozy. After 15 years of construction and filling, the completed dam will begin producing hydropower in 2009. The statistics related to the dam are staggering. The Chinese government has poured upwards of US$70 million into the project, with 60,000 workers operating around the clock on construction during its height. It hasn't been a smooth, efficient process either -- in 2000 a local official was executed for taking over a million dollars in bribes and 96 other officials were arrested. The dam itself is a mile and a quarter wide and 600 feet high, and when up to full capacity it will produce the equivalent of 18 nuclear plants worth of energy, one fifth of China's generating capacity. The dam will improve navigation on the Yahgtze (though passing the dam itself through five locks will be a pain) and it will provide much-needed flood control on a river that has claimed more than a miliion lives in the last 100 years. Those benefits, and the economic development that is expected to occur in its wake, would be considered the good news.

The bad news is perhaps even more overwhelming. In order to accomplish these world-record feats of power production and flood control, the Three Gorges Dam will back up the Yangtze for nearly 350 miles, displacing nearly two million people and their livelihoods and burying more than 8000 important archeological sites under millions of gallons of water. The potential environmental effects are daunting as well. As the river slows it may lose its ability to oxygenate, threatening many species of animal and plant. Additionally, thousands of tons of untreated waste from towns and factories along the river's length could make the Yangtze into one long septic tank. Silt deposits could affect ports in Chongqing and other cities upstream, and could potentially block the dam turbines. Another fear is a dam collapse. In 1975, two Chinese dams collapsed and killed 230,000 people. The death toll for a Three Gorges Dam disaster would be in the millions.

This elaborate expository preface explains, in part, why I was on that rickety, ratty boat for two days. You see, in June 2003 the construction will be complete, and they'll start the filling process behind the dam, substantially reducing the impact of the lovely natural wonder of the three gorges and various smaller tributary gorges nearby.

Cruises through the Three Gorges have long been popular with Chinese and foreigners alike, as it is considered one of the great scenic attractions of China. So you'd think, given that there are only a few weeks left before boats stop running for many months, that the cruises would be crammed with people. There are lots of boats, but ours was barely a quarter full, most likely due to SARS, which even the Chinese are starting to take seriously. It was also clear that the tour company has given up the ghost with respect to boat maintenance and cosmetic upkeep. OK, I admit it, the Red River was a dump.

I was travelling 3rd class, which means I shared a cabin and sink with seven other people in bunk beds, bathroom and showers down the hall. The bathroom was trench-style with waist-high partitions between "stalls" and no doors. You really have to learn to have no modesty or privacy in this country. The shower room resembles something from a 1950's prison movie. But maybe a Mexican prison movie -- it wasn't nearly nice enough for a US prison. Since everyone else on the boat seemed to share my fear of showering, I was at least able to use it as a changing room, though with communal showers and no locks, I had to be quick about it.

The boat did have a small restaurant, which had extremely limited operating times, outside of which they locked the room, the only nice place to sit and talk with people. Apart from dinners, I subsisted on oranges and cookies during the trip. The boat also features a bar and rooftop seating area, which nobody goes to because they charge you a dollar to sit up there. I paid the fee -- anything to avoid sitting in the room with six chainsmoking Chinese men.

The room setup actually wouldn't have been too bad if it had just been me and five chainsmoking Chinese men. Unfortunately, at the last minute a Chinese couple with a toddler boarded. Initially, as I heard another baby's muted screams through the wall to the next cabin, I was grateful that our toddler was so remarkably well-behaved. And in fact, during the day the child was an absolute angel. I was only once the lights went off that he became a banshee. You know how when a baby starts crying in a theater or party or something, the mother or father leaps to take the child outside so as not to disturb everyone else? Well, that's not the custom here, apparently. A baby starts crying, and everyone basically just sits there until he decides to stop. I had very dark thoughts about that toddler during our first night out.

The other strange Chinese custom that seemed decidedly discourteous from a Western point of view was that when someone got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, he would turn the overhead light on, then leave it on while he walked down the hall, did the deed, and walked back. Why couldn't they turn off the light? Another great mystery of the Orient.

By now you're probably thinking that this trip sounds like a nightmare, but really it wasn't too bad. There were two other Americans on the boat (the only foreigners) and two Chinese who speak some English. It helped that I decided to approach the voyage like it was a camping trip rather than a cruise. That way I was just grateful for indoor plumbing and a dry and fairly clean place to sleep.

Since we got on the boat at 7:00 pm on the first evening, our first real tourist event was the morning of Day 2. And by morning, I mean practically night -- we were awoken at 5:30 am to go to the Ghost City of Mingshan Mountain. Now, when I heard "Ghost City" it conjured up visions of a Chinese version of an old west saloon-filled ghost town. Nothing could have been further from the reality.

The "ghost city" and its surrounding area said to be the home of ancient spirits and demons. And that may well be true -- the way they have manifested themselves in 2003 is in a cheesy tourist trap of epic proportions. I mean, tacky doesn't even begin to describe this place. First of all, the draw is not the city at all, though considering that it will be underwater in six years the name seems oddly prophetic. The "City of Ghosts" is actually a temple of sorts, devoted to various demons, devils, their activities, and the methods by which one escapes from hell and enters heaven and/or reincarnation.

It's the first temple I've been to in China with no monks and packed full of utterly sacreligious tour guides barking information to their groups through mini-megaphones, while inside the temple. And after ridiculing the matching-visored Chinese tour groups and their sheeplike obedience to their flag-toting guides, I was now one of those tourists, following behind while not understanding a single word, incredulous that I had paid six dollars for the privilege. The whole place was crawling with tourists and kitchy souvenir stands full of rubber masks, talismans, and for some reason, obnoxious squeaky toys. Though after running the gauntlet of souvenir hawkers trying to get my attention with those, I can fully believe that the netherworld is chock full of plastic squeak toys.

The "temple" portion of the complex was fairly typical Daoist fare, though hard to take seriously given the atmosphere and the fact that I believe the whole thing was built after 1982 "in the Tang style". But they couldn't stop there, oh no. Someone, somewhere, decided that in a "ghost city" they should have an elaborate cave-like haunted house, complete with demons, gods, torture changers, war scenes and all manner of bloody killings in museum diorama style. Frankly, the haunted house I worked in in high school was scarier, and we had way more effective lighting. Though I must conceded that the Chinese did get awfully graphic with the torture scenes.

Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, the ghost city managed to top itself. For an extra 50 cents, we boarded the "ghost train", with carnival-style two-man cars on tracks doing a 90 second loop throug ha dark cavey area where things popped out at you and hung from the ceiling. Since they haven't bothered replacing many lightbulbs, however, we could only make out about half of it through the murk. Lord, what a waste of money and painful limping that morning was. If only I had opted for an additional three hours sleep.

Stay tuned for the next Three Gorges installment!

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren

*** Note: All information related to the dam was cribbed shamelessly from the Lonely Planet guide to China.

*** Chinese computers appear to dislike websites related to Three Gorges photographs, so you'll have to look for a link yourselves.
posted by Katy at 7:44 AM

 
Chongqing, China

I'm off tonight on a boat trip down the Yangtze, to see the Three Gorges before they're flooded by the giant dam (starting next month!). After that I'm going straight to the Zhang Jia Jie national park (billed on the poster as "Fantsatic Mounpains and Water"), so it may be a few days before I update here.

Some fellow travelers I spoke to in Dali took 4th class berths on their Three Gorges tour and said there were 20 beds with 60 people sharing an alarmingly small room -- I'm thinking I wouldn't like three to a bed or sleeping in shifts. Therefore, I splurged and went with 3rd class. Don't ever say I'm cheap.




posted by Katy at 11:20 PM

 
Emei Shan, China

Day 1 of the Emei Shan Mountain trek was a very long day. My ankle still hurt a bit when I woke up, so I decided to take the bus to the top and walk down the mountain, ratherr than walking up. OK, I admit it, this plan has been in my mind for some time. It was a plan based on pure laziness, plus a generalized loathing for climbing stairs. And Emei Shan has in the neighborhood of 2500 vertical meters, which translates into about 8200 feet worth of rock or concrete stairs. Whichever way you slice it, I wimped out, and I'm not at all sorry, particularly after watching some of the poor saps heading uphill.

Have I ever mentioned how I love to go for long walks in the rain? No, I didn't think so, because I hate it with a white-hot passion. I hate feeling wet, I hate wearing plastic over my clothing, I hate it when I sweat under the plastic and get my clothes wet anyway, I hate not being able to see through the droplets on my glasses, I hate walking on slippery rocks, and I hate it when my watch fogs up on the inside. Are you getting the idea that it rained during my hike, or am I being too subtle?

The first two hours of the hike were grim, no two ways about it. I hiked up (see, I can do some "up") to where you catch the cable car to the summit if you're too lazy to hike (which I am). It was raining so hard and the clouds were so dense that I figured it would be a waste of time and money to attempt it, so I slogged back down, getting ever wetter despite my previously reliable 15 cent baby blue plastic rain slicker I bought in Saigon. I was basically cursing the day I ever thought of coming to Emei Shan. I was wet, miserable, extremely cranky, and the clouds were so low that there was no view whatsoever. However, since there was no way I was going to hike back up to the bus stop at that point, I soldiered on.

Things did indeed get better after lunch, as the deluge metamorphosed into "light rain" then "sprinkling" and then "scattered showers". Can you tell I've spent lots of time listening to Seattle weather reports? In fact the weather got decent enough for me to appreciate the scenery and take a few photos that will never come out because it was too dark.

To provide a little background material (a little late in the day, I admit -- I was way too obsessed by the weather to start out with exposition today) Emei Shan ("shan" means mountain in Chinese) is one of China's four Buddhist holy mountains, and by the 14th century there were around 100 holy structures housing several thousand monks. Not much of this reemains, however, as most buildings fell victim to fire, war, or the cultural revolution. Today there are around twenty temples and monasteries, some restored, and several offering lodging for the night for exhausted pilgrims and hikers. The Chinese government is very proud of the mountain and how it has been preserved, and appears to be in the habit of bestowing honors on it every couple of years. Thus, Emei Shan has been officially honored as a "Sanitary Mountain", "Safe Mountain", "Civilized Mountain", "The Advanced Unit for Managing and protection Wrold Class natural Heritage of China [sic]" and "The Civilized Sightseeing Sample of China." With all these accolades, it is very popular with Chinese tourists, though relatively few of them walk the whole thing like the insane foreign backpackers do. Most take a bus to near the top, hike 20 minutes and take the gondola to the Golden Summit where they might have a chance of seeing "Buddha's Light". This phenomenon reportedly occurs only 14 times a year, at dawn on unpredictable days, and when it happens you can see your shadow cast from the peak into the mist before you, with a colorfully glowing halo surrounding the head as though you had achieved enlightenment. I have my doubts about that whole concept, but it definitely sells tickets.

The setup at Emei is as follows. There's a little soulless tourist village at the bottom, utterly commercialized, with enticing road names such as "Tourist Commodity Street" and "Famouse [sic] Snack Street". There is more than one route to the Golden Summit, so there's very little backtracking involved if you're extra-energetic and decide to walk up and down, which takes a minimum of three days. As I had talked to Nathan, the friendly Chinese cafe owner in town, I simply chose the most scenic of the various paths.

I would describe the area, having no real understanding of climate zones whatsoever, as a temperate rainforest. And that's not just because it includes the word "rain" -- the whole place is overrun with trees and vegetationn. The walk, once the rain stopped and I got over my crabbiness, was truly lovely in an eerie, misty way, with wispy clouds floating through verdant canyons, waterfalls crashing through rocks and down steep cliffs, and chattering streams winding throughout. Even the path itself was scenic, made in the usual Chinese labor-intensive mannerr with large attractive stones mortared together into uneven but very sturdy steps. Every fifteen or twenty minutes you come upon a building of some sort selling hot food, drinks, walking sticks and rain gear.

After walking way farther than my poor muscles would have liked, I put up for the night at the Venerable Trees Terrace Monestary. When I arrived I was treated to the sight of five monks huddled around a small television watching a children's program. One was willing to break free and show ttme to an extremely spartan room with a lovely view.

Then came the challenge of dinner. Unlike the other monasteries along the way, I had not seen a handy restaurant on the way in. In addition, I didn't think my feet would carry me any farther than the front gate. So I went on another Monk Hunt, this time traking one down in the kitchen. After an elaborate session of pointing, mimee andd writing in chinese on little pieces of paper involving me and three brown robed, fuzzy slippered monks, I managed to get a bowl of rice and some delicious spicy stir-fried eggs and tomatoes for a dollar.

On Day 2 I set off early in the morning, due to the gongs or bells or cymbals or whatever the hell they were that were calling the monks to action of some sort at the (to me) ungodly hour of five a.m. Actually, it was a bit surprising that I slept that long, considering I went to bed at 8 p.m., absolutely exhausted and sore. I can only imagine how tired I would have been if I had been going up those stairs.

The walk was as lovely as the day before, and included an "Ecological Monkey Reserve" with wooden walkways and stairs adn bridges all over the place. Frankly, having encountered these nasty, menacing, thieving macaques the previous day, I was in no way interested in visiting the "Platform for Teasing of The Monkeys" or the "Plank Road on Cliff Side for Teasing of Monkeys". Those monkeys didn't need teasing -- they needed a good shot with a taser. Thankfully, I was carrying what is popularly called a walking stick, but could more accurately be referred to as a back-off-you-wretched-growling-monkey stick.

The rest of the walk was uneventful, and I made it back to town in time to catch a bus to my next destination, Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province. Relaxing in Chengdu is mandatory -- I don't know if my legs have ever been so sore. What kind of religious sadist thought up that whole stair-filled mountain pilgrimage idea? Although now that I think of it, one of the basic premises of Buddhism is that Life is Suffering. I guess I know what they mean now.


Click here for a site showing pictures of Emei Shan.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 12:25 AM

 
Emei Shan, Sichuan Province, China

My second evening in Emei Shan was considerably more interesting than anticipated. After wandering around town and temples for most of the afternoon I stopped into the Teddy Bear Cafe in the vain hopee of finding a book exchange and maybe a brownie. No luck on either count, but I did find a Coke and two local university students who hang out at the cafe hoping to practice their English.

After 20 minutes of lively conversation they invited me to join them for the final night of "English Week", a series of evening competitions, essay contests, debates and presentations sponsored by tthe university's English Club. Naturally I accepted with alacrity -- a second consecutive evening in front of Chinese television wasn't much competition. I mean, there are only so many Yao Ming NBA clips that I can stand.

The girls and I headed over to the campus, a branch of a university in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province. The campus waas absolutely hideous, despite obviouss attempts at landscaping and beautification. Thereee's only so much you can do with 1950's and 60's dirty concrete buildings. No amount of willow trees and lily ponds can overcome that kind of architectural dead zone.

As I've come to expect, the moment I showed up I became part of the program, asked to give a short speech to the 75 or so students and teachers in attendance. Unfortunately for my general air of professionalism, I had experienced a small mishap during dinner at the campus dumpling restaurant. I managed to lose control of my dumpling (I'm still not totally expert with the chopsticks) and drop it into my little bowl of mixed soy sauce, vinegar, sugar, spicy stuff and MSG. I was, therefore, forced to begin my presentation with an explanation of all the dark brown spots all over my chest. Ever the international sophisticate, that's me.

I did mostly Q and A, and I can modestly say that I was quite a hit. At least, they laughed at all my jokes, and even clapped and cheered a couple times. Really my best audience so far for one of these impromptu speeches. It was something of a relief for me to be in a room with so many people who understood what I was saying -- I was getting a bit starved for chit chat. Or at least starved for an appreciative audience -- you people aren't nearly appreciative enough. As it turned out, the English Club was lucky I showed up, since their featured entertainment (a showing of a knockoff DVD of "Prince of Egypt") had insurmountable technical difficulties.

I learned several interesting things during the course of the evening. First, they hate President Bush. I was asked if I would be voting for him in the next election, and they all cheered wildly when I said it was unlikely since I hadn't voted for him the first time. I wasn't even that emphatic about it. They are strongly opposed to the war in Iraq as well, which is to be expected.

The thing is, the information they get is highly skewed, as it is all controlled by the government. For example, China, which was taken to task by the World Health Organization for its lackadaisical approach and reporting secrecy with respect to the SARS outbreak, has apparently been saying on TV that China's treatment techniques have received rave reviews from interrnational authorities and that everything is under control. Which, in fact, is what they were telling backpackers going through Guangdong Province in March, just before the shit hit the fan in Hong Kong and Hanoi. They've also been telling the Chinese people not to believe what they read on the internet, that the West has blown the whole thing out of proportion and there's nothing to worry about. I'm getting the sense that the Chinese government is not as contrite as the WHO might like.

On a completely unrelated subject, I also learned that in China you (or your parents) must declare a major before you start at university, and switching mid-stream is not allowed. So both the girls I was with hated the majors selected by their parents (commputer science and electronics -- both selected so they would be able to get good jobs) but were enduring and studying other things in their leisure time. They said that easily two-thirds of the student body loathed their course of study but had no choice but to finish. Very few drop out.

Well, this entry is becoming a rambling mess, so I'll just quit now. Stay tuned for Emei Shan -- the Ascent (or actually the Descent).


Copyright 2003 Katy Warren


posted by Katy at 3:31 AM

 
Emei Shan, China

I'm in a new place, but not without a grueling 24 hours of travel to achieve it. Lijiang, my last base of operations, is a bit remote and not on the train line, so in order to catch a train north (and avoid 5-6 days of bus travel going the long way) I took a bus all day yesterday from Lijiang to Panzhahua. It is not overstating the case to report that the trip was a hideous nightmare.

It was one of those mid-sized buses, very old and packed to the rafters. I was wedged into the back left corner with no legroom whatesoever, an opaque "window" on one side and a friendly Chinese woman with nose-numbing body odor on the other. Actually, it wasn't even like she was "next to" me -- since we had five people sitting in that back seat we were more like one very large person smooshed in strange ways. no telling where one ends and another begins.

Very shortly after the bus started up the twisty mountain road, it became more of a vomitorium than a mode of transportation. Person after personal frantically leaped for the window to puke over the side. Of 23 passsengers on our bus, seven lost their cookies at least once during the trip, and six of those were among the 13 people in the back three rows with me. You can imagine the smell in there. Not to mention the inherent dangerr of opening the opaque window -- I feared the blowback effect from the unfortunate couple in front of me.

On the upside, the bus was moving pretty efficiently up until the point when we got stopped by the cops. We spent 20 minutes in the hot sun for an I.D. and baggage check. As nobody spoke English on the bus, I had no clue what they might have been looking for. Shortly after getting back on the road we were stopped again, this time for an hour and a half at a dusty road construction site. Lovely view. We ended up staggering into the train station (after a brutally bumpy hour ride from the bus station over dirt roads -- I swear this whole country is under construction) a half an hour late for the train we had all hoped to catch.

Meanwhile, I suppose my ankle got a bit of rest, but since I had to maneuver it into so many crazy positions due to the utter lack of leg, knee or foot room in the back seat I suspect most of the benefit was lost.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren


posted by Katy at 10:26 PM

 
After spending three days walking 20 miles up and down steep mountains over rocks and down treacherous scree-filled slopes, I managed to wrench the hell out of my ankle while walking down the streets of Lijiang to pick up my backpack at the old hotel. Well, at least it means I was justified in carrying around that elastic ankle support thing for the last six months.

The problem is that I have another mountain to scale very soon -- tomorrow would be ideal, in fact. I think I may have to rest it one more day before I tackle Emei Shan, a holy temple pilgrimage mountain of China. Guess I'll go see the Big Buddha instead.
posted by Katy at 10:08 PM

 
Tiger Leaping Gorge, China

Day 2

The first bit of Day 2 was the hardest. Between the Naxi family Guesthouse and the high point of the trail (2670 meters above sea level, or about 8800 feet) we had to negotiate the "28 Bends", a series of (by my count) 34 switchbacks rising 2500 feet in the first hour. Ouch.

Surprisingly, we saw very few people during our trek. According to one of the local trail guides, about ten people per day begin the trek -- surprisingly few considering how well set-up it is for travellers. The path is ludicrously well marked by all the various guesthouses along the way. Seriously, you'd have to be remarkably unobservant and/or criminally ineptt to lose the trail, since there seemed to be no stretch longer than 10 minutes without an arrow or two or five painted on a handy rock. Mario accidentally took the wrong path once, realized that he hadn't seen an arrow for five minutes, and backtracked. I, of course, never lost the trail, as I have something of a paranoia about it and was vigilant in looking for arrows at any questionable fork in the path.

Though the guest houses aren't particularly close together, there are enough of them to enable hikers to go as fast or slow as they want. There was pretty much a guest house every two hours or so of trekking, each advertising clean rooms, great food, hot showers, and various other enticements written in broken English on rocks. Our original plan was to do the trek in three leisurely days -- the bus ride plus two hours hiking the first day, 4-6 hours to the halfway point on the second day, then 3-4 hours to the village of Walnut Grove, where we would cut off the final leg of the trek in the interest of time.

Once we got going on Day 2, however, we realized we were making decent time. We arrived at the Halfway Guesthouse around 1:00 pm, with plenty of daylight left to both have a leisurely meal on the deck overlooking the gorge and get to Tina's Guesthousee, the next possible destination two hours away. So we set off, mostly steeply downhill, enjoying the dramatic views of rapids way, way down below between the two huge mountain ranges. It's impossible to adequately describe the scenery on this trek, and I suspect that any photos taken with my little automatic camera will not capture the grandeur of the competing mountain ranges, one snowcapped with sheer cliffs, the other forested with terraced villages in green canyons. And that's not even mentioning the river itself, with whitewater winding for miles through impossibly high vertical stone walls.

Unfortunately the effect was largely ruined at Tina's Guesthouse, through no fault of Tina. The road construction crew had set up some huge (and loud) metal contraption not 30 yards from the poor guesthouse and appeared to be in the process of quarrying rock from the cliff face below, complete with constantly operating generators and periodic dynamite blasts. Not the pristine and silent village environment we were looking for, needless to say.

So after a short rest and an icy Coke, we were off again, this time to head down the absolutely deserted yet beautifully paved road to Walnut Grove, our last stop before returning to Qiaotou. We staggered in at 6:00 pm after 9 hours of hiking, and despite my poor aching feet it was well worth it to walk the extra distance. Sean, the guy who originally marked the trail (we know this because of the huge 'SEAN IS YOUR TRAILBLAZER' sign on a rock about halfway through), runs an excellent guesthouse with basic rooms, lovely stone pattio with a view of the village terraces, gorge and mountains, and "The Only Flash Toilet in the Gorge" (sic). This was quite an enticement for me after all the toilet trenches I'd seen. Plus, for a minimal extra price, Sean will make your food "happy", by lacing it with locally grown marijuana. Sadly, I stuck with the local beer.

Day 3

We thought we were totally organized and ahead of the game when we got up on Day 3. We were up by 7:30 am, and had arranged with Sean to catch a ride at 11:00 back to Qiaotou. What could possibly go wrong?

Since we were up early, we decided to tackle a short hike -- down to the bottom of the gorge and back, an optimistically estimated hour and 40 minute round trip. It was approximately 900 vertical feet in elevation drop through terraced wheat, village, and a large section of very steep sticker bushes. Frankly, I didn't think we'd actually make it to the bottom after listening to the hair-rasing tales of the dangerous final third of the trail. I figured we'd walk most of the way down, get to the part where vertigo sets in and goats hesitate, and call it a day.

But Mario was determined, and I couldn't really blame him. After all, we were at Tiger Leaping Gorge, for crying out loud -- it would be ridiculous to never actually make it to gorge level. So after a number of errors and the complete loss and eventual (after scaling a farmer's fence and walking gingerly through a barnyard) rediscovery of the path, we clambered over the final rocks to reach the bottom. A relaxing two and a half minute photo-op later, we headed back up in the interest of making our ride.

And after much heaving, sweating and bitching (on my part -- not on Mario's) we did in fact make it back to Sean's with 20 minutes to spare. Sadly, that was 10 spare moments too few - Sean had not told his staff of our arrangement, and the minibus had come and gone at 10:30.

Now, you'd think we're on a road, right? Surely there must be other buses! But this is, in fact, an honest-to-God Road to Nowhere, with some sections beautifully paved and complete, and others bumpy and rocky. The guesthouse girl suggested another might come along, but in a tone that implied that it might be tomorrow if we were lucky. So we opted to start walking -- an hour down the road would bring us to Tina's and the major construction, and another two hours after that we'd be at the bus park from which we could definitely hitch a ride with some Chinese tourists.

Fortunately it didn't come to that. After just ten minutes of walking I waved down a little Chinese-flagged truck struggling up the hill carrying a load of small rocks, upon which we sat (FYI - sitting on rocks is dusty and they are very pointy on the posterior) and rode to the construction site. We must have been a bizarre sight -- all work ceased as the crew stared, laughted, waved and yelled "hello" as we rumbled past.

At Tina's we had a stroke of luck -- the Japanese coule we met the first night of the trek had just called a "taxi" -- actually a pickup truck, but we weren't complaining. We piled in, got out at Qiaotou (less of an eyesore in the sunshine, I must admit0 and flagged down a bus heading toward Lijiang. All in all it was a fabulous trip. The only thing I regret is that the sun didn't really come out until our last day, so I ended up taking half a role of photos out the window of various bouncing vehicles. I'll be lucky if I get one decent photo from that -- I never learn.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren

posted by Katy at 9:43 PM

 
Tiger Leaping Gorge, China

I have just returned from a three day trek to Tiger Leaping Gorge, an incredible Yangtze River gorge near the river's origin. It's one of the deepest gorges in the world, about 10 miles long and almost 13,000 feet from water to mountaintop. It's become a very popular trek with backpackers in western China, and I thought I was going to have to give it a miss since even I'm not foolhardy enough to set off on a 3 day treacherous mountain trek alone. Fortunately, I met up with Mario, a guy from San Francisco, while I was in Dali last week. Since he was in the same boat (solo traveler afraid to break an ankle alone on a remote mountain), we joined forces.

Day 1
At 9:00 am, after a civilized breakfast at Ali Baba's Restaurant overlooking Mao Square, we set out on the bus for the three hour drive to Qiaotou. Now, how would you think that would be pronounced? We were calling it Kyoto, Kewtoo, Quoytoe, and a million other iterations, but really it's like "Choetoe". It's a miracle we actually made it to the right town. However it's pronounced, Qiaotou is an armpit of a town located in a supermodel of a setting. It's a dusty wide-spot-in-the-road that features an appalling number of 1960-1975 era buildings with the awful blue or teal colored glass windows that are so inexplicably popular here in China. To add insult to injury, the whole area is basically under construction, as the Chinese LOVE building roads, and Tiger Leaping Gorge is presenting an extra special blasting and roadbuilding challenge for them.

Fortunately we were taking the "high road", meaning, in effect, "high goat path", from which we could not see the eyesore of a road-in-progress down below. We traversed Qiaotou in 15 minutes, having seen the market and the sorry hotels on offer, and having walked through a couple basketball games, a soccer field and across a small fallow terrace to a tractor road. Thankfully the Lonely Planet had detailed directions for finding the trail or we'd still be wandering around cursing the dust.

As I am woefully out of shape and Mario likes to walk slowly and take a million photos, we decided to approach this trekking business in a very leisurely manner and take three days in which to walk it. This meant a relatively easy Day 1, with just 2 hours of hiking (mostly uphill) before kicking back and relaxing with a beer in the Naxi Family Guest House in Nuoyu, a tiny terraced farming village high in the mountains. The houses are very sturdy up in the mountains of Yunnan province. While most houses in the rural lowlands are built of mud bricks with tile roofs, the village houses look like they could survive the apocalypse, as they are built almost entirely of big flat stones held together with some sort of mortar. Even the barns and outbuildings are built this way -- I imagine they have some serious weather to withstand up there. The local residents were all busy working in the fields and ferrying stuff up and down the steep mountain by horse with baskets attached. All were friendly and cheerfully used their single word of English -- "bye bye".

The Naxi Family guesthouse was a typical village house made of stone with a large courtyard. Guests were kept in two of the buildings around the perimeter -- in one, guests slept above, horses and chickens below. One huge wall was devoted to drying corn, which the girls of the house ran through a machine to break the kernels off. Since there was no corn on the menu, I assume the corn was destined for the animals.

And although the guesthouse and the village were great, the views are why you really do the Tiger Leaping Gorge trek. At the Day 1 stage you can't yet see the actual gorge, but the view from the guesthouse is stunning nonetheless -- steeply terraced gardens with an incredible backdrop of enormous snow-covered mountains -- the Jade Dragon Snow Mountains.

That's it for Day 1 -- it may be a few days before I have time to post days 2 and 3 as I'm heading up toward the holy mountain of Emei Shan tomorrow by a consecutive combination of all-day bus and all-night train. This is a big country!




Click here for a site showing pictures of Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren

posted by Katy at 2:22 AM

 
I got my camera fixed yesterday, at a place here in Lijiang that advertised "REPAIPING CAMERA SPEEDILY". It cost forty dollars!!!! And this damned camera is only three weeks old!

So here's a tip: don't buy an Olympus camera. They are crap.


posted by Katy at 10:16 PM

 
Lijiang, China

We went to see the Naxi Traditional Orchestra last night, on the recommendation of another traveler. She billed it as some kind of combination of the Buena Vista Social Club and Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road project. This may have been a bit of an overstatement, though admittedly the musicians were as old as the hills (and appeared to nap between songs) and it was a very Asian sound.

It was interesting, don't get me wrong, but I'm a bit of a cretin when it comes to weird foreign music -- a little goes a long way with me, and the visuals are more interesting than the sound. So it went on a half hour too long from my point of view, but it was worthwhile.

To back up a little, the Naxi are the dominant ethnic group around Lijiang, a mountain town in the far Southwestern area of China not far from Tibet and Myanmar (Burma). They descend from Tibetan tribes, have been in the area for 1400 years, adn are strongly matriarchal, though local political rulers are actually male. The Lonely Planet guide gives a couple of fun bits of information about the Naxi. First, they have no marriage in the community. A couple would become lovers without living together; any children were cared for by the mother and her female relatives. Men lived with their mothers, and supported the child only until the relationship was over. Paternity was not an issue much sweated over. Best of all, women inherit all property, adn disputes are decided by female judges.

The Naxi language reflects this matriarchal bent as well. The addition of the character for "femal" will strengthen a noun, while the addition of "male" will weaken it. So adding "female" to the word "stone" will make it into "boulder", while adding "male" makes it a pebble. I don't know why, but that one just cracks me up.

There are lots of folks in traditional Naxi dress (blue blouse, trousers, apron, t-shaped cape) dancing in the Lijiang square, selling various things and just generally present throughout the day. The old town, restored after a 1996 earthquake, is such a tourist trap that I suspect they're all being paid to show up. Regardless, they are very colorful and look authentic at least, and little could detract from the beautiful mountain setting, traditional architecture, and lovely canals of this town. Well, maybe the zillions of photo-snapping, cell-phone-using Chinese tourists and the hundreds of shops could, but not completely. Tomorrow I'm heading out on a three-day trek in Tiger Leaping Gorge, so I shouldn't be seeing any of either for a while.


Click here for a site showing pictures of Lijiang.



Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 10:13 PM

 
I am a weak woman. So very, very weak.

Before I set out this morning, I solemnly resolved that I would not buy a single thing, no matter how beautiful or tempting. After all, anything I buy I have to carry around for months -- it should be a powerful incentive, considering the weight of my backpack already. And I've been very good for the last few days. We went to markets, and walked by the countless vendors and shops in town, and I barely twitched. Well, maybe I asked prices a few times, but I never closed the deal.

Today, however, I just couldn't help myself. I was left alone with nothing planned but wandering the streets, unfortunately filled with gorgeous tie-dyed and batik fabrics, clothing, "little red books", jewelery, elaborate little metal objects, and decorative wall hangings. Circumstances were obviously conspiring against me.

I started off in an innocent way -- I bought a bracelet. The one I had been wearing, small wooden beads strung by blind orphans I visited in Saigon, was inadvertently left on a night train a couple weeks back when I awoke just as the train entered the station where we were to disembark. So I needed a replacement, and it really wouldn't add any weight to the luggage. It was a perfectly acceptable purchase, now that I think about it.

My second purchase of the day wasn't too bad either -- a small purse with a long strap. Of course, I have one already. It's really practical and functional (read: not cute at all) and I'm am kind of tired of it. I could leave it behind -- that would mean no net gain in the weight department, and thus no real violation of my morning resolution.

Unfortunately, there is no possible justification for my third purchase. I bought a tablecloth, for crying out loud. I mean, really. I've never had any interest in tablecloths. Sure, this one's very pretty, in a deep blue with an intricate geometric white tie-dyed design on it. But I have to carry it for three months. What the hell was I thinking?

Man, I'm only on Week 3 of my trip and I'm already failing at the shopping self control. I guess tonight I'll have to figure out how to fit a 4' x 6' tablecloth in to my bulging luggage. If I'm not careful, by the time I get back to Saigon I'll be down to a t-shirt, shorts, 4 pairs of undies and 25 pounds of tourist goods.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 2:42 AM

 
Since it's already noon and all I've done today is have breakfast and drink coffee (at three different restaurants, for social reasons) for 3 1/2 hours, I might as well write a little more about yesterday. Not much though, because I've decided to go get a massage from the deaf and dumb women down the street.

I noticed yesterday that babies here don't wear diapers. If they wear pants at all, they are cut out in the whole business end of the baby -- in other words, assless pants. Kind of like chaps, but made of cotton. All I can say is those babies must be potty-trained a lot earlier than western children, because who would want to hold one when there is a constant danger of infant bodily fluids erupting onto your clothing?

A very annoying thing happened yesterday. My brand new camera, brought over by Heike three weeks ago, has broken. I can still take pictures, and the zoom lens appears to be working, but I can no longer see the change in view through the viewfinder. And I'm not that familiar with this camera that this is not a huge problem. So basically I point the camera, hit the zoom to whatever I instinctively might be appropriate, adn click. I'm like a blind woman taking pictures -- I can't wait to see how these turn out. It's not like I don't aready have enough handicaps in the photography department. I asked our Tibetan guide to recommend a camera repair place here in Dali, but he told me that they will just break it more. So I'm going to be traveling for the next week or two doing photography by feel, rather than by visual, until I get to a big city.

Well that's enough for today. I'm off to get a massage, change money and go shopping. It's a terribly stressful life I lead.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren






posted by Katy at 9:20 PM

 
You'll all be happy to know that today as we wandered through the temple village we were unexpectedly invited in for tea with the local doctor. He practices Chinese traditional medicine and is a specialist in cancer treatment, for which his patients travel to this remote corner of Yunnan province from far and wide.

Along with the tea he provided us a taste of his personal health elixir, which contains 23 different herbs and a whole lot of alcohol. The good news is that in addition to helping us with our general health and well-being, he mentioned as an aside that it would probably work for SARS. So no need to worry about me - I've been innoculated. And if I drink much of the magic elixir, I'll be too drunk to care about SARS anyway. The corn whiskey factory was our next stop, so anything that wasn't killed by the doctor's herbal potion should be dead and buried after one swig of that godawful whiskey.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren



posted by Katy at 6:56 AM

 
I had a fabulous day today in the Dali area, which of course means I don't have much to write. It's always easier to fill the page when I'm alone and things inevitably go awry.

I've teamed up with a couple other solo travelers, and along with a few other people we were taken a couple hours toward the Burmese border by Jim, a Tibetan guy who runs a guesthouse here in Dali. The draw of this day trip was that it would take us to places where no tourists go, and that was certainly the case.

We first visited a lovely Buddhist/Taoist temple with beautiful buildings and one temple structure which housed over 400 weird human-figure colorful statues, all with individual faces and very unusual personal characteristics. We were the only ones there except the old woman caretaker. Before the cultural revolution there were many monks, but they were sent away or arrested. More recently there were six monks taking care of the place, which is used by the nearby village for monthly 3-day religious celebrations. These six village monks apparently decided last summer that they wanted to study martial arts with the Shaolin monks, so they took off and have not yet shared their return date. The old lady and the villagers are holding down the fort until then.

After a further drive through wheat fields, corn fields, and rice paddies surrounded by high green mountains, we arrived at a small town on market day. Having been to the market in Shaping yesterday, I didn't really have high hopes for this one, though I thought at least the native costumes would be different since this area was populated by Yi tribe members rather than Bai tribe. I was wrong -- the two markets couldn't have been more different. Shaping clearly catered to tourists, offering vast amounts of trinkets, textiles and other tourist goods along with the stuff for the locals. This market today clearly had no foreigner in mind. We were the exotic ones, and they were getting on with their daily business of selling and trading produce, meat, baskets, useful items of all types and livestock. The livestock market was perhaps the most interesting, teeming with pigs, cows, horses and water buffalo. And each of the streets entering the market area basically served as a parking lot for horse-drawn carriages -- clearly motor vehicles are secondary in this area.

After a delicious lunch and tea with an old lady in a nearby village (these people are so friendly that if you ask to take their picture they'll invite you in for tea), we headed upward for a short and of course beautiful mountain trek to a remote Yi tribe village and school, at which time we learned a bit of Chinese from our guide. In Chinese, the characters for United States mean "beautiful country". Isn't that nice? I was hoping that some countries would have been given really negative names, like "country of idiots" or "treacherous infidels". Unfortunately, the Chinese who made up the names for the countries were apparently quite diplomatic.

That was pretty much it for my day. See how boring it is when nothing goes wrong? So good day for me, bad day for you.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 6:22 AM

 
You know, I did have a moment of trepidation during that gondola ride as the wind picked up and started swaying me from side to side in an extremely vertigo-inducing way. I examined the space under the seats to see if it might be safer in the event of a drop, but decided in the end to rely on its German engineering and the fact that it was obviously brand new.

The view was nice, but really brought a smile to my face was the sight of the Chinese tourists coming up the other side. A couple of days ago I took a day trip to the Stone Forest, a weird area of huge karst formations a couple hours outside of Kunming. By the afternoon it was absolutely swarming with rich Chinese tourists, many of whom were curiously wearing these matching crappy straw cowboy hats with "Marlboro" printed on that ribbon that goes around it. So you could be walking through these huge bizarre rock formations, turn a corner and see five swaggering Chinese men in matching dorky hats taking photos of eachother. It turned out these hats were available at the tourist shops on the way in -- it was a very hot day, so there were many Chinese cowboys.

So to get back to my original point, as I headed down in the gondola, I could see several cars full of Marlboro-hatted Chinese men heading up opposite me. I'm obviously following a popular Chinese, as well as Western, tourist route here in Yunnan province. Cowboys everywhere.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren

posted by Katy at 2:50 AM

 
I arrived yesterday morning in Dali, a small city that was one of the many former capitals in China, in this case of the Bai empire. After a buffet breakfast and a shower that did much to help me recover from the night train, I headed out to explore the town, a very cute little walled city with all sorts of old Chinese buildings built of stone and mud with tile curving roofs. Most of the shopfronts and homes have gorgeously carved wooden accordion doors and the native crafts in this area are really beautiful. It's going to take a real act of will to avoid shopping.

I actually feel quite at home here. Not due to the Chinese architecture, of course, but because the town of Dali is situated in an agricultural valley next to a big lake, and is surrounded by dry piney mountains, much like my hometown in eastern Washington state. The crops are mostly different, though they do grow apples, and the mountains are quite a bit higher (more than 12,000 feet), but the whole area is very friendly and inviting. The Chinese are very nice too -- not nearly as agressive as the Vietnamese in trying to sell you things, and better drivers, though it would be difficult to find worse.

Though I didn't originally intend to do anything strenuous, I was approached on the street by a non-English speaking girl trying to sell me a ticket on the Cangshan Ropeway, which turned out to be a two-man chairlift that headed up to a Buddhist temple complex high on the mountain. Since I didn't have anything else planned, I decided to go for it, though it felt a bit lazy to take the chairlift rather than walking. I did force the girl to walk with me all the way to the ropeway boarding station so we could confirm that it was a legitimate ticket. I'm so untrusting these days.

All was well on the chair ride, and as I watched people slogging up that steep dusty hill amid buddhist tombs and pine trees I congratulated myself on my laziness. Then disaster struck. No, not that kind of disaster -- no mechanical failures on the lift. But bad enough for me -- my sunglasses flew off in a great gust of wind. My prescription sunglasses, the ones that are also serving as my "extra" glasses if somthing dire shoud happen to my regular ones. It began to look like I was going for a hike after all.

The most efficient way of handling this situation would have been to scope out the temple, then search for the glasses on the walk back down. But I am nothing if not inefficient, particularly when travelling, and I had decided before the glasses-falling-incident that I wanted to do this 11 km hike to another temple, and the path started at the top. So I headed down almost immediately. Of course, I didn't want to start on the treacherously steep dusty slop right under the lift, so I began on the switchback walking and horse trail off to the left. After a while, due to my abysmally weak sense of distance, I decided I needed to cut back toward the liftline. This would be known as "The Shortcut from Hell". I was the first person on it for some time, judging from the four inches of unbroken pine needles on the ground, and let me just give you a tip -- pine needles are slippery. I needn't go into any further detail on my lack of mountain goat-like qualities; suffice it to say that it is fortunate that pine needles also provide a soft landing.

After 25 minutes of this, I emerged -- back onto the nice wide walking and horse trail, which led directly to the spot where I lost the glasses. After a very organized grid search based on the principles I learned from seeing rescues on television, I found them, quite a bit farther away from the lift than I expected. Successful and pleased, I headed back up to the top.

By this time I was a bit wiped out. The elevation is above 9000 feet and I hadn't had any water. So I explored the temple (not too exciting), enjoyed the view, had a lunch made up of rice mixed with a whole lot of mystery vegetables, and chatted with an English guy for an hour.

So now it was 2:15, and I realized that if there was a lot of elevation gain and loss, or if it was a bad trail, I could be hard pressed to complete the 11km before dark. However, since I had hiked back up that mountain I was damned well going to do the hike. Stubbornness is another of my impressive list of virtues. Due to the time crunch, the hike took on the character of a forced march. A beautiful forced march, with waterfalls, gorges, panoramic views, glaciers, green mountains, rocky cliffs, all on a terrific 4-foot wide path made of large flat rocks that must have taken a million man-hours to build. They love big projects here.

As I approched KM 9, I realized I must have misread the guidebook again. What it actually said was that there was an 11 km up and down hike to a temple, from which you could walk down to the road. In my mind, this meant it would be a little over 11 km, but not much. But as I was stillat about 900 feet and the path showed no indications of going downward, the 11 km was beginning to look like much more.

I reached the end of the path, and there was no temple in sight. There was, however, a life-size Chinese chess board being constructed, and a huge new building which housed . . . . . a gondola!!! JGiven how sore my feet were from walking on rock for three hours, and being able to see into the valley just how very very far it was to the road, the gondol was looking very good to me.

So I headed down to talk to the militarily-attired guard, hopeful but not optimistic that he would speak a bit of English. Miraculously, he did, but after he quoted me an outrageously high price for the ride, I asked him to show me the path. I set off again. By this time it was 5:30 so I was setting a brisk pace down the stairs to the bottom of the gorge, when I hear "Lady! Lady!" coming from behind and above me. So I hiked back up, to find that I must have looked sufficiently inept, pitiful or exhausted to inspire the guard to give me a free ride down, which he did while holding a "shhh" finger to his lips, warning me not to mention it to the guys down below.

After the gondola ride, a 30 minute drive to town in a horse-drawn cart, and a long walk (I got lost), I finally arrived home at 7:00 pm. Thank God I didn't have to hike down -- I might still be making my way back to Dali.


Click here for a site showing pictures of Dali.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren


posted by Katy at 2:13 AM

 
Apparently my weblog is dangerous censored material, as I can't access it from anywhere in China so far. I can get in to the other site to update, but I can't see if anything is actually showing up for those of you who aren't at the mercy of the Chinese Net Nanny. I'll keep posting and hope for the best.
posted by Katy at 4:37 AM

 
I spent today wandering around Kunming and managed to see practically nothing. In the morning I strolled over to the Bird and Flower Market, which was extraordinarily difficult to find, as the dot on the map was in the wrong place. Once found, it wasn't too exciting. Birds, flowers, and zillions of other consumer goods without listed prices.

It did give me a good workout, however, as it was a long damn walk. The blocks of this city are about 300 yards long, so the distances on the map are very deceptive. The city of Kunming is almost entirely new, as the Chinese have no compunction abkht tearing down old and/or historic buildings in the name of "progress". There are some benefits to this strategy, however. When you dont have to work around existing buildings, you can really go to town on the urban planning. Consequently, Kunming is very well laid out, with wide avenues, a ring road so traffic can bypass the central district, special bus lanes, and huge bike lanes on both sides of each road. Traffic moves incredibly efficiently here. It helps too that there are no sneaky motorbikes to gum up the works.

That's the good news. The bad news is that the only thing that separates downtown Kunming from any western city is the chinese writing on the signs. There's obviously a ton of money here, and judging by the most prevalent businesses, residents like to buy shoes and do their banking. There are an astronomical number of banks here, of every conceivable type: city, state, national, commercial, agricultural, construction, communications, development, and industrial banks, to name a few. And they're each housed in a skyscraper. I have no idea how they can do so much banking, particularly since I hear that not only do Chinese banks not allow you to take money out on an international Visa or ATM card (only Chinese cards allowed), but regular Chinese customers can't even take money out of another branch of their own bank. All transactions must be done at the branch at which the account was opened. Not exactly convenient, is it?

In addition to shoes and banking, the locals also seem to love clothese, and they're very well dressed here. The whole downtown area just screams prosperity -- immaculately clean, lots of trees and lovely landscaping, and a vibrant shopping scene. Too bad I hate shopping. I did manage to make a giant purchase today -- bought a watch for a little under two dollars. Hope it lasts the length of the trip, at least.

After checking out the hotel, storing my bags (I'm taking a night train to Dali at 11:15 pm), and piddling around on the internet for an hour, I decided to head to the Bamboo Temple, which came highly recommended in both my guidebooks. Sadly, the Bamboo Temple was the first casualty of my inability to communicate in Chinese. I followed the directions to the letter. I got on the #5 bus from my hotel, and successfully located the Yunnan Hotel, which supposedly ran shuttle buses to the temple. The folks at the Yunnan appeared to be utterly unaware of this service, however, and after a bit of effort, they told me I could get there on the #5 bus I had just gotten off.

It appears there may have been something lost in the translation, as it were. Not long after I boarded the #5 bus for the second time, we began to go drastically off course, pursuing a meandering route all around the city. After 50 minutes, I was back where I started, and since by then it was after 4pm, I wrote the temple off and headed to McDonalds for a late lunch. Yes, I know it's terrible and cliche to go to McDonalds, but I haven't seen one in six months! Sadly, they're not too into quarter-pounders here. The only meat options they offer are the Big Mac and some burger with a nausea-inducing egg on top. No cheeseburgers, even. So I had the chicken McNuggets, which sucked, and fries, which rocked.

That was my day. And you can thank the fact that I have many many hours to kill before this damned train departs for the excruciating detail in which it was related.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 4:36 AM

 
I am distressed to inform you all that I have experienced a new type of toilet here in China. I'm not sure if it's better or worse than those godawful squat toilets, but it's definitely scarier.

Predictably, it was at a bus station. In order to get to the business end of the bus station bathroom, you had to walk up a couple of stairs to get into the "stall", which was actually a half-wall with no door. Who needs full walls when you're squatting anyway? Inside the stall was a foot-wide trench that ran from one end of the bathroom to the other, so the same trench served both stalls. The principle here is the same as with the hole-in-the-ground toilets, so I needn't go into any more indelicate detail, but I will say that every second I was in there I was afraid I was going to fall into the trench.

The other toilet related issue I feel I must share is that those squat toilets are the norm here, not just to be endured at filthy bus stations and roadside diners. Seriously, even the department stores and nice restaurants in town have them, and I was quite alarmed to read in my guidebook that an upcoming hotel has just renovated and installed "blissful western toilets". Naturally, I'm not disturbed that this particular hotel has western toilets, but that sentence surely implies that many hotels in China do not have them. Forewarned is forearmed -- now I know that hot water and cleanliness are immaterial when scoping out a new hotel. I absolutely must look at their toilets before handing over any cash.

edited to add: After I wrote this this morning I went to McDonalds, where one of their four stalls has a western-style toilet. In order to resolve any confusion that users may have, they have taped the following sign above it, in both English and Chinese: Please Do Not Stand on the Fixture.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 10:25 PM

 
One of the surprising things about China (I say from my vast experience of two days) is that I really don't understand a single thing here. Sure, I knew about the whole Mandarin characters thing going on, but I really thought they'd have more signs translated into English, or at least into Pinyan, the roman-alphabet phonetic version of Chinese. I was so wrong. Maybe one in a thousand signs is translated, including a curious little eatery in the middle of nowhere called the "Enjoyment in Farmyard Restaurant". So I do a lot of guessing as we roll down the road. I'm especially curious about the signs that have a series of Chinese characters followed by an exclamation point. Important notice? Advertisement? I may never know.

The other thing is that no one speaks English here. Seriously, the only people I've come across who had more than 20 words of English were our hotel clerks and the guy at the border who was trying to scam me into changing my money on the black market. I had to explain to him that the concept of "black market" would imply that he should be offering me a better rate than the bank down the street.

There's really no reason for them to speak English, I guess. It's a huge city, but it's not exactly in the most cosmopolitan area of China, and I've only seen a handful of westerners since I arrived, mostly at my hotel. Clearly I got spoiled in those countries where everyone under 30 wants to practice their English. It's my turn to adapt, which is quite a challenge since my Chinese vocabulary consists solely of "hello" and "thank you". Everything else is hand motions and pointing at my guidebook. I spent all day today with a Korean university professor who is living in China for a few months. He never said it straight out, but he clearly implied I was insane and couldn't believe I had undertaken this trip with no language skills. I look forward to proving him wrong.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 6:27 AM

 
I think I'm allergic to China.

I've been sniffing and sneezing off and on since a few hours after I crossed the border, and it's getting worse the longer I'm here. It's really not so bad, but with this SARS thing freaking everyone out, every time I sneeze I fear that others might think I have it and demand I get off the bus/train/whatever. I don't have it -- not to worry. I checked out the required symptoms on the CDC site, and really don't have any of their itemized list other than being in a high risk area. So yesterday I spent a fair amount of time massaging my nose to avoid sneezing, and today I just sneezed and hoped for the best. Hopefully this antihistamine I took will do the trick -- I took two for good measure.

Anyway, I arrived in Lao Cai, the Vietnamese border town, around 5:30 a.m. yesterday, and sat at a cafe swatting flies for an hour and a half until the border opened. Naturally, since it was Vietnam and these were immigration officials, the process did not go swiftly. They had no clear signs telling us where to go, and once we handed over our passports they took them into the back room and did mysterious things to them for 20 minutes. I swear Vietnamese border officials are the worst around. They've been known to turn people back at the airport if they can't remember the address of where they're staying.

The border station was a fairly entertaining place to hang out, however, as hordes of Vietnamese ladies were pushing and shoving to get to the head of the line so they could wheel their goods over to China. Good to see that they do that to eachother, not just to foreigners. Once we got through the Vietnamese side it was smooth sailing -- the Chinese make a very good first impression.

I had been semi-planning to take another night train to get to Kunming, the capitol of Yunnan province in southwestern China. But as I looked at the guidebook again I realized I had misread the times involved -- the train was six hours longer than the bus, and wasn't supposed to leave until 4 pm, which would mean seven mindnumbing hours in the Chinese border town of Hekou. Not exactly a garden spot, if you get my drift. So at 10:30, I boarded a deluxe bus to Kunming, complete with legroom, reclining seats and complimentary bottles of water. Really the lap of luxury compared to what I've been used to.

Although nine hours is a long time in a bus, I did enjoy the ride very much. For one thing, the roads were way above Asian par. The first road, which would through and over lush mountains and valleys, I would describe as "very good". In the context of Asian roads, "very good" means:

-- Paved. Bumpy, sure, but no potholes to speak of, and no long stretches of backbreaking uneven rocks.

-- Mostly complete. It has been my experience that Asian roads are in a constant state of construction or rebuildin, causing endless delays, detours, and speeds in the neighborhood of 10 miles and hour. This road had some construction areas, but they were short and didn't involve the endless breaking or handplacement of sharp rocks.

-- A visible drainage system. In this case, a huge ditch on the hill side of the road. You wouldn't thing this would be important to me, but believe me, when you're on one of these roads perched precariously on a steep hillside, you're thankful for all efforts to prevent erosion of the road surface.

As delightful as it is, "very good" does not mean:

-- Lines in the road. These are clearly unneccessary and just limit the creativity of the drivers.

-- Shoulders. Also extraneous, though admittedly there have been moments when I have seen "Tragic Bus Accident Kills 26" rolling through the headlines in my mind.

-- Barriers of any kind. You'd think that on these twisty mountain roads in which one side is hill and the other abyss, a guardrail of some sort would be in order. Apparently not.

Halfway through the trip we switched to an Outstanding, Unbelievable, Superlative Asian Road. This thing had lines! It had no-passing zones and truck lanes on steep hills! It had a guard rail!!! Of course, it was still somewhat dangerous due to the flexible attitude that drivers have adopted with respect to the lanes. For example, it is acceptable practice to pass in a no-passing zone if: A. you honk your horn very loud, and/or B. there is sufficient room on the shoulder for the oncoming truck to swerve out of the way.

But enough about driving -- I really should take a paragraph to talk about the scenery. The drive really was beautiful, and as you can imagine when driving 9 hours, the terrain changed quite a bit over the course of the day. The first part was the same sort of gorgeous lush green mountains and death-defying drops that we experienced in northern Vietnam. And while I had thought the Vietnamese adept at terraced agriculture, they've got nothing on the Chinese. Although the area is not particularly suited to large-scale farming (very steep hills, very narrow valleys) the Chinese have managed to plant food on a remarkable percentage of the countryside, including terracing slopes so steep that the terraces themselves look only a few feet wide. Even the crappy soil on the side of the road has banana trees planted in it. I guess when you are trying to feed over a billion people, you learn how to use what you have efficiently.

As we moved north, the countryside began to look more and more like southern California (or Chelan, for those in WA), if the southern Californians were into terraced farming. The hills got rollier and browner, and the rain-fed crops gave way to irrigation. The trouble is, now I'm in a city in the middle of this dry, rolling hills sort of area, and I'm not that fond of that sort of scenery. So tomorrow I head for Dali and some serious mountains.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 5:53 AM

 
And I'm off to China! I have two consecutive night trains looming before me as I rumble toward Kunming, in the Yunnan Province. So think of me when you lie down on your nice innerspring mattress.
posted by Katy at 3:18 AM

 
Since dad mentioned that foreign visitors to Hanoi all go to see the so-called "Hanoi Hilton", Heike and I headed over there to fulfill our touristly duty.

For the underinformed (which included me until my visit), the Hanoi Hilton was the nickname that Vietnam War POW's gave to the prison in Hanoi that housed them. Many American pilots, including Senator John McCain and Ambassador Pete Peterson, were held there for years during the war. The prison, built in 1897 by the French, was originally a whole lot bigger, but within the last few years the government tore down most of it to make way for an apartment/hotel and office complex. The remaining portion, in the shadow of the high-rise, contains a museum devoted mainly to how Vietnamese communist political prisoners wer tortured and executed there before the Paris Agreements of 1954. This included displays of stocks with emaciated mannequins attached, samples of torture devices, photos of resident party members, and two guillotines. Remnants of the sewer system through which several prisoners escaped over the years were also on view.

Two small rooms were devoted to the pilots who lived in the facility during the Vietnam War. The gist of the exhibit was clear -- the enemy pilots were gloriously well treated during their stay. To hear them tell it, you'd think the prisoners were on a multi-year spa retreat, complete with new clothes, medical services, exercise, and any number of collegial meetings with the media nad high-ranking Viet Cong officials. I don't know much about how the POW's were treated here, but this account smelled the tiniest bit fishy to me. Again, the victors write the history.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren



posted by Katy at 3:15 AM