through the looking glass

my friend is beginning to post some of his pics from the china loop trip. you can attempt a babelfish translation but don’t expect much, he likes big words. ; ) however you can view the photos even if you can’t read the charachters.

begin with langde. scroll down past the ads near the bottom and you will see more replies, all from ‘dogthis’, that’s him, the photo series continues. he has some wonderful shots of the ‘festival’ we saw one afternoon, photos I’ve mentioned I could not bring myself to take. one in particular charachterizes the way I viewed the event, you’ll know it when you see it.

I have arrived home to no internet connection and a still dripping toilet and as yet it’s not particularly irritating, as I’m still basking in a bit of a glow from my sojourn into central china. (though the jack daniels I procured doesn’t hurt either) you may remember a vague outline of destinations back in january. well, my nose (and occasionally my erstwhile travelling companion) led me differently and I headed east and north instead of west and south, successfully following, as it turned out. the path of a rainstorm for fifteen days through muddy middle of nowhere locales. yet there is something immensely pleasing about wading in mud with a big ol pack, or smiling peacefully on a bus at 1am still an hour from your 10pm destination sitting in a traffic jam caused by an accident on a neigh one lane mountain road. difficult to quantify, but it feels good.

gear
wearing: long underwear top, sweater, windblocker fleece. fast dry fleece thick thermal bottoms, pants, socks, hiking boots. hat. scarf. gloves.
pack: sweater, long underwear top, 2 short sleeve wicking tshirts. lightweight thermal bottoms. 3 pairs socks. underwear. pack towel. toothbrush, soap, shampoo, razor, comb, hairclips. toilet paper. camera, ipod, cell phone and chargers. journal. seraphita by honore debalzac. instant coffee packets. maps. travel water purifier. cribbage board and cards. dictionary, phrasebook, my chinese notebook. bandana. sunglasses.

the only thing I didn’t use was the purifier. sans yunnan the tshirts did well as a second layer over my long underwear and I wore both pairs of thermal pants under my pants. it got damned cold in hunan and hubei ;-)

linear motion
(kms are approximate)
1.22 afternoon: overnight train to Chengdu, 17 hours
1.23 morning: arrive Chengdu
1.27 afternoon: overnight train to Kaili, 15 hours
1.28 afternoon: arrive Kaili, evening: 10km bus to Langde
1.29 afternoon: 110km bus to Leishan
1.30 noon: 160km bus to Rongjiang/Congjiang, evening: 5km mototaxi to Piasha
1.31 noon: 15km bus to Luoxiang, afternoon: 6km walk to ZhaoXing
2.1 morning: follow the man with the mattress : ~10-15km, 952m vertical, Xiage and Tongan
2.3 morning: 90km bus to Liping
2.4 noon: 160km bus to HuaiHua, night: 95km bus to Fenghuang
2.6 afternoon: 10km bus to Sanjiang, evening: 95km bus to HuaiHua, night: overnight train to Wuhan, 13 hours
2.7 noon: arrive Wuhan
2.9 evening: overnight train home, 17 hours

total 62 hours on trains (often sleeping), 850km on busses (always awake), 1 mountain climbed, 0 villiages arrived at in sunlight, 9 rivers, 1 lake, 15 places, 11 explored, 19 days.

on the train we met a student returning home to wuhan who filled us in on the local uni hotels and steered us to the best one, on the campus of the electrical science school, supposedly one of the top ten most beautiful campuses in china. sold. outside the window the scenery again left little impression, in the rain and cold my initial impression of the city wasn’t much better. we insisted on helping her off the train with her innumerable large bags and she insisted back on escorting us to our hotel after dropping off her things. we shivered in a guard shack at the gate to the uni where her parents teach, she returned with warm milk. we cabbed it to the university hotel to a lovely room with an excellent view. after piling on almost every article of clothing I had, looking somewhat like an overstuffed yellow bear with a funny hat ,we set off for lunch.

the famous wuhan fish was unavailable until 6pm so we ended up across the street in the basement of a superstore to sample the traditional chicken, chain cafeteria style. parting company we headed to china post to finally mail postcards, only to get a phone call from the girl saying she’d found a train ticket office. we headed over and picked up two tickets home for two days later. not a long time in the city, but the next day was new year’s eve, it would become increasingly difficult to find food, and the 9th, chinese new year, promised a near empty train. went back to the hotel for a shower, as we were already two hours away from the famous fish.

the city grew on me. I’ve realized I descended into daily minutia, my exertion at this memory recall beginning I’m afraid to show. I’ll stop now. we ate, we explored, I went off on my own for some more of both. pictures were taken, amusing people met and laughed with, shopping shopped, growing packs lugged, good coffee procured. got lost in a trust mart, avoid a wal-mart. the riverfront was a park and dock, prettier at night. being a premao city the arcitecture was stupendous. we took busses and got off where most of the people did, this is how one finds the city center before one buys a map. ate mcdonalds. yes the food tastes exactly the same, which I found refreshing and disconcerting all at the same time while sitting in my identical american purple plastic chair sipping my milkshake. hair color’s popular in this city, bicycles in the cold rare. nice busses. friendly folk.

the train home was indeed empty. I’ve always enjoyed train travel, but perhaps never so much as this particular trip. no snores to keep me up, freedom to keep my little light on reading after the lights dissapear at 10, no rustling at 7am or fighting for a seat. a clean bathroom. (did I mention the train to kaili (or was it wuhan…) had quite possibly the most beautiful chinese bathroom I’d ever seen? the entire thing was stainless steel.). a pleasant way to pass some quiet time remembering the trip and relaxing, knowing home is only a few easy hours away.

and that’s about it. bus took me downtown, cab took me to school, I walked to my door. I came home to a clean and somewhat surprisingly unmusty apartment. an amazing trip, good company, new friends, photos shot, chinese improved, understanding perhaps a bit too. so then I did what any rational human being would do, I took a shot of johhnie walker, dumped my clothes in the hamper, and went for a walk downtown to check out the new year’s celebrations ;-)

another sanjiang was a mere half hour ride away and the group was headed out for the sunday market and potential for cheap silver. after brilliant homestyle noodles we piled into a cab for the bus station then crammed into a tiny bus for the trip out. a woman tried to save a seat for her bag of goods, unsuccessfully. people crouched in every available corner, a foreshadowing of the chaos we were about to fall into. people flowed like a tidal wave up the mud covered market lined hill. I cannot begin to describe the momentum that carried us forward, no one seemed to be pushing yet everyone was pushed by the sheer volume funnelling in. I caught one picture in a moment out of the crowd, a man peacefully sitting, getting a haircut. occasionally a car would shove its way past, forcing people to fold over tables strewn with candied ginger and fried dough.

reaching the end the bar owner suggested a walk to the nearby villiage. the town felt like a shadow, empty on market day and shrouded in water. two little girls became our guides, showing us through the narrow paths. the group proceeded quickly while hu and I hung back, walking around every corner and trying to understand life in this small place.

3pm and hu and I decide to break from the group and make a run for the 10pm train from huaihua to wuhan. on the bus here he’d shown me a map of the city and that was all it took to sell me on the place, it’s 90% water. we ran back to the hotel, finished packing and ran for the bus stop, only to find out that we’d missed the last bus. undaunted due to recent experience we wandered around for a bit and talked to some other drivers and sure enough, not ten minutes later, a bus from huaihua showed up, unloading a plethora of chinese tourists. same bus driver as the way out and he was in some kind of rush to get home, we waited all of five minutes before pulling away. traffic again, he said, but not bad, maybe an hour delay. we made it to huaihua in time for dinner at a sichuan place with decidedly unsichuan food, a stop at a bakery for train food, cigs and orangeate, and a leisurely walk directly from the station door onto the train.

the day began early with pictures off the dripping balcony. not a pretty day on the water, but it cleared up enough to go exploring soon enough. wandered down the river, into the city for a safe lunch. which of course was not to be found for many, many blocks. apparently no one in the city eats out. a piece of bizarre spiced chinese fried chicken provided enough energy to push on through the growing holiday shopping crowd. veered off down a little side street back towards old town and saw beautiful mutton at a muslim vendor. ordered up and chatted with the 15 year old chef and his older sister. he spoke little mandarin so we had a lot of fun attempting communication, but his sister spoke more and eventually spoke up, finally asking for a picture with me. it took 15 minutes to figure out the address of the apartment building behind them they inhabited so I could send copies.

wandering down an alley turned into an afternoon of shopping, filled with traditional ribbon sugar candy fresh from a woman pulling it on the sidewalk and conversations with a talented batik maker from anshun with a passion for african art. many gifts purchased, a few friends made. on through the streets, past hotel row along the water, on to the edge of old town where the tomb of a famous writer/archeologist, who of course I’d never heard of, supposedly lived. found and captured by a sweet old man with green eyes (!) and few teeth who produced a complete history of the man and his works (of which I could understand perhaps every tenth word between his missing teeth and hunan dialect). the government provides him with 800 kuai a year to tend the grounds; traditionally the family would keep the caretaker but apparently no longer, the most they did was make sure he kept his job. we gave him a little gnosh as thanks, but he still would not let us explore on our own, so we headed back to town for a dinner of baozi (our first bread of the trip) and then off to the bar.

open bar
a walk across the river back to the bar to find owner and bbs travellers drunk and dancing to 80s music and chinese pop. ordering a jack and coke yielded a glass of jack and a can of coke, but finding a tall glass I mixed it up myself. I was videotaped from every angle laughing. despite protests our money was no good this night, no one’s was, and after the jack poured away a bottle of red wine was proferred for the first american guest, turned quickly into their own wine spritzer concoction and passed generously around to numerous ganbeis. slurred philosophising and sarcasm ruled the eve. we were invited along on a free day trip the next day to sanjiang, a town we thought to lie over 350 km south. insanity. we were invited by the sichuanese teacher for family breakfast which we gladly accepted. they practiced their english reading my postcards. they were it seems the occupants of the rest of our hotel, so I felt marginally less guilty about our 1am return.

it’s 2:30am, it’s drizzling, it’s a room, albeit a gross one, cold and stale and unwelcoming with the unheated bathroom through an open balcony, overpriced at 80 kuai. hu starts to bargain and I can’t believe it but I pull him aside. no. it’s one night he says. and tomorow we’ll have to spend half the day hunting for a better one. there were warm lights on the corner at the river. I’m going back. the couple tried to convince us (not a hard sell) that everyone’s asleep, I apologise for troubling them and walk out the door. hu thinks I’m crazy, but somehow he hadn’t seen the light we passed. we walk to it and look in. the door is closed but the lights are on, people inside. are you a hotel? no, sorry. do you know of any? how much? 80 is okay. the door opens. come in, let me call my friend. we’re in a bar, a very new bar that had just opened three days before, run by a couple guys who also run a travel bbs. also on this bbs is the owner of a new hotel (called, booked solid) and the owner of yet another hotel (this is a popular chinese tourist destination), riverfront, who happens to have one room left on the first floor and is willing to let us come see. fantastic. cigarettes are passed around, one of the owners tells us to follow him.

we walk along the river until we come to a set of stone blocks. the hotel’s on the other side. I look at them, look at the river, feel my pack on my back, and take the first step. oh my this is going to be fun. I had forgotten the old lesson of focus on the path in front, not the water below and that with my bad night vision made for an interesting crossing. but cross we did and there were passed off to another flashlight-bearing man, who dropped us off in front of a door just being swung open. we step into a cozy living room and are shown down the hall to a clean, bright room with windows along one side facing the river and a little balcony outside, two beds covered in crisp white egyptian cotton, heat, and our own bathroom complete with a gas tank for hot water. 3am, 2 escorts, 1 river crossing, 1 perfect hotel room, 80 kuai. we didn’t bargain.

even after a day of rest 6am isn’t any fun. we were the only two on the large bus for a while, picking up more as we meandered through the twisties. this ride marks the first cringe of the trip, as we swerved to avoid a water buffalo. long way down. the recent rains slowed the three hour trip into more than four, arriving at 11:20. I note this because the only bus for huaihua, hunan left at 11. or so said the clerk. we were to find out the next day that muddy roads and traffic tended to slow things down for it as well, and the one we took the next day didn’t leave till after one. none the less, the overnight stop allowed for a much needed shower and some laundry, though I have to wonder what the owners of the starred hotel we got for 100 would have thought about the myriad of laundry we’d cleaned in the marble sink and hung to dry along the walls near the central air vents.

for a growing city there wasn’t much there. no luck finding a pair of running pants on an evening walk (I was at this point splattered in mud from the knees down and had not brought a second pair, figuring I could find some on the way if I needed to. I didn’t really need to, but they would have been nice.) though hu did manage to find some lovely tea and the food was good, and clean. watched the travel channel, brushed away some mud. warmed up. the hot water ran freely, but the next morning we ran out of cold, rendering the toilet absolutely useless.

as noted, the eleven oclock bus arrived at one and we got on it. the scenery of hunan passed me by without much impression, mao had written many a poem praising our final destination of phoenix town (iffy recomendation at best in my book) but not a word about the trip there; for once I can’t disagree with him. the architecture was still dong for a long time, but the hills lost their lush green and flattened out, spread out. new growth forests replaced the old. arrived at 6:30 to a decently large city. we learned that there might be one more bus to fenghuang that night if enough people were interested, they’d wait till the 8pm train arrived and see. we climbed aboard to wait out of the rather bitter cold. 9pm, the last couple tucked in back next to us, boy on girl’s lap, we departed. estimated arrival 11pm. actual arrival, 1:45am. traffic.

traffic on small roads in china is defined as anything blocking even a part of the road. as it is when two busses meet in opposite directions the one on the inside of the mountain slows down or stops and the one on the outside negotiates slowly by, often almost kissing mirrors. anything that narrows this space renders the road unusable by two vehicles at the same time. in tonight’s case it was an accident. two trucks misjudged it seemed, and there aren’t exactly a plethora of tow trucks running about, so five hours after the accident everyone was still passing one side at a time. but I can now fold myself into quite a small little bundle, even in three layers of clothing, so I curled up and took a rather lovely nap.

so it’s 2am and we’re walking towards the old section of town and a woman walking ahead of us with a little red bag of groceries turns to us and asks if we’re looking for a place to stay. she happens to own one. we follow her through a covered bridge (which I dubbed smelly bridge for what I’m sure are obvious reasons), down a tight staircase to the riverside, then just when I smile with delight at the warm inviting lights up ahead she turns down a dark alley away from the water.

the breakfast noodles had been brilliant, and the previous night’s dinner so good we’d waited to eat till we got back that night. she didn’t have much, so we had a menu repeat as well. in hindsight, that should have been a clue. a brilliant day, a brilliant tasting dinner. around ten, while sitting around the fire talking with the family, playing with the owner’s two little girls, trading stories with the american, my stomache started to turn. and turn again. I went to the bathroom, took some pepto. I went to bed early. two hours later I jumped up but didn’t make it to the bathroom. it wasn’t the water, I’m pretty sure it was the pork. hu agreed, food poisoning. to add insult to injury (men, you might want to skip ahead) my period showed up too, a week and a half early. hu showed immense kindness, wiping my forehead, cleaning up my mess, making me sip a little hot water even when I reaaaally didn’t want to. I felt better after throwing up, the poison was gone, but he insisted I stay in bed the next day, which was almost worse than getting sick, I wanted to explore, but I felt guilty disobeying the orders of someone who’d gone to such trouble to play nurse. he brought light food and amazing medicine, I slept and wrote and listened to a terry pratchett novel on my ipod. he wandered on his own, stumbling across a wedding party and getting invited in, I got a text message about it and later saw the photos. but by nightfall I was desperate to get up, wanted to move again. we decided to catch the bus to liping the next morning at 7.

while on an exploration photo walk in the morning, past the drum tower (for which the dong are also famous) and across one of the rivers I was taking a photo, turned around, and a man carrying one end of a mattress set on a stick waved me over and said “lai” (come). okay. so I called hu and we came. rising on stone steps up the very muddy hill I at first thought we were headed simply for a great view and it didn’t occur to me to ask. we lost the guys ahead for a bit, they were amazingly quick considering they were carrying the componants for a bed up a mountain, but we kept stopping to look down or take some pictures. forty minutes later we spot them taking a break a little beyond the spot we’d decided to stop at. cigarettes passed around, we learned they wanted us to come see their town, tongan (called an ecological preserve on the map). how far is it? well, you go over this mountain, over another, around a couple more, maybe 20 chinese km and you’re there. (a chinese km is about half a euro km). oh boy. they went on ahead, we rested a while longer. a quiet man passed carrying only the stick usually used to carry buckets over the shoulder. we continued. my legs trembled a bit as I climbed up the rising stone steps ahead of me, tiring quads occasionally not wanting to grip onto the slippery mud, but no turning back. if they can do it with a damned mattress in tow I can do it carrying half a bottle of juice and a camera. we reached a level path and my body sighed, grateful. though we never did figure out how high we went I’m guessing it was in the neighborhood of 500 meters. not too high, but not half bad for a city girl.

then we got lost.
the path turned into terraces and then into jungle. we checked with a woman hacking away at a tree with a machete (whom we could hear but not fully see) and she confirmed that this was the path. I felt ancient walking this narrow trail through the wilderness. I laughed. half an hour later we were sure we’d gotten lost. back on terraces we retraced out steps and chose another way, though at this point a way could be defined as someplace someone might have walked within the last ten years. we saw no fresh footprints in the mud, no trace at all of the mattress men. well, they had said there were two ways, maybe we were just taking the other one. approximately three hours after departure we heard music. beautiful, calling music. we followed it. around the side of one hill after another, around terraces of rice and cai and nothing we chased it quickly lest it vanish. we saw two old women in the distance and scurried over, the music was coming from xiage they thought, follow the road to tongan and you’ll get there first. we did.

we stepped off the terrace onto another stone walk, back into time. small houses scattered thinly. a young man stood outside one, we asked about the music (gone), he did not know. hu followed the man towards his home. he went in. I followed, hesitant. I wasn’t sure we’d actually been invited, but curiosity took over. no lights, another man, a brother perhaps, worked thinning bamboo by a shaft of sunlight from a hole in the wall. their father, I think, walked back and forth, heavy boots clodding against the dirt floor, carrying water from a wok to a bucket ladle by ladle. the young man asked where we were from. gansu. he did not know where it was, hu traced a map on the floor. a sad light faded in his eyes, he knew this long ago but the memory was gone, taken over by the tasks of life. this embarrassed him. we looked out of place in our outdoor gear and hiking boots, backpacks slung over our shoulders in a house that contained no more than a few stools, one of which was brought down from a little bedroom, a fire, and somewhere in the back of this small house what sounded like a very large pig.

we followed the path that was now a path into the villiage center. houses crowded together along a road of thick mud. we slurped through and made for the community fire burning under the drum tower. men sat circled, smoking. children ran the outskirts. we sat by the fire, warmth. two boys produced a pair of stilts from thin air, hu took a turn. I made faces with the girls and played peekaboo with a little one. we took pictures, they too couldn’t get enough. I put the camera down and played some more. we laughed. but it was getting late, time to move on. I didn’t want to.

tongan was only a few kilometers away at the top of the next hill (hill? mountain? I do not know), a kind man followed us out past the beautifully clear streams running through and pointed us down the right path when we went the wrong way. we thanked him and waved.

the money tongan recieves from the norwegians shows, though what norwegians are doing giving money to the town to preserve their way of life no one seems to know. no mud here, the streets were all stone; water ingeniously terraced and funnelled, first level for drinking and cooking, next for washing, then drained off to the fields for irrigation. it was a pretty place, but somehow lacked the soul, the warmth of xiage. perhaps I’m biased, hu seemed to prefer this place. something just felt a little strained here. after wandering around a bit we sat under their drum tower, and soon after a rehearsal began for another show, another tour group was coming soon. however unlike the show at langde this was a rehearsal and there was laughter as people made mistakes and one old lady badgered everyone good naturedly. the sky faded dark purply blue, late it seemed, and we tried in vain to convince the moto taxis to make a trip back to zhaoxing for us. fortunately a big blue truck showed up, spilling passengers from another trip, and was convinced for a rather high price to make one last run. while trying not to get run off the road by donkeys we looked forward to another good meal at our new favorite restaraunt.