I’m a world traveler vicariously more than actually. It’s a bummer. On the other hand, I’ve been within seven miles of a whole lot of countries, feeling vertically challenged at 600 MPH. But leaving home never feels bad to me, and this past June it felt great. I was returning to China.
After eight long years of withdrawal from bad warm beer I was shocked to see Beijing engulfed in flames as our plane began its descent. Well of course it was not smoke covering the area but rather the urban smog I should have remembered from my visit in 2003. The kind of smog that has you constantly wondering if you actually DO have SARS.
I was in China when the epidemic had everybody wearing those “look at me, I’m a surgeon” masks, and I had a bad cough by the time I landed back in Seattle a month later. Fortunately I was able to “remain silent” as I passed through US Customs or I might still be in quarantine.
This visit was different. I was more streetwise (better at dodging kids on motorcycles and old ladies driving tractors), and it helped not to have “that girl I never married” along, bless her materialistic soul. I still wonder what she ever did with my banjo.
And Beijing had changed. The subway had been all fancied up for the 2008 Olympics. Buildings looked prettier. There were even less human turds on the sidewalks. Oh, and now they laugh at you if you try to pay for your boiled cow lung dinner with USD.
There were also fewer bicyclists trying to run me down as I carefully picked the flies out of my street food. Most have upgraded to electric scooters, and with their added speed and weight, the game play has heightened dramatically. They even work in gangs now. In fact, I think the fewest number of people I saw on one scooter was seven.
It is amazing to watch a two-year-old standing on the “floor” of their mother’s scooter as she negotiates through heavy traffic at about 70 KPH. Heavy traffic including but not limited to double decked buses, huge twenty-four wheeled trucks, and an occasional one-ton Yak, with each party going in whatever direction seems most accessible at that given moment. No seat belt cops here. Surely there is some quiet level of telepathic energy throughout all of China. What else can explain how 1.4 billion people drive the way they do without cutting their population in half within one week?
Some things were the same. The universal aromas of the hutongs were very reminiscent, and you can still buy a small bottle of Baijiu for under a dollar. Don’t do it.
After four days in Beijing I had to go south. Three hours and about 1200 RMB later I found myself gazing down upon the beautiful scenery surrounding Guilin. No fires here. And yeah, I was seven miles away, but this time I was going to put my foot down.
It felt great, riding in an old beat up taxi, surrounded by some of the planet’s most unusual landscapes.
The driver ran through the gears like a pro, womanhandling whatever traffic issues we encountered. Thick skinned, I could tell. Probably spent a lot of years working in the fields. I thought she was cute, though, and she got me to Yangshuo in time for Happy Hour.
Okay, Tsingtao is not exactly a full bodied 7.2 ABV IPA. But China taught me two essential lessons about beer. First, there’s only one thing worse than bad beer, and that’s bad WARM beer. And secondly, there is only one thing worse than bad warm beer, and that is NO beer.
I also discovered that when combined with 3 shots of Tequila, a warm mug of the old Chinese standby is not so bad. In fact, late one night a Russian friend jokingly filled my Tsingtao bottle with water and I didn’t even notice.
After three weeks of hiking, biking, and being dazzled by the Li and Yulong rivers via bamboo boats and kayaks, I found myself routinely hanging out at The Alley Bar each evening. Foosball is hot at The Alley, and surprisingly I placed second in a couple of Wednesday night competitions. A lot of the “regulars” spoke English well, and were glad to practice on me. Meanwhile, I constantly took notes on how to speak basic Mandarin (my notebook was later stolen in Brussels, dammit). Soon I was saying “Ni Piao Liang” to every other girl in the street. Got a lot of smiles.
After a month of wasting away in Tequilaville, I had to return to Beijing and venture to northern China, on a quest to draw interest in an English language program that a friend and I were trying to develop. So I hesitantly boarded one of those suspicious looking aeroplanes with far too many loose rivets and Russian lettering and left the beloved south.
My first night back in Beijing was HOT and sleepless. Plus I was feeling gastrointestinally challenged. Could it have been that fish eyeball I ate the night before? My soup kept staring at me, what else could I do?
Two days later we began our mysterious journey to Richard’s hometown of Nenjiang. I say mysterious because I was never certain of where we were going nor why we were going there. I did learn, however, that our destination would always include a very large table with up to 16 Chinese people wielding kuaizi and all staring at “the Westerner”. I think they liked me but I’m pretty sure that was because they couldn’t understand a word I said.
I still feel guilty for eating the shredded shark fin but trust me when I say a lot of what else spun past on the gargantuan Lazy Susan did not appear to be fit for consumption at all.
It took 25 hours in trains, buses, and taxis to find myself wandering alone on the dark streets of Nenjiang, not far from the Russian border. I was alone because Richard stayed with relatives while I set up camp in some super dive motel with no windows, no towels, no soap, and no lock. The huge poster of the nude man and woman on the wall was especially disconcerting. $12 seemed tai gui le.
Far northern China looks like Iowa. No rice. No Karst. Just corn, corn, and more corn. And of course the 25 hours of being boxed up in vehicles had to be repeated in a southerly direction. I began to feel regrets about leaving Yangshuo. My final days in China, and I really needed to be outside.
My departure included some challenges too. Imagine locating a specific hotel in a city of 17,000,000 non-English speaking folk. The taxi driver could not even find it. Instead he just stopped the car where he believed was “close enough” and held out his hand, waiting for the 100 RMB I promised him. Xie xie for nothing, pal.
My final day in China was uneventful. Got to the airport at 4:30 a.m. and made my way through Security just as the plane was boarding. I left Beijing at 7:00 a.m. on Monday and flew over Detroit at 6:30 a.m. on Monday. How weird is that?
I was glad to be back in my own house, but mainly because I’d be leaving for Europe in ten days.
