Bullet Train to the Future

Since my personal life is currently in a less-than-settled state, I don’t really feel like talking about it right now. Fortunately, I can hearken back to a simpler time: namely, my sweet hangouts in China last summer. It’s hard to believe that it was less than six months ago! Anyway, this is probably going to be the second last of these travel bloggos, as I’m rapidly nearing the end of my trip.

*   *   *   *

On the morning of the 17th, our group splintered apart, with Choden hopping back on the train to meet up with his wife, two folks staying behind in Hangzhou with plans to visit the *real* Mt. Tiantai, and the remainder of us piling into a van that had kindly been paid for by the somewhat duplicitous abbot discussed in the previous post. One by one, the various members of our entourage were disgorged at various locations in the city, until it was just me and trip’s two remaining organizers. After some pleasant (albeit perfunctory) goodbyes at the Hangzhou rail station, I found myself – for the first time since being picked up at Chengdu airport – alone in China. On one hand, I was a little spooked. I had been heavily relying on the fact that my travelling companions spoke fluent Chinese, so being without them meant that I was going to be doing a lot more phrase-bookin’ and playing more charades. I was fine with this prospect (it even promised to be kind of fun) when it came to ordering food, finding famous monuments, or general pleasantries, but the possibility of needing to mime my way through “someone stole my camera” or “I’ve broken my leg” was pretty scary. On the other hand, and in spite of the fact that I’d generally enjoyed the company of my fellow travellers, I was done being shepherded around. I wanted to set my own hours and follow my own itinerary. It had been too long.

After killing a few hours in the restaurant at a nearby “Western” hotel (note: “Western” in this case meant “having knock-offs of European artwork in the lobby”), I humped my luggage back up the hill to the train station and prepared to board. Now, I knew that I was going to be on a new-fangled train, as I had paid for the 75 kuai ticket (around $12 CAD) instead of the $4 CAD alternative, but I was not prepared for the marvel of engineering that greeted my eyes when I stepped out onto the platform. I’m not a “car and gadget” kind of guy, but I was still pretty taken with this train: a spectacular piece of machinery, looking like a flashy, mercury-coloured sports car had been pulled like taffy and stretched into a glittering silver tube the length of a city block. Once inside, I was ushered to my spacious seat by a pleasant young stewardess in a full, vintage-looking uniform, complete with pillbox hat and white gloves, and settled in to do some of the reading that I’d been meaning to catch up on.

Seriously! It's like a horizontal rocket!

Once the train got moving, it was actually kind of disorienting to look out the window, given that we reached a top speed of almost 350km/h. The parallax shift between the foreground and background was by far the most extreme that I’ve ever experienced. It didn’t help that the 300km corridor of land between Hangzhou and Shanghai – some of China’s priciest coastal real estate – has virtually all been developed, meaning that you saw cities in various stages of construction at every perceivable distance, as far as the eye could see, for the entire trip. In spite of the absurd rate at which we were travelling, I saw something pretty cool in many of the little cities alongside the railroad tracks: kilometer after kilometer of homes with large solar-arrays on their roofs! It was quite impressive. Anyway, after less than an hour zipping along in this air-conditioned future-mobile, the train slid to a smooth stop, and I disembarked onto the platform at one of the main Shanghai transit hubs, where both an airport and a major train station intersect with the metro. Whew! Now what?

Clean! Futuristic! Impossible to Commit Suicide By Jumping on Tracks!

Shanghai Metro Map

I knew that the Shanghai Blue Mountain Hostel, where I was staying, was near Luban Road station, so I hopped on the (also futuristic) metro and tried my luck. Fortunately, the system was extremely well designed, with helpful illuminated maps and a voice announcing the stops in both English and Mandarin, so it was actually pretty straightforward to reach my destination, even though there are over fifteen distinct subway lines woven together like some sort of complex organic molecule. As an aside, for the first time since arriving in China, I began to see a lot of white people… which implied that the PRC government’s attempt to promote Shanghai as a world-class metropolitan vacation destination had obviously been pretty successful. Changing cars at an outdoor station, I happened to see the following pretty hilarious sign. I mean, halogen cooked food sounds good and all, but it can’t be that good.

I must admit, I was intrigued...

Once I exited at Luban Road station, I proceeded to immediately get lost, which in retrospect is kind of funny because the hostel was literally two and a half blocks from the station. At the time, however, lurching around with my two increasingly heavy backpacks (which held my laptop, camera, passport, cash) was a less than optimal experience. With each passing minute I grew slightly more anxious, until I thought to pull out a map to the hostel that I’d printed out before leaving Toronto in a fit of prescience. With this prop in hand, a succession of helpful senior citizens kindly provided me with the simplest sort of directions (“Go that way!” “This way?” “No, that way!” “Ah! Thank you!”) and I eventually made my way to Blue Mountain, which would be my home for the next three nights.

It’s Official… I’m a Twit.

First, a little housekeeping: As an aside to those who have been following my China adventure blog with bated breath, I just want to let you know that my final entry into the series is going to be coming out in the next week or so… I’m just preempting it here in order to talk about something a little more topical.

Also, I’m pleased to announce that the Trifecta (Andy, Reberk and I) have launched a new blog project, wherein we talk about the various facets of games and gaming. It’s essentially the textual scion of the weekly conversations we had on our hit radio show “How I Spent My Summer Vacation,” and, if you’re wanting to hear three sweet dudes talk about D&D, review games, and otherwise geek out, you could do far worse than to check it out. Reading the latest entries by Berk and Andy, I was forcefully reminded of their thoughtfulness and eloquence… I’ll have to pull up my socks for my next post!

* * *

Anyway, the title of this post is not simply me indulging in my regularly schedule self-deprecation. It is instead a reference to the fact that I have, after considerable foot-dragging, decided to set up a Twitter account: @frangibility.

“Now, wait a minute,” I can hear you asking yourselves. “Why would this self-proclaimed curmudgeon and ostentatious facebook holdout be adopting a different invasive internet time-sink?”

I have to admit that I thought the exact same thing until just a few days ago, despite never actually having used the offending software, when I ran across this Roger Ebert article that convinced me to give it a try. In it, he discusses his own previous reservations about Twitter (specifically,  he thought that it represented “the end of civilization”), but notes that, after suffering a bout of cancer that robbed him of his ability to speak, he has managed to reinvent his love of pointed, adroit repartee using Twitter as a medium. Even though he can no longer make topical jokes in conversation, he can still do so online. As a long-standing Ebert fan (his facile opinions on videogames notwithstanding), I took his discussion seriously and figured that, at very least, I should give it a try rather than writing it off, sight unseen.

Rather than bore you with stories about setting up my account, I’ll just describe two incidents that swung me over to the side of Twitter advocacy. First, on Monday afternoon, as I was getting ready for my literary Chinese class, I happened to notice that my friend Hadge had posted a concern about the termpaper that he was in the process of writing. Now, he probably wouldn’t have explicitly emailed me about this, but since I heard about it passively, it let me jump in and offer him some tips (which I hope were somewhat helpful). Second, I’m using my account to follow all of my elected representatives (as well as the jackasses running my city and country). After our mayor dropped his execrable budget, my city councillor immediately began using his twitter account to dissect its various lies and inaccuracies, as well as detailing the various constituencies that would be hurt by it. Responding to this, I asked him if there was anything that the citizens of Toronto could do. Within six minutes, he had replied, telling when and where concerned citizens could go to make their voices heard. Likewise, I was able to find out about my MLAs involvement in protesting the closure of the OccupyTO movement. In the Canadian political climate, where our prime minister actively attempts to squelch access to information and freedom of the press, I find it incredibly refreshing to have such insights into the daily activities of my city councillor, MLA and MP. It’s an impressively direct form of communication, as well a clear expression of accountability.

Now, that being said, I’ll be the first to acknowledge that it’s an online tool that, like any other, can easily waste time and fill one’s life with an unnecessary dross of “information.” For instance, some people follow hundreds of Twitter accounts and write posts that vapidly broadcast the minutiae of their daily lives… Fortunately, you have the simple option of not “following” those people. By carefully selecting the accounts that you follow, it seems reasonably easy to keep the amount of material manageable, as well as avoiding being inundated in drek. As for me, I’m pretty happy getting daily updates from my elected representatives, some of my favorite authors and artists, and a few friends. I’ve already been introduced to videos, articles and news stories that I never would have encountered otherwise. Check back in a month to see if I’m still so enthusiastic, but so far I’m pretty impressed!

Shanghaied in Hangzhou

Though I realize that I’m a little late for completing my travel blog, I figure that I might as well jot the rest of the trip down before I forget everything. So, here goes…

* * *

When we finally disembarked from the train in Hangzhou, the gang and I were bleary-eyed from the suboptimal train sleep, not to mention slightly odoriferous – a natural side-effect of spending 40+ hours in one’s clothes in a hard-sleeper car whose air conditioning was inconsistent at best. More than anything, we just wanted to meet up with the rest of our group, check into our hotel, and rest up for the trip to Mount Tiantai.

For a bit of background, Tiantai is one of the most important holy mountains in China, as it’s the site from which the first indigenous school of Chinese Buddhism initially emerged, so the opportunity to see it was the only reason that the three of us had endured the cross-country train trip. The plan, which had been formulated by the venerable Buddhist nun who had masterminded the whole trip, was that any interested parties (note: there had been ten of us in total) could find our own ways across the country, meet up with some Buddhists in Zhejiang (the province where Tiantai is located), and tour around the holy mountain for a day or two. Unfortunately, an unexpected medical issue waylaid the nun and her assistant, which meant that the Hangzhou gang didn’t include anyone that had actually taken part in planning this stage of the trip… This would prove quite problematic!

We were met at the train station by a lovely middle-aged woman who introduced herself as “Charity” as she beckoned us to follow her to a waiting vehicle. After stowing our luggage and donning some designer driving gloves, she ushered us into the leather-upholstered backseat of a beige Lexus SUV and proceeded to take us on a vehicular tour of the town’s primary tourist destination: the West Lake – a carefully manicured waterway surmounted by numerous ornate metalwork bridges and surrounded by gorgeous watery expanses of lotuses. While it was quite picturesque, I have to admit that I was having a hard time staying awake… As she and Julius had an involved Chinese conversation in the front seat, I exhaustedly rested my head on the side window and collapsed into a stuporous half-sleep (until I noticed the greasy face-print that I left on the glass, which impelled me to sit up).

After this detour (and rather than taking us to our hotel), she then drove us to a monastic complex in an adjacent metropolitan area (around an hour away). This should have been my first clue that something was amiss. The second (and more overt) one was that we were then presented with giant name tags and red V.I.P. sashes. When the remainder of the group joined us in the early afternoon, it became clear that our status as token international scholars was being exploited, as we were then led to a three-hour-long press conference (announcing the compilation of a new edition of the Buddhist Canon), where we were expected to help unveil the wooden chests holding the texts and then stand for innumerable photos celebrating this event. Our (unwilling) participation had been orchestrated by the bearded Buddhist abbot of a nearby monastery, who had commissioned the new canon. As an aside, the only thing worse than listening to a bunch of pretentious, sycophantic speeches is listening to them in a language that you don’t understand.

That evening, once the interminable event concluded, we were delivered to the sketchiest hotel I’ve ever seen. The walls of our room were covered in a spongy pink wallpaper the approximate colour and texture of Turkish Delight, which featured a number of dark, foul stains, as if someone had beaten a small animal to death against them. Rather than having the regular assortment of “room service” items that I’d come to expect from previous hotel stays (e.g., noodle bowls, tea, bottled water), this room featured a wicker basket in the bathroom bearing a reasonably large selection of sexual aids (condoms, lubes, etc.) that guests could use for a nominal charge. I slept in my clothes.

Note the stains on the left- and right-hand walls...

The next day, we woke up early to make the trek to Mount Tiantai – a drive of several hundred kilometers from Hangzhou. Accompanied by the abbot and a number of lay devotees, our group was divided between two vans, which sped along the highways for a number of hours, stopping only for a snack of fruit, water caltrops, and stinky tofu. Once we finally bounced along a rutted, gravel-strewn path towards a small complex of monastic buildings inset into an open cave-wall, it was already close to 1pm. The site was interesting, featuring, in no particular order, a series of pavilions contained within natural caves, a giant recumbent Buddha sculpted from white jade, and a human mummy (preserved in a copper alloy). That said, it was *not* Mount Tiantai. Instead, it was the abbot’s personal monastery, which he was currently in the process of “sprucing up” in order to create a potentially lucrative pilgrimage destination. In fact, many of the temple structures were still under construction, with some Buddha statues (ordered in from Burma) still boxed or wrapped in plastic.

For a sense of scale, note the human figure on the left-hand side...

One of the monastery structures, built out of the cave wall

Inside one of the undeveloped caves

When we finally finished our tour, the abbot flatly refused to take us further, arguing that Tiantai was “just another old monastery,” not an exciting new complex like the one we were seeing. “Besides,” he said, “I’m sure that they’ll be closing for the day soon” [it was 4pm]. The drive back was frosty, given the time and expense that we’d all invested in traveling across the country to see Tiantai.

When we finally got back to the Hangzhou suburbs, our collective irritation was only exacerbated by the posse’s peculiar (lack of) organization. We just wanted to go back to the hotel and buy some food, but instead we spent another two hours being driven around town as the organizers (i.e., the abbot’s lackeys) attempted to figure out what to do with us for supper. In the end, we were taken back to the complex where the press conference had been held on the previous day, where we were unceremoniously dropped off near a dimly-lit, ramshackle, mosquito-infested building. Inside, we saw a variety of tepid, partially-eaten dishes sitting out on the table, somewhat protected from the buzzing clouds of insects by a set of plastic plate covers. Overhead, the single light-bulb was installed behind a whirring ceiling fan, giving the room’s lighting a vaguely discomfiting, horror-movie-esque strobe effect. We ate the proffered food more-or-less in silence, wanting only to get away, though some of our group’s number held conspiratorially whispered conversations about hiring a bus and sneaking back to see the mountain the next day. I, on the other hand, was done. I was done with the temple tours, the strict organization, and the lack of freedom… I just wanted to leave the group behind and strike out on my own.

Review: The House of All Sorts

The House of All Sorts by Emily Carr
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It’s difficult for me to review this book… On one hand, Carr is a masterful stylist of the English language, who writes extremely poetically. Her book was a quick read and the anecdotes about “landladying” in the early 20th century were engaging, visceral and often quite poignant. On the other hand, I had a very difficult time relating to her, especially in the final third of the book, which is entirely consumed with describing her love of bobtail sheepdogs. I found it endlessly frustrating that she lavished so much attention on these animals, while simultaneously turning a sharply critical eye upon her human tenants and friends. Given that so much of the book is spent describing her misery in the (titular) House of All Sorts, I can’t help but feel like her moroseness was at least partially self-inflicted… Since she appears to have a generous, humanistic spirit, I don’t know why she so often failed to extend her empathy to human beings, rather than squandering it on dogs.

Then again, I’m really not a pet person.

View all my reviews

Sleeper – A film by Woody Allen

With the successful completion of my Fringe duties for the year, I can now return to my (overly) prolix account of my trip to China. Don’t worry folks, just two more posts after this one!

***

After hanging out in downtown Chongqing, it was nearly time for me to take my leave of the city. Though the tour itself was officially over, a secondary opportunity to spend time at another of China’s premiere sacred sites (Mt. Tiantai) had arisen, and a small number of our contingent (eight people) had decided to capitalize on it. While most of these fellows (they coincidentally all happened to be men) simply flew across the country, three of us (Choden, Julius and I) decided to save some cash and travel the 1600+ kilometers via the sleeper train – a trip that promised to take upwards of thirty hours.

Returning to the hotel after our brief exploration of downtown Chongqing, Choden and I met up with another of our number (a Sri Lankan monk), ate a delicious vegetarian meal, and picked up provisions for the train trip – mostly dried fruit, instant noodles, flavoured peanuts, and liters of water. Since the desk clerk had told us that it was only a ten minute ride to the train station, we took our time, idling about the hotel, sending emails, taking showers, and otherwise preparing for our departure. We prepared to leave the hotel at 10:35pm, which we figured would leave us plenty of time to reach the station, get through security, find our train and hop on board, given that we weren’t departing from the city until 11:38. Without giving too much away, we soon discovered that our leisurely attitude had been inspired by entirely faulty information!

Here’s how it played out (with times inserted to add an element of dramatic tension): Choden and I left the hotel (10:38) walked down to the street, hailed a cab, and jumped in (10:42pm). After driving a few kilometers (10:46), we became locked in a chaotic, intermittently flowing morass of traffic. Some roadwork up ahead had constricted the freeway down to a single lane of traffic and, just like a brain about to suffer an ischemic stroke, the various packed lanes of traffic – each of which was filled with a jostling line of cars, trucks, buses, and motorcycles – were creating irregular, shapeless clots of vehicles in their respective attempts to dump their payloads into an artery that was too narrow to accept them. So, we waited, being passed by pedestrians, inching forward at a glacial pace, for around 15 minutes (11:01). By this point, Choden and I were starting to panic a bit, especially when the taxi driver chided us for not leaving sooner.

Once we squirted out of the vehicular tangle (11:03), the taxi-driver turned and said that he’d do his best to get us to the station on time. In addition to pulling many of the stunts I’d seen in Chengdu, this fellow’s primary modus operandi was simply to drive like a maniac: we barreled through the streets, often doubling the posted speed limit, zipping between other vehicles and narrowly dodging pedestrians. After a seemingly interminable drive (which was made all the more nerve-wracking by my realization that none of the seat-belts in the back seat were functional) (11:22), Choden and I were deposited – somewhat shaken – outside of the station. Carrying our giant duffles and backpacks, we charged forward, racing upstairs to the main entrance, through the security checkpoint, down a long tunnel to the terminal, down another set of stairs to the track level, where – to our great relief – we spotted the train, with a slow stream of passengers still filing into the various cars (11:34). Without too much hyperbole, the train left the station mere seconds after the ticket agent closed the door behind us and showed us to our seats. Julius, who had been visiting his brother and had thus made his own way down to the train, was quite pleased to see us, as he’d basically given up hope that we’d make it. Whew!

Accommodations on the train were spartan but relatively comfortable. I was in the top bunk, so I found myself squeezed between the bed and the roof, with just enough space to lay on my back with my knees bent upward. The sheets and blanket seemed clean, though I’m glad that we were taking the train from the beginning of the line, because I noticed that the bedding was not changed for people who embarked from later stops. Julius was in the adjacent top bunk, while the four berths beneath us were occupied by seven people: a mother, a grandmother, and five young children. Though this gave the initial impression of staying in a nursery, the kids were actually really well behaved, so it wasn’t an issue.

Anyway, the train trip itself was relatively uneventful. We basically just spent the time chatting, watching the landscape rush by, eating a surfeit of instant noodles (every car of a Chinese train has a spigot that dispenses boiling water, which makes a noodle bowl the optimal road snack), and idling about in the surprisingly unfriendly dining car. Also: sleeping! I was probably passed out in the supine position for 14 of the total hours that we were in transit… I guess I needed it. That’s about it… I suppose I could tell you about my intestinal distress on the second night and the adventures resulting therefrom, but perhaps I’ll save that story and tell it in person when I’m in my cups.

Fringe Hiatus!

Hey friends! I’m not quite done writing up my experiences in China, but a new (and pressing) concern has emerged: I’m back in the saddle on the Fringe Fest Flyer, which means that all of my time is basically consigned to Fringe-related activities. Most important of which, for the present, is posting my viewing schedule. As was the case last year, I have two media passes and am happy to bring folks along with me. If there’s a show that you’d like to attend, please email me (or comment on this post) and you can (on a first come, first served basis). I’ll be continuing to update this post by gradually striking out shows that have been claimed.

Happy Fringing!

Thursday July 28th

• Bertha (VicUp @ 4:20pm)
• R.I.S.K. (VicUp @ 7:10pm)
• Joe’s Cafe (VicUp @ 8:30pm)

Friday July 29th

• The Sucker Punch (Cosmo @ 5:20pm)
• Suicides in Vegas (VicGym @ 6:50pm)

Saturday July 30th

• A Different Woman (Broadway @ 2:10pm)
• Sofa So Good (VicGym @ 3:50pm)
• Rat Bag (Cosmo @ 5:10pm)
• My Brother Sang Like Roy Orbison (VicGym @ 6:40pm)
• The Sparrow and the Mouse (VicGym @ 8:30pm)

Sunday July 31st

• Last Goddamned Performance Piece (Broadway @ 2pm)
• Giant Invisible Robot (Broadway @ 3:50pm)
• Wet Dream Catcher (Cosmo @ 5:40pm)
• Three Seconds to Live (Cosmo @ 7pm)
• Europe: A Savvy Girl’s Guide (VicGym @ 8:30pm)
• 30 / 30 (VicGym @ 10pm) <– As an aside, I’m very grateful to Nicole for taking these two on!

Monday August 1st

• Breakfast in Vegas (Broadway @ 2pm)
• Oh, That Wily Snake! (Broadway @ 3:30pm)
• `33 (Broadway @ 4:50pm)
• Who Are These Guys (Cosmo @ 6:50pm)
• Wild Abandon (Cosmo @ 8:10pm)
• Shoot, Get Treasure, Repeat (VicGym @ 10pm)

Tuesday August 2nd

• The Surprise (Broadway @ 3:50pm)
• The Progressive Polygamists (Broadway @ 5:30pm)
• jem rolls IS PISSED OFF (Broadway @ 7pm)
• Twenty Five (VicUp @ 8:30pm)
• Big Shot (VicUp @ 10pm)

Wednesday August 3rd

• Fuel – a One Act Play (VicGym @ 4:50pm)
• BOX (VicUp @ 10pm)

Thursday August 4th

• It’s Been Taken (Cosmo @ 3:30pm)

Friday August 5th

• Lacerta (VicUp @ 3:40)
• Ben & Jess (VicStoneStage @ 8pm)

Saturday August 6th

• Two Corpses Go Dancing (Cosmo @ 3:50)
• Prehistory of Moses P (VicUp @ 10pm)

Chongqing Express

After a final night in Chengdu, wherein I laid low and ate noodles in my hotel room after being laid-up with some intestinal issues, we left the monastery guest-house behind and were ferried by our long-suffering bus driver to Chongqing – a city that I’d never heard of but whose greater metropolitan area is home to almost 30 million people.

On the way, we passed through the Dazu Grottoes – a cave complex that weaves through the hilly area around Chongqing and which is home to over 1300 years worth of religious (primarily Buddhist) statuary. Given that we were running low on time (and that we had already been in a bus for five hours or so), our tour guide decided that we were just going to visit Baodingshan, which is one of the largest of the cliffside sculptural installations. It was quite spectacular and, in my opinion, entirely deserving of its status as a UNESCO world heritage site. In addition to the various pieces of Buddhist statuary (which I can now classify more easily, as a result of my trip to the Shanghai museum), there were also some interesting pieces that spoke to the Buddho-Confucian synthesis that came to be created in Tang-Song China: not only were there images of the young Buddha demonstrating filial piety to his mother, but there were also a series of reliefs depicting proper familial relationships being enacted beneath the watchful eyes of a long line of bodhisattvas. Intriguing! That said, my favourite area was undoubtedly an immense series of sculptures depicting the various tortures awaiting moral reprobates (e.g., adulterers, wine vendors, and carnivores) in the Buddhist hells. There’s an on-going debate between some of the PhD students at Mac about whether the missionary success of Buddhism was more related to the soteriological carrot (Enlightenment / birth in a Pure Land) or stick (karma and the prospect of unpleasant / hellish rebirths). This sculptural installation certainly made a case for the latter.

I can’t really say much about Chongqing itself, as I was only there for around a day. We went to one final temple (this one the least commercial and, in my opinion, most interesting of the trip), I ate some delicious charcoal roasted mutton and lotus root from a street vendor ($0.36 a stick!), and the group split up and said our goodbyes. Even though we’d only been together for a few weeks, this was still more difficult than I would have expected… At least many of us are in similar fields, which means that we’ll likely be running into one another at conferences for the remainder of our respective academic careers.

After the majority of the tour’s participants left, I ensnared Choden (a New Zealander with a Tibetan name) to go shopping with me for bizarre Chinese t-shirts, as I wanted to pick some up as souvenirs. As we wandered around, I came across a fake Apple store: same decor, same employee uniforms, similar (knock-off) products. I snagged a photo of the exterior, but when I tried to get an interior shot, an irate employee chased me down the street and aggressively blocked my path while waiting for me to delete the image (a process that he oversaw waspishly). Not wanting any trouble, I simply complied with his demands. When I returned to the hotel, I confirmed my suspicions via Apple’s Store Locator: there is indeed no legitimate outlet in Chongqing. Odd coincidence: when I was in the Vancouver airport, I saw that some blogger had recently made it into the news cycle posting about a fake Apple store in Kunming.

Anyway, once the majority of folks left, the remaining contingent (around ten of us) decided to venture into downtown Chongqing. The commercial hub was what I’ve come to expect from Chinese capitalism, with the entire downtown area dwarfed beneath a strident panoply of Times-Square-esque billboards, each advertising major (often European) brands of clothing, accessories, cars, and electronics. This trend was even manifested in Liberation Square – a public park in city center originally created to memorialize the rise of the Chinese Communist party. Greatest irony: in the middle of the square I saw a giant floral arrangement, writing out “1921-2011” in red and yellow blossoms, commemorating the 90^th anniversary of the founding of the Party. In the midst of these blooms rose a large stone obelisk with large clock-faces on each side. On each clock-face, a single word: Rolex. Welcome to the new China!

Tibet Lite!

When we first arrived in Kangding, both our tour guide and one of the Taiwanese nuns warning us not to travel around alone, not to barter, and to watch our purses and wallets. While this could be seen as some generally sage travelling advice, to me it smacked of good, old-fashioned Chinese racism (concerning the city’s sizable Tibetan population). One of the members of our group confirmed my suspicion, as he actually lived in Kangding for six years and noted that it was no more or less safe than any Chinese city of that size (around 100,000 people).

The next morning, when we headed out for our scheduled temple tours, it was impossible to ignore the uniquely Tibetan character of the Buddhism being practiced, despite the fact that we were only 350 km from Chengdu. Some examples: conspicuous presence of giant painted mandalas in temple roofs, incorporation of a discrete set of deities in the iconography, the use of prayer wheels (of various sizes), and a generally “non-Chinese” feel to the architecture, temple layout, iconography, music, and the interactions between the monks and the laity. Anyway, it was all pretty compelling!

After we finished our typical morning o’ temple hopping, we were turned loose on the city, so Zhuan and I decided to head out on foot and explore the city, which turned out to be really beautiful. If you ignore some of the run-of-the-mill shabbiness (i.e., the little reminders that China is not actually a First World nation), Kangding is quite striking! You can see the misty peaks of the lower Himalayas from virtually every point in town; the Tibetan influence can be seen in the prayer flags that festoon various public structures; the mountain air is crisp and clean (a marked contrast from Chengdu); and, the city’s main street (which included the typical bazaars, restaurants and shops) is bisected by a swiftly flowing mountain river that runs its entire length, which means that the street is neatly divided by a succession of beautiful stone bridges.

Later on, we rejoined Meimei and her Vietnamese friend, and headed out for a supper of delicious hotpot – a meal that turned out to be more of a voyage of self-discovery than I would have expected. Here’s the thing: I’ve eaten hotpot with other Chinese friends before. I know that part of the experience is cooking and eating all sorts of (awful) offal (filter organs, hearts, tripe, etc.). What I wasn’t ready for was a the third dish to hit the table: a big plate containing three whole pig brains. I had been ready for any other organ, or even other types of weird meat, but seeing the brains immediately turned my stomach and set my contagion-avoidance system into high gear. Having read D. T. Max’s excellent The Family Who Couldn’t Sleep, I know more than I probably should about causes, infectivity and morbidity of various prion diseases – all of which are most easily transmitted by consuming the cranial tissues of mammals. While there are currently no known prion diseases linked to porcine brains, I just didn’t want to take the chance, and since this nightmarish ingredient had been added to both sides of the hotpot, I felt as if the whole thing had been tainted and I (silently) decided against eating.

Now, if the story was just that I became anxious about something, it really wouldn’t be worth telling. What was interesting for me, however, was the way that the situation ended up playing out. As the dinner continued (and I continued to consume large, watery Chinese beers), I actually worked myself into a state where I realized that I could (if I so chose) actually start eating stuff from the pot, which undoubtedly would have been the socially expedient thing to do. Also, there would have been a point in my life where I would have simply adhered to the “new experience = good experience” equation… but this time I didn’t. I instead realized that this was an experience that I simply didn’t care to have and I was okay with that. Maybe this indicates a new level of self-awareness or it could just be me getting less adventurous in my old age… who knows?

As my supper had only consisted of beer at this point, I was pretty famished when we got back to the hotel. Fortunately, I ran into some other folks (a group of younger travellers that I hadn’t spent much time with yet) and they invited me to come along for some traditional Tibetan fare. After wandering the streets of Kangding, we finally settled into a cozy little local spot barely wide enough for the two rows of low plush chairs and little tables. After consulting with the (lovely) middle-aged owner, the proficient Chinese speakers in our group (i.e., everyone but me) ordered a smorgasbord of Tibetan delicacies, including butter tea, fresh goat yogurt with barley flour, steamed buns stuffed with yak’s meat, and a dessert made out of cheese curds and local spices. The buns and the yogurt were delicious. The dessert, whose sweetness was utterly overpowered by its “goatiness,” was virtually inedible (at least to me). Also, I found the butter tea – which is basically a black tea with a froth of yak butter whisked through it – unsurprisingly foul. Talking to some other members of the group, it sounds like this concoction, which is the region’s unofficial beverage of choice, is regularly served by hosts entertaining guests… In such a situation, where it would be a major social faux-pas to reject the proffered beverage (as it is filled with a highly prized source of fat and calories), I’ve been told that a Western guest must maintain a delicate balance between drinking enough tea to avoid insulting the hosts and drinking too much, which causes your cup to be refilled. I’m glad I’ve never been in that situation, as I’d have difficulty choking more than a couple of mouthfuls down.

On one hand, the Kangding trip was kind of a bust, given that the transit to touring ratio was almost 1:1 (24 travel hours vs. 31 hours in town (during which time we needed to sleep twice)). On the other, it was also one of the most interesting places that we visited. Based on my limited experience, it seemed that the city’s culture was a compelling blend of Chinese and Tibetan influences, with municipal architecture, artwork, shops, and cuisine that diverged from the Sichuanese standard in a variety of interesting ways. I certainly don’t regret going and, if anything, only wish that we would have had more time there. So long, Kangding, we hardly knew ye!

Purgatorial Bus Trip-a-go-go

On July 10th, I experienced the dark nadir of Chinese vehicular culture… but we’ll get to that in a second. That morning, we had piled onto the tour bus for our longest trek yet: a voyage into Kangding – a regional hub within the desolate, sparsely populated area of western Sichuan near the Tibetan border. Knowing that the highways could be treacherous and that delays were likely, the tour guide had previously instructed us to bring snacks for the road, just in case we were in transit longer than expected… This turned out to be unexpectedly sage advice.

Initially, the trip went fairly well. We made good time on the highway, travelling northwest through a variety of gorgeous mountain scenery and ever-decreasing signs of human habitation, and, by 3:30pm, we were informed that it was only another forty or fifty kilometers to our destination. Though we’d already been driving for around six and a half hours (minus pit-stops and lunch), spirits were high and the bus was humming with excited conversation. And then, everything fell apart.

At around four o’clock, the bus coasted towards the entrance to an enormous tunnel, where we encountered the tail-end of a seemingly interminable line of unmoving vehicles stretching forward into the darkness. Time passed… first minutes, then hours. In all, we sat in that spot, without any explanation or hope of reprieve, for more than two hours. In addition to the psychological difficulty of being powerless and uncertain, there was also the physical discomfort of being unable to exit the bus because we were a) on an elevated highway and b) unsure about when we’d need to get moving again. Though there were cheers when our bus started up again, our excitement was short-lived. Once we cleared the tunnel, the cause of the delay became obvious: the highway on the other side had been buried in a landslide, which had necessitated the construction of a new (and as-yet incomplete) roadway. Since the old highway was gone and the new one wasn’t yet built, our bus (and every other stranded vehicle) had to navigate a pitted earthen track several kilometers in length, bucking and wheezing as they shuddered up and down the gravel mounds that passed for a road. Suffice it to say that I’m glad I managed to sidestep my family’s genetic predisposition for motion sickness, because this portion of the trip would have made me feel *very* unwell.

Anyway, our troubles continued once we cleared the worst of the construction, because we then (once again) were plunged back into bumper-to-bumper traffic. After crawling along for several hours, during which time the sun conveniently set, the roadway finally achieved total gridlock. Essentially, Chinese driving practices were to blame: the narrow two-lane highway was simply not up to the task of accommodating three lanes worth of traffic attempting to travel in either direction. At one point, our bus (which was in the right-hand lane travelling west) came up against with two buses and a car that were all driving eastward (and filling up the entire roadway in the process). Sitting in the back seat of the bus, Arturo and I mentally played Tetris with the cars, trying to figure out what needed to move in order to allow traffic to resume flowing.

In the end, after several more hours of waiting, our tour guide and several of the participants took matters into their own hands, getting out of the bus and brow-beating people into reversing along the road or pulling into the shoulder. Once they carved out a path, they then walked ahead of the bus, blocking traffic with their bodies and directing the other drivers to either side of us. It was a dicey gambit (especially considering that it was pitch black outside), but it worked. At 11pm, after more than fifteen hours on the highway, we finally made it to our hotel. I can only hope that someone bought the bus driver a beer… he deserved it.

In spite of the fatigue and irritation, I actually kind of enjoyed this day, oddly enough. It’s like my mood was buoyed by trying to keep everyone else’s spirits up. In addition to having some nice conversations with various folks, I also helped to organize an impromptu singalong, and participated in games of Twenty Questions and Mafia (a variant of Werewolf). It was a peculiar sort of bonding experience for the group.

Time to make some Kuh-Razy Money!

I’m utterly convinced that whoever designed the arcade game ‘Crazy Taxi‘ (which was pretty popular in the late 1990s) must have been a veteran Chinese traveller. On the night we got back to Chengdu, a few of us decided to attend a musical revue of local theatrical specialities, which included Sichuan opera,  puppetry, fire breathing, instrumental performances, and face-changing (which I’ll explain shortly). In order to get us to the venue on time, the taxi driver did all of the following at least once: making wild u-turns in the middle of intersections, driving with two tires on the sidewalk, navigating a congested street by turning down a fenced-off bike lane, laying on the horn and essentially playing chicken with on-coming vehicles of various sizes, accelerating to twice the posted speed limit, cutting across pedestrian streets, and driving on the wrong side of busy streets by swerving between on-coming cars. Nothing like the invigorating rush of impending doom to whet one’s appetite for theatre!

Aside: face-changing is an indigenous speciality of Sichuan opera, which requires the actors to use various tricks in order to switch between masks nearly instantaneously. On the bus ride to Emei, our tour guide had explained some of these techniques, which demystified the proceedings a bit. If she hadn’t, I would have been absolutely bamboozled trying to figure it out. While I’m sure that this theatrical tradition would have greater effect within its original context, the five minute face-changing routine that we saw was still quite impressive, though I’d say that my favourite of the acts was an incredibly accomplished shadow puppeteer.