The Train

Most Americans alive today never had the chance to partake in a long distance train ride across America. In fact, the only train ride I took before coming to China was a scenic train ride somewhere in the Adirondacks when I was about 6...a train ride for fun, to experience the romanticism of 'riding the rails'. While it is still possible to travel across The States by train, it's cheaper to fly, and a little quicker. Yet, the most common form of long distance travel in China is still the train.

Taking the train in China is an experience in itself. Yet, before even getting on the train, which is the easy part, you must purchase the tickets.

Buying a train ticket is probably the most stressful thing you can possibly do in this country...and maybe the world. When you go to buy tickets at a large train station there are usually about 15 or so windows open, all of them jammed with people in a dysfunctional line. Each line is about 20 people deep with students, workers, businessman, and yourself, the token foreigner. If you watch the front of the line, it can drive any rule abiding person crazy, because people come from all over the insanely crowded train station to buy tickets out of turn, shout questions, or to tell the ticket seller what they had for dinner. As the line slowly inches forward, you repeat the Chinese over and over in your head, "Jin tian dao Panzhihua, liang zhang wo pu" (Today to Panzhihua, two sleeper tickets), but you just know, that no matter how boldly you shout those words in your best Sichuan dialect, the ticket seller Nazi will glance at the silly foreigner and fail to acknowledge you, or simply say there are no tickets, at which point the next person in line will begin screaming in Chinese and pushing their money through the window. Yet, slowly, you continue creeping towards the front of the line. When you're finally a few people away from the window, you break into a sweat and forget how to say "Hello" in Chinese. At this point, you get a sense of the ticket seller Nazi that fate has thrown to you this time around, who with no fail, is a middle aged, unstably disgruntled woman. Finally, you reach the front of the line and proudly state your destination and the day you would like to leave, after pushing a line cutter to the side. If all goes well, she will begin plugging away at the computer immediately, if not, prepare to yell in Chinese. After a few nervous seconds, she will ask you for the type of ticket you want or simply print one out anyway (There are four types of tickets in China, the soft sleeper, hard sleeper, soft seat, and hard seat. The hard sleeper is good for any overnight trips and the hard seat is fine for any trips under 8 hours. I've only had a soft sleeper once and I've never had a soft seat, they're pointless for the extra money.). You then give her the appropriate money (too many big bills will anger her) and step to the side. Now, try to make your way out of the train station without having your money or bags stolen.

When it's time to actually go to the train station, you usually want to arrive there 20 minutes early if you have a sleeper ticket and up to 1 hour early if you have a seat or a standing ticket (this sucks). Even when people have a seat ticket, they will line up early and press at the gates waiting to board. If you have a seat and ten 100 lb. sacks of grain to put on the luggage racks above...you want to be there early to take up every one else's luggage space. The gates open 20 minutes before the train departs and everyone pushes and shoves to be the first to board. If you win, you get to take up tons of space and sit for 20 minutes donning a shit eating grin or pretending to sleep, in order to take up even more space (if there are open seats, standing ticket holders can take them).

When the train finally starts, the hard seat section is usually full to the brim with workers and farmers, minorities and students. The train cars are full of cigarette smoke and card playing, people sleeping or pretending to sleep. There are people reading magazines, staring blankly at their cell phones as they input text and change ring tones, listening to music, and eating instant noodles. There is free hot water, two bathrooms per car, two sinks, and the workers stroll the aisles selling magnetic jewelry and socks that will never burn, smell, or get stretched out. The train is a microcosm of the Chinese world, fully equipped with generosity, prostitution, snoring, alcohol, kindness, assholes, thieves, and boredom. It rolls through a predominately agrarian landscape that is often beautiful and always fascinating.

I love to see the landscape roll past the windows and watch it change from desert to sub-tropical forest to snow covered mountains to river valleys. I also love to eat instant noodles (which are many times better than those in the States), peanuts, and anything else my hands land on. Yet, one of the changes that is eminent as you cross the Chinese countryside, is the coming of a new age, one that hit America years ago: The Automobile Age. The Chinese equivalent to our interstate system is being built across the country and will be completed in the next 2 or 3 years. With the faster travel times that a highway offers, the train will start to see a decline in passengers and this model of public transportation will begin to fade away. While the train will be slower then buses plying the new highways, the ability to glide through the countryside on a train cannot be replicated. These moving cities that ebb and flow with passengers at each station, that offer food, drinks, and portable DVD players, with room for all classes of people, are truly something to experience at least once. Hopefully, the completion of the highways will not herald the death of the passenger train in China.

Exploiding Computer and Butt

While I was writing an e-mail the other day, I mocked Lindsey's propensity to hammer on the keys when typing. Two seconds later, the computer screen went blue and gave me a sweet message of system instability. The computer restarted a few seconds later and then gave me an even better message, "failure to locate operating system". So, to tell a long story short, the computer completely crapped out, I went into town to buy some Chinese versions of Windows, four of which didn't work, then borrowed a Dell system recovery CD from Nick and the computer started working again. Yet, everything on the hard-drive was gone. I lost a lot of stuff I have written and countless other things. Mostly lots of little stuff, but things that just irk you to have lost. So, that started my fun week.

Later that day, when I laid down to go to bed Sunday night, my stomach felt a little off and I could sense trouble was brewing. Let me pause here to warn of the openness that China and the Peace Corp has allowed me to talk about my bowel movements and fill you in on some China poop facts.

I thought it was rather comical a few months ago when I was on the phone with my parents and I told them I felt a little sick to my stomach and had diarrhea. "Oh my, are you OK?", they asked me, sounding rather concerned. I laughed a little and said, "Yeah, I'm fine, everyone here gets diarrhea at least once a week...at least once a week." This is due to the spiciness of the food, how everything is cooked in oil, how the water isn't safe to drink, and the fact that everything is grown using human feces and is not washed very well or with the feces contaminated water. So, we have to wash everything and boil all of our water (Lindsey has a home video with a scene where her friend drinks a glass of water straight from the sink...Chinese heads turn in confusion after seeing this) but, something slips through every once in awhile. Lastly, there is a parasite called Giardhea that over 70% of the Chinese have, but is not tested for in China. The parasite causes stomach aches, diarrhea, cramps, and lots of other fun things. Lindsey had it. Greg thinks he has it and I have a sneaking suspicion that I have it. Yeah! Peace Corp! Don't worry, the parasite is only fatal in rare cases and you can get rid of it by taken some pills, but it is a little stubborn.

So, I fall asleep on Sunday night thinking things are going to be alright, but man was I wrong. At about 1:30 in the morning I woke up and slowly made my way to the bathroom for the first time. I ended up pissing out my butt for a bit and everything felt a little better, but there were still some rumblings. I went back to bed and laid down for about ten minutes and then strolled back to the bathroom to pee (out my butt) some more. Then, something that hasn't happened to me in years (I think the last time was when I was about 6 or 7 and I ate Mac n' Cheese, laid in bed, and then threw noodles up all over the floor through my mouth and nose). Thankfully, the sink is right next to the toilet and I could get two things done at once. I ended up spending the whole night going back and forth to the bathroom, threw up a few times, and generally, felt like dying. We took my temperature sometime in the morning and I had a fever of about 101...celcius. After sipping some water and taking some aspirin type pills I started feeling a lot better around 8:00. If it wasn't for Dr. Aysta (Lindsey), I don't know what I would have done. I felt so bad because I kept her up all night and she had class at 7 the next day, which she still went to. I ended up spending Monday laying in bed getting sentimental watching Christmas specials, then I watched Annie Hall and China Town. I'm finally starting to feel better, but man. Conclusion: Being sick is crappy.

(Some of the pictures are from a little day long bike trip I took on Friday to a village about 4o km away. I made it there by lunch, bought some noodles, and started back. It was a great trip because it's just nice to enjoy some fresh air away from the city and actually see grass and trees.)

Tang Fang Fang

A young, 18 year old Chinese girl committed suicide last night. She was a Freshman English major and not yet one of my students, but I saw her occasionally at English Corner and whenever I passed by her classroom, yet I can’t pretend to have known her. Her name was Tang Fang Fang. She was fairly short, thin, had a round, blemish free, bright face, black hair, and was always wearing her highly visible black-rimmed Harry Potter glasses. Whenever I saw her, she never failed to sport a smile and always greeted me with an enthusiastic, “Hello Brian!” She jumped from the 8^th floor of the freshman dormitory and landed on the road in front of the school’s bakery at 10:30 last night. I wish I had known what that smile was hiding.

What was she thinking as she put her foot up on that window ledge? Was she scared, nervous, mad, relieved, or anxious? In her three-second fall to the ground, did she wish to undue what gravity could not prevent, feel clarity, or feel nothing at all?

In my own class this morning, I tried talking to my students about the death that happened only 12 hours earlier. Yet, it was as if nothing had happened at all. My students were laughing and joking around, as if it were just another day, which I suppose, it was. I asked them if they knew what happened, “Yes”, I also asked them if they knew the girl, “Yes”, they replied with apparent frustration. The attention of the classroom was all over the place, people laughing and talking in Chinese on one side of the room, students laying down their heads in boredom on the other, with only a few students putting on an air of concern. What did this all mean to them? Anything? Nervous laughter rained supreme throughout the morning. Throughout the class I tried to discuss life, suicide, depression, and their meanings and causes, but this brought us nowhere. One life had simply ended and the world kept turning, without missing a beat, in the same manner as it had before.

What message was she trying to send us? Or was she simply upset because she constantly quarreled with the other girls in her dorm room and didn’t get along with her class, as the rumor tells it? One minute to pause and reflect upon life and it’s meaning would do everyone a little good here, but I have yet to see that. “What’s the point?” I asked my class, “What’s the point of it all?” but everyone seemed to regard this question with the same indifference that they have greeted everything else in the class.

Hopefully, there is more then this pathetic blog post, her parents and relatives, and some friends that will stop to reflect what the meaning of her death was, if it was anything. But maybe that’s hoping for too much.

Glory Days

After the Halloween party I had with my students, there was a party at Nick's house (new PCV). I dressed up as a Chinese Muslim selling BBQ (they are everywhere), Lindsey was a chicken foot (a snack eaten by all the Chinese), Amanda was a cat, Nick had a ripped shirt strewn with red marker, and Gregory constructed a mask out of tinfoil. I'm just pretty sure that my Mom is happy I didn't dress up like a woman again.

The next weekend we had planned on traveling to Liijang, a town I have already been to twice, but it's a great little weekend getaway and the new volunteers in town had yet to go there. But, it just so happened that my school's sports meeting was on the same weekend.

All across China, every school, middle schools and high schools alike have a sports meeting that usually takes place in the fall, over a long weekend. The sports meeting is basically a school wide track meet in which anyone can participate if they sign up. This is what I love and hate about the sports meeting. I do enjoy watching track meets, and it's great to sit back and watch some of the events. That last 100 meters of the 400, or the precision of a hand off during the 4X100 are two of my favorites. Yet, the 11th heat of 5 girls all wearing jeans and awkwardly tripping over hurdles gets a little tiring. Why the hurdles girls? Did you know what they were? Oh, and then there's the dramatic dive through the finish into the open arms of a friend and subsequent passing out after jogging 200 meters. But, all of this does add to the allure of the sports meeting.

So, we had to postpone our Lijiang trip so I could defend my 100M dash title from the previous year, and watch kids in loafers and jeans trip over hurdles. I was running on the second day. I had signed up for the 100, 4X100, and 10X80. There was an open 400...but I didn't feel like embarrassing myself. When the day of the race came I was a little anxious. I wasn't as nervous as last year because I knew what to expect, but I still had some butterflies. I warmed up for awhile but never really felt as loose or ready as I wanted. When it was our turn, I made my way over to the 4th lane, got down when I heard the starter yell something in Chinese, and started moving when I heard the gun. I had a really bad start, it felt like I was 50. But, about half-way down the track I had caught two people and was going for the guy in first when we ran out of meters. Well, second's not so bad. After that race, there was the 4X100, which I was really pumped up for. I felt awesome, just like I was back in Manley Field house or at some big invitational. I was the anchor and the guy who had beaten me in the 100 was as well. Our team started off great and I watched every leg before me hold our lead. I received the baton in first with a 10 meter head start and never heard anyone. I wished the other teams were a little closer, but it felt good to really kick ass. The last event was the 10X80, a truly strange race. There are poles on both ends of the grandstand straight away and five team members at each side. When the race starts, people run back and forth to deliver the baton to the next person. The whole time you never know who's in first because there are so many damn people, but it's pretty hysterical to watch. Our team also won this race after holding the lead the whole time. It helps that my department at the school is somehow affiliated with the Physical Education department.

Overall, it was a great weekend. It sure made me miss my track days, but Lindsey and I trading race stories as we timed splits and running a few races, helped bring it all back. I can remember rolling my eyes when Dad used to talk about St. Agnes and how Charlie and him would go into the city every day after school to play street ball, or the way that his team was ranked nationally and how some of his buddies went on to play pro in Europe or coach at the college level. I just never thought I'd be bringing up my stories already. Glory Days! Baa Baa Baaaa Baa!

Justification...and Halloween!

Well, first off, my Mom asked me after reading the last post what all the complaining was about. What's my problem with China? I've complained a few times in posts, but I guess I keep a lot of the complaining here in China with Lindsey and the rest of the Peace Corp crew. Lindsey tends to tell people more of the problems she has faced here and the fact that her family has visited China lets them understand a lot more about this crazy place. Yet, after my Mom asked me why I was complaining...I had to sit back and ask myself the same thing..."What was my problem?" Is it just me? So, here is a little something that I wrote to try and explain China, my problems, and my disillusionment:

I didn'’t come to China to help people. My humanitarian beliefs are not what brought me to this place or into the Peace Corps. The reasons I joined the Peace Corps and then came to China were for the most part, selfish. The thing I wanted most was a departure, a new outlook, something beautiful, simple, and it seemed that that 'thing', that '‘something'’ is sold to us, as shown in the literature, or has somehow through the years morphed into the concept of: The Peace Corps Experience. I did want to live in a mudhut. I did want to eat bugs. I wanted to be cold in the winter and hot in the summer. More than anything, I wanted passion. I wanted it to be real.

China is a place that is passionless. It is a country whose college students favorite past-times are watching Qing Dynasty era soap operas, playing video games, and sleeping. Asking my students what they love, what they like to do, and knowing, before asking any of these questions what answers I will get, is painful. Do any of you like to read for fun? Do any of you like to paint? Do you like to write? Do any of you hate television? No.

The real question is this: What is it about this country that makes people feel like their souls are being stolen? Lindsey sees China as a place that is home to a population with no beliefs bigger then themselves, with no aspirations other then hedonism and monetary wealth. While the outside world may see China as a Buddhist country, anyone living here knows that this label is liberally applied with no meaning attached, just as fair-weather (Christmas-Easter) Catholics are not influenced by their label. While I feel this lack of a faith plays a role in defining China, I think the most basic problem is the sheer lack of beauty, or any appreciation of it.

If you spend the least amount of money as brashly as possible for construction projects, they look like it. If you allocate minimal funds for the maintenance of recently finished public works, they start to degrade. This is China'’s story, a story that is unfolding more and more rapidly as industrialization and modernization spread to every city, town, and hamlet across the country. The old is quickly tossed away in place of the new and everything is seen as better for it. China is moving forward quickly, but it's doing so without any reflection of the reasons for it's development. While China is a 'real' place, something I mentioned wanting during my experience in the Peace Corp, it is a place that takes no time to think and reflect upon itself and what it's doing, or the rest of the world. It takes no time to question, and therefore, has no time to see what its deficiences, needs, and loves are.

To counter all the negativity, I would just like to list some of the things that I love about China: I love the fact that I can buy fresh vegetables and fruit, merely a minutes walk from my house. I love how the elementary school children yell "hello" to me on their way to class, and then awkwardly think over what else they could possibly say. I love a lot of my students. I love the fact that I, and most everyone else in China never flinches when the power goes out, and stays out all day. I love walking and taking the bus everywhere. I love long train rides through a countryside that still seems timeless amid the roaring industrialization. I love how the eye's on the old women who picks through the garbage light up, as if it were Christmas morning when I give her a couple of bottles. I love peanut milk, soymilk, and these big round cookies that taste just like animal crackers for only $.20 a package. I love Chinese BBQ and these little oranges that you can peel in seconds. I love working 16 hours a week and using all that extra time to complain about it. There are things that I love here, a lot of them I guess, but it sure is easier to dwell on the bad. Oh, but I still hate the beer.

In closing, I threw a Halloween party for one of my classes on Halloween night. There was no power so the whole classroom was full of candles, which was awesome. A lot of the students dressed up, we bobbed for apples, I gave them candy corn, and I think that everyone had a pretty good time. I love Halloween back in the States and it actually felt like I was able to celebrate one of my favorite holidays here in China. I dressed up as Lindsey in a typical last second dash, and Lindsey donned my hat and went as me.

Crap.

Well crap. It looks like its been over a month since I've posted anything at all. While it might be clearly obvious to some...I think the three part Tibetan series is taking a little longer than expected. Its been caught up on the Editor's desk for quite some time, we're fiddling with different fonts and font sizes to see if we can get some more mileage out of the material we have, but it's an uphill battle. Anyway, a lot has happened to me since I returned from Tibet. I started my third semester (which is currently 7 weeks underway), celebrated my birthday (note the can of Guinness provided by the best GF in the world), went to Chengdu for a small Peace Corp training session, traveled to Chongqing during my one week National Day vacation, and got sick.

Firstly, Panzhihua has gained some new members. A PCV 11 relocated from his first site to take Lindsey's place at my school and we also have a newbie at Amanda's school named Nick. The first couple of weeks were a little rocky. It seemed that everyone had to recalibrate themselves to find their new role within a new group of people. Who would be the jaded China hater? The disillusioned sarcastic jokster? I still can't wait to find out. After the initial introductions, we have all become more comfortable with each other and things are going well. Yet, sadly, one guilty pleasure of mine has been hearing how Nick has been adjusting to China. I love to hear him express his excitement to learn the language and integrate into his community. He's also excited to teach, explore, meet Chinese people, and so on. My guilty pleasure is sated when I envision the reality here in China, swallowing a few of his lofty goals. I know, that's kind of terrible, but I can't help it. Recounting my first year, I can recall watching my initial intentions and goals morph and change into something else. Not that they all imploded in a vacuum of cynicycism...but that the way you look at this place, or any place for that matter, can change drastically within the span of a year and the methods you adapted to survive in that place change as well. I know volunteers who have done quite well here in China. There are those that have adapted and have grown to love or at least enjoy this place. I can still enjoy China for it's subtle and on frequent occasions, overt peculularities, but I hold no love for this place. And yes...I am counting down the months until I'm done. I guess, I just hope that Nick can adapt to this place and see it as the second home it has now become to Lindsey and I. More importantly, that he can fulfill his initial goals, or find ones that are just as lofty and fulfilling.

The 1st of October is China's National Day and directly following the day is a national week long holiday. I had a Peace Corp training in Chengdu the week before National Day, where we met up and discussed teaching things and stuff. Yet, the majority of us used the week as an excuse to blow a lot of money drinking beer and visit with people. PC put us up in a really fancy hotel outside of Chengdu, and let me tell you, the water pressure in those showers was worth the price. I played a lot of billiards, won some money at cards, and drank some more beer. All in all, two thumbs up. After that, I headed off to Chongqing to meet Lindsey for our week long vacation.

Chongqing had always been described to me as the literal City of Dis. I could only picture skies laden with coal dust, towering smokestacks, and grey buildings covering the landscape, and while this is pretty much what every Chinese city looks like, it actually was pretty nice. The city itself is home to around 30 million people (NY holds about 11 million) and is growing by leaps and bounds everyday. The city's claim to fame is that it was the capital of China while Japan was wreaking havoc on the country during the 30's and 40's. It's also a huge center for the production of every conceivable good known to man. The city is also a few hundred miles upstream from the infamous Three Gorges Dam. Overall, the city is much like every other Chinese city I have visited except for the fact that it is really big, really big. There is also a light rail system, which was really nice (I didn't know at the time that it had fallen off the track only a year ago killing a whole trains worth of people). Oh, and we could call...to get pizza...delivered. I don't know why I ever shunned this city. While in town, Lindsey and I stopped off at the local Wal-Mart (seriously) and grabbed ourselves an oven (we have made bread, muffins, oatmeal, bagels, and just bought cheese for pizza).

Hmm...well, none of that was very exciting... Alright, I'll try to have another post up before the month is out. 我的大便 是很漂亮。 Oh, I wanted to see if you can all see this Chinese or not. If you want to see what 'secret messege' I sent out, you can search for 'babel fish' and translate it from Simp. Chinese into English. Also, I'm still sick with a nagging cough, yay for pollution!

Tibet: First Day On The Road

I bought my plane ticket to Tibet for 1900 RMB ($250) at a small hostel in Chengdu that has a travel agency. Foreigners are still not able to buy tickets to Tibet themselves, they have to go through a travel agency to receive a 'tour permit', which is simply a front for the government to pocket about 300 RMB...but that's the way it is. I had originally wanted to take the new train to Tibet, which started running at the end of July, but the tickets are still very hard to come by. So, plane it was.

I took off on August 3rd at 8:00am, after paying 230 RMB in excess charges for my bike, running around the airport to put the bike through an x-ray machine, and then watching it loaded into the plane from my window seat. The flight was very smooth and only took about two hours. There wasn't much of note besides the fact that I was sitting with approximately 30 other foreigners and oh yeah... the view. Chengdu sits in one of the largest fertile basins in China, a large stretch of land shaped like an oval and surrounded on all sides by mountains and directly to the west of Chengdu, the Himalayas come screaming out of the ground. Flying over Eastern Tibet, the plane skirted over jagged snow capped peaks, which the clouds struggled to rise above. These mountains were ringed with mile long glaciers that ran through the valleys on every side. It seemed as if the plane was just a few feet above the tallest mountain peaks, but the river gorges cutting through the mountains were a dizzying three vertical miles further down. I snapped a dozen or so pictures, but none of them seemed to do the view justice, and then before I knew it, we were already starting to descend.

While everyone streamed out of the baggage claim area and started jostling for seats on the next bus or cab into Lhasa, I began putting my bike together. This time, I didn't almost break down into tears (as was not the case back in New Orleans on my first bike trip). I was so excited to get moving, but I took my time getting everything ready, pausing to take deep breaths of the crisp, cool air. Finally, I got on my bike, made my way to the exit of the small Lhasa airport, and took a left onto the only road.

The sky was a deep blue and the mountains on either side of the valley were splashed with sand dunes. Tibet is by all regards, a high altitude desert, and the stark contrast between the aridity and shimmering fertile valleys caught me off guard. Soon after leaving the airport, I began passing small farmhouses that were built from mud brick. Each house was built in a courtyard fashion, but the architecture was very different from anything I had seen in China. Each house had a stick on all four corners of the outer wall that was covered in prayer flags. Then, flying high above on a stick located in the center of the roof, a Chinese flag was commonly seen. Which I later found out, is a requirement for certain houses and towns. There were also ornate paintings under the door way and window eves. But the thing that surprised me the most, were the people. As soon as I left the airport and started down the road, I was greeted with smiles and waves. The fact that something as simple as friendliness towards a stranger could catch me so off guard, should tell you a great deal about China. Throughout the day, the friendliness of the local people astounded me time and time again.

One of my first stops was a small Tibetan village and a monastery. This first monastery set the pace for the rest of my trip... which found me not spending any money on entrance fees into the larger monasteries, which can sometimes cost 50 kuai or more (which was typically my budget for an entire day). So, I walked around the small Tibetan town and then went to explore the hillside ruins of a large monastery that was dynamited during the Cultural Revolution. Trudging up the hillside took a little while, but the view of the valley below and having a whole complex of thousand year old ruins to explore by myself, was just what I had been looking for. After spending about two hours in the ruins I watched thunderclouds slowly work their way into the valley a few miles away and decided it was time to eat and then find a place to sleep.

I quickly glanced around and then pulled off the road. The spot I found to camp was about 400 meters from the road in an orchard, a really beautiful place. I set up my tent, which must now be set up with the aid of a stick, and I sat outside to write. The fact that a person can waste a day getting up at 12:00, only to go shopping and watch a movie, as I have done today while writing this on the computer, or, a person can spend that same day flying into Tibet, biking 60 miles, exploring and experiencing new sites, food, and people, and then spending the night in the middle of the Tibetan countryside, boggles my mind. The day had been fantastic. On my first day I saw a place and a people that were truly different. While I watched the same orange and blue dump trucks fly past, saw much of the same cement Chinese architecture, and saw hundreds of signs in Chinese, the differences between this place and China stand out just as clearly as those signs welcoming you to this county or that in Chinese script. The sheer friendliness of the people, the language, the architecture, the dress, the food, the breath-taking surroundings, and some undercurrent that may simply be owed to the aura surrounding Tibet, manages to clearly set this place apart from China.

On the next day I would rise and head to Samye monastery, the first in Tibet. It required a boat ride, which was a bit of nerve-racking because of the fact that anyone (foreigners) in this valley is supposed to have a permit for traveling and the police supposedly use the Samye ferry as a standard spot for checking permits.

Tibet: Introduction

I'll start by saying that I've posted about 100 (98?) pictures on my Yahoo! Pictures page, which is located at: Brian's Photos (the link to the Tibet section is in the middle of the page with the picture of the mountains). I'll be posting some photos on this site as well, as far as they relate to my tales, but the majority of my photos are on the Yahoo! page, so feel free to place comments or...order your favorite ones by posting on this site. Also, this is the first part to a topic that I can hopefully restrict to about three installments, so as not to bore everyone and myself. Here we go...

The debate has raged on for years about whether or not Tibet should be a sovereign nation. Yet, while this debate rages, China continues bringing Tibet into the Chinese fold through Han emigration, modernization, and most recently, the development of the Tibet-Qinghai railway. Knowing this before I left for Tibet, I was more then a little apprehensive about what I would find, so much so that I considered other destinations at the last minute. My paramount concern being that I would simply be traveling through a Living Tibetan Museum as depicted, curated, rebuilt, and preserved by the hand of the Chinese. The majority of my fears revolved around two questions I feared greatly... Does 'Tibet' still exist? And more importantly, would I ever have the chance of seeing or experiencing it?

This was the question I set out to answer with a great deal of anxiety three weeks ago, and I hope I can fulfill it for you here in the next couple of entries.

A Year and Counting

I arrived in China on July 2nd of last year a little confused, a little lost, and a little scared. I clearly remember collecting my bags at the Chengdu airport and then boarding a bus with the rest of the volunteers to head into the city. The city was so large, so modern...yet, so different and new. I remember laughing to myself as I looked at all the billboards along the ultra-modern highway that cut its way into the city, because no matter how much those advertisers wanted me to buy their products, without a big picture...no Chinese writing was going to help me. After traveling through a dense urban landscape for an hour, a landscape that seemed to be repeating itself every five minutes, we started passing through the most developed part of the city. It contained thousands of bicycles and cars flying past the bus, bright signs in unintelligible Chinese, Chinese pop songs blaring from store fronts, and people everywhere, then, we stopped. We stepped off the buses in front of our hotel and stumbled around dazed and surprised. We were finally here, for better or worse.

Later that day, another volunteer and I decided to walk around a bit, to leave the safety of our cushy downtown hotel and go exploring. Matt could speak a bit of Chinese because he had studied the language in college. When we stopped our walk after five minutes because Matt wanted to haggle 1 yuan off the price of a pirated dvd, I was a amazed, scared, and nervous. After that first day, I was wondering if I had done the right thing. China was not the place I thought it was going to be, it was faster, more developed, and bigger than I ever could have imagined. But here I was.

I would start learning the language later that day by repeating the four Chinese tones over and over and over during our introductory class to the language. Later that week, we all moved out of the hotel and moved in with our host families, began language classes, and learned how to eat hot pot. I played soccer with my host brother, made Chinese food with my host families' grandparents, and always, drank too much beer at dinner with my host Dad. We bitched about our teacher training, bitched about our language training, and described our bowel movements in vivid detail. I improved my Chinese, training came to a close, and then, I learned that I would be moving to Panzhihua, my current home.

A great deal has happened in this first year, I have made a lot of friends and met my fabulous live-in sitemate/girlfriend. I have learned how to speak Chinese, but have also learned how to pretend like I can't speak Chinese to avoid having the same agonizing conversation ten times a day. I have certainly been hardened by this experience, and find myself complaining about China occasionally. I have no deep love for this country, but still find myself amused by the countless idiosyncrasies that can only be described as Chinese. In the next year, I don't know what's going to happen, yet, I am still excited for the teaching, friends, traveling, and day to day life that is mine here in China. I still have a lot left to do and explore here, and I still wake up excited for each day, and that's all I can hope for this next year.

This summer I'll be heading to Yibin, a city north of here, to teach for two weeks and then I'll be heading to Tibet for three weeks. So, I probably won't have a new post up until late August. I would just like to say thank you to everyone who has read this blog or has been in touch with me in anyway, be it through AIM, myspace, facebook, Skype, googletalk, or the occasional e-mail. It's great to know that my family and friends are still with me, even though I'm on the other side of the world.

Train Ride, Boat Ride, and Minorities!

This past weekend Lindsey and I took a trip out to a little place called Xichang. This city is located a couple hours north of us on the train and it is the capital of the Yi minority here in China. The city is also the Chinese Cape Canaveral equivalent, they have launches every once in awhile and have had some supposedly incredible failures that ended in whole towns being destroyed when the rockets plummet from the sky, but this is all covered up. Last little fact...this city was one of the places that the Communist party trekked through during the Long March. They had to secure safe passage with the Yi locals or they never would have made it through the then foreign, unwelcoming lands of the Yi. Oh, the Yi also had slaves until the 1950's.

We jumped on the train here in Panzhihua on Monday just to take a little trip before I head off for the summer and Lindsey heads home (she'll be returning in the fall). I had looked up the city of Xichang in my China travel book and it looked fairly interesting, part of the old city wall still exists, there's a lake nearby, and we could buy some minority trinkets, most importantly a handmade Yi minority skirt for my Mom (I still haven't sent anything home...it costs a lot!). So, we pulled into town after the train ride and checked into a decent hotel. We spent the night walking around the main shopping street which could easily be confused with downtown Denver. Every Chinese city I've been to seems to have these incredily well-maintained, fancy shopping streets with trendy expensive stores, yet these are really the last places you want to be when your in China. They all look the same, have the same stores, and have the same people walking around looking at you. While it's fun to people watch in these places for a little while, your interest starts to wane as the fiftieth group of gigling teenage girls dressed in a seeminly haphazard assortment of colors and hair styles strolls past. So, our first impressions of Xichang were mostly dissapointment; it was the same as everywhere else in this country.

The next day we headed off to go found the South Gate, the only part of the ancient Ming Dynasty city wall that is still standing. Around the wall, there was supposed to be an eclectic local market and teahouses. Before we reached the wall, the buildings lining the street started slowly growing older. It was then that I found an antique shop that had the Chinese 2 yuan bill from 196o that I had been looking for (I started collecting the set of 1960 bills a month ago and the 2 bill is the rarest. Most stalls sell the bill for between 100-150 yuan, but this old, rundown shop sold it to me for 50...pretty sweet huh?). Further down the road was the local market, full of women and men dressed in their ehtnic garb. The road by the city gate was a congested nightmare, but it was more entertaining then annoying. We walked along and looked at the puppies, old fortune tellers predicting the future by looking at the contents of cracked eggs, the bird market, and the shops selling Yi crafts. I ended up by my Mom a pretty nice Yi skirt with Lindsey's help and then I bought a couple hand painted wooden bowls.

The next day we took the bus over to nearby lake, where one can supposedly swim. We got off the bus amid miles of lakeside construction and stumbled around looking for the park, but couldn't find it. Eventually we found a place to rent little electric boats. After we crawled our way across the lake in our painfully slow boat we saw a small wooden boat being paddled towards us. When the woman paddling the boat got closer she yelled to us (yes the woman paddling the boat was going at least two times as fast as us). We didn't know what she wanted right away but she ended up coming right over and tethered our boat to hers. It turned out to be a mid-lake BBQ boat, fully equipped with beers that tasted like they had been microwaved for five minutes. The woman had a small charcoal fire and different food that we could pick out. So, we had two beers, potatoes, and this green vegatable called jiucai that Lindsey loves. After we ate, we jumped in the lake to cool off and then made our way back to the dock and then hotel. All in all it was a great little break from the average day around here. It was nice to get away and see something different here in China. Sometimes, everything starts to look the same and things start to get a little dull, but we can still get rid of that feeling by taking little trips here and there.

Adieu Quasi-Ponytail....and My Hot GF!!!

Well, I hadn't gotten my haircut in about 8 months until last week. I finally told myself that it was time, but only because I was able to pull it back in a quasi-ponytail, as a much needed ponytail shout-out to Nate Kester, one of my college buddies who refused to part with his much loved locks until very recently. So, before I went and got my haircut twenty steps from my front door for 3 kuai (38 cents), I took some pictures in memory of the ponytail, while trying to simulate an average day in the life of Nate...




"Yeah!, Phish is
the best!"

"What the hell is this
light, watered down,
lacking flavor, non-
Guinness swill!!!"

"Lets see what
The Boys (Phish)
are up to!!"

"##(*!^($!)*!!$!
%& friggin' George
Lucas!!!"

Here's my girlfriend Lindsey and me!!! Wooohooo!!!

Baldwin the Monk

I woke up and sat in bed, listening to the activities of the house from the security of my room. I finally rose at about 9:00, put on my clothes, and walked outside. It was still a little cool out but the sky was blue today with only a few patches of clouds. It looked as if I wouldnt have to shiver and try working blood into my hands as I rode today. My agenda for them morning was light; wandering the streets to try and grab some breakfast and then take some pictures. After sauntering towards the center of town, which was denoted by a few farmers selling produce and some groups of old men and women chatting about whatever old Chinese men and women chat about. I didn't notice any place that seemed to have food, but there was one house with a big colorful sign, so that seemed like as good a place as any.

When I walked in the gate, the owner rushed over and greeted me. He whisked me inside the courtyard as I asked him if he had any dou jiang (soymilk). One of the best breakfasts in China is hot soymilk that comes with fry bread. The soymilk is served in a large bowl with one spoonful of sugar in the bottom, and then you tear the fry bread into pieces and dip it in the milk...all this for only one Yuan (12 cents). The owner assured me they did, and continued talking as we walked past three men and a dead goat. He brought me into the familys living room and put on the TV, and then he began rooting around for a video to play for me. The video was a hand-held camera production of roughly 40 old townspeople doing ethnic circle dances in the town square. Seeing these dances for the first time is interesting, especially if you go to a bonfire where people are drinking, dancing, and having a grand ol time. But, the dark living room where I sat by myself failed to produce the same festive atmosphere. The old man smiled and nodded approvingly for having done his job and then quickly left. I sat and watched the video for about 30-minutes, wondering if these people were ordered to dance, or were simply caught in the act. As my boredom increased, I wandered outside to see what the three men and the goat were up to.

The goat was lying on a circular metal stand, above a bowl filled with charcoal. The men were standing around this contraption looking at the goat and talking with each other. While I didnt understand the reason for it, the men were trying to brown the outside of the goat. They werent trying to cook it; just tan its skin. But, the fire didnt seem to be doing the job fast enough so they were thinking of new ways to get the job done. After an hour of stoking the fire with bellows, they went and bought liquor to poor over the goat. After this didnt seem to do the job, one of the men heated up a shovel in the fire and then pushed that against the goats skin, this was met with a great deal of approval. So, while I waited for breakfast, I watched these men tan a goat with shovels, cut it open, completely disembowel it, clean all the intestines, and kick some chickens away from the scraps. This took about three hours. While this was going on, I noticed that the soybeans for my breakfast were being ground in a hand-operated grist. While it took four hours to get a bowl of soymilk (no bread), the family let me eat lunch with them and didnt charge me.

I thanked the family a great deal, especially the poor old lady who spent four hours of the day making soymilk for a foreigner, and then headed back to the Doctors house. I ended up paying the family 20 kuai for the previous nights dinner and place to stay. They told me that the town would be having a bonfire with dancing that night, and that I was welcome to stay in their house longer, but I told them that I had to be on my way. So, I packed up my things, said thank you to everyone with a tip of the bike helmet, and headed out. I knew it was going to be a better day when the road immediately turned from dirt into asphalt.

That day, I rode through a dusty, traffic filled town called Ping Di. It was hell compared to where I had just stayed, but it was, just as the last town had been in its own way, very Chinese. As a small cross roads on the border of Sichuan and Yunnan, it seemed that its survival depended on the hundreds of identical orange and blue dump trucks that roared through. I ended up eating lunch there and walked through the small town market, still in search of the classic blue Mao Ze Dong hat for my Dad. The town had no hotels, and more importantly, no pressing reason to stay there for more than an hour or two. With two options, either to travel the main road towards Panzhihua or to head towards Yunnan, I choose the latter.

After riding for an hour or two, I ended up sidetracking to go up a small road that led up a mountain. It was the kind of road that you wish you only had to ride down. I ended up pushing my bike up more then half of it, but the surrounding forest was something Ive missed during my time in China. The sound and smells around me set me at ease and helped me to resist the urge of turning my bike around and soaring back down the mountain. Then, in the forest I heard the sounds of chanting and saw a small path leading towards what I soon discovered to be a monastery. It was about 6:00 in the evening and the soothing sounds of chanting carried through the woods, mixed with the sweet smell of the pines, and the breeze gliding through the trees was perfect. I ended up staying there for two nights.

Chinese Weddings

This past week I attended a Chinese wedding. One of the younger female teachers at our school who is one of Lindsey's good friends decided to take the plunge. A plunge that is certainly different from the way that most Americans look at and perceive marriage. For the past few months we've known that she was going to be married soon, but no one knew when. Then, this past Monday, Lindsey told me that Qin Qin was going to have her wedding on Friday. On Wednesday morning, the wedding was off. On Wednesday evening, it was back on. Let's just say, I didn't get an invitation in the mail. So, when Friday rolled around me and Lindsey got ready for the wedding party. I decided that the occasion was worthy of a fresh pair of pants, a clean, yet wrinkled dress shirt, and a pair of shoes (which I haven't worn in two months, opting instead for my $2 flip-flops). Lindsey wore a skirt she bought in Laos and a wrinkled white blouse.

If you have already assumed as much, wedding is not really a big to-do in China. Typically there is no wedding ceremony because the Church doesn't have as big a foothold in China as apathy. But, it is becoming more popular to have wedding photos taken in a traditional western wedding dress and tuxedo. For the photos, you go to a one-stop-shop where you rent the dress and tuxedo, get your hair and make-up done, and then you go traipsing around town to the standard beautiful places to take the photos. In all the wedding photos I've seen, none of the women look like themselves. They are all so made up with powder and make-up that their skin is translucent. The wedding itself is simply signing your papers at the local government office and then you have a Chinese banquet style party with your guests, basically the same banquet you would have anytime you go out to eat with a large group of people.

So, Lindsey, Hong Mei, and myself showed up to the wedding a little late and sat down at an already packed table. The table consisted mostly of English teachers from our school and their children. I was sitting next to a rather peculiar boy who ended up handing me fist fulls of sunflower seeds and chocolates, he also gave me about 8 cigarettes throughout the night, he was probably 12. Qin Qin and her new husband came over to toast our table with glasses of wine. They were both incredibly happy throughout the whole night and it was really cute to see.

Well, I wanted to finish this before I headed off for Chengdu today, but it looks like the 15-hour train ride has approached quicker then i thought it would. So, it's off to Chengdu to get my mid-service Peace Corp physical and eat a whole lot of western food and maybe some beer that actually tastes good and doesn't contain any poison (formaldehyde).

Damn You Colin Brady...

So, after perusing Colin's little blog that was made with this website's template, I said to myself, "that is far superior to my pathetic myspace blog". I have therefore decided to switch my allegiance over to this new site. Sure, maybe I just need to follow in the footsteps of a Computer Science major...but this site also supports images within the text with little to no effort...which is sweet.

This past week the whole Panzhihua crew headed into Chengdu on medical leave, with the exception of Steve who is off to far bigger and better things (he is already visiting his host family in Nepal where he served in the Peace Corps prior to China).