Mr. Wu's Wild Ride

(Joseph)

Dear Reader,

So much has occurred in the past few days, and my experiences have been so varied, that I cannot focus on any one topic at present. Thus, I apologize in advance for this somewhat scattered, stream-of-consciousness blog entry that will touch upon various topics.

Mr. Wu’s Wild Ride
So far, driving in China has been 99% off-road, 99% of the time, and not even the best of car shocks will cushion the ride, so I think the Chinese don’t bother with shocks. No, the true shocks are apparently left for the tourists. Navigating the roads is semi-organized, nail-biting chaos. The roads are most often extremely circuitous and rife with rocks and pits, which makes for a fairly uncomfortable riding experience. I’m not quite sure there are driving laws or “rules,” actually.
There are, much of the time (but not always), two “lanes,” but no dividing line between lanes because cars are passing each other all the time. When passing occurs, the passer honks his horn several times to warn the passed vehicle. This is why honking can be heard continuously in China (the words incessant and cacophonous also come mind). And because the roads are so windy, drivers will honk as they approach a bend to caution anyone who may be traveling in the other “lane”—if two lanes exist at all. I was certain I would die on our three-hour car ride to rural Shaxi Village; I braced for a head-on collision at least a dozen times, especially as we climbed a mountain on which the narrow road was a mere few feet away from a death-plummet. And regarding vehicles on the road: most often you see very old, dust-grimed trucks and motorcycles with an attached wagon for carrying goods (which makes for what appears to be a three-wheeled car), but every so often you will see a shiny, seemingly off-the-lot BMW or Mercedes sweep by. Contradiction indeed—or some of the nouveau-riche took a wrong turn and ended up many hours away from home. Regardless, if any eager and quixotic entrepreneur is looking for a monumentally-challenging business venture, start a paving business in China. Until then, I can only hope that the city roads will be smoother.

Tourist Attractions: In Reverse
I don’t think Dali gets too many foreign visitors, or at least Caucasian visitors. Our group turns heads everywhere we go. While sitting outside a restaurant for lunch in Dali, hundreds of local residents and even Asian tourists would stare at us and mumble to themselves. In fact, a few of us have achieved celebrity status over here, and the occasional Chinese person will ask for permission to take a picture with us, anomalies in less-touristy parts of China. We may see a white face every few hours here, and in Shaxi Village (also part of Dali), there is not a white face to be seen, except for a 60-something retired dentist from Los Angeles (originally from South Carolina, and his Southern drawl was indeed a strange sound in China) who married a 30-something Chinese woman and moved to Shaxi Village only two months ago. Why did he move here, and why is he not opening a dental practice here, where his services would be most welcome? “It’s a whole different way of life here,” he says. True, but I bet his young wife has something to do with it too. Regardless, it’s a different feeling being the head-turning minority over here—a minority by a very long shot. All eyes on us.

Food Glorious Food…Maybe
If possible, there is too much food over here. It is everywhere you look, and you can’t escape the various smells of cooking meats as you walk the city streets. It seems like our adventures are the lines that connect the “meal dots” during our travels. I am not used to eating such big meals for every meal. Initially, I thought I would lose weight on this trip because I am not too “adventurous” when trying too many unique foods (or drinks such as, for example, snake wine or the dried, salted fish that you see in Hong Kong). Now, I am starting to think I should be shopping for larger clothes. The Chinese, however, must have iron-clad stomachs, because food sanitation is quite poor. In Hong Kong, I distinctly remember uncovered, unwrapped food sitting outside of various shops while debris-generating construction was clouding the air only a few feet away. Also, “restaurants” are not exactly what most people have in mind. Some people run a “restaurant” in their own kitchens or homes, which they often bill as “guest houses” if they rent a few rooms to visiting tourists. Don’t get me wrong: some of these guests houses and kitchens are quite welcoming and beautiful; however, last night in rural Shaxi Village, our “restaurant” looked like a dimly-lit abandoned warehouse with peeling walls and piles of refuse sitting in the corner—the only “decoration” being a flickering television set playing a dated-looking Taiwanese soap opera in the corner of the room. Then, in the middle of our meal, I hear a cell-phone chime and our cook whips out a state-of-the-art, sleek and shiny smartphone. Land of contradictions indeed.

Puff the Magic Chinese Dragon
So what else are the Chinese people putting in their mouths? Cigarettes. Billions of them.
Smoking in China is a huge problem. Millions of Chinese workers make a living in the tobacco industry here, and cigarettes are super cheap (about the equivalent of seventy-five U.S. cents per pack). Eighteen to eighty plus years old, four out of every five people I see are smoking; most of the older Chinese have been smoking for over 50 years. Although hard to believe, most deaths in China have some connection to smoking, according to research I conducted online. Yang, our Dali tour guide, expressed concern that the problem is, not in her words, an elephant in the room that no one is acknowledging. Smoking is a deeply engrained way of life here, where addicts are everywhere. At yesterday’s market in Shaxi Village, I saw many elderly women with cigarettes dangling from their mouths while they conducted business transactions—a sight for sore eyes, and a plague for healthy lungs.

Chinese Numbers: Omens, Omens Everywhere
I love this place. Everyone thinks I am half my age here. Our Dali tour guide, upon meeting us, did not know who the teacher was, and mistook me as one of the high school students. At a local tie-dye shop (did you know that tie-dye is an old Chinese art form?), another woman also guessed that I was eighteen years old. I am told that my skin is very smooth and young-looking. A typical mid-30s male in rural China is wrinkled with the lines of hard work chiseled across his sandpaper face. I am introduced to a woman who is my age, and she easily looks a full decade or two older than she should. These are work-hardened and hard-working people here in Dali (perhaps a bit weary as well). Maybe this much-welcome Chinese flattery about my age is merely a method of buttering me up to buy without barter, but I know better.

A bit more about numbers. Note to tourists: when bartering, you should not offer 250 Yuan. The number 250 means idiot in Chinese. This would explain the smirk I got when offering 250 Yuan for a tie-dye wall hanging I bartered down from 320 to 260 (also note: there is not as much haggling to be had when the goods are handmade and unique in contrast to factory-made, which makes sense). Also, the number four is avoided in Chinese because the word sounds very similar to the word for death when spoken. Six means good luck, however, and the number eight, means good luck when referring to money matters. In China, significance and symbolism is everywhere, which leads me to…


Tall Tales for Everyone, and Everything
The Chinese have a story for everything. I feel like I’m being told a few dozen different stories about this or that every day, and the stories are wild—so wild, in fact, that they have escaped my imagination and memory. Upon seeing an odd rock formation, the Chinese are quick to “see something” in it, such as an elephant with its trunk in the water at Elephant Trunk Hill in Guilin. During the Li River cruise, I was supposed to see seven horses in the side of a mountain. I was told that most people see only two or three. I did not see any. Then again, I guess that is typical of someone who offers 250 Yuan during a barter. I prefer to think that is rock is sometimes just a rock. My literature students will most likely enjoy this, as many have told me that I over-interpret symbols in literature; the Chinese would make me look like the most literal and narrow-minded person alive. Or perhaps this stuff is just made up for tourists, and the Chinese are secretly laughing at us for being such fools as they accept our Yuan for admission to see a rock. Then again, we westerners have our Blarney Stone and Plymouth Rock, so I can’t be too critical.