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Fear and Loving in the Middle Kingdom
Submitted 5/6/04 Part III: Riding the Iron Rooster for 59 straight hours, a little spy and arrival to the city of spring Fuzhou is a mammoth city of six million people, i have heard said that is like Shanghai but in what way no one would speak. Luckily we stayed only one night there, the was decent better than the four bus trip i had just completed seated next to a very pregnant woman, i prayed she did not want an American next to her when her baby was born. In the morning i woke up to catch some of the super bowl, yes they showed it here, in Chinese of course except for the names on the jerseys luckily they were not translated. Pats had it under control from the very early moments and i had to leave but at least i was at a little peace. I did not sleep well throughout the night women kept calling asking if i wanted them to come to my room, when i asked them why they said nothing..strange indeed. The Chinese call the train "The Iron Rooster" no one is sure exactly why except having to do with not being able to pull feathers from it...futile i guess like blood from a stone or the truth from a republican. The station was packed, end of Chinese new years many people traveling back home after visiting friends and family and eating some killer food. The year of the monkey was very underway. Long live the might Monkey King the great Sage equaling heaven. (Journey to the West reference its a Chinese book...whatever). When i was in the station my thoughts drifted back to pats hoping the panthers had nothing...We of course had received insider train tickets through a friend of a friend a sympathetic undergrounder, otherwise we would be stuck on the east coast and life would have been hindered greatly or maybe eastern china wanted the foreign devils on the road, no one knows for sure right now. I smoked with my Tibet contact in the bathroom the sign said no smoking but the janitor said because i was American i could do whatever i wanted. God bless him. I also befriended some red army soldiers they liked me, i liked them, it was all good. Then came time to board the train, we said goodbye to our Tibetan friends, i knew i would miss them, and still do. The boarding was crazy massive amounts of Chinese running toward some old looking train. All the car's looked the same and Bj seemed to know which was ours but did he or was he guessing, whatever the case we walked by bunk after bunk till we came to ours...three beds 3 feet above one another, a bed at least. Bj was on the highest bunk and i was down on the bottom in the shit, Bj and i were the only non-Chinese on the train. I was watched, and the government placed a young mother and her 3 year old son across from to watch my every move. The little spy was sneaky, whenever i would listen to my mp3 player he would approach and grab it and push buttons and when i wrote he would come over and write too reading my every word he knew 16 languages that little bastard but when i asked for a single cookie all of a sudden he knew no language. He would find nothing in my note book to connect me to the Quebec sepratists, thank god i burned those papers long ago. The army men at the station lied they said the trip would conclude the next morning but it was actually almost three days, lying bastards. It was hell, eating instant noodles and reading Howard Zinn on the Iron rooster a hard life to love. But finally we arrived to the City of Spring my home for the next five months, my home right now. All i wanted was to get a hotel and wander through my beloved city. More to come... Submitted 4/28/04 Part II: Xiamen city with lights, "Playahs Ball" and no sympathy for the foreign devils (in regards to classes starting) I forgot to mention SARS. I had heard of such things but to see people in Hong Kong sprawled about the street dead or drunk but there were streets there and people pretending to be doctors wearing masks riding bikes to work in suits. In Taipei there were high tech monitors checking the temperature of each traveler to the micro-degree. No money to save the poor but high tech machines. Yes xiamen, xiamen is a cross between Chuck'E'Cheese and Boston if Boston was warm all year and across the water from Taiwan. It is a city of immense wealth a special economic zone whatever that really means, full of dick heads with money and nice cars. We arrived in the sin city and acquired a hotel room immediately. It was 4 dollars each a day a fine deal with the shower/toilet bathroom wonderful. We then had dinner with our three Tibetan contacts. They were teaching me useful phrases like "lighter" and "i want a lighter" and of course "beer". Our whole meal was less than 3 American dollars including drinks...i liked this place already. We then went to a club/bar. We did this the entire week so i will only describe the first night. We entered a giant room with two stories and an open area with some kind of stage. We were shuffled by a very cute polite Chinese woman to a table in the corner a huge booth with comfortable seats and dim lights. Because we were outsiders we were given three waiters to light our cigs and pour our drinks most table had one but my friend told the manager i was a oil mogul and deserved great respect. They then brought us offerings of fruit and and veggies. The beer was expensive but out Tibetan friends were part of the underground and received massive money from their home. The women there were beautiful and stared at us waiting to see what Americans do when beer was placed in front of them, it was a test, i failed. I felt a rock star as girls would approach the table and my friend translated. Then every once in a while a performer would go on the stage give me a quick nod and i would wave and then they would sing or dance. I met a girl in the city who amazed me, we talked a lot she spoke English we talked about Pizza Hut because here Pizza Hut is a high class place and big bucks, she asked me what i liked i said the meat-lovers, she said shrimp soup...maybe we were not meant to be, I have never seen shrimp soup at pizza hut in America I told her she just laughed. There was a debate after a few days as to when classes began, Kunming was of course across the country and they had never mentioned when the classes started, very Chinese no details unless you need them and we didn't need them. The web page was no help and we called the number from the web page but the man who received my call spoke no English and I asked if he was Yunnan University in Kunming. The reply was unbearable I think he thought me some chump. Eventually we decided to leave one week from when we arrived, a long week. We went to a Buddhist temple and looked out over the city. Lovely at a distance, we smoked with some old man who spoke only Russian. I trusted him though. Then we left Xiamen to Fujio and boarded a train... More to come... Submitted 4/26/04 Part I: Arrivals Departures, Hong Kong in less than 24 hours, Long live Chairman Mao! It was a cold December as I boarded a flight. It was the year of the monkey a horrible year indeed. There is not much hope for the monkey the poor bastard. I was returning to the middle kingdom to see how life was there for the most populated country, the red star has risen. I had avoided the sun for 23 hours but it began to rise as i arrived to Taipei. A dirty city indeed. I smoked a cigarette in the smoking lounge with a bunch of Chinese men and one other American named Dave. He was going to Thailand to teach, he had never been, i said they had prostitutes there, he was not deterred. I arrived to Hong Kong asian New York. I got a hotel room thank God for the slavation army. I dropped off my bag and went to kowloon bay to ride the blue star across the bay. Nothing like sea air and skyscrapers. This was not china, this was the underbelly of china, the retarded little brother who was rich and mom made you play with. Beer was too steep so i only drank coors. I went to an irish bar but that didnt make me love Hong Kong. We had booked a bus the next day, Bj and I. We were off to Xiamen a lovely place i am told. I was tired so i went to bed early and the bus left very early so no time to mess around. We didnt even know where the bus stop was. We tried to ask but they dont speak mandarin the sick fucks we would play there game but only for the next hour because we were about to cross the border into real china. There were many soldiers keeping mother fuckers out of hong kong, out of the western life. We had to walk through two gates and on the other side Bj said "I know i am in China because there is a dude over there pulling a cart wearing flip flops. Right he was, this was china. Bj bought a pack of cigs and it was less than one american dollar, a sign of things to come. People stared at us and shouted words like "Hi and Hello" interesting indeed. We at lunch on the bus and after 8 hours of looking at chinese graves and people hard at work in fields we arrived in Xiamen. Let life begin again, let it begin. More to come... |