Travelers Traversing China

Disclaimer: Since I haven't written anything since I've gotten here, I'm going to slam you with a BIG post, so big that I'm separating it into two posts (although the first is still really long). This is the first post, which is more of a travel log for all you curious folk out there, and the second one, the one underneath this post is one of my ruminations since I've been here. So get yourself a cup of coffee or whatever you need to make yourself comfy, and indulge yourselves.

Only a week has passed since I left America Home of the Brave and entered China Communist Country, and so much has happened I can't even wrap my mind around all the days, food, events, people, and Chinese words I've encountered. It doesn't help I've been awake since 5 AM this morning and swimming in sweat all day. There's something about walking in the heat and sweating all day that makes you exhausted by 10 PM. WELL LET ME TELL YOU WHAT'S BEEN GOING ON OVER HERE.

Dan and I have pretty much seen the 3 extremes of China from the most developed (Hong Kong/Kowloon), pretty developed (Guangzhou), and the least developed (Linggao, Hainan) in the past 5 days.

KOWLOON/HONG KONG:

We first arrived in Hong Kong and checked in a swanky hotel in Kowloon (a city right outside Hong Kong) my mom insisted on reserving me when she purchased my ticket to China as a graduation gift. Needless to say it was my first time in such a nice hotel room without parents or family. I felt as if I were playing grown-up in this hotel room with a safe, plump pillows, and fancy bathroom. Dan and I roamed around that night, looking for a bar and somewhere to get that infamous delicious Chinese food Dan has always been raving about. We looked for the familiar words “jiu ba” which means bar, and was disappointed to see the scarcity of said word. Many places were also closing as it was 2 AM, but we finally chose a place without beer, although they had an impressive Chinese menu with pictures to accompany the descriptions. I have found pictures of food quite necessary and helpful here in China where I can't read what the dishes are and descriptions are scarce. Kowloon, in general, is a dirty, overcrowded city teeming with impressively large cockroaches, 7-11s, and towering, neglected apartment buildings squeezed in between nicer company buildings with pretty Asian girls smiling down on the streets from billboards. We were originally going to stay for one night and head to Guangzhou the next day where we would take a ferry to the island, Hainan, but plans change as they often do when traveling, and we decided to stay another day to see more of Hong Kong. The next day Dan and I checked out of the hotel to find some place more fit for our budget, and we found it on the 12^th floor of a multifunctional building filled with vendors, apartments, and currency exchange booths. The hostel was called “Cosmic Guesthouse” and it was mostly a narrow hallway with doors that led to small rooms. The funniest part about our room was the “rain showers” which is a 1 square meter area consisting of a sink, shower head, and toilet, making most sense to shower while sitting on the toilet. No joke. Although much of the area was urban, Dan and I found hidden beauty in a park with a swimming pool, aviary, sculptures, and a path that led to the coastline where we could see man's effect on the natural word-- shimmering skyscrapers, construction cranes, and mountains enveloped in fog dotted the horizon. A city apart from the city. Dan and I decided to take a train to central Hong Kong for the night for some dinner and drinks. We strayed from the main road into the dark alleys where we found a small outside restaurant with terrific service and sub-par food. What delighted me the most was our waiter, an old man who reminded me of Dobby (from Harry Potter) in features and stance, who kept on filling our cups with beer we ordered, and then would pour our beer into his own cup for himself. He neither asked nor was unnatural about this. I found it hilarious. We clanked glasses.

After dinner Dan and I stumbled upon a raging bar street off of one of the main roads. Whities and Asians were pouring from the bars onto the streets, dancing and breaking bottles. Dan and I drank a beer from higher ground so we could observe the unfolding scene below on the streets. One beer turned into more beers and many shots, and making a friend, Ethan, who we realized was a bboy when he started breaking only after I attempted a freeze and fell on my face. We danced the night away, hopping to one bar to another, dancing to Spice Girls, Cyndi Lauper's “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”, Queen, and salsa music (did my Costa Rica learning some justice!). A fight broke out at the end of the night which I, emboldened and indignant with injustice and booze at that point, was able to stop with the help of Dan and others. Apparently this Asian fellow had punched a girl in the face, provoking her boyfriend to beat the shit out of the Asian guy. I stopped the boyfriend, pleading with him that I would take care of the other guy (HA!) if only he would stop kicking the other guy. He stormed off with his girl, and left me furious, looking for the weak asshole who would punch anyone, girl or boy. Dan had seen the guy, I had not, so I had no idea what he looked like, and of course, Dan wouldn't tell me because he knew what I wanted to do (give him a piece of my mind) and didn't want me to piss off a guy who would hit a girl. Fair enough. I was so mad though, which unearthed the deeper feeling I had experienced earlier in the night upon seeing a hunchback begging on the bar street where rich bitches were stepping over his hat filled with sympathetic money (part of it mine and Dan's). The stark contrast between the needy and the privileged disgusted me, and it was this that led me to start taking shots. Pathetic, I know. I wanted the warm feelings of being tipsy to overwhelm the sadness I felt for this man I didn't know. I gave him money, offered him a beer, and even asked other people to give him money. I started resenting the people who just walked right over his hat, not even looking at him, as if he wasn't a person. I was seething, and only when Dan gave me some insight did I start feeling better (okay, and those jello shots helped too). He told me that I couldn't hate the people who didn't care like I did because if I wanted the world to change, I would need help from those people who didn't care. I would have to get them to care or else how will anything change? Good point-- that changed something in me. Too many times am I frustrated and angry with the world for being so selfish and self-absorbed... but I need more productive feelings, not the self-defeating kind. Anyway, we ended the night getting ramyun at a 7-11 at 4:30 AM, and making another friend Ali. All in all, a really unexpected fun night with a new friend.

GUANGZHOU:

The next day we made the trek to Guangzhou where we were going to find this ferry to take us to Hainan, according to multiple sources. TURNS OUT NOT TRUE! After several hours trying to figure out where we could take this ferry, we gave up and decided to buy train tickets, only after did we find out that the ferry had been suspended because not enough people were taking it. Guangzhou was what I imagined Hong Kong to look like-- wide streets and spaced out buildings, not as dense and crammed like HK. The spacing of the city stood in contrast to the absurd cluster fuck the train station turned out to be (we first went to the wrong train station), which was a SEA (LITCHERALLY) of bodies cramming together and pushing past each other. Total chaos and disorder, and it didn't help I was carrying around 100 pounds of luggage in air so humid I was literally wading through it. The train was a sleeper train, composed of many beds and walkways so narrow that I could barely squeeze my suitcase through. The train ride was from 9 PM to 9 AM so Dan and I slept through most of it while “stewardesses” pushed carts past full of fruits and ramyun and old Chinese men slurped ramyun. The AC was barely working and so I simmered in my own sweat for most of the time.

HAINAN:

We arrived in Haikou, Hainan early in the morning and were greeted by the elderly Chinese couple that were hosting us WWOOFers. I liked them right away. Guo, the hubby, is a sweet, goofy man with a chuckle that makes me feel at ease. Niu, his wife, is also just as kind and inviting as Guo, and they always are so sweet to each other. Considering the age difference between them and Dan and me, we have an awful lot talk about, from factory farming to the environment to fat Americans to North Korea to ducks, and there are rarely silences. They're very chatty and love entertaining our questions, and I definitely take advantage of the fact they are fountains of information on China. Haikou is an underdeveloped area that is struggling to create itself as a tourist area. There are a lot of half-built buildings and high-end resorts apparently frequented by government officials. The county they live in (Lianggao) is even more underdeveloped and in ways reminds me of the rural town of Kimana, Kenya. There are so many abandoned buildings, as if someone decided it wasn't worth their time to finish building, and the stores are dilapidated and are mainly glass display cases filled with random merchandise. Guo and Niu's farm is small, 2 large disjointed gardens, where they grow mangos, papayas, bananas, yams, jack fruit, as well as house ducks, chickens, and two cute rabbits. So far we've weeded and picked mangos and bananas. We've tried about 3 types of mangos here, and they are far superior than the apple mangos we get in the United States. We wake up early to eat breakfast, usually consisting of vegetables and steamed buns or vegetable pancakes. We'll do farm work either before breakfast, or after, depending on how hot the day will get. After that the day crawls and Dan and I fill it with reading, lazing around on our bamboo mats, learning Chinese, and/or blogging until Niu calls us for lunch. They don't eat much meat here because of the heat-- vegetables are more refreshing-- so it's quite easy to be a vegetarian here. I get a secret delight also when I see Dan eating and actually enjoying all these different kinds of mangos, and I am personally thrilled eating them right after we pick them-- knowing where they came from and that these truly are the fruits of our labor. After lunch everyone takes a nap because it's the hottest part of the day, and so you can't move much without feeling the burden of the sun on your shoulders. It's funny, even though Guo and Niu are farmers, they, like most Asians in Asia, don't enjoy being in the sun, something they admitted themselves. After a nap we do a little bit more farm work, also depending on how hot it is, if it's too hot we'll spend the time however we like until dinner. Guo originally wanted Dan to help him translate his book on systems theory, but Dan quickly realized this feat to be impossible once he learned it was over 300 pages of Chinese characters. I've been writing in the meantime and tearing through books on my Kindle (I converted). Last night we took a walk to the edge of the town where we were engulfed by the sounds of frogs and the bright glow of the moon. The moon is really bright here, it's as if someone turned on a lamp in the sky, illuminating everything in the dark when we're laying in our beds at night and listening to the sounds of geckos. The life here in Lianggao country is taking idyllic to a whole new level. It's been difficult speaking to Guo and Niu because I can't speak much Chinese, but Dan has been amazing at translating my questions and anything they say to the best of his Chinese abilities. It's frustrating at times not understanding what's going on around me, conversations floating around my head, but I do my best to pay attention anyway and try to pick out words I do know, formulating my own version of their statements. I participate and ask and ask and ask because I'm curious about life in China, and am trying my best to engage with this life, and start a hazy version of my own.

TOMORROW WE GO TO THE BEACH, BITCHES!