China, 28 Feb 2007 --

I’m here at the site of the Three Gorges Dam waiting for my three day cruise up the Yangtse River through the famous Three Gorges.  If you haven’t heard of the massive hydroelectric project, it aims to provide for a significant portion of China’s growing demand for electricity by placing a huge dam across the Yangtse River near Yichang.  Construction of the dam was completed in 2006, and the newly created reservoir will fill to its full height by 2008.

An unfortunate side-effect of dam construction, though, has been the permanent flooding of several gorges once legendary for their beauty.  If this sounds vaguely familiar it’s right along the lines of the U.S.’s very own Glen Canyon dam project, completed in 1963.  David Brower, then director of the Sierra Club, described construction of the Glen Canyon Dam as “America’s most regretted environmental mistake” and felt partially responsible for the rest of his life for allowing it to happen .

All facts aside, the dam itself has to be one of the ugliest concrete walls in the middle of a beautiful river I’ve ever seen.  The tourist areas created to allow viewing of the dam have been landscaped nicely enough, but the surrounding area is criss-crossed with power lines in all directions.  The surrounding countryside seems to have been gutted to provide raw materials for the dam project.  In the words of one tourist placard, though, we now have “The Blue of the Yangtse, the Green of Yichang, and the Silver of the Dam.”

On the advice of CITS (Chinese International Travel Service), I decided to wait a few days so I could book a ticket on the first ‘tourist schedule’ ferry of the year.  This ferry costs the same as the regular ferries, but plans its schedule so the gorge scenery won’t drift by in the middle of the night.  Thanks to the helpful CITS agent, I was able to use this extra time to track down more out of the way Yichang attractions including The Chinese Sturgeon Museum.

The Chinese Sturgeon is a unique fish that is born in the waters of the Yangtse, swims to the South and East China Seas to live out its teen years, and returns to the Yangtse to spawn.  Obviously the giant concrete wall in the middle of the river has created some problems for this fish, which can grow to 500 kg and live to be 100 years old.  Chinese scientists are making efforts to preserve its existance, and have conducted several releases of sturgeon bred in captivity below the dam.  The museum dedicated to the Chinese Sturgeon seems a bit unmaintained, but the staff was friendly and they showed me an english version of the informational DVD.  Man, if you’ve never seen video of scientists collecting sperm from a Chinese Sturgeon…you haven’t lived. 

The perpetually rainy weather in Yichang drove me to seek other indoor activities, and I found a very cool little bar/outdoor gear store (yes, you heard me right) called Bar54 down an alley called Peiyuan Lu off the main street of Yunji Lu.  The tiny shop has a pretty good selection of outerwear, tents, and sleeping bags downstairs, while the even tinier loft above houses the bar.

To get in out of the wet one night, I came by for a beer.  I ended up talking with Leo, the owner, for a few hours and he threw in a few cups of Chinese tea for free.  His English wasn’t great, but it’s a lot better than my Chinese, so I can’t complain.  He’s apparently done a fair bit of mountain climbing, some in Tibet.  From what I understood, Leo hurt his knee climbing a few years ago and can’t climb as much now…but still gets out on easier stuff from time to time. 

I flipped through several back issues of the Chinese version of Outside Magazine in the bar, and had Leo write down the Chinese characters for some of the cities that looked particularly interesting from the pictures.  Many of the recommended destinations seem to be in Sechuan Province, where I’ll be at the end of my river cruise…so I’m excited for the next part of the trip.

I have Leo to thank for recommending that I get a Chinese massage from his friend, Huei Ping, down the street.  This was the first massage I’ve received from a 50+ year old Chinese man, so I’m glad to say it felt much more clinical and precice than Thai massage.  For 20 kwai (about 2.5 USD) I got 45 minutes of poking and prodding of pressure points along my various ‘meridians’ which hurt only slightly less than the extreme pressure involved in Thai massage.  At the end of it all, though, I felt great and a nagging cramp in my right quad seemed to have vanished.

On my way out, Huei Ping offered me a cup of Chinese tea.  On seeing my interest, he ended up brewing three or four different teas for me and doing his best to explain (he doesn’t speak a word of english) the different pieces of equipment involved.

Brewing and serving Chinese tea involves a fair amount of sloshing water, and so is performed on a flat wooden box with narrow drainage slots cut to allow the excess water to drain into a pan below.  Boiling water is poured over the small tea pots, the metal filter, and the very delicate ceramic teacups.  Loose tea is placed in the bottom of a small brewing pot, and boiling water is added.  The lid of the brewing pot is then used retain the leaves as the liquid is poured off into a serving pot through a filter.  The tea is poured from the serving pot into the tiny, handleless cups, which are then presented to the guests. 

At no point does the server actually touch the cups, instead using a long set of tweezers to move them around.  All of these steps are carried out at blazing speed, and with all the sloshing, pouring, clinking, and brewing it’s an entertaining sight to see.  Leo, the Bar54 owner, explained to me yesterday that a medium quality tea loses its potency on the 7th brewing, while a really good tea doesn’t produce its best cups until the 10th brewing or so.  Either way, you end up drinking a lot of tea before all is said and done.

After all of this, I was really surprised when Huei Ping told me I didn’t owe him anything for the tea, and even more surprised when he insisted I take a few containers of dry tea with me for later.  Making friends with local people has been the key to the best experiences on this trip, and Yichang proved to be no exception.  Hopefully I’ll make some new friends in my four person 2nd class cabin during the three day cruise up the Yangtse…otherwise it’s going to be a long three days.

China, 23 Feb 2007 --

I think I’ve finally hit my stride in China, and a lot of the things that seemed confusing at first are starting to make more sense.  I think travel here is a bit like chess…it’s just not possible to win if you don’t plan a few moves ahead.  Once I accepted that and started trying to look at the big picture, things just started to fall into place.  Also, the complications arising from the language barrier are turning out to have their bright side, making the most mundane accomplishments seem huge and vastly rewarding. 

On my way to Heng Shan, for example, I had to take a city bus from the train station to the minibus terminal.  From there, I planned to catch a bus to Nanyue at the base of the mountain.  By complete dumb luck and despite all the fumbling with my phrasebook to ask which city bus I needed, where to buy my ticket, and which minibus to get on…I caught the last minibus of the day to Nanyue  (just me, five other passengers, and a rooster in a paper shopping bag that made himself known halfway through the journey).  This good luck saved me spending a night in the not so interesting town of Hengyang.  When I got to Nanyue, I managed to haggle pretty respectably for a great price on a clean room.   None of these things seem impressive, but with the massive communication barrier, doing all of that successfully left me on a high for the rest of the night.

The high continued, as my use of the phrase “What do you recommend?” from my phrasebook when presented with an all Chinese menu (which has produced watery fish rice gruel in the past) landed me with a single-serving clay pot full of tasty fried tofu and pork.  Apparently it’s called Nanyue tofu, and is (obviously) a local specialty.

Having to ask for help so frequently is a humbling experience, but at the same time it’s made me very impressed with the patience and friendliness of the Chinese people.  It’s like I’m being carried along on this trip by all the helpful people I meet, and they always wish me the best before sending me on my way.  The one and only time anyone has tried to rip me off in China was in Changsha, and that was just a case of some cab drivers trying to tell me that their meters were broken.  Lets face it, are the cab drivers in any country trustworthy?

At any rate, Wuhan is a surprisingly comfortable city with a nice downtown walking mall that would look at home anywhere in the west (except for the Chinese characters, of course).  Again, dumb luck prevailed, and I wandered into a clean, cheap hotel right off the main drag that’s located right over an English school.  The ancient hotel owner doesn’t speak a word of English, and looks like he used to be in the Red Army or something…but he’s a really friendly guy who gives me the thumbs up sign every time I come in.

The street food here is honestly the best I’ve seen yet on this entire trip, and that’s saying a lot.  For 1 kwai (1/8 of a US dollar) I can get three deep fried spring rolls. For 4 kwai: seamed dumplings with assorted delicious fillings, and 5 kwai gets me a sort of fried pita wrap with a fried egg and grilled pork.  I feel a little lazy since I’ve eaten on the same ‘food street’ for the last 3 meals…but when it’s so good, so cheap, and so close…why go anywhere else?  I figure a few days will give me enough time to work my way down the entire street…for tonight, I’ve got my eye on the claypot noodle soup.

Now that I’ve located my first Chinese internet cafe, I don’t think I’ll be able to upload any pictures for a while.  Unlike the completely disorganized places in S.E. Asia that offer easy access to USB ports and DVD drives…this place seems to be run by someone who actually knows what they’re doing.  The PC itself is locked in a box, and this whole establishment seems more like a back-alley gambling den than a webcafe.  In a week or so, I should be in Chengdu, which is the next city I’ll hit with an established backpacker/hostel culture.  Hopefully from there I’ll be able to put some images online.  ‘Till then, my action-packed prose will just have to do.

China, 19 Feb 2007 --

…that’s my completely non-pinyin correct transliteration of Happy New Year in Chinese.  It’s now two days into the lunar year of the pig, and in these two days I can say I’ve learned one thing for sure:  the Chinese love their fireworks.  It’s like being in a war zone here…seriously.  Everywhere you turn at every hour of the day and night someone is setting off a roman candle, a bottle rocket, or most likely a 10 ft long string of chinese firecrackers.  The sound of a string of firecrackers echoing down a concrete alley is nothing short of deafening, and you get used to 30 second pauses in conversations…it’s just not possible to talk over the explosions.

I would imagine one of the reasons there’s so much heavy artillery being detonated is that it’s just so cheap!  A short string of firecrackers goes for 1 kwai (about 1/8 of a US dollar), and even a ‘money tree’ which sends 12 exploding balls high into the sky is only about 5 US dollars.  I should add, too, that these are the inflated prices I could get with my white face and my still developing bargaining skills.  Someone told me once that it was good luck to spend money during Chinese New Year’s, so I’m that much luckier I guess.

I set off a few of my own fireworks on Chinese New Year’s Eve, which I spent
in Yangshuo with an Aussie guy, two Danish girls, a Sweedish girl, and a German girl.  Meeting people while traveling is sort of like putting friendship development in fast forward since everyone is usually so starved for fluent western conversation and there’s just so much to talk about.  It was nice to have a group of friends, even if only for a few days, and we drank a good bit of cheap Chinese beer and baijio (some kind of rice whiskey that tastes much better than lao lao) to ring in the Year of the Pig.

I’ve moved on to Guilin now, and the short lived group of friends has disolved in various directions.  I spent today wandering the ‘Dragon’s Back Rice Terraces’ a few hours bus ride from here, which was really pretty beautiful.  For 50 kwai (about 5 USD) I got to view such rice terrace formations as ‘Two Dragons Fighting over Treasure’ and ‘Moon with Accompanying Seven Stars.’ I can’t say I’ve ever paid admission to a rice terrace before, but that’s just how things go in China.

Tomorrow, I suffer my first experience in ‘hard seat class’ on the Chinese train system.  I’ve heard mixed reviews.  It’s a short 8 hour trip up to Hengyang near the base of Heng Shan Mountain, which I plan to climb.  Shan (Mountain) is my new favorite Chinese word, and even the written character is easy…it pretty much looks like a mountain.

I’m adjusting to life in China, and things have definitely started looking up since the last post!  I wish you all ‘qui chi fa tai’ (Have Lots of Money) in the young year of the Pig.

China, 11 Feb 2007 --

Here’s a little thought experiment for you:  picture the dumbest guy you know.  I mean, this guy seems completely unaware of what’s going on around him.  He asks questions to which answers seem painfully obvious, he seems oblivious to the most basic of social customs, and is frequently the source of amusement for people around him.  In case you can’t guess where I’m going with this:  this guy is me, in China…every single day.

Consider this example:  The other night I had a very quiet dinner for one in a cavernous ballroom that probably seats several hundred during the high season.  I was, however, in the resort town of Zhaoqing in what is apparently the complete and total low season.  Most of the lights in the huge room were off, and the only other people there were the giggling Chinese servers.  I sat by myself at a large round table set for 20 or so.

I get laughed at quite a bit, but the laughter is generally good-natured and the ones laughing the hardest are usually the most helpful.  The servers at the resort, for example, were kind enough to serve me a simple meal for 15 kwai (a little less than two US dollars) rather than charging me the exorbitant menu prices.

In the Guangdong province of China, I found the level of English spoken by the average person to be about zero.  This is a huge change from South East Asia, where the average level of English spoken is ever so slightly above zero.  Believe it or not, this makes all the difference in the world.  In the other countries I’ve visited on this trip, the most basic bastardized English is understood while here it’s met with blank stares.  Believe it or not, I’ve walked into hotels and had to resort to my phrasebook just to get across the fact that I was looking for a room. I’m not sure what else they think I’d be doing there with my big backpack on my back, but oh well.

This Lonely Planet Mandarin phrasebook has been a lifesaver, incidentally.  Without this thing, I think I’d be completely non-functional.  My tiny Mandarin vocabulary is growing a bit at a time, but in the meantime pointing at the Mandarin text in the little book seems to work just fine.  They have a different system of finger counting here, which makes it possible to count from 1-10 on just one hand.  This, at least, I’ve mastered and it’s been very useful in haggling over prices.

China has a very complete bus and train system, and the choice of possible destinations in every direction has been a little overwhelming.  I’m used to the relatively small countries of South East Asia where there are at most 5 major roads and one major rail line.  The only real travel decision to make is how many hours to move down the road.

In addition to the basic problem of deciding where to go next, is the daunting fact that buses and bus schedules are labeled in Mandarin characters only.  To figure out which bus is mine, I’ve had to get creative in describing the characters in my head.  Yesterday, for example, I took a 9 hour bus ride from ’squiggly thing, two trees’ to ‘b-shape, step ladder.’

Anyway, now that I’ve reached ‘b-shape, step ladder’ (also known as Yangshuo), I seem to be firmly back on the tourist trail.  The backpacker ghetto of endless guest houses and bars with thumping music is all too familiar.  Despite the difficulties of being all alone in Guangdong, I have to say I miss it a bit.  From what I hear, I’m sure there will be more confusion and entertaining language difficulties in my future.