global_jd

Packing notes, PRC09

I recently lived 23 days out of a carry-on and a daypack, carrying a computer, camera, and plenty of books. I've already pruned away many of the things that don't work on earlier trips, so here's some gear that does work, as well as some gear I still have to improve.

Basic outfit? I had two pairs of tactical pants, and two 5.11 Tactical shirts, in navy and khaki, in medium and light weights. Under the shirt was a lightweight longsleeve REI performance T-shirt, their "Sahara" line. In hot weather I could wear the shirt open and untucked; in middling weather I had two layers of sleeves to roll up, and in cold situations I was pretty windproof. Plenty of pockets -- the pants can hold maps or a guidebook, the shirts have large internal document pockets, both top and bottom have secure passport pockets, and there was much flexibility in arranging gear. These tactical clothes can also take a few days' wear before needing to hit the laundry. Very flexible; I'm sold.

While traveling I topped this with a Filson Travel Vest. I've been using this for a few years (it's more expensive now!) and it's functional while not looking too dorky. At first I used this as my main gear-holding clothing, but when overburdened it tends to drag on the back of the neck. Now, with more pocket options in pants and shirts, I can use any of the vest's many pockets to hold whatever's convenient. Rephrased, instead of just sequentially filling empty pockets, now I'm just using pockets when I need them, and many of the pockets remain empty. Much more balanced. The zipped pockets, large map pockets, and large split front pockets make for a very secure carry. (The split front pockets are interesting... there's a patch pocket with snap cover in front of a large handwarmer pocket, but the patch pocket has a full-length divider, for a total of three storage compartments. Easy to find stuff; easy to layer things so they sit tightly and don't jumble together.) I didn't use the Filson Travel Vest for day-tripping at all this time... just for transit (handy in an airline seat!) and as an extra wind-barrier layer.

I carried four more pieces of clothing, for layering and emergency use:

• A burgundy longsleeve Feather Cloth Shirt from Filson. I brought it as emergency third shirt and as dress shirt, but it's supernatural enough to serve as everyday shirt... only downside relative to 5.11 shirts is two big pockets instead of four. This is Filson's lightest, tightest cotton -- it's a solid shirt, but it dries overnight in the shower, faster than any synthetics! I think the weave may be tight enough that water just drips out and can't stay. I'm continually amazed. Blocks wind but is very comfortable in heat, and packs up to very small size. If I had to use only one shirt for multiple days, this would be it.
• Under Armour Heatgear Compression Fit leggings: I was skeptical, but now I'm sold. These are lightweight longjohns, tight yet stretchy. They felt very weird the first few times I wore them, but after a few washings they feel much more natural. I'm not sure if this is in their catalog anymore... sorta like this or this. Served multiple purposes: extra layer of insulation for cold which was not uncomfortable when warm; great for long airplane flights for reducing pooling of blood in lower body; useful as an extra sleeping layer if needed. It dries very quickly, and holds up well between laundromat visits.
• Filson Lewiston Knit Henley: This is no longer in stock, but was selling for US$30 during closeouts. It's a very finely-knit cotton, windproof and insulating. Rolls up to an exceptionally small space. Can function as a second undershirt, or outside the overshirt as a sweater. Could be removed and stored discreetly in a Filson Travel Vest map pocket. Saved my butt more than once.
• A very lightweight pair of "convertible" pants, with zip-off knees. Useful as emergency pants, hotweather shorts, swim shorts, sleepwear, and as overpants for very cold conditions. Rarely used, but I'm glad I had them.

Two more essential pieces of clothing: A lightweight red Supplex ballcap (which could be suitcased if I met a nice hat), and a heavy 33" red-patterned cotton bandana. The bandana sounds incidental, but it was of daily use: as a scarf to block wind; as a bib when slurping noodles; as a washcloth to dry hands at a restroom (there's often no paper or heaters); tied around my head babushka-style underneath the ballcap for a high-wind hood (Yangtze River at 20 knots, baby!); as storage to hold buffet nuts and dried fruit until I could pack them for later snacking; to mop my brow; more. In the past I've used 24" bandanas, but the larger size and heft here makes a big difference. Available at Wild West Mercantile. My secret weapon against weather changes. :)

I've learned something about socks. I usually wear calf-high cotton athletics under wool socks, double-layering 'cause I walk a lot. While traveling I often add a fast-dry thin polypropylene sock liner (yes, three layers) to make the cotton last longer by avoiding skin contact. Wool just needs to air out to freshen up, but at one point I realized I was sending cotton socks to the hotel laundry even though it cost more than just buying fresh cotton socks. Future plan is to figure on buying and discarding middle-layer cotton socks through the trip, washing them only if convenient. (Those socks I discarded in Singapore this spring did indeed die a noble death.... ;-)

Anther travel tactic this trip was early mailing of guidebooks to a hotel I'd reach mid-trip, as well as mailing back guidebooks that I used on the first part of the trip... at any point I was carrying only half of my book/map load. Some downsides: it's expensive; it can be confusing to mail at book rate from a foreign country; when mailing into China the package was opened for examination, and not all that unobtrusively. But the Kindle hasn't stocked the material I need, and I'm not certain if a Nook can be turned into an effective travelguide book.

I carried an extensive medical/toiletry kit. I used an Eagle Creek bag, maybe this one, used as a belt pouch while walking around, and inside the maps pocket of the Filson Travel Vest while in transit. Held rare stuff like bandaids, aspirin, vitamins, toothpicks and earplugs and such, but was regularly used for Chapstick, Purell, and Ayr Saline Nasal Mist. I suspect the latter is very important when traveling in areas of high particulate matter, or when confined in an airplane -- salt may deactivate many pathogens, but moisture helps keep your nasal cavity at its strongest. Anyway, this Eagle Creek belt pouch of health supplies was again very useful.

I didn't carry any melatonin for jetlag this time... wish I had, but couldn't buy it in time. I regularly use Walgreen's sleeping pills on a plane, and rely on their caffeine pills for tough mornings without a coffeepot. I carry laxatives and anti-diarrheal pills... glad I've never needed the latter, but I should pack a light laxative to use at the end of the outbound airline trip. I carried four tubes of Airborne but was short, and managed to eke out the extra Vitamin C tablets... multivitamins I averaged at 1.5 a day. Three small Purell containers. I carried one ounce-sized toothpaste tube and relied on hotels for the rest, but wish I had a backup of my own stuff. I did not carry any skin-moisturizer (other than Chapstick), but needed the hotels' supplies to avoid breaks in dry skin.

New, and a winner: "Smells Be Gone", a 4oz. spray bottle. Haven't tested it conclusively, but so far it has seemed to help hotel-sink washing and packing dirty laundry. Not as objectionable as some of the wintergreen deodorizers. Will be buying more and trying it in different situations.

Pocket tools were few. I packed and carried my usual beltpouch of nailclippers, tweezers, magnifying glass, marker pen, safety pins and so on, but instead of my daily vintage Leatherman I used a Leatherman Micra tied by 8" cord to a flat compass. If I needed strong pliers I would have failed, but the Micra's tweezers can function as an eyeglass screendriver, so I came out ahead. (A compass is necessary, even if only for figuring out directions while in an underground mall... GPS/maps is promising, but still seems a hassle in many locations.) I carried one 10' length of paracord, but should have carried two... I tied a bunch of canes together and then lacked a spare cord for emergencies. But bottom line on pocket tools: nothing got confiscated at airports this time! :)

Flashlight shoutout: Streamlight Stylus Pro, bright and durable, clips in a pocket like a pen. I wrapped some flat paracord around it to make a finger loop for open-hand carry. My daily savior.

Computer was a 10" Dell netbook... only three hours on battery, but good connectivity with few hassles, and a keyboard that became more workable with time. Camera was a nice Nikon Powershot, but I didn't use it enough to justify it... too busy looking directly at things. Also brought a transistor radio, but rarely thought to use it this time... would have been interesting to turn the dial up and down in West China and on the Yangtze.

I used two pairs of shoes, some great LL Bean slip-ons (now discontinued) for hardcore walking, and some lightweight slip-ons for airplanes or hotel. I didn't carry an extra daybag or bookbelt... this trip was mainly supported by pockets, very comfortable. For electronics it was just chargers for camera and computer, and a Radio Shack transformer, no socket adapters necessary in the PRC (wall outlets supported the China-style 3-prong as well as cylindrical 2-prong).

The suitcase pack has slowly improved. My old Filson Wheeled Carry-On is getting beat up by unnatural airline damage, but it's still sturdy, presentable, and tight. Bottom layer holds shoebag, shavebag, gearbags, pipes, books... above that go two shallow layers of Eagle Creek packing cubes for clothes. Took me awhile to figure out how to use it.

I need to improve my passport carry. I need a small flexible container which will lock out moisture and prevent crushing, and which will fit in any of several secure pockets.

Wallets included a zipped pocketsafe tied to a beltloop for ID, credit cards and reserve cash... a slim nylon billfold for spending money and receipts... a change purse for coins, which seems pretty much a necessity throughout Asia. Made it easy for a quick pat to ensure that everything's where it should be.

Summary: This trip I improved my layering strategies, and succeeded in shaving ounces and inches in enough small ways to make a big total difference. I can live out of a carry-on and daybag for weeks at a time.

PRC09 wraps

The goal: Learn more about the culture, the history, the natural sites of China, and get some practice in language production.

The method: Five nights in Beijing, an overnight train to Xi'an for two nights, a plane to Chongqing for four nights, five nights on a boat through the Three Gorges and down the Yangtze, then three nights in Nanjing, two nights in Suzhou.

The cities:

•    In Beijing I was mostly in Xuanwu and Tiantan, and saw only a little bit of Olympic Park, Houtian, and the touristed areas... hard to tell how much changed.
•    Xi'an is funky and gutsy, but the traffic and air were difficult. I had a chance to walk a little of it five years ago, and a chance to walk some more of it this trip.
•    Chongqing has an impossible city center, very entertaining, although I saw only a little bit of the larger municipality. Fascinating.
•    Three Gorges was a new landscape painting, every hundred feet. Huangshan was surprisingly satisfying. The Yangtze itself, wow.
•    Nanjing has culture oozing out of every pore, and is in rapid transition to a new version of itself. Easy to spend more time there.
•    Suzhou would be great, once the cabbies and pedicabs got a clue.

Biggest takeaways:

•    Creative destruction: The cities and the country are reinventing themselves. I was particularly shocked by the amount of reconstruction going on in Chongqing and Nanjing. But it's part of a tradition -- most of China's grand buildings have been revamped and changed over time -- stones from old hutongs are being used to build newer versions of traditional structures -- one city's plan is drawn from another's, the same principles are constantly being reinterpreted. The amount of startup businesses is phenomenal, even though their startup skills may be under-experienced. The rate of change far, far exceeds what I see in San Francisco.
•    Generation gap: I saw two types of groups which were shellshocked, without emotional affect: tourists, and elders who have had their city and country change out from under them. Apartment complexes don't support the previous social structures. And on this trip I saw more spoiled and overweight sibling-less children than before. Each generation has a different dynamic, a different understanding of China. Very stark.
•    Computery stuff: People looking at their hands were about the same as in San Francisco (which has increased dramatically over the past year). But most of the shoulder-surfing I did showed text displays. I'm really impressed by visual design and motion design in China, and think (particularly with the language differences) that this would have great implications for mobile use, once the ecology moves beyond just text. But I was greatly under-impressed by Chinese information design, the thinking of things from the viewpoint of the user, and anticipating their needs.

Skill arts:
   I use a cane, and enjoy juggling rope. I got the chance to spend four of the five Beijing mornings at Temple Of Heaven Park, and got the chance to observe many players. I didn't find a similar scene in other cities, just little pockets of early-morning physical activity. In the latter section of the trip I had the chance to practice some of the new things I had learned, and have progressed greatly... footwork in particular. I'm sad, though, that I never saw anyone handle an everyday walking cane with grace and intention.

Food:
   As usual, I dropped a belt notch this trip... I eat some, but not enough to replace the energy I expend walking all day. I did not find a good source for Biang Biang Noodles in Xi'an, nor Bang Bang Noodles or even hotpot in Chongqing. Got to visit the insect foodmart near Wanfujing once, but was turned off by the tourist hustle. Enjoyed the Chinese/Western breakfast buffets at the hotels. Had some spicy skewers in Sichuan, discovered some real good Ma Po Tofu in Nanjing, ate lots of bowls of noodles, drank lots of juices and yogurts and teas, and rediscovered matured rice wine. But for all my interest in different foods, I'm not real good at scoring a princely meal.

Biggest complaints: Hygiene, noise, the inability to anticipate what happens next.

Biggest pleasure: Taking a moment to recognize someone's humanity, smile, and receive a smile in return.

 

Skill Arts, Nanjing & Suzhou

For learning skills of coordinated movement, in Nanjing, I struck out.

While taking the bus in the first day I did see a group in a park near the northwest (hard to tell what they were doing, although group Tai Chi was part of it). Up towards Crowing Rooster Temple there were elders stretching to instructional cassettes, and one woman had a sword, but the only other gear I saw was an accordion. Nearby, towards the City Wall Museum, I heard the whirring roar of Chinese YoYos, and saw three or four players doing the usual tricks nicely. But no sticks, no ropes, and no big party scene as at Beijing's Temple of Heaven.

Part of the scarcity is that I was here three nights, and stayed in late one morning to recoup. The other part is that parks are spread throughout the city, and there are no particularly obvious central gathering places as in other cities. I did some websearches for likely candidates but came up empty.

I don't know if there's an actual difference in the local scene... don't see any reason why there should be, aside from the lack of critical mass and network effects. I definitely haven't given things a fair shot of enough investigation -- the Purple and Gold Mountain area alone is large enough to support much group action, and the only time I've been there has been late in the morning. But even in Shanghai the amount of early-morning physical activity fairly leaps out at you. Here in Nanjing I haven't even picked up a clue.

I've been personally progressing, though. With double-weighted full-height rope I can now do three-beat weaves while turning around in either direction, walking forward, walking backwards. I've started in being able to transition from this to a single-ended swinging, like a small rope dart, with the various straight tosses. I've seen ways to integrate wraps into this, although I haven't yet progressed to a five-beat weave. There's also been room enough to do some work on horizontal planes, but my transitions from plane to plane are still gawky. I'm reserving rope-as-staff work to when I get back home... will need lots of privacy to get the rhythm.

The cane, as always, also progresses when I spend hours a day walking. It's always in motion, particularly when avoiding obstacles in the street... a small swing to the wrong side allows a larger swing to the correct side to avoid a bicycle wheel blocking the sidewalk, a bit of construction debris, the chair and table set up in the walkway. Everything gets a little more graceful when the cane is handled for hours on end.

Best place I may have swung and twirled was probably the great southern Zhonghuamen Gate in Nanjing. It's five or six stories tall, almost broad enough to support a soccer field, expansive views in all directions, and nearly deserted as the autumn sun goes down. I didn't do anything particularly interesting or lengthy there, just enough to pay my respects.


Update: I spent three nights in Nanjing and didn't stumble across anything resembling Beijing's early-morning scene at The Temple of Heaven, but I wish I had had at least a morning or two to check all the different areas at the Purple & Gold Mountains. In Suzhou I had two nights, but no morning excursions to the parks... one morning I had to rest up, and the other I had to pack up, and websearch on "suzhou park tai chi" and such didn't turn up obvious hits. The latter part of this trip was more personal practice than observation.

Even more tweets

Twitter is blocked in the PRC, but the service has trained my brain too well, and I cannot stop thinking in roughly 140 letters. These are from Nanjing and Suzhou, the last two cities of this trip.

Travel outside of the comfort zone always seems to temporarily boost IQ.

If you're going to the PRC and want to bond with adult males, bring plenty of classy foreign cigarets and pass them out, one or two at a time. It's an accepted social gesture.

(And if you don't smoke, consider it for the trip... tobacco helps gate sensory input, lets you cope with the noise and the lights and the crowds better. Seriously, look up nicotine's effects.)

The PRC I first saw in 2004 is not the one of 2009. I think that by 2014 it will have evolved even more dramatically. The keyword here is dynamism.

Wordpress is still blocked here, as are Blogspot and Typepad. Also blocked is Om Malik (who wrote something anti-PRC a few years ago, as I recall). On the other hand, scobleizer.com is up, and his site back in 2004 or 2007 had been blocked. Slashdot and Hacker News are available.

Tai Chi and similar arts are almost uniformly taught by rote rather than rationale. You are taught things to do, and must discover principles yourself. China may produce a Madonna or a Britney, but I'm not so sure about a Charlie Parker.

Even on a fast connection, Typepad's "rich text editor" lags in loading time, and is not cached. Downloading rich logic for every page refresh does not scale, confirming natural expectations.

Why does garlic smell so good after it's cooked, and smell so bad after it's eaten?

One sign that it's the end of a long foreign trip: the longing for one's own Waterpik once again.

Opera's location bar hinting seems to include page text, which isn't as helpful as Firefox's use of only URL, page title, and any page description. (Too many false positives.)

An enjoyable aspect of the PRC is being able to toss around 100-dollar bills so freely. (Used to be about US$12.50, now about $15.)

One downside of not being able to read Twitter for the past three weeks is that I've entirely lost track of what so many people are thinking of eating for breakfast.

Perhaps it's better to think of Chinese beer as a pleasant beverage, rather than as beer.

You'd be shocked by how many signs are in English here, both official and commercial. It sort of slips under your awareness, but English words are spelled out everywhere.

A metro station in Nanjing had relatively loud music, paced about 60bpm. Rhythmic entrainment, to calm people down?

If Nanjing surprised me by how walkable it is, Suzhou surprised me by how strollable it is. The center of town is almost a pedestrian mall, more Venice Beach than Venice.

One other thing that surprised me about Nanjing was the number of walled estates. I'm not sure of the dynamics of it yet, but many apartment buildings were in private guarded areas.

I have looked, but not yet found on this trip, any of the Darkie or White Men toothpaste which was everywhere in 2004, and still common in 2007.

For awhile this trip the cabdrivers reminded me of Mac bloggers... they're always honking, rarely observing. (Weird to be a fan of one brand like that, rather than of new human capabilities in general.)

Note to self: Next time I'm in China, start drinking Shi Ku Men Lao Jiu immediately. (It's a Shanghai-style Huangjiu, matured rice wine, 12% alcohol at $4/500ml, and much nicer than the Taiwanese stuff we can buy in Frisco. Or the Chinese beer.)

One of the things I hate most about Apple is how its financial success and mindless fanbase convince some at Adobe to act with similar opacity and non-responsiveness. Don't encourage bad role models to the corpofolk!

I'd bet that the length of a cold or respiratory infection can be reduced by wearing a surgical mask, even if only because it increases humidity, preventing nasal drying. Aids your natural response.

Suzhou has something rare in other cities: the KEDI convenience store chain. But their parks tend not to have that amazing tube-steel exercise equipment found in Beijing, Shanghai, elsewhere.

Figured out the disquieting thing about public expectoration is the hawk that sounds like a shotgun cocking, followed by the higher-pitch whine of the projectile. Waiting for the other shoe to drop; scary.

  --  and after return to San Francisco  --

It's odd how little traffic there is on the streets, and how few of them honk their horns.... ;-)

American supermarkets are weirder now. Prices seem very high, stock selection not always satisfying, and they play decades-old verysafe music.

The people next door moved out. Not only is there less yelling and drama on the street now, but there's less risk of it coming within the next hour too -- no lurking bummer! :)

Terminology of Toys

It's hard to figure a good name for some of these cross-cultural toys. Here's the best I've got so far.

"Diabolo" is the English word the Chinese translations provide, but I'm not sure it's the best one... in San Francisco we use it to mean a specifically-shaped device, one which I've only seen incidentally in the PRC. So I'm now using "diabolo" for the large symmetrical inverted yo-yo shape we see in the west, "Chinese Top" for something which spins mainly on the ground, and "Chinese YoYo" for the one which spins mainly on the string. Subject to change, and I'll occasionally use "diabolo" for the entire class of devices, but this is the best nomenclature I've been able to figure so far.

I'm going to use "Shooting Stars" to describe the double-weighted rope of height-length or less. With all due respect to Marc MacYoung, "monkeyballs" wasn't cutting it, and I feared it raised lurid thoughts in the minds of westerners. "Shooting Stars" is more poetic, and has historical justification, and is still definitely in the plural, and although it is not common terminology seems to describe the thing better than anything else I've seen. (For the height-and-a-half length of double-weighted rope, "jump rope" will do... never mess with someone carrying a jump rope, or even a dog leash for that matter.... ;-)

Now I'm using "meteor hammer" in the stricter sense of a single-weighted rope of roughly twice-height length or greater... pretty much interchangeably with "rope dart", save as a percussion instrument rather than an edged one.

With that in mind, "swinging poi" means just playing with double-weighted rope in general, whether single or double strands, whatever the length. It's convenient. And "twirling cane" is for any type of manipulation of a half-height stick. 

Hmm, that seems simple enough in retrospect.... ;-)

Final day of first visit, Nanjing

Nanjing may be the most walkable city I've found in China. The walled city area, I'd guess, is about a third as big as San Francisco... the automobile traffic not as aggressive as Shanghai, nor as congested as Xi'an, nor as ten-laned as Beijing... the hills, lakes, canals and twisting streets make for great variety... and the weather seems as mutable and (in autumn) as temperate as San Francisco. It's been easy to accidentally stumble across history or temples or food streets on every outing I've made. I've left a lot of the city untouched... would be easy to spend more time here. Random impressions follow....

The first day was warm, in the 70s on the Fahrenheit scale, and very humid. The second day dropped fifteen degrees, and the third fifteen below that, to the 40s, as the entire country encountered a freakish cold snap. During the summer it's murderously hot, and humid from the surrounding lakes and rivers, but during these few days at the cusp of November the weather has been some of the most conducive to walking that I've found in mainland China.

The reason I couldn't find much in central Xinjiekou was, frankly, because pretty much the whole area is being reconstructed. I had seen some large cityblocks under construction when checking in, but it wasn't until I got the chance to walk around a little that I realized how much new building is going on. In past years I had seen Beijing preparing for the Olympics, and Shanghai preparing for the 2010 exposition, but in both Chongqing and Nanjing the construction I've seen has surpassed that, at least on a percentage basis, if not in total acreage. It's astounding, my mind can't grasp the magnitude of "creative destruction" here.

Sidewalks all throughout the central district are under renovation. This has serious implications for walkers! It looks like each piece of sidewalk is handled by a different small contractor... there's not a central Department of Public Works as in San Francisco. Still two guys watching and instructing while one guy does the actual work, though. ;-)

The standard sidewalk construction attire? Sometimes it's a jacket, but more usually it's the single sports coat that the worker may have. No uniforms, no orange safety vest... very different scene.

And if a guy can work in his only sports coat, then it makes sense that it wouldn't quite matter if the pedestrians have a clear place to walk while the construction is going on... that would be a side-issue to actually getting the job done and getting paid by the boss. Even if there were a marked-out safe pathway, the bicycles and electric bikes and delivery trikes and card tables and sales-on-a-blanket and shoeshine ladies and what-all would block it anyway. After the sidewalk is done there will be a clear path, so hurry up and get the job done, that's the important thing. ;-)

As a result, any walk in an improvement area is a cross-terrain walk, alternating between storefront path and sidewalk and motorcycle path and roadway, crossing a pile of dirt here, picking among a stack of discarded tiles there, wending among the bicycles parked at odd angles, avoiding the cars parking on available sidewalk, and of course watching out for the crowd of careening wild pedestrians. I don't know how the people who don't use a walking-stick do it; the cane's three-footed source of support has seemed to be a necessity when walking in the downtown area.

Right now I'm typing in the German Brewhaus beneath the Jinling Hotel in Xinjiekou, enjoying a nice full-strength dark beer, munching large roasted peanuts, smoking a pipe of blueberry/vanilla Virginia and Burley tobaccos. It's nearly deserted, here at 7:30pm, although I bet it will pick up towards 9 when the band comes on, and the foreign businessmen upstairs are escorted down by their intelligent young translator/guides for a European experience after their tiring foreign business-filled days. 

I've got a good view of the entryway of the (apparent) KTV separating the bar from the hotel... been watching dozens of Chinese girls enter the past hour in jeans or business clothes or culottes and heels, then seeing them after they've donned full-length gowns for the lineup for prospective patrons. (First night I was here I thought it was a wedding party... any gal in a gown is a thing of beauty to me, and I hadn't known it was really just a costume of business convention.)

Ninety degrees away is the dressing room for the bar I'm at, and girls come out of here in German blouses and suspendered plaid kneelength skirts... quite the contrast, or perhaps not. The groups of Chinese-speaking businessmen are now starting to come down the escalators, laughing perhaps a bit too intoxicatingly loud. I've seen the young male staff at the karaoke bar handling bottles of Chivas Regal and Johnnie Walker and looking like they're ready and able should troublesome duty call... on previous nights I've seen the lineups of gowned girls waiting to be chosen for a booth. It's not my scene, and I don't understand it, but there seems quite a bit of human capital which understands the routine.

This morning I took the underground north to the Nanjing Railway Station, to try to buy a ticket to Suzhou. Chinese railway stations are a trip-and-a-half... a kaleidoscope of human life, crowded, every eyeblink tells a story. I spent close to an hour examining the various display boards, trying to dope out what ran when, why I might want one train over another, and only succeeded in copying down the departure times for the wrong line. Ended up going back to my hotel and asking for help, and they already had a ticketing office in-house, and did it better than I could have. Lesson learned, but I'm glad I soaked in the flavor of the station.

After a break at the hotel, I took the metro south, to the great Zhonghuamen Gate at the south of the old walled city. I don't think my words can do it justice; I was profoundly impressed. Easily five stories tall, based on packed-earth drawn from the surrounding moat, protected by thousands and thousands of twenty-kilo bricks. No, I'm *sure* my words can't do it justice... where Xi'an's wall was drawn with geometric precision, Nanjing's wall seems even higher, and curves around with the rivers and the hills, a stone snake surrounding the lion city... a response, not a dictum. 

This main southern gate entry was built for defense, and has inner walls to rain weaponry down upon any attackers who may it through the first multi-ton doorway. Thousands of troops could hide within this gate's walls, shooting arrows and pouring oil on invaders who breached the first line of defenses. It is tall, tall, tall, tall, tall. There were two wide stairways for cavalry to mount to the upper levels. People live inside the walls today; all you can see are the air-conditioners sticking out of the wall. From the top you can view across miles and miles of scenery, and that's without the multistory wooden observation towers which were once built atop. The walls of Nanjing are beyond my power to describe... every brick has a story of some conscripted laborer, centuries ago, who struggled to raise it to the heights and cement it in place. The city's wall established what was in, and what was out... a distinction which carries through into the mentality of today. Centuries old, but still impressive, a thing of beauty today. My words can't do it justice, but I was lucky to experience it.

... took a break just now, and went to the toilet shared by the brewhaus and the KTV, it had an attendant who pointed me to the best current urinal, who held open the light-operated faucet and pointed out the soap, then pounded my back while I washed my hands. He had ten-kuai and twenty-kuai bills on his stand, but I left a five, 'cause I already know how to pee. Meanwhile the two or three dozen gowned girls at the establishment have been joined by a half-dozen sturdy young lads in navy whites standing in the lineup, as more and more groups of customers enter, including some escorted westerners. Please excuse me, I'm fascinated, but I really don't wanna know.... ;-)

Backtracking a bit, the metro to Zhonghuamen led me to a mini-adventure... the station was to the south of a river, counter to my main map's north-of-the-river. I got my bearings and walked rather briskly through some neighborhoods that apparently hadn't seen a foreign visitor in quite some time, but did make it across the bridge to my destination. Later at Fuzi Miao, the shopping area surrounding the old Confucius Temple, I didn't find a single non-Asian among the thousands I saw... quite a difference from two afternoons ago, when the cruise boats contributed approximately 0.5% of the current population. I sort of like being the outsider like that... makes me feel more comfortable when regarded as a weirdo  in San Francisco. ;-)

One place I didn't get to visit was the museum of the occupation of Nanjing in 1937, usually called "The Rape of Nanjing". It's a serious event... close to half-a-million Chinese were killed within a few weeks of the Japanese army's advance from bombed-out Shanghai. I've researched it a bit, but don't feel comfortable talking about it... the museum was apparently closed on a Monday though, so I've got a good excuse for not going. But my one real contribution on the subject is that I don't see it as a Japanese thing, so much as a youth-gang thing... the military in Japan at that time was a boys' network, without significant feedback from other segments of society, and was royally effin' delusional, as such in-groups too often are. We've got the same problems in the States, with ghetto gangs and latin gangs and and other dysfunctional boys' networks, and I suspect China has a similar problem emerging, with Little Emperors experiencing two decades of positive change without learning how to play well with The Other. Regardless, if you want to understand China then I think you have to study the centuries of sorrow they've experienced, whether from Kubla Khan or Manchurian invasions or unequal treaties or the Japanese invasion or the KMT's executions or the Cultural Revolution... life is precious, but life is cheap, and today definitely has better potential than yesterday did. It's too bad so many of us had to cry so bitterly during the journey to this place, though.

Okay, it's nearly 9pm, and the Brewhaus house band is warming up, even on a Monday. I tried to order some food but had to subsitute fried rice for steamed dumplings, and spicy tofu for spicy fermented tofu -- the latter turned out to be the best Ma Po Tofu I ever ate, by the way -- but it's all getting a bit too close to the Land of Managed Expectations for me, I've got to cut out and retreat to my room, rest up for the train ride to Suzhou tomorrow. 

I've had a great time in Nanjing, walked 'til my feet got sore and my eyeballs bled, and don't even ask about my eardrums. I have zip idea about the digital scene, but I've got a much better flavor of the overall scene. Nanjing's a good town, and I think there's a meaningful chance that in five years it will be a great town. Things change fast here, that's my biggest takeaway. If you get the opportunity, I'd encourage your own first-hand experience of the place... definitely seems worth it.

Update: The band did get worse, and the flood of testosterone-addled customers to the KTV did grow larger, and the working girl who arrived at the brewpub punctually at 9pm to work the westerners understood my "duibuqi, wo ting bu dong" adequately enough, but I'm sure glad I got the check and got out of there when I did, it's a strain to try to pass for statistically-normal for too long a period.... ;-)

More unpublishable tweets

Tips for Beijing West Station: The "English Desk" isn't, but it's hidden down a corridor to the left. Taxis are in the basement. Duh. (And the clerk may be perverse; she gave an older gimp like me the upper hard berth!)

It's sort of freaking me out that there's only like 70 more days we'll be able to describe the year by starting with "200-something".

Usual routine: Wake before dawn, walk five to eight miles via a park, come to hotel to eat shower and crash, get up towards dusk and do another five to eight miles. Awesome.

It would be fun to fix cars randomly, middle-of-night, so that one time out of a hundred the car horn would deliver a meaningful but non-fatal electrical shock to the driver. Over time civilization would ensue.

I bet it'd be valuable for someone to do an "Annotated Techmeme"... just call out the people who have nothing to say, and distill out those pages which did hide ideas within bloated text.

After all those years in tech support, you'd think I'd at least consistently ask myself "Just to be sure, does the problem persist after you restart the computer? That's an easy potential cause to get out of the way." (Hotel internet connection.)

Fri Oct23, evening: Although I've had congestion, it seems more a fever than a cold. Took two easy walks today, but crashed after about 2pm. Craving tiramisu, burnable energy.

Those blogs with a Twitter widget never stop loading here.... ;-)

Tiramisu update: The Room Service crew tends not to have the English skills of the front desk. "Tiramisu" is universally understood, but "fruit plate" is better requested as "shui guo".

I never got Foursquare, but I assumed other people were just more popular and social than me and were trying to meet up with anyone nearby. But gawdhelpme if you ever auto-tweet that you're on a BART train, you're history, bub.

Those who jabber on "network neutrality", like "global warming" and "open web" and "all natural ingredients", think they're saying something discrete when they're just expressing an undefined marketing sentiment.

One of the great unsung advantages of a netbook is that they fit easily into any hotel safe.

Chongqing is indeed a city of mist, along with mountains and rivers. It would make a setting for Lord of the Rings type of landscapes.

All software is squirrelly. We just become used to a particular set of squirrelularities.

Last night I enjoyed some grilled squid skewers in Chongqing. This morning I wondered how they got ocean food so far inland as street food.

When I was growing up in New York & Long Island, a Chinese restaurant was still unusual, and the grocery stores had Chung King brand crispy noodles and soy sauce. I used to wonder why they didn't call him King Chung, until I learned it was actually a place.

Oddly enough, websearches on "'herb caen' umbrella" do not turn up any results on one of his most important contributions to society.

I've gotten into the habit of using a napkin to handle tongs at a buffet table, and Purell after using a public keyboard and mouse. I need to get into the habit of wearing glasses while people are eating and talking; tired of getting their food and spittle in my eye.

The tourists' cameras get in the way of their eyes, the guide's voice gets in the way of their ears, the conversation about home and other trips get in the way of realizing where they are.

While waiting in queues, a walking-stick is wonderful soft persuation to prevent tailgaters from becoming rearenders.

And when someone bumps into me in foot traffic and says "Sorry," I say "Don't be sorry, just Be Here Now." You're not really conscious unless you're looking around.

Odd realization about Beijing this time... not one person wanted to sell me a Rolex. Most of the watches sold this trip were luxury items, self-definition, not cheap practical timepieces. Mobile kills another industry.

Grab bag of notes

Miscellaneous observations which fit nowhere else, added on a number of different days, in Beijing, Xi'an, and Chongqing.

Pajama wear is still big. This is mostly in Beijing's hutongs and residential areas of other cities. Quality seems to be high... dress pajamas, fully buttoned, worn with undergarments and slippers. I wish we had that kind of elan in San Francisco.

The concept of the convenience store chain does not seem to exist in the PRC. 7-11, AMPM and other chains were a revelation to me in Tokyo and elsewhere in Japan, and I've relied on them in Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and elsewhere. Maybe it's because the state operates local cigaret/alcohol shops here, or maybe it's because the concept of foreign ownership of a business is not tolerated on the mainland. It's easy to buy plastic bottles of juice or tea, and many also have a few cans of beer, but there's no wonderland of oden and buns and crackers and dried fruit that I've seen elsewhere. Even 500ml bottles of beer are hard to find outside of restaurants. Maybe I just don't know how to shop it here.

Bird guys are big, big, big. Every morning you can see retired gents walking their hooded birdcages to the park, swinging them to and fro, why I do not know. Sometimes they carry multiple cages on a stick across their shoulders. They hang the cages from the trees, and their songs are very beautiful. Best scene so far is in Chongqing, where I've already seen large birds in individual cages, even balsa blockhouses of small birds in small cages, maybe six rows of eight, six feet across, freestanding upon the ground, transported by bang-bang pole.

Chongqing has chickens too. I saw a few of these in Beijing, but nothing like that in the Mountain City, where a large cage or bushel would hold half-a-dozen hens, or maybe 2-3 larger roosters. They'd be brought to the park and let loose to peck, then a few weeks later would be dinner, I suppose.

White cats roam the parks. People would bring them plastic bags of food in the morning, and it seemed certain people know certain cats. Pretty.

And you know about the tree people, right? People commune with individual trees, stroking and hugging them. I saw a few trees with odd truncated lower branches that middle-aged women would, well, hump during their morning wake-up routines. I'm not too sure how deep a communion they receive.

I came across a wet market this morning in Chongqing that was much livelier than anything I've seen in Hong Kong. Rows of ducks would sit placidly waiting to be bought and dispatched before being cooked. The ducks were so well-behaved that I wondered whether someone had slipped them a mickey, maybe some stale beer, to keep them quiet. And unlike the wet markets of Kowloon the streets here were curving and hilly and of very uncertain footing... much more of an experience than the rectilinear layout of Mongkok.

I've seen very little rope, stick and toy work in Chongqing. Partly this is because there are few big parks, and I don't know where to go... when I've gotten to a park in the morning I've seen people stretching, maybe some empty-hands Tai Chi, and one lone sword dancer. But I haven't yet found anything to compare to Xi'an's parks or the Bund in Shanghai, much less the scene in Beijing. There must be a scene here; I just don't know how to find it.

On this trip I've been mainly using the Opera browser -- if it's good enough for Russian hackers, it's good enough for me! I've been writing in Notepad++, which I hadn't used before, but which is a good solid text editor. Opera took a little while to configure to my liking (tabs, displays, etc)... glad I got the opportunity to get familiar with it again.

Which sites are blocked here? I can't see: NewTeeVee.com; certain complex Google News searches ("adobe -'please download' -'this site requires'" after the third page, eg); Blogspot, Typepad, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook; Mark Cuban; varied US political blogs (hit & miss; some surprises get through); Google News time-sorted searches (intermittent), and Google News sequential pages (fails after about three or four pages).

Wikipedia is not currently blocked, in late Oct 2009. I haven't tried to hit particular entries which might be blocked.

In Chongqing a higher percentage of people seemed to be wearing various shades of red, perhaps 25% of pedestrians after including the odd fluorescent yellow or lime green. Some were straight-up red, others were burgundy, russet, dark pinks, hot purples... generally, it seemed a lot more red clothing than I had seen elsewhere. I really like those russet raw silk sport jackets some men wear, but there's little chance of me hassling the hardsell sales process to try one of my own. Maybe in San Francisco.... :(

Kids here are a mixed bag. Those under five years stare at unusal-looking people (like me), and you can earn big points with their parents by waving, smiling, saying "Hello" and "Bye-bye". But subteens are often willful and spoiled, often already overweight. They do not have the experience of negotiating with siblings, with the siblings of their friends. This may be one of the great risks of the next few decades.

I have a number of wallets. There is the little black leather change-purse, purchased at Asakusa Kanon in Tokyo, holding yuan coins and jiao coins and folded yuan bills in a flap in the back. There is a recent nylon mini-wallet from REI in San Francisco in the other front pocket, with 5Y and 10Y, 20Y 50Y and 100Y bills folded separately for easy access. The back pocket has a nylon zippered pocket safe with my ID and credit and bank cards, secured by a looped cord to my belt. Then in the hotel safe I have a leather travel wallet, with a photocopy of my passport and other essentials, itinierary and spare cash, used at airports and while travelling between cities. A pickpocket might game me, but they cannot game me much.

Last day in Chongqing

A day of elation; a day of frustration. Final day in Chongqing. Biggest takeaway? Relax and things will take care of themselves. So far. ;-)

I took a morning walk about a mile away to the last remaining remnant of the city's walled gates. These are located where Minsheng Lu and Heping Lu curve around and meet, and were constructed during the Ming Dynasty. The history seems to go back further though: many of the plaques in the area were quoting dates in the 1100s and beyond. There are lifesized metal statues of people fighting to climb the walls, and defenders throwing boulders down on the people climbing ladders, archers everywhere. Not a pretty lifestyle!

One of the benefits of smoking a pipe is that I can stop and fiddle with it, out of the flow of foot traffic, and just look around while doing so. The streets are only occasionally marked by streetsigns, so contextual clues like the location of a mosque or an escalator really help. (The longest escalator in Asia, even bigger than the Central Walkway on Hong Kong Island, is near the Chongqing railway station. I didn't make it there, but did stop by the smaller Kuanxinkou Escalator (sp?) near Shibati, connecting the lower city with the upper... like Tokyo, there's a low town and a high town, with status in each to match.)

Then I walked north, found the monorail, took it eight stops to "Yangjiaping Walking Area", a large shopping center to the southwest of city center. This is the start of the university area, developed during WWII when coastal areas were under occupation. I had planned to walk a few metro lines north, but realized on the way in that freeways seemed to cut off obvious footpaths, and so just wandered, people-watching, thinking deep thoughts. I'd tell you what those deep thoughts were but I'm now continuing writing this the next day, and am not in the right mental place to do so. Later.

Took the metro back to a new station nearby my hotel, and had some fun with a google-eyed pair of four-year-old twins... after peekaboo we ended up blowing kisses to each other as the whole car laughed. The walk back started nicely, but then so did the rain, and slick tile inclines with unobservant pedestrians, many with impolite umbrellas, sorta ruined the mood. On my last night in Chongqing I stayed in the hotel room, too scared to chance the streets.

But the next morning, when the Victoria Prince cruise boat pulled away from Chongqing, I did tear up a little. I like the town. It's difficult, and grey and overcast, and I never had hotpot or bangbang noodles, but I was very impressed by the population of the town, and what they've achieved. "City of Lingering Aftertaste", indeed.

Today I've been sailing down the Yangtze, and we'll reach Fengjie and the start of the Three Gorges in the morning. Took a shore excursion in evening to Fengdu, Ghost City, the Entrance to Hades... again treacherous slick footing on the stairs leading up to the main temple, so I went as far as felt comfortable and smoked a pipe and swung some poi while looking out, through silent trees, to the river that supports a third of China.

No deep thoughts to write tonight, sorry... been thinking them, but it will take the right opportunity to present. A little alcohol, a little tobacco, a little people-watching while typing would all help. The boat does have internet access but it depends on geography, and sheer steep cliff walls still prevent weak little internet signals from coming through. Not sure of my workflow the next few days... just sailing down the river.


Update: What places does Chongqing remind me of?

San Francisco, the moist air, the hills' crooked streets, the historical reputation for quirkiness.

Hong Kong, for its stairs and grime, for the difficulty in navigating by logic, for the light show in the harbor at night.

New Orleans, for the rivertown feel, the regional reputation for spiciness.

Tokyo's older irregular sections, around Ueno Lake, up in the old samurai areas now converted to residential, and also its underground world of malls and tunnels.

New York's old air quality, its filigree of tunnels and overpasses leading to unknown destinations, its realistic brashness.

Chicago's broadshouldered warmth and industry, its ability to cast aside the past for new needs of today.

Moria, the Dwarf city in the Lord of the Rings, dark and scary yet warm to those of good heart.

London's storied sulphurous fog, its resistance to invasion, its history in every block.

More Chongqing notes

CHONGQING, Oct 24: I lost most of yesterday due to fever, but it seems the forced rest did the trick, and I'm back in the pink today. Rough travel notes follow; no main point, just observations on the day, in a stream-of-consciousness way, which may or may not be of interest to anyone reading the other entries here.... ;-)

It's about 10pm Saturday night, and I'm back in the hotel, drinking local beer. It's Shancheng brand, with shan being the character for mountain, and cheng being the character for city... Mountain City beer, which is the nickname for Chongqing. It's a Pilsener, as are most beers here, and I think the label says it's 9.5% alcohol, a 4.75proof beer... again, on the light side. These 500ml bottles are sold at all the street stalls, and people pop back three or four with a meal. Cost me five yuan a bottle, about seventy-five cents at today's rate of exchange... would go for $3.69 + tax in San Francisco. Between this and the cheap Baijiu, I don't know why the CCP doesn't make cannabis and opium legal again. (Sichuan used to grow a lot of hemp, and I've heard that opium pods were an occasional ingredient in Sichuan hotpot, so it's not as farfetched as it might seem.)

Today had light occasional rain... dangerous on these slick inclined tile sidewalks. I took things very slow while walking, and so far have lived to tell the tale. The city beat me on a few counts, and I had a few more small triumphs of getting around... a draw. This is definitely the most challenging urban environment I've ever been in. I don't think it's an impossible city, but it sure has a big upfront learning curve. Fascinating. I'm glad I'm here in the temperate autumn, and not in the legendary summer.

A couple of times today I thought visiting Chongqing would have been a great event for the San Francisco Suicide Club, the precursor to the Cacophony Society. We used to do bridge climbs, Moonie infiltrations, rapelling in large abandoned buildings, and other stunts which would challenge your preconceived capabilities. I'm centered and calm, but am definitely enduring things which would have me running and screaming were I to only imagine them.

Early today I took the metro line out a few stations to Liziba, and tried to walk back through the Stillwell Museum, Eling Park, and other sites in the area. No way! The streets climbed around and took me where they wanted to take me. I finally ended up at the building the CCP used during WWII, when Chiang Kai Shek tolerated them in town as a precondition for the US and the Flying Tigers to continue fighting the Japanese for him. I could recognize the characters for Chou and Lai on a statue, figure it was Chou En-Lai, but couldn't make out much of the other signboard material in the museum exhibit of the buildings in which they lived. Gave up and hailed a cab to get back to the hotel, and saw the Peoples Assembly Hall on the way... hope to visit that tomorrow night, my last night in town, to see the massive dancing scene they have in the plaza in the evenings.

One very cool thing I saw this morning further in the promontory was how WWII bomb shelters had been reworked as car garages, restauarants, other uses. People have dug into the mountains here, and those spaces are still in use. I know I won't see the range of such recycled burrows, but I'm glad to have seen first-hand at least a little bit.

Late in the afternoon I got back out, and managed to find the northern connection for the cross-Yangtze cablecar... the trick to local navigation seems to take it slow and steady, just gradually hone in on a target... it's an isthmus, there's only so many places a river-crossing gondola can hide. A box holds twenty people suspended by cable above the river, takes about five minutes, costs half a buck. I was thrilled, even though the view was still socked-in and overcast. Then a 45-minute walk through twisty neighborhoods until I finally found Nanbing Lu, the food street on the south bank of the Yangtze. These are big dining palaces, a whole block of them, but none of them seemed oriented to the single diner, so I crossed the street and discovered a whole bar street hidden beneath the roadway, overlooking the river. The bars were a little strange, all empty... I couldn't figure out if people enjoyed the afternoon there and had already left, or whether it only came alive after people ate meals across the street. I'm not comfortable being the only person in a bar, particularly if the deepest draft is a Budweiser. Took a cab back to the center of town, failed to find a meal on Hao Chi St, and got some fried rice at a food court. That's what I done today. Following are some riffs on that routine.

How come I couldn't find a meal on Good Eats Street? Mostly because I couldn't dope out their process. It's like trying to fill out an IT form at Adobe, I'm very willing to enter the process, but I just keep getting blocked when trying to guess what they want me to do next. Many of the canteen-style places have the ingredients laid out, and you tell the cook how you'd like them prepared. This has obvious problems when there's a language barrier. In the food courts the final dishes are presented, as in Japanese Kappabashi work, only with real food. I just walk, look, and point... no questions asked. In Hong Kong and Taiwan I've also gone hungry, simply because I couldn't figure out what they were asking me before they'd give me food. Partly my personal foibles, partly the fixation of the process they use.

Speaking of asking questions across languages, repeating a noun does not make a sentence. There have been plenty of times where someone repeats "120 yuan!" or whatever, writing it down on paper and showing it to me, and I say "I understand you're giving me a price, but what do I get for that price?" People used to ridicule The Ugly American for repeating a phrase in a louder tone of voice, but I've seen the same weakness across cultures. Rephrase it, mime it, keep a smile in your eye, don't get stuck in repeating a pattern... if there's a blocking-point in the communication, try something different. No shame, just something we've got to grow out of.

Another communicational problem I've seen across Asia is how some people, particularly those in lower service positions, will assume they cannot communicate with someone who looks like they're a foreigner. I first read of this in the excellent Nihongo Notes series from Japan Times (still available at Kinokuniya Bookstore in SF)... even fluent speakers will find that they cannot communicate with some people, simply because of the way their face is arranged! This is funny enough in Japan, whose linguistic homogeneity through the country is remarkable, but it's extra remarkable in China, where most natives speak Mandarin as a second langage, and where natives often honestly compliment foreigners on how more "standard" their pronunciation is. I don't know any way to cope with this other than to grin and move on, after getting silently waved away.

(The flip side of this is that Asian-Americans without native language skills will be assumed to know perfectly well what the speaker is saying, and that any incomprehension is some kind of act. Now *that's* difficult! I'd rather be waved away I think. ;-)

One more language note is that I'm hearing a *lot* of Chinese I can't understand at all. I can pick out sentence patterns when people are speaking Mandarin with a heavy Sichuanese accent, but there's other stuff going on here too. I couldn't even tell you how many dialects I'm hearing in a day. It's easier to deal with the written word than the spoken word.

The car-honking is nearly unbearable. But I've noticed that on any street it's a minority of drivers who commit the majority of the honks. You can hear their tonal differences. Widespread car ownership is still very new here. But city bus drivers are some of the worst offenders, and I'm pretty sure their horns are at a higher decibel level than private autos. These honkers have deep, deep problems, ones that I suspect I might solve were I only to have an opportunity to cram that bus up their capacious as... but wait, I digress. ;-)

(Seriously, noise pollution has direct effects on health. It doesn't get the airplay of particulate matter, or even chemo-agriculture or mobile phone irradiation, but at some point we humans will get a freakin' clue on not getting right in-the-face of innocent strangers for no good reason. You're frustrated, and so you frustrate us... makes no sense. These car honkers need to get their feedback, because they're oppressing the rest of us.)

I think I've got a gift of rapport, at least in superficial relationships... when I see other foreigners deal with natives I never see mutual smiles, it's usually very strained. I don't mind being the brunt of a joke, and so can take more chances, get more laughs, have more fun. I've been fortunate enough to do grunt customer-service work myself, and feel more at home with ordinary working people than many of the foreigners seem to be. We're all human, there's a little spark in everyone, and none of us were born knowing what humans are intended to be. I keep thinking that next trip I should brush up on my street magic, that's a sure way to fascinate kids, and particularly in China, once you make their child smile, you've got an "in" with the parents. I think folks are happy to see a looser American, one that won't rant at them for odd reasons. Whatever, I feel lucky about connecting with strangers across a language barrier.

One more day and night in Chongqing, then I'm on the Victoria Prince luxury cruiser for a five-day trip downriver to Nanjing. Part of me welcomes the removal of stress; part of me dreads dealing with English-speaking vacationers. I've got some guidebooks to read, some good tobacco to smoke, a few play-toys to exercise with. The ship is billed as having internet access, and if they've got any Newcastle Stout or other thick beer, I'm set. I still need to book the last two nights' hotels in Suzhou and Shanghai before the flight home, but it's about time I'll be heading back eastwards again.