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Short notes which I took in Yunnan, which could've been turned into 140 characters had I the time....

Oddly comforting thing about background music in China... Billie Holiday comes up more than would be expected.

Tourist in China? Wear suede shoes or sneakers or something, not leather... saves you from the shoeshine people.

Car honkers suffer from an amplified form of Tourette's Syndrome. Very disruptive.

I'm learning there's a certain charm in warm 3.5% beer... depends on the setting. And the price doesn't hurt, either.

I've been in at least a hundred photos that I know of, usually "V" fingers with someone who needs proof they traveled. Be a good sport. (Update: Know of 300 or so.)

Travel services are derelict in not clearly advising the difficulty in finding booked rooms, Lijiang's lengthy cobblestone treks for luggage wheels.

Sitting at an outside restaurant, lighting up a pipe, became the subvert target of photographs from multiple parties, passing in the street.

In Lijiang's Siefang Jie, hill people dressed as Tea-Horse caravaners, with fur hats and cloaks and burros and falcons, probably had a few more photos taken of them than I did. There was one shot where a muleteer and I were sitting near each other, and....

Seen many more children under five years of age in Yunnan, than I have anywhere else in the PRC.

In other cities in China it's common to see gents walk their caged songbirds for the sunshine. In Lijiang they walk with hunting falcons on their arm.

I think it was a visit to Hong Kong, five years or so ago, that first turned me on to the practicality of wearing a canvas vest with pockets.

The dogs here are cute-and-a-half. Most are pocket-sized; some are mastiff-sized. Some are pampered, some scrounge the discards at street stalls.

Yunnan Ham, "Pipa", is the God of Bacons. Dense, sweet. Small restaurants often display their bacon stores, hanging on hooks on the wall.

On CCTV I've seen some nice Apple commercials... deaf people signing via Facetime, a young nuclear family celebrating a birthday even though daddy's away. No idea if it's a transplant of western commercials, but I liked 'em.

Incidental observation that so many Silicon Valley sites have exceptionally long load times here in China, and it seems to be the calls for web-beacons to Twitter, Facebook and other banned sites. They have to time out to free up that HTTP connection for the next request.

People have really taken to digital cameras. Unclear what the majority of people do with the photos after. Certainly a great proofpoint for explosive growth in pocket digital screens. (Mobile phones had similar growth, but maybe not as much curiously exuberant use... telephony is still a stopgap, where you have to ask someone to get info.)

Couple of times I've had young Chinese guys introduce themselves, say they're from Wisconsin or New York. From the accent, I don't think they were born there. Maybe it's to impress the people they're with.

Despite the groupthink in the SF Bay Area, it still seems easier to achieve outside perspectives there.

Probably folly to hope, but a martial-arts flick featuring excellent conflict resolution skills would probably be novel to watch. How would an expert avoid a conflict, turn an opposition into something mutually beneficial? Too bad there's not yet more of a market for such a thing.... ;-)

I think I saw a Starbucks in Kunming. That's it. But Starbucks is starting to work with Yunnan Arabica farmers.

There's a KFC and a Pizza Hut in Lijiang. Both have Dongba characters, which is cool. Most of the patrons look like they're from Beijing or Shanghai. All the comforts of home.

Oxidized oil is hard to digest. Preservatives help. The Adobe kitchen in SF uses "natural" oils and is often rancid... burping, indigestion. Haven't had that problem here in China, even though food's oil content is often high. Don't know if they use BHT. Do know they move it much faster, give it less time to oxidize.

Odd how the tour groups are overwhelmingly nationals, while the few foreigners are mostly wandering around solo or in couples. Hard to tell how many nationals are doing self-directed touring, however.

Seems like bloggers are going off on the TSA (instead of on centralized policy decisions), but at some point airlines really should require that everyone wear face masks during flight... just as with seat belts, it's a safety issue, only far more frequent.

We technologists do a half-assed job. We figure how to make stuff, but don't anticipate how it will be used. Whoever invented the car horn could have had a more holistic viewpoint, for instance. Someday we'll feel the same about handheld screens which allow people to weave on sidewalks. Bad juju.

Lao Beer (from Laos). Hadn't seen it in PRC before, but may not have been looking. A dark 12oz at 6.5% alcohol, a 500ml lager at 5%. Both 10-12RMB. The Budweiser in my hotel room is a 3.5%.

It's fun to watch westerners first try to eat soup noodles with chopsticks. Also fun to watch easterners eat spaghetti with fork & spoon. Exotic for both. In the latter, they use chopstick technique: lift the fork high to gauge the right amount of noodle, then slurp it in. Haven't seen any pasta eaters try to twirl it in their chopsticks, though.

Guys, you know, have problems. Our dicks are always too small. Leads to all types of repercussions, at least for the first decade or two after puberty.

It'd be fun to sit above a traffic circle with a slingshot, and shoot heavy soft loads at cars honking unnecessarily. Or a paintgun. (They do it because it *might* be useful to them, even though it's *definitely* unuseful to everyone else.)

In cafes I usually touchtype on a netbook, often looking around, off into space. Realized what an unusual appearance this must present to those who hunt and peck while studying the characters presented by an IME.

Europeans speak in English. Locals communicate in various tongues (Dai, Bai, Naxi), and sometimes Mandarin, sometimes English. Both languages bridge groups, but one is of larger scope.

The Cultural Revolution Never Ended

Fri Nov 19, Lijiang: Attended a concert for the Dayan Ancient Music organization this evening, the Naxi Orchestra.

It's an interesting situation. Yunnan, like Taiwan, has been at the backwaters of Confucian organization, the hinterlands. Certain traditions can stay alive longer in such situations. In this case, musical instruments, scores and playing styles have been preserved like nowhere else in China. Specifically, when Kublai Khan swept down through Sichuan to Yunnan, attempting to flank the remaining Han forces from the west, he dropped off a bunch of captured Tang instruments and scores, as well as some of his bandmembers. This became the nugget of "Naxi Ancient Music", which I believe preserved some of this material in the Dongba pictographic script.

At least that's the official storyline. In practice tonight we also heard Bai folk songs (which still remind me of Appalachian string/singing traditions), regional opera, and other non-ancient tunes. There's a big influence from Taoist music too, and I hear similarities to current Taoist bands on the east coast. Seems accretive, but not syncretic, but there certainly does seem to be a living link to Tang music.

If you're near Flickr, do a search on "Naxi Ancient Music" to see photos of the band... "The Three Olds" are old tunes on old instruments from old players, and many in the band are over eighty years old. They dress real fine, in brilliant Taoist silks... really should check it out. (There's also a Naxi shaman dress style which reminds me of nothing more than prime Gris-Gris New Orleans... plenty of funk to go around.)

Main instruments are flutes, plucked stings, bowed strings, harps and cymbalums, Taiko-sized drums and plenty of gongs. Voices, both solo and choral unison. Playing style is general Chinese monophony, where all instruments play the melody although each in its own way, its own pace (gongs are usually whole-notes, flutes might be eighth-notes, others in-between, ie). Scales are usually ionian pentatonic, although there is sometimes a sharpened-fourth or flatted-seventh, and some pieces have startling temporary modulations of a fifth. Most striking stylistic identifier is the quarter-note tremolo on some held whole-notes... "I left my heart-art-art-art-art-art-art-art-art, in San Francisco-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh", eg.

I had heard of them while researching this trip, found their Nonesuch (?) CD on Amazon, listened to it often. Was grinning a lot during the concert. Still grinning now, but there were a couple of rough spots along the way.

Biggest problem was that the lame-ass bars two streets over had their dumb-ass beats drooling over into the Naxi concert hall. How distracting to perform or listen to one thing when there's a competing oblivious beat coming in unnecessarily. Amplified music is the anti-music... music perhaps in its own space, but in its insane encroachment where it's not wanted it defeats other music which might otherwise be taking place.

A year ago I was fortunate enough to cruise down the Yangtze, and after the Hubei Provincial Museum's day-trip to the Marquis of Zhou's gongs, was very very happy to be alone on the boat's upper deck, swinging poi in the dark in the middle of China's longest river, listening to a recent recording of those ancient gongs playing ancient tunes. Had hoped to have a similar experience tonight. But on the river outside Wuhan there was no competition from oblivious beats. Tonight, there was a constant oppression.

Other problems included the cold of the unheated hall, down to 43F by 10pm with moist air on a slight wind, although I was bundled up. In front of my seat was the tallest guy in the place, and at my side in the connected row was a hyperactive guy with a jiggle foot. Was easy enough to move further back after the first tune.

The unwanted amplification was the biggest issue. Oddly, though, when the band was playing and in a groove, they blew away the fake beat which had only a Fender knob to support it. The people playing, the musicians, had a heaviness far beyond that of the Boom-Boom-Boom-Boom-you-can-find-your-ass-with-both-hands-even-if-you're-a-lamer beat.

The band's driving force, 82-year-old Zhuan Ke, was apparently imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution. Some of the instruments had been buried to hide them from attempted destruction by self-righteous teen gangs.

The Cultural Revolution was late in Mao's career, after their horrible failures of centralized agricultural planning, at a period when he may have been toppled. There was therefore a clampdown on heretical thought, and as an afterthought gangs of youth were given the A-OK to go out and destroy older cultural artifacts. Humanity lost some of its history during this psychosis. Mainstream Chinese thought now brands it as a mistake, but I always wonder about all those people now in their 60s who had taken part in what was now called a mistake.

The Naxi Ancient Music has been preserved by humanity for 1300 years. That's like half-a-million nightly recitals. During a claimed aberration forty years ago we lost it, but fortunately those interested brought it back. Tonight it was nearly taken away by other arrogant youth, who had their own idea of what was proper but did not think to look around to see what effects their actions would have on others.

Forty years ago they smashed and burned instruments. Tonight they just overwhelm The Other by turning a switch louder than necessary. Same arrogant failure-of-imagination, failure to look at other people, failure to focus on making things better.

Provides a parallel to the car-honking, the pedestrian collisions, the overly-loud speakers. The arrogance of constrained views.

The title? A riff on Philip K. Dick's "The Empire never ended", which I understood as the power networks among humans never actually just vanishing when their named epoch is over... PKD realized that the influencing networks behind the Roman Empire evolved into those behind the Church and later evolved into those behind states and financial markets... goes beyond looking at individuals and dates and into the longterm patterns within history.

"The Cultural Revolution never ended"... the period is labeled an aberrant mistake today, but the same psycho-dynamic of "my car is bigger than your bike so I must have the right of way" is still quite alive. Thankfully the pitchforks and torches are back in storage. But similar types of damage still occur.

What can I do about it? I don't know, but it seems a very useful thing to try to improve. San Francisco has the same types of problems -- mindblowing how high-IQ Adobe employees can't stack dishes without shifting their lazy-ass costs onto others -- more a difference of degree than of kind between the two cultures.

I believe that improving digital publishing can help, just as people who created books a thousand years ago helped improve our condition. It's not a direct effect... just a reasonable hope that making it easier to see the creative viewpoints of others will help new people learn faster that other people really do have different perspectives, and increase sensitivity in their own actions.

Maybe having a mordantly benevolent sense-of-humor is the most direct contribution I can make, even though it's very limited in range. I'd sure like to make things easier for the people a couple of generations down the line, though... that's my main goal.


Afternote, next morning, light rain, under 50F. Up early to take a walk before it got busy. Siefang Jie, central square, a dozen Naxi women gathering. Most were over seventy years. After enough have arrived, join hands, slow circle dance, chanting... the morning's work, keeping the balance of the world in order.

Meanwhile, one of the narrow djumbok shops has light-rock-less-talk... limpid BossaNova-inspired pop, breathy young female voices singing of their repetitive wistfulness. They'll be playing that tape throughout business hours... wouldn't've killed 'em to turn it off while the Naxi elders were actually making music, the music the shop's customers had actually come to hear.

And the tourists pushed themselves into line, turning the whole thing into a photo-fest. Some of them had genuine fun, true, duplicating the steps. But I also saw the lead dancer continually brushing away linked arms who were too unobservant to notice they were trying to link in front of the head of the line. The photos usually had one of the group posed in front, the actual subjects of the photo, the culture just exotic background.

The Cultural Revolution never ended. Just changed its clothing. It's something we'll always have to deal with, until we finally all grow beyond it.


After-afternote: The elder women did their thang again in the square that evening. With very loud speakers. Around a bonfire, in the dark. Totally blew away the shop which still had its autofeed on. Competed rather well with the evening's 72bpm thumpers from nearby bars, but still....

Travel Notes, Hong Kong, Sun Nov 28

[These "Travel Notes" are just raw brain-dumps, collected whenever I had a chance to sit down and type during the trip. See December's various topics for more reader-friendly post-trip writing.]

Sun Nov 28: Sad to leave Xishuangbanna, happy to see Hong Kong again. Funny how much spunkier I've been in the first few hours of return than when I came out three weeks ago... partly a half-day plane ride instead of 14+ hours, partly coming down from mile-high levels to sea level, partly not having to finish off planning for the trip.

Getting here was a bit chaotic... pack'd and taxi'd to a T, but the Xishuangbanna to Kunming leg was delayed. No English alerts, no Chinese signage. I asked at the desk and the attendant was flustered by a westerner, calling for help, until I gently asked "Chi dao le ma? Shenme shi hou lai?" She wrote down the time. Turned out that was the time a replacement plane would leave Kunming, meaning I'd cut things too close for the Kunming to Hong Kong leg. Finally figured out what was going on, and got a seat on an intermediate plane so I could still make my connection.

That incident crystallized a pattern. Staff in the airport were very caring when they realized what was going on. They were just negligent in realizing what was going on. When a driver honks their horn they're not denigrating the eardrums of others... they honestly don't seem to realize the effects of what they're doing. Quite sweet, actually, when they do get around to noticing. That's why it's important to smile and stay relaxed here, even if they're killing you.

Amazingly, my baggage followed me too, no hassles... arrived in Hong Kong just when I had planned. Surprised to see it dark by the time I got out of customs, but shouldn't have been... China is just one timezone, and Yunnan has later sunrises, later sunsets than Hong Kong.

Kunming to Hong Kong leg had some funny aspects. Dragonair seems to be a HK airline. Main announcements were in English, followed by Cantonese, then Mandarin... must be sensitive in how the languages are ordered, and English came out as the primary language. The recorded safety announcements, I don't think they had Mandarin, but I did hear Korean. I was like "if it's okay with you, then it's okay with me."

Had a window seat, early boarding. Next to me sat two Hong Kong'rs, urbane 60-ish gent in suit and scarf, his unmarried 35-ish woman (secretary? relation? mistress?) in the middle seat next to me. Middle of the flight he reaches over, unbuttons her blouse a bit. Asks me "Where you from? San Francisco, oh." Rest of the flight it's a rather mild titty show, him grabbing her boobs, trying to put her hands on his pants, she going along but also pushing him away. I was again like "if it's okay with you, then it's okay with me."

At Hong Kong customs I again tried to declare that I had more than 28 grams (one ounce) of tobacco... a 50g tin, and maybe 30g left in my pouch. This time the customs agent seemed embarrassed that I was so proud to declare and wanted to pay any duties necessary. She told me to just hide it in my bag and go through the "Nothing to declare" line. Once more, I was like "if it's okay with you...."

Got to hotel, unpacked like a demon and threw smelly clothes in for quick showering, then out on the streets, a wildman from the Southwest, linen field shirt and tactical pants and hemp hat and cane, working out the energy of sitting in planes all day, hunting food and beer. Using the cane as a camel's nose under the tent, weaving a way through crowds weaving unseeing across the sidewalk. (I really love people with good peripheral vision, who look ahead and _see_.) Very polite and helpful, but self-assertive when obliviousness seeks to impose costs on others.

Hong Kong folk don't smile back as much as people in the PRC. Particularly around Temple Street, where foreigners are rife. I must have seemed like a wildman to them.

Also used a lot more Mandarin this evening, and I was surprised it just worked. Usually I try to think in Cantonese when I'm in Hong Kong, but I don't get enough study or practice, and I really suck. The last few weeks of trying to use Mandarin carried over habitually into this evening's conversations, and it just worked... Mandarin is a second language for most Honkies (that's what some Hong Kong residents call themselves), so we were able to communicate poorly but happily together. Unexpected.

Tried to get a meal on Temple Street and again saw later-arriving Asians (both HK & PRC) getting their food while I still couldn't place an order. Couldn't tell if it was racial discrimination or just sugar-fed incompetence. Went further down the street to a foreigner-oriented joint and got some noodles and vegetables which weren't as good as I hoped the oyster omelet would have been. Will try again when the staff is less overstimulated.

Tomorrow I want to visit Shenzhen... this time with a map and a plan (Hongqiaobei area, two subway stops north from Futian border, then transfer and two subway stops east). Maybe go to Dongmen to seek a russet silk sportcoat, which I've craved for years. Was thinking of getting an iPad knockoff just to bleep off Steve Jobs and his Mactards, but there are better ways to fill up my return luggage. Will try Tuesday for Macau... haven't been in five years, and it's changed greatly, but I bet they still have Portuguese almond cookies and sweet dried jerky. Wednesday's a day for catch-up in case any of the above falls through. Thursday's a twelve-hour flight, and then it's back to good coffee and juice for breakfast, good beer and tobacco at night.


Mon Nov 29: Had a fantastic, mind-expanding time in HuaQiangBei retail electronics market in Shenzhen. Brought back every nerdy affection from Homebrew Robotics Club, electronics construction, wholesale produce markets, current consumer electronics, and much more.

Unfortunately I'm unable to integrate it in writing right now... got waylaid by idiot motormouths constantly talking zero (no, net-negative) content into cellphones on the subway back, then on stupid-bleep hip-hop "look at me I can rhyme" insistence in bars, and just general being-less-than-fully-human jive the past few hours. My mood is shot.

Will sleep, and likely dream of dislocating joints of idiots with a three-foot wooden lever. But tomorrow, Macau.

[And that's it. Shenzhen and Macau were both fabulously brain-filling, but I spent the rest of the trip on foot, rather than on my butt typing. Will try to cover highlights of both in subsequent topics.]

Travel Notes, Xishuangbanna, 2010 Nov 23

[These "Travel Notes" are just raw brain-dumps, collected whenever I had a chance to sit down and type during the trip. See December's various topics for more reader-friendly post-trip writing.]

Xishuangbanna, Fri Nov 26: Haven't been typing much at all... arrived here Tue 23, been walking ten miles a day the first two days, fifteen yesterday, took it easy with about eight miles today. Lots to process. Been thinking, just haven't integrated things yet. Mere snapshots follow; no particular order.

Jinghong is a gorgeous environment. Jungle-y, when you get into the parks (and, presumably, if you get out of town). Banyans, broad-leaf canopies. Vaguely grid-like, but offset from cardinal directions... I've gotten turned around. Few street signs. Searing in mid-afternoon, but evening fog lasts until morning, great air.

Biggest shock when arriving in Jinghong, besides the 35F increase in heat, was street signage. In most of the PRC the signs are in characters, with English subtitles. Here they're mainly characters, but with subscript in Dai writing (which I first took as Thai). Sometimes English appears in a third line, usually phonetic Pinyin rather than semantics. Threw me. Felt like a graduate course: "Okay, your safety net's gone!"

The guys on scooters hanging out blocking sidewalks are usually scooters-for-hire, if they're wearing hardhats. Seen a lot more two, three, or four on a scooter than I've seen elsewhere. Not sure why; cabs are a significant fraction of traffic, and are significantly empty.

Expats in Dali set up heavy networks of friends. Expats in Lijiang seem individual entrepreneurs. Expats in Jinghong often seem in competition. Europeans disproportionately represented.

There are designer-label stores. There are beggars. Many of the beggars are women with 2-3 young children in tow. Inexplicable. Some beggars have damaged limbs. Some set up camp outside a particular restaurant or series of restaurants. Some peddle packages of peanuts, or roses (as in SF, although with different affect).

Feels like there's big coastal investment in this tropical, non-visa getaway. Large apartment towers going up on the banks of the Lancang (Mekong) just north of city center... feels like holiday homes. Beneath is Bar Street, about a mile of carefully-spaced bars in theme zones ("Snack Street", "International Zone" ("Mexico Bar", eg), "Rain Forest" zone, etc). Must have made sense to the original investors. Doesn't make sense to me, but I've seen a lot of abandoned strip malls in my time.

Lots of SUVs and campers and probably-too-big-pickups here. Good number of Lexus and BMW too. Suspect they're not townies. Bigger than motorcycles, guess that's the main thing.

Not sure if I've seen any Americans during this whole trip. Have seen a lot of Europeans, some Australians.

Jinghong is just the largest city in the province. Most of the attractions are out of town... an hour away, three hours away, seven hours away. Tour buses load up from the hotels before 7am, then stream back late after 11pm. I know I'm missing a lot of rural attractions on this trip, a lot of diversity, but I didn't come here to sit in a bus, I wanted to see people who weren't Robert Scoble. Staying in town is a more effective way to do that. Maybe next time.

I've been eating great food this whole trip, even when constrained to places with obvious hygenics. Today for lunch I had Dai-style beef... dried jerky, shredded, in lime and fish sauce with chopped garlic and scallions, loads of chopped chiles, cilantro (perhaps mint and basil), with a side dish of stir-fried boletes in red/brown sauce... big pot of Puer tea dark as coffee. This evening shrimp cakes, like fish cakes, but sweeter, less chewy. Big bold flavors, and lots of 'em. Mengzi-style Crossing-The-Bridge-Noodles, flavorful stock of chicken/duck/pork bones, bubbling hot then a layer of oil on top, assorted plates of chicken/pork/ham/fungi/greens/banana-flowers/peanuts added in turn to cook, then cold cooked noodles added as last step, 20Y. Fresh watermelon juice, tamarind juice, red sour berry juice, plus lots of plastic bottles of orange/lemon/grapefruit juice, mixed berry juices, various teas. I should've logged 'em as I et 'em....

Very notable here: As a westerner unaccompanied by tour group, I'm seeing a higher proportion of blank staring than any other place I've ever been. However, 90% of the time, a smile and acknowledgment of the other person brings about the same in response. You can't smile at people in San Francisco and expect the same. (The exceptions seem to be older people of perceptibly diminished capability, hardened patterns.) On the negative side, I've also apparently frightened a couple of under-five children, despite their parents' entreaties to say "halloo"... haven't had that happen on previous trips.

Outside my hotel there's a stone workshop, with the sound of the drill running from 8am past 6pm. A few times at 4am there have been loud half-hour arguments, perhaps drunken, outside the 24-hour noodle shop across the street. The car horns are often quiet just before dawn.

My language skills always drop back a year or so in realworld use, compared to home study. This time I did much much better when reading signage and in conversation with shopkeepers, random individuals.

Fewer people smoking here, and in Yunnan. Still a bit more than San Francisco, but not what I recall from the coastal cities.

Betel Nut is common among some in this area, but apparently more in the countryside than in the city. Did see some of the telltale red splotches on the street near the Myanamar Jade Market, usually stafffed by Indians, but did not see anyone consuming, and could not find a source.


Sat Nov 27: Mid-day walk through Manting Park, a mile south of city center. Very quiet, only Mad Dogs and Englishmen.... Jungley. Lake. Well over a hundred peacocks. A cage of turkeys with whom I missed a date; multiple cages with a few macaques apiece. White Pagoda. More Buddhist reconstructions. The famous Dai splashing-water pool, empty, wood stacked in a brazier for a nighttime fire.

Sat Nov 27: Wrote the above, and did a lot of editing on previous Travel Notes, while sitting in back of the Mekong Cafe, drinking a fabulous pot of rich Puer Tea, smoking two pipes. Then, on to my Last Night in Yunnan, which was fabulously confusing....

First, walked north to the new bridge, across to the other side of the Lancang/Mekong, then north a mile or so to the old bridge. Dark, lots of bright headlights, changes in roadway/sidewalk, oncoming scooters, the rest. the NE side of the Lancang River here isn't as developed as the townie side yet, but shows the signs of change... lots of garages, monster truck tires, scooter repair, small shops where the two owners' bunks are visible when they roll up the shop door, sweaty guys watching their TV after the day's business is over. Lots of Dai barbecue places, glorious smells of smoke and citrus and grilling fish or meat or vegetables, people setting up tables at 8pm in anticipation of locals spending the rest of the night chatting with friends. Meanwhile, closer to the river, construction and empty new brightly-lit condominiums for sale, in expectation of coastal investment in vacation homes.

After a walk that seemed longer than a mile and had a few empty desolate spaces, came to the old bridge and informal convenience stores once again, barber shops with fashionable-looking young men tending hair even a few hours after dark, and foot-massage places which had three beds and three young ladies of dubious age and sanitation, people playing mahjohng or chess or cards or watching TV, and the reappearance of cheerful neon. Just before the bridge a few quarter-ride kiddie amusement rides, and a preplanned Dai Village bar scene, much smaller than that on the SW bank.

Back on the town side of the Mekong, ballroom/jitterbug dancing (but without the jitter) to radio-DJ's tunes which had western instrumentation but traditional frontier China sensibilities... lovely, such a contrast to the Internet Bar gaming scene. Back south down past the Bar Street scene which, on a Saturday night, apparently took only one table of a dozen patrons to rationalize the business investment. Back into CarHonk Central of Jinghong itself, and the evening's first and final bar stop at Banna Cafe on the corner of Manting Lu.

(I've been hitting nearby Mengzi Noodles and MeiMei and Mekong Cafes disproportionately because I know how to place an order there... Banna Cafe I had been to only once, and so owed them a visit.)

The music is what disoriented me. Willie Nelson with Rickie Lee Jones, an album, for starters. Then Merle Haggard, "Sing Me Back Home", which made me wish for George Jones' "Green Green Grass of Home" which was introduced to me by Ray Bierl many years ago. Then a group of Northern California newgrass singers, one of whom I could swear was Bethany Raines whom I had such a crush on before she joined Good Ol' Persons and got married, while she was singing with her brother Greg Pratt and Tony Marcus and Lesley Dixon in Random Harvest while I was playing with Bruce Stelter and Bruce Foss in Life Of Reilly, but the recording may not have been Good Ol' Persons because the lead singer enunciated the words so it couldn't have been dear Kathie Kallick, don't know... just put me offbase, the whole thing.

Then the waiter came by with a sheet of paper, and after a bit of time I understood that he wanted to check on some English prounciation issues. We spoke in Mandarin. He was Lao. I was quite enthralled by what he was doing, expat, speaking in a second language, trying to learn a third. The problem was the English "th" sound, which doesn't really exist in all other languages... a new skill. He got it after awhile, good for him. Meanwhile the jukebox did play George Jones singing "The Green Green Grass of Home", and I was really losing it, being on my second half-liter of 5% Lao Beer and walking about twelve miles on a pot of tea and some noodles.

And then... the jukebox played what sounded to me like an Irish button accordion. But then the second verse was Chinese open-throat singing, western Chinese, very distinct. Third chorus was definitely an Irish flute. I haven't been playing accordion for about five years, while studying Chinese, and so couldn't place the player... a half-hour later I could still hear the tune and believe they married an O'Neill's tune to a Chinese tune for some quick'n'ready fusion, but... it felt like the evening was speaking directly to me, giving me a sign, "Take these things and integrate them" or such.

I'm a little freaked out. Not uncomfortably so, just mind-changingly so. My last night in Yunnan, and it seemed to tell me to Do More. Maybe I should go to sleep now and dream about it....

Travel Notes, Lijiang, 200 Nov 16

[These "Travel Notes" are just raw brain-dumps, collected whenever I had a chance to sit down and type during the trip. See December's various topics for more reader-friendly post-trip writing.]

Tue Nov 16: Left Dali today, and the transit was a joke. Arrived in Lijiang, and it's a joke too, except perhaps one not so hurtful.

Dali made a big impression on me, and I've punted on the past few days of activities... mostly walking around, watching people, soaking things up. Dali is really a town where people live, and I left wanting to help them achieve what they want, but not sure how to do so.

The bus ride up was stupid. I wanted what they call a "Luxury" bus, three hours up, leaving about noon. Dali has many many booking offices, and I chose the one which had the clearest signage. Somehow the clerk downsold me from the 65RMB version to the 50RMB version... she had such certainty that it would be better; I now think she got a higher net from it. Instead of noon, it was scheduled 1:30, and she wrote on the ticket 1:50, and when I got there to wait the clerk told me 2:40, then 3pm, then a bit later it finally arrived.

Filthy bus, sunflower seeds all over the floor, grungy, frayed. 75% full, a number of nosepickers, and people who yelled into their many phone calls. Driver was a honker, pathological, should be put down. Once we made it out of Dali we pulled into a roadside stand where people were charged for the au naturel bathroom. Drivers ate a meal, about a half-hour. No advice on how long we'd be staying -- I was under the impression there were no stops, or perhaps one, during this three-hour trip.

Two-lane highway, lots of slow tractor engines pulling cement and dirt and cabbages and fuel and rebar and gosh knows what else. Drivers always trying to pass each other, but they'd slow down just as they were about to do so, probably so they could get a few more 100db+ honks in. Passing on blind curves... even a brain-injured person wouldn't do that.

Halfway through we pulled into another station. I asked "Duo jiu?", but the driver didn't appear to speak Chinese. Three workers quickly scrubbed down the outside of the bus. I took pictures of their activity, then shot the floor of the bus inside. A weakness in some Chinese personality: how it looks, rather than how it is. Please grow up quicker.

After a few other incidents (tractor stuck in a toll lane, a temporary steambath inside the bus, etc) we pulled into Lijiang's southern bus station at 7:30pm. I had asked for a ride so I could get there with a few hours of daylight. It was dark. My maps were all weak, and I had no idea of scale. Smoked a pipe, reconnoitred.

Bus station had women in white coats touting... something. They told me it was 100RMB one person. Repeatedly. Still don't know what it was, and my enquiries in Mandarin were not matched by Mandarin replies.

Finally got the second cabbie to take me to a landmark (the Water Wheels) which the maps said was near an established hotel which had vacancies (Lijiang Grand Hotel). Took me half-an-hour walking around to find it... was recessed from the street, hidden, even though it's big. I was a systematic detective, with no street signs, pulling luggage over broken cobblestones, among throngs of Chinese tour groups. Systematic, I was.

Once I found the Grand Hotel things went easily. Only $50 a night, and the room is quiet at night... see how it is during daylight construction hours. No Internet, that's the big oddity [edit: incorrect]. Supposed to have a good Naxi/Thai/Han breakfast buffet [edit: incorrect].

Great location... right outside the northernmost end of the old city. Lots of foot traffic... like the entrance to Pier 39. Walked down through it and got thoroughly lost... no grid, most streets off the cardinal axes, and I couldn't even get much of a bearing from visual landmarks, having arrived after dark.

Seems like Lijiang is a modern Chinese tourist city built atop an ancient and interesting city. After the 1996 earthquake many people in China first saw the city, and in subsequent years it became a tourist sensation. The original architecture was re-established in this older eastern side of the city. But most of the inhabitants were forced out. Now it's miles of souvenir goods, fast food and bars. Not all bad, though... the handicrafts are actually quite interesting, and the fast food is the traditional stuff presented with more modern sanitation.

The bars... I'm amazed at how clueless of pitch karaoke singers are. Don't their friends tell them? I found some that were quieter, mellow, further away from the 18-year-old-male bar scene.

Grabbed some Dan Dan Noodles and a Dali V8 at a corner restaurant nearby... guy tried to mooch a meal by helping me with the menu (although he actually hindered). Walk a bit, get lost, get found, order some spicy-sauce tofu from a street stall, 10Y. Eat, people-watch. Grab a pumpkin bread, 5Y. Walk a bit more. Need some meat, got sitdown Yak Jerky deep-fried with leafy greens and garlic cloves, and a 500ml of Feng Hua Xue Yue... chewy, but excellent flavor, salty, assertive, but very, very chewy (yes, that was deep-fried jerky... it worked).

Ended up getting back to the hotel around midnight. Very, very quiet here. Wonder if it will get noisier on the weekend. I'm in the off-season, and the Grand Hotel has been outclassed by more modern hotels. Will see.

The part of Lijiang I saw tonight was Tourist Central. Those beautiful golden lights upon traditional buildings on the hill... Disneyland, only added recently for Han sensibilities. The red-lit bars with planks across the river to enter... thumping techno, anguished thrash, subhuman karaoke. The slick-looking rough cobblestones... cobbled together for added flavor for the souvenir stalls which replaced neighborly dwellings. Packs of tourists, from four to two dozen, swarming insensate along otherwise busy walkways.

The people working here wear brightly-colored traditional costumes. The ones wearing black are the tourists. Prety straightforward.

I like it, though. I can figure out dated hotels, accompanied by convenience stores, even in the midst of a wrongly-designed tourist cashflow situation. I think there are richer more expressive parts to be found. Even though it's busy and crowded, right now it's quiet and warm where I am. Think I'll feel comfortable spending a few days here.

Summary: Subject to inhumanly stressful conditions, I persevered, retained my center. Hah, take that! ;-)


Wed Nov 17: My first real day in Lijiang. Had so much fun.

Walked around the outer areas of the old city early today, before the tour groups arrived. Could see Jade Snow Mountain, big and icy, sending rivers down through the town's canals. Quiet... could hear the soundscape change block by block. Lion Hill. Mu Palace. A baba bread, flakey, with Yunnan Ham. To the hotel, a nap.

Then out for a walk in the new city, west of the hill. Vibrant. A day market closing up. Little kids, staring wide-eyed.

Broke my cherry for hotpot. Never knew the social process of eating... easier if you're social, and have someone to teach you. Mushroom and chicken, it was, 58 RMB, more than I could eat. Many mushrooms I knew, some I didn't. It was a black-skin chicken, chopped entirely, flavoring the stock. I didn't eat the feet, too full. Spinach and Tat Soi and (I think) chrysanthemum greens, drop them in till they wilt. Staff were happy to help me get set up... put me in a front seat in the crowded shop, and I think I drew business. (Saw two Europeans walking by, trying to dope out the menu.)

Then just hang around the space near the waterwheels for an hour or two. Spontaneous circle dancing. One group, three dozen, grannies and male teenagers and more, all follow the leader, to recordings of traditional music using modern beats. Awesome. Then another group, one wild flutist driving over a hundred dancers, with a hundred voices joining on the chorus.

A walk to finish off the pipe, along the river to Black Dragon Lake. Quiet, all you hear is rushing water, breaking over rocks.

Walked twelve miles today. Most fun I've had in any city in China.


Thu Nov 8: Second morning in Lijiang. Went to sleep early, woke late... lassitude. We're like 7900 feet high, and in Dali I think it was 6200 feet. No headache... mostly slowness. Am holding off on any more reckless bus rides until I feel more like myself.

Enjoying it, though. Spent the morning walking Black Dragon Lake, and it is as impossibly scenic as popular photos portray. Afternoon nap, avoid the brunt of the direct sun, bright at this altitude.

Now in a streetside restaurant near the South Gate... a whole bunch of them here, to catch the crowds from the newer hotels... except at this time of year the streets are just fairly crowded, and most of these tour groups have their own meals arranged... restaurants, little business. Still displays of skewers of meat, greens, vegetables, mushrooms, suitable for sterilizing on a grill or in a hotpot.

Dish of the moment is rice & ham steamed in a bamboo tube. Seen plenty of pictures, never had it before. This dish is ten sections, each two inches long. I was baffled by how to eat it... "zenme chi?" but the waitress brought me chopsticks instead. I figure you hold one end to your lips and suck the rice in... seems to work, and nobody's pointing and staring. The rice is glutinous and sweet, little meat.

After I entered another couple sat down. Of the three-person staff, the mama/cook is between duties, older sister is knitting rough cotton, younger sister in the brighter clothes is the tout on the street. No reason why a customer should choose one place over the half-dozen adjoining... no reason to choose one souvenir stall over the others which have the exact same stock. The phrase "Unique Selling Proposition" has not entered the vocabulary yet.

Knitting is very, very big here, by the way. Dali too. Haven't seen any guys knit yet, but women knit sitting, working, walking... all types of activities. Lots of knit goods in the stalls too. Some shops have small looms set up for weaving. Others do brocade. Hard to tell the blend between made-elsewhere goods, and standard patterns replicated by the shop owner.

Previously spent about an hour in Siefang Jie, old town center, the crossroads of the old Tea-Horse Trade Route. Now tour groups assemble after time spent stall-wandering. Near full moon, rising past a large tree, mountain in the horizon, tides of tourgroup banners in the foreground. People-watching, very enjoyable. Made judicious use of sunglasses and brimmed hat to avoid becoming the center of a photography mob... keep the head moving past a staring gaze, corner-of-eye awareness.

Biggest thing I got from that surge of humanity is that each of those brains is trying to improve their own personal situation... a lot of decentralized decision-making there. That's only one small fraction of the intelligence we've got working on this planet. Not all of it will be put to the noblest and highest of purposes, but the longrun trend, I think, is beneficial.

Lots and lots and lots of small kids too, under five years old. More than I've seen anywhere else in China. Yunnan is one of the poorest provinces, so that's one aspect, but the government's birth permits are allocated at a higher ratio to minority groups than to Han. There's also the aspect of the overall expectation of improved economics in China... optimism breeds people. Hard to guess the blend between the factors.

The number of tour groups also made me think of tablets. There are tourgroup operations elsewhere in the world, but Chinese tourgroups certainly seem the biggest and most dynamics. At some point each group member will be issued a device with GPS, multimedia database, and apps for connectivity to the other devices in the group. It's easier for me to see this as distributing devices than as distributing apps to their current devices... easy to carry a five or seven inch tablet optimized for the necessary apps, fewer support issues, particularly as display-screen pricepoints plummet. Not sure how many other people in Adobe know of the CITS scene. Would drive local media creation, tooling. I'd also really like to see schoolkids in Dali document their daily lives, tie it in for visitors, maybe for export afar.

That last point is important to me. One thing I got from the community of Dali, and the cultural persistance in Lijiang, is that folks here are proud of who they are, they want to maintain it. There's some globalism, but there's also strong localism. (And for good reason too... the local culture is very rich.) Agriculture may be rich, but trade is poor... one of the biggest assets they have is culture, and I want to see that contribute to the rest of the world, before it fades under global pressure.

Big theme of this trip, that... the dynamic between globalism and localism. I see lots of people wearing local shirts and jackets, bluejeans on the bottom. Traditional music has been updated with global beats. Local restaurants serve standards from elsewhere in China. They're finding a balance. Globalism has its forces... Steve Jobs would like everyone to buy an iThing. But much of our richness is at the edges, and Adobe tooling can help decentralize artifact-creation.

Odd thing about the globalism dynamic here... television content is mostly from central or local governments. They may have Kentucky Fried Chicken, but they don't have reruns of Married With Children. Only certain aspects of the rest of the world come in through the broadcast screen. Western movies are also carefully screened before national distribution. The home screen for broadcast video is one of the earliest ways that people use visual technology, but its effect in the PRC is not as wide-open as elsewhere.

I'm still baffled by the retail mindset. I do rough customer/revenue counts, and it's hard to see it covering staff expenses. Restaurants are quite active about pulling in guests, but then it can be hard to catch their eye for a followup order, at least without yelling out "Fuwuyuan!". Handicraft shops do try the strong upsell, insisting you examine additional items after a purchase... maybe that's successful with most of their clientele, but for me at least it makes me want to get out quicker. Mid-November isn't that far our of prime tourist season. Then again, I come out of a high-volume retail produce background, where you've got to move stuff quickly, and figure out ways to get people to buy... not just wait for someone to come in and buy. Dunno.

Lijiang, hard to find places. Few street signs here, compared to Dali, even compared to Kunming or Hong Kong. Curvy streets, no grid. Foot traffic is often so heavy that it's easy to pass by places without seeing them. Been trying to find Xuan Ke's Naxi Ancient Band venue... know I've passed by it, but haven't been able to ID it on the street.

Language use in Lijiang is quite interesting. In one sense it's easier, because Mandarin is a second-language for most residents too, so it's not as hard as communicating with a native Beijinger. I'm hearing lots of Sichuan-style Mandarin, where "s" sound replaces "sh". Then I'm hearing tons of speech I can't place at all... the majority is likely Naxi, but there are other conversations with very different sounds, too. No idea.

It's often easier to speak with people for whom Mandarin is a second language, but it often introduces new barriers too... often, people look at my face and believe I'm speaking Europeanese instead of Chinese. Sometimes I've had a bystander interpret my Mandarin, into Mandarin.... ;-) I realize my tones are sometimes off, and this causes unexpectedly high barriers, but maybe I should start with a standard "Ni hui shuo Putonghua ma?" before trying anything else....

Tobacco. In Kunming I found some angel-hair blonde Virginia, and in Dali some more regular-looking brown Virgina ribbon-cut, both in the same pack. In Lijiang I'm also seeing cigars, handrolled, from regional Virginia leaf. I don't smoke cigars much, but bought a pack. Sweeter and cleaner than cigars elsewhere, no assertive Maduro or Dominican flavors, just straight Virgina. If Hong Kong didn't have restrictions on travellers I'd bring back a few ten-packs for cigar smokers within Adobe.

Seeing lots of bongs and hashpipes too. Local folks smoke cigarettes or cigars in the bongs. Not sure about the hashpipes. Along with the Tibetan-style textiles, it feels a lot like Haight Street.

Hats? The most dramatic are the fur hats, whether discreet Manhattan-style folders or big ornate frameworks to support a whole skin, complete with tail, paws, and head. Bucket hats are big, in various fabrics. I like the hemp knits, in bright red, pink, yellow, blue. Some knits are also ballcap-style, and I hope to be right-time-right-place to pick one up. Other bucket hats are batik regular patterns. Cowboy hats are very big, in both straw and leather... some of the latter have horsehair trailing down the back. I'm trying to find ones that I can also wear in San Francisco....

Let's see, two 500ml Feng Hua Xue Yues at 3.5% alcohol, that's 35 milligrams, just about equal to a two-ounce shot of Jameson's, divided by ten bamboo-encased rice rolls and one hour... think it's time to wrap it up at this streetside restaurant at the South Gate of Lijiang Old Town, find a bathroom..... ;-)


Sat Nov 20, just past noon. At Lamu's House of Tibet, a joint reputed to also offer the best western food. "Since 1998" says the wooden sign out front. Light rain, temperature finally up to 50F. An omelet with Yunnan Ham and sweet peppers; Tibetan potato balls enclosing a spoonful of ground beef, two cups of dense sweet Yunnan coffee.

Been taking it very easy... altitude, exhaustion, cold, wet. Having fun so long as my body stays strong. Need more sleep though. Power off at the hotel... was figuring on watching some Wushu drama on TV while resting my body, maybe later this afternoon.

Am not taking side-trips out of Lijiang. Possibilities included Leaping Tiger Gorge, the First Bend of the Yangtze in Shigu, maybe even the highly matriarchical Mosuo on Lugu Lake. Besides the physical stress, cofactors on the punk-out include the sheer number of tourbus vendors, all with the same orientation of getting a group of 6-8 rather than assembling for set times. There would be overcharging... I don't have the heart to haggle with people scratching so hard for cash. Then there's the honking and aggressive driving, particularly on narrow mountain roads in the rain... no thanks. I know the Yangtze bends there, and it doesn't need validation from me to prove it. Easier to watch people in town, and think.

Kunming was very noisy and pushy, Dali imposing and friendly but also sad... Lijiang may be colder, but it's easier to spend a few days here. Had originally checked into the Lijiang Grand Hotel for two nights, extended it by four after I had scoped things out. Looks like daily flights from Lijiang to Jinghong in souther Xishuangbanna are only for peak season... no flights Monday, one on Tuesday. I'll probably stay another night then, seven in all. Fine by me, although I think the locals will start to wonder about who this foreigner is, and what his trip is.... ;)

Cameras are funny. Lots of people use them in lieu of looking where they are. It still amazes me how the big thing is taking a photo of yourself in front of some frequently-photographed background, as validation that you actually did something. Only people I've seen who have framed unusual shots have been foreigners, and few of them at that.

Three types of photos... photos of the camera's owner, of famous sights or characteristic people (uncompensated vendors, eg), and unusual detail or perspective on an environment. Technology innovators have brought cameras to the world, but it's been a crapshoot what the rest of us have done with them.


Tue Nov 23: Last morning in Lijiang. Got out walking while it was still dark, full moon over Sifang Jie, caught the sunlight just arriving on the eastern peaks of Jade Snow Mountain.

Been taking it very easy the past few days... not sure if fatigue is from altitude, over-exertion, cold wet weather, diet, something else. Did finally get some gastric distress, after a night of drinking local Sulieman wine (like a sherry or Shanghai Huangjiu, but which I later learned was 42 proof!), then a suspect "American style" breakfast of fried eggs easy, some Yunnan bacon (lean, this one was), hash brown croquettes, some good brown toast and two large cups of Yunnan coffee. Slept and took it easy the last few days.

Lijiang Municipal Museum is at the north gate to Black Dragon Lake. Didn't see it in the usual guidebooks; learned about it from a photocopy of "Museums in China" that I brought along. One of the better exhibits... large three-dimensional model of the area, Naxi and Dongba exhibits, walk-in log house, wild photos of fauna, flora, and fungi.

Taking off in plane this morning to Jinghong in Xishuangbanna. Fifty minute flight, twenty-five degrees warmer.


Afterthoughts:

  o  Taxi ride to the airport had its moments... got stuck in one of those "might as well turn the motor off 'cause we ain't going anywhere" traffic jams. Some road (rail?) contruction paralleling the two-lane highway from Lijiang to airport. Lots of big heavy trucks, tractor trucks, tour buses, more. Took about seventy minutes for something like twenty miles. Longer than the plane flight. Left early, so plenty of time... an adventure. Didn't see any truck drivers playing cards by the side of the road though. Plenty of police standing around.
 
  o  Lijiang is in an awesome physical environment. It's surrounded on three sides by different mountain systems, and open to a broad plateau to the south, wending its way down to Dali. As a trading post, Lijiang was about as high as the southlanders could go, and about as low as the mountain folk from Tibet could go. Usually they'd transfer caravan goods here, from lowland animals to mountain mules. A nexus.
 
  o  Memorable food: Rice noodles and vegetables, griddle-fried, wrapped in a thin tofu skin, then chopped with spatula onto a styrofoam tray and lathered in chili sauce. Mushroom-filled steamed jiaozi. Skewers of yak meat, dusted with ground Chilis & Sichuan Peppercorn, three sticks for ten yuan. Round pumpkin bread. Babas, self-rising, rolled and flakey, corn-based and crunchy. Yunnan Ham, the choice fattier pieces for high-caloric value, which I couldn't quite finish. Dan Dan Noodles at a 24-hour joint, bare noodles on top of piquant ground pork sauce, mix them up before eating, about a buck US, with 500ml of Feng Hua Xue Yue at $1.50.

Travel Notes, Dali, 2010 Nov 13

[These "Travel Notes" are just raw brain-dumps, collected whenever I had a chance to sit down and type during the trip. See December's various topics for more reader-friendly post-trip writing.]

Dali, Sat Nov 13: Actually got here yesterday... very strong impression... too much to experience to sit down and write.

Now it's Saturday night, just past 10pm. A light rain picked up again, scattering the few still playing in the old town. Stream of consciousness follows....

I'm at the Old Wooden House on Foreigners' Street, an outside table under eaves with a dozen red lanterns... chairs made of woven bamboo, tablecloth of red silk brocade upon rough-woven red and natural hemp. Two 500ml bottles of local Feng Hua Xue Yue beer (Wind, Flower, Snow, Moon beer), 3.5% alcohol, crisp Pilsner style, lightly hoppy and clean... plates of Dali-style fried potatoes and cheese to come.

Dali Walled City... history is expansive, I can't cover. The current walls and gates were built in Ming Dynasty, 1400s. The city is much older... some of the large pagodas are from the 800s, and the city was a center of power long before that.

The physical setting... very heavy. We're seven thousand feet or so up, with the type of silences possible I've recalled from Taos or the Canadian Rockies. There's a large lake, seventh-largest in China, curving north to south in the shape of an ear... they call it Erhai, "ear sea". Along its west side, for scores of miles, is the Cangshan mountain range, "ocean blue" or "azure"... no idea how tall, but if the sun would set at 6pm, then this mountains just west of town would block it by 4pm. Clouds and fogs hide the middle while peaks show through. Eighteen brooks ripple down to the lake, west to east, villages upon each. Roadways along each side, ferries crossing the lake for trade. To the east Erhai is a smaller north/south stretch of mountains, ruddier red in color.

A walled city, giant gates on each side, maybe a mile square... imposing Cangshan mountains to the west, anchoring... stretching downhill from mountain, to city, to fields, to lake. Never seen anything like it; certainly makes an impression.

(The Dali Fried Cheese arrived. Famous dish. Goat milk, turned to cheese, very thin sheets maybe 8" x 10". These are then fried until bubbly and crisp, then arrive, dried. Not heavy like other fried cheese... tangy, slightly sour, aromatic. The Dali French Fries are potatoes, julienne cut, mixed with batter to very rough-shaped croquettes, fried. Look like little crabs, all spiky, four inches long, but you can chew the whole thing.) (The food here is a big experience, by the way... I'm working through the menu of Bai specialities.)

Dali is a marble town. The tectonic pressures produce high mountains, deep river gorges, and dense, striated marble. It reminds me of Hualien on Taiwan's east coast... their Taroko Gorge matches Yunnan's Tiger Leaping Gorge... Hualien is a beach town, while Dali is a lake town, but both are very laid-back. Dali is famous throughout China, and through Asia, for its marble... the Chinese word for marble itself is Dali Shi, Dali Stone.

The streets are rough-cut cobblestones of marble, one foot by three, irregular surface providing good footing even in the rain. Marble is used casually for construction, walls, ornaments, seating, bridges, balustrades. One of the town's specialties are thin placques of striated marble which resemble landscapes, cloudscapes, rivers, faces, scenes... stunning, but won't fit in my luggage. Shops sell large vases of lathed marble... eye-popping.

Orientation around town is easy... the mountains are to the west, the land slopes down to the lake in the east, the sun is to the south. Streets are a grid system, north to south. Street signage is plentiful, in characters and English.

This street is called Foreigners Street. It has two meanings. A few decades ago Dali was a stop on the Hippie Trail, one of the easiest cities in China to escape the pressures of larger cities, a laid-back multicultural atmosphere, stunning natural beauty, and a heritage of using hemp fabrics. Many settled and set up shop here. As the city became more popular the hippies dropped off, and China tourism took over. Now it's more a place to see foreigners. I'm part of a zoo act... think I can handle it.

Kenny G is street-sent from a neighboring restaurant... battling a heavy techno beat the next block over. Really bad. But at least it's not as bad as the blaring karaoke singers from a Chinese bar street a few blocks south... nice real estate, but their loud music is a detriment to me, not an attraction. So much other good music in the world.... :(

Eleven PM, no crowds, but no signs of the place shutting either... tables of people playing cards, talking, seem like friends of the owners. I may be the only paying customer among four tables, not sure. No pressure.

I've found a new tobacco. Exact same packaging as that (presumed) Yuxi angel-hair that I picked up in Kunming. This is a darker brown, still ribbon-cut but thicker... acts like a good English ribbon-cut Virginia, not quite as rough as Esoterica's Dunbar. Not sure of the price because I bought a few other things at the same time.

Yunnan Coffee, had some this morning. I think both crops were brought in by the British, when they had an outpost in Yunnan. Dark, thick... served with cubes of rough sugar, steamed milk which I think came from a cow. Took a bit of preparation... almost reminded me of Vietnamese Coffee in taste, although it didn't have the little French presser.

This morning I took a little stroll. Got a small cup of sit-down coffee (although I could have used a mug). Also some of the regional breakfast bread, "baba", a non-rising pan bread, eight inches round, three-quarters an inch thick, doughy and chewy, cooked on a griddle, 3 RMB or so. Two varieties, savory with salt, and sweet with a paste spread inside.

Walked up to the northwest of town, a Saturday market. Main area was about a block large, assigned stalls under a permanent awning. Side streets around all had people spreading out vegetables or other goods on blankets, side of sidewalk. Rows of caged chickens, scores of them, wondering if this will be the day. Fish stalls -- lake fish -- flopping in dozens of plastic pans. An installation at the back of boiling water to pluck chickens, someone to helpfully gut them for you, a man hanging onto a prepared rabbit, arguing the final points of a deal. A mushroom row... found offerings which would cost significant money in US produce markets. Herbs, dried peppers, beans both fresh and dried, kohls and cabbages and leafy greens and glistening round carrots, maybe a thousand pounds of potatoes coming from a bin. Foot traffic... well, better left unsaid. ;-) What SF's Alemany Market is to the Ferry Building Market, this is to Alemany. And I hear there are even greater markets elsewhere around the lake....

(I want every hair on Kenny G's body to be plucked, one by one. Slowly, too... draw it out. Not by me. I just want him to get some real feeling in his life.)

Dali has a big tourist contingent -- mostly PRC tour groups -- but also has real people living there too. From what I understand, this is different from Lijiang post-earthquake, which was renovated so that the old town is no longer a town. There are many lodging facilities within the Dali city walls, but most of these are smaller hotels and hostels, while the hotels able to accommodate tour groups are mostly outside the city walls, and so they are bussed in en masse. This leads to distinct times of the day for tourist hordes.

Looking at many of the retail operations, I'm not sure how they make it. Tonight was a Saturday night, although dampened by rain, and most of the restaurants still had full produce displays outside. It's possible they buy at the same time as the Saturday market, and so have a different delivery schedule than restaurants in SF. But I saw many shopkeepers, customer-less, watching TV... many fried cheese sticks left unsold at the street stalls, sausages left roasting under heater lamps. But then again, I didn't see what street business was like at the height of the tourist hour... I was walking later in the evening, after the light rain hastened tourists' return to their beyond-the-walls hotels.

But underneath the tourist trade there seems to be a strong social community, many longtime ties, a neighborhood feel. The tour groups are loud and bossy and tend to look within themselves rather than without... strange way to make a living. But maybe it's just one strange component within a larger social system. Pier 39 feels absolutely empty at night. Dali does not.


Sun Nov 14: Ended up closing the bar last night, then woke before dawn for a walk down to the lake, to the Cai Cun ferry dock. So many acres of agricultural land stretching from city to lake... brassicas, salad greens, many of the heavier crops already over. About four miles one way, then a one-kuai busfare back. A slab of sweet baba bread, a bottle of cold tea. A sitdown cup of hot Yunnan coffee, sugar and steamed milk. A visit to the Dali Museum, small in the center of town... the extensive Nanzhou kingdom here in 800AD, the later smaller Dali kingdom, wiped away by Kublai Khan, the Ming years, the Muslim Panthay Rebellion of the 1800s. Crossroads for a long time.

I'm tired, cold, damp. Socks haven't dried for three days. Figuring out my timing for the rest of the trip, which days where. Lijiang's next... higher, and colder, but more real hotels, and I hope warmer and drier. This Dali Palace hotel I'm at is pretty quiet (when the Chinese tourists aren't yelling into or out of their rooms), but it's warmer and drier outside than in; I need a change. Don't want to cut out of Dali too early though, because Lijiang might be too strange, then if Xishuangbanna is unsatisfying, I'm stuck going back to noisy Kunming until Sun Nov 28 and my scheduled plane for Hong Kong.

Dali is a beautiful place, but the interesting places I haven't visited are all a vehicle trip away, and I'm tired of traffic... don't want to support honking cabdrivers, honking busdrivers. Words cannot measure my contempt for little minibikers going nowhere in a hurry with 90-decibel interruptions to everyone else. On the fence.

There's an in-group type of arrogance to the noisemakers, the groups spreading across the sidewalk oblivious to the needs of others. San Francisco has its share of arrogant ignorants, and they drive me nuts... proportion is higher here, but it's easier to excuse because of the rapid cultural change. The volume of uncomprehending assault is a drag.

Typing at Iron Monkey Bar on People's Street. Music was innocuous when I ordered, now it's some angry young Oakland guy yelling lyrics all hyped up, measuring meaning by how many unintelligible syllables he can cram into a minute. Bad enough in Oakland; a pity it's exported around the world. Instead of taking a baseball bat to my head, how about I take one to yours, instead?

Travel notes, Kunming, 2010 Nov 07

[These "Travel Notes" are just raw brain-dumps, collected whenever I had a chance to sit down and type during the trip. See December's various topics for more reader-friendly post-trip writing.]

Sun Nov 7: Yow. Reminds me of taking LSD, you'd go on a big trip and have lots of overwhelming experiences, but nobody was in your head but you, you were on your own. I'm very happy, and also blown away.

Biggest shocker may be the air quality. Arriving in late afternoon there was more auto exhaust than I'd hoped, but... you know how it is to step off a plane in San Francisco and feel that soft gentle air? Kunming is the only other place I've gotten the same feeling. Amazing.

It's definitely the PRC and not Hong Kong... tiled sidewalks, lots of casual street businesses & relaxation, scooters everywhere, horns honking "I'm here! I'm here! I'm heeeeeeere!" Teenage boys standing in the middle of airport exits, slowing the taxi enough to toss handbills for massage parlors in the window... daredevils jumping fences to cross in the middle of the block... overladen bicycle porters... giant stores for Cartier and Louis Vitton... a poor person with a bicycle hauling a charcoal grill of roasted sweet potatoes. To exit into the airport lobby you have to pass touts blocking your way offering gypsy taxicab services, right in sight of the real taxi queue and many police. My cabbie did the usual routine of pretending not to understand where the hotel was, even though Google Maps was in both English and Chinese, and the hotel's printed webpage had the address in both languages.

(Aside: It's astounding that Expedia and the rest of the global reservation services still don't include printed maps in the local taxi drivers' language. Most hotels already have them printed up as cards, "Please take me to" so-and-so. Even if you can figure out the location on your own, most cabbies need a Voice Of Authority before believing the hotel exists... it's death to show them a page with mostly English on it. The travel services focus on convincing the purchase of a reservation, not on what the purchaser of that reservation will obviously need in order to use it. Some day they'll fix this, but I wonder how many customers they screw over, month after month after month.... :(

My hotel, Green Lake View, is a large building, in a cosmopolitan part of town, usually handling domestic tour groups... a lone westerner with a big grin caused a bit of a costernation, but they handled it with aplomb, conferencing with Assistant Managers and Shift Managers and all. I was still sort of thinking in Cantonese, catching myself from going "duo jie", and hadn't wired my Mandarin check-in rituals... they went for it in English. I love seeing the pride in a smalltown person's eyes when they deal successfully with an international transaction. They're doing better than I can do. :)

Sunday afternoon, and local weddings are in progress at the hotel... wreaths everywhere, crowds of proudly-dressed people waiting and talking, multiple photo sessions of the bride and groom, sweets to pass out, young'uns running about meeting cousins. Lovely. I went upstairs and did a quick unpack, then down to get oriented to the city before the light faded.

I get a thrill out of being dropped in a strange town with maps and compass to figure things out. Kunming is built on a ring model, not a grid... some streets do run north-south and east-west, but others run to the northwest, some to the southwest, lots of odd angles, unusual compass headings, easy to get turned around. But I took my bearings, got some visual landmarks, and set out to build a mental map.

First task was Green Lake, northwest of the city center, near my hotel. This was a gas! Sunday afternoon and many people strolling about... lots and lots of musicians, with erhu and pipa, banjo and guitar, side-flute and gourd-flute, Chinese Opera and oh-I'm-so-miserable pop tunes, all hanging out by the water having fun. The lake itself reminded me of Houhai Park in northwest Beijing, with willows on the shore and hyacinths in the water, teahouses and restaurants all around. But the level of cultural activity was more like Tiantan Park in Beijing, with many people expressing themselves with friends, lots of chaotic cacophony as people did their thing. Can't wait to check it out in the morning.

Many of the lakeside stalls held Tibetan goods... they're relatively nearby, and there's a lot of cross-cultural influence here. Almost felt like I was shopping on Haight Street.... ;-)

Speaking of Haight Street, the tribes of the nearby Golden Triangle gave us the bong, although I think they use it more for the local tobacco (introduced by the British) than for cannabis (which is native, and used for clothing, but apparently rarely smoked for recreational purposes). I've seen lots of gorgeous large wooden bongs already, and even learned that people carry them in a sack over their back, like a tennis racket or a musical instrument. One elder gent, listening to a musical jam, dumped his bong water in the lake before putting it in his backsack and walking his granddaughter back home. Totally groovy.

I was thrilled to see my first example of women using gorgeous minority dress as daily working garb... Sani, I think they were, although I really don't know my tribes yet. Lots of white/blue/red beadwork on the headdress, primary colors on the tunic... it's a point of pride, the heritage, and one of the big reasons I came here. It's not a schtick, it's something they maintain, a definition of self by the definition of the group.

A walk around Green Lake completely exceeded my expectations. But the sun was setting, and I wanted to get a bearing on the center of town. Went back to the hotel, got flashlight and scarf, and figured out how to get to the Golden Horse and Jade Chicken Gates....

... but first I needed some food. Had some yogurt and juice in the morning, then some cashews and an airplane meal on the way in. With the mile-plus-high altitude I had to take things easy and pace myself.

Across the street I saw "The Brothers Jiang" restaurant, which I recognized from Martin Yan's sleeper "Hidden China" documentary on KQED. To get there was a bit of an adventure, with an underground thoroughfare that looked like bumper cars gone wild and which I can't do justice at the moment, but get there I did.

The food-ordering process often stymies me. Knowing what food is available and what I want is one thing... figuring out the social conventions to get it quite another. In this case I knew they had Crossing The Bridge Rice Noodles, and I could read enough of the menu to figure out I wanted the chicken version, so I told the cashier "Sorry, this is my first time here, and I really don't know the procedure. How would I get some chicken noodles?" The young clerk took me under her wing, and she called a boy waiter to sit me down and set me up, joining a table of strangers in the busy ground-floor level. So much more functional than when I was in Hong Kong.... ;-)

Crossing-the-Bridge noodles seem related to Pho, but with a side-trip to Shabu-Shabu. They bring you a large bowl of exceptionally hot broth, covered with a thin layer of oil to keep the heat in. Then there's a plate of thinly-sliced raw pork, some raw chicken, some greens, a bowl of scallions and herbs, a raw quail egg, other seasonings, and a big heaping of noodles. You put the meat into the broth first, stir it, let it cook... add the noodles, then later the greens... season it up, dig in, spit the bones on the table (or, in my case, a plate). The broth was excellent, one of the best I've ever had. The rice noodles had a wheat-like texture, more satisfying than any rice noodle I've had in San Francisco. A big bowl, yet it went down fast... hydrated, carbohydrated and proteinified, I set forth for the center of town.

It usually takes me a couple of miles walking to figure out the scale of a town... what types of distances a map really conveys. In this case, Kunming seems tractable, foot-friendly. Go down Ren Ming Zhong Lu (Peoples' Street, Middle) until you hit the big commercial center, turn south until Porsche storefronts turn to Pickle street stalls, and you're golden. I saw sausages, preserved hams, fermented vegetables of every description... foot massagers, neck massagers, fortune tellers of various philosophies, and more... tofu sellers, dried-fish sellers, vendors of Yunnan-grown coffee... and I wasn't even really looking around yet. There's a night-market scene at the city center that I have to get into more deeply tomorrow.

But going south there are three ornate Chinese gates, one at the north, and just below it one facing east, and one facing west... the gate of the Golden Horse, and the gate of the Jade Chicken, whose history escapes me at the moment. I wanted to pack a pipe there, but went just a little bit further south, still seeking Yunnanese pipe tobacco, and... scored.

I probably got overcharged, at 65RMB for what appears to be a two-ounce tin, but I can bargain another day. One of the major tobacco-growing regions in China is Yuxi, a few hours south of Kunming. Most is made into cigarettes. But the bong guys need a fix too. This is a finely ribbon-cut Virginia type of tobacco, and although it looked to me like it would be acrid and burn hot, it's actually mellow, sweet, and soft. An amazing smoke. The label says it's one of the "18 oddities" of Yunnan... but there's no website. ;) I'm impressed, but don't know enough, and need to learn more.

Pipe packed and lit, a walk further northwest up Dong Feng Xi Lu (east wind west road), to try to find the Kundu Night Market, and its associated bar street, on the way back to my hotel. I'm not sure I found it. When I think "night market" I think of something like Shihlin night market in Taipei, with tons of snacks. But the sense I got tonight was that this was a regional odd-goods market which is slowly shifting into a more lucrative bar trade, for college students who have more money than study time. First impression indeterminate. I'll need to learn more....


And that's pretty much the theme for the day... fascinating, but I need to learn more. Kunming hasn't always been a part of China, but it has a history which predates much of China, judging by hominid bones and dinosaur bones and bronze works and more. I had a wonderful time today, impressed by the climate, the vibrancy, the street scene. I could have done with a little less wanton car-honking, but I want to learn more.... ;-)


Tue Nov 9: I was too tired to write yesterday, and really am too tired to write today, but I want to catch up before I fall behind.

No Internet connection... like the Hong Kong hotel, this one in Kunming gives me an IP address, but says "Limited or no network connectivity". Might be because I'm using Windows 7 instead of XP? Who knows. When I'm up to negotiating with the staff I'll try it face-to-face. (In Hong Kong I used the hotel lobby's WiFi.)

Language is difficult. I'm in a Chinese tourist hotel, rather than a more international hotel. (Thanks a bunch, again, Expedia... and printed guidebooks are 'way behind growth here.) I tried to locate some of the international hotels elsewhere in town today, but failed. Tried to find the bus station to see if I could schedule a trip to Dali, but failed. With a real net connection I could cope, but without, I feel like half a person.

Language itself is okay, considering the fatigue... I'm able to read signs much better than on previous trips, and have had a few successful language interactions. But I'm also unable to bring up some of the stuff I know when I need it. Somewhere between acceptable and disappointing.

Why the fatigue? Part is because I'm walking a lot, at least eight miles a day, exploring the neighborhoods. In San Francisco I rarely schedule so many heavy-walking days in a row. A larger part is because walking is so expensive here... many many people walking, meandering, imposing extra costs on others. The scooter/bike/ebike scene is killer too... every time an electric bike silently whooshes up from behind a foot from my elbow feels like adding another half-mile. Cars at intersections have that Chinese trait of "I'm bigger than you so you shouldn't have been where I now want to go," which would be a little less intolerable if they let us know where they wanted to go with turn signals. And then there's cars on sidewalks... you can always tell the young man who has his first fancy car, because he'll park it across the sidewalk, unreasonably blocking the way. The honking... should be taxed. The problem is unevenly distributed -- many people have awareness and empathy. Some people have deep, deep inadequacies, and try to make up for it by insisting on themselves first.

Sleep isn't right. Some days I've stayed up late and gotten out early. Last night some business guy in the room next door got in at midnight and started yelling into his phone. (Take a clue from the ladies, big fella... you don't need to yell just because they're far away.) Between naps and partial sleep I'm not sure how much sleep I'm really getting, and probably need deep sleep to integrate all I'm learning. Short sleep atop stress can lead to opportunistic infections, which I really wish to avoid. Knife's edge.

Nutrition is also indeterminate. The last few years I've been eating less, and here I've been trying to nibble through the day. But it's hard to tell how many calories, how much protein I'm actually getting. Some mornings it's fruit juice, some mornings it's fruit drink... some mornings it's yogurt, some mornings it's yogurt-inspired beverage... trying new brands to find the richest ones. Noodles are readily available, but the protein content varies. Meat snacks are also readily available, but not all skewer stalls seem sanitary. Thinking of splurging tonight on a real sitdown restaurant near Green Lake.

Bottom line is I'm really pushing myself, simultaneously on activities, environmental stress, diet and sleep.


What have I been doing? Yesterday I found a bookstore and discovered I already had one of the better bus maps... figured it out and managed to take it out to the 2009 Horticultural Expo towards the northeast. The bus route had changed due to subway construction on the north/south axis of town, and building construction added many streets that were not on the map. Turned out it stopped at Golden Temple, just beyond the Expo. This is a beautiful tall hill, lots of old trees and buildings, and many stairs to climb. Up top were droves of retirees knitting and playing cards and walking around, who had taken cars or other vehicles to the top of the hill. Took an overhead-cable car down to the Expo, which was weird in a forgotten-Worlds-Fair kind of way... each country still had staffers there in costume for photograph-posing, and they didn't have much to do on a Monday. Took another bus back downtown and walked cross-town to the hotel. Laid down for a nap that lasted three hours, got up and made a juice/yogurt/beer run to the convenience store, then came back and crashed for good, until Mr. Loudmouth started at midnight.

Today I visited the Yunnan Provincial Museum, which had Dian bronzes on one floor, Yunnan culture on another. Superficial exhibit, but about really important stuff... the Kunming area was home to an early advanced civilization which had disappeared pretty much entirely until relics started being dug up in the 1950s. Their bronze work is startling for being of everyday life... hunting and warring and weaving and knitting and crop-selling and music and actually looks rather modern... not the stuff you'd expect from the time just before Christ. Then a walk to the south railway station which, like all railway stations in China is total sensory overload.

I'm downgrading my whole itinerary... just too difficult to negotiate things. I had been thinking of taking a six-hour bus ride south, on the west side of Dian Lake, to Jianshui and the Confucian Temple, staying overnight in the Zhu Family Garden, before heading north on the other side of the lake to reach Shilin Stone Forest, prefrerably for early-morning or late-afternoon exploration, after Tour Group Peak Hours. I'm close to chalking off the Xishuangbanna leg of the trip, because it requires one air flight from Lijiang and then a second to Kunming. Thinking of just spending a few extra days in Kunming, Dali and Lijiang, takes things a little easier than I had hoped, due to the costs of discovery and negotiation. Whether I can get a reliable Internet connection may make the difference. Let me go downstairs and see if _they_ can get it to work....

Update on Internet access: Just before going downstairs I followed the old Tech Support adage: "Does the problem persist after you restart the system?" Sure enough, that fixed it. Those durn computers..... ;-)


Wed Nov 10: Big adventure of the day was negotiating a bus to the outskirts of town... dealing with ambiguity, playing Orienteering Detective.

And right now I'm typing this at an outdoor bar alongside Green Lake, bright neon all over this side of the street, dark water and trees just across the road, six-year-old kids yelling as they play chasing games with each other, the owner of the pipe-gourd shop across the street playing a very mellow tune. Not too busy here, but still a lot of life.

I wanted to reach the Yunnan Minorities Museum, down on the shores of the large Dian Lake to the south. I knew that the #24 and #44 bus went there, at least when two of my guidebooks were written, and that they had a terminus at the Kunming South Railroad Station. But the Station is big, and terribly crowded, and it was iffy whether I'd be able to connect.

Walked down through the part they called "Old Town", which now seems to be at least half torn down for newer buildings. Got some flatbread pancakes, puffy and chewy, from a street stall whose owner regarded me with a mite of suspicion. Was hoping for some Yunnan Coffee (yes, a major crop), but failed to score. Figured out a bus to get to the station, 'cause I knew I'd be walking more later in the day. (The buses in Kunming are a little intimidating, and awful diesel-y, but startling frequent, and regularly packed. Bus stops are clearly marked and list all routes which stop there, as well as their subsequent stops. Costs only one yuan, flat-rate... less than a quarter in US coin.)

Got off at the station, and despite the signs at street stops, found no signs at the station. After half-an-hour or so I got the idea that the #24 and #44 didn't stop where I was let off, and with a little detective work and a helpful map, I moved on over to where a stop oughta be, and sure enough it was. Had my compass and a map as I craned to look at street signs, checked with the driver whether this stop was the museum, and again, sure enough it was.

(Interruption: Just got served some amazing "Old Kunming Fried Rice" at this beer patio near Green Lake... short-grain rice, with what tasted and chewed like millet, although I couldn't find any little round yellow balls in the mix. Preserved vegetables (the killer mystery ingredient!), chiles, oil, and what tasted to be a Fermented Tofu paste. On the side there was a pickled black bean mix. Really, really enjoyed it.)

Yunnan is the northern part of a whole mountainous territory extending down south into Laos, Burma, the Shan State, and over into Tibet. The count is of 22 different ethnic groups here (although a lot may depend on how you count), 26 languages (with many sub-dialects), and an amazing 22 different writing systems in use. The land itself and the remote nature is one factor in such diversity, but there's also a strong ethnic identity where people are proud to keep their own traditions alive. There's the pull of modernity and homogenization into the dominant Han culture, and it's hard to say how this will play over time, but right now it's an amazing melting pot where every ingredient still has its own strong flavor.

And, to their credit, the CCCP has explicitly called out for preservation of these minority cultures, even as it strives to improve the integration and opportunities for the people. There are scholarships and studies and cultural museums both out here and in Beijing. (During the 60th anniversary celebrations I was impressed by how the minority cultures took a central place in the ornamentation of Tiananmen Square.)

This Nationalities Museum in Kunming is sort of ground zero for an overview of the various cultures in the region. There are seven main exhibits, covering everyday tooling (agriculture, hunting, etc), architecture (stonework, log buildings from the northwest, bamboo buildings from the southeast, clay buildings from the eastern mountains), masks (diverse but didn't press my buttons), musical instruments (ancient shengs, the ancestor of the accordion! plus flutes and drums and jaw harps), writing systems and media, the obligatory CCCP photo ops... the one that touched me most was on textiles, though, and I hope to do this up in a subsequent post.

There's also a Yunnan Minorities Village nearby, which I did not visit... seemed to be a Showtime kind of thing, not my style. The Museum took up most of my day, and I was glad I went.

Negotiated a different bus back (it was easier to find the bus stop ;) ... hoofed it north from the bus stop through a food street and a Jiang Brothers noodle chain (they're very gracious in dealing with newbie foreigners)... some beef skewers just south of Gold Horse Silver Chicken Square... back up for a gander through Kunda Bar Street but nothing moved me... wash up in the hotel, then up to Green Lake.

The day was challenging... lots of noise, diesel fumes on the thoroughfares, a few honest smiles with people but no real communication. Biggest surprise may have been the amount of new construction and teardown/reconstruction going on south of the city, to the lake... I knew there were building binges on the coast and in Chongqing, but there's a lot going on in Kunming too. Very many young children being carted around, a new generation arriving. It can be draining to deal with so much energy, but I think the planet is lucky to have it.


Thu Nov 11: Short day... stress, lack of sleep, cold weather and risk of a cold... spent most of the day sleeping.

In the morning I went to the Kunming Zoo, just northeast of Green Lake. The weather was cold and cloudy however, with a bit more wind. I wasn't dressed for it. Walked through quickly, but cut it short, to get back to the hotel room.

Kunming Zoo is said to be one of the top ten zoos in China. The parts I saw were very pretty, multi-level, lots of trees and paths. A forlorn amusement park, lots of young kids on class outing. One traditional-style building had neighborhood musicians, singers and dancers playing traditional tunes, sat for awhile and listened, mutual smiles.

Baboons, Golden Tamarinds (I think), other assorted monkeys... 30-ish Chinese guy walking up to the cage and grunting and challenging the monkeys. Draw your own conclusions.

I was hoping to find the Lesser Red Panda, the Firefox. I think I did see their area in the park, but did not see them. Would have liked to have gotten some photos for the Mozilla folks, but considering the colder weather and how prejudiced they sometimes are, I didn't pursue it. Tried, though.

On the way into the zoo there's the area's largest Buddhist temple. You can tell by the shops selling incense and other offerings out front. Fortunetellers, monks in robes of various colors, beggars with deformed limbs sitting on the sidewalk, a cup in front. Words cannot express....

Cut out of the zoo early, grabbed some pepper beef and tofu soup at a restaurant, got back into the hotel room by 2pm. Slept. Woke every few hours, puttered on computer, but mostly slept. Got up to pack towards 6am. Sixteen hours of nothing but intermittent rest.

I felt a cold coming on, and had certainly been exposed to lots of infection vectors. Besides that I knew I was stressed... poor sleeping, lots of walking, and maybe most importantly the unseeing aggression of drivers honking, pedestrians swerving in, motorobikes in near misses, all the things that make you feel less like a person.

So I slept. Had the first real dream sequences I can remember for awhile too... connected dreams. For awhile I was in SF, where the landlord had sublet part of my apartment to a lefty government proselytizer... then I was crosstown trying to get back, somehow lost my shoes, trying to avoid the big crowd of a sports event due to let out... short description of all that is I was dispossesed, trying to find my center... apt metaphor for the day. Then another sequence of connected dreams, where I met an old friend, who had turned blind, and she needed help to get back to her place, fainting spells and walking in front of traffic and more.

I'm typing this on a bus, a 5-6 hour trip from Kunming to Dali, in the front seat, behind the driver. The high-speed roadway is much emptier of traffic than were the streets of Kunming. Weaving between ranges of hills... river to our right... agricultural fields on both sides... terraced fields of rice and other crops... stacks of field corn hanging under eaves to dry, wheat stacked in cones in fields, rows and rows and rows... large hand-barrows in fields awaiting loading... car broken by side of highway, four people scurrying to fix it... people standing on the roadway waiting for something... houses of cinderblock, and brick, and white plaster, and wooden beams... paintings of dinosuars and mushrooms and birds and much more on sides of buildings, Bai style, my first exposure... older woman with waterbuckets on a shoulder-pole, coming back from the nearest market... oxen, burros, and horses too... multiple flocks of small black goats, clambering on hillsides, chased into line by eager dogs... climbing into mountainsides, switching back through tunnels, high bridges straddling the way. Bus trip to Dali, not to be missed.

Surprised to see roadway signs in both Chinese and pinyin, as well as text in straight English. "Don't driver tiredly" is my favorite, with a stick drawing of a ZZZing guy about to take off into space. Very easy to read distances, in kilometers, with little markers along the road.


Afternotes:

  o  First night I arrived in Kunming I heard amplified singers on the street, sixteen floors below. Sounded pretty bad, as amplified singers usually do. When I got out to the street I saw there was a girl, perhaps 13 years old, singing into a mic to a Music-Minus-One kind of backing, a basket for tips in front. Off-key, but full of pathos. When I came back an hour or so later she was packing up, and looked sad. I tip affecting street musicians in San Francisco, but resist while on the road. In this case I've been wrung-out ever since, thinking of her. What is her life, what are her hopes, that she sees the glamour of singing her soul, in the street, and is rebuffed? We've got to fight to create more opportunities for her, and for those who follow.
 
  o  Seen a lot of young boys playing with western-style yoyos. Not the Chinese Diabolo kind -- the Duncan Yo-Yo kind. Pretty good too, lots of string-catching tricks. No idea how that stuff got out here, hopskipping the coastal areas.
 
  o  I know there are radio stations here... seen ads for them on the street, found Internet citations in San Francisco. Haven't been able to pick them up yet. I get the sense that talk shows and Modern Adult Sounds are the big things, but man, it would be great to find actual stations of locally-produced music. (Taiwan's Tainan is one of the few cities I've found with a distinct aural radio "sound"... I had first heard SW China's Miao and Yi music from David Mayer's wonderful "World Music" show Wednesday mornings on KPFA-Berkely back in the 1980s.)
 
  o  I've been to two Kunming museums where Korean tour groups have passed through... did a little eavesdropping to check, and a friendly "Anyong hasseyo" from one of the grandmas confirmed it. I've also been startled to see a few shop signs, in different parts of town, with Korean syllabary. Most of the museum signage is in Simplified Chinese and English, and one exhibit also had Japanese script, but I haven't happened to hear any spoken Japanese yet. No idea what it all means. (And although I've seen people of European descent in some of the tourist spots and in the university area, I've usually been the only non-Asian in most of the places I pass through here... makes me feel warm'n'fuzzy to have an obvious excuse for being an outsider. ;)
 
  o  Mobile devices still seem mostly voice and text. Noticed peple spending a lot of time waiting for a friend, getting a call, waiting some more... shouldn't there be an app that keeps track of your friends' location and lets you message them asynchronously instead? We've adapted pretty quickly to mobile voice once it became available, but aren't there more efficient ways to achieve our actual goals...?
 
  o  Shiny cars... new, lots of status. The horn-honking seems to be from only a minority of drivers, even though the volume would give you the impression everyone's doing it. The newcar-ownership syndrome also gives rise to a perceptible arrogance in their use, pushing through people, blocking roadways. Related: lack of understanding of basic sanitation such as uncovered coughs, nose-picking, eye-scratching. Seems connected somehow. I'd guess it would take at least a generation for these (generally) young males to wise up. PITA in the meantime.
 
  o  The wealth-disparity is still unsettling. Lexus and Cartier shops, older people picking through garbage on the street. I think this will also wise up with time, just as environmental quality will almost certainly improve. Heartbreaking in the meantime, though.
 
  o  They say the girls are prettiest in Chongqing, but I think Yunnan may have them beat. There's some made-up glamour girls, but I've seen lots of just regular girls with no makeup whose natural beauty takes my breath away. May be the mountain air...?
 
  o  I still get a kick out of casually pulling hundred-dollar bills for a meal. Only about $15 US, and you get change back too. Gotta live it up while we can.... ;-)
 
  o  Trick of the trade... to signal for a bill, just draw a little rectangle in the air with two outstretched forefingers. Seems to be understood everywhere I've gone, this side of the Pacific.
 
  o  There's a certain arrogance to many of the 30-something males. I've seen it before, on previous trips, but it still bothers me. Their in-group is more important than responding to the moment... easy to shoulder aside people who are not of the group, quick to take umbrage when the shouldering-aside is returned. I've been in cabs with female taxidrivers who honk a bit too much, but it's not like the males, hawking and spitting and speaking too loud.
 
 

Travel Notes, Hong Kong, 2010 Nov 04

[These "Travel Notes" are just raw brain-dumps, collected whenever I had a chance to sit down and type during the trip. See December's various topics for more reader-friendly post-trip writing.]

A fourteen hour flight, with an hour added for boarding, taxiing, deboarding... in a tight middle seat between two guys who really didn't need the coffee/tea they ordered early... the elbow jabs were not avoided by ceding them the armrests, but the worse part was the stereophonic nose-picking and uncovered coughs. They did calm down during their sporadic ten-minute naps through the flight. I persevered.

Coming back into Hong Kong, I had forgotten the natural beauty of the coves, the mountains, the hazy dawn, the fishing villages, all visible on the airport ride to town. Unexpected happiness at seeing stacks and stacks of air-conditioners in apartment windows.

The new Hong Kong limits on tobacco imports seemed to be aimed at commercial carry... once he saw my three two-ounce tins it became clear that it was for personal use only, and not an issue, even though I was about 140 grams over the duty-free limit of 25g. Didn't have to pay extra. I hope it's as relaxed when I come back from Yunnan, where I hope to score some of the local tobacco. Maybe the measure is aimed at mainland arbitrage.

Yesterday I arrived at the airport towards 6am, and was checked into my hotel by 9am. I'm at the Metropark Hotel Kowloon, 75 Waterloo St... a little rundown, and full of shell-shocked tourgroups, but just a few quiet blocks away from the heart of Mong Kok. After a quick unpack I took a two-hour walk, getting reacquainted with the side-streets, rebuilding the habit to look the wrong-way-around for left-driving traffic. Then a four-hour deep nap.

Jetlag hasn't been a problem. I credit pre-visualization, smart napping, and melatonin. For the week before departure I set a watch to Hong Kong time, regularly drilling myself on what time it "really" was. Even a brief afternoon nap in the days before leaving can set up a two-sleep-cycle kind of day instead of one big sleep cycle, making it easy to flip over into a different two-cycle schedule on arrival. It's hard to tell how effective melatonin actually is, but I do know that I've felt more comfortable when I've had it than when I haven't.

Last night I meandered down Nathan Road to Tsim Tsa Shui, just catching the end of the harbor laser show. CitiBank ATMs were where I remembered them, and I got my Octopus transit card renewed. It took a little bit of work to find Hau Fook Street, nestled between Cameron and Granville, then a little more work to settle on a restaurant... I had been hoping for barbecued pork, but may have gotten there too late. Had some wonderful golden roasted chicken, atop chicken-stock rice -- like Singaporean Chicken Rice, but without the chili sauce. Some excellent mustard greens in oyster sauce, and a glass of iced almond milk. Whole thing came to HKG$50, about US$7.50.

A pint of dark Kilkenny Beer in the foreigner bar district cost HKG$65. Also scored a packet of Bourbon Borkum-Riff tobacco at a cigar shop, but that was like HKG$130... nearly US$20. Wasn't sure how much of this price-doubling was because I was in a foreigner area, how much was due to local regulations.

Back up through Jordan Road area, though Temple Street Night Market, up to Mong Kok Station, down through Ladies Night Market... unsure of distance, because I hadn't yet found where I had packed my pedometer, but I'm guessing 6-7 miles. It looks like the Stinky Tofu stall at 41 Dundas may have moved for pending construction, but I managed to find some other suppliers.... ;-)

This morning I took a six-mile walk up through Khadroorie Avenue and Braga Court... tree-lined mansions of the wealthiest 150 years ago, just blocks away from the most-densely-populated neighborhood on earth. The signs for "Clean up your dog poop" were in English, Chinese, and Malay... it's the domestic servants from Indonesia and Malaysia who actually walk the dogs there. Then out to try to find the remains of the last walled village in urban Hong Kong, Ngai Tsai Wan... I enjoyed the streets of Little Bangkok, and paid my respects to Kowloon Walled City Park again, even though I couldn't find the exact place where the smaller walled enclave had been. Then back to the hotel for an afternoon rest, before going out into the city again.


Thu Nov 4, evening: Odd experience... what could be seen as racism in a crab shop. I'm still ambivalent, but at least I got fed.

The Hong Kong palate is not known for its love of chiles. Across the Pearl River Delta, in Macau, the Portuguese trade with Africa and India brought assertive and fiery spicing. In British-influenced Hong Kong, not so much. Even the Thai food here, sustained by its domestic servants, is said to be sweeter and oilier (and far less chilier-er) than more-worldly Thai cuisine.

So I was always intrigued by the Temple Street Spicy Crab shop(s)... multiple storefronts which seem to be served by a common kitchen. Sidewalk tables, under a tarp for the rain, three corners out of four, on Temple near Saigon. Always wanted to try it, but too crowded whenever I had passed by.

This time I got there by 5pm, when the crew was still shelling shrimp, tables not set up. I waited, smoking a pipe out of the rain under the new Temple Street gates, gently dissuading the Thai massage girls who wanted me to come inside, until I saw some people starting to sit down. I was at the third table occupied for the evening, just before 6pm.

A waiter asked me "Beer?" I pointed to the San Miguel placard on the table, got set up with a 640ml bottle for HK$20. Meanwhile other tables were ordering food, getting served. A half-dozen other tables of Asians later arrived, also had their orders taken, received food. I got up and looked around for the waiters, all disappeared. Looked across the street, and the cook staff were starting to eat their dinners.

Looked around the restaurant. All the tables with food already were Asian tables, even ones that had arrived a half-hour after me. All the food-less tables were non-Asian.

Later, after 7pm, the cooks finished with their toothpicks, got back into the kitchen, and food started coming back out again. Just before I slipped a twenty under my bottle of San Miguel and split, I got my Tung Choi with Preserved Tofu (which was superb), and another ten minutes later got the crab. I had nursed that one bottle of San Miguel for nearly 90 minutes.

The only tables which had been able to order and had gotten their food were Asian. The only tables which hadn't, weren't.

How did I feel? Hungry, of course. Upset about the lack of guidance, sure. The inequality? Well, perhaps we all look the same. Temple Street gets a lot of tourists, and many of them are admittedly kind of dweeby. The same type of treatment with the races reversed would have been a scandal in San Francisco. But San Francisco Values are pretty dweeby too.

I remain ambivalent. The lack of guidance is the mark of stupidity. But it's still rather a stupid primitive planet, so I'm willing to chalk that one up to my own ongoing education.

Very striking though. All the Asians got served nearly an hour before the non-Asians, even those many tables which had arrived after me or the other whiteys. It's their party, though, so they set the rules.

I really liked the greens with fermented tofu though. It's that cheesy type of tofu, which is mashed down into a piquant sauce, a wonderful coating for the stringy greens. I still don't understand what role those chiles play in the normal Hong Kong palate. But at least I finally ate at that crab shop... even if I did have to sit in the back of the bus.


Fri Nov 5: Shenzhen.

I wasn't well-prepared for this trip... finalized my schedule less than a week before leaving, and didn't have a chance to update my maps, nor scope out best places to go. I was happy just to have been able to visit, though.

Shenzhen is the part of mainland China just north of Hong Kong's New Territories. It's the place of the iPhone Suicides, and also Ground Zero of the Shanzhai knockoff culture. Last time I visited Hong Kong, in Spring 2009, I had gazed wistfully across the immigration line at Lok Ma Chau (nothernmost HK railway terminus), knowing that only a visa had kept me from proceeding. This time, with a multiple-entry visa, I was good to go, so I went.

First, the train ride from Kowloon to Shenzhen alone is beautiful, subtropical mountains and oldtime villages... highly recommended even if you do nothing else than look out the train windows, perhaps stop off in Tai Po or other New Territories towns. It gives a very different perspective on the totality of what Hong Kong has to offer, the natural splendor of the greater Hong Kong area.

Once you get off at Lok Ma Chau, you can exit Hong Kong immigration, walk across a river on an enclosed bridge, and enter the Peoples Republic of China immigration. Very dramatic, to be stateless for the five minutes it takes to walk across the river. Very hair-prickling, to realize you're on two different sets of closed-circuit cameras simultaneously.

Fortunately they accepted me, and I exited The Process, to walk freely in Shenzhen.

Had no idea where to go, so I slowly reconnoitred the immediate vicinity. Got a Shenzhen map at a nearby convenience store... wallsized, it was. Negotiated an early lunch at a nearby diner, English-free but with pictures... turned out to be a Denver omelet and fishcakes with rice and tea, similar textures, but good.

A few things I noticed very quickly. It was fun to be in a Mandarin-speaking area again, where I didn't have to doublethink my feeble Chinese language skills. The people were more fun too... many more "Halloo!"s, much more honest curiosity about this odd lone foreigner, and much much much much easier to get a smile from people when I responded to the stares.

I took the subway line a few stops north, to the civic center. It probably isn't representative of the whole, but man, it was impressive... big ol' new buildings, grandiose... the Shenzhen Museum alone was architecturally startling. It seemed like the whole area was just recently redone, like a Singapore done 2000-style. Still had beautiful old Banyan trees shading the sidewalks, don't know how they managed to pull of old growth in new growth like that.

I meandered south, roughly parallel to the subway line, in a light rain. I did manage to find some older buildings at one point, and could see the South China influence. But I was also in international expo area, with biergartens and Brazillian barbeques alongside fresh Chinese fastfood joints and Cartier-style luxury malls. Also saw a few street hawkers making fried noodles on carts. I don't have a good sense of how the whole scene fits together.

Walking eight miles in the rain tuckered me out, though, and it was a shorter jaunt than I would have liked. I saw next-to-zero consumer electronics shops; still don't know the districts. Now that I have a recent detailed map and a lay of the land, I hope to make a day-trip again at the end of the month, when I return to US via Hong Kong.

I was in Shenzhen. That's about all I can say. I was impressed by the expansiveness, the modernity, the natural beauty that I saw. Shallow, true, but one more step forward....


Sat Nov 6: Street markets & subways

Rainy day in Hong Kong, my last day of four here. I'll be coming back for four more in three weeks, so it's not so bad.... ;-)

Jet lag hasn't been a problem, and I usually wake in the middle of the night for the bathroom anyway, but my mind still races a bit towards 3am, so I'm not yet quite fully here. I enter "airplane mode" and let my brain ramble while my body lies still, but it still feels a stopgap. Glad I planned a few days in Hong Kong to handle the timezones, then a few days in Kunming to get used to the altitude.

Walking a heck of a lot. In SF I thought I usually did 3-5 miles a day with up to 8 miles once or twice a week, but with the nifty new Omron HJ-203 pedometer I learned it's more usually 5-7 miles, with peaks about ten. Here in Hong Kong I've been averaging nearly ten miles a day, even when taking it relatively easy. I really enjoy the automatic pace-counting of the device.

Rain started yesterday, light enough to not be uncomfortable, but changing the pedestrian environment enough to revamp daily plans... saw a couple of people get poked today by poor umbrella use, and the little mushroom clouds add volume to the sidewalk, slowing speeds dramatically.

I wasn't sure what I'd be doing until I started doing it. Fallback plan was to do some subway touring. riding out to a station I had never visited, then getting out and walking around. The rain proved light enough that I could explore the north end of Mongkok first. Some of the intersections I remembered from similar walks in spring of 2009, when I spent a week exploring the New Territories... funny how the memories came back, how I knew what was coming next... up along Fa Yuen and the Gold Fish markets north of Argyle, then past Playing Field Road to Fuk Wing, Fuk Wa, Pei Ho and other un-PC street names to Apliu Thieves Market. It was Saturday morning and the scene in full swing, some streets dedicated to traffic, others to street stalls with produce or clothes or other niches.

One new area to me was full of holiday ornamentws... Santas and tree globes and other western seasonalities, quite jovial.

On Apliu St I picked up another 18" keychain (US$3), and a pocket AM/FM radio for local stations in Yunnan, and for baseball next spring (US$7). Then I spent a good hour walking through the electronics shops, seeing what they had for sale.

Mobile phones were still the big thing... dozens and dozens in each storefront, mostly Nokia and Motorola and Samsung and various PRC brands. I wasn't savvy enough to evaluate the prices, but it was easy to see that this was the major portion of many stores' offerings.

There were a few iPhones, usually highlighted towards the front, but very few. And of those, most of those seemed to be in boxes that never mentioned the word "Apple". Now I wish I had checked the San Francisco Apple store to see their actual packaging before coming over... maybe 75% of what I saw triggered my BS alarm, and I caught a whiff of clerk concern when this westerner started looking at the boxes too closely. Apple was a status brand for the customer, but was not the major concern of the retailer. After all those years of seeing pirated Dreamweaver and Flash, it was a little satisfying to see the same dynamic applied to Apple.

Tablets were few, at least at first. Most of the tablet form-factors were actually pocket televisions, or GPS displays. Later, towards the north end of Apliu Street I saw more Apple-branded and Android 1.6 or 2.1 tablets, and variants like "aPad" and more. The iPad boxes seemed poorly printed and did not really mention Apple... slogans like "This changes everything, Again" and "FaceTime", but not what I'd expect from legit packaging. Again I wished I had checked Apple's own packaging before coming over. I did see two stores that had what seemed to be Apple's normal pricing, but I have no idea if those were actual selling prices, or just initial bargaining prices. Guessing, I'd say 80% of the Apple-branded stuff smelled like knockoffs, but I don't know enough to be sure. [Update: Real Apple boxes do indeed say "Apple Cupertino" etc on the back.... ;-) ]

No Samsung Galaxy Tabs, no Dell Streaks, no Android 2.2 tablets. The vast majority of tablets felt like Shenzhen products. At the higher-end Apliu places tablets had a meaningful presence but still didn't seem to be volume sellers. (I have not yet found anyone actually using a tablet on the subway, street or restaurant... all phone-like form-factors.)

I saw a lot of other wonderful items... dog-bark silencers, loudspeakers-on-belts, great hardware tooling like personal mini-torches and precision screwdriver keychains, laser globes, digital calipers... more than my mind could retain. Felt like Radio Shack during Tandy's prime, just updated for 2010. Prices were cheap enough that I could easily have busted my luggage limits had I wished.

By this time I had reached the northern end, at Yen Chow Street and Dragon Center, so I entered the building and rode escalators up, up, up, with wonderfully funky views of Sham Shui Po from above. Sure enough, top floor had the food courts just opening up, and I grabbed a bowl of Sichuan-style rice noodles with preserved vegetables, peanuts and fishballs for less than three bucks, enjoyed the championship ice-skating rink lessons going on nearby. and trundled back downstairs to the street.

(One thing I really enjoy about China is that it reminds me of my youth in Long Island, with rough commercialism just maturing, the Hempstead Farmers' Market stalls (with few farmers), the early strip malls... the energy, the vitality, the raw edges to many of the ventures. Feels alive.)

A little more window-shopping, then I found an alley under a tarp, lit a pipe, started people-watching. That's one of the benefits of smoking a pipe... you can stop in any out-of-the-traffic place and seem to be doing something, even though you're really doing nothing. A guy in a wheelchair rolled into my alley, stood up and dropped his pants to urinate about six feet away. Another street guy had gotten a bowl of noodles somewhere and sat down behind me to eat about half of it before leaving the rest on the street. The strolling police gave me the once-over before deciding I was innocuous. A number of Africans passed through, some in a hurry, some unsure where to go. Indonesian domestics in headwraps, schoolboys in uniforms, very well-dressed young ladies, mothers with grandmothers and infants out on their errands, sweating porters carrying boxes to storefronts... a whole range of people. Sometimes I attracted a curious glance, mostly not.

Then down into the subway. From Sham Shui Po down to Admiralty on the island, then a transfer out to North Point. I got out here, where I had never been before... where Chinatown moved after Sheung Wan and Kennedy Town started getting too upscale. I walked a few blocks, enjoying the street stalls and negotiating the foot traffic, through clothes markets and wet markets and Chinese opera theatres and other activities. I finally found an outpost of the Cafe de Coral restaurant chain and clumsily negotiated a bowl of roast pork noodles and milk tea. Had trouble finding the MTR again, but went back under the harbor and out to Po Lam, out near Clearwater Bay.

This town was beautiful, but very planned... blocks of new 30-story apartment buildings among tropical mountains, pretty near the eastern coast. Banyans and shopping centers and plenty of local buses, and I was very careful to put out my pipe when the signs told me to.

Then back to the MTR, and the Kwun Tong line overland/underland to Mongkok. Some stations were empty, while others packed the bus. I don't know volumes, but it's a safe bet that many of the HK MTR lines carry more traffic in a day than the entire SF MUNI does in a week, and they do it much faster and with higher carrying capacity too. I avoided the busiest parts of Mongkok on a late Saturday afternoon, but the sidewalks were still a sea of people. Down to Waterloo, and back to the hotel.


On this Hong Kong leg of the trip I got reacquainted with places I had seen, explored some more in depth, and visited places I had never been. At the end of the month I hope to do a little more, return to Shenzhen with a little more smarts, and maybe make a daytrip to Macau too. And I still need to discover how Temple Street handles an oyster omelet. Wonderful. :)


Afternotes:

o I stumbled across a one-of-a-kind character I had first read about online... an older gent who was one of the few remaining makers of high-quality wire utensils such as strainers and scoops. He had a little stall on Soy near Shanghai. It's possible to machine-manufacture wire strainers, but pro cooks like a certain quality, and he made each strainer by hand, to order. I didn't speak with him or even catch his eye, but I appreciated his presence.

o I often sing while walking, partly because I almost always have an internal soundtrack going, partly to help slow centerwalkers up ahead realize there's someone behind. (Lots of people don't have 360-degree awareness while on the street, and the slower ones tend to weave around the center and make things harder for everyone else.) Tunes in Kowloon included "Winter Wonderland", "Alexander's Ragtime Band" (have you ever heard Bessie Smith belt it out!?), "Little Elephant Walk", "Mood Indigo", many others. I use a straight-up wordless vocalese for the melody, enunciated in percussive semi-quavers, with bass notes during the fills, and a sibilant high-hat on the offbeats. Works very well with the cane in rhythm.... ;-)

o Hong Kong folk would have reason to feel sophisticated compared to others... they're expected to be comfortable in both English and Mandarin (two notoriously difficult languages), and their native tongue is Cantonese, which may be more complex than either. I admire them greatly. I really love the human tonal quality of Cantonese... compared to Beijing-style speech, it's like comparing a polite New Orleans drawl to New Jersey English. Even though I did some cram review I had little opportunity to speak, couldn't get my brain in gear in time, barely even automated the universal "m'goi" (which can mean "please", "thank you", or "sorry").

o Trip out of Hong Kong was adventurous, but in the end, easy. Plane left at noon. At 8am I checked with the lobby whether I had to do anything special... turned out the next one was at 9:10, and it's the start of a multi-hotel run, and I'd probably arrive at 10:30. Tight, for an international flight, but doable. We left more like 9:20. At one of the later hotels, the Grand Century Plaza near Mongkok East station, we pulled away before someone realized she had left a bag in her room. Lots of tight bus turns at that hotel, but we went back and waited while she went up and found it. Then the driver was passed by all the taxis, cars, and trucks on the way to the airport. Then the check-in gate was changed to another terminal, and the boarding gate required a bus ride to reach. Still arrived with plenty of time to sit and wait, however. (One funny thing at boarding... the loudspeaker announcement got stuck in a loop, something like "chi guai boy toy chi guai boy toy chi guai boy toy chi guai boy toy". The glitch fouled the rest of the boarding procedure, and we left a half-hour late. Still arrived pretty much as expected though. Just one of those days.... ;)