Kitchen "essentials"

Perhaps it shouldn't surprise me, but Chinese kitchens, well, homes in general, steer well clear of appliances. Washing machines are pretty normal, but as I’ve noted before, dryers are nonexistent. Crispin, a perfectly intelligent fellow, assumed yesterday that the washing machine required manual assistance to fill up, only because even washing machines are still not the norm. Back in Yantai, Andy told me that older generations in China will sometimes wash things by hand, even when they can afford not to, out of mistrust for newfangled contraptions.

Of the homes I’ve visited, none contained an oven or a refrigerator (where fridges are present freezers are often absent), to say nothing of things like mixers and blenders. Neither will one much knife diversity: a giant cleaver slivers and dices the necessary reagents. Task specific dishes, pots, and implements (for example: measuring tools, whisks, any baking related dish) are nowhere to be found. Rice is usually cooked in a separate rice cooker, not in a pot, and one or two pans suffice for the majority of dishes. The efficiency is appealing, but it’s also downright annoying if one’s trying to make western food.

The absence of a refrigerator, in particular, is vexing. I do want to cook here, but without butter, or milk, or cream, many standard western recipes are downright impossible. It is possible to obtain milk and butter, but not very practical when they can’t be kept more than a day. As for cream, I’ve never seen, or heard, of it’s sale. Bread I can still make, although perhaps a limited variety, since I won’t be finding bread flour, or even “normal” flour here. But be it the staff of life, or no, one cannot live on bread alone. Not that I need subsist on my own cooking, but you get the idea.

Butter, butter, butter, most of the “simple” things I’d make hinge on butter. Muffins, cookies, biscuits, pie-crust, donuts . . . anything like these must have butter or fail. And that’s only half the battle, cake pans, pie tins, and muffin tins are not worth purchasing myself, to say nothing of the inability to measure precisely, and the further inability to procure measuring tools!

I suppose this is turning into a rant, but I’m not really grumpy, just bemused. Lao Loa (or something like that, the owner) was saying maybe I could cook something basic for western guests, like a hamburger. Obviously I can cook hamburgers, but one doesn’t cook a hamburger without buns, ketchup, pickles, or cheese! There’s precious little staple-ingredient-overlap between our two cultures, but I suppose we’ll work around it somehow.

Air Quality!

I left Yangshuo on Monday, after a lovely weekend of food poisoning. Back I went to Guilin, where I waited for a few hours before the overnight train to Kunming. This time around I bought a “hard sleeper” ticket, but I didn’t regret it. The only significant difference between hard and soft, apparently, is that in hard there’re six bunks to a compartment, as opposed to four, and there’s no door. This time I remembered to bring some ramen noodles along too.



Once in Kunming it didn’t take long to find a bus bound for Lijiang. I suspect I was gouged on the ticket price, but I decided to pay it anyways since I didn’t know how long it would take me to find the official bus, there didn’t seem to be many English language interfaces around. At any rate, I got on the bus and assumed the catatonic bobble-head position for a few hours, until the driver motioned us to depart and transfer to another vehicle. An enthusiastic man welcomed me to the back middle seat, he was an English professor, and asked me if I’d ever been to Dali before. Oh, I rejoined, is this bus going to Dali? It was, and that’s why I’m in a hotel in Dali right now instead of the Enjoy Inn in Lijiang. I probably could’ve made it to Lijiang today, but my butt hurt and I wanted a shower— I’ll just get a bus in the morning. At least I got a good deal on the hotel, I asked the cabby to take me somewhere I could stay for eighty Kuai. This is where I ended up, and eighty is what I’m paying, but the rates on the wall say a hundred and eighty-eight per night.



I’m loving Yunnan already. It’s the first place I’ve been (in China) with acceptable air quality. The sky is actually blue, and, I don’t know why, but the clouds are amazing. Maybe it’s not like this every day, but they’re just ridiculously tall and billowy. That’s how it is in Dali at least; I hope things are similar in Lijiang.

Thursday—

The boss plays Go, and he’s good! We played two games last night and, while I sure wasn’t in my best form, I can tell he’s severely stronger than I am. Hopefully we can play more in the days to come, provided it’s not too boring for him.



I finally made it to Lijiang yesterday and, as per normal, it was a regular whirlwind. I met the family who owns the place, their dog, their cats (the non skittish one), and went out on a little walk with some guests to explore the area. The little walk was more like a hike, and a thunderstorm caught us near the top of the little mountain we were climbing. But, it was no big deal. To our mutual surprise, the guests and I share a common interest in Anime— even a shared interest in specific series, so we had no shortage of conversation topics (would you believe they also read The Song of Ice and Fire and The Foundation? Nobody reads The Foundation!).



Dear, dear, apparently I don’t feel like writing this morning, but I will soon. I foresee no shortage of morning writing in Lijiang. The family stirs itself around ten, and until then the place is empty save for myself, and the few guests who need the door opened.

Little Update

Egad! This guy should be viewed separately to really get a feel for him



This is the lovely visitor I found on the floor last night. I shooed him out, but he scuttled right back in. The dark door crack appealed to him. Finally, I got him to the hallway, where I found this frog, before meeting the giant moth in the bathroom. The insects of this place are quite exotic to my Alaskan sensibilities.

He's small, but he's there:



This bugger was big:




A miniature horror landed on the pool table the other night— probably seven inches long, including the jaws, about 1.5 inches, which creaked loudly by squeaking its wings (It’s not all horror though, the butterflies are perfectly splendid). Abel took many pictures, perhaps I can send away for one, and maybe I can capture some shots before I leave.

The tickets aren’t purchased, but I plan to leave Yangshuo this weekend. I think I’ve seen pretty much all there is to see, and most of the people I knew (even the some of the students) are gone. My next stop is Lijiang. There I have another volunteer opportunity,— interacting with foreign customers at a small guesthouse. That in itself doesn’t interest me, but the place has a small, unused, café which I can apparently bend to my will, even to point of making money if stuff actually sells. They have an oven too, the first I’ve encountered since landing in China! How I long to bake some bread, the selection in stores here is absolutely unbearable. Even bread from bakeries seems a bit off.

There’s not much of note to mention. I played Go with a Chinese man in the park the other day. He was good, very near my own level, hard to tell if slightly above or below, but he lost in the end. The game was awesome though, I tried and tried to kill his shapes, but never succeeded. Still, I used the threats to dictate the flow of play and squashed his territory, thereby minimizing his points to a fatal degree. Much fun was had, hands were shaken, he complimented me (you play like a Chinese), and we both took us off, late, to our respective dinners.

I probably owe the structure of that last sentence to “The Worm Ouroboros,” an early book of fantasy written in Jacobean prose. I finished it the other day, but the odd turns of phrase have yet to dissipate from my brain. It was an excellent book: curious, in that the names, both of places and people, were bizarrely uncreative (for the places), and weirdly inconsistent (the people), but possessed of an uncommon elegance in illustration. Normally I hardly scan, or abide, lengthy, overwrought, descriptive passages. But the author of this book, though his sentences trailed on for clause after clause, paced things so well, and chose words so carefully, that every spellbinding fragment seemed at once clear, important, and poetic. The villains were villainous; the heroes, heroic. It read like a Greek epic cast in Fairy Land.

As it happens, I just read the Wikipedia entry on the book and found this explanation for the names:

'Many people (including J.R.R. Tolkien) have wondered at and criticized Eddison's curious names for his characters (e.g. La Fireez, Fax Fay Faz), places and nations. According to Thomas, the answer appears to be that these names originated in the mind of a young boy, and Eddison could not, or would not, change them thirty years later when he wrote the stories down.'

End Times

The view from a small hill in the park:



Well, our temporary little Yangshuo crew is dissolving. By now Abel should be in Beijing. Jordan left last week, and Hamza and Veroni are leaving on Monday. I think I'll finish out next week before taking off for Lijiang. Apparently I don't have the energy to write just now, I'll have to come back later.

Group picture at the secret beach:



About to jab Amir with the bamboo (the door locks at 12:30, somebody has to let us in):



More Guangxi landscape:

Rest For the Weary

Today, I rest. A lot of people are going to Moon Hill, but I won’t be joining them. Bicycles in Yangshuo are too small to ride in comfort, plus it’s not my nature to be so busy day after day, night after night. We all went out Tuesday and I said that would be it for the week, but I got lured out again on Wednesday by my English Corner group. They were all going to a masquerade party a bar, “Mojo.” I had to stay late and talk to Kim, about co-hosting a speech contest the next day (yesterday), so I couldn’t rustle up a mask. Still, I figured it’d be a good time, and I figured right.



As the night wore on a fellow noticed my “dancing” and came up from across the bar with a proposition. About five seconds later we were doing this on the dance floor: Acro-yoga.



I handed my camera to Abel, who took these shots. Sadly the coolest position is missing from the record, but oh well.



Sai, I learned his name afterwards, did most of the work, talking me through what needed doing, and adjusting things with his feet, but it was totally exciting flipping around in the air. It's a very small world. I discovered later that he’d learned Shaolin style at Kunlun (the school I almost attended, where my master used to teach). There’s not a lot else to say about the evening, it was fun, but nothing much to write about. I just felt like sharing the pictures.



So, that was Wednesday. On Thursday I hosted the speech competition with Kim. It was a bit odd, the Chinese a have a different sense of event planning and public speaking. Everything must be planned to minutia, and everything must be applauded. Up till the last second Kim was scrounging around for an intermission performance. He had his heart set on Hamza dancing, but Hamza fled the school rather than accept. It was a necessary measure. Kim actually left in the middle to go look for him. However, the whole thing went off well enough, and I got a Zhuoyue College T-shirt for my trouble, which I may stash away until I hit the sates again (the rigors of Chinese washing are extreme).


For reference, from the left: Hunter (terrible at directions), Jordan, Abel, Hamza, Veroni, Seby (Sea-be)



Nothing, by design, happened today. I watched Iris vs Savior on youtube, ate, slept in, watched Kung Fu Panda, and not much else. Hamza and Veroni are similarly engaged. As for Abel, who knows what he’s doing— probably out with his camera. He’s an Ecology Major with a keen dedication to photography. He borrowed my computer the other day and I got to see some his shots, mostly of butterflies, birds, and snakes, they were spectacular. I half thought about asking for a copy, I may yet.

Jordan, Vitchen, Abel, and Myself

Highlights

Friday began the worst of my Yangshuo days. I’d agreed to go along on a bike expedition to nearby Shinpin. Nearby, though, is a relative term. On bikes the average transit time is two and a half to three hours, but because I had the whole day before me, I wanted some exercise, and because the company seemed promising I brushed the details aside. Our ride over was pleasant enough, but things took a sour turn.

We had no sooner arrived in Shinpin central than a flock of hawkers zeroed in trying to sell us bamboo raft rides. We repelled them earnestly and went on our way. I’m fairly accustomed by now to the pushy insistence of all Chinese vendors, but one woman just wouldn’t quit. She followed us, we on our bikes, she on her electric scooter, around town for over half an hour. When we finally stopped to rest so too did the harpy.



I was closer at this point to robbing the woman and pushing her into the river than patronizing the bamboo-raft economy, but to my dismay she managed to entangle over half the group in negotiations. These went on for an hour and a half. I voiced my opinions as strongly as possible without being a total jerk. They were as follows: we never intended to go on a ride at all, any lower price we achieved would still be much higher than zero, the small sums at hand weren’t even worth the time wasted already, we could expect with certainty that, were we to accept, the boat would deposit us in some tourist-trinket-bazaar belonging to this woman’s family, and that, first and foremost, we should refuse it all on principle rather than reward her appalling behavior. In the morning I’d assumed that with six hours total of biking, and probably two or three in Shinpin, I’d have no issue making it back for Vichen’s party at seven. However, it was already two o’clock. We’d whiled away two hours doing nothing but haggle, still needed lunch, and the boat trip was expected to consume two more hours.
Despite my best efforts we lunched at an establishment belonging to none other than Raft-crone’s sister— the food was abysmal and on this everyone agreed. Then came the raft, the unavoidable swindlers, and finally it was time to leave. Noting the time, and seeking solitude to settle my dark humor, I put on all speed, abandoning the others, as soon as I was sure of the way and arrived back around six.




Friday-six-o’clock-Taylor was hot, tired, grumpy, and didn’t much feel like a party. I knew, though, that the girls would be disappointed if I bailed, and I also knew, in the back of my mind, that I could probably cheer myself up in the right environment. I collected Abel, a newly arrived volunteer from France, met Jordan, hooked up with Vichen and her friend, and off we went together.

The party, when we got there, was far larger than I expected. It was held in a vast courtyard, filled at the time with tables, chairs, and people, with a stage (probably 15x50 feet if I had to guess) opposite the gate. Vichen dragged us whiteys to a forward table, crowded with seven or eight girls already (I don’t know why, but the students at their school, and ours too, are predominately female), and another round of introductions began. Drinks were free, snacks were free, and as usual everyone confused Alaska with Las Vegas. I’m not sure how to account for it, but something like ninety percent of Chinese people confuse the two.

“Where are you from?”
“Alaska, it’s in the United States.”
“Oh! You must really like to do gambling!”

We were all warming up to each other when Vichen asked me something disturbing: “Soooo what have you prepared?” I replied that I hadn’t prepared anything and wasn’t aware of a need. “Nooo,” she mock whined, “you promised to do a song or a dance!” Then I remembered. I had grudgingly agreed that I might dance at the party (but certainly never agreed to sing!) the day before. However! I assumed, as anyone would, that I was agreeing to dancing of a normal sort: that is to say with other people, on a dance floor. All the while, though, students had been coming and going from the stage to deliver their own dance/song routines. In a flash I understood, she wanted me to follow suite.



My refusal was adamant. One cannot, without some serious training, improvise a dance routine, especially to music one had never heard before! Neither can one sing a song (At all! Never mind badly!) if one doesn’t remember the entirety of any lyrics. As the entire table joined in cajoling the situation started to get out of hand. So, in order to pacify them, I assented to join a group performance of something like a Chinese incarnation of the Chicken Dance. I’d be among others, and the whole point of the thing was to be silly, so I felt fine about messing it up. Up I went. Down I came. I considered the situation resolved.

Vichen was not appeased. She still demanded a song. Emboldened by success and a few drinks I set about internal browsing for songs, but I was hard put. I’m not a singer, I don't make it a point to memorize lyrics. I'd be surprised to remember words to anything (besides, possibly, a few Disney tunes). In the midst of this process voices called me back to the moment. There was about to be a Taiji performance. “Go! Go!” I was encouraged. Everybody knew already of my interest in Kung Fu. I resisted, not wanting to make a fool of myself amidst people who actually knew the style. However, I was told that only the master really knew Taiji, and everybody else up there was simply about to try keeping up with him. That, I thought, I could handle. Up I went again.



What followed was a miserable example, on my part, of Taiji, but it was nevertheless a brilliant success. Nobody else could keep up with the master, he performed the form very rapidly to music, and they left the stage to us. Thanks to my flexibility, martial arts exposure, and to the fact that I was deep in “the Zone” I kept up with him nearly perfectly through everything from cloud hands, to spinning crescents, to a tornado kick dropping to a low, low one-foot stance (which I’d never seen before but accomplished anyway, and flowing Taiji aesthetics: feats that garnered cheers, a first among firsts for me. Of course I made mistakes, but I was, for lack of other words, on fire. I glossed over the rough parts with anything I could smoothly match a transition to for a moment, and I don’t think the audience could tell the difference. We closed the form and I left the stage in extreme exhilaration, ascending for the rest of the night to mini-celebrity status— the recipient of many a congratulation, compliment, and request for pictures. I won’t forget that night any time soon, but I have a souvenir just in case: a scroll with “Dragon” on it that the host scrawled and presented to me.

We stayed at the party until it broke up before heading out to eat with the girls, and that’s all I care to write for the moment. It was an awesome time though, truly awesome.



I've also gained the ability to do the "lotus" sitting position without warming up. I'm pretty exciting. It's the ideal seated position, because you have three points of contact with the ground and you can sit perfectly straight with no effort.

Guilin to Yangshuo

There's still a lot of settling down to be done, and I have plenty of stuff backlogged to post, but right now everybody's sleeping and I think I'd best do it later. These are some pics from yesterday though, context will follow shortly.



After setting up camp in Yangshuo I assumed things would settle down, but they continue to move as fast as ever. I’d been walking in Guilin for about thirty seconds before a woman darted out: “Help? Do you need some help?” She was on the clock, and not entirely altruistic, but she spoke English and asked my preference ; bus or boat? Boat seemed the obvious choice and off I went. The trip up the Li river took practically all day, but I had some awesome company, namely a German girl, Katrina, a New Yorker, an expat from Macao, and his girlfriend from Brazil. Thankfully, we all got along. The day was well spent admiring the unique Guangxi scenery.




After landing in town I made my way to Zhouyue English College in time to eat dinner and conduct English Conversation Corner directly afterwards. Conversation corner is blast everyday so far, everyone is curious about Alaska, and especially Kung Fu once they figure out why I’m here. The young people at school have no clue about Kung Fu at all, to them it’s basically magic, and they love to hear about it. But, conversation drifts wherever we want it. On Thursday I talked forever on carpentry tricks of Dad’s and old, European superstitions.



Man, I don’t think I can organize these thoughts into anything coherent. The days, only four of them, have been so packed it feels like a lifetime since I got here. Thursday is a great example of this. I woke up, showered, set out to familiarize myself with the town, and walked for a long time. I knew I was getting myself lost, but I didn’t mind. It’s a small town, and I knew basically the direction I needed to get back. Eventually I’d been going so long I figured I’d better start running, or else miss lunch. So I ran. Somehow I ended up in a park. Chinese attendants accosted me, demanding 50 Yuan for admittance. But, I figured I wasn’t there to enjoy anything, and certainly not on purpose, so I shouldn’t have had to pay. They were impotent young women, so I made an executive decision and ran past laughing like a villain.

I expected to wind up on a certain road; instead I wound up in the forest. Nevertheless I was confident in my course, I must have just misjudged the distance. The hunch proved correct and I emerged in the center of town, totally muddy, scratched, and exhausted in time for lunch. We ate, and I left to wander the town. Before dinner I gave an hour’s speech on western cooking, and then two more hours of conversation afterwards. Then, as I was leaving the school, two Chinese girls ran up to me. They were students from a different English school, visiting for a couple days in Yangshuo, with a homework assignment to speak to foreigners and collect their signatures as proof. Since I live in a hive of foreigners I led them around collecting signatures, before meeting up with Jordan, after which we set out for West Street in search of strangers.



West Street lasted awhile (I’ll need to write a small passage on it one of these days), we collected a lot of signatures, I bought a Go set (the stones are nice, actual stone like my ones at home, but the board is just a cloth), and we ended the night at rooftop bar. The girls pressed us to attend a party the following day, to be thrown by their school upon the conclusion of their Yangshuo visit, and we accepted happily. I got home late and went to sleep immediately.