China Recap

Nobody wants to read a play-by-play of my week in China and quite frankly, I don't want to write one either. But basically, my aunt and uncle took me to China with them. Before this trip, our conversations were limited and sparse. Since the trip, I have been able to have full conversations with my aunt in Thai and learn more about her life (and my father's) when they were growing up as orphans. I guess that's what treating your now-27-year-old niece to a $1,300 trip to China can do. Additionally I started out as a near-deaf-mute because everything was in Thai and Chinese (and not my kind of Chinese) so I didn't really have a clue what was going on nor did I know what to say to people, but by the end...well, let's say I have a lot of new friends now. My aunt was impressed. Ha ha.



Anyway, the tour was great but I don't know if I am such a fan of tours in general - the itinerary was so packed, there was hardly any private time. Evenings could have been private time, but being on the road and on one's feet after a 5AM wakeup call nearly every day (on sleep-in days, we woke up at 6AM), by the time you finished dinner, sleep is all you can think of, especially since you started the tour the morning after a "red-eye" (three-hour) flight. And going in a large group means you cannot explore the small little cafes where food is much more delicious and authentic than large banquet halls or hotel restaurants - the only places that can accomodate crowds like this. Still, no complaints. This trip was free and I was given a spending allowance.

Anyway, the Yunnan province is beautiful, with what guide books call the most varied climate in all of China. We did not venture to the south (had I known, I wouldn't have packed tank tops, but I couldn't read the intinerary), instead starting in the provincial capital of Kunming on a dreary, dreary Thursday morning and working our way northwest to Tibet. I now know why Chinese calligraphy artists painted the way they do - much like Constable was enamored with clouds in England, I was enamored with the clouds in China. They are just so different and so much more expressive than anything I've seen in North America. The closest comparison I can draw is the Smoky Mountains if they were merged with the Rockies and I've only ever flown over and gawked at the Rockies.

The toilets were dismal and the stench and conditions turned almost into a joke. Nature is best, and proving this point were the outdoor toilets, basically earning their "W.C." status because someone had bothered to erect some sort of wall shielding the female squatting over some sort of hole from the public. Of course, this did not necessarily mean there were walls should there have been two, three, or four holes together, and so I can so I feel a certain sense of cameraderie with my fellow female tour-goers. The Exxon on that dirt road in the U.S. ain't nothing till you've had to squat less than six inches over a pile of shit in a commode that has grip marks for your feet and lack of any flushing system.

The highlights of my trip were taking a lift and then walking a kilometer to a meadow for a drop-dead gorgeous view of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountains and visiting the monastery in the Tibetan town of Benzilan. It was at that monastery that a Tibetan monk blessed me after I donated some money and felt a sense of spiritual peace. I got two bracelets made of wooden beads out of it. Oh, another highlight was that I made my first midget friend, Mr. Lee. He is from Taiwan but has lived in Bangkok for over 20 years. He is so great and hilarious, the height thing doesn't even occur to you. His wife, her sister, and her sister's husband were also great. Mr. Lee tried out his Cantonese on me, and the first thing he said to me was, "You are a fat pig." Of course that is the perfect way to get on my good side.







But visit my Flickr page and you'll see China as I saw it. I'm still not exactly sure how to describe my first pilgrimage to the motherland, although my family is from the south, not the southwest (we speak Cantonese and Teochew primarily - Mandarin is the "national language" and so we must speak it too). And another first - I have mentioned this story to some people, but here it is again. On the second or third day in China, my aunt's 80-something year old friend grabbed me in the bathroom of a hotel where we were having dinner. As more women entered the ladies' room, she pulled down her pants and underwear, shoved a bottle of green eucalyptus oil into one hand, and forcefully placed my other hand on her ass, directing me to massage oil into her ass. "MORE! HARDER! MORE OIL!" she kept yelling. In Asia, one always defers to her elders, and so I obliged, though not quite willingly. Whatever, it is amusing, so I'm not exactly upset. Her butt was a lot softer than I would have expected.

Tomorrow I am off to my five-star resorts. The chauffeur is taking me to the airport at 7:45AM. I chickened out on asking the yogi to come with me, even though I had the perfect opening. I wasn't getting the strong vibes I needed to go through with the invitation - I think he is a shy "good boy." He is looking to go to the University of Washington for a PhD in Comparative Religion next year and when I mentioned that Seattle was a great city except that everything shut down by midnight, he sheepishly said he hadn't stayed up until midnight in quite some time.

This means no boozed-up making out which means not entirely compatible, I think. But we did have a 20 minute conversation, which is a baby step. Ha ha.