Wandering Goat

Travel stuff by Miguel A. Villarreal

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Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Game Reset & Into the Hind

Leh, Ladakh region, India
 
So I've been quite lately due to mental & physical fatigue and also because I really don't have that much to say.  Hong Kong is Hong Kong, and it doesn't really need me to say anything about it that you can't learn on your own.  Plus, 5 star living at the Peninsula Hotel kind of saps your resolve as it seems as if the Concierge would post for me while I sip gin on the veranda.  Being a Peninsula guest opened many doors for me while I was in HK, particularly the automatic kind when I waved the Peninsula umbrella in front of the sensor. 
 
The only really memorable experience, aside from  eating Lipman's Thousand Year Old Eggs after he chickened out, was walking through a deserted super high tech shopping mall on a Sunday afternoon which was like a new age cyber ghost town.  But since I'm still acclimatizing here in Leh I don't really have the energy to describe it, so I'll leave the apres-postmodern monograph to Jonathan Franzen or Dom Delillo, who can write things in BIG CAPITALIZED PHRASES or important expressions of utmost irony
 
I should also send a shout out to my friends (and gracious hosts after the Peninsula ran out of dishes for me to wash) Jayne, Alex & Austin.  While it wasn't the Virginia Woolf-ish spectacle of being marooned in Moron that I happened to share with J on a previous excursion, nonetheless their hospitality was much appreciated.  So--holla, guys. 
 
I don't have much to say about Ladakh or India yet other than that while things here are changing, I imagine that flying Air India biz class is not unlike flying Air India biz class.  My big deal trek and the assault on Stok Kangri (which I can see from the roof of the hotel. It looks...high. But not too high for me) starts tomorrow, but it's a 9 day affair so it's not going to be too rushed.  I'll likely be out of radio contact till then but the pen is mightier than a shitty dial up ladakhi internet connection.

Thursday, July 21, 2005

Salon Kashgar

He's not only the owner, he's also a client!

A stern Urumqi caution listed below:

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Fotos

Hong Kong Special Adminstrative Region

So I'm back in the land of limited freedom and can finally access the goat myself and upload some pictures to prove that this entire trip is not cover for a giant insurance fraud scam ....... yet.

So here's a limited selection of what I've seen so far, uploading which takes more mental effort than me pronouncing on various topics occidental and oriental in a nagging know it all voice.

These are lower res versions and just a limited selection, and am not sure how many people are reading this now so I might have some bandwith issues, so download early I guess:


This is Ci Xi, the legendary Empress Dowager's, famous marble boat at the Summer Palace outside Beijing (she embezzled the funds to build/refurbish the summer palace from the Chinese Navy, and finished it off with a marble boat as an ironic final insult. Not that long after she died & the Qing fell.


Also at the summer palace


Bingling Si, off the Yellow River


Hui woman, Lanzhou


Overhanging Wall Section, Great wall, Jiayuguan


Mingsha sand dunes, south of Dunhuang


Kashgar Sunday Bazaar


Uighur district, Kashgar


Autagh, Pamirs


Kashgar


Summit of Mount Emei

Monday, July 18, 2005

Macau Boy

Macau Special Adminstrative Region

Yesterday I got off the mainland finally flying out of Kunming and jetfoiled it over to Macau. Kunming (the "eternal spring" city, capital of Yunnan province) sits at the southeastern corner of the himalayas, so it's in the mountains yet is also the crossroads into SE Asia (Laos, Burma, Vietnam, etc)so it's got a lot going for it. Kunming was thought of as a backwater hellhole where the communists would exile nationalists in the old days and as I said before was the end of not only the Burma Road but also the end of the famous Hump Airlift. The only problem was that people liked it and didn't want to go back. So now instead of a dirty backwater it's a popular vacation spot for domestic tourists and backpackers alike due to climate (70's in the summer) and location, and sports a Mazerati dealership on the Renmin Road. Hell, my own accomodations, which were mid range when my guidebook was written 2 years ago, were 5 star by the time I pulled up on Friday. (Chinese 5 star means only a little bit of water damage on the floor - although that is nit picky, it was excellent for the mainland).

Like Chengdu, Kunming is a laid back place but with better weather. Also a thriving nightlife scene featuring a maze of bars and carousing. Early on my last evening there I ended up dining, by random circumstance, with my new friends Karl and Zhang (incidentally, I plan on introducing a line of mens thongs in China under the label of Karl Zhang one day, they'll be so gay they're practically straight). Karl was a large teuton who ate most of my noodles by accident. Zhang was a museum tour guide. Unfortunately, Zhang was setting us up for the oldest trick in the book by offering to show us his museum later that evening, and one that I was vigilant against a few weeks ago but had forgotten about. Zhang's museum was of course not so much of a museum as a giant gift shop - which only makes it about 10% different from many actual tourist sites.

I politely extricated myself from that situation, abandoning Karl to his fate, and headed for the main Kunming party area, which is basically a maze of bars & clubs where young Yunnanese drink to excess. As a lone gaijin, I had no trouble approaching and befriending groups of locals - generally a line like "Hello" or "So, you're Chinese, huh?" worked quite well. A moment of glory was attained when one of my new friends pronounced that I was like "Tom Calooze". Of course this accolade was conferred by a 28 year old male office manager, so I decided to keep my Dianetics in the bag at that point.

Then it was on to Macau the next morning, where I am now. It's basically hot as hell, loaded with Portugese buildings and Portugese language signs (which must be by some legislative ordinance), and filled entirely with Cantonese. I haven't met one Portuguesa speaker yet and I've been dining at portugese restaurants and asking around as it's an excuse to eat Western without feeling like a hayseed. Anyway, this has its benefits, as it has allowed me to claim to them all that I am the son of a Brazilian diplomat, and so I then insist on ordering in Portugese. Of course, I speak no portugese and can only read it simply because I can read Spanish without much trouble. So when I pretend to speak it, I use Spanish and just put in a bunch of "owww" sounds where the "o" would be in spanish and use a lot of "shhh" instead of s's. This has worked fairly well thus far.

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Southward to Exile

EDIT - meant to post this a few days ago, sorry.

Chengdu, China

According to various guidebooks, getting a visa extension in China is a straightforward affair. My own visa expires on the 17th, and I'd structured my entire trip around getting to Hong Kong on the 20th when I have hotel reservations, so I just needed a mild extension - which would give me time to do a horsetrek in Songpan, because every boy should do one at one point. So yesterday I hoofed it down to the local Public Security Bureau, and unfortunately due to the massive insecurity with which it is managed, getting a visa extension is a 5-day complicated procedure which requires, inter alia, photocopies of bank statements (which was insulting as I've been tossing yuans around like J. Pierpont Warbucks XXIV and maintain considerable reserves in chinese terms) and worse which requires you to surrender your passport and stay in Chengdu for the whole time - so there's no point in me doing it. So I decided to trash that idea and head southwest to Kunming in Yannan province tomorrow, which although not that great, allows for some good daytrips and is a place where I've wanted to go as its the terminus of the famed Burma Road. From Kunming, rather than let the Man cramp my style and force me to HK before I am damned good and ready, I'm going to fly to HK on Sunday and then transfer immediately to the jetfoil to Macau, which I don't really want to see because I don't like gambling that much, but it's necessary to go there to avoid giving Them the satisfaction.

In another depressing development, I lost my cheesy pair of Serengeti Sunglasses on a bus, which means I had to go in search of another pair yesterday, because the only other pair that I have is a pair of JULBO glacier glasses for mountain climbing. WHile they are good for mountain climbing, they are lousy for urban fashion as they look like something that Stone Cold Steve Austin wears while boating (which may be the same ones that Alex wears.) So I went to the department store in search of yesterday. Shopping for regular western type stuff in China is a little iffy because you are not sure what you're getting since everything is made here - you're either getting a cheap knock off, or you're getting the real deal at a good price, or somewhere in between, where you get the real deal but with no label, or a chinese label. This actually proved to complicated for me to absorb yesterday so I ended up with nothing.

Speaking of Chinese labels - frequently, though you'll see western name brands in the bigger cities, the trend here is to Chinese Western clothes. By that I mean a Chinese made, chinese owned, chinese operated label, but with a western name and western models in the advertisements and names and logos which vaguely resembele western counterparts. AMong the most popular are Jack Jones, Septwolves, and K-Boxing, as well as Leadon, Youngor, Flying Scotsman, Leonardo, Giovanni Valentino, Zare, Minze New York, and my old favorite "Frognilio Zima". My new favorite is one that I saw yesterday in the department store, a handsome display of mens underwear was feautured right below a sign which bore the proud name of the label, in large gray letters......... "SCHEISSER".

So since I'm nearly at the end of the line on the mainland, I guess I should start wrapping up China in the form of issuing sweeping generalizations and cliches. A few things to take home:

1. I sort of wish I had more time here, but on the other hand I'm not that disappointed to be leaving, for a few reasons. One is that the han Chinese parts of China have a collective sameness about them that although well known, doesn't sink in until you experience it. For example, to the untrained (my) eye, a (restored) Tang dynasty pavillion in Beijing will look identical to a (restored) Qing dynasty building in Chengdu which will look similar to a (restored) Ming building in Lanzhou, as to a recently built pagoda out in the Pamirs, literally on the westeren end of china. Now, all of these buildings were built thousands of years and thousands of miles apart, yet they look very similar - I believe for the reason that the perception was that art & architecture achieved a level of perfection during the Tang period, so everything else followed the same style in subsequent works. I'm not saying they're not beautiful, elegant buildings and art - they are, certainly, with the Jiheyuan/Summer Palace in Beijing being my favorite example. However, imagine how boring it would be if western/american art & architecture was thought to have achieved perfection around the colonial/georgian and every subsequent building from 1700 -1960 was built in the same style - no art nouveau, no art deco, no prarie home, no bauhaus, no nothing. Gross. This probably sounds a bit too harsh and condemnatory and I'm not saying it's that bad, just different because it's the same.

2. Communist era city planning is awful, awful, awful. You're not going to find too many old towns in most chinese cities as they were bulldozed for wide up and down avenues a long time ago. Kashgar had the only remaining medieveal old town, and even that was chopped up into little island enclaves. Although I must say that it makes it convenient to get around, there's always a Renmin lu running either north south or east west in every city right through the heart, which makes it easy to orient yourself. Also a lot of the major sites are sort of aligned north south in feng shui style so that helps too.

More later.

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

The Long March

Emei Shan, China

[this is a bit long, sorry]

So I'm writing this from the Wanfu nunnery (but typing it later) about 3000m up on Mount Emei, about 200k west of Chengdu. As a nunnery, it seems to lack a significant populace of nuns, or maybe they're just the non-head shaving kind. Either way despite the fact that it is populated with travellers, etc, and is rather noisy for a Buddhist nunnery, it's significantly less so than the St. Rose of Lima convent on a Friday night.

Emei Shan is one of a seemingly endless number of holy mountains in the Buddhist world. I think there's at least four or five here in China including the big one (Kailash) over in Western Tibet. Each one has a big story about it, but forgive me because I forgot the one that goes with this one as they're kind of formulaic, and after three years of traveling intermittently in Asia they blur together. Just assume that some boddhisatva or something was passing through on a pilgrammage and miracles happened and elephants flew or talked or something and so they built monasteries and such here.

Emei itself is a series of mountains ranging from 1 -2.5k meters (3k -7.5k ft) all the way up to Mount Emei which is about 3.1km tall (10k ft). It covers a HUGE geographical area and features at least a hundred miles of trail & roads and is covered with temples, monasteries, pagodas, nunneries, etc. Somebody put together a page with some nice photos of it here.

There's a couple of ways you can do Emei - the wussy sissy I'm a little baby way, where you can drive to various points almost all the way up to the summit and then walk the last vertical half-mile (or even worse, take a cable car), or the hardcore badass way, which is to start at the base at Baoguo Si and takes about 2 days of walking and about 50-55k total. Since I've got bigger mountains to climb in the near future I went the hardcore route.

The park itself at the lower elevations especially reminds you of Chinese painting type stuff - bamboo forests & gingko trees and brown rocks and waterfalls (except for the occasional exposed sewer pipe or high tension wires). Allegedly there are even a few pandas there, but considering that many parts of it are the standard 690 ring Chinese tourist circus I think the only pandas are the ones you can buy at the souvenir stalls that line the lower levels. It did however have a seriously huge sampling of insects around though - and even better most of them were of the non-stinging/biting variety. I think it's home to 500-1000 species of moths & butterfly alone, which I would believe - they had all kinds of crazy looking butterflies there that you only see shellacked against a wall in a museum. There were also these wild cicada like things that made this noise that sounded like a rusty windchime from Children of the Corn or something that were mildly disquieting.

As for the hardcore route, after screwing around visiting a few temples & monasteries at the lower levels I finally got cracking in the early afternoon, which was a mistake. It wasn't hot but it was ungodly humid, and slippery and wet as hell. Within a few minutes of climbing you're drenched (and you've also fallen on your arse a few times). After about 4-5 hours of hiking up and down (that's the hard part about Emei Shan, you don't just climb a 10k foot mountain, you ascend and descend about 4 or 5 3000-6000 foot mountains first and then climb it) I was dead tired and had covered about 10 miles. So, having been misled about a scarcity of hotel beds (thanks a lot, Rough Guide to China), I pulled into the first dumpy prefab hotel I found.

Big mistake. Not only was it a dump and a relative ripoff, but it featured the worst bathroom situation I have encountered yet (which I was too tired to notice before I hd paid). It featured a nasty little in-ground Chinese squat toilet, with a shower. And by with a shower, I mean the shower head was directly over the toilet. Needless to say, despite the fact that I was sweating more than a Uighur discotheque, I chose to forego a shower that night/morning despite the possibility of killing two birds with one stone. It also had the effect of killing my appetite and putting me in a nasty mood the next morning.

So the next morning I cleared out around 7:30 and headed down the trail towards the "monkey joking zone" with a bad attitude towards all primates, which was heightened by the ineveitable first few hundred "HAA-LO"s from Chinese passersby. Any westerner who spends an extended amount of time in China can tell you that it's basically impossible to walk down the street in any place outside of maybe Beijing or Shanghai without 1. everybody staring, and 2. somebody (usually kids, but adults do it too) shouting "HAA-LO!!!!" to you all the time. While the "HAAA-LO"'s are sort of welcome and amusing at first, after three weeks they start to grind on you and one gets the feeling that many times it's not so much as a greeting as it's like them throwing a stick at you and seeing if you'll fetch it. I talked to an English guy yesterday who'd been here teaching for 11 months and was on his way back and he said that not having to deal with "HAA-LO"'s was the thing he was looking forward to the most.

SO on to the monkeys - among the few species of megafauna you'll regularly see in Emei is the Tibetan Macaque. They're rather used to humans, and they appear throughout the park as well as in the "monkey joking zone". Joking is one word for it. They're pretty much always demanding food from you and they can get very aggressive - I saw some of them unzip peoples pockets and take stuff out, and they steal peoples bags and run off with them if you're not careful. Also they don't bite, but they threaten to bite you if you don't give them food so they growl at you and bare their teeth. So what I'm telling you is that they are cute, but up close and personal they're not really monkeys, they're more like assholes.

I knew about this beforehand, and since I had my passport and camera and stuff in my bag I wasn't going to put up with any of their monkey crap. As I said before, I was in a bad mood this morning so if necessary I was ready to go head to head with monkeys and was wiling to resort to my swiss army knife, if necessary, and start snapping and dancing and going Sharks vs. Jets on their monkeyasses.

Fortunately that wasn't necessary, they'd give me the growling, teeth baring biting routine and while ignoring them doesn't work, giving them a dirty look and a menacing step usually backs them off, which was somewhat disappointing. What was not easy was the climb itself. It was freaking hard, long, and humid, and I hate to harp on this, but I was losing electrolyes like a madman (though I was setting a decent pace and burning past elderly chinese pilgrims left and right). As I got halfway up the second mountain of the day I nearly crashed and had to sit awhile and eat an extortionately priced but incredibly good bowl of cold noodles.

That was early on though and it got rougher from there. I think today (day 2) I covered about 40-45k total (26-27 miles or so) in about 11-12 hours with only short breaks. It got somewhat easier when I switched on the MP3 player to drown out the "HAAA-LO"s and then decided to sing off key along with most of the songs on it (after 3 weeks and with only 1GB, I know them all by heart), causing much bewilderment and amusement to fellow travelers. This both fulfilled the Chinese "look at this crazy american guy" perceptions and distracted them before they could launch the "HAA-LO" salvo so I consider it successful.

Later on when I saw a group of Tibetans crusing down the other way, I did take the time to shout "TASHI DALEK!" (the all purpose Tibetan greeting) as loudly and stupidly as I could, which rather amused them. Now, hold the phone, I know what you're thinking: "why, that little bastard ain't a-practicing what he's a-preaching". Wrong, this is distinguishable from the "HAA-LO" thing for two reasons: 1. Most or all Chinese don't know enough about Tibetans or just don't bother to shout "Tashi Dalek" to them - and nobody did it to the ones that I saw, and; 2. "Tashi Dalek" literally translates to "good auspices" in English - that is it's a Buddhist blessing. So when you say it to a Mahayana (himalayan/tibetan) Buddhist you're gaining a small amount of merit for them and yourself - and if you do it to a monk (as one of the walking Tibetans was) he gives you a little mini head bow/praying hands type blessing in return - sort of a mutual merit boost. So I was doing them a favor. The only bad part of the experience was that the Tibetans gave me a false impression that I was near the top, to which I was nowhere close.

By the time I'd pulled into the nunnery I'd been hiking about 11 hours (the last few very steep and at relatively altitude) and again, not to overemphasize this, but it was true - sweating like a jazzercise class and was nearly at the wall. The nunnery was maybe a 1-2k walk or so from the summit which I probably could have reached but there was no point as real mountain men know that the summit is only worth it in the morning when it's clear and the view is good.

So the nunnery (all the nunneries & monasteries traditionally offer cheap, relatively clean accomodation to travelers & pilgrims) was where I stopped tonight. They served an awesome vegetarian dinner, which was great even though I had no idea what it was, and had long, animated dinner conversation with a bunch of older chinese guys, about what I am not sure. The nunnery accomodations though spartan were far superior to the previous night's; I'm serious, give me a filthy outhouse located a long walk away over the shower/squat shitter combo any day of the week.

EPILOGUE: This AM I reached the summit early in the morning, which was all right - the view was decent but a little hazy. I was filled with contempt for the total wusses from tour groups in rented jackets who had obviously either driven or ridden up that day who were up there yelling at each other in Chinese (actually that is an oxymoron - all Chinese is yelled, not spoken) but otherwise the 50k hike was its own reward.

Also, note: now that I'm back in Chengdu, I've noticed that it's not quite as relaxed as I thought. The sign in the elevator in the hotel contains a laundry list of regulations for proper and safe elevator travel, including "NO SMOKING OR JOKING" and my favorite: "THE FOLLOWING PERSON MAY NOT USE THE ELEVATOR WITHOUT ACCOMPANIED: 1. BLIND 2. PREGNANT 3. PSYCHOPATH". So if you are a sightless, knocked up serial killer living in Chengdu, I hope you get used to the stairs, sister.

Saturday, July 09, 2005

Out of the Desert

Chengdu, China

Ok, this is the third time I've had to type this because for some reason the they included a "power" button right beneath the delete key on this keyboard, very convenient....

Anyway, I'm finally out of goat stankonia and back into China proper (though not before half of Kashgar attempted to trade me everything they owned for my mp3 player - I was offered hats, watches, even something vaguely organic that I couldn't identify). Chengdu gets little respect and for most travelers is a stopover on the way in or out of Tibet, for example, my first visit here last year was just to spend the night with a retired geologist from Utah named Jerry, which everybody should do, I think. It's too bad because it's a decent place - cheaper than most big cities here, with a relaxed atmosphere and awesome, if satanically hot, food since it's the capital of Sichuan. It's got drawbacks, namely humidity and pollution, and the loudest goddamn cicadas I've ever heard, honestly, they make most chinese seem quiet, but a pretty decent spot nonetheless.

Closing the book on the Silk Road - was it everything I thought? Yes and no, it was a little disappointing in that it was all pretty damned modernized by now - but when there are dudes hitching up their donkeys at the blacksmith shops at the end of the line it's pretty authentic. It did have high spots - Dunhuang, Bingling Si, the Pamirs being among them. I also skipped a bunch of key spots (Khotan, Turpan, Korla) due to lack of time and attention span. Not sure if I'd do it again as my kebab capacity was breached, but I'm glad I did it.

Where to next? Tomorrow I'm headed west of here to someplace called Emei Shan, which is a complex of Buddhist mountains and temples and that kind of thing. Supposedly it takes three days to travel the whole route so I'll be out for awhile.

Thursday, July 07, 2005

Last Flight Out

Kashgar, China

So at this time last week I was hauling ass to get to Kashgar and now I'm trying to get the hell out. You've been great Kashgar, but I am starting to smell like a goat - that means I need to leave but am stuck here till the night plane unfortunately

A few more observations on the Uighurs - great people but they need fashion intervention; urban Uighur dudes in formal occupations favor the Andy Sipowicz/Homer Simpson short sleeve white shirt with tie look. Also their hairstyles are trapped in the late 70's, early 80's look, sort of like Kirk Cameron from "growing pains". And the trading - it's a stereotype, but damn these guys will trade anything, anytime, anywhere. Everywhere you go, you see crowds of Marvelous Marvin Hagglers trading goats, grain, hats, textiles, cell phones, whatever.

Next stop is chengdu - so I am deviating from the route map and instead of making the big zig back to shanghai it's a small zag to chengdu, capital of Sichuan province. The food should take an upturn although I think it's nasty humid out there this time of year.

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Stop .... Pamirtime!!

Pamir Mountains, Kirghiz Autonomous Prefecture, China (yes, I'm really typing this from Kashgar but I wrote this at the former location and am a little sick of Kashgar at this point)

So today I finally got off the beaten path and took an expensive (1200Y) driving trip out to something either called Auyitagh or Oytak, depending on who you ask and when. I'm kind of sitting on top of a melting glacier at the moment and ice balls keep rolling past so I should probably make this quick. I'm about 200 something K southwest of Kashgar in the Pamirs somewhere along either the Tajikistan border I think, but I'm not exactly sure where I am yet and I can't find it on any map.

About the Pamirs, briefly speaking, there's several major mountain ranges that are a result of the crash with the Indian subcontinent: the Himalayas, the Karakorum, the Kunlun, the Tian Shan, the Pamirs, and maybe some more that I forgot. Anyway all these mountains are gigantic, I think nearly all of the world's 7000 m peaks are in one of those ranges, so they're just massive. THe Pamirs themselves separate the various Stans of the world, as in Afghan- Pak- Tajik- Kirghiz- etc, and were locally called "The Roof of the World", and allegedly Alexander the Great and Marco Polo passed through somewhere in the vicinity

Right now, I'm guessing, but i think I'm on the glacier, would guess about 14k feet up or so, of this massive pile of rock called Konger Shan or maybe it's Auyitagh Shan or something like that, or maybe one of the ones next to it. Anyway, let me read you what it says on the admission ticket, which basically says all one needs to know:

"Within one mountain, try millenium primitive ecology of view best, between one day, is it catch gem scene originally four seasons to award to the limit praised as 'The Western Regions one all one's life attitude view' goological expert"


OK, maybe not. So I'll describe it - I've seen some beautiful spots and some high mountains in my day, I've been to Everest base camp, and the Altaics & seen the Alps, but Jesus H. Christ in a chicken basket, if the scenery up here in the Pamirs isn't the most hyper-perfect, drop dead postcard beautiful shit I have ever seen, then I'll eat a donkey for dinner. I'm talking thousand foot waterfalls, massive glaciers, huge snowcapped peaks and blue skies, green pastures & valleys, huge red-clay canyons, dense fir tree forests, little Kirghiz farming & herding settlements along the way -- it's like scenic crack and I am overdosing.

The best part about it is that there is not a soul up here except for me, some other goats, and a couple of marmots, and a few Kirghiz (they're like the Uighurs mountain cousins, hard to tell them apart though). Which I guess is understandable, this place doesn't appear on any major brand English maps or guidebooks and is an expensive pain to get too, but damn if it isn't worth it. Best of all, the assorted incompetents and thieves who run the China domestic tourist biz appear not to have caught on yet, and hence there is a present lack of tacky karaoke spots, borderline autistic Chinese tour guides, and overpriced hotels with mediocre buffets. Simply awesome.

epilogue: so actually I ended up driving back later that day because it enables me to get out of here an day earlier - Xinjiang is great and all but I think I'm beginning to smell like a roasted goat myself. I'm headed Southeast towards Chengdu & Sichuan province, which will unfortunately take two days so I won't report in for a while. In another shitty development, I left my Ohio State hat in the car, which will no doubt now become the precious new possession of the driver (as well as the food he stole from me)which means I now have to rely on this awful green floppy hat that makes me look like a jungle warrior village person or buy some shitty Chinese hat that says "Rocck In the Fry WOrld!!!" or something.

Monday, July 04, 2005

Local Time

Kashgar, China
So my Uighur pal didn't show up last night, which was a bit of a relief. Not sure if I got the time right or not, since they have that weird "local time" thing here. But I waited across the street from the "Newlywed Fast Executive Hotel" at what I believed to be the appointed time, and no omarjun.

A word on Chinese beer - every Chinese province has their own cheap brand of identical tasting watery lager, produced by a state run brewery - so in Gansu you get "Landmark" beer, in Tibet you get "Lhasa" beer, here in Xinjiang you get "New" beer. Most of it is drinkable if cold and if it's hot out, which it pretty much always is, except for one brand which has a picture of a horse on it and smells way too much like cat urine. Anyway, last night, since I'm a dark brau guy at heart, I jumped at the chance to grab a bottle of 'New Black Beer" from the hotel bar.

So as you may have noted, I've been somewhat critical of the Chinese tendency to euphemistically label things - however when I got "New Black Beer", I got exactly what it described. Watery chinese lager - with black food coloring added. Be careful what you wish for I guess.

Sunday, July 03, 2005

Uighur Beaver

Kashgar, China

first, today, or actually last night, officially marked the two-weeks of traveling mark - and even better, through a combination of judicious timing and good fortune, I have not had to use an Asian squat latrine once. Not sure how long that streak will last.

Second, a few words about the Uighurs (pronounced "WEE-gurs"). They're a Turkic peoples and accordingly speak a Turkic language, written in Arabic script, and which sounds like Arabic with the throat clearing "habhlablgabchabg" type noise being the predominant one. As for the faces, some of them look fairly Asiatic but many of them look strikingly Western like they could be from Cyprus or something. Although it's difficult to tell them apart, as there are also various Kazakhs, Kyrgziz, Tajiks & Uzbeks running around too. Apparently you can tell by the hats, but it's an acquired skill. Some of the Uighur chicks would be kind of hot, but unfortunately many have got a thing for the Frida Kahlo look, where they actually pencil the unibrow in if they don't exist.

As for Kashgar city, if you were teleported into any number of Uighur neighborhoods here, (which exist as large baked mud-brick/adobe islands amid the standard ugly chinese made shop-blocks) and somebody asked you where you were, about the last thing you would say would be "China". More like Baghdad, Kabul, Islamabad or Istanbul. I'm talking donkey carts, blacksmith shops making horseshoes, blaring islamic music. Crazy stuff.

The Uighurs, however, are a hell of a lot more friendly towards westerners than you would think people in the above places would be. Yesterday in the main square in front of the mosque, I was eating some Uighur bagels and kind of walking around when one young Uighur walked up and started chatting, and invited me to his language school. Being a wary global citizen, I had visions of being kidnapped and held for ransom - though these guys were pretty small so I felt I could take them so I went along with it. So it turned out their offer to buy me some kebabs was . . . . actually an offer to buy me some kebabs, which they did, and then absolutely refused any payment whatsoever, despite the fact that my weekly disposable income was probably enough to feed their families for years. I also gained their favor in the same way that one would with Tibetans, Miao, or other mainland china minorities - by saying nasty things about their government overlords (who, by the way, put the hugest-ass statue of Mao up that i have ever seen here in the characteristically ugly renmin square)

So after that, they (they primarily being my boy Omarjun, and his friend with some unpronounceable name) actually did take me to their language school, where I was instantly the most important person in the entire building. They took me to class, which lasted from 9-11 (or actually from 7-9 - China has this idiotic rule where all cities are on Beijing time, however we are as far from beijing as LA would be from NYC, so consequently there is also an unofficial "local time" two hours behind that Kashgar residents use that confuses the shit out of pretty much everybody). Despite my grateful efforts to bow out after a bit, my host Omarjun wouldn't hear of it, or actually he wouldn't let me go without him, so I reluctantly stayed.

The class was in a dank basement and consisted of about 30 students ranging in age from 12 years old to about 35 or so. The teacher, Muhammed Iziz, or something like that, spoke pretty decent English, though the class wasn't so great as they'd only been at it for a few months. What they lacked in language skills, however, they made up for in enthusiasm and volume. Inevitably, being the only native English speaker for miles around - I was soon impressed into leading the class in their excercises. So Muhammed hands me the book and I start leading the Class in exercises, where I'd read a phrase and they'd repeat it. It went a little something like this:

Me (very slowly and emphatically): "I want to go swimming"
Uighur class (shouting): "EYE VANT TO GO SVEEMING! EYE VANT TO GO SVEEMING! EYE VANT TO GO SVEEMING!"

Me "I want to have a picnic"
Uighurs "EYE VANT TO HAVE PEEKNEEK! EYE VANT TO HAVE PEEKNEEK! EYE VANT TO HAVE PEEKNEEK!"

and so on ad nauseum. And then we had a bit of a Q&A session where I told them about myself, etc, though its very hard to explain to a bunch of Muslims how you like to go out drinking with your friends and I suggest you never try.

All in all, a very touching experience even for a hardened cynic. The only problem is that my buddy Omarjun has now latched himself on to me and proudly declared yesterday to be 'one of great days of my[his] life', and wants me to come to class yet again tomorrow, so i have to meet him again in a few hours. It's kind of a drag, but it's hard to say no when your mere presence makes people so happy.

Speaking of such, right now (if you are still reading this far down and didn't get tired of it) you may be wondering how an American can walk into the heart of a muslim enclave, just a few miles from the Afghan & Pakistan borders & Al Qaeda & taliban country, and be so well received. The answer is both geography (incredibly high, virtually impassable 20k foot mountains surround Kashgar on all sides and cut it off from those places pretty much) and politics (chinese heavy-handedness keeps Xinjiang and the Uighurs pretty isolated from those places, although they frequently use 'terrorism' as an excuse to crack down on them).

Regarding the Bazaar, which I just came from, I'm not sure where to begin. Kashgar's sunday bazaar is the largest & most famous in all of Central Asia, drawing 100,000 traders from hundreds of miles around. To imagine it, take a bunch of Uighurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgzyz, Turkmens, Pakistanis, Afghans, Uzbeks, Tajiks, and even a few descendants of White Russians & Cossacks, and the occasional Mongol, put them on trucks, motorcycles, bikes, & primarily donkey carts, then cram in every possible consumer good, agricultural item, livestock animal, commercial good, or otherwise that can be bought, sold or traded, including the kitchen sink in many instances, and you have the Kashgar sunday bazaar.

My own experience involved being swindled repeatedly by Uighur knife merchants - I only wanted one, simply because they're so popular around, here, but I somehow ended up with 3 despite much baragining, which I hope don't get confiscated because I probably paid way too much for them.

Saturday, July 02, 2005

Kashed

Kashgar, China

So I finally made it to Kashgar which was my ultimate goal. Am writing from the Chini-Bargh hotel, an ugly concrete box next to an old bungalow which incorporates the remnants of the former British Consulate which was also the estate of legendary British Central Asia Hand Lord George MaCartney, who was the chief British spymaster in Central Asia during the Great Game era and effectively the guardian of the Raj's furthest frontier. Sorry for the lectures, but if you guys would get off your asses and read "Tournament of the Shadows" or Peter Hopkirk's "The Great Game", you would know what I was talking about already and I could go on to more frivolous affairs.

Haven't seen much of Kashgar so I'll talk about that later. Let me just stop and lavish praise upon myself for a second - I hauled ass across 3000 miles of China speaking no chinese and took in a ton of territory, mostly overland, in about 11 days. That goddamned bazaar better be worth it.

As for the trip to Urumqi - I made the latest of my "train friends" on the night train from Dunhuang, a Kazakh tour guide named Hader. With all due respect to my han chinese train comrades from previous train journeys, I've got to give the edge to this guy. Drinking beers on the train with a Kazakh crossing the Taklamaklan is the reason why I do this kind of thing, which sounds nuts but trust me you had to be here.

As for Urumqi - the guidebooks make it out to be a hellhole and it has a long and bloody history of warlordism and general industrial nastiness. I actually found it not that bad, although the service at the Urumqi Ramada could have been a bit better, but the city itself was very modern & new, a lot of money had been poured in recently apparently. It's the capital of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region - "autonomous", when one translates the chinese political jargon, means the exact opposite, of course. Maybe they should call it the Xinjiang Uighur Oxymoronous Region. Although, in a rare show of restraint, it appeared the Chinese were too afraid to go to the Uighur section of town because I was the only non-Turkic dude there. Likely because they look mean and carry knives. I actually had a nice dinner there and spoke pidgin Chinese/English/Uigur with the waiter in one of the cafes, although he kept making a throat slitting gesture which was mildly disquieting.

I will also note that I saw a pimped out, fully loaded, NBA first round draft pick style Cadillac Escalade rolling down the streets there, which is the only time I've ever seen a Cadillac in Asia. The second time came not more then an hour later, when I saw a mint condition 80's land barge style Cadillac Fleetwood in the Uigur section. How the hell that car got from Detroit Rock City to Central Freaking Asia in the 80's would probably make a hell of a book.