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.