Getting Updated
Since it took so long to get the blog up and running, here are some of the blog posts I had planned from the last week. . .
7.29.2007
Wake up early, scarf breakfast, chug coffee, hugs, kisses, crying, lines, security, some more lines, get on the plane, find seat, think about leaving family and friends for six months alone in a new country, think about it some more, let the anticipation build, get a cookie for the road, feel excited and nervous and anxious to get there and all the other natural emotions, crush knees into seat, seatbelts on and tray tables up and then—
“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the captain. We will be de-boarding the airplane. Those who are planning to make connections in Chicago should go to the ticket desk for alternate plans.”
Ready, set, wait!
My first post is not from China but from an exceptionally comfortable couch in the business class lounge of the Northern Kentucky Airport. Judging by a look around the lounge, there apparently has been some kind of trophy-wife convention in Cincinnati this weekend. It’s 4:10 in the afternoon and I should be somewhere over the Pacific right now, but after enduring some mechanical failures, mediating bickering between United and Delta, and schlepping back and forth across terminals during what apparently is a trophy-wife convention this weekend, I have ended up with business class seats to Paris, and from there, to Beijing by Tuesday morning. I’ll be heading the opposite way around the world and showing up a day late, but as I enjoy the fresh fruit and free beverages and contemplate the massage chair, I have to say it’s all worked out just fine.
7.30.2007
I write this from De Gaulle airport, outside Paris. I am sitting on some ridiculously comfortable futuristic-yet-non-bourgeois chairs and waiting for the next plane. I feel very well rested.
In a turn of events which “Sugar” Sam “Sexmachine” Johnson would definitely term as “fortuitous,” my flights to Paris and Beijing were upgraded to business elite, or something snooty like that. Instead of the cramped suffering of the plebes, I would be enjoying my trip with fully reclinable seats and free booze. The toilets had soap of lemongrass and wasabi, and the Thai soup tasted like spicy Froot Loops. Luckily, I really like Froot Loops. Upon entering the plane, you are greeted with a glass of champagne, presented with some fresh socks, assorted creams and lotions, a hot towel, and the menu for the flight. The menu includes items such as “Herb-crusted lamb with blah blah blah. . . “ Not that it mattered, it still came out of a microwave. At least I had my Thai Froot Loop Juice.
I reclined all the way, stretched my legs, took some champagne and watched the sun set over Lake Superior. The trophy wives were whining and the businessmen were ignoring them, pretending to sleep or read business things. We were about 20,000 feet up and the sky was clear, and I could see about a quarter of the lake as we flew just south of it. I watched as the horizon turned pink, then orange, then red as it waned to the color of a fire dying out, and the little wispy pink clouds just below me turned pink then purple then black.
Just then the whole trip seemed immediate, real for the first time. Up to that point it had never really seemed I was leaving everyone that's important to me. It was a strange time for a moment of realization—I have no personal feelings for Lake Superior, we’ve never had dinner together or high-fived—but something about it pulling over the horizon made the surreal goodbye's of the last week tangible for the first time. Sometimes we just need the sight of an arbitrary body of water to make it click.
When it got dark I pulled the shades, reclined the chair to an obscenely comfortable position, put on my courtesy noise cancelling headphones, and went to sleep very excited.
8.5.07
Ming Tombs, Great Wall, and the Wisdom of the Cultural Revolution
Almost slept through the Great wall trip. Woke up 15 minutes before bus left. Tour guide took us to Jade shop and pottery shop before we went to the wall. She talked in the mike as we rode past the new Olympic stadiums. Bizarrely, she started talking about the Cultural Revolution. I wasn’t expecting anyone to bring it up. At first she seemed like she thought negatively of it, but she quickly jumped back to the standard line. This is more or less what she said about it:
“In the 1960’s our great leader Mao Zedong said, ‘everyone should get a chance to be the worker, the worker is the strength and glory of the country, so everyone should have the glory of the worker.’ So people who weren’t the worker, who were students and scholars went to all the corners of the country for some years, to learn how to be the worker.”
Well. . . that’s one way of putting it. From the little I’ve read and heard from Chinese people, this seems to be a common thought process concerning the Cultural Revolution. They recognize that it was bad, that maybe it shouldn’t have happened, that perhaps it was damaging to China, but the next logical thought—condemnation of the leaders who instigated it—never happens.
Sometime after Reform and Opening began in the late 70's, the standard line on Mao Zedong and his often disasterous policies became that he was right 70% of the time, and wrong 30% of the time. Wilson, who lived in Beijing for a year with a host family, told me that some people have recently begun switching the percentages, saying he was wrong 70% and right 30% of the time. But its always 70 and 30, never anything else.
Right afterward we were dragged to a Jade factory, which was a tourist trap with all kinds of ridiculously overpriced jade. Very socialist. We spent more time there than at the Ming Tombs, which were incredibly touristy and whose sites were limited.
Lunch was at another tourist trap, some kind of pottery factory. But more importantly, we had French fries! There was much rejoicing.
It takes a few hours to get to the Great Wall as traffic is horrendous. Jakub the Polish guy keeps us entertained with stories of fork-lift races and exam-cheating and getting a lightbulb stuck in his mouth, taking a taxi to get the lightbulb out, returning, finding a dormmate with a lightbulb in his mouth, and walking with him to the hospital only to find the cab driver with a light bulb in his mouth. Apparently the Poles love a challenge.
We head to the most touristy section of the wall, as it is the closest to Beijing. The city fog blends with the mountain fog so badly that visibility is horrible. We name the mist sfmog. It just sounds right.
I didn’t think people would be hawking so much crap on the actual wall. I expected more sanctity, I guess. As soon as you get off the bus there are very persistent people hounding you, to sell postcards and t-shirts and goofy hats and communist shirts, and once we got on the wall there were painters and other artists, food vendors, goshery tables, and a woman who sold little pissing Buddhas. The wall is crowded but I climbed as much as I can, and there are still awe-inspiring moments, considering the human and natural elements conspiring otherwise.
An Arrest
After dinner we head Beijing’s night market. Nicoli, a Dane, has been drinking rice wine since before 9, and is utterly pissed, and some of the Brits like to say. He's wearing a communist hat and dancing around like a buffoon on a crowded street corner, much to the delight of most of the Chinese watching. They're laughing hysterically. One of Nicoli's friends reels him in, and as we cross the street, a raving wild-eyed old Chinese man stands above everyone and starts ranting in Chinese. From the grumbles and eye-rolls of the audience I can tell that no one is very interested in listening. He's crazy, but not as crazy as the drunk laowei, and he's definitly not as funny. He gestures wildly with papers in his hands, and his open shirt flaps around, and it seems like he’s pointing towards some from our group, but really he’s pointing everywhere. It would be speculation to say that he was reacting to Nicoli and the perhaps disrespectful hat he was wearing. He seems to be an equal opportunity rabble-rouser, because soon he starts screaming at the people gathered around.
In any case, the cops roll up and rather politely try to take the raving old man into custody. He refuses vehemently, yelling on tiptoes at the crowd over the cops’ shoulders. The police stop being polite. After several failed attempts at coercing him into their car, the police surround him and take him to the ground efficiently, dragging him to the car. He doesn't go quietly. I ask one of the Chinese assistants in our program what happened, and he looks back across the street to the scene and shrugs, “Something political.”
Night Market
Next we walk down the street to a night market, where booth after booth sizzles with the bizarre food of all kinds. A crush of people is pressed against the booths, and the strange smells comingle and waft up over their heads as they haggle, point, shout and laugh. The men behind the booth are animated and their eyes and hands do most of the negotiating. Friends dare each other to try things, everywhere there are these little negotiations going on...what to try next, who has to eat the last one, who is a girly-man for not swallowing or trying. On the tables sit rows and rows of cow stomach, hearts, testicles, whole squid on a stick, worms, snakes, starfish, scaly fish staring skyward, numerous fried insects, and all kinds of unidentifiable creatures on sticks. It was only right to try as much as we could. You might be saying to yourself, "It all sounds so good, how should I know what to get the next time I have the opportunity to eat strange animals?" Well, kind reader, I've taken the guesswork out of nightmarket eating. This little guide will help you the next time you are in such a situation. Here’s the verdict:
Snake: C +
Tender and sort-of fishy. They rip out the spine and clean it (hopefully), skewer it and grill it and roll it in spices. The raw ones slide slowly down their inclined spot at the booth but always stop short of falling on the ground. Jakub from Poland eats the head first, then realizes he has to spit out the skull bone. It bounces on the ground and rolls down a gutterdrain... I would eat it again, but downing a whole snake would be a challenge. There's a bigger snake that just has a stick rammed down his throat, and that one gets an F.
Silkworm: F - - -
Couldn’t swallow it. It’s like a plastic ball filled with rotten cheese sauce. Tastes worse than it sounds. There are four or five skewered on a stick, and only three of us give them a try. Our reactions were enough to dissuade anyone else from coming near the nasty little things. Seriously, don’t do it. There’s being adventurous and then there’s being a jackass to your body.
Heart: A
Not sure who or what’s heart. Maybe chicken. Pretty tasty. I’d eat it anytime, really.
Scorpion: A -
There was small and large scorpion. The small ones were about 2 inches long, small and crunchy. The large were 4 or so with long tails. I had the little one. Tasted like a bit of fried chicken skin. Highly recommend. I didn’t try the bigger ones but they looked pretty mean.
Testicle: C
It wasn't clear who or what's testicle we were eating, which inevitably led to "Now we know how they enforce the one-child policy" jokes. I can't in good concience give an unidentified nut a higher grade than a C, but it really wasnt bad. Tasted like a bland sausage. There were all kinds of penises available too, but I passed.
Grasshopper: B +
Big damn grasshopper. 3 inches long at least. Salty and crunchy, again tasting like something deepfried. No big deal, except that they require a lot of chewing or else the legs get stuck in your throat or teeth…mmmmm.
Starfish: D +
It's bad, but not silkworm-bad. The outside is spongy and tastes vaguely like seafood, and the inside has this green goo that oozes out. It was just fun eating a starfish though.
So there you have it, the quick guide to nightmarket eating. A synopsis: Scorpion good, silkworm bad, and testicle useful for population control.
(Note on this post: I tried to go on Wikipedia and look up some facts about the Cultural Revolution, but the page was blocked. I don't see why they need to block a page about a few million people learning about the glory of the worker. . . )
