Report from "the Real China"

I'm posting this from the Yangtze River International Youth Hostel in Chongqing, China, which had taken on something of a holy grail status during the seemingly unending and ridiculously complex journey we undertook to get here. Two days ago, we were finishing a pleasant three-night stay in Fenghuang, a beautiful Ming/Qing dynasty-era river town in Hunan province. Fenghuang has only just made its debut in the Lonely Planet, so while it is crowded with Chinese tourists, we saw fewer than half a dozen Western visitors during our time there.

Our next destination was to be Chongqing, starting point for Yangtze River cruises through the Three Gorges. Following the advice of a couple of helpful hotel staffers, we got up early on Friday morning to catch a bus to nearby Tongren, from which we expected to begin - at about 11:00 am - a seven-hour train journey to Chongqing. In Tongren, however, we were confronted with the dreaded "mei you" - often the only words in a sentence that foreigners can understand, and while what can be understood is that "mei you" means "don't have," we have no idea why what we want to have cannot be had, or whether it can be had a little later, or somewhere else, or for a different price, or in another form. All we knew was we were in Tongren, a provincial Chinese town unmentioned in the guidebook, blindly following the advice of people we had met two days and thirty miles previously, and our plan had run aground because when we stumbled through the Mandarin phrases required to book tickets to Chongqing, we were met with "mei you."

Eventually we learned that a landslide had closed a key tunnel on the tracks to Chongqing, which made as much sense as any other explanation. Meanwhile, we stumbled around from train station to long-distance bus station to short-distance bus station, from Tongren to Jishou to Huaihua, eventually ending up in sleeper berths on a train that was claimed to be heading for Chongqing: departing Friday night at 22:38, arriving Saturday morning at 06:00.

Twenty four hours after that, we were sitting in our crowded sleeper carriage, motionless on the tracks about two miles from the Chongqing station, while a passenger revolt began to break out around us. Our train had taken an alternate route to bypass the landslide, arriving in the Chongqing area several hours late, only to find that no platform was available in the Chongqing station. For two hours we sat on one siding outside the city, watching the sun set. Then we rolled forward maybe a mile, to sit for another two hours on yet another siding. The train was out of water and food, and the carriages filled with cigarette smoke as we waited. Some passengers argued with railway staff, demanding to be let off - and a few escaped through windows, hustling down the tracks on foot, luggage in hand, smiling and waving to the cheering crowds still imprisoned on the trains (another train full of delayed passengers was stuck just across from us).

Rachel and I waited it out, and finally, at 11:00 pm, more than 24 hours since we had boarded the train in Huaihua, and about 36 hours since we had begun our (supposedly eight-hour) journey, we pulled in to disembark at Chongqing. We took a room at the first hotel we found near the station, an efficient operation busy funneling in late-arrivers, and spewing out early-departers in the morning.

This morning, after a confusing pair of taxi rides and a bit of lost wandering around, we managed to find the Yangtze River Hostel, which we had booked for two nights previously. We're not staying here now, but we had heard it was a good place to book Three Gorges trips, and it is - the staff here are fantastic (and not at all angry about our no-show).

All along the way, we've been joking about being lost in the "real China" - readers of this blog might know how much terms like that annoy me. For the 48 hours it took us to to get here, we've been the only Westerners in sight, and, with a near-absolute language barrier, we've mostly had only a dim idea, if any, of what was going on at any particular time.

The point of it all - the over-long journey, this over-long post - is that we really would have been lost were it not for the unbroken chain of kindness with which we were met by the people we encountered along the way. I don't like to generalize about vast cultures - "the Chinese are X" - but I do have to say that at every turn we've found people willing to go out of their way to help lost foreigners, even if we don't have any language in common: telling us which bus station to try; explaining to cab drivers where to take us; the woman who took us on a city bus to the Jishou train station (almost certainly not where she herself was planning to go) on a rainy afternoon, and then tried to give us her umbrella; the travel agent in Jishou who went to the ticket counter with us to help us book our tickets (for no fee); two young women on the overnight train who spoke a little English and gave us periodic updates on stituation.

The real China, insofar as we've seen it over the past couple of days, seems to be bustling, and very very big. It's also, I'm happy to say, full of very decent people.

Amber Fort

Painting the ceiling, womens' quarters, Amber Fort - pic by Rachel.

We're currently in Fenghuang, Hunan Province. I'm trying to upload some Hong Kong and China pix as I write - wish me luck. Meanwhile, another India flashback:

The most magnificent sight in the Jaipur area is Amber Fort, which had served as the seat of Amber state before the construction of Jaipur. It's a vast, sandstone stronghold spreading across the top of a bluff, impressive both for its defensive aspect and for its graceful Mughal-era style, combining elements of both Hindu and Muslim artistry. Walking around inside the fort, you can get pleasantly lost in the winding passageways and hidden chambers, especially in the mazelike womens' quarters. Emerging into the courtyards you see blazes of color - banners and saris - against the honey-colored stone. Here are a few pictures.

Mughal garden, Amber Fort courtyard

Mirror, Hall of Private Audiences, Amber Fort

Amber Fort photo set on our Flickr page is here.

Chinglish

Judging by the number of hilarious English translations of signs we've seen in the few short days that we've been in China, Chinglish may have to become a regular installment on the blog. Here are a few of our favorites so far.

A sign on the wall at the immigration port read "Please do not shake my head so that I may serve more of your heads." (Then, at the border control desk itself, we were invited to "assess the performance of your inspector" by pressing one of three buttons marked "perfect," "ok," and "unsatisfied," somewhat undermining the all-powerful air that immigration officials are supposed to assume. I wondered, if my inspector had rejected my visa and banned me from entering the country, whether I could have changed his mind by pressing the "unsatisfied" button. Luckily I didn't have to try.)

A sign on the door of a toilet cubicle at the immigration port instructed the occupant to "please keep cleaning."

Another sign on a toilet door read "Male; Man."

A notice outside a doctor's office in Guangzhou reassured potential patients that "We cure your pain and care about the health of your Spondyle."

And then there was the German beer ad promising a "naive feeling derived in germany," which we thought sounded more like a crossword clue than anything else.

As for our Chinese language skills, we're attempting to learn a couple of basic Mandarin words but were in Cantonese speaking places for the first few days so haven't had much chance to try it out yet. As a result, ordering lunch the other day consisted of pointing to what the people at the next table were eating and hoping it didn't turn out to be cat.

Pearl River Sunset

Shenzhen Expressway sunset

Guangzhou, our first stop in China, was known to the west for centuries as Canton - the first and for a very long time the most important Chinese port city to be open for foreign trade. Since the Beijing government began its post-Mao economic reform, it has returned to that role, from its site at the heart of the Pearl River Delta (PRD) open economic area.

A vast proportion of the "foreign" direct investment in China in fact comes from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the overseas Chinese diaspora. The PRD open area was set up to benefit from Hong Kong investment, and it has - it is the richest and most developed area of China, rivalled only by the Yangtze river delta area around Shanghai. Within the PRD, the city of Shenzhen - just across the border from Hong Kong - was set up as a Special Economic Zone with even greater investment incentives, and in the last three decades Shenzhen has gone from being a small fishing village to one of the largest and richest cities in China, with a population equal in size to New York's.

As we made the two-hour trip up the (Hong Kong-financed) expressway from Shenzhen to Guangzhou, we travelled through the most industrial landscape I've ever seen - a continuous expanse of factories and workers' housing, covered in a thick layer of pollution tinted pink and orange by the sunset and set aglow by the occasional neon sign (in fact we haven't seen blue sky since we left Singapore). When you read that something is "Made in China," chances are it's made here.

We're taking a night bus to Guilin tonight, which should be a somewhat different experience. In the meantime I'll see if I can bring some order to our Flickr page.

Quick Update from Guangzhou

After three nights in Hong Kong, today is our first morning in China 'proper' - we're in the southern port city of Guangzhou, and very excited to be here. Will post more as soon as possible, and after we've had a chance to sort out some of the Flickr uploads we've done recently. Hong Kong was amazing, by the way.

Singapore: Looking Ahead

Buddha contemplating the Port of Singapore

So we're in Singapore, which seems in many ways to be exactly what people say it is - wealthy, expensive, sparkling clean, frighteningly orderly, and very well policed. The definitive Singaporean social contract is supposedly that its people have traded a certain number of civil liberties for law and order and the highest material standard of living in Southeast Asia, and one can certainly see that contract in effect. Still, it's a friendly enough place, and surprisingly green, particularly outside its surprisingly small city center; moreover, I have to admit it's a real pleasure to be in a place where everything works, and where one can stroll around enjoying a vibrant outdoor nightlife without the slightest worry about crime. Also, the Singapore Zoo's Night Safari is freaking awesome.

Singapore's founder and towering political figure Lee Kuan Yew (now the country's "Minister Mentor") apparently gave a talk just yesterday, outlining his take on the city-state's overall strategic, economic, and social situation. He stressed the benefits to Singapore of its multi-racial identity and its nimble diplomacy, both of which have helped it secure its position in the world. Notably, he repeatedly emphasized Singapore's "meritocracy" in places where American politicians would talk about their country's "democracy." I don't pretend to know anything really about Singapore, but I thought it was interesting.

So, having stayed in Singapore just long enough to reinforce some stereotypes - for better or for worse - we're flying off to Hong Kong tomorrow (April 11), then crossing into mainland China via Guangzhou on April 14.

I'm not entirely sure about the internet situation in China - as is well known, the Chinese government censors many websites (I've read that about 10% of all websites are unavailable in China). Evidently, Blogspot is periodically one of those, but I'm not sure if that's currently the case, and of course it's impossible to predict what might happen. Moreover, even finding internet cafes may be difficult in places where the government has cracked down.

Nonetheless, we'll try as much as we can to keep posting updates, and to maintain our Flickr page, which will include a new section for highlights of the China trip, as well as individual sets for the various destinations. If we can't use Blogger, we'll try to post updates via Flickr and/or Facebook.

At any rate, we're incredibly excited about the coming leg of the journey, and cramming to learn some essential Mandarin before we go (sounding entirely ridiculous as we try to guess how the language's tones are supposed to work). Will post more as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, in Kuala Lumpur

Monorail and Chinese Temple, Kuala Lumpur. Pic by Rachel.

The narrative structure of this blog is getting a little complicated. We're only now starting to get caught up with the photo uploads from India, but since I don't want every post here to be about things that happened a month ago, I'll try to bring it back to the present tense in between flashbacks.

At the moment we're with Rachel's parents in Malaysia's Cameron Highlands, enjoying the cooler temperatures and jungle hikes (though today's expedition was more a series of grueling climbs than a hike). We met Alice and Chris in Kuala Lumpur, which, after Singapore, is Southeast Asia's most successful city. It's also one of the youngest, having been founded as a tin miners' supply town only in the mid-19th century. It has shiny world-class skyscrapers and a shiny world-class public transportation system(including, Seattleites take note, a working monorail line), shared by the city's definitive Malaysian mix of Malay, Chinese, and Indian populations.

Above: Petronas Towers, symbol of ultra-modern KL

Alice, who once worked with students from all over Asia in her position with the University of St. Andrews' English as a Second Language department, noted that the Malaysian students she knew tended to be unimpressed with historic buildings, much preferring sparkling examples of modernity - not necessarily surprising given that Malaysia has done extraordinarily well in the modern, post-colonial age.

Still, that attitude may explain why the Heritage Station Hotel, where we stayed, has been allowed to deteriorate from a colonial-era five-star hotel into a frayed and underused budget facility. The rooms are still very comfortable, and it's wonderfully atmospheric - housed in KL's old Moorish-style colonial train station - but it's clearly unappreciated in Kuala Lumpur's glossy new world. I wonder if that will change in time.

Above: Heritage Station Hotel

By the way, Kuala Lumpur apparently means "muddy confluence." Here's the confluence in question, though it's more concrete than mud these days:



UPDATE: I wasn't able to get this post online yesterday when I wrote it. We're no longer in the Cameron Highlands - we are now in Melaka, which is gorgeous, and which I'll write about later.

Jaipur: Jantar Mantar

In between running a kingdom, founding a city, and commanding an imperial army, Jai Singh II managed to keep himself busy with astrological pursuits - overseeing the construction of five observatories scattered across northern India, of which the largest is in Jaipur. Visiting, you walk amongst fantastically big and odd-looking instruments designed to monitor the movements of the sun and the stars. We had a guide to explain the function of each of the (impressively sophisticated) devices, but I'm not sure I can remember everything he told us.

The concave structure above is actually half an instrument, separated to allow the court astronomers to walk in amongst its sections for better observation. Observation of what, I don't know.

I do know that the tower below is the world's largest sundial:

It's so precise that you can actually see the sun moving across it, counting the seconds. The actual dial part is a much larger version of the one pictured here (which served as a prototype):

Here's me with a smaller sundail calibrated to track the progress of the astrological period for Leo - my sign:

Finally, this wasn't actually in the observatory, but we thought this was a particularly well-dressed cow:

Jaipur: The Hawa Mahal

Jaipur from behind purdah: view through colored glass at the Hawa Mahal

The Rajputs - Rajasthan's historic warrior clans - were fiercely Hindu, but culturally they were affected by centuries of contact with Muslim traders and invaders. One Muslim tradition the Rajputs adopted was purdah, the practice by which women were to be kept out of the sight of men. The women of Jaipur's court observed a strict form of purdah, which had the effect of isolating them from the life of the city.

Both to mitigate and to facilitate this isolation, Maharajah Sawaj Pratap Singh ordered the construction in 1799 of the Hawa Mahal, a palace whose primary purpose was to serve as a sort of pink sandstone veil for the royal women. It's a virtually flat, five-story high building, an elegantly carved screen full of tiny windows, behind which the court women would sit to observe the action on the streets below. Here are a few pictures - the photo above, which is one of my favorites, is by Rachel, as is the last one below.

Jaipur: Pics from the Pink City

We arrived in Jaipur after a pair of short flights on Kingfisher Airlines, each of which afforded the opportunity to watch the first half of an entertaining Bollywood film whose title - and ending - we never managed to catch. About half of the passengers from the small plane disembarked with us, and together we were the only people in the terminal that evening.

During the taxi ride into the city center, we passed maybe a dozen brightly lit processions and outdoor banquet halls: wedding ceremonies held on Valentine's day, featuring turbaned grooms riding atop fantastically decorated white horses or elephants, preceeded by marching bands, attendants carrying giant lanterns, and guests in their finest clothes. Fireworks spotted the dark sky. It was an impressive introduction to a city that proved to be one of the most intense places - for better and for worse - we would visit in India.

Jaipur is one of the former princely states of Rajasthan, each of which was ruled by a Hindu maharaja in the days before Indian independence. Rajasthan's history is punctuated by stark and often militaristic forms of chivalry, tested by conflicts among the various states, but especially by the complex dance between the maharajas and the Mughal emperors, as the former variously fought to the death to maintain their states' independence, or sought to accomodate and adapt to Mughal power when necessary. Jaipur's founder, Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II, built the city as a new capital after moving from nearby Amber fort (about which more later) in the early 18th century. Jai Singh, following family tradition, secured his kingdom's position through judicious diplomacy with the Mughal emporers - even serving as a top general to the notorious Emperor Aurangzeb, who rewarded him with the title "Sawai," meaning "one-and-a-quarter," indicating that the maharaja was distinctly greater than the average man.

A later maharaja had Jaipur's old city painted pink to welcome the Prince of Wales when he visited in 1853; the tradition has continued, and one of the most interesting aspects of visiting the city is walking around the old town, which hosts a series of bazaars with varying specialities depending on the street. It's an amazing experience, full of sensory overload brought on by the intense colors, smells, and sounds, the painted elephants and cart-pulling camels, the traffic and the touts, and the arched arcades tunneling chaotically through the dusty and glowing pink buildings all around.

The hassle in Jaipur - from vendors, rickshaw drivers, and random passers-by - gets exhausting after a while, and the city was also our first introduction to the cultural difference between northern and southern India, one aspect of which is that northerners are often noticeably unfriendly compared to their counterparts in Kerala. But as a place to experience, it's incredible.

The images from Jaipur are worth a few posts. Here are some pics from our day wandering around the pink city. All photos in this post, except for the pink shutters and the turban vendor, are by Rachel. More in later posts.