One of Ten

China is a place that likes numbers, statistics, and rankings at least as much as the United States, maybe more. This comes from a place where bureaucracy is king and nothing can be done with a form or dozen. The bureaucracy of China should be a subject for its own post trying to elucidate the hazy intricacies of the Chinese government. There is the state and the Party, central and provincial, and the rule of law versus the rule of man. A lot of our class time and readings try to do just that because, as it is more and more apparent, no one really knows what is going on over here.

We are currently on our own spring break. During Carleton's actual spring break, we were flying over the Pacific and starting our wanderings of Asia in Thailand. China is a huge, huge place and within the hour after our last class, many of us were boarding planes and trains (but, hopefully, no automobiles) for distant destinations. My trek set off with a 21 hour train ride south to Anhui province. Southern Anhui is home to Huang Shan or Yellow Mountain, which is one of China's ten most beautiful landscapes. I am not certain what the other nine are, but when speaking with other Chinese tourists, they are usually certain that Huang Shan is very beautiful but only so beautiful. The rivers around Yunnan, for example, are obviously even more beautiful than Huang Shan, 'the most beautiful mountain in China.'

The mountains are listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site and rightly so. They have drawn tourists, poets, immortals, and enlightened ones to their peaks for two-thousand years. In a stark and wonderful contrast to Beijing, Huang Shan is covered in pine trees and even bamboo at lower elevations. The air is clear, the sky is blue, and it is actually possible to feel the warmth of the sun on your skin. Vendors sell locally grown tea on shaded, breezy streets. All of these feelings combined gave me a real sense of relaxation that I had not yet truly had in China. Huang Shan's greatest downfall is its relative expensive services based on the huge numbers of native and international tourists that come every year.

After spending so much time in place that seems to have forsaken its environment, it was astounding to see such a successful example of eco-tourism. Once inside the gates that surround the area, there are no roads as far I could tell, only staircases that lead a few thousand feet up one peak and then down the next. At the top of four or five of the most scenic peaks are hotels catering to hikers wishing to spend the night and morning there. In order to move supplies up and down the mountain, scores of porters with huge calves and strong abs carry down loads of trash and waste in bags balanced on bamboo shoulder supports. I never saw a porter going up the mountain, and I assume that most supplies are brought up via one of the three cable cars. Every few meters or so, a cleverly disguised trashbin has been installed, and the stairs and lush forests surrounding them are wonderfully clean. The park has even banned smoking in outside areas which, for a country that has more smokers than the U.S. has population, is a big deal.

We spent an extraordinarily pleasant day ascending the peaks in time to reach the summit by night fall. A rather common thing to do at the peak is wake in the early morning and stake out a claim on a peak to watch the sunrise. We did just that and found our place near atop some boulders and trees. Huang Shan in at predawn is covered in rolling clouds, split at intervals by thin majestic cliffs. After spending a magical hour watching the sun wake up the top of the world and clouds melt away, we continued our hike to tallest of the peaks. From there it was easy to see valleys, rivers, and boulders that had been moved by glaciers some few million years ago. I could wax on and on about the steep staircases and incredible vistas, but I find myself in Xi'an now and exhausted by attempting to travel during China's May 1st holidays.

P.S. Don't be afraid to e-mail.

Down to Shanxi

Fenyang is a small town by Chinese standards, that is 300,000 people or so, located deep within the Shanxi province, population 30,000,000. There are an estimated 800 foreigners in Shanxi, zero of them in Fenyang. Truth be told, Fenyang is still a 'closed city' as opposed to open cities. If a city is closed, it requires special permission and permits to get in, and there is a whole department devoted to watching foreign activity within the city. A man, some director with a fancy title, hangs around and observes or directs the foreigners to certain areas. Although in Fenyang, finding out where us visitors were was no real effort, simply look for the crowds of people or maybe the stopped traffic.

Carleton has a deep connection with this particular city. During the late 1800's, the first real OCS program sent young Carls to China that culminated in the creation of a school in 1906. Dr. Watson, for whom Watson Hall is named, established a hospital while in residence. Both the school and hospital still exist, but all official contacts between Carleton and Fenyang ended during the Communist Revolution when all non-Chinese were forced to leave China. That is, until 40 Carleton students showed up to this dusty thoroughfare. We were the first official delegation sent by the school and were received with no small amount of celebration. The school and the city held banquets in our honor, people danced and sang, and everyone managed to find some reason to hang out near our hotel the week we were in residence.

Chinese banquets are as unique a ceremony here as dragon dances and Chinese opera. Everyone sits at a large round table, students mixed with various city and school officials. The first person to give a toast is the host. The second, third, and fourth toasts are also given by members of the hosting group. Subsequent toasts are given by the guests, thanking the hosts for the banquet. The eating can then commence while groups of people wander from table to table, toasting and (in our case) posing for pictures. Fenyang has an official drink of something called Fenjiu (fun-joe) distilled from rice and 90 proof. It's clear, thin, and vile. Any real toast should be toasted with Fenjiu and usually one shouts 'Gambei', a terrible phrase that calls for the entire glass to be emptied... then refilled for the next toast. In short order, the plan for any Chinese banquet, is to drink a lot or get others to drink a lot. Our first banquet, with Fenyang Senior Middle School (high school by American standards) was jovial, sort of nice, and left most people in a mild state of drunkenness. The second banquet, hosted by the city government, was run by professionals who, somewhat maliciously, drank with a purpose: plaster these students.

Eating adventures aside, Fenyang was filled with curious people who made us into celebrities. Walking down the street attracted an enormous amount of attention with people shouting long 'Hello!'s or whispers of 'liaowai' or 'waiguoren', phrases used to indicate foreigners. For many people in town, we were the first non-Han person they had ever set their eyes on. The feeling of being the first foreigner anyone ever sees is a strange one. It was easy for me to catch the whispers and pointed fingers, but most remarkable to see were the facial expressions of someone consciously registering a different face, skin, eyes, hair. Where had I come from? Why was I here? Did I have American money? How did I get so tall? What's the world like from those eyes? Americans must be a great people to be so creative and have so much money. Are we all rich?

Some questions were easy to answer, others less so, but the differences were greater than cultural. The most difficult part of Fenyang to accept were its environmental aspects. Gray and black are the predominant colors of the city. Gray sky without sunrise or sunset, just a particulated diffusion that covered with world in grit and dust. Black dirt and black roads and black coal lining the street in great mounds. Seeing vendors sell fruit on the side of the road was confusing. Where was this fruit growing? Fenyang, at least, had no green. The grass had long ago died, as had all the insect and bird life. Fields were bumby and brown, plain dirt for the most part, but where was the vegetation invading the cracks in the concrete? Smothered, I should guess, long ago. As I say this, a few things should be kept in mind. Beijing is similar, gray of sky and horizon. That said, the air quality is hundreds of times better than a decade or two ago.

For my part, I became devastatingly ill. At first I thought little of it, headaches and body aches. Before too long this became a fever and confined me to bed in the hotel. At lunch on the third day, I passed out. Nearly the entirety of the next few days were spent in bed at the hotel which I grew to despise. Across the street was an open air dance arena that started playing music at 6:00 a.m. for the pre-work-ballroom-dancer-crowd. The music played all day, broken only at times by the pounding of construction somewhere else in the hotel. Those days were dark and dim, defined not by sleep and rest but simple misery. I am well now and back in Beijing, clean and vibrant by comparison. Home sweet home.

Peking Fowl

I am in Beijing alive and well-enough, all things considered. Compared to places like Bangkok, Hanoi, or the floating villages deep within Halong Bay, Beijing seems a lot less Asian. This comes as a surprise to me. As the capital of China, the country that immediately calls to mind Asia and the Far East, one would think that it would reflect similar ideas and lifestyles. That is, I suppose, just another stereotype. Beijing is in the midsts of modernization which has led to a great many cars, buses, and other automobiles crowding the streets, but it is by no means complete. Bicycles are still widely used and so are motorized-cyclos that would be illegal several times over on any U.S. road, but if it moves from point A to point B, no one here is too picky.

Of course, not being able to read or even begin to decipher a character based language (a different topic entirely), ordering food has become my largest adventure. About half the menus in the city have pictures that accompany them which is of great help. None of the pictures are all that large or detailed, but I can usually tell if I'm pointing at a plate of food or a bowl of noodles, sometimes if it's a meat or a vegetable. Whatever group of people I'm with will huddle around the menu and point to various orange or brown colored dishes, deciding what to eat. Most Chinese cuisine is served from a large, communal dish and taken in small portions with chopsticks or moved onto very small personal plates the size of a tea saucer. Hotpots are my favorite kind of dishes to order. The food comes out, literally, on a hot pot with some oil-based flame keeping it warm for the duration.

A lot of the food is very good, all of it interesting. Lamb is popular here, especially within ethnic restaurants. A much more authentic version of sweet and sour pork is to be found almost everywhere, pan fried mushrooms, broiled fish, other assorted meats. For the most part, this all goes down without complaint, but more than once I have totally failed at dinner. There are all sorts of hotpots, but I invariably manage to order the wrong each time. Instead of some sauteed vegetables, spices, and meat, I'm presented with a thick, bubbling broth adorned with a boiled, vaguely gray, chicken head staring back at me. The dish is made, I think, by simply chopping up a whole chicken and putting it in the dish. What you get is a lot of bone, legs, some meat, but most importantly, a large chicken head with puckered skin on top of what you thought was going to be a good meal.

Maybe I'm just coming at this with my own epicurial prejudices, but I've had some strange foods in my day. I simply don't want to add chicken brains and eyeballs to the mix. Were I in a country with less scary hype about bad bird-borne diseases, perhaps I would. The dog I had in Vietnam didn't give me (m)any qualms and wasn't that bad in the end. But how do I even begin to eat this? How much of it is edible? I can't imagine the bones get that soft after being boiled, or am I supposed to suck on the head in the same manner as crawdads and shrimp? I dunno, but whatever the case, I don't buy it. After getting a few to many of these for dinner and needing to find substitutes, I haven't ordered any hotpots in almost a week. Having realized this, I'll change that soon, but please... wish me luck.