Tonight, we say farewell to China. Tomorrow we board a sleeper bus to the border of Laos and 20 hours later we will be there. 20 hours on a bus. It's a fitting way to end our trip through China. China has been awesome, and we will miss the heck out of it. Sure, China's got some issues. She smokes too much, is loud and obnoxious, dirty as hell, spits on the streets, gives us food borne illnesses, blocks the coolest internet sites, and laughs, stares, and points. Oh, and lets its children pee and poo on the street.
But dangit, China has got something special. There's beauty past those smoggy skylines and true friendliness and gentle curiosity behind the stares, laughs, and points. She means well. (Except for that encroachment upon freedom of speech, no meaning well there). And you know what, it's actually kind of cute to see kids pee and poo on the streets. They designed special buttless kiddie pajamas just for this specific reason!
China is awesome. Lindsey and I had a conversation where I pointed out that it would be difficult to tell someone exactly what to do in China. Beijing for sure. Yunnan Province has been really cool. But just being in China and seeing the culture and the cities and experiencing everything we've seen has been really phenomenal.
Here is a list Lindsey and I compiled of "China stuff":
whenever our bus or train would arrive at a destination, especially in a smaller town, a huge rush of people would greet the disembarking passengers, especially the foreigners, to offer us rooms, other buses to other towns, or other incomprehensible things to sell. They really wanted to have us come with them RIGHT NOW but we were never quite sure where, and they definitely couldn't tell us. As a Scottish dude told Lindsey one day, "bless their hearts, the Chinese, they so badly want to rip you off, they just lack the language skills to do it". Today a man held out 1 Nike shoe and said, "Hello, Nike!" so I grabbed the shoe, said "shie shie" (thank you) and started walking away. Lindsey and him both laughed a lot. Ｉdo what I can.
we will miss speaking our broken Chinese. highlights: me, for no reason, repeating every number in Chinese - someone could speak in perfect English "146 yuan please" and I would reply, "yi bai suh shi liu yuan?" just to show them i could say 146 in Chinese. Other favorites of ours:
hao chr! = delicious - said after every meal to the waiter, no matter how delicious it was or not. once an older man was so touched he went outside to the sidewalk to tell his friends that the foreigners said his food was hao chr. lindsey pointed at a pile of cooked baby birds and snakes in a street stall and said hao chr. The baby bird proprietor laughed heartily
ni hao! = hello - very arresting to the Chinese people who would greet us with a loud HELLO! and receive a loud NIＨＡＯ！！！！ Also, "hello" is usually accompanied by giddy waving from people of all ages
liang ge piao (insert city name) = two tickets to...wherever. I was our official train/bus ticket purchaser, and it filled me with a victorious joy to successfully buy a ticket to the correct destination, usually speaking to a person with no English skills at all.
lines, or the lack of them. Getting onto a bus to the Great Wall was a fantastic example of the freak outs that happen when Chinese people plan to board a bus or train. Every person held a ticket to the bus. There were plenty of seats. When the bus doors opened, however, what ensued resembled a panicked group of gazelles running to freedom, where freedom was a seat on the plenty large enough bus.
Chinese people are LOUD. China is LOUD! Horns honk for no reason, people talk on their phone on the sleeper train at 5:30 AM, and talk very loudly. As a test, we started yell-talking on a crowded street to see if people would react. "MAN, THIS STREET IS CROWDED!" "I KNOW! SURE ARE A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO CAN HEAR US!" Nothing. NOTHING!
We were at a park in Chengdu and were approached by two girls who asked us to fill out a survey about tourism in the Sichuan province. We began, and within 2 minutes were surrounded by about 20 curious people trying to see what we were doing and why. At the same park, we went to the craziest low-rent haunted house of all time, 10 different circles of people doing choreographed dances while admiring eyeglass-shattering Chinese operatic singing, saw a possibly dead turtle wrapped in cellophane being sold, and witnessed people feeding coy fish with a baby's bottle taped to a stick.
Trying to order anything at a restaurant without an English menu. We would say, in very broken Chinese, "ni you jiaozi?...shuijiao?" asking for dumplings. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. I said it would be the equivalent of a Chinese guy walking around American streets shouting "you havee freeench frieee?" Tonight we snuck out of a place after being sat at a table because we didn't want to risk ordering something gross on our last night in China.
Chinese people won't give you their opinion when asked. "Is this dish good?" "Depends on personal taste" ok. "Is there a good place to eat here" "Some people think yes, some people think no" ok. But what they will give you...handfulls of free fruit!
Yesterday's train ride was pretty great. For those of you not on Lindsey's email list, here's her description of it:
We had a ten hour train ride yesterday from Dali to Kumning and a very energetic Chinese man started chatting us up. He peeked his head over excitedly and said "oooh hello, I very nervous I never speak to foreigner before" and plopped down right next to us on the train. We talked with him using various Chinese, English and sign language phrases for over an hour. He said that he didnt have an English name and asked us to name him, so we decided on the name Charlie because his Chinese name was Lu Chao. At times he was sitting so close to Craig it looked as if they were about to kiss. Our little Charlie, I wanted to bring him home with me.
McDonalds is known as "mac-don-ard" and KFC is "kentujee" and will not be understood by any other name
we've seen tons of people with wonky eyes. Wonky can mean crossed, missing, drooping, or bulging. Lindsey pointed this out first.
At least one person has vomited on at least 50% of all our bus rides, which means we've seen about 8 vomiting people on buses. One was sitting right next to me while she spewed into a trash can. She had to first remove her doctor style face mask to do it
Lindsey has developed a rare involuntary form of bulimia. She has now vomited 6+ times, and is surprisingly upbeat following each bout. The reasons:
1. eating a vitamin on an empty stomach in Korea
2. getting "the sickness" in Korea after a long hike and a large spicy ramen noodle cup
3. on the boat from Korea to China from sea sickness. She told a guy we met the next day, "i felt kinda sick last night." He replied, "oh yeah, what happened?" She said, "I threw up twice." "Oh, so you GOT sick."
3.5 almost vomited from eating a large chicken sandwich too fast at an Irish Pub in Ulaan Bataar
4. Food poisoning in Lijiang due to undisclosed meat on a stick. This one was not so funny
5. We began our malaria medicine today for our Laos trip. I told her I read that we were supposed to take it with food and lots of water. One label on the bottle said the same. Another said "take 2 hours after a meal". Lindsey stubbornly took the pill before we ate anything "to see what would happen" for future reference. We sat down to eat lunch. She felt sick. She got up to go to the room. Came back 5 minutes later, smiled, and said, "I just puked my guts out"
(I only vom'd once, and that was in Mongolia. I stood up from breakfast, walked to my bed, slowly put on my shoes, went outside, puked, kicked some dirt on it, then went back in the ger and ate my bread.)
We've probably risked our lives only twice in China. Once we were hiking on a small trail next to a cliff through a herd of goats and a broken pipe. Later that day we drove on a mountain rode in a van where the driver looked up above to look for landslides, then proceeded to drive over a pile of fallen rocks while biting his tongue nervously. This doesn't count just crossing the street, which is death-defying in and of itself.
We're leaving tons of stuff out for sure but we've both kept journals of events and will continue to do so throughout our trip. We will be in Laos by Sunday, eventually getting into Thailand, then flying to India on Thanksgiving Day.
Love you guys! Happy Halloween! Miss you!
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