To be honest, it’s been five weeks since I left Guizhou province in southwestern China. When I first arrived home from my year abroad, I got a bit distracted with rehabituation to American culture in all of its lavish decadence. But the photos haven’t changed and I hope I can give a fair idea of my time there in the few words to follow.

My first impressions of the province were misleading to say the least. I arrived by train 12 hours after leaving Changsha to find myself in the capital Guiyang, which turned out to be one of the most expensive cities in Western China. The province, with a population that averages the poorest in China, has been the target of extensive government investment to develop it as a transportation hub in the Southwest. The ridiculous irony is that it was by far the most tedious and slow-paced travel I have experienced thus far, the worst of which culminated in a nine-and-a-half hour bus ride that took me the 200-kilometer trip between Leishan and Congjiang.  This investment has apparently hugely inflated the price of living in the capital, which is so much more new and sparkling than the city I’ve been living in. Needless to say, I wasn’t all that interested in taking pictures of it. However I did meet a much smaller but very friendly expat community that seemed to consist of maybe a dozen students and teachers from the U.S., U.K., and Africa.

From Guiyang, my first stop were the falls outside of Anshun. This place was the final straw. I will never again visit any hyped-up, commercialized, and over-visited Chinese tourist trap. The crowds, the prices, the short-tempered condescension (however understandable) of those employed there… enough said. My room in Anshun was quite the opposite. I paid the equivalent of $2.94 for one night and the family who ran this dirty little guesthouse was incredible warm and welcoming.

Anshun – Kaili – Xijiang:

Xijiang was a Miao minority village in the Southeast of the province. I think the photos pretty much speak for themselves. I spent most of my time there wandering for hours in the rice paddies. I noticed curiously that the paddies, which were drowned in water at this point in the rice cultivation season, had large fish hitting the surface. I spoke briefly with a farmer tending his plot and he communicated to me through both simple Chinese phrases and characters written in water on stones, that these fish were raised here and later harvested along with the rice when the paddies were drained in the fall. They have been farming in this way for hundreds of years, cultivating two crops in the same plot by a totally sustainable means. There is something for us to learn here.

Xijian – Leishan – Congjiang:

Help from a nice girl on the bus over who I struck up a conversation with was the only way I would have ever made the bus in Leishan, which picked me up, with no seats to spare, on the side of some random road. I already told you how long this trip took because of the quality (or rather lack of completion) of the road to Congjiang, now you know how uncomfortable it was.

Just outside of Congjiang there was Miao village perched on the slope of a hill. None of the little wooden houses in the village had running water, very few had electricity, but there were a few with semi-functioning looking satellite dishes. The first floor of these homes housed the livestock, and the second the families. I was invited in by one of these families for lunch. They showed me the few photos of their family and fed me raw cucumbers. There, even those with nothing offered everything.

About two hours down the road towards Guangxi province, I visited the Dong village of Zhaoxing. The bus only took me as far as the next village over, the last 8 kilometers I did on foot. The most viscerally present memory of my time here was the meal I had. Niubie it was called, a Dong minority specialty [Niu meaning beef and bie translating confusingly and somewhat inaccurately as ‘shrunken’ or ‘shrivelled’]. It can only be described as sliced beef and young celery shoots cooked in what smelled and looked like the semi-digested contents of a dyspeptic cow’s stomach. Adding a bitter, sour taste to the beef, the celery sprouts and tar-black cow stomach juices actually complimented each other well and seasoned the beef in a flavorful way.

Really, I spent so much time traveling, I had relatively little time to enjoy the sights. You earn your vacation in China, and for that reason, I enjoyed those places so much more. Relaxation is more holistic when you’ve been hassled by beggars, screwed around by would-be tour guides, misled by those who claim to be informed, and stuck on buses that crawl across pot-holed dirt roads for the majority of your travel time.

Congjiang – Guangzhou

On my 17-hour bus ride I had the chance to watch the sun rise and then set and then rise again. The landscape passed incessantly. The terraced mounds like the variegated shells of giant land tortoises, the limestone hills rising like listless sentinels as dark descended, each one engrossed in its own personal vigil. I passed through Guilin at dusk like a memory. The mountains began to take on a darker hue of the same shade as the sky. Everything appeared as a reflection on the window of the bus, the hills marching slowly by, the digital clock, the lady in the fetal position behind me. The temperature read 55 degrees in the window’s reflection, and for a moment, I lost sense of space and time. I woke at dawn in Guangzhou.

The last leg of the journey is still to come.

A few words of advice and some snapshots.

Dear next-generation volunteer,

I’m writing this letter without the assurance that my position will even exist next year, but since my position is a pretty unique one and it’s never been held before in this location (which is the reason I wasn’t so lucky as to have any kind of handover letter or prior warning as to what I’d be doing), I think this will be valuable in aiding your hopefully smooth adjustment to this environment and this work. So without further a due…

The Apartment

Let’s see, where to begin… Well I’ll start with the living quarters, which are very simple and we can get out of the way immediately.

You’ll be living on the first floor of the “Foreign Teachers Building,” which houses you, one other foreign teacher, and basically the entire Chinese staff and faculty of Changjun middle school. Don’t ask me why it’s called what it is. My first strong warning to you is, since it is the first floor, and since most of the schools garbage is dumped directly outside the back entrance to the building, if you don’t keep your rooms clean and free of food waste, the rats will come. The rats keep to themselves mostly but, even so, it’s best you keep them out of your place—they are not clean houseguests. When you leave for spring festival, make sure you leave an immaculate house. I learned that lesson the hard way.  There are a couple of places where I believe they come from. The first is a basketball size whole where the piping from the sink in your washroom goes into the wall. The second is the same room’s squat toilet, which will be used as the run-off for your small and ineffectual washing machine. While I’m on the topic, there is no drier, so be prepared to wait three to four days for clothes to dry as they hang sopping and misshapen from a suspiciously high ‘drying pole’ (is the only way I can describe it).  There are also some ‘clothespin wheels with hooks’ (which is also the only way I can describe them) that I purchased and will be there for your use. The garbage is also the reason for the swarms of flies and mosquitoes that tend to linger in the hallways during the warmer months. That’s why I’m leaving you my trusty electrified tennis racket, but keep a can of Raid on you too.

You have two main rooms, one bathroom and a second bathroom, which was converted into a washroom. The school, realizing the apartments didn’t conform to Worldteach housing standards, clearly scrambled at the last minute and tore a whole in the wall between two separate apartments and put a door in. So you have a one bedroom and one bath and its mirror image. I have one room arranged as a bedroom and the other as a living area with TV, DVD player, two sofa seats and a coffee table. The floors are all tile and the walls are solid white, except for mosaics of splattered insects that the workmen left me (I did my best to remove as many as possible). The ceilings are probably 13 or 14 feet high, which means in winter there’s no hope for really heating the rooms with only the two small wall units that are there, and in summer they can get pretty hot (although the ACs do cool better than they heat). I would recommend getting additional heating for the rooms. What I did was purchase an electric blanket for about 180元, which is about 25 dollars American. This was by far the most intelligent purchase I made my entire time in China. The problem is, it doesn’t appear to be working to well right now, so you may need a new one. Anyways you’ll have an extra blanket to keep warm with. I purchased to medium sized rugs as well that should hopefully be there when you arrive. In the bedroom there is a desk, a bed that’s somewhere between a single and a twin, a desk (that’s actually quite nice) and chair, and a large closet. There is no kitchen and no counter-space, so what I did was I borrowed a couple of unused student desks and covered them with a cheap tablecloth. Although you have no kitchen you will have a decent-sized fridge, a microwave, a hotplate, a water dispenser (I would probably stick to bottled water), and I strangely useless contraption that does nothing more than superheat your dishes. Some volunteers got creative with these and were able to actually bake in them. Baked goods aren’t my specialty so I never tried, but it’s an idea. I will be leaving a very limited selection of kitchen supplies (as follows):

• Cutting board
• Butcher knife and a couple of other knives
• Two soup bowls and corresponding spoons
• Two plates
• Three glasses
• Set of wooden chopsticks
• Wok
• Shallow pot (for boiling water)
• Two metal stands for hot dishes
• Daisy Duck mug (purchased for me by my liaison for Christmas from the Disney Store)

On lazy summer afternoons, the workers will start trash fires out behind the building you will be living in. I suggest keeping your doors and windows closed at these times. Seriously though, its not all bad, you have all the privacy you want and at the same time you can open your door to students anytime. Just make sure they are aware that your space is your own. Sometimes a student, with a slightly different concept of what is and isn’t intrusion and harassment, will knock on your door ceaselessly at 7 am on a Saturday to go with him and his friends to an overcrowded theme park for his birthday. If this happens, politely make it understood that students are only allowed over when you give them permission and with prior agreement. Once this is clear, they are very respectful. Your neighbors can be a little loud at times also, but you only hear them when they are in the halls. Although the solid concrete walls are terrible at temperature regulation, they are good for one thing, and that’s keeping rooms relatively soundproof. Also, chances are they will be getting up far earlier and working far longer hours than you, so past 10:30 or 11 on weeknights, the building is silent.

You are surrounded by high-rise apartment building construction sights on three of four sides. They can be pretty noisy, but generally before too late, they quite down (although they never seem to stop working completely). And, whether or not you have your alarm set early, chances are at least a couple mornings a week, the tremendous explosions of fireworks that seem to be going off outside your window will start up (for some unknown reason) at 7 or 8 in the morning. These flares of pyromaniacal celebration can happen at anytime indiscriminately, so be wary.

The Neighborhood

Knowing China as well as an outsider who’s lived here for twelve months possibly can, this could very well change drastically between the time I leave and you arrive, but I will tell my experience. In terms of neighborhood, there really isn’t one. Not one you will be able to really explore well enough on foot. It is a very new area of the city with broad empty boulevards and construction sites springing up everywhere. There are still very few residents, it seems. If you go towards the river until you can go no further, make a right and then a left on a road that passages under a sort of archway, there is a nice farmers market where you can buy anything from fresh vegetables and fruits to dog meat and duck heads. I go there pretty often for fresh fruit and also a nice woman who sells a Chinese version of peanut brittle that will rot your teeth and leave you craving more. The end of the line for the 6 Bus is over one block from the school, and that bus will take you right into the heart of the city center for 1 or 2元. I had a second-hand electric scooter for most of my time in Changsha, so that made it convenient to explore the vast expanses of this area of town. If you don’t, it might feel a little bit distant and unwelcoming at times. On the upside, the air is markedly fresher at this distance from downtown, and the once you’ve been around the hustle and bustle of Walking Street long enough, you’ll appreciate the peace and quiet too.

The school provides you with free meals all week long and a card with 200元 every month that you can use at the school store. So even though your location is a bit out of the way, you can survive quite well without leaving until the weekend. But I still strongly urge that you get out as often as possible.

The School

You are going to get an earful about this during orientation also, but let me give you a little advanced notice. You need to be assertive about problems and needs with your liaisons. Song is delightful and always willing to help, but you perhaps will need to remind her several times before something is done. Hershey is perhaps quicker to answer the phone but less immediate and warm in personality. She is a beast though when it comes to getting forms through and passport/visa issues dealt with. Together I’d say they make a pretty good team. Just don’t expect them to come to you and ask you what you might need today or if you’ve been having any problems. As willing as they are to help, there are busy and they wont go out of their way to see if there’s an off chance that something is troubling you. Be vocal about what you need.

Most of my teaching effort is dedicated to the incredible small ‘International Department’ within Changjun Bilingual School. That means four days out of five I teach two classes worth of students (one group of Senior 1s and one group of Senior 2s). In addition, the groups are quite small. The senior 2s are only about 24 (it fluctuated) and the Senior 1s only nine. Next year, many if not all the senior 2s will have graduated and there will be (I assume) a new crop of senior 1s. This is as of yet unclear. At times my liaisons would speak of rumors that the international program would not continue after my year, but it’s impossible to say what will really happen. This means a lot more of my time goes towards lesson planning than actual teaching. I had about 14 hours a week at most points. About four to five hours for each group of seniors, and one day a week I would teach junior 1s in the normal school for four periods. That means that you have to plan a good eight lessons a week. So that I wasn’t overwhelmed, I’d often plan extended lessons for one group because many my classes were back-to-back periods. I would also usually ‘scaffold’ down or up one group’s lesson to meet the needs of the second, thereby reusing a lot of the material. Also, I would often teach from the IELTS Exam prep book on one or two days a week and then create my own lessons that tied into what they were practicing in IELTS on the other days. This also took off a lot of the weight of being continuously creative with lesson ideas eight times each week.

Now to the most important issue regarded the international department. The International Department is in almost all ways a complete misnomer. The ability of students in your classes will range from the most basic beginner to advanced levels of English knowledge. Some students are fantastic; others in the very same class seem to have just begun studying English. The idea behind this entire program is that this school will be sending all of these students to schools to English-speaking countries by the time they enter college. You will quickly realize that this will happen only for a very select few. This can be a huge challenge during both the lesson planning phase and the actual lesson time. I hope orientation will prepare you well enough for this, but chances are it won’t. All I can say is don’t let it get to you too much. Come to terms with it and find some way you can reach each kid at least once or twice during each lesson. The nice thing is you will have a lot (I mean a lot) of time with each student because of how the schedule is set up and how few of them there are. It will be overwhelming at first, but I have faith that you will adapt to it in no time.

Another important thing: You will realize eventually that most ways, this department has become largely a dumping ground for the children of very wealthy and influential people. Changjun has one if not the highest reputation of any school in Hunan. They know this, and they also know that many of their kids (who could care less about school) would never be admitted into the regular program. Somehow, as if by magic, they are admitted here for you to struggle with. If you feel at times that you are merely a piece of the façade that is this program, just relax and go with it.

There are some really good things about this placement, don’t get me wrong. One of the beautiful things about being the IELTS oral instructor for this program is you have a lot of say about what you teach and when you teach and you can really develop strong relationships with many of the students. Those students that I failed with time and time again in the classroom turned out to be tremendously friendly and generous outside of class. I found that it was in those moments outside of class (whether it was hotpot dinner or on the basketball court) that I really got through to those same students who would give me so much trouble in the classroom. You will have a handful of truly brilliant students also and it’s incredibly satisfying to have even a few who are right there with you the whole time during class. I couldn’t shake some of them if I tried.

One quick point: If you have a student that’s giving you a hard time (and undoubtedly you will at some point), take them to the teacher’s office and have one of the Chinese teachers duke it out with them. You will be dealing with some very spoiled kids. Chances are you wont have all of their attention at all times, and sometimes they may give you lip. Address it up to a certain point. Then, turn it over to their head teachers. Don’t let it get to you.

A Little on the City & Surroundings

You will have a tremendous amount of free time here. Spend it wisely. I had three-day weekends during the second part of the second semester. This allowed me to take a lot of memorable trips around the province and to neighboring ones. These were some of my best experiences and I strongly recommend that you do the same with any chance you get.

Changsha is a huge city and you will feel like you are on the remote outskirts of it. Don’t let this discourage you. It’s important to get into town as much as possible and the 6 Bus is perfect for that. There is a tremendous amount to do in this massive city, which is the reason I elected to be here. Live music at 4698 Bar is a great idea on weekend nights. The clubs, bars and restaurants of jiefangxilu, taipingjie, and hualongchi can also be a lot of fun. The computer market near the train station is a city of discounted hardware and software that costs next to nothing. Yuelu ‘mountain’ (foothill), which is relatively close to where you will be on the west side, is also a really pleasant (although often crowded) place to go on a stroll and to poke your head out of the smog for a couple hours. Really, I could go on and on about what there is to do, but the best way is for you to figure it out for yourself. I bought a second-hand electric bike for about 1400元 (about U.S. 200) soon after I arrived. Precisely because I am a ways out of the center—but not too far—this was absolutely crucial to me. I became dependent on it, and when it was stolen, I dreaded taking the bus. If you are brave (because it is pretty dangerous, you will soon realize, as you watch in awe the way people drive in this city), it is a blast and incredibly useful. With a scooter, traffic is no longer and obstacle, but the weather is doubly so. With the amount it rains in Changsha, be sure to bring plenty of rain gear.

To finish up, I’ll leave you with a quick list of things that I consider absolutely necessary to bring:

• Rain gear
• Deodorant
• Pepto
• Medicine you can read and understand (because you wont find it here)
• All the clothes you’ll wear while here
• Coffee (if you drink it. You can find it hear, but is uncommon and expensive.)
• BOOKS (no English-language books in Changsha)
• Trinkets from America for your students

The rest of the things will be in your orientation materials or is already fairly obvious.

I do wish you the best of luck. If you listen to anything at all in my letter, listen to this: for all I negativity I spewed on Changsha about and all the crap I gave my placement site, I absolutely loved the time I spent here. So will you.

All the best,

Leo B. Carter

Resting against his walking stick in one hand, and curling his long white beard around the index finger of the other, the philosopher and poet is at a loss for words. He simply stares. He has taken up residence here, under these heavenly spires that gouge holes in the rain clouds, the tips of which seem forever shrouded in mist and the dull white light behind them. He is a hermit. China is not yet China, but a series of boundaries and battle fronts, as of yet with out a true sense of itself. It is divided by several hundred different dialects and as many different cultures and ways of life. This man now wanders from Tujia village to Miao village, preferring solitude in the deep recesses and narrow canyons of this corner of the world. With rainwater he writes characters on the steep sandstone walls; the brushstrokes are rough but determined over the jagged surfaces. In other areas he chisels a more permanent mark on a pillar more than three thousand feet tall, inscribing it with red paint. Because he cannot describe them sufficiently, he gives them each names, sometimes spending hours deciding on the perfect characters. It is not just a word he is choosing, but an image, and idea a unique identity captured only by a unique set of characters never used before and never to be used again: 天外来客 “tianwai laike…” Roughly translated, this means “Visitor from beyond the sky.”

I look out at the vast expanse, my mind just as vacant as I had hoped it would be, looking and looking and finally thinking: “What?” I realized I felt just as I did when I used to sit on those old wooden recliners on the terrace of my Grandmother’s home in Italy staring up at the night sky wondering: “What the hell were the Greeks thinking?” All those years ago, they gave names to each pattern of stars in the sky. Some overlapping, reusing stars from previous constellations to draw up images (multi-headed serpents, centaurs, lions), that to many of us today seem absurd. Well, we know now the Ptolemy got some things wrong, but that’s not the point. Looking out at that expanse, the green so green it seemed worked over in Photoshop, the stone pillars balancing so precariously that they seemed they could fall at any minute, and yet there they stand and have stood for millions of years… you see what you want to see and that’s exactly what is so profound about a view like that. It clears your mind and takes over completely. In that moment, you are free thinking, a blank slate, your mind wanders without direction. The landscape impresses itself onto your brain, painting a picture for you because you can never hope to understand. You can only interpret, and you will inevitably lose something in translation.

My whole time at Zhangjiajie I stayed off the main paths. Even the constant rain barely had an impact on the influx of tourists (mainly Chinese and Korean) to the park that week. But for the two full days I was in the park I managed to avoid them almost completely. The paths I took were perhaps a little less ‘family friendly.’ Some of them were just slick stone and no handrail next to a thousand foot drop off, but I was as safe as I could be about it. Their air was the freshest I’ve breathed in a long time and my mind took a break from the thought pollution (which is only one of the many varieties) in Changsha.

Can you believe they still use these to carry lazy tourists up and down mountains?

Two full days of hiking up and down thousand foot staircases definitely took its toll, though.

If only my eyes could take pictures, you wouldn’t have to look at these…

Many thanks to the Romsas’ who were incredible hosts.

To all of you out there, visitors from interspace, One Love.

4698 Livehouse is tucked away in the nook of a sordid and crumbling residential building, with a tiny sign that leads you up a flight of steps to an elevator that hardly runs.

Regardless, this is one of the only venues in central China that actually sees fairly well-known groups both from the mainland, and as far away as Europe and the States. The beer is the cheapest in the city and the bartender speaks excellent English, which is one of the reasons it has become something of an expat hang-out even on nights without shows. It is a breath of fresh air in a city where that is really a rare thing to come by.

Reflector (More or less a less-annoying Chinese Green Day)

Yakza - 'The First' Chinese Metal Band

A folk musician whose lead singer is his overweight cocker spaniel... i guess if it's good enough for youtube...

A mosh-pit in China is more like an over-zealous game of ring-around-the-rosie, where a few people fall down, but most of them are just at home and happy pushing against a mass of people.

It doesn’t matter that I would never fork over even the negligible cover (3 – 6 dollars) to see most of these bands if I were at home in the States. The fact that these bands exist and they are doing what they are doing in China for a strictly Chinese audience is something of a statement. It doesn’t matter that there sound is fairly derivative, a mixture of outside influences and popular culture that are arriving in China in a jumbled mass. Give it a few years and, once they sort it out, it will be undeniable that Chinese bands will have developed confidence in a sound that is uniquely there own. One band that performed at an Orange Island show incorporates a stage-full of traditional instruments—erhu (a two stringed instrument shaped like a narrow bamboo violin wrapped in snakeskin), pipa (a more ornate and complex guitar-like instrument) among many others—blending Chinese folk songs with metal guitars. Give it time, that’s all I say. All the greatest bands have taken as their starting ground the uniformity and restless repetition of the modern material lifestyle. What better place and time than here and now.

Raw pig brain and orchid - now, what could be more metal than that???

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OH RIGHT…

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I forgot.

Happy 4/20.

I arrived on the island after about 20 hours of travel from Bangkok. I have to give you a brief recount of the lunacy of travel within Thailand, which is far more convoluted and ass-backwards than anything I’ve experienced so far in China. The night before I left for the island I arrived in Bangkok from Cambodia. I was immediately ushered to a travel agency by a cab driver who was clearly working some angle. I had little choice. At the agency the agent told me there was no longer a bus that night—there was—and that the next one wouldn’t leave until 7pm the next day—also a lie. He charged me almost twice what it should’ve cost to go to Koh Tao and put me on a bus that didn’t even stop at the port from which the only direct ferry to Koh Tao left. Instead the bus continued right on through the middle of the night until it essentially rounded the archipelago, leaving me in a town in the far southern area of Thailand at five in the morning. From there I was placed onto several different buses and flatbed trucks that moved from one area of the city to another. Each time the drivers gave me a look like they had no idea what to do with me. I realized immediately I was in the wrong place because no one was going to the same place as I was. By noon I had made it maybe an hour down the road to the 3^rd pier I’d been to that morning. There, I received a ticket—well more like a stack of tickets—that were used to take me to three different islands on three different ferries until I finally reached Koh Tao at five in the afternoon.

The employees at the dive school made it easy on me. They had already found me a place to stay and started the paperwork. I had my own instructor, one-on-one, throughout the entire course, a nice guy from outside of London who used to be a sound technician until he decided, fuck it, and left.

The dive school in many ways is a fraternity house. And when so many are packed so close together on an island that cant be more than 15 square kilometers, you get absurd rivalries and idiotic displays of ego. Add to that fact that most of these DMs and instructors are washed-up American travelers and UK jocks that drink heavily. That being said, my school was modest, the people amazingly nice, but they still held their grudges.

The course started with videos and classroom assignments. Then, we did shallow water exercises like towing injured divers, removing masks underwater, and breathing from broken regulators. By the second day I was already 10 meters down. By the 5^th I had done my deep-water dive to 30 meters. Sometimes I went on three dives a day. I’ve never been around so much color. Where I spent many summers, my mother Mediterranean, has atrophied and lost a lot of its former brilliance. Koh Tao is fortunately a nature preserve and is somewhat protected from the destructive force of over-fishing, but every night you can still see a fleet of fishing boats with their long arms and high-voltage lights, looming on the horizon.

I saw from the tiniest flatworms moving like waves through the mid-depths, to spotted rays lurking on rocks; giant groupers of a dozen varieties to forests of phlorescent purple anemones filled with their resident clownfish; the giant Crown-of-Thorns starfish to diminutive white-eyed moray eels to massive schools of sleek, wide-eyed Giant Barracuda.  But for all that color and beauty, life and death, down there under the water’s surface, the feeling that I treasured most was that of complete isolation and calm. The night-dive was where this really affected on me. A couple of times, when rounding a boulder or a pinnacle, I was separated from my instructor. And when that pure, inky black surrounds you, its like nothing you’ve ever seen or felt. With only a small spot of light from your torch, you realize that there is still some true solitude to be had. You are quite literally in your own bubble down under the waves, away from everything familiar. You can’t communicate save for a few simple hand gestures and a little body language. You focus to steady your breath as a motor rattles somewhere above you. Once you breach the surface, you are a complete outsider—a pure observer—leaving nothing but a chain of bubbles as pass through an alien world. There’s something strangely postmodern about the whole thing. To avoid philosophizing too much, all I will say is I understand why some people give their life to the trade (even if most of those people are deadbeat jocks). I highly recommend it, if you haven’t already tried it.

P.S. I would’ve have liked to post pictures of me underwater, but the guy who took them has yet to get back to me. I’ll post them eventually.

–Leo

For those archeology nerds (of which I know there is at least one reading), the carved friezes are some of the longest (a hundred meters or more) and most detailed in the world. There are battle scenes between warring nations with archers mounted on elephants and terrifying Hindu deities hashing it out on the brink of oblivion. My favorite, the Churning of the Sea of Milk, is the Hindu creation story where the Devas pull one end of a giant serpent and the demons the other. Watching over it all is Vishnu in multiple incarnations just acting like the boss of the whole universe. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samudra_manthan)

I really don’t think describing these places is going to paint you an accurate picture, so hopefully a very limited selection of the far too many pictures I took while I was sweating and hiking and biking and tuk-tuk-ing through the ancient city will suffice for now. I think there’s a sufficient amount of literature out there as well for those who I just can’t satisfy.

The first day (pardon the anachronistic timeline of my writing) we went to a floating city. Unfortunately it is a bit dry at this time of year, but the houses were perhaps even more impressive without water around them, rising over ten meters high on stilts. The boat took us down river and through the town, where the people were surprisingly jovial about us passing through and snapping pictures of everything. We visited the schoolhouse (pictured in the previous post), temple, and town center before the boatman took us down further into the biggest lake in SE Asia. The only bodies of water I am afraid to swim in are here where I am now, so of course I went in (mostly clothed).

Other stops of note: The Landmine Museum, the curator of which began his adolescence as a Khmer Rouge soldier fighting against his own people, later defecting to the Vietnamese Army to then fight the Khmer Rouge, and has spent the last 30 years of his life (and continues to do so) defusing and collecting antipersonnel and antitank mines, grenades, and unexploded bombs, rockets and mortar rounds.

See, I can keep it short.

You could literally walk out of the tarmac and out of the airport without passing any security or semblance of a customs checkpoint and be engulfed in the muggy Cambodian afternoon. Feeling the sun truly for the first time in months was worth the trip.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the warmer the climate and the farther south towards the equator you move, the friendlier the people and the bigger the smiles (also the fewer the teeth, or at least its more noticeable). I always assumed but never really tracked it as closely as I did this time. By the time one gets to Cambodia, even one of the worst mass genocides ever can’t keep their spirits down. Its not as if the Khmer Rouge is an episode lost in the pages of ancient history. Every Cambodian 40 years of age or older directly experienced the worst of it and every Cambodian of any age now continues do deal with that bloody legacy on a daily basis. There are still upwards of three million landmines pock marking the countryside.  You look around and see people of all ages who have lost a limb to a mine or an unexploded hand grenade. Before we arrived a car was pulverized by an antitank mine left buried on a country road.

The Street Children: A Comparison

Changsha, Hunan, PRC: In Changsha, because of their aggressiveness, one is quickly jaded to the sorry faces of the beggars who lie sprawled on sidewalks or shake their cups in your face. The little snotty nosed children, faces streaked with soot and grime, as freakin’ adorable as they are, will wear anyone’s empathy thin. They come up and either kneel in front of you adjusting their position to block any attempt at maneuvering around them, or they latch onto your leg like koala bears, refusing to let go until you’ve given them something. The worst part about it are the older women behind these kids, pushing them on, using them as emotional bate. The pyramid is more diabolic than this even, and these old ladies are just one rung up in the ladder. The pyramid. All these beggars, as I have been told by various Changsha natives, are employees (to put it nicely) of a sort of beggar boss. This person probably has multiple lookalikes and decoys–and I’d guess–he runs with a pretty tough crowd.  The is the icing on the cake of course, because even if you decide to take pity on these lowly people in their brightly colored and very soiled winter pajamas, is the money you give them will probably never really go to them.

Siem Reap, Cambodia: Cambodia on the other hand is thick with begging entrepreneurs, some of them no more than 5 or 6 years old. Hardly any of them are beggars per se, but peddlers of cheap knick-knacks and counterfeit books. All of them speak a certain level of English and some of them are just downright clever. My friend Jon can tell you that after a couple of beers, even he was susceptible to their charms and their smarts. He ended up losing consecutive games of tick-tack-toe to a young boy and having to buy two of his books from him. Another couple of girls, no more than seven or eight years old each, approached us in a typical manner, asking that we buy a bracelet or a charm. “For a girlfriend… a wife?” … No we have neither. “Maybe that’s why you should then, maybe that’s why you have no girlfriend…” Touché… “What is the capital of Burkina Faso” … … … “Ouagadougou” You’re very smart, kid. “You can’t tell me the capital of Brunei, you buy.”

If these kids just applied themselves, well if they had the means to, they could do something worthwhile.

Then the infamous night that left holes in our pockets. The tuk-tuk (little motorbikes that pull wagons with benches) drivers by this point had become very good friends of ours, and they decided to take us to place only Cambodians eat. It was a long strip of blankets and food carts along a main road that lead to Angkor Wat. The food, as a side note, was delicious. Perfectly BBQ-ed chicken, snake, and frogs stuffed with peanuts and lemon grass—it was by far the best food we had in Cambodia, and the hungry children seem to know this all too well. As soon as we sat down, they had us surrounded—about six or seven of them at first. Jon, being the sucker that he his, at a certain point—I don’t know his heart swelled up and popped or something—decided he would guide these kids over to a stand and buy them something to eat. The kids, as if they had rehearsed it followed and began to point to the food they wanted, yelping at the owner in Khmer. Quickly they amassed and before too long, 20 plus children were gathered around an overwhelmed and panicky looking Jon. I was the only one who offered my help and began purchasing baggies of rice and carrying them over to a large mat next to a drainage ditch. More children appeared as we scrambled to get more food. I’m sure at this point some parents just shoved their children towards us and distanced themselves enough so we would feed the kids for them. They circled around and as we rationed out the chicken and skewered meats as best we could. You wouldn’t believe the patience and manners they had. They shared with one another and waited respectfully until each person had been served and we were ready to let them eat. Then, in unison, the bowed there heads to their fingertips and dug in.

Consequently we didn’t go back there after that night. I think it was for the best, and Jon would probably agree.

I volunteered there for a mere four days. Both at an after-school program for high school and up, and for a monastery run primary school that paid for underprivileged rural kids to come and learn. The teachers were thrilled to have the days off. If only my students here in China showed the same kind of enthusiasm and excitement towards just about anything that these kids did, the weather wouldn’t get to me so much. But maybe that’s why they seem like they are dying in their seats–the weather. I’ve never seen smiles so big (I’ve also never taught kids so young, and probably couldn’t for very long) on faces when asked to come and write a letter or a word on the board. They literally leapt out of their seats to do it. Don’t get me wrong though, they were little psychopaths. When we took them out for game time, they thoroughly harassed a cow and her calf (and managed to avoid getting crushed) by hitting them and attempting to mount them, as well as completely destroying a tree and carrying the branches off in different directions like trophies. I’ve never seen a group of kids more thoroughly enjoy a game of duck-duck-goose or abuse the rules so blatantly. It was a really great time, and I couldn’t have been happier with the way things went.

With the older kids I picked up in a book where their teacher had left off. On the last day of class, I had two kids open up in a way that just knocked the wind out of me, a foreigner they’ve known for three days. I did a lesson on the future tense and, brought my hippie friend Crystal in to do mock tarot card readings to illustrate the idea. Two kids remained after class, completely eager to have a full reading done. One guy wanted his fortune read to make sure that his one wish to have his family reunited was part of his future. As Crystal sort of made it up as she went along, he told us about his how his father had been gone for years and about his brother who had witnessed a beating and been wrongfully arrested by the Cambodian police, easily some of the most corrupt people in Asia. He has been in prison for three years, with no end in sight. Crystal did what should could to ‘read’ in his favor. These two students, with nothing to offer, put their gifts of green mangos and ballpoint pens in our hands as thanks before our goodbyes.

Wow, look at the time, sorry to keep you so long (those of you who are still there). I’ll bore you with the sites later.

When I think back on Hong Kong, I think about the human body and how I can’t wrap my head around how it works. Foot traffic scrambles (albeit with great focus and control) through tight corridors, over densely-crowded, multi-level pedestrian walkways that crisscross over streets and along buildings, through hotel lobbies and hallways, banks, insurance offices, with all the purpose and organization in the world. A complex vascular system, men and women in businessware hasten through this network blindly, hardly looking ahead, absorbed in phone calls or papers. In no place I’ve seen can you truly and accurately analogize the people as the lifeblood of the city like you can in Hong Kong. Everywhere else, the blood is too thin.

At the same time though, you really only need to walk 20 minutes or so and all of a sudden the city recedes. The car horns, the shuffle of leather soles and heels on pavement, the calls of shop owners, all gone within a matter of minutes. Hopping on a ferry to it didn’t matter which island, I found that HK has done an amazing job cultivating the various spheres of urban life. Although there’s little room for parks in the city proper, they have turned the majority of the islands into parks, wildlife preserves and nature research centers. For a resident a day in a quiet islands park is only 15 or 20 minutes away. I manage to find myself completely alone on a certain beach. Myself and cargo ships on the horizon. Giant outcropping boulders colored orange towered over the water. A little shrine to some warrior god stood at the far end of the beach. Washed up on the beach was a plethora of recently historicized artifacts, cultural detritus: light bulbs, dolls heads, Minnie mouse, a squid that looked like it must have died in the fight of its life, the image of a model, a cognac bottle…

By nightfall I had gotten a little lost. The bamboo creaked in the wind like old bones creak. It was that most confusing and otherworldly moment of dusk where you feel the world has gone just a little out of focus, like opening your eyes for the first time one morning before it’s really light outside. I saw red Chinese characters scrawled across the wall of an abandoned stone house, seemingly too small to fit any average sized person. It looked liked it had aged in a museum, with ghostly energy and weathered, but somehow pristine. A few steps beyond, tombs rose out of the ground like giant stone drums, each with a picture that was too faded to make out. All quite surreal really. And to think that one of the busiest commercial centers in the world was only a few miles away.

Macau was a mess. I lost, I think, 80 bucks playing blackjack in the biggest casino in Asia. I can say I did it now and move on. Also it’s a good thing I drank before hand because they don’t seem to serve alcohol in most of those casinos. You’d think they’d learn from Las Vegas and understand how much more money they could take from people if they just gave them a few drinks now and again. Their loss.

I finally ran into my uncle, after several misses and he and his family fed me one of the best meals I’ve had since leaving the states, with a few things you absolutely can’t get anywhere outside of the states (or outside of our extended family for that matter). Jambalaya, homemade bread (man did I ever take bread for granted… never again), milk that tastes like milk, and huckleberry freakin’ pie. It was good to be around family as far from home as I was, even if only for a few hours. Thanks again to Cory, who as busy as he was, let me stay in his place for four nights without ever having met me before. A real standup guy.

My time there was rushed to say the least. And as packed together and concentrated the city engineers of Hong Kong have made it (hats off), I could’ve spent more time exploring. But the prices were a bit forbidding and I had plans to move on already.

Highlights:

Climbing above the city

Medium-rare, 2 half-pound patties, jalapenos and cheese

Huckleberry pie

Walking away from the Grand Lisboa with most of my dignity intact

Sorry for the absurdly long hiatus. I have things to write about again.

Riverview Highrises

The Xiangjiangs resting place

If someone ever asks you what you think the future will look like, tell them that you’re not speaking from experience, but a reliable source says it will look something like Changsha, China—for better or worse (I will withhold comment).

This is my city now, and I have to admit, I’ve come to consider it an indispensable part of who I am. It may be a hard place to live, but I’ve found that people here really do live.

The view of the red dirt, dusty skyline, and seemingly endless backbone of high-rise living construction sights—as I was photographing it, I noticed two separate groups of people painting in the same area. They were picking and choosing what they saw: snatches of gray sky here and there, a single benign smokestack, an overturned wooden boat all rotted through. Watercolor is a messy medium after all, and you can’t hope to catch all of what you see. Why not show just what you want to see?

Above you’ll see a couple pictures of the Xiangjiang riverbed. For half the year it is completely full of water, and then in the fall in winter, the water needs of Hunan province are so high that most of the river just disappears. You’ll see people trekking around in the muddy bed looking for something, fishing in a few landlocked holes. Some of them must be trying to wrap there heads around how such a massive river could just dry up like that and what it must have left behind. When a river goes like that—dried up, what little is left being sucked back into the Earth—you realize how tremendous and frightening human thirst can be, and you wonder how much of it a river can take it.

meat drying, laundry drying

So I haven’t been doing a lot of traveling recently. Money is tight, time is ample but spread out in unmanageable clumps. I think I’m just going to have to feed you little bits of things here and there. But don’t worry, I wont start posting poetry are anything like that… yikes.

再见, for now.

The East Fork of the Xiangjiang