| On Falling Into a Chinese Toilet August 17, 2001 Napoleon said, "China is a sleeping giant. Let her sleep, for when she awakens she will astonish the world." After a month and a half in China, I can safely agree that she is a sleeping giant...the question is when she will completely wake up. You'll be happy to know, friends, that in Communist China, capitalism is the order of the day! I've had people ask for money after giving me directions to the toilet, and children cheerfully waving hello with outstretched hand saying, "You pay! You pay!" After a two hour uphill climb of a desolate stretch of the Great Wall, I turned a corner and was confronted by a man selling Mao's Little Red Book and Juicy Fruit gum. Until about ten years ago, the Chinese governement had an official policy of overcharging foreigners, especially in the transportation and accommodation sectors. The law is gone but the sentiment remains, especially among the common people, to whom foreigner=money. I travelled with two Israeli guys, Tal and Dror, for about three weeks who were regularly charged double for everything they wanted to buy. But with blonde hair and blue eyes, I'm usually charged triple, sometimes quadruple the price. Buying anything from a bed for the night to a bottle of water is a lesson in patience and good humour. My haggling abilities have become razor shap, and one day I was left in charge of procuring our night's stay at a fair price (about $1.50 per bed) - high praise from the Israelis. At the same time, I've been pleasantly surprised by the friendliness of the Chinese (even when they rip you off, they do it with a smile!). They've been refreshingly bold and candid with their curiousity about the "lao wai" (foreigner). While a Japanese person will follow you for ten blocks without admitting it, a Chinese person will block your path, start asking questions, or rather, start poking and prodding until they're satisfied. End of story. Example: while wandering around "my" section of the Great Wall, I met a seventeen year old girl and her family. After some time, they invited me to stay with them for the night and I happily accepted. The next day she confessed the reason they invited me to stay over: her father wanted to find out what exactly I carried in my backpack. Of course, I obliged. Beijing is a HUGE dusty dirty city quickly leading the country out of its slumber, although it's got a long way to go before the Olympics in 2008. Did you see me on TV the night they announced that Beijing had won its bid? I headed down to Tiananmen Square with about one million of my closest friends for a great night of celebration! Singing, dancing, flagwaving; a jubilant celebration all under the careful scrutiny of the Army. I got stuck in an incredible little village called Xiahe for about a week. The village exists around a monastery and as it is close to what used to be the Tibetan border, has become an important centre for exiled Tibetan monks. What a place! Monks in their ruby coloured robes battling it out for space on the streets with the pigs and the nomads in their incredible traditional dress. The Tibetan people are truly beautiful, wonderfully bashful and curious all at once. They have a quiet innocence to them, which makes their persecution all the more horrifying. It is a crime for monks to have pictures of the Dalai Lama, but there happens to be a picture of His Holiness in my guidebook. I brought it to some monks I had befriended; tears came to their eyes as they traced their fingers over the page. The most inspiring thing about them, in the midst of their terror (word from Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, is that fourteen monks have been executed since April), is their capacity for play! While I waited at an intersection two miles out of town, hoping to flag down a bus, I waited with two young monks and two older women. After our hour's wait, we all were wearing sunglasses and...wait for it...sparkles! I had not been faring well with Chinese cuisine, and was losing weight and strength at an alarming rate, but a wonderful woman in Xiahe led me to recovery through a diet of rice and yak yogurt. With renewed strength, I headed into my next adventure. After a gruelling ten hour bus ride (with a Christmas tree, ten ducklings and a baby in my lap!), I arrived in Songpan for a four day horse trek. It was incredible, despite the altitude sickness that kicked in full force...headache, unable to breathe, and nausea...but my wonderful guide, Shamu, brought me tea on the hour and again, due to the kindness of strangers, I was nursed back to health. I don't know how, but this guy knew I was a princess! From waking me up with a cheerful "Good morning!" to actually tucking me in at night and singing me Tibetan lullabies, he made the trip as great as it was. On our last day together, heading back to the village, we exchanged song for song. (He preferred Joni Mitchell and Ella Fitzgerald, while his Tibetan songs blew me away.) As we walked through the village, somewhat shocked by the chaos, we both agreed that we should have stayed in the serene mountains for a few more days. The next big adventure was a four day hike through an area called Tiger Leaping Gorge, in southern Yunnan province. The mountains were incredible, orange and black stone covered with thick vegetation, with the faint roar of the Yangtze River always present. My friend Ralph and I hired a guide to take us right down to the gorge, which was astounding! As our guide skipped lightly rock to rock, cigarette in mouth, Ralph and I struggled to survive, not looking down, chanting our mantra,"Une slip et au revoir!" It was well worth the effort. Silky mists nestled in the mountains, contemplating how they would wile away their afternoon, while six thousand metres below, the angry water crushed my every thought with its ferocity. It echoed in my ears for days. We stayed with a family including two young boys and a very cool grandma. The cat slept with me, or rather, I think I slept with the cat, and one of the horses woke us up in the morning by nibbling on the blankets! Next to Lijiang and Dali, which were very cool places to hang out and people watch, although too touristy for my bones. To escape the people one day, Ralph and I hitchhiked to a little village just outside of Lijiang. Imagine our delight when we stumbled upon about thirty old Naxi (an ethnic minority in Yunnan province) all gathered for three hours of singing and dancing! There we were, learning the dance steps, sharing our water, hanging out in the shade...it was one of those days travellers dream of, and rarely get. China has been incredible and horrible and great and crazy and and and! The people are incredibly sincere and friendly, but always and I mean always hoping to get extra money out of you. It's exhausting, and after six weeks, I'm ready to get the hell out! I've been ripped off, spit on (and ripped off and spit on), dehydrated, inebriated (that rice whiskey is not for the faint of heart), delighted by beauty, genorousity, and scenery, and I've been devastated by the poverty. I've seen babies trained to cry at the sight of a foreigner's face, and I've seen two old ladies fight over my empty water bottle. An eye-opening start to this trip. Next stop: Laos. The first step is a 26 hour bus trip. Thank you, China! Good night! back to pictures home |