Phil and Red's Excellent Adventure

Spent time with John because he's got a week left in China before he heads home. His flight is for March 8th. I worked on my DVD. Another one is under construction. I also picked up my fixed space heater from the Bond office today. Finally. If they would just buy quality products they would have to waste money on having them fixed and pissing off their employees. I am afraid to leave that thing on anymore since it coulda burned down the house anytime it wanted. Leianna's almost set her couch on fire when it blew out.
I went to dance practice but they were in a school meeting when I showed up so I went home.

Posted by Phil at 12:26 PM | Permalink

Not much to report today. Just hung out most of the day with John, Jolene, and Yumi. Nick was here and there with his girlfriend from Inner Mongolia. She is in town visiting him. She took a job in Shenzhen to be close to him. Aaaaaaawwwwwww. She speaks no english.

Posted by Phil at 12:24 PM | Permalink

I had dance practice from 830AM-12...well, actually 10-12. I was told to be there at 830AM. So i showed up on time and practice didn't really start till 10AM. Thanks. People didn't even get to the dance area until about 930AM. Chinese time can be trying. After dancing we all went out to lunch. It was good lunch. I was super tired and I passed out around 230PM and got up around 430pm. Rest of the day was spent doing nothing special.

Posted by Phil at 12:21 PM | Permalink

Today was ok. I was very tired for some reason. My first class was canceled because the headmaster ended up lecturing the kids for about 30 minutes. The rest of the day was fine.
Tonite was Toby's birthday and for some reason, Rumi decided to throw him surprise bday party. I asked her, "Are you sure he is reliable enuff to show up at your place at 930pm? I mean, he did go on a vacation without bothering to tell you. How do you know he just won't go elsewhere tonite on his own?" She said she would make sure. Whatever.
Around 7pm, Nick and Amy both said that Toby was calling around asking for people to go out drinking with tonite. They would meet at 9pm and head out. ....... So I called up Rumi. "You know, Toby is calling around to get people to go out at 9pm."
-Oh.....he is? I will call him and see what he's doing.
Yes, make it more obvious that you are doing something.
When time finally came around, Toby didn't show up at 930pm like he was supposed to. He showed up about 1015pm with Sean and Suzannah. And of course, no one in this country knows how to throw a surprise party. They were all talking loud and turning off the TV while he was knocking on the door. And people were whispering around constantly. Then it took Rumi about 5 minutes before she turned out the lights and opened the door. Around 2.5 minutes, Toby started playing his guitar, "Open the door, and let me in".
She finally did and a couple people blew off those confetti canons.
Why wasn't she ready. Oh well.
Toby was wearing the same shirt that I bought in Lijiang. Only he got his for 100RMB, i got mine for 40RMB. giggle.
At one point near the end of the nite, I came out into the living room when the first thing I heard was Toby saying this, "Yes! Cats should pay rent too." I immediately turned around and went elsewhere.
I dunno how the conversation started but I think it arose from someone mentioning Animal Rights on the TV news. Toby said, "If people want to give aniimals rights, then maybe animals should be required to do the same things as people. Animals should pay rent and stuff like that."
A story about the Pope came on and how he was in deteriorating health. Toby said, "Good ridance [followed by incoherent babbling]." This sent Sean and Suzannah up and they were trying to argue with him and it was useless. Toby then said, "If I could, I would vote a cat to be the pope if he paid his rent." - you don't vote for popes - "Oh yeah, there is like a cardinal convoy that does so or something [more incoherent babbling]."
I headed home around 1130 since I have to do some stupid dance practice for the school tomorrow.

Posted by Phil at 02:10 PM | Permalink

From: Phil
To: Austin
Subject: Hope you are well.
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 13:01:22 +0800

I got word not too long ago that you were in an accident last week. I hope you are alright. What happened?
I am pulling for your quick recovery. I hope the guy that caused your accident will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But thats doubtful. I hope you are better now and things are healing.

Posted by Phil at 08:39 PM | Permalink

Today was an interesting day. Today is the day where my first class is at 10:10AM. Sweet. I got up real early today as well to get some things done and plan for the lessons. John showed up at the big House around 9AM. He spent 10 hours on the train yesterday coming home from Hunan with Jolene. He neeeded a place to crash because another person has already moved into his old place. I told him that he is more than welcome to crash in Clyde's old room. Too bad its locked. He basically sat down and fell asleep on the couch after he told me of his time in Hunan. He only got 1.5 hours of sleep. Icky. Sounds like my plane ride to Hong Kong.
I headed to class. It was ok. It was third graders. They weren't very good today. They seem to have forgotten all their english of the few weeks that they had off. Fantastic! Also, the little boy with cauliflowering of his ears was shooting paper wads with his ruler with his 2 friends that sat next to him. I scolded him a couple times as well as my enforcer. Then one of his friends shot a paper wad with more strength and effort than he planned to. It whizzed by my head I turned quickly around, and there he sat with his hands covering his mouth. So I grabbed Cauliflower Ears and Hands Over Mouth. Then kids sitting around him pointed out the third kid. Apparently he shot it, but the hands over mouth kid was in on it as well. So i grabbed all three, I put them in front of the class and made them all do the horse stance until class was done. There was about 10 minutes left. After about 1 minute they were jiggling around trying to relieve the pain. "Hey kids, you know if you squirm or try to relax the position, it just hurts more." There were up there for a while that I forgot about them. They were leaning over and I kept going over there sometimes and fixing their position.
Lunch was good cause I worked on finishing up most of the journals. Then went back to class. I had the 5th graders this time. These classes went really good. The 2nd class was better except in the beginning.
After the eye lessons were done, I noticed one of the "huskier" girls had her head in her arms. When Ivy, the enforcer, walked in, i motioned to the girl. Ivy went over and the girl was crying. She said some things that implicated the person in front of her. Then Ivy said something else and all the kids sitting around her pointed out another kid all at once. Damn! You kids are sure quick to rat your fellow comrades out aren't you. I am super glad none of you kids are my friends or comrades. I couldn't trust you with anything. Thanks Chairman Mao. You did wonders for this country. While Ivy had her back turned and scolding the boys, another boy decided to pull out a single barrel aimed at Ivy. I saw this and scolded him and made him do the horse stance up in front of the class. After 5 minutes, Ivy had him come back to her and explain what happened. I went and told Ivy what happened and he stood back there for a while really sad and red in the eyes. He was upset the whole class. He will get over it.
The classes actually went really good, except for those parts. Got them speaking alot and telling me how their chinese new year was. It was very good. It was tuff but I got them to do it.
After class was over I had dance class at 445pm. I got there at 5pm and they were just starting up. And it was still the same. Then the dance instructor showed up at 6pm and spent an hour with us showing the intro and the moves. She also showed me the part that has the Muay Thai Kickboxing in it. Very terrible. I can't believe I am doing this. Well, the school is nice to me, so I will help them out by giving them face. Besides, I get something I can laff at.
After that I went and grabbed some food at McDonald's (hangs head). I know. I shouldn't but, ugh...i wanted to. One of the girls from Lion Dance was behind the counter and she was happy to see me. "Fei Long!" So I chose her line. Pretty decent. Very nice. She gave me extra big pop for free....OOOOOO! she likes me. ;-)
I came back here and Moses and Nick were watching Deer Hunter. It was in the middle. Why do I always catch it in the middle. Oh well.

Posted by Phil at 07:59 PM | Permalink

Today started out just as another day. After I finished my 5th grade class with Lily at 1050AM, i booked it out of school and down the street to snag a motorbike taxi. I got to Yongning (proper spelling, not Yongling) at about 11:05AM and only few a people were around. I figured we prolly wouldn't head out for another 15 minutes cause that's the way Chinese people work. However, I was more surprised when we didn't leave till about 1145AM. I guess I didn't have to be there so soon. Guo Sifu showed up with some packed lunches. Everyone scarfed their food and they were all amazed when I didn't take my rice box. Listen, you don't need to eat that much rice. Its just a waste of stomach space and no nutrition. I changed my clothes. We then headed out. We packed up a mini-bus filled with people.
On the way to Shiqi one of the kids threw up. Alot of chinese people get sick on buses, its very surprising. I never thought of something like that. We got to Shiqi and unpacked the trucks and bus. We then headed into the stadium where the festivities would start. Wow, this place was pretty big. We were around the 35 yard line if there was a 35 yard line. There were a lot of lion dance troops there along with some other activity groups. There was also a large contigent of buisness employees that were there as advertisement for their companies. The 1+1 Superstore Grocery Store chain had four people dressed up in these giant yellow chick suits. It was really funny. They would let us take any fotos with them though. What a shame.
I just hung around waiting while the rest of the people showed up for the festivities. I was getting lots of stares from other teams. There was one dragon dance team where the guy doing the head was giving me dirty looks and imitating me as I was warming up some muscles. It was kinda chilly. What a Turd Ferguson. I was taking fotos of the team as well. I also allowed a couple of the kids, Victor in particularly, to take some pictures. He actually took a couple good ones. He also took a bunch of crap. :D
About this time I had one news agency come over to me and interview me. It was fine. After her not understanding me, Guo Sifu came over and helped out a bit. Told her what I do and what I would be doing (which I ineviatably didn't do). After some more time it was time to start the show. There was about 10000 people in the audience of the stadium. Wow. I took a place by the press reporters and video people. I had my video camera in my right hand and my digital camera in my left hand. I kept noticing chinese people taking my foto. Oh well, I have to expect it. The lion dance blessing was really kool. There were about 50 lines on the sidelines just rocking out. Really cool. It reminded me of being in Kung Fu movies that have big Lion Dance tournaments and a "VIP" daus in the stands overlooking with their power.
After they were done, they moved to the side. I kept getting yelled at by the police to stay behind the line, the problem was, they kept setting the line further back. First it was the white line. Then it was the yellow line, then it was the red one...etc etc. "But the TV crew guy is out there! I want to do that too!" Punk. There was also one police officer who was taking fotos of the event as well. I asked to take his foto and he said no. Hey, at least I asked him. He didn't bother to ask me before he took mine without my permission.
After lion dancing was done, other events took the floor. First, the Zhongshan Health Attendants. WHat I think were nurses. They were dressed up in full uniform and doing some pretty funny form things. Like marching in place, then other stuff. It was just bizarre. It was like watching that video clip at the end of the Daily Show one day during the "Moment of Zen": It was a bunch of elementary school kids, about 16 lined up in rows all bouncing a basketball in a low stance at the same time for Yasser Arafat. Friggin' bizarre. After them, it was the cheerleaders who didn't even bothering "Bringing it on". Their form/dance they did was even worse than the Nurses.
Now, after the cheerleaders, this group of old chinese women came out with flags around their waists and they did a neat dance to a cool song. It was really nice. After them came another group of old women and a couple old men in the back. They all had red fans. They all started doing a taiji form. I was like, KOOL! it was awesome, they all flipped the red fans open at the same time and there must have been 100 or more people out there, becuase it made a huge resounding FWHOOP! It rocked.
After them came the drum and cymbal people. After that, I think it was done. They started blowing air up the asses of the important people on the daus while everyone else sat down in boredom. I went and sat on the troops cart that carries our percussion session. I was looking down doing something with my fotos and people were coming by and taking my pictures without my permission. Son of a bitch. Because you are being a dick, I won't give you anything. I kept my head down and I turned myself away from their likes. The girls on the cart were giggling everytime I got irritated with them.
After more time of that finally things got underway.
They started bringing out the balloons. They had a torch guy come out like it was the Olympics. Whatever. And then the important people left thru the lined up lions and all the lions were saluting them and the drums were playing. Then we started the parade. We started walking out. Once out of the stadium we were behind the biggest dragon I have ever seen.
The head alone was larger than the guy controlling it and it was about 30 people long. They had three people holding a rope tied to the tail like they were holding it back from the candy ball in front. Very cool. I was staring at them and they were staring at me. It was stop and go parade style, after about 20 minutes we got going along with no stops. We were walking down the Palm Tree Street towards one of the government buildings and the seats where the important people were at. As we walked down I took a bunch of fotos of stuff. It was also kinda funny, all the kids were staring at the shiny stuff in the parade, but all the adults were staring at me. What's a gweilo doing here? It seemed like I was the only gweilo invovled in the festivities. I saw one other walking in the crowd. After we reached the end we headed back to the mini-bus. We drove back to Xiaolan. It was about 530 when we got back. I ended up walking home almost because of the fact that there were no empty taxi bikes around. Fudge. Well, got home after grabbing some food. I was relaxing and threw in O Brother Where Out Thou. Funny.
Afterwards headed to bed. I was super tired.

Posted by Phil at 03:56 PM | Permalink

Today went well. I walked in and we had the new books for the sememster so I need to come up with a lesson right quick. I tried asking the kids "What did you do for Chinese New Year". After some manipulation, they figured it out. It went pretty good.
During lunch I got Amy's help to make a chinese language menu for my DVD. It turned out really well. Very good. I used an Apple Template. Very simple. Very good. That pleased me.
The 6th grade class went surprisingly well. I asked Coco about covering my morning class because I thought the performances were at 10 and 11AM. She said sure! I LOVE MY SCHOOL! After classes were done I had Amy talk to Guo Sifu about the times for meeting at the gym on wednesday morning. He said 11am and then we go to Shiqi. Also, there was no practice tonite. Thats a change, that means I will miss that afternoon classes. Great, that means I can teach in the morning on wednesday and then May can cover for my afternoon class. I will have to tell them this at the dance practice I have tonite. :D This dance stuff is hilarious. Real cheezy. I figure, what the hell, I will perform in the contest with them. It will make for good jounral entries.
After classes were done, I came back here and showed the DVD to a couple people. They liked it. Amy told me of one mistake on the menu so i fixed it and made a better copy for Guo Sifu. I will give it to him on wednesday. I went to the dance practice. So funny. Apparently they have added some punching exercising to the dance steps. UGH! This is terrible! Why can't we do real dancing like Swing or Lindy or Waltz. Something real.
I headed back home. Daisy and her mom wanted to stop by and drop something off so they came over with a fruit basket. Apparently Daisy wanted to give me something because of the gift I got her in Kunming. Also, her mom wanted to ask me about private lessons. Sure thing. After they left to meet their grandfolks for dinner, I had some dinner. Nick made some spaghetti. He was bored all day with no work, so he made us dinner. That was sweet. We watched the Ray Charles tribute on Pearl TV. It was kool. But answer me this... what the hell was Tom Cruise doing on stage and talking about how Ray Charles' music had made America more just... Nick and I just looked at each other and said, "BULLSHIT" simultaneously. They showed Morgan Freeman look away with a look of...This guy is retarded. It rueled.
After that, I headed to bed. Long day tomorrow.

Posted by Phil at 01:08 PM | Permalink

Sweet. Spent more time today updating my journal. I also started putting together a DVD for Guo Sifu. All the chinese New Year Lion Dance performances. I am gonna hack together and give it to him. Should be cool. Shunde, Guzhen, and Sanxiang. It took a while to get it done, but after a few hours, I didnt some quick sloppy edits and churned out a good movie. Its gonna take about 10 hours to encode, so I will finish it tomorrow. I hope it looks good.
I read the onion just now, there is an awesome article that is just like the experience I am having here in China. Its very funny. http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4107&n=3 This ruelz.
i went to lion dancing today. I got there at 815pm and people were waiting outside. Now one was indoors, so some of the guys called around. About 830 one of the kids ran to someones house, grabbed a key and then came back. Again I spent my time practicing while others fooled around. Oh well. I need to prepare for the Latern Festival on the 23rd. Guo Sifu showed up around 915pm. He was in HK today picking up the Wunderkinden. I chatted to him about the Latern Festival on the 23rd via Mountain. That guy is such a life saver. He is my favourite Bond staff member. He actually gets things done. Anywho, I find out that the performances in Shiqi are during the afternoon. 11AM - 230pm. What?! Who the hell celebrates "Lantern Festival" during the day. Lanterns are used to light up the nite, shouldn't the celebration be at nite? I guess not. Well, I have to teach so i guess I can't go....unless I ask for someone to cover for me...hmmmmm......I called Coco to find out about if we have school on Wednesday being Latern Festival. We have school. She then asked me where I was for dance practice. I told her I had to come to Lion Dance practice. She said oh. But then she said we have practice on tomorrow evening, so I must go. Ok.
After that I headed home and went to bed.

Posted by Phil at 12:52 PM | Permalink

I went to the sunday morning meeting at my school today. It was 2.5 hours of listening to chinese people and I sat there correcting Coco's little Chinese to English Restaurant Conversation booklet. Bond told me I had to be there but when I got there everyone was like, what are you doing here? Whatever. But the good thing about it was that everyone was giving everyone else little red packets of Chinese New Year Money. The school itself gave everyone 150RMB. SWEET! It was awesome. I love my school. For other reasons than this. My school, from what I understand from other teachers, is very relaxed. They let me come and go after my classes done. Its great. Other teachers have to be there all day if they dont have anything to do. During the meeting everyone was given a small pile of sunflower seeds on their desk area. For about 1 hour, 50 teachers were constantly chewing on these sunflower seeds. I swear, I felt like I was in a giant bowl of Rice Crispies with the SNAP CRACKLE POP! going off. Thats what it felt like. It was very loud.
After the meeting, we had dance rehearsal. Apparently in 2 weeks there is a dance competition for teachers at different schools. They had a girl come in and show some dance steps. Its very very cheesy. The type of dance you do for aerobics. Its actually quite funny. I think they really want me to do it. What the hell, I will. It will make for great journal entries and video. The best thing about it...we get to do "jazz hands"! YES! And of course, the chinese have made it mechanical, no feeling behind it. Very funny. Lets see how that goes.
We then all went out to Dim Sum. mmmm yummmy dim sum.
After that I headed home and started writing up these jounral entries.

Posted by Phil at 12:46 PM | Permalink

Spent the day unpacking and squaring things away. Pretty awesome. Very good day.

Posted by Phil at 12:44 PM | Permalink

Woke up at 7am today and we had breakfast. Today was the last day. Looking back on the trip, I had a blast. The tea shop and medicine shop were a waste of time though. I feel we could have more time at the real sites if we didnt have to attend these government forced stops. Hopefully today we see some real cool stuff. I am not sure of what the agenda is today. I will have to wait and see.
We hopped the bus at 800AM and headed out to a Common Old Town. Basically, this is an old town/village/city that was very common in the past. Its not like Lijiang or Dali which were ancient...over 1000 years. I would have to say this was more like 500 years or something. It was very differnt thats for sure. It reminded me alot of the city area and locale of the movie "Iron Monkey". If some of you haven't seen that movie, find the original version before Queinten Tarantino and Miramax got there slimy hands on it and butchered it. Its my favorite Kung Fu Film. Its also regarded around here as one of the best. Donnie Yen rules. Anywho. It was very pretty and we were there about 830AM. The place was empty. No shops were open and as we left people started to set up little tourist stands. The place was still waking up.
I walked thru the very large and pretty gate. On each supporting wall of the gate entrance was a picture of an animal the chinese love. It also had one lotus blossom.
I walked down a long dusty main street. It was lined on either side by, what I figued, are restaurants, bars, shops, and a hotel. There may have been a whore house there too, in the past. At the end of the road, it widens up to the large town square that has much to look at. On the right corner at the end of the street there was a three leveled building which I think was the hotel. As you turned the corner you get a major modern day shock. On the right side of this new street/path is the old traditional fancy hotel on the right and the path then turns into a road thru the modern living quarters of the residents. It was mind boggling to have all these gorgeous old time buildings right next to these new(relatively) run down shacks that lined the street. These places were falling apart and the place looked like a war zone. It just was a kick in the face pretty much. I grabbed a couple fotos, here. Well, if you look at the fotos, you may disagree with the war zone bit, but that was my first impression. It doesn't really come thru on the foto, but it sure seemed like one in real life. Maybe it was the moment, seeing gorgeous old chinese stuff then ugly new stuff. That must be what it was. Anywho.
I walked back into the town square. There seemed to be two squares. First there was the religious square then the town square next to it. In the religious square was a big grey stone shrine with four entrances. I walked in and Ying Ying followed me in so i started to chase here around. It was pretty low ceiling. Once in the middle if you look out the four entrances you can see the main gate thru the opposite opening you could see a building before the Buddha temple. The other two openings, one you saw the street of the new living area I talked about before, thru the opposite opening you can see the town square and the Taoist temple across the town square. After that I headed to the Buddha temple. It was kool. I am starting to get templed out in China. There are so many, they are so pretty, but alot are just the same. I like them though. The buddha they had here was the fat buddha. As I walked to the temple I had some ladies try to sell me incensce sticks. No thanks. They kept pushing it on me as well. NO! The female doctor that gave me the medicine got the same treatment. The ladies were chasing her. It was bizarre. She would say no and they kept coming after her. Man, these people don't let up.
After checkin that shizzle out I headed over to the taoist temple across the square. This was a real kool looking place. Lots of ornate stuff in it. I got a couple of "waz up" nods from some staff workers as I entered and left. They seemed nice there. No one pushed anything on me. Took some fotos and headed out. Then next to the taoist temple was (what I think was) a congregating area for like banquets n stuff. I think. I dunno. The red wall was all scraped up. It looked neat and old. I then headed back to the main street and everyone was heading back to the bus. We grabbed the bus and headed out. It turned out that this little visit to the Common Old City was the best part of the day.
We arrived at this shopping center and everyone which was made for selling tea and selling crap that goes along with making and drinking tea. It also had some really cheezy souvenirs. They had this really funny looking purses made from coconuts. They took coconuts, cut them in half, and polished them up n stuff and put a lining inside. The put a zipper on them and then gave them faces and bodies with leather. There was a goat, a bull, a pig, something else I could figure out, and a lion.
I spent about 20 minutes just walking around doing nothing. Totally bored. Walked out and they had people missing limbs begging for money on the sidewalk and of course, they saw the white man and instinctively thought that I had tons of cash, not true. They hobbled over to me and were beggin. Sorry pal. I walked around the area. There was a construction site underway. A giant building kinda like Cobo Hall for veiwing shows n stuff. I then headed back to the bus, still no one. So i just sat there until people came back. Chen and Spaz's Dad came back and they headed out back around the junkyard where we seemed to be parked at to relieve themselves. They got back and I asked, is there a bathroom over there? They said, "No." Just be careful. Crap. So, I went and found a nice little area and didnt find out to afterwards that it was a place where very poor people lived. I found this out when a small shitzu chained to the wall tried to attack me. He was out for blood man. The fotos are in the Kunming section, here.
The place looked like a demilitarized zone and then I saw doors. Whoa. Totally not expecting that. Sorry folks. I headed back to the bus.
We drove to a jade/diamond shop. Oh man, not another one. At this point, I was like, screw it. Lets just go home. Get me outta here! Let's make like a tree and get out of here. This place had two floors. I went looking at stuff. Again, very pretty, but nothing really speical. And since it was a shop, you know it was way overpriced. I was looking for souvenirs, but nothing called out, "PICK ME!" After the jade shop, we drove around in a cicrle. We started to go somewhere and then the bus turned around and we headed back towards the diamond/jade shop towards a restaurant for lunch. Lunch already? Its only 11AM. Jeez. Oh well. Across the street was a resturant that still had Christmas decorations hanging up. Sweet! Well, i shouldn't laugh. We still have our tree sitting up in the living room. Giggle.
We headed in to have hot pot. I didn't eat much and I wasn't in the best of moods because so far the day was pretty friggin' lame.
After lunch we headed to the Flower Market. It was pretty lame too. Lots of flowers. Some of it was pretty for about 10 minutes, then it just got boring because we were there for about 1.5 hours. Ugh. There was some really strange art hanging on the wall. It had to be a local thing to a certain person in Kunming because I didn't see it anywhere else in this area. Also, alot of the art in this area has a Native American feel to it. After we finally left, we headed to the airport around 230pm. I had some much junk that I bought here that I had to put my backpack as luggage. The plane was for 4pm, but it was delayed 40 minutes. I spent the whole time writing stuff for my jounral. And I spent the 2 hour flight writing in my journal as well. Koolio. It was a good flight home. Grabbed luggage around 7pm and we got our bus back to Shiqi at about 730pm.
On the bus ride we watched Kung Fu Hustle. That movie rules. We finally dropped everyone off and I got a taxi back to Xiaolan. ZTG paid for it. This taxi driver was terrible. He got lost in Xiaolan. Figures with my luck. He asked about 5 people directions to the same place and they all differed. What is wrong with you people! Ugh. I finally got home and got some sleep. It was a great trip despite the last day of boringness. Good nite all. Hope you have enjoyed these entries.

Posted by Phil at 11:28 AM | Permalink

Woke up really early again today at 6AM. Grabbed breakfast and the bus took off by 730AM. Everyday since Dali, the bus has had trouble starting up. The first day it happened, i thought we were gonna get stranded somewhere in the middle of nowhere. But after about the 6th try the thing starts up. Oh well. Today we are heading to the Stone Forest. I am excited about this. I hope its really kool. We headed out and were on the road for another four hours. At our first pitstop, a bunch of the women went into the bathroom then a few seconds later I see them all running out covering their mouths and pluggin their noses. They then formed a line outside the bathroom while still keeping their mouths and noses closed. The kept playfully pushing and egging each other to go into the bathroom and use it. It was quite funny. The guys would walk into their side and just come out holding their breath. I told myself, I can hold it till the next stop. It was a memorable moment. Thats what you get for not having proper sewage and toilet systems.
Somewhere along the way we stopped at another Beijing Medicine shop for brainwashing. I didnt even bother going in. I just hung out by the bus and walked around looking at all the wreckage in the back of the building. Kevin was outside as well so i played with him a bit.
We headed out again and stopped for lunch at this highway sightseeing place outside of the local town. We entered the gate and the first thing I saw were these tibetan inspired buildings or orange and white then a little pagoda pavilion on the top of a cliff with a water fall spraying out below it. It was beautiful. I went, "ooooooooo". Chen said this place was called "Seven Color Painted Wall" for whatever reason I don't know. Very pretty. The lunch place was in a big dinner theatre type of hall. The place was packed. And it was a buffett. Crap. Nothing is worse than seeing chinese people at a buffett. Well, its not the worst thing, but its not a pretty site. The people just scramble for food. There is no order. This is where lines/deli tickets would be perfect. It goes back to the time honored tradition of communist conditioning and rationing out of food to starving people. I was finally able to get some food. I actually stood in line for about 5 minutes. I had to lower myself to their level...i felt dirty. I sat down with some of the group members. There was a performance starting on stage.
The modern chinese people have cultural confusion. The first act had a bunch of girls on stage in some traditional style of chinese outfit for the region, but they were doing a mix of chinese and hip hop dancing while wearing Cowboy hats. I just lowered my head and shook it. After they went off stage a Gourd Flute player came on and busted out some tunes. The mic on the flute was way too loud. Thankfully I finished my food quickly and bolted out of there. I went sightseeing around the place. Here are the fotos. After taking a bunch of fotos of the buildings and the bridge and the white stone memorial of Chinese Heros, I tried to get some decent fotos of that pavilion on top of the cliff. I asked how much it cost to enter the park. 20RMB. Koolio. here ya go.
I entered the park and found out right away that it was a peacock and chicken park and they got to roam free. Thats pretty cool. I walked all over the park snaggin fotos. I couldn't find the path to the pavilion so I walked up the super steep hill. The view from the pavillion was gorgeous. See the panorama. After the pavilion I walked down the opposite hill and talked to a little baby in the arms of her grandfather. I was walking down the hill not paying attention and I walked around a tree and there I stood 2 feet away from about 20 peacock females and chickens and roosters...whoops. I backed away and one peacock started to come after me. I jumped across the stream from a higher rock and the peacock jumped on the rock and jumped across as well. He extended his wings and floated to the ground. I am just gonna walk away. The thing kept following me to. I went over to a small temple and took a couple snapshots and then left.
After the park I walked over to look at some of the shops. I bought some Gelato that someone was selling. Kicking. Then Guo Sifu called me on my cell. He was asking when I would be back. I told him and he said thanks.
I headed to the bus and we were about to head out. I had noticed all day that Golf was not 100%. He threw up on the bus a couple times into a plastic bag and then just threw the bag out the window. It made me giggle in a kind hearted way. While the bus was stopped and we were waiting to leave, he dropped another bag out the window. So I kidded, "Um, you feeling ok Golf? You know there are trashcans." He cracked a smile. There was a trashcan not more than 10 feet from the bus. The bus headed out and we made our way to the Stone Forest.
Two hours later we got there. It was beautiful. The tour guide told us to stay with the group because it was very easy to get lost. I got scolded once for climbing some stairs to another area that she wouldn't take us too. Its not like I wouldn't be able to find you. Oh well. She is just doing her job. I was climbing on all the rocks to get good fotos. Check them out here. I don't know if the lady said not to climb on them or not, but I couldn't understand if she did. Besides, its not like I am gonna break them or make them dirty. Birds have already painted them white. There were some absolute spectacular views.
We also went into the Baiyun Cave that was there. The chinese really like to ligth things up. Houses, temples, trees, fireworks, cigarettes, and caves. They had every color imaginable down there lighting up the insdie of the cave. It was really neat. At one point they had a skeleton drawn on the wall with green flourescent paint so it would glow in the black light. Giggle. We then left the fave and walked around some more. We then headed back to the buses. There was a small horse that pulled a carraige for sightseeing. I petted the horse a bit, but then it got angry with me and NAHed at me. Ok, i am outtie. Then its cruel master approached me and tried to get me to take a ride. I pointed to the bus and said I couldn't. He smiled and seemed happy to talk to me. The place seemed dead, so I bet he was really bored.
We headed back to Kunming City. It took about 1.5 hours. We had dinner somewhere and then headed over to that Tea Shop inside the gorgeous shopping center I mentioned in the first journal entry of this trip. Boy was I uber-bored. It was another one of these Government Forced deals. I sat there really pooped. For some reason I wasn't in a good mood. I just felt that we were wasting our time with this junk when we could be seeing real stuff or spending more time at real stuff like more than 2 hours at the Lijiang Ancient city. We then headed back to the hotel we stayed the first nite at. I packed up all my junk and passed out on the bed.

Posted by Phil at 10:21 PM | Permalink

Woke up around 6 this morning. Took some of that medication that ZTG supplied me with. It hasn't been working at all really. As I headed out for breakfast, I didn't realize it was on the second floor across the patio. So I hopped in the elevator and there was some dude there. I realized at this point that the chinese people that I met that morning don't understand how elevators work. I got in the elevator from floor 3 and pressed the 1 button. The other guy in the elevator then pressed 5. um...huh? Of course, we went to the 5th floor, he walked out, looked around and said, "WTF" then got back on and gave an embarrassed smile. Oh, the elevator must have been going up and stopped at 3. But why the hell did the guy press 5? No clue. We then headed back down to 1. We got down to the 2nd floor and there were these women. This old lady got on and off the elevator three times and finally decided to stay on the third floor. Then a couple other folks got on and pressed 4. No wait! 3. Wait no 4. I was stuck in that elevator with these people for about 5 minutes. wow.
Finally figured out where breakfast was. I sat down next to the older couple thats on the tour, they are part of my table group. I have found that on these tours, whoever you sit with on the first meal of the trip is who you sit with for the rest of the trip. Very interesting. Fear of change or something like that. She asked me how my head was feeling and I motioned that my forehead and eyes were aching (like when you got that zone out feeling) and my nose was clogged, but my throat was fine. She threw a bag of medicine on the table. It turns out she is a doctor. (and now that I think about it, she may have been the lady that diagnosed my lack of food poisoning) She gave me two pills and then two potions. Thats right, she gave me potions. Two little glass vials with a hard straw to stab the cap with to drink out the medicine. God did it taste awful. They all laffed at the table. Then, for my throat, she gave me four pills to take. Jeez! A total of 10 pills (four from in my room from ZTG) and two potions. Man, for this type of thing back home, all I had to do was take one, that's right, one Sudafed 12 hour non-drowsy and I was fine. China needs Sudafed. She told me to drink lots of water.
We then headed out on the bus into town and stopped at a place by the Anceint City Entrance that we went to last nite. We got out and walked into the old city. We had another tourguid for this as well. I immediately ran and took a foto. The ZTG then came to me and told me that if I want to go off on my own or if we get seperated to meet back at the bus in two hours and be careful because this place has 36 entrances. wow. Alot. So, I scampered off thru the city on my own exploring. It was really good to see in the sunlite. The sun was fighting to come out again. It was bright then cloudy then bright again. I went into the back alleys to see the real places.
This is were I met another white person. Her name is Lauren and she has been here a bit. Her husband is in the Shoe Business. I wonder if the Triads have a hand in there as well. We chatted for awhile. She is from Dongguan I think which is just a few hours from Zhongshan. She and a few others drove out here by van. It took her four days but she says she was glad because they really got a great view of the chinese countryside. They had all the issues too. Yaks, goats, and broken down vehicles blocking the road. People running up to the side of the car peddling their wares. (i dunno about that last part, but it would be cool wouldn't it. It would be like in Indiana Jones whenever they drive thru the desert cities - Cairo and the middle east. A donkey and its cart blocking the road and people shoving stuff in your face. Hardcore. Then you get to ride a rail car thru a cave over molten lava.) She is from Colorado. Worked with K2 for some time testing equipment. Thats the job I need when I get home. Then came to China. She was at the Jade Dragon Snow Mt last nite as well and all her fellow travellers got altitude sickness and she mocked them. Well, she laffed, but didnt mock them. I would have mocked them. ;-) We mentioned that she and her husband are planning to stay here for the long term and she wants to learn the language real well. She asked how long I was in for and I was like, my contract is up, I am totally out of here. I aint ever doing business with the chinese again. That brought us to where we both agreed on feelings about the chinese.
You will find that when foreign teachers get together in China, they all have pretty much the same feelings about China. Except Toby. We all love the land, art, and history, its gorgeous. But when it comes to the people, we all have bittersweet tastes in our mouths. We both agreed that we both hate generalizing about the chinese as a people in a negative way, but that the chinese make it soooooooo easy. She mentioned that she has been here for awhile and that she still feels that she has yet to meet a chinese person that does not have a hidden agenda. She has many chinese friends, but she just has yet to meet one to trust all the way. Me, I can't really make that statement 100% yet.
-----And ****, if you are reading this, Lauren is from Colorado, therefore not a Yankee and she has some of the same opinions as me. I dare you to come to this country for more than 6 months and work among the chinese as I have and if you do not feel just a bit the same way about the chinese as I do, then kudos to you.----- So anyway. I met a very cool person from home and in a very cool place. We exchanged emails and fone numbers.
I ran off to take more fotos. I found some awesome views of all the rooftops of the city. Absolutely gorgeous. Check out the fotos of Lijiang Ancient City in the daytime. Fotos. As I was coming down from the rooftops, I ran into the gang again going in the opposite direction. I started going around with them and checking stuff out. Sue, Wife Lady, and I did one of those dress up in ancient chinese garb. It was quite humorous. Check out the fotos.
About 15 minutes before I had to leave, I ran to a camera shop to have all my fotos transfered. This guy was really slow, I mean, it worked, and he was super nice, but he was really slow. It was like he someone hit is slowmotion button or something. I then headed back to the bus. But I got lost. I went down the wrong street. I had to have a woman working a fone store talk to Golf to figure out where I was. Boy, am I a jackass.
They showed up about 10 minutes later and we met up with everyone for lunch. The doctor asked me how I was feeling and I told her great. Everything was fine. I had to blow my nose hardly at all. It was all clear. Very nice. After dinner we spent 6 hours driving to Chuxiong for some reason. It was a gorgeous bus ride. I enjoyed it alot. We drove back thru Dali to head to Chuxiong. It was pretty funny to drive by there again. I was like....lets go! The drive to Chuxiong was gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. The sun was out and it was on this drive that I got some of the best fotos of the countryside. When we finally got to Chuxiong we had some dinner. The a few of us went to a computer bar so we could check our email and so Golf could transfer fotos.
Boy was that an experience. While I was waiting for Golf to finish his stuff (there were no computers open but one) I was looking at all the chinese folk playing computer games. Most of them were playing the same thing. I dont know the name of this one, I was unfamiliar with it. Some guy came running up the stairs bringing a bunch of food for everyone. While I was standing around, folks were lifting their heads from their computers and performing doubletakes. Surprised to see a white person in their mists. I painfully watched as this one guy sitting next to Golf was trying to play Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. I was like, NO! NO! You do this! He just sat there while he ran into the ocean, drove into the ocean, and allowed himself to be pummeled by the police officer. He giggled everytime he died. Either he was having fun with the game or he enjoyed making a white man drown in the water and get pummeled by the police. I think it was the former, I don't believe he knew the controls. I checked my email and responded to a couple and then headed out. I was super duper tired and I passed out on the bed at 9pm.

Posted by Phil at 06:40 PM | Permalink

Woke up early again. On my way to breakfast I took a bunch of fotos of the hotel and surrounding areas. The sun coming up in the east contrasted big time with the dark clouds clinging to the mountains that we were staying at the base of.
We hopped on the bus and headed out at 8am for Lijiang. There were stops on the way. Of course there was more gorgeous mt driving. I loved it. There were more villages on this drive, alot more. Around 1100AM we drove into this large town area. It was called the white country village "Bai Ju Wen Hua Chun". Gorgeous. Fotos. Very bright, sun was shining with no clouds. The ground reflected the sun alot, somehow. Maybe thats why they call it the white village. Well, they call Yunnan "the white country", so I mean, well...whatever. The bus drove thru the area and pulled up to a very fancy place. I believe the name of this place was Xin Hua. I don't know the translation of this. This was a very touristy place. Over 50 buses were parked inside its gates. There was a building for souvenirs, medicine, a tibetan buddhist museum that wasn't yet in operation, a restaurant, a hotel, and a food store. I walked around this gorgeous tourist trap and took fotos n video. It was very pretty. Its kinda funny how these tours take us to the fancy touristy places and not to modern day things. I guess thats not what most people want to see. Personally, I would like to see more of everyday things in this area. The villages were by far one of the most spectacular things to see.
After the bus spent about 30 minutes sitting in the corner with the windows closed, it became an oven from the bright sun. It was cold outside but burning up in the bus. There are always extremes in China, its either one or the other. ;-) After someone opened the windows and closed the shades, it cooled down quickly. I was busy running outside the tourist gate to the land of the locals to take some shots of the tourist place. I was mobbed with people wanting to sell me things. I looked around to see if I could find anything from the expensive store out here for cheaper, and if they had anything worth getting. Nope. I went back in and asked where I could get some OJ. I had seen tons of people walking around with meat and animals cooked on sticks, but I couldn't find them. I was told they were down an alley and around the corner. Aaaah. I found the spot and there were tons of people selling various things on a stick. Someone shoved a stick with five cockroaches skewerd and cooked on it. "What won't make me vomit?" I just grabbed an OJ and took off.
As we sat in the bus waiting for the rest of the gang to take their seats, there was another bus next to us. There was a cute little girl plastered against the window looking off into space. I caught her attention and waved to her. She opened up the window and stuck her head out and started babbling to me. It was so adorable. I grabbed some fotos and I took some video. She loved it. I was asking her questions. Her mom sitting next to her was loving it, she was really enjoying it. The bus then took off and she waved goodbye and said some stuff in Chinese. It was really cute. A few moments later, our bus left and we headed out again for Lijiang. I took some fotos of the people on the bus.
It took us about an hour or two to finally get to Lijiang. We drove into the modern city and stopped off at a hotel. Lunch was ok. At the end of eating i was lifting myself out of the chair when the arm snapped right off. Wow...I guess I am fat. For a few minutes the whole table was giggling and I was trying to get the arm to stick back into its position. I finally got it to stay on there by itself. Then Kevin came running by cause he was playing with Ying Ying and he bumped into my chair and knocked the arm off again. "WHAT'D YOU DO!?" (ala Tommy Boy) He was stunned for a second and then took off running around like nothing happened. The table started laffing again. I then showed a hotel service woman that was cleaning the tables the destruction I had wrought and she just shook her head. I told her I was sorry. She just shook her head. "gweilo". Its not my fault your chairs suck.
We then took the bus out to Jade Dragon Snow Mountian. This was kool. Here are some fotos. We drove a deserted road along the side of the mountain. As we climbed higher, it started snowing. YES! SNOW!!! So wonderful. It was wet snow, great for packing, but easily melted once it got to the ground. Higher up in the mountian though there was much more packing snow. It was the first time for most of the tour group to actually see snow in real life and not on TV or in books. It was cool to witness that.
As we came around a bend in the mountain road we came to a bridge that went over the river created by the run off from the mountain. What the chinese have done with this was gorgeous. They made a man-made water fall and had it go below a man-made flat that people could walk on. The bridge went over the flat. On the flat they had Yak Rides and foto ops. This was a gorgeous sight, I hope that we stop down there. We just drove over the bridge and up towards the chairlift.
As we pulled up to Tourist Center by the chairlift, the Mountain Tour Guide (MTG) told us that the locals here are very impolite. They don't want fotos taken, they don't want to be stared at (but its ok to stare at white folk), and they are very sneaky so don't buy anything from them. Thanks for the tip. We got in line for the chairlift. Aaaah, i want to go skiing. There was a great Chinglish sign warning honorific passengers to use danger caution. Quite humorous. Golf and I hopped onto the lift and headed up. I had my cameras ready, but there really wasn't anything worth taking shots of. I see all this stuff whenever I go skiing.
After a long cold ride up the lift, Golf hand's were shaking, he had no gloves. He was so happy to see all the snow. He was taking fotos left and right. As we started to walk along the woodened walkway, people of our tour group that have never seen snow jumped over the railing into the snow and started trying to pelt each other with handfuls of snow. It was really humorous. "My hands are freezing!" Duh...its snow! Since they had never seen snow they didn't know how to make snowballs. They were just grabbing handfuls of snow and throwing it. It would break up and scatter at a distance of one foot so no one they tried to hit would get hit. So, I hopped the fence and made a few snowballs and pelted everyone in the snowfight. I then showed them how to make the balls. Some of them got it, some of them didn't. It was kool though, instead of walking on the walkway, we were all running along the side in the snow having snowball fights and I taught a few folks just what a "whitewash" is. Mwha ha ha ha! I got some of that first fight on video. After a while I started walking along the path to see the rest of the area. Every once in a while a snowball would land at my feet or next to me or I felt one whiz by. Bastards, after I that I taught you.
I got to the end of the walkway where they had a military guard who obviously hated his job yelling at people to go no farther. In the distance was the rest of the peak. I was hoping that we would go to the top and that there was like a temple at the top, but nope. So I headed back. This area there were some more donkeys for donkey rides and who I think were locals. They wore this big fur had with i 3-4 foot long feather sticking out the top. They then wore what looked like a rug/cap and some other stuff. It was kool. I sneakily grabbed some camera and video shots. I started going back the way I came and Sue, Wife Girl, Husband Boy, ZTG, Spaz, and Golf were making a snowman...well, snow woman while using Golf's tripod as the base. They packed snow around it and placed a big ball on the top. That's not how you do it, but it worked sorta. They were using donkey droppings as eyes. They had grabbed twigs and used them as chopsticks to place the dung eyes on the snowwoman. I guess you work with what you got.
After taking some group fotos we had to head back. On the way back we got in more snowball fights. When we finally got back to the chairlift, it was like a wait for a rollercoaster at Cedar Point. Chen and a couple others smuggled snowballs into the line and were pelting me with them everytime they passed by me in the line. It seemed that everytime we would pass, I would just forget that they had an arsenal. I was able to get them back with their own stuff a few times, but they got me good once and the entire line started laffing at me. "That's right! You suckas laff at the gweilo now, you will be sorry soon enuff. You can play me like that once, twice, or even a thousand times, but the Law of Averages states that you are going down!"
Golf and I took the chairlift down again and this time there was a wonderful view. It was spectacular. We were above all the trees, the mountain was there in the distance, the trees from the lift to the mountain were like a green carpet. And it was completely silent. Amazing. Breathtaking. Got to the bottom and headed for the bus to warm up. The bus headed down to the bridge that I mentioned early and we stopped. Sweet! I get to take some fotos and ride a yak! Something I have always wanted to do...ride a yak. I grabbed a couple fotos then ran down to get a yak ride. Chen took a couple fotos for me and his wife grabbed some video. Awesome. We got back on the bus and I thought we were headed out to dinner. But we stopped again at this medicine shop on the way down the mountain. The place sold many herbs and tea. Great, maybe a place that can demonstrate how chinese medicine can cure my stuffy nose. I explained to the girls at the desk about my nose and they said they had nothing for me. What? A medicine shop has no medication for the common cold? What kind of scam shop is this? Then Golf explained in more detail and they were all like, OOOOooooh. They took me bin that had some roots that looked like giant dried maggots. Totally gross. I ain't touching that. They wanted 150RMB for a handful so i laffed in their face. I can deal with a couple more days of discomfort. Then we really headed to dinner after that.
Dinner was interesting. The food here was fantastic. Tasted great. Everyone scarffed it down. It may have been because we were really hungry from playing in the snow. While we were eating, they started an art auction. Kool. There was lots of stuff this guy was selling. Some really classy chinese stuff and some not so classy. Some of it looked good, others didn't. There was a couple mountain views that a couple people got. The first one that turned me on was this nice small picture that I thought was going for 13RMB because Chen kept saying "13, 13, 13", I was like sweet! I went up there and said "Yi shi san?" - "No, San Shi"....oooooh, you meant 30 not 13. I have noticed that is an issue. Golf said a shirt that cost 60 RMB cost 16 RMB. And thats not the gweilo factor either.
Later, I was able to get the tree branch with snow under the sun. Very big and very cheap, only 100RMB. They wanted 120, but I just stood there for 5 minutes saying, "Yi Bai." Some of the ladies in the tour group thought this was hilarious. The sellers were like 120, and I just kept sayin 100. They finally relented. Sweet. I am picking up this haggling thing pretty well.
We headed out to the buses to head to the hotel. I was trying to find foto transfers for my shots, but they were super expenisve, 30RMB. Wow! damn. Golf and I tried to ask the hotel people if we could use their computers to transfer some stuff onto his portable harddrive. They finally said sure. The kodak store next door wanted 20RMB. The bellhop took us to a corner where a monitor sat under a blanket. Strange. He turned it on and realize that there was no mouse. Great. Genious. Oh well. Another solution will present itself. We waited for Chen to come downstairs, he still hadn't show up. So we called him and he said he was already at the town. We need to snag a taxi. Ok. Golf, Spaz, a woman, her son, granny, and I crammed into a taxi and headed out. As we were heading towards the ancient city, I was sitting next to granny and she started to reach over me to grab the window to grab the knob, but she didn't grab the window knob. I yelped loud and she got all red in the face and I realized that she wanted the window rolled down a bit, so I took care of it. I can't believe I got felt up by a grandma.
We got to the city and got out. It was like clowns coming out of a clown car. Golf called Chen to find out where he was then ZTG and a few others showed up. The whole gang back together again. The gang kept losing me cause I stopped to take fotos. Then, the girls started shopping. Lijiang is a gorgeous city but its shops are little and far between in the sense of variety. There are a total of about 6 styles of shops. The "local ethnic clothes" shops, the "local ethnic art" shop, the "gourd flute" shop, the "ethnic jewelry" shop, the "souvenir" shop, and the "antique" shop. Now, these 6 shops would repeat themselves in no particular order 3x. Then there would be a random shop that doesn't fit the others description. Also, sometimes there was a small performance theatre of culture dances and music, which is kool. Thats all it was. The girls would go into every friggin store and not buy anyting. Its the same crap at each place! Literally, the shops were selling the same thing. There was hardly any variety. Welcome to Communist Tourist China. So, I would walk down the street, look to see if I randomly found something kool. When I didn't I would go take some fotos. I would then head back to the store where the gang was still at. Or, sometimes, Spaz would walk out in the street and yell my name out "Fei Long! Fei Long!" Shut up!
At one place I stopped, there was a dog chained to the wall so I started playing with him. He must not get lots of attention because he was super happy to see me. I then headed elsewhere. I bought a kool shirt made of canvas. Its black, has the chinese cloth buttons, a mandarin collar, and its got two gold dragons on either side of the buttons. Pretty neat. I walked around and took fotos of different things. After a little while, Spaz's father showed up with Ying Ying's father and they were both noticeably drunk. Ying Ying and her mother were in close tow. Spaz's father was treatin me like a monkey and it was getting me real frustrated. He treated me different from the others. The others took me in as one of them and I felt honored but then Spaz's father just wanted to hang with me because I was a gweilo. I mean, he prolly didnt mean to do it, but it was really frustrating and annoying. I know i don't describe it very well, but it just felt like I was prodded. I know that if that **** guy from a previous comment he posted () reads this he will say that I am some ignorant loud mouth yank who thinks everything should be my way or the highway and that I am out of touch with other cultures, but no, I am not, this guy was just making me feel crappy. You had to be there I guess. That **** guy obviously has no idea whats going on or who I am. Hey, if you want to let your liberal heart bleed, be my guest, let it bleed, I enjoy the posts. But one thing I would like for you to do is make sure you know the facts or walk in my shoes. ;-) tee hee.
By this time I was getting really tired walking around and the snowball fight at the mountain earlier took alot out of me. Plus I could not breathe out of my nose at all. The younger folks decided to go hit up a bar. Ugh. I could barely drink the beer. When I would drink the cold stuff my nose would get worse, then I would have some skewerd meat on a stick and it would open my nose up, then the beer would close it. I hate being a party pooper. At 1130PM we headed bck to the hotel. I fell asleep right away.

Posted by Phil at 10:58 PM | Permalink

Kunming to Dali
We got on the bust at 800AM this morning after breakfast and headed out for Dali. Its ~4 hour drive by bus thru the mountains. It took about 4.5 hours because we stopped at a couple places for gas and stretching. I knew signing up for this tour that there was gonna be a lot of time spent on the bus, many long bus drives between cities. However, I am super glad that we took bus rides. It was absolutely breathtaking. The country side, not the bus. I tried to take as many pictures of the gorgeous chinese countryside as possilbe. I can't express enuff how gorgeous it was. Words can't really describe it and my fotos thru the bus window don't do justice either.
Once we got out of Kunming City, the mountains started pretty soon. I knew right as we started out that I was not gonna want to sleep on these long bus rides from town to town. We passed an uncountable number of small chinese mountain villages. This is the China you saw in text books growing up: The small communities, old traditions, and old style architecture. There was lots of earthy reds contrasting wiht the faded black roofs of stone or slate. Each house looked as if it was packed onto or next to another. There seemed to be no real formulated layout as to where to build houses. Just throw a house out and see where it lands. The houses would follow the slope of the mountain or where they terraformed the mountainside. This made it look as the house had grown out of the grown because some thin patches of wheat? were growing on some roofs.
Speaking of Terraforming Mars Now!, the terraforming of the mountains just added more to the view. With its crops, it added nice contrasting vibrant greens and yellows to a landscape dominated by reds, browns, greys, and blacks. The occasional small lake or pond at the bottom of the hillsides added even more.
While taking fotos, I had trouble with the road, trees lining the road, bumps on the road, bus windown, and low level light conditinos (it was overcast and sprinkling off and on) causing blurred or crappy fotos. I wish I had a special panorama mount for the side of the bus. We stopped off at one SINOPEC to gas up and stretch arond 930AM. We stopped again at 11AM to stretch. At the second stop, I tried to call Yumi in Japan for Valentine's Day. I got an answering machine with someone talking all Samurai like. I asumed it to be Yumi's Japanese cellfone so I left a message. The damn thing cut me off. We headed off towards Dali again.
We had to climb higher up in the mountains on a secondary road because they were creating a bigger road. It wasn't bad like it would be in the US because there was barely any other vehicles driving thru the mountains. The occasional tourbus, van, pickup truck. We would always get stuck behind a hauler moving at a snail's pace. It would take forever to get thru the mountains at that speed. Oh, the chinese like to pass on curves, especially when they can't see around them. I can't count the number of times he passed people on curves or whnen he would pull out in front of oncoming traffice. Aiya.
The higher we got in the Mts, the more spectacular the views got. Passing over bridges stretching across deep ravines that flowed into countryside sprinkled with small villages, amazing. At one point we were coming around the bend from one part of the mtside and we drove right into the clouds. The mtside across the gap from us was blanketed in clouds. We couldn't see below the bridges. Fantastic. We then entered a tunnel that took us thru a mt. We come out and there were still clouds all around.
We finally arrived at the Modern Dali City and headed straight for lunch. It was sprinkling. I called Yumi after lunch and left another meessage and got cut off again. DAMNIT! So much food. Damn MSG!
We took the bus around the city and we drove to a sightseeing place by the sea. It had raied here hard yesterday or so. This is where we met another Zhongshan tourgroup. A few of us walked to the pier and looked at the sea. It was a very muddy walk. Eeeew, the bus driver is gonna yell at me. The mud was yellow and red. Chinese like the chinese flag! I got to the end of the pier and took a panorama of the city and mts across the sea: 14 shots i think. We then walked back. By the time we got back to the buses, it started raining a bit harder.
We headed to Dali's Old City. What a beauty. ~1000 years old. The buildings looked their age but the interior was all modern updating. Very interesting contrast. It was raining muhc harder and got real windy. We drove thru part of the city and got to one of the 4 direction gates. we went to the top of the hall that was an overlook of the city, it also contained a stage for viewing of Traditional Dali Dance and Music while having traditional snacks. The outfits worn by this chinese minority are very cool and pretty. I like the headdresses worn by the women. I videotaped all the performances. The actual dances and songs I thought were pretty lame, but hey, decide yourself. The best part of the show is when they asked audience members the ingredients of a soup-drink. I was the only white folk there and the Sucka MC came over to ask me about the drink. She started spouting off in Putonghua and I was like, "Wo bu dong." :D That got a laff out of the surrounding chinese. She asked a few others. Those who got it right got to go on stage and learn a dance. Chen, the guy I sit next to on the bus and father of Kevin, got to go on stage. It was quite humorous.
After the show was over, we headed to this famous Dali Rock shop. It was another of those government forced visits. This is how the tourist trade works here: They take rocks from the mts and turn them into all sorts of things. Statues, chairs, chess pieces, vases, and they take slabs of rock and frame them. Sounds dumb, but this stuff if very pretty. Of course, its uber-expensive in the shop because the people need to make commissions. Of course there were lots of things I wanted bu then I thought: 1. where the hell am I gonna put it? 2. How am I gonna get it home? 3. Whats its use? -Nothing. Basically its just prettty junk thats useless. Just another thing to lug around and collect dust. Another thing to clean and I had enuff of that B.S. as a kid to last me five lifetimes. I wanted those chinese chess pieces though. They were 100RMB, but the people wouldn't haggle. I will wait to see if I find them at a street vendors by the city.
As I entered the shop, a saleswoman was assigned to me. I had a young attractive maiden (because an old ugly widow wouldn't be able to sell as well) fixed to me on a 2 foot leash tied at the waist. This girl walked up to me from the buffett line and just started talking to me like I was chinese. I smiled a nice "Wo bu dong". I then headed off to look at stuff. I noticed that she was following me around. Everything I looked at, she would come up and start telling me about it. "Lady, do you see that I am white and have no idea what your saying, or are you so drilled in what you are saying that it doesn't register?" :D After many minutes of looking around and having her speak to me after I continuously tell her "Wo bu dong" i decided give her a taste of her own medicine. I began speaking to her in English, "What rock is this. How much is this? Oooh, what is the significance of this Buddha statuette? Have you ever watched Star Trek? You know, you shouldn't waste your time on me. I don't plan on buying anything. See how it feels when you can't understand. You're a pretty girl but it just wouldn't work out between us. I am a white devil and you are a chinese woman. Chinese women are crazy. I have never met and gotten to know well a stable chinese woman. I am sure they are somwehere but I have never met one." After I finished talking to her and finding that that didn't work, I was like, Screw it! I am gonna lose here. I performed many Pick N Rolls and Duck N Covers, but this girl was on my ass like toilet paper on a shoe. After a bit of travelling around and looking at all the junk, I think she realized to cut her losses and move on.
After the rock shop, we drove the bus to Foreigner's St, which is a commmercial area of Old Dali with bars n stuff and some western food. The name misleads you though, I only saw two other foreigners. It was raining lightly and I paired up with Golf. Despite it being "Foreigner's St.", it was still old school. We walked around together and took lots of fotos. Golf is a photophile as well. We went into back alleys and took fotos. After about 30 minutes, it stopped raining and the sun tried to come out. It was coming out over on the opposing mountains across the horizon, but the moutnain we were next to had this forboding black cloud trapped against the mountain and it would not leave. We were to meet the group at a certain area but we got lost. we easily found our way thou. It was at this point that I tried to call the ZTG to get our bairings and found out that I sucked up all my minutes/money tryin to call Japan. Shoot.
On our way back to the bus, it started to sprinkle again. While running thru the street I found a vendor selling those chess pieces for ~70RMB. I was able to talk her down to 50. She relented as we turned away. Kool. They are heavy. We then sat in the bus for awhile because the bus had gotten stuck in a corner with many other buses. We headed to dinner when we got done. It was a packed 4 story place with very slippery stairs.
from dinner we went to the hotel. Absolutely gorgeous. There were 3 large Stupas/Pagodas lit up in the nite sky and the layout an location of the hotel was superb, see the fotos.
After unpacking ,a few of us went into the old city. WE took fotos together posing with flowers because of V-Day. Goofing around n stuff. A couple had rented out a bar and covered the floor with rose petals and lit the place up with candles. All the girls in our group were standing around by the door just waiting to catch a glimpse of the couple and oogle at the lack of male testosterone. ;-) LEAVE THEM BE!
As they stood around doing nothing and wishing they had a boyfriend that would do the same, I walked around and played with a dog, had my fotos put onto a CD-R, tried to buy a card for fone minutes but a Yunnan card wouldn't work on a Zhongshan fone. God forbid a traveller may need to put money on his fone in another province. I found some funny graffiti on a wall.
We R Muppets
No Celine Dion
(obviously written by foreigners)
And to send the message home, an elevator version of Celine Dion's "My Heart will Go on" was playing over a speaker. ugh.
In an antique shop i found some old swords. Real ones. Three old rusted out and bent katanas. One was actually nice even though it was bent up. I should have gotten it, I think he wanted 300RMB. There was also this bad ass heavy chinese sword. It was double bladed and it was real, but it was dusted, rusted, and bent up. But classy. The guy told me it cost 1600RMB and I laughed for about 1 minute in his face. I told him 500RMB and he kicked me out of the store. It must have weighed 15 pounds. I wanted it.
We goofed around then headed back to the hotel and slept. They turned off the pagoda lites. CRAP! I anted to get some nite shots. phoeey. Good nite everyone.

Posted by Phil at 09:51 PM | Permalink

Woke up at 4am this morning. Jeez. Proceeded to get ready. I was just about to finish putting on my clothes when the taxi guy called me at 445AM. I had no idea what he was saying. He was just rattlin' off some Beijing Babble. I figured he was telling me that he was waiting for me at the post office, so I booked it out of the house. I was skipping down the street to the post office. Actually, i was walking really fast, almost at a trot.
As I got closer, I thought he seemed to be happy to see me at 500AM in the morning. As I opened the cab door, the roof light showed his grin to be ear to ear...like in that Warrant video for "Cherry Pie". Maybe he has never had a fair fare before. (You like that little play on words? I just thought it up.) He said, "Guo Ji Zuo Dian ma?" which is "International Hotel?" I was like...yuppers. I followed that with a wink of the eye, a raised corner of my smile, a click of my tongue, and a thumbs up.
This guy was flying down the highway...the four lane highway with stop lights. I was trying to sleep, but I was afraid of not waking up. He had to be going 140km/h because we arrived in Shiqi in like 28 minutes. I always fear some chinese kid or adult would be walking across the street and not look both ways, because chinese people seem to miss that concept especially during rush hour.
I arrived at the hotel all in one piece. I gave the guy 60RMB. It was uber expensive because it was so early in the morning. I walked into the hotel and looked at all the Chinese New Year decorations and I tried to ask the bartender/frontdesk dude where I could get some OJ. My throat was giving me a tingling feeling. The Shiqi Tour Leader (future reference will be STL) came up to me after I finished drinking from the toilet and asked, "Are you Phir?"
Yes, I am "Phir". How could she guess that I was her token gweilo for the tour group? Because, I was the only gweilo in all of China signed up to go to Kunming with a tour group. She took me to the bus. I got on and the first thing I saw was a woman with a perm (a major 'no-no' for chinese women btw). She sees me and her eyes widen in shock. I am not kidding. "What's wrong? It looks like you have just seen a ghost."
I fell asleep on the bumpy bus ride to the airport. We finally got there and sat down in the waiting area. When I arose from my lack of sleep induced coma, I looked over and off in the distance I saw two girls wearing those shoes that have the pop out rollerskate wheels. At first, it didn't quite register and I was like, "Hey, the floor must be really slippery. You can see their reflection in it. Oh look! Here comes the Zamboni...oh wait...thats just a baggage car/fat people carrier and those are shoes." It was very elegant, oddly enough. And all this while listening to Ministry's "Thieves".
A chinese guy started talking to me. He seemed about my age. His English was OK. He needed more practice, but I was happy. YES! ENGLISH SPEAKERS! His English name was, get this: Golf. At first I thought he was saying his Chinese name (because his Chinese name is Go Fu), but no, he was saying Golf. He made the swing of a club motion and said, "you know...GOLF". Aaaaah. Gotcha. He said my hair looked very sharp. Um...thanks...dude....i like chicks.
He is here on his own as well. He works in Zhongshan making ducts. Well, that's what I could understand, he didnt know the english of what he does so he showed me. The airport was covered with them. I do know if he designs them or builds them or works on a conveyor belt like in "Lavern and Shirley". He told me that awhile ago he studied Hong Quan in Guangzhou. Kool. He asked if I would teach him. I was like, dude, you're chinese, I can teach you english, but I think you would lose face if a gweilo taught you gong fu. Besides, I think Guo Sifu would be pissed off if I tried teaching it to anyone.
We went thru the security checkpoints and I finally got some OJ. The OJ was uber-expensive, 12RMB. So, I layed into the seller...very polite like. "This is really expensive. How can you live with yourself knowing you are selling junk at this price? Personally, I would shoot myself." The two girls behind the counter did nothing but giggle awkwardly.
I then headed to the bathroom. Some dude left a yellow-green snot rocket on the side of the sink. It was huge too. I went and sat back down in the Gate waiting area, A24. A girl named Shoe...well...Sue introduced herself too me. She said, "You can call me Shoe." -Um...come again? "Sue" Great! Nice to meet you. I am Phir. She offered me a peice of candy. Well, that was nice. Thank you much.
Plane ride was uneventful. We got into Kunming and it was clear skies, well, blue with clouds. It was also 22C. A nice change from the past three weeks of overcast in Zhongshan. They say Kunming and this area of China only has one season, they call it Eternal Spring. It is dry and wet for 6 months out of the year. We boarded a bus and we were off. I noticed dark clouds closing in.
Our first stop was Green Lake. I walk all around for about 20 minutes alone then I ran into a family that sat next to me on the bus. I spent the rest of the time walking and talking with them. The husband and wife have one son, Kevin, who is super adorable. He is four years old and gets really excited when I look at him. Super hyper. I doubt he has seen many white folks. He likes to repeat what I say which is great. Chen, the father speaks very good English. Great! We walked around the lake and there were lots of folks making, listening to, and dancing to music. Bustin' out the jams. I brought out the video camera. You would think the audience would be looking at musicians, but nope, they were staring at me.
We had to be back at the bus at 315pm. Around 3 we headed back and it began to sprinkle. On our way out, the Kunming Tour Guide (future reference KTG) told us that today was the first day it has rained in three months. "That's right, Suckaz!! I brought the gloomy rain! In addition to that, I bring along pestilance, disease, destruction, common courtesy, and manners!" We headed to another park area where they honor the seagulls for some weird reason. Well, they don't really honor them, they just feed these winged rats bread so there are huges flocks of seagulls...with really bad hairdoos. :D
I think this place was called Da Guin since I had no idea what the tour guide was saying. But, it was a pretty park. From there we headed to dinner. It was 5pm. It was across the street from a hotel/tea shop/shopping mall that was designed like a Thai/Indian buddhist temple. I think I had the best sweet and sour pork in my life. Fantastica.
We headed to the hotel. I was on the 14th floor and the view was great. Dirty, but great. The ZTG brought me some chewable medicine tablets because I asked her where I could get some. After taking two, which are just chewable coughdrops, I decided that if we go to another stupid government mandated medicine shop like we did in Beijing, then I will try and squeeze a free treatment out of it. Around 8pm I headed out to find a kodak shop to transfer my pictures to CD. I then stopped at a DVD shop on the way back. I found tons of awesome junk. All the Transformer episodes. No Voltron thought, that woulda been hardcore. They also had some good movies too. But I didn't buy any of that stuff. I did buy "The Story of Ricky". "Arguably the most violent Hong Kong movie ever made...now totally uncut." This is the movie that the Daily Show lifted that guy smashing a head for the 5 Questions intro. Sweet. Can't wait to check it out.
I gots to get up at 630AM, sleep well.

Posted by Phil at 08:58 PM | Permalink

I woke up. After I took my shower, I was mopping up the floor and I heard the fone ringing. I ran to get it and I didnt recognize the number. I answered and it was Yumi. WOW! She called me from Japan. What a wonderful surprise. It was great to chat with her.
I called CASE in HK at 10AM to find out about my iPod and I got that same message. "Thank you for calling incompetant people. Business hours are closed. Please call back during normal business hours at 10AM to 8Pm Monday thru Saturday. Thank you."
um...it is normal business hours and its saturday. You should put on the message when you will be back in the office and why you are closed. But I guess that is too tough. I decided to call back every 10 minutes just to make sure and when I called at 1020AM, someone answered. So I said I would be there. I rushed to the Flower Hotel and the next ferry to catch was at 2pm and the shuttle left at 1215pm. It was 1045AM so I had some time to kill.
My old glasses that I brought along broke. I step on them once here in China and I bent them back into shape. However, doing so made them much weaker and during that wretched Bowen Camp, i finally broke them while I was trying to adjust them. Oh well. So, I decided to pick up a new pair here in China. Glasses here are super duper cheap. I could get a stylish and durable frame with good scratch resistance lenses for $24US.
I checked out a couple places on prices for frames and I found a place that had some cool frames for cheap and it was by my house. So, I was gonna go with that. By the time I had decided on what I wanted, it was 1130am. They kept speaking to me about something I didnt understand, turned out to be what type of lenses do you want. Basic, better, best, tinted, etc. I said I didnt understand, and they just continued to speak chinese to me... What part of "msec tang" do you not understand?
I called Jolene and I just asked a couple basic questions, and it took her about 10 minutes to ask them everything. I asked for the time they close...that question alone took 5 minutes to get. She kept getting and giving me information that was useless. It was just getting frustrated, becuase it was getting late.
I sat down for the eye exam, but they wouldn't start it out until 10 minutes were up, because of the chemical on the eyes left by contacts would ruin the test. Whatever, you prolly wont do it right anyway. They said the actual test would take 3 minutes. 15 minutes later the test was done. The glasses would be done at 2pm, so they would be ready when I got back from HK. It was 12:10pm by the time I got out of there. I told them about my time issue many times and they assured they could complete it by 12. but...nope.
I got to the Flower Hotel at 1215pm and just barely caught the shuttle bus. The ferry to HK was packed with people. I was very surprised. I have never seen it this packed. Leaving the ferry was a chore, there were 300 people trying to get thru one door all at once. Like John said last nite, "If any country was in need of deli tickets, its China." These people don't understand the concept of waiting in line. They just push and shove.
Once I got in HK I went straight to the CASE Office via the Subway. After I picked it up I took off and headed back to the ferry port and snagged a ticket for 6pm. Chinese/Hong Kongese people walk really friggin' slow. Its very irritating. I was in HK for a total of 2.5 hours. I got back to Xiaolan at 845pm. I then headed to the glasses shop to pick up my glasses.
And wouldn't you know it...I tried them on and I immediately said, "bu hou" (no good). I repeated it over an over again. They checked them over and put them on a machine for some adjustments and they still were wrong. Ugh! INCOMPETENCE ABOUNDS IN THIS COUNTRY! And it seems lIke I am the only one that deals with it all the time. The tailor, the travel agency, CASE, the eyeglass shop, etc. I mean, yes, I am a demanding person, I want things to be right, but I aint a prick about it. I mean, these people are certified eye-glass people. They had the diplomas and stuff hanging on the walls. I see tons of chinese with glasses. I can't believe that nobody in China has the same issue with their eyes that I do. Its not that uncommon: astigmatism, lazy left eye, and farsightedness or nearsightedness(i dont know which).
I called Amy and she talked to them. I told them that I would go home and get my old lenses to have them duplicate them. I ran back, dropped off my stuff, grabbed the glasses and headed back. They looked at the lenses and from what I could tell, they were clueless. I tried calling Amy back, but her fone was off. I tried calling Jolene, her fone wouldn't connect, I called Mountain, it wouldn't connect. Crap! Ugh! Then a few moments later Mountain called me back. He talked to them and they wanted to do the test over again. I tried to explain to them what is up with my eyes, but they didnt understand. I drew pictures and that didnt help. I told Mountain what the problem seems to be:
The lenses they created, the left one works with the left eye when the right eye is shut, the right works with the right eye when the left is shut, but when i open both eyes, it hurts and I can't focus on anything. I believe they failed in their test on my astigmatism or lazy eye. The thing is, my lazy eye isn't lazy anymore, I have strengthend it. I use contacts and I dont go cross eyed. I can't believe they could screw something like this up. I can't believe they couldn't find the problem, I am sure chinese people have the same problems as well. So, they gave me two options via Mountain.
1. Refund my money.
2. Try a different pair of frames. (apparently they felt that the location of the lenses may have caused the problems. I never heard anything so lame before. The issues is that they don't know what they are doing.
Being nice, I chose 2 after I told Mountain. I went outside and I chose a different set of frames and they looked at me like I was crazy. They tried to give me my money back, but I was like no i want you to try. So they started pricing out the other lenses. i was like YOU GAVE ME THE 2 OPTIONS! Screw it, I aint' dealing with you jackholes anymore, gimme my money.
I came home. Finished packing some stuff and just finished writing this journal. I am going to bed. I need to get up at 4am to get ready to leave for Kunming. I will be taking notes in a paper journal on the trip. Take care everyone. I will try and get lots of pictures.

Posted by Phil at 10:08 AM | Permalink

Today I had to get to the studio at 730AM since Shan Xiang is farther away. We didnt take off until about 750am because there were too many people on the bus and the driver wouldn't take us anywhere since there were too many. So sifu thru the dragon team into the van and followed. Driving to Shan Xiang was nice. The entire bus pretty much fell asleep after about 15 minutes. I was trying to visualize the forms in my head but I kept nodding off. It was a very scenic drive. Lots of mountains. Very pretty. We drove by the Sun Zhongshan park and i thought that maybe Shan Xiang was another name for the Zhongshan Gardens that we went to for Autumn festival. That would ruel. But, alas, it wasn't. It was another city a bit farther away.
Shan Xiang is a pretty big city. Its got alot of western style architecture and most of the places that Lion Team blessed was involved with this western wretchedness. A company named Agile. And in front of one of their complexes is where we held the big show. But, I have to say, the western style was much more pleasing to the eye than the tiled modern chinese buildings covered in filth. I guess the best way to describe it is to say it looked like a big casino with no lights or shiny things, just the gaudiness.
There isn't much to say about today. I mean, the performances were pretty much the same as the past two days. My performances went better today than yesterday in Guzhen. We were there a long time because we blessed two places around town and then had a long drawn out show. After the show was over, we packed up everything then drove about 5 minutes to someplace that gave us food. Outside along the road was a bunch of street vendors selling crap, like most places in China. I bought a switchblade for a 2/3 of what they wanted. I prolly could have gotten less, but I had an apple in my mouth. I never had a switch blade, so I got it for the novelty. I was looking for stuff to get as souvenirs for friends and family, but there is nothing but junk in China. I mean, there is nice stuff, but that is really expensive, and even then its just crap that takes up space and really doesn't do anything. It just sits there. Living here in China and barely watching TV or seeing advertisements, i don't buy useless crap really anymore. Hopefully when I get back to the States, I can keep it that way.
We headed back to Xiaolan and arrived at about 3pm or so. Everyone passed out on the bus on the way back. Riding my bike back to the house was a chore. Around the evening time i went to meet up with John and Jolene. My intention was to purchase a carry-on suitcase for my trip to Kunming, but it was way to expensive at the CRC. Jolene invited me over for dinner she was making. I was supposed to meet them in the CRC to shop for food for dinner after I bought some DV Tapes for Kunming, but they got sidetracked. I wasn't in the best mood for some reason. Tired i guess. After getting all the food we headed back. About 1 hour later or so Jolene had finished making food. It was really good. Very good. I took off around 9pm to pack up and maybe prepare for HK tomorrow. I was able to pack my stuff into a backpack so no need for extra luggage. Fell asleep around 1130. Its gonna be nice to sleep. :D
good nite.

Posted by Phil at 11:33 PM | Permalink

Today was what I was hoping Shunde was gonna be. Only problem was that I was grade A in Shunde and I was about Grade B- today. I am saddened by that, but I had lots of fun today. The plus side to my mistakes today is that one of the troop members was videotaping me and didn't really know how to use the camera, so he missed a few of my mistakes.
I got up early again and took a motorbike to the Yongling studio. There are less people here today. For some reason, which I chalk it up to lack of space, the dragons are coming today. That cuts out a bunch of folks. We just packed everyone into a couple cars and vans. Guzhen is a much smaller town and we went to an area that is very tightly packed. Guo Sifu drove the van I was in while his wife drove the car and we seperated from the equipment truck and another car. We got out of the van and had a small makeshift parade down an empty street towards a temple and stage/performance area. While dancing down the street, bit by bit we came upon more and more people, there was another Lion Dance troop already at the temple, I think it was the Guzhen troop. They had two lions. When our three lions arrived at the temple square, their lions inspected our lions and vice-versa...and they were sniffing butts just like dogs. They worked each other over and I was videotaping. An old guy came to yell at me to get out of the troops way and one of the team members explained I was in the team. This brought tons of stares my way from the Guzhen troop.
Greetings ended and I was the only non-chinese person there. Stares in Guzhen are much more super saturated in Guzhen because they dont ever see foreigners, Xiaolan and Shiqi are much more open relatively. We unpacked the truck and put the lion pedestals on the stage and then Guo Sifu mentioned for me to come with him. Some people stayed back to set up the pedestals. I flipped on the videocamera and walked with them our lions and the drummers. They had put the big drum on its rollers along with the cymbol stand and they rolled those down the street with the lions. We marched and followed the Guzhen troop around town. We arrived at the Guzhen Government building where our lions proceeded to bless the building and office rooms with its supernatural powers of non-corruption. Lets hope that this year it works, cause it never has. ;-)
All the while we were travelling around and blessing stuff in the streets and at the Government building, a couple fellas had those "pou jo" firecrackers that are super loud and they would throw them in the path of the lions, far ahead of the lions mind you, but ahead of them and the explosions would throw the red paper out like sprinking rose petals by the flower girl for the bride during a wedding. They were soooo friggin' loud. I really need to get some earplugs for tomorrow's festivites...and for sleep tonite. My last pair of earplugs fell on the ground and I dare not put those things back in my ears. The government building's outer layer is tile just like every other chinese construction and this caused the echo of the firecrackers to multiply the noise by a factor of "shut the hell up!" The worst place was in the stairwell because in addition to the most echo, there was no wind and the smoke from all the fireworks just hung in the air, I started to choke on the smoke, it was that bad.
After the government building we headed back to the Temple where they blessed the temple to be more honest with its congregation. The firecrackers here were almost as bad as in the Government building in the enclosed areas of the temple. I so wanted to take the firecrackers away or wished that his hand would get blown off. After we left the temple, someone had strapped a pole to a building column and at the end was a succession of vegetables tied up with bagged candy and sweets. The lions would go at each level and take turns. It got to the point where they were standing on each others shoulders and what not. Finally, the tallest guy was trying to get the second to last prize, but he couldn't cut it off and then he slipped a bit of the second's shoulders and he held onto the prize and pulled everything off the pole as he fell. He landed fine, he just lost his balance. No injuries. That drew cheers from the crowd.
While the lions sat on the ground fooling around with the spoils, Guo Sifu found me and told me to do Hong Quan in about 2 minutes. WHAT!? Apparently we aren't following the schedual he said we had. Great. I rushed some stretches and because of my hurridness, I didn't feel ready. I could give numbers of reason of why I made a few mistakes on the forms, but the number one reason that I made mistakes is that I still need more practice. I need to be able to do them without thinking, and that will take a bit more time. I am totally gonna practice at home when i get back. As I stretched a bit behind the spectators some people were staring at me and wondered, "Why is a white devil wearing a lion troop uniform?"
So, before I went on, there were three people there who spoke english that were taking fotos of stuff and they chatted with me. I went out in front of everyone and did Hong Quan #1. That one went fine. Then Sifu's daugther performed. I thought I was done, but then Sifu told me to go back on for #3. Crap. This is the one i goofed a bit on. I also slipped during it thru no fault of my own. Some kid had urinated on the ground again because Chinese people don't potty train their kids which could lead to the mental problems they have later on because potty training is considered a very important part of mind developement. John Irish and I have had many interesting conversations on this topic. So, anyways, the urine mixed together with the paper from those damn firecrackers and while I was doing my form I slipped on it, thankfully I caught my footing and went on with the form which drew some cheers, but my mind was already not where it should have been and my performance suffered. Lousy chinese culture. Pissing on the ground where people are performing. In the words of Kevin Meaney, "You're like a crazy person! Peeing on the ground whenever and whereever you want. That's not right!"
After the temple performances we went to the stage area. There were a couple lion dances and then Guo Sifu went up and talked a bit and on the spot I was told to do Hong Quan. CRAP! Oh well. The chinese way. So I did #1 and it was ok. I had change the form a bit because if not I would have fallen off the stage. Sifu's daughter went on, then another Wunderkind did a form then Guo Sifu put me on for #3 and this was better than during the Temple one. After I was done, Sifu's daughter told me that he wants me to say something for about 1 minute to the crowd. "What's the point, they can't understand me at all." Just say something for 1 minutes. Whatever.
I went up and I was about to start, I just said "Jo sun" (Cantonese goodmorning) and then some other sucka-MC pipped in with Mandarin and said some stuff. Then I got to speak. After the first sentence in English, the audience started to laugh. So I told them, "I realize that no one here understands what they hell I am saying, so I will make this quick." Sifu just stood their looking so happy like I had just cured cancer or something. The things chinese do for face. :D Guo Sifu rules though.
I only video taped the wushu performances and the pedestal dance, but I took fotos of the other acts. The pedestal dance was great. No mistakes taht I could see. He didnt fall today. The crowd went crazy for this one. It was great.
After that, the crowd dispersed and we packed up the truck. While doing so I had a few chinese people come up to me and give me the thumbs up and say stuff like, "Hun hou!" repeatedly. (means very good) and other things. It was very nice. One guy had 5 shiny metal teeth (chrome flavor prolly) on his lower jaw and I swear I think the other guy had wooden teeth. The guy with the metal must be a gangsta rapper. The things I notice. May God have mercy on me.
We packed up and headed back to Xiaolan. After we dropped some people off at the studio, Guo Sifu took us out to lunch. It was good. After we ate lunch, most people had left except for the Wunderkinden that needed to go back, me, and Guo Sifu. We were watching the news and a bit came on about Condoleeza Rice's trip to Europe and Middle East, but after a second it was on, the news was cut straight to a commericial. Then the commercial was cut back to the news for another story. I knew it was Condoleeza Rice because her grill his pretty unmistakeable. A news story about Chinese New Year in New York City came on. That was nice to see. After that Sifu drove me home. I have to meet them at 730AM tomorrow for our trip to ShanXiang. Great.
I went to go pick up a couple pair of pants I took to get repaired because I ripped them in the crotch and I forgot which repair shop I took them too. There are about 4 right in a row. However, I figured out that the one I took them to was closed. I will get them tomorrow. I came back here and started writing this journal entry.

Posted by Phil at 02:25 PM | Permalink

Kung Hei Fat Choy!!!
Thats the cantonese greeting that you say to one another during Chinese New Year. It means something like, May this year be prosperous. Something sappy. The Puntonghua is Gong Shi ....something something.
Woke up early again this morning. I barely got any sleep last nite because of those damn fireworks. Boy, am i gonna be tired today! I stepped out about 7AM to see if the Bau-tze shop was open or if anything was open so I could grab a bite to eat. I was utterly stunned by silence. The city looked like a ghost town. There was nothing going on. It felt like being in that scene from "Spirited Away" at the beginning. As I looked up and down the deserted streets, i was wondering if there was another cultural revolution. The streets were covered in scraps of blood-red paper from those fireworks like the bloodied shrapnel of chinese brains splattered upon the ground from public street executions.
I also searched for taxi bikes to take me to Yongling studio, but I saw none. They most have day off today. All the shops were closed. I headed back to the house and grabbed the bicycle and headed out at 730pm. I stopped at an open convenience store on the way there and grabbed some breakfast. On the way out I saw a motorbike taxi drive by. Great.
I got to the studio 10 minutes later. Everyone was wearing a snazzy "CHINA" jumpsuit. How do I get one!? Anywho, I was there and they gave me a gold sash to wear during the performance. About 8AM, John called me and said, "Where do we go." Jeez man. "Jolene knows, ask her." She got on the fone and I gave it to sifu. It was alright because we still hadn't everything packed yet. When we finally boarded the bus, it was packed tight. Shunde was about 30 minutes away. We got there about 845am and we started the show at 915pm. I got video of the whole performance except the last 2 minutes cause my tape ran out. It was actually quite boring. I love the lion dance, but there is a lot of waiting around in the dance where the lion hesitates doing anything. The lack of sleep was starting to wear on me. I did my performances and i felt pretty good about them. I watched them afterwards and I was quite surprised but still I am in need of practice. I need to make it more fluid. Its very choppy and you can see me thinking about the next move in a couple points. oh well...i think for a couple months practice its pretty good. I got two more days of this. At least the next couple days I can get decent sleep.
There is some good video I got. Some cute kids, chinese courtesy, and kids pissing on the ground right in front of everyone.
We left about 11AM and headed back here. On the bike ride home, the streets had gotten busier like they usually are, but there was also something different. All the streets were stained blood-red from water and urine mixing with the shrapnelled paper left over from blown out fireworks. The cleaning people came thru and sweeped it all up spreading the dye everywhere. John and Jolene came over. We ordered Pizza and watched some Simpsons. Jolene and John fell asleep on the couch. They left after that.
I sat down to write the past three days up on my computer. Nick finally showed up. He was in Shiqi last nite celebrating new Years with the ShiQi Bond people. Those that havn't gone home yet were partying at Boss Jane's pad and playing Mah-Jong. Neato.
We played a round of pool together while we caught up with each other. he is busy unpacking and stuff right now. Coolio.
Nothing much else to report. I need sleep tonite, I am tired from not very much last nite. I have to get up early, we are going to Guzhen for a performance. I have decided just to tape my stuff so I can study it and video tape a couple other things.
Goodnite. Happy Chinese New Year.

Posted by Phil at 02:48 PM | Permalink

We woke up this morning around 1100AM when the hosts showed up. Well, we got ready and out of bed at 11AM. We were up late goofing around last nite so we were tired. When we were completely out of bed, more host kids showed up. They started passing out the Hon Hing Lion Dance uniforms for us to wear. Great! Shiny green pants, super tight white shirt, used shoes, and calf wraps. Victor brushed his teeth and not a minute later he was smoking again. I wanted to smack him. We fooled around some more and then packed up the truck with tons of lion dance equipment.
We headed out. I sat in the prison seats by the window. After 20 minutes, I knew the girl from last night had no idea where TVB was at. It sure wasn't in Kowloon. After another 30 minutes of driving to an area of HK that looked barren save for some big industrial complexes, we arrived. It was 200pm. We unloaded and placed everything in the green room and then we sat around and had lunch.
When they said we would head to TVB at 2pm and practice Lion Dance n stuff, I thought they meant "practice" not sit around while all the other groups do show practice. We sat around the green room and in the TV Studio watching other groups do their routines. There were the hosts of the show on the other side, some dancers doing Red Streamers, and a bunch of little girls dressed as Chickens (year of the Cock) doing a horrific dance. I swear, the things that parents make their children do in the name of "cuteness" is downright abusive. This is universal, not just China. Around 3:45pm, I was fed up. I am bolting. I was planning to leave at 5pm to catch the 8pm ferry for sure, but I couldn't just do nothing for another 75 minutes. There was no where to do Hong Quan on my own. This way I can practice at home for tomorrow and get more sleep. I caught the subway and spent 30 minutes on it. I got to the ferry terminal a little bit before 5pm. I was able to get a ticket for the 530 ferry. Sweet. I snagged some gyoza and chicken skewers and headed out.
I called Amy while i was on the ferry to find out if Nick had arrived yet. I always was curious about the status of the trip, whether they have all the spots filled or not. Nick hadn't shown up yet, but the Agency called Amy today to let her know that they will pay for my 5AM taxi to Shiqi to leave on the bus to head to the Guangdong airport. Damn, that is early. However, Amy didnt ask about openings. Oh well. I can deal if Nick doesn't go, its not a big deal. It would just be nice to have someone who speaks english. We can check the openings tomorrow. Amy mentioned that John was back in town and he was over at the Big House having BBQ with Jolene and Moses and her. Sweet. Maybe they will be there when I get back. I still will practice for tomorrow. I hope I don't screw up the forms, I want to make all the chinese folk gasp with surprise at my superiority. ;-) Crap! I forgot to call and harass the CASE people. Oh well. I will do it on the 10th.
I arrived in Zhongshan about 7pm. I didnt mention this last time, but they completed work on the Zhongshan Ferry Port. Its super nice now. Its very friendly and pleasing to the eye...no more bleak communist design. The shuttle bus to Xiaolan doesn't leave till 8pm, so I started writing out this journal entry. As I started writing I was next to the TV in the waiting hall. There was this big festival going on in some Chinese city. The news people were able to corner a white guy and have him say some things on TV. He just said the normal crap about how its a cool thing to see and a good experience, etc etc etc. I have done that about 3 times already. Dude! Where is this festival taking place? Why can't I be there? That was the whole point of going to HK. I thought it being Chinese New Year and HK with one of the top lion troops in town, this would have been a giant event where we would go practice and meet tons of other people like a big seminar. Thats what I expected and hoped. My dreams were shattered. China tends to do that...they excel in destroying hopes and dreams. *couch* Cultural Revolution *cough*
Oh well, it wasn't a total loss. I bonded with some of the troop wunderkinden and met some new people. I am now 1 degree of seperation from Jackie Chan and many famous HK people. :D
As I am writing this on the curb waiting for the bus to leave, I hear fireworks out in the distance. Cool. One of the shuttle drivers is amazed at my handwriting. He said he doesn't understand but that it looks beautiful. Did I laugh, no. I am polite. The shuttle took off at 8pm.

I got back to the Big House about 840pm. We made really good time. I gave John a hug..."Brothers don't shake hands...brothers got to hug!" The BBQ they all made was fantastic. I told them about HK and told them about Shunde tomorrow and our performance. They were excited so I had Jolene call up Guo Sifu and she asked them if there was room for them on the bus, he said sure. So I told them to be there at 8am, none of this Foshan time (i said 8AM, they didnt show until 1pm). They were like, coolio.
We watched Hellraiser IV: Bloodlines. It wasn't that good. They kill Pinhead...YOU CAN'T KILL PINHEAD!
I checked my email. Guess what I got...and email from CASE saying that my iPod was ready on the 7th. SOB!!!!!!! What is wrong with these 'tards?! they need to communicate with each other. I mean, they did do what they would say, email and prolly call when it was ready, but I called a few hours earlier on the 7th and they said it would be back until the 14th. Ugh! Just another reminder to me and all you out there who aren't in China or its special governing areas, don't trust anything they say and constantly ask them questions about things that involve your time and your money. Otherwise, they won't do it.
So I sent an email back telling them off in a way. Now I have to go back again, I will do it saturday, the day I have off before I leave for Kunming. I got Lion Dance performances for the next 3 days.
I watched Kung Fu Hustle with Jolene and John and we chilled. I chatted with my bro before I went to bed. He auditioned for a reality show over the weekend that would follow the band INXS in search of a new front man to replace the old front man who accidentally committed suicide while trying to do some sexual asphixiation thing with a rope around his neck. He didnt get any call backs, but if INXS wants to succeed with quality, they should. He doubts he will be on TV or be recapped on the show. One of his friends performed "Baby Got Back" so he might make it on TV just for the hilariousness of the performance. My bro did an original, so did Don. While chatting with my bro, i realized falling asleep tonite will suck. Every five minutes, some chinese guy lights off "pou jo" or "bian pou" those huge wrappings of red fireworks that sound like a machine gun and last for about 30 seconds and leave tons of read paper all over the place. They are super loud and annoying. I got sick of them the 3rd day I was in China. And of course, they are so loud and cause enuff vibration that all the surrounding cars' alarms are set off. Great. Let's see what happens.
Well, time for bed. I practiced some Hong Quan before bed. Good nite.

Posted by Phil at 04:32 PM | Permalink

Woke up quite early this morning. Headed out of the house around 740AM to make sure I got to the Lion Dance Center in time. I snagged a motorbike and said "Yongling", thats the district that the lion dance setup is located. It also happens to be the name of the team I am apart of. The driver must have understood me because we went in the general direction. I pointed him the rest of the way.
They say that the Yongling District is a very rich district. Well...if this was a rich district, I would really hate to see the poor district. The house here look very expensive and I have no doubt that people have spent lots of money in this area. However, the houses have this weird look of gaudy Western architecture mixed with the Chinese love of tiles and house layouts (which i think is a cool layout) and went they put it together it is just downright ugly. Give me the old traditional style of Zhongshan Gardens or Wong Fei Hong's Museum in Foshan any day over this crap. The residences look very expensive, but no one seems to care about the surrounding landscape or foliage. The place looks like a hurrican ripped thru here just last nite. Overgrown vegetation, trees knocked over, crap laying all around, spotted grass fields. Pretty displeasing to the eye.
I think its partly chinese culture though. The layout for their houses causes it. Basically, you got this house with a 8 foot to 13 foot wall surrounding the plot of land. Inside they have picturesque gardens and other pleasurable viewing materials, i have been able to peer in thru some gates. They don't see the actual surrounding landscape unless they leave their house and the only time they do that is when they go to work. I am sure if they had to look at it every moment they were at home, then they would do something about it.
I get to the Lion Dance Center and there is this 1980s (looked 80s-ish, but most everything does here in China) blue Honda Mini-Van sitting outside the door. The driver was blaring horrible Canto-pop over the out of date speakers. I knocked on the blue door. One of the wunderkinden answered and let me in. I took some morning footage of their living quarters and them getting ready. A couple others planning to come to HK had arrived. Then Sifu arrived all full of energy. We packed 9 people into this mini-mini-van. We headed out to the Guo Tai Bus Station, the small one by me. We hopped a bus for shenzhen at 840AM. I had the first seat next to Guo Sifu.
One thing that needs a swift bullet to the head is Karaoke on buses. It should not be legal to have it on the whole 2.5 hour bus ride. It really wasn't bad, but it could have been. This girl that sat across the aisle from me pretty much sang along with almost every song. Guo Sifu sang along with a couple. Of course they weren't singing loud, but enuff that me and my hawk ears could hear it....what? Even in China karaoke videos are quite horrendous. I still love the one that had Jackie Chan, Leslie Cheung, Yeun Biao, and Andy Lau sitting around an Old West fashioned Boomtown corner that had a well, a blacksmith and a bar all within a 5 foot radius.
The sun was coming thru the front windsheild so i was wearing my police mirrors while I drifted in and out of sleep. My head was falling into the aisle, but most everyone on the bus was passed out. We arrived in Shenzhen and it was really crowded. I thought that from Shenzhen we would need to take a ferry boat ride, but I was wrong. Shezhen shares a boarder crossing with the north part of HK. After about 20 minutes of walking and going thru two passport checkpoints, we snagged a train to take us to the Hon Hing Train terminal (East Kowloon Area). The train ride was around 30 minutes and it was a glorified subway train, just a little more plush. This family got on at one stop and this little baby girl had the biggest cheeks I have ever seen on a baby before. She was infatuated with the red "Oh Shit!" handles dangling from the ceiling.
We got to the KRC station at Hon Hing where we waited for our ride. About 30 minutes later he showed up. We were picked up in a converted chinese fish truck. Well, it never really was a fish truck. If you have ever seen movies set in China/HK/Japan, its the trucks that carry fish. This carried Lion Dance equipment. Three people could fit in the front cab, then we had 5 crammed into the prison seats in the front of the trailer while two people stood up in the back of the trailer with all the equipment. If that ain't totally chinese, I don't know what is. I was at the left window and I stuck my camera out the window as we were driving around the spider web that is the Hong Kong road and Highway system. One of the wunderkinden vomited in the back of the truck from standing/sitting in the back of the truck. He better have not heaved onto my bag. I will be pissed.
The sun was out, the sky was considerably clear, and it was warm. A gorgeous day. So what did we do on a gorgeous day in HK after eating in a cafeteria over looking scenic Aberdeen Harbor? Nothing! I was so friggin bored for 2 hours! Basically, after lunch, we arrived at one of the practice studios this new Sifu makes use of. This is where we will be sleeping tonite. It looked like Chang Kai Shek's Family Junkyard. The place looked like a pig sty....wait...a lion sty. There was liond dance crap and trash all strewn about the place. Some workers cleaned it up quick and laid down the practice rug. Then everyone sat around doing nothing but sleeping for what seemed like forever. I kept asking the driver dude, "How do I get to Times Square? Where are we on the map? Where is the bank, I need to exchange money? Is there anything to do around here?" I got negative answers to all. The driver spoke english, he just didnt know anything. He claimed there was nothing to do at all. BS!
After 30 minutes I had already flipped thru all the magazines they had laying around in which they had stories on this Hon Hing Troop. I had also seen all the fotos the Hon Hing Sifu had taken with celebrities: Jackie Chan, Andy Lau, Simon Lam, and Tung Chee Wah (the commi ruler of HK) I think thats his name. Also, Andy Lau had done a bunch of foto advertisements for the New Year with some of the lions. They were quite humorous. "Hey Andy! Your stance is wrong."
I called CASE to find out the status of my iPod. The jerks said it wouldn't be ready tomorrow, yet they said it would. They said it would be ready by the 14th, Monday. I was like, I need it for my trip. "We are sorry for your inconvenience..." Bullshit, if you assholic chinese cared at all for your customers you wouldn't have said 3-5 days knowing full well in advance that you could not deliver. (all the people there when I turned my iPod in never got theres at least for 1.5-2weeks) I knew this would happen so I am just callling to be difficult and I will call again tomorrow.
Finally after sitting and staring at nothing while all the others took their afternoon nap (chinese people like to nap in the afternoon because they aren't grown up enough to handle the trials of the day), we headed to dinner. We hopped into the truck and drove all around the road system just so that we could go about 1 mile distance when we prolly traveled about 10 miles of road. Everything is so cramped here. We got to this diner and Victor ordered me some Chinese French Toast which was covered in liquid sugar and egg butter. Then they also gave me some terrible salsbury steak and eggs. At the diner we met some of the other teachers.
When we got back to the studio the head Hon Hing Sifu showed up while we goofed around. I was bored again. It took me 20 minutes to find out what was going on tomorrow. I talked with one of the comrades from Hon Hing troop. Her english was pretty good. Tomorrow we have practice at 2pm at the TV station where they will shoot the TV Program at midnite. Cool. She said TVB is located in Kowloon, so that means its pretty close to the China Star Ferry Terminal so i can hit it up at 8pm and get back intime to get a good sleep since I need to be in Shunde the day after that. So, to kill some time and appease the lion dance fanatics, i popped my tape of the Foshan lion dance troop to veiw it. The Hon Hing Sifu saw it and was watching it with me for about 5 minutes. He wants a copy. I mean, I think he wants a copy. His english was so messy I couldn't quite understand what he was saying. He then invited us all to dinner. Oh crap. Not again. I ain't hungry, oh well, I guess the MSG will take care of that. While at the crowded dinner table, I found room in my innards to pack some very good MSG ladened food away.
We headed back to the studio where the Hon Hing sifu wanted to watch the wunderkinden in action. The area that they practice the pedestal set up is on the roof. Its an amazing view, I was up there when we first arrived and its absolutely gorgeous. I got some fotos during the day and night. Very nice. It was 23 stories up. After that practice, Hon Hing sifu invited us back to his pimp pad and tried to seduce us with his many awards and trophies. Impressive. We chatted back and forth with everyone. Some folks speak english. Now, because they speak english, they think they are really cool, and acted all arrogant when they would talk to me. "English...no problem. I speaks english to you always." To bad its wrong. All I ask is that you try to speak english, I know that living in HK, these people have been taught it more than in China, don't be arrogant about it though because you aren't that good. Aiya.
We were taken to the roof here as well. This was on the 26th story. We were up there for about 5 minutes when the driver came running up the stairs with a handful of flames. He thru it into a pot and poked it with a stick with his other hand while he was sucking and blowing on his burnt hand. One of the english speakers showed up on the roof with two handfuls and then some of Money for the Dead. I figured thats what it was, but it seemed there was other stuff in there too. It looked like trash. "What's that..." I asked....
"Oh, its hard to explain to you."
-Try me, Prick. Just cause I ain't chinese don't mean I don't understand. After I said what it was, they all gasped, "WAH!, He's right! But he is still a gweilo."
I discussed my past gung fu experience with Siu Fei Long (Small Flying Dragon). We then went back to the pimp pad where i looked at some fotos. We then walked back to the other studio. I started writing this journal entry. After about two sentences in, some of the younger Hon Hing folks came over. They played some music while we all chatted. It was nice.
The host people left us so we could get ready for bed. I had to take my first chinese shower/bath. Basically, they had this giant bin filled with water. It had a heating wire at the bottom to heat the water. You take a bucket and pour it all over yourself, then soap yourself up, then dump another bucket on yourself. We were in the bathroom with a tile floor. By the time I got to go, i was last, the floor was under an inch of water and the water holder had very little water left. What was left was damn near scalding. I found this out when I tried to dump it on my chest. AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! I had to mix it up with water from the faucet. Talk about getting Hong Kong toe...this is the way to do it.
After the bath, I taught "Pull My Finger" to the chinese wunderkinden. They were speechless. It was quite humorous. Later on in the night they were doing it with each other. I have taught the chinese another valuable skill.
Now these wunderkinden are from poor families. In China, well, in the past, poor families that are too poor to care for their kids send them to kung fu schools to live. Thats what I think is happening here. So, they were all amazed with my electronic toys...my digital camera and DV Video Camera. I allowed them to use them. They took tons of pictures and video. I barely touched my stuff today. They seemed to enjoy it. During the time we were about to go to bed, after everyone cleaned up and etc, they took some really hilarious video footage. Its totally going on the DVD. Its great. I laughed my ass off.
We all went to bed, or tried to. We prolly didnt fall asleep untill 3AM. Basically, it was like a sleepover with a bunch of immature boys. It was great. I gave a bunch of charlie horses. It was great!
Time to sleep.

Posted by Phil at 02:46 PM | Permalink

I was insulted again today as I was walking down the street. It was around 2pm and I was just out for a stroll. A person riding a bike rode by and a girl on the back of a bicycle saw me and said with surprised the title of this entry. It means fat man. I am getting sick of these assholes.
Went to practice and spent about 1 hour trying to understand what is going on for the next week. I gots me a finallized schedual of the events...and of course, this is subject to last minute change.
Feb 7-8th: Spend two days in HK practicing and having free time, but I plan to watch the lion dance troop, take pictures and video.
Feb 9th - 11th: There is a set schedule of events. All three are in the morning. First day is in Shunde, second is Guzhen, third is in Shanxiang. I will perform Hong Quan #1 & 3 each morning. And then they said they want me to do the dragon head. Of course, I don't know how to do it and they just want to laugh at me.
But, i am going to bed, i just put all my stuff together for HK. I need to meet them at 8am.
Goodnite.

Posted by Phil at 07:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Today I went to the foot massage place by myself. It was nice. However, I made sure to avoid the eyes of the girl giving me the massage. Everytime I looked up or opened my eyes, she was looking right at me. Ok...this is freakin' me out. I ain't here by myself for a "happy ending" or anything more immoral. Icky. I was getting weirded out. I am hoping that since this is a nice place, it isn't like one of those "Rub n Tugs" that some of the other people attend. Speaking of which, one of the "Whore Hairdressing Shops" in town has been closed the past few days I have walked by it. Thats good. There are so many of these things all around here. Its gross.
After the massage thing, I bought a couple CD-Rs because I needed to put some fotos of Daisy on it to give to her mom. So, after I bought the CD-Rs, i bought a couple of those little money packets that people give little kids for Chinese New Year. I threw a few bucks into the packet, I burnt the CD then picked up some candy for her. I had called Jolleen and she said that for children of Daisy's age, 4 years old, its almost an insult to the parents to give money to the little kids because they really don't have an idea of what money is, but its better to give food or toys to them. The reason i gave a money packet is because I wanted to give a money packet for Chinese New Year. Screw chinese customs.
After I got it all together, I rode my bike over to their place. I remember her grandmama told me what number their house is and on what street. I rang the doorbell and her grandpapa answered. He was surprised to see me and my bag of goodies. He invited me in and told me that Daisy and her mom were out and about in town. I chatted with Grandmama and grandpapa for about 10 minutes, then took off since I had to pack for Hong Kong tomorrow.
Around 6pm, Grandpapa Jing-Xun gave me a call and I heard Daisy chirping in the background. They wanted to take me out to dinner. So I said sure. I met them at 630pm and we went to this place called Old Place. I got to witness a chinese Hamburger. Its about the size of a hamburger from White Castle. However, instead of a rubber chunk, they had about three small slices of beef smothered in chinese cheese topped with some lettuced. The bun was steamed so much it was soggy, but a good soggy. It was yummy. Daisy was cramming that thing into her mouth. Very humorous.
After dinner I stopped by the BOND office at 8pm to sign an amendment to my contract stating no evening classes and two consecutive days off for the next term. I had Owen call Guo Sifu to let him know I would be late by 20 minutes. I then headed to practice. I got to practice and I noticed tonite was gonna be a waste. For some reason the whole floor was covered in a thin layer of water like the Bowen floors were. If i tried at all to do any gung fu, i would slip and hurt myself. So I started picking up bad chinese habits of sitting around and doing nothing at practice. Around 930, Sifu still hadn't shown up and I got irritated. I called up Mountain and he was able to get a hold of Guo Sifu. At the same time that Mountain called me back, about 3 other staff members told Michelle to tell me that there was a problem with the HK trip on Sunday, so it was cancelled but that we would go on Monday. What? All you knew about this, and saw me sitting there for all this time and no one said anything, and sifu didn't even tell Owen when he called him two hours ago. This stuff has got to stop, but I know that it never will, and my irritation at it never will either.
Oh well. I came home.
Moses had bought a new DVD player for the house since Peter took his with him. So, I paid him for my share. Its a nice one. I think. Oh well.
Talk to you tomorrow.

Posted by Phil at 11:07 PM | Permalink

Amy called the ShiQi travel agency number this morning. She walked into my room and said, "I am really sorry, Phil...you are such a wonderful man, you shouldn't have to deal with this type of let down everyday of your existence in China. I apologize for the rest of my country-men and -women, we are an inconsiderate people. The trip has been cancelled. Six people have pulled out this morning." So the Kunming trip has been cancelled. Amy didn't really say all of that. I made up about 10% of it. ;-) So, I need to decide what else to do.
Yumi is back in Japan right now but she went to the dentist the other day. She needs to have her wisdom teeth removed. She is having it done right now at 230pm. Ouch. I bet she will look like a chipmonk afterwards. :D
Amy and I went to the other travel agency in Xiaolan around 230pm to find out about other possibilities. They are offering a tour to Kunming almost identical to the one the other agency was offering. They already have 17 people on the tour, so its a postive "go". I signed up for it. It was also cheaper as well. Only 2400RMB. The ladies in the travel office didn't seem very happy though. I didnt see any smiles while I was there. What a shame.
After I hit up Wooden Chair for some yummy Tomatoes and Eggs, I corresponded with Nick, a teacher that used to teach here but went to Inner Mongolia now he is coming back, about going on the tour with me since I would be the only white folk that speaks english. Most others in Xiaolan already have plans. He is interested in the trip. As of now there are 17 spots left open and he won't get into town until the 8th, so hopefully they stay open.

I went to practice tonite and just practiced hard.

Posted by Phil at 10:32 AM | Permalink

I Learned never to take the Shunde Route to Hong Kong. It took me four hours to get there. Left the Flower Hotel 815am, the van guy picked up many other people and we finally arrived at the Shunde Port around 930am. I have never been here and it was really nice looking. The ferry itself took 2 hours almost exactly. To kill time I dragged along my laptop. I was finishing up the last hour of Farewell My Concubine. That movie is pretty awesome, but very depressing. After about 5 minutes, I noticed two kids sitting behind me were watching so I unplugged my headfones and set the laptop in the middle seat so the kids could watch and woman sitting in the other seat could watch as well. There was a couple points that I had to cover the little kids' eyes. And fastforward something. Most of this part that we were watching had to deal with the Cultural Revolution. I was kind of worried about playing it, I was looking around seeing if anyone seemed to care, but no one did. So I said to the kids, "Are you happy to see what your government has done to your people. The people that were involved in this are now in power! Good for them, huh?"
They just stared and giggled. "A white man is talking to us!"
After that movie ended, I tried to put in Edward Scissorhands, but my DVDplayer wasn't reading it. Crappy Chinese knockoff DVDs. So, I threw in One Flew Over the Kuckoo's Nest. After about 30 minutes of that since the kids and woman lost interest and I couldn't hear it, I shut it off and put on Super Troopers.
We finally got to Hong Kong and with walking and the subway system and trying to find the office, I didnt get to CASE till about 1:15pm. I got to the Apple Certified Service Center and during a conversatioon with another customer, I realized that it should be called "The iPod Service Center". I was there for a span of about 30 minutes or so. Everyone that I saw come in had an iPod related issue. I had a battery that has drained during the one year warranty, another dude had the same model as mine but his battery was fine - the harddrive in it just stopped working - he has had his for 1.5 years. Another guy was there to pick his up and they still didn't have it ready for him. He came in last week and they said 3-5 days, he showed up, they didnt have it. He came back today, they didnt have it. He said he will be back in town on the 19th and they better have it.
While I was there, about 6 people came and left about iPods. The one guy who had his harddrive conk out said he was there in the morning and he swore that at least 20 people had come and gone while he was there and it was all about iPods.
I swear, Apple is its own worst enemy. The iPod would have been the perfect thing if they made the battery more accessible, removeable, and last longer. However, truth be told, the battery technology to make something like that run a long time still isn't there. Its getting better, but its still tuff. Gooooo T/J! You should start some business with Apple! :D
After that I headed to another shop then head back to the ferry port. I was constantly travelling all day and I ate alot of M&Ms. The van ride back to Xiaolan from the Zhongshan ferry port made my tummy ache, so i rested instead of going to practice. I will make up for it tomorrow.
I am off to bed. Check you later.

Posted by Phil at 09:50 AM | Permalink

Today I went down to ShiQi to pick up my Z-VISA. Finally! No more useless trips to Macau and HK. This makes me feel much better. I picked it up and Dan was there doing something for his contract, so we decided to head back together. When we got to the FuHua hotel to pick up a bus, we had talked about travelling during the festivities and he took me to the ShiQi travel agency around the corner to see if they have any tours. After all the brainstorming we did, we found one for Kunming from the 13th - 19th. It would just be me, with the chinese tour group. Kinda like Beijing was, but before I knew about Rumi and Yumi. So far there was only 9 people confirmed and they 16 to run it. She gave me her card and Amy will call her to ask her what the status is. Interesting. Hopefully it works out, it sounds kool.
While trying to learn the itinerary of the trip, I called Amy and while I was talking to, I had the lady fax the itinerary to the Xiaolan Office because Amy was there. While we were chatting she got it and we discussed it. Ain't modern technology wonderful. China needs more of it.
We then headed back to Xiaolan.
Practice was cold again and rainy. I did some stuff and then I helped rib the new dragon that we got. A long arduous process.
I then headed home.

Posted by Phil at 10:08 AM | Permalink

I am witnessing more and more bike accidents. As I came home from practice a bit early tonite becausee no one was there to help me out, it was drizziling rain. I was riding the bike and I heard a crash on the side street thru the trees. I quickly went to the corner to see if I could give any assistance. As I was pulling up, a motorcycle was leaving the scene of the accident. (they didn't do anything, they just witnessed it and didnt' want to get invovled)
I pulled up and there were two bikes laying on the ground with shattered glass. There were three men on the ground. The one on the left, still on the pavement was bleeding from the mouth and there was a small pool of blood on the pavement. He looked dazed. I tried to offer him my fone so he could call authorities, but he just stared at me. Then he took out his fone and called. The guy on the right sat in the grass and he had pulled his pant leg up and he was obviously in pain on his leg, however there wasn't any noticeable damage. He started shouting at the guy on the left. I figure the guy on the right was with the guy in the middle and the guy on the left was the cause of the accident. The guy in the middle was sitting at the beginning, then he stood up and he it was obvious that he shouldn't because he didnt have any balance. He looked as though he would fall over. I motioned for him to sit down, but he just stared at me with one good eye and one bloodshot eye while he drooled. He then walked around the wreckage to look at some stuff. Well, looks like I am no help here. So i took off.
It amazes me that they have all this space on the road, yet they still get into car accidents. Go figure.
Goodnite.

Posted by Phil at 10:16 AM | Permalink