Farewell China

Since I am leaving soon, and the preparations for departure will take up a lot of time in the next few days, this will be the last posting from China. Momentous, I know.
But my plans for the future are even more so: I'm going to get a job.
Aside from this astounding news though, there is not much to say. Living in Kunming has been an entirely different China experience from what I had expected. Kunming is nothing like the more official parts of China, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Beijing. And for any of you who might be entertaining the idea of a vacation in the near future, I would like to suggest Kunming as a very promising location. Not only is this semi-tropical city the perfect size, but it also is close to many of the lesser known (but by no means inferior) sights of China. Kunming's relative invisibility on the world stage makes it a wonderful place to visit. Less tourism than other hot-spots in China, better weather, more diverse culture and experiences. Not only is Yunnan (the province of which Kunming is capital) home to many of the minorities in China, it also is home to some of the most stunning scenery too. You have the Himalaya in the northwest corner, the tropical forests in the south, three major rivers, geologic features such as the Stone Forest and an entire range of volcanoes, and there are others which I don't have time to name, and still others I have not yet discovered. So a trip to this locality is highly recommended.
And for those of you who may still doubt the modernization of southwest China, Kunming comes complete with running hot and cold water (although the hot water is somewhat fickle), paved roads, western restaurants which aren't half bad, an amazing bus system, and a fair number of wireless internet spots. Don't worry about all the developing nation stuff, China's cities are almost as developed as those in Europe and America.
So if you do find yourself in Kunming, make sure you stop by Wenhua Jie and visit the "foreigner street" which runs as a small alley between there and Yi-er-yi Street. There are several restaurants here worth visiting. First is Heavenly Manna which serves up delicious Sichuan food with lots of spice. Especially tasty is their Rubin which is fried goat cheese. You can find this stuff all over Yunnan, but Heavenly Manna's is especially delicious. Also good on this alley are Free Life (another Chinese/Sichuan style place) and of course Salvadors. Salvadors claims to be Kunming's premier coffee house. I don't know if I would go that far, but it is a nice place to spend some time. Their upstairs is especially comfortable and they have pretty good coffee for being in China. But the best coffee I found in Kunming is around the corner at Yunjoy Coffee which doesn't serve any food at all, but their coffees are definitely good. I particularly enjoyed their Americano. Also notable are French Cafe, Prague Cafe, and Chapter One. It is safe to say that these places would probably be nothing special in the US, but here they are the cream of the crop.
And if you find yourself in Kunming and are bored, I can recommend a trip out to the Stone Forest (Shi-ling) or a weekend trip up to Dali. For more adventurous trips I would suggest going south to Xixuanbanna where you can experience tropical rainforests complete with tigers and elephants (even if it is a little touristy now). Also notable is Tiger Leaping Gorge up in the northwest near Lijiang. I thought Lijiang itself was a tourist pit of hell, but Tiger Leaping Gorge was phenomenal--definitely worth the hike up there. And of course, getting to Tibet is not at all difficult when in Yunnan. There are both flights and trains which head up that way.
If you can't tell, I'm a big supporter of this area. It is far more interesting than Beijing or Shanghai, and there isn't' anywhere near as much pollution. If you are planning a trip to Europe or some other lame location like that, I say you should change all the plans and head down to Kunming. You would not regret it.
But enough of the tourism plugs. I will bid you all farewell from Kunming. There is still more to the story (I might even say that I have been living an illicit double life while here, half of which has not been able to be published on the web because of its illegal nature) but I will conclude it back in the safety of the States.

I Breathe A Sigh of Relief

Finally, after much intellectual pain, I am finished with yet another semester. Rather than talk aimlessly about how fast time is flying and how it feels like I'm going to be "old as the hills" in a matter of moments (no insults intended to those of you who feel that you are already as old as these geographical features), I have a nice little story about censorship which everyone can appreciate.
Earlier in the semester, our teachers asked (read required) us to write a brief essay in Chinese about some topic. They told us this had to be longer than the weekly reports we wrote, some three or four pages and that it had to be good. Being the innocent, naive little students we are, none of us suspected what evil designs our teachers had in mind. Well, almost none of us. There were these rumors that they (our program) were going to attempt to publish these horrible little things we wrote. Apparently, the status of foreigners in China is so elevated that even the mindless, badly composed drivel of a bunch of students is worth publishing. Now, you my wonderful readers, know me, but you do not necessarily know how bad my Chinese is. It has gotten better, but at the time they wanted us to write these things, it was genuinely atrocious.
Any Chinese person who saw my writing would ether laugh themselves to death or cry themselves to death because it so mangled their language. I speak (and write) Chinese with a lack of skill which invokes deep mental pain in the minds of those who are native speakers. I have even seen some Chinese cower on the ground in the fetal position upon hearing me speak.
So you may imagine, knowing me to be the compassionate person I am, that I never would have desired to cause such wide and deep pain as the publication of anything I wrote in Chinese would have caused. So I set my mind to work. After sleeping on it, I devised a fool proof plan that would ensure no one would even contemplate publishing what I wrote.
Even though China is nowhere near so foolishly obsessed with political correctness as America is, they have their own love of bureaucracy and so cannot avoid at least a little. My plan involved appealing to their sense of decorum and political correctness, in effect hiding behind it. I figured if I wrote something offensive enough they would never, in all their desire to make us foreigners into sideshows, publish my piece.
So one night I sat down to open up the floodgates of political in-correctness. Having read this far, you can make a guess at what I ended up with. The topic I was give was tourism in China. So, I decided to list off the favorite past-times of all the various races and nations on earth in the most indecent manner possible. This involved quite a bit of the imagination. I started with the Taiwanese, I decided to say that not only did the Chinese mainlanders not like them, but the rest of the world didn't like the Taiwanese either. But the real brilliant touch here was why people did not like them: I said that Taiwanese people eat little children (台湾人很喜欢吃小孩子) . But i wasn't convinced that this would be shocking enough to ensure that they couldn't publish it, so I forged bravely on. I said that there weren't many French tourists in China because they don't like to use bathrooms and instead will nonchalantly relieve themselves wherever they feel the need (法国人随地上厕所) but I quickly realized there were two problems with this. First of all, nobody really likes the French anyways so they wouldn't have a problem with publishing such a scandalous review of them. And secondly, the Chinese seem to be quite content with this very informal means of answering nature's call, so I couldn't exactly expect them to raise any guff over such a statement.
The only choice was to keep on striving for the ultimate in offensive statements. I said that China did have a lot of American tourists, but nobody really liked them because they were all fatties (美国人都是胖字). I said that China only allowed Japanese tourists in so that they could catch them all in a great vengeance trap and kill them (中国人要杀死日本人). The Germans became people who liked to drive cars the wrong way on streets and Canadians just came to China to use drugs. I added a few other touches but finally relaxed with the comfort that it would cause a small international incident if my teachers tried to publish this little piece of mine.
I underestimated their cunning.
Low and behold at our farewell dinner, with all the dignitaries of our school present, the program head pulled out some colorful little magazine and said that it was a collection of articles written solely by us students. He began to read some of the articles, and my feet grew cold. I did not want to imagine what it would be like if he got to mine and went foolishly on reading. From what I have seen the Chinese do not appreciate a dry sense of humor and sarcasm in the same way Americans do--I guess they haven't had enough contact with the English. Anyhow, he named off two of my classmates and then came my name. I cringed. He started in talking boastfully about the wide understanding of tourism I demonstrated and the fairness and insight with which I judged the various nations' reasons for coming to China. I did not understand it. How could this be?
After a few minutes however, it all became clear. My teachers had decided that a little poetic license needed to be used in my case. They had rewritten my entire article and the only thing which remotely resembled the one I had written was the name. For a while I was angry about this, but then I realized that I had achieved my aim anyway. I had wanted to stop them from publishing what I wrote because my Chinese would have caused horrible pain to the many native speakers who read it, and this was achieved--just not how I imagined. It is no doubt that my teacher's Chinese was far more eloquent than I ever could have written, but since she attributed it to me, everyone would imagine it was my Chinese--and what is more, no one would have to go to the hospital. There are times when things do actually work out.
And so that is how I ended my semester, in plagiarism imposed upon me by my teachers.

A Brief Anecdote on Sanitation

Unfortunately this week is finals week and I have been more or less brain dead for the majority of it. But all of that will be over tomorrow or the day after, and I shall once more be free. But until then, I thought perhaps I could relate to you a few short stories about the sanitary situation here in Kunming. There are those of you who would like to believe that China is a filthy, disgusting, dirty place which could learn lessons in cleanliness from Africa. I am here to disprove these false and disturbing beliefs.
First of all, water in China is very clean. Sure it is inadvisable for one to consume tap water, but really is America any different. How many of you regularly drink your own tap water? I know that many of you are too picky to even drink American tap water so how can you criticize the Chinese for not drinking their own tap water?
So when here you drink bottled water. Perhaps you think American bottled water is cleaner than Chinese. Well, at least the Chinese fill their bottles all the way up to the rim. In America have you ever noticed how you never actually get a full water bottle? In China this is not the case. I wondered why this might be, but upon opening my first bottle of Chinese water figured it out by getting soaked. If you fill a water bottle all the way to the top and seal it, the customer struggling to open the bottle will inevitably end up with much of the water on his or her shirt or pants. But aside from this Chinese bottled water and American are very similar...as long as you don't let your Chinese water sit around for more than a day.
I made this mistake.
I purchased a water bottle in the morning (a large one--liter and a half) and drank from it all day. At night I still hadn't finished it, but didn't think much of this and let it go, planning to finish it off in the morning. I woke up, and being in my normal foggy state, wandered about for a bit trying to bring myself into full wakefulness. I finally did and figured it would be good to take a good ole swig of fresh spring water from the Springs of Yulong Mountain (the bottling company promised crisp, fresh, mineral water direct from the mountains). I picked up my bottle but stopped short of drinking from it. For some reason the water was yellow. Upon closer inspection I found out that I was wrong. The water was green. Apparently there was something growing in it too. Have you ever looked into a ditch on the side of the road with its festering green scum? This was exactly what my water bottle looked like. I thought briefly that this was the same water I had consumed copious quantities of the day before, but decided to ignore that fact. Lesson: Do not let your Chinese water sit "mature" it is not like wine.
Perhaps one more story will fill out the picture for those of you who still doubt how clean China is. I was sitting in a coffee shop this morning, looking at the traffic wandering by on the street outside. I should have been paying attention to the traffic inside. In less than five minutes a string of no less than a dozen rats dashed under my feet and across the floor apparently deciding to exit out the back door. I don't know if this was the sign of some coup in the rat world and these were the last few crime bosses making a hasty getaway out the back, but it was definitely proof that the coffee shop didn't have any more rats. Now that they were all gone, I felt much better about the crackers they gave me with my coffee (previously I had always wondered why the crackers looked like someone had nibbled on them).
Hopefully this enlightens all you ignorant curs, don't be casting no more aspersions on the Chinese. They just as clean as us Americans...well, almost as clean.

Last Night: A War of Attrition

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING NARRATION IS VERY VIOLENT, THOSE WITH WEAKER STOMACHS ARE ADVISED NOT TO READ ON.

The mosquitoes came in low. It was dark, no lights on and I could only hear their high-pitched whine. But last night was different, I played the game of appeasement too long. For the last month I had been terrorized by mosquitoes every night. As soon as the lights were out, they’d come in and feast on me. Too wily to spot, to quick to catch, I was getting eaten alive every night. They buzz around my face taunting me and depriving me of sleep. And when I awoke, it would be to the terror of a day of itching, a day of scratching at these little bits all over my feet, my legs, my chest, my arms and my face.

But like I said, last night was different.

This night, I laid a trap for them. I waited, softly and quietly in the dark, waited for the little devil bugs to come. And then I heard their whine. I remembered once watching a WWII movie which talked about not shooting until you could “See the whites of their eyes.” Now I don’t know if mosquitoes have whites or even if they have eyes. Besides which ignorance, it was dark and as close to Rambo as I may be, I still cannot see in the dark—very well. Instead, I waited until I could feel the flutter of their wings on my face. Mosquitoes wings buzz so fast, they generate a large flow of air. So I laid quietly, not moving as they whined about my face. But their time was not yet. There was no guarantee that I’d kill them if they were still in the air. These mosquitoes were veterans, they knew how to move in the air. I had no chance unless I waited.

So I waited. Pass after pass, they flew over me—I guessed reconnaissance missions to make sure I was asleep. Well, such was my anger I could wait. And waiting paid off. Finally one of the little buggers got brave or stupid and landed on my nose. I felt the feet, the antennae, but not yet…I had to be sure. Waiting and waiting and finally it came, that sharp almost indiscernible prick of the mosquito’s sucker. There was no backing out now. I slapped my face will all the force I had—enough to give me a bloody nose. But the mosquito’s nose was not the only bloody thing about him—I turned that bug into the flattest mosquito the world has ever seen. I actually contacted Guinness Book of World Records to see if it wasn’t a new record—I haven’t heard back yet.

But the battle was on now, they knew I was awake. I leapt out of bed with a primordial yell, flicking on the lights. The small insect bodies scattered up towards the ceiling where they thought they were out of my reach. They hadn’t yet comprehended the awful nature of my trap. As wily as mosquitoes are, they are not as smart as their human prey, something which is decidedly to their disadvantage. They didn’t know I could jump on the bed.

Both hands flailing, I leapt into the air, clapping like a madman father at his son’s football game. The squashed mosquitoes fell, littering the floor like some plague of locusts. Soon there were audible crunches every time I came back down onto the bed. But the war of attrition had begun.

Just as I thought was gaining on the bugs, they brought out reinforcements from the bathroom. Apparently the humid atmosphere in that room was being used as a breeding ground for the evil bugs. But I was not daunted. I intended to exact vengeance for so many sleepless nights and the more bugs which came to the party the better. I abandoned the bed and began chasing the small black insects all around the room. I yelled, I screamed, I slapped the bugs flat on every surface in the room. But there were so many of them. And these were the crack troops, the Navy Seals, the Delta Force, the Massad, and the SAS all rolled into one. They began landing on my back, on my shoulders, all over me. Soon, I was reduced to swatting the bugs on myself, unable to see for the cloud of insects. And in the back of my mind I began to wonder if I wasn’t going to lose this one. I imagined someone coming in to the room the next morning and finding my mosquito bite covered body lifeless upon the floor. And for a moment I almost accepted this fate. But there was still a little something deep down in me which wasn’t going to give up.

And then, in what was nothing less than divine intervention, my hand come down upon a blanket. Whipping this up I began to swing it around about me, catching up all the light mosquitoes in a whirlwind of air. Like a tornado the bugs were pulled into the blanket cyclone. Soon the entire air was clear and they were all wrapped up in the folds of the blanket. With a roar equal to Samson’s scream as he tumbled the temple pillars, I hurled the blanket against the wall and sent all the little vampire bugs to their awful demise.

I don’t know if bugs have an afterlife. But wherever the mosquito afterworld is, it has a whole hell of a lot more residents now. Perhaps I can get some sleep tonight.