Chinese Showers

Although this may surprise some of you, particularly my sisters and other family members who choose to cast aspersions upon the state of my person's sanitation, but I have taken many showers in China. Indeed, I might even lay claim to some sort of expertise in this realm. And since I have been making this study of the nature of showers in China, I felt the need to enlighten the rest of the world on the off chance that someone might decide to take a trip to China. So take the following as an exact and scientific description of the shower facilities in most of China.
First of all, showers are only considered acceptable if in China’s largest cities, elsewhere they are strictly forbidden as anti-communist propaganda and criticism of the government. If you plan on venturing into the smaller and lesser known villages in China do not bring your shower cap.
Secondly these showers as a rule do not allow for shower curtains. The general mode of things is to allow the water to create a miniature lake on the bathroom floor so that the forgetful traveler will soak his socks and spend the rest of the day with miserably cold feet. If you have any sort of aversion to damp feet, forget traveling to China.
Third, when in the actual shower-taking process, it is the policy that hot water takes at least 15 minutes to make an on-scene appearance. This usually involves the highly risky process of “testing the water” (看一看水热不热) where the traveler dashes into the bathroom, barefooted of course, and shoves an arm under the stream of water. The traveler always emits a loud, primeval scream at this point either because the water as recent as half a minute ago was in its glacial form, or because it is boiling. The especially savvy travelers begin to learn how to tell the temperature of the water merely by the mistiness of the bathroom’s atmosphere. This last trick is invaluable.
Fourth, Chinese showers believe in a clear-cut form of temperature control. While Chinese showers do have knobs which offer almost 180 degrees of variance from right to left, usually the only place which results in a change of temperature is somewhere around 80 degrees if 0 is all the way left and 180 all the way right. To either side of this “sweet spot” (最好的地方) is one extreme or the other. The result is that the traveler must constantly and sometimes rapidly jiggle the knob back and forth over the sweet spot so as to moderate the temperature. This exercise results in an interesting rhythmic series of sounds from the traveler which has become known as “Chinese Opera” (京剧).
Finally, China firmly believes in the practice of having no standard direction for hot or cold. One place may require a knob turned to the right for hot water, another to the left. Since the water takes so long to heat up, the traveler often spends many anxious moments waiting. Half of him believes the heated water merely hasn’t made its way from whatever depths it resides in yet, while the other half is convinced that the knob is turned to the cold and so it won’t ever heat up. The worst course of action however for any traveler is to indulge in petty indecisiveness which involves turning the knob one way and then the other at intervals of five minutes. The only result this achieves is cold water.
But I am confident that you, armed with these priceless facts, will find no difficulty in conquering the intricate system for keeping oneself clean which has developed in China.

Umbrellas: A Serious Threat to Humanity

Kunming, being situated where it happens to be situate on this lovely little globe, is subject to the monsoon climate. This means that the wonderful weather of late winter and spring which gives Kunming its title as the "Spring City" vanishes with the arrival of May. From May on out well into summer, the weather in Kunming turns unpredictable, leaving few days without at least the threat of rain. The sun goes off on quick, unannounced leaves of absence and the residents start walking faster than normal to dodge the big raindrops. I would have said this caused everyone to whip out their umbrellas, but the truth of the matter is, they already have them out. I have known few people so attached to shelter. When it is sunny, they carry their umbrellas to avoid a burn or even a light bit of color in the face; when it is raining they bring them along to avoid the moisture, and for all the times in between, they keep them out just for consistency's sake. Kunming's populace is very attached to its umbrellas, and if any one of youu happens to be an umbrella salesman or manufacturer, I might suggest you move to Yunnan to make your fortune. Of course there might be a small hitch in all your dreams of riches: everyone in Kunming already has an umbrella, sometimes two or three.
But I didn't bring up Kunming's weather so I could talk about how many umbrellas everyone has; my main point was to draw attention to the great threat all these umbrellas pose to my life. See, the Chinese are not generally a tall group of individuals, actually I'd say they are shorter than not (and I'm short myself). And when these short people go walking around in great big crowds with their umbrellas it is no doubt some one will get their eye poked out. The Chinese do not even need Red Ryder beebee guns to de-eye themselves. As you walk along the crowded sidewalks, and every sidewalk is crowded in China, you have to dodge right and left to avoid the sharp little metal points on the edges of the umbrellas. If you have never taken the time to think about it, you will be surprised to learn that umbrellas are expressly designed to pose an ocular threat to the human race. The metal wires which are the umbrella's skeleton also happen to have just enough metal sticking out past the cloth to give your eye a good, sharp gouge. My personal feeling is that umbrellas are not a human invention at all, but a product of malicious green aliens from Mars who have eyes out their butts and so are not threatened by these new weapons. I caution everyone to think twice before purchasing an umbrella and contributing to the dominance of a race of little green Martians with eyes in their butts.
Can you imagine these new weapons in the hands of short people who want to get out of the rain? The way the population wields its umbrellas, swinging them around as if they were little harmless daisies, I am not surprised Kunming no less than five eye hospitals. Perhaps you have seen a certain film entitled Singing in the Rain? I have evidence that points out this is actually a piece of propaganda by the butt-eyed Martians to encourage wanton and careless handling of these dangerous weapons.
To date, I myself have managed to avoid any damage only by constant vigilance and having the reflexes of a cat. I encourage all of you to do away with your umbrellas before the Martians take us all over.

The Moral of the Story

Perhaps some of you are familiar with the verse, “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.” Matthew 25:35-36 as well as the follow up verse, “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.” –Matthew 25:40?
My adventures in Tibet brought me to a new understanding of this verse, though a painful one. The first and obvious connection is that I often saw the hungry, beggars who wanted food. Tibet, according to statistics a friend gave me, is one of the poorest nations (I guess I should say places) on earth, with an illiteracy rate more than 70%. And when you combine this with Tibet's being a major tourist destination for very rich tourists, it's not surprising that there is an entire culture of begging. In Lhasa they were on the streets, making supplicating gestures at you, because obviously you were white and had money. On the road, at the places we stopped they would come up to the windows of the car if we didn't get out and would point at the food we had sitting on the seats. They'd point to the food and then their mouths, making an eating motion. Besides a few rolls, I didn't give them any of my food. Some person huh? But people asking for food weren't the only ones I encountered. A young man asked me for my coat. Now he had one of his own, but it was old and worn, and he was living on one of those high passes we went through where it was always freezing. Now I'd like to tell you that I gave him my new coat, which was really something I'd only use a few times at Everest and maybe once or twice more back in the States every year. But I did not give him my coat. I wasn't a jerk about it, I made some lame excuse and sort of ducked my head and ran away. So it seems I failed on two counts, first the hungry and then the naked.
As bad is this is sounding for me, perhaps you would like to know if I have some purpose in telling you all this, perhaps you would like to understand how I could be so unchristian? Unfortunately it was easy.
I mean, when a person comes up to you asking for food, how do you know they aren't someone who is just making their living off begging when they could be earning money some other way? How do you know? Often we would arrive at some pass with a tremendous view and there would be all these people begging. But the pass is way out of the way from civilization, and if there were no tourists, these people would never have tried to spend time up there. Do they count as the starving? There wasn't anything particular about these people which made me think they were about to die from lack of food, (besides their voices.) And the guy who asked me for my coat? He wasn't shivering, he didn't look ill or anything. He was a strong young guy, there was nothing about him crying out cloth me! (Nothing except for his voice...).
So armed with these great weapons of reasoning, I never deigned to help these people. I had my dinners, slept in my warm beds, saw my mountain and came home. Out of sight out of mind, problem solved.
I'm not sure what else to say now. So maybe some of you can be of some help; what are we to do beyond actually sucking it up and helping the people who ask for it?

Phil's Fabulous Tibetan Journey: Part 14-- 67 Hour Train Ride

As unfortunate as our traveler's early return from Mount Everest, things actually work out better this way. You might remember there being some problems with the idea of our traveler's triumphant return to Kunming--mainly that he had no clue how this was going to come about. Our traveler was now going to be in Lhasa on the 4th of May which is a Friday. He decides that it would not be a bad idea to simply head out the train station on the 5th and try to catch the Saturday train (which leaves around 10 in the morning).
After the first good meal he has had in more than four days, he confers with his companions who are returning by airplane Sunday morning. It is decided that our traveler will awake as early as possible Saturday morning and make the journey out to the train station. There he will try and get on the train but if this doesn't work he will return and try to meet up with his companions again. To this purpose he asks them to give him a call around nine or ten o'clock that they might know whether or not our traveler will be trying to meet up with them again. Our traveler would have used his phone to call them but it is currently on the fritz and only able to receive calls.
Morning comes, our traveler heads to the train station where he boards with incredible ease. It seems that in a few minutes all of his traveling uncertainties are gone, he has a bunk on the train to Chengdu which will leave in a few hours so everything is just a waiting game now. He waits for a call from his companions. It never comes. Are traveler later learns that his phone is on the fritz to such an extent it cannot receive calls either. So our traveler, as far as those in Lhasa know, simply vanishes from Tibet--next to deportation, a fitting way to leave.
The train ride ahead of him is longer than any he has ever taken. He has never taken a train for more than an hour or two. This train will be going for some three days before he arrives in Kunming. The first leg, 49 hours from Lhasa to Chengdu, is almost pleasurable with wonderfully stunning views and only one surprise. In a conversation with a Dutch man our traveler meets on the train, he is shocked to learn that he will be going through Lanzhou which is a city far in the north of China. For a few ghastly minutes our traveler imagines he has gotten on the wrong train and is headed into far off parts of china which he has never had a plan of visiting. This misconception however is cleared up when he learns that the train will be turning south after Lanzhou down to Chengdu where he can change for a Kunming train. Though you may find it hard to believe this was the only shocking event in the first 49 hours of our traveler's train ride.
The next 24 were entirely different however.
Arriving in Chengdu at 8:30 in the morning, our traveler sprints off the train to purchase a ticket for the 9 o'clock train to Kunming. The lines in the ticket office, our traveler immediately gives up all hope of catching the 9 train. After some twenty or thirty minutes in line, he reaches the counter and asks for the soonest train to Kunming. The woman behind the counter tells him 5 in the afternoon is available. Our traveler feels this to be a little later than desirable and asks for the earliest train again (stressing the earliest). She tells him there is a two o'clock train. Our traveler repeats this process, saying the same thing each time and the woman always working closer to the desired near departure. Eventually they settle on a 10:15 train and our traveler sprints back to the station, since this train is about to depart.
The Kunming to Chengdu train is entirely different from the Lhasa train. The Lhasa train, being a new addition to the Chinese railway system in the last year, was clean, comfortable and populated mainly by classy tourists. The Chengdu train is the antithesis of this. It is old, dirty, and populated by the lower reaches of society. Now our traveler has nothing against those people who are less privileged than others, but this was not quite the issue at hand.
He arrives at his cabin to find a small member of the slit pants crowd crawling all over his bed. If you are unaware of who the slit pants crowd are, I will take the trouble to enlighten you for our traveler's sake. The slit pants crowd are a group of more traditional Chinese who believe that all children up to the age of 5, 6 or even 8 should wander about with a slit in their pants rather than a diaper. While this does have many advantages in the realm of convenience, it is disgusting when one finds a little child rubbing its naked butt all over one's pillow. But these were simply the beginnings of our traveler's woes.
Another notable aspect of the Chengdu train's clientele is that everyone smokes horrible cigarettes. There are no laws against smoking in China and sometimes these patrons of the train can be seen smoking two cigarettes at once, such is their state of addiction and indulgence. When added to the general smell of feet which have not been washed in several years and other nastiness, our traveler was quite happy when his sense of smell committed suicide and gave up the good fight.
But the worst was yet to come. Our traveler had gotten up to visit the dining car (which wasn't bad considering the rest of the train) when upon returning was startled by something he had thought the Chinese not even capable of. The small child, member of the slit pants crowd as already stated, was being held in his mother's arms out over the small walkway between the beds. Here upon urging from the mother in the form of some sort of child-like imitation of a gun firing, the child was being induced to pee. Our traveler does not consider himself a overly sensitive person, nor someone who is terribly bothered by filth and squalor, but small children peeing on the floor only a few feet below where our traveler sleeps is something else.
The shocked expression on our traveler's face must have awoken some sense of decorum in the mother's heart for she smiled awkwardly and after her child had finished ran to grab a mop with which she rubbed the little kid's piss all over the floor to ensure that the coat was even. Around this point, our traveler crawled into his bed, turned to the wall and whispered calming things about how nice America was. In such a state he arrives once more in Kunming, thankful that the train ride is over. And such is the ignominious end of Phil's Fabulous Tibetan Journey.

Phil's Fabulous Tibetan Journey: Part 14--The Yeti

In general our traveler feels that restrictions on where he is allowed to go are not so much legal precedents or compulsory regulations, instead he general finds such laws to be challenges. Such was the case with the taunting "We will Punish you" sign. Who was the Chinese government to tell our traveler where he could and could not go in China?
Looking around, he notices some gravel hills to the east of Base Camp which rise some 200 or 300 feet above the level of the plain. Our travel notices that the several folds of these hills would definitely hide him from the view of base camp and so would, barring any sort of patrols, allow him to keep on going. Decided, he follows the road back towards tourist base camp for a half mile or so, not wanting to draw attention to his move to the eastward. In a hollow with no one around, he cuts off the road and scrambles up and over the gravel hill. Out of sight and in comparative safety he slows down and heads further up the valley. He is on a sort of sunken shelf between the cliff sides of the larger valley and the small ridge created by this row of hills.
He is presented with a stunning view of both the full magnitude of base camp and the awful power of the mountain. Looking down from this new height base camp has a whole new order, remarking its human origin. The tents are geometrically laid out, their bright colors forming neat rows, circles, and other pattern and this order is offset against the earth shifting disorder of the tumbling hills of dirt pushed before the glacier. In the sun Everest shines with an almost cruel brilliance, and our traveler averts his eyes for lack of sunglasses. Turning away from this awesome sight then, he begins to head up into the ravine. It’s mouth is guarded by two steep cliff walls which force the ice choked remnants of the stream up and into a chaotic bristly mass as it passes through. Our traveler clambers down one side of this cliff face, slipping and sliding the last portion until he is on the rocks sticking up and out of the snow over the stream. From here on it is up, through this canyon valley until…
The only sounds are the gushing wind and the rushing of the stream beneath the snow. Choosing ease over safety, our traveler begins walking his way up the snow covered creek, trusting in his vision to spot those portions of the ice which are rotten and unsafe. At points the stream pops out above the ice and froths about over the snow and between rocks until it vanishes again beneath the half-glacier.
For a while the going gets steeper, but is still not too difficult since there are plenty of layers of snow over the ice giving out traveler traction. The ice even begins to form giant steps which our traveler sometimes resorts to all-fours to climb over. As he pushes his way up, the valley opens some—cliff walls giving way to steep rocky hillsides, topped with snow. The weather also begins to change; the sun fading beneath ominously heavy gray clouds. It being almost 1:30 in the afternoon, our traveler sets a 3:30 turn around time for himself, claiming no matter where he is, he begins his return then.
As small bits of snow drop fitfully from the sky, our traveler meets with the first genuine forms of glacier he has yet touched near Everest. One of the giant snow steps he is climbing, made of more ice than normal, sends him sliding backwards, tumbling down the steep slope. After coming to a stop on some rocks in a more level portion of ground, he slowly works back up to this slippery place and finds blue ice where his footprint drew off the thin layer of snow. He decides to stick to the rocky hillsides for a while, whether it be slower or no.
This sort of hiking is steeper as well as more energy consuming since he must jump from rock to rock or do an endless version of a stairstepper. Our traveler begins to notice that he must often stop for water and breathing. His faithful water bottle, having served him all-day, is beginning to show signs that its supply may not actually be inexhaustible. Our traveler decides to ration himself.
It is on one of these rests that, looking up at the high mountain sides all around him, our traveler remembers that there are still snow leopards occasionally seen in the area. Imagining this would be quite a sight, our traveler ponders the ridgeline for longer than normal.

But the subject of wildlife is not only limited to snow leopards. While the thoughts of such mystical beasts as the Sasquatch and Yeti may be entirely ridiculous to you in the comforting safety from the wild which civilization affords you, when alone in a ravine more than 3 miles high with mountains still towering over too high to see above your head, one’s sense of what is ridiculous and what is not becomes impaired. At least such was the case with our traveler. As he continued on, once more on the semi-rotten ice over the stream, he comes upon large footprints. Logic tells him these are the tracks of some snowshoe shod hiker, doing the same thing our traveler is, but logic is not the kingly personage it once was in the oxygen impaired mind of our traveler.

He cannot help but think of the Yeti; afterall the tracks are larger than any human foot should be. Although our traveler can reason out many objections as to how the tracks are of human origin, the overriding feeling within his mind is the illusion-like sense that the tracks are more paw-like than shoe-like. Now, given these already insane thoughts on the part of our traveler, you will no doubt forgive him the added lunacy of following these tracks up the valley.

From this point on, his course is determined by the footprints. He follows them sometimes at a distance when they seem to cross impossibly dangerous sections of ice, he searches almost frantically for them when they vanish into the rocks. But eventually, in a wider more snow-filled section of the valley, they vanish. Spending quite some time, our traveler comes to the conclusion that the tracks could not have made it to any rock surface—they are all too far away, and that they must remain a mystery.

Nearing the turn-around time, our traveler decides he will continue until the next bend in the valley to see what there is to see, and begin the long haul back. His steps are slower now, and he stops to breath almost every 20 yards. Also he begins to feel a headache building up in his skull.

Our traveler notices a tendency of his person from afar as it were, of his focusing entirely now on each step, each single movement up. From rock to rock, across the snow and ice, through the occasional sand banks, he steps slowly up. Finally he comes around this last bend. Before him the valley opens up into a giant bowl, filled with snow. Straight ahead are two ponderous rounded peaks, with lower rolling hills at their base. These hills are tiger-striped with snow as if the sun has been working a wave-like motion in melting them.

All thoughts of Yeti’s and snow leopards are gone form our traveler’s mind; only the consciousness of his now splitting headache and the sense that he should return soon. Perhaps he did not spend adequate time admiring the beauty of this scenery he worked so hard to reach, but his lack of water contributes in such a way to his state of mind that he simply stumbles back down the ravine. He does stop briefly to look out from the ravine at the ridgeline on the opposite side of the massive Rongbuk valley to see how high he is. By the marks on the side of the other ridge, he judges that he has climbed at least 1,000 vertical feet if not a bit more from the valley’s plain. It is my guess that he reached something close to 18,500 feet or higher at this point.

Dizzy now, with a head that aches at every jarring step from rock to rock, our traveler resembles some drunken reveler, weaving carelessly through the rocks. He remembers that he planned to bring back stones from Everest for his friends and family, so he begins to at random stoop over and grab some colorful pebbles to shove in his pockets. Upon his return he does not find these stones to be near as colorful as they seemed at the time.

His chest begins to feel constricted too, a strange tightness in the very center of his chest which feels like someone has bound up his lungs with a heavy rope. It is as if there is a horribly wracking cough coiled up inside of him, but which he cannot cough. His eyes also are in a sad state, seeing as he forgot his sunglasses and has been beneath the high-altitude rays of the sun reflected off the glaringly white snow all day. He wonders if part of his headache is not due to this glare.

But our traveler continues bravely on despite all of this, staggering often misplacing his feet and only avoiding bone-crunching falls by divine intervention. Almost to the cliffs he scaled down to enter the ravine, our traveler spots another human-like form. Instantly the yeti tracks pop back into his mind, and our traveler thinks of flinging all his colorful rocks at this monster to fend it off. However clarity wins out and our traveler realizes the figure is actually a fellow hiker, but only after he has screamed wildly to frighten the not-yeti away.

With a silent wave they pass each other in the icy canyon and our traveler stumbles back into the fake base camp. At the supposed site of residence in this tourist’s base camp, our traveler finds his companions looking dour. They claim they are very uncomfortable and feeling the effects of the altitude. This apparently because they sat on the rocks in the sun all day, like so many cold-blooded reptiles. They announce that they have decided to return all the way to Shigar that night, and be in Lhasa the following evening.

Our traveler, weary from his over-ambitious hiking, concedes to their foolishness and climbs into the car after only a small cup of tea to refresh himself. To say that the return trip was morbid would not be accurate, for in a way our traveler also was finished with the mountain. But it is with a heavy heart that he leaves, watching the massive peak fade slowly into the masses of clouds which once more wrap it up. As he leaves the valley, he catches one last glimpse of Everest and the whole range.