As always, comment and tell me what you think! This is available as a print in my Print Store over on Deviantart. I wouldn't really recommend buying it because I have no idea what it would look like as a print, but it's over there.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
The Dammed Mountains 2
As always, comment and tell me what you think! This is available as a print in my Print Store over on Deviantart. I wouldn't really recommend buying it because I have no idea what it would look like as a print, but it's over there.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
The Dammed Mountains
The Lake of Life is result of a miraculously still functioning hydroelectric dam that provides power to the City of Eb, its water is provided mostly by snow and glacier melt from the major Anterior alps, draining through networks of mountain caves. As such, at its depths the water is believed to be saturated with heavy life gas. The effects were not well studied before the Eblonians went extinct but it generally has an interesting effect on wildlife in the area: many animals continue right on living after they've died.
Most curious of the high altitude freshwater lake is an unusual aquatic predator and prey: the inland Leopard Seal, and the aquatic sloth. Leopard seals are apex predators within the lake, weighing nearly half a ton and reaching three meters in length. Aquatic sloths (or thalassans) are large herbivores that eat grasses deep in the lake. Other animals in and near the lake include ghost deer, loons and a number of rodents, including squirrels, chipmunks and muskrats.
Another drawing of Celie where she looks too skinny. She's actually a bit posh, the dear girl, growing up amongst those medical types. It occurs to me that I tend to draw Celie for my blog way more than I draw her anywhere else. Here I dispensed with her normal togs, because I've been trying to get her into an outfit that more suits the environment and reminds me less of her fundamentally cribbed design overall. I like the gloves: taking them off creates for innocuous moments of intimacy and putting them back on makes her hands look huge and tough. Somewhat ironically for something that should by rights be doctors' gloves, they call to (my) mind individually articulated boxing gloves.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Jim
After drawing the Apocalypt and realizing I'm really bad at delivering daily updates, I decided to draw my favorite character from OTSRPoD 3, Jim. Now, Jim is lucky because he's a cross section of two of my favorite things: skeletons, and disembodied heads. You might say I just really like skulls, but that doesn't quite capture it.
On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode 3 is actually a pretty fun game. Jerry Holkin's writing returns for another glorious game, full of cunning punning and sublime rhyme. I'm kidding, I actually just liked "cunning punning" and needed a second rhyme. The rhyming in OtRSPoD is pretty ordinary, you know, poetry about dead gods lapping at pools of blood.
Anyway, the :"game" aspect is a lot of fun. The various class pins allow you to customize your experience in a way the previous OTRSPoD didn't allow, but at the same time very carefully organized leveling means you never have to grind in order to compete with the latest boss.
My problem with the game was purely aesthetic: I didn't get to see a lot of the stuff I wanted to see, i.e. weapons, accessories or items. Stuff like Stone Ground Mustard Gas or even something as simple as the Twin Hoe were inexplicably compelling to me in a way that the new items weren't. The lack of in-game visuals for weapons, on the bright side, means I get to design them here.
The enemies were also... there were a lot of them and they were fun, but the first two games emphasized costumed humans (hobos, mimes, clowns, psych ward inmates) over monstrous enemies, and given the character's habit of reminding you that you were often murdering people in the street, it felt like a "thing". New Arcadia had monsters in the old game, but most of the enemies were humans. It felt like the truly weird stuff--the hat spiders and animate trash--were shoved in corners; they were genuinely paranormal, rather than being "six things you'd find in the everyday Arcadian home". Bah! I'm putting too much thought into this.
 |
| Jar, Pitcher, Beaker, Crockpot, Urn |
On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode 3 is actually a pretty fun game. Jerry Holkin's writing returns for another glorious game, full of cunning punning and sublime rhyme. I'm kidding, I actually just liked "cunning punning" and needed a second rhyme. The rhyming in OtRSPoD is pretty ordinary, you know, poetry about dead gods lapping at pools of blood.
Anyway, the :"game" aspect is a lot of fun. The various class pins allow you to customize your experience in a way the previous OTRSPoD didn't allow, but at the same time very carefully organized leveling means you never have to grind in order to compete with the latest boss.
My problem with the game was purely aesthetic: I didn't get to see a lot of the stuff I wanted to see, i.e. weapons, accessories or items. Stuff like Stone Ground Mustard Gas or even something as simple as the Twin Hoe were inexplicably compelling to me in a way that the new items weren't. The lack of in-game visuals for weapons, on the bright side, means I get to design them here.
The enemies were also... there were a lot of them and they were fun, but the first two games emphasized costumed humans (hobos, mimes, clowns, psych ward inmates) over monstrous enemies, and given the character's habit of reminding you that you were often murdering people in the street, it felt like a "thing". New Arcadia had monsters in the old game, but most of the enemies were humans. It felt like the truly weird stuff--the hat spiders and animate trash--were shoved in corners; they were genuinely paranormal, rather than being "six things you'd find in the everyday Arcadian home". Bah! I'm putting too much thought into this.
Saturday, September 15, 2012
The Corporate Headhunter
Another RED managerial type, this is the Corporate Headhunter. He's tasked with finding new recruits for the company. At a well-run company that wasn't competitive with a single, equally helpless competitor, he might get to fly jets, drive fancy cars, and take prospective employees to nice dinners, but RED isn't exactly aiming for the sharpest pieces of gravel in the pit. As such, he mostly hangs out at job fairs and bars, schmoozing gun enthusiasts, eccentrics, and people who won't be missed.
Editorial: Yes, I realize he looks exactly like the sniper, and there has to be a "business casual" look other than team-colored shirt and tie combo. Maybe a vest. As always, feel free to make suggestions, berate me or pull my hair in the comments section below.
Editorial: Yes, I realize he looks exactly like the sniper, and there has to be a "business casual" look other than team-colored shirt and tie combo. Maybe a vest. As always, feel free to make suggestions, berate me or pull my hair in the comments section below.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
The Apocalypt
He's wearing a rough wool robe with an apron that's meant to evoke a doomsayer's sandwich board. Not really, but that would have been a good idea. He's actually wearing it because it's hard to make robes look suitably dynamic.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
In Which Nanjing Is Super Depressing
These are my May/June 2010 Journals, rewritten into a semi-coherent narrative of my trip through China with
the UW Madison History group. It was a tremendously fun experience that
I want to publicize a little bit, so I'll be posting these here.
We
arrived in Nanjing, and it was immediately depressing. We picked up our
tour guide, who took us to a hotel in the middle of nowhere, and then we
went to the Museum and Memorial to the Rape of Nanjing. One of greatest
tragedies in the second Sino-Japanese War, Japan occupied Nanjing for
several weeks, raping and murdering at their pleasure, to the tune of
300,000 dead civilians and over 250,000 rapes Japanese soldiers earned a
reputation for cruelty in Nanjing, and the museum was well stocked with
horror stories; mothers and sisters sexually assaulted, then murdered
and their corpses left nude and defiled, men stood on the banks of the
river and murdered with rifle and rapier. Disturbing photos lined the
walls; one featured a decapitated head left on a fence post that resonated particularly with me. It was
awful.
Then we went to dinner at a restaurant that offered no reprieve. We'd become quite efficient at perfunctorily dispatching whatever disappointing foodstuffs we were offered, and then finding sustenance elsewhere, but here we could hardly be bothered to touch the food. The desperate tourist attraction that served as its facade left us despirited; empty of anything essential, it felt like hollowed out hell.
Afterwards we went to a lecture, which was as fascinating as it should have been, offered in a private museum by its curator. Apparently unaware that we did not speak Chinese, he attempted to show us a an unsubtitled movie and it took nearly ten minutes to explain that we couldn't pay attention. He turned it off and delivered the quite excellent lecture--a fairly comprehensive overview of the Rape of Nanjing, although it was delivered to a soundtrack of explosions and gunfire as apparently our lecturer had simply turned off his projector without stopping the film or turning off the speakers.
We went into Nanjing itself, to one of these huge shopping centers, and stumbled across American food--a Papa John's, no less. Then, off in the distance, we spied a McDonald's! And a KFC! Tempted beyond all choice, most of the Creux left seeking comfortable, familiar American cuisine. How could we resist? With a little fortitude, you pansies. I'm kidding you guys, it had been a month, I don't blame you. A brave few kept with Dreux to seek out more authentic fare. The Chinese chain joint we ended up at was not comforting--in some ways, it reminded me of a long-forgotten Taco John's. While we ate, a homeless man attempted to enter. One of the servers noticed as he got to the door, and immediately seized it, trying to keep him out. Another server materialized behind her, and as the indigent managed to pry open the door, the second server grabbed a nearby ashtray and struck him full in the face. After some more shouting and mutual spitting, he left. It was like someone had lifted a veil, though: suddenly, Nanjing's poor were visible as though advertised with neon signs. Embarrassed and broke, I tried to keep away from them.
The next day we visited Sun-yatsen's presidential palace. Another museum of some regard, I was excited to see it but profoundly disappointed when I learned it had a vast rock-garden maze I'd totally missed because I'd been too busy mucking about in a completely different random section of the vast complex, and also buying a new hat.
Somewhere along the line we'd driven to an art museum. In a weird mood and feeling for some reason that I had ground my compatriot's nerves a little too enthusiastically, I spoke as little as possible while we were in the art museum. This might have been a rewarding tactic were my memory more sound. Unfortunately, without someone to bounce opinions off much of the art slipped my mind once I'd given myself ample time to forget it (at the time of writing this it is some eight weeks distant). The Mood affected me considerably and so I'll blame it for my forgetfulness, engrossed as I was with avoiding my cohort.
Then we went to Sun Yatsen's tomb, the ninth or so huge
mountain Sean and I raced up. I was somewhat surprised when the first
person to try and scale the mountain was not myself, or Sean, or Dreux,
but Z. I was proud of him.
At some point in here Krista and I went to a nearby McDonald's, but I can't for the life of me remember when. We went to a grocery store, I bought some chocolate, and as I recall she yelled at me for some reasons.
Our final day in Nanjing was meant to be a sort of restive day, and a snafu with train tickets meant we had to spend literally the whole day in the city even though we had to check out of the hotel early. We were quickly ushered into some sort of museum on the Boxer Rebellion, but we were exhausted. Not physically, but temperamentally. In an effort to be as childish and stereotypically American as possible, we immediately ditched our tour guide to play tag. Once we discovered the museum was also a massive garden complex, I think we were pacified. Sherri and I explored a back yard area with several outcroppings over a pond containing koi and Chinese goldfish, and promptly got extremely lost attempting to return--at least twice we were turned away from offices we stumbled into by mistake looking for the exit.
After that, there was just enough time to go to a local Confucian temple, where I rang a bell (and discovered it cost two kuai to ring the bell), and spent what felt like an eternity wandering the shopping complexes which surrounded the temple. Most heartbreaking were the pet stores. We must have wandered past several thousand animals, most of whom were stuffed into cages so tight they could hardly move. Roomier cages had animals added until none of them were comfortable, and most of the food and water dishes were empty. I've never felt sympathy for turtles before (smug bastards that they are) and yet seeing a box stacked three to five turtles deep, I had to work very hard not to cause an international meeting of the foot. And ass. As in, my foot, kicking this guy's ass. After walking about a half mile through a PETA propagandist's wet dream, Krista and I retreated, our sorrow glands swollen and leaky. Then it was time for a movie, and more shopping, and food, and shopping, and when all that was done, there was still six hours until the stupid train would be leaving. Sick to death of shopping districts that felt like the Walmart Corporation having an eighteen story yard sale, I elected to go with Dreux and Rachel to our meeting place to wait for the dispersed members of the Creux.
It was only after buying a hand-cut steak/hambaobao and some kind of spiced shish kabob from a girl whose mother was flirting with me on her behalf that the hellish eighteen hour time sink in Nanjing was over and we were free to board the train. The train ride itself was unremarkable; a long ride consisting mostly of uncomfortable sleep and cranky companions. The only memorable part of the experience with the Nanjing train ride using the terminal bathroom and reading what appeared to be graffiti advertising homosexual prostitutes. That or "same sex" friendship--my ability to determine euphemisms in Chinese is considerably lacking.
Our final destination was our first one. We arrived in Beijing tired, pugnacious, and doggedly determined to do nothing for the rest of the day. But that's a story for another journal entry.
Around China in 30 Days
In Which Nanjing is Super Depressing
Nanjing represents the pinnacle of exhaustion every member of our
Creux felt. We left Hangzhou via bus and pounded pavement 277
kilometers, only stopping at a small rest joint to use the bathrooms and
maybe buy some inedible chicken part snacks. This provided me the only
story that regularly gets any response aside from "Oh yeah... wow" when I
talk about China--I left the restroom at the rest-stop and saw a lady
holding her young son over a garbagecan so he could do something he
could have done into a device built specifically for that purpose
just fifteen feet away. If that's too obtuse, he was pooping. Into a garbage can. Outside of a bathroom. In a series of bathroom-related cultural horror
stories, this represented the pinnacle of unpleasantness.  |
| This is just to cheer me up for what comes next |
Then we went to dinner at a restaurant that offered no reprieve. We'd become quite efficient at perfunctorily dispatching whatever disappointing foodstuffs we were offered, and then finding sustenance elsewhere, but here we could hardly be bothered to touch the food. The desperate tourist attraction that served as its facade left us despirited; empty of anything essential, it felt like hollowed out hell.
Afterwards we went to a lecture, which was as fascinating as it should have been, offered in a private museum by its curator. Apparently unaware that we did not speak Chinese, he attempted to show us a an unsubtitled movie and it took nearly ten minutes to explain that we couldn't pay attention. He turned it off and delivered the quite excellent lecture--a fairly comprehensive overview of the Rape of Nanjing, although it was delivered to a soundtrack of explosions and gunfire as apparently our lecturer had simply turned off his projector without stopping the film or turning off the speakers.
We went into Nanjing itself, to one of these huge shopping centers, and stumbled across American food--a Papa John's, no less. Then, off in the distance, we spied a McDonald's! And a KFC! Tempted beyond all choice, most of the Creux left seeking comfortable, familiar American cuisine. How could we resist? With a little fortitude, you pansies. I'm kidding you guys, it had been a month, I don't blame you. A brave few kept with Dreux to seek out more authentic fare. The Chinese chain joint we ended up at was not comforting--in some ways, it reminded me of a long-forgotten Taco John's. While we ate, a homeless man attempted to enter. One of the servers noticed as he got to the door, and immediately seized it, trying to keep him out. Another server materialized behind her, and as the indigent managed to pry open the door, the second server grabbed a nearby ashtray and struck him full in the face. After some more shouting and mutual spitting, he left. It was like someone had lifted a veil, though: suddenly, Nanjing's poor were visible as though advertised with neon signs. Embarrassed and broke, I tried to keep away from them.
The next day we visited Sun-yatsen's presidential palace. Another museum of some regard, I was excited to see it but profoundly disappointed when I learned it had a vast rock-garden maze I'd totally missed because I'd been too busy mucking about in a completely different random section of the vast complex, and also buying a new hat.
Somewhere along the line we'd driven to an art museum. In a weird mood and feeling for some reason that I had ground my compatriot's nerves a little too enthusiastically, I spoke as little as possible while we were in the art museum. This might have been a rewarding tactic were my memory more sound. Unfortunately, without someone to bounce opinions off much of the art slipped my mind once I'd given myself ample time to forget it (at the time of writing this it is some eight weeks distant). The Mood affected me considerably and so I'll blame it for my forgetfulness, engrossed as I was with avoiding my cohort.
At some point in here Krista and I went to a nearby McDonald's, but I can't for the life of me remember when. We went to a grocery store, I bought some chocolate, and as I recall she yelled at me for some reasons.
Our final day in Nanjing was meant to be a sort of restive day, and a snafu with train tickets meant we had to spend literally the whole day in the city even though we had to check out of the hotel early. We were quickly ushered into some sort of museum on the Boxer Rebellion, but we were exhausted. Not physically, but temperamentally. In an effort to be as childish and stereotypically American as possible, we immediately ditched our tour guide to play tag. Once we discovered the museum was also a massive garden complex, I think we were pacified. Sherri and I explored a back yard area with several outcroppings over a pond containing koi and Chinese goldfish, and promptly got extremely lost attempting to return--at least twice we were turned away from offices we stumbled into by mistake looking for the exit.
After that, there was just enough time to go to a local Confucian temple, where I rang a bell (and discovered it cost two kuai to ring the bell), and spent what felt like an eternity wandering the shopping complexes which surrounded the temple. Most heartbreaking were the pet stores. We must have wandered past several thousand animals, most of whom were stuffed into cages so tight they could hardly move. Roomier cages had animals added until none of them were comfortable, and most of the food and water dishes were empty. I've never felt sympathy for turtles before (smug bastards that they are) and yet seeing a box stacked three to five turtles deep, I had to work very hard not to cause an international meeting of the foot. And ass. As in, my foot, kicking this guy's ass. After walking about a half mile through a PETA propagandist's wet dream, Krista and I retreated, our sorrow glands swollen and leaky. Then it was time for a movie, and more shopping, and food, and shopping, and when all that was done, there was still six hours until the stupid train would be leaving. Sick to death of shopping districts that felt like the Walmart Corporation having an eighteen story yard sale, I elected to go with Dreux and Rachel to our meeting place to wait for the dispersed members of the Creux.
It was only after buying a hand-cut steak/hambaobao and some kind of spiced shish kabob from a girl whose mother was flirting with me on her behalf that the hellish eighteen hour time sink in Nanjing was over and we were free to board the train. The train ride itself was unremarkable; a long ride consisting mostly of uncomfortable sleep and cranky companions. The only memorable part of the experience with the Nanjing train ride using the terminal bathroom and reading what appeared to be graffiti advertising homosexual prostitutes. That or "same sex" friendship--my ability to determine euphemisms in Chinese is considerably lacking.
Our final destination was our first one. We arrived in Beijing tired, pugnacious, and doggedly determined to do nothing for the rest of the day. But that's a story for another journal entry.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Around China in 30 Days--Hangzhou
These are my May/June 2010 Journals, rewritten into a semi-coherent narrative of my trip through China with
the UW Madison History group. It was a tremendously fun experience that
I want to publicize a little bit, so I'll be posting these here.
We arrived in Hangzhou and began our drive into the city, past the tall houses of the villagers. I was surprised; these villages consisted of colossal, five story houses of mismatched architectural style. They were profoundly ugly things, smacking of the American Suburbia in their uniformity, and they're hideously kitschy, armed with outlandish patterned paintjobs, minarets, and parapets.
In spite of their hideousness, I decided to be happy that an agrarian lifestyle could be so rewarding. Hangzhou itself was gorgeous, one of the greenest looking cities we stayed in. We arrived in our hotel--a comfortable affair which promised on demand movies. The hotel was greatly improved when I discovered my iPod nestled in the bottom of my backpack. A few hours before I'd decided to wear headphones until I found it, and it worked. I bet this is how cults are formed. Or it would be, but I threw the headphones away.
Arrived and settled in, we immediately left for a
local landmark, the Lingyin Temple and nearby Feilai Feng. The temple
itself was home to remarkable statuary although in our habit Sean and I
immediately embarked on an upward tour of the temple, seeking its
highest point (disappointingly, a barren wall below the mountain's
peak). We traveled back down (discussing, as I recall, which of us was
Lewis and which was Clark) and contrived to carve our names into bamboo.
Lacking a carving implement, we continued our journey, slipping through
gorgeous rock gardens and discovering the monk's basketball court.
Feilai Feng was much more interesting, being something of a carved
mountain, adorned with some three hundred images of the Buddha in
various states of repose, along with long staircases and some caverns.
As always, there was a race to the top, although I took a wrong turn and
exhausted myself trying to make up the difference. Sean and Benny, then
the rest of us, were coerced into photos at the top; a young couple was
getting married and apparently sweaty American tourists are an ideal
ingredient in any wedding photos.
I expressed some curiosity about the name. I had only heard the English translation of the name at this point, which sounded like Pig Flying From Afar. There was a story that a drunken monk had had a vision of the mountain would come flying and land on a local village and when unable to convince the villagers to leave, he kidnapped a local bride so the locals would give chase. As near as I could tell the story had nothing to do with pigs... why was it called that? Krista corrected my mistake--it was Peak Flying From Afar.
Leaving the Temple was perhaps the most jarring experience--because lined up in the vast, bus-laden parking lot was about a dozen Chinese indigents, each with a more horrifying disability than his predecessor. Facial burns, missing limb, melon-sized growth projecting out of the jaw, the cavalcade of misfortune really put things in perspective... for about twelve seconds, until we arrived at a restaurant and the fact that the food was bad became the greatest tragedy any of the Creux had ever experienced.
Returning to the hotel, we discovered an alley across the street stuffed with food, abating our hunger with delicious Hong Niu Rou Mian. As Sean, Tony, and Krista looked for bubble tea and other snacks, I contented myself with a delicious bottle of orange Fanta and immediately discovered the soda that would define the flavor of our last week. Delicious Fanta.
After food, we decided to go out to a nearby bar. It was next to the hotel, a weird little joint that had a western feeling and a cramped grotto for musicians. We looked up and saw some guys doing something that bridged the gap between rocking out and the international signal for "Help Help I am choking to death, possible on the funk." Sean, being the beatific guy that he is, nodded in approval. After a few drinks, we headed up to the second floor because the girls wanted to dance. When we arrived at the not-dancefloor, the girls headed down.
Sean and myself did not get the opportunity. As we headed back downstairs, we were seized by some Chinese guys-that was pretty shocking. They stuffed into their booth and plied us with booze and cigarettes. I managed to wave the cigarettes away (and explain Sean and I didn't smoke), but I couldn't dissuade them from pouring us drinks. Or arm wrestling Sean. And they destroyed him. Finally, we managed to sneak away, but that wasn't the end of it. Oh no, the girls were dancing downstairs, and when we joined them, the guys showed up again--this time, dancing behind Sean! Oh man.
The next day we saw
a reconstructed pagoda, took a boat ride, and visited a village that
grew tea. It was interesting, but in that amusing, quasi-academic way
that doesn't produce horrifying culture shock memories. The woman who
pitched to us about tea (and sold about å…ƒ1000 in Emperor's tea and tea
cookies) laughingly said they sent their worst tea to Japan for sale. We
knew the game and that the US was probably the victim of that same joke
when the Japanese come calling, but we bought her filthy cookies
anyway. They were delicious. The evening was met with more unspeakably
edible street food (I stuck with niu rou mian, afraid as I am of trying
new things once I know about safe, tasty snacks) and cards.
Hangzhou was a comfortable city, but somehow it failed to make a lasting impression. The food was good, but I got the distinct feeling that it was a stroke of bad luck we hadn't simply been indoctrinated into street food culture earlier.
Stay tuned for next time, when we travel to Nanjing, the most depressing city I visited in China, and not just because it's a city whose name is most closely associated with the word "rape".
Previously in Xiamen
Next in Nanjing
Around China in 30 Days
Hangzhou
We arrived in Hangzhou and began our drive into the city, past the tall houses of the villagers. I was surprised; these villages consisted of colossal, five story houses of mismatched architectural style. They were profoundly ugly things, smacking of the American Suburbia in their uniformity, and they're hideously kitschy, armed with outlandish patterned paintjobs, minarets, and parapets.
In spite of their hideousness, I decided to be happy that an agrarian lifestyle could be so rewarding. Hangzhou itself was gorgeous, one of the greenest looking cities we stayed in. We arrived in our hotel--a comfortable affair which promised on demand movies. The hotel was greatly improved when I discovered my iPod nestled in the bottom of my backpack. A few hours before I'd decided to wear headphones until I found it, and it worked. I bet this is how cults are formed. Or it would be, but I threw the headphones away.
I expressed some curiosity about the name. I had only heard the English translation of the name at this point, which sounded like Pig Flying From Afar. There was a story that a drunken monk had had a vision of the mountain would come flying and land on a local village and when unable to convince the villagers to leave, he kidnapped a local bride so the locals would give chase. As near as I could tell the story had nothing to do with pigs... why was it called that? Krista corrected my mistake--it was Peak Flying From Afar.
Leaving the Temple was perhaps the most jarring experience--because lined up in the vast, bus-laden parking lot was about a dozen Chinese indigents, each with a more horrifying disability than his predecessor. Facial burns, missing limb, melon-sized growth projecting out of the jaw, the cavalcade of misfortune really put things in perspective... for about twelve seconds, until we arrived at a restaurant and the fact that the food was bad became the greatest tragedy any of the Creux had ever experienced.
Returning to the hotel, we discovered an alley across the street stuffed with food, abating our hunger with delicious Hong Niu Rou Mian. As Sean, Tony, and Krista looked for bubble tea and other snacks, I contented myself with a delicious bottle of orange Fanta and immediately discovered the soda that would define the flavor of our last week. Delicious Fanta.
After food, we decided to go out to a nearby bar. It was next to the hotel, a weird little joint that had a western feeling and a cramped grotto for musicians. We looked up and saw some guys doing something that bridged the gap between rocking out and the international signal for "Help Help I am choking to death, possible on the funk." Sean, being the beatific guy that he is, nodded in approval. After a few drinks, we headed up to the second floor because the girls wanted to dance. When we arrived at the not-dancefloor, the girls headed down.
Sean and myself did not get the opportunity. As we headed back downstairs, we were seized by some Chinese guys-that was pretty shocking. They stuffed into their booth and plied us with booze and cigarettes. I managed to wave the cigarettes away (and explain Sean and I didn't smoke), but I couldn't dissuade them from pouring us drinks. Or arm wrestling Sean. And they destroyed him. Finally, we managed to sneak away, but that wasn't the end of it. Oh no, the girls were dancing downstairs, and when we joined them, the guys showed up again--this time, dancing behind Sean! Oh man.
The next day we saw
a reconstructed pagoda, took a boat ride, and visited a village that
grew tea. It was interesting, but in that amusing, quasi-academic way
that doesn't produce horrifying culture shock memories. The woman who
pitched to us about tea (and sold about å…ƒ1000 in Emperor's tea and tea
cookies) laughingly said they sent their worst tea to Japan for sale. We
knew the game and that the US was probably the victim of that same joke
when the Japanese come calling, but we bought her filthy cookies
anyway. They were delicious. The evening was met with more unspeakably
edible street food (I stuck with niu rou mian, afraid as I am of trying
new things once I know about safe, tasty snacks) and cards.Hangzhou was a comfortable city, but somehow it failed to make a lasting impression. The food was good, but I got the distinct feeling that it was a stroke of bad luck we hadn't simply been indoctrinated into street food culture earlier.
Stay tuned for next time, when we travel to Nanjing, the most depressing city I visited in China, and not just because it's a city whose name is most closely associated with the word "rape".
Previously in Xiamen
Next in Nanjing
Monday, September 10, 2012
Around China in 30 Days--Xiamen and the Tu Lou
These are my May/June 2010 Journals, rewritten into a semi-coherent narrative of my trip through China with
the UW Madison History group. It was a tremendously fun experience that
I want to publicize a little bit, so I'll be posting these here.
The planes in China were nowhere near as terrifying as I'd expected, so the flight into Xiamen was marked only with an awful novel. A terrible, awful, really bad novel that deserves absolutely no further mention, not even a title. You'll know it if you read it, and you'll probably depressurize the cabin trying to be rid of it.
Xiamen was gorgeous and I liked it instantly. The blue sky, the ocean, the sandy beaches, the highways that inexplicably ruined miles of beachfront property... Xiamen was quite a sight. We passed a gorgeous island, and went onto a vast and beautiful campus. Not as big as Bei Da, but very nice.
Dreux spoke nostalgically of the town where he'd come as a
student and studied, and so led Z and I on a tour. We went to the beach,
which was quite beautiful if you ignored the huge tankers in the
immediate foreground or the line of glass on the beach marking high
tide. The palm trees and white sand made it easy, and Xiamen proved to
be a reasonably comfortable place. The hotel was gorgeous, with
beautifully appointed rooms and even a small deck. I finished the
terrible book on the deck, swaddled in a blanket. But we hadn't
even spent a day there when I felt some sickness move in me, and finally
I couldn't fight it. I woke up exhausted and miserable, and we were
herded onto a bus. I did my level best to sleep, curled up into a ball
on the seat, my feet pressed against the windows, legs bent over my
head. I finally closed my eyes, comfortably asleep, and the bus come to a
stop. "Everybody off, we're going to eat horrible and terrifying food."
I got back on the bus and went back to sleep. As my eyes closed, the bus jerked to a stop again. Apparently we were wherever we were going. And we were walking! Oh boy, walking. I dragged myself after the group. Billy Crystal was yelling in my ear, assuring me that I was only mostly dead. Nothing like having the disembodied voice of a washed up actor yelling quotables in your ear to make you wish you were totally dead.
The Hakka Village was so beautiful that I
immediately hated it. How dare it be the coolest thing we'd see while I
was too tired to properly enjoy it? Massive trees, gorgeous rivers,
architecture like it was completely constructed from my mental cobwebs. I
began visualizing diseases and then violently converting them to atomic
particles, and finally that aggression collapsed and I was just happy
to be in the village. Also, I was terribly, terribly ill.
Our
night in the Tu Lou was fantastic. The hotel was very cool (even if
everyone but me hated it and the showers were unreliable), and navigating the
village gave me a very comfortable feeling. The villagers we spoke with
were very interesting, and I finally managed to persuade one to talk
about something supernatural as they plied me with tea. I felt my
strength return slightly. The village had been founded in a fascinating way--a taoist
I returned to the hotel and sat with Dreux and some Chinese tourists, drinking tea. They chattered away enthusiastically, and I sat quietly, doing my best to listen. There was talking and uproarious laughter, and it suddenly occurred to me that I was the topic of conversation, however briefly. Apparently (with Dreux's translation) I'd been called a "duck listening to thunder". I liked the appellation. Everything's coming up ducky, I guess.
Then we woke up, had some rice gruel for breakfast, and got back on the bus. Back to Xiamen! I don't remember the bus ride, which is weird for me. No wait! There were pipes involved. But then we were set up, back at the hotel (finally) so we packed up and headed to the island for a day of fun in the sun. Unfortunately, the sun had a prior appointment so we had to cancel and rebook. It was such short notice we could only get rain.
The
island was actually great, with a huge and ugly statue that we got to
see. There was a bird sanctuary/bird hell. And gondolas! I love
gondolas. Not much else to report, there, until we went for massages.
Krista really liked massages. I was still hurty, but the massage was a
nice finish to our stay in Xiamen.
Xiamen was concluded, and I was sorry to go. Especially when we tried to get on the plane and they were confused as to whether my name was Ben or Benjamin. Apparently it was both, after some discussion.
Previously in Yenan
Next, Hangzhou
Around China in 30 Days
Xiamen and the Tu Lou
The planes in China were nowhere near as terrifying as I'd expected, so the flight into Xiamen was marked only with an awful novel. A terrible, awful, really bad novel that deserves absolutely no further mention, not even a title. You'll know it if you read it, and you'll probably depressurize the cabin trying to be rid of it.
Xiamen was gorgeous and I liked it instantly. The blue sky, the ocean, the sandy beaches, the highways that inexplicably ruined miles of beachfront property... Xiamen was quite a sight. We passed a gorgeous island, and went onto a vast and beautiful campus. Not as big as Bei Da, but very nice.
I got back on the bus and went back to sleep. As my eyes closed, the bus jerked to a stop again. Apparently we were wherever we were going. And we were walking! Oh boy, walking. I dragged myself after the group. Billy Crystal was yelling in my ear, assuring me that I was only mostly dead. Nothing like having the disembodied voice of a washed up actor yelling quotables in your ear to make you wish you were totally dead.
 |
| Look at this place. |
I returned to the hotel and sat with Dreux and some Chinese tourists, drinking tea. They chattered away enthusiastically, and I sat quietly, doing my best to listen. There was talking and uproarious laughter, and it suddenly occurred to me that I was the topic of conversation, however briefly. Apparently (with Dreux's translation) I'd been called a "duck listening to thunder". I liked the appellation. Everything's coming up ducky, I guess.
Then we woke up, had some rice gruel for breakfast, and got back on the bus. Back to Xiamen! I don't remember the bus ride, which is weird for me. No wait! There were pipes involved. But then we were set up, back at the hotel (finally) so we packed up and headed to the island for a day of fun in the sun. Unfortunately, the sun had a prior appointment so we had to cancel and rebook. It was such short notice we could only get rain.
Xiamen was concluded, and I was sorry to go. Especially when we tried to get on the plane and they were confused as to whether my name was Ben or Benjamin. Apparently it was both, after some discussion.
Previously in Yenan
Next, Hangzhou
Friday, September 7, 2012
Around China in 30 Days--Dusty Communist Butts in Yenan
These are my May/June 2010 Journals, rewritten into a semi-coherent narrative of my trip through China with
the UW Madison History group. It was a tremendously fun experience that
I want to publicize a little bit, so I'll be posting these here.
After a week in China, my enthusiasm for the colossal nation was beginning to flag. I felt a tad under the weather, brought low by pollution and dust storms. I wasn't the only one; our evening on the train and the oppressive heat had altered our crew from gentle tour group to Chicago five minutes before the Cubs lose a bid for the World Series. Or something, look, I'm not that good at sports metaphors. Our new tour guide, Grace, fortunately, was understanding and full of empathy for the people of Xi'an and decided to shoulder our intense, laser-like hate on herself. As a way of introduction she explained that we were running late and rather than taking five minutes to shower and sort ourselves into something resembling humans we should hurry so that we could see a museum about Communists. Our rebellion was fast and victorious.
Once we'd been pacified with running hot water, we assented to be lead around Xian. There was an art museum which I thoroughly enjoyed, although it provided little in the way of entertaining stories. There was a pagoda to be enjoyed, although really the only story there was "Grace did not know what she was talking about", something that was cemented for me when she referred to Kwannon as "Shiva" in a Buddhist temple.
Then we were taken to Xian Daxue. It had by this point become simply matter-of-fact that bathrooms were going to be horrible places, but Xian Daxue went the extra mile by assuring you that nearly any building you entered would have a bathroom that could be detected from a hundred yards by scent alone. As if that weren't enough, someone had apparently decided that doors were a luxury students didn't need, and that same perverted sect devoted to ruining every public restroom in China revealed itself to be comprised primarily of anthropomorphic horses. It was at this time that I resolved to hug every janitor cleaning a bathroom that I met. The next three weeks in China would contain exactly zero hugs.
After we'd been allowed to think that we'd have some time to get comfortable in Xian (or I had hallucinated that) we leaped aboard a bus and made a pilgrimage to the Mecca of the CCP, Yenan. A small (China small, anyway), ugly little town arranged amongst a skulking crew of mountains, I liked it immediately. This fondness was immediately rewarded with a torrential downpour and a string of Revolutionary Museums. Originally there was a joke here about how boring revolutionary museums are, especially their fascination with dusty chairs and the famous asses they cradled, but after having been to DC as an adult, it seemed unnecessarily mean spirited.
We
visited a rotating restaurant, which had terrible food and, for some
reason, a kitten under one of the tables. We stayed a local hotel,
which was very nifty looking, designed to look like the caves where famous Communists had hidden during the Long March. I don't know that anyone got
photographs. As we got on the bus after a night spent on the hotel,
Helen announced she was sick and would be catching a ride back to Xian.
Dreux relented and said we'd simply cancel our next night in Yenan and
head back to Xian instead--a good decision, we decided, because there
was a Panda Rescue Center/Zoo that, being Americans, we were desperate
to visit. So we went to another house full of old chairs that Mao had
graced, and several awful shirts and hats that made me look like a
Communist. Tony decided from then on that jokes comparing me to Trotsky
or Lenin were pure gold (okay, they were pretty funny) and so subjected
me to them for the rest of the trip. Considering my high school resemblance to John Lennon, I guess the appellation should stick, and if you want to call me Lennin or Lenon or something I won't stop you. I love nicknames.
The return "home" had very little of interest except the opportunity to see the tallest bridge in Asia. It was very tall, but I'm lacking for other descriptors; perhaps they're unnecessary. Actually, here's a picture:
Our return
to Xian brought us quite suddenly into the middle of the tourist
whirlwind. We were taken to see the Terracotta Soldiers, an official
Terracotta soldier museum (where they make the fakes they sell to
tourists). The Terracotta Soldiers were surrounded by huge gates, and
outside those gates was more evidence of mercenary mercantilism; it was
especially depressing because you apparently cannot visit the Terracotta
Soldiers without buying the pelt of a domestic animal. I guess you just
can't claim to have lived until you've seen the skin of a German
shepherd waved around by a Chinese septuagenarian while they yell
incomprehensible gibberish. Before you get excited, I have it on good authority that even if you speak Chinese it's incomprehensible gibberish.
Somehow, seeing the Terracotta soldiers failed to impress me so much as seeing the Huaqing Hot Spring where Chiang Kai Shek fled his own generals. You see, back in the 30s Japan was invading Manchuria, but Chiang was so busy killing Communists he wouldn't even consider fighting the invasion until all the Commies were gone. When his generals got sick of their homeland getting colonized, they decided to make him talk about it. But old Generallisimo Chiang would rather climb a mountain, in his jammies, during winter, without his teeth than ever even discuss not killing Communists. In the spirit of the day I raced Sean up the mountain, and then back down, although by then the only way to challenge me to a race was to be in my immediate vicinity near any incline.
Chiang Kai Shek's hiding place was really high on the mountainside, up a cliff face that I could barely climb even with the courtesy chains they'd added to help encourage tourists to climb up there and die. I managed to make it, but I was immediately schooled by an elderly Chinese man who decided to climb the chain behind me while smoking a cigarette. Behind him, a woman in high heels had apparently decided that scaling a rock face shouldn't require her to take off her six inch heels.
Apparently, our tour guide Grace hadn't murdered our good nature thoroughly enough, so the next day we went to Xian's city wall and rode bikes. Riding rental bicycles atop a six hundred year old cobblestone wall (admittedly a cobblestone wall that's nearly 80 feet high) is a sensation similar to getting testicular massage from the Los Angeles Police Department. Every bike (this is true) was constructed by Mao himself in 1944 and everybody's afraid that fixing anything will disrespect his memory.
And lectures! Our alternative to exciting bikerides and mountain climbing was getting lectures, and if they could go until extremely late at night, causing us to miss dinner and eat at an (actually rather delicious) Chinese fast-food joints that was great. I sound facetious but I'm not; it was pretty fun.
Xian's Muslim quarter, our attraction for the next day, was actually a pretty cool place, full of strange and tasty foods, suspicious people selling cheap goods, and delicious tea. However, given the choice between wondering dumbstruck around a district full of gorgeous Ming-dynasty buildings and seeing an American movie for like five dollars, I elected to see the movie. Jake Gyllenhaal was not worth it, even in a movie that had the comedic value of pretending he was even the slightest bit Persian.
After a few hours regretting seeing a movie in place of centuries-old architecture, we hopped on the bus and headed out to a panda... holding place. Zoo? I mean, it filled me with a profound sense of regret, so I'm thinking it was a zoo. Either way, the pandas were sleeping and mooning us, so it was sort of a bust until we saw that three legged monkey. And the ablino peacocks, I guess, but mostly that monkey. We left deflated in the way American tourists often are after being reminded that zoos fundamentally suck, and that in poorer places than the States they suck even worse.
I felt better, however, when I saw that
Daoist temple. Or rather, the stairs behind it. Sean took off at a mild
clip, jogging, really. I kicked my flip-flops off and gave chase. After a
few sprints, trying to get ahead, my lungs had had enough and gently
suggested that I collapse face down on the ground. We only had an hour
to make it to the top, so Sean urged me on and fighting for breath I
hopped step after step, pausing only to stammer broken and
incomprehensible Chinese at local tourists, trying to inquire the time
and distance. Finally, someone said something that made sense: only 50
meters! Sweat dripping-dripping--from my brow, I launched
myself up the stairs again, Sean following right behind with his
customary one-step-at-a-time gait. I flopped down at the top of the
steps, and in one of those perfectly-cinematic cue-crescendo fisheye
lens moments, I saw another flight of stairs stretch off. I felt a
little light headed, dots flashed before me eyes, and I heard voices.
"Ben!" I spun around, and it was Dreux. Somewhat out of breath, sweating, and visibly gripping an imaginary belt, he explained that he'd been chasing us the whole way. He said we had to go back, but we protested--we'd come from the bottom to the top in less than forty minutes, carrying thirty inch long incense sticks we intended to burn in tribute to Laozi. Dreux assented to allow us to continue our ascent. We flew up the final steps, feet hardly touching the ground, and we arrived at the incense burner. Sticks alight, Dreux appeared behind us "What the hell are you doing, get going?"
I didn't need any more telling. He was serious, and worst of all, we were late! I hate being late. So I began my formal descent, or, as anyone else might call it, falling. At one point I actually lost my balance and slipped down a path, narrowly missing a donkey and flying headfirst over a brief cliff. I missed a turn, though, and for a moment I jogged in place as Chinese tourists pointed in three different directions while each suggested in turn that he knew the way I intended to go. After a moment, I recovered myself and returned to the proper path, jogging gently down the slope at the foot of the mountain. Off in the distance was Dreux's trademark white hair, and with a final burst of speed I sprinted-still barefoot--and caught up to my creux. I'd descended 2 kilometers in about ten minutes--wearing flipflops. I was in a good, good mood. Until we got home to the lecture.
After a long, long stay in Xian, everyone seemed a little revitalized, as though staying in one place, even with a multitude of long bus trips, bicycle rides and the occasional (and under reported) giant squirrel-back tour, we were sorry to leave Xian, especially since our departure was to be by Chinese airplane.
Previously in Chengde
Next in Xiamen
Around China in 30 Days
Dusty Communist Butts in Yenan
After a week in China, my enthusiasm for the colossal nation was beginning to flag. I felt a tad under the weather, brought low by pollution and dust storms. I wasn't the only one; our evening on the train and the oppressive heat had altered our crew from gentle tour group to Chicago five minutes before the Cubs lose a bid for the World Series. Or something, look, I'm not that good at sports metaphors. Our new tour guide, Grace, fortunately, was understanding and full of empathy for the people of Xi'an and decided to shoulder our intense, laser-like hate on herself. As a way of introduction she explained that we were running late and rather than taking five minutes to shower and sort ourselves into something resembling humans we should hurry so that we could see a museum about Communists. Our rebellion was fast and victorious.
Once we'd been pacified with running hot water, we assented to be lead around Xian. There was an art museum which I thoroughly enjoyed, although it provided little in the way of entertaining stories. There was a pagoda to be enjoyed, although really the only story there was "Grace did not know what she was talking about", something that was cemented for me when she referred to Kwannon as "Shiva" in a Buddhist temple.
Then we were taken to Xian Daxue. It had by this point become simply matter-of-fact that bathrooms were going to be horrible places, but Xian Daxue went the extra mile by assuring you that nearly any building you entered would have a bathroom that could be detected from a hundred yards by scent alone. As if that weren't enough, someone had apparently decided that doors were a luxury students didn't need, and that same perverted sect devoted to ruining every public restroom in China revealed itself to be comprised primarily of anthropomorphic horses. It was at this time that I resolved to hug every janitor cleaning a bathroom that I met. The next three weeks in China would contain exactly zero hugs.
After we'd been allowed to think that we'd have some time to get comfortable in Xian (or I had hallucinated that) we leaped aboard a bus and made a pilgrimage to the Mecca of the CCP, Yenan. A small (China small, anyway), ugly little town arranged amongst a skulking crew of mountains, I liked it immediately. This fondness was immediately rewarded with a torrential downpour and a string of Revolutionary Museums. Originally there was a joke here about how boring revolutionary museums are, especially their fascination with dusty chairs and the famous asses they cradled, but after having been to DC as an adult, it seemed unnecessarily mean spirited.
 |
| Tony, Lenin, Sean |
The return "home" had very little of interest except the opportunity to see the tallest bridge in Asia. It was very tall, but I'm lacking for other descriptors; perhaps they're unnecessary. Actually, here's a picture:
 |
| Now You Say: "Holy Crow That Is A Tall Bridge" |
Somehow, seeing the Terracotta soldiers failed to impress me so much as seeing the Huaqing Hot Spring where Chiang Kai Shek fled his own generals. You see, back in the 30s Japan was invading Manchuria, but Chiang was so busy killing Communists he wouldn't even consider fighting the invasion until all the Commies were gone. When his generals got sick of their homeland getting colonized, they decided to make him talk about it. But old Generallisimo Chiang would rather climb a mountain, in his jammies, during winter, without his teeth than ever even discuss not killing Communists. In the spirit of the day I raced Sean up the mountain, and then back down, although by then the only way to challenge me to a race was to be in my immediate vicinity near any incline.
Chiang Kai Shek's hiding place was really high on the mountainside, up a cliff face that I could barely climb even with the courtesy chains they'd added to help encourage tourists to climb up there and die. I managed to make it, but I was immediately schooled by an elderly Chinese man who decided to climb the chain behind me while smoking a cigarette. Behind him, a woman in high heels had apparently decided that scaling a rock face shouldn't require her to take off her six inch heels.
Apparently, our tour guide Grace hadn't murdered our good nature thoroughly enough, so the next day we went to Xian's city wall and rode bikes. Riding rental bicycles atop a six hundred year old cobblestone wall (admittedly a cobblestone wall that's nearly 80 feet high) is a sensation similar to getting testicular massage from the Los Angeles Police Department. Every bike (this is true) was constructed by Mao himself in 1944 and everybody's afraid that fixing anything will disrespect his memory.
And lectures! Our alternative to exciting bikerides and mountain climbing was getting lectures, and if they could go until extremely late at night, causing us to miss dinner and eat at an (actually rather delicious) Chinese fast-food joints that was great. I sound facetious but I'm not; it was pretty fun.
Xian's Muslim quarter, our attraction for the next day, was actually a pretty cool place, full of strange and tasty foods, suspicious people selling cheap goods, and delicious tea. However, given the choice between wondering dumbstruck around a district full of gorgeous Ming-dynasty buildings and seeing an American movie for like five dollars, I elected to see the movie. Jake Gyllenhaal was not worth it, even in a movie that had the comedic value of pretending he was even the slightest bit Persian.
After a few hours regretting seeing a movie in place of centuries-old architecture, we hopped on the bus and headed out to a panda... holding place. Zoo? I mean, it filled me with a profound sense of regret, so I'm thinking it was a zoo. Either way, the pandas were sleeping and mooning us, so it was sort of a bust until we saw that three legged monkey. And the ablino peacocks, I guess, but mostly that monkey. We left deflated in the way American tourists often are after being reminded that zoos fundamentally suck, and that in poorer places than the States they suck even worse.
 |
| Of course that makes you a Sad Panda. All Pandas are sad. |
"Ben!" I spun around, and it was Dreux. Somewhat out of breath, sweating, and visibly gripping an imaginary belt, he explained that he'd been chasing us the whole way. He said we had to go back, but we protested--we'd come from the bottom to the top in less than forty minutes, carrying thirty inch long incense sticks we intended to burn in tribute to Laozi. Dreux assented to allow us to continue our ascent. We flew up the final steps, feet hardly touching the ground, and we arrived at the incense burner. Sticks alight, Dreux appeared behind us "What the hell are you doing, get going?"
I didn't need any more telling. He was serious, and worst of all, we were late! I hate being late. So I began my formal descent, or, as anyone else might call it, falling. At one point I actually lost my balance and slipped down a path, narrowly missing a donkey and flying headfirst over a brief cliff. I missed a turn, though, and for a moment I jogged in place as Chinese tourists pointed in three different directions while each suggested in turn that he knew the way I intended to go. After a moment, I recovered myself and returned to the proper path, jogging gently down the slope at the foot of the mountain. Off in the distance was Dreux's trademark white hair, and with a final burst of speed I sprinted-still barefoot--and caught up to my creux. I'd descended 2 kilometers in about ten minutes--wearing flipflops. I was in a good, good mood. Until we got home to the lecture.
After a long, long stay in Xian, everyone seemed a little revitalized, as though staying in one place, even with a multitude of long bus trips, bicycle rides and the occasional (and under reported) giant squirrel-back tour, we were sorry to leave Xian, especially since our departure was to be by Chinese airplane.
Previously in Chengde
Next in Xiamen
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Around China in 30 Days: Come to Chengde in Summer
These are my May/June 2010 Journals, rewritten into a semi-coherent narrative of my trip through China with
the UW Madison History group. It was a tremendously fun experience that
I want to publicize a little bit, so I'll be posting these here.
They were huge, ungainly things, like we'd suddenly stumbled into a pasture of thousand-foot-tall buffalo. My general sentiment was that mountains are huge and neat and that I desperately wanted to climb all of them, forever. Just let me off here, I joked, I have a lifetime to waste in the Chinese countryside.
So when we arrived in Chengde I was in a ood mood, taken as I was with the mountains and oblivious to anything else. We were herded without much explanation into a restaurant, given meal, and without much circumstance introduced to our tour guides. Wang Laoshi, an old friend of Dreux's, was to coordinate our trip. An older Chinese man and former professor of Japanese at Beijing Daxue, he was to be our caretaker for the next month. He arranged the buses, the accommodations, and the food. Our guide in Chengde was introduced as Peter, and the more said about him the better, because the man was a beautiful lunatic. He was apparently a professor at a local tour-guide college, and so devoted to his guide company that he'd run ahead of us at any opportunity with a video camera, eager to film this crew of Americans as he lead us around China's version of a rustic paradise (which is accurate in the sense that it was home to a mere 450 thousand people). He developed an immediate crush on Krista, and while organizing group photos always asked that room be left for him with the implication that it be left near her. On several occasions he materialized to thrust a camera at me and have his photograph taken with Krista. He would not be the first nor last person to be taken with Krista's good looks, but he was by far the most entertaining. You know, for me.
He also served as our translator during both our lecture and our visit to a local village, and both times our resident Chinese speakers (Helen, Z, and Tony) caught him editorializing like he was the Chengde Board of Commerce. In retrospect, he probably was. But the thing that made me realize truly what a terrific nut we'd gotten, after our lecture, he announced he wanted to recite some poetry he'd written about the local sights, and play the flute for us. The man was so crazy I can literally not think of something funny to say that he hasn't outshone merely by being him. Suffice to say, no other tour guide impressed me as much.
He
took us to the Bishu Shanzhuang, the largest park in China and
something of a miniature map of the Qing emperor's realm. The complex
itself was huge and served as the summer home to the final Chinese
dynastic powers, but like so many of the buildings we would see it
failed to impress upon me its age or majesty. It was awesome, yes, but we simply stood about, a
bit indifferent, as we were given an impromptu lecture on the Qing
dynasty and the life of crazy Empress Dowager Cixi. We wouldn't rustle
up anything resembling enthusiasm until someone gave us tiny electric
boats and encouraged us to boat around the miniature lake. I shared a
boat with Sean, Benny, Sherri, and Tony, which we dubbed the "USS Capitalism".
Being Men Of Action (even Sherri) we promptly sailed hard across three lakes, singing
pirate shanties and generally having a blast.
Arriving back on land found us on what would be the first in a string of buses traveling at spine-shattering, toe-curling, voice-box-welding speed along things Webster would only call a road after a particularly persuasive savage beating. The sights we saw when the bus would come to a blessed halt were made all the more wondrous by the relief that we hadn't died, but then immediately eclipsed by the fear that we'd have to ride another bus to go back down. High in these mountains that represented China's mostly uninhabited and dry North was the place where the emperor would store concubines that displeased him. What an awful punishment! Imagine, forced to leave a harem to go enjoy some solitude in a comfortable cabin in the mountains.. We also visited the emperor's private library, now a bookstore.
The garden outside the bookstore was amusing in its own right, constructed of rock and flowers to provide dozens of little paths through which the discerning Emperor (or slackjawed American tourist) might stroll. It even had a tiny rock statue with a hole constructed in such a way that it cast what appeared to be a reflection of the crescent moon into a shallow pool.
The
next day we visited a pair of vast temples constructed to resemble
those in Tibet; apparently the Qing emperor had gotten a visit from the
Dalai Lama and upon converting had decided to build the holy sites to
house him during future visits. Adorning the entrance to each was a
tablet written in the five languages of China--Chinese, Mongol, Tibetan,
Arabic, and Manchu. I mention them because Peter brought them up and
delivered the same monologue them every time we saw them, important
symbolic aspects of Qing architecture that they were. These temples
provided a unique psychological landscape, with their steep staircases
and juxtaposition of modern and ancient infrastructure. The first temple
was gorgeous and hosted a massive seventy foot tall Buddha statue.
Dozens of locks adorned fences and although their purpose was never
adequately explained they were really cool. The second temple was really
tall. Like... really tall.
Our final day in Chengde
started out painfully dull, like a fourteenth century sword through the
thorax. Between the violent wind and the militarist offerings in the museum, that could
possibly have been arranged. It was standing in this temple and hearing
that it had been established in the late 1700s that it suddenly occurred
to me that I was standing in a building that was going through its
awkward teenage years when my home country was still weighing the pros
and cons of self-rule. I decided to spend the rest of the trip
breathlessly reminding anyone in earshot that we were in the presence of
things whose age I could only appreciate with hushed, aggravating
whispers. At some point it became possible to shrug, unimpressed,
because something was "merely a few hundred years old". I thought that
it was crazy.
Which, you know, didn't make the actual
temples any more interesting, and the subtle nuances of Buddhist
devotional architecture aren't well appreciated by still-jetlagged
American tourists who're steadily running low on childlike delight. Se
we decided to mix things up and went to the Sledge Hammer Peak. Arrival
was arranged via twenty minute gondola ride that delivered you over some pretty rough
terrain. Sometimes there'd be a hundred feet of air between you and the
ground, and other times you'd get gravel in your shoes. The peak
itself was gorgeous, offering a view for miles that really hammered
home the fact that twenty feet in any direction you had roughly thirty
stories to fall to a screamy death. Fortunately, the locals had take security measures: they'd painted yellow
lines along the edges of the rock face,
so I was perfectly safe so long as there wasn't a stiff breeze and I didn't have a
crippling bout of acrophobia. Never one to let a good opportunity go to waste, I succumbed to my vertigo and lay down on the rock face to adjust my perspective and distract myself from the prospect of a short life filled with falling.
After crabwalking back to safety, we were dismissed to visit a village, interview the locals and learn from them whatever we were interested in. My area of study was supernatural events and local beliefs. They were extremely quick to point out that they had none. They didn't have any particularly interesting festivals, absolutely no stories to tell their children, no religion, not even any funerary rituals except "When people die, we put them in a box. Then we bury them, the end." With no supernatural beliefs, or even supernatural stories they told for fun, I was stymied; I immediately contributed this frustration to Party involvement with the village and fear of appearing to be superstitious by a people who rely heavily on tourism to fuel their economy.
Of course, my attempt to enter into a college discourse on the supernatural wouldn't have held water anywhere, especially if the questions were delivered via a game of telephone between a moron didn't know how to phrase them in English (that's me), a slightly embarrassed translator, and a Chinese fruit farmer. Finally in a panic I just pretended I didn't have any more questions left, closed my journal, and thought of England. The villagers had an interesting approach to life; appeared to want for nothing, and because they produced all their own food they had considerably easier lives than city folk. Standing on the road overlooking a valley and some mountains as clouds left dappled shadows on the countryside, I got the feeling that they weren't too far off base.
We dropped Peter off at a street corner and headed back to Beijing. We'd spend a couple hours there before boarding a sleeper train to Xi'An. In a Dairy Queen we met an American who taught English at orphanages in south China--the bastard made me feel like a jackass. The sleeper was interesting, because our group of sixteen was shared across four six-bed bunks, meaning four Americans and two Chinese strangers in every cabin. I was disappointed to find that I was on the ground floor, but the top was empty. Surreptitiously I climbed inside and snuggled down for the night. Naturally, I had just fallen asleep when we stopped and our resident Chinese stranger entered our cabin and tried climbing in next to me. A few hurried apologies I was silently hating him from the bottom bunk.
After eleven hours on a train, we pulled up to the Xi'an stop. We'd arrived in the city that was to be our home for the next four days (with one exception), and it was a hot, sweaty, polluted place. Even so, I was excited to enjoy this new and strange place.
Previously, In Beijing
Next Up: Xi'an and Yenan
Around China in 30 Days
Come to Chengde in Summer
I don't recall falling asleep on the bus to Chengde, but I certainly
recall awakening after an indeterminate period and being startled to
discover that at some point since I'd closed my eyes, someone had
meticulously replaced a hundred-odd square kilometers of buildings with
mountains.They were huge, ungainly things, like we'd suddenly stumbled into a pasture of thousand-foot-tall buffalo. My general sentiment was that mountains are huge and neat and that I desperately wanted to climb all of them, forever. Just let me off here, I joked, I have a lifetime to waste in the Chinese countryside.
 |
| Warning: Mountains May Be More Majestic in Real Life |
So when we arrived in Chengde I was in a ood mood, taken as I was with the mountains and oblivious to anything else. We were herded without much explanation into a restaurant, given meal, and without much circumstance introduced to our tour guides. Wang Laoshi, an old friend of Dreux's, was to coordinate our trip. An older Chinese man and former professor of Japanese at Beijing Daxue, he was to be our caretaker for the next month. He arranged the buses, the accommodations, and the food. Our guide in Chengde was introduced as Peter, and the more said about him the better, because the man was a beautiful lunatic. He was apparently a professor at a local tour-guide college, and so devoted to his guide company that he'd run ahead of us at any opportunity with a video camera, eager to film this crew of Americans as he lead us around China's version of a rustic paradise (which is accurate in the sense that it was home to a mere 450 thousand people). He developed an immediate crush on Krista, and while organizing group photos always asked that room be left for him with the implication that it be left near her. On several occasions he materialized to thrust a camera at me and have his photograph taken with Krista. He would not be the first nor last person to be taken with Krista's good looks, but he was by far the most entertaining. You know, for me.
He also served as our translator during both our lecture and our visit to a local village, and both times our resident Chinese speakers (Helen, Z, and Tony) caught him editorializing like he was the Chengde Board of Commerce. In retrospect, he probably was. But the thing that made me realize truly what a terrific nut we'd gotten, after our lecture, he announced he wanted to recite some poetry he'd written about the local sights, and play the flute for us. The man was so crazy I can literally not think of something funny to say that he hasn't outshone merely by being him. Suffice to say, no other tour guide impressed me as much.
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| Sean, Me, Sherri--Photo by Sherri |
Arriving back on land found us on what would be the first in a string of buses traveling at spine-shattering, toe-curling, voice-box-welding speed along things Webster would only call a road after a particularly persuasive savage beating. The sights we saw when the bus would come to a blessed halt were made all the more wondrous by the relief that we hadn't died, but then immediately eclipsed by the fear that we'd have to ride another bus to go back down. High in these mountains that represented China's mostly uninhabited and dry North was the place where the emperor would store concubines that displeased him. What an awful punishment! Imagine, forced to leave a harem to go enjoy some solitude in a comfortable cabin in the mountains.. We also visited the emperor's private library, now a bookstore.
The garden outside the bookstore was amusing in its own right, constructed of rock and flowers to provide dozens of little paths through which the discerning Emperor (or slackjawed American tourist) might stroll. It even had a tiny rock statue with a hole constructed in such a way that it cast what appeared to be a reflection of the crescent moon into a shallow pool.
 | ||
| Putuo Zongcheng |
After crabwalking back to safety, we were dismissed to visit a village, interview the locals and learn from them whatever we were interested in. My area of study was supernatural events and local beliefs. They were extremely quick to point out that they had none. They didn't have any particularly interesting festivals, absolutely no stories to tell their children, no religion, not even any funerary rituals except "When people die, we put them in a box. Then we bury them, the end." With no supernatural beliefs, or even supernatural stories they told for fun, I was stymied; I immediately contributed this frustration to Party involvement with the village and fear of appearing to be superstitious by a people who rely heavily on tourism to fuel their economy.
Of course, my attempt to enter into a college discourse on the supernatural wouldn't have held water anywhere, especially if the questions were delivered via a game of telephone between a moron didn't know how to phrase them in English (that's me), a slightly embarrassed translator, and a Chinese fruit farmer. Finally in a panic I just pretended I didn't have any more questions left, closed my journal, and thought of England. The villagers had an interesting approach to life; appeared to want for nothing, and because they produced all their own food they had considerably easier lives than city folk. Standing on the road overlooking a valley and some mountains as clouds left dappled shadows on the countryside, I got the feeling that they weren't too far off base.
We dropped Peter off at a street corner and headed back to Beijing. We'd spend a couple hours there before boarding a sleeper train to Xi'An. In a Dairy Queen we met an American who taught English at orphanages in south China--the bastard made me feel like a jackass. The sleeper was interesting, because our group of sixteen was shared across four six-bed bunks, meaning four Americans and two Chinese strangers in every cabin. I was disappointed to find that I was on the ground floor, but the top was empty. Surreptitiously I climbed inside and snuggled down for the night. Naturally, I had just fallen asleep when we stopped and our resident Chinese stranger entered our cabin and tried climbing in next to me. A few hurried apologies I was silently hating him from the bottom bunk.
After eleven hours on a train, we pulled up to the Xi'an stop. We'd arrived in the city that was to be our home for the next four days (with one exception), and it was a hot, sweaty, polluted place. Even so, I was excited to enjoy this new and strange place.
Previously, In Beijing
Next Up: Xi'an and Yenan
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Around China in 30 Days: First Stop, Beijing
These are my May/June 2010 Journals, rewritten into a semi-coherent narrative of my trip through China with the UW Madison History group. It was a tremendously fun experience that I want to publicize a little bit, so I'll be posting these here.
I will endeavor here to describe in crushing detail my month in
Beijing. This is an assignment, so I don't expect anyone to read it too
closely, and I hope you don't, because up to a month after the fact it's
going to be mostly rote description of details for my own future
edification. Well, obviously, it's not like it's "present" edification, -ed. A considerable warning for those of particularly Victorian
constitution: much of the culture shock I experienced in China revolved
around bathrooms.
I arrived in Beijing after possibly the most harrowing plane ride I'd ever endured. How many hours passed I've no idea, but if I had to guess I'd say "Hell is very real, and it is a tin can soaring at 30,000 feet and playing Meet the Morgans as your only source of diversion ". On the bright side, I lost my camera! The pictures you'll see were taken with permission from my friends on the trip.
Beijing International Airport had the effect of immediately pacifying me, though, as it was colossal and my first glance at China's dusky magnificence. Peeling away from the airport and onto the highway, I was offered sights which I devoured with increasing glee. From the ugly apartments with thousands of matching air conditioners to some trees growing underneath an underpass to the first glance at Beijing Daxue's lush campus, I giggled about how much I "loved China". My compatriots were unmoved--or at least, they certainly weren't as moved as I was. Which is understandable, as I was and continue to be something of a lunatic with unending pleasure for China's unique psychological imprint.
It took a full day for my enthusiasm to dampen even slightly. This was caused by a meeting with the infamous and unpleasantly nicknamed "squatty potty". Although I was previously familiar with these engineered attempts to prevent the geriatric from using public restrooms, I'd never done so as someone possessing adult dignity (loosely resembling, perhaps distance cousins, but dignity nonetheless) and so after a minute or so of mentally accounting the urgency of my needs against the absence of a lock and the presence of a garbage can littered with suspiciously stained tissues, I surrendered and retreated. The rest of the day passed with little of interest to mark it spectacularly except a loud and entertaining battle between two people on bikes (culminating in a brutal slap) and an opportunity to try Beijing's Greatest Lie (aka Chinese Mt. Dew).
The next day, our troupe attempted to visit Coal Hill and instead found ourselves in one of Beijing's numerous shopping districts. Again, my sanitary needs were foiled by the presence of the squatty potty and the arrival of a mysterious trend: missing bathroom locks. Is there some pervert desperately hoarding these? Perhaps a cult of vandals opposed to restroom privacy? I don't know, but again I decided to test my colonic fortitude and simply left. This is far from a comprehensive discussion of events which transpired that day, but discussing in depth the circulation of a shopping district for no reason seems something best left to someone with a broader vocabulary for the subject. That I opted to discuss the nature of toilets in place of shopping should shine some light on my feelings for the consumption of material goods that I can't consume. With, like, my mouth.
Our final full day in Beijing remains one of the crowning experiences during my trip, one that would set my pace for the month. First, we saw Yuan Ming Yuan; a Qing Dynasty Summer Palace destroyed by invading Europeans during the Second Opium War. We had a lecture sitting on the ruins interrupted by an adorable kitten mewing constantly and a curious Chinese man quietly video taping us. It was quite an enjoyable experience, sort of a peaceful, pedestrian thing. It might be a fun place to take a picnic and learn of the horrors of British imperialism over ice cream.
Then we traveled to the New Summer Palace, a
massive complex arranged over a mountain and decked out with a variety
of experiences for the discerning and wealthy tourist. A man painted my
picture on a plate and sold it to me for a hefty sum, even after Helen
was kind enough to intercede and do violence to him in ways that I
sincerely believe only Chinese women are capable. I saw a marble boat
complete with marble paddles, one of the first pieces of Chinese history
I encountered as a scholar of Chinese history (such as I am) and a
testament to the Qing ruling family's increasing disconnect from
reality. The loss of the Opium War is frequently attributed to Qing
financial misconduct (and not British aggression) but that's a topic for
another time.
I took a photograph of a small child, and while my eyes were moments later occupied with magnificent architecture and the lay of the vast city stretching below, I was beset by a Chinese tourist eagerly offering me his child. I was flattered and frankly bewildered; what did this dirty stranger (I should specify: the guy was actually, physically dirty) want me to do with his adorable daughter? He offered her again, and so I took her cautiously. Perhaps too cautiously, as I held her at arm's length and her father immediately rescued her. No, wait, he was fixing her dress--apparently if they were going to have a stranger hold their child like it was an adorable bomb, they wanted to make sure she wasn't naked from the waist down.
I departed (retreat was quickly becoming my watchword for the trip), and before too long we arrived at a massive building containing many, many stairs. "Hurry" I was urged. "You have twenty minutes to reach the top and come back, or you'll be abandoned and possibly eaten alive by Chinese merchants." I am not the sort of person who takes such suggestions lightly, and so I bolted eight stories or more in short order and arrived at the summit out of breath. The breath-taking sight did its best to take credit, but really it was air pollution and my own belief that respiratory diseases are just God's way of questioning my manhood.
Sights seen and mountains twice surmounted, I descended rather proud of myself. I'd easily beaten the time limit and seen a large statue. What more could I want? I reached the bottom, left the gated-off building, and was promptly informed that the bus would not be arriving for over an hour and that I'd nearly died so that we could lolligag somewhere where the water could mock us with a mixture of tantalizing freshness and foot-melting pollution.
And in the final moments of good fortune in Beijing, I ran into a friend, who invited me to my first evening on the town. I met several of his friends--amongst whom I hope I did not embarrass myself too readily--and we visited a pair of bars and a very nice restaurant. Jake was more than happy to serve multiple roles, helping me speak trembling Chinese, giving me a tour of one of Beijing's terrific Jiu Ba Jie, and accompanying me home when a mixture of terrible Chinese beer and jetlag began exacting their toll.
I woke up the next morning bright eyed and bushy tailed, enthusiastically ready to travel to Chengde, to be entailed shortly. Beijing was a terrific city, I decided, but I was ready to depart for new sights.
Next Stop: Chengde
30 Days in China
First Stop: Beijing
 |
| Thanks to Krista Thomson |
I arrived in Beijing after possibly the most harrowing plane ride I'd ever endured. How many hours passed I've no idea, but if I had to guess I'd say "Hell is very real, and it is a tin can soaring at 30,000 feet and playing Meet the Morgans as your only source of diversion ". On the bright side, I lost my camera! The pictures you'll see were taken with permission from my friends on the trip.
Beijing International Airport had the effect of immediately pacifying me, though, as it was colossal and my first glance at China's dusky magnificence. Peeling away from the airport and onto the highway, I was offered sights which I devoured with increasing glee. From the ugly apartments with thousands of matching air conditioners to some trees growing underneath an underpass to the first glance at Beijing Daxue's lush campus, I giggled about how much I "loved China". My compatriots were unmoved--or at least, they certainly weren't as moved as I was. Which is understandable, as I was and continue to be something of a lunatic with unending pleasure for China's unique psychological imprint.
It took a full day for my enthusiasm to dampen even slightly. This was caused by a meeting with the infamous and unpleasantly nicknamed "squatty potty". Although I was previously familiar with these engineered attempts to prevent the geriatric from using public restrooms, I'd never done so as someone possessing adult dignity (loosely resembling, perhaps distance cousins, but dignity nonetheless) and so after a minute or so of mentally accounting the urgency of my needs against the absence of a lock and the presence of a garbage can littered with suspiciously stained tissues, I surrendered and retreated. The rest of the day passed with little of interest to mark it spectacularly except a loud and entertaining battle between two people on bikes (culminating in a brutal slap) and an opportunity to try Beijing's Greatest Lie (aka Chinese Mt. Dew).
The next day, our troupe attempted to visit Coal Hill and instead found ourselves in one of Beijing's numerous shopping districts. Again, my sanitary needs were foiled by the presence of the squatty potty and the arrival of a mysterious trend: missing bathroom locks. Is there some pervert desperately hoarding these? Perhaps a cult of vandals opposed to restroom privacy? I don't know, but again I decided to test my colonic fortitude and simply left. This is far from a comprehensive discussion of events which transpired that day, but discussing in depth the circulation of a shopping district for no reason seems something best left to someone with a broader vocabulary for the subject. That I opted to discuss the nature of toilets in place of shopping should shine some light on my feelings for the consumption of material goods that I can't consume. With, like, my mouth.
Our final full day in Beijing remains one of the crowning experiences during my trip, one that would set my pace for the month. First, we saw Yuan Ming Yuan; a Qing Dynasty Summer Palace destroyed by invading Europeans during the Second Opium War. We had a lecture sitting on the ruins interrupted by an adorable kitten mewing constantly and a curious Chinese man quietly video taping us. It was quite an enjoyable experience, sort of a peaceful, pedestrian thing. It might be a fun place to take a picnic and learn of the horrors of British imperialism over ice cream.
 |
| Seen here with Krista and Liz |
I took a photograph of a small child, and while my eyes were moments later occupied with magnificent architecture and the lay of the vast city stretching below, I was beset by a Chinese tourist eagerly offering me his child. I was flattered and frankly bewildered; what did this dirty stranger (I should specify: the guy was actually, physically dirty) want me to do with his adorable daughter? He offered her again, and so I took her cautiously. Perhaps too cautiously, as I held her at arm's length and her father immediately rescued her. No, wait, he was fixing her dress--apparently if they were going to have a stranger hold their child like it was an adorable bomb, they wanted to make sure she wasn't naked from the waist down.
I departed (retreat was quickly becoming my watchword for the trip), and before too long we arrived at a massive building containing many, many stairs. "Hurry" I was urged. "You have twenty minutes to reach the top and come back, or you'll be abandoned and possibly eaten alive by Chinese merchants." I am not the sort of person who takes such suggestions lightly, and so I bolted eight stories or more in short order and arrived at the summit out of breath. The breath-taking sight did its best to take credit, but really it was air pollution and my own belief that respiratory diseases are just God's way of questioning my manhood.
Sights seen and mountains twice surmounted, I descended rather proud of myself. I'd easily beaten the time limit and seen a large statue. What more could I want? I reached the bottom, left the gated-off building, and was promptly informed that the bus would not be arriving for over an hour and that I'd nearly died so that we could lolligag somewhere where the water could mock us with a mixture of tantalizing freshness and foot-melting pollution.
And in the final moments of good fortune in Beijing, I ran into a friend, who invited me to my first evening on the town. I met several of his friends--amongst whom I hope I did not embarrass myself too readily--and we visited a pair of bars and a very nice restaurant. Jake was more than happy to serve multiple roles, helping me speak trembling Chinese, giving me a tour of one of Beijing's terrific Jiu Ba Jie, and accompanying me home when a mixture of terrible Chinese beer and jetlag began exacting their toll.
I woke up the next morning bright eyed and bushy tailed, enthusiastically ready to travel to Chengde, to be entailed shortly. Beijing was a terrific city, I decided, but I was ready to depart for new sights.
Next Stop: Chengde
Monday, September 3, 2012
Call Me Ishmael
Had a lot of fun with this drawing, working on some new coloring techniques, diversifying my ability to represent textures. I'm thinking I should maybe have painted the robe and beard a white color, but I really wanted to capture the wooliness of the beard by making it look slightly dirty.
I have a theory that Ishmael is wearing a false beard to hide his face, since Snicket explicitly mentions its wooly quality by way of comparison to the island's numerous sheep, and Ishmael of course would know about Veiled Facial Disguises.
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