A scene from rural China.
Red flames on trees.
Inside Beijing's Forbidden City
Catching sunset atop a sacred mountain. 
Girl in Shujou
Goat watch in Hainan province.
Haunting vistas at Tiger Leaping Gorge.
Somewhere in southwestern China.
Road to the village.
The mountains that inspired countless watercolours.
Guilin: One of the most enchanting places on earth.
Me swimming in the river.
**************************************************
Some correspondence to paint more pictures of China...
Warm Season’s Greetings
Happy New Year, everyone! We’ve just returned from a very enjoyable Christmas Holiday on Hainan Island, China’s southernmost province. Perhaps the word "Christmas" is a misnomer considering the Chinese don’t celebrate the holiday; we heard no Christmas carols, saw no Santas and witnessed no last-minute consumer madness. Instead of a blanket of fine, white snow, our Christmas backdrop was surf and sand, palm trees and warm breezes.
We left for our holiday shortly after my last class on December 24th and spent Christmas Eve on a cramped, overnight bus. I managed to get a little sleep but poor John suffers from some sort of a "can’t-sleep-on-a-moving-vehicle" affliction. The next morning, after a 2-hour ferry ride, we arrived on Hainan Island a bit groggy but ready to greet Christmas day. What greeted us was a horde of food vendors, taxi drivers, and ticket salespeople with a voracious eye on our tourist dollars. They ignored our polite requests to leave us alone and wherever we walked a circular group with a 3-person radius would follow us. I thought it must have looked comical but John was getting claustrophobic and found none of it amusing. When he resorted to raising his voice, however, they relented and we managed to get out of the city to a smaller, quieter town.
That smaller, quieter town was Sanya, at the southernmost tip of China’s southernmost province. While having lunch at the bus station we had the good fortune to meet a local who had lived in Canada and was therefore fluent in English. He helped us find the cheapest lodging in town, which was, believe it or not, in a dormitory at a plant and animal quarantine centre. It was literally called "Sanya Plant and Animal Quarantine Centre"! Yet despite its inauspicious name, it had comfortable beds and a modest bathroom for only $10 a night. And the beach was only 50 steps away, across a palm-tree lined avenue.
The beach was where we spent a good part of our vacation, dividing the time between high-stress activities such as reading, people-watching, strolling and napping. From time to time, a herd of goats or a cow or a crew of sun-bronzed fishermen would traverse our patch of turf and remind us that we were in China.
Beyond the beach life in Sanya, there were a few interesting points that were accessible as day trips. The most enjoyable way of reaching nearby destinations was in the side-cars of motorcycle "taxis". The wind would blow our hair as we putt-putted on rutted roads across rice paddies and dusty villages.
One of the fascinating places we visited was Monkey Island, a preserve where thousands of monkeys live peacefully. It was only about 6 million years ago that the human species diverged from theirs – an extremely short time interval on the evolutionary scale. And watching them interact, it was striking to note how similar they were to homo sapiens; the way they gingerly curled their fingers around objects, the way they formed extended family units and clans, the way the males doggedly pursued the females, from filial love to avarice it was all there. Right from the minute we entered the park, a group of about 50 monkeys reminded me of the vendors and taxi drivers that accosted us when we arrived in Hainan – except that instead of tourist dollars, they were after tourist food. The park permitted us to feed them nuts so I brought a small bag with me. No sooner had I opened my knapsack when one of the monkeys scampered up onto John’s shoulder and snatched the bag of peanuts from my hand. John was more guarded with his peanuts, although during the course of the afternoon he did lose a baseball cap. Neither of us saw it being stolen but we assume that one of the 50 or so more aggressive monkeys is culpable. Somewhere on the island there’s a monkey wearing John’s hat.
From Sanya we ventured inland, taking a 3-hour bus ride on winding mountain roads. Our second-hand, 10-year old tour book suggested that there was a large concentration of "minority peoples" in the region with their own unique dress, music and architecture. We had visions of bamboo huts and dancing around a campfire but with the breakneck speed with which China has been barreling into the future, it seems that things have changed and there is now very little evidence that there was once a thriving indigenous culture. I can’t fault them for wanting modern luxuries but it’s still a pity that so much has been lost.
We didn’t stay long in central Hainan, just long enough to enter an historical park style "ethnic village" where we had a glimpse of what village life used to be like: Mud and bamboo homes with thatched roofs, straw baskets and mats, carvings of primitive deities. Our $4 entrance fee also entitled us to a presentation of local dancing. There were about 20 young men and women that performed for an audience of two – yes, that’s right, apart from the dancers, John and I were the only other people in the theatre. It felt strange sitting there in the empty hall but it was interesting to see their colourful outfits and dances which resembled something more from my Filipino heritage than from China.
By New Year’s Eve we had made our way back to the north of the island. We didn’t really have any plans but by chance we met a warm-hearted Dutch traveler who, despite knowing very little about us, invited us to her friend’s New Year’s Eve party. We met her friend who was a burly Dutch man studying Chinese at a local university. From the balcony of his apartment we had a view of the relative affluence that has been brought about by China’s capitalist experimentation. The neighbourhood was so strikingly modern with its tall glass skyscrapers, smooth roads, luxury townhouses sporting large sun roofs and satellite dishes. Yet juxtaposed amidst all this was an undeveloped lot with shabby, dilapidated homes and litter strewn everywhere. The shared bathroom, which was a pit for a toilet and a simple pipe for a shower, didn’t even have a roof for privacy, modesty being inconsequential at that level of poverty.
Our New Year’s Eve party was held on a boat with a motley assortment of ex-pats. John was singing in Dutch with the Dutch contingent while I practiced my rusty Spanish with a large Texan and my rusty Japanese with an amiable young Tokyo trader. We met German businessmen and an Australian male prostitute. The crowd was so cosmopolitan I even met a physicist who graduated from none other than the University of Waterloo, my alma mater! There were interesting people, drinks, dancing, food and fireworks and what made us appreciate it all the more was that it was all so unexpected – 16 hours earlier we hadn’t even met our fellow traveler and were expecting to take the overnight train back home for the evening. The boat party was a welcome change in plans and a marvelous way to cap our holiday and usher in the new year.
Culinary Forays
It’s winter in Zhongshan. This of course means the temperature plummets to the mid-20’s – considerably more comfortable than the humid, mid-30’s weather that assaulted us when we first arrived in late July. Winter also means it’s dog season. If the thought of eating dog turns your stomach, imagine how we felt when we saw tangible evidence of it several days ago. We were showing the sights of Zhongshan to a couple of visiting Canadian friends and fortunately our visitors hadn’t seen the dog meat until well after we’d eaten, otherwise I’m sure it would have flattened our appetites.
Our evening started with dinner at an unassuming restaurant popular with the locals. We ordered a "hot pot", a fun culinary experience which consists of a burner in the center of the table that keeps a pot of seasoned water at low boil. We’d dip tofu, beef, shrimp, vegetables and other sundries in the pot until they were cooked to our liking and at the end, we savoured the rich broth that was the end-product of all our dippings. Fun, active eating!
After our bill was paid and our bellies sated, our intent was to go for a foot massage. At the front of the restaurant, though, we were momentarily distracted by – of all things – snake decapitations. Apparently, the restaurant is popular for fresh snake meat. At its entrance they displayed pails of water snakes and cages of cobras and with every order of snake the chef/terminator would step outside, flick his hand in a cage and deftly extract a snake from a writhing black mass. The snake would struggle, but the chef remained in control, indifferent, pinching the creature at the base of its head with his bionic fingers. The beheading was then swiftly executed with a large pair of scissors. One gruesome SNIP, and there was no more struggle…
I have learned that the Cantonese eat almost every variety of creature that crawls, flies, swims or slithers in their section of China. Following an objective train of thought, I reason "Why not?" In Canada we slaughter cows, pigs and chickens and our taste buds have grown accustomed to them. But even though I could accept it intellectually, nothing could have prepared me for the visceral impact of seeing a skinned dog, unceremoniously suspended on a hook, head wrapped in a plastic bag below. They might as well have kicked me in the stomach. It was thought-provoking, though, in the way that many disturbing incidents are; our reactions were the products of a Canadian culture that chooses to make dogs "man’s best friend" while the Chinese walked by the dog as indifferently as we would walk by a package of cold cuts at the local supermarket.
No comments:
Post a Comment