Culture

Life Becomes More of Adventure

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Old Town Vilnius is now on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sights. Some graffiti seems significant in this country where a staggering 91% of the 64% of the population who turned out to vote gave a resounding yes to membership in the European Union and that just this last April became a full-fledged member of NATO: “Your Life Becomes More and More of Adventure” and “The important Thing Is To Express Yourself!” are examples of graffiti everywhere.

One of the more vivid images of Europe this year, but especially of Vilnius, is the sight of slim, long-legged beauties strutting confidently with an air of success in slip-on spike heels and showing off flat tanned bare midriffs above skin tight jeans that come within an inch of the pubic bone. There are solariums (tanning beds) on every other block…no fish-white bellies here. I asked a young woman in former East Berlin what is behind the styles in dress and she answered “It is self-expression…we want to dress according to how we feel.” I asked if the school authorities allowed the students to wear these clothes to school and she said they wouldn’t DARE prevent us from dressing the way we want to dress!

But on the other hand Sasha, our guide to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, will say “these are nice girls…not prostitutes…but they have $100 in each eye!” There will be no going back to rigidly defined socialist customs in these countries!

Bob & The Europeans

Posted on by Laughingnomad

There is something in the European demeaner/attitude that brings out my anti-establishment posturing. On the flight from the U.S. to Frankfurt (Lufthansa Air) my seat was broken. “No problem,” said the sweet little blond frauline in braids. “We’ll find you another seat after everyone boards.” “Perhaps in first class” I suggest. (87.3% joking but it’s always worth a try). “I DON’T THINK SO” was the authoritarian autocratic response of this idealic frauline now converted to “big nurse.”

On boarding an open top tour bus in Berlin I ask the attendant (100% joking) whether this is the bus to Paris? I DON’T THINK SO.” is the less than friendly response while he is thinking “scheiskoff!” In Krakow our taxi driver parked his upscale white Mercedes next to a bright orange-colored street rod. “Maybe you ought to paint your taxi that color,” I suggested. Predictably…”I DON’T THINK SO!” Suspect that my attempts at humor need a total revamping.

Europeans perceive Americans as large, loud and naive. (This does not apply to me of course.) I think that the Europeans are a bit dorky. Especially men wearing shorts and regular shoes with black socks. Oh well.

Traveling continues to be a learning experience–the perception/interpretation of other cultures as well as our ability to tolerate/adapt/react is a challenge. The language barrier contributes to frustration but that is my problem, not theirs. I’m in their country. Still working on the smile. But occasionally it is difficult to smile when confronted/frustrated. Am going to schedule a session with the Buddah who seems to have a corner on smiling.

Most encounters however are rewarding. And each day offers the promise of a new adventure/experience–and that is exciting. However, it seems that adrenaline rushes are good for a day or two–then need a day of R&R. This sort of thing did not seem as necessary back in my frivilous youth. The R&R days usually are not planned…they just occur as in “crash.”
Later,
RLG

Krakow Poland

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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We are out of the unusually hot and humid Czech Republic. After an all night train we are in cool Krakow Poland. We accept an offer by a young English speaking man at the train depot and end up in a hostel…six flight up…”old building…no lift!”

The historic centre of Cracow, the former capital of Poland, is situated at the foot of the Royal Wawel Castle. The 13th-century merchants’ town has Europe’s largest market square and numerous historical houses, palaces and churches with their magnificent interiors. Further evidence of the town’s fascinating history is provided by the remnants of the 14th-century fortifications and the medieval site of Kazimierz with its ancient synagogues in the southern part of town, Jagellonian University and the Gothic cathedral where the kings of Poland were buried. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The first night out we look for Polish food and find ourselves in a Hungarian restaurant instead!

The next night we move to a nice little Jewish neighborhood-Kamimierz-with little cafes and jazz music up and down the street…and Internet hot spots to boot! There are fewer than 150 Jews in Krakow now. Most of the hotels in this neighborhood are full of young people from Israel visiting Auschwitz and Bzerzenka…surrounded by big burly bodyguards…

By the way In Poland, if you’re invited to dinner at someone’s house and you’ve had enough to eat, DO NOT clear your plate! This means that you want more, and your hosts will really get their feelings hurt if you refuse another helping. Same for drinking–always leave a little bit in the glass.

Former East Berlin

Posted on by Laughingnomad

I am off to Starbucks to spend an hour over coffee while checking my email but their Hotspot internet service is down. It’s a good time to revisit the former eastern sector of the city. Berlin’s architecture is stunning…old and new. Cranes hang suspended everywhere over the city. The Wall fell in 1989 and Germany has not looked back.

The West German Bundestag moved the capital of Germany from Bonn to the eastern sector of Berlin located in the middle of former East Germany and from a former wasteland has sprung a new urban district…a symbol of Germany’s Unity and the country’s success. The Brandenberg Gate is fully visible now with only strips of stone inset into the streets and sidewalks to show a new generation (dressed in retro east German clothing to tweak their parents) where the Wall once stood.

Concrete grey Friedrichstrasse in the former east sector is now the new hip place to be…hardly remembered from my 1965 trip to Europe. I asked a young English speaking guy “(I am German American,” he says) in a music shop to suggest some popular Berliner music but came away with two interesting “out there” Norwegian jazz CD’s.

Checkpoint Charlie that in 1965 released me and a friend from the American sector into the grey colorless landscape of East Berlin is now a tourist site.
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Email From Paul In Ruilli

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Before we left Chongquing Jana and I got an email from Paul, one of the Ruili kids. Jana and I were both very touched that these kids considered spending time with us so special that one of them even forgot about his own birthday! How many 17 year olds at home would spend an evening with two older women? When we were leaving Ruili, Paul had said to Jana that Chinese people feel sad at parting. When Jana said that we do too, but in so short a time we have become friends, Paul responded by saying, No, it does not take a long time. The email is best read in Paul’s own words:

Eunice, Jana:

howtimefly
I feel very happy, because
i can receive your email! i have told my parents message about you! They feel very move! i know, you are old, however, you are healthy, but you don’t afraid difficulty, from the U S A to China! Do this need nerve!
My mother is 43, i know women’s age is a secret, but she does not mind! she want to travel, my father agree her, but she said to me: i’m afraid.’
This is a chinese’s word about travel.
Why the USA is a developed country, but China is a developing country! problem in there, thinking!
Now is 23:27, my mother asks me to do homework, i
must go now!
Finally, i hope i can see you again, i represent duan na, fantasy, stv thank you again, thank you give us so wonderful time!

yours: paul
good luck to you!

Perspective On China

Posted on by Laughingnomad

China is big.

The population is staggering with a billion and a half people. It’s a matter of getting perspective. Our home state of Oregon only has about 1.5 million people. By comparison Hong Kong has 7 million. Westerners hear mainly about the Chinese cities of Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, but Guangzhou, the first mainland city we visited two hours north of Hong Kong is a westernized city of commerce with nearly 7 million people…it’s province of Guangdong having 46 million. Kunming, which reminds us of Denver Colorado…a mile high, cold but sunny…has nearly 4 million people but its located in rural province of Yunnan that has nearly 44 million people.

Guilin has nearly 1.4 million people…it�s province of Guangxi having nearly 75 million. Yangshuo, an hour south of Guilin, felt like a small village in comparison with the bigger cities but the guidebook shows it with a population of 300,000…bigger than our home town of Salem, Oregon.

Chengdu has over 11 million people but it’s province, Sichuan, has 109 million. Chongqing, the city where we started our Chang Jiang (Yangze) River trip, is a sophisticated lively city that reminds us of San Francisco with 5.8 million people…it�s province having 32.5 million. You get the idea–lots of Chinese folks—and lots more on the way even with their one child policy. Ultimately a formidable group.

How is China Doing?
As near as we can tell, China’s cities and it�s citizens are doing well. The significant story is in the poorer rural areas where only 10% of China’s land mass is capable of agriculture…encouraging genetic engineering of food to force an increase in production and where unemployment and disastisfaction is high…and where China’s leadership will continue to be challenged by demonstrations that are never reported in the Chinese or Western press.

The arguments against the Yangze River dam pale in comparison to the country’s need for electricity…and in comparison to the economic power China will become because of it. Mao Tse Tung decreed nine categories of enemy: landlords, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries, bad elements, rightists, traitors, foreign agents, capitalist-roaders and…The Stinking Ninth…intellectuals. The motto then was “Serve The People.” “To Be Rich Is Glorious” is the motto used now by a new practical generation…the first to grow up with no spirituality, no Confucius and no interest in politics…unhampered by religion and it’s dogmas-Taoism, Buddhism and even Christianity-unhampered by emperors, by chairmen, by gods.

China’s youth wants democracy and freedom. But the Chinese “never know when to stop,” says Paul Theroux who recounted his trip through China by train in the 80’s in his “Riding The Iron Rooster.” Where will the brakes come from when China is headed toward excess…in a China already plagued by corruption?

When I asked one of the teenagers in Ruili if he could go to Hong Kong if he wanted to answered “No Money…No Happy!” Another, Paul, a teenager who plays the guitar in his rock band, when asked what he thought about Hong Kong, answered: “Paradise!” You Western capitalist running dogs…look out for the younger generation in Communist China…the generation that is so excited that they are finally free to work hard…free to put money in their pocket…already making materialism in the West look ascetic.

I would love to have a conversation with Ma Jian, the poet, painter and writer who, being harassed by communist cadres, left Beijing in the early 80’s and traveled through China for three years. In his book “Red Dust” Ma foreshadowed the thinking of the next generation when he recounted his thoughts after getting lost and nearly dying in a desert: Walking through the wilds freed me from “worries and fears, but this is not real freedom. You need money to be free.”

When, after a student demonstration in the 80’s in Guangzhou, Paul Theroux asked Andrew, a university student, if he expected to become a capitalist-roader, Andrew answered “I think we have a lot to learn. We want to use the good features of capitalism but not the bad ones.” “Is that possible? Paul asked. “We can try” Andrew answered. Maybe it is only fair that now China gets it’s turn to try…

Bob’s Thai Village Visit

Posted on by Laughingnomad

While Jana and I were playing with Chinese teenagers in Ruili in the south of Yunnan, Bob spent some time in an ethnic village in the mountains in Issan Province southeast of Chiang Mai in Thailand. The people were Thai but smaller and darker…probably with a Lao or Cambodian background… and were very concerned about getting too much sun because darker skin color is discriminated against by other Thais.

Bob said he learned something about Thai culture from the people in this village when he hired a pick-up to take him to a Khmer wat (temple) high in the mountains…only to realize that nearly the entire village was going along when he saw them all piling into the back. And of course before the day was over when they all got hungry he was expected to buy the food! After a couple days feeling like he had been gouged, as he puts it, he discovered that it is the custom for the person with the most wealth and social rank (and foreigners are often perceived to be in this category since they have enough money to travel) to foot the bill.

Relationships in Thailand are governed by connections between the phuu yai (big person) and phuu nawy (little person). Ranking is defined by things like age, wealth, status and personal and political power. The phuu nawy is supposed to defer to the phuu yai and show obedience and respect. So Bob got to ride in the front seat of the pick-up but in turn he had to pay for the pick-up and the dinner. While eating dinner (three barbequed chickens and several spicy papaya salads) he received the choicest portions and they wouldn’t let him sit on the ground but gave him a prime position on the mat. The idea is that whatever wealth you come into is to be shared with the less fortunate and this especially applies to friends and family.

The school aged kids just stared at Bob…considering him a novelty…the little ones were frightened as they often are told by their mothers that if they don’t behave they will be eaten by a farang, a semi-derogatory term for a Western foreigner!

One of the villagers was an elderly blind woman in her 80’s who had never seen a farang so she wanted to feel Bob with her hands. She felt the hair on his arms and, touching each of his fingers and exclaimed, astonished, that the “farang hand was just like the Thai hand”…which cracked up all the bystanders. Bob had no idea what was going on until someone translated. He was very touched by her discovery that a farang was not a monster.

The next day Bob had an encounter with Thai justice when he was stopped on his rented motocycle by a police barricade. Apparently the motorbike license had expired. Three hours later and 500 baht poorer, the key to the motorbike was returned and he was allowed to go on his way.

After a few days kayaking and biking on Koh Chang, an island in the south of Thailand, Bob spent Christmas and the next day on a bus back to Chiang Mai. There he picked up a plane for the short hop back to Kunming, China and met Jana and me at the Camellia Hotel.

Chinese Mysteries

Posted on by Laughingnomad

The Chinese have incredible confidence in themselves…and consider themselves unquestionably the most superior people in the world…mostly due to their long history. We Westerners are the barbarians. (So we don’t need to think we are “all that” as my teenage Latina friends would call it.) And in China, Jana and I have noticed that we are continually being hidden in the rear of the restaurants, buses or whatever.

Hacking and spitting; bad hair on the men who hold cigarettes between their teeth and between their fingers like we hold a pen.

Why is the huge sign on the number 11 Middle School written in English? Because China has recently joined the World Trade Organization and it wants Western tourists to come visit their schools?

What is the Chinese Welfare Lottery? Never found out.

Old rusted framed-in but unfinished buildings…often covered with sheets of dirty canvas.

Internet everywhere…the Chinese ISP is even free on my laptop…love the sound of emailers giggling at their funny messages in the internet cafes.

Signs Everywhere…English Teachers Needed

Conversations…Guy in CD shop with university education; didn’t know what I meant by the term Communist Party…but later found out that he probably just didn’t want to talk about it. He said it was not true what westerners think…that people can say what they want and can talk. The people are told by the Communist Party that the Falung Gong is a cult that leads people away from conforming to their country (they really mean the Communist Party). They are also told that Falung Gong makes some practitioners commit suicide…and when I told one waitress that those people are committing suicide to protest against their government I saw a veil lower over her eyes but she didn’t say anything.

Western Tourists
Met a Canadian couple in Kunming that travel to Mexico every year and stay in bordellos where they can park their recreational vehicle in a fence enclosed area ($2) where they feel safe to sleep at night. I wondered how they tell where the bordellos are…

Chinese Tourists
60’s clothes; smart sophisticated looking girls…probably from Beijing. Platform leather; tennis shoes with stretchy upers, ankle length leather boots with leggings or long skirts-many of them leather. Sweaters to rival those of the Europeans.

Cultural Guffaws
Jana remembered a story about her husband John’s grandmother and grandfather in San Francisco’s Chinatown in the 1950’s. His grandfather asked a Chinese man on the street a qustion…”do-ee youee knowee whereee weee can….” when the Chinese man turned to John’s grandmother and said “lady, what’s wrong with your husband that he speaks so funny?”

A Chinese word we learned: OK is Koor Yi

Conversations In Tiger Leaping Gorge

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Wednesday Dec 11
In Old Town Lijiang, Bob joined us for breakfast at our hotel at 9am; met Li at her hotel at 10:30 for minibus trip up the gorge. Bus had no shocks so was a very bumpy miserable ride; Bob uncomfortable on narrow road overlooking the gorge. Drove all the way to Walnut Grove, which is the beginning of the Gorge and had lunch there before the trip back…everyone else but the driver and I got out and walked a couple stretches. Caught the driver rummaging through our stuff couple times while waiting for the walkers. Later Bob said that Li had warned him not to leave money in the bus while they walked.

Talked to a young French walker on his way through to Walnut Grove…he had been working for six months in a L’Oreal factory near Shanghai in order to learn Chinese. I asked him about a working visa…said he thought he was on tourist visa…his supervisors obviously paying off the immigration officials to allow him with his engineering background to work in the factory. His Chinese was great though!

On the way back, Li told us a few things about the minority people…that for the Naxi the Snow mountain is God…that when couples divorce the woman is no longer desirable by other men but that if her husband dies she is desireable. Marriages are popular in the winter.

For the Yi people, the sun is God so they live on the top of the mountains near the Sun God…but they are lazy and when they get money they drink alcohol. There are 30,000 Naxi people in Lijiang.

She went on to say that the government is poor but the leaders get all the money from tourism. The sons of the leaders get to go to school in your country, she said. Almost all the businesses in Old Lijiang are run by the Han Chinese she said…the Naxi are able only to rent out a room or two in their homes. The Naxi also drive the taxis.

Thursday Dec 12
Sakura was trying to heat up the restaurant with a charcoal burner but it produced so much smoke we had breakfast across the canal while listening to Blues Music in the Delta Cafe.

Later, Jana and I went to Sakura’s Bar and…partnerless…watched “American Sweethearts.” A group of very loud Chinese tourists came upstairs where we were watching the movie…we had to turn up the TV to earsplitting volume in order to hear. Seems to be a trait…talking in movies, concerts…any public entertainment venues…

Friday Dec 13-14
Bob took a bus to Kunming and then flew to Chiang Mai Thailand.

Echo & Li…Competitors

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Monday Dec 9 2002
In Old Town Lijiang, we are woken up by a knock at the hotel door at 8am. Two couples from Taiwan were on their way to Zhondian with a driver and wanted to know how we found the city. Then we breakfasted at Sakura Cafe.

Later, we moved to Mr. Yang’s Inn, a brand new beautiful guesthouse right on the canal where, playing with Fifi, his Lijiang dog and Debu, a pure white 3 month old Beijing puppy, we saw a large group of young people with chef’s hats on walking through the streets…we followed them until they ended up at an orphanage with children whose parents (600 people) did not survive the 1996 earthquake and more than 16,000 people were injured. Turns out we had happened onto a celebration.

On the way we passed a group of men building a traditional Naxi structure…with pegs…no nails. They had a roast pig on the spit…a traditional way to celebrate the birth of a new building, we are told.

Dinner at Sakuras…a western hang-out…guy at table next to us was from Eugene. I said we made a big mistake going home in February! He laughed and said he wasn’t going home until spring to avoid the Oregon winter.

Bob arrived in Lijiang from Dali by 1pm on bus but we didn’t connect. We were communicating via email; he told me to meet him the next day at noon in the Square. Bob couldn’t follow my directions to our hotel so he got one of his own in a Naxi Family House for Y80 or about $10 per night; tiny but very clean with 24-hour hot water.

In the meantime, Jana had gone to one internet cafe and I had gone to another at Sekura’s because there was no room for me. Thirsty, I drank a 40 oz beer while answering email…and feeling quite good, I emailed Jana and told her she should join me in another beer. Later she told me she laughed out loud reading my email.

Tuesday Dec 10
Breakfast in the cold courtyard of our hotel…Naxi fried bread with chives, rice porridge with pork, steamed bun, eggs, stir fried cabbage and coffee. I worked on my journal sitting in my heated bed while Jana washed her hair.

Later, Jana and I ran into Echo and invited her to eat with us…meeting Bob in the town square. Jana and I didn’t know it, but Bob had arranged for us to meet with Li, a Naxi minority woman Bob had hired to take us to the gorge the next day and to take us to a Naxi music concert after dinner. Echo, a city-bred Chinese Han from Beijing, bristled when Li walked up to our table in the restaurant. Li tried to talk Bob and I into watching a Chinese play instead of listening to Naxi music…the previous client of hers from Illinois liked the play much better than the music, she said! Echo, whispering in my ear, insisted she just wanted the higher commission on the play but we persisted in getting to listen to the music. I would find out later that Han Chinese look down on the ethnic minorities…feeling very superior to them. And Echo was horning in on one of the few jobs Naxi people can get that isn’t scut work…as tour guides.

Then there was a mixup on the seats at the concert…some Chinese patrons made us get up and give our seats to them…then Bob questioned whether we actually had Y50 seats…so Li offered for us to move up to the front. But as the concert had already started and we didn’t want to disturb the others, we declined.

Don’t know why we bothered with the consideration…others were coming and going and talking out loud with each other as they pleased during the whole concert.