Conversations

“11 Minutes” Outranks Mao

Posted on by Laughingnomad

On my way to my BTS Skytrain station, I stop for lunch at The Emporium, an upscale indoor shopping mall where there is a variety of restaurants on the 5th floor. A young Asian woman sitting next to me at a sushi counter is reading an English language travel guide. I wonder if she is from Singapore but to my surprise she is from Beijing. She is here with her “fat” Texas boyfriend, but “he is rich,” she says. I am impressed by the command of spoken and written English by this 26 year old woman.

Fascinated to find a mainland Chinese traveling outside the country, I said that I was told by many Chinese that the only way to get a passport was via an organized holiday tour or a business trip with associates. Her business card reads that she is manager of the contacting department of a cultural communications company but I never did understand what her job is.

We met the next morning for coffee…talking intensely for four hours. One of my questions related to the fact that even after everything that happened during the cultural revolution, I still see statues and big portraits of Mao everywhere in China. She said her mother thought Mao was a hero for China. I told her I thought Mao was worse than Hitler. She bristled and said that that wasn’t true. I told her that I thought that many people in China don’t really know what happened for the ten years of Mao’s campaigns in the countrysides where it is estimated that anywhere from 30 to 80 million people died.

Then we visited an English language bookstore where I recommended the shocking biography of Mao written after Mao’s death by his personal physician of 25 years, “Wild Swans,” a story of three generations of a Chinese family, “11 Minutes” by Paulo Coelho-a book that I think is being read by every traveler from Europe to Asia, and “Soul Mountain” by Chinese author Gao Xingjian who was the first Chinese to win the Nobel prize for literature. I have since received an email from her telling me she was moved down to her soul by “11 Minutes,” the true story of a prostitute who discovers love.

A Talk By Shirin Ebadi

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Bob has been in the north for the last week so I joined the Foreign Correspondents Club the other day as a way of meeting other English speaking people in Bangkok.

Membership is reciprocal with Foreign Correspondents Clubs around the world; I first discovered the club in Phnom Penh, Cambodia a couple years ago. The club provides journalists with a venue and equipment for media activities but also provides memberships for other expats who live abroad or visit often…my category being “retired.” The club, in the penthouse of the Mayeena Building, sponsors activities like talks by visiting personalities like the Dalai Lama, has a bar and restaurant and a collection of English language papers, books and magazines.

So my first visit was to a talk given by Shirin Ebadi, the Muslim activist who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003. The talk was very short…the questions by many of the media seemed designed for making their own statements about other governments like Burma, North Korea, the U.S. and Iraq.

Ms Ebidi is a self declared human rights activist (having once been jailed for her activities) and one of the many attorneys who are working together with many of the nearly 200 journalists who are currently incarcerated in Iran. She said that it is impossible to determine the exact number of people jailed for their human rights work because the statistics are not released by the government and families do not want to tell why their members are in jail for fear of reprisal.

Her most adamant point was that violence and war solves nothing but instead intensifies conflict. She added that Iran is not in a position to pose any danger to any of it’s neighbors. Then she continued by saying that it is left up to various Non-Governmental Organizations in Iran to go into neighboring countries with any messages, eg. human rights workers in Iran “are in agreement with Iraq’s Muslim leader, Sistani, who is adamantly advocating separation of church and state in Iraq.”

In describing her work, Ms Ebidi stressed that “the power of the pen is much stronger than the power of arms…the work of the pen can do more than an entire army,” she said. (Most of the people in attendance clapped in agreement when she commented that now that Saddam Hussein is going to be put on trial, the country must put western governments on trial too for collaborating with Hussein when he gassed the Iranians during the seven-year Iran/Iraq war!)

“So human rights activists are fighting for the freedom of the pen,” she said. “All societies need freedom of expression…the first stepping stone of democracy.” Regarding Burma, she said that the role of mass media is critical and the media should demand that the democratically elected leader and Nobel Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, be given her freedom from house arrest.

When asked for her reaction to the Muslim woman in New York City who led a group of Muslim women in prayer over the objections of male Muslim leaders, she said she was not a religious person so she couldn’t comment on religion…but then went on to say that all women should be able to practice their religion the way they want. Islam, like all other religions, can be interpreted differently but any interpretation must be consistent with today’s societies. “What is the true Islam,” she asked? She answered herself by saying that “we all have a small piece of the truth. We must believe in what we are doing and believe in our path and allow the others to follow their own paths.” But then she added that “many use Islam to impose their political will on others.”

The most interesting question was asked by a woman from the BBC. She wanted to know how Ms. Ebidi was able to be critical of Iran, a country, like Thailand, that considers criticism as unpatriotic, without incurring reprisal. Her answer was that sometimes activists are accused of plotting against national security, but that it is impossible for one person to make a complete change in a country and any change must take place through the people. “The world is a mirror that reflects the good and bad in us eventually,” she concluded.

A man at my table was a professor of engineering at a local university. After introducing myself (retired and a traveler) he wondered why I was interested in “this.” I thought it was an interesting question. I was kind of speechless for a moment since the answer seemed so obvious to me. Then I remembered that my son Doug told me that when they got married his Thai wife, Luk, didn’t know who Prime Minister Thaksin was…an example of the lack of general knowledge of and interest in civic affairs. The other person at my table was a woman who worked in the human resources department of an oil company who was going to be doing business with Iran. The man at the table had a slight Indian accent but side-stepped the where are you from question from the woman. I mentioned that I thought the speaker was very “cagey” in her answers…and the guy was delighted with the use of the word “cagey” but I admitted I had no idea how the word came to be used this way! I love this stuff.

Jazz In Familiar Old Quarter Hanoi

Posted on by Laughingnomad

I had to check out of Thailand…thought my visa was 90 days that I got in Kunming in December but it was only 60 days. So at the end of March I had to pay a hefty fine at the airport to get out of the country…almost 10 a day!

I hopped a flight to Hanoi and stayed at the Classic Street Hotel again…this time thoroughly enjoying the Old Quarter with a minimum of running around.

Found a jazz club and while enjoying the free WiFi on my laptop had a great conversation with an American woman who, having been out-stationed in Hanoi for several years with Ford Motor Company, met and married the sax player and owner of the club. Even bought a T-shirt with an orange sax and name of the club that I have now forgotten!

At the end of a month at the Classic Street Hotel I flew back to Bangkok.

Keeping Body and Soul Together

Posted on by Laughingnomad

In Bangkok we got a good deal for a month in a beautiful completely furnished apartment on a dead-end street in the upscale Saladaeng area…close to the Skytrain and the new subway that is running again after a recent accident.

Many delicious food vendors just outside the front door were well-placed for the two towers of business offices at the end of the street. After a week Bob took off for northern Thailand and I stayed in Bangkok…taxiing back and forth to my Tufts university-trained dentist who employs a group of specialists…all women…on Sukhumvit 24. With two new porcelain caps and a root planing, I will return in a month for prep work on two implants that will be completed in another 4 months…all for about a 7th of what it would cost with no dental insurance at home.

Doug and Luk took an overnight train from Krabi and stayed with me for a few days while a friend babysat their dog Ting-Tong at their house. They eat very small meals many times during the day…Thai food being what it is…so it seemed like we were eating constantly. One evening Doug took us up to the top of one of the tallest towers in Bangkok where we looked down from an outdoor bar/restaurant sitting on the very edge of the building…refreshing cool breezes blowing our hair…jaw-dropping night lights of the city down below. But mostly Doug and Luk just hung out in the air-con apartment with me…dreading the return to their “fan-cooled” (a uphemism if ever there was one) house in Krabi.

Bought a 20 hour wireless card I use with my Mac computer in any of the many Starbucks around town…handy for uploading blog notes and updating software…visiting with other computer users like the young guy from London who just moved here for a two-year tour with his company…paying as much for the freight on his furniture as it all cost in the first place. Our visit ended when a Thai-boy sat down at the Brit’s table…shooting me a look that could kill. Apparently I was interfering with their date.

Visited the six floors of Panthip Computer Shopping Mall several times where you can buy any high-tech item you could ever want. There are hundreds of stalls selling CD’s and DVD’s and at one I spoke to a rough-looking character standing next to me. “I come here often for R&R,” he says looking at the Thai girl standing next to him. (One in 30 Thai women have said to be working as prostitutes although they don’t call themselves that…they just want an ATM guy to exchange sex with.) “Most things are cheaper if you order over the net,” he says, apparently except for the handfulls of games and software he is buying for his employees in his computer center in Iraq.

Checked out the Foreign Correspondents Club, one of many around the world (I used the one in Phnom Penh Cambodia) that honor each other’s members. In the penthouse of a Bangkok tower you will find the club with a bar/restaurant that hosts speakers from around the world…recently the Dalai Lama spoke there…has a state of the art media center for journalists, jazz on Friday nights…and expats to speak English to! The night we were there ASEAN was hosting an open conference regarding Burma.

Miao Village In Guizhou

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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In Shanghai, exploring the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree web site, I noticed a query from a young woman from Kaili in Guizhou Province who was offering to arrange a homestay in a Miao minority village in the mountains. We exchanged emails and I was excited to meet her. But then I received an email saying she was in Shanghai and could we meet for the train ride to Guizhou in a couple days. I returned that I couldn’t leave that soon but I could meet her in Kaili…then I never heard from her again. A mystery…or maybe she got an offer from someone to pay her fare back to Kaili…who knows. But I knew where I was going next! From Shanghai I flew to Guiyang, capital of Guizhou Province and stored my baggage at a hotel there before boarding a bus for the three hour ride to the city of Kaili.

When I got off the bus there, I was directed to another station around the corner with several rickety old buses waiting for passengers to various villages. I had no idea which bus would take me to Xiuang, the village I had been told by the English-speaking receptionist in Guiyang that would be celebrating their New Year’s holiday. Then I saw a smiling family waiting near one half-full bus. “Xiuang,” I asked. Yes, they nodded. But while we were waiting to board, a couple of men outside a nearby fence a few feet from us motioned us to approach them. It gradually became clear they were taxi drivers that wanted to take us to Xiuang. Between my motions and their language we all agreed to share the cost of the taxi so we piled in and were off…on a harrowing short-cut along steep mountain dirt roads with thousand foot drop-offs…to our village!

The people in the mountains in this southeastern Chinese province are not Han Chinese. Eighteen different minorities live within Guizou province and I was here to visit the Miao people in this gulley-like valley with identical hand-hewn wooden houses climbing the hills on all sides.

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The wooden houses are built on foundations of stone and constructed with wooden pegs…no nails or cement. Steep paths meander among the houses.

After some initial quandry as to where a hotel might be, if there was one, I came across a woman who led me to a small building…who would have thunk it was a hotel…for about $2.00 for the night. I was invited to join the family around their hotpot dinner downstairs…had no idea what I was eating but I was starved and it tasted delicious with smiling faces all around. No extra charge! There was no heat in the freezing room that night so I took the bedding off the other twin bed and added it to mine.

There are at least 130 different types of Miao people living in villages among the mountains and they have different dialects, headdress, and traditions. Yet, they all belong to one Miao minority. Their language is endangered as it has no written form and is used less and less among the younger generation who is often eager to learn English.

The next morning, walking along the main cobblestone path through the village I came across a young French couple…the only Westerners in the town…who were delighted to speak English with someone after hiking all over the mountains from village to village without a guidebook. “Just knock on a door” they said, and show the sign for sleep and eat and show money and you will be invited in,” they said. They were in their second year of travel before returning home to start a family. They had been traveling in the province two months and it was they who took me to Mr. Hou. Mr. Hou was the English teacher in the middle school there that drew students from villages all over the mountains. “By foot,” he said.

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Mr. Hou invited me to stay for two days for $4 a day in his home, generously sharing three banquet meals a day around “hotpot” and dozens of small dishes of whatevers with him and his extended family of which there were many coming and going during each meal! While the men and women prepared the food, the guests all sang a local folk song. Then they asked me to sing a song…and I’ll be darned if my mind didn’t go panicky blank…all I could think of was Row Row Your Boat and I think that is really a French song! So I told them we had rock music and I couldn’t sing rock. They all nodded in agreement…to my relief I was off the hook!

The family and I joined round on 8 inch high stools and watched Mr. Hue chop the meat up on a thick round wood cutting block on the floor. Then slowly bowls of food appeared from another cooking room that the women had prepared and were set out on the floor around a “hotpot”or wok full of boiling broth sitting on a foot high round stand full of lit charcoal. Mr. Hue would chopstick some of the food he considered the best onto my small bowl of rice. The bones and small rejected bits were spit onto the floor. After every few bites the local hooch was poured round and after a song and a whoop everyone would gulp down the fiery fruit-flavored alcohol made by the grandmothers. It didn’t take long for the whoops and songs to exceed the eating. Humorously, I was given “just a small amount” each time..the villagers having experienced past catastrophes with drunk foreigners!

Finally the day came when the New Year’s biggest day would be celebrated…music, dancing…the women in wonderful traditional dress.

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During the daytimes I wandered through the small cobbled lanes leading through the houses and shops…trying my best to avoid the firecrackers thrown at the visitors by the small boys.

Although the New Years ethnic dances in costumes were delightful and the people warm-hearted and friendly, I was happy to leave the village. The small boys thought it was great fun to make the “foreigner” jump when they threw firecrackers at her feet…one landing on top of my backpack…nearly scaring me out of my wits. And on top of that Mr. Hou felt he had to direct my every move in the home…was terribly worried I would fall off the narrow log ladder to the upper level where he had cleared out a cozy room with a rock-hard bed. After all, I was “old.” 62! So by the third day I had had enough fireworks and directing!

While I was waiting for the bus back to Kaili, (there was no schedule…you just waited for the bus to show up) a newly-arrived young man from Amsterdam and I made friends with some Chinese English-speaking students from Hunan province who were there with their photography teacher and we nearly went to Langde village with them if there had been room in their van. I was sorry not to be able to go with these cheery young people who were so anxious to try out their English…some of the words inappropriately big and ostentatious…and some I didn’t even know the meaning of! Be sure to correct our English, they said! Well, we don’t use that word in normal conversation I would say and they would look so disappointed. We exchanged email “to practice English.”

“Kaili, Kaili, bystanders yelled at me as a small bus appeared…barely missing the food-vendors on either side of the dirt road leading up to the village. Then just as I was waiting to board, a Russian-American in his 80’s from NYC with a false leg nearly toppled off the bus with his bag into the street. We quickly traded some travel stories…he had been backpacking for years all over the world…refusing to give it up…very inspiring…and touching…

I headed back to Kaili, a comfortable and colorful Miao urban city with great food down small alleys, and was pleasantly surprised to find that my hotel room harbored a broadband high speed internet connection! This was not only Asia, but it was China after all and the appetite here for technology and communication devices is insatiable.

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After another bus back to Guiyang I spent the evening walking along the river than runs through the city, meandering up and down streets…getting lost and finding my way again…checking email at a large internet cafe with at least a hundred young kids all noisily playing video games. And eating wonderful street food!

The next night I headed off to Kunming on an overnight train…middle bed in a 6-bed compartment this time…but not without exploring the new Wal-Mart around the corner from the train station to replenish my battery supply!

Shanghai

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Spent about 3 weeks in Shanghai in a lovely small hotel behind the Shanghai Library on a tree-lined street of the former French Concession. The US Embassy was next door to the Library but we never did figure out where the entrance was.

Had some interesting conversations at breakfast in the hotel with two men from Manhattan New York…both fluent in Mandarin. They collect Chinese art and furniture and are proficient in Chinese calligraphy. Made me wonder where I have been all my life. They are gay with a long relationship together…separated now…but still travel together and share their Chinese interests. I wish I could explore this further with them…after all relatonships are relationships…whether gay or straight.

Shanghai is a surprisingly user-friendly city for a Westerner. Just felt good to get off the road and cool out. Spent a whole day at the Shanghai Museum Of Modern Art during a tech-friendly exposition of world renowned artists…mostly video exhibits…very inspiring for a video freak. Even Yoko Ono sponsored a Wishing Tree which will provide the basis of some future work of hers.

Yangshau

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Currently in a delightful city (Yangshau) that is on the Yangtze River about 100 miles north of Shanghai.

China’s autumn has been fantastic, the people interesting (and challanging) and the food tasty (most of the time) even if we do not always know what we are eating.

Spent 3 days north of Beijing trekking the Great Wall (I waved to the folks in space so hopefully they were able to see me) and then did a couple of climbs on China’s sacred mountains (Tai Shan and Lao Shan).

The climbs were more like our day hikes in Oregon but still a good workout–spent one night on the summit and got up with several hundred Chinese to view the sunrise–magical and mystical as an orange globe emerging from a cloud bank. The Chinese, however, take a tram to the summit and were quite surprised that a foreigner of my age would want to walk up the mountain. “Singjingbing” (“crazy”) is the frequently heard comment.

China is a very dynamic country and going through rapid metamorphoses–in 10 yrs it will be quite different and maybe not for the better–they aim for modernization and construction is booming. However on the lanes, streets and freeways autos compete with pedestrians, bikes, and hand drawn/animal drawn carts. The expression “Chinese fire drill” prevails. Crossing a street is an adventure.

Market economy is obvious and pervasive–Karl Marx can only be shaking his head.

Tiz OK to laugh with the Chinese but not at them (have made a couple of social/cultural guffaws).

Off the tourist track we foreigners are still an oddity and draw many long stares. Younger children say “hello” and then giggle. I say “neehow” (hello) and they giggle even more. The smaller kids are cute as can be; as they get older (teens) jeans and cell phones prevail and there is the loss of cultural diversity.

Air pollution, autos, hacking & spitting, littering (everything: restaurant bones, trash, spit goes on the floor–at an internet cafe I was admonished by the propriator for putting my backpack on the floor–did not appreciate her concern until I realized what all else is on the floor and had the insight that she was trying to prevent backpack contamination.)

Then the Chinese sweep–everywhere things are swept with grass brooms but that is as deep as the cleaning process goes. But as always the fun is in observing and appreciating cultural differences (a two way street as they laugh at me)
later. B

Tai Shan Sacred Mountain

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Located midway between Beijing and Shanghai, “Tai Shan” is probably the most famous of the five sacred mountains of China. According to legend Tai Shan represents the head of Pan Gu, who after creating heaven and earth, dies from exhaustion and his limbs and head fall to earth as the five mountains. Subsequent emperors were required to climb the mountain in order to be considered an appropropriate ruler. Both Confucius and Mao felt obliged to scale the summit (5068 feet).

The sacred Mount Tai (‘shan’ means ‘mountain’) was the object of an imperial cult for nearly 2,000 years, and the artistic masterpieces found there are in perfect harmony with the natural landscape. It has always been a source of inspiration for Chinese artists and scholars and symbolizes ancient Chinese civilizations and beliefs. It is an UNESCO World Heritage Site.

I had no idea what to expect but planned on spending a night on the summit so packed my pack with multiple contingencies to include extra clothing, rain gear, food, water etc. All unnecessary, of course, as vendors and shops lined the route from bottom to top altho prices became proportionately more expensive with elevation.

The majority of the route is along carved and/or constructed stone steps which are several centuries old. Multiple temples and shrines line the way. These have cultural and spiritual significance for the Chinese but without English explanation went over my head and remain largely unappreciated. Trees, under which various emperors rested, are noted and enshrined.

Along the route the Chinese would often give me the thumbs up sign–perhaps because of being a foreigner (“laowai”–the word has a derogatory connotation like farong or gringo or honkie) or perhaps my age, perhaps both. Frequently they would request (demand) to carry my backpack (I sweat easily) and were dismayed and occasionally argumentative when I communicated that I preferred to carry my own pack. My interpretation was that they felt they should be “taking care of” the foreigner.

Photos of ancient sites & scenery were encouraged but attempts to photograph poverty, filth or anything less than ideal were met with negative feedback or at least wonderment on why anyone would want to take such a picture. The Chinese have elevated posing to an art form and always include themselves in the scene.

I reached the summit about 5pm and found it to be crowded with all shapes and sizes of Chinese who had taken a bus to the half way point and then a tram the remainder of the way to the summit. As the sun set it became increasingly cold and vendors rented out Chinese military overcoats. The laowai (foreigner) had difficulty finding one that would fit–precipitating smiles to giggles to gaffaws. The lodging was somewhere on the negative side of adequate and without heat the night was cold enough to interfere with sleep.

After a knock on the door at 5 a.m. I joined a huge entourage of Chinese for a hike to a lookout where we sat and waited for the sunrise. It was spectacular with an orange globe rising from a white bank of clouds…this coupled with a lone pine tree next to a pagoda…represented my interpretation of the quintessential and mystical China.
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Lao Shan Mountain Climb

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Spent 3 days in Quin Dao…one in new part of town, one in old town and one on a mountain north of town called Lao Shan–subsequently took train to Tai’an and climbed Tai Shan–one of the 5 holy mountains in China–it was an all day effort but not that difficult–more like a hard day hike in the Columbia Gorge in Oregon–spent the night on the top–accomodation somewhat less than basic but inexpensive–then was awakened a 5 a.m. to join the rest of the Chinese tourists to a lookout point to see the sunrise–it was quite impressive–took a tram down and now am south of Qufu–tomorrow have an “offer” to see the countryside so will probably see what that entails–do not know whether it is an overnight or what.

Have found that the Chinese usually have the best of intentions but something gets lost in the communication/language gap–on the mountain had people wanting to carry my backback–don’t think it was for financial gain but they just wanted to take care of an “older” foreigner–when I refused it often became a tug-of-war. On my way south and plan to stop in Nanjing and Langshou–there is another shan south of Shanghai that the guide book said is thee mountain to climb in China–but would like to meet up in Shanghai–probably +/- one week from now.

Had another couple of days of diarrhea with a near miss experience on Lao Shan–am sorry to hear that the upper respiratories have reached you again–but am glad that you are not proximate as the cold you gave to me in Russia took 3-4 weeks to resolve. Keep me updated–each time I get to an internet access I will forward to a word or two.
l. B

Kindred Spirits in Quindao

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Walking by the Foreign Language Bookstore in Quindao, just up the street from my comfy clean hotel room that a tout from the railroad station led me to…80 yuan she says..that’s about $10..I look in to see what they have in English. Most of the books are in Chinese…the English selection is tiny with dreadful choices and high prices. Just then I see the first westerners I have seen in Quindao walk in…where are you from, I ask…from the Gold Coast of Australia…oh, I find Australians everywhere…yes, she laughed…we manage to find our way all over the world! These women have just arrived from Shanghai where they participated in the masters section of an international dragon boat competition. One, Tye, is a nurse…the other, Leah, a school janitor. Dragon boat racing, they said, originated in China but is very popular in Australia.

Are you alone, they ask. When I say yes, their eyes light up…oh good, then would you like to come with us? Of course I jump at the chance. I show them where the internet cafe is that I had walked all over town looking for and finally found that morning by accident as there was no sign on the outside of the building. And I give them a card for the hostel I stayed at in Beijing which delighted them no end.

We have dinner together…the women pass up tubs of all kinds of shellfish to choose from on the sidewalk in front of tiny restaurants with only two or three tables…and finally choose to have “hot pot” that sits on top of a flame with your choice of all kinds of fish from the sea…a dozen different kinds of clams, little crab, shellfish we have never seen before, various unknown kibbles and bits, leafy vegetables, thin sliced mutton or pork, as much as you could eat for 29 yuan or about $6. One of the women is a bit nervous about all the unknown bits…but we laugh it off and make a complete mess on the table…the big Chinese group at the next table finding our clumsy adventure quite funny.

The next evening they showed up at my hotel door….we just showed the Chinese girls at the desk downstairs “big hair” they said…and the girls immediately knew who they were looking for…besides the fact of course, that we were all westerners…we must all know each other! They shared some wonderful chewy sweetened dried fish with me and needed me to show them how to do email so off we went out into the evening again.

My last evening in Quindao, at a 4 star hotel coffee shop, I invite the friendly waiter who has been letting me use the hotel’s free WIFI with my laptop to have dinner with me…seafood soup and jousa (dumplings)… before he has to go to his university classes at 7pm. Jack is his English name given to him by his English teacher and I find myself wishing Chinese English teachers would get a little up-to date with the English names they hand out. Jack, Han Chinese, is from Urumqi in the largest and most western province in China…Xinjiang…which has a majority of muslim Turkic speaking people. His family still lives there. He is 23 but says he is not a good student. I ask why and he says he likes sports…he would rather play American football! I say, what!! He says it’s a sport young people like but his parents don’t. I say, yes, I understand! I ask if he plays basketball and mention Yao Ming’s name…he dismisses Yao…”oh, if I were 7 feet tall I would be famous too!”

I let Jack order…he is anticipating a soup with “all kinds of shellfish from the sea” but when it comes it’s basically an eggflower soup with only a few little bits of shrimp and clam. He looks disappointed and I realize he has never done this before. The soup is only 6 yuan…less than a dollar. But Jack only makes $200 a month and I wonder what this skinny kid eats every day. At his bus stop we shake hands with lingering looks and he invites me to come back to Quindao again.

I have a hard sleeper booked on the train today at 1:30. I will arrive in Shanghai tomorrow about 9 am when I will book a dorm bed for 100 yuan…about $12. Right now this hotel I am in is celebrating a wedding with drums and a funky dragon made of balloons. The dragon lies down and the groom carries her over it and into the elevator…the ceremony will continue downstairs.