Holy Places, the Ghost of John Denver, the Ganja Mistresses of Dali, and my Fourth Infatuation with Bob Dylan

I've been a bad blogger. No matter, no time for Internet-self-depreciation--there are adventures afoot, and words with which to pin them down like preserved butterflies. Nabokov, eat your heart out.

The Buddhist temples of Yunnan (and perhaps the rest of China) often follow the same general layout--whether or not elaborated or minimized, there are a few elements that more or less remain the same. First there is the entrance, a gateway garnished with color and frescos, the rooftiles curving like feathers. There is always a long peice of wood that must be stepped over (don't step on!), which completes the gateway. The purpose is to either keep out evil ghosts or trip foreigners, depending on how you look at it. Beside the main gateway are usually a couple guards, often 20 feet high or so, brandishing swords or musical intruments, faces alive with grimmaces or silent shouts or strange, wicked grins. Now, after the gate, there is a lot of variation, but usually there is a central building which houses Mr. Buddha himself, enlightened, frozen in gold leaf and gold paint and gold admiration. He is the main man, tranquil, often flanked by a couple holy cronies, who are usually quite large--but never as large as Big B himself. The largest Buddha I've seen could've easily been 100 feet tall, lotus-positioned and lotus flower in hand.
Once you get over Buddha (I'm sure he would prefer that you would, afterall, he did preach a dissolving of conceptions of self), you notice everything else: the banners, the carved lotuses, the alters. And around it all is usually a walkway for moving things, you know, us who are not quite sacred enough to be petrified in gold leaf--and beyond that, carved into and covering the walls, you can often see an audience of saints (for lack of a better word?): a holy audience for the human audience for the holy. In the bigger temples there are hundreds of these guys, some with red faces, some with blue faces, some with swords and some with flowers, and some with incredibly long eyebrows (think jump ropes protruding from your brow). They all have different facial expressions: angry, peacefull, and some, with very fixed expressions of focus, mouths open in some strange shape, looking intently into the distance... much like so many KTV enthusiasts, drowning in the flickering pseudo-sound-proofed karaoke rooms of Kunming city.

I remember what Charles, one of my language teachers, told me. There are three elements that describe 80% of Chinese culture: Yin and Yang (in cooking, in medicine, in general spiritual and lifestyle balancing), the Chinese Language's penchant for words that sound a-like (i.e. luck and bat sound similar, therefore the bat is lucky--the number four is unlucky because it sounds the same as the word for death), and Boisterousness.
Boisterousness: how the Chinese people like their restaurants, their streets, their get-togethers, busy and loud and crowded and fun. I mean, you sort of have to embrace a certain boisterousness if you're living with a population density like this.
But the boisterousness is of a particular sort. Enter the downtown clubs of Kunming, where techno decibels defeat the meagre vocal chords of the patrons, who sit crowded around tables, beers and baijiu in hand. It is Saturday night, the place is packed to capacity--but nobody is dancing. Well, almost. There's a stage for hired dancers to sporatically appear, and several blocks upon which the drunkest of the clubbers go to sway and jerk. At the moment, the stage is occupied by two red-bikined women, gyrating around an very homosexual man in tight red plastic pants and an open red plastic jacket. They are choreographed, sort of. "That man there," my friend Roger, a Chinese college student, yells into my ear "is a very homosexual man." This provokes thoughts, questions: what does the average Chinese person think about gay, lesbian, transgender, genderqueer, etc.? Is it out in the open? What about Chinese sexuality in general? Sex is definately one of the most important issues/forces in China (see the One Child Policy and the inclusion of western "sexy" advertisements and clothing), and yet it seems to be the least acknowledged. But then again, I've only been here around 6 or 7 weeks. Some things take longer to get to.
But now there's no time to think out these things, because four yellow-cowboy-outfitted Chinese women have climbed upon the circular bar in the center of the club. The lighting scheme changes. The dancers begin to lukewarmly, bored-facely, sway from side to side. The music plays a song, slightly sped up, only the vocals: "Almost heaven, West Virginia..." What? No, It Can't be. "...Younger than the mountains, growing like a breeze" and then, the techno beat kicks in, and a suprising majority of drunk Chinese cock their heads upwards to shout "Cooouuuntry rooooads, take me hooooome..." boom cha boom cha boom cha "...to the plaaaace, III BEEELOOOOONG..." and the yellow-cowboy-outfitted Chinese women are, still in bored-faced fashion, doing something that looks like a manic-depressive's version of a go-go dance. It could be my imagination, but I think I see Buddha, laughing somewhere near the turntables.

That last episode, among many others, is why I am more and more seeing Chinese urban culture in this metaphor: The urban Chinese are like someone who has received an Ikea kit for Western culture, complete with more or less all the correct peices--but whether by accident or motivated by purpose, they have made something that looks decidedly different (yet vaguely familiar) to the picture on the side of the box.

Several days later, here I am, holed-up in an internet-cafe in Dali, a beautiful town moderately beseiged by tourism. We're on our third or fourth day on our two-week excursion through NorthWest Yunnan, and we've taken a day off to gather ourselves. A couple days ago we had hiked up to and slept upon Ji Zu Shan (sp?), a holy mountain topped by a large stone pagoda (as well as a few temple buildings and hotels), where you can see from miles around. The sunset was one of those shoot-me-in-the-face-gorgeous moments, the kind that you can't quite replicate on camera, looking out at a horizon warmed with violet and tangerine, prayer-flag-adorned cliffs dipped in twilitic hues, mountains silouwheting (sp...) in the distance with such an adamant solid dark-blue-black that may often be overlooked and is yet so necessary to couple with the sky above, emblazoned with bird of paradise petals.

But now we are in Dali, where you can't take a walk down the street (as a westerner) without getting at least a couple "You want smoke ganja?" "You smoke weed?"--but never from men, never from sketchy-looking darting-eyed twenty-somethings, but rather from middle-aged and old ladies, some of them in traditional clothing. I weild the words "BU YAO!" (I don't want!) like a sword. The word on the street is that cannibus grows everywhere in Yunnan, on it's own. Yes, it's illegal, but unless you're into political protesting, the Chinese authorities don't really enforce much. Also to note: I've been told by an experienced stoner that Yunnan weed is "weak as shit".

But enough about that. More important things use the letter "B": Busses, Bob Dylan, Books. On our field trip, we've been spending many hours careening across the roads of Yunnan, passing by farms, tractors, homes, cities, mountains, some people who look like they belong in 2000's America. Some people who look like they belong in 1930's America. And here's where Bob Dylan comes in, as I watch a man carrying a pole, two heavy-looking bags of corn on each end, each as large as him, walking along the road... "Come gather 'round people, wherever you roam..." and I see China "and admit that the waters around you have grown..." and I see all the money, "and accept it that soon, you'll be drenched to the bone..." and everybody scrambling to get it "if your time to you is worth saving..." and confusion, and contradiction, and so few people seem to stop and think about it "then you better start swimmin" it's a mad dash "or you'll sink like a stone" and I can't help but think "cause the times, they are a-changin'", where's China's Bob Dylan?

And then there's books. I think I've figured out my ISP: next month I'm going to read a couple versions and maybe watch a film version of possibly most beloved and known stories, a 1800-page-long affair in English translation: Journey Into the West. Then I'll talk to Chinese literay professors on their take, and then older people, who were taught the story with heavy-communist-interpretations (Lu Laoshi told me: "when I was a kid, they taught us "The monkey king is like the people, is like Mao, striking down the Bourgeosie!"), and then the Children, who grow up watching it as a cartoon (all interviews with a translator, unfortunately). I'll compare english translations of the test, but more importantly, try to understand how the story is shown reflected in the eyes of the Chinese people. And I thought I wouldn't be able to do a literature study! Yesssss...

Well, that's all for now. Sorry about lack of pictures, but I'll try to add them later. Until then, happy trails.

-s

Way Out Where The Mountains Play

A couple weeks, and much passing through--me through things, things through me. Well, no use wasting time. To summarize (but not even that, perhaps only to hint at, to flash a corner of the quilt):

I found a week for tucking myself away into the grooves of the Himalayan foothills. My companions: a Swiss girl and a cold, the latter of which, like the ghost of a late-round boxer, did not hesitate to throw heavy punches of air, phlegm, and germ up through my throat (a convoluted way to say that I've been coughing a lot). We rode buses, and with bent knees I became a small giant in a large toy vehicle, zooming across cliff-hugging highways, higher and higher, vaulting mountain passes with the clouds slow-motion galloping right along with us. Villages: houses and rice terraces peeking out from between the creases of rock and dirt--sleepy, yes, I think they are, as both tourist and home-ist brumbuh-hum-hum by way of old metal green and grey bus onwards to Yubeng.

Yubeng! A town, lightly touched by the wand of tourism but by no means turned from beautiful Yak to ugly Zhongdian (the city some few hours back on this journey, otherwise named Shangri-la, where you can watch real genuine bona fide tibetan monks buy cell phones and appear in music videos. Buy prayer flags, incense, salvation, all for a low, low price). Yubeng, only accessible by foot--if you're like the Swiss, the Boxer and me--or by mule, and if you are a tourist from Shanghai, also by iPod. And here is the past, the old folk of the town who still wear traditional clothing, the men who carry their babies with cloth straps, the women who make us tomato and cucumber soup in old, old bowls. And here is the future, the twenty-somethings, thirty-somethings who run the tourist mule trains, who wear brand-emblazoned shirts and Von Dutch hats. Which of the two are the present, that is hard to say. And now, me and the Swiss are gratefully eating corn in a smokey kitchen where the old mother makes stew, and here comes the Von Dutch mule-herding son, and they argue in Tibetan, they gesture wildly (why does he keep gesturing at us?). The Swiss and I are nervous. Even the boxer is quiet for the time being. We're worried that we're not welcome here, that maybe we should leave--but then, he smiles, asks us if the food is good. And then, she smiles, brings over a kettle, and pours what comes as a sign that everything is OK: home-made apple liquor. The smokey kitchen fills with cheers, the nervous corn cobs are put away, and that night we dream of mountains, prayer flags, glaciers, snow leopards, and the best yogurt I've ever had.

All of this was the prime rib, held together by fat-slabs of long bus rides (for the logisticicians: Kunming to Zhondian to Deqin to Feilaisi to Yubeng to Feilaisi to Deqin to Zhongdian to Kunming--7 days), and on-the-go meals of packaged peanuts and half-green tangerines.


But these are the stories of dreams away from Kunming. The next words will be for Kunming, the hospital, the rehab center, the Peking Opera, the markets, the graffiti, the baozi, but most importantly, the host family, who I need to go join again in the livingroom now.

-s