South China Love

[Marshall K]

Tomorrow morning my son and I fly to China.  We leave for Portland then take Northwest to Tokyo, then Guangzhou.  The first leg is 10 1/2 hours, the second is 5 1/2.  There is a 2 hour layover in Tokyo which gives you enough time to enjoy the world's best toilet. 
After an overnight stay in Guangzhou, it's off to Zhanjiang and my new family.
Zhanjiang is a nice city by Chinese standards, clean, safe, prosperous and has lots of nice parks and waterfront.  It's on the South China Sea and is home port for the South fleet of the Chinese navy.  It's tropical, on the same latitude as Cuba and Merida, Mexico.  Great food, awesome seafood.  Clean air mostly.  Moderate traffic.  There are about 7 million people in the city and surrounding areas which makes it a small city by Chinese standards.  There are only about 100 white people living there, and tourism is non existent.  There are supposed to be some nice beaches around the area, so I'll be checking them out.
We will also be going to Yunnan for about a week.
It's steamy but right now only in the 70's and 80's.  Some rain showers, and typhoon season just started.
I'm pretty damn stoked!
I will try to keep you posted.  Here's some of the good looking local fare:  (thanks for the tip, Ray)

[Marshall K]

We landed in Guangzhou right on schedule and there was the cutie with the sign to take us to the hotel near the airport.  My wife arranged the the reservation so we avoided the high priced places and this one was smallish and in a quiet neighborhood with clean, big rooms with tile floors, AC, and a bathroom with good plumbing for about 40 bucks, a very good price near the the Guangzhou airport.  Awoke the next morning to firecrackers on the roof and since we were on the top floor it sounded like a dumptruck was dumping  a load of rock on top of us.
Then the flight to Zhanjiang and finally Yali.  It's been 2 and a half months and Skype just doesn't quite cut it compared to being with the real deal.  We spent the rest of the day introducing the commies to the joys of Monopoly and the Simpsons before we finally got the boys to bed and had our time alone.
My Chinese wife has two personas: the one that the world sees and the one in the bedroom.  I love both, but the one in the bedroom has been the greatest surprise of my life.  Say no more, wink wink nudge nudge.
From talking to her about other Chinese women, they are a bawdy bunch, but they really are more polite and proper in public.
We have been eating exremely well, and there was a duck head in our lunch yesterday which I did kind of gnaw on, but couldn't quite get myself to summon my inner zombie and suck the brains out.  I had one of my favorite things this morning which is called "ayah" (like the New England "yes")  which is a kind of rice gluten tamale with a sweet peanut filling and is steamed in banana leaves.
It's steamy and warm and we are having a lot of good quality family time.  My son is a handsome 6 foot four, and gets lots of attention from the cute shop girls.  He is enjoying the hell out of it. 
Time for some quality family time, and more cheap shopping.  More later.

[Dave H]

Hey Marshall,

I'm glad you guys are having a great time! I didn't realize you were already there.

My Chinese wife has two personas: the one that the world sees and the one in the bedroom.  I love both, but the one in the bedroom has been the greatest surprise of my life.  Say no more, wink wink nudge nudge.
From talking to her about other Chinese women, they are a bawdy bunch, but they really are more polite and proper in public.

Very true! That is our little Asian Board secret!  

Dave H.

[Bear]

Durn! I guess that our "Little Asian Secret" had to get out one day!

Nice info.  7 Million being small by Chinesse standards! Suddenly "waves of yellow people" seems pretty scary.

The Baer Family

[Marshall K]

The earthquake was in Sichuan, which is about a bazillion rice paddies away from where we have been.  We are back in Zhanjiang arriving this morning on the sleeper train from Kunming, Yunnan province.  Ten days on the road was a bit on the tiring side but we saw lots of incredible things.

Yali's son, Tody got a reprieve from school and got to go with us.  The first day we got on the train for a  six hour ride to Nanning, a fast growing (is there any other kind?) city of around 15 million where we were met by an old friend of Yali's.  She booked us a decent hotel for Y100 per room.  That's about $15.  We got to see a bit of the city which had a great light show on the skyscrapers. 

The next day we signed up for a tour in Guinlin home of the cool limestone Karst mountains you see in all the Chinese watercolors.  Chinese tours are grueling jam packed affairs with the guide talking too loud through a loudspeaker, but still fun.  We first saw a lovely river park, probably a thousand years old with a limestone cave that had Buddha statues carved into the walls.  Also a rice winery where the wine is fermented in caves and a tasting room.  I had some of this stuff at a wedding, but it was cheap rotgut.  The good stuff is quite tasty so I will probably get some to bring home.  Just when we hoped we would be going back to the hotel about 5 o'clock we were taken to a gem museum with a huge shopping area.  New China capitalism at work.  We window shopped.  Can we go hotel now?  Maybe restaurant.  No, time to go to a tea tasting.  Some local food items, too.  When the tidbits were passed around to sample, they ended up stopped with Tody where he laid into them like it was dinner.  We were led through a maze of stuff for sale on the way to the bus.  Hotel at 7:30.  We are starving!  Yummy spicy duck, eggpant, fish, beer.  Yali and Tody are not used to spicy food so they suffer through.

7:30 the next day off to the river cruise.  It is raining on and off and the mist hangs on the mountains.  Just like the paintings!  There are about a hundred boats at the dock each holding about 200 people.  We pile in, sitting in the big cabin at tables with comfy chairs.  We have made pals with some young people and are sitting with them.  There is an incredibly loud guy telling us all about the mountains we will see and he will sell you photos of yourself on the boat, shut up, [snip]!  We pull out into the river in a long convoy and we go uptop to escape the loud guy and enjoy the scenery.  It truly becomes breathtaking and you can enjoy the beauty and create your own solitude imagining this place 200 years ago.  There are showers off and on throughout the cruise, driving most below so you can enjoy it even more.  The food served is good, especially the little fried crabs that you eat whole.  Yali is the first to succomb to bad tummy this day.  We land at a nice small town (only about 100,000 people), and walk up through a fun market place.  Then into the bus and off to the limestone caverns.  Another breathtaking tour.  Big caverns with huge limestone waterfall formations and stalagtites.

We're not done yet!  There is a quiet ride in local river rafts, a tour of a cheesy native village, and a stop at a national park to see a giant 1500 year old banyon tree.  All throughout there are wonderful karst mountains and scenic farmland.  All of the farms look like prize winning Rodale gardens, only they go on forever.  Everything is done by hand, the biggest machinery I saw was a big rototiller.  Buffalo are used a lot for pulling plows and carts.

Back to town by 7:30.  Got a better hotel and no more tours!  Tomorrow is Kunming, Yunnan province.  We take the sleeper train.  Tried an internet cafe, but it was like dialup on quaaludes and after waiting ten minutes for it to open the new mail page on my hotmail I said f* it.

More tomorrow.

[Marshall K]

We rested up real well the next day since our train didn't depart for Yunnan until 5:00pm.  It was damn hot, and we sluggishly strolled the streets under the shade of our umbrellas, listlessly fending off the the hawkers.  My stomach was not happy, so we stayed close to the hotel and a cleanish toilet.  Guilin is losing its charm.
At 4;15 we hump our baggage across the street to the train station.  Crossing any Chinese street can be an adventure since lights and crosswalks seem to be a sort of weak suggestion to motorists. 
There is a massive concrete parking lot in front of the station, so the whole walk was probably about a quarter mile in baking humidity.  The train station is equally gargantuan, with lots of stairs, and the train is about half a mile long and our car is near the rear, so we did a pretty good death march just getting there.  In China the station being across the street is a little deceptive.
In the sleeper cars there are six bunks to a room, three high on each side, and we got the top and middle bunks.  you can sit up in the bottom bunks, but the AC units blow right onto the top ones.  Brian and I choose the top ones.  In the hallway there are little tables with little fold down stools.  Overall not too bad.  Toilets are at each end.  Chinese toilets are squat to go devices which arent a problem unless you have Chiang's revenge.  Fortunately the magic medicine has worked.  What amazes me are how the ladies in high stiletto heels manage these devices in a rocking train, but Yali assures me it's no problem.  I guess generations of foot binding have made just about anything possible.
Sleeping on a train is nice, you get rocked like a baby and you wake up somewhere new.  In this case, high in the mountains.  Still lots of farms, only a lot poorer since they have a lot less available water.  More grain which they were harvesting by hand and piling onto oxcarts.  There is a cool place that has a bunch of limestone pillars scattered over the landscape, all pretty close together.  People are trying to farm in between these, too.
We get to Kunming about 11:00 am.  It's one of those 20 million or so places with bad air and a few low lifes with bad teeth hanging around the train station.  Kunming is where the pilots flying cargo over the hump from India in WWII landed to offload.  Brian's grandfather was one of those pilots, so a  descendent returns!
We are met by a niece of a friend of Yali's.  She is there to help us find our way around and suggests we go to her hometown, Yuxi, which is much nicer.  We do and do not regret it.  The nicest hotel I have stayed in in China and only Y100 with breakfast.  Yuxi is a nice small town, only about 5 million people, with fairly light traffic and friendly people.  We eat a great spicy lunch which causes Mr Tummy to act up again.  I skip dinner and stay in the hotel with Tody while Yali, Brian, and Chumei go out with some friends of hers.  They had a fun time and Yali tells me that Chumei has her hand on Brian's knee in the cab.  This is the Chinese version of heavy  petting.  She is quite attractive, but very reserved, like most good girls in her country.
The next morning she takes us to a great Buddhist temple complex with three large temples with awesome statues inside.  I guess the cultural revolution passed this by.  Chumei is quite the reverent Buddhist and Yali also knows the drill so we each light three sticks of incense at each station (there are plenty) and offer up our prayers to the deities.  Brian does a good job of doing this, too, pretty impressive for an alleged atheist.  This also impresses Chumei. 
At a last small temple Tody, who is getting mighty bored, is goofing off with his incense sticks and manages to brand his face in several places, however, Buddha in his benevolent wisdom keeps it out of his eyes.  The ensuing howls bring a half dozen or so lady workers to the rescue, one of whom runs off and returns with an Aloe leaf.  No permanent damage, but time for lunch.
Great meal at an outside dining place, but somewhat sullied by the coal burning in a next door house.  The air quality here, although better than most, has a little too much essence of coal for my taste.
We do a little shopping at the outdooor market, and it's fun watching the girls haggle.  Yali is world class, sometime pissing the merchants off, but we always get a good buy.
We are to leave the next day, but it's Brian's turn to get Mr. Tummy, so we hang out another day.  Chumei gives Brian a photo of herself which I think is the Chinese version of throwing herself at his feet in an act of undying love.
Kunming tomorrow.
Marshall

[Jeff S]

Great stuff Marshall - Keep it coming.

[Marshall K]

Finally everyone has their [snip] together, so to speak, and we can go to Kunming, only about an hour and a half by bus.  We get in the taxi, go to the bus station and find out the next bus is 2 1/2 hours from leaving.  How about a car ride, the driver asks.  He has a friend who can take us.  He takes us to Kunming in only 1 hour and we get to enjoy the grody 20 million person traffic jammed place.  However, this man knows the city and knows the marketplace where we can get all the great Yunnan native crafts.  We get the Y100 rooms and he takes us there.  Nice guy, very helpful.  China really is a friendly place and we have met countless helpful people, folks who go out of their way to make us feel welcome.
So, after three trips to China I finally find the teeming marketplace with countless stall full of local jewelry, jade, statues, carvings, batik, clothing, bags, bamboo bongs for nasty Chinese tobacco, teas, knives and Chairman Mao T-shirts.  Now I can finally get some good stuff to take home!  I decide to limit my purchases to fabric art and jewelry since it travels on the airplane well.  Of course they try to hose me since I'm a 'rich' American.  I've done this before, and I have my expert Chinese haggler.  We pose as buyer and interpreter and have a great time buying.  I end up getting lots of earrings and necklaces for a song that will sell for pretty good money at home.  I also get three different styles of batik, some cheap and some really nice big stuff for pretty cheap.  Also some small purses, scarves and billfolds.  Oh, and a couple of Chairman Mao t-shirts.
Everyone is exhausted by 1:30 so we have lunch, and do a little more shopping.  Around 2:30 the earthquake hits in Sichuan, about 500 miles away but we don't feel it.  It was felt in other parts of China that are a lot further away.  This is a horrible tragedy, and it looks like the death toll is going to be very high.  I donated some money to the relief effort this morning at the Bank of China.  If Americans want to donate, I would recommend Mercycorps.com.  They are a great organization.  Very little money goes to administration, and most gets to the people who need it, unlike United Way and Red Cross.
Our great Y100 hotel karma finally comes to a crashing halt.  The place we get is pretty marginal.  The carpets are scuzzy, the wiring is marginal, and the beds are small and hard.  The bathroom has a lovely essence of sewer gas wafting up from the floor drain.  The bathtub has a half inch gap with cracked caulking between it and the wall (where does the water go?), and you are provided with one large wash cloth to dry yourself.  The one good thing is that the water pressure is great and there is plenty of hot water.
About 5:30 I wake up to smoke.  I go in the hallway and it's smoky!  Crap!   A Chinese hotel fire!  We call the desk, and are informed that it's just the daily early morning rubbish burn.  Where do they burn it?  The stairwell??!  Anyway, we go back to sleep and kill time until our train leaves for Zhanjiang and home.
Sleeper train home and boy are we glad to get there.  Zhanjiang has great food, clean air and really feels like home.  All moods are great, except Tody gets a little teary eyed because he doesn't want to go back to school.  Can you blame him?  They go for 8 hours a day and he is up till 11:00 every night doing homework.  Kids still get smacked if they screw up and if there is a holiday weekend with a Friday or a Monday off they have to make it up the following Saturday.  I would wager they finish high school with a better education than our kids do.
Travel in China is a good adventure, and it is a lot easier when you have someone who speaks the language and has good connections.  We saved a ton of money on hotels and shopping, and met a lot of cool people.  I would highly recommend going to Guinlin and surrounding areas because the natural beauty is breathtaking.

[Bear]

Good trip report!!

The Bear family

[Marshall K]

I gotta talk about the foot massage.  Yali insisted we get one and that she knew a really good guy that's in the neighborhood.  This practice uses pressure points in the foot and lower leg to to trigger responses in the rest of the body.  I used to know a lot more about it when I was young and cosmic, but basically the practitioner applys pressure to a place in the arch, for example, and it helps your stomach and digestion.  Other places affect the rest of your body.
First I get the nice herbal warm foot bath, then the treatment/extreme renditioning starts.  He puts pressure on my arch and I experience some mild agony.  "Bad stomach"  he tells Yali.  Yeah, from the bad road food.  After more poking and massaging in various places he tells me I have back problems (yep), a funky shoulder (work too hard, I know), too much fatty food (that's what my doctor says), not getting good sleep (Yali's fault , and a very good sex drive (Yali's fault, too!).
Afterwords, my back felt better, and I was much more relaxed.  Even my stomach felt better and he suggested only water, tea, fruit and veggies for the day.  It cost a whopping Y25, about $3.50, for an hour long treatment.  If I end up spending next winter here I think I'll be making weekly visits because it's one of those great Chinese medical marvels.

[Jeff S]

I got one in Taizhou last week too. It was one of the most incredible things there is. It definitely would be on my weekly schedule if I lived there. I heard about a Chinese women in my town who has a small business near me. I might give her a try, too but I doubt it's as cheap as China.

You had a guy do yours? Where I went the guys did the women and the women did the men. Very cute and in really good shape too. 

- Jeff

[Marshall K]

Got home around noon yesterday.  Isn't this @#$&&*!!!! primary over yet?? 
Try to explain this primary season to the Chinese.    Flying out of Zhanjiang was delayed for a couple of hours.  They had three minutes of silence for the earthquake victims, including stopped traffic and flights.  It was eerily quiet. 
This country has made some huge shifts in the last week, and not just seismic.  The propaganda ministry normally has an iron grip on the media in natural disasters, worried about whatever paranoid totalitarians worry about, but they were overridden by higher ups and the result has been an unprecedented amount of media coverage on the TV, in the newspapers, and online.
The result being an country that is incredibly unified and generous to their fellow citizens.  I saw lots of collection boxes and people digging deep to give money.  There are thousands of new middle class folks, loading up the car with donations and trucking them to Sichuan themselves.  Thousands of volunteers going there to help.  Also exposed are the lousy buildings that went up during the 80's and 90's with no regard to safety, earthquake resistance, or quality.
It appears that local officials were happy to turn their heads for the right amount of money, so greedy contractors could cut corners and build junk.  The tragedy is that none of the schools had even the most rudimentary reinforcements resulting in the deaths of almost all the kids in school that day.
The government will be hunting those responsible down and they are not squeamish about capital punishment in cases like these.  It will probably result in some changes throughout the country, because there is a ton of corruption in government there.  Makes our Congress look pretty good.
The immediate government response to the disaster on the other hand makes our government look kinda pathetic.  Their army, 1,000,000 strong, is used like our National Guard is supposed to, to respond to domestic emergencies.  They parachuted into remote places, and were the first responders everywhere.  The TV shows them humping 100lb bags of rice through mountain trails to villages, and helping evacuate villagers.  You see them carrying injured on their backs and the anguish on their faces.  They are big heroes in the eyes of people.
The Prime Minister was there on the ground, within a few hours of the quake, running the operation.  You saw him talking to the injured, including those still trapped, and comforting those who lost their loved ones.  He was near tears on camera, and I don't think they were fake.
A big tragedy has brought out the best in most of the people there, and I think it's good for the world to see this side of China.
I'm not there now, so I feel like I can be a little more candid online, so I think I will be.
The Chinese government is lame in many ways.  There are lots of lazy, corrupt fat cats taking advantage of the citizens.  When we were eating lunch in Guinlin at our hotel, a bus load of well fed happy guys on holiday came in.  I thought maybe they were businessmen , but Yali said, "no, look at their faces.  They don't look like they work."  She was right.  None of the worry lines that a hard working, successful business guy might have.  They were upper level Communist Party guys, having a good time on the People's dime.
Unfortunately, these people are supposed to have job titles and do things like take care of roads, sewage, schools, the environment, and all the other aspects of a society's needs.  Instead, they take bribes, vacations, and daily lunch is a big drunken party resulting in them sleeping it off in the afternoon in the office.  Not much gets done after lunch.
The air is filthy in most cities, their medical system sucks overall, and their schools collapse in earthquakes.  They may be a totalitarian state, but 1.3 billion people are getting a little tired of this, and they are making themselves heard.  Watch for changes in the near future.

[Marshall K]

The last few days in Zhanjiang are spent doing nice local fun things, shopping, eating, visiting and napping.  Lots of "napping".  Yali's sister has been bugging me to go swimming in the water park.  I have visions of some humongous public jam packed horror, but when I am backed into a corner I agree to go.  We are supposed to have dinner, too so there must be a noodle place nearby. 
Where we end up is a high end spa and resort about 1/2 mile from our apartment and on the water.  This is an expansive place with beautiful tropical landscaping, bungalows, and a small hotel.  Rooms start at $60.  We eat first at a nice restaurant featuring a giant buffet and great barbecue.  We stuff ourselves on pork tongue, ribs, and beef with plenty of treats from the buffet.  After a couple of hours of eating we go to the pools. 
These are too spendy for the general public, about Y20 apiece, and I think they work to keep the riffraff out, so it's just us rich Chinese.
There is a nice big swimming pool in a nice tropical setting and lots of hot pools with different water features including big waterfalls and a 20 foot concrete giraffe with a long stream of water coming out of his mouth.  (It might have been more fun coming out of a different orfice )  There were some nice jets and high pressure showers scattered about.  There were scented pools and a vinegar pool.  There was even an icy cold one for us Nordic types to cool off in.  Steam room, saunas, massages.  Fun for the whole family.
This is a very nice resort that I just found out about, but would be a nice place for anyone to stay and relax.
Time to go home.  Everybody sleeps like a rock that night.
The last day is hot and muggy.  We go to a good noodle place for lunch.  It's down the street in a nice neighborhood next to a McDonald's.  We see WHITE PEOPLE!!!!  It's Sunday and I guess that the handful of Americans that live here must come here for their Sunday brunches.  One fat couple with no kids, and one skinny couple with kid.  I'm more of a Burger King guy myself, but they are poorly represented in South China.  KFC, Mcdonalds and Pizza Hut rule here.
We stroll through the waterside park which is deserted because it is nap time.  It is kinda hot, but really nice.  This park is nicely landscaped and has lots of palm trees and flowers.  The beach has the Vietnamese fishing boats beached for the day.  These are about the third generation from the original refugees who showed up during that conflict.  They live on the boats and you can buy directly from them.  The South China navy is based there too, but it looks like most are out at sea today.  They have a lot of pirate problems in these seas.
We live close by and stroll on home for some naps.