On Friday night I went to the city to meet a friend whose sister was visiting Japan. We went out to the bars and got mega drunk and had a great time, and were intended to meet some other people after the bar closed. Instead we ended up at a konbini and hung out with some seemingly crazy Japanese girls who were passing by. At some point the topic of Spiderman came up and someone wondered out loud whether the crosswalk light pole was climbable. I took this as a challenge and proceeded to scale it in superhuman time. Of course in my inebriated state I failed to consider that there would be no way to get down from my perch. I tried badly and landed in the worst possible way, stumbling and trying to break my fall with my hands. Their immediate pain reminded me why doing so is a terrible idea, and a quick trip to the hospital later, I walked out with a cast around my fractured right wrist and a new appreciation for heights. It’s not the dumbest thing I’ve ever done, but it’s in the top five.

I told you that story so I could tell you this story.

Now that my right hand is almost completely unusable, with the cast covering two fingers entirely and leaving the other two with only limited mobility, I’ve had to quickly find ways to do all the things in my daily life with one hand. And not just one hand, but my left hand, which is non-dominant to the point of comedy. I’ve thought about the huge ability gap between my left and right sides before, ever since I started taking karate and we trained both sides equally. I was aware of it in any activity requiring equal movement from both hands, taiko drumming being the most recent example. But now that I’m being forced to use my off-hand and nothing else, I’m astounded at how much I took really basic motor control for granted. I remember hearing about left-handed children in the Middle Ages being forced to use their right hand for everything because the left side was considered the “evil” side of the body. It’s almost like that, although with less corporal punishment.

I’ve had to relearn how to shower, shave, brush my teeth, put on clothes (socks and buttoned shirts are the worst), wash dishes, make food, use my computer, fold clothes, eat, and ride a bicycle, all with one hand. Until I get a new cast that will let me grip things, I won’t be able to eat with chopsticks, hold a pen, ride my scooter, and who knows what else. I’m forced to rely on rides to work. Even something as seemingly simple as getting money out of my wallet has become a lengthy process. Everything I do now takes more time and effort than it ever has before. And if any of you are saying, “hurr hurr I thought you’d be used to using a computer one-handed;” oh, a masturbation joke. Really mature.

I’ve gained a new appreciation for ambidextrous people. I thought it was the kind of thing you could train your body to do, as if any of us could be ambidextrous if we practised enough. I certainly don’t think that anymore; I know I’ll never be able to use my left hand for any kind of task requiring detailed motor control, short of playing baseball. But I’ve also gained a sort of new respect for amputees. No, I’m not comparing my minor annoyance of a fractured wrist to losing a hand, so don’t start sending me hate mails. But I’m observing how much we take our bodies for granted, and how much can change when you lose a part of it. I’m learning to use my left hand temporarily and I know it. Learning to use it permanently is a much more daunting prospect.

The last few entries in my China journal will have to wait until I can type with two hands again, but the pictures will continue to go up and be edited into the past entries. I go back to the hospital in a week to get my wrist rechecked, so hopefully I’ll get something that will give me the use of my right hand again.

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Over the Sea of Japan, May 8^th

As I’m writing this on the plane back to Fukuoka, I think I can proclaim my vacation over. This morning inexplicably went off without a hitch, the only difference being my use of taxis instead of buses since I didn’t have time to accidentally catch the wrong one. The suit was ready right on time and fits… differently. At first I thought it was too small, then I realized that I’d been wearing off the rack suits before and they were probably intentionally large to allow for adjustments. After a few minutes, it was like finding out what suits are supposed to feel like. I should have gone earlier just so I would have had time to have more than one made.

Suit in hand, I decided to indulge my trip to the airport and caught a taxi to the mag-lev station. It’s only a seven minute trip from there to the airport, and with good reason; the train is magnetically levitated and hits an eye-popping 430 km/h! We barely even hit the top speed when we had to start decelerating to stop safely, and of course, none of my pictures turned out showing us at maximum fastness. I took the risk of cutting it close by mailing postcards and buying omiyage before locating my gate,

and almost missed my flight as a result when I misread my ticket and ended up at a gate on the opposite side of the airport. Thankfully I wasn’t the only late passenger, and they whisked us off to the plane with no time to lose. I won’t get back to my island for another few hours, as I have to go through the same multi-stage trip that I took to catch my flight so many days ago, only backwards.

And that’s all she wrote for China. Now is the time when I sum up what I thought of my vacation in a few short sentences, but nothing I write is ever short. And if you’ve read all of these entries so far you already know what I thought of China; it’s absolutely incredible. Everything I saw and did was so different from anything else, and there’s a huge list of things I wanted to do but never had the chance. Seeing the pandas in Chengdu, catching an acrobatics performance, all the historical sights in the non-major cities. Hell, I had the opportunity to get invited to a gong-fu school in Xi’an to watch them train, but there was just no time. I would love to go back and see what I missed the first time, but it will have to wait until I’ve checked a few more countries off my list. I’m still looking for travel buddies for my next excursion, since the one thing I really know about this trip is that it would’ve been even better if I wasn’t traveling on my own. But considering my choices were to travel solo or not travel, I don’t regret it at all. I can’t decide where to go next, either. Possible ideas are Vietnam, Mongolia, South Korea, Malaysia, Bali… the possibilities are almost endless. If you have an idea, let me know because I seriously can’t make up my mind, and the clock is ticking.

With that, I close this travelogue. Until the next trip!

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“Brick, you said this was a shortcut!”

Shanghai, May 7^th

It’s strange walking around a truly westernized city again after so much time in less foreigner-heavy places, including my island in Japan. In some ways it’s easier, as the average English level has increased and the city has a more Western street layout, making it much easier to navigate. But it makes it incredibly obvious how different and unrepresentative Shanghai is compared to other cities. I can’t say whether it’s a positive difference or not; people who live here can probably be more objective and knowledgeable about the Westernization of China. If you know any, ask them what they think.

As expected, I did do a whole lot of walking yesterday, but it turned out to be an absolute pleasure. I had time to kill before I got my memory card back, so I just walked around the neighbourhood and out to the nearby Bund. It’s the name given to the entire boardwalk area of the Huangpu River that cleaves the city into the Pixu (old) and Pudong (new) areas. I thankfully had my camera-phone with me, so I just wandered around taking pictures for around two hours. It’s a fascinating area, filled with street vendors and couples and families just walking and enjoying the sights. No one seemed to be in a hurry to go anywhere, which was quite a change from the rush-all-the-time mentality I’d been surrounded by everywhere else. The whole street is lined by dozens of different architectures and billboards and office buildings, and its position right in the center of the city seems perfectly fitting for the hub of activity it has become. I was so fascinated by the area, I ended up returning to get my memory card and heading straight back out to get even more pictures.

I also decided to head over to the Pudong area to see how Shanghai is developing. I thought it felt Western on the west bank, but over there it’s like being back home. Department stores, restaurants and souvenir shops were all either Western-focused or at least had multi-lingual signs. I even found a Hooters restaurant of all things (Asian waitresses at a Hooters seems like a contradiction, wokka wokka). The trip to the far bank involved going through some kind of trippy light-and-sound show tunnel that was probably artistic to whoever designed it, but bewildering and surreal to everyone else. The ticket through also got me into a deep-sea creature exhibit (depressing, it was so lackluster and half-assed that the surviving creatures on display were visibly uncomfortable in their tanks) and an exhibition on Chinese sexual history. That was actually more interesting than I expected, as it showed a bunch of sex-related artifacts and writings from the past several thousand years of their culture. Here’s their intro:

Part 1: The sex evolution

There are two instincts and basic needs of human life, one is food, and another is sex. This two elements greatly influence upon the development of society. As for sex of human beings, there are two characters, one is natural as well as animals, another is cultural which is different from animals. The natural character demands that sex would be opened, not shackled, the cultural character demands that the human sex life would be scientific, healthy and ethical, not unconventional and unrestrained. To combine this two characters means the civilized development of society.

Pretty deep stuff, duuuude. I love historical stuff like that, despite studying very little of it formally, and it was cool to see how the perception and knowledge of sex evolved and how it was viewed in ancient times. I mean in ancient China, sexual education and health dealt not only with safe sex, but with learning how to better satisfy your partner and yourself. Now that would’ve made high school health more interesting!

Once night fell, I hit the old side of the bank again to get pictures of the riverside lit up at night, and to sample the famed Chinese street-side food. I love anything in the form of ________-on-a-stick, and that’s what most of it was, including some crazy spiced beef thing that was shockingly good. The competing seller even tried to convince me that my seller fucked the cows he cooked to steal my business, but I was unswayed. An attempt to find a restaurant listed in the Lonely Planet proved fruitless, but led me to another hole in the wall where I scored some delicious crispy noodles and pork. Finally, I headed for Zhapu Lu for more tasty snacks. I didn’t find any, but I did try my hand at bargaining down some souvenirs at the stores.

Surprisingly they were adamant about their prices and refused to budge, even when I was armed with a friendly Chinese speaker who tried to help me plead my case. I decided to pass and try my hand the next day; that would turn out to be a great decision. Back at the hostel I met Katie from Manchester, who was leaving the next morning, but we chatted until an angry Japanese man staying in our room walked in and said, “I sleep now. Be silent.,” at which point we relocated to the bar. Other than being woken up at 4 AM by the three loud Chinese guys also sharing the room, I slept like a log.

Today I had a similar plan, only instead of wandering the Bund, I would be wandering the People’s Square and the Yuyuan Bazaar. With no breakfast (saving my appetite), the first step was the Shanghai Museum in the square, since I had the time and a ticket was only 5 yuan with my very expired student card. I’m glad I went, as the sculptures and bronze and jade artifacts on display absolutely shamed the China section of the Royal Ontario Museum, which was all I had seen before. From there I had a decision to make; I wanted a suit at the cloth market, but I would need to get more cash before I did that, and at some point I wanted to head to Yuyuan.

So which do I do first. I opted for the money, which meant a subway trip back to the hostel area to visit the Bank of China (it should’ve been my first stop for maximum efficiency, but I assumed I’d find a bank near the museum). The bank was sadly closed, but I decided to experiment with my bank card in a Citibank ATM, and against all odds, it worked! Cash in hand, I headed for the Yuyuan Gardens and Bazaar.

I didn’t get there until earn 4:00 after the money search, and since the gardens closed at 5:00, I decided it wasn’t worth the 40 yuan and stuck to the bazaar and markets that had sprung up around the gardens. They were worth the trip alone, the kind of place professional shoppers dream about. I’d been saving my hunger for some highly recommended steamed buns at the bazaar, and they were totally worth the wait. It’s gonna be hard to go back to foreign-style Chinese food after this trip.

The rest of the time, I just explored the area and picked up a souvenirs for my family and myself, including shirts, hilarious Engrish magnets, and fake Communist propaganda posters. The market was really tiny and packed with tourists, which I expected, and that seemed to make the shop owners much more open to doing business with foreigners. It turned out that waiting on last night’s purchases was wise, as I bargained everything at this market down to much more reasonable prices. I have no doubt I could have gone even lower than I did, but it was getting late and I still had one more stop to make.

The Dongjiadu Cloth Market was bizarre, a huge building sectioned into hundreds of cubicles packed so full of fabrics of every material in every colour and pattern that there was barely room to stand. After scouring the floor I managed to find a place that could not only fit me for a custom-made suit, but could have it ready for pickup the next morning! I’d heard that I could get a cheap suit made in Shanghai and made it one of my goals to find one, but I didn’t think it would be as seamless (groan!) as it was. They took my measurements and details so fast, I had time to order a custom-fitted shirt as well and pick up a new belt and some ties on my way out the door. After spending years wearing off-the-rack unadjusted badly fitted suits, I can’t wait to see what a suit is supposed to feel like. I decided to take the long way back and caught a bus to Nanjing Road, the big Western strip.

Lit up like Vegas, it wasn’t something I expected to see after the cities I’ve been to. It’s almost a symbol of what China is trying to be to foreigners, as opposed to what it’s like now in so many places. It’s also where all the “You want massage?” guys hang out; I had wondered why I wasn’t being accosted everywhere, but apparently they adopted a hive strategy of advertising. I happened across a ramen shop and figured my students would get a kick out of it, so I ordered the most Chinese/Japanese dish I could find; Peking Duck ramen! Frankly, it was underwhelming. Japanese people think ramen is a Chinese dish, but everyone else thinks it’s Japanese, and they do it so much better it might as well be.

I was forced to pack it in early due to my schedule the next day; wake up, check out, pick up my suit, and book it to the airport to catch a noon flight. Speaking of which, all this beer has had the intended effect of making me sleepy, so I’m out for tonight to pack. In our final chapter, we find out whether I make it back to Japan, and my final thoughts!

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Shanghai, May 6^th

I realized last night, while trekking through the streets of Shanghai looking for my hostel, what’s been making me feel terrible for the past few days. It’s not exhaustion or the early stages of a flu, like it was in Christmas; it’s the pollution. It’s omnipresent in this country, and as much as I got a slight break from it in Xi’an, I got slammed by it as soon as we landed at Pudong. In two days I’ll get the first breath of really fresh air I’ll have had in almost two weeks. That’s one thing I certainly won’t miss about this country.

The city walls I wrote about two days ago were stunning. Not only was it sunny and hot, but we had something I was told not to expect on this trip at all; a beautiful blue sky. It’s almost a 14 km trip to circumnavigate the entire wall, longer than the Great Wall hike we did albeit not as dangerous, so by food it would take the better part of a day. The better option is to rent a bike, which gives you 100 minutes to make it around. That turns out to be plenty of time to stop and relax and take pictures once in a while. Maybe it was the weather or the holiday, but everyone seemed to be in a good mood, waving and smiling and talking with a cheerfulness I never saw in Beijing. I ended up talking to a guy from Beijing who has family in Vancouver for a good 10 minutes.

Back at the hostel I did nothing but rehydrate and sit around like a lazy bum while my camera batter recharged (it ran out precisely halfway around the wall, robbing me of a few sweet pictures). The original plan was to hit the Muslim quarter for dinner, a huge street market beside a mosque in the center of the city. Things changed when I found Mau was still in town and had decided to leave the next day, and that he was heading to a local bar street with a huge crowd of Aussies. I had convinced someone else from the lobby to join me at the Muslim quarter, but we ended up joining the massive group anyways.

We discovered that while the bars served alcohol and the cafes served coffee, neither served any food and came up with some interesting solutions to convince us to come in. For example, the hamburgers a few people ordered turned out to be Zinger Chicken sandwiches from KFC. The rest of the dishes were probably outsourced as well. The absurdity and high prices drove us back to the hostel, where we sat and drank until the wee hours of the morn. By 4:00 am there were only four of us left trying to teach a Filipino guy with very broken English how to play Bullshit. I think by the end he was either the worst player at the table, or the best.

Idiot that I am, I agreed to wake someone up at 9:00 for her trip to the warriors, so I ended up running on only four hours of sleep. On the other hand, being up early meant I had time to hit the Muslim quarter before my flight after all. It was absolutely stuffed with people shopping for whatever crazy foods and wares the hundreds of stores and vendors were selling. I didn’t even recognize half of the foods, but it almost certainly wasn’t typical Chinese fare. I also managed to find a few trinkets for everyone back home, which I will refrain from listing because they’re sure to read this. It’s hard to buy from markets like that since everyone seems to be selling identical goods, and any time you pay for something you find someone else selling it for cheaper. I could have looked around for even longer, but I had to dash off to the airport.

I think everyone in the entire city was traveling yesterday, since the airport was jam packed with people. Compared to my flight to Xi’an, the flight to Shanghai was miserable, full of shoving crowds and mediocre food, and compounded by the fact that I had been feeling ill and badly rested almost all day. Nevertheless I somehow made it onto a shuttle bus to the People’s Square, which was the closest stop to the Captain Hostel I was looking for, recommended by both Andrea and the hostel in Xi’an. Sadly the bus dropped me a good twenty minutes away from the square with no indication of which direction to go in, and the hostel was another hour away.

I finally found the place, and in its defense it was a pretty classing looking hostel. It was also the most expensive place I’d been; beds in a dorm room were a full 25 yuan higher than in Xi’an, the Internet access was not free like it was everywhere else, the food was overpriced, and the beer at the top floor bar cost… are you ready for this? Fourty fucking yuan! I felt my jaw unhinge, it dropped so hard. That’s a full 1000% increase over every other place I’d seen! I ended up getting a Gatorade and Snickers at a Lawsons (Japanese convenience stores? Wasn’t expecting that.) and bringing them back, where I was kicked out of the lobby for having outside drinks. So I went to the room, ate my “dinner” and got the much needed sleep I missed. So far, Shanghai wasn’t doing much to win me over.

I woke up early this morning for a reason; I wasn’t staying. I had the address for another hostel, so as soon as I was packed I went down, checked out and tried to get breakfast. I say tried because when I asked for the eggs, bacon and toast set, the completely inept waitress said they were out of toast. No problem, I said, I’ll just have the eggs and bacon. Oh boy was that a mistake, as she immediately freaked out and started unintelligibly protesting to anyone that could understand her. The idea that no, I did not want the croissant breakfast instead, was so new that she had no idea how to respond. Eventually she wandered off in a semi-daze and refused to take my order or acknowledge my presence.

Then I realized she was the same girl who had booted me from the lobby yesterday! Congrats, useless waitress, you single handedly drove me from your hostel. The other place, the Hiker Youth Hostel, was only 30 minutes away and they have free Internet, cheaper beds and meals, and thankfully, toast. I’m writing this in their lobby and trying to decide where to go today. Probably to the Bund to take a look around, but first I have to get my pictures burned to a CD. I have a feeling I’ll be doing a whole lot of walking again today.

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Xi’an, May 4^th

This entry has the added exoticness of being written in a little garden inside the city walls of Xi’an, as shown. This country is filled with walls! I guess with all the invasions they were subject to, China learned to be picky about who they let into their major cities. Although it seems that most of the walls never really kept too many people out.

Mau and I got to Xi’an two days ago and immediately decided it was way cooler than Beijing. The entire city was packed and lit up and noisy and full of activity, kind of like what we thought Beijing was going to be like. Instead of going for the reservation I had made, we headed for a place that some Dutch people had recommended at the concert. They were full, but their new location just up the street wasn’t, so we checked it out. We were sold as soon as we entered the lobby; the place is huge, clean, comfortable, friendly, filled with other travelers, and to top it all off, cheaper than the Harbour Inn was! It was too late to do anything other than grab some beers and relax at the on-site bar, and it was exactly what I needed.

Yesterday we went out to the Banpo Neolithic Village and the Terracota Warriors. Our tour guide first took us to a silk market, though, and said we’d be there for half an hour to “look around and see how silk is made.” Apparently lots of tours in China do this; the bus drops you at a store without your knowledge, in exchange for a cut of what you buy. I decided to make a stand and wait outside until everyone else was done. And of course, no one bought anything because who wants to carry around a big shopping bag all day? Seems to me they’d get more business if they went to the market last so people could take their purchases right to their hostel. After that little side trip we went to the village.

It’s a 6000 year old village that is still being excavated, although not while we were there. I’d love to go to a site like that where people are actually working on the archaeology they claim to. The dig site and restored village were both really cool to see, but the pictures are a bit disappointing as they don’t show much more than holes and rocks. I can’t fathom how they figure out the historical details behind the community, either. How do you look at pottery fragments and building foundations and conclude that the society was matriarchal (which they had done)? Eddie Izzard was right, they just make stuff up.

After that was the Terracotta Army, probably the busiest attraction I’ve every seen anywhere. It was absolutely swarming, which ruined some of the charm, and we were kept really far away form the actual warriors, which didn’t help. But the sheer size of the excavation is amazing, and the work they’ve done in restoring and rebuilding the broken statues is impressive. They had a few other displays of bronze artifacts and ceramics they had found, but the warriors were still the main draw.

I think the most amazing part is that they were discovered by accident; farmers digging a well in 1979 pulled up parts of a soldier and started one of the biggest archaeological projects in the world. Almost 40 years still later, they still haven’t found everything. You can see the original well location in the picture on the right.

With nothing left on the itinerary, we went back to the hostel and proceeded to get way too drunk on Chinese rice wine (which is absolutely disgusting) before heading to a dance club (groan) with some of the other people from the tour. I don’t understand why I agree to go to clubs anymore; the music is terrible and too loud to talk to anyone, the drinks are always way too expensive, I can’t dance, and picking up girls at a club has always been a sketchy proposition, at best. Nevertheless, I agreed to go along, and it turns out clubs in China are no different from clubs anywhere else, except this one had an angry bartender who tried to intimidate me into giving him 100 yuan for a menu he thought I broke. That told me it was time to leave.

Today I haven’t done much other than nurse my hangover and book my flight to Shanghai. Mau is catching a train out today, so I’m back to traveling solo. I guess this entry is a lot shorter than my previous ones, but the city doesn’t have as much to see and my time here has been pretty stress free so far. I’m sure I’ll be back to writing novel length entries in Shanghai, but right now relaxation and rehydration are all I’m looking for, and I’m getting them both. A+, would travel to Xi’an again. With that, I’m off to bike the city walls.

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