So I made my first solo foray into "real" China by going by bus to Lishui, a little village of two million people about four hours from Hangzhou. Of course, at the bus station I got on the wrong bus and got totally confused as workers looked at my ticket and yelled at me in Chinese. My bus had already left so they put me on the next one.
I sat next to a Chinese guy and he said "Hi," but actually spoke zero English. He yelled on his cell phone every five minutes. The extent of our conversation was thus:
He said something I didn't understand in Chinese.
I said, I don't speak Chinese. Then I said I was American.
He said America and gave a thumbs up.
He looked out the window at China, said Zhongguo and gave a thumbs down.
I said No, Zhongguo thumbs up. We were passing some beautiful mountains and little farms and ponds and it was a really a beautiful landscape.
He made signals with his hands as if to say "Compared with America, China sucks, and is way behind."
Then he got back on his cell phone.
Apparently a lot of Chinese say this. Some kind of inferiority complex. Or talking about countries as if they were soccer teams.
I got to Lishui and Brandon, who I was visiting, picked me up on his motorcycle. He'd once had his motorcycle confiscated by the police, and it was banged up from the time he hid a pedicab. He drove like a local and spit like one (namely, on walls.)
From his apartment (really a dorm room at the university where he teaches) you could see green mountains and farmers working their plots with hoes. From the back balcony you could look right into the Chinese dorms where eight boys are packed into one dorm room. They walk around in speedos or boxers and smoke.
It was like a non-stop sauna in Lishui. We didn't get up in time to escape the heat of the day when he went on a hike through the mountains the next day. I felt like my skin was burning the second the sun touched it -- but I was fine. The hike went up some steep rock faces, through an orange and plum orchard, up to pine trees and ferns, and tombs. Brandon once got drunk up there from an offering of Baijiu someone had left on their ancestor's tomb.
He showed me a cave where a hermit (or hermits?) from the Temple below lives. There was a recording of chanting playing but nobody home.
x
The hermit had a grand view of Lishui. There was actually a National Geographic article written about Lishui by Peter Hessler.
The hermit in her rocky redoubt has no doubt seen a lot of changes in the past ten years.
I felt like I was in a sweat lodge in that cave, and was looking forward to going to a lake that Brandon had sold me on. Unfortunately it started dumping rain as we were walking to the lake later that day and we decided to ditch the idea. We just drank a few beers under a mushroom shaped shelter on his campus.
One of Brandon's students, Rain (they often have hippy English names -- Rain, Fire, Sunshine. Brandon named one of his students Gecko), took me to the bus station and sent me off. She told me the Chinese ideal of beauty is not a tall woman, but one who is "small and exquisite." This made us both laugh.
Other news:
I went to a Thai restaurant with Joe and his friend Judy or Sara (she can't decide on an English name) and they just played "Hotel California" on repeat. There was a face-shaped fortune-telling machine that said "Plough a one-yuan coin through the nose-hole."
I got a massage from a blind man. "Blind massage" is actually a thing here. It was good though Chinese massage is rough.
I went to a doctor at the hospital here for my thumb which I hit probably two months ago and it still hasn't healed completely. I wanted to get acupuncture which they do in the hospitals here (along with massage and herbs). Instead he prescribed Imada Red Flower Oil which burns like hell but smells good.
