W drodze do Hong Kongu

If you want to see me sob like a small child, play Vincent (Starry Starry Night) by Don McLean. China has been trying to make me cry since I stepped off the train in Beijing. The other day it almost succeeded. On the long distance busses here they blast music videos to drown out the din of the yammering passengers. On the way back to Guilin from the rice terraces they played Starry Starry night, and I almost lost it. The only thing that saved me was the fact that it was a cover done by a woman who sounded like a mix between Feist and Cat Power. The singer actually could have evoked in me the proper emotions to get the tears to spill, but the producers elected to go down a path that has been blazed by others, such as Milli Vanilli and their management team. They chose a face over an artist for the video. A small and fragile Asian girl, who could not summon the strength to move her lips with any conviction, was pretending to sing. She was clearly not the owner of the voice coming out of the speakers installed in the ceiling of the long distance bus to Guilin, and she was pissing me off. I was supposed to be crying. Instead I was daydreaming about strapping her to a dolly and wheeling her into a room with a defibrillator. It was probably for the best, no need to freak out the other bus riders unnecessarily.

I was sitting next to a guy I had met on the bus to Dazhai. They pulled this strange move on the way up there. They stop about a half hour before you reach the city. Women in uniform get on and tell you that you need to pay them 80 yuan or get off the bus, not in an extremely kind or explanatory fashion. All the Chinese passengers were readily paying, and the only two westerners, him and me, were confused, questioning, and flipping through books trying to understand what was going on. The woman robbing us spoke perfect English, but she was kind of a bitch about it, clearly fed up with the stupidity of travelers such as ourselves, and not overly willing to walk us through the reasons we were expected to pay her. She said we needed to pay to enter the scenic area, and everything we wanted, food, accommodations, etc., was inside the scenic area. Even though they had a huge gate and ticket booth set up at the entrance to the town (scenic area), for some reason you couldn’t just pay there when you arrived. Baffling.

Out of necessity, I’ve become comfortable living in a state of perpetual bafflement. When my waffles and ice cream scoops are garnished with tomatoes, I no longer question it. When they consider it rude to blow your nose in a tissue, only to walk outside and watch people farmer blow on the sidewalk and summon wads of phlegm from the depths of their bodies, hurtling it into the small circumference surrounding you, which could be considered personal space, I don’t judge, I simply hum a cheerful ditty to myself. When the upscale coffee shop provides tiny television monitors at each table for entertainment, and plays a video of a monkey, in scarf and overalls, leading a bulldog wearing a fanny pack around the city on a leash, through the park, brown puddles, the grocery store, and appliance shopping, I don’t ask myself why, instead, I set my mind to deciding if I would prefer to be the monkey or the bulldog. I’m finding it’s best not to ask questions in China.

Back on the bus, the only other westerner and myself became friends. Our shared confusion united us. After a small chat we found out we were staying at the same guesthouse. We decided to split a room, which left us each paying just a couple of dollars per night. This sounds like a deal, but really it was only almost a fair trade, as we had to share the place with all kinds of other life forms; roaches, slugs, spiders, beetles, mosquitoes, and years worth of dirt and grime that couldn’t be scrubbed away, even if someone were actually trying to.

We spent the next couple of days together, along with other travelers we met, hiking the rice terraces, and sharing beers and strange meals. For breakfast I had what was called A Kind of Omelet. Just as I was discovering it was, in fact, a bug omelet, a man trying to sell us a cucumber descended upon our table, scooping up one of our coffees, putting his thumb in it, and helping himself to a slobbery sip. The owner of the guesthouse chased after him with a broom, in a way that would suggest this was a common routine for the two of them.

On our final evening in Dazhai, we got into a philosophical debate about the fate of the human race, as dictated by the usage of Facebook. I’m pro Facebook. I consider this mode of interaction a necessary and inevitable step in our social evolution. I hesitate to make declarations about it consuming us to the point that we’re no longer able to have face-to-face relations. I think it’s leading us to something that will ultimately connect us in a deeper way, rather than isolate us. I got pretty intense about it, and this encouraged the boys to be equally as ridiculous, by comparing the author of an article in favor of abandoning Facebook to Galileo. Completely unreasonable, but I appreciate the comic effect. In light of the tone of our final night together, I’m happy that the faceless woman’s rendition of Starry Starry Night wasn’t able to bring me to tears on the bus. Although, sometimes it’s fun to be perceived as an emotional basket case, that day I wasn’t really in the mood for it. I was more in the mood for being a monkey in overalls, shopping with my companion, the bulldog.

Once we were back in Guilin, we said goodbye without exchanging our Facebook info. I hadn’t showered in two days. It seemed futile to shower in a bathroom that I was cleaner than. I was thinking about staying one more night in the hostel I had been in before, to clean up then make arrangements for the bus to Hong Kong. I went there for lunch and to use the Internet, but decided not to stay after listening to the guys at the neighboring table exchanging stories about different places they had puked throughout China. I started having flashbacks to the first night I had spent in the hostel, where I ended up sitting in the lobby for a sleepless evening, with fifty or sixty mosquitoes drinking blood from my ankles, because even though I had asked nicely, twice, the guy in the bunk below me wouldn’t stop having sex with the girl he had brought into the room. Rather than hanging out with drunken tourists again, I opted to stay unshowered for a third day and get on the bus right away.

Getting places in China is really difficult. Nothing is written in English, and even when the sign language routine kind of works, everyone has a completely different version of what you need to do.

There’s no bus there. You have to transfer. Take the train. No, get the bus from the train station, not the bus station. You have to go through another city. What are you doing, why don’t you just get a direct bus?

It’s hard for everyone involved. I can see the frustration on the faces of the people trying to help me. I feel a lot of guilt over it. I’m in China and I can’t really say anything in Chinese, but it’s just not possible for me to learn the language of every place that I’m traveling to. I’m waiting impatiently for the day that we will have microchips installed into our brains that allow us to instantly download an entire language and speak fluently. We all managed to combine our brainpower and I got a ticket on an overnight bus to Hong Kong. I boarded the bus and to my absolute delight it was filled with rows of beds. YA-HOO! It was like coming home and finding out mom bought Coco Puffs instead of Corn Flakes. Thanks mom!

Riding the bus recumbent is an amazing experience. Watching night markets, people having dinner, neon signs, and masses of traffic flying by while lying down is surreal. There’s a window the length of your sleeper right next to you, so everyone on the street can see you stretched out in bed. I kept checking for reactions from people outside, like, Hey I’m horizontal! No one but me seemed to find it all that noteworthy. I was woken up often, by the sensation that the bus was about to tip over. This was followed by the memory of a couple of head-on truck collisions and an overturned van we saw on the way to Dazhai. As far as I can tell, the only rule of the road here is to get out of the way. One of the hostel owners I met said that traffic in China is much more chaotic, but there are fewer fatal accidents because no one feels they own any part of the road. Cars, bikes, busses, vans, and trucks are everywhere, all over every side of the road, so you’re more aware, and more willing to yield. They’re extremely fearless and artful in their maneuvers, and I’m here to type about it, so I guess we did OK.

Hong Kong has a totally different feeling from Mainland China. It’s very cosmopolitan and easy to navigate, also expensive. It’s been dumping rain since I arrived, so I haven’t done much, aside from walking around in some markets and along The Avenue of Stars. Right now I’m in Starbucks and they’re playing Buena Vista Social Club. I used to laugh at people who frequented Starbucks when they were in other countries, but now I totally get it. I’ve started to have little episodes of homesickness. Sitting here with my computer and coffee I can completely lose myself in the illusion that I’m in Los Angeles, where I have my own bed and home, with two cuddly cats there waiting to meow me a hello, and sit in my lap while I watch a movie. Wanna come over for dinner and then go get a drink? Cool, see you at 8. xoxo.

Just got off the sleeper bus from Guilin to Hong Kong.