Lets Take a Walk

Leaving the hotel in Gongshan, I look up at an old woman gaping down from her balcony, resembling a bobaloop of sorts in her thick pillowed silk turban. I wish her thoughts would penetrate my conscious as I regain my focus to the steps below. Descending into the daily market street, the sights are now becoming as common to my eye as my alarm clock. Every cube of business greets its customers with the same raised garage door releasing a few lucrative products out into the street. The filmstrip of stores lining the streets goes something like this…first the common market furnished with your choice of double mint gum, cigarettes, Sprite, Pepsi, water, RedBull (god they are an incredible company) or a surprisingly delightful nutrient milk containing Melamine (kidney stones beware). Open air produce markets sprawl from every alleyway flourishing with peeling oranges, surprisingly bland bananas, delicious crunchy apples, dwarfed watermelons (perhaps the size of a healthy watermelon without the help of artificial growth hormones) and more mysterious fruits of various colors and shapes only found in these nomadic marketplaces…….and of course, SUGAR CANE ☺, my guilty pleasure.

A stalk of sugar cane nearly as tall as me is merely 6 kuai (90 cents). The satisfaction of peeling this stalk is comparable to that of shucking crabs. I prepare my feast by carefully edging my knife blade into the taught husk, sliding down the length of the cane's heart until reaching the first growth notch, where a quick flick of the wrist releases the husk from the cane. Peeling the circumference, I begin to see the juices inside causing my mouth to water like a storm drain. I thumb the blade into the side, popping off a bite size chunk and grasping the morsel off the knife with my teeth, I roll it back toward the molars and clench down releasing the taste of sweet tropical esctacy into the potholes of tasebuds triggering a sugar smile from ear to ear. Yummmmmmm.

Now my psyche is in prime shape to continue my sugar shucking meander down the remainder of the marketplace. To my left is a barber shop with a brown tinsel floor composed of the prior day's clippings waiting to be be brushed into the street. Passing by shoestores and mini-markets ranging in products from hotplates and thermoses to dried and packaged animal parts that I have only seen in US petstores. Onward, the bakery lies inside its cube of commerce. Cookies galore, all tasting the same, large colorful trays of rolled cakes, all tasting the same, muffins as plain as my description, but the banana bread….flourishing with flavor, every bite reminding me of grandma's baking. I buy extra pieces (pian) but soon the secret is out and our group cleans out every bakery in town of their precious banana bread. They refill the next day. Before long, when an American walks into a bakery, the pre-teen clerk is already putting banana bread into a bag, I now giggle and order something else to preserve my individuality.
Continuing on is the plumber's shop hawking faucets, sinks, hoses and the infamous pearl “browninghole.” This piece of dim-witted Chinese engineering is merely a glorified porcelain bowl that turns your rectal experience into more of a golf game! Choice in style and color does not exist. At least they furnish footgrips on the side of these porcelain contraptions to keep you from loosing traction on your back swing.
Another piece of sugar cane in the system, passing by restaurant row I glance at ankle height stools as wide as a personal pan pizza surrounding the tables. The list of ingredients available are physically displayed in a lighted case: greens, greens, and more greens, meat….mostly pork in all of its glorious forms, organs included. How they turn this array of goulash into palatable meals is beyond me. Mechanic shops, more efficient than a Wal-Mart tire center, do all their repairs on the side of the street. Garages are a luxury reserved for more developed countries, apparently. Tool shops with used tools, another common store, another shoe store, the picture repeats itself as I reach the staircase leading me down the landfill hillside to my day's resting spot on the river.
Returning in the evening, the alley-way markets have unloaded their fruits of labor and the color blends brown again as the wagon coach of farmers begin to trolley their wooded carts out into the streets, then disperse like mice ino the vast network of trails leading back to the the mountain villiages where they will gather for tomorrow's storefront. Heading up the steps back into the hotel, I look back at the settled street as the departed colors leave the gray solidity to blend back into the concrete jungle.

Ironically enough, just as I wrote those last words the Bob Marley song "Concrete Jungle" shuffled into play on my I-pod. I am on the bus Mr. Keasey, my bus that is.

Spiked Shoes, Hydroelectricity and a Humble abode.

Men working dawn to dusk building Cliff-side roads;
wearing business suits and spiked canvas shoes while handling shovels and hoes.

An array of colorful hardhats piled like a stack of cairns, this protective plastic would serve a better purpose as a noodle bowl, and their colors are as much a status symbol as the dirt under their owner's fingernails. No machine bigger than that which can be carried on one's back is being used. Hours are inches and the inches fill their years.

Function before form is the fashion of the countryside. Every rural convenience store carries one type of shoe on a shelf above the dried fruits and meats. It is a hybrid of sorts, as if an original Chuck Taylor All Star had intercourse with a Babe Ruth era baseball spike. Muddy cliff-side driveways reminiscent of a hunter's favorite deer-path are rather hard to navigate in stilettos you see. And naturally, it is not out of the question to have your stylish choice of “Revolutionary Red” or “Communist Camouflage” on the "souls" of your feet. The laws of supply and demand are no foreign language to the store owners in these rural settlements, as no healthy white Texas high school football player would have a chance at finding his size.


Each rock to be laid on this road is hand-crafted like a Spruce Village bird carving and then dangled from a chain hammock centered on a mildly sturdy log which is supported and transported by the calloused backs of 2 men wearing....well, hard hats...of different colors, of course.

This drive has been adjusting my diaphragm like a rabid chiropractor as the mini meat wagon hauls us over this battlefield commonly recognized as a construction zone; washboards would be as relaxing as a Swedish massage at this point. A dumptruck stops in front of us. As the driver lays on the horn, paying no mind, the dumptruck driver unloads directly in front of us. There is no such thing as a detour here, we wait for the shovels to subside. Cresting the next hill our eyes are greeted with the increasingly familiar face of Chinese industrialization grinning its stone teeth across the canyon walls; the countryside and lives of the people being swallowed into the bowels of this giant beast. My thoughts begin to drown as my consciousness waves goodbye to the fields , villages, stories and souls that will be flooded by the dam below. This story is becoming all too familiar.


Arriving at our destination, I was greeted by the very common "shock and awe" staring back at us through the eyes of the locals. Immediately I lock eyes with one of the villagers, and as my mind searches for the answer for approval of our invasion in his eyes, the ageless wrinkles in his face begin to rise with a smirk, indicating the proud Chinese welcome to his humble dwelling. This destination is the known base camp for the arduous trek spanning the Salween River drainage to our previous watering hole, the Mekong. It is as close as a human can come to the path a bird would fly to span these two gorges (as I mentioned in my last post). Alou, our host, was as welcoming as the smell of the sun baking the fresh sawdust just outside the quarters. With every step forward I fade back into time, eyes glazing over until as clear as blown glass; I am walking up the slight grade toward the sound of my Dad's planer behind the bellowing barn doors of his wood shop, shaving off the same scents that my nose is now inhaling. Stumbling over the raise in the doorway and back into reality, I am feeling quite at home.


Alou runs a very small guide service here; his eyes reflect images of Himalayan mountain peaks and the crow's feet sprawling towards his temples trace his many journeys over the snow covered passes. The guide house is built simply of stone and un-jointed wood. The resting room hosts a small wrap-around couch covered by a colorful Peruvian blanket - inviting me to plop right down on it, until I realize there is less padding than a thermarest separating the blanket from the wooden frame. I think furniture is manufactured by the Chinese government's labor task force, because lounging around is not exactly comfortable, nor desirable, by the red flag toting officials………

Speaking of officials. Our intentions when we came to this village were to complete a community service project in which we would clean up the overwhelming abundance of trash and bottles. The last cleanup provided them with enough glass to construct a bathhouse (cesuo) out of glass bottles, as illustrated in the picture below. However, this time the officials were present and detained Alou for a couple hours and determined that it was illegal for us to pick up trash. I will write that again. “Illegal for us to pick up trash.” That is another story altogether, but needless to say, we were unable to complete our service project………


The walls of the guide house are decorated with various posters of media clippings symbolizing the legitimacy of Alou’s operations. Pinned to the beams nearby are a few posters of Jesus Christ introduced by the marching band of Christian missionaries who blanketed this area in the 1980s. The gathering room, the size of a standard middle class bedroom, is draped in scrolls - all telling of the experiences you may encounter by making the trudge over the sacred mountains. Enlarged maps plotting the journey stretch across one wall continuously conveying the life preserving importance of following the guide's decisions, as weather patterns can end life's journey just as quickly as it began. In the lower corner my eyes fixate on the ever evolving universal language….it reads “GOOGLE”.

The haze in the room is gradually thickening as the smell of frying oil and sautéed vegtables begins to creep into the nasal passages. Che fan le! Lunch time!

Mekong Video Update (#2)

Mekong Update from World Class Kayak Academy on Vimeo.

Tibetan Sepia

I wrote a song this week…well perhaps it is more of a poem right now, considering the musical additive has not been applied. Regardless, many people are under the impression that China is covered by a veil of spiritual and majestic life. Although the landscapes of this country and its surrounding borders most definitely satisfy that stereotype, the reality of life here is far different than the picture so many people have painted, and I wanted the poem to portray the image and thoughts that have passed through my eyes and mind on this journey.

However, this journey is its own story and deserves to be told as well...

A bird in East Asia is much more mobile than a human bound by the transportation limitations of a car. A voyage from one river valley to the next is less than 60 miles as a bird flies…if only I had wings. The obstacle separating these valleys is a minor figure known as the Himalayan Mountain Range. So as a bird could snatch a stick for building a nest from the Yangtze River in the morning and place it in a tree in the Mekong River Valley in the afternoon; we mere mortals are not so lucky. We are required to follow the rutted, potholed, dusty mountain roads as they wind like a boneless snake around the breast of the mountains until, alas, their grasp extends out into the open plains - hours and miles away. Gazing through the windows of the Gnome Bus (aptly named because the size of the seats are fitted for dwarfs at best) the frames flash through impoverished villages skirting and supporting the industrial towns ahead. Faces old and young appear covered in the dirt of their own environmental ignorance, as well as the dirt of their agricultural bliss. The country is separated by class like oil and water. A village with dirt roads, stick shelters, a goodwill of sorts outfitting the inhabitants. Behind an open bamboo gate you may see a Porsche SUV parked next to the charcoal pit, the only car in town. Probably belonging to one of the villager's sons, home for a visit from his auspicious job as a high official in the Chinese Red Revolution. A “sell out” is the impression he carries on his back as his past comrades carry their fruits of labor on their backs.

The vibrations rattling through the bus have my brain in a syncopated rhythm as if I’m stepping off a chartered fishing trip onto the vertigo of the dock. The numbness has turned what may once have seemed extraordinary, into my ordinary daily life in China. Hours pass by, the same scenes flashing by the windows, only the landscapes are changing now. High desolate tundra, fit for only the harshest beasts of survival, drab immense mountains stained brown as a result of their colorful ancient trees being stripped from their faces, flat planes of rice fields extending into the thick valley haze, bitter snowy meadows draining their life into the lush tropical river valleys below; then, the countryside is flourishing again, palm trees and bamboo shooting from the cliff sides, mountain streams sprouting through the narrow canyon vegetation, the turquoise river below funneling in and out of limestone gorges like hourglasses of water, all the while, the faces we pass are still smiling.

It has been 2 days of traveling , the sight of the river below has released the fluids of my adrenal glands into my system as my mind wanders through the visions on the turbulent rapids below. With the put-in area in sight, a canal of sourceless water is streaming out of the cliff hundreds of feet above. The mist of the waterfall stretches and waves like a silk scarf down the mountain side until its tassels mist the peaks and the waves of the rapid below. It’s a sight that will not repeat itself as the source of that waterfall disappeared the next day, leaving nothing but a dry cliffside etched with a watermark …..another sign of China's mystical industrialization.

Reaching the put-in we were greeted by a baker's dozen of Tibetan people currently embarked on a 25 day pilgrimage from their village to worship the sacred Tibetan mountain of Kawekabo above. A generation ago, Tibetans would often complete this pilgrimage on foot, kneeling and laying flat after every step as a sign of their commitment to Buddha. It took years to complete. As we geared up, the people were mesmerized by our method of travel on the water, having never seen such crafts. In fact, the sight of a Westerner alone was virgin to many of their eyes.

The rapids to follow were as strong as the local dialect. The first main cataract claimed the egos of many of our young adventurers to be. It was actually relieving to see some of them humbled by the powers of the Mekong waters, it has humbled its inhabitants for lifetimes. I choose clean lines and good times for my adventure as we navigated through numerous trains of overhead waves and holes. Rounding the last river bend we were greeted by rainbows of prayer flags stretching hundreds of feet above the river like footbridges. The hike out of the gorge was filled with more color as scrolls, prayer flags and temples lined the pathway brushing us with colors reminiscent of a box of primary colored Crayolas.
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Two more days of paddling and we began to pack for our trek over the mountain to the roadless Tibetan village of Youbeng seated at the base of Tibet's most sacred mountain. Distance, in such a land of epic proportions, is as difficult to judge as the dialect is to understand. We began to hike, upwards, and upwards, and upwards and…. the grade of the incline remained steady and steep, as if you were forced to earn the respect of the mountain before it would yield its wonders on the other side. Hours later, and 3500 vertical feet above, I wound through the endless tunnel of prayer flags and was rewarded with the most inconceivable view my eyes have ever focused upon. Standing at nearly 13,000 feet, the 23,000 foot snow-capped peaks directly in front of me towered into the clouds as if there was no force on this planet holding them down. The scale is impossible to express through words alone. I had been sick with the aches and pains of a strong cold until this moment - where nature’s beauty injected me with its equivalent of Super-Sudafed. Stunned by the scene around me, the 2500 foot descent into the bowel of the mountain was complete before it began.

The pictures in this post can give you a glimpse of what I saw, but it's similar to looking into a Victorian dollhouse. It all very beautiful, but you can never appreciate the scale and detail until you are in the dollhouse yourself. The people in the villiages on our stay were the happiest, humblest and most proud indiviuals I have ever met. The Tibeten culture has been torn apart, but the Tibetan poeple have hung on to the threads of their ancestral lives. We sang with them, we danced with them, we shared in their rituals, they shared in ours, we devoured their food, spun their prayer wheels, absorbed and re-absorbed their smiles and respected their lives. These people are beautiful, and if you never let your eyes look down, you would never see the impact of their country's desparate revolution.


I read 5 books on this leg of the trip, 3 about the Tibetan people, culture, and hardships, and one about China's communist government and revolutionary ideals. My cultural bias is leaning much further down the hill towards Tibet, but that is another discussion in itself. There are many pieces I left out, as time online is never an utmost priority or luxury here. I can share many more experiences over a nice cold Mountain State Brewery Seneca Pale Ale another day (considering my choice to go dry for this entire venture.) Enjoy the poem below:

A Nation?
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People hauling their lives on the hunch in their backs,
taking footsteps because of the lack of train tracks.
This nation is healing from a culural revolution,
but the wounds remain open and filled with pollution.
Passing by the dusty villagers with smiles on their faces,
strong hearts beating to keep smiles in these desparate places.
A Tibetan man branded with the hardships of his time,
a life a man should not have to photograph in his mind.
Old women with bamboo sticks piled on their shoulders,
every step to the market, she's getting older than the boulders.
Terraces filled with fruits as clean as the day is clear,
but the wrappers of industry below are near.
Shirtless children waving stick switches,
at politicians hiding lies beneath the stitches.
Holding together this nation torn apart,
is nothing but fear and the maroon robed hearts.
Prayer flags strung across high mountin roads,
waving from the draft of another truck load below
Passing by the ones who truly need it,
because their eyes are too RED to see it.
That color is burned into the eyes of these folks,
no longer as white as their harvested egg yolks.
She spends days pushing that cart full of sugar cane,
only to hope the profits will ease some of the pain.
People forced behind the bars of production,
just to give it up to someone else's consumption.
Bankrupt in a life deprived of paycheck,
the real wealth he wears in the beads around his neck.
We dance songs and steps that could move a grindstone,
if they would just listen to the message vibrating the tone.

Xie Jien,
Jesse

The picture below is of me and my Tibetan friend Zachary.

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Great Bend Video Update

WCKA Yangtze Update 2009 from Danny Doran on Vimeo.

This video was created by my Videography class as one of our bi-weekly updates for the WCKA Blogspot. You should definitely check out our World Class blog, as well. www.wckaeast2west.blogspot.com.