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!
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