Creative passport renewal - Bangkok, Thailand

Memories from August 2006

I've decided to subject my passport to yet another one of those intensive sessions I've imposed on it so many times in these past Asian years.

This is the plan: fly from Bangkok to Hong Kong where I will meet Lu and Lo coming from Venice. Get a Chinese visa, cross the border overland and from Shenzhen take a flight to the western limits of the country, in Xinjiang - with trips to Urumqi, the desert, Turpam and a couple of amazingly filthy rural markets -, then head back East landing in Chengdu and from there descend on Yunnan to stop in Kunming, where I'm still renting an apartment with some school mates (Chinese Language at the Yunnan Normal University). My guests will then go back to Hong Kong where they will board their return flight to Italy. I will spend one or two more weeks there before heading back to Bangkok, where I also have to catch a return flight to Italy. Every year I go back once for a month, to visit my family, friends, and the places where I grew up. Finally from Bangkok I will fly back to Kunming, where I'm planning to spend a few months.

I always do that: I live through periods of immobility, enjoying a city or a beach where I like to loaf around or have some work to do, then all of a sudden I leave, without saying goodbye (normally just because there is nobody to say goodbye to) and during the following weeks I let some nice guys at the immigration points or at the embassies lash the pages of my travel document with powerful strokes of their seals or stiffen them with stickers that look like giant revenue stamps. My movements become even more frenzied when someone comes to visit me from back home, as in this case. In the last few years I've become a fairly slow traveler (or maybe I should say tourist?): if I don't click with a place I leave at once, otherwise I'm gonna stay there one week at least, if only to stroll around or read a book in a cafe that after a few days already feels like my own living room. That's not the case of my friends and relatives though, who can only enjoy a twenty-day vacation and are eager to see as many places as they possibly can. Traveling in good company is well worth some adaptation efforts, as in this case.

Chinese oddities/2 - Guangdong and Yunnan, China

- One yuan coins are often given as change in Eastern China but are hard to spot in the west - e.g. Yunnan province - where only one yuan banknotes are used instead.

- At Kunming airport a girl hangs on to the hand and the laptop case of a guy, kneeling and sliding on the floor as if she was holding a skilift, yelling "I won't let you go...I woooooon't let you gooooooo!", while the guy - visibly upset and embarrassed - walks from counter to counter with that unusual, wiggling and noisy luggage on tow, alternating polite conversations with the airlines' employees - who try to pretend nothing is going on and often stare blankly at something else - and wild screams toward the girl. Now and then they stop arguing and start to hit each other for a few seconds, then they argue again and finally the man will head to another counter, always dragging the girl whose rubber soles slide on the smooth airport lounge floor. A friend of hers talks on the phone while people are watching the scene in silence, until a cop arrives and takes them to the local station.

She's her lover? He owes her money? She wants that laptop? She's blackmailing him? I'll never know what that was about...but it was a fun way to kill time before the check-in counters opened.

- After she has checked me into the Kunming-Bangkok flight, the airline employee says: "Please sit down there and wait for the immigration counters to open"

"...ah, and when will they open?"

"When the officers are on duty"

"...no, I mean..." What do i mean? How do I explain it? "Well...alright...yeah sure, thanks..."

- The Chinese city of Guangzhou has its own version of the fake Buddhist monks: they hang around the square in front of Guangxiao temple, they hand people some cardboard charms and ask them to donate ridiculously huge sums of money (read about the Kuala Lumpur phonies here).

- The local authorities in Kunming (which is not even a major Chinese city) have decided to create a new town out of the city center. Government buildings and university campuses (many times as big as the old ones) are being moved there.

- Supermarkets, shops and some restaurants run out of iodized salt for a few days due to the panic induced by the Fukushima nuclear plants radiation threat.

- The rubbish bins at the Green Lake in Kunming automatically open their doors and wish you good luck after you dispose of your litter.

Read "Chinese oddities/1" here

The inoculation - Kunming, China

Making noodles, by Fabio

It's a warm summer night, a light breeze is sweeping the terrace and through the clear sky the vain moon is reflected in the still and dense surface of the lake. 
Some Italian friends of mine have just arrived to Kunming. After having hanged around the city for a few hours it's time to take them to dinner. To mitigate their cultural shock I'm trying to avoid the simple places where I normally go to eat, not because I'm worried by the quality of their food but for the boundary conditions that might upset the newcomers. Finally we've chosen this nice place with tables on the roof of a building facing the Green Lake, right next to my house.

A cute and refined waitress surprises us with a rather good English: among smiles and good manners we order a number of national and local specialties. 

About twenty minutes later - long enough to prepare each of the courses that we've just ordered - a different waiter walks towards our table. The conversation stops but our cheerfulness doesn't. We expect some kind of impeccable move, in accordance with a mood drugged by the atmosphere that is fluttering around us: that he refills our glasses, moves the salt container or a chair, or that he asks whether we would like some more beer or a particular sauce to go with our food.

"I'm sorry, the duck that you ordered is finished."

Confucius and drunks - Kunming, China

(Spring 2007)
The foreigner is tipsy when he gets to the club. He circles the dance-floor, walking next to the tables. Some Chinese call him, hand him a small glass. He smiles, grabs it and toasts with a man, but when he's about to the the same with another guy, the first one stops him and asks him to drink. One more glass, another toast, and so on with all the members of the merry group. It's whiskey and green tea, not a good drink, but sweetish, watered down, easy to swallow.

The awakening is an inter-dimensional trip: as it often happens since he arrived to China he wakes up and feels lost, in an unknown place. However this time the sensation remains. Lying on the couch he stares at the ceiling, he dreamed of the vomit that is on his face. He turns his head defying a migraine and spots two girls who are sleeping on a bed: he remembers that one of them was at the club. He lifts the blanket and he's a bit ashamed when he notices that he's wearing someone else's boxers. He still hasn't managed to put the pieces together when his fingers touch a wound on his brow.

He was staggering and swaying when he walked out of the club. The girls helped him to get on the cab, but when he was about to tell the driver the address, his brain switched off and he collapsed on the seat. With some help from the driver they took him home. He fell on the stairs and hit the rail with his head. 
In the past other foreigners were drugged and robbed, but he can see his belonging on a table in front. The girls give him water and fix something to eat. They cleaned him and undressed him, sent his clothes to the laundry. In the West this is is considered a normal behavior but in China these things can't be taken as granted. 
An Italian who lives in China explains in his blog that in order to understand what happens in that country one should always remember the following statement: 

<<君君、臣臣、父父、子子 (jūnjūn, chénchén, fùfù, zǐzǐ)

According to Wikipedia a possible translation is:

There is government, when the prince is prince, and the minister is minister; when the father is father, and the son is son.
(Confucius, Analects XII, 11)

The order of human society derives from respect for hierarchies. According to Confucius the five bonds are:

1. Ruler to Ruled
2. Father to Son
3. Husband to Wife
4. Elder Brother to Younger Brother
5. Friend to Friend

In the list "the fellow men" just don't appear, those neighbors that "thou should love as thou love thyself".>> (From Itariajin)

Our drunk foreigner was lucky enough. Even in China - sometimes at least - exceptions step in to prove the rule. 

Portrait of Confucius by Wu Daozi, 685-758, Tang Dynasty, from wikipedia.org

That's China - Kunming, China

(Spring 2006) 
We've finally found a place to stay. Three spacious bedrooms, a huge living hall. It's at the fifth floor and there is no lift, but you can get hypnotized by the view on the Green Lake. We don't know who used to live here and for how long it's been vacant, but the floors and the furniture are in a pitiful state. The agency recommends a cleaning firm. Three thin men arrive, with jackets and moccasins, a couple of buckets, sponges, rags. We're struck dumb by the scene and we think of the mantra that people have kept telling us since we arrived. If something doesn't make sense it's because...that's China...

For a couple of hours they pretend they're cleaning. At first we say something but then we drop it. When it's time to leave they seem to be in a hurry, they nervously smile and then bounce down the stairs. We look at each other and we say it loud, the explanation must definitely be: "That's China!" We look around to see what they have done. They didn't really clean the place, but at least they've scratched the first layer away.

The following day I open a drawer and fish out the bag where I keep my cash. Of all the objects that were in the house this must be the one they have cleaned the best. They haven't even left a renminbi inside.

Also stories like this one have something to teach. The expression "that's China" is not a universal key and at the end for some aspects the whole world is a village.

Photo "Green lake from a window", by Fabio Pulito