Ever had the desire to stand around and watch people lying on the pavement bleeding out, but not have to do anything about it?

If you said yes, you are a heartless jerk.

But, you would not be alone. Because if I polled the people in Yangshuo (and all of China from what I hear) then about 99.9% of people would have said yes to the above question.

I was witness to my second accident since in the past 2 months.

First accident was no biggie - A lady was walking across the road not looking for traffic at all (nobody does) when a lady riding a scooter (who was NOT looking forward, but behind herself as they always do) smacked into her.

WHAP!

Scooter - 1
Lady lying face down on the pavement - 0

Everybody just stood and looked at the lady lying on the ground. An Australian guy and I ran over and went to work. All the usual post- accident stuff that you do - and everybody just stood and watched. She was ok eventually. They took her to the hospital and did whatever they do


Second accident, not so kind. 2 days ago I was waiting for someone near a small river when I heard the "smack-griiiiind" of large machinery sliding on asphalt. I saw a large crowd of people who were...

(can you guess what they were doing?)

...Standing there watching. Two women face down in a large pool of blood. I was the ONLY one who went to help. C'mon people!?! One had a pretty bad head injury. So I attended to them both by myself with a crowd of 50 just watching.

Great.
Fantastic.
Wonderful. I'm elbow deep in blood and you're just watching.

Thanks for your help everyone.

I went to the hospital later in the day to check on them. The one with the bad head injury was still in rough condition... the other was ok.

Moral of the story here? Don't get hit by a large moving piece of metal in China unless you have a back-up plan after death.

When was the last time you saw a Buick station wagon?

1972.

The Buick Sportwagon.

I saw one yesterday. Not a Sportwagon. A new Buick station wagon. And though it nearly rips the fabric of space-time itself, I have to admit that it didn't look half bad.

Which bring me to my topic. Cars in China. Being as I am a car junkie, I have to crane my neck every time a Citroen drives by - Just because we don't have 'em in the States.

So here's a list of the cars I have seen that are not common in the states, or are weird to see in rural China -

Peugeot 207
Peugeot 307
Puegeot 307 Police Car

Honda City
Honda Fit
Honda Accord Police car
Honda Odessey sports station wagon. (Eli, you would LOVE that one : )

Innumerable miniature Chevys unheard of in the states

Jeep Cherokee

Toyota Landcruiser (Lifted / snorkled / "safaried" beyond all reason)

...and as I'm typing this I'm realizing that only my brothers, and maybe a guy in his garage in Milwaukee will care at all about this post...

Brothers (and random guy in Milwaukee), I will take pics, and then give you a proper post when the time is right...

what's in a name...

Well, being as the Chinese put a lot of effort into their Chinese names, you would think there's a lot in a name. My Chinese name for example -

Jiang Si Fuo - My first name is Joseph, and Jiang Si Fuo sounds phonetically close. But secondly, SiFuo means "like Buddah" (also can be used as "a kind teacher"). I was given this name my first week here because they said that I reminded them of Buddah, in all his kindness.

Awesome. Great. Maybe there is something to this whole importance in names thing going on here in China...

and then you learn a Chinese person's English name. I will list for you just a few of the names of the students at our school

Females -
Apple
Spider
Ice
Angel
Sunny
Rainbow
Lemon

Males -
Wolf
Tiger
Silence
Dorix

And I think to myself, "self, maybe names don't mean so much after all."

Weekend 2 (Sun)

I went to a Barbecue on Sunday. And it was nice...

Kind of.

I got sick that night with food poisoning. Barfed my guts out a bunch of times throughout the night. That's bad enough by itself, but it really sucks when you're staying in a concrete block of a room 8,000 miles from anything you would call comfortable.

But back to the Barbecue. We went to a market in the morning that had all sorts of awesome things in it (like every vegetable and animal possible. Including Dog :) ) and picked up what we needed. We then proceeded to walk for 40 min out of town down little Chinese back roads with little Chinese homes lived in by little Chinese people to a "secret beach" that everyone knows about, where were set up for our barbecue.

Chinese barbecue doesn't involve a grill by-the-way. It's more like... ummmmm... sticking once-living-things on a stick and then charring them in a flame. Chinese barbecue, it's what's for dinner.


You'll notice in the picture below that I am holding a stone. My favorite stone.

What was actually happening was that everything we ate was washed in the river (remember the food poisoning?). So somebody had to get in the water to wash the "stuff"... that's where the rock comes in :)

Happily walk down to the water with some delicious vegetables, bend down to wash, and *KER-SPLOSH*!! I got 4 people that way.

4.

Vengeful.

People.

The result of my tomfoolery was me wading into the water thigh deep to retrieve my sandals (which had been innocently thrown in) while 4 gleeful Chinese girls threw in huge stone all around me. Good times.

We headed back later in the day and then all hung out at Sunny's since her husband was in town and had another big meal which couldn't be beat. And I barfed all night :)

Weekend 2 (Sat)

During the week I did all sorts of awesome stuff.

Which I'm not going to tell you about here. I will tell you about my second weekend here though :)

On the 5th (Sat.) we got a late start for a place called Moon Hill. We went and rented bicycles around 11:00 and proceeded to ride for the next hour in 110% humidity all up hill.

Really, it was all up hill. Not like dad's "when I was your age we walked to school..." type of up hill, but REALLY up hill the whole way. It was an arduous ride for the whole group honestly, especially considering the Chinese tendency to ride SUPER wobbly at 1/2 a mile and hour.

Thankfully we weren't going to climb some ridiculously high hill or anything...

At the base we ate a few pieces of a fruit called a Pomelo, and then we started the ascent. The winding stone steps took us up through a shady (albeit sweltering) path trees and Bamboo. On the way I carved my Chinese name into a piece of bamboo that was covered with other Chinese characters (which I idiotically forgot to take a pic of) and generally enjoyed the fact that I was climbing huge hill in China. It took us about 35 - 40 minutes to arrive beneath the arch (which you can see in the picture) where I snapped a few shots.

Then one of the girls (Sunny) and I decided to climb all the way ON TOP of the arch, as high as you can go. It was a MUDDY climb. I was wearing my flops, and I was using every ounce of my balance to keep from slipping off the side of the 2 foot path and tumbling down the 200 foot sheer drop on the side. Really, it was kind of hairy, which is why it was so enjoyable :)

The view from the top was definitely worth-it











We eventually made our way back down and biked back to Yangshuo (which went a lot quicker since it was now all down hill).

Yangshuo

Well I've been here in Yangshuo for 2 weeks but I haven't really posted anything about my stay. There's been too much happening every day to have time to post about it so I'm going to try to give a quick recap of the past 2 weeks via a few posts.

The first weekend I was here I got "adopted" by a bunch of students from the school and did a whole bunch of things. On friday I took a bamboo raft ride down the Li River -


The limestone peaks all around are called Karsts. There's a ton of those that you can climb around here, and that's one of the many reasons Yangshuo is as popular as it is (in an obscure Chinese kind of way)

The raft ride lasted about 1 1/12 hours, and then we all went and got something to eat... somewhere... I don't remember. It was good.




Then on saturday we went to a place called Shangri-La. No, not THAT Shangri-La. This Shangri-La was the residence of an administrator of the Qing Dynasty (1644 - 1911) who was demoted and sent away from the imperial palace.










And I have to go sit in on a class, so that's all you get for now :)

Arrival in Yangshuo

I knew the bus was ghetto.

After rumbling along for 2 hours, the bus stops on the edge of a town (which I can only hope is Yangshuo) and drops me off. Yeah. Just me. EVERYONE else stays on the bus. And I'm definitely not at any bus station like I should have been.

.... so ....

I decided to start walking. I found a hotel and went in and managed to convey that I wanted to use their phone. I then called my contact in Yangshuo to let him know I was there, I thought. Turns out I was. After 10 minutes or so my contact "Johnny" arrives riding a small scooter and gives me a ride to the Yanshuo ZhuoYue English school, where I'll have free accomodation and food for volunteering 2 hours a day. Sweet.

Guilin to Yangshuo

Not much to say here. I went to the bus station in the morning, and was kind of wandering around until a younger Chinese guy (early 20's) approached me and asked me where I was trying to go.

I wheeled around and punched him square in the face.

That's what I thought about doing. Who in the world approaches random strangers and tries to help them out?!? That's just stupid... But he did help me buy a ticket for Yangshuo on what must have been the oldest bus on the lot.

I actually wasn't sure that I WAS on the right bus for Yangshuo because I was the ONLY person on the bus when it left the station. Really.



But we proceeded to spend the next hour driving through every street in the city at no more than 5 mph trolling for potential riders. We eventually did fill up the bus and headed on our way.

It was a 2 hour bus ride, and would have felt arduous where it not for the fact that it was beautifully sunny and they played Rambo 3 and the new Rambo on DVD. Yes, welcome to rural China.

Arriving In Guilin

Guilin as described online

Guilin in it's TRUE beauty













Guilin was so-so. I took a 40 min bus ride from the airport to the middle of the city, where I was promptly left. It was about 9:00 PM, and I had no idea where my hotel was. And neither did the cabbies for that matter. As soon as I stepped of the bus (I was the only one off in this area) I was surrounded by 10 random people who started crowding in much too close for comfort. I then had to take out my laptop in front of them all to show them the Chinese for the hotel I was staying at.
I was thinking I was going to have to start fighting to keep my stuff from being stolen, until I saw one one of them point to my big duffle and mumble "military" in poor English. At that point they ALL looked at me in the face and I made REALLY good eye contact with all of them.

And I got a cab to my hotel :)

LAX

For all that LAX sucked, HKG rocked. It was huge, well made, free internet EVERYWHERE, and more noodles than you could shake a cheaply made chopstick at. I was feeling pretty wiped out when I got there because I think I got a total of 5 hours sleep (fitfully at best too) on the LAX to HKG flight. Then I found a Noodle & Congee place. This is the true meaning of Asia:














I found some sofa chair thingys to rest on and I read some "Shogun" for about 4 hours, and then wandered down to my gate for my next meal. "Slippery" would probably be the best word to describe that meal. Imagine taking sticky white rice, pureeing it, and then compressing it into thin spippery slabs. That's pretty much what I had.

After that it was just a lot of waiting around until my flight arrived.

Day 1. The Flight - LAX / Second Leg

Now it's just getting stupid. My flight landed in LAX 20 minutes late due to a hydraulic failure which wouldn't let the gear go down. The pilot came on the intercom and told everyone that it was an issue that they had had on that plane before, and that it would soon be in opperation. I don't think any of us were too sure that was true, but we didn't really have any options but to wait. We circled the airport for about 15 min until finally they were able to HAND crank the wheels down...

well, that's what SHOULD have caused the delay.



All I REALLY know is that the flight was 20 minutes late landing, and then the terminal bus was forever in arriving. You can see in the picture the layout of LAX.

The international departure gate is THAT far away. So like I said, the flight took forever to arrive, and then the bus took forever to arrive as well. Before I knew it, I was arriving at the Cathay Pacific check-in with only 40 minutes before my flight was supposed to depart at 11:20.

Here's where it gets good.

THEY CLOSE THE GATE 1 HOUR BEFORE THE FLIGHT DEPARTS.

.................

So NOW my NEW flight was leaving at 1:30 Pacific time. That's 2 hours MORE I was going to have to wait. The kicker: The flight that I wasn't allowed to board because I was ONLY 40 minutes early instead of 60 minutes early?... ended up boarding at 11:40. Yup, that's an HOUR after I arrived at the check-in I wasn't allowed to be a part of.

Shoot me in the face.

... or stick me on a plane designed for little Asian people and put me behind the ONE other tall lanky dude WITH the malfunctioning seat that leans farther back than it should,,, AND let that guy be the one who reclines as soon as the wheels tuck after takeoff. Hahaha... that would almost be worst than being shot in the face....

Day 1. The Flight - First Leg

Apparently you can't travel to China without a return ticket.

Well, that's what the lady at the United desk at the airport said anyway. It was a really cool and fun way to start off my trip. I had purchased a one-way ticket to Guilin, China about 2 weeks ago with no mention of need for a return ticket. In fact, I had gotten my Chinese Visa from the embassy in DC about a month and a half before that. The Chinese didn't seem to care if I had a return ticket or not either, but the buck stops at Helen.. or at least the little manual she was reading the rules out of anyway.

After much huranging and "round-about-ness", I got my way... and had to purchase a flight back out of China.

Speaking of China, United Airlines has potentially the worst in-flight movie selection I have ever seen. No, really. I was hoping for something that might involve Chuck Norris, or Charles Bronson - like "Death Wish 12". Or better yet, something with Sylvester Stallone pumping thousands of rounds of molten hot lead into the bellies of impoverished southeast Asian villagers.

"August Rush". That's what I got. It's about a kid who hears his parents singing in the wind of guitar strings... or something like that.














It wasn't the molten flesh carnage I was anticipating, that's for sure.

And yes, he finds his parents in the end.