Canned Culture

Xijiang - Guizhou, China - May 14

Day three in the idyllic village of Xijiang (Shijiang), with population 5,400 of Miao minority people. Our first day was spent people-watching + hanging about the market that commences every five days. Men were selling + smoking tobacco from long, bone pipes. Women were selling produce, or embroidering, or haggling over the purchase of baby ducks + chicks. A market OBVIOUSLY not happening for the sake of tourists, which was just as well since there were only five or six of us around.

The day before we'd taken a bus to the smaller village of Langde, also picturesque, and were fully surprised an hour later when groups of sedans began pulling up, followed by a tour bus. Soon, villagers were coming out of the woodwork bedecked in festival finery and assembling along the steps leading to the village as yet MORE buses pulled up and camera-toting Chinese tourists emerged to music + fanfare. Darin and I looked at each other - HUH?! and had to laugh, it was all so staged... but that was just the beginning. We followed the music to the town square and were then witness to a song + dance performance with cameras furiously flashing. Meanwhile, young children were picked up and posed with and cameras were pointed right in peoples' faces as if they were mannequins. Agh! We HAD to get out of there! And to think that people had actually paid alot of money for the experience too! We hung out on the town bridge, eating our picnic lunch + waiting for it all to end. We got a good laugh later when we saw all the ethnic dancers shuttle onto one of the tour buses and head out of town. They weren't even villagers!

The scene here in Xijiang is about as opposite as can be. No one's wearing costumes, but they ARE colorfully dressed in the traditional style and with so much character that you'd think you're on a movie set. There's not much music but for the laughter of children, the man who walks into town every morning banging his gong selling who-knows-what, the chatter of the old men's caged songbirds + the burst of firecrackers. Yesterday we went on a hike up into the terraces above town. We sat and marveled at the feat of engineering it took to build these functional + aesthetic masterpieces as women hauled past loads of compost in baskets, men plowed fields with buffalo with a wooden yoke over their shoulders + the myriad of other tasks necessary to grow the bounty of food they need to survive - Old school! We're certainly not feeling any rush to leave this magical place.



Chengyang - Guangxi, China - May 22

We just crossed into a new province after two weeks in one of the least visited in all of China. We've already found that we need to start asking prices as things are more expensive here and overcharging more common. Also, it's the first time since Yunnan where we've had to pay admission into anything - And even just to enter a village or walk through the terraces which we've been doing for free, as it should be. I guess it's a good primer for going back to the wolves in Vietnam, the one thing we did NOT like about that country.

Chengyang is actually a collection of seven separate villages linked together by old bridges with rice paddy buffers in between. Yesterday I meandered through homes with chickens darting across my way and old men playing cards on the bridges, which actually double as sheltered hang-out spaces that catch the afternoon breezes and provide a respite from the heat as much as from the rain. The village's main claim to fame is the stunning "Wind + Rain Bridge", built without nails and one of the oldest + finest left in the Dong region. It's all a bit fairytale-like, especially in the evening with the twinkling of fireflies and racket from frogs + crickets as we sit along the river and watch the last of the light fade from the sky. It's another place where we feel we could stay indefinitely, but for the increasingly persistent call we're hearing that we need to start working again.

And SPEAKING of work... There's such a flurry of building happening here - New homes, guesthouses, roads, stone walkways... Even the admission fee is a new occurrence from what we're told. We've been speaking with the young owner of Yang's Guesthouse, a town native whose entire family helped fund him to attend university in Guilin city. Now he's back, and after obtaining a loan, and with the endorsement of the Chinese government to promote the village for tourism, he + other locals are jumping on the bandwagon and looking to better their livelihoods through the tourism boom. That all sounds good on paper, but Chengyang is another fragile place that won't be able to maintain it's charms if the needs of the larger tourist market - The Chinese - are met. While we were there, his other guests complained that there was nothing to do there, that it was a broken town. "There's no music, no girls, no KTV (Karaoke Bars)". I wonder why they would've even come here in the FIRST place if that was what they were after!



Yangshuo - Guangxi, China - May 25

So THIS is what the Chinese want! What a scene! We've seen the song + dance perfor- mances, we've seen the row upon row of tourist trinkets, but THIS is something new altogether. There's a carnival atmosphere here with live music + outdoor dining , strings of hipply designed bars pumping out dance music, girls all dolled up... And people, many of them twenty-somethings are out on the town. We talked to one young guy from Guangdong province that quit his tech job to come check things out and is thinking of relocating because the business opportunity looks so enticing. He says many people from his province come here just for the weekend. And come they have... In droves. What a shock for us from the sleepy backwaters we've been frequenting. My initial thought was "I didn't come to China for this!", but then I had to remind myself that this is China too, and it just keeps hitting home what a study in contrasts the country is.

Check the "link" for more photos from Guizhou Province

To Eat, or Not to Eat (Dog)... That is the Question

What is the fate of the sweet, little dog that walked with us yesterday through villages? We ARE in dog-eating country after all and the villagers were unusually inquisitive about him and stared at him WAY more than us. It was all a little bit suspicious and left us with a pang of guilt as we hopped on the bus and left him to his fate standing on the roadside smiling after us :(

So you may say that the question I posed is not a question at all, the answer is OBVIOUS. Which is what I would have said too at the onset of this trip. But then there were the hordes of strays in India + Nepal - Mangy + flea-ridden, barking ALL NIGHT LONG so that some nights I got little to no sleep. And though it was immensely disturbing and would haunt me for weeks, I began to understand (at least a little bit) why locals would torture strays for fun. Dogs were a PROBLEM. If you barely have enough food for your family you're certainly not going to be feeding a PET.

Next we arrive in Southeast Asia where the locals have a slightly DIFFERENT method of dealing with the problem - They eat them. I won't elaborate on some of the stomach-churning images we've been witness to at the markets, but after getting around my initial shock + disgust, I've forced myself to reevaluate my feelings about the issue. So WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL?! People NEED to eat and there's a FREE source of protein running around in abundance. They don't have a problem with it so why should I? This has been my frame of mind the last few months. People in Southeast Asia DO have small pet dogs that they adore and fawn over, but they're not strays, and that is the difference.

Now back to our walk and the sweet, little stray that tagged along with us for a couple hours... In just that short time I was reminded of the one thing that sets dogs apart from many other animals - They're good companions. That fact alone may be the deciding factor, at least for me, to this moral + culinary dilemma. That, and the fact that they eat poo.

Postscript - One week later as Darin is on the bus having backtracked to Kaili to hit an ATM, he spots who else but our little, furry friend... Right where we first found him on the side of the road. What a relief to know that he didn't become someone's dinner :)

China - Breaking the Stereotype

One year and two days ago we landed in New Delhi, the beginning of the "hard" traveling, and what a year it's been! From India, to Nepal, to Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and now China. All distinctly unique + memorable, but maybe no other has been so contrary to my expectations as China is proving to be. At times, so similiar to the States, but better - Very friendly people that go way out of their way (even taking time off work or school) to help and are quick to smile or laugh; People out and about WALKING in planned pedestrian plazas or on tree-lined boulevards, or even BIKING in DESIGNATED bicycle lanes; Cities that are spotlessly clean with numerous public toilets + efficient mass transit for pennies; Old people as a vital part of society, whether they're doing Tai Chi stretches in the mornings at Tonghai's temple mountain or playing instruments + dancing in Kunming's Green lake Park on a Sunday; Teens are as hip + fashion forward as at home and ever eager to practice English with a stranger and help you with your Chinese in return; Modern metropolis' and ancient villages not only exist side-by-side, but intermingle, and it's not uncommon to see women in tribal dress going about their business with cell phone in hand. Not what you thought, is it? Us either. Yunnan has really won us over.

You're waiting for the "But" aren't you? There is an obvious one. For all it's "Pro's", China's big "Con" is that it's heading on the same mega-consummerist track that the rest of the western world is and the cities all feel like giant shopping malls. We headed halfway 'round the world to get way from that a bit and now it's right back in our face. It's the same story the world over though - people get money and they can't wait to spend it. I know I'm not much different, but it HAS been nice being farther down the consumption chain living out of a backpack for awhile. And note that I said Yunnan, not China. I can speak from my own experience here, but China's a big place, and we've gotten reports from our friend Ken who's now up in Xi'an saying that that is THE most polluted city he's EVER been in, and noisy to boot. Obviously, China hasn't gotten a bad rap on their poor environmental record for nothing, and if you think that that's THEIR problem, check THIS out. The World is becoming increasingly smaller, and more + more, decisions made halfway around the globe will affect us all. For the most part though, we've got nothing but recommendations. Come see it for youself and make your own judgement.

Check the "link" for our Yunnan Province recommendations.

STOP! Don't Grab that Bottle!

Here's a recent report by Worldwatch on a subject that we've been paying close attention to here on the road - On average, I consume 2 liters of water per day. Over the course of the 15-1/2 months that I've been gone, this would equate to 940 plastic bottles going into the landfill. Not very ecologically sound! Before we left on this trip, I did a fair amount of research looking at other alternatives. Water pumps + replacement filters are bulky, iodine can only be ingested for two weeks periods... and that's about it. Then I discovered Steripen, a UV water treatment wand that treats a liter of water in 90 seconds flat. It's available at outdoor sporting goods stores like REI for around $150 and treats 5,000 liters, equalling about .03 cents a liter. We've been using it since the start and have had NO problems. What a find! For home use, there are SEVERAL good options available for water purification systems. When you consider the impact that all our plastic waste has on the planet (and plastics DO come from oil, btw, which obviously has MUCH bigger ramifications) there's absolutely NO reason why we all shouldn't be keeping that waste to a minimum. Recycling only does SO much, and it takes alot of energy to do that too, so please stop and think before you grab that clear bottle off the shelf next time. Read on for more about the impact of the fast-growing bottled water problem AND to learn if it's really safer to drink than tap water...


The world's fastest-growing beverage is a boon to the industry but a bust for the environment and for the more than 1 billion people worldwide who lack access to clean drinking water, according to a new Vital Signs Update from the Worldwatch Institute. Excessive withdrawal of natural mineral or spring water to produce bottled water has threatened local streams and groundwater, and the product consumes significant amounts of energy in production and shipping. Millions of tons of oil-derived plastics, mostly polyethylene terephthalate (PET), are used to make the water bottles, most of which are not recycled. Each year, about 2 million tons of PET bottles end up in landfills in the United States; in 2005, the national recycling rate for PET was only 23.1 percent, far below the 39.7 percent rate achieved a decade earlier.

"Bottled water may be an industry winner, but it's an environmental loser," says Ling Li, a fellow with the Institute's China Program who authored the update. "The beverage industry benefits the most from our bottled water obsession. But this does nothing for the staggering number of the world's poor who see safe drinking water as at best a luxury, and at worst, an unattainable goal." An estimated 35% percent of urban dwellers in Africa and Asia lack adequate access to safe potable water, according to Worldwatch.

Consumers in industrial countries choose to drink bottled water for taste and convenience, while in developing countries, unreliable and unsafe municipal water supplies have driven the growth in consumption. Yet many poorer people who seek improved drinking water supplies cannot afford the bottled version. Bottled water can be between 240 and 10,000 times more expensive than tap water; in 2005, sales in the United States alone generated more than $10 billion in revenue.

Global consumption of bottled water more than doubled between 1997 and 2005, securing the product's place as the world's fastest-growing commercial beverage. The United States remains the largest consumer of bottled water, but among the top ten countries, India has nearly tripled its consumption, while China more than doubled its consumption between 2000 and 2005.

In industrial countries with highly regulated water supplies, tap water has been proven to be just as safe, or safer, than its commercial counterpart. In the United States, regulations concerning bottled water are generally the same as for tap water, but are weaker for some microbial contaminants. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which regulates bottled water at the federal level, permits the product to contain certain levels of fecal matter, whereas the Environmental Protection Agency does not allow any human waste in city tap water. Bottled water violations are not always reported to the public, and in most cases the products may be recalled up to 15 months after the problematic water was produced, distributed, and sold.

The Tiger Leaping Gorge Conflict

We've been traveling with a good friend from home, Captain Ken, for the past couple weeks and slowly working our way up into the Tibetan plateau. Tiger Leaping Gorge, sandwiched between Haba Snow Mountain + Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, both towering at around 19,000' is really the beginning of the plateau and marks the far eastern end of the Himalayan range. The Gorge is notable as one of the deepest in the world (13,000') with the Yangtze river crashing it's way through at the very bottom.

Some geographers + writers like to think of the Yangtze as a sort of waistline that divides China in two. Above the waist are the brain, heart + soul of China, a land that is home to the pale-skinned, wheat-eating, Mandarin-speaking, reclusive + conservative peoples who are the true heirs to a thousand years of uninterupted history. Below the waist, on the other hand, are the country's muscles + sinews - The stocky, darker, more flamboyant, rice-eating peoples who speak in complicated local dialects, the men + women whose energies and acumen, AND cooking, have spread the goods of China to the world beyond. For this visit we will be staying solidly "below the waist" and can only speak of our experiences in reference to the South, not China as a whole, being as large + diverse as it is.

It's been nice to get a fresh perspective on what we're seeing + experiencing through Ken's eyes. He too has been surprised at the reality of what China is versus what it's been portrayed to the western world historically and in the present day. Though the Cultural Revolution did much to stiffle minority ethnic groups and religion, the people here are tough + resilient and both seem alive and well in the 21st century. On our hike through the Gorge, locals farmed as they've been doing for thousands of years on terraced fields dropping precariously down the steep slopes towards the river below. Sadly, the proposed dam project will displace approx. 80,000 people initially (and up to 1 milliom ultimately) who will lose their homes + farmland underwater. While most of the world now recognizes that the massive dam projects of the past have, throughout the world, ultimately caused more harm than good, China still seems determined to move full-speed ahead to satisfy their growing need for electricity.

The scenic town of Daju, where we spent a day at the northern end of the hike, is one that may feasibly be affected by the dam. This untouristed gem is one of the places that Darin + I only PRAY to stumble upon when traveling - Beautiful homes made of clay bricks, carved wooden beams + hand-glazed ceramic tiles sited on an extraordinarily scenic plateau; Farmland in shades of gold + green in a mondrian patchwork; Friendly locals. Though these ancient peoples still exist within modern China, they are becoming increasingly marginalized in the name of progress, and have little to no voice with which to defend themselves. It's a sad reality.

Here's a "link" to more photos from Tiger Leaping Gorge