July 7th, 2010 Wrapping up China - Brett

July 7th, 2010 from Indonesia...

China seems a world away.

We arrived on this island about an hour ago. The little wooden (not very sea-worthy) boat grinds onto the sand and we jump out into the surf trying to keep our packs dry. We wander up the beach for about ten minutes (almost half way acrossj the island) where we find a simple cottage right on the beach. Ahhhh... we can finally relax and catch up on our reading and writing. Yes, China seems very far away. Click here to see where we are...  http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Gili+Meno,+Indonesia&sll=40.033372,-105.238741&sspn=0.004321,0.013711&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Gili+Meno&ll=-8.437055,116.026611&spn=1.05956,3.735352&t=h&z=9
But China will leave a lasting impression. The people, the ideas, the history, and the new, emerging culture are so vast and so foreign to our western brains. They say that western businessmen arrive in China with a plan to educate and modernize and show the east how it is done. And without even realizing what is happening they are the ones who become changed. I now understand that. No matter how open I thought I was; no matter how much I proclaimed that I came to China to learn; no matter how willing I was to throw my pre-conceptions to the wind – I am walking away not only with new ideas, but I am walking away a different person. It reminds me of my first philosophy class in college. Something in your brain changes and you begin to see the world with different eyes.

Yangshuo, China

Our last post was from Guilin, China, a small city (700,000-ish) in southeast China. We had missed our contact (Mayte) by a day, so we decided to head down to Yangshuo, a small town most easily accessed by floating down the Li River on a small, bamboo raft.  As the river walls grew steeper and the gumdrop-shaped mountains rose up on both sides, we felt like we were entering another world. And indeed we were. This was the first place in China that felt like home. After a few days we felt like locals, and after a week we didn't want to leave.

Upon arrival, we signed up with the local English college to teach classes in exchange for room and board and how perfect that turned out to be. We felt like we were getting paid to do exactly what we came here to do! By day we explored the surrounding countryside full of sublime views, awesome rock climbing, and delicious food. At 5:30 every evening we would meet our students (who had been in class all day) for an hour of dinner and chatting (with lots of laughing and telling stories) and then we would do two hours of “English Corner” - essentially more chatting, laughing, and telling stories! After class was officially over we would sit around and drink (free) beers with our favorite students and the other teachers and swap stories of travels, the great crags that we climbed that day, the cheapest place to get steamed buns (four huge, soft, warm, cinamon-bun looking things filled with anything from peanut butter to meat to tangy vegetables cost $0.28, total, and easily keep me full for a day of rock climbing), or how gross our dorm room was (picture three-dimensional mold on everything).

But what we most enjoyed was getting to know our students. In typical Chinese fashion, this both was and was not a representative cross section of the up-and-coming China. Most of our students came from rural towns, left their homes to find work in the big city, and had been struggling to find their way in large factories or export companies. This is typical China. What was not typical is that every single one of our students had the guts to quit their jobs and come to Yangshuo for three to six months to study for 14 hours a day to learn English with the hopes of finding a new job and a better life. From a society that encourages conformity and safety – these folks were different.

And it gave us the opening we were looking for. This greater risk tolerance provided us the opportunity ask questions and engage on topics that were not so openly talked about. We explored more about the one child policy. We got into passionate discussions about Confucian thought versus socialism. We talked about censorship and government control. We asked openly about Tibet and Xing Jiang province. We pressed them about China's role in taking care of the environment. And, just like China, the answers covered the entire spectrum from the conservative to the downright revolutionary. And we loved every minute of it.

But we still hadn't quite settled in. Every night after the discussions, after the late night beers, and after the temperature had dropped to a refreshingly cool 90 degrees, we would head back to our dank, smelly, mouldering dorm room, duck under the stairwell for a quick cold-water rinse, and lie on top of our sleep sheets sweating the night away listening to the drunk old men make jokes and the toothless old ladies cackle outside our window until 4 or 5 in the morning. And after three days we had enough. In Guilin a young man who knew a lot about tea and seemed to have friends in any other business we were interested in (bamboo rafts, art, DVDs, and, as it turns out, guest houses in Yangshuo) gave us a business card for “Tripper's Carpe Diem”. Turns out Tripper is a Belgian who loves good conversation, runs the best guest house I've ever been in, and imports Duvel and Leffe to share with his very appreciative customers. Tripper's place is a good 25 minute walk from Yangshuo to the neighboring village of Shi Baun Qiao (population 146) and worth every star-lit step. Every night as you stroll along the gently flowing Li river with the full moon creating ghostly reflections of the mountains on the calm water, the frogs get louder and any remaining stress from the day just melts away. Tripper is always there waiting with a cold beer and a couple hours of good conversation. For four wonderful days this was home and we were very sad to leave...

As we rolled out of town we reminisced about days spent climbing in the rain (in a huge, gaping cave providing shelter from the monsoons), the antics of our fellow teachers - Sam and Adam who were climbing their way across Asia and then biking across Mongolia; Vel and Galena crooning out Russian rock songs on the little stage at 98 bar (run by an Aussie ex-pat); innocent little Catherine who wasn't really sure what to make of it all; and our oh-so-french friend Celeste. We re-watched the movies we took from the back of Tripper's borrowed motorcycle winding our way through endless backroads, Jenny at the helm as we sped through rice paddies, banked corners by vertigo-inducing overlooks, and puttered slowly through little villages waving to little girls by the side of the road. Photo 932 We looked at the recipes of egg-dumplings that we learned to cook in a tiny rural courtyard outside of town. We cringed as we recalled the hearts, livers, bladders, and stomachs of pigs, cows, chickens, and dogs layed out on tiled blocks, blood pooling on the floor where bare-foot women shopped for their daily needs. And we smiled thinking of the enjoyable nights spent on Tripper's patio talking about his fight against corruption and the meaning of life in China. Yes, Yangshuo was a special place.