June 2000

 

Depart NYC with sister Rachel. 18 hour flight to Hong Kong. We arrive exhausted. HK is hot and humid. night time.

 

We wake up at 6 a.m. unable to sleep. Rice and pork for breakfast! Man fishes in the sewer with roaches as bait on a string. We take the Star Ferry from Kowloon to HK island. Bus tour of HK ($7 U.S. extra to ride the fishing boat). Thai restaurant on Victoria Harbor Humidity causes bad hair Aggressive Indian street sellers on Nathan Rd. I sketch relentlessly (15 sketches in 24 hrs!).

 

Ferry to Lantau Island and bus to Po Lin Monastery. Largest Bronze buddha in the world atop a mountain. Vegetarian lunch at the monastery (Rachel is a vegetarian). I swim in filthy water at Lantau Island beach. Lan Kwai Fong area in HK - expat night life. We meet a Dutch girl and a Macau girl. Listening to a funk band, drinking beer.

 

June 4th

Another brutally hot day. We resolve to take it slow. Dim Sum at elegant Luk Yu tea house ('Luk Yu'- it sounds profane) Thousands of Filipina domestic workers lounge the streets on their day off? Later we learn there is a protest in which they are taking part. Mo Lin buddhist temple on Stanley Street. Causeway Bay shopping area, Park Lane hotel. We drink a beer to escape the afternoon heat. Western style bar, teenage waitresses in stars and stripes humming to Hong Kong pop songs on the juke box. Emotional Pro-Democracy/Tiannanmen Square anniversary commemoration at Victoria Park. One man curses me in Chinese, another man introduces himself and his 15 yr old daughter, and 2 college students interview and photograph us. Rail thin girl in plaid pants lingers on the street 3 nights in a row in front of our hotel.. She smiles at me ...seems to like me...

 

Ferry to Macau Island (former Portuguese colony). We buy handkerchiefs to wipe sweat from our foreheads. And nutmeg balm. (We rub it on our hearts.) Little boy at department store shields his eyes from our white skin. His mom, laughing, reassures him we are ok. We visit an old portuguese church facade. (funny how foreign relics are a tourist attraction. the only old chinese buildings are temples.) Back to Hong Kong. We find cafe 64. Bohemian international atmosphere. Unfortunately we must catch the last ferry back to Kowloon. We don't have money for a cab and the money changers are closed. We meet Hideki, a strange Japanese man in his mid 30s with a long head and gadgets hanging from his belt. He tells us of a prophecy about Chicago where a very important person will appear in 150 years. I suggest someone like Jesus Christ and he says‚how did you know?

 

Train to China, the mainland. Train attendants in bright blue uniforms. Travel agent at the train station in Guangzhou (Canton) hustles the foreigners (known also as gwailos, i.e. long nosed devils). Hocking, slurping, spitting, and nose-picking common here. We catch several people in the act of the latter; no one is embarrassed. With phrase book in hand I attempt some Chinese while shopping and end up with 3 new shirts, all nearly identical (but only $6 U.S.). Young kids say "hello!" to us. People are more friendly than in HK. 2 teenage girls ask me to pose for a picture with them Rachel and I, fearing water with foreign bacteria, dump out ice cubes from our Cokes. We stumble upon a street market filled with live animals waiting to become food: buckets of swarming eels and frogs, a cage of sad-eyed rabbits and one of cats and brown chickens, turtles, crabs, ducks, bugs. A take-away zoos the guidebook says. The heat and humidity makes us dizzy. Lipton, Coke, 7-Eleven, McDonalds, KFC, and Kodak all in China. Latest Mariah Carey song is stuck in Rachel's head. (The grammar is incorrect: ‚someday you and me will...) A young Guangzhou woman in a tight skirt walks down the street parasol in hand to shield the sun. A teenage girl can hardly contain her mirth when I stop to pick up a wrapper that I accidentally drop.

  

Scores of U.S. couples picking up their newly adopted Chinese babies in Guangzhou. Pushing strollers and goo-goo-ing. 3 live alligators lie atop one another in a small tub outside a restaurant. Inside on the chopping block lies the head of one of their brothers. Drab gray and pink post-war communist buildings. (Possibly same architect as in East Germany?) Old people playing traditional Chinese music in the park. The singing sounds like cats in heat - in a good way though.

 

24 hour train ride to Shanghai. Chinese and western muzak drones on the loudspeaker for the entire trip. Rain outside. Green landscape, muddy roads. Farmers knee-deep in dirty water. Stray oxen roam the countryside. 3 vertical bunks to a compartment. We are unable to communicate with our Chinese bunkmates, but we smile at each other. I buy hot noodles from a vendor on a train platform for 60 cents (U.S.). Everyone around us is slurping loudly. Rachel and I are probably attracting unnecessary attention because we don't slurp our noodles. Also, we can't bring ourselves to spit like the Chinese do.

 

At the Shanghai train station a crowd of 10 - 12 Chinese stop to stare at us when I ask for directions. It is hysterical to them when I attempt to speak Chinese. Our hotel is next-door to the Sheraton. Shanghai is a beautiful city.

 

We meet my uncle's friend from Minnesota, John Uldrich, for lunch at the American Club. It is difficult for me to sketch inconspicuously because everywhere we go people stare at us. Tourists strolling on the Bund, viewing new Pudong area across the river with futuristic architecture. Very few westerners though. Chancre sore in the lower left of my mouth. Chinese woman talks to Rachel and me. Says she lives in Brooklyn. I buy another shirt. At night we drink at Tequila Mama's.

 

Dim sum brunch w/ John Uldrich, his Chinese wife Eva, her son Ben-Ben, and their friend Paul Jensen who speaks Chinese as a 2nd language. I exchange the shirt I bought for a smaller size. Rachel and I watch Rocky on TV at the hotel. Rachel naps while I email Dad a happy father's day message one week too early. Feeling exhausted and a little homesick. We seek out a vegetarian restaurant which turns out to be closed. Get burgers instead at Malone's American sports bar.

 

Day trip to nearby Suzhou, famous for its gardens. We rent bikes. Migrant country people look similar to indigenous South American people. We pay 10Y ($1.20) to enter the grounds to see a pagoda tower. Then we pay 5Y to climb the pagoda tower. Then at the top, after climbing 8 flights of stairs, we are asked to pay another 1Y to see the view! This is ridiculous. I sarcastically offer to pay more money for the privilege of descending. Girls smile at me, then laugh at me - the foreigner. It is demoralizing sometimes. Korean man helps us at the train station.

 

I exchange my shirt again for a third time to get a better fit. The exasperated clerks laugh when i say: see you tomorrow. Rachel is getting tired of my sketching all the time and, frankly, so am I. Ancient paintings at the Shanghai museum. Reading Moby Dick in spare moments. We visit the Oriental Pearl Tower in Pudong. Travel fatigue today. I become cynical about the possibility of really connecting with any locals. Sometimes it feels like we are just flipping through a guide book. Rachel and I imagine that staying at the youth hostel might have allowed more contact with other humans at least. Nonetheless, we do exchange warm smiles with people on the street and waitresses, and of course we are sharing squat toilets with countless strangers. Hotel clerks names: Lodge Lu and Vincky (sic) Hu. Sound like characters from a Dr. Seuss book.

 

Train to nearby Hangzhou, famous for its lake. (Marco Polo gave it 4 stars.) We are surrounded by tourist vultures at the train station all vying for our money. hotel? taxi? they say. no, no, no, i say. A cab driver who speaks no English emphatically explains something to us in Chinese as he drives us to the wrong hotel. I start jabbering in English to shut him up. It works. He points to his mouth and shakes his head. Forty year old woman in bar starts grinning at me and raising her eyebrows. Billy, our Chinese waiter practices his English with us, and later we meet two collegiate Americans who are teaching English here.

 

Bicycles to the Yin Ling Temple. Vegetarian lunch there. Train back to Shanghai. One of us experiences mild discomfort from the Chinese diet. On the hotel registration form where it asks for my "Chinese Name" I copy the characters for Railway Station from our guide book. Man carries live quacking ducks tied by their feet, hanging upside down, from a pole. U.S. midwestern tour group at acrobatics performance. One old woman to another: "It sure was nice to eat at McDonalds today for a change."

 

June 16th

We fly to Tokyo, Japan and stay with my friend M. Fujimi for 2 days.

 

Then back to NYC--

 

Funny English signs in China:

 

"Stairs are suggested for those who are not fit for the escalator"

"Flagrant vegetarian dish"

"Cocatail" (for "cocktail" on menu)

"Treble Room" (for "triple room" at hotel)

"Rive and wild animal food" (on menu)

"No occupying while stabling" (toilet door on train)

 

The End