Pale wisps of white steam trail alongside the narrow road that runs past Chongqing University’s “A” campus, where most of my teaching takes place (A lucky thing, as my other assignments are in “D” campus, located more than an hour away by bus).  My small band of Chinese grad student minions are theoretically available at my beck and call, but after the first few days spent confusing, aggravating and flummoxing them while getting a lay of the alien landscape, I humbly opt to resort to them only in worst case scenarios.

An outdoor food stand in Chongqing. The produce is (theoretically) fresh daily, though the prep area could use a little work. Unmatching tables and chairs are arranged on the sidewalk around it as needed by patrons. Fast, cheap food, and generally more tasty than any Chinese food in the States.

How hard can getting around Chongqing be, anyway?  Granted, this mega-city isn’t used to having many westerners, so passable English speaking is at a premium, and my own Chinese never quite got to a useful level of any sort.  Also, any advantage I might get from the natural politeness of the Chinese people (easily a hundred times more patient in trying to understand me than most Americans are to people that don’t speak English) is immediately foiled by just how much those same people suck at charades.  Because I know I’m pretty fucking awesome at it.

That’s why this aromatic, steam-filled street is such a godsend; Row after row of food arranged out on tables, with only the occasional errant point of my finger required to have food prepared directly in front of me.  There are plenty of restaurants with menus printed out upon their walls, but short of accompanying pictures or a translator servant at my side, this layout is incredibly problematic.  Granted, it gets easier once I discover that nearly all of them serve the same dishes, but in these early days, nothing sates my hunger with more ease than a giant table of fresh meats and vegetables kept safe from flies by steady fanning from a vigilant serving woman.

Today’s selection is a smoldering, blood red bowl of what look to be crayfish.  I’m fairly certain they’re what I selected, though one can never tell here.  Their aroma is reminiscent of shrimp, though they’re clearly saturated with enough sichuan chili oil that my eyes water up as I blink away the steam.  I test one in an attempt to discover the entry point to the multi-layered carapace, then drop it forcefully back into the bowl and suck on my fingers to alleviate the strong burning sensation.

“Fuck,” I say, to no one in particular.  No one can understand me here anyway.  I could unleash an execrable deluge of F-bombs upon the unsuspecting populace and still get a solid G-Rating.  But it’s clear, based on the middle-aged Chinese man who skitters over to my table, that I’ve gained the attention of at least one person.  His shirt is rolled halfway up his chest, exposing his sweaty stomach and he carries both a small bottle of baijiu (“BY-j’yo”, literally “white alcohol”) and a half-smoked cigarette in one hand, and what looks like a wad cellophane in his other.

He holds the clear plastic up to me with a smile and a series of drunken Chinese phrases that might not even make sense to someone with a full understanding of the Chinese language.  Gloves.  Disposable ones.  And so thin, they surely won’t offer most protection from the still sizzling shellfish.  I take them from him reluctantly, and smile back with just as much reluctance.  Putting the gloves on, I’m surprised to find the shelled bastards are notably more easy to handle than before, though the thin plastic isn’t enough to block all the heat, turning each excavatory evisceration into a mildly comic juggling act.  I learn quickly that the meat is all conveniently bunched up in the plated tails and — I’m glad to find — quite delicious.

This beer works on so many levels: It's named "Super Pure Beer." The pasty man on the front is, from the receding hairline to his facial expression to that tie, the worst possible choice for a spokesman. And lastly, said spokesman is actually holding the beer that he is featured on. Sadly, this beer was undrinkable. I bought a six-pack and threw away five of them.

My bare-bellied new friend laughs out a few more expressions and casually passes me the baijiu like it’s a dirty secret.  It is my first experience with the beverage, and sadly it won’t be my last.  Dirt cheap and ubiquitous, I learn quickly that baijiu has one particularly bad side effect: No matter how many things you eat or drink after taking a swig of it, every belch expelled for the next 24 hour will taste exactly like baijiu.  Baijiu, by the way, tastes like stale zombie farts.

I manage to hold down most of what I chug, sputtering out the rest as I cough “xie xie” (“thanks”) repeatedly to my new friend.  He laughs amusingly, and seems to be in a bit of awe as he watches my eyes tear up from his gift.  His hands dart quickly down to a pants pocket as though he’s just remembered something of the utmost importance.  Immediately, he holds a small burgundy pack of cigarettes featuring two playful panda bears that don’t seem to be suffering the ill effects of lung cancer on the front of the pack.

Warning labels have not yet reached China.  Cigarette price hikes also seem to be absent here, as I’m told packs of cigarettes go from three dollars for a premium pack (like Marlboro) to 30 cents for a pack of the local brand.  I guess when your country is this overpopulated, there’s no rush on the government’s part to halt any life-shortening bad habits.  I went to the local hospital once, which was immaculately maintained and looked no older than three years old, yet people still smoked with impunity in its hallways.

“No thanks, man.  No smoke-y.”  It’s clear he doesn’t know a lick of English, so why bother with proper grammar?

“Ughhh <mumble mumble mumble> duhhhh,” he says, as he waves the cigarette at me, confused.  Or he says something like that.  I might be paraphrasing a little.  But regardless, he seems mildly upset that I won’t take the cigarette, and still dangles it in the air in front of me, his expression now seeming a bit more worried by my unexpected rejection.

“No.  It’s cool, really.  You can keep it.”  In my mind, I’m helping my friend not be wasteful with his cigarettes, but he frowns so forcefully as he slowly lowers his offering hand, that I feel a confused sort of guilt.  ”But thanks!  Xie xie!  Really.  It’s cool.”  As an afterthought, I hold my hands up in the air.  ”Gloves great!”

He looks as dejected as a middle school kid being told the offer of his friendship is unwanted due to his being, in fact, a complete douche.  He mumbles something else at me as he holds out the baijiu once again.

“Aww man, now I feel bad because you seem so sad.  But I can’t drink anymore.  I just can’t.  It tastes like absolute asshole, man.  Also, it’s like one in the afternoon.”

He says a few more things before getting up, but each statement is only met by dumb expressions from me that only grow in more exaggerated simplicity as he remains at my table staring it me wistfully.  Eventually he rises to leave and he disregards my closing gratitude for the throwaway gloves as he stumbles off, and I’m left to a half-eaten meal of exotic shellfish, the nauseatingly inescapable aftertaste of baijiu and a confused sense that I’ve just caused a minor international faux pas.

“Oh sure he was insulted, mate,” explains my ever-helpful English neighbor.  ”You just had your introduction to guanxi.  It’s like ‘face,’ you know, how people see each other.  It’s like shame and pride and everything all rolled into one.”

“So by not smoking, I insulted his face?”

An arty shot my friend J captured of the "rolled-up-to-the-belly" style of shirt wearing in Chongqing

“Well, it’s not really like that.  Guanxi is more how people regard one another.  It pretty much sums up the entire relationship between them in one little word, all the love, hate, respect, and history between them.  What each side’s done for the other in the past, and who owes who what.  It’s how most business in China gets done.  And it’s also why, despite all the communist talk, the people in power still take care of each other first.  It’s not really different from how things are done in other countries in that regard — just much more hard coded into the culture.

At a Chinese engagement party months later, I was warned in advance that I would be given a cigarette by the groom and I was in no way to turn it down.  Later in the evening (after a surprisingly edible meal of spicy frog), the groom stood up and delivered a drunken speech to the room, then walked from person to person handing out individual cigarettes.  I accepted mine with an exaggerated glee that seemed genuinely appreciated.

“So if I took the cigarette from the dude,” I ask my English friend, referring to the drunken glove dispenser at the crayfish stand, ”I would’ve owed him something later on down the road because of this ‘guanxi’ thing?”

“Nah, just having a relationship with you — being seen interacting with you — would’ve been enough for him.  The Chinese can admittedly be a very racist people, but it works well in our favor.  They love white people.  Especially Americans, even if they don’t particularly like your government that much.  Just by being witnessed drinking and smoking with you, he would’ve appeared better to everyone around him, or at least felt like people respected him more.  I don’t entirely get it myself, but that’s guanxi for you.  Enjoy it, mate!”

And I do.  It’s the reason I almost never have to buy drinks for myself in clubs.

Gambei

Months later and I’ve got a lay of the land.  My friend J (who asked that her name never be used in any blog entries) from America’s in town and seems to revel in everything strange and alien about China that I initially found so fearful.  For instance, she doesn’t seem to mind that I’ve just been drunkenly handed a small Chinese child from a sweaty, drunken male stranger that may or may not have a crush on me.

Me and my new Asian child

“What am I supposed to do with him?”

“The drunk or the baby?” she laughs.  More than laughs.  She’s practically doubled over in uncontrollable cackling as I hold the young boy out at arm’s length.  The inebriated businessman speaks no English, but followed us out of the club after being a party to my own intoxication, and I felt as though I should let him tail us seeing as he paid for most of what I’d drank in the club.  No one shared any drinks with J, which possibly proves my point that there is an underlying sexism in addition to the racism with guanxi that makes giving drinks to a white man the highest form of honor.

“I can’t guarantee it, obviously,” I told J earlier in the evening as we first walk past waving Chinese in animal mascot suits into 88, one of the more popular clubs amongst laowais.  ”But almost every time I come here, at least some people will gambei with me.  We just need to make the rounds a little.”

There’s a crew of surly Russians in the ornate lobby; I recognize them, but they’re not among the Russians I’m friends with.  One of them goes by the name of “Destroyer” or “Annihilator” or some other ridiculous English nickname.  He’s notorious for beating up a cab driver, then taking the car on a joyride.  His father’s apparently some kind of foreign official here, granting him a form of diplomatic immunity he’s only too quick to take advantage of.  I do not acknowledge him.

Inside, a group of Africans have taken over a select section of the club.  They’re mostly friendly to me, either because they find me oddly charming, or because I am their instructor and they have to be.  The blanket of universal adoration that my status as a while male grants me does not seem equally distributed over them, and I’ve witnessed a few occasions of locals clearly attempting to pick fights with them, once ganging up unfairly on one of my students from behind as he obliviously attempted to get into a cab.  They’re fun company, but I won’t get any free drinks hanging out over here.

Nor will I get any from any of the other foreigners, or any of the younger patrons, or any of the women, unfortunately.  No, I’ve got a very specific target in mind.

“Hey!  America?  Gambei!” someone yells at me, as I pass.

“America!  Yes!  Ni hao!”  Bingo.

For some reason, these mascots occasionally greet club goers here in Jiefangbei

Five ebullient men that I peg as businessmen sit perched around the round bar table, each more excited to see me than the next.  At that weird age where any of them could easily be as young as 23 or as old as 40 (and let’s face it, I’m as good at guessing the ages of Asians as they are at guessing my age), some still wear dress shirts, while others have changed into more casual wear.  Upon the table are the requisite three bottles of pre-sweetened green tea, and one handle of Jack Daniels.  The Jack tastes funny here, and most of us believe they’re filled with locally brewed prohibition-era swill, but it at least tastes better than the stuff that doesn’t even bother pretending to be real whiskey.  That none of us have gone blind yet is a good sign.  A serving girl brings out a new pitcher of ice and takes the liberty of mixing together the whiskey and green tea.  While coca-cola is also frequently used, the green tea seems to be the most popular mixer, and thankfully becomes more drinkable with lots of practice.

Men like these don’t sip their beverages.  They gambei.  Literally, “bottoms up!”  Every so often, one of them will signal for another round and fill the cocktail glasses in front of each of them halfway, before shouting “gambei!” as they all lift and chug the potent mixture.  The alcohol is then forgotten about for a time, until an awkward silence demands another hearty gambei several minutes later.  Things play out differently with the addition of a laowai, however.

“Gambei?” asks the stylishly dressed one that initially brought me into their fold.  He speaks with a mix of excitement and nervous expectation, but he’s already placed an extra glass in front of me.

“Ok, sure.  Gambei!” I smile.

He pours a large serving out to me, and then slightly less into his own glass, in a fluid motion that only manages to spill a little fluid on the table between us.  Setting the pitcher down, he grabs his glass and holds it aloft, staring at me expectantly.  I take the other glass and clink it gently against his.

“Gambei,” I say calmly, as I stare at him with a smug look on my face.  You guys wanna drink with an over-confident American businessman?  I’ll give you your money’s worth.  The saccharine fire burns down my throat into my gullet, but I smile warmly as I set the glass down.  ”Ahh, whiskey and green tea.  My favorite.  Hao!”

“Ahhh–” says the man next to him, spouting off into a stream of Chinese aimed desperately at me, which I am only too quick to cut off.

Jiefangbei's eponymous tower, at night

“Ting bu dong [literally "I hear but do not understand"], my friend.  Ting.  Bu.  Dong.  Not a fucking word.”  He looks confused for a second as I stare into his eyes and smile sheepishly, granting him the slightest of shrugs.  He darts his hand out for the picture with lightning speed, as though a mere moment of indecision on his part might lose the opportunity to gain my company for a drink.  I’ve not yet mastered the art of guanxi, but I do know that if one of these men shares a drink with me, most likely they will all feel a burning compulsion to do so as well, and to turn any of them down would be an insult both to their pride and my sobriety.  Not wanting to shame any of them, I stick around through five grueling shooters.  Because I am a gentleman.

“He seems taken with you,” says J, nodding her head toward the fourth man in the group to gambei with me.  The allure of my foreign uniqueness has already worn off with the others, but the sloppiest looking of the lot, sweaty with matted down hair and an unbecoming grey shirt, continues to attempt communicating with me for some reason.  It’s clearly a lost cause since A) it should be obvious by now what a terrible student of the Chinese language I am and B) they are out of whiskey.  His sweaty arm drapes over me as he yells something that may or may not be an attempt at English, and his eyes seem out of sync either due to the alcohol or some early childhood malady.  He bounces subtly as he barks at me incomprehensibly, and I’m convinced that at least one of his parents was a television cartoon.  My presence seems to fill him with unbridled joy, though I’m fairly certain his devotion isn’t homosexually based in any way.

“What’s he saying?” J asks me.  She’s been beside me, taking in the entire scene with a sense of wonder, though none of the gambei crew appear to have noticed her at all through this entire interaction, nor offered her any gambeis.  I am wearing a particularly sporty jacket.

“No idea.  Dude’s creeping me out.  Here–” I say, shaking his hand in what should be the universal sign of farewell.  ”Dance!”  I point up at the stage where not all club-goers are allowed to perform, yet laowais are almost always welcome.  He laughs and nods his head vigorously.  This was probably a mistake.  He makes no move to follow, but if anything, my mounting the stage has only increased his adoration.  I can’t dance well, but by now I know all the songs by heart.  Poker Face by Lady Gaga.  A rousing, fist-pumping French hit by Nadiya called “Roc”.  German classic “Du Hast” by Rammstein, which is particularly beloved here for reasons unknown.  A Korean song called “Ave Maria” (whose only non-Korean lyrics are “Ave Maria”).  Another Korean song called “Nobody but You” (whose only non-Korean lyrics are the painfully infectious “I want nobody nobody but you I want nobody nobody but you I want nobody nobody but you.  Nobody nobody nobody nobody!”)  The DJ is nothing if not predictable.

The Wonder Girls – Nobody But You, the video. Not only is the song inescapable in clubs and on the radio, but this video plays on repeat wherever televisions are sold. It makes sense, as the girls are particularly hot. The video has a bit of an involved subplot, so the song itself doesn’t begin until about the three minute mark.

My terrible rendition of “Nobody but You” having done nothing to disturb the guanxi I’ve so clearly cultivated with my admirer, I grab J and dart out of the club toward the street, but my new friend is tenacious.

“He’s still coming!” J shrieks at me gleefully.  I get the feeling she is not this amused with anything life has to offer back in America.

A flower vendor outside the clubs. I don't know if Chinese girls like things being bought for them more than girls in other countries, but they're certainly vocal about it. One friend's ex always told him "I can tell you do not like me because you do not ever buy me anything." He bought her things more often than any boyfriend I've ever met.

“Hello again,” I say with resignation to my shadow.  He’s still babbling drunkenly in Chinese, but I just nod my head and smile in the hopes that he’ll wear himself down eventually.  There’s an odd tugging at my pant leg and I look down to see a toddler of no more than four holding his hand out to me.  In his other hand is a flower, which I can only assume he wants to sell me.  Parents set their children out alone in the club district from midnight onward in the hopes of gathering guilt-riddled charity from drunken club-goers.  The child looks up at me with large eyes that seem more disoriented than particularly sad.  It’s a shameful situation, but at least he’s not getting his feet bound somewhere.  ”Sorry, little guy, I don’t have anything for you.  And I’m definitely not buying my new friend here a flower.”

Without missing a beat, the smitten clubgoer who’s been unshakable up until now, reaches down and picks the small beggar child up, then unceremoniously deposits him into my arms (which is about where this story began).

“Dude, what the fuck?!”

J and my stalker are now laughing in unison, though I’m unsure if they’re in on the same joke.  The child, which I’m now awkwardly holding at a distance as though he were a delicate bomb, seems particularly nonplussed by the entire scenario, and stares at me as if he’s already decided that I’ll be an acceptable new parent.

“I don’t want– I mean, he’s cute and all but why are you giving me children?”  The man is babbling to me again, and he might be answering that very question, but I’ll never know.  I try to pass the child back to him, but after a bizarre, unplanned three-way hug, I end up holding the child by myself once again.  ”Sorry little fella,” I say, depositing the kid back on the ground, “but I really don’t want a scruffy little Chinese scamp.”  He stares up at me from the pavement and holds his tiny hand out once more, this time more confidently.  ”Ugh.  Fair enough,” I tell him, as I dig through my pockets for change, “but you’re the one that got the free ride…”

As he waddles off triumphantly into the busy street, I turn back to my stalker and shake his hand decisively.

“Good bye!  Zaijian!  Thank you!  Xie xie!”  I grab J and sharply turn my back on the man, and when I look back after a minute or so, he’s blessedly nowhere to be found.

“He loved you,” she tells me gleefully.

“I know.  It was very special.  We had a child together.”

"Dude, I don't want him."

There are a lot of street food vendors serving late-night jiefangbei (the most popular shopping/club district in Chongqing), but my favorite one is hidden away behind one of the smaller clubs.  The cart is made up of a single flat grill surrounded by baskets and baskets of food that may or may not have been sitting out in the warm Chongqing air for hours.  I select an assortment of meats, vegetables and dumplings and make a wide, circling motion around the collection of spices implying that I want them all.  There is nothing sanitary about this back alley stand, and it would fail food safety inspections in the States at almost every level.  And that’s a shame, because it’s probably the best-tasting street food that exists anywhere in the world.

Posing with my Chinese friend Daniel (note: not his Chinese name) amongst various stuffed animals for sale outside the clubs. I wouldn't think giant plush toys would be much in demand by drunken Chinese people at 4 AM, but I would be wrong. This particular one's name translates to "Angry Wolf" from the extremely popular show "Happy Lamb Lamb"

The Chinese sure love their candies gelatinous...

The Chinese equivalent of a food cart, sans cart. Guys like this literally carry their entire kitchens on their back. Usually one side is all noodles, while the other contains spices, sauces, toppings and other condiments.

Fresh meats and other grillables sit atop these food stands for hours on end, serving both the pre-club and post-club crowds. It shouldn't be sanitary, and maybe it isn't. But it tastes awesome, fills you completely for about two bucks, and I'm pretty sure I never got horribly ill from eating any of it.

Here's lookin' at you, kid.

A photo of the proprietor and myself. Â The restaurant may be in her apartment, but that doesn't mean she can't have fancy personalized boxes. Â Apparently you can get them made in bulk from China...

The best pizza in Chongqing, my small group of foreign cohorts all agree, can be found at Suzie Home Pizza, located conveniently enough, in Suzie’s apartment.  Suzie is a Chongqing native with fairly impeccable English skills who decided some time ago to turn her private apartment into a pizza restaurant.  We discovered the unlikely restaurant on a rare flier scribbled in English, and painstakingly followed her awkward directions into the back building of a large, brown, nondescript apartment complex and then up to its 18th floor.  Technically, we really only went to the 16th floor, but the Chinese collectively suffer from tetraphobia (fear of the number 4), due to the Chinese word for “four” sounding awfully similar to their word for “death.”  As such, most Chinese elevators omit the 4th, 14th, 24th floors, and so on.  I’ve never been to a Chinese building with more than 40 stories, so I’m uncertain as to how that nightmarish scenario would be addressed.

Florescent light bulbs looming overhead buzz with a nervous ineffectiveness as we navigate the thin, labyrinthine hallways past scores of identical brown apartment doors.  A pizza restaurant?  Here?  It’s surely a ruse or an elaborate joke, we surmise, until reaching room 1837 as the flier recommends and standing before the unmarked door timidly.

“Should we knock?” I ask.

“Of course,” says my more blunt and forthright Russian friend.  ”It says 1837 on the paper and now we are here at 1837.  Why should we not knock?”  Why not, indeed?

I knock softly, like a child tacitly coming forth to accept corporal punishment.

“No one’s here–” I say almost immediately, but the door repudiates my statement just as it finishes exiting my mouth.

“Hello?” the young Chinese man says, improbably, in English.

“Hi,” I say, followed by a long pause.  “Pizza.”  I tend to use as few words as possible when speaking in English to the Chinese, as I never expect anyone to know English here.  Being of college age, it shouldn’t surprise me greatly that he speaks fluently.

“Suzie moved her place.  She at 2613 now.”

“Oh.”

Re-energized by this positive break, we race back to the elevator and head up to the 26th floor (which is really the 23rd) to discover that Suzie actually treats her pizza restaurant quite seriously.  A large placard sits in the middle of the hall outside of her door, advertising the restaurant in both English and Chinese to anyone that passes.  How the neighbors feel about this intrusion into their otherwise domestic space in unclear.  The door itself is covered in pictures of pizza and fresh toppings, seemingly clipped from old magazines.

A pic from another visit to Suzie's, with a larger group.

It’s a standard apartment on the inside, though the one bedroom has been turned into a fine dining room, with two small tables and one large one, currently pressed against the wall to make the dining area seem bigger.  There are pictures of various diners displayed all over the walls, though we are the only ones here right now, and she gives us the table pressed against the room’s lone small window, complete with a lit candle.  The menu is a single piece of paper, covered in hard laminate, but fully in English which is practically a blessing at a Chongqing restaurant.

Twelve pizza options in various sizes greet us, along with a wide assortment of unexpected Italian fare like ziti and baked lasagna.  Suzie loves Italian food, and has even been to America (Italy would’ve simply been too much to hope for), and it was her dream to make this restaurant.  Lax zoning laws and an apartment board whose attitudes could be considered pococurante at best allowed it to happen, all in her own home.

“I really want more Chinese to like pizza.  To like this food.  I like it so much, but it is not very popular.  Chinese people only like Chinese food.  Maybe…” she pauses.  ”Chinese people like white people and want to be like them.  Maybe I take your picture with my food and they see it, and they will come here.  I will give you discount!”

We do not fulminate on this long.

The pizza is average for a pizza joint in, say, Idaho, but almost legendarily good compared to its counterparts here in Chongqing.  Suzie is definitely right about the Chinese having a very limited set of tastes.  There’s an Indian place that takes an hour or so to get to from my apartment, by bus (good naan, at least).  There’s a sushi spot, though the rice to fish ratio is about 100:1, with every sliver of fish being thinner than an American bagel joint’s typical serving of lox.  Oddly enough, there’s a Belgian restaurant in the city center, but while their frites are good, business never exactly seems booming.

If you’re in the mood for a fine Chinese meal, however, you’ve got limitless options!

Actually, I take that back.  You have two.  Standard and Hot Pot.

No Fours.

See, there are restaurants on every street, so one never need walk far in order to find a meal.  The problem is, there are really only two types of restaurants, and every restaurant of a given type has a nearly identical menu.  Sure, things like quality and location may vary, but when visiting a “Normal” style Sichuan restaurant, I know that I can sit down and order “Gung Bao Ji Ding” (kung-pao chicken) without even looking at the menu with no fear of rejection.  And though they may always laugh at my shoddy pronunciation, within three minutes (smoldering woks cook quickly) I’ll have a fresh plate of spicy chicken and peanuts sitting before me.  The lack of variety in restaurants may seem like a weakness, but as a foreigner with limited Chinese speaking skills, it’s most definitely a blessing.

Suzie ends up cutting the price of our meal in half in exchange for a five minute photo session of us laowais blissfully chowing down on her pseudo-Italian fare.  She doesn’t seem overly concerned about getting pictures of the two of us actually eating her food, instead opting to place us in playful poses that feature her apartment/restaurant prominently displayed in the background.  It’s a very low grade whoring out of ourselves, and probably unnecessary as the pizza was only three dollars to begin with, but who am I to refuse a bargain?

Understanding the needs of her clientele, Suzie serves not only the exotic Carlsburg beers, but serves them cold as well.  This is a deviation from the norm, though I never figured out if the Chinese believed cold beer to be a luxury or if they genuinely preferred the piss-like complexity that only a sun-baked cheap local beer can offer.  There seems to be ample fridge space throughout the myriad restaurants around town, but only those with frequent laowai customers tend to keep cold beer at the ready, even on the most sweltering of summer days.

Two Carlsburgs in, and it’s a must that I take advantage of the restaurant’s lone bathroom before we head back out into the eerily dim and uninviting hallway.  It’s abnormal for a Chinese bathroom in that there are several toothbrushes, a hairdryer and some intimate feminine wear strewn about, but fairly normal otherwise in that the toilet is simply a grooved porcelain indentation feeding directly into a shadowy pit in the ground.  Traditional Chinese insist that the “hole in the floor” style of defecating is far healthier for the body than our lazy western seated position.  But even if this is true, there are several drawbacks at work here that I consider dealbreakers:

1. There is almost always a yellow, glistening sheen of urine covering the interior porcelain, ranging from pungently fresh to stagnantly repugnant, likely due to the lack of any sort of flushing mechanism.  Often, this excretory polish has spread from the inner valley of the groove to the untidy flooring situated around it.  This segues nicely into my next point.
   

   A standard Chinese toilet. Apologies for the scatological nature of this photo, but obviously it was needed to illustrate my points on the left.

2. I have no idea how to cleanly defecate into a Chinese toilet without stripping down to full nudity below the waist.  Possibly, the agility it takes to master this skill comes with plenty of time and practice and I simply did not allow myself that luxury, but the few attempts I made at doing so were disastrous.  The problem is that it was nearly impossible for me to balance and expel without my legs being a bit spread, but pants tend to keep the legs locked together until they’re dropped down to almost the ankle level.  However, this maneuver places the pants mere inches from the floor, where the assistance of several hands is necessary to keep them from intimately mingling with the saucy ground cocktail.  As my male parts already preoccupy at least one of my hands, this situation is untenable, and except in the most dire situations, I simply opted to go with the “clench technique” until making it back to the safety of my westernized apartment.  On the rare cases where this was not possible, more often than not I removed both pants and underwear and hung them from any available hook.
3. About five inches in diameter, the narrow toilet hole turns the simple act of defecation into a game of Shit Basketball that suddenly requires finesse, strategy and an asshole with at least a passable ability at aiming.  Apparently it’s not as difficult as I initially imagined, as every payload I ever delivered reached its intended destination without leaving any stragglers behind at my feet, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t hold my breath nervously with each release.
4. The lack of a water trap separating the bathroom proper from the combined human waste of the local sewer system means that no matter how clean a floor toilet may be (and especially in nicer public places, the Chinese are quite fastidious about cleaning), the rank, muggy reek of a thousand excretions is always just wafting distance away.  To be fair, the smell generally favors urine over fecal matter, but seeing that even Berty Bott (purveyor of jelly beans such as “liver,” “tripe” and “boogey”) wasn’t willing to inflict “stale piss” on the general populace, it’s clearly not a popular odor.  I was in a few beautiful Chinese apartments, but the doors to the bathrooms were perpetually shut, and upon entry, the effluvium of urine was always there to greet me.
5. They are, quite literally, shit-holes.

At Suzie’s, I’m lucky enough to only have to urinate, saving me from the indignity of at least three of the above problems.  As we’re the only diners this evening, our hostess walks us out into the dim hallway with a giant smile locked on her face.

Lisa and me, posing for Suzie

“Come back very soon!” she exhorts, and we assure her that we will.  It’s likely not a lie, as I do enjoy pizza, and the only other option for it in town features an unidentifiable meat covered in sweet, neon orange cheese. Lisa, my Russian friend, lives at the Xuelin Binguan (literally “study-forest hotel” — I’m guessing something is lost there in translation), a hotel near the university that was turned into dormitories for the visiting students that arrived to find all the standard dorms already full.  The air is cool and wet — there aren’t many major rainstorms in Chongqing, but it’s regularly misty out in the non-summer months — and we hug each other goodbye under a full moon that no one can see.

The walk back to the foreign teacher’s building is about fifteen very repetitive minutes long past a series of similar storefronts and restaurant offerings.  Restaurant, brothel, convenience store, sign store, brothel, restaurant, internet bar (generally open 24 hours a day, these places are almost always packed with young Chinese people playing a variety of video games), convenience store, brothel, etc.  Some blocks are even lucky enough to have one of the ever-popular KTV establishments — large, expensive clubs filled with private karaoke rooms that are packed almost every day of the week.  There aren’t many options, but if your needs are mostly simple, they will always be met.

Normally, the most outlandish passer-by I come into contact with on my walks home might be a young mother that wants her child’s picture taken with a laowai (a rare occurrence, but not entirely uncommon), but tonight as I pass a series of food carts selling dan-dan noodles and what literally translates to “stinky tofu” (for good reason), there is someone a bit more out of place than usual.  Coming directly toward me on the sidewalk is a short Chinese man, likely in his early 50′s, wearing a long-sleeved olive green shirt and literally nothing else.

An internet cafe. World of Warcraft, Farmville, and a game that looks oddly like Ultima 7 seem to be the most popular offerings at this 24-hour mega-cafes.

Refusing to acknowledge an aberration so far beyond the norm, my eyes do a double take, zooming directly down to his impending crotch to verify what my peripheral vision so fearfully already alerted me to.  Tenuously wobbling between his legs like an arthritic thumb, the older gentleman’s penis practically slams into me as he approaches and I give it another befuddled stare against my will, while he stumbles up along the dirty sidewalk on bare feet.  Quickly I avert my eyes from the public disgrace, though he and his member are equally unconcerned with my attention, darting quickly past me toward the busy street.

Immediately I turn to the crowd around me for signs that this is unusual behavior, even in the strange, alien land of China.  Indeed, people give the man a wide berth.  Some even stop in their tracks, like me, to glare back after him, but most carry on about their business nonchalantly, as though his indiscretion stood out no less than a crying baby or a dropped cup of tea.  As I look forward, I notice a uniformed policemen shimmying toward me on the same path as the naked man.  At least someone is prepared to do something about the exposed nuisance! I think, as the officer saunters through the pedestrians in the narrow wake left by the unexpected penis.

Rather than carry on after the streaker, who has now walked up to a motorcycle taxi and seems to be negotiating something with the driver, the officer unexpectedly stops beside me and grants me a large smile.

“You America?” he asks.

“Wha?” I sputter out in confusion, looking from his face to the sagging buttocks leaning up against a motorcycle just 15 feet away, then back toward the officer.  ”I mean, yes.  American.  But, that man–”

“I go America, uhh, summer.  Chongqing.  Hong Kong.  California.  California!  Yes?”

Chinese sidewalk. I felt compelled to post this for two reasons. 1) these tiles are Everywhere, and incredibly slippery. This is a horrible combination in Chongqing in particular, as the city is both hilly and perpetually wet. 2) That little bastard of a raised area broke my sandaled foot once early in the year, and it was still sore when I left the country. I snapped this picture in anger.

“Sure sure.  California good.  But, man… naked…penis?” I say, craning my head back toward the bare ass that doesn’t seem to register on the policeman’s radar, either because he does not care or due to general obliviousness on his part.  The motorcycle driver mostly stares forward at passing traffic, turning back only sideways to talk to his potential patron.  It’s possible that the Chinese are less concerned about unclad invasions of personal space, but my money is on the driver having no clue just how close he is to the exposed genitalia.

He nods his head to the naked man in agreement at something, and suddenly they’re even closer than just moments before, as the exposed leg lifts up and over the smoking motorcycle engine and the bare, wrinkled ass slaps down on the cracked, black leather seat of the bike.  The motorcycle and its two riders slowly lurch back onto the road, and I watch as the rear passenger humps his way forward scant inches to be pressed up closely to the driver, reaching in and wrapping his arms around the driver’s stomach for support.  It’s a standard action on motorcycle taxis, yet now seems so much more intimate as the naked backside, now dimly glowing red from the brake light below it takes off down the road.

“Two weeks!” exclaims the officer.  ”Very good!”

“Sure sure,” I mumble.  “Well, California’s a crazy place…”

I glance back one last time as the tiny red circle of unusual but apparently not unexpected ass disappears off in the distance.  I turn back to the man and shake his hand as I depart, suddenly smiling very hard.  ”You should be ok, though!”

“Hah!  California!” the policeman calls out after me excitedly, but I just stare at the ground and walk faster and faster back to the relative safety and sanity of my westernized apartment.

The real best pizza in Chongqing? Â I made it in my apartment.

Another nightly occurrence on the walks home each night: Upwards of a hundred Chinese women dancing in near unison to modern or traditional Chinese music. Though I did hear Lady Gaga one night...

“Can anyone actually explain what ‘Object-Oriented’ means?”

“Shit, I’ve got no idea what that is,” my father exclaimed, interrupting me, upon my recounting this story to him months later during a trip back to the States.

“Of course you wouldn’t.  You’re not a computer programmer.  These guys are in a class with ‘Advanced Object-Oriented’ in the title, so some prior knowledge is assumed.”

One of my classes, about midway through the semester. It was full on Day 1, though there were even less of them by the final class.

I had expected the sea of Chinese students arranged before me to fit my closed-minded, preconceived stereotypes: fervently studious, profoundly respectful of authority, inherently good at math and irreparably bad at fashion.  And while some of these traits hit close to the mark (Seriously, guy with the purple paisley polo shirt, does that monstrosity need to show itself at every class?  Do you even wash it?), the young classroom assembled before me today seems astonishingly like, well, a typical college classroom.

Granted, it’s a particularly crammed classroom — close to a hundred students in their late teens and early twenties — and it’s unlikely I’ll absorb most of their names given that I’ve yet to be able to pronounce a single one without garnering roars of innocent (yet soul-crushing) laughter.  But the general behavior patterns match those that I’m used to from classes in the States.  In the front, the bookish types grin up at me with undeserved respect, keeping their uncomfortable seats warm all semester even after all the slackers and those who’ve realized the futility of attending my class have long since given up.  To the rear, a typical rogues gallery of note-passers, cell phone video game players, magazine readers, sleepers and text messagers and a single loner who snaps his phone’s video screen shut with such force each time I walk by that I can only assume he’s watching porn.  And they all have ineffective study habits not terribly different from my own back in my early college days.  In a sense, this is my karmic payback.

It’s not that I’m a terrible teacher, though it became clear before class even began that I was terribly unprepared, unqualified, unassisted and unready for this task.  No, the most daunting aspect of my tenure was the complete impossibility of communication between the bulk of the class and the laowai with a rudimentary understanding of how to say “yes,” “no,” “kung pao chicken” and count to ten in Chinese.  Poorly.

After posing my question about “object-oriented,” a dank silence fills the air, weighed down by the thick Chongqing summer that is thankfully starting to recede.  I’m momentarily nervous that the silence will grow and consume the remaining hour and forty-five minutes left in my lecture.  It’s an unending and unwinnable staring contest between one man and the collective will of a linguistically uncooperative China, determined to learn despite my best efforts.  Long minutes stretch into a seemingly infinite battle waged between the unsaid and the unspeakable.

I’d been warned that the Chinese style of teaching involved very little interplay between student and instructor, but why go so far out of the way to import an English-speaking teacher if not to violently tear the clunky, consonantal sounds of the English language from their shy, unwilling throats?  I speak to them honestly, explaining that this is my intention.  Some of them seem rankled or intimidated.  Most have no reaction.  This is because they have no idea what I have just said.

Such an exciting class!

Sheepishly, a dainty, feminine hand finally raises like a cluster of rice noodles, al dente, to half mast in the front row as this class’s Joan of Arc bravely takes one for the team.

“Yes!” I say excitedly.  ”Liqiu, right?”

A torrent of raucous peals of laughter follows my simple question.  I could juggle, do card tricks and possibly even escort in a Russian bear on a unicycle wearing a pink tutu and guide it through rings of fire without providing as much entertainment value as I do by trying to say even the simplest of Chinese names.

“Oh, no teacher,” she laughs politely, with the soft, trebly giggle of a schoolgirl from an anime cartoon.  ”It is Liqiu.”

I hear no difference in tones, of course.  I never do.  Once I spent five minutes yelling the same four syllables– “Chong Qing Da Xue,” the name of my university — to a taxi cab driver using every possible combination of tones and emphases I could come up with.  Eventually a young student with some knowledge of English approached me as I stood there, practically in tears, and I explained to him where I wanted to go.  ”Chong Qing Da Xue” he casually said to the driver, who immediately nodded and waved me in.  China is not an easy place to live.

“Liiiiii-CHEW,” I repeat, dragging out the syllables and playing with tones.  To emphasize what I’m attempting to do, I use my hands to effetely draw which tones I’m attempting — a quick rise of my right hand into the air like a salute for “Li” followed by a U-shaped motion as though I’m mimicking a roller-coaster for the “qiu.”  There are far less combinations of letters used to create distinct syllables in Chinese than there are in most languages, including English.  This is compensated for, however, by the usage of a variety of tones attached to each syllable that create entirely new meanings.  Possibly the most famous teaching example is with the syllable ‘ma’.  For instance:

• mā – the bar over the syllable ‘ma’ calls for the neutral tone.  ”Maaaaaaa”.  No rise or fall in the speaking of the word.  Like this, it means, easily enough, “mother”
• má – the rising tone.  Start low, and go up an octave or two while pronouncing it.  ”maAAAAA“.  In this case, the meaning is “hemp.”
• mÇŽ – this tone drops, then rises.  ”MAaaAAAA“.  Probably the hardest tone, considering how close it sounds to untrained ears to the standard rising tone.  Keep in mind that each of these syllables are spoken so quickly that the tone changes are almost imperceptible to those not well-trained to recognize them.  I was not well-trained to recognize them.  The “ma” here means “horse.”
• mà – a sharply dropping tone, blasted out like an imperative.  ”MA!”  Probably the easiest to recognize.  In this case, it is a verb meaning “to scold”.

In addition to basketball courts and soccer fields, you can still spot a few ping-pong parks.

To my ears, the changes from tone to tone is almost non-existent.  To the Chinese, though, the difference is as stark as 媽, 麻, 馬 and 罵 (the Chinese characters for the above example).  Of course, this simple lesson ignores the fact that each different pronunciation of “ma” has multiple meanings beyond the four above.  Depending on the various tones, “ma” can also mean dragonfly, numb, toad, leprosy, mammoth, agate, morphine, a weight, pile, ant, curse, mark, headboard, sacrifice to the god of war or grasshopper.  Oh yeah: it’s also the Chinese spoken equivalent of a question mark.  Any sentence can be turned into a question by tagging “ma” onto the end.  Thus, should your Chinese girlfriend say:

“WÇ’ pàng”

She is stating “I am fat,” at which point you should of course console her and insist that this is not the case.  Whereas if she should say:

“WÇ’ pàng ma”

She is now asking “Am I fat?” to which, like their American counterparts, there is no acceptable answer and you should leave forthwith.

Back in class, my slaughtering of Liqiu’s name has the class in hysterics.  It’s good for waking and invigorating the classroom, but poor for my overall self-esteem.

“What’s so funny?”

“Oh, teacher.  You said a funny thing!”

“‘Liqiu’ is funny?”  

Uncontrollable peals of laughter erupt once again.

“When you say it this way, it is wrong.  It means something very different and is funny.”

“What does it mean?  Why is it funny?”

“Oh.  I think it would not translate into English.”

Me with two of my African students. By teaching them Masters levels courses, I assured them that, upon passing, they would have higher level degrees than I myself have.

Other students, particularly those with extensive English training, have “English names” they would rather be called.  These names were typically picked early on in their English studies, and represent what they thought were the best options in naming that the English language had to offer.  For some reason, girls often had names that typically go well with the stripping profession.  I had several girls named Candy, a Karma, a Brandy, two Desirees, two Jasmines, a Destiny and a Mercedes.  Boys were a bit less classy, opting instead to go with the name of pop culture icons.  Both Superman and Batman attended my Requirements Engineering course, for instance.  But my favorite male name came from a gawky young man that always wore the same purple shirt and sat in the back row, despite being one of my more talkative students.

“What’s your name,” I asked him, after he’d already participated in class with me on multiple occasions.

For the purpose of this story, I’ll type out his responses phonetically, and hope that it doesn’t look too much like I’m making fun of the Chinese:

“You wan’ … Een-grish o Chi-nee-seh?”

“It’s up to you!  Do you have an English name you want to use?”

“Yes-uh.  My … Een-grish is Nih-go-la-gayjh!”

“Hmm.  I don’t actually recognize that English name.”

“Nih-go-lah-GAYJH.  Yes.”

“Are you sure it’s an English name?”

“Very famous Holly-Wood!”

“Wait.  Are you saying ‘Nicolas Cage’?”

“Yes!” he says excitedly.  ”Nigolagayjh!!”

“Ahh, so you want me to call you Nicolas, then?  Got it.”

“No!”  He pauses and stares at me for a second, confused.  ”Nigolagayjh.”

“You want me to call you ‘Nicolas Cage’?”

“Yes.”

One of many basketball courts spread throughout Chongqing University's campuses

And that is how I spent the next four months teaching software engineering to Nicolas Cage.

Back in my Advanced Object Oriented class, Liqiu is ready to actually explain what the term “Object-Oriented” means to her; the definition reads like something lifted directly from a textbook, but she doesn’t seem to be reading from any book.  She also never misses a single class, sits up front every day, gets 100′s on every test and confides to the Irish foreign expert that teaches another class that she has an intense crush on me.  At the end of the year, when I pass out teacher evaluation forms asking what my weaknesses are and what are my strengths, her answers are, respectively, “none” and “so very handsome!”  Liqiu is my favorite student.

The girl sitting to her right, who I am only too glad to call Candy instead of risking the massacre of another Chinese name, responds to my follow-up question about the term “Inheritance,” and how it fits into the Object-Oriented methodology.  At the previous, introductory class, I spent about ten powerpoint slides going over the concept, so it should, theoretically, be an easy question.  She spars with the English like it’s a unfairly experienced kung-fu partner, but the terse, final response is serviceable enough that I shower her in praise as a means of pleasant encouragement.

“Yes, Candy!  Inheritance is when one class takes things from another!  Good, good!  Excellent even!  Oh sweet sweet Candy!”  

She beams up at me, wearing my compliment about her like a warm and fashionable new sweater, despite the sweltering temperature in the classroom.  This might actually work, I think.  I can do this!  O Captain, my Captain!  

“Ok, a hard one now.  It is a very long word, but I talked about the word “Polymorphism” in the last class.  Can someone try and explain this word?”

“Polymorphism” stands alone on the screen above them like an accusation, its dark text burning its way through a sea of fearful eyes.  The quiet that greets me at this request is powerful enough to halt mythical tigers from leaping across giant gorges.  Even the reliable hand of Liqiu fails to rise to the heavens in confident exaltation as the five clunky western syllables trudge through the vast, murky air of the classroom.

“Anyone even want to try?  Anyone?”

No one does.  At all.  No one wants to be there.  A few of them may actually be wishing me bodily harm.

These bizarre exercise contraptions are strategically placed around campus, and are manned at any time by either the health-conscious elderly or their infant wards

“OK.  So I think they want me to teach you not only so you learn software engineering, but also so you can practice English.  So really, I just want any student to try to talk to me about this.  It is practice.  You get in no trouble if you are wrong.  You can say anything!  So if no one will try, I will pick one of you.  But it will be OK, I promise!  It will be fun.”  With that last sentence, I have now established myself as a shameless liar.

This recent proclamation seems to evoke two distinct reactions: those that stare at me fearfully understood my veiled threat.  Those that are casually nonplussed did not.

“Alright then, how about you,” I say, pointing at a male student in the second row wearing a bright orange shirt, eyes glazed over from a subtle mixture of boredom, confusion and teenage hormones.

“Can you tell me anything about ‘Pol-ee-mor-phism’?”

His eyes widen a bit, suddenly aware that the attention of a frighteningly tall laowai teacher and 99 fellow students are focused entirely on him.  In shock, he turns to either side, then behind.  Surely Teacher speaks to another!

“No no,” I tell him, attempting to ease at least a little of his confusion.

“I’m asking you, in the orange shirt.”

He swallows uncomfortably and then sits up slightly, accepting his fate as an unwilling sacrifice.  Slowly, English-shaped words begin to escape his mouth like overweight cattle stubbornly resisting being herded.

“I … sorry … teacher.  I … no … know ……… ‘or-ange’.”

And with that final, stammered word, my fate here as an effective teacher of software engineering is soundly decided.

“Well if you don’t know ‘orange,’ I guess it’s safe to say you don’t know ‘polymorphism’!”

The statement is both depressing and hilarious to me, but I concentrate on the latter and immediately laugh out loud to the large group of students.  This time, no one laughs along with me.  Only nine months to go…

Freedom of Speech

Over a lunch of hoguo (Sichuan hot pot, where a vat of sizzling oil sits between my co-worker and me, unhealthily deep frying a rich mix of beef, pork, potatoes and lotus root), my Irish counterpart gives me a quick tutorial in the do’s and dont’s of casual conversation with students.  He’s been teaching here in China for five years now, so I figure his information is probably legitimate enough to keep me out of any awkward foreign prison.

“You can talk about whatever you want with the students, really.  Preaching any kind of religion is strongly frowned on, but they’re pretty open to talking about anything else.”

A particularly large serving of Chongqing hoguo (hot pot)

“What about ‘The Three Ts’?  I was warned to avoid those.”

“Eh?”

“Oh.  I thought that was a semi-official term.  But you know, ‘Tibet’, ‘Taiwan’ and ‘Tiananmen’.”

“Well, you can talk about all of those things, but keep in mind that the students have a very different perspective on those things than you do.  Tibet and Taiwan have, in their eyes, always been and always wanted to be a part of China.  The Dalai Lama or the Taiwanese leaders are small, insignificant separatist groups with presumably very little backing.  And Tiananmen?  Try doing a search on it on google.”

At home, I nervously type the nine letters into my keyboard, already knowing from several warnings that my every keystroke is logged and analyzed by a team of government officials.  I promise myself that this will be a harmless, one-time search through the Internet’s vast reserves of images.  Photos pop up immediately of the iconic square, bright and colorful, under the watchful eye of large banners of Chairman Mao.  Parades, babies, smiles and sunshine.  The central square in downtown Beijing at its best and most hopeful.  Page after optimistic page of a thriving and vibrant city square.

To compare, I load up a small VPN program that costs more to use per year than the Internet service itself, but is a necessity for almost all of the foreigners here.  What the Virtual Private Network service allows me to do, basically, is connect to another computer in London, or Sydney or Washington, and use that machine to bring up any website I wish to peruse.  Then I view those pages as though I were on those foreign computers, rather than on my strongly quarantined machine here in Chongqing.

All of these workarounds are sadly necessary due to The Great Firewall of China (TGFOC), the government’s attempt at fully maintaining control of what the citizens can and cannot access.  It’s supposedly the most intense country-wide filter of the Internet in the world, and has over 10,000 employees regulating what the people are reading at any given moment in real-time.  Sites that have already been given a thumbs-down are now permanently blocked across all of China.  Other sites are regularly scanned for new material, just to make sure nothing subversive is sneaked in.

Regularly searching for software terms as my job forces me to do, I’m constantly aware of when one of my search entries is something new and exciting to TGFOC.  Take for example a search for “horizontal prototyping,” which clearly must not be a popular pasttime in China — the page of results turns normally in my browser, but any attempt to access those results yields an error page as though my Internet connection is on the fritz.  But kosher, vanilla searches for words like, say, “kosher” or “vanilla” still speed through with no difficulty.

As my curiosity about “horizontal prototyping” grows boundlessly, I attempt to use the magical, entertaining powers of the Internet to distract me from my own impatience, as it’s done since 1995.  Facebook’s always good for a laugh, right?  Not in China!  Back in 2009, some protesters in Ürümqi (no idea how that one’s pronounced) used Facebook to plan out the protest and it was curtains from that point on for the social networking site in the Middle Kingdom.  Google “Pages” — a simple Google offering for designing simple webpages — seemed like an easy way to create online syllabuses and post class materials to my students.  It worked splendidly for the first two weeks of class; it was added to the ban list for the remaining 38 weeks.  Even wholesome, reliable pornography, possibly the primary reason for the Internet’s existence, can be incredibly difficult to find here, despite there being at least 20 obvious brothels in immediate walking distance of my dorm.

Foreign students gathered at A Taste of Singapore for one of my quiz nights.

Close to ten minutes later, a nameless bureaucrat has apparently decided that “horizontal prototyping” does not seem imminently threatening to China, and suddenly my page of google results click through unhindered.  Riveting!  I was just getting into that game of “Farmville” (as of 2009, the most popular online game in China, which isn’t, I guess, that surprising for an agrarian society).  Luckily my upcoming search for “vertical prototyping” is about to cause another ten minute drought in my productivity.

And so this VPN line to a shady, unremarkable computer in London is absolutely necessary.  It slows down the general speed of the Internet drastically, but at least it provides a lifeline to the world wide web as I know and love it.  Sure enough, search google images for the term “tiananmen” from a London computer and the screen immediately fills with a platoon of tanks bearing down on solitary individuals, broken up by the occasional cluster of bloody bodies.

Topics in class do tend to stray from things related to software engineering on a semi-regular basis, though; it’s fairly difficult to hold the attention of a large group of people that speak a different language from you for close to two hours with such dry material as ‘polymorphism’ and different styles of ‘prototyping.’  The students get more animated when discussing politics and world affairs, anyway.  They ask me about life in America, which I am only too happy to share. Information from the students about themselves is a bit more difficult to get out of them.

“So what will you all be doing this weekend?” I attempt to pry out of them.

“Teacher, we will be studying,” says Karma.

“All of you?  All the time?”

“Yes.”

“Are you saying this because I am a teacher and you think it is what I want to hear?  Because you can tell me the truth!  You must be doing something fun this weekend, right?”

“Teacher, we have so many classes and so much work to do.  I think I will study for the entire weekend.  We must.”

“No breaks at all?  Not even an hour or two?  Maybe go to a park, or see a movie?  Maybe a small party even?”

“No parties, teacher, but… maybe…” says Desiree nervously.

“Yes?”

“If I have time, some friends and I will get together…”

“Excellent!”

“At the library!”

“Oh.”

“Sometimes we will watch television together on a computer there.  It is very fun!”

“Yeah, you guys rage…”

While the life of the average Chinese student doesn’t seem particularly fun, they explain that it’s a necessity to do perfectly in classes now, but the first few years post-college once they’ve achieved degrees tend to make up for lost time.  Go out to any club in the central district and there are hordes of young Chinese packing the clubs and vomiting profusely (young Chinese clubbers seem particularly bad at holding their alcohol) until dawn.  But for now, fun times are relegated to brief group visits to the library.

One of the more popular recurring topics is basketball, which has in less than a decade, become the number one sport in China.  One Yao Ming and suddenly the NBA gets over a billion new fans.  And there’s no doubt that the NBA is beloved — There are official seaweed chips of the NBA.  I tried the official pineapple beer of the NBA (the logo was real, but for some reason I’m skeptical), and then I spit into the sink and promptly never tried it again.  There seemed to be two separate channels displaying NBA games from throughout history, 24 hours a day.  On the way from my apartment to class, I pass no less than three outdoor basketball courts, each featuring anywhere from eight to 20 courts.

“Who is your favorite player,” I ask.  ”Yao Ming?”

The class seems to laugh at me derisively as a whole.  The consensus seems to be “No, we do not like Yao Ming.”

“I like Yao Ming.  But he is so tall.  And most Chinese people I meet, well, they are much shorter than me…”

The English speakers in class pause momentarily to take in this random statement, before Superman speaks up: “Teacher, China has one and half billion people.  There has to be one tall, right?”

I cannot argue with this.  ”So who are your favorite players?”

A surprising amount seem to like Allen Iverson, though he’s clearly not a bad choice.  One boy yells out “Kobe!” and the class erupts in a cacophony of English and Chinese exclamations.  It seems Kobe is quite beloved in China.

“Oh Kobe!” says Destiny.  ”He so beautiful.  I want to marry him!”

Without hesitation, Batman practically yells back at her in a genuinely perplexed tone: “How could you marry Kobe?  At night, all you would see are his eyes and teeth!”

She, and many of the other girls, pause to consider this while I consider explaining the impropriety of this statement.  In the end, I keep silent.

The students are only too happy to talk about the government, and while the talk is almost entirely positive, there’s an awareness to things I hadn’t expected.  For instance, Mao: Here’s a guy whose policies almost wiped out thousands of years of Chinese culture and did wipe out millions of his own people. I don’t offer this harsh perspective, but I do ask if he’s as popular as his ubiquitous presence on the money, in every park and public building and on clothing would make one assume.

“Teacher, it is known that Mao made some mistakes, but he did much more good.  We know that some rules are very strong here, and maybe there is not the freedom to do what people in America can do.  But in China, people are happy with the government because for Chinese people, this is the best that life has ever been.  Our grandparents remember not having food to eat and have always been so poor.  But now, there is much prosperity.  So I think people respect our government, even when they do things we might not like, because life is so good for us now.”

My neighbor’s Chinese wife told me a story about how her father’s life was systematically destroyed in almost every possible way after getting caught gambling.  A local friend explained why dogs, cats and the strangest and scariest parts of animals that I normally consider ‘food’ are still regular far in many restaurants: When millions of people starve, the definition of “food” tends to stretch a bit.  With such a horrendous recent past, the quote above explains a lot about what would otherwise seem like blind faith in a not always trustworthy government.  And I can’t really argue with it.

It was a unique, unexpected and timely job offer, received between hangovers and saddle sores in Cuzco, Peru.  Let us fly you to sunny (at least ten days per year!) Chongqing, China, O American Software Engineer.  There, you will instruct the next generation using your vaunted coding prowess which you have surely acquired from many years of revered capitalist field work.  Lodging, utilities and a massive paycheck (at least by local standards) will be provided.  Vacation days out the yin-yang!  (which, of course, means something completely different over there, yet still works within the context of this sentence).

An important notice (theoretically), posted inside the elevator of the foreign teachers' dormitory. From the three lines at the bottom, it's clear that most of the foreign teachers did not understand its content.

With little expectation of a response, I read a paraphrased variation of the above while slumped over at a public internet terminal in my Peruvian hostel, and blasted out an only mildly embellished resume electronically back to China, only to discover within the hour that paperwork was already being drafted for my work visa.  Cut to four months later, and the soft, wispy smog clears around Huang Yang, my steadfast employer, as he greets me just outside the gates of Chongqing International Airport.  There’s an innocence to his exuberant smile that would look hopeful and precious on the face of a child or puppy, but grants the grown man a look of exaggerated simplicity one could potentially mistake for feeble-mindedness.

Such is not the case, though.  When necessary, Huang Yang is indeed a shrewd and serious man, and I would later witness his dissatisfaction with other teachers and be glad not to be caught up in the path of his wrath. But generally I am solely the beneficiary of those simple, blank stares and overly enthusiastic smiles.  I am the lone American “foreign expert” in his employ and the supposed feather in the cap of Chongqing University’s roster of international teachers.  It is not that Huang Yong is good-natured, though that he may be; that hazy smile of his is a brilliant defense mechanism to be delivered in tandem with any sort of unfortunate news, which a neophyte instructor such as myself is sure to be receiving on a regular basis.

For instance, allow me to recount a conversation from my first day in Chongqing, in the close quarters of Huang Yong’s office where he has just lit a cigarette.  Judging from the brownish-yellow build-up on his teeth, it is not the first and I nervously note that the windows are sealed, trapping the both of us in close quarters as the smoke builds up to a soft smog to match the weather outdoors.

In many ways, modern China is like America in the 1950′s.  They’re going through unprecedented growth in almost all sectors represented by a growing middle class, they’re fiercely patriotic and they love cigarettes.  Upon a visit later in the year to Chongqing’s new hospital, I was amazed to find people smoking in the hallways, surrounded by what would otherwise be one of the nicer hospitals I’d ever visited.

Huang Yong brings something up on the computer and calls me over to examine it.  ”Here is your schedule,” he tells me, excitedly.  Questions arise almost immediately.  Five classes, but only one involving direct lessons in computer programming?

“Software Systems Design.  Systems Architecture.  Advanced Object-Oriented Principles.  Requirements Engineering.  Ah, here — Introduction to C++.  You have me listed for these five classes, but only one of them is the C++ class you told me that I would be teaching in the job description…”

“Yes, those are your classes,” he affirms, not acknowledging the heavy hint of a question I’d layered into my statement.  His smile is bright and expectant, clearly beaming from what he either believes to be extremely good news or terrifyingly bad news.  I smile back at him, doing my best to not let on that I perceive it as the latter.

“It’s just… I came here because the job description said you wanted someone that worked in C++ to teach C++.  Software Systems Design?  I don’t really even know what that means..?”

Though he doesn’t respond vocally, his eyes widen a bit, as though to say “I acknowledge that you have just spoken, but you have not provided me with enough material for a retort, so please continue speaking.”  The smile is larger than before, and oddly hypnotizing, which is typically a job left to the eyes.

“Maybe… Do you have a syllabus?  Or something that describes the class, so that I know what should be covered?”

At that, his eyes grow to maximum wideness in excitement as he exclaims:

“Ah, that is the good news.  YOU get to write syllabus.”

“Oh.  Good news.  Yes.  Also, most of these classes have ‘(M)’ written next to their title, see?  What does this mean?”

“Those are Masters level courses.  You will teach the Africans.”

A whole stack of interesting surprises piled on all at once.  It seems that only some of my classes will be taught to Chinese students; the others will be to foreign students from Ethiopia, Togo, Benin, Mauritania, Madagascar and elsewhere in Africa that have come to Chongqing to seek their Masters degrees.  A common source of irritation over the next year would stem from telling people I taught African students only to get the response “Uhhh, you know Africa’s a continent and not a country, right?”  Yes, smartass, I know this.  I just do not feel like listing off 14 countries every time I try to describe who I teach.  Regardless, nothing about the job description mentioned need of a certificate of higher learning, but suddenly I’m filled with a nervous sense of guilt as I unload my shame to Huang Yong.

“I am afraid that I do not have a Masters Degree.  I sent copies of my diploma to you — I thought you knew…”

“Oh, is fine,” he smiles.  ”You do not need Masters.  You are a foreign expert.”

My title has apparently granted me a reprieve from all other factors, despite my not having precisely earned the title in any way yet.

“I don’t need a Masters to teach Masters level courses?”

He simply smiles back at me with an almost imperceptible shrug.  This is not something of importance.

“But… ‘Software Systems Design.’  Could I at least see the book I am to use for this class?”

At this, his face seems to grow simply to contain the beaming smile that emanates from it.  Under its power, my head starts to grow light and fuzzy.

“Also good news!” he exclaims.  ”YOU–”

“–I get to pick the books.  Riiiight.  Great.  Are there even English books here at the school?”

For the first time since our conversation, his smile seems to dampen a little.  Perhaps it’s dropped down to an eight, on the standard scale of one to ten.

“Not very many English books here.  But you can pick book online and I will get them for you.  You give me the names of the books.  Is no problem.”  The closing expression is one that I would hear many times over the course of the year

“So I get to write the syllabus and pick the books.  Even though I have never taken or heard of these classes, you want me to fully design them?”

The smile is back in full force.  Is this not fantastic news?

“Yes!  You will do very well.”

A high-tech screen sits affixed to the main administration building at Chongqing University, where my office sits upon the 10th floor. When it works, the screen displays interesting videos and images related to Chongqing University's rising global prominence. When it doesn't work, it basically just displays a crash notice like this one all day. I always wondered why no one turned the screen off on these occasions, but no one seemed to mind...

I’m doubtful, but put on a confident face.  I’m doing this for America.  After several hours of intense research of different tomes that seems as though they might apply to the classes that I am teaching for which I still have nothing more than names.  He writes back immediately to give me a thumbs-up — I will be alerted immediately as soon as the books arrive.  Flash forward to a week before my class is scheduled to begin:

“Hello Huang!  I really need those books to prepare my syllabus and lesson plans.  I am getting pretty nervous.”

“No need to be nervous.  You will be fine!”

His smile is dizzyingly strong.  Maybe all will be well…

“You have the books, though, right?”

“No.  No, I have no books.  Soon!”

The day before class:

“Huang Yong, I am sorry to come by again, but I’m kind of freaking out.  You have the books, right?”

“Ah.  They still are not here.  No.  No…”

His smile is still cheerful, but as I am now an expert of sorts, I can sense that something is off.

“It is for my students also.  I cannot assign them to read without books.”

“Yes,” he nods, more as an acknowledgement that I have spoken more than as an acknowledgement about anything I have said.

A small saucepan and cutting board purchased from the local Trust-Mart (a miniature Chinese version of Wal-Mart). They are flimsy, but cheap enough that this doesn't bother me. What DOES bother me are the stickers that are affixed to the sides so strongly that they are impossible to remove, despite scrubbing, soaking and scraping.

“So, what should I do?”

He seems confused by the fact that I am having difficulty with this, but bears with me out of apparent politeness.

“Tomorrow is introduction.  No need for books.  Say hello.  Talk about class!” he smiles.

The combined efforts of google, wikipedia and youporn have given me less than a page’s worth of riveting information to impart upon these foreign scholars, and tomorrow I will be lecturing them for two hours.  Yet I get through it, somehow.  It’s uncertain whether my students appreciate being spoon-fed two hours of bullshit in lieu of actual erudition, but they seem to accept it silently; most of them have to accept it silently, as they speak almost no English.  But more on that later.  A week passes like this, and then another.

“Huang Yong.  I am sorry to complain to you, but this is terrible.  I have no books.  Students have no books.  Please tell me you have them now!”

“Ah, no.  The books–” he says, pausing as if to give his next point a bit more moxie, “–They are not here!  I checked, and we cannot get the books.”

I stare back with a slight grin, using all the energy and willpower within me to maintain composure while my eyes shoot beams of rage and madness at that unflappable yellow-toothed grin of his.  At once I sense that, like me, he is caught up in a large and generally inefficient machine that typically means well but disappoints more often than not.

“But..” I stammer, breaking down before him.  ”I need.. the students need books.  We all need them.  Books.  I mean, how can I teach Software Design Analysis–”

“You mean ‘Software Systems Design?’”

“Yes.  That.  Right.  How can I teach without books?”

His smile takes on a Buddha-like calmness as he delivers what is, in his mind at least, a perfect solution, and one that I will surely be pleased to hear: “Just use Internet.”

Not acknowledging this statement in any way, he adds an addendum just to make sure I truly understand the majesty of this explanation: “All information is on Internet.”

And with that, he forms an impossibly optimistic grin that is positively beaming at me.  How can there be doubt in my heart in the presence of such a smile?  All information really is on the Internet.  Classes resume the next day, not with books, experience or traditional knowledge, but with all the material google can provide me.  Sometimes, a question is asked to which I do not know the answer, but this is not a problem.  Sometimes, the answer to the hardest questions in life can be answered with a smile.

University-Appointed Tourguides to this Strange New World

Wei, the first of several female graduation assistants assigned to my service is already waiting outside the door of Huang Yong’s office for our meeting to conclude.  I’m not certain if Wei is her first or last name or if it matters or if my intonation is correct or if it is what anyone else in the world calls her.

Wei and I, under the protective shade of the ubiquitous all-purpose Chinese umbrella. Note festive pirates in background.

“Wei?” I ask.  ”Is that right?  I call you Wei?”

“Is Ok,” she responds quietly, looking down.  I’ve determined that the term “OK” might be the most universally used English phrase in the world.  In this case, I take it to mean “No, but it’s probably as close as you’re going to get, so let’s just go with it, laowai.”  Laowai is the Chinese equivalent of “gringo,” though outside of the worst tourist spots, it isn’t typically spoken with a derogatory tone.  Over the course of the year, I will hear this word many times.

As to why my well educated, short-term servants are always female, I quickly dismiss any ideas that I am being set up with potential lovers as all of them appear too intimidated by me (bordering at times on mortal fear) to succumb to any of my flirtations.  But Chinese is a strange and unfathomable language, and these shy, frail local women all speak it fluently, so my life is quite literally in their hands.

For the first month or two, they help me shop, buy a phone, set up my cable and internet, figure out mass transit, give me tips on etiquette and local customs and generally ease my way into the weird and wonderful world that is China.  Wei is mine for the afternoon, and I’m told we are to go on a brief tour of the city as well as stock up my home with basic needs I would otherwise be too overwhelmed to purchase on my own. Wei is overly polite and has a difficult time making eye contact with me, despite my generally pleasant demeanor and some almost needy attempts on my part at making banter.

The outside air is sweltering, with a palpable, damp mass to it that feels uncomfortably grippable at times.  The sky is a uniform, grey-ish blue with no hints of “normal” bulbous clouds or even general atmospheric health, and I feel for all the children of Chongqing that never got to look up and create shapes from the billows above.  As one of China’s hottest cities, Chongqing’s ancient accolade of being a member of China’s “Three Furnaces” (the other two hotspots being Wuhan and Nanjing) is well deserved.

Easing them from the intensity of this heat, Chongqing men roll their shirts up from the bottoms, exposing much of their clammy waists and stomachs.  How much gut is exposed seems to be directly proportional to their stomach size; fat men amble down the streets with bulging, sweaty bellies protruding for all to see like hard earned trophies.  At a cafe once, one of these stomachs came into contact with the side of my bare arm, and I fought hard to keep the contents of my own stomach in place as our stale sweat briefly mingled.

An example of beautiful Chongqing weather from a bridge over the Yellow River. In all fairness, this was a particularly bad day. However, there were worse days as well -- On one occasion, I crossed this river and couldn't see buildings on either shore from the middle of the bridge. Yechh.

Hordes of women clog the sidewalks with cheap umbrellas blocking out the sun, and the umbrellas blend together as one, forming a single canopy that hovers approximately six feet above the ground — just above the heads of 99% of the population here in Chongqing and directly at eye level with me.  The umbrellas are ubiquitous in Chongqing year-round.  They are used on sunny days to protect the fair-skinned girls, for whom a light complexion is so important that skin-bleaching products, regardless of health hazards, are still all the rage here.  And on rainy days (read: “every other day”), they are used for their more traditional purpose.  On either day, I am barraged with a never-ending assault of umbrella tines at or near my eye level.  Sunglasses are necessary protection here, though more from the threat of umbrella assault than from the muted, hazy sun.

“There’s lots of pollution in Chongqing,” I state, with just a hint of a question, staring up at the unwelcoming, gloomy sky above.

“Is fog.  Chongqing always foggy.”

This is not entirely inaccurate.  In World War II, Chongqing (then known as “Chungking”) became the capital of China after most of the country’s eastern territory was gobbled up by the Japanese.  Hidden within a valley, Chongqing was seen as the perfect spot for a base of operations, since its location kept it regularly cloaked in a bed of clouds.  But the overcast haze that hangs over the city now doesn’t match the color or character of any natural clouds I’ve known to have existed before.

Wei’s phone rings a familiar song and after she engages in a short, terse conversation in Chinese with the person on the other end, I joke with her about the ironic choice of ringtones.

“You know this song on your phone?  It is called ‘Winter Wonderland’.  This song is about winter and cold and snow.  Isn’t this funny?”

“I do not know.”

“No, I mean.  The song says it is so cold out, but here now in Chongqing, it is hot, right?  Very hot.  That’s funny!”

“Yes.  This is… very funny I think.”

The Jiefangbei clock tower for which this region of town is named. It's in the center of the cultural hub of Chongqing and was erected in 1950 to commemorate the communist takeover of China. Originally the largest structure in the area, fifty years later it's dwarfed by every building surrounding it.

Wei is not the last person I will meet here who acknowledges what I believe to be humor without even a hint of smile. On the phone was a friend that wants to meet us for tea near the city’s cultural center, Jiefangbei (pronounced, by me at least, “JAY-fong-BAY”), where the Yangtze River, so similar in name to my own, meets the Yellow River.  From the start, I’m disheartened by the fact that the Yangtze goes by a different name in China: Chang Jiang, meaning, appropriately enough, “Long River.”  It is the longest river in China, after all.  Apparently, “Yangtze” was the name of a local structure or port outside of Shanghai that some white foreigner was mistaken for pointing at whilst attempting to discern what the locals called the river.  The misnomer stuck.

Nearly a fleet of permanently docked riverboats perch along the banks where the two rivers meet, offering dining and entertainment at varying levels of quality.  The lower decks are loud with the combined sounds from a kitchen that seems too busy for the otherwise empty vessel and an engine room that seems unnecessary for a permanently docked riverboat.  The smell of seafood and brine is palpable, but the muggy air at least smells fresher on the top deck where we’re seated, and we’re given a pristine view of the convergence of water bodies below us.

The Yellow River, which is actually more of a dark green color, slowly churns its way into the fast-moving, milky brown waters of the Yangtze until it is dissolved and the two become one. Even with the river breeze, the air is thick and oppressive here, but with the dearth of other customers on the boat, each of us is granted our own industrial strength fan to stave off the heat.  The electrical fans are old and loud, and they make the already choppy conversation between us even more strained, but the broiling alternative is far worse.

Tea is brought to us with a wide assortment of strange grasses and flowers hovering in a clump at the bottom of the glass like fallen leaves caught in a pool filter.  Mine has been picked specifically by Wei and looks to be the most exotic (is that a dandelion?), though tastes no different to my simple pallet than generic packet teas I’ve sampled in the past.  While we drink, they share their favorite music with me via cell phone speakers; the upbeat, nasal Sino-Pop is painful at times for me to listen to, but probably no more so than lots of modern Western teeny-bopper music offerings would be.

Around us, the clustered buildings of this little known mega-city rise up and out and beyond from the riverbanks like a petri dish experiment gone wild.  Depending on where one draws its boundaries, Chongqing contains between ten and 32 million bustling people, and the metropolitan expanse explodes outward in every direction, dwarfing nearly every city I’ve ever visited thus far.  Immune to western views on tackiness, the skyline shimmers each night with flashing lights and colors on the buildings that create a spectacle similar to a city-sized 80′s video arcade decked out in Christmas lights.  The daytime view, while still somewhat daunting, is a bit more serene, though I point out to the girls how prolifically each building seems to be covered in compact Chinese characters.

Barges going down the Yangtze. The funky looking building on the right on the opposite bank is the fairly modern Chongqing Opera House

“Can you actually read that?  Those letters there–”

I point at four characters erected at the top of a particularly boxy skyscraper far in the distance that, to me, look like blurry white smudges.

“Of course.  It is Chinese.  And we are Chinese.  We learn these letters when we are very small.  It is no problem.”

“No, but I mean… They’re so far away, but each character has so many lines and boxes and squiggles.  It’s…  Let me explain a different way.  In English, letters like ‘D’ and ‘O,’ or ‘N’ and ‘H’ are similar.  So from far away, sometimes it is hard to tell these letters apart, even though they are simple.  I would think Chinese characters can also be mixed up from far away.”

“No, this does not happen.  I think that Chinese is a very good language and this is another reason why.”  She stares at me and it’s clear that this is as precise as her explanation will be.

“Oh.  Ok, then.”

Over the course of a long afternoon, the pair take me through a “tourist” market (I am the only non-Chinese visitor), a grocery store (where I pick up basic home supplies, like my very own wok) and a traditional style luncheonette.  The kitchen at the restaurant is only separated from the diminutive dining area by a small ceramic barrier, and the massive stove top only adds to the already stifling heat inside.  The walls, floors, tables and staff could all equally be described as dingy, but the flames licking nearly a foot up the sides of the large wok at least leads me to believe that no contaminant in any of the ingredients could possibly survive the cooking process.

Chinese food is typically flash-cooked over intense heat, with most meat dishes being fully prepared in under two minutes.  The quick method of wok frying is much to my liking and I’m pleased to see that the gas stove in my apartment kicks out similarly large flames unlike any I’ve ever cooked with before, which is useful, if a bit dangerous.  The downside to this is that the “low” setting on the stove is actually the western equivalent of “medium high,” making simmering all but impossible without manually holding the saucepan several inches above the fire.  Like most Chinese kitchens, mine also lacks an oven, as baking (without steam, at least) has only just caught on in China recently.

When asked by the girls whether I like spicy food or not, I answer in favor of it but the girls still warn me that my dish may be too fierce to manage.  The lamb that was ordered for me comes out in a small, rectangular metal dish with a small fire below it to maintain the heat.  The tingling of the fresh Sichuan peppers is a new sensation for my mouth, but it is not unpleasant, and I’ve had far spicier offerings in the past.  Like most Chinese food, the meat and vegetables have already been cut into bite-sized pieces; Chinese silverware is a simple set of chopsticks, and finely chopped food eliminates any need for knives to be kept along the standard place settings.

Wei's attractive (though similarly shy) friend, me and Wei, at the tourist market. I bought a lot of strange food here, though I only ended up eating a small fraction of it. None of it was particularly bad, though only a few things could've really been described as "good".

Another question I’ve always had about using chopsticks: How does one eat the tiny, elusive grains of rice, so omnipresent here in China, with those thin wooden sticks?  The answer, though seemingly unrefined, is fairly obvious: the bowl of rice is held aloft near one’s mouth, as the sticks work in unison, shoveling large clusters of rice inwards to compliment the meal.  Spoons seem to be available when needed, but it seems they are rarely used. Hard food in soup is eaten with chopsticks; the rest is quaffed from the bowl like a fine, savory tea.

Biting into a piece of lamb, I quickly discover the morsel is primarily made of bone and gristle.  It’s an unpleasant surprise, and I try to disguise my shock and extricate the gritty artifact from my mouth without either of the girls noticing, spitting it suavely into my small paper napkin.  If they notice, neither girl says a word, but I quickly find that the next bite, while meatier, still contains a fair bit of un-digestible mass.  Giving up on propriety entirely, I spit the sticky brown clump into my hand and mash it casually against the edge of my plate.

“Sorry,” I say sheepishly, “there was bone.  You don’t eat that here, do you?”

“No, it is ok.  Most meat have the bone in it.  You do not eat this.”

“Yes, but I do not know where to put this–” I say, pointing at the lump of almost-food perched along the side of my plate.

“Oh, you can put this on the floor.”  As if to demonstrate, she removes a small piece of sinewy mass from her mouth that I hadn’t even realized was there, and drops it softly onto the floor at her feet.  ”They will clean.  Also you can put on the table.  It’s ok.  No problem,” she smiles.

“Wait a minute,” I say, removing a chunk that my teeth had just recently stripped bare.  ”You’re saying it’s ok for me to do this?”  I place the chewed-up mess between my fingers and hold it aloft dramatically, before insouciantly dropping the moist chunk onto the dirty floor below.

“Yes, this is fine.”

“Wait,” I say, quickly chewing on another piece of the meat which is, by the way, succulent and filled with flavor.  Once I ascertain that there’s little benefit to keeping the used morsel in my mouth any longer, I spit it into my hand in preparation.  ”What about this?”  As though the used meat fills me with shame and disgust, I fling it low against the wall near me, where it silently bounces off and settles onto the ground.”

Barge restaurants and tour boats, lined up by Chaotianmen dock near where the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers meet

“That is fine also,” I am told. “You should not throw at other person though,” warns the second girl. “Yes, that is not a good thing to do.”

“Oh.  Damn.”  I stare down with a look of exaggerated dissatisfaction upon hearing this news.  I’ve gotten no laughter from these girls all day, so clearly this faux disappointment will be similarly confusing to them, but I can’t help myself.  It’s probably a terrible decision, as these girls already seemed intimidated enough by me before discovering that I apparently have a sick fetish for flinging used meat at people.

“Sorry,” says the first one, quite genuinely, meeting my eyes briefly with a confused sympathy.

There was a distinct language barrier when dealing with people throughout South America.  But at least there was always a sense that what we collectively found to be funny stemmed from the same presumably European root.

Here in China, people don’t simply laugh at things differently; they think differently.  Sarcasm (which oddly enough is quite popular with the Russians, who fully border the Chinese from east to west) seems to be a strange, alien concept here.  Around me, people laugh and smile and joke, but the language of their humor is as different as the language they speak with.  There is some foundation to western thought that leads to basic similarities in most Western art, philosophies, and basic conceptions of the world around us.  Whatever that intangible bit of Western-ness is, it is not present here in China.  And that’s going to take some getting used to.

“Did you like the food?” asks Wei.

“I did!  It was amazing.  Spicy and so much flavor.  I did not like the bone, but I do like throwing the bone on the floor, so that is good.  Thank you very much.”

“You are in the right city for food in China.  In all of China it is said that Chongqing has the best food and the most beautiful women.”

“Interesting,” I say.  ”Where are you from, Wei?”

“I am from Chongqing.”

“Oh,” I respond quietly.

I can't remember the name of this building, nor can I find references to it online, though it was a very popular tourist market built into an older Chinese structure. I love how well they've maintained the traditional look throughout all 14 stories of the building, only to place a Subway Sandwiches on the top floor.

Our apartment in Windsor Terrace as seen from the outside. There are actually two doors into our building; the left one leads into a foyer with three other apartments, while the one on the right goes directly in to our apartment. That big bay window on the ground floor is our living room window.

Our living room, festively decorated for the holidays by the roommates.

The kitchen. Small compared to most suburban kitchens, but for being in a nicely located spot in Brooklyn, it's remarkably spacious.

My bedroom. Note the projector on the right-side wall, which turns the opposing wall into a large screen when so desired.

My room, as seen from the bed. Above the stunning dresser (only the finest, from IKEA) is some hanging art from Argentina, with a copy of X-men #1 from 1963 on the wall next to it. The gong in the upper left is from Hue, Vietnam.

Closet-space. The only downside to city apartments -- there's not much of it. With some guidance from my dad, I was able to get two bars in the closet, but the thing's completely full. Up above it is thankfully more storage space.

My desk area, with the lights off, while watching Parks and Recreation.

The upstairs bathroom, located just outside my bedroom. There's another one in the basement with the other two bedrooms.

Stairs down to the basement, looked down over by Mr. Jerry Garcia. There are two more bedrooms, a wide hallway and bathroom down there, but it's mostly my roommates' spot, so I'm not posting any of that here.

Laundry machines, provided by our landlord. These are shared by the entire building, but they don't cost anything to use, which is almost legendarily awesome in the city.

The rooftop deck. We don't use it that much now, but I'm guessing it'll be quite pleasant in the spring.

So, this is apparently where one lives after traipsing about the globe for three years…

Gilbert’s premise was simple enough: Get over the heartbreak of a failed marriage by eating in Italy, praying in India and loving (or at least contemplating on how to love) in Indonesia.  None of her epiphanies are philosophically eye-opening and the book suffers (or perhaps profits from) an excessive amount of navel gazing.  But she has a compelling voice, pleasant enough attempts at wit and above all manages to write a book that follows enough of the conventions of best-selling “chick lit” to make a ubiquitous tome among female backpackers, while managing to tell a story that, at least theoretically, actually occurred.

For the purposes of this blog, there’s not much point to discussing Gilbert’s eating or  praying, so I’ll jump straight to her Indonesian love-fest, where the hapless Gilbert found herself in a mild form of indentured servitude with the yoda-like Ketut Liyer.  Living with the wizened figure, she documented all of his simple, salt-of-the-(Eastern)-earth style wisdom that had provided Gilbert with the existential material needed for her to have an epic breakthrough and find true and everlasting love.  Theoretically, at least; I wasn’t compelled enough to go out and grab the sequel to see just how well all that love worked out for her.

The interior area of Ketut's demesne. The man likes his birdhouses.

The Ketut of the book is a soft-spoken, patriarchal no-nonsense figure who simultaneously seems to view the world as though in on some sort of private joke.  None of his fortune-cookie-like words of wisdom truly seemed epiphany-inspiring enough to me that I would pointedly track the man down, but upon hearing that the now-famous guru lives just minutes from our hotel in Ubud, Laurie and I are both too compelled to pass on a quick visit to his humble estate.  With each passing year, I’ve gradually accepted that I will never meet Yoda, but perhaps getting some profound words from a man who is now both the most famous and the most shriveled tourist attraction in Bali will be a close second.

A handful of black and white drawings hang along the single wall of the otherwise open air waiting room, where we lounge in silence as Ketut tends to the steady queue of visiting pilgrims that all tend to be of the same basic demographic: white, female, mid-30s to early 50s, presumably single, presumably not always so.  His current seeker sits cross-legged next to him on a small platform, peering into his eyes so deeply it seems she’s attempting to use them to extract a part of his soul, and she rides every slow word that wisps inaudibly at her from his dark, cracked lips. Intermittently shifting his gaze between her eyes and her right palm which he grips with one of his small, dry hands, Ketut mumbles to her with an urgency that she clearly grants an exaggerated poignancy.

Turning my eyes back to the artwork on the wall, I’m reminded of the psychedelic scrawlings of shifty parking lot artists at Grateful Dead concerts, peddling their wares for gas money.  The mixture of Balinese spirituality with repetitive patterns that surely “look sick when you’re tripping” permeates most of his efforts, and there’s a clear display of at least basic talent on his part, but none of the pieces are compelling enough to request a price.  Glimpsing back at the ancient figure, I ponder on the artistic truism that an artist’s works always skyrocket in value upon their demise, but even as I morbidly size up Ketut’s mortality, I’m not compelled enough to shell out any extra cash on a sketch of a three-headed Balinese demon goddess floating within a circle of curvy totems that could either be surreal earrings, surrealistic breasts or both.

We’re waved forward as the woman currently on the dais with Ketut slowly pushes herself upwards into a hunched over stance, still shaking his hand vigorously in gracious praise of his divine acumen.  It’s a good sign.  My casual public cynicism may make it clear to anyone glancing over at me that I expect little from this meeting, but deep down inside, why wouldn’t I be hoping for the same enlightening, life-changing pearl of wisdom that all of his pre-menopausal visitors with biological clocks ticking so ominously that they might be connected to large blocks of C4 hope for?  How different am I from these grimacing, doubt-filled near-matrons, floating about the world with little direction or purpose?  Clearly this mystical little brown spiritual ninja will slice through all the subterfuge and see that I’m at least as worthy of life-altering advice as Elizabeth fucking Gilbert.  Right?  Is it so much to ask for that he provide me with just a handful of solid one-liners that both change my life and sound really witty if you add “in bed” to the end of any of them?

The open air bed that one assumes Ketut sleeps in. Apparently severe nighttime rainstorms aren't a major issue here.

Ketut signals for Laurie to advance toward his platform first, as I am guided over to a small stone step next to one of the many birdcages pervading his sacred compound.  The large white bird contained within, like most of the Balinese people I’ve come in contact with, seems neither perturbed nor excited by my presence, despite my apathetic attempts at befriending it.  It’s uncertain to me whether the guru is even aware that I am the next in line; I’ve heard that many men apparently come along on this excursion solely as supportive partners, surely hoping the entire time that Ketut doesn’t complicate their relationship with a dismissive thumbs-down when the topic of romance comes up.

As Laurie sits, the diminutive man greets her with a nearly toothless grin and takes her hand warmly. “Welcome!  Oh, your lips look so sweet!  Please, welcome, sit.  He–” Ketut says, pointing at the male guide that brought us here, “–explain that the reading is [equivalent of $25], yes?”  To give this value perspective, most meals are around five dollars; an hour-long massage at a nice spa is upwards of ten; a night at our bed and breakfast is just under twenty.  She nods and he continues.

“I am sorry but my nephew is in the hospital right now and it is so expensive and so I must charge this.  You know — E-liz-a-beth Gil-bert?” he asks rhetorically, putting extra emphasis on each syllable of her name.  ”She stayed here with me and wrote a book Eat-Pray-Love.  You know this book?  Yes?  And this man there,” he says, pointing at me, “is your… boyfriend?”  Laurie quickly explains that I am not.  ”Oh,” he says, looking mildly befuddled by this unexpected news.  It must always be perplexing for fortune tellers when they discover that they have no idea what is going on.  He passes her a brown, hardcover book.

“E-liz-a-beth Gil-bert give me the book Eat-Pray-Love and many people in the world love this book.  But I do not know what it says because I can not read this!  Will you read please?”

“You want me to read it to you?” she asks.

“Yes.  Please.”  He stares at her, nodding toward the ratty tome, which appears to be close to a hundred years old, despite a publication date from 2006.  She picks a passage seemingly at random, though it’s possible that the section had been marked in advance for intrepid visitors that they might get a refresher as to why they came to visit Ketut in the first place.  She reads softly to him for a few moments — no more than two paragraphs — while he stares out into space loftily with the occasional solemn nod, as though receiving a sacred benediction.

“Ah.  Yes,” he says with a smile, closing the book as he eases the book from her hands.  ”I do not know what she is talking about, but I remember E-liz-a-beth Gil-bert and she stayed with me for many days and I am happy for her that the book Eat-Pray-Love is so popular and I hope she is very happy.  Now–” he says, suddenly returning to the business at hand, “–you would like for me to do a palm reading, yes?  Good.  And I must ask you first, this man with you is your boyfriend?” he says, gesturing again toward me.  Laurie laughs confusedly and expresses that I am still not her boyfriend. “Hmm,” he ponders, confused by this reiteration.

“I look first at your beauty line and you are so pretty and I see that you will be beautiful for all of your life.  And your life line is also very long so you will live to be very very old!” he smiles warmly, as though caught off guard by this splendid news.  ”Very good, yes.  And here, I see, is your line for romance.”  He says the last word excitedly, as though several months of regular practice has keyed him into what the money point is among his typical guests.  ”You came here with this man, I am correct?” he points over to me.

Ketut, discovering new and riveting things from the surface of my palm.

“Yes,” she says, “but he–”

“And,” he cuts her off excitedly, “he is your boyfriend, I think!”

“No, really, he’s just a friend!”

“Hmm,” he ponders, “but you have a boyfriend, yes?”

“Yes.  Back at home.  Not him.”

“Not me!” I quietly assure him from my spot next to the disinterested white bird.

“I see your romance line is very long.  The man you are with now is the right man for you.”

“My boyfriend back at home?”

“What?  Yes, you and your boyfriend.  You will be married and both of you will live for a long time.”  He smiles knowingly.  Cynically, I feel the strong urge to point out that he doesn’t technically have her boyfriend’s palm available, and thus cannot make such a proclamation.  But then the cynic in me remembers that we are here getting our palms read from a near-toothless Indonesian man which already renders all further skepticism redundant.

“Also,” he says, tacking one last piece of inspired wisdom to a reading already rife with visionary prescience, “your flower — is a geranium!”

“Oh,” she responds.  ”Thank you.”

“Very good for you.  You must come back and visit me some time.”  Elizabeth Gilbert ran into the fortune teller some time before beginning work on her book, and was inspired to return after he generously requested that she come back to him some day.  Hearing this closing line, it’s possible she might’ve read a little too much into his closing shtick.

I replace Laurie on the dais, while she steps aside to keep the insouciant white bird company.  Ketut is exactly as warm and friendly with me as he is with her, though thankfully the line about my having sweet lips is omitted.  He queries me about my relationship with Laurie, and his eyes widen as he shares the good news about my successful business dealings, my long life (presumably with the girl sitting behind me) and a great love who will be with me until the end of my days (“that girl that is with you, I think,” pointing again at Laurie, and said with a smile and wide eyes that seem to get more and more glazed with every proclamation).  Proving that he finds me every bit as charming as both Elizabeth Gilbert and my presumed girlfriend, I, too am invited to come and visit the next time I am in Ubud.  As it is unlikely that I will be returning in his lifetime, I swear in all earnest that I will.

My future now laid bare with surprising clarity and depth, I rise to take my leave but Ketut reaches out for my hand portentously and, after a brief, thoughtful pause, suddenly shares something with me that is for once entirely different from what he had passed on to Laurie:

“Your flower — is the orchid!”

Sadly, only one of these two figures is a learned jedi master.

For someone that surely would’ve avoided any attempt at talking to me in high school, he certainly seems overeager to do so now.

“What are your names?” he asks us, friendly enough, offering that his own is Greg.  Louise and I answer him, though she quickly leans in conspiratorially and speaks to me quietly enough to establish a level of privacy to our conversation that doesn’t extend to my new friend, but not so quietly that he might suspect we’re talking about him.

“I can’t believe this bar!” she tells me with excited trepidation.  ”I can’t even believe it exists in the middle of the city like this.”

“I love it.  It’s an actual dive!”  I’m genuinely excited to be at a dimly grungy and antiquated bar simply for the perfectly innocent level of trashiness that it exudes.  Not even a New York City resident yet, and already I’m acting like a hipster.

“Well, I only came here because there are two-for-one drinks,” she responds.

“Yeah, just don’t forget to use your ticket,” Greg offers.

“Thanks!” I smile, without actually understanding his point, before shutting out the stocky neighbor on my right once again in favor of the far more attractive neighbor on my left.  It’s not that I actively want to block the mildly soused Greg from our discussion;  I just need some quality time with Louise.  She is going to be my new roommate after all once I resettle from nearly three years of travel into The Greatest City On Earthâ„¢.  ”It doesn’t seem that bad here.  It’s got a kind of gritty 70′s charisma.  It’s dark, and smoky and… wooden…  I would totally hang out at a place like this.”

“No,” she whispers firmly.  ”I got here early and left to wait for you outside.  When I showed up, there was a guy running out with blood pouring out of his face!”  Decidedly odd for 5 pm on a Tuesday, I agree.

“Yeah, I probably wouldn’t hang out at a place like this…”  I signal the bartender.  ”PBR, please.  And a ticket..?”

“Ticket’s two for one.  But you gotta get both beers at once,” she explains.

“So you give me a ticket and then I give it back?”

“Yeah.  For the second beer–”

“–which I get at the same time?”

“Right.”  I manage to hold onto a small, yellow ticket stub for a few seconds, and two pints of America’s most beloved beer for a little bit longer than that.  We have an appointment with the cast of The Big Lebowski in just thirty minutes (the Blu-Ray of the movie is being released, and they’re celebrating with a Q&A session at the Hammerstein Ballroom in Manhattan), and it’s the kind of event that one should be both timely and mildly intoxicated for.

“You guys live around here?”

“Nah.  Well, not yet at least…”

“We’re going to be roommates!” says Louise excitedly.

“If all goes well, we’ll be moving into our spot in Brooklyn in the beginning of September.  I just got back to the States a few weeks ago after some extended traveling.”

“Me too,” says Greg.  ”Where were you?”

“Oh my god, he was everywhere!  He went to Antarctica and high-fived a penguin!”

“He didn’t actually high-five me back…”

“…and taught in China, and went to Africa!  It was like, the biggest trip ever.”

“It was ok.”  I pause, embarrassed in person by the same narrative that I ploddingly maintain a blog about online.  ”You just got back from a trip too?” I ask him.

“Yeah, I just finished a third tour in Afghanistan…”

“Oh.”

Greg has two kids, and they seem to be his primary reason for returning home from time to time.  Since joining the army right out of high school, he was shipped off to Iraq, fought in Somalia during the “Black Hawk Down” days, and has bounced back and forth between Iraq and Afghanistan for most of the past decade.  While Louise banters with the bartender, I listen as the previously mundane Greg regales me with stories of interesting and treacherous places that never managed to make it onto my travel roster, nor will they likely ever, much to the joy of my parents.

“So are you back for good?”

“No, I’m headed back to Afghanistan in two weeks for one last tour.  Found out I’ve got prostate cancer so it’s really the only option.”

“What?!”  I don’t exactly do a spit take, though my shock upon registering his previous statement is fairly visible.

“Between dying slowly over here or going out over there, it’s not even a choice.  But the main thing is, if I die over there, my kids’ll be well taken care of.  That’s why I’m doing it.”

“But prostate cancer’s got a good recovery rate.  Though I guess I’ve heard you can’t ever fuck again without viagra…”

“Yeah, you know about that, huh?  I’d never heard about it until I got diagnosed.  What a shitty side effect.  I dunno.  I don’t want to go through that.  The whole procedure… it’s just not for me.  Even if I make it, what would I do after that, you know?”  He shrugs.  ”I’ve thought about it a lot, and I know what I’m doing is the best thing for my family.  And there’s really no way I’d rather go out.”

“Hey, your choice, man.”  After a sip of beer, I profoundly add: “Sucks.”

“Yeah, it’s nuts but you know, I don’t even think anything about it anymore.  Maybe it’ll hit me harder when I’m back over there, but I’m kind of ready to go already.”  He pauses to finish his beer.  ”Cute girl.  She your girlfriend?”

“Nah, Louise is just an old friend.  She needs a roommate and I need a city to live in, so we work well together.”

“What do you do?”

“To tell you the truth, I have no idea.  I used to be a software developer, and I’ve done some writing in the past.  But right now I don’t have a fucking clue and I’m just kind of burning through more savings than I’d like trying to figure it all out.”  

I don’t add the obvious “but it could always be worse” addendum that still hangs in the air from Greg’s own story.  Louise tugs on my sleeve expectantly and I nod, quickly downing the last of my pint.  ”Well, we gotta get going, but it was nice talking to you.  Good—  Shit!  I was about to say ‘Good luck over there in Afghanistan,’ but that just seems wrong to me now.”

“You’re going to Afghanistan?” Louise asks, rejoining the conversation.  ”Wow!  Be safe!”

“Hah.  I don’t think she heard my story,” Greg says.

“Probably not,” I tell him, shaking his hand.  There are so many strange, interesting and dangerous paths a life can take.  Whether or not Brooklyn ends up being the right choice is still very much in the air, but one thing’s for certain: It’s sure as hell got nicer weather than Kabul.

A map of Bali. Ubud and Kuta Beach (sadly the only two spots on the island I was able to explore) are circled in red.

Over a week in Indonesia, and only one goddamned page of notes, mostly from a short excursion I’ll not be writing about here (see next post).  Expect this one to be short on the verbal meat, and a bit long on pictures, as Bali‘s reputation for one of the most gorgeous and relaxing of the popular hot spots on the planet is well earned.  And sad to say, I only scratched the surface of the mecca (no pun intended) of Indonesian Hinduism amidst the near endless sea of Muslim islands (Indonesia hosts the largest Muslim population by far of any country in the world).  Despite terrorist bombings in 2002 and 2005, the island still maintains a solid reputation as a veritable paradise on earth, and despite there being 17,000 islands in Indonesia, 80% of all foreign visitors only make a point of visiting Bali.

First glimpses at Bali, from just outside Denpasar International Airport

I timed the trip carefully to coincide with a ten day yoga retreat taking place in the impossibly serene town of Ubud, located basically in both Bali’s spiritual and physical center.  The ways of the Downward Facing Dog or the Sun Salutation are mostly unknown to me, as a decade spent slouched by a computer monitor are about as far from the physical finesses invoked by yoga as one might attain in life.  Even the bulk of those gathered for the retreat don’t fall within my typical strata of social connections.  The women are Californians both in name and in spirit, all in their 40′s and 50′s; the lone male, of about the same age, possesses a particularly grating sense of humor and an unstoppable urge to talk in poorly executed ethnic impersonations for no discernible reason anyone present seems able to comprehend.

“Can you please pass the salt?” I ask him at one point over a group meal.

“Now we ain’t got no salt he-ah, man,” he responds with ebonic swagger.  “All we done got is a lotta peppa!”

Who the fuck are you, Fred Sanford?  “Oh, I thought both were in front of you there.”

“Nah, man, just messin’ witchu.  Some salt for mah man,” he says, passing over the salt.  Laurie’s eyes meet mine with a quick, burning glare clearly meant for the grating half of an Amos and Andy act in the process of painfully bombing across the table from us.

We pass this large statue on a man-made island on the way from Denpasar to Ubud. The snake plays a major role in Balinese creation mythology, though I wasn't able to track down who this character is online. I just think he's kind of badass.

“I think I’m about ready to slap him if he does another shitty Chinese or black accent every time he opens his mouth,” she swore to me earlier.  “Last night at dinner, he was talking in a bad Indian accent to the waiter.  Here.  In Indonesia.”  She’s amusingly fuming, but accurate, as well as my reason for being involved with the retreat in the first place.  An old friend from New York, it’d come to both of our attention that we’d be in the area around the same time it felt a travesty not to meet up.  Doubly fortuitous for me, their whole crew was arriving around within an hour of my flight, providing me with a free ride from the airport (past a McDonalds proclaiming “beef prosperity,” by the way) and a pseudo-guide in the form of Patrick.

An American expat who’s lived in Bali now for years, Patrick’s living expenses are too low for him to ever consider living elsewhere by now, and at least on the surface he seems to be living a dream life of sorts with his Japanese girlfriend here on the island.  Costs of living are beyond affordable here, with occasional work like the organization of these sporadic yoga retreats taking care of most of his basic expenses.  The cottages where those attending the retreat will be staying are fully booked, but Patrick has a friend with an open room across the street that’s almost as nice for just ten dollars a night.  Laurie’s cottage, located on immaculately maintained gardens replete with a wide assortment of statues of Balinese gods peering about serenely, is still only twenty dollars a night and includes breakfast and swimming pool access.

For an assortment of valid and fearsome arguments she was quick to provide, Laurie has no interest in riding on the back of the motor scooter that, for reasons unknown, the friendly Patrick has also provided for me free of charge.  From occasional comments made by the generally thrifty Laurie, I know the yoga retreat doesn’t come cheap, so it’s bizarre that the one freeloader — myself — seems to be getting the most perks from their guide; I do not complain.  I scour the rice-covered hillsides on the back of the small bike — a toy compared to the Minsk I’d just been living on in Vietnam — while Laurie meets for yoga, and then in her off-time, we stumble about through the quiet streets and shops, basking in the spirituality that just oozes through every brick, stone and grain of rice in town.

On the back of my scooter, somewhere in Bali...

Fierce and benevolent gods peer out at us from every corner; they watch down on us from the rafters and rooftops, and guard entryways and temples.  They stand prominently in the center of temple complexes, and they silently peer out almost invisibly amidst seas of dense trees and bushes where only the most searching eyes would take note.  Each evening, the massive figure of Ganesh, multi-armed elephant god of intellect and wisdom (I like him so much, I pick a large, iron Ganesh up at one of the many craft shops, despite the future difficulty that traveling with such a massive idol might cause me), greets us upon our return to the small boutique hotel.  In the mornings, he sends us off covered in garlands of fresh flowers with a newly made canang sari placed at his feet.

Literally “essence basket,” the canang sari are placed at the feet of the gods and goddesses every morning by soft-spoken women mostly wearing the same matching peach-colored sarongs.  Made of coconut leaves and filled with a variety of flowers, leaves and berries, the offerings are similarly left at the doorstep of every home, stand, temple and business in town.  During the afternoons, the same serene girls sit behind their respective counters at the shops where they work, quietly braiding the small leaf-entwined baskets for the next day’s offerings and filling them in between sales of strange Balinese masks, vividly colored pottery and a profusion of wooden penis statues (and similarly shaped bottle openers) that for some reason can be found in every store in town.

The center of town hosts a complex of temples more intricately adorned and spectacular than anywhere else in the city (or perhaps the entire island).  Outside of one, a large statue of a baby glances down at us gleefully, its waist respectfully wrapped with a large, clean sarong.  We stop for lunch under the thatched roof of a building located on an island in the center of a large rectangular pond.  Only thin walkways over the water to the north and south provide access to the scenic restaurant, where we lounge out on pillows while a large Balinese temple reflects across the water nearly to the edge of where we sit.  The food, like the view, is amazing, though the finest dining experience in Ubud requires a bit more effort from its patrons.

Fresh coconut milk for all upon arrival at the hotel.

The portly and solemn Ganesh, guarding the way back to the cottages.

Bebek Betutu for dinner. Balinese roast duck roasted underground in leaves for twelve hours. Understandably succulent.

A temporary statue being erected in a park near the center of town for an upcoming festival of some sort. It's unclear who the statue will be, but it's safe to say she's got great... pulchritude.

A road through the middle of town. Note the intricate detail even in the street design.

Note the plethora of canang sari around the statue, as well as the fresh sarongs keeping the short little fellow warm and stylish. No one can accuse the Balinese of not giving their sculptures enough love...

Our lunchtime view from atop a cafe sitting on a concrete island in the center of this quiet, lily pad-infested pond. Not a bad spot.

Laurie and I at lunch, at aforementioned cafe

The pool, back at our hotel. Most of the hotels I looked at in Ubud seemed similarly priced, and almost all of them either had or had access to a swimming pool like this.

A baby cried for much of the flight from Singapore to Jakarta that I had taken just days before. It was not nearly as cool (nor as well dressed) as this baby.

Balinese penis souvenirs. Oddly ubiquitous across the island.

A cluster of canang sari, with freshly lit incense on top (Ubud in the mornings is an incredibly pleasant smelling town), outside one of the storefronts.

At close to twenty dollars for an hour-long massage, it's one of the most expensive in Asia, though there's no question that they create the best possible environments here for getting serviced...

The Trek to Sari Organic

My interest in the Sari Organic Cafe is middling at best; the skies are overcast and hint of rain, and the most common caveat with every recommendation for the restaurant is that it requires a bit of a journey to find the elusive vegetarian restaurant.  Not being a vegetarian myself, the compulsion to roam the countryside in search of the popular cafe is not particularly high for me.  But Laurie’s interest in the place is too piqued to be denied, and despite a hand-drawn map to the cafe with less clarity than most ancient cave art, we take off down the main street, turning onto a narrow muddy road with overgrown grass to either side that eventually gives over to seemingly endless rice paddies.

A shot taken during light rainfall as we fecklessly make our way through the countryside in search of the hidden gem of a cafe

Clouds darken and what had been a soft mist in the air thickens to an uncomfortable downpour, leading us to seek shelter in one of the lone buildings along the empty dirt track.  A not particularly riveting art gallery, the building also doubles as a restaurant by night and offers cooking lessons as well; I’m vaguely curious, though the prices are significantly higher than any of the other attraction we’ve sampled in town.  As the rain subsides, we make our way back out and follow the widening track until it intersects with one of the main streets through Ubud, closer to the center.  Only the chance glimpse at paper advertisement for Sari Organic on the side of a telephone pole points us in the right direction.

Again detouring from the main road, we go against instinct and follow the sign’s directions around a small, empty garage as the sidewalk gives way to a thin dirt track just wide enough for a single motorbike.  The track stretches along for a few kilometers, with nothing but terraced rice fields and the occasional farm house to either side of the increasingly narrow path.  The last marking that signified in any way that this was the right way to Sari Organic was also the first, with no signs of life or activity since then.

Our first (of several) glimpse of Sari Organic, as we come around the bend from a small cluster of trees.

And suddenly a cluster of open-air buildings, most of them little more than thatch-roofed shacks, rise out from behind a cluster of trees and vegetation.  In place of rice paddies are several rectangular gardens offering a wide variety of different herbs and vegetables.  Most items — salads in particular — are thrown together from items hand-picked by the chefs just moments before from these gardens.  Creative guests are even given the option of picking through the plants by themselves to make part or all of their own meals.

A Canadian, about my age, plays at at guitar for a time at the table behind us.  That he’s brought the instrument this far out into the Indonesian countryside implies either that he’s been here before or that he was a lot more trusting than I was about the restaurant’s reputation.  While I dine on cream of pumpkin soup and a green pancake replete with chunks of mango and pineapple, a wizened dark-skinned guru with a long, white beard and a look of profound enlightenment in his eyes speaks to a group of Americans in their fifties and sixties who all look as though they might’ve hung out with Ben and Jerry (or Jerry Garcia) in their youth.  Nearly horizontal on a long, soft cushion, I stare out over the moist rice paddies stretching into the distance as a prismatic sky of blues, pinks, oranges and purples is reflected into countless patchwork puddles on the damp ground below.  It might be the most perfect location for a restaurant ever, if only one doesn’t mind a bit of a hike.

The relaxing environment and almost hypnotically bucolic countryside lulls us into a peaceful complacence that causes us to neglect the difficulties in returning to Ubud after the sun has set.  Stumbling through the darkness with only the light from my camera for guidance, we’re trailed for a while by a shadow about the size of a medium-sized dog.  We walk in a state of mild paranoia until reaching a building with a sloppily painted-on depiction of the lion-faced demon god Barong glaring outward at us.  Perhaps it was enough to scare the animal off, as there’s no further sign of its presence for the rest of the walk.

Over drinks later that night, an American couple speak to us of their work on the island: They’ve come to assist with the massive outbreak of rabies amongst feral dogs in Bali.  Apparently, the disease — especially here in the center of the island — is quite rampant…

A large building in the distance we pass while walking through the rice fields. I'm not sure if it's a farm, hotel or private residence, but I liked the look of it.

The extremely narrow cement path to Sari Organic. At some point, the cement gives way to an even more narrow dirt track.

Soggy, terraced rice paddies

Laurie and I at Sari Organic

A glance up at the inside of the rooftop

Fresh cream of pumpkin soup

Green pancake with mango and pineapple. Why is it green? Because it was made by hippies. Still tasted good, though...

One of Sari's gardens. Throughout our time there, we'd watch as kitchen staff from below would run out to the gardens for fresh food. We were told that visitors could pluck their own salads as well, though I didn't see any of the customers ever take them up on this offer.

Sunset over Sari Organic

The Monkey Temple

In town the next morning, we venture downhill to the base of the large hill our cottages are built into to scope out the Monkey Temple.  It’s an appropriate name.  Here, the woods are at their most dense, choking out the sky under a massive green canopy.  Already a handful of monkeys chase after tourists bearing bags of bread crumbs, industriously sold by locals across the street where for some reason the monkeys don’t dare to tread.

Feeding time, across the street from the entrance (costs a nominal fee to go in) to the "Monkey Forest". Despite no gates or barriers of any discernible kind, the monkey do mostly stay confined to the borders of their "forest"

Against Laurie’s wishes, I pick up a back of the crumbs to take into the park; she’s understandably timid around the obnoxious little bastards, and this timidity only grows each time an occasional alpha male asserts itself a bit too strongly while seeking out snacks from clueless tourists like myself.  The animals are far more friendly than their cousins in Vietnam, but still aggressive enough to make one maintain a safe distance.  For every monkey willing to dance about playfully on the ground for a few crumbs, there’s another with no compunctions about climbing up a human’s leg and angrily grabbing the entire bag with a soft hiss.

In the center of a long series of winding trails sits the temple itself, a monument to the animals that appear to claim dominance over this section of Ubud.  No less intricately carved out than any other temple in the city, busts and statues of Ganesh, Setesuyara and Kala are all replaced by various monkeys in a variety of positions, innocently mocked at all times by the living specimens that’ve made this place their home.  A cluster of infant monkeys come tripping over to me greedily upon spotting the remainder of my bag of snacks and I dump it quickly on the ground for them before any large males can swing by.  One assertively does, of course, but not before a few of the pups at least manage to sneak off with a few morsels.

At the Monkey Temple, with monkeys both living and carved out of stone

The Monkey Forest. See if you can spot the monkeys! (Note: monkeys may not actually be in this picture)

Kuta Beach

With two days left in my Balinese adventure (the lucky Laurie getting to stay on for a few more days for further exploration), we debate between treks to dormant volcanoes and sloppy beach adventures, eventually opting for the latter.  Calm, relaxing beaches can be found in all the cardinal directions, with some exciting island hopping in the southeast and a few popular beaches famous for their black sands in the north.  But after a few days of Ubud’s pleasantly lull-inducing air, the liveliness of Kuta Beach in the south seems the ideal choice.

Laurie, presenting our vast, open, unpopulated piece of Kuta

Notoriously taken over by young and wild Australians almost year round, it would appear we showed up on an off night.  By day we swim and tan on nearly empty beaches, so happily unmolested by locals (when’s the last time locals at a beach haven’t at least approached to beg or sell something?) and then wander about the fairly modern city streets through the afternoon.  There are people here, but not in any abundance.  The most people show up for a sunset worthy of even more than those that arrived, but even still it’s no Koh Phangan in terms of population or wild behavior.

At night we wander through mostly empty bars and clubs, walking back and forth in anticipation of the large crowds that never quite arrive.  Outside, some local men stand around in a huddle looking bored.

“Want any drugs, my friend?”

“Nah, not really.  Do you know how much a cab back to Ubud would be?”

In liu of excitement and adventure, and perhaps realizing we’re too old to spend a day at the beach and then sit out in the clubs until midnight waiting on the hint of a party to start, we opt for the casual familiarity of another night in Ubud.  It’s no raging all-nighter, but there’s a decent Reggae band here in Ubud and the beers are cheap.  Sometimes, pleasant adequacy after a long day at the beach is more than enough.

We're not exactly sure what this structure was. We snuck up to the side of it and there was a podium elevated in its center with maybe 10-20 seats around it. Maybe a super-exotic convention center for very, very small conventions?

The only noteworthily unpleasant thing about Kuta that I spotted: lots of these small, dead fish grouped in various places throughout the beach

The most crowded point of the day (that we'd seen at least) was here, right before sunset

Sunset at Kuta Beach

In the midst of a massive collection of crowded islands — 17,508, to be precise — containing the largest Muslim population on earth, the relatively small (compared to sister islands Java and Lombok) Bali practices a unique form of Hinduism appropriately called “Balinese.”  It features a perfect blend of wild, frolicsome coastlines, and ultra-serene meditative environments within the island’s heart, making the whole package an ideal tourist destination.  Hell, it accounted for one third of Elizabeth Gilbert‘s Eat, Pray, Love (and 100% of the “Love”).  Only the terrorist bombings of 2002 and 2005 mar its reputation, though the US removed its dire travel warnings as of 2008.

Into Jakarta

Unfortunately, the discount flights I chose required overnight layovers both heading to and away from Bali in Indonesia’s populace capital city of Jakarta.  Two non-consecutive nights in a city isn’t nearly enough time to pass judgement upon a place, but Jakarta is probably the least pleasant city I have ever passed through.  My first visit in Jakarta, upon entering the country, was made infinitely better by a brief visit with my friends Jim and Liz; I’d met them the year prior in Patagonia, and they’d since taken up residency as teachers at a high-end American school here.  One of the finest things about long-term traveling is ever growing list of amazing people around the world to catch up with in their homeland (or in this case, adopted homeland).

Muslim women in dark burqas line the dimly streets, crying as we drive by, their arms locked in place reaching out like crooked tree branches, wordlessly begging for money.  It’s explained to me later that they are unmarried, and likely too old or undesirable to  find a husband now, though they’re simultaneously incapable of self-sufficience.  The streets aren’t lit nearly enough as we drive by suspicious characters standing in place in the shadows, peering into my cab.  A McDonald’s, seemingly out of place in this part of Jakarta, casts a golden glow on the area and proclaims “beef prosperity” on its exterior sign.  And suddenly, we pull through two large gates — double security — and it feels as though the car has mythically crossed the border into an entirely different reality.

Here, houses unmarred by graffiti have green, well-manicured lawns with flowers and the occasional piece of lawn furniture.  Windows lack thick metal bars over them, so common on buildings outside the gates.  Are those tennis courts?  The school where Jim and Liz teach is prestigious, and safety is clearly a primary concern for their foreign teachers.  I’m among the first to find out big news that had arrived almost concurrently with me: Liz is officially pregnant.  We toast to their good luck and share travel and life stories from the time spent since last we saw each other.

My stay is short, unfortunately.  They’ve got a nice house, complete with a local husband and wife team that live in a room adjacent to their garage and serve as their cook and housekeeper — another boon of working at their school.  It’s almost enticing enough to encourage me to get a Masters in education.  They leave before I wake but, consummate hosts that they are, arrangements were made with both their chef and their driver for my convenience.  After a large breakfast of pancakes and fresh fruit, I’m taken directly to the airport.  I may not get the best vibe from this city, but it certainly has its  pockets of comfort.

Out of Jakarta

Cut to one week later and I’m back in Jakarta, relaxed and somehow even tanner than before, with less than twelve hours to go before my flight returns me to the life of a mild-mannered software professor in Chongqing.  Dirty and exhausted, and now with a bulky, extra duffel bag purchased just to carry all of the knickknacks I’d picked up along this trip, it’s imperative that I find a place to stay.  But where?  The overpriced (even for Indonesia) airport hotel is filled to capacity.  Hopping in a cab, we have no luck at two other spots before finding a third that’s willing to take me in.

An employee takes me up the stairs — the elevator is broken, and I feel quite certain that it has always been so — to a small room on the fourth floor.  He opens the door for me and immediately flips the light switch, which proves to be a futile gesture as the room stays cloaked in darkness.  Shrugging it off, he crosses the room and turns on a more effective table lamp on the other side of the bed, illuminating a mammoth-sized cockroach that sits, antennae gyrating wildly, on my pillow of all places.  It must be a comfortable pillow.

“Ahhhhh!” I exclaim.  He can’t understand English anyway, so it’s not like a more descript explanation would’ve served any purpose.

“Ahh?” he asks.  I know you see the cockroach, fucker.  Don’t play dumb.

“Roach there!” I say, pointing.  ”Monster fucking roach!”

“Oh!” he says, suddenly aware of what is causing my discomfort.  He swoops in and swats the mouse-sized insect toward the doorway, where it rebounds off of the door, dazed, and flops gracelessly onto a spot on the floor just barely within the confines of my room.  Stepping forward swiftly, he kicks it with his right foot, which again sends it bouncing up against the open door before following up with his left foot as though tracking a soccer ball, knocking it safely into the hallway.  He looks up at me with a large, satisfied grin upon his face.  All done.

“Good enough, I guess…” I say, shrugging off the pyrrhic victory.  After he leaves, I grab the pillow and consider removing its casing before I notice the sickly yellow mass that resides within it.  With no other options, I flip the pillow over and collapse down onto the coarse, fetid pallet in exhaustion.

I wake and it’s still dark out, with only the softest, ash-gray hint of dawn brightening the lone window, filling the room with soft shadows and hard silhouettes.  Now significantly into my thirties, I have apparently reached a point, physiologically, where it is impossible for my bladder to make it through an entire night.  This personal detail is only important as a lead-in to explain why I am awake in time to discover a small cat, glowing eyes forever burnt into my memory as fodder for a legion of future nightmares, perched upon my bundle of belongings in the corner, mere feet — it’s a very small room — from where I sleep.

Wait.  Not a cat.

“Ahhhhh!” I repeat again, groggier this time but possibly conveying a greater sense of revulsion.

My exclamation sends the rat running into the bathroom, but I remain in bed, frozen and nauseated, for several moments before building up enough drive to switch the bedside lamp on.  Shivering with revulsion, I slowly creep off the bed, checking first carefully under the bed to make sure no other distinctly unwelcome guests (snakes?  spiders?  OJ Simpson?) are currently residing in my room.

I lean into the bathroom, keeping my feet firmly entrenched outside of it as I turn the light on and stretch my head inside.  It’s a small bathroom, and I can immediately see both that the rat is gone, and what was most likely his escape route.  Shuddering, I reach back into the main room for my duffel bag of souvenirs and drag it into the bathroom, pressing it flat against the wall to block a single small hole where the floor and wall meet.  I close the door to the bathroom and lay back down before grimacing as my bladder reminds me why I woke up in the first place.

Cautiously opening the bathroom door, I return to the scene of the crime, though my bag is thus far succeeding in separating me from Jakarta’s lively animal kingdom.  Back in bed, I close my eyes and pretend to sleep, but I fool no one.  Least of all, myself.

Seven AM, and I’m waiting outside on the front step for the shuttle to take me out of here, never to return.  I will not say with assurance that Jakarta does not have its charms; simply that I was unable to discover them during my short stay.  I’m too tired to be startled as a rat — my roommate? — nonchalantly darts out from under the steps right between my legs, making his way into a cluster of large bushes growing next to the hotel.

No, I don’t think I like Jakarta very much.

Singapore on the map. It's even smaller than it looks here..

Singapore.  Tiny island nation off the southwest tip of southeast Asia.  Home of the… Mer-lion?

More on that later.

A Singaporean (Singaporese?  Singaperson?) friend from Chongqing, upon hearing I’d be gracing his small but world renown homeland, offered me all the lodging, touring, dining and clubbing I could possibly want, courtesy of a legion of his friends and family.  It’s the ultimate backpacker boon — having access to friendly locals — and it’s absolutely wasted on me.  The cheapest flights I could organize in advance from Cambodia to Indonesia happened to have a seven hour layover in Singapore.  It’s enough time to go on a quick tourist run of the city-state, but doesn’t allow for much more than that.

It’s a shame, because I’ve liked everyone I’ve ever met from Singapore.  For one of the smallest countries in the world — at only 270 square miles, it’s barely larger than Guam — the people of Singapore certainly get out a lot.  I’ve met several people from Singapore in my travels, though I’ve never met a single Malaysian, despite the neighboring country being more than 500 times its size.  There are a few factors that likely influence this:

1. Singapore’s primary language — there are three other official ones — is an interestingly accented English.  It’s heavily enunciated, yet with a soft ‘R’.  ”Sing-a-PUHH” rather than “Sing-a-PORE.”
2. It’s an extremely wealthy country, with the highest percentage of millionaires in US dollars — 15% of all households — in the world.
3. Singapore is used to being very international.  It has one of the busiest ports in the world, and  is the fourth leading financial center in the world, due to very business-friendly policies from the government.

Singapore is also famous (or infamous) for having a strict, authoritarian government.  When I was in grade school, it made the news for taking a cane to an American student’s bare ass due to catching the hooligan vandalizing property.  The penalty for being caught with drugs, even for foreigners, is  death.  Chewing gum and having oral sex in one’s own home are both still technically illegal, though laws are in the process of being changed to make the country seem more modern.  But spitting, littering, smoking in public, urinating in public and jaywalking all carry heavy fines and potentially warrant use of the cane.

I make a mental note of staying on my best behavior during my short, exploratory layover.

A thoroughly modern subway drops me off in the theoretical heart of town.  ”Go to Raffles!” the various subway employees tell me when I question them for advice on how to best spend my time here.  Thomas Stamford Raffles, founding father of Singapore.  Dead now, obviously, but his legacy remains in the form of a hotel, bar, hospital, university, sports complex, marina, several statues and any number of other honors bestowed upon him by one of the few Asian cities I’ve been to that seems proud of having a British imperialist founder.

Singapore by bicycle, the lazy way

It’s a decidedly Western city, tucked away as it is in the heart of southeast Asia.  Its layout, architecture, appearance and general personality remind me more of home than anywhere else I’ve been since arriving in China six months ago.  A purposefully wrinkled, beige sport jacket catches my attention in a window, and while it’s significantly more expensive than clothing in China, it’s the first article of clothing I’ve felt the need to purchase in some time.  Outside, an older man driving a bicycle taxi offers to give me a thirty minute tour for ten dollars.

As his tour includes the first, and ends with the latter two on my tourist checklist –

1. Visit the Mer-lion
2. A Singapore sling at Raffles Longbar
3. A drink at the New Asia bar

– I hop into the comfortable wicker and cushion seat.

Yes, it’s a decidedly alcohol-saturated list, especially for a quick afternoon visit, but (2) is this country’s  addition to bar menus across the world and (3) offers the best skyline view of the city, but only for bar patrons.  I have no choice but to imbibe!  As for (1), I’m not quite sure what the hell is going on with this country.

Yes, the Mer-lion: Half mermaid (well, half fish, technically) and half-lion.  For a country with zero tolerance toward drug usage, it’s surprising to find this Yellow Submarine reject as its official mascot.  In Malay, Singapore means “Lion City” despite no lions ever gracing its borders, and being an island, clearly a more marine-based lion would be needed to represent the country.  Enter the Mer-lion.

Yes, the fearsome Mer-Lion, symbol of Singapore!

From Homer's lost work. Finally, the Odyssey makes sense!

True story: Singaporeans use "Merlion" as a euphemism for "Vomiting." As in "I shouldn'tve eaten that shark fin soup -- I think I'm gonna Merlion..."

The view from the top of the Asia bar. Half of the Asia bar is a sit-down restaurant; I asked if I could walk over to take a quick picture of the other side of the city and was denied, despite having bought a drink. Then again, all the pictures I've ever taken from these rooftop bars just end up looking identical to me anyway.

A slightly more zoomed in picture capturing all the maritime activity outside Singapore. The country hosts one of the five most active ports in the world.

Attractive, sunny, downtown Singapore.

My hardworking tourguide. To his credit, he talked almost non-stop about the various plants, monuments and buildings we passed. I've forgotten almost all of it!

Singapore's skyline, with the monument honoring the dead of World War II (when the Japanese had occupied Singapore) in the foreground

And the World War I memorial

The beloved Mr. Raffles. Â And an Asian woman posing with him. Â Seriously.

The world famous Raffles Long Bar, inventor of the Singapore Sling and famous for gratuitous servings of peanuts where patrons are encouraged to toss the remains onto the already shell-covered floor

The sling and I. I kept the glass, despite what a pain in the ass it is, traveling with any souvenirs, let alone glass ones.

The lively Clarke Quay, riverside hot spot and home to a large assortment of fine restaurants and clubs, including "Hooters"

I just liked the building's color scheme

A friendly Buddhist monk on vacation from Sri Lanka. We got to talking on the street near Clarke Quay and eventually he freely gave me a five-colored bracelet to wear with my others. It was my favorite, though I lost it two months later during a week-long vacation to the States, when an overzealous security guard ripped it from my wrist as he ejected me from a Disco Biscuits concert.