Just a quickie here. I started yoga classes today and I have to brag just a little. I've been doing yoga at home by myself for about 5 years. I started with a tv program and have since become a self-taught yogi as it were. I would never profess to be a master, but I won't deny that it comes quite naturally to me. So anyways, I thought my first yoga class would be a harsh reality, that my skills wouldn't really be as good as I thought and that I probably wouldn't be able to handle it. But, well, let me just say that I kicked yoga butt tonight! I knew all the poses we did, I was comfortable in all but one, I still haven't mastered the one leg balancing. Little Chinese ladies were falling left and right, and there I was holding my pose, yeah I was good. Okay I know I'm bragging, but I really was THAT good! After class one of the ladies came to me and in her broken English asked how long I had been studying yoga and where I took lessons. She couldn't believe I had learned from tv and just done it myself. Even the teacher was impressed with me. So yeah, I'm going to be going twice a week now. That's all I wanted to say, it's official, I kick butt at yoga.
Happy New Year! This was hands down the most interesting holiday I've ever had.
Allow me to take you on a journey through the past week and a half of my life.
On Christmas Eve Anthony and I went into Guangzhou to meet up with a good friend of his, Michael, from the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra. Michael is from Texas and plays bassoon in the orchestra, so he and I hit it off right from the first time we met (about 2 months ago). Michael also brought along his friend Paulo and the four of us went to this fantastic Italian restaurant for Christmas dinner. We had roasted red peppers, caviar and bruschetta, green pea soup, vegetarian cantelloni, filet mignon, iced lemon sorbet, all sorts of cheese and get this, paska for dessert! How cool is that? The only deviation from regular paska was that instead of icing they covered it with a creme anglais sauce instead. So that was my Christmas dinner, not a bad alternative to the traditional turkey and potatoes. Dinner took us about three hours to eat so we left around 11 pm or so. Of course the night was still young, and it being Christmas and all we thought what better way to celebrate the holiday than with what China does best...massage. So we went for two hours of relaxing foot and body massage. Paulo went home after the massage and Anthony and I went back to Michael's apartment. We watched a TERRIBLE movie. It was so disappointing. Michael and Anthony, being the artists that they are, are very into old movies and stuff. So we decided to watch White Christmas, a 1950's movie and the source of the song "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas." We thought it would be so great, but no, it was complete crap. We stuck it out though because it was actually quite fun to see just how bad the movie really was. All in all, a very good Christmas Eve. Christmas morning was nice and relaxing. We left Michael's around noon and had to book it back to Clifford because Anthony found out the movers were coming to pick up his stuff the next day, a day sooner than we thought. So we came home, I helped him pack. Boxing day was all moving, all day, but we got it done so that's good. I'm glad the move went so fast, because I think it could've easily dragged out for days and consumed too much of the holiday. And we actually were able to leave earlier for our trip than expected because of the expedited timeline.
We left for Yangshuao on the 27th in the evening. We took an overnight bus and had a pretty good trip there. The bus was very comfortable, and aside from the cursing driver and the two road blocks which held us up for two hours, it was a very peaceful ride. We got into Yangshuao around 10 am on the 28th and spent the morning finding a hotel and getting settled in. Yangshuao is a small town in the foothill mountians of the Himalayas. It's a total tourist town, I didn't see any evidence of any other industry in the town at all. Being that it's winter, it wasn't high tourist season, the river was a little dried up and the vegetation was obviously not as green and lush as it would be in summer, but still it was very scenic. We spent the rest of the 28th walking around the cobble streets, looking at all the little shops and cafes. We walked along the Li river, normally as majestic as the Red river in Winnipeg, but now it was mainly dried up river bed with a little stream flowing through the middle. On the 29th we rented mountain bikes and rode outside the town about 5km or so to Moon Mountain. I thought we were going to climb a mountain, at least that's what Anthony said we were going to do. So in my mind I thought dirt trails, a little bit of rock climbing, you know, real mountain climbing. I mean these were real mountains and so what else was I to think? After four months though, you'd think I'd learn that nothing is logical or normal or as expected, THIS IS CHINA. So we park our bikes at the entrance to the "trail", pay our 15 RMB to go up (yep, they charged us to go up the mountain) and we started walking up some stairs. I thought, oh this is just the beginning of the trail, maybe it's so steep in some spots or whatever so they put some stairs in. But oh no, there were not just some stairs, it was ALL stairs. The entire way up the mountain was stairs. I couldn't even guess how many flights it would be equivalent to, but man was that hard work! The view was beautiful and the rocks were very cool! Unfortunately it was quite overcast and foggy the whole time we were in Yangshuao, so the visability was bit limited, but we could still see quite a lot from the top of the mountain. In the afternoon we went exploring through a huge water cave. We took a little boat to get into the cave. It was freaky, I got incredibly claustrophobic on the way in. We had to lie down flat in the boat and even then the ceiling of the cave was only inches from our noses! That was just to get into the cave though. Once we were inside we got out of the boat and walked around for hours. The cave was so beautiful, stalagmites and stalactites everywhere! It was a living cave, which was so cool! For those of you not in the know on the geological terminology, this means the cave was growing rock icicles from the ceiling and floor. In summer there is a mud pool and three swimming pools in the cave, we saw them, but it was a bit too cold to go in. After the caves we were dead, so many stairs, so much walking! Day 3, the 30th we still had the bikes so we decided to go exploring some of the surrounding farm towns. We biked 23km north of Yangshoau to this little town called Xingping. It sits right on the Li river and is the departure point for a lot of boat trips up and down the river. We arrived there at lunch, our bums felt purple and our legs were exhausted, so we rested in a great little Chinese restaurant for a few hours. By the time we were ready to get up, it was too late to see or do anything else so we had to turn around and bike back to Yangshuao. That's one thing about China, the whole country is in the same time zone which means the hours of daylight are quite skewed. We went for massage when we got back, our muscles were so sore it hurt to sit! It was the first time I had Thai massage, that was a great experience! Basically Thai massage means using feet, knees and elbows, not just hands to do the massage. And you don't lie on a table, but on a bed. At first I was a little suspicious of the whole bed thing, because I was thinking, "how do I lie on my stomach, my face will be smushed in the mattress. But I didn't have to lie on my stomach. I had this little Chinese girl doing the massage and she told me to squat at the end of the bed, then she came behind me, rolled us backwards and lifted me up on her feet! She then proceeded to give me an AMAZING back massage in the air! How cool is that? I mean, only in Asia could you ever have an experience like that! So I was feeling much better after that. The whole time we were in Yangshuao, we had this pushy guy trying to "help" us arrange what we wanted to do. We were staying in his hotel, so we kept running into him everyday and he of course was just acting as a middle man for all his friends, and we could see that he wasn't going to get us a good price on anything, it fact it would be more expensive to go through him because he would get a cut too. So we were successful in avoiding him for most of the times, but finally on the 30th Anthony caved and agreed to let him arrange a boat tour for us for the 31st in the morning. He promised a private driver and it sounded good, plus we wanted to go on a tour anyway, so he didn't talk us into something we weren't planning. So whatever, I was leary though. We came down in the morning and there was this beautiful Mercedes parked outside the hotel, and a Chinese driver standing in the lobby, so I'm thinking, "wow, this guy actually came through!" So we go with the guy out the door, but he doesn't open the car door, and I'm starting to get this sinking feeling. And then I come around the other side of the car and here it is...a bike with a flat bed cart hooked up to it. And the guy points to the cart and tells us to get on. And we look at him, and Anthony says we can walk, so we walked with our private driver, because in all fairness, that's what he was. So I'm thinking, wait, we need to go all the way to Xingping again to take this tour, we're not going to walk all the way to Xingping, and then I'm thinking, I'm not riding in this cargo cart all the way to Xingping either. But I kept walking, hoping, trusting that it had to get better, I mean it couldn't get worse right? So the guy walks us two minutes from our hotel to the public bus depot and tells us this is the bus to Xingping and he leaves. I'm stunned. We paid good money for this tour, I mean GOOD money in Chinese terms and this is what we got, a guy walked us to the public bus depot. Of course we had to pay for our bus fare, that was not included in the fee we had paid. We took this nasty public bus that drove a steady 20 km an hour all the way to Xingping, so it took us a little over an hour to get there when it had taken us only 2 hours to bike the day before. Talk about frusterating! And then we meet this Chinese lady when we get off the bus, and she seems to know us and she asks if we're from the Dong Fang Hotel, so we say yes and she points to this Chinese car (basically a primitive motor, three wheels and a covered cart - terribly old world and quite fun to ride in!) and tells us to get in. So we go with the driver who takes us to the river and charges us for his services - I guess that wasn't covered in our fee either...hmm so what was? We then meet another lady who walks us down the dock and shows us our boat. Oh, so THAT's what we paid for, four middlemen and a BEAUTIFUL boat all to ourselves. Okay, so in the end it was worth it, but we were shaking our heads and laughing the whole time thinking we had been totally screwed out of our money. The boat trip was very nice, the scenery is gorgeous in that area and it was so nice and peaceful having the whole boat to ourselves. When we got back, we checked out of the hotel and caught a bus to Guilin, a big city north of Yangshuao. We thought we might have a bit better luck finding a New Year's Eve party there. The bus ride was only about an hour, so we got to Guilin just after lunch and spent a good part of the afternoon walking along the river and getting a sense of the city. It's very nice, definitely cleaner and more attractive than Guangzhou. We found a party at a club near the Sheraton where we had decided to stay for the night. So around 10 we headed to the club and it was really quite a good time! The music was totally my kind of dance music, none of this R&B, hip-hop crap you hear in North America, but classic European techno-dance. It was really good, and the entertainment was cool too. There was a bartender juggling flaming bottles and making flaming drinks, it felt like I was in the movie Cocktail. We met two America guys who are in China travelling around for a month, so we spent the evening talking with them. They were really fun to listen to. I'm realizing how well I've done adjusting to China. These guys had been here a week, and the one was like, "if I don't get a cheese-steak sandwich in the next 24 hours I'm going to die! I'm so sick of rice!" And I'm thinking, man it's going to be a long three weeks for his friend, 'cause he ain't goin' find nuttin' like that round here yo. Sorry, they were just SO very American! So we hung out there with them until around 1 am. Then we headed back to the Sheraton, but we weren't staying in a room per se, we were staying in the sauna. See what you can do here in China is go to these fancy hotels, and in the basement they usually have a sauna. So you go in, take a shower, sit in the sauna for a while and then naturally you go for massage (do I sound addicted? I may be, I'm not sure. I'm going to go through withdrawal when I come home though, I know that for sure!). So we had the best two hour body massage I've had yet in China. The girl was so good, and for once she actually massaged my back and shoulders more than my legs. Now this has become an issue for me. After you get over the initial excitement of cheap massages, you begin to take the massage more seriously, and you start thinking about what's going on. I've noticed most Chinese massages focus at least half of the body massage on the legs, and even more specifically the calves. I've started to get upset about this, because when I really think about it, why would my calves require 20+ minutes of massage? They don't. So why do the Chinese focus on the calves so much? Because it's easy to massage the calves. Ah!!! People here can be so lazy! It's not just me either, in conversations with other people, they've reached the same conclusion. To give someone an hour long back massage is work, and when you're doing that all day, it gets exhausting. Okay fair enough, but I'm paying for a body massage, not a leg massage, so it was such a relief to finally get two hours of real body massage. The cool thing was they gave us facials too! So by about 3:30 we were done, and hungry, so we ordered food and then what you do is you sleep in the massage room on the massage beds. Okay, so it's not the same as a king-sized comfy bed like you could get if you stayed a few floors up in the hotel, but they only charge you 20 rmb extra to stay the night, so I mean, you can't even get a crappy hotel room for that, let alone a nice warm room with reasonably comfortable beds, plus you just had a massage and you don't have to move and in the morning you can take a hot shower and even go in the sauna again if you want. So it was all very nice! We spent New Year's Day walking around Guilin more and seeing all the big sights - more hills, lots of pagodas and a palace. We left late in the afternoon, went back to Yangshuao to pick up the rest of our luggage that we didn't bring with us, and caught the overnight bus back to Guangzhou. We got back early this morning and now tomorrow I'm back to school. So there you have it. My Christmas holiday in China.
Now, for those of you who want to hear some of the gorey details of life in China, I have story for you. It's not pretty, and definately not for those of you with a weak gag reflex or a queezy stomach. I'm just warning you, don't read it if you don't want to hear the brutal truth of what some days are like. If you think the stories I write here are too cynical, real, discouraging whatever, then please don't read this. But if you can look past the negative in my stories and see the people and culture for what it is, then I think you could handle this story. It's just one of those things where I have to tell the story, but I realize it's not for everyone, and want to give you the choice not to read it. So even from the title, you should be able to figure out if you want to read it or not. The story is called "The day of the puke, the pee and the poop". Okay, so I warned you, this is real China. You won't find this in a travel guide, but it is just the straight honest exposed truth of life in China. If you're daring enough to venture on this journey click the link and come with me!