To pay homage to our breakfast, lunch, and dinner meals we visited the rice terraces in Guilin on our last vacation. En route our tour guide took us to a remote little town simply known as “Long Haired Village.” Yep, you guessed it, they never cut their toenails. I mean hair. The women grow it forever, cutting it only once between the ages of 16-18. The village belief is that the longer the hair, the longer the life. As you may have noticed from our photos, my face has since adopted this creed. They have a few peculiarities to them, namely that they don’t kiss prior to marriage. Rather, to express affection, to say “I love you”…they pinch your butt. Needless to say Courtney was dying to implement this custom into her daily life. The deeper the pinch, the deeper the love. Ok so I’m not sure about pinching by degrees, but the pinching of glutes is definitely a thing. Just remember, the universal symbol for money, your thumb tapping against your index and middle fingers, means love when applied to your rear end in an isolated village in the mountains of Southern China. I’m sure you’re glad to know. Our tour guide Sara was funny. Her English was fantastic, in fact we learned she originally grew up in that village, and were it not for an American family (from Georgia of all places) that paid for her to get out and go to school, she’d be pinching butts all of her life (read that last part again, this time in your best Nacho Libre voice). As great as her English was, some things like time got lost in translation. The first was at the village she told us she would “catch up with us” on the path we were walking. 20 minutes later while we’re bartering for a portrait she runs toward us from the opposite direction, saying in effect the bus was leaving and that she’d been scouring every strand of hair in the village looking for white people. “If you miss bus I think maybe you be married here forever.” What happened to “catching up with us”? Later at the rice terraces she told us to meet her by the entrance at 3:50. “I think maybe no shopping this time,” she said to the foreigners, but only looking at us. So we stroll into the entrance at 3:47, proud that we made our imposed deadline. Sara was nowhere to be found, along with the rest of our group. Then I saw a guy with brown teeth, a smile I couldn’t forget, and remembered he was on our bus. “We wait for you,” he said. By the time we walked halfway down the mountain we found the bus, with everyone else on it, and an unhappy Sara saying “Late again!” We still don’t know how everyone got the secret memo to meet early and board, even the Frenchmen somehow figured it out. But she definitely said 3:50. 20 Seconds of Courage I can understand the Chinese having frustrations with us, because I know we’ve had our fair share with them. Much of it I’m sure comes from cultural differences, things they deem perfectly normal and in America we would call highly inappropriate. One that made my blood boil last week happened while we were in XingPing waiting to catch a bus home. We’ve noticed repeatedly that some Chinese people have no respect for the purpose and order of lines. If you’ve waited 20 minutes to buy your train ticket, some dude will just walk up to the front of the line and cut you off right as you put your passport on the counter. Even if you’re Chinese, there’s no exchange of “I’m sorry, but my train is about to board, is there any chance I can cut in real quick so I don’t miss it?” There’s no apologies, no explanation, and no courtesy. And no “Xie Xie” (thank you) when they’re done. Just the “adios” of their behind and rice cooker in tow, off to cut the food line and get their chicken feet before boarding. This drove me nuts. So at the bus station when there’s a line a mile long and people continuously walk from the back to the front and squeeze their way into a vehicle that’s packed like it’s bound for a certain country border, I lost it and walked up there. Maybe it was the knowledge that none of these peeps spoke a lick of English and my ensuing tirade would go right over their heads. I’m a pretty non-confrontational person, and the thought of a one-way dialogue gave me some confidence. When the next perpetrator tried to shimmy his way onto my ride home I grabbed the shirt around his neck and pulled, hoping the stretch marks would serve as an eternal reminder to wait his freaking turn. His foot got to the first step on the bus before being yanked back to earth. “Hey!” I said, giving him the look that said I’d never punched a man before but this certainly felt like an appropriate time to start. “The line is back there!” I yelled, pointing towards my beautiful wife pulling up the rear. He just looked at me, not knowing the words, but more than understanding my body language. The stare down continued for a few nanoseconds before he put his head down and walked to the back. The Chinese people in line looked at me like I was crazy and the few Europeans that spoke English were laughing. Unfortunately my masquerade only stopped one misdemeanor, while three more outlaws boarded at the village grandma’s encouragement. I gave her a piece of my mind too. It seemed like she was even telling me to get on the bus, no doubt glad to be rid of the crazy American that was ruining her oversight. But we weren’t about to participate. Twenty minutes later our turn finally came and we trekked back. I asked someone that spoke English why people are allowed to do that here. She said they weren’t, but nobody ever bothers to stop them so they just cut and skip rampantly. Not on mine and Brandon’s watch anymore though. The next time someone tried to cut Brandon they were welcomed with a stiff-arm and a lesson to not try their tricks on Americans. At the Avatar Mountains a guy came up and literally shoved his money and I.D. into the ticket counter while we were in the middle of our transaction. I stepped into his kitchen and told him to wait, then after finishing I blocked his way so the person behind me could go instead. Patience is an eternal principle, and it seemed I had lost mine. Squatters For Days Remember that hole in the ground I told you about? The one where the toilet doesn’t exist? Ok so picture this: We’re about to go on a hike when my lunch hits the fan and I figure it’s probably best to trek with less weight anyway, so I run into the nearest joint I can find and look for the loo. It happened to be under the stairs, and in real life I think it was Harry Potter’s closet. No matter, I’m squatting anyway right? The door won’t shut and I look down to see a hose poking through, it looks like it comes from the hallway. So I kick it out and set up shop. There’s no light switch so I’m dropping missiles in the dark, hoping to avoid a crash landing. It’d be a bad time to miss, my other clothes are 15 miles away, although Chinese buses smell like a landfill, and I’d probably just blend in. I’m just happy as a rat when all of a sudden my feet feel wet. It’s pitch black but there’s no way I’d just slipped in my own mess. What was it? Beginning to choke on the musty smell of my own business I kicked open the door, shorts around my ankles, ready to duke it out with whichever Chinese kid missed trying to pee into the trash can. While I did encounter one of those juveniles later (he was putting on a yellow laser show outside McDonalds), all that met me now was a washing machine hose. Whoever wanted to rid their shirt of B.O. (impossible in China) was consequently flooding my makeshift bathroom. They told us in training we all would have our own squatter horror stories. Hopefully I got mine out of the way. I just can’t get over the restroom situations here. It cracks me up because in every train station or bus stop there is always a “no smoking” sign posted next to the squatter. And without fail that is where all the men go to light up. I would’ve graced you with a picture of the irony but you’d have to take the cigarette butts in with the other butts. Some don’t have doors to the stalls but they’re angled in such a way that you can’t see if they’re occupied unless you stroll on in there. Only to stumble upon a crouched Chinaman, constipated with carcinogens. Organized Chaos Yangshuo further reinforced the truth that rules simply don’t apply in China. Take roads for example. They have lines, meant to be driven between. In China, drive wherever the heck you want. The wrong side of the road, the sidewalk, on top of people, it’s all fair play. While this can’t possibly be true, we did have someone here tell us the bus drivers are allowed a certain number of kills per year. A pedestrian here, a pedestrian there. While riding through town on bicycle we saw “the light” a few times. McKenna got clipped by the opening of a bus door. Now when we hop on a bus and they actually go the speed limit or drive on the right side of the road we get annoyed. In Yangshuo, the buses pass cars in the fast lane. Wada Ya Mean? Business is cut throat in the tourist arena. When I told our host at the Wada Hostel I would be booking our bamboo raft through someone else, she told me in her broken English that it was very bad and she didn’t like me. I told her I’d compensate her by purchasing some books the hostel had. “Do you forgive me?” I asked. Her eyes looked puzzled. “Do you know what forgive means?” “No, what does it mean?,”she responded quizzically. “It means if someone hurts you and you say ‘it’s ok’, that you forgive them. Everything is all good.” “Ohhhhhh,” she nods, understanding now. “Yeah I no forgive you. I never forgive you.” Well, at least her English was improving. Boy or Girl, Who Knows? “Is it a boy or a girl?” I asked the chef at our hostel, who at 38 weeks looked like she was about to explode. “I don’t know,” she replied. “Oh nice, gonna wait until it comes out huh?” “Actually, in China it is illegal to know the gender of the baby prior to birth,” she informed me. “Wow.” Having an abortion when parents found out it was a girl really was a thing back in the day. I read about that in history books, now I was confronting a woman living in the aftermath. Crazy. Quotes of the week:
“Yummy for your tummy. More cheaper.” – a cute old Chinese woman trying to convince us that her restaurant was better than the Moon Hill Café. “Don’t slip.” – Brandon says as we’re reflecting on the communal trough that doubled as a squatter. The 2 foot trench ran through the entire bathroom, and had one of those archaic pots from the Stone Age that filled with water and when it overflowed, the whole thing tipped over. You could be doing your thing and if the water bucket splashed all of a sudden someone else’s gift, complete with a cigarette, would slide on down into your neck of the woods. Don’t slip, you might just plant your foot in some fertile soil. Shirt of the week: “I choose Jesus.”
1 Comment
Angela Clegg
10/23/2016 08:37:12 pm
I don't know how I missed this one earlier. Great as always!
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Casey and courtney ClemOur goal is to make you laugh at least once every post. Archives
October 2017
Categories |