Out the Window

When do we get there?

That question earned me a lot of "Be quiet!" in my youth. I was a horrible traveller: couldn't sit still; didn't keep quiet; fidgeted until my parents went mental. I wanted to be there!

Now that I'm in another country, the landscape is a destination in itself. Here's a little of what I've seen out the window in China.

The Kowloon Express

The trip from Hong Kong to Guangzhou was a study of opposites. As the train left the city, the New Territories flew by; the trees and hills greened out the view. Farther along the track, I got my first taste of China's driving force: buildings poured out smoke, obscured themselves in a brown haze; ghosts of present industry.

The approach to Guangzhou gave no hint of the urban civility I would find. There were grimy manufacturing buildings and rundown apartment blocks. Faded brick and mud-puddled potholes in back alleys blighted the outskirts.

Fly-by-Night

The fly-by-night bus took me from Guangzhou to Yangshuo.

I fell asleep only to be awakened by China's poorly maintained highway system. Two hours into a trip that would last ten, the uneven pavement stopped and started until I reached my destination. I wouldn't sleep, except in snatches, for the rest of the night.

This was the point that I made two discoveries about Chinese driving habits. First, provided nobody is coming in the other direction, drivers will go wherever there is space. Chinese drivers know the exact length and width of their vehicles; tailgating and passing cautiously have no meaning here.

Second, the Chinese use their horns to communicate, though not frustration or profanity. Horns convey warning and action. Honk, honk: don't cross the street; I'm driving and may run you over! Honk, honk: don't walk there; I'm behind you and want to get by! Honk, honk: don't swerve out; I'm passing you on the left and don't want to get crushed!

A bus rumbled over uneven, narrow roads at speed, sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right; it ran up the back of lorries and other buses, passed where there was enough space to squeeze by, honked all the while; tucked itself back into the procession when lorries and buses came the other way, undertaking the very same process.

Welcome to the fly-by-night bus!

The Sleeper to Kunming

Paul Theroux, one of North America's better-known travel writers, is a great advocate of trains, but I've always considered him a bit of a wimp. Though he does these massive trips, he's often in first-class sleeping quarters and complains when he's not. During his trip in The Great Railway Bazaar, Theroux whined when the conductor told him, at one point, that his ticket was not good for a first-class berth. I thought he should just get over it and take his seat.

Then I took the sleeper train from Guilin to Kunming.

My sleeper train was a marvel of comfort and luxury. It made the ordinary difficulties of long distance travel - stiff joints, cramped quarters, the person next to me sleeping on my shoulder - a thing of the past. I stretched out to full length and relaxed under a quilt. I read my book, Ian Rankin's Mortal Causes. I slept for nine hours of an eighteen hour trip.

I was in a completely different part of China when I woke up. The limestone mountains of Guanxi were far behind me and, looking out the window, the hills rolled more and did not impose on anything. There were rock formations on them, which looked like tree trunks carved out of a larger, jagged stone. I popped my ears and got ready to leave, rested.

So, a change of heart: sleeper trains are a wonderful way to travel.

Vegetable Sack Travel

This is the story of how a vegetable sack and a gas can got me to the top of a mountain.

I had planned to visit Longji, the Dragon's Spine Rice Terraces, and do some hiking. The plan included taking piecemeal buses north from Yangshuo to Guilin to Longsheng, a grubby little pockmark of a town. I was to stay in Longsheng and see the rice terraces as a day-trip.

Arriving in Longsheng, I came right up against my lack of Mandarin. My brother had guided me around Guangzhou and Yangshuo was about the most Western-friendly town in the whole of China. This was different. Very few people spoke any English and I had to use my Tall White Guy Power to get anywhere. The girls I smiled at happily led me to a hotel, where the proprietor was confused about my planned adventure.

"You don't stay at the rice terraces?" She frowned, asked the question again, and proposed a different course. "I have hotel at the rice terraces, you stay there. Nice girl runs the hotel, she speak English, will meet you at the bus." The price was right too.

But what's the catch, I thought.

"I run get vegetables, be back, put you on the bus." Ah. So I was to be an errand boy.

I agreed to the plan, mostly because the hotels in Longsheng were over-priced and I couldn't see enjoying my time there. She ran off and came back twenty minutes later with a bushel of vegetables and a local bus ready to head up the mountain. I got on.

"Hey, I have two things here," she said, pointing to the vegetable sack and a gas can, "get off at the last stop!"

Local buses in China are an experience. Glorified Westphalia vans, these things get crammed to bursting so that locals can get themselves and their goods between villages. I'm pretty sure that our bus housed most of a grocery store and its customers at one point: 22 people, several egg cartons and many baskets of fruits and vegetables. We only lacked a contribution from the meat section, livestock, which I'm told can occasionally make an appearance.

My bus wound its way upwards on a narrow piece of mountainside concrete. We made slow progress until a parked truck and a warning sign stopped us; a road crew was laying ashphalt up ahead. Perched on a cliff in the middle of northern Guanxi province, I got to watch a mechanic fix a couple of leaf-blowers while I waited. Mechanics, grease and oil smell the same in China.

The road crew eventually let us pass and we drove up to the rice terraces' parking lot. The promised meet-and-greeter was there. He grabbed the supplies, affixed them to a bamboo pole and started on our mandatory walk up to the village. Thing is, the hotel wasn't at the first village; it was at the second one almost at the top of the mountain. I got to do a thirty-minute hike with twenty kilograms strapped to my back.

The journey that day started at 9am in Yangshuo and ended sometime after 6pm in Tien Tou village, Longji. After a day of disjointed travel, I was glad for a shower, a hot meal and a bed. The hotel proprietors were glad to see their vegetable sack and gas can, too.

Tourist Trap, Traveller Paradise

Never has "hello" sounded so insidious as during my trip to Yangshuo.

"Hello, you need bike to rent?!"

"Hello! Water, cold water?!

"Hello, DVD?!

"Hello," with a hand on my arm.

"Hello!"

The hawkers and vendors of this small mountain town in Guanxi province were everywhere. They appeared at my dinner table. They blocked my path. One old woman chased me up a mountain. I just reached for that cold, dead spot in my voice and said bu - or, in the case of the old woman, used my long legs to put her out of breath!

Even my introduction to Yangshuo was poor. Arriving before sunrise, I found myself face-to-face with a crowd of people. One flashed a Hostelling International card and said he had space available. I said "okay", went with him. As he kept taking me to small hotels, though, not hostels, I knew something was wrong. I knew I was being sold something. But I put down money on a room, anyway. Perhaps I wanted him to stop talking. Perhaps I wasn't thinking.

Worn thin and grumbling, I walked into the brightening streets and looked up. There were the mountains. They reclined above Yangshuo, green and soft and easy. They were big, too, bigger than a picture or a painting. I had to stand back and turn around to see them. The sun, finally risen high enough, kicked off the water in front of me.

I actually said it aloud: "Look at where I am."

The next few days were full of hiking and some of the most gorgeous views I've seen. Hills in Yangshuo Park saw over the stalls and vendors to the Li River. At the top of Moon Hill, I looked out over everything with students from Guangzhou.

This town deserved to be hated - "Hello!" - but the beautiful scenery saved it. I just had to get (most) of my money back from the hotel owner-cum-used car salesman and find better accommodation.

I just had to say bu, keep walking and look up.

Guangzhou, Part 3: English Lessons

What would it be like not to speak English？What would it be like to look for the English words to something you know how to say very simply in another language? What would it be like not to find those words？

To answer my questions, I went to my brother's classroom. He teaches for a private organization, English First, so the kids who show up there are high-school or university students. They come for extra instruction and homework on top of their regular studies.

After introductions and Question Period with the new foreigner, Justin moved us along to storytime. A student would start the story with one sentence and each student after would add one more to move the story along.

Our second story was tabloid-perfect: it had family conflict, violence and lust. According to the boys in the class, my brother and I were walking down a street and came upon a pretty girl. The girl had eyes only for me; as a result, my younger-not-smaller brother laid a beating on me (jerk - what am I to do if the girl likes me better?). By this time, the story had come 'round to the girls, who put an end to our strife. My brother and I made up. I finished storytime with the girl and a black eye.

Once we'd had a break, the students played games. They had to determine the missing words in a sentence, find synonyms for some words and spell others. What struck me in all of this was that, despite the odd blank look, these kids threw themselves into the language. They tried.

It was fun to see students work so hard to learn another language. Made me want to improve my high school French, which I'll do just as soon as I've mastered "please" and "thank you" in the half-dozen languages I'll need on this trip. One thing at a time!

Guangzhou, Part 2: No Big Smoke

I came to China with an idea of what I would find. Books told me that cities here were dirty and overcrowded. Pictures showed me people on littered, coal-black streets, surgical masks in place. The image: the British industrial towns of the nineteenth century - the Big Smoke.

Guangzhou didn't fit this image. Full of green spaces, open squares and shaded walkways, this city had planned for the recreation and health of its citizens. It had given them a place to live in, to enjoy.

That first day, my brother and I went to Yuexiu, one of the many parks in the north of the city. We strolled the pedestrian paths and stayed off the grass like the sign told us to - Don't Hurt Me For Your Pretty! We enjoyed a seat in the shade while mothers pushed baby strollers and old men shuffled by with wide eyes for the two huge white guys on their left.

Later, we lounged at Chien Jia Square, an expanse of precise concrete, surrounded by manicured bushes and flowers and trees. The square gradually filled with people: badminton players; girls from a department store in their crisp pink uniforms, on a dinner break; a man taking his bird for a walk.

In these places, the park and the square, the people of Guangzhou enjoyed their leisure - a sharp change from Hong Kong's go-go atmosphere.

The relaxed pace continued the next day with a visit to Sun-Yat Sen University. The campus had close but breathable lanes and a green canopy, very much like the University of Victoria at home. The environment was mellow, which was also true of a walk along the Pearl River. A wide boardwalk provided enough room to walk in the sun, sit on one of the many benches or play the Chinese version of hacky-sack.

But the river was still brown and Guangzhou was still a city. Streets smelled of something that should have been thrown out. A woman held her child, bare-bottomed, over the root of a tree, hoping. The threat of being over-run by dirt was constant.

Not every city had succeeded in dealing with this threat. Other travellers told me that Beijing and Shanghai were just as polluted as the books and pictures made out. Industry and pollution had run rampant in the streets.

The same was not true of Guangzhou. My preconceptions dashed, I could not describe that city as the Big Smoke: the sun shone in a blue sky.

Guangzhou, Part 1: Round Mass of Food

Today, I start a series on Guangzhou. It's a city that enjoyed immensely thanks, in large part, to my younger brother, Justin. He showed me a lot, but made sure that I ate well, too. So, to begin, a note on Guangzhou's food.

I could eat my way through hundreds of restaurants in Guangzhou and still find more to sample. From steamy hot bao dzu at a corner stall to crispy, fried seafood to spicy, fresh-made noodles, this town has food for every palate. It more than lives up to its reputation for being serious about eating.

First stop, on a evening that poured warm rain, was a Buddhist vegetarian restaurant. We met my brother's co-worker, Leo, who stalked into the restaurant under his arch-villain eyebrows, all angles and bones, wearing a shirt that read "I'm not lovin' it" in English and Chinese. Through conversation about China and teaching English and American politics, we filled ourselves with cabbage in coconut milk, noodles, beans, pretend chicken with button mushroom - they served a bunch of meats that weren't, actually - and faux-fish in a sticky sweet sauce. We stayed away from the Burn Round Mass of Food, the Steam Turnip Pill and the Joss-Stick Frailty Duck.

Next morning, my brother treated me to dim sum. I've been for this type of meal before: sit at your table and order course upon course upon course of Chinese delicacies. But here was different; on Up Down 9 (Shang Xia Jiu) Street, this restaurant, this meal had ceremony to it. Take the tea: before we were even permitted to drink it, the server used the first pot to wash our bowls, our cups, our chopsticks. She poured water over the tea leaves and, from there, into two small cups. Using her own chopsticks, she ran all of our eating utensils through the weak tea and then poured it off into an ornate wooden receptacle. Everything had been cleansed; we were now permitted to eat.

The brothers dove into the menu. We ordered steamy shrimp dumplings, meat wrapped in thick rice noodle and pork with shitake mushroom in a savory soy-based sauce. When we ran out of our own ideas, we took suggestions and got dumplings stuffed with minced pork and soup and a very light, sweet pastry that rather looked the fossilized root of a tree. That was fun with chopsticks! But it was another fine meal.

That evening, my brother took us to a seafood restaurant in an alley - an alley where the words "no activity here at night" were written on the wall across from us. Two of my brother's other co-workers joined us to gorge. Susan was a shy Chinese girl with a round face, a smile and a good grasp of English. Ben, next to me, was an American with a slow drawl and a shaggy head. On plastic chairs, we sat and munched fresh fried squid, green beans and shrimp in a syrupy sauce that ran river-like down our hands and arms, diverted by knuckles and sinews. That last dish, the tangible nature of eating it, abandoning chopsticks, tearing off the shrimp heads and sucking our fingers afterwards, made the meal a particularly memorable experience.

The other food encounters that made Guangzhou great happened just around the corner from my brother's flat. For breakfast one morning we stopped at a corner stall and ordered bao dzu, which surprised me with juice and meat and steam when I bit in, and grilled flat bread with subtle hints of green onion and sesame. We did dinner that night at a Muslim restaurant down the street, where the owners made their own noodles, tossing them and stretching them and, finally, serving them in a rich, spicy sauce. It was wonderful!

These are only the highlights. I could go on and tell you, blow-by-blow, what I ate for every meal, but I suspect you're no longer listening. If I've done my job well, you're too hungry to continue. Enjoy your trip to the refrigerator.

An Introduction to Asia

Where a land and its culture are completely new to an observer, to slip into the place by degrees, to slide ever so slowly into the differences, is very nice. In Looking for China, Judy Schultz titled her chapter about Hong Kong "The Land Between" and she was right: it's a place of neither here nor there, permanently lodged between the West and the East; and the perfect place to start a trip to Asia.

Arriving in Central, the business district, on that first morning, I couldn't have told you that this was Asia. There were people in suits, both dark- and light-skinned, hustling everywhere, crowding onto the metro, managing their Blackberrys. There were Starbucks storefronts with customers reading newspapers over expensive coffees. There was a polite voice announcing the stops on the subway. This could have been any city in North America, except that the subway voice spoke with a mild English accent and cars drove on the left side of the road.

Then I realized that all the signs had Chinese characters on them. Up the hill towards Queen Street and Hollywood Road, other signs of Asia appeared too. Narrow alleys replaced broad streets. Wide storefronts receded and stalls crammed with anything that could be sold filled the hole. Overhead walkways simply disappeared and the pedestrians fit themselves in where they could. Vendors leaped from piles of knick-knacks, jewelry and little red books - surprise! - to harangue the unsuspecting passer-by. Space was at a premium.

Even the smell changed. Gone was the sharp divide between pristine, air-conditioned office buildings and the urban odour of everywhere - engine exhaust and litter and industry. Here was the pungency of food for sale. The nosy-ness of fresh seafood flopping around in shallow water and of fishmongers cleaning a purchase right on the spot. The heavy waft of a natural medicine shop - dried birds nests available here! The sticky sweetness of a noodle stall.

I loved watching these pieces of a foreign world. They went right on with their day, a little China, as if the English never arrived. But the English did show up and I was glad. The western influence on Hong Kong gave me time to get comfortable with Asia; it also gave me access to the comforts of home and I made sure to get my fill. I even went to McDonald's before I caught the train from Kowloon's Hung Hom station.

After my hashbrown, I was ready for mainland China.

The Trip to Get There

Travel is about the people you meet along the way, and the places you see. But especially at the beginning of a trip, it’s just as much about bus tickets and boarding passes and bags in transit.

The day of my departure, I started at 5am with a mad dash for the door. Despite all the planning – I neurotically went through my bags and could tell you where everything resided – the exit from my parents’ house seemed breathless. All the lists in the world wouldn’t have slowed me down. Even the stick-it note on my door, the one that exhorted me not to forget my passport and wallet, barely got a read. And I only just remembered my watch.

I slept my way through most of the morning with eyes wide open. It was enough simply to get there: to hand over my ticket, to board a bus.

There was plenty of time to spare at the airport, which was okay. I could watch this bizarre little city, retentively clean and sterile, and listen to what its transient citizens had to say. A gentleman behind me, for example, had this to say on gender roles:

“Guys have got to take responsibility by the age of 35. They can play around a little bit but, by then, they have to plan their lives. Girls mature earlier, but guys are just... weird.”

Well. Weird or not, I seem to have 6 more years of irresponsibility on my hands.

I finally boarded the plane and took off at 3pm. A lot of things make 14 hours of flying very comfortable: the exit seat with lots of leg room; passable food; movies; music, and; good company in the next seat over. Cathay Pacific provided most of it, but the company came courtesy of a very nice woman whose name escapes me, and who works as a consultant in Hong Kong. We chatted about who we are and what we do, and she told me all about my destination.

The flight was full of fitful sleep and we arrived, bleary-eyed, at Hong Kong International Airport (8pm local time). The simple logistics of travel had given me a focus. Buying tickets, tagging bags – arranging the onward journey – put all the planning and preparation into practice. But now I was tired and very glad to see my friend at the airport. He got me the rest of the way, just for one evening.

Right Here

I’m off to Asia and this is where you’ll hear about it. Right here: frenetic, steamy noodle stalls; claustrophobic crowds; language barriers and charades; hill tribes and city-dwellers; hopefully, a beach or two.

There are travel resources too. You’ll find links to travel guides, tourism agencies and news on the right-hand side of the page.

If you’re news-obsessed like me, you can read the Xinhua News Agency and China Daily, find out what China thinks and feels day-to-day. They’re an interesting counterpoint to western media like the Globe and Mail and BBC News.

I’ve included the Rough Guides and Lonely Planet websites too, both for different reasons. I like the content on Rough Guides better: it’s more detailed and gets off the beaten track more. But Lonely Planet has a really great bulletin board for users, the Thorn Tree. You can read opinions from people who have actually been to the places you’ll be going. Plus, Lonely Planet includes maps on its site. Maps are good.

The tourism sites for the countries I’ll visit are here, and the Government of Canada’s travel reports as well. They’ll give you tips on accommodation and health and travel.

But you want to hear about my adventures; these are just helpful resources if you’re interested. I leave for Hong Kong on the 7th and spend some time getting to know the city before heading to mainland China and perhaps the most challenging travel experience of my life.

I’m excited and scared all at the same time – it’s not every day that one heads to a country and a region whose culture is different from his own. I’ll see people and places and events that no one ever would in North America. And you get the blow-by-blow account. Right here.

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