moderation is a dirty word

i'm just going to rant for a while, because i'm in that sort of mood. if you're after a short blog, check back again some other time.

MORE ON FOOD

1) i didn't include a picture of 'gou rou' in my last blog, so here it is - ready and waiting for any watering mouth that happens by.

2) the word for animal in chinese is 'dong wu' which literally means 'moving thing'. as we have already learned in china, 'things' are good to eat, better to eat when they were once moving, and best to eat when they still are.

3) i've been asked what doggies taste like, but i have a lot of trouble distinguishing between the taste of different meats. for me it either tastes like chicken, or non-chicken. doggies taste like non-chickens.

4) most vegetarians i meet are broken by china. when you tell people that you don't eat meat, they look at you as if you've just told them that you enjoy touching your arsehole. a mild disgust, but an overwhelming curiosity at something so seemingly normal yet strange at the same time. it's a stream of consciousness that simply doesn't exist in china (vegetarianism, not arsehole touching - sniff your palm after shaking hands with any villager and you'll realise that they've most recently had the pleasure. they probably sniff their palms and realise the same of me...)

i've also included a picture of the pigs' penises (very rubbery) and a popsicle which made my stomach heave to even think about.

SINCE YANGSHUO

so i escaped the karsk mountains of yangshuo and caught a train to kunming, yunnan province. we arrived a massive 10 hours before i thought we would, so it was all a bit confusing. i think when i asked the ticket inspector what time we would arrive, she thought i was asking what time we wouldn't arrive, and gave me the correct answer to that question.

as soon as i got off the train and put my bags into a hostel, i headed for a nearby mountain range and scaled the highest peak i could find. the little trek taught me two things about china:

1) the chinese are disgusting litter bugs. disgusting horrible nasty little litter bugs.
2) the chinese hate hiking/love convenience. everyone complains that you can't get a moment's peace in china, but as soon as you walk 30 minutes into any forest or mountain range, you're almost assured of solitude. there's a lot of catching buses or chairlifts up mountains, but as soon as you've cleared the chairlift or bus-accessible areas, you won't see a soul.

for this reason i'm not too concerned about the opening of the beijing-lhasa railway in july this year. goodbye lhasa - yes - but until they build a chairlift to the top of mt kailash, i think the rest of tibet will be safe (for the time being)

THE TROUBLE WITH PEOPLE (THEY ARE DUMB BASTARDS)

sometimes when i pass groups of chinese people and say 'ni hao', i am met with deadening silence and staring, then scoffing and laughing as soon as i've walked away. fucking rude. it doesn't happen often, but it really started to get to me, much more than it probably should have. so i enacted my 'i can be a rude bastard too' action plan. these days if i say ni hao to a group and am met with silence, i repeat 'ni hao'. if there is still nothing, i call out 'doesn't anyone here speak chinese?' and then stare at every member of the crowd. if there is still nothing, i say 'oh my god! that's so embarrassing!' and then walk away. usually people are shocked or just pissed off when i say it. i know it's all a bit childish and not a good way of making friends, but i am left with a feeling that is most satisfactory.

now you may say 'oh it's cultural'. culture shmulture. there's a difference between culture-based behaviour and being a dumb bastard, and these people are dumb bastards.

dumb bastards are not only chinese of course. i met an american boy a few days ago (who wanted to start his own school of philosophy after taking mushrooms and having some sort of an unholy communion with a tree in amsterdam), who asked me what 'ni hao' meant (after having spent three weeks in china) and saw fit to refer to the chinese as 'those bloody chinks'. i had to remove myself from his presence immediately before i punched his fuck-ugly head in. clearly, there is no shortage of dumb bastards in the world, and china and america both contribute amply.

DALI - the mountains, ondrej, the mountains!

recipe for happiness: head to the highlands. climb mountains.

i arrived in dali yesterday. it's an old town which has been wonderfully restored, has a largish ethnic minority group population, and a really lovely laid-back feel. it's situated between a massive lake and a snow-dotted mountain range - yum.

this morning i wanted to conquer the nearby mt zhonghe, so i set out at the crack of dawn (with very little idea of where i was going). i strayed into a restricted military area, but two gorgeous uniformed boys came and set me straight (if that's at all possible), and i was soon heading up the mountain full speed.

the only hiccough was that i forgot toilet paper, but was given a whole roll by a man who owned a guest house about 2 hours up the mountain. not a minute too soon. for those of you who don't know, ondrej is actually an old slavic word for 'he of the unpredictable and often watery bowel motions'. a painful legacy to endure.

the trek took about 9 hours. it was one of the most varied treks i've walked. i wandered up through a large grave-yard area (in the country, people bury their dead on the mountainside among the trees. very nice). and then headed up a rock-scrambling dusty area into a pine forest. those amazing pine-needle carpeted forest floors hold a secret to my heart! before long, the scenery changed to an open grassy area - whole mountainsides covered in yellow grass, and then a steep area covered with azaleas, a massive outcropping of rocks, and finally into a wet moss-covered forest area, with areas of slate-grey boulders extending to the limits of vision. at this stage it started getting really cold, and i was walking through dense mist and pockets of snow. i had ascended nearly 2000 metres from dali (2km above sea level) to the mountain-top (4km above sea level), and at times was struggling to catch my breath because of the altitude. i was exhausted and my vision was a little bit 'different'. not quite blurry, but almost.

the final leg of the ascent was fucking cold, windy and i couldn't see much at all. i didn't know whether the stretch would take 30 minutes or two hours, as my (hand drawn) map and directions were really unclear. about 20 minutes up from the final turn-off, i reached an area where the wind almost blew me off the cliffside. the air was frigid (see picture of plant with horizontal ice on it, and picture of small mammal that died of exposure) and i was by myself, at least 4 hours walk from help. i saw the headline in my head 'australian dies in brainless mountain climbing attempt', so i did something that i thought i would never do: i turned back.

i turned back!

and so it was that i have returned to dali, exhausted, and found out from my hostel staff guy that the exact point where i turned around was only 15 minutes from the peak. oh!

on one hand i am proud of myself for turning back. for letting my instinct for self-preservation kick in and prevent some sort of harm.

but i can't help feeling a sense of disappointment - as proud and childish and silly as this may seem, ondrej doesn't like to believe that ondrej gives up. ever.

(moderation is a dirty word): tomorrow i climb again!

pic 1 - gou rou
pic 2 - pig's penis
pic 3 - vomit popsicle
pic 4, 7 + 8 - ondrej in the mountains (check out filthy rubbish on ground in 8)
pic 5 - fields of dali
pic 6 - food time
pic 9 + 10 - near the top of zhonghe shan
pic 11 - this one forgot his thermals
pic 12 - alpine flowers