kde domov muj?

the last thing i expected to see when i visited the benxi water caves (a 3km underground navigable river - the longest of such open to visiters in the world), was a drag queen. in a bikini. with a large python around her neck. performing a show in a crocodile pit. with 3 live crocodiles. surrounded by chinese families. clapping. politely. well...clapping politely until she ran through the crowd with that big snake and a large contingent of audience members stampeded (in a controlled way) out through the nearest exit.

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unexpected? yes. suprising? after 4 months in china? not at all. suprise? i'm no longer familiar with that term.

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so from baihe to shenyang, i made an overnight trip - the chinese way: i got a hard seat in a crowded train, entered into a loud discussion with everyone in my carriage and half the people in the next, got involuntarily plied with alcohol, cigarettes and processed meat while making pledges of lifelong friendship and mutually beneficial business agreements with people i couldn't even see, and spent the next two hours clinging to the window for dear life while the train went into a freefall spin around me and my stomach did backflips, before passing out with my face on an opened packet of chilli sausages.

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from shenyang i popped over to the aforementioned water caves. though i don't really enjoy caves secondary to a growing claustrodiscomfort (more an uneasiness and boredom than a full blown phobia), a 45 minute boat ride on an underground river with your very own chinese fan-club is simply magnificent. turns out there are some things money can buy.

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but i won't harp on about all of that. i'm back in beijing and my days in china are up: i'm writing this entry to conclude.

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a couple of years ago, on a different trip, i sent a final group email entitled 'kde domov muj?' (where is my home?). in it, i concluded that my home and heart belonged in melbourne.

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though a big piece of my heart still resides there, mainly because many of you live there (but particularly and especially because mum and dad live there), i've come up against a bit of a hurdle - a wall: home. i can't reconcile myself to the term.

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china has been wonderful (much more than that, as you may have gathered from all the ranting in previous blog entries). but it's not just china - it's this whole damn world that's turning me on. and the being 'me' part of it - the living of my life - is something i find wonderfully intense. i didn't know what to call it - happiness? sadness? love? but then a friend here in beijing pointed out that another czech had already described it perfectly - it's the unbearable lightness of being. spot on milan - way to go bro.

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maybe ondrej's changed and maybe he hasn't. probably hasn't actually. but my trip's resolved something for me - i feel deep within myself that my heart, home and me belong out here - out there. not in any one particular place - but everywhere.

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i'm looking forward to seeing those of you who are in melbourne. as long as i don't have any problems with australian customs (like the embarrassing incident of the coral i stole from venezuela in 2001), i've got a bottomless bag of hugs and kisses that i'm bringing back with me for individual, group and wholesale distribution.

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whoops! five and a half months has passed a bit quick hasn't it? yes it has. and now it's finally time to say: good bye china...hello ondrej!

the chicken or the egg?

in the darkened evening streets of chinese villages, ladies stand over thin troughs of embers, fanning them to heat the skewered meat that they cook and sell from the top.

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i ordered 5 cow-meat skewers before i spied something in the darkness that i'd never seen before - roughly ovoid shaped, with a yellow yolky section, but other parts that were squiggly, or smooth, or sticking out. i decided that it was a mushroom and ordered two.

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when they came, i pulled a little leggy thing off one before biting into it. the taste of yolk was distinct, mixed with another rubbery, almost meaty flavour.

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i looked down at the leggy thing on my plate. it was a leg. in the other mushroom i made out little feet, a head shape, a yolk - no longer an egg, but not quite yet a chicken. my stomach lurched. i staggered home and brushed my teeth for 7 days and 7 nights.

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after all the things i've eaten in china, i don't know why this should have affected me in the slightest, but it did. i was revolted.

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ondrej has found his limit.

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pics - chinese mushrooms

plan b

the eastern-most section of the great wall lies along the yalu river (which forms the chinese/north korean border), originally built to keep the heathens in pyongyang and out of beijing (so to speak). i spent a morning last week climbing this steep section of wall and blissing out in the sunshine before part of the mountain i was standing on was unexpectedly dynamited and i had to throw myself under cover as i shat my pants. that's china for you.

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there's actually a massive slab of land on the chinese side of the river that mao gifted to the north koreans as a show of friendship, so there's a long section of border where north korean land and chinese land is only seperated by a 2 metre wide creek. it's dotted with army posts. from a recently built (i mean restored) great wall watchtower on the top of a mountain, i looked through the grandmother of all binoculars at an airfield on the north korean side filled with modern bombing-and-killing-people type aircraft and other military bits and bobs. closer to home, at one of the army posts, i spied smoke coming out of individual nostrils of a smiling north korean soldier. it seemed extraordinary. i could have descended the mountain and initiated creek-side peace talks, but i don't think i would have been able to get back up the mountain again without my leg auto-amputating, and probably would have ended up with a bullet in my arse for my troubles.

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in dandong there's a bridge that only stretches halfway across the river. the americans accidentally blew up the other half at the same time that they accidentally blew up dandong's airstrip in the 50s. you can walk around on the remaining bridge on the chinese side. on the north korean side, in the direct line of sight, is a little 10 metre ferris wheel - the sort you see at country school fetes where older kids rock up stoned and start punching each other while their parents lie paralytic in the grass. the ferris wheel is an obvious attempt to show that north korea is wealthy enough to afford leisure, but a quick glance at the chinese side of the border, where modern apartment towers line the shore as far as the eye can see (in both directions) exposes the sham fun fair for what it is, and the irony is very saddening, and very troubling.

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i moved on to baihe, near changbai shan, the largest nature reserve in china. miles and miles of virgin pine forest stretch all the way to the horizon, crowned by the beautiful heaven lake, sitting in a volcanic crater that straddles the chinese/north korean border. it's the origin of the songhua river (you know, the one they dumped all the benzene and other chemicals into last year and then lied to everyone about?)

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i spent a wonderful day soaking it all in before being abandoned about 20 km from baihe for reasons i'm still grappling with. 3 hours later i was on my rescue bus with a group of chinese university students who all lined up to have their photos taken with me. much to their delight, i wrapped my arms around every single one like a bitch on heat while they struggled with their digital cameras on the bumpy road. i hadn't realised how much i was craving physical contact, but one busload of gorgeous young men later, as i sat back grinning like the cat who had had too much cream, i thought: 'wow...i needed that' :)

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after my plan to visit north korea went pear-shaped last week, i turned to plan b: make a dash over the border in the middle of the night with my pen torch and a packet of tim-tams. if it had worked, i'm sure i could have made it all the way to pyongyang and re-established peace and security in north east asia for generations to come: round table 5-nation talks, naked mud wrestling adjudicated by dwarves from vanuatu, and smiling nigerians taking it three ways were not even the tip of my masterful, top-secret grand-plan iceberg guaranteed of success.

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anyway, the plan fell through, for the obvious reason: they don't sell tim-tams in china. in fact, the chocolate here is heinous, like eating brown ear-wax but worse. i met some children so thin you would presume they had died of starvation had you found them lying on the ground, and tried to gift them my chocolate stores. their eyes brightened as they asked 'is it chinese?' i said 'of course it is'. there was a pause and an un-focusing of eyes as they replied: 'we're trying to lose weight'. bless.

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the only other thing worth writing home about was an incident that occured this morning. i was prancing around my chinese-only guest house looking for a shower wearing only a little pair of porn-shorts that left less to the imagination than had i been naked. ladies appeared and swarmed, and a ruckus ensued. eventually, the substance abusing owner emerged, and with his eyes on the prize, said "put some clothes on", before offering me the services of a prostitute. i followed the command, but declined the invitation.

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yes i'll be in australia next week. on top of everything else, it means that i'll finally be able to read my blog comments, so please feel free to leave messages from now on! go on, you know you want to :)
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pic 1 - the great wall at dandong
pic 2 - propaganda dropped over the border by the chinese during the korean war (from the museum to commemorate the fight against US aggression and aid korea). in a country where all major tourist sites have chinglish signs like 'no sexy moves or plunging down the staircase', the mind boggles to see perfect english being used over 50 years ago.
pics 3 + 5 - heaven lake on the chinese/north korean border
pic 4 - hello ondrej (minus feet) at the 'underground forest'

[beep]

i fled from beijing and headed to shanhaiguan, where the great wall meets the sea.

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i stayed in a nasty little hotel in the industrial part of town with crumbling wall plaster and a bathroom so unsavoury that i was afraid to enter. my room hosted a squadron of mosquitoes that would fly around my room in formation, and suck me dry each night (in a bad way).

the main square was an enormous rounded affair, bigger than the open area of fed square. big speakers were set up in all four corners playing music in the afternoon as groups of people played shuttlecock, hacky sack, laughed and talked and hung around.

at dusk, the square was transformed. imagine this: ~ 1500 people crammed into a big city space all dancing, jumping, laughing and clapping their hands wildly like energiser bunnies whilst the speakers blasted music. not chinese or traditional music either - but hardcore eurotrash techno. and then, rising above the sexy, deafening electronic beats, the following lyrics:

this is the time to rock! this is the time for sex!
this is the time to rock! this is the time to [beep]

but the [beep] was inconsistent, and at the end of the track the angry german girl's voice roared: "this is the time to fuuuuuuucccckkk!!!", whilst all around, old grannies pounded the concrete in their little chairman mao slippers and threw their arms up in exhilaration with great big smiles on their faces. i had a great big smile on my face too, though i was vaguely concerned that i'd stumbled into an alternative universe.

the sense of community and inclusion is powerful at these nightly gatherings. i've experienced them in a number of towns now, and i wish we had the same sort of thing in oz, and i don't just mean raves. you just feel like you're in love with everyone. and you are.

the great wall enters the sea at a place called 'old dragon's head'. it was fairly disappointing, having been built (sorry restored) in 1987, so i was over it before i arrived. but then the wall crosses a plain to a city fortress, called 'first pass under heaven' which is beautiful, and then heads up into the mountains. i swallowed my pride and took a chairlift to the top of a section of this mountain wall. for about half an hour, there was no-one else there. to walk along the wall, with the sun beating down and the mountain cliffs and crags falling away beneath you, and to be totally alone with all this...history...was exhilarating.

i went to an excellent great wall museum with some interesting propaganda, but it had a sign at the exit that i really appreciated. it said 'the great wall does not belong just to the people and history of china, it belongs to all people.' it really resonated with me because it appealed to a feeling that i have always held true - something difficult to express without using cliches. that we are all the same people - one enormous family of people. that anyone's history is everyone's history. that your story is my story. that no man is an island.

fact: at any given moment, there are an estimated 10 million people on trains in china.

i hopped onto a train with what felt like about 10 million other people, and came over to dandong this afternoon. it's right on the border with north korea! i can see north korea over the river! i wanted to cross the river and poke around for a bit, but apparently it's not that simple. what sort of an idiot turns up at the north korean border without a visa and expects to be over it within 24 hours and a minimum of fuss? hello ondrej?

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pics 1 + 4 - the great wall at jiao shan, shanhaiguan

pic 2 - reeking of piss

pic 3 - first pass under heaven

communism with a chinese face

nothing symbolises runaway consumerism like the designer thong. a thong for goodness' sake. i have always claimed to distance myself from any such expressions of materialistic indulgence. but a few weeks ago, as i was swinging around in ya show, (the 5 storey westerner-focused clothes market in beijing), i spied them - my first pair of fashionable flip-flops. who put that black stripe there in the middle? genius. i had to have them.

of course it didn't stop there. i needed to buy some shorts to match my new thongs, and a fake D+G cap to match my shorts, and how could i survive without ersatz italian sunglasses to top off the combination? i was swooning with all the bargaining. i emerged from the market in my completely new, completely fake, completely matching set and cruised down the street as if i was the coolest banana in beijing.

no - i still believe that there is no happiness to be found in materialistic pursuits, but no trip to china would be complete without a visit to the new temple - the market - for a spot of worship at the twin alters of capitalism and consumerism.

and of course one mustn't forget to wear one's designer thongs. because they just look so good.