"Return To Shaxi" and Beyond....

Splitting from Kunming for a few days for our epic sequel, "Return To Shaxi - The Halloween Visitation".... We're taking the bus to Dali with beautiful Laura from London, an architectural designer and all-around super chill sweet girl, who's lived in Sri Lanka and India the past six months....

Noon-thirty in Kunming to 10:00 PM in Shaxi! Bus to Dali, bus to Jianchuan, haggle the minivan kid at nine o'clock at night down to 100 qwai for the both of us; too much dough, but we just don't want to stay in a Jianchuan bordello and get the clap from the sheets.... We roll into the Horsepen Hostel while everyone is still awake except Slipper, and Shirley is super-happy to see us and gives us big hugs! IT's like coming home, this dear old Horsepen.... Slipper finally wakes up and comes out of his room and wonders what we're doing here! He's just not on point without some barbells in his hands....

Ritodhi's unofficial entry into the Guinness Book of World Records: 69 toothpicks stuck into beard, at Muslim Lady restaurant, Sideng

The dogs of the Horsepen: Mali the Fatass and Luoshi the Sex Addict

***Interview with Slipper***

- 24 years old so far, from Chengdu

- Learned how to make composting toilets because IT's good for the environment

- Loves mountains because he loves to take over their summits

- Old wood houses could easily catch fire because he smokes, he prefers modern houses because then you can't hear the neighbors and then you don't have to cut down trees; he likes concrete because IT's strong, and feels that IT's okay to make environmentally bad houses as long as they're strong

- New Chinese life is better than old Chinese life, technology makes everything better; cars and medical tech are great, living in the country is more healthy than in the city.... When cities take over all the countryside, he hopes he is in heaven

- Feels that wherever you live, you always want to be somewhere else; if you're from the city, you want to move to the country, and vice versa

- Likes old Chinese clothes, but finds that Western food has more power

- Feels there are not enough jobs in China, and people will need to move to other countries.... He wants to travel all over the world

- Message to young people: Do whatever you want to do, you can realize IT! Oh, and don't smoke! (waving cigarette in air)

*****

Hangin' at Ashley's! So many sexual innuendos.... So much sexual tension.... So many nonsequiturs!

Nicklas and Hanna both attend Country Town University in Sweden, and are majoring in travel and being blond - says Ashley (with a little help from Ritodhi)

Specxy: Spectacular and sexy.... tip of the hat to Nicklas' english learned from TV and movies

"IT mimics a turbo - a turbine - de blew IT.... (motioning towards groin with both hands) i have to go to the bathroom!" - Ashley

RITODHI (Motioning towards two empty chairs): Ashley, why did you get those two chairs?
ASHLEY: I HAVE FRIENDS!

"You should really not take your fingers off that thing while i'm around!" - Ashley

"i'm one of those filfs.... milfs.... whatever they're called." - Ashley

RITODHI: i like hilfs.... you know, hamsters you like to fuck?
NICKLAS: Hamstrung?

Our Shaxi Cultural Center Three-Ring Circus: Ashley as the Bearded Lady, Ritodhi as the Bear on the Unicycle, Nolan as the Clown, Nicklas as the Strongman, and Hanna as the Trapeze Artist

"Hurt.... i love hurt." - Ashley

"You could be one of those mims.... mimes.... no, those statues!" - Ashley

"My chest is tight." - Ashley

"We're tomatoes!" - Ashley to Hanna

"The octopus - the pussy garden - the Beatles!" - Ashley

"i'm going to fill up your whole thing there!" - Ashley

"Soccer Mom meets Janet Jackson" - Ritodhi on Ashley's dancing

Sam Mitchell is a kind old hippie fountain-of-info professor and doctor of all things Sino-Indian from Fredericksburg, Virginia, who runs the school program that originally brought Ashley to Shaxi; he and his wife Yuen bought and restored the Cultural Center, set IT up as a guesthouse, and gave Ashley the job there.... Sam is a talker for sure, very interested in spreading information and very happy to do so very consistently throughout the day; some people are just meant to be professors.... During his time he spent in Austin, Townes Van Zandt and Stevie Ray Vaughan knew him by name, and he's an old Deadhead for sure, having gone to 21 Dead shows between '72 and '80.... He has an encyclopedic knowledge (albeit with some spotty recall) of topics ranging from 20th-century American pop music to Sino-Indian relations to ancient Vedic literature, and was suuuuuper-psyched to meet Ritodhi, who matched him note-for-note in talking about Indian history, culture, and literature.... He even wheedled an Indian cultural book-list out of Ritodhi, of titles Sam wasn't familiar with that Ritodhi knew intimately.... Such fun to observe the two of them! Some people are just meant to meet each other....

- Our food-providers in Sideng: Nice Lady, Muslim Lady, Slow-Cooking Guy, Ripoff Lady (who charged us more when we brought our own broccoli & mushrooms and Ritodhi helped her cook IT than when we just bought all her stuff), Salty Lady, Baba Lady

Shibao Shan! We wake up earlier than is entirely comfortable for a trip up the local Bai people's holy mountain, led by Sam, who is eager to share the specific and unusual iconography with Ritodhi and Ashley and i.... The little-known iconography in the holy spots on the mountain sports the only Shaivite temple in the People's Republic of China, featuring a trident-and-dumru-carrying Shiva with six hands and snakes wrapping around his legs and staff, accompanied by a Chinese warrior-guardian.... The local mountain temples and the Shizhong Shan Grottoes that we eventually reach feature mostly all-Buddhist iconography, with the notable exception of an obvious conical Shiva-lingam, made into a yoni with a deep slit cut down ITs front.... The cone is greasy and covered in oil from butter offerings, for according to the sign outside the niche, this statue is the holiest local yoni and feminine power-deity of the Bai people; according to Sam, local Bai women come to this shrine to offer fertility prayers and to give birth.... When or why local people transformed the ultimate male worship image into the ultimate female worship image are questions without answers.... These examples of Vedic influence in China (according to Sam) are the only known specific instances of Shaivite worship in the whole of China, and offer evidence of the mixing of Chinese and Vedic religion in the ancient Nanzhao Kingdom, the political area that stretched from modern-day Burma in the west to Thailand in the south and the whole of Sichuan in the north, from the late 8th century until ITs overthrowing in 902 CE; this religious mixing is apparently not documented or acknowledged in the current scholarship on the Nanzhao Kingdom, and Sam's intention is to write a specialized book on the topic....

Our 10-km-plus walk is very beautiful, climbing up and around winding mountain paths over Shibao Shan to gain an awe-inspiring view of the whole Shaxi valley, so huge and spread out with our little town of Sideng far below.... Our trip back down a paved road is punctuated with an area of nature preserve that is home to a colony of freely-roaming monkeys, a sight which i have never seen; i am entranced in watching their movements and monkey-consciousness, and feel very excited about the prospects of observing and interacting with monkeys in India, until Ritodhi explains to me that monkeys in India are more like gangs of starving homeless people than gentle animals; if one sees that i have food, IT will try to get IT away from me, and if i then kick IT in the head, all of ITs monkey friends will attack me at once like a vicious gang.... He says the best thing to do is to stay away from them or to run away from them if they try to engage....

After walking for a long time on the paved road, and sticking out our thumbs numerous times for numerous cars, we're all getting a bit tired and Ashley asks Ritodhi to try to reiki us a car.... Maybe ten minutes after he starts his walking meditation, a car stops with a couple of dazzling Chinese urbanites, and invites us in for a ride back into town.... Unexplained Phenomena? Oooooo....

"No Nakedlight"; "Beware Of The Firm Feet"; "Firefighting Equipment Can't Move Away" - Warning signs, Shizhong Shan Grottoes

"Any shaman you meet will want three things: a pack of cigarettes, a bottle of strong alcohol, and a chicken." - Sam

"A good trip is a rare find." - Ritodhi

"i want to read a book as fast as i can eat IT." - Ashley

Nipples the dog is alive and well! After not seeing her for the past three days, when she was a daily fixture of Shaxi life before, we went ahead and assumed that she had been made into a stew or stir-fry in one of the local restaurants.... But as we walked up the street to the Muslim Lady's for dinner, there she was! Dangly as ever, scratching her fleas.... i walked up to her and said "Nipples!", and she totally remembered her name and remembered me, and came and sat with us during dinner! What a sweetie....

- Talking with Rachel (Gui Ru Fei) in the Horsepen dorm, we learned about each other's holidays in America and China.... Chinese holidays are New Year's (both Jan. 1st and the lunar calendar date), Spring Festival, Tomb-Sweeping Day (built-in to the culture for everyone to go to the family graves and bring flowers and giftees), May Day (May 1st, Worker's Day), Dragon Boat Day (commemorating a famous poet Qu Yuan's suicide over his untenable political situation by jumping into the river - the day is celebrated by having boat races and eating zongzi, which is dropped into the water for the fishes to eat - just like the poet!), Double Strong Day (9/9, Sept. 9th, dedicated to the elderly of China, family hiking to the mountains), Mid-Autumn Festival (with all the Moon Cakes and chestnuts), and National Week (the big hullaballoo of the year)....

"He just did me.... i'm exhausted." - Sam on Ritodhi's interview

"When in doubt, slow down." - Sam

A fun night of playing tunes for Sam, Ritodhi, and Ashley.... Sam, between his encyclopedia of old pop music knowledge and his Deadheadedness, knew every song that i could play.... How wonderful to be able to play music for someone who is so familiar with my repertoire! Of course, that person would have to be in their fifties.... i'm such a dinosaur.... Magical "Black Peter", though, and a first time for Ritodhi on that song, so that's good.... Also, Sam said that whenever he hears "Wharf Rat" from now on, he'll be thinking of me, which is quite the honor! "Wharf Rat" --> "Imagine" --> "Wharf Rat" and ending off with "Brokedown Palace" was pretty fun.... And for the night's end, outside under the giant twinkling sky completely full of stars, the closest shooting star i've ever seen! The Leonid meteor showers were happening for sure, and this particular happening had little sparks around ITs head and left an orange trail in the sky.... for just a moment....

Halloween 2011! Devil's Night comes to a close, as the sun rises on another Day of the Dead here in the Shaxi valley.... The mewing cat down in the Horsepen courtyard calls a memory of three Halloween mornings ago, when i received the call from Devon that my little friend Mysto had been struck by a car during the night.... That Halloween of '08 was one of my first real encounters with death, burying poor mutilated Mysto in the rocky foothills of North Foothills Highway outside of Boulder, up by Sarah's old place where he had loved to be free.... The meaning of the holiday had never been clearer to me than in experiencing the gruesome passing of a beloved friend, and tonight i will honor these connections in meditation and calling upon the spirits for intimate contact, cradled here in the Shaxi valley....

Yay! Laura from London finally showed up in Shaxi on Halloween morning! So we will have a little party after all; i will find some black shit somewhere to darken up my face, wear Ritodhi's Chinese hoodie, and become Ghost Dog, Samurai hitman to the mob....

"i gotta go get my ya-ya's out." - Ashley's family saying

"i ate after i came!" - Ashley

"The Platonic Replacements" - Ritodhi's awesome band name

"i am Simon.... wait, Legend!" - Ashley

"She messed up a high-six by doing a ten and a seven!" - Ritodhi on Ashley

"i miss thee.... no, t-h-w-e!" - Ashley

"Is that Mesmerelda? You're a liar.... That sounds like pants on fire!" - Ashley

"i can't stop rocking!" - Ashley

After a fun evening of Thriller, Gonggui plum wine, strawberry candies, beers, doughnut penises, and Ashley laughing/throwing up/falling down/being carried home from the river by Ritodhi, we three remaining Halloweenies (Me-Ritodhi-Laura) had a wonderful late-night Halloween conversation, ranging from tantra and kundalini yoga to quantum science and impermanence in our lives, reiki and vipassana and anger.... We spoke of things we're not ready to accept, and things we're working on accepting.... IT was wonderful to connect in all these things, and i had no thought during our time together of going off alone into the woods in search of the local cemetaries, or the want of solitudinous meditation.... The spirits were watching over us, the living, talking late down by the dark river under the bright stars; and they were smiling, i'm sure....

"Wow, French people are epic, yo! They have such fucking heavy suitcases!" - Ashley

"We really hear what we want to hear...." Me on our little Shaxi collective

Off to Lijiang! The Disneyland of Yunnan.... Or maybe i should say, "Chinaland", as ITs old-town's streets are ablaze with overpriced crapshops, restaurants, laser fog-light dance clubs, and bars with one guy-acoustic guitar-and-songbook, where drunk customers can get up and do a little live karaoke.... The place is like Vegas without the gambling, a Chinese tourist's heaven where the party never stops, seven days a week....

The canals running through the old-style architecture, lined with weeping willows, are very beautiful, and the cobbled streets recall a simpler time when the city must have bustled with horse-drawn carts and local people come to buy and sell their wares and produce.... Yet now the narrow streets are packed with tourists from all over Yunnan and all of China as well, where the colorful shops distract mightily from the beauty of the buildings housing them; the buildings themselves are mostly all recent constructions, having been rebuilt in the old traditional style after the originals were mostly destroyed by a large earthquake in the eighties.... IT was actually refreshing to get out of old-town for a walk into the actual current city of Lijiang (looking for the one guitar shop in town), and be surrounded by streets and stores made for regular citizens rather than throngs of gabbling partygoers....

What a treat to meet up with Hanna and Nicklas again, randomly at the Panba Hostel here in Lijiang! IT's totally unexpected and always welcome company with these two Swedish sweeties, and hopefully we'll be reuniting yet again in India....

"The Ray Of Sunshine Pugai Noodie" - Lijiang noodle shop

Lijiang dreams: Apocalyptic future scenario in which the ultimate control of humans will be affected through our smartphones, and all my steampunk Road Warrior anarchist friends are banding together.... Before the Big One hits, they grab me and start running, demanding to have my Gphone so they can destroy IT for my own good; i don't want to give IT up; "What about all my phone numbers and contacts?" i wail helplessly, as i am pulled along under the night skies full of thunder and lightning.... But i surrender IT, and IT feels unexpectedly liberating to be removed from the phone.... The underground bunker is full of my steampunk anarchist friends, decking themselves out for apocalyptic battle, and i am proud to be among them....

"People Foremost Customer As Supreme" - Lijiang tourist motto

"Alian Snack" - Lijiang storefront (New Town)

Wow, this is just not really cool! On the train from Lijiang back to Kunming, a guy dressed in a train-official uniform is right behind me, doing a VERY loud live half-hour infomercial in a VERY loud voice for little quick-drying towels, soaking them in a bowl of water and showing how quickly they dry, walking back and forth down the aisle, slapping his rolled-up towels into his hand, and yelling his advertisement in my fucking ear.... He keeps doing these little pauses, and i think maybe he's done, but then his grating nasal voice starts up shouting again.... Oh my god he WILL not stop! *** Will someone just shoot me now? After a glorious period of silence, NOW he's walking back and forth again, shouting and holding up packaged toothbrushes.... *** And NOW he's got a little plastic self-cupping device for moxibustion therapy and WILL not shut up! i wish he would suction the little cup over his lips and do his shouting advertisement through his cup-pursed lips.... JESUS now there's two of them! Both with uniforms and cupping tools and they're both walking up and down the aisle shouting! AAAAA!!!

.... Back in Kunming, Tiffany and Ritodhi and i had one last Chinese hangout sesh at the Hump, good as always.... And then, Ritodhi was gone.... After two months of non-stop awesomeness, we took a cab to the airport together and filmed his fake arrival in China at the doors of the airport as he got ready to leave.... He gave me some wonderful hand-knit wool socks that are already coming in handy, and a beautiful little letter.... i miss him already, and very much look forward to our reunion in his homeland....

Home To Kunming

Back at The Hump Hostel.... feels like being home again.... IT's good to feel at home when you're sad....

i can't write this right now, because IT's too late at night and i'm too sleepy and emotionally drained, but i will write this over the next several days, i feel.... i will need some time to process these huge feelings wracking my spirit....

.... So now, a couple of days later, i think i can begin putting words to this stuff.... We got into the Hump on the 19th and got on the net; i checked my email and so did Tiffany, and everything was completely normal.... And then Tiffany looks up with wide eyes, and says, "Nolan.... Bob Epstein died."

She shows me the Daily Camera obit online, and sure enough, there's a pic of dear old Bob, and a story written by someone who didn't know him, saying that he passed away suddenly and unexpectedly on October 11th.... In shock, i check back in my email, and sure enough, there's a letter from Jackie telling about how the two of them had just taken an amazing trip to Spain, how Bob had fulfilled a long-time wish to be in Barçelona on his 60th birthday among Antonio Gaudi's treasured creations, how romantic IT had been, and how many inspirations and plans had come out of this wonderful trip.... They returned to the states very happy and excited for the future.... And then one day shortly thereafter, Bob had a heart attack and was pronounced gone at 1 AM....

Crying, i call Jackie, Margie, Josh, and get all machines.... Finally, Alex picks up his phone; he and Josh and Cass are all at Bob's house still, and i speak with each of them in turn, expressing my sorrow and love.... Josh tells me that IT was a very clear expression of Bob's love for me that he let me store my stuff up in the music room storeroom, because whenever anyone asked him if they could store stuff at his place, he ALWAYS said no.... So the fact that he said yes to me was a pretty big love deal.... That was nice to hear amongst all the tears.... He also said that they were keeping the music room as is, and they would keep my stuff safe for me until i return....

Crying out on the deck couches at the Hump, i write to everyone i know who knew Bob, letting everyone know about his passing and asking them to join me in remembering to love the people we love as much as possible RIGHT NOW, and let them know IT while we're all around to love each other.... Cause god damn! Any day, any of us.... BAM! No more being around! IT can happen so fucking suddenly.... just ask Bob!

Bob Epstein drove a cab in NYC, worked as a stagehand at the Fillmore East and saw the Grateful Dead, Janis joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, and many, many more.... Bob was at Woodstock in '69, lived on a functioning commune in New York State, has attended so many motorcycle rallies at Sturgis that he doesn't even go anymore.... Bob is an artist, a sculptor, a guitarist, a singer, and an appreciator and collector of art and comics and music and jokes and all things surreal, psychedelic, weird, and hilarious.... He's made his own electric guitars, customized art-parts for Harleys, bizarre sculptures, and a quiet and wonderful life for himself out on a beautiful property in Lafayette, Colorado, looking out towards the beautiful Rocky Mountains fringing the horizon....

Bob Epstein is a gentle, sweet and loving big bear of a guy who can get really gruff if he needs to, or can be the sweetest, huggiest dude.... From what i understand, he used to get very frustrated about some things in life; but i think in his later years while i've known him, he's had a better understanding of his own frustrations to the point where he can diffuse them early (at least IT seems so while i've been around him).... He is a wise and tolerant person, has an appreciative relationship with his Judaic heritage but heartily embraces any and every spirituality from around the world, and has been a loving partner with the amazing and beautiful Jackie Buckner for over twenty years.... i have loved playing guitars and singing harmonies with him for years now, and he always has said that i'm one of his favorite-ever people to sing with; we've played more little jams with his old band buddies than i remember now, out there in his little cluttered art/music studio and wood shop, sung so many good tunes together, jammed out way too loud, hit a few beautiful songs spot-on with harmonies to raise some goosebumps and bright smiles, and even played a couple of shows together with his old band "Wasted Youth".... Bob has been like a second dad to me ever since i met him, and has been helping me to positively re-envision what life can look like in so many ways that IT's taking me a long time to even begin putting them all into words....

"You should get the Dead Guy Ale.... Oh, i didn't mean IT like that." - Tiffany (and yes, he's laughing)

"Wow, i'm not even hungry now, seeing how much you guys ate.... i've got a contact full." - Colin Flahive, on our epic Salvador's meal

TIFFANY: "Go for IT, dude.... Get the Star Destroyer with Rum Raisin on top."
ROTEM: "Are you gonna caress me when i'm pooping myself out on the street?"

"i can't say no to old men!" - Rotem

- Well, i finally bought my closed-toe shoes that i've really been needing in these muddy villages these past several weeks.... After trying on crap shoes in a whole bunch of shoe stores, Ritodhi and Rotem and i stumbled upon the footwear motherlode on the basement floor of a big mall building near the Hump.... The CATerpillar Store! Big heavy giant awesome brown CAT boots called the "Colorado Special" for, uh, $185.... Yes, i realize that's like a third of my month's budget, and i also know that these shoes are made like tanks and will hold up and care for my feet for (hopefully) a long time to come.... Of course, any thoughts about "having time" seem rather farcical after today's difficult news.... Yet happy i am to have these excellent clodhoppers, and i hope to take care of them as well or better as they take care of me....

Now, the all-inverted cards i pulled in asking for guidance surrounding this laughably expensive purchase were NOT seemingly in favor of my pulling the trigger on the footwear deal; and yet, my true instincts were to go ahead and hook myself up with good-quality necessary gear, so i must look to the card-meanings involved as necessary reminders in the process about what's REALLY of true importance here.... Namely, that the shoes aren't the main point! Learning true love and the landscape of my heart (inverted Page of Cups) is the real work to be done, requiring attention to be paid to the support and wisdom of the Mother and not harping so much on self-sufficiency and rigid adherence to habituated patterns (inverted King of Discs), experiencing too much attachment to permanence and security through the expensive shoes (inverted Magician) and experiencing difficulty in understanding how a potentially wrong choice may still turn out okay (inverted Sun).... In this way, i can understand how buying the shoes is a good thing, and still keep focus in mind on what i'm really supposed to be doing here....

But upon reflection beyond even these understandings and reminders, i sense an overall message that i need to state in plain terms: Doing the same things as i am used to (using lots of money/resource to purchase potential security) WILL NOT assist in this process that i intend of evolution beyond my current shackled boundaries.... IT is okay that i have done this action, but not to the point that i lose sight of this important reality! The cards are beckoning me further and further out to an uncharted sea, and the more lifelines to shore to which i cling, the more tethered i am to an existence of familiarity and self-imprisonment....

Wow, today was the day that we almost saw Shaquille O'Neal! The crowd of hundreds of excited people surrounding a small stage area in the entrance to the Brilliant Plaza off the main walking mall attested to the fact that we were in Kunming at the same time as the Shaq Attack.... Unfortunately, he wasn't scheduled to make his appearance for another hour and ten minutes from the time that Tiffany, Rotem and i wandered by.... So we were not blessed with each other's presences....

- Ritodhi and i are generally very much on the same wavelength (which just doesn't happen for me very often), and i am super-psyched to have such a supportive friend in my immediate sphere.... i hope to travel to India soon, with the knowledge that i have a solid friend and point of connection in a land that is (in all probability) going to rock my world in ways i don't understand right now.... Ritodhi says that one can't go to India expecting to find the enlightenment and peace of spirit that all these shmoes from the west tend to expect; he says that isn't the way IT works, and that India will kick my ass in every way i can imagine because IT is a place where life is simply not lived in ANY WAY that i am accustomed to.... From the inside out (Delhi Belly, etc.).... Rotem and Tiffany keep saying that i'm going to die in India, and Ritodhi is consistent in his encouragement and support of my abilities to adapt and grow, which i really appreciate more than i can say.... His recommendation to me is to get a jute bag and Indian clothes and leave all my nice gear with someone i trust, and to travel the land as an Indian person would for a while, to become a person that i have not been, and not in the Eat Pray Love bullshit way.... anyway, we'll see about all this.... But India is on my radar

Wow, i've really been hitting my head a lot for the past few days.... Three times getting off the bus in Kunming, punching myself in the face, the shelf in the Hump common area, the iron lamppost decoration on the street, the side of my bunk bed in the Hump dorm, the overhang out on our midnight walk.... What does IT mean? When will IT change?

"How much is IT gonna cost for me to put your stuff in my shit?" - Tiffany

"Arrrggghhh.... Poop in ass want out!" - Rotem

Rotem is catching his flight to Beijing this evening, in preparation for heading back home to Israel in three days, so a proper celebration was necessary.... We had a fully epic last meal for the Fantastic Four at the promised-land all-you-can-eat sushi & hotpot restaurant on the fourth floor rooftop of one of the nearby mall buildings.... goddamn IT was good, so much food and then us all groaning and staggering out of the place.... We ate them into submission so completely that they had to close their doors; all the waitstaff and cooks packed up and beat IT, and we left our table a wasteland of destroyed foodstuffs, crumbled cookies, and sushi dumped in the hotpot broth....

"Hey, IT's not gay.... IT's love!" - Rotem

Pole dancing with the gay boys! Going out to clubs in China is the only time i can ever remember feeling like a hot girl.... Everybody is so friendly, and people just keep giving me beer.... especially in the gay bar!

- Two girls, arm in arm, walk by us at the end of our slightly drunk dancing night; one slightly smiling, the other visibly sad and sullen, carrying a giant teddy bear.... "Just goes to show, teddy bears can't buy you happiness," says Aussie Rhiana....

There is a Father & Son duo which sings karaoke together out in the square in front of the Hump for dough.... The son is two-something, maybe three years old, and singing VERY off-key.... Keep practicing, kid, IT's a long way to the top....

"Care grass as protect skin" - Kunming park sign

"No Thino To Lose" - Kunminger's t-shirt

Well, looks like a Halloween return trip to Shaxi might be in the works.... Ritodhi is saying he'd rather go and deepen his information about one of his key areas that he's studied, instead of going and getting shallow info on a completely new area with no contacts or introductions.... "Return To Shaxi" might be just what the doctor ordered....

Lying in bed, writing about Bob and listening to sad songs, having my grief and my thanks all at the same time, i take out the cards to randomly flip through, looking at them.... and one card is backwards in the deck, with the backside towards me.... How does this happen? This never happens.... except sometimes IT does.... i flip IT over, to reveal: the Card of Impermanence, inverted....

Good Taro reading for little Aussie Rhianna before her departure for back-home, concerning transitions into upcoming adulthood for her.... IT was a good reading (Consummation, Catch & Release inverted, The Fool inverted, Schism inverted), and IT felt good to do an actual reading for someone again! i'm thinking about taking a day and just setting up shop at the Hump tables, giving readings to anyone who wants....

Nicklas is a big baby-faced Swedish guy from Gothenberg who is a hell of an understated dancer, with little funny moves, a big smile, and a jolly perspective on life; he plays some guitar, bartends at a jazz club called Nefertiti back home, and hangs out with....

Hanna is a wonderful supercool skinny kickboxing musician girl from Gothenberg in Sweden; she plays trumpet and flute for Irish and Swedish folk music, harbors a wish to go do a tour of American folk and bluegrass festivals, and is a sensitive and insightful soul - not to mention her fun dancing! She and Nicklas should start a dance troupe.... They are both going to be travelling in India, and IT is entirely possible that we all may spend christmas down in Auroville, the organic farming community in southeast India....

- Well, quite the saturday night in Kunming! Ritodhi and i got a bunch of white people excited about the prospects of being given free beer at the gay club downstairs from the Hump, and then we dressed to impress.... Making our appearance as the Gay Terrorist and the Space Cowboy, we were the gayest guys in the gay bar for a night.... We showed the gay guys what IT means to be gay! Several memorable stage dances, pole dances, conga lines being led by a dude in a full Bugs Bunny suit with one regular eye and one black hole, sexy girls climbing poles and hanging upside-down, and finally the stupidly-drunk guy who fell into the table and then ate IT right down on Rianne's knee, dislocating IT into a nasty unnatural position! At this point, our party ended, as Rose and i carried poor Rianne out onto the outer deck and the medics were called.... They put her knee back in place (and man, was she a tough cookie! Holding IT together the whole time; i would have been freaking my shit), and told her she'd be okay, but she wanted to go to the hospital to be checked out....

Tiffany, Iris, and Rianne just returned home to the Hump from the hospital; Tiffany reports that the doctor said three days, no walking, but she'll be fine.... That's very good news, considering her shit looked straight fucked.... whew

- Today i have been reborn, with the shining light of Buddha and the snake demons penetrating my soul! i feel like i've given birth to a simpering bat-boy and an army of underwater rats....

Ritodhi and Nicklas and Hanna and i took a walk over to the movie theater today, and although they sneakily tried to get us to see Green Lantern in 3D, we rose victorious to see the most amazing movie of 2011: "IT's Love"! Tony Ching's masterpiece, clearly, in all ITs sub-par-CG glory, IT also features Jet Li in his most compelling role to date as Master Faihi, Buddhist demon-hunter! i could try to explain this crowning jewel of Chinese cinema in writing, but i think that the intricacy of the plot and the amazingness of the cinematography warrant a different rendering altogether.... So i think i'd like to present the brilliance of this film through the nonlinear sharing of ITs myriad imagery....

IT's Love: Buddhist disciple waking up in the morning to find he has pointy ears and fangs; A white snake locked away in a pagoda tower; A floating inflammable spirit-herb that undulates like an octopus; Romantic underwater kisses amid breath bubbles; Demon-hunting; Incestuous lesbian snake women; Cock-a-Doodle wine; Giant golden Buddha-hands; Master Faihi writhing and convulsing, covered in snake-bites, lying atop Buddha's giant head; Bromance mouth-to-mouth CPR; Mountain herb-picking; Elderly talking turtle

"Celebrate space - will have opportunity - talk with international" - Kunming girl's shirt

"If i didn't have to put food on the table in order to go to work, i sure as hell wouldn't do that." - Tiffany

Playing the Halfway House's open mic tonight, i had one of the best times i've had in China so far.... The venue is run by a musician and guitar player who loves Bob Marley, so there were many pictures and much music playing on the PA celebrating the deceased reggae guru.... i thought a little tribute to Robert Nesta might be in order, so i started off with "Waiting In Vain" and was quickly joined by a girl on shaker and a dude on djembe, and what do you know? The drummer was actually a drummer, and listened, and paid attention to my cues! Ah, things always go so much better with a real drummer.... Folks seemed to really appreciate the Wailers cover, so i gave them a little original with "2012", in which the drummer kept up beautifully with the fermatas, and ended off with "Georgia On My Mind", during which a saxophone player randomly popped up and blew a fun solo and backup! IT was simply mahvelous to have that kind of round-out to the set (and to that song in particular!), and i thanked the two other players profusely afterwards.... Tiffany said that IT was the happiest that she's seen me on this trip and encouraged me strongly that she feels that i'm supposed to be playing music, and that is what i'm meant to be doing....

The rest of the open mic had a bunch of really fun players and good music, and we had a great time listening to them all; Tiffany said IT may have been the best open mic she's ever been to!

We were sitting with two cool gay guys (Li Jing and Zhang Kun) at one of the tables in the back of the bar, who both expressed great love and admiration for my playing, and as we continued conversing with them, i discovered that Li Jing had been listening to the Grateful Dead for the past ten years since he was fifteen! We cuddled together, listening to "Attics Of My Life" on his tiny little phone speaker in the loud-ass bar.... How wonderful! i felt the gentle hands of Bob Epstein at work around our meeting, because how i could possibly meet a huge Deadhead in southwest China is so unlikely as to be almost ridiculous, yet here IT was happening! Thank you, Bob, for guiding me towards family even halfway around the world....

IT's Love: Master Faihi versus enraged white snake chick; The Fool forgetting his true love, Bat-boy saving the green snake - "Why is IT that every time i wake up, i'm next to you?"; Amitabha; Golden Spirit Dagger

"You are beautiful - We are ready for ready" - Kunminger's shirt

"Life is a zebra crossing" - Kunminger's shirt

"Every day of your life, live charmful" - Kunming shirt

IT's Love: Bat Demon shaking the canals of Lijiang; Underwater army of rats versus senior chanting Buddhist monks; "Use maximum protection!"; Snake-induced tsunami; Disciple Boy ready for demons with cymbals on his hands; Master Faihi triumphant on an underground lava rock; "You must be mistaking me for a gentleman," says the Fool; Evil spirits trapped in a circular portal; Inter-world marriage; Mom's fashionable rabbit-ears

Bemused in Bangdong

Song Idea: "i wasn't ready for the gay boy, but he was ready for me-e-e-e" (Melody - 2x * root / 2x * b7 - root / b7 / up - b3rd / root // 3x * b7 - root / 5 / b7 / root / b3rd)

Annoying pit stop right at the beginning on the bus to Lincang by Chinese military dudes looking for drugs, guns and smuggled people on the Ruili border, as our bus is also the one heading down to Jinhong, a skip and a jump away from Lao.... They got us all off the bus while they searched for nothing, and stood around the perimeter looking like a bunch of kids with guns.... Aaand made us take all our bags out of the bottom, and look through them to find more nothing.... what a drag, man! They need to just let IT all go, let people do what they do, you know, man? Set them free.... yeah.... Freedom, man, freedom.... can you dig?

Lincang dreams, in our late-night hotel: Came to a place in travels where the ocean waves move these bluish-purple spherical beings around through little circular tunnels, and the motion causes them to naturally create indigenous plastic; the creatures were very beautiful, and the whole environment was white and very tranquil....

The Seinfeld people lived in houses nearby each other and when i went to Elaine's house, her jealous boyfriend was moving about through secret passages in the walls behind large beautiful paintings; the woman wasn't Elaine for long, kept changing into other women, but i was there to see this old tapestry, batik-looking, of the sea-dwelling plastic makers from long long ago.... IT was incredible that this mystery had hung on the wall for so long, and that i had been privy to ITs key so recently!

i started to become buddy-buddy with the jealous boyfriend, in hopes of calming him down and showing him friendship which he clearly needed; finally, i whisperingly told him of my recent experiences in the oceanic place, and he got all weird and touched my hand briefly in thanks, but not indicating strong friendliness, and then our interaction was over....

All these computers in the house, rows and rows of them, and all the while the oceanic place is tantalizingly close.... i can find IT whenever i want, and the question is, why is IT so amazing? What is IT about this natural plastic? Why has IT been such a mystery to so many people?

Writing a letter on one of the many computers, i put in a quick few lines at the bottom as though i am George Lucas, indicating my interest in the plastic-creatures project and pledging my support in the endeavor; i can't figure out how to save the file (named fitzgerald-xxxx-xxxxx or some set of numbers like that) and i keep trying, even though we've got to leave and i'm making us late.... George Lucas is there suddenly, and i'm trying to bring up the closed file to show him to see if IT's okay with him that i wrote IT in his name....

Lastly, i am out on the city street walking at night, and smile at a dark-skinned short-haired Indian-looking girl in a bright green dress about to get into a car; she looks at me as i pass, and says "Hello there! Oh god...." in a London accent, as though she'd really like to hang out more and here we are parting ways immediately.... Somehow, i get some kind of psychic message from her as i'm walking away that her name is Diana and she's going to something called E3 and that i should come there and hang out.... A club? Bar? European conference? i wake up....

*****

Heading to Bangdong Village, two hours out of Lincang; the road to Bangdong is littered with chickens and dogs....

We arrive in Bangdong Town and are met by our benefactor Colin from Kunming, a welcome face in a random mountain-town place; after a short ride further on, he and his baked-hippie-looking friend Mu Nan lead us down a slick muddy path through the woods on quite a slippery little hike down to Bangdong Village proper, tucked away on the terraced mountainsides in a breathtaking valley where the fog and clouds roll in among the amazing vistas....

Colin leads us down towards the street with the little town stores, and turns us left into a house area, where up in a little room, we find.... Ritodhi and Rotem! Reunited again, we are all smiles and very happy to see each other, and the Fellowship is once again rejoined....

Our sleeping family is in one house, and our eating family is Jiuhong's parents, brother, and friends in their house a few minutes walk up the dirt road.... Jiuhong (who i met for one minute back in Kunming and Tiffany hasn't met at all) is the progenitor of the Bangdong Coffee Co-Op Project, where a thousand mu (a "mu" is the Chinese land-area designation) of Burmese coffee plants have been planted by twelve different village families jointly on their collective land; they don't know anything about growing coffee per se, but there has been a bunch of dough invested, mostly on costly fertilizers, in expectation of a sizable return from the production of their specialty Yunnan coffee.... Jiuhong (quite the entrepreneur) has enlisted three friends to come live in the village and help him both manage the coffee farm and build an Eco-Lodge on the mountainside overlooking the (hopefully) soon-to-be coffee forest.... The three friends, who we wind up hanging out with most of the time, are:

Chuan Zhang, "Captain", is a little mustached fresh guitar & flute & vocals playing cat; he has very kind eyes, a wise demeanor, and a band in Shanghai, "Yabaso".... He seems to be the foreman for the construction of the Eco-Lodge....

Mu Nan is a kindly skinny chill-guy who always looks a little faded.... He has a cool "Crow"-art-style shoulder tattoo that he drew the art for after dreaming ITs imagery, waking up and drawing IT.... He plays guqin and guitar and has some of the best recorded music i've heard in China, and acts as Jiuhong's partner & site manager in the Coffee Co-Op....

Wu Chi is a thick and slightly-too-cool brooding tough-guy drummer dude, who has not made any attempt to talk to any of us more than the usual politenesses over food.... He likes to drum, and also clearly doesn't listen very well as a drummer, which is the only thing that you really need a drummer to do....

Amazing yellow moonrise over darkened Bangdong Village, accompanied by Captain, the brooding drummer and i having a fun two-guitar & djembe jam: several Chinese songs from Captain, and Bob Marley medley from me (Duppy Conqueror, No Woman No Cry, Redemption Song).... Also some fun freak-out for me on slide while drummer dude messed around on the guitar.... The evening finished up with Colin playing my axe and me joining him on vocals for "Blackbird", "Summertime", "Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out", and a little "Somewhere Over The Rainbow"....

- After spending one night in our host family's family room, with bed and couches and TV, Tiffany and i realize that they probably moved someone out of their regular sleeping quarters to make room for us, and we arrange to set up our hammocks out under the house awning so as to inconvienience them as little as possible.... Every night, i put up my hammock and curl up for the night, and every morning take IT down again so the family can access their giant piles of fresh corncobs out on the porch....

"Vitality Conspicuous" - Happy woman with baby on her back's yellow shirt, heading to Bangdong Village market day

We part ways with Colin at the top of the climb back up to the road, heading to the town for market day; he is motorbiking back to Kunming, and leaving us on our own to maneuver as best we can through life in the village.... He wishes us well, encouraging us to not have any accidents and not to drink any baijiu with any friendly family members....

Captain asks me if i like iced tea; i say sure i do.... He disappears for a bit, and pops back up with a bottle of Ice Shock! Best bottled iced tea ever, with that shocking cool zing of mint in every chug....

Interesting info, on the way back from viewing the worksite where the boys are building an Eco-Lodge from the ground-up: Captain has a band in Shanghai, has played at least one big-ass festival in China so far, is good buddies with Shan Ren the folk-rock star we saw perform at the 500 KM Festival, and has the option (maybe not if he really doesn't have the dough) to play five songs at the third-biggest festival in China at the end of this month in Huangzhou.... is IT possible that somehow i might be becoming involved in China's big festival rock scene? Only time will tell.... and by the look of things in the cards, humility and passivity need to be prime priority right now....

- IT's a regular circus around here at night in Bangdong, where the roosters howl like wolves, the pigs snort and fart, the bats sound like bouncing ping-pong balls, the rats chatter and scamper in the corn, little dogs go berserk at nothing, and Rotem saws away snoring like the Rapture is at hand....

Ritodhi enjoys abusing the pigs, throwing guavas and corncobs at them and telling them to do something with their fat, useless lives.... He says he wants to punch them in their fat faces but has not done so, so far.... He also apparently likes and wants to wrestle the fat black one....

- Well, another feather to join the magnificent plumage already in my cap.... Now i'm the poster boy for manual labor incompetence for white people everywhere and our little group in particular, after attempting to split bamboo poles for an hour or so on the house-building project and getting one usable bamboo rod out of IT.... i'm sure all the sweaty bare-chested construction boys were getting a kick out of my laughable attempts to pitch in.... Captain asked us all to do something else more tuned to helping them do stuff they don't know how to do yet in the village (read: asked me to quit and do something more suited to my weak abilities), which is what we're actually here to do anyway.... Well, what Tiffany and Ritodhi are here to do, anyway.... Nice one, Me

Nice.... giant whining industrial tea-drying machine here starting up next to our host family's house at 4:45 in the AM.... what a great time to run your noisy mechanical equipment! Great idea, really....

Stupid drunk (fun, yes, but still....) with Jiuhong's Fam.... After dinner, the dad kept pushing cup after cup of baijiu on us, like a true player.... and then came Rotem's bottle of gin, laced with fake Chinese Sprite.... and then the dad opened another bottle of baijiu.... uggg.... i was very done pretty early in the game, but allowed continued pouring into my little cup out of politeness and wanting to have a connective fun time.... uggg.... The kind white-haired old man who joined us partway through the night (Jiuhong's dad called him the "Virtuous Man" and "Friend of the Village") gave us all titles, saying that the family dad was the Godhead, i was the Antiquity, Tiffany was the Witch/Enchantress/Sybil, Ritodhi was the Hero, and Rotem was the Frizzy Tiger.... The old gent had a wonderful time commenting on all of our three beards, and Ritodhi said that he was strongly reminded of his grandfather by the Virtuous Man.... After all the booze was gone and everyone was mercifully done, we somehow got back down the dark dirt road home, where i threw up over the side of the roof-terrace at our place and that's the last thing i remember.... Had a really fun dream like a dramatized tv show about some event a long time ago that involved some intrigue and two guys breaking out of a jail to do some shady deed one fateful night.... i woke up right as the two guys were free and heading to do whatever the event was, so i didn't catch the end! IT was pretty compelling, i wish i could have stayed through the end.... Maybe there isn't one, though.... Maybe that's the point....

Wow, the roosters literally do start baying like wolves during the night when the moon comes out from behind the clouds.... Kind of creepy, Wolfman style

P.S. Ritodhi totally made Rotem's bed his bitch today as he fought pain with pain, groaning and moaning the baijiu out of his system, writhing on his stomach and yelling, "UH! Take IT, bitch! UH!" :-D

NTS: If you know you should stop drinking booze with friendly folks, just man up and do IT! i know you want to make friends and be connective, but IT's just not worth the poisoning and completely inneffective following day of STILL BEING DRUNK the next afternoon! Fuck all that noise!

- Well, i guess i'm really just not cut out for any manual labor, huh? We go down there to help out again, and this time they're individually lifting halved big-ass six-foot logs, and carrying them uphill to the building site on their shoulders.... i did one by myself that i could actually carry, and that was IT for the me-carryable ones.... i did another with Tiffany, and IT was just too much for me to do successfully without whining and feeling like the world was going to end (not to mention my top shoulder-bone going to rub out through my skin; did i mention that i was still drunk at noon-thirty from the night before, and not at my best to begin with?).... So i finished carrying the second log and took off before i could begin hearing about what a joke i am in the village labor market.... Anyway, i am officially labeling myself the title of Giant Puss, and should really remember this when thinking that i will help anyone with anything that they need done.... All this self-unmanageable manual labor stuff is really helping me dismantle my ego, and i really appreciate the much-needed assistance! Uselessness is a state of being....

i'll say IT again until i actually remember IT: Proportion Distortion!

Hmmm.... Now Tiffany's talking about going back to Kunming for a couple of weeks, and then heading back down here for an extended service-oriented stay in Bangdong Village.... if that's the case, i may be heading out on my own sooner than i would have imagined....

A few days into our homestay, i'm realizing that the family dynamic here is a little weird for me.... the current residents are Great-Grandma, a wizened wrinkly eighty-year-old woman who can barely see out of her tiny eyeholes and who moves around and works with slow difficulty; Grandma, a tough-as-nails rather attractive farm lady who doesn't seem grandma-age and can be alternatingly sweet and cutting-sharp; and little two-year-old Baby Girl, who seems very sweet when she's not despairingly crying "Nai Nai! Naaaiiii Naaaaaiiiii!!!" - which she does repeatedly, many many times every day.... Tiffany found out that Baby's mom lives and works in Kunming, and has left these two ladies in charge of raising her child.... The Baby has some serious trauma going on, as evidenced by her frequent wailing outbursts, and gets yelled at frequently by the prunelike Great-Grandma, while Grandma frequently yells sharply at the old woman for being a doddering fool.... Where are the menfolk of the house? Who knows! i only know that the dynamic around here, whether i'm misinterpreting IT or not, definitely doesn't work for me super well.... Especially when the one mean pig starts attacking the other pigs down in their cement pig prison, and a terrible screaming and squealing begins, soon joined by the Great-Grandma's yelling epithets as she beats all the pigs into submission from above with dull thudding whacks from her long stick, as the pigs squeal and scream.... Just not fun :-(

"Don't bite the mouth of the interpreter." - Tiffany

Poopocalypse!

The two little two-year-old girls peed on the ground together, took off their shoes, and danced in their own pee :-D

"This is what hippies do.... We spill our blood in the garden." - Tiffany

- Well, i seem to have found the proper work that fully suits me in the most applicable manner: arms deep in gnarly shit mixes (cow and pig), applying the mixes to the base of coffee plants, mapping the area and cataloguing which plants got which mix (bio-cha) while describing and photographing the current state of the plants at the time of application, and taking an average size and leaf number selection per section.... This works a lot better for me than carrying shit from one spot to another.... Sad but true

Later that night, we are invited by Jiuhong's dad to the Virtuous Man's house for dinner, where we are surprised to discover a wonderland of statuary garden, beautiful painted woodcarvings adorning the house, handmade furniture, and giant beautiful moths fretting around the yellow outdoor light.... The Virtuous Man, we learn, is an artist and carpenter, and has carved and painted all the art around the house and on his beautiful handmade furniture, as well as sculpting the statues of Guanyin and the dragons out in his statue garden.... We are all delighted by his work, and when Tiffany asks him if he still makes art, he shakes his head in a resigned manner and tells her that his work used to look good, but just doesn't look beautiful when he does IT now, and so does not make anything anymore.... We all get the sense that he has some great sadness in his past, and would have quite a story to tell if we could properly understand him.... Tiffany also notes that when he speaks to us, he's frequently rhyming, and seems to be quite a poet, but her comprehension is not good enough to understand the poetry that he's using in his conversation....

He also shows us his giant jugs of aged homebrew baijiu; this 16-year-old potion is soon brought out to the dinner table, where IT is expected that we do them the honor of pounding more of this stuff at the men-only (with Tiffany as the lone exception) dinner table laden with plates of grubs, king bees, silkworms, and mushroom jerky.... These sorts of delicacies are apparently reserved for the male gatherings; you know, Man Food! An additional barbequed meat section would soon be accidentally set on fire by Wu Chi, the brooding cook, whereupon he dumps all the flaming food on the ground, disappearing in shame shortly thereafter.... This interesting bill of fare, however, could not quite distract us enough to willingly take in more baijiu, and Rotem winds up taking one for the team as the lone honorable one among us, drinking until he is sweating profusely and whispering aside to us, "i'm dying! Save me!" We politely excuse ourselves after the meal, and try to walk back home, only to be hijacked by the Virtuous Man's best friend, who asks us to come on a five-minute walk to see his house down the road.... After several more than five minutes on an increasingly muddy road, i give up and turn around, leaving the rest to walk ahead as i return to my comfy hammock.... The others wind up walking halfway to Lincang, where the new kind old man pours more baijiu down Rotem's throat, and we do not expect him to live out the night; fortunately.... he does

"Baijiu is like demon cum." - Ritodhi

"Arrrrggggghhhhh!!! i drank Satan's blood." - Rotem

- We have met the Biggest Pimp of Bangdong Village; he is very old, and was so hardened and slick that he didn't even talk, and silently mimed his whole story to us.... He had four hoes, and sold each of them for 300 qwai, and bought eight pounds of crack which he kept in his knee, and then drove all over the mountains exchanging his crack for eight more hoes and several kilos of cocaine, making cash.... The way he paid his hoes was to throw them on the ground and toss cash on them.... Somewhere in there might be a story about his getting in a car crash, and injuring his knee badly, and how the village elders helped to pay for his surgery.... Still, he's the biggest player in the game, and quite the mimer....

Poor Tata the little Wonder Dog got attacked by another dog tonight and incurred a bad open gash under her front leg; Tiffany roused us troops and had Ritodhi and holding the poor dear while Rotem supplied razors, iodine, antibiotics, bandages and surgical tape for the procedure.... Ritodhi gave her reiki during her haircutting, and she was so relaxed and good that Tiffany called him a miracle-worker; when the time came, Ritodhi squeezed a high-pressure stream of water on the wound to clean IT, and then after Tiffany applied the iodine, Mu Nan donated an old shirt that she cut up into a little doggy-shirt, tied with a yellow string so IT looked like a little gray monk robe....

- Nice to hang out with Matt Dexter again, if only in my dreamworld.... Back in my old room in my folks' place, sitting on my bed together, goofing around and singing and playing Alms For Satan hits.... Some good dreamtimes....

The early morning's rain made us all hesitant about the muddy, slippery climb up the mountain to the road to catch the truck to the market day in town, and the minivan in town to Lincang.... Can IT be done? Do we even want to try? Maybe we should stay another day until IT dries up more.... But no! We decided to go, braving the drizzle and the mud, ready for the hardest climb of our lives.... Our version of summitting Everest in the harshest of conditions.... And then IT wasn't that bad! We climbed pretty easily, after having lost Rotem, who went sprinting up the mountain ahead of us, raping bears and bringing the mountain to ITs knees in shame over ITs complete domination by his hiking prowess.... Afterwards, we all agreed that our climb out of Bangdong needs to become one of those fish stories, where we run into greater and greater difficulties and more impossible traps with every re-telling....

As we were about to get in the minivan to head back to Lincang and were saying our goodbyes to Mu Nan and Wu Chi, we realized that Captain had disappeared off into the market crowd and had not yet returned.... So i had to ask Mu Nan to make sure that he got my gift, and handed him my conical Asian-style blue Kavu hat.... IT did seem a lot more natural on him (when he'd tried IT on earlier in the week) than IT did on me! We all packed into the small vehicle and waved zai jian to our friends....

Thank you, Bangdong Village, for some bizarre and stimulating times.... Definitely not the most comfortable vibe we've had on these travels, but an array of interesting encounters for sure.... Perhaps we shall be meeting again....?

"FRESHJIVE - Hostage Crisis - Conspiracy Hard Times" - Old Man's hat on exit climb out of Bangdong

"You can kill the revolution but you can't kill the revolution" - Guy's t-shirt in Lincang

"You have not been truly busy in your life.... until you have eaten a sandwich while taking a shit." - Rotem

"Jesus will not save you from this Jew." - Rotem

10/19/11.... Triumphant return journey to Kunming on the upper back four beds of the smelly-feet sleeper bus with no opening windows on top, and the people on bottom who close theirs for the whole trip.... Rotem isn't smoking and is groaning with the baijiu demon in his guts, Ritodhi runs off the bus at the last minute of a rest stop to trip and collapse in the bushes, pull his pants down, and have an explosive expulsion, and Tiffany listens gaily to "Burning Ring Of Fire" out loud on her phone and laughs and laughs.... IT's been a wild, silly, and educational Yunnan month-and-a-half, from Kunming to Dali to Shaxi to Shangri-La, back to Dali, to Ruili to Lincang to Bangdong, back to Lincang and finally to Kunming at bleary 6:30 AM....

The Great Ruili Border Run

On a sleeper bus from Dali to Ruili! Phase One of The Great Ruili Border Run, underway! Arriving at 6 AM, we will then need to figure out the border biz, and be back on a bus by.... afternoon? If all goes well, we should be straight on track to meet back up in Lincang with the boys....!

"One Day In Ruili"

After we pulled into town, dreaming our little dreamy dreams, they let us all sleep for an extra hour 'til 7 AM on the sleeper bus, which was nice of them.... As we sat outside on the parking lot ground with our packs in the dim cloudy not-quite-morning light, we heard a small squeaky animal voice crying underneath one of the nearby parked buses.... A little kitten had somehow lost ITs mother, and was pathetically wailing over and over again in the big quiet parking lot.... i went over to try and coax IT out, but IT ran away under the buses from my clucking greetings, and i immediately gave up on IT.... i watched Tiffany from across the lot as she gave IT a try, and minutes later, she was standing in front of me holding the little crying maybe-seven-week-old calico sweetie with the big pink nose and the giant batlike ears.... we gave Shao Mao some yogurt and Tiffany swaddled her up in my middle-eastern blanket, slung her over her shoulder (where the poor little thing promptly fell asleep), and we were off on our little adventure!

Tiffany asked at the bus ticket window, and we found out there was one 10:00 AM bus to Lincang per day, which meant that if we could get our shit stamped real quick (IT was 8 AM at the time), we could make IT back and be on the road again! In a flurry of excitement, we hopped in a cab and asked the driver lady to take us to the border! Ten minutes later, after crossing over a wide impressive river, we pulled up outside of the big imposing Chinese government border building, and gave IT our best try! The tall glassesed dorky military guy who met us inside listened politely to our reasonable request, and just as politely told us to go screw! They don't do that, they never do that, people can't just go around to the other side without a proper Burmese visa, we should go fly to Thailand, la la la la.... So, since Jerkface categorically refused to help us at the Out-of-China side, we smartly slipped over to the Into-China side and asked those guys if they could stamp us through.... The one guy seemed amiable and fine with IT, but he just had to check with his superior first.... He led us out of the other building, and back to the first building, to check in with.... Jerkface! Needless to say, Jerkface was not happy to see us again.... Negged at the big border building for pedestrians, we glumly decided to walk along the border fence to find the other border crossing for motor vehicles, in hopes that they might be more reasonable/lenient with us over there; unfortunately, they were even more terse, and quickly redirected us back to the big building for the kind of outlaw action we were requesting.... Newly negged at the little crossing house and seemingly out of options, we sat on the border-crossing stoop and contemplated our possible upcoming expensive next journey to Lao, wondering if we shouldn't have just gone for the sure thing to begin with....

We decided that turning immediately around and heading out to Lao because of one initial defeat was premature, and since the border crossings were open until ten at night, we should get a room near the big crossing-house and try again after the guards had changed out their shifts.... what had we got to lose? IT seemed pretty sucky to have come all the way to the Burmese border and to have to tack on a big extra travel expenditure without exhausting all the options first.... Wandering back towards the big crossing house along the small river which demarcated the border, i was struck by the sheer silliness of the physical situation i was witnessing: the river was being used as a dividing fence between China and Burma, and a passerby like myself could easily observe day-to-day life on both the Burmese side, with ITs interesting bubble-script writing and men wearing long skirts, and the Chinese side, with ITs trinket shops and people just waiting to get off work.... IT was remarkable to me that there were no bridges across this river, where people from both sides would obviously enjoy shopping and mingling with each other given the opportunity; rather, there were imposing border crossings, enforcing the impression that mingling is not at all welcome, and to be allowed only in a highly controlled fashion which takes all the fun out of IT (not to mention all neighborly hospitality!) What a pointless endeavor, i thought to myself, trying to separate people who obviously can get along just fine for the sake of pointless borders and officious nationalism....

We climbed the stairs to the 1-2-3 Hotel to the delicate barrage of jackhammering all around us in the giant construction project on the ground floor; we got a giant 80-qwai room that could sleep four on the beds and fifty more on the floor, and spent an hour or two decompressing by giving Shao Mao a sink-bath and picking all the fleas off of her with a tweezers.... A glassful of water peppered with drowning fleas was followed shortly after by ear swab after ear swab of clumped ear mite poop, while Shao Mao whined and screamed her discontent at Tiffany's mothering caresses.... Soon the little dear was deloused and spring fresh, and curled up in Tiffany's crevices for a well-deserved kitten sleep....

After our rest, we headed out for a walk with the mission of finding some bomb-ass Burmese food at the big Ruili town marketplace, with Shao Mao nestled up in Tiffany's fanny pack.... Before we could even get down the big hotel front-staircase, however, Tiffany looked down and saw a little stream of liquid emanating from the bottom of her waist-pack, and dribbling onto her feet.... Fortunately(?), little Shao Mao was pretty dehydrated and malnourished, and what should normally have been a bag-killer cat pee actually didn't smell much because of the lack of everything which the little bugger didn't have in her body.... After a quick sopping with toilet paper, we continued onward to some yummy cart noodles soaked in thick gravy (and a hot dog sausage for Shao Mao), and a walk around the neighborhood which was only punctuated with Shao Mao jumping out of the small zipper-hole in her carrying bag, and running underneath a car.... We looked underneath and still heard her crying, yet she was nowhere to be seen! Finally, Tiffany found her up in the driver's side wheel well, which sparked some guesswork that maybe the mother cat had birthed her kittens in the underside of a bus back in the depot, which might explain how the little one would be so familiar with the underside hiding spots of motor vehicles....

One cab ride across the great river later, and we were back in Ruili town proper.... The marketplace was less than bustling, and the food area was devoid of cooks and customers alike; we vowed to return later for the storied "Burmese Barbeque", and after seeing the biggest table ever, made out of one giant section of red tree ("The most epic community house table ever!" said Tiffany) and another bowl of delicious Burmese noodles for us with a healthy chunk of boiled liver greedily devoured by Shao Mao, we headed north towards an area called "The Jade Market" on our pilfered Rough Guide map....

But before we could get very far up the road, a sort of carnival sidestreet beckoned us down, and before i knew what was happening, Tiffany had pulled us into a Japanese-style photo booth with crazy computer images to spice up your souvenir pics; we must have spent an hour or more in the photo hotbox, planning all 22 pictures on the computer with different backgrounds, foregrounds, movie posters, funny poses and expressions, with Tiffany fixing her hair and getting her face all ready while i sweat my balls off with my knees shaking and about to give out as i posed at just the right angle for the camera, begging her to take the shot already with the little remote clicker....

Finally we had our funny picture printouts, and continued around the corner to find.... bunches of trippy little kid's penny ride machines! i have been making a careful photo documentary of the weirdest kitsch i find in China, and the little kid penny rides definitely have taken the cake for some of the most oddball statuary i have ever seen.... Who knew the mother lode of weirdness would be right in downtown Ruili? i had a great time photographing the horned sheep-scientist, two different Donald Ducks, the airplane with a face, the alien hero with his face built into his helmet, the creepily-innocent little boy, the twin alcoholic cats, the insanely happy anthropomorphic cow, the hollow-eyed sheep in the shoe-car, and the albino construction-worker koala bear with ITs mini-me offspring peeping over ITs shoulder....

Happy with such artistic productivity, we continued on towards the fabled Jade Market, but were distracted again by the prospect of a Burmese restaurant off on a sidestreet.... They weren't yet ready for dinner business, but our culinary curiosity had an unexpected effect: on our journey down the sidestreet, we saw a woman watching her two 6-month old kittens play in the bushes by the road! We stopped to watch the cats playing and chat for a minute, and were soon joined by her friend (apparently the ladies were co-workers in the Chinese restaurant next to the Burmese one, and kept the cats there).... Clearly we were in the presence of cat ladies, and so we showed them the little sleepy Shao Mao in her little sack.... They loved her (of course!) and when we asked them if they'd like to have her, the ladies enthusiastically agreed! i gave her a last kiss and we handed her, whining and crying, to the delighted ladies, and walked away giving each other an emphatic high-five for saving little life number two since arriving in China! What a wonderful thing IT is that Tiffany has the instinct to help out those that don't get a second thought from most people....

With the Jade Market being either closed or nonexistent, we decided IT was time to get down to some real food-eatin'.... Our Burmese cart-dinners were super tasty, filled with spice and flavor, with noodles and eggplant and coriander and tofu and gravy and sprouts and fried egg and mint and rice and pickled cabbage and lime and ground meat and greens and vegetable relish and unidentifiable sauces.... so yummy! As the sun began to set on our empty to-go bags and empty bowl sloppy with the remnants of the meal, we knew the time was upon us, to find out if the universe would grant us our visa wishes at the big border building.... As we walked past the circle of dark trees dripping with moving colored lights, we knew that Ruili had been wonderful and kind to us today, and perhaps our good deed towards one of ITs miserable furry citizens was our way of saying thanks! After heading back for a quick peek at the "Burmese Barbeque" in the main marketplace, which turned out to be just a big Chinese food area, we were ready for destiny.... Everything felt right as we got in the cab back across the river, and i realized that no matter what happened next, even if we would be pulling out towards Lao instead of Lincang tomorrow, we had been here to help out a little friend and have a wonderful day, and everything was just as IT needed to be....

The anticipation was thick as we arrived once again at the imposing government building; after but one moment of hesitation, taking a breath before the plunge, we moved forward with determination, scoping out the military staff from outside to see if we were dealing with any of the same people.... Fortunately, we had a whole new night staff to work with, and the crunch-time atmosphere filled the room as we walked in and talked to the first guard we saw at the "Foreigners" line....

He listened to our request, and we had several moments of uncertainty as he looked squintily at our passports.... And then, taking them in his hand, he asked us to have a seat in the back! This was MUCH more promising than the morning's brush-offs....

From far away, we saw him hand our passports to the stern and chiseled official sitting behind the desk, signing people into Burma.... From the nearby public computers, some stirring Disney-type music was playing, and lent a happy and hopeful atmosphere to the moment.... i looked up, and saw a single dragonfly perched on the white wall above the computers; and everyone knows that dragonflies are good luck! Right? The feeling of positive proceedings grew even brighter within us....

And finally, our dreams were fulfilled as the chiseled dude from the desk came back and gave us departure/arrival cards to fill out, and told us that everything would be cool (in Chinese of course, and the fact that Tiffany understood and could speak with these guys is probably 90% of why IT worked out).... We thanked him profusely, and within a few minutes, we were in Burma! We had a beautiful walk around the back of the border building, and bade Burma farewell as we went back iside to get stamped back in to China! We left the border behind with a sense of gratitude and victory, and exchanged another emphatic high-five outside on the steps! After texting Ritodhi our happy news, he soon replied back, "Epic. You guys are my heroes."

A Chinese bike-cab lady took us on our victory ride to a local Burmese restaurant (apparently under protest, saying, "Why would you want to eat that disgusting stuff? Chinese food is much more delicious!"), but on the way we saw a large street lined with local vendors and filled with people and music, and knew that to be our true destination.... Among the market junk along the sides, i stopped to look at an electric hair clippers for a moment, and would have blithely walked onward if Tiffany hadn't noticed the item directly next to IT - a hand-powered pair of scissor-like hair clippers! No batteries, no juice! Neither of us had seen anything like them before, and so my days of haircuts and fantasies of straight-razors may have temporarily come to an end! Their box proudly stated, "Hagh-Class Hair Clippers"....

As we walked on down the market street, i realized that i hadn't actually articulated to Tiffany the extent of my appreciation of how she naturally winds up helping folks out in the world.... i had taken note of how meticulously she had mothered the motherless little kitten, and also noted how that help would not have happened if i was by myself here in Ruili.... i took the time to express these things to her, including how thankful and appreciative i felt that she was so willing to help those around her in need.... She thanked me, and asked, "What lesson have you learned from today?" i thought about this for a moment, and replied, "i learned that there is no good deed that is too small. Every little thing is good to do, no matter how little." i also realized that rather than beat myself up over what i can't do that Tiffany does easily and naturally, i should rather focus on the ways that i naturally act to help others that come easily for me, and make them happen more often....

As i mused on these things, we watched a smiling cart-dude assemble a bunch of betel nut chews, first taking some green leaves, brushing them with a white paste, adding the brown betel nut chunks, a slice of lime and a sprinkling of tobacco, before rolling and wrapping them up in a little chew-roll form.... Apparently you chew them until your teeth turn black, your spit turns red, and you freak out like a raver acid casualty.... i declined the opportunity to trip out on the betel nut that evening....

Back up the street again, Tiffany's last pants-shopping burst of the night resulted in my purchase of one of the greatest t-shirts i've ever seen, a girl's shirt with the front going something like this: "THE BEATLES mum sue who had already breastfed four children including twins before COKE", followed by an amazingly poorly copied British article on natural breastfeeding for local mothers in Bradford, UK.... Misspellings galore and no relation WHATSOEVER to the stuff about the Beatles and coke at the top.... And on the back, the unbelievably random "FOR YOU - Splendid smile" with a smiley underneath.... This shirt must be given to the right person, and IT is up to me to connect the two together.... Who in the world will IT be?

And at last, home again to the 1-2-3 Hotel, with some non-teleprompted english-language CCTV9, where the lady newscaster kept pausing in her speech on-camera to look down at her paper.... As Tiffany fell sweetly asleep to the hesitant strains of the Chinese english newscast, a giant bathroom cockroach kept me company while i laboriously figured out the inner workings of my new hair clippers, and gave myself a long slow headshave....

EPILOGUE: As we checked out of the hotel in the morning, right on schedule to catch the ten o'clock Lincang bus, the hotel girls straight jacked us for an extra twenty qwai of our deposit, saying one of our towels was dirty and we had to pay for ITs soiling - which was bullshit - but we had no time to yell at them and get the dough back, so we had to suck IT up and head out to catch the cab to the Ruili bus station.... i guess Sin City, Yunnan takes a little tax in the end.... ;-)

The Promised Land: Discovering Shangri-La

Heading to Shangrili-la!

On the road: a guy sitting by the side of the road holding two live snakes in his hand, smiling rather maniacally and putting their heads into his mouth

- i have seen the wide muddy brown Yangzi River with my own eyes out the bus window

Shangri-La (actually called Zhongdian, but what better way to drum up tourism than to change the name to the golden city of legend) looks like any other modern small Chinese city when you pull into the bus station, but when you get in a cab and ask the driver to take you to the "old town", you get out at a crazy hodgepodge tourist ghetto of crap shops, restaurants, discos, outdoor gear stores, hostels, and guesthouses, all contained within a winding and tourist-ghetto-fabulous ancient wooden village.... Ironically, the "old town" of Shangri-La is in reality the "new town" having been constucted fresh and new in the ancient style of architecture within the past decade to drum up the tourist trade, with overwhelming success; tourists from all over China come to Shangri-La's "old town" to wear cowboy hats, spend their dough, and take painstakingly-set-up picures on tripods with giant long lenses of the quaint fake ancient streets.... What weirdness....

Heading to explore the village where Ritodhi had previously stayed outside Shangri-La, we were met on the entry-bridge by an old drunken man, who tried to get us to go onward to the lake, or back the way we came, but not to enter the village; as he was warning us away, a dog trotted up, proudly carrying a decapitated decaying goat head in ITs mouth.... Despite the old man's drunken warnings, and the surreally disturbing image of the dog with ITs rotting head, we continued on over the bridge and into the town....

The Dragon Wars: Conquering The Dragon

- In the seemingly-never-ending battle with my mild dysentary, i have been placed by Doctors Grell, Chakraborty, and Gluzman on a very strict diet of skewered rice circles and yak yogurt.... 3 to 5 skewers of two chewy circles each and half a bucket of yak yogurt per meal....

"Crouching Tiger, Grabbing Nipple"

In doing research on NGO's working with villages around Shangri-La, Ritodhi discovered the Thangka Academy, a Buddhist institution in Old Town dedicated to teaching kids and adults how to properly create Buddhist thangka art; students live, eat, draw, and paint on the premises, and we found out during our time in Shaxi that our buddy Ashley had actually spent three months there studying as well! We went there to check in and find out how they might be able to assist us in connecting with families to stay with and learn from in the neighboring Tibetan villages.... Outside the Academy building, we met Tess, a Dorset-born British girl who is on a study-abroad program with her university and associated with the Thangka Academy, and she invited us in to introduce us to....

Dakpa (actual name Gedan Zhaba, great-uncle to our buddy Kelsang) is a Tibetan Mafia slick businessguy who i think is Jeremy Kurn's Asian look-alike; he runs the Thangka Academy in Shangri-La & the local village Eco-Lodges, and was the "disciple" of the Academy's Master monk but became unmonkulated.... He owns lots of property around Old Town, and we can tell which properties are his because they're all called "Khampa" This or "Khampa" That.... He clearly has fingers in a lot of local pies, and we privately gave him the title "The Don Of Zhongdian".... Dakpa has an unforgettable hand-up-head-down-giant-smile signature greeting motion, and warmly uses IT whenever he sees us....

Before actually meeting Dakpa, however, we wound up having a wonderful random audience with the Buddhist Master monk Lobsang Khedup; in looking for Tess after she disappeared to go find Dakpa, the small child that we called The Master (in his little Buddhist robes) came to tell us that she was upstairs in the back and not busy.... We were brought into a little back room which was the personal office of the Master monk where Tess was having an audience, and he invited us to sit down and join them; i could understand little more than half of what the gentleman said, but i was very grateful for his willingness to speak to us at great length, in a stream-of-consciousness manner with him speaking and us listening respectfully, as he shared golden apples and bits of wisdom.... His little golden statue of Buddha had ITs head completely wrapped up in white cloth tied up with a red velvet ribbon....

.... IT is interesting to me that my Jewish grandmother had something in common with our Buddhist Lama friend: they both could talk for long periods of time to people without ever seemingly needing any input from the people to whom they talk....

Dakpa warmly and smoothly has arranged everything, and we shall be staying for four days with two different families in the nearby Bisong Village (two of us per family so as not to overwhelm them with four people at once)....

The Dragon Wars: Sending Mixed Signals

- Have added giant helpings of müesli to the buckets of yak yogurt to help the sure blockages from the giant rounds of sticky rice move through in a more expedited fashion.... Perhaps i will poop in less than ten days now!

Shangri-La Music House bar menu:
- Dudweiser
- Snake Foods

Cei Rang is a cool little mustached traditional-singing guy who owns the Music House Bar in Shangri-La; he is very polite and understated in conversation, and his singing is powerful and soulful.... We had the honor to attend one of his nightly performances, and were treated to an amazing contemplative evening of traditional Tibetan singing, accompanied by his ladyfriend singers and his light drum taps, in the silent and darkened candlelit Music House Bar.... The intent behind the songs was clear though the lyrics were not, and i felt cleansed, after a fashion, and thankful for the quiet period of sitting and breathing and listening and being.... Afterward, some downtempo electro was put on, and the meditative atmosphere was followed by mellow party mood, with Dakpa smilingly treating us all to gin & tonics.... The mellowness, however, only lasted as long as IT took to get a functioning acoustic guitar in my hands; Tiffany cut me a pick out of the plastic cover on her notebook, and as i started jamming, two other Tibetan guys jumped in on the two handy djembes, and crazy music ensued, moving from a jam to a highly-energetic "All Along The Watchtower" that had a bunch of folks up and dancing.... IT was good to get things moving again musically! Boy i love to play and help people dance! So much fun.... i was quite spent after that jam, however and gave the guitar over to the next player.... The music continued as a drum-circle jam, featuring an excited Cei Rang doing crazy gong-fu dancing to everyone's delight....

- Ritodhi, hyperventilating with nervousness, being escorted on a long walk by us all to try and get some action with sweet hydrogeologist Meuma at her guest house, since he hadn't made moves on her signals when he'd had his chance at the Music House Bar before she left for the night.... Her guest house was dark and locked up when we finally arrived, which Ritodhi considered to be a victory....

The Dragon Wars: The Dragon In Retreat

- Have shat slightly solider stanky poop after a day-and-a-half of only sticky rice, yogurt, and müesli....

ETTI (the Eastern Tibet Training Institute) is a place that invites teenagers from the Zhongdian area to come and live and be trained in the managerial arts.... We went down to talk to them about their local village programs, and met a bunch of their program directors and teachers, who were mostly very friendly and engaged with one weird and stand-offish exception (who graduated from Columbia, naturally).... The place has a really good vibe to IT and the kids seem to be very happy; ETTI seems to be doing good work, except in the sense that they are contributing to kids leaving their farming families and never going back again to their traditional way of life, in many cases with many kids....

What a fun powerpoint presentation on America by the ETTI kids.... American Cultural Dress pic is: two black guys in tuxedos, looking like Puff Daddy and bodyguard! Yes!

Kelsang Phuntsok is a way-chill cool NGO guy who is the first person ever to go to college from his village and is intent upon using his knowledge to give back to his community; he is creating local kindergartens, interviewing old folks to record their stories and songs while they're still alive to do so, and is generally focused on poverty alleviation for local villagers through education and creating financial incentives to maintain traditional lifestyles (he also is Dakpa's great-nephew as we later found out).... We met him as he drove us out to case Dakpa's Eco-Lodge villages, to see which village might be the most productive for our homestays; he spoke good english and was very candid with us about his work and how strongly he feels about ITs importance for the rural Tibetan communities he is working with.... Kelsang is for sure the coolest guy doing the best work that we've met so far on our travels in Yunnan, and is the kind of guy that is so straightforward and so good a guy that you just automatically want to say, "What can i do to help you?" He can use all the help he can get, too!

- Ritodhi's stolen paper Chinese army slogan: "We must train soldiers according to how we fight"

The Dragon Wars: The Illusion Of Victory

- Have eaten only giant helpings of yogurt and müesli with a sprinkling of rice; things are not quite right in there, what with all the gnarly gas, but damn i sure love that müesli!

RITODHI: "i saw this white monk walking down the street today.... He had a little buddha-smile on his face, like he was enlightened."
TIFFANY: "Don't touch my what?"

One night out on the corner of our Shangri-La street, four yelling cops took the large black barrel-oven off of a guy's food cart; looking like a ridiculous bunch of Keystone Cops, the four of them shuffled slowly away around the corner with the cumbersome round oven, with the food-cart guy looking wistfully after them.... He turned around and got on his bike-cart and pedaled away with a little smile on his face....

Kevin is the local white-guy here in Zhongdian, a "Big Lebowski" Dude-man-about-town and one of the first white folks to settle down and live in the area.... He owns and operates Kevin's Guesthouse, as well as adventure touring in the area with rented jeeps and backpacks and crappy motorcycles that seem to need a lot of repair; he knows everyone in town, and modestly looks down towards the ground and grinds his shoe a bit as he tells us that he's "something of a celebrity here in town".... We have dubbed him "The Colin of Shangri-La" after our friend and mentor Colin Flahive back in Kunming....

The Dragon Wars: The Dragon's Revenge

- Have had the worst epic giant explosive diarrhea since Dongdezhong; will move myself onto self-diagnosed fasting for the time being

Rotem and i are staying together in a family's house right next to the house where Ritodhi and Tiffany are staying.... The two families seem to really be one big family in two large square Tibetan wooden houses, with much trading of kids back and forth.... We are given yummy yak yogurt cheese and round puffy bread for breakfast, along with the traditional butter tea, which is exactly like drinking a cup of melted butter! Very nourishing stuff.... Our dinners mainly consist of unspiced potatoes and rice with some pork fat thrown in for flavor.... Also very, ummm, nourishing....

Pussyking is the oldest son of Tiffany & Ritodhi's Bisong family; he, at the tender age of ten years, complains, cries, and screams with an extremely runny nose on an everyday consistent basis - thus Ritodhi has dubbed him with his moniker that he (fortunately) can't understand.... His intense frustration causes him to lash out at his younger seven-year-old sister, Wonder Woman, who then proceeds to beat him up and spin-kick him in his snottynosed head.... We were actually witness to his mother giving him a bath in the washbasin, where she held him over her knee washing him as he screamed and whined....

Commando is a tough-as-nails six-year-old boy, who looks like he's three, who comes from another family to hang out with Pussyking and Wonder Woman almost every day.... He always has one hand down his pants, playing vigorously with himself, and bounces back from any injury like a miniature super-soldier; he dresses in camo, loves guns and destruction, and does his best to beat up on Pussyking, who gets some of his only powertripping done by abusing the small child....

Wonder Woman is a spunky little seven-year-old girl who hangs with the boys and gets some shit for IT, but is not afraid to make full use of the smooth gong-fu techniques she sees on TV and in movies to make short work of her would-be abusers.... One swift kick to the head often seems to deter any boys (namely her brother Pussyking) from unduly lording IT over her....

Commando Boy, out on the street on National Day in Shangri-La, dressed all in camo and holding his Desert Eagle plastic handgun, whips out his penis and starts peeing on the street, while holding the barrel of the gun in his mouth.... so calmly

Commando Boy scoffed (a cough and sneeze combined) in my face.... from two inches away.... Soooo not okay!

Pussyking - he's only a man with a plastic gun in his hand

Commando Boy - A gun in his mouth and his dick in his hand

Pussyking: The Making Of A Fashion Designer

Rotem to Ritodhi in the cold house: "Would you mind sitting on my hand?"

Chinese Communist Ninjas versus Japanese Fascist Ninjas - the greatest epic episodic drama show ever badly filmed! Starring Bubba, the baddest-assed Chinese Ninja of them all, and when he looks pissed, and i mean REALLY PISSED, you know someone's going to meet their maker with five bloody finger-marks in their skull, and you also know a lot of grenades will get thrown and a LOT of shit is going to blow up.... The best scene is when Bubba hasn't killed anybody hand-to-hand in maybe five episodes (only killing about half of Tokyo with his giant-explosion grenades), when suddenly he's all alone and fifteen Japanese Ninjas come jumping out at him, whirling their weapons in the air; cut to Bubba's face in close-up, looking REALLY REALLY PISSED, and you just know this is going to be a truly epic Ninja battle where Bubba is going to graphically wipe the landscape with the blood of all fifteen Ninjas, and just when IT's all about to go down, the scene cuts to a bridge blowing up and soldiers shooting at each other, and never ever cuts back to the Bubba Ninja Massacre.... Episode after episode goes by, and we never see the Bubba Ninja Massacre.... We're pretty sure the show is called "The River Kwai And The Bridge That Goes Over IT"....

"Once i remember his name, i'm going to give you some books to read." - Rotem

Nice to feel like an educator again for a day! On my walking way to meet up with Tiffany and Ritodhi, who had ridden back into Shangri-La with their homestay family on their tractor for National Day, i was given a ride into town by a kindly government family (Tibetan mom in the customs house, Han dad in the local government) whose daughter Laura (Yom-Zi Zhuo Ma) is studying english in Chongqing; i told them about my teaching background over lunch at their place (right in the same housing complex as ETTI!) and Laura invited me to come meet her the next morning and help her with her holiday homework, which was to go to a local Shangri-La high school and sit-in and critique two english classes, and then tout her Maple Leaf International School at a third middle school english class....

i woke up before dawn at our homestay house in Bisong Village the next morning, and walked in the wintry cold for two hours: first gropingly in the dark fields and the muddy roads, shining my dim lights on the ground in order to not step in deep mud in my sandals and socks, and then more confidently in the growing gray light towards the main road.... Once on the main road, the walking was easier, but my socks were soaked through with the night's rainwater and i had to continue walking with soppy steps to keep my feet somewhat warm in the cold mountain air....

The dad (Shi Dingxiong) picked me up as planned, by the giant white roadside stupa as IT turned out, and drove me to the beautiful shiny high school where Laura was waiting for me.... Once inside, i got my wet socks off and we entered the first classroom to the thunderous applause of seventy psyched Chinese high school kids; i guess IT was considered something of a celebrity visit to have a white teacher come to visit the class....

The classes were large by my standards, and needed more sectioning out, team-building, and individual interaction, along with more emphasis on pronunciation and cadence.... i was surprised that i was asked to get up in front of the class to offer my critique of the teaching style; at first, i was worried that this might be embarrassing to the current teacher, but Laura assured me that IT was the teacher that had requested the public critique, so i gamely went along for the ride....

The kids in both successive classes loved seeing me in action up front and hearing my thoughts on their classes; my main metaphor about the importance of smaller teams within the class was about trying to play basketball with fifty people on each team.... The kids seemed to appreciate this metaphor....

Only at the middle school class did i fully appreciate that i was basically doing Laura's homework for her.... Not only did i do most of the talking in the critiques, but she hastily prepped me on the details about her school for twenty minutes beforehand, and then had me do all the main speaking to the kids as though i were one of the teachers at her school, translating my words into Chinese as i went along.... Sort of cheesy, but the kids did love IT, so again i gamely played along....

The family was very thankful to me for the morning's shenanigans, and before lunch (back at their place), they went in the garage and came out with a North Face shoebox, having noted that i was wearing sandals in the wintry weather (and having given me another pair of socks earlier).... The hiking shoes in the box were brand new brown shoes that i would have been stoked to wear, and with gratefulness and excitement, i looked under the tongue to see the size.... 9-1/2! With me being an 11! Oh, so close.... The story of my life! i tried them on, and even though they didn't fit, considered taking them anyway and just making do.... because IT just seemed so perfect! Until the dad tried them on and they fit him perfectly....! That reminded me that somebody else would make make much better use of them than i could.... So they offered to take me someplace to where i could get a cheap pair of shoes.... After trying five different places while the whole family sat in the running car, none of which had shoes in big people's sizes like 48 cm, and Ritodhi warning me away on the phone from buying the one pair of grandpa shoes i found in my size in old town, i apologized and asked them meekly to drive onward down the road to the village.... After they kindly drove me the whole way back to my homestay house, through the mud and rain and getting their nice silver car quite dirty, we parted ways with a memorializing picture of Laura and i, with wishes that we may work together again....

P.S. i have witnessed, at Laura's house after lunch, one of the weirdest cartoons i have ever beheld.... Done in a kitschy Hanna-Barbera style, i pick IT up in the middle of a story taking place in an ancient Asian mishmosh of cultures.... IT features a white hero in unidentifiable Asian garb, his brown bald white-bearded diaper-wearing swami sidekick, the Persian princess love-interest, ugly Chinese bad guys, and the twisted high-voiced mustached vaguely-Asian villain who gets thwarted in his evil plans by the intrepid friends in a long and convoluted rescue of some sort.... The villain then has to jump out his castle window and gets caught on a hanging branch coming off the tower, where he hangs, weeping pitifully and repenting his wicked ways as he squirms in front of all the townspeople below; suddenly, a strange vulture-like bird flies down and grabs the villain in ITs talons, swooping him away into the sky as he cries and begs forgiveness for his evil deeds.... Suddenly, the bird-thing and villain are engulfed in a crazy wormhole that opens up in the sky out of nowhere....

The wormhole takes the bird and villain to a faraway mountaintop cave, where the bird crashes into a rock and gets knocked unconscious, spilling the villain onto the ground, where he rolls and bumps into a dusty old chest, which he then opens to discover an ancient mystical amulet inside.... Forgetting all his repentances, and immediately reverting back to evilhood, he cackles and uses the amulet to open another wormhole which sweeps him up.... This activity has been witnessed by a bespectacled professor purple dinosaur who hangs out in the mountain cave, who voices his concern about the villain and his evildoings and jumps into the wormhole after him....

Suddenly the heroic friends are chasing after the villain through the wormhole, accompanied by the professor purple dinosaur, except now the villain, the friends, and the purple dinosaur are all wearing bubble-helmeted spacesuits and are floating up in space on their chase.... i leave the narrative at this point, feeling like i'm coming off some face-melting psychedelic trip....

The Dragon Wars: Laying in Wait

- i have not pooped now for going on five days, seemingly as the result of the hearty food we have been given in our lovely Tibetan family homestay; the diet of all carbs and fat (bread, yak yogurt cheese, butter tea, potatoes, turnips, and rice) seems to be just the trick to plug up the Dragon's Cave with some starchy boulders! We shall see how events continue to unfold....

Great Ideas File: Raising the military age to 60! Yes! All the old people who want to go to war can just go do IT and leave everyone else alone! Grandpas in machine-gun wheelchairs and cybernetic war suits like Matrix Revolutions! Grandpa training camp: "Get down and give me five!" Grandpas climbing ropes and falling off the big net....

"What kind of nappy ho are you?" - Tiffany to Rotem, during conversation about pube-dreds

The Fantastic Four: Ritodhi as Mr. Fantastic, Tiffany as The Invisible Woman, Nolan as The Human Torch, and Rotem as The Thing

10/4 - Happy birthday, Connor! i wish i could communicate my happy wishes to you over the interwebs today, but my ensconcement in this rural village prevents IT.... i hope you can hear me over the netherwaves! i love you!

Who hangs out with sensitive melancholy poets? Sympathetic depressives

- Tiffany has had the great misfortune to be lying in a bed immediately over a giant colony of fleas, and was progressively eaten alive over the course of three nights; she emerged from the third night with the bottom two-thirds of her body completely covered in red bites which itched her so badly that she scratched them all until they bled, so in addition to the puffy allergic reactions she is having in blotches all over, she is also covered in bloody dot-like scabs.... She was quite the gruesome sight as i rubbed the itch-cream on her back and hard-to-reach places, and she slept the next night with socks on her hands to stop her scratching....

"PHONY - The Pleasure Of Life" - Bisong Village shopkeeper lady's cap

Rotem went out to take a poop out in the field, and an insistent pig tried to eat the poop as IT came out of his butt :-D

Bisong Village chips package: "Cate & Health - Series High Foodstuff Good Taste, Choiceness Raw Material, A Present First Choose"

Bisong Village kid's basketball game players: Grandpa (Me), Fancypants, Player, Pussyking, Commie, Rambo, Shooter, Polio Boy, Jailbait, Wonder Woman, Commando.... The most sporting exercise i've had in at least three years!

"When i went to the Midwest, i realized that Jesus really loves processed food." - Ritodhi

The Dragon Wars: Light At The End Of The Tunnel

Back in Shangri-La, at the Dragon Cloud Hostel, the first poop in four-plus days of backed-up fats and starches! Solid and stalwart! Also kind of stinky, but i don't want to flush IT down because i'm having such a love affair just looking at IT! :-D

Good advice from Ritodhi tonight over foodsticks, helpful and offering useful guidance: start at the most basic, by figuring out what IT is that i can and cannot deal with.... What do i really care about? What can i not live without? What do i not really want or need? What do i love? What can i not stand? The answers to these questions will begin to lend shape to the larger questions concerning what i need to be doing in life....!

"i love Drew Barrymore.... i just feel really frustrated that i know who she is." - Tiffany

Thespiphobia - The fear of actors

Kelsang arranged for us to head out for the day to nearby Chenyi Village to do a video interview for Ritodhi's documentary with the oldest fossil of the village, Newa Lazong (69 years young) about the traditional Tibetan lifestyle, consisting of mostly yak herding and yak products, with a little potatoes on the side.... "The Grandpa" (as Kelsang called him) was a kindly old soul who was well-versed in the ways of his ancestors, and fingered his mala while softly muttering his prayers between sections of the interview, during which a little wild white weasel climbed across the roof rafters of his humble little wooden home.... He openly answered all Ritodhi's questions as Kelsang translated for us from the Tibetan, and seemed to feel that modern technology and lifestyles were not inherently bad, as they bring many helpful conveniences into village people's lives; his main issue was with the distance and separation which modernity places between young villagers and an active interest in maintainance of traditions and old-world lifestyles.... Newa was very kind to do the interview with us, and as we were thanking him in the darkening field outside of his home, his wife hung over the fence and laughed about how he was too old and ugly to be a western movie star....

Rotem, the Erectionless Israeli, got charged by a crazy yak in the field during Kelsang's interview :-D

"They gave me some cakes and i passed away." - Kelsang on his hospital experience

"The Gui Qing Sound Is Like A Store" - Shangri-La storefront name

"Ugly women very safe." - Kelsang Phuntsok

A great evening after the interview with Kelsang, who fits into our little party like a yak in a condom catheter.... His stories had us all rolling; illicit sex parties at the Thangka Academy, local dialects which mix up the words for yaks and penises, Uncle Thomba getting jiggy with the farmer's daughter, etc.... We parted ways at the end of the night with warm hugs and high hopes for future collaborations....

10/9/11: Bai bai Shangri-La! And let begin the epic adventure of The Great Ruili Border Run! We four are up at 6:00 AM, on the bus to Dali at 7:00 AM, and ready to go get the best French baguette in Asia, and pick up Tiffany's passport, money, and debit card which she forgot a month ago at the Jade Emu Hostel....

From there, Tiffany and i will get on a bus heading down southwest to Ruili, once the Sin City of Yunnan, dripping with prostitution, drugs, gambling and vice; once there, we have every confidence that the border guards between China and neighboring Myanmar (Burma) will be kind enough to understand our visa turnaround-plight (the governmental rule says we have to leave the country every three months if we want to keep hanging out) and stamp us right back through in a revolving-door fashion.... Right? Right? Sure! Everything will go great, i'm sure.... Because otherwise we have to spend a whole bunch more dough on buses to get to Mengla and the Lao border to get this shit done by the 16th.... We're undertaking this Ruili run because IT's a significantly shorter (and less expensive) journey than going all the way down to Lao for the turnaround; i read ONE post on gokunming.com from a British guy that said IT had worked perfectly smoothly for him this summer to do this same thing in Ruili.... so what could go wrong? We'll just disregard that EVERYBODY and their mother has posted all over the internet everywhere that China/Burma border crossings are difficult and harsh and that no one anywhere has gotten the visa turnaround successfully accomplished....

Anyhoo, from our planned turnaround in Ruili, we plan to figure out buses or whatever to Lincang, where Ritodhi and Rotem will have met up with Colin, the Kevin of Kunming, and shuttle out and meet up in Bangdong Village with which Colin works closely in his NGOs, and be back on track again, one big happy Fantastic Four Family.... well, that's the plan, anyway.... What could go wrong? :-D