Kunming Vegetarian Restaurant menu: Crispy Fried Chicken Paws, Endless Buddha Force, Ground Freshness
Good to see my old buddy and tutoring student, Rohan Adam Jesudason, here in Kunming where he's studying Chinese for a semester out of UVM.... IT's always fun to hang out with him!
A somehow-meaningful first in my life tonight: As i was showering here at The Hump Hostel in Kunming, i dropped the soap as my eyes were closed under the water.... and never heard IT hit the floor! Eyes still shut, i thought maybe IT was sticking to my stomach or something; i look down, and see the rounded bar on the floor, standing upright on a slight tilt back, like a little yellow sail.... i smiled, and could not help but find some meaning that i do not understand in such things....
Ritodhi Chakraborty is a thick and funny Indian guy from West Bengal who has lived in Indiana and San Fran, Boulder and D.C. and is quite well-travelled; he's applying for Ph.D's and working on research for a book and documentary on Earth Tech and Sustainability.... We met at the Hump Hostel in Kunming where he came to meet up with Tiffany to discuss traveling together to research agricultural technology in rural areas of China, and immediately took a liking to each other.... He got me out of some serious doldrums with his affability and good humor, like a big breath of fresh air, and in the days since, we have recognized each other as kindred sensitive male spirits and therefore have the license to pal around like dudey dudes in our manny pants.... (-D
IT seems as though i have an invitation to travel with Ritodhi and Tiffany to these villages and live the life of the people with them.... i do not yet understand my place in all this, but i welcome the opportunity to learn and grow and come to some understanding of necessary humility in all of this.... i think this upcoming village farming travel to the Shaxi Valley and beyond will be very educational - and fun!
"Being a baby is like being a hardcore drug addict." - Ritodhi
"Oh my god! The cheese is so real!" - Tiffany
"Back to School Party with DJ Teacher" - Kunming street sign
"Robert's School - Engish for all ages" - Kunming irony
"Without business MGM has not slaughtered" - T-shirt in Kunming trendy store
A very fun day, beginning with Tiffany and i meeting up with Ritodhi in the morning to go to Salvador's Coffee Shop, a local westerny place owned by a Colorado guy named Colin Flahive.... Colin is starting some non-profit NGO ventures and has connections through his employees to small villages where he can set Ritodhi up to do his research, which of course ties directly into what Tiffany is researching as well! We met with Colin and discussed his various ideas and how his assistance might be helpful to R. & T.'s research....
The meeting was great, the food was great, and afterward we three got on a random bus that drove us up out of the city into the mountains, where we had to get out partway up to wherever the bus was headed because we had only paid five qwai each.... We realized that none of us had much money on us, and no food or water; so with this understanding, we started walking off down a trail into the woods, where i had to remark that IT seemed like five minutes earlier we were walking around trendyville in downtown Kunming, and all of a sudden we're lost in the woods somewhere! Walking down these random stone trails with no other humans around anywhere was very unusual for being in China, and i had to remark that IT seemed like we might have entered some kind of wormhole time warp, and that i'd be really psyched to be stranded in some crazy ancient time period with these two particular beings....
However, our isolation in the woods only lasted as long as IT took for us to realize we were walking along the outside wall of a park, and we soon had made our way out of the thicket onto a paved road with houses.... We were all ready for a rest, so we laid down by the side of the road, and took a nap in the shade.... Every now and then, a car would drive by, and from our prone positions, we would lazily lift our thumbs up for a ride.... Needless to say, no one stopped for us....
However, somone finally did stop, and the man in the passenger seat motioned us to get in.... There was a girl driving, and as we all piled in the back, we realized that this was a student driver car, and the girl was in the middle of a driving lesson.... We weaved back and forth down the mountain, hoping that we would make IT back down without plunging over the side of the road and laughing all the way.... "She'll be going down my mountain when she comes!"
We did indeed successfully make IT back to Kunming, and were driven to the bus station by the kind driving instructor, where we caught a bus back to the area of our hostel, and found a place to eat where we had a tasty meal within our meagre budget, with a little $ left over at the end for each of us! Walking back through the hostel doors almost twelve hours after we started the day's journey, we decided that IT had been great fun and we had all enjoyed each other's companionship very much!
The night ended with a completely random bump-into with Adam and his friends at The Hump Bar downstairs from the hostel; Adam wound up playing some bass with his buds onstage, and after they finished, i came up and Adam and i jammed for the first time with each other! Funny IT should come in China.... We played "John Henry" and rocked IT out, even though dude's guitar had action as deep as the Grand Canyon and my fingers went up under the strings when i tried to bend notes.... Great soloing technique! Anyway, IT was fun....
Self-deprication & identity Taro throw: Significator - Justice, Contact inverted & Communication (drawn in a pair), Queen of Swords, Magician inverted
Synthesis: You want to establish a new beginning of self and identity, but there have not been clear boundaries established to properly demarcate old patterns and identifications from whatever new ones you are interested in establishing and exploring.... Your beginnings are frustrated and overly aggressive, not particularly progressive, and possibly doing more harm than good; IT seems necessary to establish clearer internal communication between ego and higher self, to dissect and discern effective lines between old and new paradigms, and drop anything that can be clearly understood as self-deception.... The main purpose in this work is to gain an increasing objectivity about ego-self and ITs work in the world, an internal balance and harmonious functioning which will not be thrown off-course by the buffeting waves of feeling which wrack the body and create the illusion of great suffering through your attachment to "feeling good", as may be seen by the lack-of-presence of Cups or Discs in this throw.... Contact, the illuminative torch, will not light your way until the education and growth which come from this inner communication have been cultivated and understood.... Reason and clarity are of primary importance in this process, and must be focused on to the exclusion of all else which does not clearly serve....
- Well i guess i'll be in Kunming a few days longer than i had envisioned; Adam got me a 2-day ticket for the 500 KM City Music Festival, a two-day rockfest at the expo center here in Kunming.... IT'll be good to go to a big show here in China and see what IT's all about....
Fun times at the 500KM City Music Festival, with a posse of Adam's friends and myself all ready for some ROCK! Points of interest: toddler girl toddling around in a white princess dress, holding a very long kebab of partially-devoured whole fish; decent prices for food and beers; and right at the beginning, as the first band was starting to play ambient hippie new age music, the soft delicate tones were being drowned out by blaring advertising coming through the PA of one of the other stages in the area, where nobody at all was hanging out.... i walked over there in disgust, and asked someone with a VIP tag if they could cut the ads because there was music starting.... And as i walked away, like magic, the blaring voices ceased and there was silence from the secondary stage area! IT actually worked! They listened to me! This would never ever happen in the states.... Due to this bizarre turn of events, i was so emboldened that when i heard too-loud electronic music coming from the Mercedes-Benz stage where there was also absolutely nobody hanging out, i went over and also asked the DJ's there to turn IT down.... and they did! i walked back to the small crowd in front of the main stage able to hear the tribal hippie band perfectly well! i remain still amazed....
The bands of the night: Sitar Tan, with a rock diva from hell whose name i'd like to know, because she COOKS! What an awesome singer.... and wrapping up the evening, XTX! Blending some of the vibe of Tool with traditional guqin music and some good vocals, i would actually like to get a CD of this dude and his band, because from the epic Floydesque beginning all through until the end of the set, those guys made a definite rock atmosphere that is worth remembering....
Just to take note: IT is 9/11/11, ten years to the day after that bullshit with the WTC.... They're calling IT the "9/11 Decade" in the media.... i can't believe IT's been ten years because i remember that shit like IT was yesterday.... just sayin
Me & Adam's Kunming Culture Alley restaurant menu:
- Ghost chicken
- Bamboo chicken. The valley
- Mixed hot microphones
- Roast wool belly
- Banana spend the meat
- Stir-fry beef spicy small microphones
- Pickles cult-inspiring hairy bell
- Smelly egg soup dishes
500KM Festival, Night 2: i cheered as i watched Adam be carried away by the crowd, borne aloft on drunken hands into the distance and disappear into a sea of waving dancers....
Bands of the night: Shan Ren (Mountain Man), with some awesome Chinese folk-rock World Music stuff, and.... CUI JIAN, the Godfather of Chinese political rock, with a growly voice more suited to death metal than melodic rock, but man he has quite a presence! His songs were fun, and the vastly-increased police presence from the night before (helmeted officers in lines throughout the crowd) attested to the provocational political outspokenness of his lyrics.... A lot of people were throwing fists in the air and cheering, and there was a lot of energetic charge in the crowd atmosphere that i wish i understood better.... What was the meaning of the colorful flag with symbols and writing on IT that was constantly being waved by one guy in the crowd? What were people yelling in their cheers? i was intensely curious and utterly handicapped by my monolinguality....
By the end, we were spent.... We had jumped, danced, screamed, cheered, and moshed (well, Tiffany and Adam moshed, anyway) our way through a highly-energized and very, very fun night of sweat, humanity, and ROCK.... We all left with another musical war story under our belts, and went back home to a well-deserved sleep....
No comments:
Post a Comment