The Road To Shaxi

"She would have gone down if she was going to go down." - Tiffany on the Bu Yao's

One night stopover in Dali at the Jade Emu Hostel, our pit stop on the road to the Shaxi Valley, and the villages which we will find there....

Dinner at the Dali Hump: All-They-Can-Cook Pizza! Because IT sure wasn't ALL that Ritodhi and i could EAT.... they ran out of pizza before that happened!

On the bus to Shaxi: Tiffany's eyes go wide in the seat next to me, and she says in a panic, "i have to get off the bus! Make them stop the bus! i left my passport and debit card and all my money on the bed at the hostel!" Rather than have her throw herself from the moving bus, we put her on the phone with the nice folks at the Jade Emu, where the maid has found her stuff, and where they will put IT all in their safe for her until she comes back to Dali to collect IT.... So IT looks like i get to play Sugar Daddy for the next however long....

NAS (Numb-Ass Syndrome): Feels like IT sounds.... FNAS (Floor version), BNAS (Bus version)

"There's a cow in the rice field. My feet stink." - Tiffany

"Stay here and get fat" - Horsepen 46 Hostel motto, our home in the town of Sideng, Shaxi Valley

The town of Sideng in the Shaxi Valley is the most beautiful human-residence place we've been so far; most of the town is wooden buildings which were mostly built a long time ago, and the town as a whole has the ambiance of a "wild west" town, except set in old-time China.... Simply beautiful residences, epic views of the northern mountain range from our hostel, a gorgeous town square with a beautifully-painted three-story ornate-roofed pagoda theater and an old temple with two giant statues of demonic deities guarding the entrance.... We could stay a long time in this as-yet-unspoiled timeless town....

Amazing moonrise in Shaxi tonight, with the egg-like moon being born into the dark night sky from a crevasse in the silhouetted mountain skyline; the dip in the mountain perfectly cradled the first light of the rising moon, and held ITs roundness for a time until the silver shining ball slowly burst forth from this heavenly womb....

"A banana a day keeps the dragon away." - Ritodhi

Shaxi's town of Sideng seems to be the sort of place where interesting people go to get away from the hustling-and-bustling world, and chill out with their art and their thoughts.... A place to solidify intentions and get straight with oneself what one is doing in life.... There is a lot of slow living and a lot of space for personal evolution in the calm town atmosphere, and a wonderful river to sit by and watch the ladies lighting little candles for their group rituals.... The cast of characters in the town, all worth getting to know, just keeps growing as we stay here at the Horsepen Hostel....

Lily Hyde is an understated short-gray-haired beautiful-souled British woman from Manchester, who has been living at the Horsepen for a couple of months and working on her third novel.... She has a beautiful singing voice, a beautiful spirit, and Ritodhi has broken his principles of larger-women infatuation to fall madly in love with her....

Slipper is the slight-goateed barbell-workout rock-climbing worker at Horsepen 46 Hostel in Shaxi.... what a classic little guy! He works out all day long, every day, doesn't shower but wants us to smell him.... We call him "Ong Bak, the Thai Warrior", because we thought he was going to spin-kick us all in the head when Tiffany mentioned something that someone else said about Chinese men having small penises.... He jumped right up, saying "That's not true! Who said that? Take me to them! Show me who said that!" Afterwards, he suggested to us that we should all go to the roof, get drunk and take our shirts and underwear off.... He loves Japanese porn, loves to call me Kung Fu Panda, and proudly showed off his little diploma from the Eastern Tibet Training Institute in Shangri-La saying that he's certified to build composting toilets....

Sun Wei Wei is a beautiful understated revolutionary Chinese artist/writer lady with a tiny quiet voice but loud things to say.... Wei Wei can be very ephemeral, almost seemingly existing on some other plane when she is entranced in the poetry of life, but she expresses very grounded and passionate ideals of freedom and artistic expression in conversation.... She rents a room on the second floor above the defunct Trail Cafe, and sits pondering the intricasies of life and writing her novel.... Sometimes, she paints....

The Three Amigos: Chocolate Bear, Squishy, and Kung Fu Panda

As we set out with our packs for our journey up the mountain to the Yi minority people's village, we encountered a small boy at the edge of the town square, who stood in our path between us and the road we needed to take.... He pointed behind us, and babbled something in Chinese about going the other direction.... We called him Oracle Baby, and hoped his prediction would not foreshadow difficulties on our journey....

On our way up the mountain known as Huan Cong Shan, Tiffany and i were definitely feeling the weight of our pared-down backpacks, and after a ways up, Tiffany wanted to take a break.... She put up her hammock, and plopped down for a rest, saying that Ritodhi and i should go on up to the village without her, and she would meet back up with us at the top; so, splitting with her, Ritodhi and i continued on up the mountain.... On our way up, we meandered somewhat off the main trail, and i called Tiffany and tried to explain to her what route we were taking.... Later, she called me, unsure of the correct path, and i gave her further navigational advice.... Despite our separation, i felt sure that the evening would find us all happily reunited in the village around a family's roaring fire, eating a hearty celebratory dinner together.... Yet apparently, all of my navigational advice was bad, and she became quite lost off the main trail and had to bushwhack her way up through forests of spiked holly, crying and cursing our names....

After four or five hours climb, Ritodhi and i arrived at the small mountain village called Luoshuidou, and after a little while of wandering through fields, we wandered onto a house property, and were invited in for tea by the old nearly-toothless man who lived there.... We sat in the small dim wooden house by the fire in the middle of the room, as the old man grabbed the black kettle out of the fire with his bare hands and poured us bitter, bitter tea.... He then placed some potatoes in the fire to cook, and took them out with his bare hands when they were ready, giving them to us to peel and eat.... i made some efforts to communicate with him, trying to explain that we were studying farming, and he indicated to us that they were very poor, so poor that he couldn't even get his teeth fixed (he showed us this with his open mouth and his maybe four or five remaining teeth)....

After our meal, Ritodhi led us out to the house's potato field, where there were several younger people digging up the potatoes.... Ritodhi went right out and inserted himself among the action, to the laughs and delight of the farming guys and girls and little kids.... We both set about pulling potatoes and sorting them in several wicker baskets, but as there was only one hoe available, Ritodhi suggested i go get the guitar and play some good ol' work songs.... The little kids very much enjoyed my playing, laughing and clapping while the older girl-lady showed Ritodhi the proper hoeing technique so he wouldn't continue chopping the buried potatoes in half underground....

We needed more water than we had available for drinking, and so we decided to bite the bullet and try using my steripen which i had brought with me for just such an occasion.... We guessed that the water coming out of their outdoor tap was probably not drinkable as-was, and i had no real idea if the steripen would work properly after i had become so violently ill after drinking steripenned water in Huabao's hometown.... So we just wished each other luck, swirled the UV in our vessels, and downed the hatch.... As IT turned out, everything was fine, and we had all the steripen water we needed....

At this point, the sun was beginning to head down, and Tiffany still had not reappeared.... We were beginning to get a little worried, for the four-hour hike had been about eight for her so far; we started walking across the village towards the point at which we had entered, wondering if perhaps she had encountered another village family and was simply having a meal somewhere hidden from us.... And as we walked, Ritodhi caught sight of a small petulant dot marching miserably towards us from far down the hill.... i pulled out my video camera, because i knew this would be worth catching on film! Tiffany hiked exhaustedly up to us, cursing us both for leaving her behind, and we were both very happy that she hadn't been eaten by a panda bear or a wolverine....

We brought her, still steaming and tearing, back to our family's house, where we finally had the interpretation we needed to properly communicate with the family about helping out on the farm, interview them, and study their life for a couple of days.... While Tiffany discussed matters with the grandma, i looked over my shoulder to see all the family kids by the water tap, washing an old corded telephone....

As night fell, we were called inside by the fire for some food.... Our dinner with our new Yi family was a very simple affair of rice with salted potatoes, complimented with little yellow pickled chilis.... very simple yet very delicious, and which felt somehow very nourishing.... i looked around the fire at the latest Ayi and Shu Shu, and Tiffany and Ritodhi enjoying their meals, and recognized that my vision from earlier of our celebratory reunion dinner had come to pass.... Ayi and Shu Shu packed their little pipes with tobacco after dinner, and sat puffing away, watching Communist dramas on the dusty old TV, as we sat and observed life in their small ramshackle house....

For bedtime, they gave Ritodhi the bed with the mewing black cat, on the other side of the little house from theirs.... Tiffany and i set up our hammocks outside, and i had mine hanging in the back garden, right over the bed of salad greens.... We bundled up a bit and got the tarps ready in case of rain, and said goodnight....

The next day up in the Yi village, Tiffany wanted to go for a little exploratory walk, and i decided to tag along.... The little walk turned into a day-long expedition, where after walking through gorgeous mountain scenery for a good ways, we wound up helping some kids and a couple of adults from Yigongzhuang (the next village over the mountain) carry cones of mustard-seed straw to a tarp for threshing the little black seeds into a giant pile.... The kids invited us back to their place for some food after the work was done, and told us that they knew our village and that IT was on their way to the live-in school they attended five days out of the week.... They were going back down the mountain to their school after washing up, and would be happy to take us back to our village.... Unfortunately, we realized after a good long way down the mountain with them that they were probably taking us to the wrong village! We split with them to try and retrace our steps up through the unmarked mountain countryside, before getting somewhat lost trying to find the way back....

i felt very sure that i had a good handle on my overview head-map of the area, and could get us back where we needed to be; in reality, i was completely wrong, and IT was generally-directionally-handicapped Tiffany that actually knew the proper deal and got us back home again, even before dinner-time! This experience dealt quite a crushing blow to my ego, for if we had followed my lead, we would have been completely lost for a good long time with no compass, no sleeping gear, and no water.... Tiffany called me useless, and i quite agree! Nothing like realizing how useless i am to show me an ever-clearer picture of the emptiness of my inflated ego....

For some late-afternoon entertainment for the kids, i took out my long rhythmic-gymnastics colorful flag, and did the flag-waving dance, which everyone enjoyed.... One of the family men really got into IT, trying to do IT like Jackie Chan would and failing; he did get the hang of IT after a while, though.... Ritodhi chased around our favorite laughing and screaming boy, until the grandparents saw in horror that he was running around and stopped everything to show us the gnarly little scar by his left ribs, telling us about a recent accident in which some piece of farm equipment had impaled the kid or something, and he had to be taken to Kunming for expensive surgery, and they were afraid for his little heart, so NO PLAYING! Our poor little buddy was the most smiley and energetic of all the kids, and IT seemed pretty sucky for him that he would be forever told not to play; he went back to playing with the washed telephone....

On the third morning, we packed up and got ready to leave, taking some pictures with our Ayi, Liu Si Mai, in her fantastic matriarchal giant flat headdress; she wanted copies of the pics, and Tiffany later got them printed out and gave them to her daughter, who we saw down at the weekly market in town.... We took our leave of the kindly folks, secretly leaving some money for their kindness under the meat cleaver in the kitchen area of their house, and headed back down the mountain, where we lost Ritodhi as he sprinted on ahead and our knees took a pounding from the extra 25 pounds on our backs! Tiffany fell and twisted her knee, and i fell and stubbed my toe and had a bad spot in my right knee that forced me to walk really funny the whole way down.... We got back to the Horsepen quite bedraggled and ready for a good rest....

"My self-esteem is a fragile bird of prey." - Ritodhi

"Girls can go forever like the Terminator." - Tiffany

Ashley Oldacre is a sweet and demure girl (with a strong spirit somewhere under the pink surface) from Switzerland and the US who came to study Chinese in Shanghai and followed her program director out to Shaxi.... She's now working on the Shaxi Rehabilitation Project and helping run the Shaxi Cultural Center Guest House.... We met her in the Shaxi Cultural Info Center on the town square as she was sitting and knitting, supposedly running the place, and struck up a conversation about the local culture.... Despite her general shelteredness, she's got a spunky core that comes out more with comfortability (and a little liquid courage).... She's got a long-distance boyfriend in Shanghai who's got big plans to make IT big by manufacturing fake Jockey underwear and selling IT to the underwearless masses of the Chinese population; we spare no opportunity to rib her about being the heiress to the Underwear Empire....

Rotem Gluzman is a big-hearted crusty bearded Israeli bastard ending up a two-year travel working a job doing mapping as a geographer.... He's a highly opinionated, yet open-minded individual who has been through a lot of high and low times, and professes to not be able to cohabitate with other people, but seems to really enjoy cohabitating with our little trio! We all met at the Horsepen, where we were all staying, and Rotem sort of naturally became the fourth wheel of our little dirt buggy.... Tiffany calls him "Mr. Awesome", and i love watching the two of them get into highly opinionated picky arguments with each other....

"My Aussie friend wears a rainbow speedo. IT's a really great look for a pedophile." - Rotem

"IT's better to have a moment of shame on your face than an hour of pain in your stomach." - Rotem's Wise Grandfather

Tiffany, Rotem & Ritodhi's funniest China moment so far: Luoshi, the big black dog at Horsepen 46, beginning his courtship by licking my knee as i sit on the floor, which i welcome with "What a nice kiss".... This gives him the green-light, and a moment later, Luoshi has mounted my leg and is attempting to rub himself off; the other dog, a giant female St. Bernard named Mali, realizes what a wonderful sexual opportunity this is, and as i attempt to squirm away from Luoshi's clutches, inadvertantly presenting my ass for further abuse in the process, both dogs begin jumping on me and attempting to have their way with me.... i feel very violated by this giant dog rape session, as all five other people in the courtyard fall off their seats gut-laughing.... i could be a goddamn internet celebrity if only someone caught this on video

As we four were getting the fire going for our barbecue down by the river, a couple of goats came trotting up.... i greeted them with open arms, saying "Goatee!".... As i began to pat the frontmost goat on ITs horned head, i felt some sprinkling liquid on my feet, and looked down to see the goat's deep-red syringe-like penis spraying urine all over my feet.... As i jumped back in horror, i watched aghast as IT proceeded to suck ITself off in sheer delight....

"You're the Ace Ventura of Shaxi." - Ritodhi

.... The barbeque ITself (minus the horny goat incident) was truly wonderful.... A great bonding time for the four of us, Tiffany outdid herself (as usual) with pound upon pound of immaculately spiced meat, tofu, broccoli, and squash, and we were all moaning and cooing over the delicious meal.... i did DJ Ipod with the little speakers, bringing a little something for everyone, which helped to set the mood, and the dark lovely Shaxi night with our little fire did the rest.... As the night went on, Lily had come and silently hung out with us for a while as we laughed and shared stories with each other.... By evening's end, i was playing guitar around the fire, and we were all connecting silently in the darkness and loving life.... IT was some of the best of what our young culture has to offer these days, i think, and i was proud to be a part of IT....

Nipples is a super-friendly dirty-ass white street dog who we see anywhere and everywhere all over the town; she loves Tiffany more than life ITself, and drinks water from the sewage drains.... She has very large dangly nipples which jiggle uncontrollably when she walks, and most of the street dogs we've seen around (and there are a bunch of them) are probably descended from her.... She is the mommy dog, "The Canine Matriarch Of Sideng", and whenever we see her, i cry out for all the street to hear, "Nipples!"

Happy Fall Equinox! Sept. 21st, 2011 is here, and summer has officially passed us by; we are now into the fall season here in Yunnan province in China.... Soon, a border run needs to be made.... Where will i go? i do not know.... India is hot on my radar, though....

"Laundry Bag - Non-Complimentary Gift" - Ashley's Bag

"Apart from the pig anus incident, everything's been pretty good." - Rotem on his Chinese culinary experience

"Moshe, you're not a hedgehog.... Come back from India" - Israeli Comedy Song about all the Israeli people who go travelling and get fucked up on drugs and need to be rescued out

"i'm internally wet.... My organs are bathed in tears." - Ritodhi

Our five destinies indelibly intertwined, we would wind up spending several nights around Ashley's Shaxi Guest House's courtyard table, drinking crap Chinese wine ("grape fizz") and laughing uproariously at our collective barrage of off-color jokes.... Our highlight was a long, drawn-out game (suggested by Ashley) of "Never Have i Ever", in which we discovered that Rotem has shat out whole french fries and stuck his junk in a bowl of hummus, Ritodhi has done the nasty in a potato field, Tiffany has elbowed me in the face during sex, i diddle cats' privates, and Ashley has danced around naked at a food orgy....

Pablo is a thick dark mysterious and goateed, slightly-too serious-to-be-humorous gay guy from Spain who came to stay at the Horsepen for a few days.... He's been teaching english in Xi'an for several months, and is traveling to Yunnan on his vacation break.... He brought both flair and a certain mystique to our little group, especially with his return-tales of hiking up to the Yi village in the pouring rain through the woods with no weather gear at all....

Steve is a soft and smiling blond hippie Canadian dude, voted the greatest guy ever by our little collective.... He's just so nice! IT's like he can be firm if he wants to be, but he just never finds a reason! Back home, he lives in British Columbia, planting trees, and now he's at the Horsepen, on his Asian journey, with a 25-liter pack that's only half full! He's the lightest traveler we've met, and so easy to be around that sometimes IT seems like he's not there....

"Don't cry because IT's over.... Smile because IT goodtime." - Sideng restaurant account book

"i dream in screams and colors." - Rotem

"Nolan and i are bound by a spiritual umbilical cord." - Ritodhi

A walk in the dimming light to count spiders out in the fields (as part of Ritodhi's environmental survey of the area) brought us eventually back to the sound of a bunch of people singing while playing drums and cymbals very out of time with each other, accompanied by a tinny oboe-type instrument.... We poked our head in the doorway from which the music was emanating, and found another town temple, with the smell of incense in the air and the singing people all up front by the altar, doing some ritual stuff while making their music.... We couldn't quite tell what religion was being practiced, and after observing their scattered out-of-time musical doings for a while, we moseyed on back to the Horsepen....

- Tiffany felt very sick last night here at the Horsepen.... she threw up several times and decided to sleep downstairs so she would be nearer to the bathroom.... While she was down there overnight, she pooped her pants, and then slept in her poopy pants :-D

Confucius Day! September 24th, 2011.... Ritodhi and i walked out of the Horsepen to find a loud parade made up of people from the temple we had stopped into the night before, with colorful costuming, dead pig heads, and the accompaniment of fireworks just rounding the corner into the town square.... IT made me remember how much i love people deciding to dress up all crazy and let IT all hang loose for a while! Everyone seemed to be having a very fun time celebrating three or four different religious traditions at once (Confucianist, Taoist, Buddhist, Jade Emperor Ancestor Worship).... The parade wrapped all through town and back to the temple, where noodle soup was served to all (most of the attendees seemed to be old grandma types).... After the meal, everyone headed back to town square, where preparations were made for a show of dancing ladies in various costumes, who would dance to horridly tinny Chinese music played through an old ratty stereo amp with speaker outs.... Everyone stood around the edges of the square in a celebratory atmosphere, but before things could really get started, just as the first wave of dancing ladies with fans got going, the gray sky let loose ITs rain.... The dancing ladies valiantly tried to ignore IT for a minute or two, but the sky soon broke loose and sent everyone scurrying under overhangs and inside the shops all around the square.... Despite the dampening rain, the locals gamely waited around for quite a while, as the sky poured and poured.... The dancing ladies eventually reappeared under the outdoor roof of the theater building, and still went hardcore with their costume dances while folks crowded together out of the rain for a viewing.... The crummy PA system with the blaring music had ITs speakers sitting out in the rain with an umbrella propped over them and their cables getting soaked.... not what i'd do with my sound gear, but hey! IT's China!

During all the hullaballoo, a little kid climbed all the way on top of one of the big stone garbage receptacles, and i went to him and extended my hand for a congratulatory high-five; he looked at my hand in confusion, without the slightest idea what i was trying to do.... i was at a loss for a moment, until Tiffany called me over and gave me a very visible high-five.... i went back to the kid and extended my hand, who got the idea and smacked mine with his.... We all felt a certain sense of accomplishment after that one....

We went inside and had a nice afternoon nap, and by the time we were waking up, there was rumor of a big dinner at the temple.... Leaving sick Tiffany back at the Horsepen, Ritodhi, Rotem and i went over to the temple and found ourselves invited to sit down to a super-yummy meal with a bunch of grannies and some of the tastiest potatoes i've ever had, tofu & mushroooms, duck and mushrooms, fried pork fat, pasta, radishes, red beans, rice, fried cabbage, and little rice chips! Everything was bomb, and they just kept feeding us until we were dying stuffed, as usual.... Ritodhi helped to wash the dishes, but no one would take any payment for the meal, and so we thanked all the grannies for such an amazing dinner experience and rolled ourselves out of the temple.... (We interrupt this narrative for some brief anecdotal amusement!)

"When you go to sleep, everything is softer." - Ashley

"Too bad you can't get softer when i go to sleep." - Ashley

"Wake up and get harder." - Ashley on Ritodhi

"i have four buns." - Ashley

"i don't know how to do anything with food. Except orgies." - Ashley

Ashley puts on the Shake Weight TV ad on Youtube for us, in all ITs gay testosterony glory, when all of a sudden some Chinese man walks in the front door of the Cultural Center.... Ashley freaks out like we're watching some kind of porn, turning the screen away from him and scrambling to mute the volume and close the window on the screen so the guy won't see what we're watching.... The three of us, meanwhile, are dying laughing....

The Shake Weight Face! "UH! That's IT...."

NOLAN: "You still haven't guessed my birthday sign."
ASHLEY: "You're a Libya."

(We now return you to our regularly-scheduled narrative!) Ending Confucius Day with a rowdy and debauched jam session with some local famous rockers, trading songs until late around a big table out in the square.... The bald quiet guy with the glasses who played djembe all night was apparently the most famous one, player of traditional-style music and didn't pick up a melody instrument all night.... One of the rocker guys with the long goatee drunkenly performed his version of Tuvan throat singing all night, even during other people's tunes.... Lily was wonderful, with a great voice and some emotive versions of Sinead O'Connor tunes and old British traditional folktunes, and we had a good night's end harmonizing together on "Girl From The North Country" and "The Rainbow Connection".... A wonderful end to a wonderful day.... Oh and by the way, happy anniversary to me! A full thirteen years to the day of the night of Sept. 24th into 25th, where the universe opened up for me and said hello.... and i began my every-single-day obsession with making a touring band called IT.... which still has not happened, thirteen years later.... Happy happy joy joy

"Just for the record, if i come visit you, IT will not be for sex." - Ashley to Ritodhi

(clutching a handful of air and squeezing repeatedly) "What about those balls, balls.... Oh, YOU!" - Ashley

Smashley!

And as our glory-filled climax of our time in Shaxi, let's not forget the somewhat-naked Sideng Town Square Theater Party! Drunken Late Night, Me Ritodhi Tiffany Steve Ashley dancing on the second-story open-air stage while Rotem takes pictures below.... i like the one picture where i'm leaping for joy and the roof's upturned decoration lies decorously between my junk and the camera.... Also the one with Ritodhi's bare ass after Tiffany momentarily pulled his shorts down! So much for our political careers....

Leaving Shaxi, we all agreed that this one one of the most chill places any of us have ever been.... Walking through the town to catch the minibus into the city, to travel north to Shangri-La, each of us contemplated to ourselves the possibility of coming back to Sideng to live for a while....

Ritodhi Chakraborty - Ruining white girls since 2002 (XD