A Picture for Mama

i promised my mom i'd upload a picture so she could make it into another idol god and put it next to matt's picture in our living room.  love you mom!

just kidding about what i just said (AKA I LIED TO YOUR FACE)

as we got toward the end of the day, the three amigos (kris, dave, and marc) and juliana decided that they wanted to go to the light show later that night.  greg and i weren't particularly interested and, instead, decided that we wanted to go cruise the town on our super-sexy electric scooter (see my previous comment on the sex appeal factor of electric scooters in the first post about the dirty old boatman).  it took a great deal of convincing to get mr. su to say ok.  the day before when we'd agreed to rent his scooters and let him be our guide, he'd promised that we could use the scooters all day.  apparently, his definition of "all day" and ours didn't line up.  to him, "all day" ended at about five.  "that's when i get off work!" he said.  (of course, he didn't mention that it was nearly ten o'clock when he found us on the street and invited us over to his place...BUT I DID!) as i reckoned it, he was working until about nine thirty or ten o'clock the day before, and since he was liable to be up just as late looking for tomorrow's customers, it wouldn't be a big deal if we didn't bring the scooter back at eight thirty or nine.  finally he agreed.  THEN, when we got back to his shop, his wife took our scooters and said nicely, "come back tomorrow!" "actually," we said, "we're going to be back in just a second with a passport for collateral.  mr. su told us that we could keep the scooter until later tonght." after about fifteen "they're out of electricity"s and "it'll be dark outside"s, i finally said, "fine.  keep it then.  but we won't be back tomorrow."  when she heard this, suddenly there was enough electricity AND she could show us how to work the lights...but we had to promise to be back before eight thirty.  so we wandered back to our hotel, stopping for some bandages for my toe and knee, and returned to the scooter shop at around six thirty or six forty-five.  SURPRISE, SURPRISE!  yang yang (the wife) has taken the scooters into the back and has started charging them.  "you two took too long! i've already started charging them.  you'll just have to come back tomorrow!"  needless to say, i was pretty dang grumpy.  few things make me more angry than people lying to my face...probably because it insults my intelligence.  i gave her a piece of my mind, reminded her that she had JUST told us that we could have the scooter and went back on her word, and promised that i would NOT be coming back the next day for so much as a road map.  and i didn't.  instead, greg and i rented a gas scooter from a place right next to our new hotel.  and that's the next story.

the dirty old boat man hooks a brother up

despite his relentless dirty-old-man-ness, the dirty old boatman proved useful.  as we were pulled over to the side of the river, snacking on our newly-purchased barbecued chicken, a couple of girls pulled up beside us.  one got off their raft, came over next to me, and ordered some stuff from the lady there.  just as she got done ordering, the dirty old boatman yells over that we should buy her something to eat and go on a date.  then, to her, he shouts, "american guys are good-looking beyond compare! you should let him take you on a date!"  we both chuckled awkwardly at his attempts at matchmaking and started chatting while we stood there.  finally, as we were getting ready to go, i suggested that she and her friend split up and finish the rest of the river trip with greg and i.  everyone agreed and we spent the rest of the trip chatting about home, work, school, teaching chinese (turns out that's what she does.  she teaches chinese to foreigners in shanghai), etc.  all-in-all, it was a pleasant trip...that is, until my toenail got ripped off and shi jie (that's her name) had to dig through her bag for some bandaids!  

the dirty old boatman

after cleaning up as much as we could from the magical cave, we cruised through the countryside on our super-sexy electric scooters (kind of like motorcycles, but without the engine...or the noise...or the bad-boy sex appeal aura______actually, i'm gonna say that riding an electric scooter increases sex appeal by about the same factor as riding a too-small tricycle).  eventually, we arrived at a dock on the side of the yulong river to the west of yangshuo.  after (again...and this is a repeating theme of our whole chinese experience) debating prices with the bamboo rafter-men, we hopped onto three two-person rafts.  you'll see them in the pictures, but they've got the world's crappiest lawn chairs attached to maybe ten thick, parallel bamboo sticks and are propelled by one wrinkly, tanned, super-ripped chinese dude.  our bamboo-pusher-man was named mr. huang.  we chatted for a while, but after he started talking about how he could predict how the alignment of the stars at the time of my birth and the chinese name i had picked would impact my future i stopped paying attention.  eventually, he gave up on mysticism and picked a topic dearer to my heart: girls...though his approach was a bit crude.  he kept yelling at all the chinese girls on shore (or with other guys on rafts) (or by themselves on rafts) that they should swim on over and take a spin with the americans.  leaning over to speak more quietly, he kept telling me that americans could pretty much hook up with any chinese girl they wanted and that i should probably take advantage of that.  (on a related note, our hotel manager told me the same thing one day.  having heard this enough to make me grumpy, i replied sharply: "so...what does that say about the foreigners, and what does that say about the chinese girls?"  he thought for a second and responded: "they're desperate...and the girls are easy."  "yeah.  exactly what i was thinking.")  we told mr. huang that we didn't need any dating advice, thank you, and that it'd be best if he just kept pushing while we went swimming.  we did, and he did.  when we got back, however, he suggested that we go to Xi Jie later that night and find girlfriends.  i laughed pretty loudly (the idea of picking up girls with this wrinkled 50 year-old dude was that funny) and he got confused.  "no! seriously! chinese girls like you!"  i laughed even louder.  "thanks, but no thanks" i told him.  he made some more comments on the way down the river, but for the sake of all women and those unmarried men reading this page i won't repeat them.  suffice it to say that i got pretty grumpy with him.  eventually, he persuaded us to stop at this barbeque place on the side of the river for some chicken and fish.  i told him we'd buy him a drink and he promptly ordered a beer (the first of two we bought for chinese guys that day).  while we waited for our barbeque to cook, he kept hitting on the girl cooking the lot of it...even though she was married.  i told him off for it and he told me it wasn't a big deal because her husband wasn't there.  oh freak.  though, he did kind of hook us up with a couple of girls at that same barbeque place.  that's the next story!

health mud

as soon as we got to yangshuo, we checked into our hotel (we'd booked it for four nights, but they only had room for two...go figure...so the guy at the desk hooked us up with another place for the last two nights), and wandered the town looking for something cheap to eat.  just as we were walking down Xi Jie (west street) where all the western restaurants and foreigners are, a middle-aged chinese man poked me on the arm and asked what we were looking for.  i told him we just wanted to get some regular chinese food at regular chinese prices.  he chuckled and started talking about some place down some road over there.  i nodded, and we started walking in the direction he pointed.  after a moment, we noticed he was still following us.  after asking what was going on, he finally came out and told us that he owned a bike shop that rented bicycles, electric bikes, and scooters and wanted to give us a tour of yangshuo the next day.  we visited his shop, talked prices for a while, and ended up promising that we'd be back at eight the next morning.  for less than $13 US per scooter and $3.50 per person, we rented scooters for the day and mr. su took us around to different places of interest.  the very first place we went was the "magical cave".  the cave itself was pretty cool, though it would have been way cooler if it were more natural.  instead of picking our way through stalagmites like i had though we might, we walked through the cave on a paved concrete sidewalk lined with different colored neon glowtubes.  the different colors of neon placed throughout the cave made it seem pretty ghetto, but it was still fun.  the best part was undoubtedly the end, where we found the long-awaited and much-anticipated mud pit (health mud, as the advertisements in the tourist pamphlets had bragged). greg and i were the first to strip down to our board shorts and jump in.  and it was DISGUSTING!  clumps of goo floated on the surface and our feet sunk more than six inches into thick, sticky mud.  before anyone else could get in, we were already throwing mud at each other from across the 30 foot diameter pit.  by the time we got out, we had all wrestled in the mud, slid down the slick embankment right into the goo, and floated on our backs (an easy feat, considering the density of the mud!).  kris came out of the back float missing a ring and unable to open his eyes (apparently health mud isn't so great on the ol' conjunctiva!).  we spent a LOT of time trying to get all the grime out of our suits, ears, and eh...everywhere.  my once glaringly white board shorts are now an attractive shade of orange mud. great pictures though.  

Regarding the Stories on the Right

For Your Information:  i just realized that if i published everything in the order that i'd listed over there on the right or (as i'd been doing it) in no order at all, you'd all be lost and have no idea in which order these stories go.  what's worse, some of these stories go hand-in-hand with others, so it's kind of important to get them in the right order.  some of the bottom ones don't really apply...they're just general comments and editorial notes that i'll write when i've got time. many thanks- the author

Baby Chaps (or "saving money on baby supplies")

mendez will appreciate this: baby chaps. that's right.  we have them.  i remember seeing public urination in taiwan.  it was gross.  i mean, nobody wants to see some old dude with his fly down on the side of the road, peeing into the bushes (or a storm drain).  funnier, though, was seeing mothers holding their kids (up to age six or seven, even!) with their pants around their ankles over a storm drain on the side of the road, shaking the kids up and down as they poo right there in full view of the public! --------China has already stepped into the new era of childcare: in order to avoid the inconvenience of pulling down their kids' pants before hanging them butt-first over a storm drain, the Chinese have invented....BABY CHAPS!  that's right, folks! they're just like regular kids' clothes, but they've had a slit cut right in the crotch! the result is simple:  unrestricted flow of poo to street!  not only do baby chaps cut down on inconvenience, but they also enable quick identification of the sex of the child wearing them.  although chinese boys and girls are often and easily confused, with the new baby chaps, one may quickly and discreetly discern the sex of the child and comment to his or her mother on his or her relative handsomeness or cuteness, as the case may be.  the only drawback of baby chaps, as i now understand them, is the very likely chance that your baby will PEE ALL OVER YOU BEFORE YOU CAN DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT!  (or, in the case of the restaurant we were at the other day, PEE ALL OVER THE FLOOR IN THE MIDDLE OF YOUR DINNER!)-----------apart from these small drawbacks, i highly recommend baby chaps for the children of the future.

my big toe v. the unstoppable bamboo raft

i have ugly toes. they used to be cute... and then i turned three. things got progressively worse in taiwan, where i walked/biked for 16 hours a day in too-tight leather shoes. by the end of my mission in taiwan, i'd racked up three ingrown toenail surgeries and one completely lost toenail (after a surgery one day, i accidentally dropped a 30 lb. weight right on my toe). back to the states and dad took me into the ER and cut me up one more time for good measure. anyway, needless to say, my toes were still in a sad state of disarray by the time i got to china. as we floated the yulong river on bamboo rafts a couple days ago we kept having to go over these small dams (man-made or otherwise) that obstructed the river and slowed the path of the water. we got stuck atop one of these barriers just before the end of the trip and i jumped out to help our guide while shi jie stayed on the raft. the guide (mr. huang) set to pulling the raft from the front while i positioned a pole of bamboo underneath the thing so it could slide forward, rolling atop the bamboo as it came up onto the concrete. one thing led to another and i started pulling the raft from the side with my right hand while positioning the pole with the other hand. we gave one great lurch to try and pull the raft up and it leaped forward, slid onto the pole, and heaved right across my left big toe (the one with only half a toenail...it was still trying to grow back in after being smashed in taiwan). i jumped back to avoid being hurt and looked down at my toe. the nail was pointing straight up at me and the root was starting to bleed. cursing my bad luck, i bent down and ripped what remained of the nail right off my toe and tossed it into the water. hobbling over to where some other members of our group were working on getting their boats over the barrier, i called for some kleenex and a band-aid. i sat down, took a wad of kleenex from juliana, and started to staunch the bleeding. meanwhile, mr. huang started yelling at sun-blackened chinese guys on the shore to grab some 草药 (caoyao...or herbal medicine). a minute later, mr. huang comes running up and shoves a handful of gooey green gras onto my bleeding toe. i don't even want to know how it got as wet as it was...i'll assume he dipped it into the water and tore it up a bit. "this'll help!" he yelled, "it's chinese medicine! it'll make the swelling go down and reduce the pain!" really, it wasn't very painful at all, but to appease him and make him TAKE THE EFFING WEEDS OFF MY BLOODY TOE i politely told him, "wow! that helped really quickly! i'll go ahead and take it off now and put on a bandage." when he turned around, i washed it with as much bottled water as i could get my hands on and bandaged it up with some tissues and bandaids. the picture at the top of this webpage is me sitting outside the drugstore later that evening, after having bought some antibiotic ointment and proper bandages, fixing myself up while these sweet old ladies kept telling me i was doing it wrong. i thought it was classic. anyway. to alleviate my father's doubtless worrying at this point, i'll say the following: my toe is fine. it bled very little, hasn't swolen a bit, and i take care to keep bandaging it. i'll let you know if anything changes, but i don't anticipate any problems. it feels just fine.----------for those of you who noticed that not only am i bandaging my toe in that picture, but also my right knee, good job! the moral to be learned here is that you should not attempt to start or stop a fully-loaded (two people) scooter on certain types of terrain (in this case, coarse gravel). if you do, your knee will look like mine. that one's healing fine too.

the best bargain ever

on our last day in yangshuo, greg, brooke, and i wandered down into this underground shopping center that we'd walked past several times that week but never explored. most of the stores were closed up, steel garage-style gates pulled down over the storefronts. i wandered away from the other two and into this shop that was selling some colombia, north face, and abercrombie pants and shirts. i asked the guy for the price on a pair of abercrombie pants i was looking at. "150 yuan." (a bit over $20 US) pretty cheap for abercrombie, i thought, so i told him i thought they were fake and that if they weren't, they were selling them for way too little. since they're probably fake, "70 is the most i'll pay" i told him. he refused and i walked out and across the way over to where greg was standing next to a ridiculously good-looking twenty-something year-old chinese girl, looking at the ties on the racks in front of him. "how much?" i asked him. "twenty-five. she told me one fifty at first." i looked at her, mock outrage in bold letters on my face... speaking in chinese, i said "you told him ONE HUNDRED and FIFTY yuan? that's more than we'd pay in america for these ties if they were REAL! one hundred fifty... poor college students can't buy ties for that much." she giggled uncomfortably and we talked a bit. i asked her were she learned her english. beijing. and how she ended up with a german/european english accent. no idea. she looked back at greg and at the pink tie in his hand. it had some sort of stain right on the front. "just buy it. wash it tonight, and if it doesn't come out clean, i'll refund your money." "HIM wash it?" i asked, "what if YOU wash it and WE come back tomorrow?" she shook her head as greg put the tie back on the rack. looking at me, she said, "twenty-five yuan. do you want to buy one?" i countered, "do you want to give me one for free?" no hesitation whatsoever, she nodded her head and said, "ok."---------------"Are you serious?" i asked. i was just joking with her and here she tells me i can pick whichever one i want for free. i start looking for the best-looking, most expensive tie i can find and brooke (who was listening to the whole thing) asks, "is it because you think he's handsome?" The girl giggles and nods. "yeah. that's right."-----------anyway, I got a free tie. pastel green, and pretty dang good-lookin, if you ask me. :) wore it to church this morning.