Pre-Trip

The holiday to celebrate the establishment of the Chinese People's Republic officially began on Sunday, October 1, 2006. It would be my last extended period off of work until January, which seems like a long time for someone who enjoys taking semi-permanent sabbaticals of unemployment. Thursday classes were to be repeated on Saturday, and Friday classes were to be repeated the following Sunday. Fortunately, my schedule has a hole on Friday, and I moved my typical Saturday morning class to Thursday afternoon, citing "important" weekend business in Chengdu (important for me to get the hell out of dodge). Upon providing my itinerary to the Tibetan Department Head (an amiable Tibetan man named Maibo, who informed me in Chinese that it was a formality for the government and that he didn't really care I went), I skirted out of Guza Friday morning and headed west for the five and a half hour busride to Sichuan's provincial capital, Chengdu.

Catching buses on the road of the nearby intersection town Wasigou is relatively painless, and the one I flagged was complete with reclining seats, buckets for sunflower seed husks, and a VCD TV system (Video Compact Disk, a runup to the DVD that is highly popular in Asia). The airing of Jackie Chan's Legend of the Drunken Master was truly an auspicious sign for the vacation. The first few hours of the trip provide the kind of impressive green cliffs and lush gorges that one might envision when thinking of the area of Western China that is the original home to the giant panda. Closer to Chengdu is less interesting, and the air quality diminishes considerably upon entering the Sichuan Freeway. The traffic was terrible, and I was not taken to the New South Bus station (Xin Nanmen) as expected. At one point we sat at the same red light for three cycles, only to discover that the northern bus station was less than a block away.

As I usually do upon finding myself in an unfamiliar place, I impulsively pursued the first option that presented itself. As I exited the bus station onto the busy street, a man wearing a white helmet standing next to a line of motorcycles excitedly approached me, inquiring as to my destination. He quoted me thirty yuan, which seemed excessive, especially considering the free-lancer's propensity to hustle butt-thumbed foreigners. He assured me it wasn't too high, and handed me a white helmet to match his own. As Mike would certainly agree after hogbacking it for a few weeks in Kathmandu, the motorcycle is hands-down the transportation of choice for high-density traffic situations in Asia. I rather enjoyed my reckless sojourn spanning a city that has a population three times that of Houston.

My business at the Bridge Fund Office in Chengdu was little more than signing a couple of contracts and scanning my address in Chinese so that my mother can send me holiday cards across the planet. I also picked up two hefty packages of new dictionaries for my students in Guza. I called my friend Olivia's friend Lisa, who works for Anne Klein's lama Ad.z.m R, but Lisa was busy for the evening and I would have to work out other sleeping arrangements. I went for a dinner of hotpot and beers with Gabzung, my boss (I think). Afterward I briefly met Drako, a coworker of Lisa and a translation master's student at Sichuan Daxue (University). Drako is Gabzung's former student from Hongyuan in northern Sichuan; they are both Tibetan. (The circle of connections of people I have met since leaving New Orleans on August 10th has impressed me, and I'm uncertain if it is the forced result of "networking" or the natural result of karma. It has certainly felt like the latter.) I faked being tipsy for Drako as he disapproves of alcohol for the Dharma-inclined among us. He helped me to Holly's Hostel, an over-popular backpacker's hostel that was completely different than what I remember from three years ago. I got a thirty yuan four-bedder (again, expensive for my tastes) but I only had to share it with a reverent Chinese touriBuddist on his way to Tibet.

I spent Saturday morning in dreamland and returned to the office for lunch. Later, I met Lisa and helped her and Drako purchase and mail a few bundles of zens, or disciple robes. The were for shipment to the United States and Italy, and were two toned in maroon, the color for ordained monks, and white, the color for lay practitioners. Ad.z.m R prefers his disciples to be in the cloth when he makes his American and European tours. The types of robes they wear, as they are not full monks, are akin to what Michael has expressed interest in wearing in the future: the robes of the nakpas (my favorite rough translation of which is "lay Tantric householder priests"). Afterward we spent some time at the impressive penthouse apartment for Ad.z.m R (who stays at his monastery in Chamdo) and her imminence his sister, Jetsunma-la.

Drako left us after the three of us ate thukpa (noodles) and momo (dumplings) at a Tibetan restaurant, and Lisa and I headed to Paul's Tex-Mex, a Western-style (double-meaning) hangout of missionaries and margharitas. Lisa and I share a certain favorite vice, and stopped at her apartment to prepare for the evening. She was having a French guest that evening, so we had to be discrete. We went to another Western-style lounge, Parisian themed, replete with low sofas and red lighting. Lisa ordered a red-bull and vodka that came back as apple juice and vodka. I had white wine and beer, somewhat less prone to bartender error. As we lounged upstairs and I helped her finish her second drink, I discovered a note in a bureau drawer from a month before, in broken Chinglish, expressing the author's prescient fascination at the synchronicity of me looking in that drawer to discover said note. Lisa and I added our own message and returned it duly to its place.

We wandered the blocks around the bar trying to look like we weren't covertly smoking anything, wondering if any of the Chinese squares with teased hair and ripped jeans and punk-mullets would have known what they smelled anyway. At one point I looked up from a long drag to glance at a building sign and read the Chinese word jingcha, the meaning of which registered a moment before looking next to it and seeing the clearly printed English word "POLICE." Naturally, no one was on duty.

Drako and I had purchased bus tickets the evening before for 8:00 Sunday morning, departing from the nearby Kangding Hotel. I ate a favorite Chinese breakfast of mine, fried dough strips and soymilk. I gave a half a yuan to an older monk panhandling next to the bus, and soon we were on the road with basically the rest of Chengdu. Although Chinese people love to hate the Japanese, and express their cultural mutual exclusivity and superiority, the ever growing middle class in China has produced legions of camera toting, hiking boot wearing Asian Tourists. The leg of the journey along the freeway went well enough, but as we got to the single lane road that leads back to Guza and Kangding the traffic began to pile up. We lunched with hundreds of other vacationers at a roadside restaurant. I ate a favorite meal of mine, kuguo chaodan (bitter melon fried with eggs). Drako ate apples, as he is prone to car sickness. I shared a table with some of the only other foreigners around, an adult couple with English accents and a grade-school aged daughter. She asked Daddy if they would ride horses. The scene was sweet enough, but seldom have I been more appreciative of my situation as a young, unattached, and culturally fluent traveler.

The border of Ganzi Prefecture (roughly the area that Western Sichuan shares with eastern Kham) is generally a peaceful, scenic tunnel mouth that overlooks verdant but foreboding mountains. We sat at the tunnel exit for half an hour as cars and buses were individually sent through a stretch of alternating contraflow traffic. Chinese workers sat on the side of the rode with walkie-talkies conducting the vehicles. I watched a woman get out of a car and then put on her pants. We arrived in Wasigou a couple of hours late, struggled with the dictionaries up the river to Guza, and I showered, laundered, and packed for the coming advent of my real vacation.