bighairylaowai.com

Lead with your headline story they say, so in a Tarantino style fractured narrative, it is day 4 of Big Hairy Laowai’s journey through Western China, and he is being unceremoniously sheperded into the back-seat of a Police (Jincha) Car, to be taken to the station for questioning.

It was my first full day in Dali. I grabbed some breakfast baozi, picked up my mountain bike from the hire shop and rode to nearby Erhai Hu (Ear-Shaped Lake). This meant traversing the cobbled streets at half seven in the morning, dodging commuters, school kids, the open stream that runs through the town, people lugging baskets, motor vehicles and everything else a semi-pedestrianised Chinese street can throw at you. I slalomed with considerable finesse, passed through the eastern gate and rode down to the lake for an early morning view, before rejoining the main lakeside highway. Field workers were lazily pedalling their way to the day’s crop, so I rode half a foot outside the bicycle lane. Bulky tour buses blaring their horns chugged incessantly past my left shoulder.

As an aside, those who know me and would slanderously call me lumbering and unco-ordinated, please hold your tongue and trust my words.

As I passed a lone peasant-woman, she veered across divisive white line, and her handlebar slipped under mine, locked, we exchanged a momentary glare of horrified anticipation, and from my momentum and the impetus of her sudden switch of direction, we tumbled and skidded into the road.

Fortunately, no tour buses were passing at that point. We grabbed our bikes from the centre of the road. Ominously, she roughly dragged her bike to the side and kicked her belongings aside her basket. She was not attempting to pick up her bike. As I moved mine to the side of the road, she latched fiercely onto my saddle, which had been bent out diagonally by the fall, and began screaming like a banshee, jabbing her finger at me, at a non existent bump on her head, a scratch on her left calf (dwarfed by a cut that ran the length of mine) and at her prone bike; she had spuriously shifted the crash site to within the bike lane, and thus framed me. She had Yuan signs in her eyes. She had found the Golden Ticket, an apparently feckless laowai to strip-down.

As Chinese people do, a crowd built slowly from the streams of wandering peasants, some staying for a brief gander at the farce, others sharing her outright hatred of obscenely wealthy white-skins and sympathising with her breathless tirade. Occassionally, when she stopped for a breather, one of the sympathisers would point to the graze on her leg or her head (though there was absolutely no physical signs of injury on her head, her busy index finger returned to her temple every few seconds), which impelled her to switch character from terrible banshee to wronged child-of-the-soil and shed some piteous crocodile tears.

Then the Jincha car pulled up. I was entirely pessimistic at first sight of these officers, and rightfully so. They were a typical motley combination of the lanky, goofy type and a squat, fat-faced one with a thick, unctious head of hair. Nearly every Disney movie has a variation on this bastardised Laurel-and-Hardy template. Bypassing me with little more than a glance, they began to question the woman, which only exacerbated her alternately wrathful and wronged stage-show to greater heights of melodrama. This woman could have made a living on the Victorian stage. Tourist coaches strangled their lumbering momentum and hovering for a gaze at the violent, peasant-beating roundeye. This was becoming the ultimate I-Hate-China day.

Hardy was just about quelling his satisfaction at my tricky situation, but Laurel was grinning unashamedly, and drew 200 kwai out of his wallet, fluttered it in my direction and then gestured to the woman. This was the inevitable outcome. Though I had not picked out any mention of chen, renmimbi or yuan from her rant, it was a transparent demand for compensation.

This incontestably disgusting gesture was like the 12th round-bell to a punch-drunk boxer, and I came out swinging. Using my limited Chinese, I explained that I had been outside the lane, she inside, she had veered left and collapsed us in a pile in the road before our bikes had to be shifted to the roadside for safety reasons. I demonstrated how my cuts, her cuts and the scratches on my bike were all on the left side, reasoning to the God of 4 year-old level physics that the force must have come from the rider on the right, her, to knock us to the left. Were it my fault, the blemishes would be on the right. In a But Roger Pedacter COULDN’T have jumped off by himself! (Ace Ventura) denouement, I followed the visible screeching tracks of my wheel, a foot outside the bicycle lane and parallel, until an outside force had resulted in a sharp skid towards the centre of the road. Chips of blue paint, identical in tone to my (now-scratched) bicycle frame, spotted the centre of the road.

The crowd dropped their accusatory glare and slowly loped off. The policemen looked downcast and told me dong yi shan (waitaminute). Banshee woman kept jabbering but her audience had fallen away. Indeed, attendants from the nearby petrol station were smiling at me, giving me thumbs up and congratulating me with hao (good)! Another police car pulled up, and it was evident that they were their superior officers. They seemed, thankfully, to be treating the situation objectively rather than with ecstatic glee. One of them had a little English, Whats your name / Where are you from / Wait a minute and seemed intent on practising it on me. I told this new pack my basic details, specifically that I was an English Teacher. This would serve me well later.

They packed up as swiftly as they had come, after their brief appraisal. It made me feel much better, though what was to follow sunk me again. Back in charge, Laurel and Hardy had apparently been told to complete a diagram of the crash scene. I can’t fault their accuracy. Using a tape measure, they measured the length of the bicycle lane, to the central division, to the next intersection and the bikes. Unfortunately, they were depicting the bikes not at the moment of the crash, but as they had ended up after an hour or more of arguing back and forth. Resultantly, the Dali Police records show that following the crash, the local’s bike straggled sorrowfully within the bike lane, possessions spilled from the basket and strewn randomly, while the roundeye bike was in front of it, perpindicular to the road and ON ITS STAND. If this was truly the unaffected crash scene, then I had overtaken her bike, skidded sideways in front of her, absorbed the impact of her bicycle as she bounced off, and for further Macchiavelian effect, cackled as I slipped the stand down with my foot.

Of course, the piece of evidence to firmly contradict this scenario was the clear as chalk tire track that sharply veered left. Despite my protestations, this was not drawn by the officers. They were given the task to sketch the scene, and the inclusion of this track would be contrary to the absurd supposed final position of the bikes. Bureaucracy at its worst. I began to lose it, and shout and gesture at their ignorance. I knew that it was a bad idea for a foreigner to jeer at the intelligence, motives and actions of a member of the establishment, particularly in a society so obsessed with public respectability, face. I couldn’t help it. I was so frustrated, and now revelled in the chance to draw atention to the incompetence and sheer corruption of these two embarrased native speakers in front of a mass of their supposed inferiors, with little more than a few words and exaggerated gestures. They lifted my bike into the patrol car and curtly gestured me towards the back seat. As I opened the door, a couple of Swedish cyclists passed by, and told me of similar experiences they had had around China. Though not their fault, they had been impelled to give the local party some cash. I made a show of collecting their e-mails and mobile numbers, showing them the unreported tyre swerve, and even taking a few pictures with my digital. The wronged woman was told to sit next to me, and indulged in further theatrics by refusing to sit next to the baby-eating honky for a good few minutes before sidling gingerly up. I was incredulous.

We were driven to a dormant, characterless litle enclave, where the sleepy little 2 storied station was facing a courtyard overgrown by grass with the bric-a-brac of damaged bikes lying by the single tree. I was sat down at one of the desks while the banshee’s tirade continued a little further. She then left the station. Time was dragging, and the one aspiring English speaker kept informing me, Waitaminute. I asked where the woman was. Waitaminute. Was an English speaker coming to help me out? Waitaminute. Would I be arrested (accompanied by hands held out in imaginary handcuffs)? Chuckles of laughter, no, no no, and Waitaminute. I’d waited around 120 by the time anything happened, when the woman returned with her crossword puzzle toothed husband and mother. The husband wore a straw hat and was tanned and leathery from the field. Ma ma was nigh on hairless, hunchbacked from bearing a basket on her back and resembled Yoda.

Pay much money, the laowai will.

Upon seeing me, they did not break into the mock-fury that I had anticipated. They seemed intrigued by my appearance, and were probably estimating the possible damage I could have done to their family member if I had actually hit her. Hubbie offered each of the officers cigarettes; to their credit only one took. Furious at this blatant attempt at blackmail, I launched off my seat at the guilty officer and offered him my back-pack with a facetious lie-ping! lie-ping! (present). He withdrew shame-faced, as his peers collapsed into peals of laughter. He would be taunted with Lie-ping! for the remnant of the day.

Banshee had acquired a limp in the interim, and the crocodile tears flowed each time it was highlighted. I displayed my larger cuts and jibed pienza! (cheat) at her, and demanded that she pay my hospital fees. The fuzz broke down in laughter. Bear in mind, again, that this is a peculiar sense of humour. I went through the zuo (left) argument again, and even drew a makeshift diagram of the crash of my own, allied with my photographic evidence of the veer, showing the sergeant, who had recently arrived and slumped back in his comfortably reclining leather seat with a cannister of green tea.

Then my life-line arrived, the bilingualist. Except that she was about as capable as my better Grade 6 students (11 years old). The prosecuting peasant party suffused her with their complaints for 5 minutes, before I decided that it was my turn to speak. I went through the rigamarole again. She (only just) understood, but seemed to share similar anti-foreigner bias, brushing aside my apparently spurious factual argument with the retort:

Must you, in China, pay money for accident

Incredulously, I repeated it was not my fault. In China, that does not matter! she replied. She seemed offended that I should be with-holding my bountiful reserves of foreigner money. I felt that she resented that I was a English Oral language teacher, doubtlessly paid more but without any pressures or responsibility. In most cases, she is of course right, but it was at that time, the straw that broke da xing xing’s (Gorilla) back.

The peasants left for lunch, surprised I had not offered settlement yet but patently satisfied they were on top.

Time for a Big Hairy charm offensive. The aspiring English speaking officer had an exercise book by his desk, so I inquired about it, marked some spelling errors and helped him model some sounds. I received questions and compliments about my size, strength and body hair, Chinese fascination and nigh on respect of the hairy white barbarians that have marked my tine here. I was then invited out for a very pleasant lunch with the constabulary, where I proffered various compliments both through my own Han Yu and the Middle School Teacher. She was warming up to me certainly, and I was essentially giving an Oral English lesson as our conversation became wide ranging and involved the use of my phrase book. She commended my strength (a national obsession it seems) and informed me that she would like to visit my island one day. It was a nascent big hairy flirtation. Then a masterstroke - ni yao da pie ma (Want to play cards)? Of course they did. This is China. But they didn’t know Duodhizou, so they took particular delight in learning my Sichuan card game, and as all the officers crowded round in amazement at the gorilla’s ability to shuffle, read and actually win at cards, I barely restrained my overwhelmingly competitive Duodhizou streak. Hmmm…. you’re my partner, you took my black joker with the red, and then you played a single! Congrats.

The trio returned extremely late, around 4, presumably in an attempt to make me twist and turn. They would, however, encounter a far different atmosphere. Her leg seemed about ready to amputate, how badly it had detoriated. Fear rose for the first time in 4 hours. They brought something back resembling a doctor’s note, a possible explanation for the extended lunch break. They needed that long to find someone literate in the village or to learn the rudiments of their own written language. I had horrible visions of being fined thousands of yuan, or even being held in Dali while the bureaucratic process rolled interminably on. This anxiety was not assuaged by the Middle School teacher’s exhortation You must not pay it. Must not!

My buddy, the homely old Sergeant, took them into his office, and I could clearly hear him yelling laowai (foreigner) as well as chen (money), effectively chastising them for trying to strip naieve tourists of cash. This was a good sign.

They were taken upstairs, she was examined, and it was translated back to me that she was lying and was completely healthy. Could have told you that 9 hours ago. I was a little surprised that hubby or even granny didn’t take a sledgehammer to her leg in the interim. I exuberantly shook hands with the relevant officers, and as the three wandered off with a surprising lack of fury, granny said something enigmatic, which came through to me as

Don’t you think Chinese people are friendly?

Either she was sardonicly pointing out how effectively I’d buttered up the Jingcha, or she was trying to impress on me how friendly they had reacted to the decision. We might have tried to cheat you, she seemed to be saying, but now the decision has been made, we don’t really hate you!

It was not over yet. I had to be put on record. I wrote my name, my Chinese name, and where I lived, which amounted to half of the first line of my address followed by UK. I put my finger in red ink and left my print on the record. I was then re-educated in the ways of the PRC. I was taken out to the centre of the shoddy courtyard, and via the Middle School teacher, the sergeant read to me from the Chinese Green Cross Code.

1. In China, must you drive on right road.
2. Must you carefully drive.
3. Must you drive bike in bike road.

I agreed. I was actually guilty of number 3, but so are 99% of people over here as well as number 2 of course.

I took some souveneir photos with the sergant, said my goodbyes, good lucks and thank you’s, and walked the bike back to the centre of Dali. I relaxed at Bad Monkey with Scott until it got dark and hid the bike’s blemishes, and returned it receiving my full deposit back.

**************

Though a little in doubt, I received my travel bonus upon my day of departure. I spent a few decent nights drinking with Caligula, Ole, Eva, the Spaniard with his bread buttered on both sides, and my successor at NAESL, Mark, a fellow 24 year old Brit (makes it an easy transition for goldfish brained 5 year olds). I mentioned my latest downloaded Coldplay CD, to which he offered to break it in two and throw it out the window to the Chinese people. That he will continue my unique brand of entertaining teaching bordering on assault was confirmed when he threw a small child selling flowers outside a nightclub into a bush.

My last last night was notable in goading the eponymous, traditionally controlled and informative Dave of Dave’s Oasis to indulge in some baijiu, folowing his threat that he could outdrink any of us. We dragged him down with us into the well of 7 shots.

I never saw the pandas in 6 months, despite it being Chengdu’s principal claim-to-fame.

Hoggle, my ex-colleague, came to my flat as I was leaving to collect stuff, and was her typical unselfish, unbitchy, uninconsiderate self. Wearing a floral maternity dress (I believe, however, she is without child) she told Mark Now I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news… (not just the bearer eh….) before telling him of her experiences at the hands of the evil empire. Of course, as she would tell us, the children and the teachers loved her absolutely. Which is why, upon my assumption of her classes, the kids cheered that the wicked witch and her oh-so-fun grammar exercises had finally gone home, while the supervising teachers told me it was good to have an Oral English teacher who actually intended to practise Oral English with games. Such a skewed, arrogant perception.

I caught the 20 hour train on Thursday 1st September. A top berth on a hard sleeper. I met an Aussie called Xena or somesuch, and spent the journey teaching her Duodhizou and playing with a girl who was leaving for her first term at Kunming University. It was her first time on a train, and seemed a little nervous.

**************

So, to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province (lit. south of the clouds), and start of the holiday proper. As opposed to the claustrophobic blanket of smog and mist that collects over Chengdu, the sky was bright blue, with an occassional puffy white cotton-bud cloud, and the climate was warm, without oppressive humidity. I couldn’t stop commenting It’s so mild! I need a jacket! I can wear trousers without melting! Not for nothing is it called Spring City.

I went to Shillin with the Aussie, a Swede, and an American called Gabe. Shillin is termed a karst landscape, a place where freak geological occurences have shoved limestone into the air in 400 square kilometres of jagged peaks.

China has something like 56 minorities, give or take, and Yunnan is well-known as the province which showcases the most, well over half of the total. And it is a showcase. The Bai., Dai, Yi, Naxi, Hani all number over a million, Miao, Lisu, Hui, Lahu, Wa, Yao, Jingpo and Tibetans exceed 100,000, the Bulang, Buyi, Pumi, A’chang, Nu, Jino, De’ang and Mongolians more than 10,000, the Shui, Manchu and Dulong probably 2 big families and a couple of dogs. Trouble is , only the Naxi and the Tibetans actually look different - the others just look like the Han (i.e. typically ethnic Chinese person) have put on a colourful apron, hat, head-dress or somesuch. Why, being from the dominant Chinese ethnicity, would you pass yourself off as such? Well, if you’re not in a position to stand for government, and are too much of a tu baozi (dirt - dumpling) for connections to mean anything, then the fact that minorities are receiving various benefits in recent times, one being they are not subject to the 1 child policy, would be attractive. And dressing in an ostentatious costume is a great way to fleece the tourists.

The square kilometre at the entrance of Shilin was inundated with such gaudiness. Not many crackers pay money for picture opportunities - only the domestic tourists. Maybe they feel guilty or something. We viewed such formations as woman waiting for her husband and elephant diving into a pool, and then explored further reaches.

Next day I cycled out to Dianchi Hu, the lake to the east of Kunming and climbed up to Dragon Gate in the Western Hills. As I wheeled my bike out in the late morning, I came upon a Chinese body-building contest in the main sqaure, where dozens of pumped little Chinese were flexing. They weren’t quite bronzed, as in the west, but rather seemed as if they had a Briton’s sun-burn, as they were all lobster-red. People are paranoid about having tanned skin in China, as they associate it with being a peasant, who works outdoors in fields or construction all day. In between, this being China, there were side-shows of youg girls performing flag dances.

Apologies for all the and thens but I’m shifting at a rapid rate and also writing this at high altitudes in Western Sichuan, where internet is rare and expensive. Tough.

Yunnan is at the threshold of South-East Asia, so it makes for an odd bunch of travellers. Particularly adventurous Chavs who toured Australia a couple years back are particularly prominent, and they seemed to have swapped stone-wash jeans for sarongs, beer for weed and nonchalant boasts about the outback for nonchalant boasts about Tibet. They talk complete tosh, the finest being the mathematics involved in an Astrophysics degree is more, like, difficult than a Mathematics degree. Thanks for that. Being in Yunnan of course, and this is their verb not mine, means that they are doing or have done China. The lack of open cess-pits, unreliable buses traversing hazardous roads, polluted skies that block the sun and waves and waves of staring, befuddled local faces means that they haven’t. There are also lots of Tickbox Travellers. A girl, in her gap-year, spent an hour agonising loudly with her friends for public consumption as to whether or not she should take the road from Xinjiang to Tibet, because it had been included in the latest edition of Lonely Planet and termed the most dangerous road in China. Being an illegal road, the experience would follow as such: you would argue with reluctant local peasants; pay, with luck, half or three-quarters of an official flight to Lhasa; be loaded into the back of a truck to stare at dusty interiors for the 3 day journey length; risk death by altitude or exposure as you pass through huge mountain passes in the winter; all to impress your fellow students during freshers week? Dumbass.

**************

Next day I headed via a 4 hour mini-bus to infamous Dali. Dali comprises a Newtown, a standard faceless Chinese city, and an Oldtown, an uncomfortable 40 minute public bus away. The Oldtown (Gucheng) is swaddled between the Cangshan Mountains to the west and Erhai Hu to the east. It is also itself divided into North and South sections, unofficially. The south caters for the domestic tourist, with its torn-down-and-built-from-scratch archways, city walls and gates, pavillion rooves and shops. Blaring tour buses abound, as do disenchanted local women dressed in Bai outfits waiting for a kwai or 2 for having their picture taken. The north is for the foreigner, not an entirely new part of town, but significantly refurbished. Dank, western style hippy-style cafes abound, named obtusely with various nouns like Bird bar, Caffene club, Tattoo Club and so forth. The whiff of some illicit substance is never more than a few feet away. The main thoroughfare in the north is called Laowai Liu, or Foreigner street in translation. Nice to know you’ve been placed in a ghetto. The Chinese tourists in the south venture . I checked in with Scott, a friend who makes occassional trips up to Chengdu. His bar had been pilfered the night before I came, of 15000 kwai, 4 months wages in my terms. He was obviously down, and a little glassy eyed in misery.

I wandered out to the 3 pagodas as dusk fell. This part of Dali was not the Newtown, the NewOldtown for Chinese or the NewOldtown for laowai, it was simply the OldOldtown. Lots of hellos! from grubby street children, not something that a distinguished foreign visitor to spick-and-span NewOldtown should have to dignify with a response. I did anyway.

Next day I planned to cycle around Erhai Hu. See above.

Next day I climbed up Cangshan with a couple travelling Americans and a Swede. We passed a kung-fu hostel / bar on the way up, and I practised a few roundhouses, inadvertently kicking Nigel, the incongruously named American semi-pro boxer in the face. Nice waterfalls at the top.

Next day I meant to leave. But after returning from the summit we had a particularly heavy goodbye night, from which I remember little but an Australian strenuously trying to convince me of James Brown’s status as the most influential man in music.

Next day therefore, I lingered around watching DVDs swearing I would catch the next available bus to Lijiang. I didn’t. We had a slightly lighter goodbye night at Bad Monkey with Scott and the rest. I caught the 8am bus the next day.

To be continued or somesuch…

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