• All About a Boy

    On March 3, 1978, in the only hospital in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, I was born into this world kicking and screaming, and my parents often remind me that I haven't changed much since. I choose to take that as a compliment. My kicking and screaming isn't a vulgar retaliation against the injustices of this world that have caused me great suffering and misfortune, for I've lived a truly blessed life. Wonderful parents, wonderful siblings, wonderful friends. I even had a wonderful dog once, but he ran away. And I've had my fair share of wonderful experiences. My kicking and screaming is a celebration of life, a manifestation of the joy I feel for being alive. It's a manic urge to express myself through a number of mediums in loud, bright colors that say "Thank you God for blessing me with so much!" Not to say that I don't paint gloomier themes in darker colors sometimes, as manic urges are just one part of an alternating cycle of highs and lows. I'm sure a graph of my life would alternate erratically back and forth across that central axis that represents "normality", but I can say truthfully that I'm happy the curves of my life have never become lines, especially ones that rest flat on that central axis. I plan to go on kicking and screaming when I can, and when I can't, in those periods of self-reflection and soul-searching that I sometimes desperately crave, I hope to learn how to kick harder and scream louder. Not to lash out, but to be heard. Not to hurt, but to help. To change. And to create.

    That's my deepest desire, my one true driving energy. To create. And a tortuous, sometimes agonizing path it has been to discovering how best to create. It's a path I'll most likely spend my entire life stumbling down, discovering new outlets for my creative urges as I go. I see a lot of Vincent van Gogh in me. Not that I'll ever have his talent (although he'd be the first to argue that talent can be a very subjective thing), or necessarily find that one medium of expression to so faithfully, and painfully, pursue, but I feel that same feverish drive to create at times, and I've seen how it can lead me to both great joy and misery, often simultaneously. And to think I was once an aspiring engineer. Oh, the roads we travel in life. Never knowing the way because we never know the final destination.

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Stories from Danba

Posted on 07/17/2005
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Categories: China, Film, Travel , Tags: , , ,

Where the hell is Danba?

I’ll start from the beginning for those of you who have no idea what I’m up to over here in Bumblefuk, China. I’m here for two months this summer to film a documentary for my Masters thesis. For those of you who didn’t even know I was getting a Masters degree, well… shame on you for not keeping in touch all this time. Actually, all of this starts a year ago, when I came to China for a seven-month stay in Chengdu to improve my Chinese, figure out what in the world I was going to write my thesis about, and for once actually live in mainland China instead of just traveling here. I was fortunate enough to set up a homestay last year here in Chengdu with a professor at Sichuan University, where I was studying Chinese. She is a young anthropologist/archeologist at the Tibetan Studies Research Center in Sichuan University named Xu Jun, and she happened to know a friend of one of my professors in Hawaii. Her husband is also a professor, but at another university on the other side of Chengdu. They also have an adorable 3-year-old daughter (she was only 2 last year when I lived with them), and “Nainai” (grandma) also lives with us. I spent a wonderful 7 months with them last year, learned a lot, and we became good friends.

At the same time, I became interested in Xu Jun’s area of academic focus, the Ganzi Prefecture region in western Sichuan. This area was once part of Tibet and is still primarily occupied by the Khampa Tibetans, traditionally known as one of the toughest, fiercest group of Tibetans feared not only by the Chinese but by their distant Tibetan relatives as well. Xu Jun became equally interested in my filmmaking endeavors. For some time she had longed to do some filming out in Ganzi but didn’t know where to begin. Over time, we discussed the possibility of working together, as she had many contacts and extensive access to one of the more interesting areas in Ganzi, as well as a wealth of knowledge that would be key to my research, and I had (or claimed to have) the skills to create a decent documentary. And thus I had found an ideal thesis project, assuming I could put together a liberal thesis committee willing to let me submit a thesis in an alternative medium.

Right before I left Chengdu last year, I spent my Christmas weekend accompanying Xu Jun and her husband to a traditional Tibetan wedding in a small mountainside village in Danba County, where Xu Jun had done much of her fieldwork and had a number of local friends. Assuming everything would work out setting up a documentary for my thesis upon my return to Hawaii, I went ahead and rented a nice video camera from a Chengdu TV station and filmed the wedding and surrounding events for the four days I was out there. When I wasn’t filming, I was being inundated by offers by the newlyweds’ relatives and friends to drink ‘baijiu’ (meaning “white spirit”, it’s a generic name for the hard liquor here usually distilled from sorghum or maize… I personally would have called it something like “paint thinner” or “bowel destroyer”… suffice it to say I’m just glad THIS great Chinese invention didn’t catch on in the rest of the world) or smoke lovely unfiltered Chinese cigarettes (which I’ve noticed have about 5 to 10 times the amount of tar as US cigarettes), which I politely refused repeatedly. That’s not to say the smoke and inebriation were any kind of barrier to me enjoying the festivities and interacting with the locals, as I found them very friendly and open to speaking with the only foreigner, and one of the few outsiders, in attendance.

One would have thought that the wedding would have been simple and attended by only a few close relatives in a poor, small Tibetan village of only a few hundred people and an average monthly income of US$100 or so. But this is where my education and research on this area began, and I quickly realized that poor and small are relative words, and that they aren’t necessarily directly related to being unhappy and destitute, as our concept of the these words in the “developed world” would lead us to believe. Also, although these people are poor in the sense their cash income in one year is less than some zit-faced teenagers monthly wages working part-time at McDonalds, they raise all their own food and are for the most part self-sustained. The wedding festivities were immaculate, the ceremony itself was spectacular, and the many hundreds of people in attendance throughout the two days of events were dressed in a most beautiful combination of colors and extravagant display of traditional Tibetan clothing, a feast for this photographer’s hungry eyes. And when I wasn’t focusing on the amazing aesthetics of the event, with my eye glued to the camera’s viewfinder, my undying curiosity about my new environs helped me uncover enough material to wet my appetite for a return visit this summer. So here I am.

Well, actually, I’ve just returned from two weeks in that same small village. But telling you about my experiences in a “small mountainside Tibetan village” without explaining a little about this magical place just wouldn’t do it proper justice. And an adjective like ‘magical’ only just begins to give an accurate description. I’m not saying it’s paradise and I’m not trying to paint some exotic picture of the fabled Shangri-la, but there is something very special about this place you can sense as you slowly climb in elevation from the lower Sichuan plains up through the deep valleys cut into sheer rocky mountain expanses. As you get further from the plains and dig deeper into the heart of what used to be eastern Tibet, the simple, functional architecture of the Han Chinese, mostly found in the bases of the river valleys, is replaced by the traditional stone architecture of Tibetan houses built into the sides of the mountains, some villages reaching over a thousand feet up the side of the mountain from the valley base. These dramatic rocky outcrops that have been the backdrop and source of subsistence for these villagers for many generations are the far reaches of the Himalayas. With Chengdu and its flat, polluted surroundings several hundreds of miles behind, you climb through the pristine passes of ‘Si Guniang’ (Four Girls) Mountains, the alpine scenery in sharp relief to the rocky peaks reaching high into the distant sky. On the other side of these mountains, the Tibetan influence grows increasingly dense as the air grows thinner. And once again you are in the deep valleys, Tibetan stone houses lining both sides as high as the eye can see.

But the best is yet to come. For if you are persistent and press far enough into these valleys, you will find a new feature protruding from the terraced walls of these steep rock faces: towers of stone that are as mysterious in shape as they are in their choice of placement. Nobody, including the locals who have lived next to these towers for countless generations, knows where these towers came from or who built them. Or even what they were used for. But there they stand, some of them over 10 stories tall, clinging tightly to the edge of mighty precipices, looking dangerously close to crumbling at the slightest provocation of a summer squall, though for hundreds of years they’ve remained firmly intact. At first only one or two will catch your eye far on a distant mountain ridge, and most likely it is only a four sided tower. Soon towers crop up on both sides, and if you look closely you will recognize new shapes, many of them with eight corners and occasionally more, tower shapes that have rarely been found in any other civilization on earth. And when the towers have become thick enough that you can see one amongst almost every cluster of Tibetan village houses, then you know you’ve arrived. This is Danba.

Ok, so telling you that if you travel up through a bunch of valleys starting from Chengdu and ending in a place with a bunch of stone towers called Danba doesn’t exactly tell those of you more geographically inclined people where I am. As I discovered from replies to e-mails last year when I lived here, most people don’t even know where the hell Sichuan is, much less Chengdu, a city of over 10,000,000 people. Aaaaye yah, when are you people gonna learn a little bit more about the most populous country in the world. I can go almost anywhere in Asia and find well-educated people who know approximately where Houston or any other major city in the US is, and Houston definitely doesn’t have close to 10,000,000 people. And of course EVERYONE knows where Texas is and what it looks like, but I want even go into that right now. For those of you too lazy to pull out a map of China (if you even had one) or even a world map and look for Sichuan and Chengdu, I’ll give you a quick rundown of where I am. Sichuan is a big-ass province, kind of like Texas is a big-ass state in the US. Sichuan has a lot of people (around a 100,000,000 to be a little more exact… it has one of the densest rural populations in the world), just like Texas does. Sichuan has a lot of unique local food and customs, just like Texas does. Sichuan has a lot of big cities, just like Texas does. And Sichuan has one big city that swamps all the others and is for the most part the cultural, commercial, and educational heart of the prefecture, known as Chengdu. Just like in Texas, we have Houston. In fact, there really are a lot of similarities between these two cities. Both are sprawling metropolises with massive amounts of pollution and unbearable heat that are considered the armpit of the region they belong to, but to their credit they are both very laid-back cities where the people are amiable and the pace of life is reasonably slow.

But that still doesn’t tell you where Sichuan or Chengdu is. That’s what you get for not pulling out your map! Ok, ok… Sichuan is in southwest China, far removed from the booming ‘coastal’ cities of Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. It’s just above Yunnan Prefecture, many a traveler’s favorite destination in China that shares borders with several Southeast Asian countries, and just to the east of Tibet. In fact, as I mentioned above, the western part of Sichuan used to be part of Tibet until it was made into it’s own prefecture under the Nationalists and then later incorporated into Sichuan under the Communists. Chengdu is in the center of the Chuanxi plain, the flat eastern part of the prefecture. If you need helping finding it on a map, run your finger almost straight north from Hanoi, Vietnam and you should land right on it. If you go almost directly west from Chengdu about 150 miles, you’ll find Danba. Not that those 150 miles convert directly into 150 road miles, nor does that mean the trip takes only a few hours. Quite the contrary, as my sore butt will readily attest to… but more on the joys of traveling in the Chinese hinterland later. For now, let’s get back to Danba.

When the bus actually arrives in Danba, it’s not the county itself, which you’ve already been traveling through for a good while, but the ‘county seat’, which is the main city/town at the center of the county. I’ll just refer to this as Danba from here on out, as the other villages I spent most my time in have their own names, and are merely one of many small parts of Danba County. The name of the ‘township’ we stayed in is Suopo, which is actually a collection of four vertically stratified villages on the side of a rather steep mountain face. We stayed in the bottom village, known as Moluo. This is where the wedding was last Christmas, and this is the center of our research, where we did at least a third of our filming this time. The village is home to some very impressive stone towers, and there is a nice eight-corner tower right behind the house where we stayed. The village is home to maybe about 50 houses or so, all thinly spread vertically and horizontally along a patch of land about the size of several football fields laid out next to each other and running vertically up the mountain.

Travel Companions

Ok, enough about Danba for now. I haven’t introduced the characters in my story yet. Of course there is Xu Jun, my energetic young professor friend who loves to speak her mind freely, isn’t afraid to pry into others’ affairs for good information, and NEVER takes no for an answer (especially when it comes to interviewing people). In other words, the ideal person to work with on my documentary. She’s a pretty good travel partner too: she never hesitates to bargain for that last penny of discount if she’s knows it’s possible, she’s never afraid to tell the biggest, ugliest Chinese dude on the bus to put out his “horribly stinky” cigarette so the rest of us can breathe properly, and she gets just as pissed off as I do with the stupidity of fellow travelers (throwing trash out the window of the bus, spitting on the floor of the bus, drivers cutting in gridlock traffic on high mountain passes and causing hour-long delays because they are blocking oncoming traffic and can’t squeeze back into the line, every last person we see on the trip screaming “Laowai, Laowai!!” (foreigner) at first sight of me). In so many ways, she’s very Chinese, and at the same time she is the antithesis of everything that’s Chinese. She also has a tendency to get easily excited, overly anxious, and often manages to drop my expensive items (which means she’s at least nice enough to offer to carry them in the first place… but my poor tripod!), so two weeks of constantly being together with her was trying at times as well. But two weeks of being constantly stuck with a crazy foreigner couldn’t possibly have been a cup of butter yak tea for her either. At any rate, Xu Jun, for all her strengths and weaknesses, is my good friend, and I’m glad I got to spend these past two weeks working on this project with her.

There are two other main characters in this story, both of whom we spent a good bit of time together with during our two weeks. The first one I knew from my time in Chengdu last year. Her name is Zhima, and she is our connection to Moluo village and also one of the main characters we documented in our footage. Her older brother is the one whose wedding we attended last year, and her family has warmly received us and given us housing both times I’ve stayed in Moluo (Xu Jun has been going to Moluo for the past five years and has stayed with Zhima’s family a number of times… she is very close with the family). She comes from a good home, I’ve no doubt of that at this point, both from spending an extended amount of time with her and her family. Zhima is in Chengdu at the moment under the funding of the Unicorn Foundation (www.unicornfound.org – their website has a lot of info about Danba and the stone towers), an organization established by a French photographer named Frederique Darragon that is doing a lot of work to improve educational conditions in public schools in western China, specifically in Danba. I’ve met Frederique before, and she’s quite a character. The first time Frederique came to Danba to take pictures and learn about the towers, she stopped into Zhima’s house to take pictures from the roof (Zhima’s family, like many others in Moluo and other parts of Danba, have opened their house, which is several hundred years old, to travelers to come in and look around, or just take in the impressive view from their 3rd floor roof or 4th floor prayer platform), and took a liking to Zhima, who could speak a tiny bit of English and was eager to dress in her traditional clothing and have her picture taken. So in the end Frederique offered to send Zhima, who at the time was already 20 and had completed some nurse training but couldn’t find a job, to Chengdu to study English, computers, and driving, in order to become a useful assistant for the organization. Zhima has just finished her training and was fortunately going back to Moluo at the same time as us, so we took the same bus with her.

Frederique seems to have friends and connections all over the place, and some of her friends in Georgia have a daughter studying anthropology at the University of Georgia who agreed to volunteer for the Unicorn Foundation for the summer. She taught English just outside of Chengdu for 6 weeks, and then her last 2 weeks her assignment was to accompany Zhima out to Danba and help her go around to the mountainside village schools and make sure all of the equipment the foundation was donating (computers, software, TVs, DVD players) was being properly distributed and used. So on the morning of our departure, I showed up at the bus station with Xu Jun and my 200 lbs. of electronics equipment to find another American anxiously waiting with Zhima. I said hi to Zhima, who I’d been filming in her English classes the past two days, and she introduced me to Sarah. I said a quick hello and rushed over to begin the ever-exciting process of storing my valuables in a ‘safe place’ (a misnomer for a dry, non-oily place above everyone else’s massive rattan bags of rice, produce, goods, and sometimes even moving things – God only knows what people put in those huge bags – in the back of the bus). It was until we were seated on the bus and finally on the road at 6am that Sarah and I got to chat. And we didn’t stop much (or at least I didn’t stop much) for the next 14 hours of exciting bus riding to Danba. Sarah spoke with the slightest hint of her deep southern upbringing, and she was every bit the young college student – and I mean that in a good way. She was full of life, radiant when she spoke of her past travels abroad, eager to learn about all my crazy adventures, and was seeming to thoroughly enjoy her first experience in China. And she seemed really excited to be going to Danba, which Frederique told her she was sure to love.

Traffic, Landslides, and Pandas

So I was pretty excited myself. I had three great travel companions. My electronics equipment all seemed to be working ok (the microphone on the video camera I borrowed from U. of Hawaii ended up being broken when I finally got a chance to pull it out and test it in Chengdu, which was only two days before we were supposed to leave for the trip… I managed to find the Sony repair place in Chengdu the day before we left and got it fixed in 20 minutes!!! Imagine that happening at a repair place is in the US… hah! Canon takes about 3 weeks to fix any of my stuff in Hawaii, and that’s if I’m lucky). My health seemed to be ok, which was going to be important considering half of our filming required hiking up very long, steep paths to remote villages (and I was the only one carrying the electronics). I was finally on my way to film my documentary, after a VERY LONG semester (and then some) of planning and negotiating and filling out forms. Everything was glorious.

Then we got stuck in traffic. BAD traffic. Twice. Chinese roads, especially out in the boonies, aren’t really roads. Roads are built to last for long periods of time and allow vehicles to pass freely between two points with ease. The ‘paths’ to Danba are one long serious of holes and booby traps that must be maneuvered with the utmost care, and of course Chinese drivers feel it necessary to do this at the highest rate of speed possible. In fact, the bigger the vehicle, the faster it’s necessary to go, or so it seems to me. To make things even more fun, there are no such things as lanes, especially on these mountain roads. I don’t know how many times I looked out the window of my bus to find another bus right next to us on a road not even wide enough to be called a two-lane road… and that other bus is going in the same direction. And there must be a heavy fine or something if you DON’T pass that massive dump truck in front of you while going around a blind curve and pushing the pedal as far into the floorboard as possible. Because that’s how most passes seem to be made. And the best are all the little tractors pulling there heavy loads of produce or bricks or people right out in the middle of the road. Bus drivers just LOVE them. They go out of their way to make their affection felt by coming as close as possible to the tractors on passes and swerving back in line last minute, especially if it’s head-on. The tractor drivers don’t even flinch… they just take another puff of the ubiquitous cigarette hanging limply from their mouth and nonchalantly blow the smoke from their noses. This is mountain driving in China. Actually, this is driving ANYWHERE in China. Maybe that’s why Hollywood’s special effects just don’t impress me very much… I’ve been on too many Chinese buses.

So why are we stuck in traffic this time? Well, because someone decided to fix just ONE of the millions of gaping holes that permeate the asphalt/dirt combination that is our surface of travel. This requires shutting down one ‘lane’ of traffic, so that only one direction can go. In any reasonable (I’m trying to avoid using the word civilized in this e-mail, as I would to give the impression that China is uncivilized and thus discourage any of you brave souls from venturing to this wonderful place in the future) place, this would be a fairly simple process where one or two guys could direct traffic and let opposing lanes of vehicles go while the rest of the workers fix the hole. Shoot, anyone who’s seen roadwork being done in Japan knows there are usually 5 or 6 guys directing traffic while only 2 guys do the actual work. But what happens when one lane of traffic is closed in a country where lanes don’t exist and every driver is out for himself? Well, it’s pretty simple. As soon as traffic comes to a crawl in one direction, everyone from the back of the line pulls into the line of opposing traffic and floors it to get to the front. Halfway up the line they meet with oncoming traffic that is being let through, but they can’t manage to squeeze back into the line because everyone has pulled their car so close to the car in front of them to avoid any bastards from cutting back into line. But now a whole row of cars has piled up in the wrong direction, so there is no backing up. And like I said, most of these roads are barely wide enough for two cars to start with, and there is no shoulder to work with on either side… one side is hard rock and the other a straight 1,000 ft. drop to the valley bottom. And thus a phenomenon known as traffic occurs. But traffic is indigenous to many countries. The fun part about traffic like this is China is that people realize that nobody is going anywhere for a while, so everyone piles out of their cramped, stinky, smoke-infested bus or car and walks up to the point of friction to have a look. Not that anyone would actually try to help. They just stand and look and point and complain about the stupid bastards who cut in line, even though they just did the same thing a mile back up the road. They were just lucky enough to get back in the line. Then if things ever DO get sorted out, nobody is in their car to start moving. So everyone starts running back to their vehicle, which blocks what little room is now free for vehicles to maneuver in. And as soon as everyone is safely back in their car and the line starts slowly crawling forward a few meters, 30 more cars decide to cut in line and start the entire process over again. God bless this country. I love it.

But the fun doesn’t end there. What happens if you are a foreigner on a big bus stuck in this traffic? Let me briefly describe the process to you. First, all the smokers on the bus (i.e. 100% of the guys aged 13 and older and a handful of women), who have been smoking off and on constantly during the trip already, decide that now the bus has come to a complete stop and there is nothing better to do (like spit loogies out the window or enjoy watching the bus driver try to maul tractor drivers), decide that now is the perfect time to light up. Fortunately, several of them decide it is more fun to go walk around outside and stare at the massive congestion of cars while they smoke, but the vast majority just stay on the bus and fume smoke out their orifices into the already putrid air. The fun is amplified when it’s raining outside, which is was for much of this trip, which means everybody closes there windows so no air can circulate. So what’s a non-smoking foreigner to do? Well, he could stand up at the front of the bus and start explaining to all the smoke stacks in the bus that in some countries (at this point he would be sorely tempted to add the word civilized in front of countries, but would of course refrain), people aren’t allowed to smoke in public vehicles because people in those countries have realized that it’s not fair to the non-smokers stuck there to have to suck up the smokers’ nasty fumes. Of course, only the other two people on the bus who aren’t already smoking would probably pay the poor bloke any heed. So the foreigner takes the other option, which is to get off the bus and take in the ‘fresh air’ outside, which by this point smells an awful lot like car exhaust and gasoline. Might have something to do with all the big, nasty buses and dump trucks sitting in line with their engines running. Let’s suffice it to say that there are no exhaust emission tests or restrictions in this country, and not likely to be any for some time. So now that the foreigner is outside the bus and enjoying China’s great natural surroundings, the traffic jam ahead is no longer important to the masses stuck in their cars. They now have a new spectacle to watch. It’s as if a giant panda had just walked off the bus in front of them, sat down on the side of the road, and put both hands in his big, black furry pockets. “Oh my God, Daddy,” says the little girl in the back seat of the car, “it’s a FOREIGNER!” And at least that sweet little child is kind enough to say it quietly. The other 3,000 people staring out of bus and truck windows with dumb expressions frozen permanently on their faces just openly mutter “Foreigner, Foreigner,” as if this moving, blinking, breathing being in front of them is from another planet. Soon word spreads from bus to bus, and for as far down the infinite line of cars as the foreigner can see, heads begin protruding from the windows like popcorn, and the entire road is ablaze with the news of the alien invasion. Feeling just ever so slightly self-conscious with 6,000 eyes trained directly on him, the two-headed, three-assed monkey-boy foreigner decides that perhaps the first option wasn’t so bad and returns to the safety of the bus. At least in there the thickness of the fumes will hide his freakishness from the onlookers outside. He steps on the bus relieved, at which point a voice from the back of the bus echoes “Hey, the alien has returned.”

Landslides are fun. They are also very common on these roads. They make you wait in traffic even longer. Fortunately some people who cut in line occasionally get swallowed by the second coming of a landslide, but otherwise they generally aren’t a very beneficial phenomenon. It had been raining a lot for the past several days leading up to our trip, and was continuing that day as well, meaning not only did we keep our windows closed on the bus and suck in some fabulously funky fumes, we also got stuck in lines even longer. And when we did finally get moving, it was all worthwhile, because we got to rubberneck and see what had caused the delay – three times it was cars that were either flipped over or submerged in dirt poo, which means everyone on the bus was looking out the window instead of staring at the alien boy at the front of the bus. Thank God for landslides, huh.

So we eventually got moving again. Air was once again circulating through the bus and people were starting to fall asleep, meaning that they couldn’t smoke as much. Mind you, that doesn’t mean they stop smoking completely, because I’ve seen guys on buses here that look completely DEAD reach into their pockets instinctively without batting an eyelash, pull out a cigarette and stick it in their mouth, then let it dangle from their lifeless lips until the half-sleeping guy next to them pulls out his lighter and lights them up. The weather wasn’t great, but the conversation with Sarah was, so time passed pretty quickly. We talked about all of the wonderful little idiosyncrasies in China that really tickled our funny-bones (i.e. pissed us off to no end), and tortured each other talking about all the yummy home-cooked southern food we would love to be eating right then. Before we knew it, it was getting dark outside and the density of the towers on the valley walls was increasing, and I unconsciously let out a sigh of relief. Danba at last. Not that it was a bad trip. 14 hours on a Chinese bus is certainly no walk in the park, but it beats the hell out of some of the 40+ hour bus rides I’ve taken in this country.

The bus let us off in town (Danba county seat), and we caught a “bread car” (they are the TINY little minivans that look like little loaves of bread… very aptly named in my opinion) out to Soupo township, where we would have to hike about 30 minutes along the river and up the mountain to get to Zhima’s house. Fortunately her brother and some friends came to greet us and carry our stuff, but I knew returning home to Zhima’s house every day wouldn’t be so easy. I was bracing myself for a long two weeks of hiking. We arrived at Zhima’s house ravished, and they brought out some simple but filling dishes and the ubiquitous Tibetan ‘Suyou’ (yak butter) tea. We ate heartily. We chatted eagerly. 6-year-old Longta, Zhima’s nephew who I’d played and wrestled with for hours on end during the wedding festivities last year, came over and kicked me squarely in the shin and looked up at me with a devilish grin. He clearly hadn’t forgotten me, and he looked eager to start sparring again.

Let the adventures begin

The next day we jumped straight into our work. Since Xu Jun and I felt that recording Sarah and Zhima together doing foundation work might be a useful addition to the documentary, we followed them into Danba that morning. Getting to Danba was fun. During the day there are usually one or two ‘bread cars’ or taxis waiting at the head of the bridge that crosses the river to Zhima’s village. There was bread car with 5 people in it already, but we didn’t know if another one would be coming soon so we decided to pile in with the locals. Now, 5 people is already a pretty full loaf of a bread car, but the four of us somehow managed to intertwine our limbs in jigsaw puzzle-like fashion and squeeze in. I think I was mostly resting my head on someone’s foot and my butt on someone’s face most of the way, but fortunately it’s only about a 5-minute ride to town. We got there and I got some great footage of 8 people getting out of the car after me, almost like one of those shows at the circus where 30 clowns pile out of one little car. But we didn’t have a secret door under our car. Ours was the real thing.

We followed Zhima and Sarah around for an hour or two in the morning, and I got some great footage of the city along the way. Danba county seat is home to about 40,000 people or so, and the entire city runs along the edge of the massive Duda River. At the front end of town, there are houses on both sides of the river, but towards the back side the massive granite rock face is solid wall rising straight into the air from the riverbed, making it impossible to expand on that side. It’s a pretty impressive view from just about any tall building in the city to look down at the gushing river, the giant mountain rising up behind it, and the sprawling city cowering in its shadow. It was my first trip into Danba, as I spent my entire time in Moluo Village last year when I attended the wedding. In the afternoon Xu Jun and I interviewed a number of local shop owners, many of them Han Chinese, and asked what had lured them out to the boonies to open their shops when they were originally from the much more prosperous plains originally. Everyone had there own reason, but those reasons all revolved around money, and it seemed that they were making more money running their own shop in Danba than they were making back in eastern Sichuan or wherever else they were from. We also found that a lot of people whose parents had moved there from other parts of Sichuan claimed they were locals, and some even claimed they were Tibetan, even though their parents or grandparents were Han Chinese. If they had even the most distant blood relative that had any trace of Tibetan heritage, they were very likely to claim to be Tibetans on their IDs. Minority equals advantages in China, as they have their own forms of affirmative action here. There are of course other reasons too, but I’m not going to get too in-depth about my research at this point. Jeez, this e-mail is already way too long anyway. But don’t give up on me yet. Oh no, the adventures are just beginning….

That night Xu Jun and I climbed up the mountain after dark. Thank goodness I always take my Maglite with me when I’m traveling. We had taken WAY TOO MUCH equipment with us to the city that day, including the 30-lb. tripod I had bought in Chengdu before we left. I also had the video camera bag with all the accessories, as well as my still camera bag with all my lenses. Halfway up the mountain Xu Jun was near collapse, so I ended up taking her bag as well. Oh yeah, and it was July 4th, so I promised Sarah I’d pick up some more beer in town (we had each agreed to buy 3 bottles… I went ahead and bought 5… mind you, these are the BIG bottles they have here in China, not those wussy 12 oz. ones), which I was also carrying somewhere on my body. At this point onlookers might have been justified pointing at me and getting excited, because I’m sure I did look pretty freakish with all the bags and straps clinging to my poor body. I was a massive ball of bags and bundles, with only my head protruding from the top and two legs sticking out from the knees down. I was a little bit tired when we got to the top. The fact that I collapsed on top of the cow lying at Zhima’s front door might have been the first indication. I feel really bad about having killed their best cow. Internal bleeding, they said.

We went inside to find a bunch of neighbors sitting in Zhima’s living room. The nice thing is that they weren’t there to check out the foreigners. In fact, never once in Zhima’s village or any other the other mountainside villages in Danba have I felt like a spectacle like I always do in more populous areas or around any group of Han Chinese. With the exception of kids giving me a very hearty smile in passing and saying “Hallo!”, I’ve rarely heard the “Hallo” or “Laowai” calls from local villagers. If anything, villagers I pass on my way up and down the mountain merely stop briefly and give me a pleasant smile, as if I were just another villager or distant neighbor. And that night was no exception, as they were only there to pass the time and have fun. After all, it was Saturday night, and everybody deserves a little bit of partying on a Saturday night. I recognized most of the people there from the wedding last year, and they all recognized me, especially since I still had a big video camera viewed to my face this time. That night we sat around the “Guozhuang” (the three-legged fireplace in the center of the living room) and talked, danced traditional Khamba Tibetan dances, sang karaoke on their big-screen TV, and watched the younger, more adventurous few in the crowd dance to techno. The fusion of traditional and modern was incredible, but I kept my filming to a minimum because I wanted to be more a part of the festivities than an outside observer. That and I was piss tired and could barely stand on my feet, and still felt horribly bad about squashing that poor cow of theirs.

As I was laying inert on the couch, eyes closed, my heartbeat very faint, Sarah came over and asked if I still had the energy for a July 4 celebration. I feigned a second wind and told her with confidence “OF COURSE!”, even though I could barely move my legs and my shoulders ached with every breath. We went out to get the beers, and I pulled a nice little surprise out of the bag… two big packs of firecrackers which I’d managed to finagle from a storekeeper who had them hidden in the back his store. I hadn’t been able to find firecrackers anywhere that afternoon, as every store owner kept telling me they were illegal in Danba county. This storeowner didn’t even flinch when I asked, he just went to the back of his small store, removed a number of items piled in the corner, and removed a small box hidden beneath. He charged me a pretty penny for them (by Chinese standards… they were only about US$1 for each pack, and they were pretty big packs), but I was happy to pay to have a proper July 4 celebration. Sarah was thrilled that I had found some, but since it was already past midnight (Chinese time… we knew it was still July 4 in America) and the monks were still asleep up on the roof, we didn’t know where the heck we were gonna set them off. Zhima’s family knew it was our national holiday that day and that we were planning to celebrate. When we told them we were planning to hike down to the river to set off the firecrackers we’d bought, they insisted that we do it up on the roof. I refused, thinking of the look on the faces of the poor monks sleeping several yards away when they were to be awoken by the loud explosions, and finally we settled on the small rooftop landing on top of the kitchen on the otherside of the courtyard from their house. Everybody stopped their dancing and came out from the living room, climbed up onto the roof, and circled around as I unwrapped the first package. We passed our beers around, and wished everyone a happy July 4 as we let the first pack rip. Pack #2 came shortly afterward, and everyone smiled and cheered as Sarah and I sang our best possible rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, which was far from passable. But I have to admit, it was one of the more memorable July 4 celebrations I’ve ever had.

Danba’s Prized Possession

The second day we headed back toward town, but this time didn’t stop in Danba, just drove straight through to the other side and onto a small traditional Tibetan village that had become a sort of ‘showcase’ for travelers. It was less than 10 miles from Zhima’s house in a nearby valley, and had a paved road winding back and forth up the mountain, which saved us several hours of hiking. At the base of the valley when we first entered this paved road, a large sign with this idyllic painting of lush green terraced fields and a large Tibetan house in the foreground read “Welcome to the traditional Tibetan village of Jiaju.” After a rise of over 500 ft. or so out of the valley, we came to a roadblock with a small office next to it. The sign on the window of the shack read in Chinese “Ticket 30 RMB”. So this little village was making themselves a bit of money showcasing their “traditional lifestyle” to outsiders. Who knows how much that meant they had to change their actual lifestyles to make it interesting enough to appeal to Chinese and foreign eyes. Seeing the gate and the ticket price, Xu Jun was immediately up in arms and demanded them to let us in for free as we were ‘locals’. That’s pretty funny as she was yelling this in Mandarin, as she’s not from Sichuan and doesn’t speak much of the local Sichuanese dialect and certainly doesn’t speak any of the local Tibetan dialects. That and she was yelling this at the gate troll as he was looking into the car at the two foreigners. This is just one of the many instances where I just had to sit back and smile at Xu Jun in action. She’s ferocious, awe-inspiring, and hilarious all at the same time. The troll laughed and said, “oh, so those two are locals also?”, to which I replied in Sichuanese “of course I’m a local!” Xu Jun, the gate troll, and I all had a good laugh at this, and then Xu Jun went into the office to continue her protest. She was fearless. And determined. From the car I could hear Xu Jun going off about how ridiculous the toll was, and how it was affecting their sense of identity as Tibetans. She railed and railed, and I figured it was to no end. In the end she came back out and asked Sarah for 30 RMB (US $4) for her ticket. That was all we paid. I don’t know how she did it, but somehow Xu Jun convinced the office people that the white guy in the car and herself were both local enough to be permitted free entrance. The woman never ceases to amaze me.

After making it past the gate troll we drove into the heart of the village, continuing to wind higher up the valley and looking out over an endless collection of impressive Tibetan houses. Many of them were obviously very new, though constructed in the traditional fashion. I have to admit the village was beautiful and would have been worth every bit of the 30 RMB. Our driver dropped us off in front of a tacky sign that advertised a TV drama that was starting in September. It had been filmed there in Jiaju and many people from the surrounding villages, including Moluo, had participated as extras in the filming over the past several months. I don’t know exactly what the drama was about, but it was definitely about something historically Tibetan. Period dramas about different Chinese minorities, especially the Mongolians and Tibetans, tend to be very popular here on TV. We ventured up onto the roof of one of the first houses we came to, while below in the kitchen a woman in her 50s was busy in the kitchen. She offered to make us lunch, and as it was already early afternoon, we gladly accepted. We knew the meal wasn’t being offered free, as many of the people in the village substantially boosted their meager cash incomes by hosting visitors, both for meals and lodging. The woman was extremely nice, and interestingly enough spoke excellent Mandarin, which was unusual for even many young people in the city, much less an older woman out in one of the villages. Most people out in this part of Sichuan spoke only Sichuanese, and even this dialect was different from the Sichuanese spoken in Chengdu. Being Tibetan, she spoke the local Tibetan dialect as well (mind you, the Tibetan dialect in western Sichuan is MUCH different from that spoken in Tibet itself, where there are a number of other mutually unintelligible dialects spoken as well). We noticed Zhima was speaking to her in Sichuanese instead of Tibetan, and asked why. Zhima told us that the Tibetan in this village and that spoken in her village were completely unintelligible, and that they wouldn’t be able to understand a single word the other person was saying. Two villages less than 10 miles away and their dialects of Tibetan were completely unintelligible!!! I later found out that some villages on opposites of rivers often couldn’t understand each other’s dialects, meaning that most communication done outside of one’s village or local collection of villages, even with another Danba person, was conducted in Chinese (their local Sichuanese dialect, not Mandarin). Pretty fascinating!

Anyway, after lunch Xu Jun insisted the older woman take us to her older house, as the newly constructed house we ate in was her son’s and their place to host travelers. We wanted to see the more traditional house. It stood in stark contrast to the new house, although it was still beautifully decorated and immaculately kept. We later ventured further into the village, then started heading up and around the back of the mountain to an even smaller, more remote mountain. Over an hour later, we were in Niega. Here we found an old man in his 80s that had converted to Catholicism as a youth. Xu Jun had heard about him from one of her friends in Danba and decided to pay him a visit. His small room was decorated with all sorts of Catholic paraphernalia. I almost thought I was in a priest’s private quarters (except I didn’t see any young boys hiding in the corners… sorry, had to throw that in). What an anomaly this man was. He lived in a Tibetan village where everyone strictly adhered to Tibetan Buddhism, and here he was in all Tibetan Buddhist house (his offspring had not followed him in his convictions) with pictures of the Mother Mary hanging on the wall and crucifixes and candles on his desk. As we interviewed him, a young man came by to see the guys granddaughter, who was a pretty cute young lass. The guy turned out to be Zhima’s old classmate, and they recognized each other immediately. We later interviewed him and he talked for over an hour, giving us some great footage and telling us a few funny things about Zhima in the process. He later showed us around the village. When we were ready to go, he took a slightly nervous Sarah and some of our bags on the back of his motorcycle down the slender, winding mountain road (we were far past the point where cars could still use the road) to save us time getting down the mountain before dark.

Up the mountain we go

The next day involved a VERY LONG CLIMB. Sarah and Zhima were off to Basou elementary school, and we were in tow. Basuo is one of the higher villages far up the mountain from Moluo, and I found out after more than an hour of hard hiking that we were a little over halfway there. Fortunately, I found this out as we were resting up in Zhima’s uncle’s house, where we ended staying for lunch. And then for a nice nap, because we found out from Zhima’s uncle that the headmaster of the elementary school probably wasn’t even there that day. So while we were waiting for news of his whereabouts, Xu Jun, Sarah, and I all went upstairs to a room set up for travelers and passed out. This house was in Zuobi, the village just above Moluo, and Zhima’s uncle had the highest house on their mountain that offered accommodation to travelers. Around 4pm we set out for the school, realizing the teacher probably wasn’t there but hoping we’d find someone to help us anyway. School was already out for the summer, but at least the headmaster’s house was right next door to the school.

We arrived at the school around 6pm, and a teenage girl came running over yelling in English “Hallo! Welcome to Danba.” She turned out to be one of Zhima’s cousins. Actually, as I found out over repeated encounters throughout the collection of villages that made up Suopo township, pretty much EVERYBODY was related. And it made sense. People here rarely marry very far outside their villages, usually only up or down the mountain. In fact, now that it was economically more viable to live at the bottom of the mountain because of improved transportation and access to outside goods, people almost rarely married into families further up the mountain, only into families in the same villages or lower. Still, with well less than a thousand people in Suopo, that didn’t leave people with a lot options for marriage partners, especially since have the people you knew were close blood relatives. Made me wonder what kind of people were living in the highest village. I figured it would be worth the extra climb just to go see if people there had extra arms or eyes or genitalia. Ok, maybe not the latter, but it would have been fun to look for anything out of the ordinary. Ok, don’t roll your eyes at me, after all the strange looks and stares and whatnot I get here in this country, I would have been justified just looking around a bit. It would have been innocent enough. Besides, you know you all love the movie Deliverance.

Anyway, we managed to find the headmaster’s son, and he led us into his house where the headmaster had put the TV, DVD player, and computer that the Unicorn Foundation had donated to their school. I thought it was interesting that as we were going into the back room were the stuff was stored, we passed by the big-screen TV in his living room that ended up being twice the size of the donated TV. And that was the case with most houses in these villages, which also usually had VCD players (the predecessors to DVD players) or DVD players. An even more interesting contrast that had caught my eye the first time I drove into Danba last year and still failed to amaze me was the fact that almost every roof of these traditional Tibetan white-bricked houses was adorned with a massive white satellite dish, all of them capable of picking up hundreds of channels. I thought it was pretty amazing sitting in Zhima’s house watching TV with her family (actually, watching her family watching TV would be a more accurate description) and seeing them pick up way more channels than I’ve ever picked up in the US. They even picked up a Muslim TV channel broadcast from somewhere in the Middle East. One day I came into the room and they were watching Spanish bullfighting. Another day they were watching F1. Anyway, you can see why I find this place to be such an interesting topic for my thesis. Little anomalies exist everywhere within daily life here, and it’s a shame I didn’t have more time or more extensive knowledge beforehand to pick up on more topics.

The donated computer didn’t come with a power cable, so even though the computer had been bought quite a while back, nobody had used it yet and nobody had bothered to go find a power cable for it. Not that there would be any in Danba, because there weren’t any places that sold computers in Danba. And why should there be? There weren’t any places that USED computers in Danba. And why should there be? There weren’t many people who would know HOW to use a computer in Danba. But that’s part of the reason the Unicorn Foundation is trying to get some computers in the schools. There are some brilliant children in these villages, children like Zhima and many of her classmates who are inevitably going to want to get out of their villages and see the outside world, whether that outside world be up the road in the Ganzi capital of Ganzi, in the Sichuan capital of Chengdu, or even the national capital of Beijing. At any rate, there are plenty of young people pouring out of Danba, feeling that they don’t share the same connections to their heritage that their parents and siblings do, and lost somewhere between the rapid development of their nation and the traditional vestiges of their villages. They are going to venture out into Chinese cities, maybe some even into foreign cities, whether someone along the way taught them how to use a computer or not, whether someone along the way taught them how to speak proper Chinese or not, whether someone along the way taught them how to speak English or not. And I’ve got a lot of respect for Frederique and the Unicorn Foundation for trying to at least give these kids a head-start. It’s just that I question how effective some of the programs are when a lot of the teachers don’t even know how to use the computers, and the computer doesn’t even work in the first place because it’s missing a power cable and nobody knows where or how to buy one. But I definitely feel it’s a step in the right direction.

So yeah, in case you haven’t noticed, I have a tendency to go off on tangents at times. Only just a little bit. Yeah. Not that anyone has bothered reading this far anyway. And if you have, kiss your computer, because at least you have one. And at least you know how to use it. And at least you were fortunate enough to grow up in a place where you have easy access to modern technology and an education to allow you to use it. Although I seriously doubt very few of you reading this e-mail are nearly as content or happy in your lives as many of the people I met in Moluo. I bet few of you rarely smile as much in a week as they do in a day. But I know that not a single one of you would ever trade your cars and computers and tiny apartments and fast-paced lives for a 3-story house and a plot of land on the side of that mountain.

But I digress. So yeah, we checked out the equipment and then interviewed Zhima’s cousin. Her cousin took us over to her brother’s house, where her ‘sister-in-law’, who was only 15-years-old, was cooking dinner. Turns out her ‘sister-in-law’ was engaged to her brother, who was in his late 20s from what I understood, but that she wasn’t allowed to marry until she was a few years older. But she had already moved in with the brother and his family, and was already cooking and feeding the animals like she was already married into the family. She had her own room and didn’t sleep with her ‘fiance’. Evidently this is pretty common in these villages, although the age difference between these two must surely have been an exception to the norm. The most interesting thing about this household is that they had opened a ‘disco’ in their basement, where the young people of the village hung out on the weekend. The admission, if people actually paid, was 1 RMB (about US $0.12), and they made a little extra money selling ‘baijiu’, beer, and other drinks and snacks on the side. The room was just a small, bare-walled cement room with benches sitting around a rotating disco light hanging from the ceiling. A smaller connecting room housed the beat-up old cassette deck and some old speakers with torn fabric revealing the plastic encased woofers beneath. It was the ultimate setup. The girl put some hot Chinese beats on for us, and before we could stop ourselves, we threw our hands into the air and let ourselves go buck wild. Well, everyone else did… I just took video of them making fools of themselves =0)

Longta vs. The Monks

The next day it was raining off and on, so we decided to stay around the house and the village and get footage there. Zhima’s family had invited a monk and two other young villagers who had studied for some time in the local monastery and could read Tibetan to come over and hold a traditional ceremony for three days. It had something to do with Zhima’s mother recently being hospitalized in Chengdu with a pretty serious illness (I never asked what), and recently recovering. The three guys slept up on the 3rd floor roof, where the wedding had been held last year, and every morning woke early to start reading from some old, sacred scripts and beat a hanging drum and other small instruments they had brought with them. The monk himself, not any older than his mid-20s, if even that, was quite a character. He’s just one of those people who doesn’t look very intelligent. Some people are just born with dumb looks on their faces, and I’m sure no matter how hard they try, if they even try at all, they just can’t get that look off their face. This guy was one of them. And I’m sure it didn’t help that he constantly had a big glob of snot hanging out of his nose and resting on his upper lip. I wonder if maybe his reasons for taking up a monastic life weren’t entirely spiritually motivated.

I recorded some of their ceremonial proceedings, and when I was done recording video I left my MiniDisc recorder there in front of them to record them chanting as I ran up on the higher roof to get some footage of the surrounding scenery. I heard them finish chanting and came down to turn off the MD, only to find them closely inspecting this strange blue metal object lying in front of them. Don’t get the wrong idea… like I already said, most of these people now have big-screen TVs in their homes and aren’t completely removed from technology, so it’s not like a scene from Gremlins where Spike and his friends are playing with a gun and one of them blows his head off. I think they realized I’d recorded them chanting (and they had been very open to me recording them earlier), and were just trying to figure out how to listen to it. I went and got my headphones and hooked them up, and they took turns listening to themselves chanting. It was definitely a Kodak moment, sitting there with a monk in his traditional garb listening to my MD and laughing at his own voice as his two friends waited anxiously alongside for their turn to listen. As much as I wanted to grab my camera and snap off several pictures, I settled for a mental photograph. Those are usually the best pictures anyway.

I did some of my own random shooting and interviewing that day, as well as some work with Xu Jun. Longta, Zhima’s fiery young nephew who had greeted me with a kick in the shin that first night, came up on the roof often to harass the three guys chanting. As soon as they took their break, one of them picked up a wooden sword and started sword-fighting with Longta. I took some hilarious pictures as they greatly exaggerated their movements for me. It wasn’t until I started taking video that I realized Longta was swinging a real sword at the young guy the entire time! And Longta wasn’t swinging lightly either!! I got some hilarious video of them sword-fighting, and then when the young guy was completely worn-out by his 6-year-old adversary, he came after me. Using the video camera to parry his thrusts, I managed to save my life but lost a few fingers. Ok, not really… Longta actually put down the sword and came at me with some kungfu moves. I had the camera right in his face the entire time and he was hilarious. He was going for a full ten minutes before he collapsed from exhaustion on the ground. I’m thinking of sending the footage to Jackie Chan in case he is looking for a young protege.

Mountain Gods and Dysentery

The next day involved some more intense hiking, even harder than two days before. Plus, since it had been raining a lot for two days, the ground was pretty slippery the entire way up. It was not easy going, but Sarah and I had plenty to talk about again and I managed to pack all the video equipment in my backpack instead of the bulky camera bag, making the hiking twice as easy. We hiked up the opposite face of the valley from Zhima’s house, where she and Sarah were off to another elementary school to inspect equipment. At the top we met Abu, a guy in his 50s that I took a liking to immediately. He just had one of those likable faces and voices, and you could tell the guy had some interesting stories to tell. He was the liaison for Unicorn in Pujiaoding, the village there resting on a bluff high above the valley floor. We had a lunch of ‘momo’ bread with yak butter, which was actually pretty tasty for a thick, fluffy piece of bread with a bunch of liquid butter poured into a hole cut in the middle.

After interviewing Abu during lunch and checking out the school for a while with Zhima and Sarah, Xu Jun and I ventured around the village and talked to a bunch of random villagers. A bunch of women were working diligently on cutting a new irrigation ditch. We asked why no men were helping them, and they said all the men from their village, which was lower down the mountain, were all off working in other places for money. The women all wore their traditional Tibetan clothing and headdresses, as did the people on Zhima’s side of the valley even when working in the fields, even though it was hot and they were straining heavily from the labor. I find this interesting, because all the men dress in modern Chinese clothing, evidently long ago setting aside their traditional Tibetan garb for special occasions. Even at the wedding last year, when several of the men had to don their traditional outfits, they had to have help from the women because they didn’t know how to dress (of course this is actually a problem found the world over).

We told Sarah and Zhima to go back ahead of us this day, because on previous days they had waited on us very patiently for HOURS as we interviewed people after their work was long done. We got some great shots of Zhima’s village and that side of the valley from the top of some elementary school boy’s house we’d met on the road. As we were leaving, the several local government officials, including the mayor of the local township, came up onto the roof to have some drinks and talk. I guess we’d picked the best rooftop in the village, as we weren’t the only ones who found the view to be spectacular. Xu Jun jumped on the opportunity to talk to local officials, and introduced the two of us. We were summarily ignored, the 5 men acting as if they were God’s greatest gift to this great green earth, only grunting their acknowledgment of our presence and giving very curt replies to our questions. That didn’t deter the fearless, indomitable spirit of Xu Jun, and she persisted with her questions. One of them was somewhat forthcoming, and after a while they did offer the foreigner (but not Xu Jun) some of their nasty ‘baijiu’ and a cigarette. I politely accepted the former and rejected the latter, regretting every running into these jerks as the horrible ‘white spirits’ streaked down my throat and burned a hole in my stomach. It started raining and we took this as our cue to leave. On our way out, I asked Xu Jun if it was just me or if those guys had actually been that rude. She said of course they had, because in these small towns these men WERE gods, and that everyone looked up to them, so in public they had to be very stern and serious and put on airs. Hmmm. Bastards all the same.

We headed back to Abu’s place next to the elementary school to interview him for a few last questions, and as we approached the school saw a bunch of doctors and nurses going into the school courtyard. We stopped one of them and he told us they were setting up a temporary clinic in the school for the villagers. It turned out a young kid in the village had died recently of dysentery and several other villagers were sick. We went in and took a bit of footage, interviewing a very young Han Chinese doctor who turned out to be the head of the hospital. Only one patient came in from the village, an older woman who had been sick for several days and did NOT look like she was feeling very well. From my limited knowledge of dysentery, I knew it could get pretty serious, but thought it was just a severe case of diarrhea. I figured it couldn’t possibly be that bad. Xu Jun recognized a female government official who she’d met on her last trip to Danba two months earlier to be an adviser for another documentary. The lady was the ‘Buzhang’ (department heads) of one of the county government offices, though I never found out what office. Anyway, she was a local Tibetan, but obviously had gotten a great education because she spoke perfect Mandarin and was very articulate. She was also dressed well in modern Chinese clothing and had a driver with her. The incredible thing, to me at least, is that she appeared to be very young (and fairly attractive in my opinion), so she must have been a very capable woman to be where she was. She offered us a ride down the mountain as soon as she was done with her stuff, so we pulled Abu aside and went off for an interview.

When 4×4 Just Doesn’t Matter

When all was done and the government official was ready to leave, we had to walk a good ways down the mountain just to get the highest point the road could come up the mountain. The sick old woman was walking in front of us, a young male relative carrying her on his back part of the way. It was already getting dark, and the road on this mountain was EXTREMELY bad, barely wide enough for the little ‘bread cars’ that had been brave enough to bring the doctors up that far. And from what I had seen of it from our hiking path on the way up, the edge of the road was pretty much a straight drop down. I’ve never been scared of heights or driving on mountain roads, but this road could make the governor of California piss in his pants. So to say the least I wasn’t terribly relieved when we got to the cars and found that we were getting in the front car, a ridiculously wide SUV that barely fit on the tiny little path. Granted, 4×4 was always a good thing on these sloppy roads, but if two of your tires didn’t even fit on the road, it doesn’t really matter how many wheels you have spinning. You’re going for a drop.

So we set off and the driver was nice and cautious at first, and rightfully so… we were practically hanging off the side of the road. I cursed myself for not listening to my better judgement and hiking down the mountain. I didn’t care that it would have been dark and wet and treacherous, at least I would have been in control of my own fate on the way down. The lady official was talking away with Xu Jun as if this was just another day in the office, although I could tell from Xu Jun’s voice that she was definitely as close to losing control of her bladder as I was. We came to a flatter part in the road (though not any wider), and the driver sped up a bit, as the four bread cars behind us were tailing him pretty hard. The bread car drivers were local drivers who were used to going up and down this road, and our driver was a government driver who did most of his driving over on Danba’s city streets, which didn’t make me feel any more comfortable.

Suddenly the driver slammed on his breaks. I looked up (I had been looking off over the edge most of the time, my hand nervously gripping the door handle in case I had to bail) and there were two SUVs coming in the opposite direction. The Danba vice-mayor and a bunch of her fellow cadres got out and came and talked to our female official friend. They had been trying to call people up at the top for over an hour to find out how everything was going, but nobody had a cell phone signal at the top and they couldn’t get through. So they’d decided to come up themselves. This created a slight problem because there weren’t exactly any turnaround points in the road here. After much skillful maneuvering, the drivers going uphill managed to pull their smaller SUVs up onto a more gradual rise in the mountain side of the road, their cars tilting over nearly 30 degrees. I didn’t think there was any way in hell our SUV was going to pass, and I wasn’t liking the way the other drivers were yelling at our driver to pull up into the bushes on the drop-off side of the road, not knowing how stable the ground (if there was any ground at all) was up underneath.

I decided I’d be much happier enjoying the spectacle from OUTSIDE the car, and got out with video camera in hand. I filmed as our SUV squeezed by the first car and brushed within a millimeter (I exaggerate not) of its roof. The second car was nearly as close. And then we were back in the car and heading back down the mountain, the four bread cars in the rear fearlessly clinging to our tail. At this point is was getting really dark outside, and as we came through a more heavily forested part of the road, we crossed over a small stream. BOOM! The front driver’s side of the car fell into the ditch. The crossing over the stream was very narrow and the driver had misjudged it, so now we were stuck hanging over into the stream. Fortunately, there were no steep drop-offs here, but we were still stuck pretty good. All the other drivers got out and started digging him out, and I got out and got some good video. It’s ok, they didn’t really need my help.

Yeah, so Xu Jun and I had yet another dark walk up the mountain to Zhima’s house. But we were actually very happy to be on foot again after that harrowing ride down the other side of the mountain into the valley. We got home and Zhima’s family had already heard about the dysentery scare, and they were asking us all sorts of questions about how many people were dead and how bad it was and if we were ok, etc. Xu Jun laughed and told them it was just one old lady who was sick and that it was no big deal. They look greatly relieved. I couldn’t figure out why they were so anxious. After all, IT WAS ONLY DYSENTERY.

Rainy Days in Moluo

The next three days we spent almost entirely in Moluo, partly because it was raining off and on those days (and there are no paved paths to get around the mountains on… it’s all a muddy slosh-pit when it rains), and partly because we’d been spending most of our time outside the village getting footage. That first day at home, I was downstairs in Xu Jun’s room going over our plans and schedule, when we heard a Chinese tourist come into the courtyard and ask if she could go up on the roof. I’d already taken advantage of the few travelers that came into Zhima’s house while I was there to interview them about why they had come to Danba and their impressions. Xu Jun was equally interested in hitting up this tourist for a sound bit, so like hungry wolves we snuck up to the roof to talk to her. She was a young girl in her mid-20s or so, well dressed in hiking boots and a nice rain jacket. She looked a bit like overseas Chinese to me, but her Mandarin was perfect, so I wasn’t sure. I helped her climb up onto the upper roof, since a slab of wood with little notches cut into it doesn’t make the most stable of ladders, and helped her back down again. Then I made the move.

Explaining that we were working on a documentary and would really like to interview her. Xu Jun let me do the talking, and when I asked where the girl was from, she said Malaysia. Figured as much. I of course felt like a dolt because I was sure she probably spoke impeccable English (and no telling how many dialects of Chinese… the Chinese I’ve met from Malaysia before are usually Cantonese or Hakka – or Hakka from Canton – in which case they grow up speaking Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka, and Malay natively, and pick up English very fluently at a young age… five languages at almost a native level!), and I’d been speaking to her the entire time in Chinese. But we continued speaking in Chinese, and her and I and Xu Jun had a really nice conversation. In fact, she said that since we had interviewed her, she wanted to interview us, as she’d just arrived in Danba a few hours earlier and wanted to learn more about it. I took the opportunity to get Xu Jun in front of the camera, which she had completely refused to do by herself up until this point (despite her insistence that everyone else we interviewed not be nervous and act natural in front of the camera), and I recorded almost an hour of footage of Xu Jun explaining to Lin Li, our new Malaysian friend, about Danba, the towers, the people, and the problems Danba faced in modernizing. Lin Li hung around for several more hours and chatted with Xu Jun while I went and filmed other stuff.

The next morning Lin Li, who was staying in a house lower down the mountain (smart girl!), came and joined us for breakfast. We immediately started talking and I introduced her to Sarah, who was sitting next to me. She started to speak to Sarah in Chinese, and when Sarah indicated she couldn’t speak, Lin Li busted out in only slightly accented English and asking Sarah questions. Yup, just as I suspected. Later I found out that her great- great-grandfather was a Hakka who’d gone to Malaysia from Guangdong, so she also spoke Hakka and Cantonese. Aaaye yah, not fair. Five languages. Wow. I’m always jealous of people who grow up speaking just two languages, much less five. Oh well, I’m from Texas. The fact that I grew up even speaking one language fluently is pretty amazing, I suppose.

At some point during these three days, a young high school graduate from Chengdu had come out to Danba to spend the weekend there. Her uncle ran the Chinese side of the Unicorn Foundation, and evidently her only purpose in coming out to Danba was to spend time practicing her English with Sarah. Her name is Wang Shu Chi, which I found very interesting because my ex-girlfriend, who is Chinese-American, has the exact same Chinese name, minus the last character Chi (her name was Wang Shu, and the Chinese characters are the exact same). She arrived early in the evening on a Friday night (I guess she didn’t get to have fun sitting in traffic like we did on her way over from Chengdu), and that night Zhima’s family had a ton of friends over to hang out in their living room. We invited Wang Shu Chi into join us, but she wasn’t interested. She just went to bed. The next day she stayed around the house all day. Sunday she did the same, even when Sarah and Zhima went out. The next day she complained about itchy feet. I offered her some of my jock itch cream, which she politely declined (ok, it’s actually just anti-fungal cream that you can use on your feet too). I didn’t think anything of it, but I found out when I got home later that day that Sarah and Zhima had taken her into Danba to see a doctor because she had been bitten by something. Evidently she had several long, skinny red rashes on her leg, and everyone was suspecting a centipede had gotten her. Anyway, she stayed in the city by herself that night, because she was going back to Chengdu with Sarah the day after next anyway. I figured that was for the best, because she didn’t seem to be having a very good time anyway.

The Veterinarian Drunk on Daniel’s

The next few days passed quickly as we were starting to wrap up our shooting. We still had a few days left to shoot and we’d carefully gone through and made a list of what we had left to do. Since Sarah was leaving on the 12th, we went into Danba the night before to check out Zhima’s cousin’s bar and send Sarah off properly. The bar was EXTREMELY nice, much better than we were expecting in a place like Danba. Zhima’s cousin had opened it less than a month earlier, and he was obviously trying to appeal to a tourist and rich local crowd, as prices matching those in Chengdu bars attested to. Her cousin was a very nice guy and definitely cut out to be a bar owner, giving us half a dozen beers free to start with. The beer brand was called Daniel’s, but the funny thing about it is that the label was an EXACT copy of the Heineken label, just with the name Daniel’s replacing Heineken. It was pretty good all the same, even though it was warm. Lot’s of people like to drink warm beer in China, which I still can’t get over. Even in winter when it’s freezing cold outside, if I was gonna drink beer I’d want it ice cold. It’s just not a beer otherwise.

Only Sarah, Xu Jun, and I were drinking the beer, while Zhima and Wang Shu Chi were sucking on coconut juice or something equally obscure that you’d never find in an American bar. Suddenly a well-dressed Tibetan guy came over from the only other table with customers and stood next to us. I very politely offered him a seat and poured him some beer in his little shot glass. He returned the favor and poured beer into my big 8 oz. glass and then yelled “Ganbei” (bottoms up) and downed his beer. I followed suit. This continued for several rounds, and even though it wasn’t exactly fair having to down eight ounces to his one, I didn’t mind since he was obviously toasted already and I was just getting warmed up. He then insisted on toasting Sarah and trying to get her to go bottoms up, which she wasn’t keen on doing. He insisted and she relented, and then he moved onto Wang Shu Chi and Zhima, who don’t even drink alcohol. He was a bit pushy, and when they refused to drink, he ordered me to drink for them. At this point the guy was already starting to get a bit annoying, but I didn’t want to create any tension, and I figured the guy could turn out to be a pretty interesting character if I could get him to stop drinking and start talking. But that was a mistake.

As soon as my new friend started talking, he went off on how all Han Chinese are conniving bastards (right in front of Xu Jun’s face, who he had already been rude to when he tried to make her chug her beer and she refused… mind you, Xu Jun and Wang Shu Chi are both Han Chinese), which made Xu Jun noticeably uncomfortable. So I started arguing with him, even though I can partially sympathize with the sentiments of the Tibetans, a dispossessed people whose situation in many ways parallels that of the Hawaiians. But this guy just wasn’t going about things the right way, and he was being a complete ass on top of that, so I started reasoning with him that every nationality has good people and bad people, trying my best to change the subject in the process. After a while, I guess I was loquacious enough to drive the man away, but he came back shortly and dragged Sarah and I over to his table to drink.

As it turned out, the young ladies he and his friend were drinking with were local Han Chinese. They were very nice and apologized for their friends behavior, which they attributed to too much alcohol and his profession… he was a veterinarian. I don’t know how that explains his poor behavior, but I suppose if I had to mess with animal poo all day long, and give big animals shots, and try to save cows that had been crushed by foreigners collapsing on them, that maybe I’d be a little angry at life too. Anyway, we did our share of ganbei-ing and returned to our friends. After a while our new veterinarian friend and his party were leaving. He grabbed a big log decoration hanging from the ceiling and started banging it against the wall. Zhima’s cousin, who was no small guy, came over and asked him nicely to stop. Mr. Asswipe refused and continued his little prank, at which point Zhima’s cousin grabbed him and pulled him away from the log. The guy tried to wriggle free and started cursing, but he was too wasted at that point and probably realized he was no match for the bar owner staring down angrily at him. His friends pulled him away and apologized to Zhima’s cousin, who just smiled casually and saw them out. I guess it’s like my momma always said, bars are not the place to go to meet nice people.

Xu Jun and I stayed behind and let the other three go back to the hotel first. We interviewed Zhima’s cousin and his business partner, although we had a hard time thinking of any good questions in our extremely exhausted and slightly inebriated state. We got back to the hotel, where I had gotten my own room (it’s too hard to get a ride out to Zhima’s village late at night, so we just decided to stay in town that night). I brushed my teeth and jumped into bed. We had a busy day in the city ahead of us. It would be our last full day of shooting in the city, and we had a lot to cover.

A Little Under the Weather

I woke up, stomach aching, around 6am. My mouth was like a big wad of cotton, which I attributed to dehydration from not drinking enough water the past several days and all the beer from the night before. I managed to fall back asleep, but woke up a little after 7 feeling even worse. I figured I just needed to get some water. My stomach hurt and I went to the toilet, where I found out I had some seriously runny diarrhea going on. I won’t get into details. I went back to bed and lay there for about 30 minutes, figuring I’d go out soon when the shops were open and buy some water and a sports drink, and maybe a little bit to eat. Yeah, that’s all I needed, some water and a spot of food. I got up to go to the bathroom again, but this time I puked. That’s strange, I thought, I didn’t drink that much beer the night before and I didn’t feel sick at all when I went to bed. But you never know with my crazy stomach. So I went out and bought a drink, and got some instant noodles too since the bakery wasn’t open yet. I sucked down the sports drink while my noodles softened, and I intentionally left out the hot spice and most of the oil for the noodles. I got halfway through the noodles and started feeling pretty raunchy again. I gave up on the noodles, and about that time Xu Jun came and knocked on the door. She was going for breakfast, but I told her I wasn’t interested.

I brushed my teeth, got my stuff ready, and went up on the roof to get some footage of the city. I went down to Sarah’s room after that to say goodbye, as she was supposed to be leaving shortly. She and Wang Shu Chi had somehow finagled a ride out of the mayor of Danba in his nice, ridiculously big (and even more ridiculously comfortable) SUV, as he had to go to Chengdu that day on business anyway. It’s all about connections in this country, and the Unicorn Foundation evidently has huge connections in Danba now. In fact, half the people we talked to in our time in Danba at least knew about Frederique, if they hadn’t met her directly. Anyway, I knocked on Sarah’s door, half expecting her to already be down in the lobby. Instead, she opened the door wrapped in her blanket, her hair in shambles and looking near death. She smiled when she saw my reaction. “I’ve been throwing up all night,” she told me wryly, though I could tell she was not the least bit amused with herself. It turns out she’d taken antibiotics the day before and forgotten when we went to the bar, so the alcohol had mixed with the antibiotics and made a mess of her stomach. She said she’d been puking every 45 minutes the entire night. She wasn’t sure if she was gonna make it to Chengdu or not that day.

I put Sarah back in bed and rubbed her hands to help her relax, and soon Zhima and Wang Shu Chi came back with food for her. I don’t know what they were thinking, because everything they had gotten to eat was super oily, and everything they had to drink was dairy. I laughed, but knew they were only doing their best to help. They had also gotten some medicine for her stomach, which I immediately recognized because it’s also used for diarrhea and I’d used it several times last year here in China. It’s a dark brown liquid in a little glass bottle, and it’s about the most gosh-awful tasting medicine I’ve ever tried. Bitter doesn’t even begin to describe it. There is no adjective for the taste this stuff leaves in your mouth. Of course I didn’t tell this to Sarah, and just to make her feel better I sucked down a bottle in front of her without cringing (at least not outwardly), my innards turning inside out as it coursed down my throat. But my stomach was still really hurting, so I figured I needed some too.

Xu Jun gave me a call at this point and told me she’d found an interesting old man at a little restaurant down the road that she thought we should interview. I hurried outside, but as soon as I started walking up the hill with my equipment in tow, death came over me. My stomach was turning inside out, and I was feeling very weak. What the hell do they put in that Daniel’s beer, I thought. It must be the beer. And the dehydration. I’ll be fine. I spotted Xu Jun down the street and hurried over, along the way spotting a suggestive sign over a store of a sexy Chinese girl in skimpy lingerie. I of course had to take some video, not because I’m a sketchy perv, but because shots like that are very suggestive of the kinds of changes that are happening so quickly over here in China. Of course, the three guys standing in front of the shop watching me shoot video of the model on their sign might not have realized that, but foreigners are all strange alien monkey boys to them anyway. We’re supposed to do strange things like that.

The hot model on the sign didn’t ease my discomfort, and as I followed Xu Jun into the small restaurant buried in a back alley, my condition was rapidly deteriorating. Xu Jun noticed I looked pretty horrid, and she mentioned that maybe I pay my porcelain friend a little visit. I told her I didn’t need to throw up, and we started filming. 30 seconds later I was sprinting for the toilet, and another 30 seconds later that half bowl of instant noodles was all over the bathroom floor. I was retching violently, and even when the noodles were all up I was still retching. I came back out and sat back down at the camera, which was still rolling. Xu Jun kept on asking the old man questions, but she could tell I was in a pretty bad state. I started to get cold. I looked down and my fingernails were already turning purple. Death was setting fast to work. I sunk my head into my hands and tried my best to hear what Xu Jun was saying to the guy, but the pain blocked everything out. I was fading.

Xu Jun must have finished up pretty fast, because the next thing I knew we were back out on the street. The sun was out big and bright that day, providing enough warmth to make people take cover in the shade. Yet as I soaked up the rays of the mid-morning sun, my whole body shivered. And it was getting worse. I stumbled along with my head down, making sure I didn’t drop the video camera that was dangling in my weak hand. We got back to the hotel lobby and found Sarah, Wang Shu Chi, and Zhima waiting for the mayor to arrive to pick them up. They took one look at me and knew it wasn’t good. I could see from their reactions that my condition was serious. I knew I was extremely dehydrated, but all the water I’d drank had come back up, and it didn’t look like I was gonna be able to get any more down. But we had a job to do. Wang Shu Chi was about to leave, and we really wanted to get an interview of her talking about her experiences in Danba. We set up the camera in a side room and pressed myself against the wall to stay on my feet as Xu Jun made quick work of Little Wang.

As soon as I turned off the camera, I rushed out of the room and begged a hotel attendant to guide me to the nearest bathroom. She merely pointed downstairs. The retching was about to begin again. I rushed down as fast as I could, rounding the corner and running for the bathroom door. I slammed into it, but it was locked and an old woman inside started screaming. For an instant I considered just letting everything loose on the floor, but managed to check myself and crawl back up the stairs. I told the attendant the bathroom was occupied and I really needed to puke. She showed me to an open room on the second floor and I instantly bonded with Mr. Porcelain. And we communed for some time. The poor girls outside the bathroom door who were straightening up the room must have thought I was dying, and I was beginning to wonder myself. After several minutes of intense retching, nothing was left and I was still dry heaving and staring straight into Mr. Porcelain’s deep, dark guts. As soon as the puking stopped, the diarrhea came, and my bodily felt as if it was slowly being depleted of all it’s mass. I was beginning to think at this point that maybe it was a little more than a simple case of dehydration.

I stumbled back down the stairs, and Xu Jun was excited because some guy we’d been hoping to interview for a while had just showed up. I tried to act pleased, but somehow I think she caught on that I didn’t really care. Death was knocking. My legs were giving in. My body felt empty and yet as heavy as a ton of bricks at the same time. And worst of all, I was shivering cold. Oh so very cold. My fingernails were extremely purple at this point, and even when Sarah wrapped her blanket around me and I sat down and buried my head in my knees, an internal winter was swallowing me on this hot summer day. That’s when the first mention of the hospital came. Oh no, I may be down and out, I thought, but no hospital for me. I’ve seen worse. I’ve been through worse. But I’ve never needed a hospital. I staunchly refused, remembering the time I had traveled with my girlfriend in China three years ago and she’d gotten sick. We took her to the hospital and they had insisted the only thing they could do for her, and what they did for everyone, was stick and IV in her hand for a day. So super squeamish boy here, who passed out from taking a small vile of blood from his arm before, wasn’t about to go get stuck in some nasty Chinese hospital out in the boonies where there was no telling if they even used fresh needles. They weren’t gonna stick me, oh hell no! Those vampires disguised in their white lab coats could kiss my white alien butt before I let them suck my blood or pump their IV gunk into my veins.

And so I suffered. And waited. The mayor came for Sarah and Wang Shu Chi. I gave Sarah a hug goodbye and wished her well, then collapsed back into my seat. My body was wracked. Xu Jun and Zhima insisted we go to the hospital, which was just right up the road. But there was the problem of Li Kaihong, the nice young gentleman who’d come across town for an interview. Xu Jun asked if he would come to the hospital with us, but I insisted that I didn’t want to put him to the trouble and told Xu Jun we should get the interview with over first and then see how I feel. After all, all I had to do was set up the camera and Xu Jun could handle the rest. But my body told me otherwise. There was a dark-clad figure I could feel standing next to Xu Jun, looking down at me and laughing hideously. My body wasn’t working. I was freezing. My lips were shaking, and my mouth was a big swell of cotton. I desperately longed for water, but my stomach told me it wasn’t interested. Think Jay, think! What to do? I suppose a few needles is better than this. Hell, ANYTHING would be better than this. I’ve never felt so nauseous in my life. My bowels are about to explode. My whole body is shaking. Every last joint of mine aches. My body has never felt so incredibly depleted in my life. And my jock itch is starting to act up. It’s time to make a decision boy.

We Can’t Treat Alien Monkey Boys Here

“Ok, let’s go to the hospital,” I said weakly, slowly working my way to my feet. Li Kaihong helped me up, and the four of us walked slowly over to the hospital. I’d been in a few Chinese hospitals before, and knew they were pretty decrepit and nasty, but I didn’t care at that point. As we walked in the main entrance, I found a bench and collapsed in a shivering ball of pain as the other three ran around trying to figure out where to take me. They finally took me upstairs, where I collapsed on another bench while they asked nurses and doctors who I should see. The hallway was painted in a dark, rich green color. In most places at least. Good idea, I thought. Hide the blood stains better that way. I stared blankly down the long corridor. Where do they keep the needles? Which room are the vampires going to take me to for their feast? Why aren’t there any other patients walking around on this floor? Have they already been devoured? Maybe Chinese vampires don’t like alien blood. Maybe I’ll get lucky.

Xu Jun and Zhima pulled me into a room where two doctors were seated. They asked my symptoms. “An excessive amount of stuff is coming out of here and here,” I said, pointing simultaneously at my mouth and my anus. “Oh, I see” said the female doctor. She pointed to the building out back and told Xu Jun to take me there. It was a LONG walk, though I’m sure it was no more than 30 meters between buildings. I curled up in a ball on the bench in the main hall, not caring what nasty stuff might be adhering to the surface of the bench. Life was in slow motion at this point. The pain was infinite and gripped my whole body. I just wanted them to bring out the anesthetic and put me to sleep.

Who knows how long the others were asking around. It was probably only a few minutes, but it seemed like an eternity. Finally Xu Jun came over and explained that if I wanted treatment at the hospital, I’d have to check in as a patient and stay in the hospital, probably for several days. Oh no, that’s the oldest trick in the book. Make you stay a few days, fatten you up and get you healthy, and then the vampires REALLY feast. I’m not falling for that one. I’ll let them stick me with a needle or two, and I’ll endure an IV if I have to, but I’m not staying overnight in this feasting ground. No thank you. Xu Jun explained that my other option was to go down the road to a clinic and just get an IV. I was already at the door.

We walked down the street. Actually, I clearly remember it was UP the street, because I was going up an incline and suddenly my legs weren’t willing to climb any more. I doubled over and started retching again. This time was even more fun than the others because I drew an audience. “Wow, those two-headed alien beings get sick just like us” the staring eyes thought as I puked up dark yellow bile. Coldness enveloped me as the midday sun pounded down on my aching body mercilessly. Something’s not right Jay. It’s gonna take a lot more than one little ol’ IV to get you out of this one boy. You’ve really done it this time. You should have taken better care of yourself. Now look what you’ve done. And you’re stuck out here in this wilderness a full day away from proper medical treatment. What if you can’t find proper treatment here? What if this is even more serious that you think? Oh, way to go Jay. Always running off on these little adventures and never taking proper precautions in case of emergencies. Well, now you’ve got yourself an emergency. Whatchu gonna do about it?

I forced myself to my feet, anger driving me now more than anything. What was I going to do? How the hell had I gotten into this mess? And how the hell had my condition deteriorated so quickly. What the hell was wrong with me anyway? Xu Jun, Zhima, and this poor guy Li Kaihong who’d gotten himself dragged into this mess were growing noticeably concerned. I felt a little better after retching, and tried to force a smile and tell them I was ok. But I knew I wasn’t. And I knew if I didn’t get help soon I wasn’t gonna be walking around looking for treatment under my own power much longer. We got to the clinic, but the doctor wasn’t there. We waited outside, because she was supposed to come back at any minute. I asked the lady behind the counter for a vile of fructose, which I knew they sold in little glass containers here in China from a previous bout with altitude sickness. I slowly sucked down about half of it, and my stomach turned. I rushed out, desperate for a toilet. I could feel another attack of diarrhea coming on.

Li Kaihong led me up into a courtyard behind the clinic and showed me to the bathroom. The place was filthy, and the stench overwhelmed as soon as I cracked the door. This made the retching only that much more violent, and as I retched I felt my bowels suddenly tighten. I threw my pants down, ignoring Li Kaihong standing right behind me, and before I could even squat the violence began from that end as well. I must have been a pitiful site. I wanted to cry. I retched and retched and retched until not even the smallest trace of bile was coming out, and when my body at last came back to equilibrium I realized I had no toilet paper. At that point poor Li Kiahong had excused himself from the bathroom, probably trying to keep himself from retching at the awful site of me. I hollered for him, and he appeared with some toilet paper, having read my mind. Feeling slightly relieved, I thanked him profusely and cleaned myself up.

When I got down to the clinic, now just a shadow of the tall, strong figure I’d been just hours earlier, the doctor was there waiting. Xu Jun was arguing with her. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but we can’t see foreigners here.” I stopped dead in my tracks. I was doomed. Hopeless. I just wanted an IV. Now I was praying for an IV. Needles schneedles, just hook me up and feed me my fix. I need a fix. PLEASE give me a fix. I said to the doctor, my voice barely audible, that we foreigners are just the same as Chinese, and that the same cures that work on her Chinese patients would work on me. She smiled, not belligerently but compassionately, and said “I’m sorry, it’s not my rule, it’s the law. If you want treatment, you’ll have to go to the hospital. They are the only ones that can help you.” Oh great, back to the vampire’s lair.

My Good Friend Mr. Hospital

Everything was getting blurry at this point. Not my vision; I could see fine. But just the whole incident seemed strange. I started to feel a bit numb, though none of my pain subsided. I remember telling Xu Jun that this time at the hospital we had to get me treatment immediately, no matter what the conditions. I told her I couldn’t stay on my feet much longer. In retrospect I’m sure I could have endured for many more hours, but as the pain is still fresh in my mind as well, I can see why at the time I was ready to settle for anything. So they checked me into the hospital. They took me a flight of stairs and I wasn’t looking forward to seeing my new room. The ward I was, or rather the hallway I was in, seemed to be fairly new and in pretty good condition, though it still smelled of death and disease, that ubiquitous smell that plagues every hospital, no matter how new it is. They put me in the last room in the hallway, made the bed for me, and took my vital signs. As soon as the first nurse left, I ran for the toilet. More dry heaving. I was so tired at this point. I just wanted to fall asleep and let them come stick me with their needles as sweet, precious Zs poured out of my head.

The first needles came soon after. I tensed up. I’d only had an IV once in my life, and that was when I had my four wisdom teeth removed and they used an anesthetic IV that put me to sleep almost immediately. Being awake and knowing a needle was penetrating my vein was going to be a new experience for me, and one I wasn’t particularly looking forward, especially given my state at the moment. I have nice thick veins, especially in my hands and arms, but they were completely gone at that point. I don’t know if it was because of my body’s depleted state or because of my nervousness, but even after the nurse cuffed off my wrist, there were no veins to be found sticking above the surface in my hand. The nurse made a stab anyway, and came up empty. I shuddered. PLEASE FIND A VEIN, I wanted to scream. Where was my sister-in-law when I needed her. She’d find my vein, and she’d be gentle about it. Was this nurse in collusion with the vampires? Was she one of their underlings, testing me to see how much of a fight I’d put up when the bloodbath began? I felt the needle penetrate my flesh again, and I tensed up. I waited. Did she find it? “Ok, that’s it,” the nurse said, taping the needle into place. Suddenly a wave of relief swept over me, and I felt better than I’d felt for the past hour or so.

It didn’t last long. I had to rush to the bathroom again. It was another double attack, and I could barely stay on my feet at this point. It didn’t help that I had an IV in one hand now either. I went back and sat in bed, but despite my severe fatigue, I couldn’t lay down because my stomach was still too nauseous. That’s when the second needle came. This time it was a much larger needle, and the target wasn’t a vein, but my arse. But shot’s don’t bother me so much, although I can’t say the size of the needle put me at ease either. Xu Jun told the nurse to inject the medicine nice and slow so it wouldn’t hurt, but the nurse went so slow it took over a minute before she pulled out. I didn’t even bother asking what had just been injected into my butt. I was just glad it was done. Then I started retching again, this time not even bothering to go to the bathroom. Xu Jun held up a small pan for me. Zhima looked on in pain.

It Was Only Dysentery

The rest of the afternoon is a blur, as I eventually got well enough to lie down on my back, though I still felt bad enough not to be able to go to sleep. And every time I was just on the verge of drifting off to sleep, I’d get a diarrhea attack or a nurse would come in with another big needle and inject it into my poor pale white buttocks. And then they came to take my blood, which I hate with a passion. First they took it from my arm, and then later they pricked my finger and took a small sample from there. Xu Jun brought me a little scoop and told me the next time I had diarrhea, to collect any solid matter in the scoop. I explained there was no solid matter at this point, but she told me to do my best. Whatever the hell that meant. But I did my best. And evidently my best was good enough. Xu Jun came back in 30 minutes later and announced the diagnosis. Dysentery. Hmmm, I remember thinking to myself, so THIS is what dysentery is like. Interesting.

A little while later a nurse came in with a little pump that had a long tube attached to one end. I asked what it was for and she just told me to turn over on my side and pull down my pants. I didn’t like the sound of this. Soon my poohole was being wrongly violated and I knew some alien substance was beginning to circulate in places it shouldn’t be. The nurse finished and told me I shouldn’t be having any more poo attacks for the next few hours. I thanked for her kindness. Sleep finally came and everything was fine until some asswipe walking by my window poked his head in and started yelling “LAOWAI, LAOWAI”. I opened my eyes and turned to see some middle-aged guy, who should have known better, leaning in my window. Xu Jun turned around and told the bastard to get lost. She was as pissed as I was. What the hell is wrong with some of these people here.

He wouldn’t be the last guy to be amused at the fact there was a foreigner in the hospital, but at least the next few surprise visits I received were more pleasant. The first was that night, when my condition had already drastically improved, and some young Tibetan lady whose mom was sick next door came by to offer me some rice porridge. Xu Jun and Zhima, who had taken such incredibly good care of me that afternoon, had gone out for a few hours, and I greatly appreciated this woman’s offer for food. I ate a little bit, not sure if my stomach could handle even plain rice porridge at this point, but since my stomach hadn’t had anything in it all day I was pretty ravished. Not that I had much of an appetite, I just had that feeling that my body needed some food in it. The next day I would meet even more people who were eager to come take care of the foreigner. Evidently word had spread not just around the hospital, but around town, that a foreigner had gotten hit with the minor dysentery epidemic that seemed to be striking down a number of villagers around the county. By the time I checked out of the hospital, at least 10 different people I didn’t know had come by to talk to me or check on me, including that old woman who’d been brought down from the village the day we had our scary SUV ride. She’d been in the hospital for four days. That wasn’t an encouraging sign for me, especially since our time to film the documentary was running out and we had a long list of things left to do.

The next morning the nurse came and told me that I’d be staying another day in their lovely little hospital, which of course thrilled me to no end. The IV treatment continued, and there was another poohole violation, but there were no more shots and no more bloodletting, so I was thankful for that. Basically, it was a long boring day, but I didn’t care because I already felt loads better than the day before, and when I did the math, the equation always came out to BOREDOM >> RETCHING. And all my new friends who came and visited me kept me entertained enough that I didn’t pay much attention to the needle protruding from my vein. In fact, I forgot it completely enough that three times I let the liquid run out and air run into the hose and come dangerously close to entering my vein. That would have been loads of fun. I did the math on that one too. Something like AIR IN VEINS = VERY UNHAPPY. After the third time of having a nurse rush in and rip the tube out to restart the fluid, I learned my lesson. Although the nurse was kinda cute, so I did consider giving it one more go.

A doctor came to visit me late that night, and I complained about how my IV still hadn’t finished. He told me with a smile that he’d reduce the amount of fluid the next day. I told him without a smile that I wouldn’t be there to suck on his fluid the next day. He explained to me that as soon as I could produce some solid poo from my behind, I was free to go. I explained to him that I had rarely ever in my many stays in China produced solid poo, and that he might have to wait several months to see that glorious day. He told me we’d talk again in the morning. I asked him what time checkout was. I bet he really likes foreigners now.

Solid Again

So yeah, I checked out that next morning. And got right back to work on my documentary. We had to leave the next morning to come back to Chengdu, so we had one day to finish all of our stuff. And I wasn’t exactly in tip-top shape, even though I felt completely refreshed. So we started going around the city tying up loose ends. We met up with Li Kaihong again, the poor guy who had watched me suffer so desperately two days earlier. He say me and said with a smile, “wow, you look much better today.” I couldn’t help but laugh, thinking about how this guy had come all the way across town two days earlier for a simple interview and ended up spending half his day dragging some crazy foreigner around town while he puked and shat all over the place. I thanked him for his help. And then we got a great interview out of him. And his sister, who had taught Tibetan for a few years in Danba before they fazed out the Tibetan language program and started replacing it with English language programs. Go figure.

Li Kaihong also helped us arrange a ride back to Chengdu. While I was showering in Xu Jun’s hostel room, they went out to get to get bus tickets. Xu Jun is not any more fond of bus rides in China than I am, and Li Kaihong told her there were small cars that made the run to Chengdu also. They found a guy whose brother was heading to Chengdu the next day and would take us for 100 RMB a piece, only 6 RMB more than the bus ticket. Xu Jun figured this guy’s brother had something to do in Chengdu and was just taking on two extra people in his little car to make a little extra money. He said we could stop along the way to take some video, which was perfect because we had seen several places on the way out to Danba that we wanted to film. And it would be so much more relaxing with just two of us and the driver in that little than being crammed into that bus. Xu Jun thought she’d done a brilliant job of arranging a ride, and from what she thought we were getting, it sounded great to me as well. Best of all, the driver was going to come meet us at the head of the bridge below Zhima’s village, so that we could stay at Zhima’s house that night instead of staying at a hotel in the city close to the bus station. Of course we didn’t have to pay money until we got to Chengdu, so we knew we weren’t getting scammed. Of course, if the guy didn’t show up, it’d be too late to catch the daily bus to Chengdu, and we’d have to wait an extra day until we could go back.

I was thoroughly exhausted by the time we started up the hill to Zhima’s house that night. I’d been carrying the equipment around Danba all day in the heat, and I’d even hiked up a mountain behind Danba at one point in the afternoon to get some overhead footage of the city. And I’d eaten nothing but rice porridge and IV juice for three days. As we were walking up the path to the bottom of Zhima’s village, we came across several young guys from her village whose tractor and trailor had gotten stuck going up a sharp incline. Two of the guys were pushing from behind, but they still couldn’t get it up the mountain. I sighed and slowly put down my stuff, knowing we I couldn’t possibly walk past them in good conscience knowing they needed some help. I ran up and put my full body into the trailor, and the tractor climbed a few feet, but no more. I helped them dig a path for the tractor tires and add rocks behind the rear wheels, but still it gained very little ground. We dug and pushed, dug and pushed, and I was sure that I was overexerting myself after just getting out of the hospital that morning. But finally the tractor cleared the rise, and we got a short, bumpy ride to the bottom of Zhima’s village, from where we still had to climb a good ways up to her house.

I got back to Zhima’s house dirty and exhausted, and it was already around 10pm. We hadn’t even come close to getting all of our footage shot, but we realized that the most important interview left was that of Zhima herself. She was already exhausted, as were we, and she initially refused, but after I offered to take off all my clothes for the interview, she finally agreed and at about 11:30pm we started filming. Zhima, who had been very reluctant to be in front of the camera the entire time we were in Danba (which has really thrown off our original plans for the documentary, since she’s supposed to be a central character), suddenly came alive and answered our questions very articulately and expounded on a number of issues we’d been hoping to use in the documentary. My naked body must have inspired her. And so at 12:30am, six hours before we had to start heading down the mountain to catch our ride, we finished our shooting. We were far from getting all the footage we planned to get, but we had about 35 hours of video to work with, and we desperately needed to get back to Chengdu.

The Long Ride Home

We were up at 6, and I washed my hair for the first time in 5 days. I was in the washroom rinsing out the shampoo when the phone rang and Zhima’s father called Xu Jun over to the phone. I knew it was the driver. I heard Xu Jun telling the guy that he had agreed to come pick us up at the bridge, and that he had also agreed on 7:30. She was getting upset, but she told the guy we’d be right down. I asked what was wrong. She said that we weren’t the only two riding in the car, that she had misunderstood (i.e. – hadn’t thought to ask) and thought we’d be the only two in the car. But no, where there’s an extra dollar to be made in China, it will be made, and this guy, with his little tiny car, was going to squeeze in four passengers for the long, arduous trip back to Chengdu. Mind you, he was driving a little Chinese made wannabe-Japanese hatchback that wasn’t much bigger than my old Ford Festiva. And it didn’t even look as comfortable. And on top of that we had all sorts of equipment to fit in his car, which was going to be hard enough with only two of us, much less another two passengers who would undoubtedly have their own luggage.

I was not happy. Xu Jun discovered this very quickly. I’d been through enough mishaps with transportation problems in China to know to clear up EVERYTHING beforehand in this country. But the day before Xu Jun had seemed very pleased with the conditions of the ride, so I figured she’d asked about everything. But she had only assumed we’d be the only two in the car, and had assumed he wouldn’t take on any other passengers because he was going to Chengdu anyway to take care of some stuff, and just happened to find us and was willing to take us with to make a little extra money. But at any rate, we still had a ride back to Chengdu. As long as we hurried down the mountain, at least. And he wasn’t going to give us until 7:30. He had other people to pick up. I wasn’t looking forward to this ride.

We said a hurried goodbye to Zhima’s family, who had been so incredibly wonderful to us the past two weeks. Her father had even come all the way into the city to see me in the hospital the first day I was there, although I was barely conscious at the time and only managed to mutter a few slurred words to him. I hated to be rushing off without saying proper goodbyes and giving lots of hugs and kisses, especially to the women in the family, but there was no telling how long our driver was going to wait. We got to the car to find one of the other passengers was already in tow, and fortunately his bags were rather small. We squeezed our bags into the back, and feigned great stomach pain in order to get into the front seat. After all, I needed to get some footage while we were driving, and my legs were at least twice as long as the young guy already sitting in the front seat. We drove back into town to pick up the final passenger, a guy who could have been anywhere between 25 and 40. There’s no telling how fast time had worn him down, but he did look worn and tired, and he didn’t say much once in the car. He got stuck in the middle, as Xu Jun wasn’t about to give up her window seat, nor was the other guy who’d already been displaced from the front seat.

A few miles into the trip, the driver lit up a cigarette. “What are you doing?!” Xu Jun immediately burst out. “You’re not smoking in this little tiny car, are you? That horrible smell will kill us all! How does your wife put up with your smoking at home? Doesn’t it drive her crazy? That smell is just disgusting? How do you guys live with yourselves? Doesn’t the smell just make you want to puke??” Oh, what would I have done without Xu Jun?! She saved me in so many ways on this trip, whether she realized it or not. Even though the driver finished his cigarette, and the other guys lit up at a few times during the trip, I could tell they smoked a lot less than they would have had Xu Jun not said something right at the start.

Our Final Near-Death Experience

The road was good, and we had a nice sunny day for the first two hours or so. Then suddenly we came to a stop behind a short line of several other cars. Landslide. And this one was still going. I grabbed the camera from the back and went up for a closer look. A small group of people had already collected, and they were standing against the guardrail only 10 feet or so from the edge of one of the largest landslides I’ve seen on the roads here. The whole side of the mountain had collapsed, and a section about 30 feet high had come crashing down onto the road. There were still smaller bits sliding down, small and large rocks flying all over the place. And here these people were standing only 10 feet away watching, the wall of loose rock in front of them not looking much more stable than the section that had just collapsed. Brilliant. Of course, they probably thought the same thing about the crazy foreigner who walked up to within five feet of the falling rocks with his big video camera to get up-close footage.

I thought for sure we’d be stuck there half the day, but they already had two big Cat tractors, one on each side of the landslide, ready to start digging away the debris. I went back to the car to rest for a while, and a little while later saw the big Cats come to life. Within 20 minutes, cars were coming through from the other side. I couldn’t believe it. How had they cleared that much rock and gravel in only 20 minutes? As we pulled up for our turn to cross, I saw what they’d done. They’d cleared a channel on the outside just large enough for one car to squeeze through. There were still some smaller rocks tumbling down, and an occasional large one, and the mountain didn’t look the least bit stable. But I guess they figured if they cleared the whole thing, not only would it take a lot longer but it would increase the chances of bigger chunks coming down, because there would be no pile below to support them. Still, this meant we had to shoot straight through the narrow channel dug through the rock, risking a further collapse on top of us or tumbling rocks crashing in through our windows. And while I’d been out taking footage of the landslide earlier, the guy originally in the front seat that morning took his seat back, meaning I was now in the back seat on the mountain side. So if any rocks came tumbling down, they were going to squash me. I wasn’t pleased with our predicament. I got even more nervous when the car in front of us was supposed to go but hesitated. He’d start to go, then slam on his brakes. He did this several times, and finally our driver started honking and shot around him. Without even flinching he bounded over the big rocks in the way and shot through the narrow tunnel, coming out the other side unscratched. I patted him on the back and congratulated him for being such a badass.

Having survived our near-death experience, everyone in the car suddenly became a little more friendly. We started talking. The guy in the front asked Xu Jun where she was from. She said Chengdu. He could tell from her accent she wasn’t from Chengdu originally, so he asked if she was a ‘Chengdu person’. No, she said, explaining that she is from Henan province. The poor guy squeezed between us perked up for the first time and asked Xu Jun where in Henan she’s from. Without answering, she said “Mister, don’t tell me you’re from Henan also.” He nodded and said he was. There was a brief spark of excitement between the two, and I figured a long conversation would ensue as these two Henanese people had suddenly met out in the middle of western Sichuan. They spoke a few words to each other and then there was silence. And turned and looked at them, expecting more to come, but nothing. That was it. I couldn’t imagine meeting someone from Texas randomly like that in an obscure place and only having a few words to say to them. I’d be talking for hours, but then again we Texas folk are rather simple and easily amused. But Henan isn’t Texas. Maybe it’s more like Idaho. I mean, I guess I could picture two Idaho people meeting up like that in the back of a car. “Hey you, wuch you do back home?” “Grow potatoes. You?” “Grow potatoes.” “You inject your cows with that RBG stuff?” “Yeah. You?” “Yeah.” “Been home recently?” “No. You?” “Nope.”

Return of the Panda

Anyway, at least I found out that the guy who was pressed up against me, and would remain pressed up against me for the next 10 hours or so, was from western Henan and was in Danba working in a gold mine. A gold miner. Interesting. He said there was a problem back home and he had to rush home. Someone in his family must have been ill. I felt sorry for the guy, not so much because someone was sick back home, but because he was squeezed in between Xu Jun and me. And every time he was brave enough to try to light up a cigarette, the only relief from his temporary imprisonment, one quick glance from Xu Jun would send the cigarette straight back into his jacket pocket.

I had my hand out the window almost constantly the next hour or so, my small video camera getting footage of the incredible landscapes we were passing through. When I finally brought my hand back into the car as we were descending down from the ‘Four Girls Mountain’, I realized my leg was completely numb. There was no feeling at all. I looked down and found the gold miners legs draped over mine, his feet on the OUTSIDE of mine, and his head bobbing up and down on Xu Jun’s shoulder, who had also passed out. I worked my non-functioning legs out from under his and tried to stimulate some blood flow, but there wasn’t much maneuvering I could do, and my butt was getting pretty numb too. I prayed we wouldn’t run into any traffic on the way home. I just wanted to get back to Chengdu as soon as possible. As soon as I got in the door, I was gonna down my rice porridge and head straight for my 10 RMB (US $1.25) one-hour massage right up the road. That massage was all I could think about the rest of the way home. And we were so close too.

Only about 2 hours out from Chengdu, we ran into another ‘hole repair’. Then came the cars speeding around us from the back of the line. And then they ran into oncoming traffic and couldn’t get back into line. And then everyone gave up and got out of their cars to gawk at the congestion. Xu Jun joined them. Mr. Gold Miner, now awake and no longer sprawled all over my legs, took advantage of Xu Jun’s absence to light up a cigarette, as did the other two guys in the car. I reluctantly prepared for the inevitable. I licked my big black paws, matted down the black and white fur atop my head, checked the big black rings around my big bear eyes, and dragged my giant furry butt out of the car.

“Look Daddy, it’s a PANDA BEAR!!!”

THE END

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