Songpan's most eligible bachelor
Meet Zhou, a 20 year old cowboy who can cook, speak four languages, and open a beer bottle with his teeth. He'll serenade you with romantic Tibetan songs while dragging your horse, with you on it, up steep muddy slopes. He enjoys long walks in rocky terrain and a nice bottle of hard grain Tibetan alcohol from a recycled coke bottle. He's good with children, willing to strap your infant on his back for the horseback ride through rockslide territory. He has left behind a lifestyle of tatoos and knife fights to follow the straight and narrow. Women as far away as Korea are ready to move in on him, so ladies, don't pass up this chance!Yaks: one of my new favorite animals
Seeing a yak on TV is entirely different from meeting one in person. They are quite pretty, with long, silky fur. They are shy but curious -- they were clearly interested in what us humans were doing when we made camp, or hiked through their grazing land, but bolted when we approached within about 15 feet. The majority of yaks we came across were running free in the wild, typically brownish-black, probably part of someone's herd in the mountains, but we also saw some more glamorous ones that were gussied-up in Tibetan costume for the tourists as we blazed through towns on the bus. Yaks make cute short moo sounds and raise their tails like a red flag warning when they freak out and trot away."That's China's fault" *
Why China, why must you take perfectly good tourist sites and bulldoze them to build something us Westerners can find at home? The more important question is not so much the "tourist sites" that are being dismantled but the actual homes and livelihoods of the people that live here. This is one of the major quandries of globalization, I suppose -- that while developing countries are doing just that (developing), they run the risk of wiping out cultural and historical sites, traditions, or practices in order to make way for the new and improved. Beijing, as I think Mike touched on in earlier posts, is a prime example. It is an example of nothing existing where communities once thrived, where every restaurant listed in our guidebook that we looked for was either boarded up or appeared blown up, and in one case, with a homeless family living inside. Walking or driving down many of these streets, one sees nothing but eight or ten-foot tall, block-long vinyl billboards advertising what new stores or apartments are to be built on the site. If you happen to duck behind these massive "coming soon" posters, you find the dusty remanants of a neighborhood that may have existed as recently as 6 months ago, but is now a construction site or tent city. Truly depressing. The winning of the Olympic bid is likely the motivator for these "rennovations", but there are larger forces at work -- namely, capitalism. And to my planner friends, if dealing with public input is wearing you out, Beijing may have a job opening for you, because I dont think the public *has* input here. There is, however, an impressive urban planning museum in Beijing laying out all that is planned for the City's future, and save the most famous locales such as Tianamen Sq. or the Forbidden City, it pretty much will look nothing like it does now. Tell that to the people on Huntley (WeHo!)
* quote from Aqua Teen Hunger Force
Call me Auntie Mame
I am now an expert horsewoman, after three days of training in Songpan (read parts one and two). The experience was part Auntie Mame's fox hunt and part Vicky the evil would-be step-mom during the camping trip in Parent Trap. If you don't know the references then you have two movies you need to watch. Hopefully I was more tolerant (and tolerable) than both women during the horse trek, because despite coming back with a cold/fever, it was the highlight of our time in China for both Mike and I. Dare I say that our nest of a bed, created with tree branches, horse blankets, and Tibetan coats with saddles for "pillows", were more cozy and comfortable than some of the hostel/hotel beds we've slept in.
The World's Cutest Kid Contest: Japan v. Chinese Tibetans
As our photos demonstrate, there are some seriously cute kids over here. I thought the cuteness levels couldn't be any higher than those found in Japan, what with the shining black eyes and dolled-up clothes and doting parents. However Sichuan toddlers have given them a run for their money (for scientific proof, see here, here, and here). I will continue my search in Nepal.
Western food is underrated
That's right. I said it. After turning our noses up at western fast food joints the last two months, the Burger King veggie burger in HK brought our noses back to earth. We haven't eaten fast food since pre-vegetarian days (aside from the single experience with the "not buger" from In-N-Out), but once we learned that BK serves up a hefty, loaded-with-condiments, grilled veggie burger, Mike and I forced Lisa to sit and watch while we gobbled down two delicious combo-meals at the top of Victoria Peak in HK. These burgers were wonderful in ways I cannot describe, surpassing its American BK counterpart from what we've seen (but never touched) in Los Angeles. Hats off to you, Burger King of Hong Kong. You will remain a shining memory of my time there.
That is it for now from me, and though I wish I could say I will be better about blogging, it will probably not be true. But please feel free to email me and post comments because I still want to know what is going on back home!
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