Xiamen Surprise

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A day is skipped when traveling to the Far East from the Far West, like from California to China. A redeye flight from Frisco International. Final destination is Xiamen, a small coastal city in the Fujian Province in the southeastern part of China. I have never been there. I have never been to China, period. Writing the word period at the end of a sentence may seem a tad bit redundant and moronic, but it's emphatic, and empathic. Emphasis and empathy are important in the written arts, almost as important as digression. Belaboration is also important as well. I just made that word up, belaboration. It doesn't exist in any dictionary of the English language. Making up words, in other words wordplay and words to that effect, is essential in a civilized and sophisticated society such as the one that we live in, a world where the written arts is so very much a key part of peoples lives, so key such that if the whole enterprise were to collapse we would all end up in an insane asylum or plunge ourselves to the very bottom of a spiraling abyss because life would be so worthless and so uninteresting that it's not even worth living, because making up words, wordplay, or the exercise of playing around with words and butchering up the whole English language to the distastes of linguists, elevates the art of writing to its highest levels imaginable because it's emphatic, empathic, digressive, belaborative, intractable, loquacious, and most important of all it's voluminous in terms of word count. Of all the things that's important in the written arts word count probably ranks up there as one of the most important, especially if you get paid by the number of words you write on a blank piece of paper. That doesn't apply to me however because I don't get paid a penny for writing anything that you see right in front of your very eyes. I write strictly for my own amusement and to provide some form of entertainment and comedy to the very many followers of my critically acclaimed and award winning travelogue blog, a very dedicated and astute group of travel writing aficionados who continually inundate me with praise, love, and affection and shower me with compliments to no end for my very incisive, witty, and unique style of tavelogity, creativity, and wordplayability, that is, the ability to invent words that no one ever dares attempt to invent for fear of sounding foolish and idiotic. But appearing foolish and idiotic has never bothered me, and that type of bravery is important in the written arts because it transcends the genre of travel writing in a way that will open up a whole lot of avenues for unexplored creativity. It transforms the whole genre of travel writing itself in a way that could reveal the very essence of what we are all about as human beings traveling and wandering aimlessly in this complicated and seemingly meaningless universe and trying figure out this thing called life.

The VIP lounge of an airline is a wonderful place to sit and watch and write about a certain group of travelers that's not often written about in the travel blog community; the business types, wealthy vacationers, upper middle class holiday goers, casual travelers, and idiot tourists like me. You see families with babies running around, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, squeezing the bejeesus out of the baby's cheeks and practically torturing the little bubby to death although they don't know they're torturing bubby to death because its cheeks are so smooth and soft and adorable and its facial expression is so indefatigable that you might think the little bubby is actually enjoying all this painful squeezing but deep inside if little bubby had any sort of ability to form some semblance of thought he or she would be saying Stooooooooopppppp! This is the crowd that I most often fall into or run into when traveling. Of course I also undoubtedly will run into a group of bratpackers on their way to shit in the woods although I try to avoid them. Not that I have anything against shitting in the woods. As a matter of fact I might actually enjoy the experience. Squatting in the jungle with the sounds of nature to help you ease out of your constipational misery could very well be an enlightening and spiritual experience, if you believe in such things. But the snobbery of these huge pack lugging, Vang Vieng tubing, Luang Prabang trampling, Khao San slumming peripathetics, misspelling intended, is insufferable. These people think just because they have to rough it out because they have no choice but to rough it out that anyone who doesn't do the same even if they don't have to is automatically unworthy to be dignified by the so called

traveler

status. And yes you anti-American types out there in travel land, I spelled traveler in the Americanized single l. That's right, that's how it's spelled, that's how it's always been spelled in the history of America's mankind, and that's how it shall be spelled till the end of America's time, so get over it and swallow that bitter taste in your mouth until America's time is over and the Chinese takes control of the world that you so very much know and love, in which case you will not only have to spell the word traveler in Chinese but write it in that incongruous set of Chinese characters as well, and by God bless your anti-American heart! Then you can mock us to your heart's deepest desire about what a bunch of soft skinned touristy types on a packaged tour we all are while you're out there shitting in the woods under the moonlight.

Well what in the heck is a traveler anyhow? Someone who backpacks and couch surfs on some stranger's sofa who you don't even really know and who could turn out to be a Jeffrey Dahlmer in sheep's clothing. Well you just go on right ahead brother and I'll see your skull split open and preserved in Jeffrey Dahlmer's refrigerator. That was old Jeffrey's specialty by the way, travel enthusiasts with no money who don't get along with their parents and have a knack for backpacking and couch surfing. For those of you too young to remember, Jeffrey Dahlmer was an American psychopath who loved the Vang Vieng tubing crowd even though there was no Vang Vieng tubing to be had in his time. Totally outrageous stuff.

Anyways, you won't see too many huge pack luggers in this little crowd of ours in the VIP lounge. What you'll see are a bunch of old people, some of them on crutches or wheelchairs, languishing near the end of their time, tons of business types, gorgeous looking women with their sugar daddies or things of that sort. Then there are the families, mom and dad with two kids, maybe granny along with them. You watch them. They're a real boring lot. They bore me to tears beyond belief. So I write about them and how real boring they are but it's hard to come up with anything imaginative and creative with a boring crowd like this because they really don't do a whole lot of odd things. They're not anxious, they're not scared, they're not uncertain about their travel plans. It's all been arranged for them by some travel agent back home in Pittsburgh or Piscataway or wherever the hell they pissed away from and it doesn't really matter anyway because quite frankly nobody cares, it's so uninteresting. The Vang Vieng tubing crowd is more interesting to write about. I love watching those guys pile out of some rickety old bus that looked like it had overheated several times on their way back from the jungle. Usually I'd be sitting in some cafe drinking foul tasting coffee and see these guys with their eyes bugging out from lack of sleep, their faces full of anger and anxiety, looking grimy and unkempt, dragging a huge pack, getting impatient, ready to kill the next tout who tries to rip them off a tuk-tuk ride for one hundred Baht to the next block. My best materials have come from just watching this crowd limp their way back home.

China China China

Taiwan is not China. It's the Republic of China. The real China, The People's Republic, doesn't recognize its sovereignty. Other nations of the world, including the United States, also doesn't recognize Taiwan as a sovereign state lest they catch the ire of The People's Republic. It's a parlor game in The People's Republic to bully their little brethren across the Straits of Formosa. The Taiwanese themselves makes a pretense of being independent by cutting business deals with other countries and thumbing their noses at their fat bosses on the mainland. So they play this little song and dance; The People's Republic exerting their authority on Taiwan, the Taiwanese threatening to declare complete independence from the motherland. But the reality is that neither wants either one to happen; reunification on The People's Republic's part and complete independence on the Taiwanese side because each side is afraid that to achieve what each wants could destabilize this part of the world and put the whole region in complete and utter turmoil, throwing away the whole export enterprise and depriving the whole conspicuous consumer world of cheap products made by cheap labor in China or Taiwan, which is bad for their livelihood. And so it goes, the status quo that is.

And thus here I am, an idiot tourist traveling to China for the first time, making a brief stop at the Taoyuan International Airport in Taipei, Taiwan for a connecting flight to the mainland. It's a relatively short walk from the arrival gate to the transfer gate. The VIP lounge of China Airlines is only two terminals away from the departing gate. It's a spacious lounge with cable television showing a recorded game of the World Cup and a better selection of food on the menu, very unlike their Dynasty Lounge in Frisco. Even the Mabuhay Lounge in Frisco is better than the Dynasty Lounge. I brushed up and put on my contacts. Afterwards I had some breakfast of pork buns and noodle soup with meat sauce. I also grabbed me a cup of Cafe Americano, which is basically nothing more than brewed coffee with steamed milk to make it taste latteish. The whole world of coffee drinking has gone to hell in a hand basket ever since Starbucks opened up Pandora's Box of designer lattes to the masses. Drinking latte was once a cozy and comfortably kept little secret tucked away in the rainy enclave up in the Northwest part of this here wonderful country of ours. I am probably giving a lot of precious personal information away when I say that when I was an undergraduate at the U-dub hardly anyone outside of Seattle knew what a latte was. All everyone knew about were wine coolers made famous by the brothers Ernest and Julio Gallo from my hometown of Modesto, CA. Those were cool and heady times as far as I was concerned. Those were the times when smoking was cool. Nowadays smoking is almost a crime. People who smoke are made to feel like criminals. They are given very little space to smoke in, almost the size of a shoebox in airports and other public places. In California, especially in the Bay Area, smoking is looked upon with disgust and abhorrence to the point of virtual criminality, but smoking dope is enthusiastically encouraged and accepted to the point of virtual legalization. You could be walking around Golden Gate Park smoking dope and the cops wouldn't even bother you but if you even think about lighting up a stick of cigarette you will be handcuffed and thrown in jail for the rest of your life and be lectured to the whole time you’re in jail about the hazards of smoking tobacco while taking a couple of midnight tokes and listening to Steve Miller singing

I'm a Joker, I'm a Smoker, I'm a Midnight Toker

. Yes, you can bet your bottom dollar that the measure to legalize dope smoking will pass by a wide margin by the wacky voters of this here wonderful state of California, and thank God for that because prohibition time and again has never worked in its enforcement in the history of mankind.

The flight from Taipei to Xiamen is a mere one hour and a half. The plane took off at 8:30 am on a cloudy morning on a Sunday of the year of our lord 2010 off the Straights of Formosa and before you know it the plane makes its descent and land down the runway at Gaogi International Airport. I arrived in Xiamen on a slightly overcast Sunday morning, at around ten o'clock. So far I don't see a whole lot of Western tourists around. This is not one of the more popular tourist spots for Westerners in China. There are lots of Chinese tourists though. Some seem to come from Taiwan and many more come from other parts of China. Chinese tourists come in large groups and they usually have a guide-on flag or banner for each group with a symbol identifying the name of the group. Now that's packaged touring up the yin-yang if I'd ever seen one. I suppose guide-on flag is for the purpose of helping each member of the packaged tour group find their way back to their respective camps in case they get lost or waylaid. I have not seen a backpacker toiling around in these parts. Lonely Planet gives no more than four pages dedicated to the city of Xiamen. Pronounced Shah-Men. It gives a mere seventeen pages of skimming details of the Fujian Province. Clearly the Lonely Planet doesn't give too much of a hoot about this whole place because they think that this place is not interesting enough. I disagree. I happen to think that this place is fantastic, and I've only been here for a mere three hours, tired from a long flight over the big Pacific Ocean pond and trying to get settled in, and already I'm loving it.

This little island of Xiamen in the Fujian province of The People's Republic of China is at about 24.5 degrees latitude, close enough and just above the Tropic of Cancer such that the climate can be suffocatingly hot and humid in the summertime. And that's exactly how it felt like as I stepped out of Xiamen's efficient international airport. It sort of reminded me of Singapore's Changi International Airport but the similarity stops at the efficiency of the airport because aside from the unbearable humidity this place is a whole lot more different than squeaky clean Singapore. As I left the baggage claim area I looked for signs that said money exchange but when I saw one it lead me to an ATM looking automatic money exchange outfit with no personal assistance at all whatsoever, so I went to the tourist information booth to ask for assistance. The lady at the booth said it was upstairs on the second floor. So I towed my luggage to the elevator and went up to the second floor money exchange kiosk. The money exchanging business in China is highly regulated and the difference in exchange rates anywhere is almost the same, unlike in some countries where better rates are given in the black market because the government sometimes overvalues their currency. Not here in China. In the People's Republic of China the currency is purposely pegged to the dollar and undervalued by a certain amount to maximize their competitiveness in the import-export business. Thus it really doesn't matter where you exchange your money, at the airport or at the hotel, you pretty much get the same rate.

Communication is a problem. There is a huge communication gap. But never mind. I hand over to the guy at the money exchange kiosk five twenty dollar bills to exchange. He very carefully inspects each twenty dollar bill. He found one that was slightly faded with a small tear at the top, typical for a bill that's been passed along and handled by a million different hands before finally landing to his precious one, passing along the way germs and deadly diseases and other forms of human borne contamination, fading the ink on the paper and tearing it some along the way. He told me it was not acceptable. He said it in Chinese. Of course I understood not one word the guy says. He was pointing at the bill, describing its faults, and I just looked at him dumbfounded, smiling like an idiot, not understanding one word he was saying. I looked at the lady behind me for some assistance. Fortunately she spoke English and helped me out. She said “it is faded; there's a small tear at the top; this bill is not acceptable.” So I took out another twenty dollar bill, making sure that this one was nice and crisp with no detectable blemish to the human eye. The kiosk fella was happy with that one.

On my way to the hotel I had another little problem with communication, this time with the taxi driver. I tried to tell him in English where I wanted to go, which was a mistake because he understood not one word I said. Xiamen is not a place where a lot of Westerners go to visit, so naturally the citizens aren't accustomed to being spoken to in any language other than their own. This is my initiation to China. You truly are A Stranger in a Strange Land. Robert Heinlien wrote a science fiction book of the same name way back in the sixties but that was about a Martian landing on Earth, and let me tell you, China to a non-Chinese is a heckuva lot more complicated than that. All the signs, directions, greetings, advertisements and what not are in Chinese and if you don't read or speak Chinese you're in for one huge challenge of a lifetime. There's a smattering of English translation but that only applies to some street signs, usually the major thoroughfares, government buildings, some historic sights, and things of that nature, as Arnold Schwarzenegger likes to say with his heavy Austrian accent, important things that clearly needs to be understood by foreigners to prevent idiot tourists from doing stupid things that could get them in a whole lot of trouble.

I told the taxi driver the hotel I wanted to go to. He understood not a word I said. I understood not one word he said. I got out of the cab and asked an airport employee if he could translate for me. He understood not one word I said. Fortunately there was a young lady airport employee who spoke a little English. She translated to the driver for me the hotel that I wanted to go to and the driver drove me straight to where I wanted to go in fifteen minutes, which was a pleasant surprise. The people here seem very friendly and accommodating. That was my first impression of China in general and Xiamen in particular. Maybe they're not all like this in China but I was pleased nonetheless. Unlike the good Ole' U. S. of A. or Europe where if you don't speak their language they tend to be hostile towards you, here in Xiamen they tend to do the opposite. Especially in places like France where they will sneer at you if you as much as mispronounce the simplest of greetings like “bonsoir” which I tend to say with my heavy drawl into two drawn out syllables, sounding something like “bones war”, which may sound as irritating to the French as fingernails scratching a chalkboard. Well whoopty freakin doo, I beg your pardon sir but I don't “Parlayz Vou France Say”, so you can take your “bones war” and stick it up your part of the anatomy where fully digested food gets discharged. Here in Xiamen, China a simple attempt at Ni Hao or Xie Xie will delight the locals.

The first thing I noticed about Xiamen is that it is a clean city. The air is clean, the streets are clean, no sign of smog anywhere in sight, and the streets are lined with trees. It looks almost gardenic, like a garden paradise to a finicky traveler like me. The traffic also looks relatively uncongested. I asked the hotel staff at the front desk for a map of the city. I looked over the map, which is written mostly in Chinese but with some useful English translation. Almost all of the advertisements are in Chinese however, so it's difficult to tell where to get to a particular restaurant or mall, if you wanted to go there. Poring over the city map of Xiamen or of any city map written in Chinese can be a real challenge to the uninitiated, but I'm excited about it. I went through a rough outline in my head of what I was gonna do first and then I took a shower and did some personal tidying up before I went off on an aimless wandering about the city. I was dressed in my idiot tourist uniform; a plain white shirt, shorts, and tennis shoes and carrying a small backpack for my new camera, a high octane Nikon D90 with a 70 mm AF-S Nikkor lens, pretty heavy stuff. I was staying at the Crowne Plaza hotel which is located smack dab in the middle of the island at the southern end of Jiahe Lu near the circle which leads to some sort of a fork in the road that essentially leads to the same destination at the end; the harbor area and the ferry terminals for Gulangyu and Jinmen, a little island east of Xiamen that's claimed by Taiwan, also known as The Republic of China. Like Yogi Berra says, “If you see a fork in the road, take it!” And so I took it but before I did I walked along the tree lined shaded sidewalk of Jiahe Lu where before the circle where the fork is there's a footbridge over the four lane boulevard which leads to some strip malls and shopping areas with the big box French retailer Carrefour as the main store. I haven't the foggiest idea how to pronounce Carrefour. Is it Care-Four or Carry-Four? Which is it? Who knows and quite frankly who really cares. I walked along the footbridge and took some pictures of the traffic on the boulevard.

The cool breeze and the shade from the trees alleviate some of the heat and humidity that tends to beat down on you unmercifully in these parts of the world. The ambient noise from the traffic and the incessant shrieking of the crickets from the trees is a most welcoming reminder that I am once again in Asia. I kept walking but when I arrived at the fork in the road I couldn't decide which way to go. What to do, what to do. Well I didn't spend too much time thinking about it, so I took Yogi's advice and just took it, and as Jiahe Lu ends it swerves one way to the right towards Hubin Nanlu and another way on an overpass towards Xiahe Lu to the left. Above Xiahe Lu is an elevated road that is used strictly by the Xiamen Bus Rapid Transit, or BRT for short. The natural way for me to take the fork in the road is to go right towards Hubin Nanlu, and that's exactly what I did. Along the way a group of three young Chinese students tried their English on me. One of the young girls said, “Hello, Welcome to China.” I said Hello back and said “Xie Xie” and “Ni Hao”, but the way I said it sounded something like “She She” and “Knee How”. That’s pretty much all the Chinese I know. After that my well of Chinese vocabulary is pretty much empty.

It seems that many young Chinese are starting to learn English these days. Many aren’t all that fluent at it yet but it’s apparent that they are being encouraged to do so by this globalization deal. I’m not all that convinced that it’s a good thing, this globalization. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Quite frankly I don’t like it because once everything becomes globalized the differences between regions and cultures becomes minimized to the point that nothing is exotic anymore and the whole point of traveling and writing becomes moot and the whole business of literature will collapse. Well, probably not, but it would be a shame to humanity if the Chinese started thinking and acting like Americans. They are already dressing like the rest of the world. Before this globalization nonsense came about the Chinese dressed in their own unique style. Now they’re wearing jeans, tennis shoes, and shirts with English words and phrases written on them although I’m not sure if they understand what they mean. “Got Pizazz?”,”Cool Cat since 2003”, a visor with “Lover” written above the bill, a visor with “361 Baseball” written above the bill, “Brooklyn”, “Lakeside Franklin”, “I Can Play”, “Horticulture”(this one seems the most mysterious), and “School is Cool” with a subtitle written in smaller font “when it’s out” are just a few examples of T-shirts worn by the Chinese that I’ve seen. It seems to be fad, something of a fashion statement, for young Chinese people to wear shirts with English on them that at times seem confounding. For example, I saw one that said “Mystery John”. What the heck does that mean? Maybe it’s a mysterious fella who patronizes prostitutes but do the Chinese who essentially don’t speak any English really understand what a “John” means in the vernacular? I doubt that but never mind because I don’t think the Chinese really care what the words written on their shirts mean. I think they are just fascinated by the English language and by Western culture in general. They even have an English speaking competition for young kids that are shown on television. It’s quite silly to be honest with you. I can’t imagine Americans having some sort of French or Spanish speaking competition among kids. Kids in America would rather beat each other up than have a competition to see who is a better French speaker. Better yet anyone who is caught speaking French in an American schoolyard will undoubtedly get the living crap beat out of them. Not in China though. Here in this vast country called China by the Westerners, a country that was isolated for so many years, they seem to embrace anything that comes from outside their borders.

As I walk along Hubin Nanlu the first thing that strikes me are the many tall buildings in Xiamen. I was expecting a quiet and sleepy little coastal town. Instead I am greeted with signs of rapid modernization. There seems to be construction going on at every corner. Many women young and old walk along with their umbrellas opened up to shade themselves from the heat. Only in Asia will you see this. You may see this in the United States too but the people doing it are invariably Chinese or Asian women. I also notice the ubiquitousness of Ronald and the Colonel in every corner. McDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken are everywhere around here. The traffic is not bad but like any Asian country that I’ve been to it’s a little chaotic. Traffic lights are generally obeyed, or should I say minimally obeyed, but the people swerve in and out of tight situations to avoid the oncoming traffic. Jaywalking is the norm. Like anywhere else in Asia, if you want to cross the street, just cross regardless. The Asians are adept at avoiding traffic. They are the most agile jaywalkers I have ever seen in my entire life. Men, women, children, boys, girls, young and old cross traffic lights in wide boulevards with complete disregard for the oncoming traffic and somehow come out of the most seemingly dangerous situation unscathed. A very incredible thing to see indeed.

On the map it looks like a short walk from the circle at Jiahe Lu fork in the road to the harbor area. Maps can be deceiving. It ain’t no short walk. It’s a five mile stomp through hard unforgiving pavement in intolerably suffocating heat and humidity with an endless array of tall commercial buildings, apartment complexes, shops of every stripe, boutiques of every niche, strip malls up the yin-yang, hotels, bus stops, parking lots, places of Buddhist worship, institutions of some sort, public toilets, restaurants, tiny little food stalls with little tables and Playskool stools that seem to be popular in Asian countries, Associations for the Betterment of Chinese Society or something to that effect, banks up the yin-yang, and every imaginable establishment that’s meant to capitalize on the appetites, urges, and longings of the human species. Almost all of the signs are in Chinese. None of it is comprehensible to me. Yet I understand that tucked away in that little corner at the edge of a commercial building of some sort is a restaurant because of the pictures displayed out front; a bowl of beef noodle, stir fried what not, etc, etc. and I know that right next to that noodle shop is a karaoke bar because of the letters KTV displayed underneath the Chinese characters which I presume must mean karaoke bar in Chinese. It doesn’t appear to be some sort of sleazy KTV lounge that you normally see all over Southeast Asia though. It appears to be a wholesome form of entertainment that everyone can enjoy. At least that’s how it appears to me. Of course I could be wrong. It maybe that these KTV outfits might turn out to be a whorehouse in disguise. Somehow my instincts told me otherwise, and my instincts have served me pretty darn well in the past.

The Esplanade

Halfway through the stomp my ankles are aching. I’m sweating like a dog. My shirt is practically drenched in sweat, my underarms are dripping with malodorous bodily fluids, and my contacts are blurred from all the perspiration that’s dripping down from my forehead down to my brows, down to my eyelashes, and finally down to my eyeballs to fog up my spectacles. I cannot see anything very clearly at this point. I blink four or five times trying to clear my vision but the dadgum perspiration keeps dripping down heavily to my eyes and spoils the clarity of my vision and blurs everything right in front of my very eyes. So I stop to sit and wait at the corner of Hubin Zhonglu and Hubin Nanlu to clear my eyes, clear my head, and wipe off the sweat from my body with my handy dandy little Oakland A’s Got Green towel that was given away as a promotional to the first ten thousand fans on Saturday June 12, 2009 as part of a campaign to boost Oakland A’s home game attendance, sponsored by Prilosec. Prilosec is a pharmaceutical company which produces anti-cholesterol pills for big fat Americans who eat too much and clog their arteries. After a little bit of rest to catch my breath and wipe out the sweat from my face and forearm I am off again on the road of unforgiving heat and humidity. This is Asia in the heart of a midsummer's scorching heat. Temperatures are in the mid 30 degrees Celsius. That's about in the mid 90's degree Fahrenheit to you and me. Every Chinese person I know in the United States warned me of this, but I thought to myself, how bad can it be; I've been to places near the equator in Equinoxial periods and God knows that at such times the sun can beat down on your noggin like hell can burn a sinner's soul to his eternal life. Well it turned out that my Chinese friends were right. It can be hot here like you've never imagined that a place on God's green Earth could ever be this hot. As the Earth orbits around the Sun at a twenty three degree angle the Sun's trajectory on the Earth's surface will traverse in an almost sinusoidal path and during the months of June through September the Sun spends a lot of time shining brightly near the 23rd parallel which causes the Earth to absorb and reflect a large amount of the Sun's radiation which in turn increases the diurnal temperatures and the humidity to unimaginable levels. Thus when traveling in June through July near the 23rd parallel, which covers Xiamen through Shanghai, you will undoubtedly be scorched by the unforgiving heat. And trust me, the heat is unforgiving. It can sap every ounce of energy in your body. I am practically dragging feet as I walk around the bend at the end of Hubin Nanlu, which curves around and turns into Lujiang Dao near the harbor area. I have walked a thousand blocks it seems from the time I rested to wipe away my sweat to the time I reached the ferry terminal area. I am completely drenched from head to toe. There is not one inch of clothing that I'm wearing that is even remotely dry. I am practically crawling my way to a hawker stall to get myself a bottle of water to replenish some energy that has been completely sapped out of my body.

The bottle of water cost ¥2. The ¥ sign is called RMB, short for Renminbi, the Chinese currency. ¥2 is about a quarter of a dollar to you and me. My energy wasn't completely replenished but I regained enough of it to be able to have a nice leisurely stroll along the esplanade. There are plenty of old men gathered around in small groups sitting little playskool plastic stools and drinking some form of moonshine or homemade liquor of some sort, at least that's how it appeared to me, although I could be wrong because I didn't actually asked them what in the heck they were drinking. There are also lots of tourists and families on a Sunday afternoon stroll, lots of people sitting on the seawall and absorbing the cool breeze blowing in from the ocean. This is my kind of scenery. I love this sort of thing; Esplanades, sea breezes, ocean views, and boats and ferries in the distance. Ferries to and from Gulangyu arrive and depart every ten to fifteen minutes or so. Lots of tourists strolling across the bay at Gulangyu which I could barely pick out with my zoom lens camera. The cool breeze from the sea blows lightly onshore and cools the late afternoon heat slightly. The clouds are partly cirrus and the Sun is at an angle of about twenty degrees above the horizon which provides an almost perfect golden hue for the camera’s image sensor to absorb. This is the Golden Hour, the so called time of day that is best for picture taking. So I take many. Many turned out good and I’ve posted it here for you all to enjoy.

There are very few tourists here who are non-Chinese. I can count them all in one hand. I see one old Haole guy sitting alone and enjoy the cool breeze and the atmosphere. That’s it. That’s perfect for me. I hate places where there are too many Western tourists. They tend to spoil the place, especially the Vang Vieng tubing crowd, but enough about them. I’ve skewered them enough to last a lifetime of amusement. After picture taking at the esplanade I went on a walking tour across the harbor on Zhongshan Lu and around the old city district of Xiamen. I love this area. I love the colonial architecture and the wet markets, food stalls, and the hawkers selling clothes and accessories. I walked aimlessly in the back alleys and side streets in between Seming Nanlu and Lujiang Dao which branch out like arteries from Zhongshan Lu, the main pedestrian street mall. It is blocked off from motorized vehicle traffic. Only foot traffic is allowed. I got lost of course but I knew where I started and I knew how to get back to where I started. I didn’t lose my bearings. I ended up in an open market selling fresh vegetables. It reminded me of a typical Southeast Asian city. This doesn’t surprise me. Afterall, many Chinese in Southeast Asia, particularly Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and the Philippines, have their roots here in the Fujian province in general and Xiamen in particular. This scene is familiar to me. After turning right then left and going around in circles for quite a long time I eventually ended up in a wet market. And like any wet market I’ve been to anywhere in this wonderful world of ours, it never ceases to amaze me because it stimulates the senses to the highest order. Meats of every stripe are on display. Fishes of every variety are on display as well. Live eels are swimming in orange buckets. The pungent smell of dried blood and rotting inner organs of a freshly slaughtered animal shakes the senses like it has never been shaken before. Pig’s heads, frog legs, live eels sinuously swaying to and fro, chicken wings, chicken breasts, and a bucket full of chicken heads dripping with blood are all out on display for the consumers to pore over and examine for quality. The smell is toxic, the scene intoxicating. I walked along the wet pavement with guts and eyeballs of animals flowing down the gutter. I had my camera with me but I didn’t take any pictures at the wet market because I didn’t want to seem rude pointing my camera at people and shooting them, so I refrained and enjoyed the sights, the sound, the smell, and the overall atmosphere.

The Old City

Out of the little side streets and back alleys just behind the Lujiang Harborview Hotel I was approached by hawkers selling fake Rolex watches and touts handing out business cards for brothels. Of course I didn’t exactly understand what the business cards said because it was written entirely in Chinese, but it showed pictures of young and beautiful women and right next to the Chinese characters was a phone number, or at least it looked a lot like a phone number to me because it had the requisite amount of numbers. So either he was handing out business cards touting a merchandise for women’s cosmetics or touting the pleasure of copulating with young and beautiful women. I thought about it for a little bit, asking myself what could all this mean. Is the guy touting cosmetics or copulation? It wasn’t hard to figure out using a little inductive reasoning given that I, a lone traveler, dressed like an idiot tourist, walking around with “sucker” practically plastered across my forehead, the only plausible conclusion is he was touting me a merchandise for women’s cosmetics because the tout thought that it would make a nice gift for my wife or girlfriend back home. Ummm....nah, I don’t think so. More likely it was an enticement for the Earthly pleasure of copulating with young beautiful women. I said no to the enticement for copulation as well as hawker selling fake Rolex watches.

I kept walking along the back alleys looking for something to eat. Everything is in Chinese. The restaurant proprietors and their staff don’t speak any English. The menus are all written in Chinese. There are no English translations anywhere in sight. The only thing I understand are the pictures of the food displayed on the wall outside of the restaurants. This is strictly for the purpose of advertisement than for the benefit of idiot tourists like me. So I walked up to this little hole in the wall restaurant off the back alley of Zhongshan Lu where there was an appetizing display of pictures of food on the wall. A young lady was sitting out front waiting for customers. There were no customers anywhere near the place because it was late in the afternoon, around four o’clock, too late for lunch and way too early for dinner. The young lady looks at me curiously and said “Ni Hao.” I said “Ni Hao” back but my accent was so bad that she practically laughed and immediately confirmed her original assumption that I was an idiot tourist from out of this world, A Stranger in a Strange Land. I pointed at a picture of a food on the wall that looked delicious to me. Of course the actual food that’s served on your plate is never as good as the picture they display on the wall. That’s the power of advertising. They do it because advertisement of this kind works almost every single freakin’ time so for those of you who cry and snivel and complain about such trickeration and say ridiculous things like “Oh God”, snivel, snivel, snivel,...,”it’s never as good as the picture on the wall”, sniff, sniff, sniff,...,snivel, snivel, snivel,...,cry, cry, cry,..., well for crying out loud stop your sniveling and get over it. It’s your own dadgum fault for believing in Santa Claus in the first place. Grow up and get real. They’re designed strictly to loosen up that wad of cash that you so tightly keep a heavy grip on deep down in your pocket because you’re a cheap sonovagun.

So I asked the young lady out front what type of meat that is that’s displayed so deliciously on the wall, it looks so appetizing that I almost wanna empty my pocket and give her all of my money because the food is so enticing and looks so fulfilling to my deepest gastronomical desires. Sounds like some dadgum x-rated food porn orgy. Well, the young lady couldn’t understand a word I said so she asked for help from somebody inside, someone with more authority than her apparently. There came out a matronly lady in a purple shirt. The only problem is she couldn’t understand a word I said either. After a few attempts on my part with hand gestures and everything I can to make myself understood, she finally pointed to a picture next to it, a golden roasted chicken. Aha, so this delicious looking picture of a stewed something in a claypot is the same type of meat as the picture next to it, a roasted chicken. Bingo!

The young lady and the matronly lady, who appears to be a manager of some sort of this establishment, lead me inside the hole on the wall restaurant. The arrangements are completely what you would expect from a hole on the wall. There are six or seven plastic tables inside a room that looked no bigger than my bedroom back home. It’s a little bit grimy but generally the place was clean. The metallic folding chairs have a very thin cushion at the seat. There’s no ambiance to speak of but there’s a great deal of character. Each table is labeled with a number off to the side on the wall for food service management purpose. The biggest table in the room, which had no number associated with it off the side on the wall, is a round table sitting in the corner of the room right in front of the entrance. Another older lady dressed in a black skirt and shirt with a picture of Marilyn Monroe on all sides sat at the round table. She appears to be the proprietor. She greeted me with a huge welcoming and friendly smile. She spoke to me in Chinese but unfortunately I couldn’t understand a word she said. She and the matronly lady laughed at my incomprehension and then started talking rapidly about God knows what, my guess being that they were talking about me, trying to figure me out me out, wondering what in the hell is this crazy guy all about, where is he from, that kind of stuff. The only other customer inside were a Chinese family of three, a mother, a father, and a young daughter enjoying a bowl of soup, some fried noodles and stir fried vegetables. The daughter was about eleven or twelve years old, I think, although I’m not sure because I find it difficult to judge the age of Chinese people. Most look much younger than their actual age. But the family of three couldn’t help me out either. Pretty soon the whole restaurant staff, a whopping four people including the proprietor which included the proprietor, the matronly lady, the young lady out front, and the cook who seemed to come out from nowhere, were suddenly out on the floor trying to figure me out, which is kind of embarrassing. I normally don’t like being the center of attention, being deeply scrutinized, being the subject of people’s interest. I recoil at such things. I have too many faults that I don’t want others to see or figure out. They knew what I wanted to order but they didn’t really care what I wanted to eat. All they wanted to do was try to figure me out. They were all jabbering incongruously in front of me in Chinese, including the family of three, when all of a sudden, the cook who seemed to come out from nowhere said “U.S.A.” “Ooohhh....” said the proprietor lady. Well they pretty much settled it. They’ve figured me out. I’m from the U.S.A.

The cook went back to the kitchen to cook me the chicken stew in the claypot. The proprietor lady and the matronly lady sat down on the large round table at the corner talking to each other but looking over at me the whole time with big huge grins on their faces. It is customary to serve tea to the customer in Chinese restaurants. The young lady out front brought me a pot of hot green tea. The plate, cups and chopsticks were all tightly wrapped in plastic for sanitary purposes I suppose. I ordered a bottle of Tsingtao beer to cool myself off. I make a point to always order the local brand of beer when in a foreign land. When in Singapore I drink Tiger Beer, when in the Philippines I drink San Miguel, when in Malaysia I drink Anchor, when in Thailand I drink Singha, when in Saigon, Vietnam I drink “33” export, when in Hanoi I drink Ha Noi, when in Bali I drink Bintang, when in Cambodia I drink Angkor, when in Burma I drink Myanmar, when in Canada I drink Molson, and when in the good ole U.S. of A. I drink Budweiser. The mother of the family of three urged the young daughter to speak English to me. After a bit of cajoling she finally said “What’s your name?” I told her my name. Then she said “Welcome to China.” And that basically was the extent of any conversation spoken in English in that restaurant not only that day but probably in the history of the restaurant’s existence.

The food arrived and I dug deep into the claypot of delicious chicken stew. The food didn’t look as good in actuality compared to the picture shown on the wall outside of the restaurant but it tasted much better than expected. It was a savoring flavor of deeply marinated chicken with some local herbs and spices that were familiar and mysterious at the same time. It was simply delicious and satisfying. I was served a bowl of rice with it as well. Sweat was dripping down from my forehead to my face as I devoured the bowl of chicken stew. I washed it all down with the surprisingly good tasting Tsingtao beer. I’ve never had Tsingtao beer before and I didn’t too much of an expectation about it. It may not be the best but it doesn’t taste like horse piss either. Of course I’m no beer expert. I drink Budweiser at home for Chrissakes! All I require out of a beer is that it’s served chilly cold and that the alcohol content is sufficient to lubricate my social abilities. And it shouldn’t taste like horse piss either.

After the meal I lingered on for a little bit to finish my beer. I think the proprietor lady was trying to set me up with a girl. She kept me in the restaurant for as long as she could, long even after I finished my beer. I tried to pay my bill but she waved my money away and motioned for me to sit down and relax. She kept glaring outside as if she was expecting somebody. Fifteen minutes later a pretty girl arrived and got introduced to me. I was skeptical however. Something like this is never what it seems. I tried to be polite but I kindly paid my bill and wrestled my way out of there. The proprietor lady tried to hold me back but I ran away and squeezed my way out of the tight situation. As soon as I got back to the end of Zhongshan Lu I flagged a taxi to drive me back to my hotel, giving him the business card of the hotel that I’m staying at, which gave the address in Chinese. After I got there I promptly took a nice cold shower then had a couple of scotch on the rocks afterwards. I was so exhausted that I fell asleep on the couch while drinking my second shot of scotch.

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Photos

Jiahe Lu
In the middle of the island

Esplanade I
The baywalk on Lujiiang Dao

Esplanade II
Late in the afternoon

Old City
The back street off Zhongshan Lu