Noah's Travel Journal - China, Second Entry

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H5N1 is Nothing but Gibberish to Me

Due to mixed comments about my last update, I think there are a few points I need to clear up for my remaining audience:

1.) Yes, I was writing about events that took place in the USA, not China.
2.) I am not by nature, an angry being, I just don't take kindly to pyramid schemes... I'll stop here, just prior to ranting again.
3.) I was attempting the impossible task of describing an ineffable experience using words (something akin to the theme of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance). Don't fret my pets, I'm just as sane as Robert Pirsig was, though nowhere near as intelligent.
4.) If you are a reader prone to disbelief, the stories coming your way will only reinforce this trait. If you instead hang on every true word I write, these dispatches will seemingly kill my credibility. Fiction is not my style, but the events to be transcribed are so outrageous that even Fox News would seem believable in comparison. That said, it's time to find space in the cargo bay and come East with me.

My elaborate plan for balancing my sleeping and insulin schedule panicked as the sun chased us across time zones. Accustomed to taking two shots of Lantus insulin per day (one every 12 hours), I wanted to be sure and adapt the regimen to the standardized time zone for ALL OF CHINA. That's right, no matter what part of the monstrous country one visits, it's always 16 hours ahead of America's West Coast. I was just happy to be moving to the area that didn't eat lunch with a sunrise for dessert. I took less Lantus at shorter intervals and instead relied more heavily and frequently on my Novolog doses, which worked through my blood stream much more quickly. After staying awake and monitoring blood sugars for the entire 18+ hour flight, the result was a Lantus schedule that mimicking China's time zone, and bloodshot eyes mimicking a drug fiends'.

Closing in on 26 hours without sleep, the neon of Hong Kong rushed towards me as if I dove head-first into a cluster of phosphorescent plankton. The screeching of rubber and tarmac meant it was time to get my head straight. I somehow found the bus service to China and completed two border crossings without losing consciousness. Emerging from the Chinese border entry building with luggage in tow, I found my bus had been replaced by a throng of hecklers for various modes of transportation. Somehow, out of the swarm, a brochure was held in front of my face with a finger that pointed to my rendezvous hotel in Shenzhen. I followed a green suited man (possibly affiliated with my previous transportation service) to another shuttle adorned with a competing hotel's logo. Not really sure where I was going or why there were no other customers in the shuttle, I decided to clear things up using the Chinese phrase I was sure would be the most useful: "Do you speak English?"

The emphatic "No," set things straight: I was in China in a moving vehicle that I hadn't paid for, alone. The confidence that came with my suited friend's enthusiasm also departed with him in the downtown area. I tried to tell him that I had a tip for his guidance as he jumped from the shuttle, but the blinking neon had swallowed him whole. The driver focused on his task (which I prayed included the Pavilion Hotel in one form or another), while I unintentionally distracted him by smashing my face to the window and hoping to catch a glimpse of the hotel's emblem.

The mystery of how I ended up standing below a crystal chandelier on the opposite side of the world in my girlfriend's arms, is just going to have to be filed away in the "Unsolved" drawer. Also filed there is the case of why Bhavana thought I was going to arrive the following evening. These imponderables both took a back seat to the issue of how I was still able to execute simple tasks like entering a taxi instead of staking claim to a little square of cement, and settling down on the sidewalk for the night.

I had forgotten the feeling of being ogled as a foreigner. In South America I could pass as a native of a neighboring country in the looks and speech department, but here I wasn't fooling anybody. The going was rough at first, not because I couldn't handle 100 sets of piercing eyes, but because it was difficult to satisfy my growing Westerner appetite. The anxiety that hounded me every time I failed to correctly enunciate my request for hot sauce, was compounded by my lifestyle choice of becoming vegetarian. I knew that the harbinger of my adaptation to Chinese life would be the day that I felt comfortable ordering what I wanted in a restaurant, in the quantity I wanted. Until then I'd just be a carrot-nibbling, vegetarian newbie, who's only comfort lay in flesh-textured vegetables with Omega-3 fatty acids, commonly referred to as seafood.

Some cold, hard facts are entirely appropriate in painting a portrait of the communist/capitalist paradox that Shenzhen embodies. 10 million people from all over China have come to live in the "New Economic Zone," since it has been developed from a small fishing village only 25 years ago. It is a ferry/train/walk from Hong Kong, and while more expensive than anywhere else in China, Shenzhen much cheaper than its' island neighbor. As its' label indicates, the two cultural practices vying for the #1 spot in the city, are buying things and making money. The daily competition for the skyline between cranes and buildings is in constant flux due to the astoundingly fast speed at which building projects are realized. The overall feeling is a bright, shiny newness with a hint of a noxious, industrial-strength sterilizer/pesticide. It's not that it's totally devoid of culture, it's just that without the Chinese written characters and spoken language, I'd think I was in A Brave New World.

This same deceptive quality comes with most consumer retail goods available. One can buy the same item anywhere, but it's the location that will tell you its' lifespan. Some markets have an average use life of 10 wears, where other stores that seem to cost more because of atmosphere actually buy glued and stitched goods that are made to be worn. There's something disconcerting about being able to talk a price down until someone is essentially trying to pay you to take it out of their store.

After many experiments in street performing, I found that my number one crowd demographic was security guards. They're always into a free show, but when a crowd gathers, they ride in on their motorcycles and look fierce. I don't know if it's my ability to assemble and control the minds of a couple hundred people in less than five minutes, or just a blocked view, that puckers them up. It was probably the former that resulted in my being ousted from the Children's Hospital waiting hall. The Instruments of the Now's message would have to be adapted to this truncated performance time and militant fear of propaganda dissemination. Still, no sheet of paper could have positively impacted a public park full of children more efficiently than clowning out an entire performance with a message that needed no words.

Moving down my list of lofty goals for the adventure brought me the daily struggle of locating a school to teach me Wushu, a Chinese martial art. No lead could guide me to an instructor for the performance martial art, until there was an ad for the 2nd National Wushu Competition to be held at a local amusement park. When the day arrived, I gathered a backpack of provisions and juggling toys and set out for the Chinese Cultural Theme Park (Shenzhen's rebuttal to a capitalist haven devoid of heritage).

My favorite thing to write about is any one day. Every day carries such an intricately designed web of related events, that to take time to recognize its' orchestration is fascinating. In truth, every day can and should be viewed like this, but it's especially nice when every event is so random and necessary, that one is carried from experience to experience, constantly aware of how complex the day's path is. It is days like this that are a tribute to our ability to create whatever type of reality we desire.

I don't do well as a removed tourist and for this reason my camera is tragically underused while I perform frequently. I have noticed however (while waiting for a full-time photo journalist to document the exploits), that all of the most pivotal events in my life occur while I'm juggling. This day was no exception. After wandering though thousands of years of miniature renditions of Chinese architectural feats, the time had come to pay homage to my own passion of Chinese origin. I made my way to a huge central lawn and began a show with the Devil Stick.

Never, in any country has so much respect been given to somebody wielding the three-piece juggling toy. After performing with every item in my bag of tricks I had a photo shoot with countless tittering Chinese girls who apparently were hard-pressed to fill their cameras in the sprawling, picturesque theme park. I would have done well to charge a flat rate per photo instead of performing a practiced, hat-passing pitch. The handsome dividend evidenced a warm acceptance, but the nutritional content of my single piece of grape bubblegum wasn't going to fuel me through another 30 minute show.

Trying a different tactic with the Devil Stick, I went to sequester some early Christmas gifts with the bartering trump card of a culturally pertinent juggling show. A hypnotized shop keeper slashed her prices on kung fu attire and subsequently ushered me to the restaurant of a relative also possessing the juggling instrument. We traded tricks and toys until I came out of my euphoric haze in time to realize I had been handed three of my new friend's knives and I was about to attempt juggling them for the first time in my life. Logic's voice boomed that there was clearly medical attention somewhere close on the grounds of a major theme park, and I would disrespect my Chinese friend and observing entourage greatly, by pantomiming that future tricks required two hands. As the first blade flipped blindingly in the sunlight, my sadistic, prankster conscience pulled off the Logic mask and started cackling.

My brief experiments in pin juggling provided enough background for a successful air-slicing session with only a single drop immediately following the first knife's soundtrack of maniacal laughter. A cheer from the crowd earned me a meal and tea with the owner. During our intense dinner discussion, clips of Bill Murray in Lost in Translation rolled incessantly through my head. I was able to convey that I was trying to locate a Wushu instructor and that I was impressed by the Wushu competition that I had witnessed earlier that day. Upon finishing, I gave one last show as people started spilling into the restaurant. My dinner host brought three onlookers up to me, who were introduced by the English speaking female of the trio as a Wushu great-Grandmaster and his Olympian beef-cake student. Granted, "beef-cake" wasn't included in the introduction, but if the translator had been well versed in English slang, the adjective would have surely accompanied the human boulder as I did, while walls of spectators parted to form a path leading to a nearby lawn.

"Lucky for you, they give you a free lesson in Wushu!" the jubilant student exclaimed.

From what I'd seen in the tournament earlier, the stance the Grandmaster and I assumed, was a foreshadowing of one-sided humiliation and pain. I didn't want to hurt the frail frame in front of me as it egged me to pull and push on its' dress coat. It only took my being transferred to the dirt a couple of times to have the onlookers in stitches. It was then the behemoth's turn for a little foreigner fun and we did nearly the same drill, but this time adding takedowns that I'd only seen the Hulk execute in an animated world. Try as I might, I was rag-dolled publicly in different drills and forms, until it was time for the trio's next performance of wood-block splintering and general mastery of the body's energy flow. I was caked in dust and ecstatic about my free lesson and training session in the elusive martial art I had come to China to pursue. Unfortunately the group was not a regional one, so I'd have to put off another public ass-kicking for the time being.

That little gem of an afternoon immediately preceded the expiration date on my first tourist visa. To renew this pricey little item (note that it's only pricey if you have the unfortunate situation of owning an American passport), an island-hopping trip to Hong Kong was in order. As I ordered heaps of hot sauce on three different dishes the day before departing, I finally received notice from my brain that I was beginning to adapt, and things would begin to move much more quickly on my Action-Hero promise pitch. The international language of juggling had been proven and utilized. The volatile insulin regimen had changed again and the dynamic duo of Novolog and NPH braved increased acrobatic training regimens. The martial art had been chased until it turned around, saw little old me and doled out a savage throttling. The events on destiny's pot-holed, graded road had been believable and relatively tame thus far. Planning ideal events however, did a piss-poor job of preparing me for the accelerated explosion into another dimension and direction, on the following day. I was still just baffled by the ease that I could acquire hot sauce.