TripTik

I'm back, baby!

I returned to Shanghai a day early for two reasons: to surprise my very patient girlfriend ... and to help her prepare the intimate Thanksgiving feast she has planned. Well, I kind of surprised her -- she said certain events of the day made her "suspicious." And I kind of helped her prepare the mashed potatoes and stuffing -- I served as the "taster." I did actually help a bit during our trip to the grocery store ... OK, several grocery stores. I carried many bags -- and one box, containing our new mini "electric oven," with which we will bake our RMB 100 frozen Sara Lee apple pie. That's right, $12 for a frozen apple pie. Think that's bad? A pumpkin pie would have set us back RMB 180 -- $22! Put another way: Two pumpkin pies would cost more than our new oven. Three pumpkin pies would cost more than my plane ticket from Xiamen to Shanghai. There's something for you to be thankful for back in the United States -- you can afford to eat pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving Day. Not us poor schmoes in Shanghai. We have to slum it ... with a $12 apple pie. Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Excuse me while I go spend the holiday with my girlfriend, who -- thankfully -- didn't ditch me when I ditched her to spend more than four months on the lonesome China road.

129 days, 2,294 photos

The final 66 photos from Xiamen have been posted -- and thus, the final 66 photos from The Trip have been posted (sob, sob). These pics take you to a decaying colonial island, put faces on the men behind oceansbridge.com ... and introduce you to perhaps the largest sofa in China. Enjoy the new photos. And thanks for joining me on my little journey through China. It's been a wild ride -- and it's far from over. I've got many, many, many more tales to tell. And now I've finally got the time to write them.

Fishing village (no fish)

My second batch of Fujian photos is up. Take a stroll through Xiamen's Zheng Cuo An fishing village ... now.

Give the gift of art ...

and help cure my guilt at the same time! The guys at oceansbridge.com -- James, Cory and Kevin -- have been amazingly nice to me, providing me my own bedroom and bathroom for my stay here in Xiamen (of course, their palatial estate does have five bathrooms ... for three people). They've also provided unlimited internet access and, more importantly, unlimited beer. In return, I have given them ... um, well, absolutely nothing. That's where you come in! It's Christmas time -- buy something from their store! They do art reproductions and originals, and their artists do a pretty damn good job. I'm going to order something as soon as I get back to Shanghai. If you buy something, tell them I sent you. Speaking of art, the girl who introduced me to James, Cory and Kevin -- Andrea See -- has some of the coolest tattoos on the mainland. She's been a good friend to me down here, so give her some love at her sites: serialdeviant.org and whatsonxiamen.com. OK, I've got some sightseeing to do. Or should I just head to the beach? Decisions, decisions.

Focus on Fujian

The first batch of Fujian photos are now online. Check out oceansbridge.com headquarters -- and spend five hours on the water with Fujian fishermen. Go to the photos now!

Stubby fingers and bunkers on beaches

I fell asleep rather early and easily on the train last night ... way before 10 p.m., the mandatory lights-out time on most Chinese trains. It was unusual. And after exactly four months of traveling through China, it was welcome. The stubby fingers poking me in my back two hours later were most unwelcome, however. The portly man in the bunk opposite me was preparing to go to sleep, and he needed to tell me something: He asked me to turn down the volume on my iPod. Actually, he asked me to turn it off. That's right, my headphones were too loud for this guy. In two years living in China -- home of some of the world's loudest, most inconsiderate people -- this was a first for me. I was the loud one? I was startled and rather confused. Is it possible for Sufjan Stevens to be too loud? Anyway, I turned the volume down a couple notches, and tried to go back to sleep. Ten minutes later, I turned the volume up again. I had to. The guy -- the same f**king guy -- turns out to be one of the loudest snorers this side of Brian Dominguez. Why is it that the loudest snorers are always the soundest sleepers, always the guys who fall asleep the minute they hit the bed? Why do fat guys almost always snore? I wanted to poke the guy in the back and tell him to turn his noise down. I wanted to smack the guy in the head and tell him some other, not-so-friendly things, too -- but, alas, I lack the vocabulary. Is it bad that one of my main motivations for studying Chinese upon my return to Shanghai is to be able to tell off stupid Chinese people? I didn't sleep well the rest of the night. Then, the next morning, as I sat next to to the window, peeling an orange and looking out the window, the fat snoring man with stubby fingers motioned that he wanted to tell me something. "You haven't washed your face," he said. "You can wash your face back there." I turned my iPod back on and continued to peel my orange. I looked out my window. I was in Fujian now, the southeastern province just across the Taiwan Strait from Taiwan. I saw blue skies, water, broad green leaves, sugar cane fields and cactus farms. From my train's approach, Xiamen, with its clean air and sparkling new high-rises, looked like a city that had been built just yesterday. Or maybe, judging from all the construction cranes, it was being built today. And at the speed things progress in China, the entire city will likely be completed sometime tonight -- and it will all look like crap tomorrow. Or maybe not. There actually seems to have been some thought put into the island of Xiamen, now, I have been told, second only to Dalian in the ever-so-competitive cleanest-Chinese-city sweepstakes. On some parts of the island car horns are actually banned. They are doing away with motorcycles. Pretty much all industry is being forced off the island. A resident told me that the city has purposefully neglected its not-so-reliable electrical system in an effort to speed the exit of some factories. When you exit the Xiamen train station, the first thing you see is a -- you guessed it -- Wal-Mart Supercenter. McDonald's and KFC share the same building. (And, by the way, McDonald's down here now serve a Western breakfast. I had scrambled eggs, sausage, an English muffin and hashbrowns for 14 kuai. They also have pancakes for 7. I believe these items were added to the menu just a month ago. Have these changes been made in Shanghai, as well? If so, I now have a reason to visit McD's ... other than 2 kuai ice cream cones.) I am living with the guys from oceansbridge.com, an online store -- run by a Brit, two Candians and an American -- that specializes in oil paintings, copies and originals. Check the site out. I've seen the work first-hand. And the quality seems first-rate. That is likely because the guys do none of the painting themselves. I thought it a natural question to ask James, the Brit, upon my arrival: "So, are you an artist?" And then I heard laughter coming from the adjacent office. It was Cory, one of the Canadians. These guys are internet guys, business guys. Not artists. They hire local talent to do all the brushwork. They work cheaper -- and they can actually paint. The company's offices and studios are in a large gated compound within a fishing village, of all places. But this is not your ordinary fishing village ... property values are skyrocketing since its part of the island -- a former military zone -- was opened to folks without uniforms. So, families who might earn a couple hundred dollars a month from fishing could be sitting on a relative goldmine if the government decides to buy them out and develop the area. James, Cory and the rest of the gang might be sitting on a goldmine of their own if everything pans out the way they plan. Sales are increasing. And word-of-mouth has been good. They have a customer-satisfaction guarantee. If you don't like your painting, they will keep working on it until you do. If only that was the way all Chinese-based companies operated. Of course it's all about building the business now for the oceansbridge.com guys, not lining their pockets. James, 32, told me he's more broke now than he was when he was 17. But when he was 17, he didn't have a badminton court in a dried-out swimming pool. He does now. It's just a short walk from where the paintings are made. I went for a bike ride north along the coast this afternoon on a lazy road lined with palm trees. It's a beautiful area. Very -- how should I say? -- un-Chinese. Fishing boats bob up and down in the breeze. There are nice-enough beaches, and they are dotted with odd old bunkers here and there. I even saw a windsurfer. Maybe it was Joel, the other Canadian at oceansbridge.com. He tries to get out on the water almost every day. But most Chinese head up in this direction to get their photo taken in front of a huge sign. It's really huge. Big enough, I believe, to be seen from Jinmen island, which just happens to be two kilometers off the shore -- and just happens to have been occupied by Taiwanese Nationalist troops since the Communist takeover in 1949. This is the English translation of the sign: "One country. Two systems. A unified China." Tomorrow: Heading out on a fishing boat at 9 a.m. Will try to check in after that.

I ate a cockroach!

Several of them, actually. Really, we should probably call these creatures water beetles, but everyone -- including me -- seems to call them cockroaches in an effort to boost their indie-cred. Here's a photo. They weren't that bad, either. More crunchy than gooey. Kind of like eating a corn nut. I took off the head and the wings before popping the first one in my mouth. And on all the ones that followed, I tore off the legs, too. They felt a little funny on my tongue. The main reason we went to this restaurant was to eat scorpions. It's not that I had a particular craving for poisonous insects, but everyone who knew I was in Guangzhou had asked me the same question: "So, have you eaten any crazy shit yet?" You see, they have a saying down here that goes something like this: The only think with four legs that we don't eat is the table, the only thing with wings we don't eat is the airplane. I think there are some other parts of that saying -- probably something about water creatures or insects -- but I forget. Many believe it was the Guangdongese's proclivity for munching on anything that moves that got the whole SARS thing started. Mmmmmm. Civet cats. I first heard of people eating scorpions in Beijing. There, they skewer the scorpion while they are still wiggling, fry them in hot oil and eat them. Tony, down here in Guangzhou, told me that he had tried a scorpion in a local park. They drowned it in bai jiu ... and it came back to life in his mouth. Sounded like "crazy shit" to me. But I forgot the name of the park that Tony told me. And he's in Hong Kong now. So, my friend Brian, who moved to Guangzhou from Shanghai earlier this year, took me to the Jiang Nan Restaurant, which came highly recommended for its scorpion soup. The scorpion soup ended up being turtle and scorpion soup -- which I thought made it even crazier shit. The bowl was filled with what appeared to be a rather large turtle -- all chopped up, shell and all (tastes kind of like dry tuna) -- and a couple dozen small scorpions. We asked the waitresses (and the beer girls) how we were supposed to go about eating the scorpions. They didn't know. "No one has ever eaten the scorpions before," one said. "Why?" we asked. "What would happen if we ate one?" "We don't know." I thought about eating one anyway. I mean, I knew people had eaten these things elsewhere and survived. And they had put them in our soup -- they wouldn't do that if they were dangerous, would they? But then I thought: "Wait, I'm in Guangzhou. And even people here refuse to eat these scorpions." So we didn't eat the scorpions. The water beetles -- and the turtle -- would have to be enough crazy shit. (By the way, for desert we had some pastries made from durian -- the "King of Fruits" -- which is famous for its awful smell, and less-awful taste. I preferred the cockroaches. I like my tea strong: Two nights ago, my mystery dinner with Winter Lin, the guy I met through hospitalityclub.com, actually went really well. His Chinese name is Lin Xiao. He's a 21-year-old recent college grad who now works both as a life insurance salesman and a translator for an Israeli import/export company. Oh, and his family lives in the crouch-space (a little taller than a crawl-space) above the curtain shop that they own. Here are some photos. Anyway, his family cooked me dinner (the kicthen is downstairs at the curtain shop) and made me tea -- kong-fu tea! I took a video of the process. Four months down ... one week to go: As of tomorrow, I will have been on the road for four months. And I have just one more week to go. Then I can actually start writing real stories again. I am leaving Guangzhou for Xiamen by sleeper train tonight. I'll arrive tomorrow morning. I'll try to check in then.

Images of Guangzhou

I had read that Guangzhou was just one endless stretch of shopping malls. That is simply not true. Check out my photos. (But they do have a lot of shopping malls.)

7 days in 70 words or less

From Guizhou to Guangzhou ... and I'm going to try to write it all in 7 minutes! 11.09.2004: The Lusheng Festival -- a Miao minority tradition -- in Chong'an, a small village in eastern Guizhou, was a striking mix of color and culture, with teen girls in big silver head dresses, cute costumed babies in backpacks, and big water buffaloes sporting red bows ... ready to bash each other's head in. The bull fights were actually rather boring -- and that's a good thing. The less blood the better, according to me. (Click here for photos) 11.10.2004: Driving on dusty roads through the Guizhou hills -- terraced farmland pock-marked with teepees of harvested rice stalks -- is like taking a trip though Middle Earth. Otherworldly. The festival in Gulong was similar to Chong'an ... but was a muddy mess. It poured and hailed when we arrived. The buffalo fights were better here, usally ending with a bull running crazily into the crowd. But the cock fights on the other hand ... (Click here for photos) 11.11.2004: Finally traveling with my Guizhou contact, CITS tour guide Henry He (previously, I was with his older brother and his friends -- who curiously all wore similar light-colored soft leather loafers), we headed to Guizhou's top tourist destination, Huangguoshu Waterfall, which is China's largest. It was impressive, and actually rather peaceful. We spent the night in Anshun, which may very well be the dog-meat capital of the world. Mmmmmmm. (Click here for photos) 11.12.2004: When traveling with a member of Lao Han minority, which Henry is, it seems natural to visit a Lao Han village, which we did. Tianlong Ancient Village has stone walls, stone walkways, stone roofs, stone bridges and a close-knit population, many of whom still live like it's the Ming Dynasty. The women have a curious tradition of removing the hair from the top of their heads -- monk-like -- post-marriage. (Click here for photos) 11.13.2004: I spent most of this day on a train, so I will write about the previous evening, instead. They sound like firecrackers or popcorn from a distance, but tuo long are really big wooden tops that people keep spinning for hours by cracking them with big leather whips. I tried it. A nice solid pop lifts your spirits ... until you realize you almost took out someone's eye with your backswing. (Click here for photos) 11.14.2004: You know, 25-hour train rides really aren't too bad ... unless the two old ladies in the bunks below you decide to wake up at 3:40 a.m. They talked in normal tones, and anyone familiar with old Chinese ladies knows that means they screamed. No one said a thing. Until I did. I told them to stop talking, that I was trying to sleep. They kept talking. And then other people joined them. Went to see the Guangzhou Orchestra that night ... and people talked through that, too. Tell me, how long has being inconsiderate been a Chinese tradition? 11.15.2004: One of my hosts here in Guangzhou is Tony, the American timpanist for the city orchestra. We headed to Shamian Island, home of some crumbling Western architecture ... and the American Consulate. That explains all the foreign couples pushing around Chinese babies in strollers. American couples adopting babies in China must go through Guangzhou on the way home. Fun to people watch here. Well, fun to baby watch. 11.16.2004: I know this is Day 8, but what the hell. Spent most of today on Tony's computer ... and watching his satellite TV. Seahawks vs. Rams is on right now. I know it's a replay, but it is so nice to watch football. Tony is off to Hong Kong and Tuan, the Vietnamese trumpeter I'm staying with, is in Shenzhen. So I am on my own. Thankfully, Winter Lin, a local guy I contacted through hospitalityclub.com, called me. I'm leaving for dinner at his house soon. Should be interesting. I know absolutely nothing about this guy. Future: I hope to get to Xiamen, in Fujian Province, on Friday. I'll be living in a fishing village ... with a guy who runs an internet company. Go figure. By the following Thursday -- Thanksgiving -- I'll be back in Shanghai. The trip will be over. And then the real writing begins. Of course my iBook is still broken. Sigh.

Whew

You know, when your host is a CITS tour guide -- who likes to socialize at night -- your computer time is very limited. Let's just say my four-plus days in Guizhou were jam-packed ... and we only did about half the stuff he had on our itinerary. More explanation and hundreds of photos will be on the way as soon as I can find time, which won't be for at least a day -- my 25-hour train ride to Guangzhou leaves at noon. There, I have a Sunday night date with the Guangzhou Orchestra. (Yes, Guangxi is getting skipped on this trip. My contact there is busy with exams. So it looks like I'll be back "home" in Shanghai for Thanksgiving!)

Rubber trees and headspins

I spent a good chunk of today uploading photos -- just for you! There are 124 photos from my amazing trip down to Xishuangbanna, a sub-tropical region near the Burmese border. I lived with a family in tiny Bayi Village, where almost everyone makes a living milking sap from forests full of rubber trees. I spent a day out in the woods watching the whole process -- check out the photos, and you can too. I also uploaded 41 photos from my new favorite Chinese city, Kunming. I've got one word for you: breakdancing! (Wait, should that be two words? Anyway, go look at the new photos. I've got a train to catch.)

On the road again

So much for staying and listening to Kunming's beat for a while. I heard from my contact in Guiyang, Guizhou Province ... and he is ready for me. Actually, he said he has "been waiting for (me) for a long time." So I bought a train ticket -- for today. My 12-hour sleeper leaves in two hours. And guess what? I got the top bunk again!

Kunming = Cool

Just a quick note to let you know I am alive and well -- and really enjoying life in Kunming. This city has a vibe that is inviting. Days just seem to pile up ... and nothing seems to get accomplished. I am emailing you from a place called the French Cafe, one of several laid back hangouts with an easy atmosphere and surprisingly tasty (and amazingly cheap) Western fare in the area surrounding Yunnan University. The French Cafe seems authentic enough. One of the owners is French. Hell, the Internet Explorer is even French -- to write this I opened a new fenetre. Last night I went to a bar called Speakeasy, drank 8 kuai beers and watched Chinese kids breakdance. There is a kind of relaxed hipster/hippie subculture in Kunming that is really refreshing. (Maybe it's all the really cheap pot.) People are experimenting. They are creating. This is the most un-Chinese Chinese city I have ever been in. Kunming has its own beat. I may stay and listen for awhile.

The American people have spoken!

And a majority of them have said, "We are absolute friggin' morons!" Guess I'll be spending the next four years in China. We are witnessing the beginning of the fall of the American empire. And I can't think of a better place to be than a remote forest of rubber trees in a place called Xishuangbanna -- about as far from this mess as I can get. This is embarrassing. Very embarrassing.

I remember, would like to forget

I remember nearly every minute of my 14-hour overnight bus ride from Lijiang to Kunming rather vividly. This is not a good thing -- I was supposed to be sleeping. I remember initially thinking that my bed on the bus was OK. Of the other 20 or so beds, mine was closest to the door -- more fresh air for me. I remember, then, actually trying to lie down on the bed. It would have been a perfect fit ... had there been a saw lying about with which I could have cut my legs off at the knees. I remember thinking that it was OK, I had been through worse. That 18-hour bus ride last October to Kanas Lake in Xinjiang didn't kill me and that road was awful ... I mean even worse than roads in Alabama. And besides, the longest stretch of this trip was between Dali and Kunming, two fairly often-touristed cities. Surely there the road quality would be much better. I remember settling, best I could, into my bed and staring out my window, watching night fall on greater Lijiang. Mountains turned into shadows, big sleeping monsters on the horizon. And the clouds -- wispy thought balloons, visible only because of the beaming full moon -- were their dreams. Soon the mountains and the monsters disappeared and everything faded to black, except for the odd swath of farmland illuminated by the moon. I remember fading out, as well. Crooked and uncomfortable, I turned on my iPod and fell asleep. I woke up soon, though. At 9 p.m., two-and-a-half hours into the trip, we made a scheduled stop. I remember someone saying we would be pausing for dinner near Dali, and maybe we were near Dali, but all I saw was a restaurant, more like an open garage with tables, on the side of a dark and empty road. I ordered a plate of fried noodles and a tall bottle of beer -- thought it would help me sleep through the night. I remember, after nearly an hour eating, drinking and watching game shows on television, wondering why we weren't being ushered back into the bus by our two-man tag-team of bus drivers. Our stop was only supposed to be 45 minutes. I looked inside the bus and saw our drivers -- their hands, black with car grease, holding wrenches and other items that didn't suggest we'd be leaving any time soon. I walked down the road a piece, unzipped, and took a piss. We didn't get moving again for more than an hour. I remember wondering what exactly was wrong with the bus and whether it would continue to be a problem throughout the ride -- we still had about 10 hours to go. And then I thought about that tiny restaurant that we spilled into: Was it where we had planned on stopping, or was it just where the bus happened to stop? I remember trying not to think about it and trying to fall back asleep. I was unsuccessful. But it didn't matter anyway -- breakdown No. 2 was just a couple hundred kilometers down the road. And breakdown No. 3 was shortly after that one. I remember looking on with awe at the swiftness with which the drivers started addressing each problem. They were like firefighters moving into action. One lifted the mattress from the drivers' bed -- directly across from mine -- and from beneath removed a rubber bin full of grimy tools. The other driver snatched some other fix-it items from under my bed. Then they lifted the giant console to the right of the driver's seat to reveal the engine, a patched together mass of tubes and pipes and other mechanical things that I have no interest in seeing, especially when they are responsible for moving the bus in which I am a passenger, especially when it is after midnight. It was all very well orchestrated, though -- almost like they had done the very same thing many times before. The smell from the engine didn't sit well with me, so I opened my window. That was the first time during the ride that I felt nauseous. I remember that some of the other passengers snored through all of this, and I couldn't understand how. First of all, a bright fluorescent light flashed on every time we stopped -- the drivers/repairmen needed to see what they were doing with those tubes and pipes. Second of all, the clanging of tools sounded like ... well, it sounded like the clanging of tools. Maybe it was harder to hear all the way in the back of the bus -- because the noise was drowned out by all that snoring. I remember thinking that the Chinese sure are good at enduring, good at ignoring annoyances. Maybe they just know to expect them. Maybe they just know that complaining will get them nowhere -- customer service hasn't made its way to the mainland yet. I have encountered this stark reality several times during this trip, most recently dealing with mobile phone monopoly China Mobile. When a bill gave us only very vague details -- i.e., no mention of minutes used -- as to why I somehow had rung up $100 worth of charges in about two days, a Chinese friend of mine said, "It won't get that detailed." "But minutes are basic information," I said. "I've long heard about China Mobile's bills," he added. "Your country perplexes me." "They don't give a damn," he continued. "They just don't take us too seriously." "No one seems to." "Well, that's what an average Chinese has to live with. No wonder people are emigrating. One of the things I am losing faith in." A bus full of Americans would have been crying bloody murder after the second breakdown, or at least crying for the arrival of a new bus. My Chinese companions stayed silent. Well, some of them snored. I remember that my lower back really started to hurt. I could either lie in the fetal position on my left side, or on my back with my feet propped on the railings several feet above my bed. Those seemed to be my only options. There were other beds, aligned side by side. I looked at them longingly. Next time I would buy two beds. F**k it, next time I'll fly. I remember realizing that the road between Dali and Kunming was far from finished. And looking out the window, I never saw anything parked by the side of the road that looked like it could be used to finish it. It was bumpy and dusty and when I opened the window to escape the engine smell something usually flew into my eye. I remember the fourth breakdown the best, because it lasted the longest. One of the drivers played mechanic from inside the bus, the other crawled underneath the bus this time. I watched as they took apart the entire clutch. That didn't work, so they tried something else. I started to feel very nauseous, so I headed outside. I remember that the air was brisk, and that the moonlight allowed me to make out mountains and farmland in the distance. Mountains and farmland. This what you always see when traveling through most parts of China. Often it's farmland on top of mountains. Something like 80 percent of China's workers toil in agriculture, despite the fact that something like 20 percent of the country's land is arable. And yet somehow this country feeds itself. 1.3 billion mouths too feed. And, largely, they are fed. Amazing. Produce stands throughout the country are always overflowing. Farming is one thing the Chinese have down pat. I remember trying to throw up. I was hacking on the side of a dusty road, where every passing vehicle meant a cloud of dirt. But then, suddenly, I realized that I might also have to take a shit. And I was afraid if I chose to do one, the other would just kind of simultaneously happen. And that wouldn't have been good for anybody. I contemplated walking further down the road and squatting -- but was afraid I would be left behind. I looked out at the mountains and farmland, and the starry skies above, and wished that I was somewhere, anywhere in the world other than the side of this dusty road in the middle of Yunnan Province. I remember looking back into the bus and being surprised to see many more parts of the engine's inner workings, thanks to several removable parts of the floor -- all of which were right next to my bed. It was nearly 5 a.m. I asked one of the drivers -- not the one who blinked violently, as if he was getting used to a new set of eyeballs, but the calm one with the crewcut and mustache -- how much time we had left on the trip. He rubbed his thumb and index finger though the hair on his lip and said around two hours, which would have us arriving in Kunming exactly on time. I remember wondering: How the f**k could that be possible? I remember the people finally started to get restless. They said things to the drivers, things you would expect passengers would say during the fourth breakdown of an overnight bus ride on a bumpy dirt road. And the drivers said things, too, things you would expect a driver -- or any other customer service representative -- to say ... in China. They responded with anger. How dare we get upset? You see, they were doing us a favor, driving us through the night on this terrible road. But what about these RMB 120 tickets we all purchased? Shut up. I remember actually smiling at the look of disbelief on the mustached driver's face when he saw the footprints on his mattress. Removed to fetch some tools, it had been left in the aisle, and passengers hadn't bothered to walk around it during our fourth prolonged pit stop. He was irate. The blinking driver started lecturing us like school children. Then he pointed at me! "Look at the foreigner," he pleaded. "What is he going to think of Chinese people now?!" I looked at my fellow passengers, rolled my eyes and shook my head. I remember breakdown No. 4 lasted more than an hour, and that made breakdowns No. 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 feel rather insignificant by comparison. Really, No. 7 might have been considered an extended stall at best. After 5 a.m., the blinking driver talked incessantly. No, he yelled, even though his mustached conversation partner was seated on the console beside him. His voice was high-pitched and offensive -- like a human alarm clock. He knew his passengers were in desperate need of sleep, but he didn't care. Hell, if the drivers didn't need any sleep, why should we? They had to drive and fix greasy things. All we had to do was lie there ... awkwardly ... and try not to throw up ... or shit ... or both at the same time. I remember, as the sky became light again, the passengers impatience growing, and their jabs at the drivers becoming more pointed. And then the blinking driver pointed to me again. "He is a journalist," he said, repeating a fact I had forgotten he had been told back in Lijiang, by the man who owned the guesthouse I stayed in there, the same man who helped me buy my unfortunate ticket for this bus ride. "You better watch what you say. What is he going to think? What are his readers going to think?" I remember being amazed that we arrived in Kunming before 8:30 a.m. -- we were less than one hour late. Perhaps the estimated travel time allows for a half dozen or so breakdowns. Sore and sleepless, I lugged my big backpack to the nearest taxi. I felt like shit. Actually, I felt like shitting. But I had to hold it for nearly another hour. It was rush hour, and checking in to my hotel proved to be a chore, as well. But once I did check in, I never left. It was bed and then bathroom, bed and then bathroom for nearly 48 hours. I caught a violent case of food poisoning somewhere -- probably back at the site of breakdown No. 1.