In Changsha, contradictions and youthful idealism

They placed his 32-meter granite bust on the spot where he composed this poem, but they turned it to face a new direction.

Changsha

- Mao Zedong (1925)

Alone I stand in the autumn cold
On the tip of Orange Island,
The Xiang flowing northward;
I see a thousand hills crimsoned through
By their serried woods deep-dyed,
And a hundred barges vying
Over crystal blue waters.
Eagles cleave the air,
Fish glide in the limpid deep;
Under freezing skies a million creatures contend in freedom.
Brooding over this immensity,
I ask, on this boundless land
Who rules over man’s destiny?

I was here with a throng of companions,
Vivid yet those crowded months and years.
Young we were, schoolmates,
At life’s full flowering;
Filled with student enthusiasm
Boldly we cast all restraints aside.
Pointing to our mountains and rivers,
Setting people afire with our words,
We counted the mighty no more than muck.
Remember still
How, venturing midstream, we struck the waters
And waves stayed the speeding boats?

Chinese, literally

长 = cháng = long, as in Chángjiāng, 长江 (the very long Yangtze River) or Chángchéng, 长城 (the very long Great Wall)
颈 = jǐng = neck
鹿 = lù = deer
               长颈鹿 = chángjǐnglù = a giraffe, which is pretty much a deer with a very long neck

He said we should wait until it got "almost too hot"

I got an amazing massage today that involved pressure on various parts of my face, fingers in my ears, totally legit rubbing near my swimsuit area, cupping (glass globes suctioned to various parts of my feet), and then finally lighting my kneecaps on fire.

100Y for 100 minutes at Muxuge Foot Massage, 沐足阁, 83 Huanshan Lu, Yantai, Shandong, China.

How I research for Lonely Planet

I get a lot of questions about how Lonely Planet authors research their guidebooks. The most common question is whether we actually visit every site. Yes, absolutely. That's the rule.

We all follow our editors' guidelines, which are laid out in a hundred-page brief and then further honed through discussions among the editors and all the authors. For example, over the past month, we've been working out how to best convey the fact that internet bars in certain provinces are now closed to those without a Chinese ID. Then there are the official LP style and product manuals, another few hundred pages long, which cover things like when to mention air conditioning and how to write with a voice but not like an imperialist. And there are the BBC journalistic principles, which cover ethical and environmental considerations.

I should say here that the policy at Lonely Planet is to never request or accept freebies. So, if you are the manager of an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet and a guy asks you to send over free pitchers of beer because he works for Lonely Planet, the guy does not work for Lonely Planet. (I feel the need here to say that stealing is wrong. It hurts hard-working folks trying to make a decent living. Anyway, if you can afford to travel, you can afford to pay for your own beer. )

As for the nitty-gritty of collecting and filtering information, each Lonely Planet author tackles it his or her own way.

When I arrive in a town, I start by visiting all of the sites in the preceding editions and move on from there. So, this means stopping by all eighty internet bars, hospitals, ticket sales offices, and post offices that are listed and those anywhere near a listed site. At the same time, I do internet research, read the newspaper, and ask around about things that have cropped up in the past few years.

When I talk to the owners or front desk, I never offer upfront why I'm so interested in their business hours or full address. Not many regular people here in China know what Lonely Planet is anyway, and when they do, my visit becomes an official tour with too much tea and too many brochures.

There's a cultural element to this. Different levels of openness are required when approaching folks in different parts of the country, for example, northern versus southern Chinese. The way of the south is for your host to accept the uncertainty and play along, perhaps prying along the way. In the north, your host expects you to be upfront with your intentions if you want anything more than a one word answer. So, in the Hong Kong, if asked, I'd explain vaguely that I'm writing a book for Western travelers. In Qingdao, if I got awkward pauses, I'd offer up that information.

Take hotels. My general method with the top-end ones is to play the role of the disorganized tourist, so that I can avoid the PR rep. What types of rooms are available? What are each of their prices and amenities? What's the price if, say, I bring my friend with me in March? Oh wait, I forgot, she has a son, so what would be the cost if we needed a third bed? Oops, did I mention I needed a non-smoking room in July? Let's try all of those scenarios now applying any available discounts. And so on. With the cheap hotels, I tend to get more complete information if I explain the info is for a tourist book. In all cases, I ask to see the rooms. This takes a while. I open drawers, sit on the beds, and turn on the faucets. I ask the puzzled hotel employee when the room was last renovated and when it will be again. If I can, I'll get something to eat at the hotel restaurant. I'll try and stay in a different hotel each night, so that I can get a real look into whether the fruit basket is fresh, the floors creak, and the staff stocks ibuprofen. This all takes a lot of time, and I probably cut half of the hotels from my final write up.

Overall, I've found the most useful thing to do when researching is to talk to anyone and everyone who doesn't run away fast enough. It's the age-old trick of journalists everywhere, and it still is the only way to get the real story. And I never copy and paste what I find already in print. A lot of that stuff is cribbed from Lonely Planet anyway.

 This is the sort of photo that I take while visiting sites. I also have a lot of fascinating snaps of restaurant menus, of course.

 Sometimes I'll take a picture like this one, and suddenly another person will be next to me taking the same shot. Who cares about the gorgeous beach in the background?

Chinese, literally

足 = zhú = foot 
球 ＝ qiú = ball
                足 + 球 ＝ zhúqiú = football (as in the Euro kind, aka soccer)

橄榄 = gănlăn = olive
球 ＝ qiú = ball 
               橄榄 + 球 = gănlănqiú = football (as in the American kind, where the ball looks like, well, you know)

This is what I've been doing

Hiking up Laoshan（崂山), a sacred Taoist and later Buddhist mountain an hour east of Qingdao and the source of the spring water used to brew Tsingtao beer, starting from the east side of the Dahedong dam（大和冻水坝）to get to

Lao Huang's farmhouse（老黄农家), where we stayed the night, chatted about American versus European travelers, Arcteryx, and cheese, drank their delicious, homegrown, hand-roasted, high-mountain teas, and ate

this chicken, who suffered an unnecessarily prolonged death (to my city eyes), but at least was consumed entirely, and in the morning shared a breakfast of eggs from the coop, foraged greens, and rice and millet porridge (白米小米粥), sitting at a table overlooking

this view of the southern route and the Huang family's two very lucky dogs.

Climbing at a certain age

If the Chinese televised a pageant about mountains, it would be called "Best Mountain, Major Hero," and Taishan would wear the sash. It's been the place for imperial, Taoist, and literary pilgrimage for more than a few thousand years and has been immortalized in painting, song, and the 5 yuan bill.

Very unfit emperors in heavy silk brocade, and their entourages, also in weighty outfits, bowed and burned incense all the way up to the summit, a good 5,000 feet of elevation gained over nine miles, so the road has long been paved with scenic rest stops. The road continues to be maintained, as it has been since the beginning, by unsung workers who carry two boulders  at a time on poles balanced on their backs. One of them, a compact man in torn plastic sandals and with a back bent from life, told me he makes it up and down at most three times and on his best day made Y80 (less than US$13) for fifteen hours of work.

My dad and I climbed Taishan yesterday.  He's 77 years old. When he came here on his own a few years ago, the park employees told him he was too old to climb--especially the steepest portion, a 2.5 km ladder of stairs called the 18 Bends (十八盘).  This time, he went for it anyway. It was a slog, but we made it all the way up in four hours, ahead of many much younger people who were panting and pounding Red Bull. Along the way, we cheered on those who threatened to give up. My dad paused to read aloud and explain the poems carved in esoteric script on cliffsides for curious passersby. We shared sympathetic smiles with the four unfortunate men and women who were bent over, retching, from overexertion.

Apparently, it is as easy to underestimate the strength required to climb a mountain as it is the strength of people of a certain age.

 Here we have a poem about the mountain by the Qing Emperor Qianlong. Each character is a meter wide. This is right after we passed the third person throwing up.

On the bus

The bus from Qufu, where Confucius lived, to the mountain hamlet of Tai'an, is sticky and brown. Decades of exhaust clings to the threadbare seat backs just as the plastic armrests cling to the skin. When summitting a hitch in the road or fording a pothole, the entire bus rattles and bends as if it were fifty pieces of aluminum, tied together loosely with twine.

The ride is supposed to be an hour, but it takes an hour and a half when the driver picks up whoever waves his or her arms by the roadside. The new passengers are covered in dust, lugging babies, boxes of fruit, or bags of scraps. They are always eager to board.

Beside a wide bridge, we picked up a few more riders. My new seatmate was a tall, slim guy in his early twenties. He had a buzz cut and wore a striped button up, black pants, and shiny black belt, the standard issue for young professionals--the type behind the counter at the travel agency or selling mobile phones in street side kiosks. His shoes were brand new, nylon loafers with a gleaming stainless steel buckle. But the narrow, pointed toes were already thickly caked with yellow soil. The soil in this region is so fine that when there is no rain, the soil levitates into the air, a brown haze about ten feet high, permeating closed doors, clothing, lungs. He had walked a long way in the dust.

He sat next to me quietly with wide eyes. He looked first at the mildewed blue curtain tied back against the window, which was smeared with the grease left by tired heads. He peered at the red plastic ceiling light, aged to opacity save for the faint outline of a hundred dead moths. He looked at the tiled floor, with its strings of exit lights, mostly burned out. Then he touched the sticky plastic armrest, lifting it gingerly into place and then lifting it again to release it. He did this maybe twenty times with unbroken fascination.

"Where are you headed?" I finally asked him. He looked at me puzzled and a bit alarmed. I repeated my question, carefully enunciating as best as I could, trying to avoid the American twang that sometimes injects itself when I'm in a hurry.

His expression brightened with understanding, and he smiled excitedly. "To the City," he said.

I nodded and smiled, turning back towards the window. But I felt he looked at me a long while after that, marveling, I think, at this foreigner with a funny accent and strange clothes, this person who had ridden buses before and lived in the City.

When we arrived at our stop, I said goodbye. "Take care of yourself," I said simply, but I tried to convey in the tone of my voice, my full wish. For him, a short and gentle road from inexperience to worldliness, and for me, his sense of wonder.

Who can resist

an omelette with an extravagant name entirely lost in translation?

Also, they have eyes! But since when did royalty wear helmets? This place also had basic pizzas with funny names. Western Coffee, 1-1 Hongmen Lu, Tai'an, China.

These are a few of my favorite things (to eat)

 样梅 (yángméi). A gently sweet and sour berry that grows on trees. They make me think of a very mellow strawberry lemonade. They're in season right now, so I got two pints and ate them all while writing this.

老鼠斑 (laoshuban, literally "spotted like a mouse" fish), cooked Cantonese-style. A super-delicate ocean fish that's always rather pricey. (This one was Y389/斤 (about US$60) but totally worth it.) They are to the Chinese what prime rib is to Americans, only Americans don't keep the cows alive in a tank in the kitchen.

 苋菜(xiān cài). Sort of like spinach but with even more minerality. It actually has a naturally salty flavor. What's better than a self-seasoning food? Plus, it turns everything pink.

 山药(shān yào). These were more than four feet long. They grow straight down into the ground like carrots, and the farmer has to dig each out of the earth without breaking it. Sauteed, they taste like a cross between potato and taro, with some of the crisp sweetness of raw apple. I also love them Japanese-style--raw and grated with tuna, maguro yamake.

白菊花 (bai juhua). White chrysanthemums. Naturally sweet and aromatic. I chew on the flowers when I drink this tea. I've been drinking a lot of it, because it really helps me with my allergies. (There is a waiter at a super fancy, double Michelin-starred restaurant (cough cough Saison cough) who calls these flowers, "chrysansenuns.")

蕃薯(fanshu). Teeny tiny, homegrown sweet potatoes. These were dug out of the mountainside in Zhujiayu, a small village dating back a few thousand years, in the Shandong Province. Pretty much everything tastes better in baby form, doesn't it?

The best, worst-celebrity restaurant in the world

Beethoven was on the one next to Tony Bennett. Jasmine Cafe (茉莉餐厅), Parc 66 (恒隆广场), Quancheng Lu, Jinan, Shandong.

The ol' swimming hole

In the middle of town, behind a crowded touristy street known as Furong Jie, there's a quiet spring that the neighborhood has used as a swimming hole for the past 600 years.

A really nice, little old lady sits next to it selling swimwear (Y15-38) and floaties (Y24). I'd noticed during both my visits that all of the swimmers were men. When I asked her whether it was okay for women to swim, she said, "Of course! Lots of women come here to swim. They just work during the day, unlike these lazy guys."

The public entrance to 王府池子 (the Wang family pool) is a hole in the granite fence. The other side is still used mostly by members of the Zhang family, whose compound is across the way. They've lived in this neighborhood for about as long as the Wangs. To get here, turn right at the police stand on Furong Jie and follow the splashing sounds.

On sale now at Wal-Mart

Best sellers here are rice and 绿豆 (lü dou, mung beans). In Chinese medicine, mung beans are used to 清肺和肠胃 (loosely, clear out the respiratory and digestive systems). A porridge of rice and mung beans is a staple of the Chinese diet, eaten for breakfast and comfort--the equivalent of cornflakes, chicken noodle soup, and cold medicine that actually works, rolled into one.

This gigantic Wal-Mart has eels and snow globes, but for some reason, only had a selection of three cameras in its Electronics Department (3rd floor, by the entrance escalator). 5 Quancheng Lu, Jinan, Shandong.

Almost everyone is happy at the park

Jinan has relied on the fresh water flowing from its 700 natural mountain springs for millennia. 五龙潭公园, Wulongtan Gongyuan, Five Dragon Pool Park. Jinan, Shandong.

The hazards of living near KTV (a karaoke bar)

 

 "Do not poo or pee here!" Posted in an alley off of Tongyuanju Qian Jie, Jinan, Shandong.

200 feet of meat

The scene last night on 银虎池街 (Yinhuchi Jie, "the pool where the lion drinks street") in the heart of the Hui neighborhood in Jinan, Shandong China.
 
This guy had a good three hundred skewers of lamb with garlic and peppers, seasoned with turmeric and cumin, roasting over hot coals (2 RMB each). I am a sucker for lamb kidney on a stick (1 RMB each).

Research time in Jinan, Shandong Province

Taxi driver picking up other fares along the way, piping hot orange juice, a kind stranger offering me a bite of his chicken sandwich on the super-fast train. I am in China.

Time for a new pack?

The Bolinas, a sweet 30-liter daypack.

My boot came untied in the middle of scrambling over a boulder field. It was probably mile 25 of a 60-mile expedition and my right arm was already numb from the weight of the boulder strapped to my back. I went to plant a knee to get to my laces, but with the sudden shift in my center of gravity, I tipped to the left, causing my pack to slide widely to the left, and suddenly I was falling toward a wide crag, the bottom of which I couldn't see. Fortunately, my pack was bulky enough that it wedged itself between me and the abyss, and so I was able to unhitch myself from my 50-pound burden and crawl to safety. It was the one good thing that pack did for me on that trip.

Two lessons I took from this: Tie double knots. Go ultralight.

The fantastic folks at Boreas, a boutique outdoor gear design shop in San Francisco make gorgeous streamlined packs, which are comfortable to wear, built to last, and do just what their told. Their 60-liter Lost Coast and 55-liter Buttermilks packs are perfect for multi-day trips and heavier loads. Backpacker made them both their 2012 Editors' Choice picks.

Best of all, Boreas gave me a pro deal to share with all of you intrepid travelers. Just shoot me an email, and I'll send you a code, which gets you 55% off!