chachaboomboom: May 2008

Saturday, May 31, 2008

L A N G U A G E !!

language...whew! I love it...it's a big part of my life (member of the yacky tribe and all) and yet, some of my loveliest moments don't have anything to do with language at all.

And here we are, we don't speak the language. We've been here a month(!). How is that possible?

Well, first of all, I did learn the 3 most important things:

*thank you: shay shay

*hello: knee how

*(where's the) bathroom? : W.C. (Britishism, short for Water Closet)

And then, on our first excursion outside of Xian, we were continually approached by folks who wanted us to rent a horse to ride: Shee ma means ride horse. One of my greatest successes was to figure out,with the help of a phrase book, that boo is a negative, when used with a phrase. So, Boo shee ma (no ride horse!)just stopped 'em cold...they would literally just stop............and then they'd laugh like crazy and repeat it to their pals standing around. And they wouldn't ask me again. Big success.

We can say good-bye, too: Sigh Chen (or Jen)

and on the rare occasions that somebody is thanking us for something, I learned to use boo again: boo shay ("don't mention it" or "it's nothing")

People are generally so delighted that you are trying that you get a lot of points. But then, they may think that you really can speak Chinese and launch into a stream of incomprehensible sound and you can just grin sheepishly and shrug and say in your own language (even tho you know they don't understand you): I don't know, I'm sorry.

Standing around looking utterly baffled is good if people have the time and the curiosity to engage and help you. Gestures say a lot. There are hand signs for the numbers up to 10 (and there are always calculators, of course, if you are in a mercantile situation)

AND, many Chinese have a little English (often learned by rote, which has its limitations, though they're ahead of us)..that's the greatest help. It's usually pretty simple stuff. We've found that "if" situations are hard to express as are times such as yesterday or tomorrow (and that these are easily mixed up)

We are often asked where we are from, and although it is tempting to lie, we have not yet. If US or USA doesn't seem to ring any bells and we then say America, the asker will say "Ah! Megwah." so, now (if we understand that is what we're being asked) we just say Megwah. They get a big kick out of that.

It's hard to say if our pronunciations of Chinese are worse than theirs of English. I know I am rarely understood when I try a word or 2 past my vocabulary of 5. Kuan Yin, Tai Chi, and tofu are several that I've been unable to get across (much to my surprise)

But you've gotta get Cal to do "scrambled eggs" the way the waitresses at our hotel in Xian did...it cracks me up every time. And the woman on the train who was trying to say Schwarzenegger..I can't begin to capture it, but I had no idea what she was trying to say until her companion gestured big muscley muscles and Cal figured it out (we were discussing California)

Then there are the translations from English. These can be on signs, on menus, on t-shirts.

t-shirt examples:

playful retro

I am a car promised

obsolete 22

jail bait (oh, dear, I'm sure she has no idea what that's about))

It's not anxious

be juicy

the strength to bare my joys

These are some food descriptions from a fast food restaurant in Xian:

vinegar law hairtail

wire-pulling sweet potato

bean in soy sauce around mass of food

jib speculation

chinese sandwidge

(we did NOT order any of these items)

The same woman on the train (she actually spoke quite decent English) said to Cal "Your nose is...beautiful!" (I have to add that Cal's nose is not his favorite feature) He was startled and said "My...NOSE?" Oh, yes, she said and began gesturing at her own to try to describe, but she couldn't grasp the word she wanted, so we asked her what the Chinese for nose was: Bee shee ay or something. Since we had been discussing mountains (shan), I said "Oh, his nose is Bee shee ay Shan ." Uproarious laughter..another big success.

We found a phrase book in Xian that has English and Chinese pronunciations (not usually successful) AND, most useful: the mandarin characters. Lately, we just carry it around with us, look up what we want and point to the characters. This works better than anything else. Cal's getting pretty good at recognizing characters, too (I am not good at this)

So, we stumble along. It was good for the humility quotient to be in a couple of cities lately, as we journeyed from one sacred mountain to another, where no one had any English and no interest or even curiosity in us..it was definitely tough. Makes me appreciate the friendliness and patience of all those who have exhibited those characteristics to us..they've really made the trip. Now, Mongolia...that will be another story all together!

Sigh chen.

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Aaaaaahhh...

Just a coupla shots here..this is the hill-side temple of Kuan Yin (they say something like Gwah Yee) so lovely and peaceful there after the racket and coal dust of the town. A blessing to be there. Well, she is the female incarnation of the Boddhisattva of compassion, after all.

more sacred mountains...AND some grit and grime

So, here in the center of the WuTaiShan Valley is this cool stupa, in the Tibetan style, about 600 years old...VERY large..a real focal point for the whole area. Quite impressive. We went into the temple surrounding it and turned these 4 giant prayer wheels that you have to walk around, and then lots of smaller ones that you spin with their little red handles. The Buddha looks happy. yes?

Here, a little ways out of the center, an old stupa, with the detritus of a funeral.

And, just so you won't think that everything is pretty and shiny and serene is that main stupa from another angle. No happy Buddha here.

Meanwhile, this is how the general populace lives. Bit of a contrast.

And, the suburbs. Enlarge this if you can..the details are interesting.

And down the mountain they went...

Note the glorious flowering something or other..a wild fruit tree, as far as I could tell.

if it's true that the number of protective animals on the upturned roof eaves signifies the sacredness of a place, then this one is WAY sacred...I count 7!

How would you like to be putting this roof on? YIKES! Gives me vertigo just to look at the photo!

BoomBoom, under a gate with the only calligraphy he knows: heaven (2nd from left)

And...duh...us. We made it!

more TaiShan snapshots,,,next morning

OK so it looks like the steps are going uphill, right? But they're not...this is the downhill view

Ah! the temple in the morning

Words fail me...(and we know that hardly ever happens!)

Knee How! (that's Hey Now to you gringoes) from Beijing

There she is, on the right, the mother mountain. That's how I felt about TaiShan after climbing up and down her flanks on endless stone steps. And actually, there is a lot of story and history (er...herstory...)of female energy centered there.

The photo below right is of the Duomo temple,...love that red color, no?

Notice the calligraphy on the rocks in the waterfall picture...the mountain is famous for that. Of course, we have no way of knowing what it says...maybe it says "no spitting"

Through the trees you can see the l o n g stairway UP.

And. lastly, recycling, TaiShan style (at least his load is relatively light ..all those plastic water bottles!)

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

on the rails

When we last spokewe were at the top of Tai Shan, China's most famous Mtn. From there we managed to get tickets on another train to the city of Tai'Yuan. But first a little more detailed description of the first train experience, Xian to Tai Shan.
The train left at 5 P.M. it was very hot and very humid, the outside plaza was full of tens of thousands of people and vehicles. We weren't to sure which gate to enter and with the cattle guard system of entry once you are in a line that is it, you better be right, there is no changing lines. Yes, right entry, and even our gate number on the electronic billboard. Great, except the two rows of "waiting seats" were full of at least 2000 people with luggage (from designer shopping bags with little rope handles to giant plastic/burlap bags that once contained seed or grain tied with country rope) waiting to get on the same train that would not arrive for another hour! Finally the gates open and as in all Chinese gates and doorway or ticket counters there is a dash/push to get through. I was carrying my large backpack the computerbag and a shoulder bag with water, food and a jacket. The surge forward can only be described as, if a space opens in front of you fill it, if a space opens in front on the person in front of you and they don't fill it, you push them to fill it. This process procedes for five to ten minutes and ChaCha and I become more and more seperated, remember we don't know where we are supposed to go or sit. She looks back at me and I shout to her to wait to the left after we pass the gate. Once through the gate there are several long flights of stairs leading to the platform. My backpack is very heavy and it is obvious I am straining to carry it up the stairs so a young woman grabs the other end and we carry it to the top where she continues to want to help but my macho-self declines and she and her girlfriend laugh and move on. Along the platform it looks as though most of the train has been full of people for weeks, they are hanging out the windows eating, smoking, and just living close. Each car we pass seems to be already full so we get near the end of the twenty-plus car train and hand our ticket to the porter, who points to the ticket that has among the Chinese chacters the #10, our car number, so we haul back to car #10 and board. The inside is packed, each car seats about 160 people, there are two cubicles in each row, one cubicle seats four people the other six people. There is a small table in each cubicle that is attached to the wall. The aisle down the center of the railcar is narrow and my pack has about a two inch clearance on either side, and no, the aisles are not free and clear. I spot an overhead shelf open spot and shout to Chacha that I'm going there, she agrees, but as I attempt to hoist the pack up I'm in a bad position, I'm sweating profusly and my hand slips and I loose control of the bag. A very small man helps me catch it just before it hits a woman in the head and the whole car full of people gasp and shout and laugh and offer a hundred different suggestions (all in Chinese) of what to do next. Well the bag gets secure and I find an open seat. A young woman passenger who speaks some english asks to see my ticket, she points to another number that we hadn't seen that is my seat number. There, in my seat, was a firmly planted middle aged woman, the seat was next to the window and she wanted to be there next to the open air, so I sat next to her and was content to leave it at that but Chacha's seat was in the cubicle across the aisle and next to the window, where a woman with an 18 month old baby was sitting, her husband next to her was very adament about not giving up that window to Chacha and there was some tension for awhile but after Chacha flirted with the baby and we all laughed and it became clear we were settled in the middle of a multi-generation family on there way back home all was well, we rotated seats and settled in for the seventeen hour ride. The small table in each cubicle serves as a dining table and also a place to put your head to sleep, the only problem is that is so low that when I tried to lay my head down it was below the level of my heart which doesn't work so not much sleep that night. After several hours and stops the car began to fill with people who didn't have assigned seats, you can buy a cheap "stand-only" ticket. When we finally arrived at Tai Shan there were more people in the car than when we left......... Our next trip was far more pleasant.

So you can understand our apprehension when the next leg of the journey had a standing only ticket for the first 150km, but it turned out to be just fine we got seats in a cubicle with some very friendly people and the experience was fun.
That train stopped at a city called Tai'Yuan a 3,000,000 people industrial monolith on a flat plateau that was solid grey from the ground up. We have been spoiled up to this point in that someone spoke at least a little english, not here. The hotel, the restaurant, the cab driver nobody spoke any english and we had to rely on our inadequate phrase book to get us through. Our most memorable experience in that city was the internet cafe. First, you can't advertise that you have an internet cafe in China (they don't want the youth surfing or playing games) so they are hard to find. The one we did find was on the second floor of a very dark building, the kind that you think would house gambling or prostitution endeavors. The term internet cafe would miss the mark by a long shot, it was more akin to an internet barn. 100's of computers in tight rows with dozens of young Chinese playing games listening to loud music, talking on the net and smoking. It was unique but we lasted only about an hour.
The next day we boarded a bus for the area known a Wu Tai Shan a national park and home to the largest Buddhist concentration in the country, there is a Buddhist Nuns College located there along with many temples and historical points. The park is in the mountains, the Wu Tai Shan area has it that there are five sacred peaks and the "bowl" below the peaks is where most of the large temples are located. The main pagota, sorry I forget the name, was built in 1067 to house sacred texts. The building is giant, several hundred meters high and painted white with lots of white marble near the bottom, very impressive. But by far our most memorable experience of the park was the hike to Quan Yin's cave. Quan Yin an immortal that lived way B.C.and is a favorite of ours and has been for many years, so to be able to go to the place where she gained her enlightenment was really a thrill. The hike was about an hour from our hotel, up into a canyon that seemed separate from the rest of the park (more on this in another blog). We paid our 4 yuan entrance fee, 60 cents, and went through the modern temple and up the rock cliff that the emperor in the Ming Dynasty had built to honor her. Also there was some description about the VI incarnation of the Dali Lama spending a lot of time there. We hiked the carved stairs straight up several hundred feet an found another temple, small with only some carved statues and prayer alters. behind the temple carved into the rock was a small cave that had a locked wooden door on the front it was only about four feet tall and three feet wide. Next to that was a niche where Chacha prayed. We marveled in silence for a while and were about to leave when a monk appeared form a small room where he had been in meditation. He showed us the inside of the temple and then as we were about to leave motioned for us to follow him to the cave. He unlocked the cave door and inside was a spring with a ladle that he dipped and motioned for us to cup our hands and drink which we did. Could it be......... We left there, went down a few stairs and found a platform where we ate apples and meditated in the warm sun. Once outside the area I commented to Chacha that the common image of Quan Yin in her flowing gown no longer held any weight. She was less than five feet tall lived in rock and ate spring water.

This is all too much computer for me for now so I'll let Chacha continue.

love
boomboom

Saturday, May 24, 2008

The rural life

The minute area of China that we have traveled through is rich with agriculture. Once you get out of the main city area and into the areas known as villages every square meter of soil is growing something. The villages are a small clusters of brick and adobe buildings. It seems as though at least half of the buildings are falling or being knocked down to reuse the brick(China uses almost no wood in construction). Surrounding the clusters of buildings is farm land. It is hard to tell how they determine who gets what plot of ground to grow but the plots are irregular shapes and often have different crops growing next to each other. As an example there will be 3 rectangles, each about 1/4 acre, of wheat, then a rectangle of cabbage, then more wheat. If there is a waterway or gorge near this too will be planted with corn or tomatoes or greens.Sometimes you can see several large plots,( 5-10 acres each) of wheat or millet, each defined by a walkway between them. We have traveled many hundreds of kilometers by train and passed thousands of acres of crops and have never seen a tractor. Also it seems like everything is dry farmed as there is not canal or sprinkler systems visible.
China has embarked on a massive tree planting campaign. From the airport in Beijing to city parks and highway meridians a billion trees have been planted. The fruit tree orchards are different than California in that they are planted much closer together, probably three trees for every one that we would plant. We had a meal at a farmhouse, the tables were set between the apricot trees which were loaded with green fruit and only about 10 feet from one another.
Today we traveled by train back West and North, through country that looked like Paradise or Butte Creek Canyon. This was interesting because for untold generations the people of this area have terraced the rocky hills and cliffs, then built massive walls from the rock that has been sifted out, giving them rich flat soil to grow their crops. A couple of times we saw someone with a backpack sprayer in the feilds but have not yet seen chemical fertilizer or a crop duster in fact I don't think I've seen an airplane.

more is later

boomboom~chacha

Thursday, May 22, 2008

High again

Good morning from the world's most-climbed mountain. That would be Tai Shan in Shandong province (northeast of Sha'anxi, where we've been until now). The mountain is sacred to Taoists and Buddhists and who knows who else? When we stopped at one of the innumerable temples on the way up so that I could light incense and pray, the attendants had cropped haircuts and different suits than the Taoists we'd encountered in other temples. Plus, there was recorded chanting of "Om mani payme hum", so I knew it was Buddhist. Also, a BIG drum, like a Taiko drum. However, originally, it was built in honor of Dumou, a female deity..a good one to pray to for straightforward childbirths and healthy babies (I added midwives, too) I liked being there..kinda felt it, ya know.

We continued on up: 6,660 granite steps, beautiful views, wild apple trees blooming, cypress trees lining the paths. I'm finally kinda getting this sense of the LAYERING of so many millenia of chinese cultural history. One spot may have had a use for so many different groups in so many different eras of history that it is bewildering: ?where am I? what went on here? and then the numbers of contemporary people heading for the same spot may all have their different purposes too. One may be lighting incense to commemorate their mother, another the fatherland, another the ancient gods of wealth or war, another the great mother. A shrine or temple may have been preserved, re-interpreted, destroyed, rebuilt over the centuries.

The land itself is the same way: layered. On the train trip to the base of this mountain from Xi'an, we saw small fields of millet (we think) with ancient tombs in the middle of the ripening grain, nuclear plants, industrial cities with blocks of apartments all the same, ancient adobe walls, tiny little garden plots on every scrap of land. People busy here for a long long time.

The train trip itself deserves at least a chapter; I'll give you the Reader's Digest version. 17 hours (overnight) in a "hard seat" carriage without the possibility of sleeping except for the neck-wrenching doze. Packed in. People very accomodating and helpful. But they do spit on the floor and smoke, and the babies pee on the floor and there are standing room only folks in the aisle if (god forbid) you must make you way to the ..er..bathroom (a squatter in a lurching train=challenging!) Pretty wild. Next train trip, we have reserved a "hard sleeper" for part of it. I'll let you know if this is an improvement.

This is being sent to you courtesy of the wireless connection we found in our comfy hotel here on top of the world..couldn't resist that one. Confucious came up and said "The world is small", Mao said "The east is red". I say Good morning!

Til the next sacred mountain, this is ChaCha & BoomBoom signing off.

Monday, May 19, 2008

p.s.

Friends & Family~

We are not able to see any comments you may have sent to us on the blog site. We also are unable to review what we've written (thus some repetition, since we each send posts, depending on who is in the mood). The best way to respond to us, therefore, is by email, at least while we are here in China. Since I am reluctant to publish our e-addresses here, just send to whosever e-address you have and we will share.

xoxoxo

ChaCha

daily city life

The photo below is the view down the alley from our hotel room. The one on the right is the central square (Bell Tower square) where everything stood still yesterday at 2:38 to commemorate the earthquake victims. The response on the ground here has been strong...people giving money and blood on the street.

If you can manage it, a donation of, say, $20 would go a long way here. I would guess that the International Red Cross would be a good place to inquire.

The 2 photos above are of housing in the local hood. Note the space made in the one on the left for the tree to grow thru the wall and the roof! Makes my cabin construction seem not so eccentric.

OOPS! on the photo on the right..I forgot to rotate it in the camera..sorry. It is of a building in the Muslim quarter, on a terrific shopping street . The food markets there are great! We got a big bunch of halvah, dried apricots, and pistachios for our up-coming train trip. But my favorite Muslim food is the buckwheat noodles. They are served cold with a fresh chili sauce. MMM!