[Ed. Note: This post is 4 months late. The trip was 8/15 to 9/10/11. Now that no one cares, I thought I'd post about it. I've been trying to write this for months, but really I was too focused on this project at work to make it happen...  If you want to just look at my PICTURES, here they are, but I think the pix are better if you read this post & vice versa...]

[Ed. Note II: I was in China for less than a month. I saw a tiny, tiny, fraction of the country in terms of square miles.  I met maybe 150 Chinese people.  I had more than a "Hi, can I buy that?" conversation with maybe 10 (being REALLY generous).  Nonetheless, I'm about to post something now that makes vast sweeping generalizations about an entire nation of over a billion people and thousands of years of history, with languages I can neither read nor write.  So please accept everything I say here as gospel from someone who knows everything.  I certainly do.

In all seriousness: I hope I don't offend anyone (esp. my Chinese friends) with my thoughts and impressions - I really am just trying to understand what I saw & felt while in a fascinating and very different place.]

Our hero in the Great Taklamakan Desert

A few months back, I was whisked off to China by my girlfriend to experience her step-mother country.  Kimberly, although pretty damn white, has studied Mandarin since she was very young & then majored in Chinese studies in college & lived there for a total of 8 years.  I knew she was missing China, so it should have come as no surprise when she hijacked our planned trip to India by taking us to China instead.

I recovered from this by planning to trade her for a panda. Perhaps two.

Unbeknownst to me, she subverted that plan by having us head to the far western deserts of China along the Silk Road.  Pandas are NOT in the desert. Sigh. (She’s tricksy!)

Luckily, I found a new fascination soon after arriving in China: looking for signs of happiness.

But, before we get into that, a brief map:

View China Trip 2011 in a larger map
We landed in Hong Kong, then flew to Beijing, spent a week or so there, and then started heading consistently west, more or less along the route of the Silk Road: We took an overnight train to the ancient capital Xi’an, spent a couple of days there, then took a 26 hr train ride to Dunhuang (sort of the gateway to the West). We then flew to Urumqi, the most remote city from any sea in the world according to Guinness, and the biggest city in Xinjiang, the western-most province. From Urumqi, we flew to Kashgar near the border with Pakistan, and spent a few days there exploring the edge of China, before flying east to Shanghai & then back to Hong Kong.

Our first stop in the mainland was Beijing, a striking and enjoyable city, vibrant and culturally alien with fascinating sights and sounds.  It immediately made me think of my closest relevant context: large Indian cities like Bombay & New Delhi.

It was similar to those Indian mega-cities but a lot cleaner (well, not the air) and less chaotic. But whereas Indian cities are chaotic, boisterous, and aggressively vivid for all 5 senses, Beijing is a much more somber place, a city made of grey brick and intensely polluted grey skies.

And while a good chunk of the lack of chaos might be explained by the remarkable lack of animals¹, that did not explain the collective lack of exuberance: Though the younger generations seem to be having a bit more fun, any forms of public joy, from the small scale, like two people laughing loudly amidst their banter, to something larger, like a crowd enjoying a street performance animatedly laughing and joking, were scarce, at best.²

As this fact began to dawn on me, I became increasingly fascinated. Also, on some level, it was depressing: for an exuberance-based person like myself, I really wanted the Chinese to be having a blast somewhere, sometime. Obviously, just because I wasn’t witnessing it, that didn’t preclude it from happening, but it felt that way pretty strongly & that is how I took it. And additionally, it was alienating: The lack of tangible public displays of happiness made for an even deeper sense of “I don’t belong here”. In hindsight, this makes me realize how much one relies on seeing people emote to connect with them.

The alienness in particular was driven home on the second night in Beijing, when we came across a quintessential piece of my world, done Beijing-style: a large, public, dance party!

Note: This is not my photograph, but it is very to similar to what I saw… (courtesy of edsailor on Flickr)

That night, as we were coming out of a sports arena³, we came across a large group of people of all ages, though mostly older, in the parking lot, dancing.  There were somewhere between 80 & 150 people congregated outside to dance.  Big speakers were set up, and there was one woman dancing on top of a platform,  executing very specific ballroom dance moves.  Before her were rows and rows of people following as precisely as they could.  Not a single one was smiling that I saw.

I couldn’t imagine they weren’t having fun, but it was really strange.  The format looked more like an aerobics class for all ages than anything else, but an aerobics class where everyone was on Ritalin.  Even more striking was the second group, maybe 50 feet away.  This group was couples dancing & were doing it UP.  The leaders were a couple, again dancing efficiently and with great purpose and energy, and all around them were couples & singles executing similar moves with various degrees of skill.  Again, if I had to bet money, I’d say they were having a blast, but for the life of me, they gave no sign.  It was bizarre.

A few nights later, as I was free-roaming Beijing by bike, I came across another such pod of couples-dancers.  The sound system was a large boom box, and this one was just on a wide street corner.  There were maybe 15 couples, all going at it.  (All lack of exuberance aside, the coolest thing about this was the fact that large groups of Beijingers have awesome, public, dance parties, on the neighborhood level – that’s pretty cool.  I wonder if is some hold over from Mao-era public calisthenics or some such.)

My time in Beijing got me thinking about public exuberance & it was in the back of my mind the whole trip. I wondered if its absence might just be a Beijing thing?  Maybe just as Parisians seem to be more cynical than the average French, or New Yorkers seem more brusque than the average American, maybe something like that was at play?  But as we went west, the lack of public joy continued.  The cities were perhaps less grey, mostly due to the lesser concentrations of grey bricks, though the skies of China never improved much (that is enough to make me scream actually), but the people never seemed much more exuberant.  I think Kimberly and I expected China to become perhaps poorer as we went West, but also somehow, more idyllic, and with that I expected more people who seemed happier.

I realize that this notion is a loaded, bourgeois conceit: that life might get harder and poorer yet simultaneously more happy and soulful, yet I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t in the back of my head. And as much as it is overly romanticized and perhaps a naive expectation of the over-privileged, I do know that my other experiences in developing nations, from Central America, to Africa, to India, were full of poor people with a lot more public expressions of joy in their lives. Thus, as we continued on in China, I was really hoping that we’d start to see the lack of exuberance start to wane, and that we’d stumble across a publicly happier and more relatable existence somewhere.

Xi’an downtown in a storm – one of my pictures from the Flickr set.

Our next stop was Xi’an, the capital city of the first real Chinese emperor (of Terra Cotta Warriors fame (loved them!)). Here, we came to our first Muslim market area, which was lively and fun, full of new foods to try and fascinating things to watch (how do they make that? who are those people? what is that!?).  We then proceeded to Dunhuang, which was described by friends as a gentle, slow paced oasis (both literally and emotionally) at the beginnings of the great Western deserts of China.  But the Dunhuang we arrived at was a brand new implanted “if-you-build-it-they-will-come” city of the future, Chinese style, that had supplanted the Dunhuang of old. It was oddly empty, but we were assured that this was a merely a vagary of the tourism schedule of Chinese nationals. In the end, the sand dunes & caves near Dunhuang were beautiful & wondrous, and were certainly worth every minute, but again, no signs of exuberance.

After Dunhuang, we headed into Xinjiang, the vast Central Asian province, home of the ethnically and culturally distinct Uighurs.   Urumqi, the capital, was a brief stopover for us, notable mostly for a serious security presence (If I were a Uighur, it would definitely feel like it was “Occupied Urumqi”).  We then headed to our “official goal” of the trip, the old central Asian city of Kashgar & Lake Karakul⁴ nearby.

Kashgar was a fascinating city with an older, dirty, charming, messy, Uighur, Muslim Old Town that would have been at home anywhere from the coast of Africa, through the Mediterranean, to northern India: Islamic architecture, tiny windy streets, old stone construction, outdoor vegetable markets & food-stalls, animals being butchered, cooked and sold, a crush of scooters and pedestrians, and the crazy melange of people.  Here in Xinjiang, life didn’t seem as somber somehow, but honestly it didn’t seem like much fun either. That being said, here the lack of joy seemed to be more of a sign of the political realities of the region rather than cultural: The Old Town had been partially destroyed and rebuilt new-style by the Chinese government ostensibly in the name of “progress”, but that decision seems to have been rescinded or at least halted, in the face of Old Kashgar’s increasingly understood tourist value.  Nonetheless, a massive and concerted program to makeover the rest of Kashgar into a modern (and sadly routine & dreary) Chinese city was well underway.  Additionally, the government was clearly very keen on making the vast demographic switch from restive Uighur to a Han Chinese majority as soon as possible.

After Kashgar, our travel superpowers finally decimated by the kryptonite that is Chinese hotel rooms, we flew out to China’s showroom city, Shanghai, and thus back to the first world. Perhaps I was biased a by a gracious host at the end of a long trek (thanks Alan!), but the juxtaposition of history, hypermodernity, and a global power trying so hard to impress, made Shanghai a fascinating delight. The fact that I was finally in a real dense urban center with access to a decent bike would have made Shanghai a favorite, but the additional fact that I could go on really long bike rides late at night and see many layers of Shanghai also brought a sense of connection to a Chinese place that was perhaps the best I’ll ever get.

Thus, between Shanghai’s modernity and my ability to bike it, Shanghai seemed the least alien of all the places I experienced in China.  Here was someplace I could see a life I understood and appreciated. With my greater level of connection, I was much less jarred by the lack of exuberance. Shanghai just seemed busy, rather than unhappy, as Beijing seemed, or grim, as the West did. In fact if the “Deep-Approved-Way-Of-Life” (note intentional semi-ironic arrogance) had to start somewhere in China, I’d bet on Shanghai (Why not? Chinese Communism started in Shanghai & ‘Deepism is much more fun.)

So that was it for our time in mainland China.  I never found the public happy.  I’m not sure why or what that meant. It certainly was depressing though. I think a lot of it must be a cultural reserve.  Maybe the Chinese have a lot of fun in the privacy of their own homes, but dial it way back in public – I’m sure that is part of it & who am I to judge?  I also am convinced that the Cultural Revolution must have done a lot to disabuse everyone who survived it of the notion of making any waves in any loud public way.  That in and of itself seems so sad.  Maybe it was actually more of a lot of little reasons – certainly just in our trip I got a sense of subtle shifts from the somberness of Beijing, to the grimness of the west, to the too-busy-to-smile feel of Shanghai.  I really just don’t know, but I’m certainly intrigued.  I’m looking forward to going back someday & maybe exploring the South?  Maybe more tropical climes will shake things up….

-’deep

.ps

I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank Kimberly’s family, Gene & Marsha (& Juanita!), in Hong Kong for providing a vital staging area before our trip and a much needed decompression zone on our way out.  I haven’t written much about Hong Kong, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t fascinating, just that I’m tired of writing (this may have been my longest post ever!)

And none of this would have ever happened of course without Kimberly, and if it did happen it wouldn’t have been a thousandth of the trip it was. Interpreter, sherpa, sparring partner, tourist attraction, comic relief & partner in crime, in the end I learned she makes a pretty decent panda substitute too:

K tries to convince me that she is, in fact, a panda.

^1. My guess is many Indians eat practically none & thus India has animals coming out its ears, while China seems to eat anything that isn’t people, and thus it has few?↩

^2. I was going to write that crowds having a blast were simply not found, but K reminded me of a great little moment in Beijing. We came across a (presumably) Chinese pop star giving a public performance with maybe 200-300 excited fans packed onto a tiny plaza in front of a mall. They were actually having a good time & K recalls how excited that made me.  I think I was also excited by the fact that as she was singing, I was the one who got the “overhead clap along” going which she great fully acknowledged from the stage ↩

^3. Duke Basketball in China!! Woot Woot! When we scheduled our trip, I knew my beloved Duke men’s basketball team would be in China for some friendship/exhibition games, but we had no idea the timing would work out so perfectly!  We had a great time at the game though it was a very, very one-sided affair – K even got a tiny moment in the WSJ’s coverage! (click here for video.)↩

^4. So it turns out we went to Karakul Lake in China which was a modest lake surrounded by beautiful mountains and a few yerts.  And though we didn’t know better at the time, we didn’t realize until I sat down to write this(!!!) that we never made it to the “real” Lake Karakul, as we intended. That lake is large and probably VERY impressive, and is also across the border in Tajikistan ↩

[Ed. Note III: Ok so I'm sneaking in an extravagant 3rd "Ed. Note." I actually have a lot more little tidbits and  brief thoughts on China, so I made them into a separate post. If you're interested check it out here - or come back some other time I promise it will at least be amusing You must learn of Clio Coddle!]

As I said in my other post: I hope I don’t offend anyone (esp. my Chinese friends) with my thoughts and impressions – I really am just trying to understand what I saw & felt while in a fascinating and very different place.]

• Unsurprisingly, knockoffs of Western brands were plentiful but this is my MOST FAVORITE ONE EVAR: I give you Clio Coddle.
  When I first saw it I simply chuckled, but something about the name really stuck with me and I had to think about it for a few minutes. Suddenly I realized the “Clio Codile” was probably an Asian L-R-switch attempt to pronounce “Crocodile” – it is simply a filtered onomatopoeia! This cracks me up no end.
  

• Historical repeating: My lovely assistant, Tom Radulovich, had given me a good book on Chinese history (John Keay’s “China: A History”) which I was reading on the trip, & it helped us appreciate the other most interesting theme of our trip: the constant sense of history repeating itself along our way:
• Hist. Repeating I: The fact that we were following in the path of the Silk Road in our travels was definitely a theme, but it was remarkable in that the FIRST ad we saw as we got off the plane in Beijing was a giant sign for the “1st China-Eurasia Expo” in Urumqi, our penultimate destination. This trade show was clearly the modern echo of the Silk Road, underscoring the importance of trade with Central Asia and points west, now as much as then.
  
• Hist. Repeating II: Additionally it was the security for this trade show that gave the Urumqi it’s “occupied” feel. Many, many troops (and even more disturbingly, what appeared to be local citizen’s militias) were on hand to prevent Uighur separatists from causing an incident. Chinese history is full of Emperors sending troops to the West to curb unrest & discontent & this felt as yet another episode.
• Hist. Repeating III: Similarly, though more pleasantly, there was a fascinating sense of continuity as we visited the famous Magao caves near Dunhuang, known for their impressive carved stone buddhas and paintings. These artworks have been funded throughout their history by wealthy individuals of the day, for some combination of reasons such as religious commitment, as status symbols, and out of a sense of philanthropy. In fact, the faces of these benefactors were often painted in as characters in the artwork. Notably, as we exited the site, there were large placards with photos of wealthy benefactors of today, detailing their donations for the restoration and upkeep of the site, no doubt for reasons not so dissimilar.
• Hist. Repeating IV: At the same site, there were historic structures which had been refurbished by the Chinese government fairly recently for purposes of tourism. At first I was appalled at the lack of respect for the historical purity of these structures. Soon thereafter, it was explained that those structures had been refurbished for the first time since the last time they were refurbished in the 1920s. And presumably they had been refurbished before that, and before that stretching back since they were originally constructed. So was restoring them making them somehow less historical, or somehow more historical in that light?

Gateway at the Magao caves, built ? refurbished in the 1920s and now again in 2011…

• Highlights: (many of these are covered in my PICTURES)
  • Hutongs in Beijing
  • Beijing architecture
  • Xi’an city wall bike ride
  • Xi’an night market & food
  • train rides
  • Terra Cotta Warriors (& hopefully Emperor Qin’s tomb someday soon!)
  • The sand dunes in Dunhuang
  • Magao Caves
  • The Old Town in Kashgar & eating fresh naan & melons (for which Xinjiang is famous)
  • Roaming Shanghai by bicycle
  • the City Planning Museum in Shanghai: a scale model of the entire city, always kept up to date! Urban Planning Geek out!
• I have often wished I could have seen China when the bike was king, but those days are gone sadly. That being said, there are still plenty of bicycles and utility tricycles all over China.
  • a huge percentage have been converted to electric bikes by after-market electric motors. Almost all the utility trikes were electric.
  • Every bike rental we ever had (other than Shanghai Bike Share) was a totally crappy bike
  • The much trumpeted Shanghai Bike Share program, was, like many things in Shanghai, incredibly useful on paper, but all the implementation details pointed to the fact that the program was really just for show. The bikes were decent though and worked well for what I needed – so thank god for that!
• As much as I give chain stores a bad rap, Starbucks became a big part of the trip for us & were very much appreciated wherever we found them: You could pretty much always count on free Wifi, and more importantly they were often the coffee shop that you could find as a tourist that was guaranteed to be relaxing & mellow. There didn’t seem to be a lot of “local options,” though when we found them we certainly appreciated them too – but of course they always allowed smoking indoors. Super-bleech.
• Facebook is blocked in China but (except, I’m told, in high end hotels that cater to foreigners, so they don’t notice the issue.) but luckily proxy websites are easy to find that worked around this issue.
• The Chinese grow food EVERYWHERE, even in freeway medians. Unfortunately it is mostly low-grade feed corn, mostly for pigs. China loves pork!
• While we were flying over the Western regions I noticed theses strange large scale patterns in the terrain, that were obviously man-made, but I couldn’t figure out what the hell they were. Gizmodo and others are now reporting similar mystery structures – check it out!
• China foolishly squanders money that any sane nation would use to pay for oil wars in the Mideast by investing heavily in energy technology and national infrastructure. Every stop in the west had a vast new airport & new construction was rampant.
• Throughout China, though especially in more affluent Beijing & Shanghai, Apple was everywhere. iPads and iPhones are *THE* thing. Buy stock. Seriously. (yes, I work for Apple, but I mean it nonetheless.)
• On a related note, I was really struck by how much of the dominant technology I was seeing in the advanced, more affluent parts of China were Western technologies: laptops, cellphones, TVs, iPads, cars. Most of them 20th century technologies. How long will this be the case? Will this hegemony of innovation continue? Will it equalize? Will it shift to Chinese/Indian dominant in the next century?
• Every square inch of of “new” in China seemed to be a mall, or a facility “with a mall built in!”  K suggests that in the absence of religion, consumerism has filled the gap. It certainly looked that way to me.  Sigh.
• The two biggest pieces of advice I can give a traveller to China are:
  • For the love of god, bring a bed roll (like a camping Thermarest). The beds in all but the highest end hotels are hard wood slabs covered by a cruel taunt of a pad. I mean it: Thermarest.
  • Though it will seem innocuously amusing at first, do NOT read the English-language t-shirts that everyone wears. Although it is fascinating to see literally millions of people wear t-shirts in a language only a few of them understand, and although some are amusing, eventually you won’t be able to stop reading them.  Then you will accidentally read something out of the corner of your eye, that will cause your brain to lock up. Or you’ll read things that are unintentionally disgusting – to wit (google it at your own risk):
    Actually, this was taken in Hong Kong, outside a burger joint advertising it’s newest “delicacy.”
• I’m afraid to consider Chinese pop music. On most trips to most countries I’ve been to, there has been some sense of local popular music that was at least intriguing. Not China. Every single pop song I heard (or watched on ubiquitous video screens) was a truly horrible syrupy pop ballad of the worst Western style. My kingdom for something with more emotional range than a Hallmark card sent by a 15 year old girl.
• On a related note though, it was really cool to see that Chinese pop culture was beginning to get a sense of its own value. In various more hip shopping districts such as Nan Louguxiang in Beijing, Tai Kang Lu in Shanghai & the Hong Kong chain Shanghai Tang, there was a really cool burgeoning sense of “Cool Intrinsically Chinese things” or cool mashup “Western Meets Chinese” things where both sides had equivalent value. That made me really happy.
• I had a fascinating conversation with a man in Kashgar who explained that most people used to eat donkey meat because it was so cheap, but then had to start sending it all to Beijing for the 2008 Olympics. He then explained that the price had never returned to normal, so now they don’t eat as much of it: As impressive as the Beijing Olympics were (& wow were they), they were willing to impoverish their entire country to stage them.

NOTE: This is my final post about my month of traveling – if you want to skip the chatter & JUMP STRAIGHT TO THE PIX, CLICK HERE – there is a SMALL set of PIX & a COMPLETE set of pix.
Also, if you want to see all my travel posts to this point click HERE.

As many of you know I just got back from almost a month in the Olde Country – India. It was a big and fascinating trip – and there was a lot I liked about it & honestly some big things I *really* didn’t like about it. There was both much fun and much not fun. Some of that had to do with India & some of that had to do with the fact that I was LARGELY BY MYSELF FOR AN ENTIRE MONTH. If you ever want to drive a hyper-gregarious, hyper-talkative person suicidal, send them to a large, fascinating & difficult country by themselves in the non-tourist season FOR A MONTH. Sit back & watch the fun! Anyway, it has been a week since I got back & now that my super-powers are returning, it is time to write up my impressions…

Before I get into what I liked & disliked about India it is important to understand that the key part of any trip is having resilience, curiosity and a good attitude. Normally these qualities are a strong suit of mine. But this trip, “curiosity” was the only one I could consistently muster. A variety of things combined to cause the others to come & go. As I said, the biggest factor by far was that I only had people to really talk to for maybe 4-5 days combined out of my 3.5 weeks in India: NOT GOOD FOR OUR HERO.* So I guess that means maybe if the circumstances of my trip were different my impressions would skew differently…

But that all being said, what follows are my impressions of India such as they are, for better & for worse. Here is the quick list for those of you skimming – feel free to click on just the items that seem interesting. (damn this is a long post! Did I mention I had no one to talk to for a month?)

Things I liked:

• Food
• Music
• Assimilation Skill
• History By the Ton
• Wildlife
• Cultural Mannerisms
• Mumbai

Things I did NOT like:

• Transaction as Argument
• Constant Honking
• Indians Trashing India
• Cheating Strangers Is To Be Expected

I should also state up front that I’m more curious and more demanding of India than I would be of many other places for a variety reasons. Obviously, being my genetic homeland, I’m going to be pretty curious, but also there are many people in my life (my immediate family for starters, but others as well) who expect that I SHOULD have a strong connection to India: “India is your home!” or “You just don’t understand that you ARE Indian” etc etc. This all leads to a closer scrutiny on my part.

Anyway, without further ado, lets get to the superficial impressions that I will attempt to pass off as facts. (hey look! “hubris” – I AM returning to normal!)

Things I Liked:

Let’s start with the things I liked:

• Food: shockingly India is a fantastic place to get Indian food Despite strong prohibitions from my mother against eating anything on my trip (and for that matter against touching, speaking to, looking at, thinking about, seeing, or doing anything), I tried to sample anything that looked reasonably clean or reasonably cooked. And having done so I can definitely say: Things were yummy. I didn’t eat a lot of stuff I wanted to because it involved “tap” water, or was cooked in sketchy looking circumstances, but I ate a lot of things nonetheless & tried not to just eat northern Indian food (which is what I’m used to). It turns out that even though a lot of Southern Indian food is not in my preferred-Indian-food-taste-palate, it is pretty yummy… And just so you know, I never really got sick.

• Music: Indians love music. And they like it loud and often Luckily a lot of it is really good. There were various moments where you’d be surprised to hear it. Like late at night in rural Kerala, sitting on a house boat in a sprawling series of vast lake channels lined with villages, suddenly a village loudspeaker system in the distance would start blaring out Hindi movie songs against a peaceful, animal-chirping star-blazing quiet night. And surprisingly, it kinda worked.

  Also, I spent numerous nights in hotel rooms late at night watching MTVIndia – which is really just Bollywood movie clips. Like most pop art, a lot of it is horrible trash, but enough are good enough to make it worthwhile & most are pretty entertaining in any case. Like I said in a previous post, there is something about a good Bollywood musical number that gets “joy” right.

  Interestingly, I didn’t like the southern Indian music and movie clips (“Kollywood” & “Tollywood” for Karnataka & Tamil Nadu’s film industries) as much as the Bollywood ones.

• Assimilation Skill: India is a fascinating cultural assimilator & seems to do it in a different way than the US. At their best, they have a long history of layering cultural influences on top of each other, whether they be Mughal (Muslim), British, or now American (as distinct from generic Western). Here in the US, we are much more likely to fuse things, or melt them together (as much as the melting-pot is sometimes a myth). In India, they seem to be more layered, or even used a la carte as the most appropriate influence to handle a given realm. When this works well – which seems often – the mixes are really cool. This comes through a lot in the music. That being said, there are many times when it doesn’t work out well – where it comes out as empty aping of styles and idioms that they don’t quite understand (this happens a lot in the music too and men’s clothing ). But time and time again I was struck by how many cultures were getting integrated at once & how often something worthwhile and very appropriate was being produced. And many times, I was struck by the notion that the thing I was interacting with at that moment, though I thought of it as quite Indian, was also a “grafted on” influence: Mughal food, British infrastructure, American technology, etc etc.

• History By the Ton: As an American, 50 years is a historically significant scale, but India on the other hand is crazy-old This is not a particularly profound or new realization, but India is so thoroughly old, that things that would be vastly historically significant here, are matter of course there. A good example was a day I was in Kerala & we stopped our house boat alongside some tiny village & there was a tiny path-side temple with a smallish (4-5 ft) & not-particularly-impressive Shiva idol in it. My boat driver explained that it was very old. I figured it was a hundred years old or two – OK – as old as the US – pretty old. After he left, I walked around & found a sign from the Indian Archeological Survey. Nope, this idol, which was basically just sitting by the side of a path, was 2000 years old. To casually display something that old means you have lots of history to go around.

  In addition to enjoying the sense of history, particular historical things were pretty amazing. The Ajanta and Ellora caves & the sustained generational burst of creativity and engineering they represent were astounding & a real highlight of my trip, and the Five Rathas in Mamallapuram were pretty amazing as well.

• Wildlife!: the peak of any of my excursions seem to always involve wildlife & India did not disappoint. I didn’t get to see a tiger (which was a goal) but quality time with Indian elephants (you just want to HUG them) & seeing a leopard in the wild made up for it. Also Indian Bison are crazy cool (who knew a ruminant could be so impressive?!) so I really really enjoyed my time in the national parks. (Also my time in the national park area was where I met the most cool and interesting people at the wonderful lodge I stayed at.)

• Cultural mannerisms: There are a whole bunch of Indian cultural mannerisms that I just love: from the hand gestures, to the rhyming, to the head-shaking to mean “yes”, to the COLOR of women’s clothing, there is just a lot to like.

• Mumbai (Bombay): For an avowed urbanist, India’s cities often were pretty grim and harsh. That being said, I extended my trip a few days to see Mumbai & I was really glad I did. This was the first city in India that really seemed to have that humanistic hum to compensate for the downsides of third world urbanism. I wish I had a chance to check out the dancing but I finally did get a brief flu-like thing the last weekend (or maybe it was just heat stroke).

Things I DID NOT Like:

Ok here comes the downers. I really want to stress that I’m not trying to disparage a culture that I really don’t understand very well, but rather just point out things that I found at best annoying & at worst pretty difficult to handle. I’d love anyone to chime in and offer explanations or nuances I was missing. Anyway, here goes, we’ll start with two annoying ones & then the two big ones:

• Transaction as Argument: I realize that, in many cultures, things are expected to be bargained for. I’m not great at it & don’t really enjoy it, but I’m fine with it. However, I got the sense that in India, transactions are often not just bargaining, but rather arguments that involve some level of frustration on the part of one party or the other. And I have to say, in many cases the frustration seemed real rather than feigned. Couple that with the fact that many seemingly simple transactions (getting tickets, getting a cell phone, etc) involved a great deal of bureaucracy along with the frustration and the result was a lot of unpleasant business transactions.

• Constant Honking: India is an assault on all five senses, and while that is often fascinating, for my ears it never was. In India, car horns are used to signal presence and intent in the chaos of the streetscape & thus blowing your horn is an integral part of driving. The consequences are that to be in an Indian city, or anywhere near a road was to be CONSTANTLY BLASTED by car horns. All. The. Time. At every volume level, and constantly, from 5-6 am to after midnight. While curious and “just different” for a week or so, after a month it was maddening.

• Indians Trashing India: This was one of the biggest things that really really got to me while I was there. The country is trashed. And getting more so by the second & what is worse is that the average Indian doesn’t seem to care. In every possible setting (village, city, national park), at any time you could someone tossing a plastic bottle, or a plastic wrapper or any piece of trash on the ground. Anywhere, everywhere, all the time. As annoying as that sounds, you have to understand that in most of the places, the ground was already strewn with lots and lots of trash – much of it plastic that isn’t going anywhere for a few hundred years.

  At its best, a cleanish city street looked like Mission Street at its worst. At its worst, there were areas of towns and villages that looked like dumps but weren’t, they were just city streets, or empty lots, or government-sponsored tourist centers (I kid you not).

  What is really troubling about this is that it doesn’t seem to REALLY bother anyone. They are going to be living with each piece of that plastic for 200 years and no one cares. Most Indians just litter as a matter of course. And even those I met who seemed to notice the problem, didn’t seem particularly outraged or angry, just casually unimpressed (One notable exception was a really cool animal welfare activist who seemed to be trying to do something – but she was the only one I met who seemed passionate about it) This lack of concern just left me agog & feeling incredibly isolated. It was very hard to think of what I had in common with the place I was seeing every day when I was so angry about the trash and seemed to be the only one.

  Like I said in an earlier post, my guess is that a generation ago, all of an Indian’s trash was biodegradable & since the climate is VERY good at biodegrading things, tossing it on the ground actually made good sense. Unfortunately, those habits coupled with India’s newly gained first-world plastic production have become a disaster. (I have seen similar habits in other developing nations, but none of them had the NEARLY the problems India has – probably because they lack India’s relatively recent production capacity.)

• Cheating Strangers Is To Be Expected: Ok, this is a huge and perhaps horrible generalization. It is also perhaps a vast misunderstanding of a very different and potentially equally valuable set of cultural norms. I hope to hell I’m wrong about this – maybe one of you Indians who reads this can set me straight or explain my misinterpretation. But this is what things seemed like to me & it was the biggest problem I had with India. I asked a couple of Indians about this as delicately as possible, but never felt I got a real handle on what was going on.

  In a nutshell, it seems that in India, it is completely OK to cheat or swindle anyone you don’t know personally. It isn’t an outrage, it is to be expected. There doesn’t seem to be much of a sense of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” This really sucks.

  It started when I got off the plane & the guy changing my money casually cheated me out of a meaninglessly TINY number of rupees & when I demanded a receipt to show that his calculations didn’t match what he was giving me, he explained that it would take 30 minutes to get a receipt. I left, since it wasn’t worth the time, but it did lodge in my mind. I quickly learned that this type of behavior was what I should expect & I was supposed to always be on the watch for it. My relatives explained that you had to constantly check every receipt & and my guide book insisted that I should always negotiate fares & the like before I got in any cab.

  It should be noted that this wasn’t just because I was a tourist: it seemed that in India, it is completely OK to take advantage of anyone not in your social network. Of course, in the U.S. people get cheated & swindled too, but it isn’t expected to be every transaction, or most of the time. In general, here there is a sense that when you are being treated unfairly, it is the exception rather than the rule. In India, it seems the other way around. Maybe this was just my perception & maybe it was skewed by the constant warnings from my relatives and Mom, but I don’t think so.

  I was very curious about this & really hoped it wasn’t true, but I think it might be. There were certainly examples of people going out of their way to be fair & nice (a mango seller I overpayed, chased me across the market to return a small but significant number of rupees (which made my day)), but the general sense was of course I was going to get swindled.

  I began to get hints that it was culturally deeper:

  • There was a tour guide who explained a story about the god Shiva cheating in a dance competition & he ended with “thus cheating itself is part of the religion.”
  • I read “Thug: The True Story of India’s Murderous Cult”, a fantastic book about the extinct hereditary strangler cults known as Thuggee who roamed far and wide strangling & robbing their victims after befriending them while traveling. The stunning thing was that in their home villages they were respected & valued members of society even though everyone knew what they did. They were robbing and murdering strangers so it was OK.

  Obviously this is all a VERY superficial understanding of a very VAST culture with MANY MANY subcultures, but nonetheless it really suggests something difficult for me to accept.

So that was my trip to India. Like all good trips, I’m not quite the same person who left & some interesting questions have been answered and a few more have been created. I really want to say thanks to all the fine folks I met along the way & my relatives for all their patient assistance. I’m very happy to be home and surrounded by my people even if it is June January Junuary! (or Jucember?) here in SF (brrr!)

‘deep

* The obvious question is how did I manage to be alone in a country with 1 billion people stuffed into a landmass only a third as large as the U.S.? Well:

• There weren’t a lot of Western tourists – it was the HOT season. Sane people go in the cooler season. I went when I had time
• I couldn’t really talk to a lot of the Indians: a large part was language barriers, but some part was me (next bullet), and some was the “cheat a stranger” stuff described in the “things I didn’t like” section. Since I was traveling by myself, and thus mostly talking to people I was paying for services from (like drivers, merchants & hotel staff), I ended up only rarely feeling like I could trust them & thus rarely felt like opening up to them.
• I need to be better at meeting folks when I’m in situations where I don’t think I have much in common with people around me… I know that is going to sound weird to all of you who know me as very extroverted and very amiable and gregarious – but there it is – there is much more to this than I have time or space to go into in this post…

When I could find folks to talk to, it was great and interesting. Some of the guides, & a driver of mine, all the wonderful staff and guests at the Jungle Retreat, and the travelers I talked with made all the difference. Also, when I was in situations where money wasn’t involved, I found folks to be super helpful, cheerful and very curious about me (the strange quasi-Indian). Thus in hindsight, if I had been traveling slower (& taking more trains and buses, rather than cars & planes) I would have probably had more interesting interactions with people (and less carbon emissions). Even though I would have seen less, it would have been a better trip…. Next time!

I bought the movie too (Movie Night Soon!) & it isn’t bad (a little cheesy of course) & is full of amazing eye candy – Hellloooooo Priyanka!) and even more importantly great song/dance numbers. This video covers pretty much everything great about Bollywood dance numbers:

• great outfits
• spectacle
• ridiculous yet inspired choreography
• and finally, pure joy

That last one is it actually, there is something about a musical (& India seems to be state of the art) that just does JOY perfectly….

‘deep

.ps be home soon & very much looking forward to it

.pps “Salaam e Ishq” translates to “Love’s Salute” I think.

To wit:

• Showers: It is very very hard to take 1 hour scalding showers when it is 4 milion degrees outside.  Though that is in Celsius, so it is only like 2 Million degrees Fahrenheit.  (& with the wind chill factor it’s like 1.9999 Million degrees F.)

• Air Conditioning: I have in good conscience paid for A/C in almost every accommodation I’ve been in out of fear that I’ll need it.  But can global warming boy bring himself to use it?  Noooooo.  The Indians are always stunned that I just use the ceiling fans. (As an aside, I’m actually holding up to the temperatures quite well I’ve learned that while a little sweat is annoying and icky, a constant soothing layer of moisture is really really a great thing.)
• Food: I’m on a houseboat (think giant wicker & bamboo gondola) trundling around the estuarine “Backwaters” of Kerala, a state on the southwest coast.  And there is a three person staff whose job is to cook for me and cart me around in the massive houseboat.  Out of deference & respect for their efforts, I eat everything that is placed in front of me.  So naturally this a chance for my burn-through-Angrazi-style ethos to manifest (Angrazi is Indo-slang for English, but it covers us Yanks too).  But while the food is quite good, there is a lot of fish involved.  Me no likey the pesci!  So I eat it dutifully but can’t bring myself to the Ultra-Big-Gulp-at-7-11 largesse required.  Today there was a clam-biryani-casserole-esque thing.  A reasonable (though small) portion of spongy filterfeeding bivalve “goodness” was consumed.  But no, I did not pig out (did i mention spongy bivalves?).  Yet another failure.

That all being said, there have been a few notable successes:

• this houseboat itself.  While my guidebook speaks of a growing possibility of environmental sensitivity & accreditation, I, in my haste & inexperience (ok LACK OF PLANNING) did not book a pole-driven classic class (though they may be extinct) and got a luxury outboard motor one.  (Actually, the irony is that if this was in the States, I would not have even thought this could be done w/out a motor.  But here I feel guilt.) 
• Ok, I am flying a lot.  My friends and I have already have had a big talk about carbon credits & the lameness of buying such “indulgences” from the “church” – but I will be doing so nonetheless.  Again, I need to be a better trip planner, but as usual I trade everything for time & historically I always thought that just meant deficit spending (pay back the credit cards when you’re home!), but now I see the energy costs too… hmmm

But – my crowning achievement (and this one I am truly proud of – Cue “The Star Spangled Banner!”)

• I have managed to use the entire (albeit small) roll of toilet paper in each accommodation I’ve staid in!  Yeah baby! Thank you, thank you so much….

Maybe with any luck, my next driver pickup will be will be a in a big-ass SUV

‘deep

.ps
On a side note, though Kerala is relatively clean and pretty, most of the parts of India I’ve seen (Tamil Nadu! Delhi) are covered in swaths of trash, mostly plastic.  It’s devastating to see. I’ve seen it in other parts of the world too, but somehow it seems worse here.  How the every-day Indian-on-the-street can look at this day in and day out & do nothing (at least it seems) stuns, baffles, and devastates me.

My guess is that a generation ago all of their trash was biodegradeable & they haven’t mentally made the switch.  That combined with their rapidly accelerating economy means the results are everywhere.  I read an article in the local paper the other day trumpeting the fact that India was now the worlds 8th largest consumer of plastic.  The undertone was “Progress!”  Sigh.  Been there done that, don’t follow us.   Various correlations between poverty and litter have been flipping through my mind as well.  Like how much dirtier Mission St. than say Valencia…. Post-capitalist values is the term I’ve hear applied.

Those of you who don’t like their cell-phones or don’t check email when they can help it, you and I don’t see eye to eye anyway, so the joys of this will be lost on you, and shouldn’t you be putting more coal in your calculating-engine to keep it running while you read this anyway? And check the inter-tubes for blockages while you’re at it

This is the deal: Place meets ‘Deep with his lil’ electronic friends: Mr. Cellphone, Mr. Computer, Mr. Thumb drive, Mama Net & of course a digital camera (neuter).

–

My first few days in New Delhi, I got a cell phone
that worked all over India – prepaid & talk-time rechargeable. So far it has been worth its weight (& wait*) in gold. Standing at a Chennai bus station with a dawning sense that this isn’t the bus stand I need? Grab the number for the State Tourist Info Center from my Lonely Planet & call- aha! suspicions confirmed! My family here wants to know how I’m doing? a periodic stream of TXT messages keeps them up to date & keeps the flow of GREAT advice coming (thanks Sumeet & Sunoo)…….. What hotel should I stay at tonight – 50km and many hours down the road? Call from the bus….

My computer was originally brought as a place to dump digital camera shots, and play movies on the plane, but now I use it late at night in my hotel room (like now) to write blog posts – a way to reflect on the day. That is what the thumb drive is for. I save the post to the drive so that sometime in the next day or so, when I sit down for a rest in a internet cafe, I’ll pull out the drive & voila, a few minutes later, a blog post from the front for my public (hello? hellooooo – anyone? someone? … at least a spambot? siiiigh). Note that the blog posts aren’t large or comprehensive – that would take too much time (compiling pix etc) which would detract from the experience, that all waits for when I get home…

Even more than blogging and email (keeping track of ‘Deepistan), the occasional chat with friends back home makes me happy. Like today – advice from Apu, who has been where I’m headed, or yesterday, sympathy after a rough couple of days from Peaty-Peat….

I can see a few of you saying “but are you really experiencing the place you are in? are you really getting away from it all?” Those are good questions – but I think, if used properly, my lil electronic friends don’t mediate nor interrupt the experience: they enhance it by making it MUCH richer than it would be without them…. Besides of course I want to get away from some things, but who wants to get away from their people? Well not me anyway, did I mention I’m hyper-gregarious?

Obviously, I’m not going to sit-out my trip in an internet cafe, just as I’m not going to look at all the sights from behind my digital camera’s display, but there is plenty of time for it all and it makes for a happy ‘Deepy whilst I sojourn…

If ever there is a contest, the real experience wins easily.. And really, if you think about it, my lil electronic friends are really just points of contact with all of you, my warm happy carboniferous friends – I get to bring you along!

good night my awesome peoples….

‘deep

.ps I’m @ 9312125996 & exactly 12 hours off SF time & as for chat: I’m amandeepjawa on AIM and amandeep_jawa on YIM – BTW: meebo.com rocks (all major chat services in one handy website, with a great interface!)

.pps Today, as I arrived here in Mammalapuram (beach/archeo-temple town south of Chennai) I noticed all these fishing boats drawn up on the beach alongside older tree-trunk boats. As I strolled the beach (Hello Pacific Indian Ocean!) I noticed that the newer fishing boats all had C.R.S. or “Catholic Relief Services” painted prominently on their sides. Were these Tsunami relief? I’ll ask a local first, but probably check the Wikipedia to at some point for more info…. yay the interweb! Damn – forgot to check the interweb for what time the sun will RISE over the Pacific Indian Ocean tomorrow – will set cell phone alarm for 5:30 just in case…

*It could/should have been simple to get but was actually a huge hassle. Big thanks to Rinky & Ravi Massi for helping me so patiently. Maybe if I got it in downtown Delhi it would have been simpler.

spotted these guys in Delhi downtown, just as I walked out of Spider-Man 3 (cousin had free tix & took the family)

It is tough for an avowed urbanist to swallow, but so far India seems much more beautiful and interesting outside the cities. Maybe this is what the U.S. was like in the heydey of the Industrial Revolution…

Anyway, I’m just south of Chennai (city #2) and in a beach town called Mammalapuram… more soon…

*to be fair, the weather in the SoF was rainy & so we spent most of our time in the car driving around, not nearly the fun possibilities of sun/bike/Paris.

* more fairness: suburbs is a bit strong, Gurgaon is more like adjacent sprawl. I would imagine Delhi has more nightlife and restaurants, hustle & bustle etc.

[Ed Note: click on any of the pix for all my Space Invader shots, or read to the bottom to get the full scoop AFAIK.]
[Ed Note: Added a few new Space Invaders I found 5/5/07]

Way back in 2003, on my maybe 3rd visit to Paris*, I saw some graffiti off in the distance (here’s the shot) & thought – “Hey! That’s a Space Invader!”

Then I thought “Hey that isn’t paint – that’s tile work!”

 

So now every-time I come back to Paris, I see more….

I never set out looking for them, but I’ll turn a corner or look down & blam:

Here’s one from 2005:

Well, I’ve only been in Paris for a few hours this time around – but the Space Invader guy has been busy & I keep turning around & seeing one! Here’s one I took today:

CLICK HERE TO SEE ALL MY SPACE INVADER PIX SO FAR

His invasions have occurred worldwide, but he is from here in Paris. Google, Flickr & Wikipedia all have tons of stuff about him. Here is a write up. Here is his website & a list of cities he has invaded (I love the fact that he has 6 on the Hollywood sign, & his NYC pix are great- but WHAT! he hasn’t invaded SF!??! Geeks & Graffitti? Hello! Cluephone! or perhaps Bonjour Avec Le Phone le Clu! (needless to say I’m unappreciated in France))

‘deep

.ps
I just got back from the south of France – it was nice but rainy – I have some cool pix, but they’ll wait. I spent today biking around Paris – you can imagine how happy that made me. For those of you wondering why I’m blogging rather than out doing something, it is 3am & I’m chilling before bed – so nyah! & it sure beats planning my India trip

.pps
Here is a whole website about mosaic graffiti. Adrian, as official ART Minister of ‘Deepistan start scheming. We’ll get underway soon.

*My cousin lives in Paris & thus every once in a while I’m OBLIGATED to visit Paris….

I’m currently sad, excited, scared, hopeful, wounded, content, anxious, fascinated, and oddly happy. I guess at 38, I can hold more than one at once. . I’m thinking about my friend Greg’s book “Window Seat: Reading the Landscape From The Air”, global warming, a girl, human population (the *real* hockey stick!), wondering how attractive Cameron Diaz really is (inflight movie), and mostly, the beauty of it all. (Don’t think that you know which of the emotions tie to which of the subjects at hand, the combinations are remarkable and fluid )

A while back (Nevada? Utah?) I passed a small wind farm. Maybe 10 giant white windmills, standing silently on a hill, motionless (slackers!). The future is here. It is going to be quite a ride these next few decades. Buckle up I can’t wait. (wow! bravado? sarcasm? hope? anticipation!? bring-it-on-let’s-do-this-coz-i’m-tired-of-worrying-and-what-is-the-name-of-this-feeling-anyway?*)

Natural features have risen to contest the brute-force human ones of the grid state now past. The results, the combination of human geometry and natural diversity, are beautiful! (contour and strip farming – Thanks Greg!).

• Eat every mango I come across.
• Avoid getting married off.
• Face time with mega-fauna.
• Observe humans in their natural habitats (both current & historical).
• Marvel at people’s ability to lead apparently functional lives without direct contact with ME
• Finally see India after all these trips, rather than just see relatives (god bless them and their kindness & hospitality nonetheless).
• Try to keep you people entertained!

To my peoples back home, I’ll miss you (I always do!). Please remember what I said about not having any fun while I’m gone. No. Really.
‘deep

*I bet the Germans have a name for that feeling, they always seem to…. with their easy to-make-new-words-without-needing-hyphens language. I bet they have a name for that too! Damn!

How To Survive Clam Wielding Sea Gulls…

After sucky Friday & a lame Saturday, I decided to go visit my friend Delphine, a vet at the Marine Mammal Center (yep. “Delphine” works with “marine mammals”… perhaps my atheism is ill-considered). Anyway, I hopped on my bike (on a sunny warm! December day) & headed to the bridge for what turned into a truly fantastic Sunday…

• found a heron being all picturesque
  
• took the shot of the heron, & the second I did, a sea gull hit me. with a clam. hard. does my head look like a rock?… ok. fine. but it still didn’t have to hit me with a clam.
• crossed the bridge, hung with some deer
• made it to the MMC, CUTENESS abounded!
• Fur seals are a BADLY NAMED type of sea lion! Because it’s not confusing enough! (ears & leg-like flippers = sea lion)