China 2019, day 7: The Terra Cotta Warriors

Today we went to see the Terra Cotta Warriors. To get there, we had to take a subway to the city wall’s north gate, walk to the railway station, and take a bus from there all the way to the Terra Cotta Warriors Site. It’s an hour-long bus ride, and Ada slept through most of it.

The Terra Cotta Warriors are not to be confused with the Panna Cotta Warriors, which is Jamie Oliver’s blog’s name, a review some idiot made on TripAdvisor, and a project Julia and I have decided to pursue at some point. For that, we’ll need to make small molds that look like warriors, and wouldn’t you know it, but they sell figurines of them at the railway stations – three pieces for 10 Yuan. We decided to get a pack on the way back.

The site is basically 3 pits where the warriors were found. They were built to guard Emperor Qin, the first emperor of China, in the afterlife. The main pit is the famous one, and the thousands of life-size clay people are really impressive:

The thousands of life-size real people who come to see them are not that impressive. They shove, speak loudly on their phones, and just act like assholes. Multiple times we were blocked by people who stood behind us when we were looking at down at the pit, and would not move to let us out, even after we asked them repeatedly. When this happens, I just start walking, regardless of what’s in my way. One of the very few advantages of getting old is that the nice belly I developed keeps me cushioned as I trample old Chinese women.

The second and third pits have very few exposed warriors, since most of them are still buried under the petrified ceiling. After we saw them, we went to the restaurant for lunch – we’ve decided to try to be better about getting Ada to eat and nap on her regular schedule, since yesterday we completely messed up her schedule and paid for that by having a very fussy child.

Lunch was a very confusing buffet, and in the middle of lunch, Ada had a blowout. She hadn’t had one in a while, so that caught us completely unprepared. Most dramatic was the absence of spare pants. We improvised something from my plaid shirt. There’s a reason these were so popular in the 90’s: they were very versatile. They were like towels from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, but for kids who hitchhiked to rock festivals. On Earth.

Right after lunch Ada fell asleep right after it, and we got to see the last part of the museum, which is the exhibition hall.

We had some time, so we took a shuttle to Lishan park, where the emperor is buried. It was a huge disappointment, since there’s nothing to see. The tomb itself was not excavated, and all the other sites around it – more pits and burial sites – were all closed off. That was really annoying because the way it’s advertised, on the brochures and with the shuttles and everything, you’d think there’s stuff to see. Only when you see the unmanned ticketing station you start to suspect. All this walking around got Ada really bored and antsy, and we were bored and antsy as well. On our way out we stopped at the visitor center, in which there’s a small museum and a gift shop – all still under construction. We were really annoyed, and to add to that, Ada completely lost it.

 On the way out a woman was selling one of those kits of Terra Cotta Warriors figurines. It was a little nicer than the ones we saw at the railway station, and it cost the same, so we got it. Then Julia suggested that we take a taxi back to save Ada from all the hassle of transferring between different modes of transportation. Next to where the taxis were picking up passengers, we were approached by someone who only later we realized was one of those illegal taxi drivers. He offered to take us home for 120 Yuan. This meant that we would not go back to the railway station, so I pointed out to Julia how smart I was to get the figurines.

The ride was hard for Julia. Ada fell asleep on her, so her neck and back were getting stiff, the temperature in the car was too high, she has still not completely recovered from whatever is making her feel not so great, and to top it off, the driver kept making mistakes, causing the ride go in circles around our hotel. Eventually, we just told him to stop, and we walked the rest of the way home, which was really only a few minutes away.

At our hotel, we regrouped, and left for dinner. We walked down an alley that’s close to our hotel and found a small restaurant. We got a local dish made of eggplants and green beans, a dish of mustard leaves and garlic, and another dish that for lack of a better description, I would call it “mangled chicken”. For this picture, I remove the foot and the band sawed in half head of the chicken from the pot:

China 2019, day 6: Xi'an

We started the day with breakfast at the hotel, which was surprisingly good. Then, we walked over to the Bell Tower. While the drums in the Drum Tower were used to played at sunset, the bell in the Bell Tower would ring at dawn. It’s huge bell, made of around 30 molded pieces. A bunch of people were standing in line to take a picture with the bell, so it was impossible getting a picture of the bell on its own. Here’s a picture with a random Chinese girl in front of it:

Inside the tower, there’s an exhibition about teapots and pottery.

And outside it there are way too many Chinese women who think that Ada is cold, or tired, or that we care about what they think.

And then we decided to give everybody a break and find a place for Ada to play. There’s a shopping mall across from the Bell Tower, and in it we found a children’s clothing store that had a small ball pit. That’s all that Ada needs to be happy:

Then we headed to the southern gate of the wall. The wall surrounds the old city, and you can walk on it. The wall is impressive, but other than walking on it, not much is going on. There are some museums along the path, but you have to get out of the ticketed area, and we’re pretty sure there’s no re-entry. All that didn’t matter. Julia was still not feeling well, and Ada was antsy, so it took us forever to move just half a mile from our starting point. I promised Julia that we’ll get off the wall at the next gate which is just a little bit ahead. However, that gate was closed for renovations. Rallied everybody for a pep talk, we pushed through and got to the western gate where we could finally get off the wall.

It was almost 4pm, and we hadn’t had any lunch yet. We walked for a bit until we got to the edge of the Muslim quarter, and one restaurant that was just about to close invited us in. We had some dumplings and the local style of noodles, which are served cold with a Tahini-like sauce.

Since we were already in the Muslim quarter, we walked over to the central mosque. We thought it was supposed to be a tourist attraction, but it’s not – it’s just a mosque, built with Chinese architecture. It was a little strange for me to hear Chinese people greet each other with “Salaam aleiqum”. Also, the Chinese Muslim appearance is interesting: they look Chinese and Arab at the same time.

We went back to the hotel to regroup for dinner, but then we got a text from Jiujiu – he’s coming to take us to dinner. In fact, he’s on his way. However, we didn’t know when he was going to show up, so we were stuck in the hotel waiting for him, with Ada getting fussy as her bedtime was approaching. I did what any responsible father would do and went to the bar to get whisky. The bartender was an apprentice, as her badge stated, and she spoke no English. She also seemed generally clueless, so now, for a few good minutes, she tried to read every single label on every single bottle, with the hope that one of them would have text that looked familiar. It was amusing and painful to watch at the same time, so eventually Julia went behind the bar and showed her the right bottle.

Jiujiu finally showed up, with his wife, who I’m supposed to call Jiuma. They decided to take us to the Muslim quarter, because you can’t miss that if you’re touring Xi’an, even though they knew we ate there yesterday.

Jiujiu was impressed by the five words I can say in Mandarin and became very curious about me. He doesn’t speak any English, like everybody else in China, so Julia had to translate everything. He said I look like a Hollywood actor, and I told Julia to tell him that I find that racist, and that he looks to me like a martial arts movie star. She didn’t, which was a good idea. I did tell him, however, that I’m Israeli, and not American. Now he was even more curious. He said that Israelis are considered smart so that must mean that I’m smart. I said that this is correct. He said that Israelis are probably the smartest in the world, and I told him that he’s right, and that Chinese people are second. He thinks I'm strong, because I pick up Ada in her stroller when we need to go up or down some stairs. He points at me as he announces "A-Yong!", my Chinese name, and I think he means something like "this guy!".

In the market, I got another one of those skewers, and a piece of mutton that you buy by the pound. They take the piece you choose, dump it in broth to heat up and cook, and then they give it to you in a little paper box with a fantastic sauce for dipping and silly plastic gloves for holding. It was all that I wanted and more – the “more” part referring to the useless plastic gloves.

China 2019, day 5: Xi'an

Finally, we left Chengdu. Early in the morning, we said our goodbyes to Yeye and Laolao, and Erjiujiu took us to the train station. As we were waiting for the train, Ada needed a diaper change. We have a folding changing mat for her, with pockets for diapers and wet wipes, so I changed her right there, on the benches, in the middle of the terminal. Everyone around was watching every move I made. Men don’t change diapers in China, so the whole spectacle was a real novelty to my audience. Having all this attention meant only one thing: I had to give my best performance, and indeed, I was done in no time, including putting Ada’s pants back on, folding the changing mat, and giving a deep bow to the crowd. 

Then we boarded the bullet train. Damn, that thing is fast! The speed is displayed on a digital sign, and the fastest that I caught it was around 250 km/h. There was so much noise on the train - everybody watching videos, talking on their phones, without headphones, of course. One lady had a half an hour discussion on the phone about how she should call one of her relatives, since most of the time you call your relatives by the way they relate to you: Erjiujiu, for example, means “Second uncle from mother’s side”. I call Erjiujiu because I’m supposed to call people the same way Julia does. Anyway, through all this noise, Ada and Julia managed to fall asleep, and I wrote a little, read a little, and slept a little. 3 hours later, we arrived at Xi’an.

Laolao’s nephew, who Julia and I are supposed to simply call Jiujiu, came to pick us up with his son. They didn’t bring a car or anything – they just accompanied us and helped us carry our stuff. He’s very nice and he was getting along pretty well with Ada. After we got to our hotel and dropped off our stuff, they took us to have lunch at a restaurant just around the corner from our hotel. It’s a local dish which is a soup with small pasta cubes and slices of goat meat. There’s a lot of goat meat here, which I guess is, to some extent, an influence of the large Muslim population here.

We went to see the Drum Tower, that was built in the 14^th century. Back in the days, drums would be played there every day at sunset. Today, it hosts a small drum museum and the world’s largest drum.

Then we went to hang out in the Muslim quarter. It’s super touristy, and the plus side of that is that we could get all kinds of street food as dinner. Julia was still not feeling great, so I was doing most of the eating. I had a fantastic, super juicy goat (I think) skewer with tons of cumin, a disappointing pita stuffed with chopped goat stew meat, a soggy but nice persimmon fritter, and a bowl of tiny spicy potatoes. I had a blast.

People stared at Ada constantly. Some people even took pictures of her, and at some point, Julia got really annoyed because nobody asked us if that’s o.k. She even gave one lady a hard time over it, and the lady deleted the picture, but then we saw someone taking a picture from across the street, with a zoom lens! We stopped to regroup, and I told Julia that the way I see it, we can’t win this war, so we might as well let people have that moment of joy when they look at her. I know I’m not objective, and that to me she’ll always be the cutest – I actually already decided that even when we have more kids, Ada will stay my favorite – but it does seem like Ada spreads a special light in the world. Either that or she’s a freak and I just can’t see it. These are the only explanations I can see for all this attention she’s drawing. Here, you be the judge:

We then watched this beautiful dancing water fountain for a bit while Ada took a massive dump, we changed her on a bench and called it a day.

China 2019, day 4: Chengdu

I’ve learned a new phase in Chinese: mei guan xi. It means “don’t worry about it”, but not in the Hakuna Matata way – it’s more like a “mind your own fucking business” way, and it’s the only way to get anybody in this house to stop telling you what to do.
This morning, Erjiujiu took us to the train terminal to pick up all of our train tickets for this trip. They can only be ordered online, and they can only be picked up in person, and it’s better to do it before the day of your trip. Erjiujiu likes to walk behind us so he can order us around and tell us whether to go left or right. Julia discovered a new strategy and she tells him “gen ni zou”, which means “following you”. We got our tickets pretty smoothly and headed back home.
If you’re pushing a stroller, the best way to get out of the subway station is by getting as close as possible to the gate, shove your ticket into the slot, and as soon as the gates open move forward quickly so both you and your stroller make it out on time. This time, however, I didn’t push the ticket all the way through, so the gate didn’t open. Before I got a chance to understand what was going on, Erjiujiu started yelling at me to do things – I don’t know what they were, because Erjiujiu yells in Chinese. A lady that works at the train statin heard him yell and came to my help. Thank god, I thought to myself – she’s actually going to help me! She pushed the ticket all the way through, the gate opened, and the lady gestured me to walk safely through. Of course, the gate closed right when I was passing through and hit my pelvis. “And this,” I yelled “is why I wanted to do this myself!”. Walking from the subway station Julia tried to explain to Erjiujiu why I was so annoyed, but he just didn’t get it. I can’t wait to get out of here.
We decided to take a break from all the madness and have lunch on our own. We wanted to try to find a dumpling place that we found in our last visit, and we were pretty sure we found it while walking from the subway station to Yeye and Laolao’s home.
- “Yeye, what is the closest subway station called?” Julia asked.
- “Don’t worry about it. Erjiujiu rented a car...”
- “I know how we’re travelling from here to Xian! I’m asking about the subway station that is closest to here!”
- “Let me finish! Erjiujiu rented a car and he’ll take you straight to the bullet train terminal that will take you to Xian, so it doesn’t matter what subway station is closest to here.”
- “O.K. Got it. Now can you tell me what is the subway station that is closest to here? I’m trying to find a dumpling place.”
- “So what do you need the subway station for? There are plenty of good dumpling places on the main road.”
- “I’m looking for a specific one that we ate at. It was on the way to the subway station.”
- “Oh, then go and have Chuan dumplings!” Laolao interjected.
- “How do you know that what we had?” Julia asked.
- “It doesn’t matter. Those are really good.”
It was pointless. We just left the house. We really didn’t remember where that dumpling place was, but then we got close to a huge construction site, and around it were a couple of dozens of small workers’ restaurants, with small tables on the road, and they were packed with construction workers wearing hard hats having lunch. That’s exactly what I wanted to eat. You pay 10 Yuan – about a $1.5, and get a plate, and you can scoop to your plate as much food as you want. Then you fill a bowl with as much rice as you like, and you sit at the small tables. We got two plates with a soybean stew, tofu in sauce, potatoes, eggs and tomatoes, and cooked yam. We got some attention, being the only baby and white guy among all those construction workers, but it really wasn’t that bad. However, when we were done and I got up to take pictures everybody seemed more engaged. They laughed and cheered. From what I gather, for them this is the simplest food that exists, and it’s funny to them that someone thinks it’s something special that worth documenting.

Then we wanted to find an indoor playground for Ada. Most malls have them, so we took a bus towards the main shopping area. At this point, Julia started to not feel well. This led to her first getting us on a bus at the wrong direction. We got off and switched buses, but when we got off at the shopping area, Julia was out of her element and could not navigate us around. We stumbled upon a huge indoor playground, but the toddler area was opening at 3PM, and it was only 1PM. I decided that this is not working, and that we should head back closer to home, where there was one self-contained mall that I can navigate myself and it was a walking distance from Yeye and Laolao’s home, so we could easily retreat if Julia felt worse.
We took a taxi to that mall, which turned out to be a good decision: they had a couple of indoor playgrounds, and Ada had a blast.

We went home. Ada was exhausted and fell asleep on the way. We had dinner, packed, and went to bed - tomorrow we’re finally leaving for Xian.

China 2019, day 3: Chengdu

I’m losing my mind in this place. The day started just fine: Julia heard of a bookstore that we had to see, and of course Yeye would not let us go on our own, so the four of us – Yeye, Julia, Ada, and I – took a bus, then the subway, and then a taxi, to find the bookstore. The bookstore is in a mall, and we let ourselves wander around a bit, mostly to see whether the mall has some indoor play area for Ada. Ever since we landed in Chengdu, Yeye has been trying to find a red panda backpack for Ada, just because Julia mentioned in passing something about a red panda backpack. The problem is that red pandas are not that popular in Chengdu. It’s all about the regular pandas here, which is really strange, because red pandas are way cuter. Anyway, we tried to go to toy stores just to look around, but that not an idea Yeye can understand. He walks directly to the staff, demands to know if they have anything at all with red pandas, and when they that they don’t, he completely loses interest and starts heading out. 

We finally made it to the bookstore, and it was worth the trip:

They also had a coffee shop, so we sat down for a coffee. After we left we saw through the glass walls that we missed the children area:

Then we came home for lunch and hung out in the living room. Yeye is making a lot of progress with Ada. He makes her laugh with funny noises and bribes her with pieces of pomelo. Laolao, laying on her couch with her hand-held massage device, thinks she could harvest the fruits of Yeye’s efforts, so she calls to Ada as she waves the massage thing to grab her attention. Needless to say, Ada is not impressed. 

After lunch it was Julia’s turn to go shopping with Yeye on his electric vehicle, and there was no way I was going to stay home alone with Laolao and Erjiujiu, so I decided to take Ada for a walk. As we were getting ready to leave, Laolao stood in front of me and mimed pushing a stroller. I assumed she wanted to know if I’m about to leave. “wu fenzhong!” (“five minutes!”) I said, feeling very proud of myself. I would later learn that she knew I was about to leave but wanted to know why I’m not taking the stroller, which I was, it’s just that the stroller was parked outside the apartment. That, of course, did not change the fact that Laolao was annoyed with me for not taking the stroller, which I did, and for not understanding what the fuck she wanted when she mimed pushing a stroller.

Ada and I walked along the countless stores selling karaoke gear, rice cookers, and portable heaters. There are so many of these, and it doesn’t look like they have a lot of business going. Who the hell buys all this crap? I also noticed that people stare at Ada way more that they stare at me. She is adorable, I’ll give her that, but I wonder if they recognize her Asian genes, but my genes cause her to look a bit “off” to them, which is what makes them stare at her. It also seems to be very uncommon for a stroller to pushed by a man around here, let alone a white man.

Then Julia called – she survived the trip and wanted to come and join us. With some unreliable help from Google Maps and counting mostly on our telepathy as a couple, we managed to find each other, and as we wandered around, we stumbled upon a maze of stores that sell electronic components and tools – my favorites. Serendipity won once again.

Then we got home for dinner. The amount of noise in this house is insane. The TV is on, both Yeye and Laolao watch videos on their phone, the notification sounds bleep constantly, and in between someone has to start an argument about something that doesn’t matter at all. Through all that noise I was trying to get some work done, but then – 

Then Ada fell, hit her head, and started crying. Julia picked her up and gave her comfort, which usually takes just a minute or two until Ada calms down, but Yeye felt that this is not enough. He took a knife and a pomelo and started hitting the pomelo with the knife relentlessly while yelling “Ye! Ye!”, thinking, I guess, that this will distract Ada. Ada, of course, started crying harder. I called Yeye and gestured to him to stop. He thought about it for a second, and decided to continue anyway. “Yeye, stop!” I said, and again, he paused, looked at me, and started again. I jumped from my seat, stood in front of him and yelled “stop!”. I found myself ready to punch a man in his 90s, and my heart was racing with rage. He finally stopped and Ada slowly calmed down.

Then Ada fell asleep, Julia made me tea to calm me down, and just when I thought the day was over, Yeye yelled to Julia from his home office. We had to remind him that Ada is sleeping. He had issues with his internet connection and wanted me to help. I followed him to his office, where Erjiujiu was sitting at the desk. He got up and gestured for me to sit. I wanted to find the router first in order to give it a nice power cycle. The router was on the desk, so I stood behind the desk and examined the connections, but that was not Erjiujiu’s idea of what it takes to fix the internet connection. He shook the chair vigorously and demanded that I sit. I was tired of this bullshit, so I pointed at the door and told Yeye to tell Erjiujiu to get the fuck out of my face – I used a more delicate language, of course. Yeye scolded Erjiujiu and kicked him out, and now, when he was finally out of the way, Yeye took over the vigorous shaking of the chair, demanding that I sit down. I restarted the router and sat down, and only then Yeye left. 

It’s a windows 7 machine, and everything is in Chinese. It did look like the computer was connected to the router, but there was no internet connection. I left the room frustrated and told Julia that “there’s probably nothing I can do. When this happens, it’s usually the ISP’s fault. Or that the ethernet cable is disconnected. Which I didn’t check because I was so pissed. God damnit”. I returned to the office and attached the loose ethernet cable. Now we finally have decent internet in the house. I can’t take this anymore.

China 2019, day 2: Chengdu

I woke up at 3 in the morning. It’s not like I didn’t expect that for my first night of jetlag. I settled down in Yeye’s home office and got some work done. Ada was great and other than a couple of short wakeups, she slept through the night. 

We hung around the house in the morning as everybody slowly wakes up. The family is having a hard time communicating with Ada. Yeye is pretty cool. He keeps trying, with pretty good success rates, to make Ada laugh. However, when Ada starts crying, he immediately tries to remedy the situation by making loud noises, pointing at things in attempt to distract her, and offering food for her, when all she really needs is some quiet and comfort, and all that commotion is not helping. Laolao, on the other hand, has no clue what to do with Ada. She’s having all kinds of mobility issues, so she spends most of her time lying down on the couch, either sleeping or moaning as she watches loud videos on her phone. She’d wave to Ada every now and again and release a faint “hallo!” to her. Ada doesn’t like it at all. She’s also not having it with Erjiujiu, who just looks at her. When we took the selfies yesterday, he gestured at me, since he doesn’t speak any English, to pull Ada from her stroller and hold her up for the picture. “She’s sleeping!” I scolded at him, since he also doesn’t understand any English, or any tone that doesn’t include anger. It’s a miracle to me that these people managed to raise kids of their own, but this definitely explains some traits that I’ve noticed in this family.

At some point we got a call from the clothes store – they got clothes for us. I’m constantly amazed by the level of service here in China, mostly since the premise of any interaction doesn’t seem promising: sure we don’t have the stuff here, but we’ll write down your number on a tiny piece of paper, and we’ll call you tomorrow after we get it from storage in another city. I never believe it, but they always follow through. Anyway, we followed Yeye to the store. The guys brought tons of clothes for Ada, we found 6 pieces that we liked, and Yeye insisted on buying us all of them – they are about $6 each.

When we got back home, Yeye said he still needs to get stuff for lunch, and he’s going to use his new electric vehicle for that. Julia thought it was a good Idea for me to join him, and she was right. We’re talking about this bad boy:

And 92 years old Yeye rides it like it was his bitch. We drove on the road, on sidewalks, and through markets, and 10 minutes and 5 near-death experiences we arrived at a restaurant. Yeye identified himself to one of the servers and we were told to sit down and wait for the dishes that Yeye ordered earlier on the phone. 

Six millennials were sitting around a table and eating something that looked really good, I tried to take a picture without getting noticed and failed miserably. They looked at each other silently with an expression I’ve seen only millennials wear. It said “Why is this guy taking a picture of us?”, ”who is that old guy?”, “ooh, a foreigner” and “this is so awkward. I’m so awkward.” at the same time. Now it was just me and Yeye sitting at a table. I had to make conversation. “What are they eating?” I asked, but to my disappointment, Yeye jumped from his seat, walked over to kids who seemed to have just gotten over the super awkward encounter with me, and demanded to know what they’re eating. He came back and announced “Fish!”. The kids didn’t know what to do with all that awkwardness. We finally got the stuff we ordered and drove back home.

After lunch we wanted to go to the science museum, and Yeye insisted on joining. Ever since I started working at the Exploratorium, visiting science museums is my favorite thing to do in a new city, and last time we were here the museum was closed for renovations. I was super excited to go: the place is huge, and most of the exhibits are pretty new. As we went in, Yeye tried to explain to me what the map, that was in English, said. I took the opportunity to bark at him a little bit to make sure that he takes his controlling attitude down a notch as we travel through the museum, and that worked pretty well. 

The museum itself was o.k., but not more than that. It’s beautifully designed, and it’s absolutely enormous, but a lot of exhibits are not working, or not working well, or suffer from poor design. Often, there would be a sign telling you to push a button, but no button actually exists. It pretty much feels like somebody decided to bring together every single exhibit from every science museum in the world, and to use any technology ever used in an exhibit, and put them all together in one museum. We did get to see a robot shooting hoops perfectly, some cool robotic fish, and a DNA Dance Dance Revolution game.

At some point Yeye and Julia were tired, so they sat down, while I explored some more, and when I came back Yeye was sleeping. It has been a long day for him, and the museum was about to close anyway, so we went home, had dinner, and everybody fell asleep.

China 2019, day 1: Chengdu

We’re in China again, and for the first time, I’m blogging when there are three of us on the road. In fact, the main reason for this trip is for Ada, our 1-year old, to meet her mom’s side of the family.

We landed in Chengdu at 5 in the morning, where Julia’s mom is from. More specifically, we landed to this:

There, we were welcomed by Erjiujiu – literally meaning “Second uncle from mother’s side, who is older than the mom”. He hired a guy with a minivan to pick us up, but we couldn’t find the van in the parking lot. Erjiujiu called him and started yelling at him. This is how you recognize Julia’s mom’s family. They have to either fight with someone or tell them what to do.

The driver showed up and we drove to Julia’s grandparents’ house. Yeye, Julia’s grandfather, made us breakfast: some kind of a fruit and egg shake, which was pretty good, and some cookies. We’ve stayed here in our previous visit, so we know the house, but Yeye and Laolao, Julia’s grandmother, bought two of these fancy toilets since then, and we needed to get debriefed on them. The toilet seats are heated, the water flushes automatically as you get up, there’s a jet stream to clean your butt when you’re done, hot air to dry it, and some more features that we didn’t really get, all available with a push of a button.

A remote control button.

-          “Why do you need a remote control for a toilet seat?” I asked.

-          “It came with the toilet.”

-          “Yeah, but what is it good for?”

-          “You can press it for the jet stream after you go to the bathroom.”

-          “Yeah, but why do you need it on a remote?”

-          “You don’t have to use the remote, there are buttons on the toilet too.”

Yeye’s incredible: he’s a slim man in his 90’s, his thought is completely clear, and he doesn’t even wear glasses. His sense of humor is rather simple, though. He finds jokes about underwear hilarious, but that’s a story for some other time. It seemed pointless trying to make him see how absurd having a remote for your toilet is. What is the use for that? It’s not like a car that you realized you forgot to lock when you’re halfway down the street. Even if you realized that you left your butt wet when you’re already in bed, having the toilet’s remote with you is not going to help.  Maybe you want to give the remote to someone else when you’re in the bathroom, and then you yell out:

-          “O.K, I’m done!”

-          “Cool; what would you like?”

-          “I don’t know, surprise me!”

We want to find Ada some nice traditional Chinese clothes while we’re here, and today seemed like a good opportunity. Yeye said Chengdu is second place in China for the number of cars on the streets, so everybody uses alternative modes of transportation. He took us by taxi to a clothing mall. In the taxi, I noticed how much Chengdu reminds me of Tel Aviv. Of course, it’s way bigger and busier, but something about the colors, the mixed-use city development, and the low-key disposition of the people feels very familiar to me.

The mall is a huge matrix of tiny stores, packed with tiny stores, and the children’s clothes are adorable:

But there were no traditional Chinese clothes for kids. We walked around and took taxis to three other mall. As Yeye hopped and skipped between sidewalks, he kept telling me where to push the stroller. That’s how they roll, they have to tell other people what to do. None of the malls had what we were looking for. However, in the last mall, a store owner told us that the reason we can’t find what we’re looking for is because it’s the wrong season, and if we come back tomorrow, they’ll get us some clothes from storage.

We went back home. Not long after we got there, three ladies showed up. They are sisters – Laolao’s brother’s daughters, and they came to have lunch with us. We went to have Hot Pot. The sisters and Erjiujiu sat at one of the table around a pot of spicy broth, and the rest of us sat at the other end, around a regular broth. Julia managed to get me a piece meat that was cooked in the spicy broth, and the sisters looked at me with anticipation as I took my first bite of meat. When they saw that I was handling it, they smiled in approval and started a regular supply of spicy food from their end of the table to our end. We kept a little bowl next to us where we cooled off food that we cooked in the regular broth and did not touch our chopsticks. From that bowl, we fed Ada her first pieces of tripe, duck blood, and shrimp paste balls.

Then, we went back home and succumbed to jetlag.

 

 

Chine 2017, Day 13: Chengdu Nightlife

Tize and Fan were back, but the big fight never happened, and we were a little disappointed. Instead, we had a minor standoff with Fan, of which the only way to get out was to just stop talking. Fan’s logic is extremely convoluted, and I would have summarized our argument here if the mere act of thinking about it didn’t give me a massive headache. At the end, somehow, the reason the tour was so bad was our fault. Tize, who has spent most of his adult life with Fan, gave me a subtle Jedi gesture that meant “this is not the fight you want to get into”, and so we just let it go.

Tize and Fan took us on a bus to Bao Guang, a Buddhist temple in the outskirts of Chengdu. They have a hall with 500 sculptures of gods. That’s a lot of gods.

We ate lunch at a vegetarian restaurant inside the complex, and then sat in the tea garden for a long time.

By the time we got home, it was time for dinner. After dinner, Julia and I went out to check out the nightlife. A taxi driver dropped us off at the river bank and told us to cross the bridge.
There were a few dozens of bars on that little strip, all had avid young men at the door trying to convince us to come inside, and all the bars had live music. The smaller bars had a single singer singing with playback music. The big bars had a full band.

We sat in the outdoor seating area of one of the big bars. It’s official - we’re old enough for the music inside to be too loud for us. We couldn’t read the menu so I pointed at a picture in the menu that the waitress confirmed that it was Chinese beer. I got a Budweiser.

A couple of guys sat down at the table behind us. One of them couldn’t stop staring at me. He asked Julia some questions about us, because he found the whole situation very confusing, but then he was distracted by the ear cleaners. Many of them were walking up and down the boardwalk, and our new friend decided to treat himself. He called one of them who came over and started examining his ear with a flashlight, trying to come up with a price based on how disgusting the ear was. Throughout the process, he kept staring at me, but now I was also staring at him.
- “I’m sorry,” he said to Julia. “I have actually never seen a foreigner before.”
- “That’s O.K.,” Julia replied. “He has never seen anybody getting their ears professionally cleaned before.”
Unfortunately, the price offer was too high and the deal was canceled. We left to another bar, a much smaller one, with a duo of a singer and a keyboard player. I tried getting a local beer again, and this time ended with a Carlsberg.

China 2017, day 12: Sichuan opera

​Erjiujiu offered to take Julia and me to a Daoist shrine, and I thought it would be nice to give him another chance. I did ask Julia to tell him to not push us around, and he agreed.

The shrine was nice, and Erjiujiu behaved himself, apart from several slipups where he tried to start an argument about which route is best, to which I replied with a sharp, internationally understood “ep ep ep ep ep ep!” and a scolding finger.

Then we hung out at the mall and got coffee. We went home to regroup, and the three of us left again to see a traditional Sichuan opera.
We took a taxi that dropped us off in a beautiful, unbelievably clean, pedestrian street. It’s really sad that we have nothing this nice in the US. We walked around for a bit, until we ran into a young man, walking around with an open laptop that had a professional audio interface connected to it and a nice webcam attached. He was interviewing people, so I guess he was doing some video blogging. He noticed me noticing him, so of course I was now in his show.

Then we went to a tea house that’s right outside the opera house, since free tea was included in our tickets. The tea house was full of ear cleaners. In China, these are actual people who walk around with a set of tools, offering people to get their ears cleaned for money. They clink one of them, which looks like giant tweezers, to announce their presence, which is really loud and annoying, because some ten cleaners are present in the tea house, and they are present very close to you.

The opera was fine. The set, lighting, and costumes are impressive. The story line is very thin, and the emphasis is on acts of acrobatics, singing and dancing. Some of these acts are good, especially the acrobatics. Some of them are pretty lame, like the dancing and acting. Generally speaking, the performers seemed very indifferent. Erjiujiu supplied some action as he kept pointing at things for us, in case we missed the stuff that was happening right in front of our fucking faces. Luckily, Julia was sitting right between the two of us, so he didn’t bother me that much.

China 2017, day 11: Emei Mountain

The day before, the organizer gave us two options for spending this day. The long route, 19 kilometers in length, requires waking up at 5 o’clock in the morning, getting a very light breakfast, and the highlights - sunrise, some halo over a Buddha sculpture head, and the view of the valley - will not be visible due to the weather. The shorter route is only 11 kilometers, requires getting up at 7, breakfast will be available at the hotel, and you get to hang out with monkeys. Moreover, it was cheaper. It was obvious that we were being manipulated to choose the shorter route, but with my healing foot and our inherent laziness, we played along.

The first half of the day was extremely similar to the previous one: we got new badges and a new, but just as annoying, tour guide named Xiao Yang, who explained that she does not get her commission based on the crap that we buy. We saw a temple, and then we were taken to meet… the fucking Yi. You’d think that this time they would tell us something interesting, but then you would be wrong. We were led to one of some ten rooms, each one had a tour group, with a Yi woman explaining, once again, the benefits of silver. Then we were taken to a store, even bigger than the one we were in the previous day. Julia and I waited outside, and as time went by the entire group was waiting with us. Except for Miss Rainbow, who Xiao Yang actually had to pull out from the store.

Today, Xiao Yang explained, lunch will be at 3PM, but we’ll stop for some snacks around noon, and the tea and alcohol will be free. By now we knew that they’re going to try to sell us something. We started walking down a mountain. On both sides of the path, there were merchants selling mostly snacks and tea, but also sticks, to scare the monkeys away in case they jump on you, and many small restaurants where tour groups sat with their guide, and all these restaurants looked exactly the same. Around noon, we were led into one of them as well. We were served tea and got a big pitcher of some weird alcoholic drink. Then a young lady who works at that joint started her spiel. Basically, she was pushing tea leaves and herbs to us to put in your cheap booze. Everybody was reluctant to cooperate, but surprisingly, it was Xiao Yang that moved to more aggressive marketing. “You seem like a nice guy,” she said to one man in our group, as she massaged his shoulders, “help me out here!” She tried different techniques on different people. When her eyes met our dismissive expressions, she said “you’re probably more coffee folks…”. It’s really incredible, how shameless this whole operation is.

A couple of people bought some stuff, probably in an attempt to silence Xiao Yang’s tiny, piercing voice, while I and a couple of guys just took shots of the liquor. We finally left, and as we continued walking down the mountain, we noticed that the merchants are selling the same kind of tea for much lower prices, the further we were from one of these restaurants, the lower the price was. At its cheapest, it was about one eighth of what Xiao Yang tried to peddle at.

We stopped at a pavilion and were given directions: if we wanted to go see the monkeys - go 3 kilometers up the path to the monkeys, go 3 kilometers back to the pavilion, and continue 3 kilometers to meet for lunch. This gives us a full Xiao Yang-free 9 kilometers.

So we got to the monkeys, and received a fascinating lesson on the evolution of monkeys, humans, and economics. Since people come to see the monkeys, the merchants also come to sell things to the people, mostly tiny bags of nuts. The monkeys jump on the people to take food from them. When monkeys jump on people, the merchants give the people tiny bags of nuts to convince the monkeys to get off, and then the people must give the merchants money. This encourages the monkeys to jump on people, which encourages people to come to the monkeys, which encourages merchants to come to the people with tiny bags of nuts. Witnessing this whole situation is heartbreaking, especially in light of how fat the monkeys have become.

One monkey jumped on Julia’s head, and immediately a merchant was there with a tiny bag of nuts. I pushed her away, because I didn’t want her in the picture I was taking, and felt some remorse for not buying one​ of those sticks. She stayed out of the frame, but kept yelling at Julia, trying to make her take the nuts. Even with a monkey on her head, Julia managed to resist.

There are three things you can do in the face of violence: absorb, retaliate, or escalate. I don’t believe in retaliation - it leads nowhere. I usually prefer absorbing. Most often, it breaks the circle of violence. However, I do think escalation is appropriate in certain circumstances, like when time is a crucial factor, or when absorption doesn’t work. Sticking nuts in your hand when you have a monkey on your head and then charging you for it is a violent act, and the timing did not allow me to absorb. Using my hands to push the merchant back is not acceptable in China, and therefore it’s perceived as escalation. The merchant was very upset, but she did move away to a distance which I was happy with, so escalation did work. But this is my point of view. From the merchant’s point of view, and generally in China, her acts are not violent at all, and my actions were not escalation of the violence, but rather an initiation of it. I don’t have a conclusion here, just some thoughts to share.

We walked double time to make it back in time for our 3:30pm deadline.We were a little worried, because the only person we ran into on the trail was Miss Rainbow. When we finally made it to the rendezvous point, we realized that other than her and us, nobody went to see the monkeys. They have been sitting the whole time in a restaurant waiting for us. During these entire two days of hard peddling, there were two things worth seeing - the giant Buddha and the monkeys. These people gave up one of them. I don’t get it.

We got on the bus and started the long ride back to Chengdu. At home, we told Yeye and Erjiujiu the entire story. They were incredibly upset and blamed Fan, who was still away with Tize for his reunion. Erjiujiu showed us pictures of the things we were supposed to see on the mountain, like beautiful shrines and amazing views, none of them looked familiar. Erjiujiu was furious. We went to bed in great anticipation for the big fight that would happen when Tize and Fan come home.