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June Journal

In which I extol peasant virtues

June 2nd, 2005
    Moth Plague Hits Town- Yilongzhongxue, Sichuan Province, PRC. Billions of moths have overwhelmed a small village in rural China. They cover every surface, and form thick, soft encrustations on window screens at night. Outside the gates of a local school, a pile of dead moths measures over 2.4 decimeters in height and 7.36 decimeters in diameter. Local scientists are scratching their heads in stupefaction.

June 5th, 2005
    This week we have four days off in order to accommodate a massive spurt of exams. The senior students will take the exams for which they have been preparing for twelve years. I planned to climb some local mountain peaks during this time, but so far it has been raining constantly. In fact, hundreds of people in other parts of China have died in flooding. Here the paths have turned to deep mud. The peasants have come out with some awesome rain gear, including woven hats the size of wagon wheels. Sort of like mounting a bamboo umbrella on your head. The effect is especially impressive when you are less than four feet tall. Maybe it’s the monsoon season or something. A few months ago, they planted about 100 new little trees all around the school, all of which died. They ripped them out. Now they are planting new trees, which might fare better in the rain. I was very surprised to see that they left almost no roots on the trees that they were planting. Trees with 3” trunks, six feet high, had a dinky little root ball the size of a noodle bowl. No wonder they al died. They are also planting larger trees along the streets, also lacking roots. Is this just an unusually massive instance of incompetence, or will the trees survive? I’m curious. Several of them have already fallen over in the water-logged ground.
    So, I’ve been staying inside, surfing the net and studying Tibetan, in preparation for my travels. I long ago gave up any efforts to learn Chinese. When I first came here, I wanted to learn it, but I somehow lost all interest. There are several reasons for this. First, the words and their tones just would not stick in my mind at all. Normally when I learn a language, I make big lists of words and memorize them. This didn’t work for Chinese. The few words I did manage to remember were useless, because nobody understood them. Somehow, Chinese doesn’t seem to be a cool language, like Arabic. The letters of an Arabic street-sign seem to scintillate with hidden meaning, but when I see a set of Chinese glyphs, I tend to think “Damn, what a moronic way of writing.” I seem to be able to get along just fine knowing only the numbers and a few other phrases. So many people want to speak English with me anyway.

June 6th, 2005
    The class distinctions in China are very apparent. There seem to be two main groups, workers and peasants. The workers are teachers, shop owners, administrators and students. They wear clean western clothes, possess a few electronic devices, and seem plump and happy. The peasants are much more exotic and fascinating. They are generally at least a foot shorter than the workers, and they wear simple, handmade clothes. They generally carry some wooden or wickerwork object, such as a split bamboo pole for hauling, a wooden basket, or an intricate straw hat. They have an interesting quality of being worn or polished down to a tough, essential core, like the banister in a public library. Their clothes and tool have this quality too. These are the farmers and construction workers. The clean and westernized workers are boring, but the peasants hold a fascinating power like elemental earth spirits.
    7:20 PM I’ve just gotten back from a long and wonderful walk I the countryside. After days of rain, today dawned blue and clear. A few remaining clouds disappeared. Around 2 PM, the paths were dry enough to go for a walk. My destination was a particularly high and imposing triangular mountain North of town. I headed over the ridge and out into the countryside. I could see the high peak behind a smaller mountain with a factory below and a red glyph on top. At one point, the path I was following degenerated from a wide road into a tiny footpath in about 20 meters, leading me into the courtyard of some peasant’s mud house. They restrained their dogs and let me through. Soon I found my way up onto a ridge, and a clear, steep path to the summit. At about five, I reached the top. The view was awesome. It’s the highest point for miles around, and I could see far, far out into the distance, with range after range of hills. The sky was deep blue and the land bright green after many days of rain. The sun was just beginning to sink into the West. I took off my orange shirt and wrapped it around my head like a turban. Standing alone in the little meadow at the peak felt so wonderful. I could see hawks soaring below, and strange mountains in the ultimate distance to the far North. I’d brought some incense to burn for the full moon, but the feeling up there was so high and pure that I felt burning something would be more of a desecration than an offering. I ended up lighting it at a small Buddhist rock carving below the peak. After trying to burn the view and feeling into my memory, I headed back towards Yilong, discovering a quicker way. Once in the outskirts of town, I invested I a delicious popsicle, which purported by packaging to be coconut, but was actually honey flavored with a cherry in it. Yum. Then, back in town, I was slurping up my nightly noodles on the street, when I heard a prolonged bonging of gongs. Some traveling kids were putting on a display of juggling, contortionism and unicyclage. They were pretty good. The little girl contortionist performed some amazing involutions. It made me wonder if someone as notoriously inflexible as I could ever become so limber as to lay with my chin on the ground and raise my legs up and over my head, putting my feet on either side, then slowly stand up.     Meanwhile, our school is full of hundreds of visiting students, here for their exams.

June 7th, 2005
    This exam business is serious. The police blocked off the whole road leading to our school, and officials set up cordons around the exam buildings so no one could get near. A police van was stationed outside the school gates. I observed all these precautions as I set off for another day of hiking in the countryside. My destination was a distinctive pointy mountain to the South. I walked through town, then turned off along the dirt road leading to the dump. I found my way down to the bridge over the river, then walked along narrow paths between rice paddies. I reflected that much of China is essentially out of control of the central government because hundreds of millions of people must live in little hamlets that can be reached only along narrow muddy footpaths. No cop could ever drive in there. I hiked up the other side of the mountain and reached a table mountain with good views on all sides. I could see the peak I reached yesterday, way off to the North and higher up. I love getting up above the level where the houses and dogs are, up onto the ridge. I reached the pointy mountain easily, but it was a bit disappointing, as the top was forested- thus no view. However, it was in this locality that I elected to consume my celebratory banana. I then walked over to the white pagoda that I’d visited before, on March 6th. I climbed up to the top, feeling very hot and sweaty. Today is a hot, airless day with a few clouds and a little haze. Not as beautiful as yesterday, when it was dead clear, like it gets sometimes in Eastern Oregon.
    Walking back, I passed several farmers and old ladies threshing grain. They did this on roadsides, exposed rocks, concrete slabs, tarps, or most commonly, on large wickerwork mats with raised edges. You basically need a flat, clear surface. I’m still not exactly sure what they were doing. It looked like they were just hitting it with sticks, or raking it. Walking back, I reflected on the amazing number of things that the rural Chinese can make out of woven bamboo wickerwork. Almost anything that is made of plastic or metal in the West is can be made of wicker here. Along the roadside, I found one of those cast off giant wicker rain hats. It was about 4 feet across. I wore it as a sunhat for a while, but it didn’t fit well, so eventually I tossed it off abridge into the river and watched it float away. I got back and took a shower. The hot water wasn’t working, but I didn’t much mind.


    7:09 PM I feel I should give some further description of my classroom. At the front is the new blackboard, with an English map of the world to the left, and a bunch of protruding wires and circuit breakers to the right. Up front is the lopsided, gimped desk I disabled by kicking. The students sit in twelve rows of twelve chairs. The chairs are made of laminated wood, and are hinged on a metal pin, which nothing prevents from moving out of its hole. Thus, about once a day, a student will suddenly disappear from the ranks of heads, accompanied by a tremendous crashing sound as they impact the loogie-strewn floor. Depending on the severity of their injuries, they reappear after various lengths of time. The students have a narrow writing place, covered solid in their inscrutable glyphs-generations of graffiti. Along the edge of the desktop is a plastic strip that can be, and often is, removed and flailed around as a whip. Most of these strips are missing, but a few remain in some backwaters. Large windows line either side. Six fluorescent lights and two fans adorn the ceiling. These are turned off and on by means of awesome, totally old-school circuit breakers with ceramic handles. At the back of the classroom is a pile of trash and some brooms that I occasionally employ for educational purposes. The double doors are locked with an impressive iron and steel padlock, to which I have the key.
    7:21 PM I have long meditated on the differences between Egypt and China. I realize that this is a random and perhaps useless juxtaposition, like the Bolivian ambassador to the Mauritius, but since I’ve lived in both places, I often compare them in my thoughts. In terms of living there as an expat, the first and most obvious difference is in the people. The Chinese are overwhelmingly polite, friendly, welcoming and honest. Also, there is just something about the Chinese national character that I find totally sympathetic. Most people here are refreshingly direct and straightforward, thrifty without being greedy, and somehow easy to relate to. As for the Egyptians, a more abominable race of sycophantic, spineless, parasitic scum never befouled the face of the earth. I did meet a few nice Egyptians, but on the whole they absolutely revolted me with their jaw-dropping rudeness, flagrant greed, and constant lying. I felt that a pervasive mendacity undercut their whole culture. Nevertheless, I must admit that living in Egypt was much more fascinating, educational and exotic than living in China. Weird, this, considering that Egypt is right next to Europe, and China is on the other side of the planet. There are several reasons for this. Foremost is that the Chinese have adopted every aspect of western culture that they possibly can, whereas the Egyptians have resisted and stuck with their own traditions. Walking around a typical Chinese city is pretty much like walking around Western city, except everyone is Asian and the food is totally weird. Walking through the medieval backstreets of Cairo was like being back in the 12th century. Another reason is that the Chinese seem to have carefully obliterated every aspect of their past history, except for a few pagodas here and there. In Cairo, I could visit places thousands of years old, and within walking distance of my apartment were buildings, still in use, from every century going back to about 800 AD. Another reason why Cairo was so much more fascinating than China is aesthetic. Everything in Egypt, from newspapers to matchboxes, to advertisements to street signs, just looked magnificently old-school, straight out of a time warp from the late 1940’s. The Chinese aesthetic is to make an even uglier version of American glitzy, crap-filled clutter. I’m reminded of how, when I told people in the US that I was moving to Egypt, they were amazed and shocked. Later when I said that I was moving to china, it seemed like that was much more within their comprehension. China is totally modern and westernized, even more so than large parts of the USA. Also, walking around Cairo, I often had the feeling that I was misplaced in space and time, that I had done something so weird by moving there that I had somehow interfered in the natural, accepted order of things. So, if I took the last seat on a meecrobus, or stepped in someone’s way in the street, it was definitely me who was out of line by even being there. Here in China I am part of the accepted plan again. I feel I must get back out.

June 8th, 2005
    For some reason, I almost never sleep through the night here in China. I always wake up around 2 to 4 in the morning with a stuffy nose. I stare into darkness for hours. Last night I decided to listen to my shortwave radio, and was delighted to find a different set of stations was audible, distinct from the ones I can hear before midnight. The English Language Service from North Korea was by far the coolest. The narrator had a voice like Dracula’s, heavy, dignified, and seductive, with a slight East European accent. First came a litany of diplomatic info- the 41st anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Ethiopia and North Korea. The king of Sweden’s birthday. Various sub-ministers of this and that. Quite quaint. Then came a prolonged and repetitive indictment of the American nuclear presence in South Korea. Dracula emphasized that if America removed its nukes, “Korea” would remove its own. Seems like a very reasonable request to me. After the rant was finally over, we were treated to a narration of a charming anecdote about the exalted supreme revered marshal Kim Il Sung, and how he stayed at an old man’s humble cottage during the war in 1950. Kim Il Sung especially enquired of the old man’s health. He did not mind that the wall was stained with smoke from the kitchen fire. Next Dracula launched into a prolonged series of ritualistic praises of Kim Il Song and Kim Jong Il. I really wish I could remember the exact honorific phrases and ritual praise he used each time he referred to one of those Kims. Something like “I can scarcely restrain my overwhelming gratitude and love for the extremely exalted marshal Kim Il Sung. His published works on socialism, history, philosophy, science, and all other topics lead us to the glorious socialist future.” Something like that. I specifically remember the phrase “…all other topics.” (Was he referring to Kim Il Sung’s little known works on Necromancy, microcephaly in Indonesian tree shrews, the effects of ayahuasca on cattle, Tantric sex practices, mustache trimming in South-Eastern Bavaria, Apoplexy in the lesser rodents, the electromagnetic levitation of whales, transvestism, spoon bending, Melanesian cinema, etc…?) Old Dracula could barely restrain himself from collapsing into uncontrolled spasms of sycophantic gratitude. When the emotions surged too high, bits of militaristic music were played, such as “The Great Leader is Always With Us.” Finally, sometime after 4 AM, the broadcast terminated. The strong signal was replaced by a soft, somnolescent static, punctuated by faint beeps. The broadcast was so interesting, and Dracula’s narration so compelling, that I may be tempted once more to arise in the deepest night and tune in.
    5:50 PM While reading The Gulag Archipelago some time ago, I came across a quotation from Lenin- “Only those who do nothing make no mistakes.” I thought this would be a great motto for my students, who are so afraid of committing errors. This afternoon, I started copying the saying onto a large sheet of paper to display in the classroom, but before I’d gotten very far into the task, I realized that the saying could be interpreted in two opposite ways. Lenin and I would both interpret it to mean that you will accomplish nothing unless you give up your fear of making mistakes. My students, I realized, would interpret it to mean that if you do nothing, not only will you avoid mistakes, but you won’t have to do anything either! That is already their guiding philosophy, and they need no poster to remind them.

June 12th, 2005
    The rains across China have washed hundreds away. Here in Yilong, a huge retaining wall buckled ominously outward, and some of its stones cracked and fell out. The wall is about 30 feet high, and made of giant, hand-carved stone blocks. It holds back a large hillside, a road and buildings. It’s right next to a playground, so if it collapsed, many might be crushed to death. The schools indomitable team of laborers was taken away from their current project and made to start demolishing the wall. It’s pretty cool to watch them nudging the huge blocks inch by inch until they tumble off and slam into the pavement below. I’m very curious to see how they will take apart the whole thing, what will hold back the earth when it’s gone, and what they build to replace it. I love watching the workmen and women, and they’ve gotten used to me staring at them. Hey, I figure everyone stares at me all the time, so I’m justified in staring back a bit.
   I’ve noticed these weird encrusted eggs for sale, and today I finally invested in one. They seem to have a coating of grayish sawdust encrusted onto them. I’ve watched people preparing them. First, the eggs are coated in a thin clay, then rolled in sawdust of some other type of crap. I took my encrusted egg home and began to open it with some trepidation. It was SO WEIRD inside! The white part had turned into a brownish translucent jelly, while the interior had solidified into a greenish-black clot. The smell released was absolutely horrific. The mind reels to imagine any sentient being ingesting something that smelled like that. Say you take a shit in a big ziplock bag, toss in a dead fish, seal it, and leave it in direct sunlight for ten days. It smelled worse than that. They also have some sort of fried tofu that smells different and even worse. It smells a little like that certain kind of “preserved” fish they had in Egypt, which if you accidentally walked by one of its stores, even hours later devastating olfactory flashbacks would make you gag. Even a single molecule impacting into the nasal lining explodes like a hydrogen bomb of stench.

June 13th, 2005
    A few days ago I invested in a cassette by someone named “Mozate.” Despite the typically glitzy and excessive packaging, the tape had obviously been pirated from a CD, for it contained CD skips and jumps in a few places. Nevertheless, I was most impressed. I hadn’t really listened to Mozate for about ten years. It made me interested in that sort of early proto-Romantic period in the late 1700’s with Coleridge, Ossian, Walpole, and so on.

June 14th, 2005
    A hot, sticky, airless day. The students and I are lethargic. They fan themselves constantly. My computer is broken. Without internet access, my entertainment options have gone from limited to zero. I half suspect that the authorities purposely crashed my computer. I had been trying to gather information about Tibet, but most of the sites relating to it were blocked. Maybe if one computer gets X amount of “access denied” messages, it is summarily tried and shot, as it were. So, with nothing to do, I think I’ll attempt some alchemical experiments in the kitchen. I’ve noticed that weird things happen to the residue of rice cooking. Perhaps it’s possible to form a dense, solid ball of rice effluvia.

June 15th, 2005
    Much mention has been made in these pages, of the laboring crew of workers continually toiling around the school. But, I feel they deserve a chapter of their own. From dawn till dusk, the music of their hammers can be heard, as they shape rocks. Sometimes they sing a special song when they are pounding Earth flat. It sounds very like some old railroad or cotton picker song from the old South. Mostly they are men, perhaps in their 40’s or 50’s. Their bodies are tanned deep brown. They are lean, wiry and muscular. There is something rare and interesting in seeing old people who are so healthy and powerful. The type is almost non-existent in the West. They wear battered straw hats, tattered shirts, and curious home-made sandals. These are just a sole tied around the foot with a flap to protect the largest of the toes. The workers are so strong, simple, and self-reliant that they are almost mysterious. Some women work with them too, mostly doing things like mixing mortar and carrying dirt and sand. It’s so cool that men and women work together on construction here. This is such a contrast from the West, where women even straying near construction sites are routinely harassed. The only machine used in the construction is a truck to carry the big stone blocks from the quarry to the school. Watching these folks work, I reflect that this crew alone could probably take on any sizable American town and kick every last ass in it. Basically, I’m in love with them all.


    Today is another brutally hot, muggy, airless day. Every conceivable variety of fan is employed, from elegant silken fans that fold up, to sturdy woven bamboo fans that don’t. Everything is wet. My students loll listlessly in their packed rows. Out the steamed windows, the hills are hidden in a hot haze. The last class today was cancelled because of extreme heat. In fact, the schedule this week has been erratic and demented, with classes randomly cancelled, or being held in obscure or distant localities. The exam plague has infected the teachers themselves, who must now get a taste of their own rigorous medicine.

June 16th, 2005
    After teaching one class this morning, I checked my email on my roommate’s computer. My father had written to me, urging me to visit the Zhu De museum in central Yilong, so I set off to give it a try. Zhu De was one of the top communist leaders, and the supreme leader of the military during the long march and the Second World War. His hometown was the nearby village of Ma’an, hence the museum in Yilong. The place had always looked closed when I walked past, but today it was open. In the gardens stood a tiny, old-school fighter jet, clearly built on the old principles of a huge engine with a cockpit on top. The garden and museum were silent and deserted. A statue of Zhu De presided. The whole place had a very haunted, mothbally feeling. Inside were lots of old photos of the great marshal. It appeared that he had developed a profound interest in visiting farms and factories. Occasionally, he diverged to a yurt. One photo showed him carrying baskets on a pole in the traditional peasant fashion. Near the door was a locked case containing postcards and some very cool enameled pins with Zhu’s portrait. I wanted to buy something, but nobody was there to open the cabinet. Perhaps this inability to buy something was in the true communist spirit.
    On my way out through the garden, I observed a banana tree in flower. Until then I’d never been quite clear on what bananas actually were. Through a tiny doorway, I discovered a whole nother part of the museum. This was actually more interesting, for it contained Zhu De’s old PLA jacket and much-decayed bedroll. On my way home, I stopped to play electric guitar with some kids in a store. I played Wipeout for them. Then, a few of the band members took me across the street to get their photos taken with me. Now they are famous.

June 17th, 2005
    Just now, walking into the kitchen, I spied an enormous cockroach luxuriating between the cutting board and the wall. On an impulse, I slammed the board against the wall, squashing the loathsome pest. Then, recollecting the Buddhist injunction to protect all living beings, I pilled the board back, knowing the amazing re-inflationary capabilities of insect life, and expecting to see it scurry away once recovered. After cooking my ramen, I glanced over at the site of the incident. A frantic trail of hundreds of ants already stretched between the roach and a hole in the tiling. There was something shocking in the rapidity of this development. In a world teeming with life, even a corpse cannot lie idle for a second.
    In other news, my computer is fixed, and I’ve been busily gathering information for my summer travels. I learned all kind of interesting things about the Buddhist and Manichean kingdoms of the Taklamakan desert. Apparently, an Indo-European people lived there until 700 AD. In 1000 BC powerful females there wore pointed conical hats. I also got deep into the subject of pointy hats. Why do witches, wizards, and dunces wear pointed headgear? This is a vast and involuted subject, worthy of a book of its own, which I plan to write, but suffice it to say that bronze-age European shamans wore tall, pointy gold hats with complex solar and lunar calendars inscribed on them. Several of these have actually been found, sometimes in bogs.

June 20th, 2005
    Today a new phenomenon appeared in town. Young boys were flying iridescent green beetles tied to threads. The beetles would fly around, then cling to objects and passersby. It reminded me of a miniature kite. When I first saw it, it seemed almost magical or paranormal, until I realized that the black spot flying around was actually a beetle. I was interested to note that when one of these beetles became entangled in a passing woman’s hair, she coolly extricated it and gave it back to the boy, without making any fuss at all.

June 24th, 2005
    I’ve started teaching the last week of classes. Supposedly, school ends next Thursday. I decided to play some music for the students. I chose what I thought they were sure to like- the brilliant ska dance music of Jamaican Desmond Decker. The reaction was totally surprising. They really hated it! I could just tell that they were suffering through it in agony, so I switched the lesson to playing a game instead. I was sure that they would enjoy the music, as it’s so fast, happy, and eminently danceable. My Egyptian students really liked the one reggae song that I played for them. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, though, bearing in mind the fact that Chinese music is absolutely the most execrable crap possible. I guess that they just have no feeling for the African rhythms upon which American music is based. They only like glitzy, synthetic, saccharine pop music. I’ve often though that an MRI scan of a typical Chinese brain would show a walnut-sized vacuity in the region responsible for music. They’ve really taken the worst, most plastic and cheesy American music and made it even more unbearable. The sound of a car alarm might be a number #1 hit if released here on CD.

June 26th, 2005
    Only four days of teaching left. Although seven weeks ago, I couldn’t wait to leave, I’ve been feeling an odd sort of sadness lately. Not Keat’s “high sorrowful” but something more like Melville’s “not unpleasing melancholy,” or what I call “the abandoned miniature golf course feeling.” Sometimes a sort of veil is cast aside, and I can see how truly tawdry, gaudy, transient, and cheap are all human aspirations and desires, from the useless plastic trash people spend their lives chasing, to their deepest hopes. Sad and weak attempts at amusement fill me with an inexpressible desolation and despair. Vast, ardent efforts at celebration and happiness result merely in disjected litter, faded trashpiles that serve only as monuments to total futility and loss.

June 29th, 2005
    Typically, I’ve only just earned that today is the last day of teaching, not tomorrow, as we had been told. Last night my boss paid me a huge wad of cash - 9,000 Yuan, or about 1,124 USD. I sewed part of it up into a secret pocket, and put the rest of it into the bank. Who knows if I’ll be able to extract it. Thus, my travels are about to begin. My plan is to go back to Chengdu, buy a musical instrument for my landlord, who is storing my books, and mail it to him, along with some other crap I’ve accumulated. Then to Kham, or Eastern Tibet, and onwards towards the Taklamakan desert. Eventually I want to go through Tibet proper into Nepal and India.
    Things I’ll miss about Yilong are the ability to cook my own food, wandering in the countryside, infinite internet access, and the throngs of super-friendly kids. Things I won’t miss are the constant reek of open vats of raw human shit, and the isolation. Actually, I like isolation, and realistically speaking, I’m not likely to encounter any significant reduction in reeking vats of sewage for a very long time to come. Also, not having to think up lessons and clown around with the kids will be a relief. The prospect of wandering around Asia is pleasing. Sometimes now I begin to catch edges of that certain feeling of emptiness and total freedom associated with setting out on travels. For this trip, I decided to pare my possessions down to an absolute minimum. This still seems to contain an undue amount of books, however. I also cut off all the excess straps from my backpack.

June 30th, 2005
    Last night my roommate Arron and I were taken out to dinner by Mr.Liu, our boss, Mr. Jiang, the school’s principle, two English teachers, and other assorted luminaries. We drank many shots of beer, mercifully unwarmed, and ate all sorts of interesting food. As special dish of eggs and tomato had been prepared for me, the vegetarian. We had our own room with a servant in attendance. Arron left today for his own travels. We had gotten along quite well together, despite being somewhat different sorts of people. He was friendly and talkative, while I am solitary and quiet. Today is my last day here in Yilong. I could have left, but decided to relax a bit, pack my crap, and have a final look around town.

July Journal

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