lost in translation

I know that poking fun at chinese interpretations of english is a pretty cheap shot, but I feel like these two should be exempt.



this is from the menu of one of Guilin airport's chinese restaurants -- this isn't exactly a small regional airport, you can fly direct here from London. I wonder what 'sliced meat cloud' is?



and this is a wet towelette that Air China gave me after my meal -- Air China is part of the star alliance that also includes United, Lufthansa, etc., so it's not like they don't have contact with the western world. but perhaps they don't have much contact with middle eastern patrons?

obviously, someone smoked up and then watched 'bubble boy'

Zorbing is all the rage in Manali, for obvious reasons.

I mean, who wouldn't want to be shoved into a big plastic ball with an opening that is eerily reminiscent of an anus?





and then get strapped in and rolled down a hill, with 3 indian guys running alongside you "in case anything goes wrong."



I just feel bad for this poor guy, who has to slog up that hill only to . . .run our muddy shoes down.

next time, I'll try "ladies room"

I've been pretty lazy about blogging lately, for a couple of reasons -- 1) toward the end of my stay in india, I was starting to get a little stir crazy, so I sort of shut down for a bit, and 2) once I left india and arrived in hong kong, I was too busy lapping up western amenities and culture to think about writing. I'll have to backtrack at some point so I can finish my thoughts on india, but meanwhile I'll write a little about my experiences so far in china. if you've been following my blog, you can probably guess what this will be about. yup, toilets.

so I've been on the chinese mainland for about 4 days now, and I grossly underestimated how necessary a working knowledge of mandarin is. today, I went cycling in the countryside with 2 friends, Sara and Cameron, and at one point I needed to find a bathroom. I walked over to a little chinese roadside eatery and asked if there was a toilet. she obviously didn't understand. here's the rest of the, uh, conversation --

me: toilet . . .uh, bathroom?
woman: (looks at me blankly)
me: [thinks to self, shit, how do I gesture this?] uh okay. toilet? [mimes squatting down on toilet, on pavement in front of passing bicyclists and nearby farmers]
woman: (smiles, says something in chinese, but still doesn't understand)
me: [thinks to self, fuck, what else can I do?] uh . . .okay. you know eating? [mimes shovelling food into mouth] then finish? [mimes rubbing belly with peaceful look on face] then toilet? [mimes squatting on toilet again, this time to the amusement of a passing tractor]
woman: (smiles, says in chinese, obviously has no idea what I am doing)

at this point, I give up and walk back to Sara in defeat. Sara speaks some mandarin so says she will try to talk to the woman. she comes back laughing -- apparently if I had just asked for the w.c., the woman would have understood. I come back to the eatery shyly, and meanwhile all the chinese staff are in hysterics because they finally understand what all my pantomiming meant. folks, the lesson of the story is this: exhaust every single word you know for 'toilet' before you start trying to act it out.

you know it's hard out here for a pimp. I mean, rickshaw driver.

my friend Bjorn is learning Hindi and as I was flipping through his lesson book, I noticed this. man, I definitely would have paid more attention in french if we had anything half this interesting to translate.

dirty hippie alert #4: modern "dancers"

yesterday, my friend Bjorn asked me and another friend, Philip, if we wanted to go to a japanese dance performance. my initial thought was, awesome, maybe it's kabuki! no, it was even better. I don't even remember the name of the style of dance, but it's all about letting your inner being express itself. in a later conversation, one of the dancers called it "a dance of the subconscious."

this guy's inner being seemed to like clinging to the walls and acting super "special". I mean, christ, how else do you describe this.

and apparently his inner being is actually a monkey.

during all the performances, the other dancers would sit to the side and "feel inspired" by the dance. you can't really tell in this picture, but the guy in the black is swaying in circles, the woman in pink is bobbing up and down, and the woman in yellow is snarling and clawing at the floor.

this is during the finale, when all 5 dancers let their inner beings start interacting.

it started raining, so obviously their inner beings wanted to go outside and be in harmony with nature.

theatre was in the stunningly beautiful, large home of the japanese teacher, overlooking the mountains. the dancer pictured below told me that you have to take the course for a minimum of 3 months, and I couldn't help thinking, you sucker, you are paying the utilities for this guy's pool so that he can teach you crap. absolute crap.


later that night, Bjorn, Philip and I were sitting around shooting the shit and the performance came up. I won't name names, but here's a little slice of our deconstruction. see if you can guess who said what:

"it was really interesting, I think it was about the ego overcoming the self."
"maybe, I thought it was more about life and death and the struggle of the spirit to break free of that cycle."
"uh huh. hmmm. yeah . . .I could, uh, see that."

just to be clear (so I don't go to hell for this post), Bjorn and Philip are awesome and the dancers I talked to were really cool. and I'm sure the dance is therapeutic and all that, and who knows what sort of fucked up dance my inner being would do. but I really, really have no interest in finding out :)

dirty hippie alert #3: the osho devotee

my past couple of posts have been pretty serious, so I figured I would counter with some dirty hippie action. I've been slacking on the alerts due to a combination of slow internet connection and always forgetting to bring my camera to the internet cafe. this is actually an alert from february, when I was visiting my friend Cyrille in pune.

this was taken outside a german bakery near the osho ashram. for those of you who don't know osho, he is hot shit over here. officially, he is an indian guru who spent time in oregon establishing a commune, and was subsequently deported for immigration violations and tax fraud. unofficially, he is the "sex guru." he's got a pretty open attitude toward sex -- so open that in order to take workshops at his ashram, men and women (mainly westerners) are required to take an HIV text. why? because osho's belief is that people should be free to act on their sexual impulses, and if that means orgies in the public gardens for everyone to see (I've actually heard reports of this), then so be it. unsurprisingly, the demographic at the ashram apparently becomes somewhat skewed, with older western men comprising the majority of devotees. like this guy. come to papa!

the worth of the west

during my time in india, I've had to defend myself against a fair amount of anti-americanism -- there aren't very many americans travelling in this region, so the few americans who are here end up being a sort of whipping post for frustrated europeans, australians, and other folk. after explaining to them that more than half of americans actually disagree with bush and that I myself worked for 5 years against his domestic policy, they usually let up a little. then we inevitably talk about obama v. hillary, and everyone is excited to see what happens. weirdly, all these conversations have sort of reinforced why I love the u.s. -- sure we've been in a dark time with bush, but people have never stopped trying to change things. and now, with the democratic primaries, there is so much potential for good in the future. coupled with the fact that the past few weeks in india have been really trying, I've been oozing with pride over the fact that I'm from the western world -- women are treated unbelievably better and have much more self-expression, I don't constantly worry about getting ripped off or taken for a ride, we don't throw our garbage in the street or river, etc. if patriotism was about western values and the western way of living, I would be uncle sam's favorite poster child.

all that has changed in dharamsala. it is sobering to understand how much power the west has, and how frustratingly little they do with it, particularly in situations like tibet. I thought I knew what 'marginalized' meant through my work in the u.s. (of COURSE, big drug companies are going to take advantage of old people! of COURSE, wealthy companies are going to exploit their workers!), but the situation with these tibetans is really opening my eyes to how much worse marginalization can get. the organizer in me wants to build a movement from the ground up, but how do you do that against a behemoth like china that doesn't actually give a shit? how do you do that when your people are so spread out and your real government is in exile? what the tibetans need is outside interference, but how do you do that when no country will be your advocate because in the end, it's not worth it, literally? the western world could band together for human rights so easily, and yet they choose not to. over and over again in so many parts of the world.

I've been reading stories about western 'support' for tibet and I don't know if I should laugh or cry. like when pelosi was here, sure she met with the dalai lama but she was so careful to word what she said, because her hands are tied by u.s. interests in china. but for days after, monks were carrying american flags. even yesterday, I had 2 monks approach me, ask if I was american, and when I replied yes, they gave me a big smile. for once, being american scored me bonus points. but for once, I wished one of them had called me out on it. it is so upsetting to be identified with a country that will inevitably let them down because it doesn't have the balls to go against its economic self-interest, because it doesn't have the balls to take the moral high ground.

after the holocaust, everyone said 'never again.' and yet, my beloved country and my beloved western world, with all of its money and power, still can't do the right thing.

this guy is part of a group of young tibetans that paints anti-china/pro-tibet tshirts all day long. here he is, with the beginnings of a shirt that will show the tibetan and u.s. flags intertwined. as if my heart weren't breaking enough as it is.