27 June 2002

The baker delivered the chocolate chip cookies I was going to hand out after the final exam. But the exam was Tuesday morning, and he delivered the cookies Wednesday afternoon. I'm going over with his money and this note, which I'll have translated:

Last time I ordered 150 cookies, we agreed to a Y150 price. Now you have delivered cookies two days late with the wrong chocolate, and you want Y225. Now that China has entered the WTO, this is unacceptable. Enclosed please find Y150.

Dinner with Li Xu and family tonight. Ann went to Yangshuo while I stayed in town to finish doing grades; I think we both were ready for a breather. Li Xu's mother made vegetarian gyoza which were very good. I ate about twenty. She asked if I didn't like them. Li Xu explained that foreigners don't eat so many. I asked him how many he eats.

"When I was 18, forty."

And now?

"Twenty."

26 June 2002

We went to Longji and spent the night. The visibility continues to be superb. I spent the whole trip grading final exams. On the bus ride back, we got stuck on the mountain road. A long-distance sleeper bus had had its front peeled away by a truck, and there was plenty of spilling gasoline if no blood. We were about sixth in line in our direction, and it was possible to squeeze past the truck to the other side but, thanks to the gasoline, I deemed this unwise. After two hours, when the cops had arrived and were carefully documenting the scene but not doing anything about the traffic, we went to the other side in search of a Guilin-Longsheng bus. We were hoping to convince the passengers to swap with our co-passengers so that both buses could just turn around and go back. The first matching bus, the driver was willing but had no passengers. The second had no driver. The next one, the driver was unwilling because he felt the obstacles would be cleared in a half-hour. We kept walking, and were told we had just missed a car that had turned back to Guilin. Then we found another car, but they only had two seats. Then we found a bus that was already turned around and heading back to Guilin, but they refused, without explanation, to take us, and drove off. Then, as we were standing at the end of the line, a car from our side passed us, and the line started lurching forward. We hustled back so that we didn't get stranded by our own bus. The collision had been partially cleared, and there was now a growing traffic jam as both sides tried to cross through the one-line space. We got in our bus, and ... nothing happened. A few big potatoes in SUVs and Toyotas had squeezed through, and then the way was blocked again. For another hour. Finally, after a three-hour delay, we were back on our way. Fortunately the locale was very picturesqe, a mountain pass with rice paddies on either side of the road.

It was neat to see Longji in the wet season. The whole mountain face is one giant champaign glass tower. Water tumbles down from higher on the mountain into the top terraces. Each terrace has a small outlet lip, and water just keeps spilling terrace to terrace. The basic system is supplemented with dirt channels, cement channels, hollowed bamboo channels, plastic pipes, and steel pipes. Everything drips and flows.

The guest houses now have big posters with pictures of endangered animals and cartoons showing diners being carted away by police. In Longsheng (a tiny city with a malevolent atmosphere) we saw Earth Day posters, complete with quotes from Marx and Lenin about the importance of the land as the source of all wealth.

23 June 2002

Last night I left the Korea-Spain match tied at 0-0 after extra time and headed to the airport to pick up Ann. Waiting for her plane, the TV showed that Korea won on penalty kicks. woohoo. Then we hustled back to town to join some of the other foreign teachers for a goodbye dinner. Later we saw that Senegal fell to Turkey in extra time.

Today we woke up to rain, and met Lu Dan to take a bus to Crown Cave. The road, oddly enough, was mostly mud as it led out of town past factories and the prison, and the ride was not at all comfortable. Finally we cleared town and got back onto cement and had a nice cruise through the countryside as the sky cleared. Visibility was amazing all day; later, from the hill near campus, I saw another row of mountains to the south that I'd never seen before.

Crown Cave was nice in that it was a) a big cave; b) naturally air-conditioned; and c) not nearly Sinofied as much as I had feared. It's pretty thoroughly electrified, with lots and lots of lights and power cables, but almost no music. Every big cavern has a gift shop, and in a few places women wear minority costumes to line up for photographs (for a fee). But the subterranean flashlight boat ride is included in the basic ticket, which was nice, and the cave was simply so wonderful that it overwhelmed the abuse.

Since the washing machine episodes have garnered so much positive feedback, I feel I should recount newer developments on that front. When I came back after the winter break, there were two washing machines in my kitchen. I removed the interlope and found that Zhang Ming had tied a rag around the faucet to prevent spray. I took my screwdriver and carefully readjusted the connector, and then the rag was unnecessary. In fact, I've had a remarkably successful relationship with the washing machine this semester. I rarely have to adjust the connector, and I can actually run the machine through complete cycles without any attention, just a slight leak. I discovered that the ends of the hoses have little plastic hooks that correspond to holes on the sides of the machine, so that the hoses can be hung up instead of left sprawling on the floor. Very clever. The plastic twine clotheslines started failing, so I bought some steel wire and replaced them. The new clotheslines are unlikely to break.

Paradiso is crap, just a bunch of swirling lights and colors and music so wonderful he can't describe it. Cop out. Inferno is much better than Paradiso, just like Doctor Evil is much funnier than Austin Powers.

Still more evidence that we're already living in the future: Consider the science-fiction story of a formerly powerful country that suffers massive collapse in every aspect - financial, political, social, economic, spiritual - and remains important to the world solely because it retains machines capable of destroying the world. How amazing, how improbable is that?

One common complain re: globalization is that we're all forced to share one watered-down global culture. I checked my hard drive, and I have music in fourteen different languages. This is "watered down?"