In Pursuit of Leaping Tigers.

I rarely if ever going roughing it, more for lack of equipment and über-sporty friends than anything else. That said, a combination of poor planning and inadequate language skills can rapidly deteriorate into a day in the rain, a night in the cold – or both. The expectation that smiles and figurative gestures will find you shelter in a pinch can ultimately collapse with great ease.

I took my annual leave from work this past summer to travel Sichuan and Yunnan provinces in southwestern China. I had friends and vague acquaintances in each provincial capital but would have to navigate a circuitous 1000-mile connection through Tibetan territory to get there with no Mandarin, no guidebook and no reservations: jokes, as a north Londoner might say.

Things were going as smoothly as could be ‘til Tiger Leaping Gorge, a hallmark gaggle of gut-wrenching canyons on every hiker’s agenda. A responsible boy, I was up at 6am and on the 7am bus to arrive at 9am. By 4pm I would be massaging my off-the-beaten-path-trodden feet, reading back issues of the New Yorker and slurping banana pancakes at Sloppy Joe’s Bed and Buddha Breakfast, or wherever the Dutchman at Shangri-La had recommended. Rather, I spent the evening half-naked and thrice-soaked at an abandoned housing site in the rain.

Halfway through the twisting mountaintop bus journey to the gorge, I realized I’d forgotten my computer cord back in town. Five grueling minutes of retrospection later, I decided to change tack and retrieve it (to think of the Uighur feasts I could finance by saving $200 USD). I got off the bus, crossed the road and stuck my thumb in the air. To my great delight, I was in the front seat of a crumbling hatchback ten minutes later, chain-smoking and stuffing my face with Chinese chapatti. Maybe this wouldn’t be such a bad day after all.

Hence I arrived back at the Gorge a cool four hours late. No sweat, I was an intrepid walker and would surely make up for lost time on the two-day journey through the country’s most dauntingly beautiful canyon. Signs to the gorge were sparing, though two men on donkeys offered to take me up the hills for a handsome fee. I kindly declined, but confirmed the direction I was to go. A toothless smile later, I was marching up the tea-lined hills with all my gear in stow: couldn’t trust the abodes at bottom to safeguard thirty pounds of computer, library books and camera (where were you then, kindle?).

An hour up the mountain and I’d yet to see a soul: it was a marvelous turn of events. Forgetting my cord would give me the entire trail to myself. Of course, I’d only packed a bag of litchi and a liter of water, but I could always pick something up at the first inn, reputedly two hours into the trail. One hour quickly turned to two, and three to four. I would eat a litchi every 500 hundred paces – ‘twas the only thing to quell the enveloping doubt that something was amiss.

My limbs began to ache from the ascent: had I taken a wrong turn? There had only ever been one route: surely the men atop the donkeys knew best. Onward did we march with unrelenting determination – only two hours now before the sun would set. 

Around 5pm I chanced upon a couple hill-women, aesthetically autonomous from anything I’d seen in town. They looked at me in utter bemusement – and motioned that I go back down the mountain without further ado. No fool to their hidden agenda, I ambled on ahead.

Two misty hillside villages later, I knew the game was up. It had begun to drizzle and the road soon turned to rubble. Mules were put in stowage, the odd bike back in its chamber: this path wouldn’t see a visitor for some time to come. A few communicative rumblings with an elderly woman convinced me the Gorge was nowhere in sight, not here, not now, not any time soon.

The temperature had dropped precipitously – we must have been at five or six thousand feet. I took one final gaze into the endless mist and smoky mountaintop dwellings before beginning my descent. Worst-case scenario, I could always ask a villager for lodging – it had been a dream since boyhood to travel roughshod-and-knapsack into the Great Unknown, seeking occasional alms along the way.

The way back down did not go well. Always steeper down than up, I struggled to maintain any grip on the dissolving mud path. By struggle, I mean I only fell once. I was drenched and covered in mud for the better part of the four-hour descent, half of which was in the dark. What remained of my torn poncho was hastily wrapped around my two shoulder bags, which together contained everything of value I owned, not to mention the library’s ransom.

The sky was pitch-black, but I could finally make out the lights of houses in the villages below. Bereft of flashlight, food or foresight, I lit the torch on my Nokia and tried to navigate a series of now paved paths descending into town. If the battery gave I would literally be reduced to a state-of-nature-like impotence.  

Where public path molded into private I could scarcely tell; most become individual driveways, one-family cul-de-sacs barring one entrance upon arrival. That said, my clothes were drenched and the rain would not let up; if I stayed in the elements much longer, I would surely lose my computer and municipal liabilities alike.  

I did what an old Albanian friend had done in rural Chile: begin to knock on doors. Surely I would be met with sympathetic smiles, a bowl of steaming ramen – perhaps even a cup of tea. Happy to sleep in the shed I was – though surely they’d have a spare bedroom with lamp and lumpy blanket: I might even finish that chapter on the Cultural Revolution before dozing off into a mountain reverie.

I knocked on a door already slightly ajar and crept into the courtyard. The lights in the main house were on – a sliding door was open. A massive poster of Mao adorned the living room wall: this would be an encounter to remember. I chirped in the least threatening and un-dirty-laowai-like voice I could muster. An elderly woman, stupefied, came to the door and grimaced. "Is there anywhere," I made a gesture for sleeping, "in the vicinity," a circular motion of the hand denoting geographical proximity, "to take shelter from the rain?" She was not taken aback. "Sorry, I shrugged my shoulders, "I am cold and lost." She warped her faced into a chiseled pout before the fight commenced. "Beat it!" I inferred, "before I call my husband! Before I call the police! Before I call the Red Guards!" I tiptoed backward, bowed an apology and took my leave. Not tonight. 

My confidence all but destroyed, I continued down the hill in the rain. Surely I could find a garage of sorts - a bus stop along the main road. The wind was deafening, the passing incoming headlights even less forgiving. I meandered toward a potential hideout, a shed behind the first house I chanced upon. An unseen beast growled with displeasure. I continued along the road in the rain, a desperation nearly betrothed. 

500m later, redemption reared its feeble head. An abandoned housing site emerged with a big, dry front porch - the perfect sanctuary, all things considered. I climbed the ladder to my perch (they'd yet to build the stairs). Dust and discarded tools were everywhere, in addition to an old rusted bunk bed in the corner. I opted for the wood-planked floor. 

I hung my shirt and pants to dry, put on everything in my possession and laid down casket-style, shivering but immensely relieved. It was damned nippy out, but I'd live to eat another almond croissant. I lit a cigarette and let my thoughts drift to Paris: oddly, it wasn't hard to conjure. Suddenly, a light went on - revealing a hitherto nonexistent bathroom. Barely five feet to my right, the silhouette of a shirtless worker began to relieve himself with candor. He coughed before flushing and opened the door onto the porch. 

I stubbed out my cigarette, closed my eyes and played dead. Would he kick me? Scream? Run inside to fetch a lumbersome object? I shuddered in anticipation. Ten seconds later with no remark, he went back inside. I heaved a heavy sigh. We'll see the Northern Lights after all! Or so I'd assumed. Two minutes later another character came to the door, this time a woman. She switched on a flashlight and directed it upon my face. For lack of better idea, I continued to play dead. When that failed to satisfy her (completely justified) fascination, I yawned and looked up. "Ni hao!" I sleepily chortled before saluting them and closing my eyes again. After a few seconds, the light went off, my captors capitulated and retreated into the house.  

I awoke at the crack of dawn and began to gather my affairs. I was brushing my teeth when the two laborers who'd spotted me the night before emerged from the skeleton of the house (a glimpse inside revealed conditions hardly better inside than out). They looked at me - damp, cold and covered in caked mud - and smiled. He chuckled and pointed to the bunk bed, as if to say I should've made myself more at home. I bowed to them in gratitude and pointed down the road. Fret not, kindred spirit, I shall soon be on my way. 

That evening I checked into the warmest, most welcoming abode of the entire journey. After a seamless two-hour bus ride from sylvan mountaintop to verdant plain, I was taking a warm bath at a French-run artists' residency outside the Old Town of Lijiang, a hallmark destination for Chinese tourists pining after pleasures of Silk Road splendor. 

Dirt-less and dry for the first time in days, I went downstairs to sip tea with Mikael, the philosopher-sculptor from southwest France who ran the residence with his loving wife and Mandarin-chatting (blond) children. With ruffled black hair and radiant blue eyes, he spoke with clarity and unpretentious candor on art, history and China - a man of sweet condition and subtle, rusticated charm. His wife Ode, a kind and soft-spoken woman, soon joined us. Perched away with tea and tobacco, we kept the sliding door ajar, watching the swollen raindrops dance upon the courtyard, beholden to their unremitting charm.  

The Road to Kangding.

The road to Kangding is paved with angst and trepidation. No more than thirty miles outside of town, Chengdu’s boisterous urban sprawl recedes into a violent rigmarole of malaise. Indeed, it seemed only fitting that the lone route from regional capital to ethnic badlands be fraught with fear and loathing. In the eight hours it took to reach our destination, the most southwestern Chinese province’s largest Tibetan town, one could pierce the atmospheric entropy with a mid summer’s soliloquy. Along the way, motorists – ours included – lose all sense of proportion, careening through the mountainous landscape at breakneck speed – inviting danger, it not death, at every turn.

Smashed-in cars, SUVs and buses (one of which was the same make and operator as our own) littered the highway the better part of our journey. Some had delved into ditches, others trees – though, occasionally, death-laden vehicles from head-on collusions were simply stranded in the middle of the road. It was far worse than the aftermath of a Midwestern blizzard when motorists, otherwise unaccustomed to such conditions, careen into frozen cornfields whilst changing the radio station.  No, there was something dark at play here, a creeping sense of geo-nihilism that penetrated the countryside with every mile-marker. Of course, sinister roads there are a many: Death Road in Bolivia, any Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd in the continental United States. That said, this effortlessly took the cake. The destruction was all-encompassing and splendidly apathetic, as though a spanking new Jeep smashed to bits and abandoned to a highway underpass were no stranger than the ubiquitous “I love Jesus” that dot Interstate 55 en route to Chicago.  

Having digested the vehicular carnage, one must evaluate the various life forms that take to the road. At one particularly hairy bend, a shirtless 15-year old flies by in an 18-wheel oil tanker, tempting State and gods alike to heed his cunning cocktail of unrelenting indifference. Cigarette in lip, he snickered in my direction: “I may not make it to Scottsdale, but I sure as hell won’t die today”. Multiple that by ten and you’ve a frightful trail to blaze. A few miles later, an emaciated horde of octogenarian peasants was hauling 80-foot iron rods down a rocky knoll into the middle of the road. Again, motorists paid them fabulously little mind; a hurried honk was enough to acknowledge the brazen encumbrance that was their life. Of course, we missed them by several meters, freeing them to finish their haul with unyielding stoicism – an ode to harder times, or better ones loath to come.

Which brings me to my final point: the ubiquitous police presence. People often mischaracterize China as an omnipotent police state; apart from Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, one can go weeks without seeing a single (plainclothes) officer or the least fragment of the Law. Not so in Tibetan-populated areas. Leaving Chengdu for the wild, disgruntled-minority-infested-west, the State makes itself very evidently known. One in five cars seemed to be national police – not to mention the unmarked SUVs whizzing by at every turn. The per capita police presence in Tibetan Sichuan is five times that of Harlem. And though Bloomberg’s replaced Mic-&-Iti laden uptown shakedowns with a curiously bespectacled crew of post-racial Enforcers, the same cannot be said of China. The law is Han – and it’s coming to get you. 

Chengdu: deuxième partie.

Term is over but the young and amorous linger with an edifying nonchalance. Indeed, Chinese provincial students have a way of carrying themselves with an understated grace I can scarcely define: sweet and bespectacled, they stroll in pairs with careless poise, monotonously innocent yet ineffably urbane. I marvel at the ease with which they browse – content to peruse back-issues of Agrarian Reader’s Digest whilst sipping tins of saccharine iced tea.

To my left a bicycle rickshaw paddles along the dusty, tree-lined pedestrian thoroughfare with the only plumpkin I’ve seen in days. The air smells of pollen and petrol yet hums with an elusive virility.  As in most Chinese metropolises, the sun’s not wont to show its face – but today, for some reason, she’s cast a sheet-like spell of monolithic fulgor over all of campus. Amber flashes shoot through ancient oaks like bullets through water; one is hard pressed to spot a placidly adorable pupil without parasol in hand.

A favorite writer of mine once castigated the Japanese for absorbing but the most desultory aspects of Western culture – imperialism, hedonism, consumerism – while rejecting its countervailing qualities – creative expression, reason, romanticism, redemption – to name but a few. While I cannot verify his statement (just yet), the inverse might be said of the Chinese Provincial University, namely that it’s absorbed the better surface aspects of the Western Research University – academic rigor, scholarship, socio-economic leveling and a seeming modicum of communal socialization – whilst rejecting the less noble virtues of American Higher Education – debauchery, misogyny, (intellectual) apathy – to name but a few. Of course, for all I know their stoically studious countenance collapses behind closed doors, leaving them prostrate before an altar of Angry Birds; I’ve no way to say. On the momentary surface, however, one is left with the sweetest image of a cheerful, timeless academic piety.

It is Sunday so we head for brunch at the only American joint in town. Immediately we’re amongst 40% of the expat scene, a typical mélange of teachers, NGO workers, oil consultants and consular diplomats. When word of the Wang Lijun incident had first been leaked to the New York Times – leading to China’s largest political maelstrom since Tiananmen – it was reckoned to have been leaked in this very establishment. In a city of 14m, Western journalists only convene at two locales. One of my lovely hosts, a Fulbrighter poking through the world of Great Unknown Chinese Fracking, had been evading a Times reporter lurking about the diner all that week: all too often our window on the world is but a window.

To my great dismay Paddy and Vermont Dan get cocktails – but stick with drip I must. We tip the friendly, heavy-set Chicagoan and set off for the tea gardens, Chengdu’s most illustrious attraction.

Whereas People’s Square in Shanghai is an acclamation of Chinese modernism with an eye for historical flare, its equivalent in Chengdu is an unadulterated ode to the imperial past. The Red Guards may have taken down the great walls of the city with a whimsical nod from Mao, but the gardens within the Square retain all the cultural splendor of ere.

The entrance to the park was somewhat insignificant but once inside a world of subdued splendor meets the eye. Stands selling brightly woven demi-gods float from cracked-wooden hangers in the afternoon heat, while skewers of barbecued lamb scatter mouth-watering aromas into the air. In each opening, elderly tai-chisters bob and weave to the remembrance of things past. Beyond the opening, where the willows resume, the 40- and 50-somethings congregate to peruse the public marriage proposals posted along a wooden fence like inquiries from American doctoral students in every épicerie on the Left Bank. I could make out nothing of the Chinese characters, but was told that below the unassuming photo of each young, procreationally-aspiring man was an all-too-unambiguous listing of his age, profession, salary, education and, finally, name. For all our touted American pragmatism I suppose they’re better at cutting to the chase than we.  

Bride-grooms aside, we made for the Mahjong tables, where the real magic occurs. In a shaded piazza of low-flung tables, endless clusters of Chinese men and women – always separated by gender – sip tea, banter and strategize the afternoon away with the Chinese predecessor to Rummikub – often in wildly varying stages of mirth and ire, and always for money. We take a table of our own and begin the draw. Within a match, we’ve three lookers-on, each keen to gauge whitey’s strategic acumen – and each scheming to hold the balance of power amongst us like Lord Liverpool in the age of Napoleon. The moment one of us pulled ahead, they’d seize upon a neighboring apprentice, whispering, quite literally, sweet nothings into his ear to effect a change of course. In the end, we roughly split games – though not before several hearts, dare I say reputations, were mildly tarnished along the way.

The proceeding nights and days unfold with delicious uniformity. Upon awakening, one saunters down the lazily bustling avenue bordering campus. Motley local delicacies await: Uighur spicy noodles; piping-fresh Tibetan samosas; Sichuan-peppered delights of every sizzling variety. First, however, we must make for the art-house café on the other edge of the Kingdom. What appears an old military canteen is in fact a massive, kaleidoscopic collection of cultural artifacts, both Chinese and Western, gathered in arguably the best café I’ve been to. Red bicycles, broken clocks, statues of Mao and Marylyn grace the flower-laden, daisy-cloth donning tables at every turn. The waitresses don unassuming bangs (as most good Chinese girls currently do) and don’t let off they understand English. The Americano is giant, strong and expensive – the ash tray overflowing.

There is far more character in Chengdu than immediately hits the eye. Granted, a new downtown development is named and partially modeled after my own very raucous, crudely Western and, how to say, culturally unforthcoming, neighborhood in Hong Kong – but that did not prevent the city from constructing a gorgeous Yuan-era temple-cum-restaurant over the pedestrian-bridge leading to said development. Down the street lies the city’s most renowned hotel, the Shangrila. Descending the floors below the lobby – usually reserved to staff or those attending private group-oriented entertainment chambers (you guessed it) – is one particularly enticing gem, arguably the world’s most amusing portrait. In a stoutly 8-by-5 foot painting tucked into a small, unlit, auxiliary hallway is President Bill Clinton, flanked by Monica behind him and a screaming Hillary, a la Munch, in the distance to his left. The catch? He’s a minotaur and Monica’s topless:

We only know of the aforementioned because an old friend was until recently on duty at the American Consulate. Mining the hotel in the days before a Biden state visit, Secret Service had stumbled upon the quasi-hidden painting. Whilst they could hardly reveal it to a democratic VP (which I no doubt hope and trust they did), it became something of a legend in the hearts and minds of those lucky enough to stumble upon it via word of mouth. According to legend, it was a personal gift the hotel’s proprietor simply could not refuse: hence the clandestine location where he hung it. An incredibly subversive political gesture or merely poor taste? I suspect the distinction is less stark than many are loath to admit.

The days amble by, then, with a carefully measured insouciance. One strolls the boulevard and the back-way, nibbling on street-food and stopping off for tea. We make several trips to varying ‘urban reconstructions,’ zones of ‘ancient renewal’ where Han Chinese tourists go to unload their wallets and feel at home in both the contemporary architectural wasteland that is most of urban China and simultaneously relish their own historical legacy. Of what do I speak, you must surely be asking yourself. Imagine, as it were, the Bavarian castle at Disneyworld, the neo-Gothic spires of recent American universities: we New Worlders haven’t a monopoly on historical-architectural appropriation. Nay, the Chinese, despite their no doubt recurrent taste for reconstructing Bruges along the Yangtze, have an even deeper reverence for their own architectural past. And all over Sichuan they’re building living, breathing replicas of entire ancient neighborhoods – and then filling them with merchants of caffeine and corn-on-the-cob. A tragedy? Not quite. These recreations are deeply attractive and seem architecturally sound. Given New Money’s urge to dwell upon a cultural achievement of its own, these commercial communities are also likely to have been built with far higher standards than many of the make-shift schools that imploded without resistance in the earthquake that ravaged Sichuan province in 2008.

What, then, to conclude of this town? Peaceful, booming, graceful and bustling, a mouthwatering delight of culinary charm, Chengdu is a wistfully enchanting giant too lazy to disappoint. Like the miraculous panda bears who half-slumberingly hang from the trees in the National Research Center outside of town, Chengdu indolently clings to its laurels of good grub and even better culture. Despite the economic wave that’s swept the entire province, in five days I saw one tie, much less a suit or, Lord forbid, a briefcase. Nay, Chengdidians are content to ramble along with history at their own pace – with tea, beer, noodles and Mahjong along the way, preferably in the shade – though not because they’re solipsistic or simply don’t get it. Rather, I suspect that we do not get them – and, if so, only to our detriment. As Vermont Dan said when his lady rang from Indonesia: “I’m with Pheiff – we’re sittin’ on a bench!” Where abouts? She asks. “Overlooking the lotus pond.”

Chengdu: première partie.

Chengdu is the industrious if curiously lackadaisical capital of Sichuan province, China’s most populous before Chongqing succeeded in the 1990s to form its own administrative district. Integrated into the Empire in the period of the Warring States some two thousand years ago, this Southwestern frontier is at both the heart and periphery of modern China. There is a saying, Vermont Dan tells me, that one mustn’t let young men of otherwise respectable character discover this urban oasis, lest they fall prey to its enchantingly lazy and almost ahistorical demeanor.  Rather than sit for your civil servant exams, you’ll waste your afternoons away along the soporific banks of the Fu Nan River, sipping tea and playing Mahjong, a Chinese variant of Rummikub. With whom I concur it’s increasingly hard to say.

I arrived at Chengdu International Airport in something of a state – but good it was to be on the kaleidoscopic fringe of the Middle Kingdom. If manically booming Chongqing is the Chicago of China, then Chengdu is Denver: rough on the edges but understatedly prosperous – the site of great wealth, development and innovation without pretension to boot (if we’re to believe David Brooks – forgive me). Whilst failing to recall certain minor details, the overweening confidence of its airport advertisements was enough to convince even the laziest and most unobservant of gaze: the escalator-moonwalk to baggage was lined with nothing but bobble-eyed honkies in watches, sweaters and residential kingdoms designed by someone’s alcoholic nephew in Milan. A good day to be alive, my grandfather once said; an even better one to be white and mediocre with an ounce of ambition, one might add.

Chengdu has a beautiful, thunderously low center of gravity, rather like a sweet, slumberous, if strangely attractive ogre too scared to stand erect and relive itself upon the architectural horizon. I head to Dan’s environs and wait for him and Paddy to show. Behind me sits a semi-functional post office, its doors stubbornly ajar on a Sunday morning.  A trickle of crumpled mopeds simmer by: just because we’ve nowhere to go needn’t mean we won’t arrive.

We hop a cab and head to Dan’s, a humbly charming set of old-folk/grad-school towers bound on one end by the city’s wonderfully languid river, on the other by the province’s flagship university, where he and co. were taking a semester-long semi-intensive Chinese language course. In the courtyard below his flat a squadron of septuagenarians Qigong the morning smog away, a complementary snuff to the Cultural Revolution and all our misconceptions thereof. We pop off at the community’s sole commercial outlet on the way upstairs, a giant vegetable stand proffering dried noodles, water and ample stocks of lukewarm beer: it’s barely 10am and my companions have decided to set the day upon an even keel. Though effortlessly tempted, one must decline. Shenzhen was still flogging about the bowels, and we’d need some modicum of chemical equilibrium before setting off to conquer campus, Yankee brunch and the town’s most illustrious teahouses.

Dan’s twelfth-floor apartment overlooks a sad but glorious sprawl of dilapidated communal housing shrouded in Chinese willows. Just beyond them, within the same walled principality, lies the catatonically perfect campus of Sichuan University, a kingdom of 1970s post-Revolutionary sensibility more succinctly agreeable than all of Bauhaus’ Scandinavian offspring put together. As the educational kingdom recedes into the distance, the city’s faux-financial center emerges in ecru sweeps of understatement, the perfect capstone to a gradually mounting urban horizon (residential, educational, professional: each endemic to ideologically sparing decades). We lap it up, burn a boag, drop our bags and descend.

Once past the ever-amicably toothless guard, we traverse the University Gate, a cement opening just beyond the dancing courtyard elders. We’ve entered the kingdom, and I’m in love. We waltz down a battered path, a stonewall to one side, aforementioned PJs to the other. A shirtless pot-bellied man cycles past us in slow motion, a schizophrenic hen waxes lyrical. The weeds give man a lazy, if casually unrelenting, run for his money; the old folk saunter forth. I cannot remember being happier.   

We chance upon an opening and all my dreams come true. Its Sunday noon and the young and thoughtful – bespectacled and calmly contented – mosey down the sidewalk hand in hand. Lining the periphery of a dusty, disused soccer pitch are retro-tinged Ping-Pong tables. They’re only half full. Lining both sides of the road is an almost deliriously magical (academic) flea market hawking everything from pre-Newtonian textbooks to Maoist badminton paddles. Next to a mangled faux-leather cardigan rests a bright green fly-swatter denouncing Krushchevian revisionism. The studious couple aside me considers the neon lampshade before sauntering off.  

Mainland Miscreance, Part I: Shenzhen.

Shenzhen is said to be China’s wealthiest city. I will not bore you with economic data or financial flashpoints – no one likes an ignorant pedant – though perhaps a word about its material base should be stated for the record. First ‘liberated’ as a Special Economic Zone in 1979, it has since then grown to be one of China’s most flagrantly successful megapoli, not to mention its second largest port. A shipping, manufacturing and software hub of global proportions, Shenzhen boasts its own stock exchange, software parks and IT villages, while producing the vast majority of Apple products worldwide (while candlelight vigils were held for Jobs’ premature passing in Hong Kong, workers across the border angrily toasted his demise – so I’m told). Its residents enjoy the highest GDP per capita in China, albeit along callously inequitable lines.

Indeed, the southern megacity perfectly encapsulates all that is new, bustling and ‘creatively destructive’ about contemporary China. It boasts of overwhelming wealth and development – far more than a Hongkongian snob such as we’re taught to be across the border could have known. That said, whilst new American money and its endless cache of sunglasses, velour, McMansions and four-by-fours provide ample comedic value, witnessing that of China throws one into mirthful paroxysms of manic proportion. I shit you not.

I’d decided to go to Sichuan province to see an old friend. He was studying Mandarin at the flagship university in Chengdu and had marvelous things to say about the provincial capital. Rather than fly from Hong Kong, the world’s sexiest and most accessible airport, I decided to head from Shenzhen, an ‘internal’ flight and hence a portion of the price. To get there is easier than swiping cigarettes from a Medicaid patient: an $8, 40-minute bus from the heart of Kowloon and you’re at the wonderfully light-and-industry-engulfed border. Why we don’t make the leap more often is a mystery.       

I frolic toward customs with my two small, albeit sinfully heavy shoulder bags, rushing to beat the hordes of day-shoppers returning to their concrete castles in the sky in the land of $4 trillion worth of vacant property. Little do I remember I’m a card-carrying Hong Kong resident with privileges to the express customs line. (With such favored treatment one needn’t wonder why we assume such airs: tisn’t long before public tokens of privilege become subliminal). As always, there’s an optional metal-detector separating customs from freedom, which women and foreigners for some reason are encouraged to utilize whilst Chinese men locate their smokes. Since you haven’t technically left the country, there isn’t duty free – but that doesn’t stop the only shop at this particular crossing from issuing nothing but cartons of magnesium-laced jacks.[1] Naturally, then, you light up to mitigate the fear and mutual excitement brewing in your tea-baked stomach as you enter the great swashbuckling Middle Kingdom. From here on out you’ll be in good, if bewildering, company.

It’s humid but not sweltering, the air surprisingly mild given the residual chemical candies you’d imagined could be plucked from the sky like cherries from a tree. I got into an old crumbling minivan with a cantankerously toothless man of middling age. He chatted me up a storm, cursing the skies and praising the pits as he sped about the immaculately manicured highways, ramps and mega-lanes of this surprisingly pleasant megapolis in good, senseless fashion. I did my best to nod, smile and reiterate my utter delight at not being able to make out a word.

My host was waiting as we pulled up to the curb. The rate was 25 so I handed the driver a hundred kwai note; he returned me fifty and grinned. I repaid the gesture and gave him a wink – another ten emerged from his festering wad. Still fifteen short, I politely smiled, followed by the mildest clinching of the jaws. Another ten made its way into my palm. Now comes the difficult part: the pressure’s highest when the stakes are lowest. Do I resist his demonic clutch for an extra five? But of course. I go for the crazy eye, the Lincoln unveils itself. I smile and thank him for the ride; he utters a growl of disdain and sputters into the distance.

If you’ve made it this far – I pity and thank you; now we’re on to the good part. My host is a very vague friend of a friend, a young man called ______ from Oregon. Tales of Reed College afresh in my mind, I consider myself fortunate. At first encounter, however, I’m somewhat taken aback – chin-strap beards and sideways MLB caps continue to bode poorly for white men living in modern times – especially those who’ve fled to China from Eugene.

We enter the compound 80m from the boulevard – a series of vaulted steel corridors something akin to Paris VI lead us through a darkened passageway to the promised land of courtyards and cascading high-rise abodes characteristic of most new developments in China. The atrium of his particular building is impressive, if tackily so, not to mention suffocatingly warm. The elevator shaft is of a B-rate horror flick – unfinished cement splattered by red stains and advertisements for powdered milk. We go to the 15^th floor. A giveaway subway map of lower Manhattan is clumsily pinned to the wall. A massive bong and a pile of DVDs lay idly below the plasma screen. The rest of the spacious apartment is barren.

Settled in, he offers me a delicious bowl of freshly made stew and a cold Tsingtao. A thoughtful man, he’s somewhat simple – the wigger son of career missionaries in Asia, reputedly on personal terms with many of Hong Kong’s great tycoons (many of whom are God-fearing Methodist friends of his parents). He quotes me his salary thrice over dinner, doing his best to simultaneously embarrass and assure us both. Expats in Hong Kong are generally obsessed with earnings and social status and will reveal their monthly income quicker than a New Yorker will with rent; on the other hand the castaways in less desirable parts of the mainland are generally content to chuckle about their economic marginalization, solidaire with the Chinese proletariat though they’re not. A self-styled former financer, he says he’s taking time off to teach English. He reiterates how excited he is to be a trendsetter, the first of many expat cadres to abandon Hong Kong for Shenzhen.

I’d slept seven hours the previous two nights combined and was keen on hitting the sack, though my host insisted I see the sites. A mad one on the town before the morrow’s tragically early departure didn’t appear a good idea, but turn down my gracious host I could not. I thank him for the beer and we descend into the stifling summer air to meet his South African friend.

The commercial outskirts of great American cities are often monotonously sad: the same sorry, half-neon, staggering-letter billboards stumbling along a horizon of downcast, one-story mattress outlets and burger joints as far as the eye can see. Occasionally there’s a new Italian eatery that caters to recently moneyed suburbanites, but even the sparkling white slacker of its freshly minted parking lines doesn’t offset its aural malaise. Characteristically underwhelming seems to be our suburban lot – even those of privileged pedigree.

Of the Chinese equivalent the same cannot be said. Devastating, yes, though never passively so. The outskirts of Shenzhen throb with cast-iron consistency, its perpendicular avenues charging blindly through nocturnal wastelands of totalitarian virility. No, there’s nothing even remotely sensitive about Chinese urban development – though the emotional dearth of its great 21^st century expansion may be one of its few redeeming characteristics. Modernity à la chinoise leaves no room for sentimentality. Nor perhaps should it.

We’re sitting on the corner of two sweeping boulevards, waiting for the South African to arrive. The publicly manicured floral arrangements spell out things like “Glory to Powerful Statehood,” “Don’t Spit in Public” - or so I would imagine. I glance upward and spot the first foreigner I’ve seen in town, a bonafide specimen of absurdity. High-top sneaks, baggy cargo jean shorts well below the buttocks, black tank-top underscored by a motley collection of flame-and-skull tattoos – all of which is topped off by a massive, throbbing lock-knotted chain of golden hue: the single most ridiculous man I’ve seen in some time. Die Antwoord to a tee with no inkling of irony. Of course, this was the sir we’d been waiting for.

He catches glimpse of my host and begins to saunter over. “Ahhhhh naw dawg! Yeah, yeah, YEAH! What my mans is?! When we getting’ fucked UP?!” Of course, I’m paraphrasing both speech and intonations – both of which were patently more absurd than anything I can recall a month after the fact (procrastination weighs heavy upon the pen) – though one mustn’t miss the point. Here is a tall, muscular, young (Caucasian) man who, despite the perfectly ridiculous appearance, is also rather-good-looking. Yet he’s also got the most jarring of racist South African accents and can speak of nothing but money, bitches, gold, hash, gems and ginger girls with whom he’s yet to sleep. More than a caricature of himself, he’s a caricature of all things petty, racist, hedonistic, consumerist, untruthful and bigoted: precisely the type you both do and don’t expect to find abroad – though rather than fresh off the boat he’s been moping around China in the neighborhood of five years.

“What are you mate?! Reckon you’re not from here, hahahahaha!” he muses before careening into a monologue on the idiocy of Chinese. I tell him I’m passing through on my way to Chengdu and western Sichuan, the mainly Tibetan bits of said province. “You should see the dirty, earthy bastards!” he cries in delight. “Looks like they ran around in mud before rolling down the mountain into town – dirtiest creatures you’ll ever meet! Yeah they’re mucky wanks alright, but real spiritual, you know – they love the earth man, roll around in it every chance they get. Real spiritual wanks!”

He continues along this vein the entire walk to the club – fully 2 or 3 miles along nameless boulevards of forgotten dreams. He rants with a bewildering, dystopian enthusiasm; for him the world’s but a splendid mound of shit and indecency. “Oh but China’s amazing!” The endless supply of hash in Dali; the desperate single women who flock to Lijiang in the hopes of prostituting themselves out for human affection; the impenetrable stupidity of the Tibetan people – each outburst a more egregious insult to every person he’s encountered this side of the Capricorn. Yet beyond the racism (at one point he complains his native Africa is far too African), misogyny and general pigheadedness lies a remarkably buoyant naivety, a Nietzschean will to ignorance – nay, a manifesto of blissful stupidity for stupidity’s sake.

Indeed, despite his civilization-dismantling crassness, there’s something disarmingly innocent about him. He’s not in the least mean-spirited or remotely conniving – or in the slightest way judgmental, despite his mind-numbing vulgarity. Like a moth to the light, he automatically and delightfully seizes upon all that is crass, ugly, base and unjust in the world – whether it be social, economic or sexual in nature. A figure for the end times, he revels in the beauty of carnage and abuse – without, however, the intention of taking a leading role therein. A terrifyingly un-cynical member of misery’s peanut gallery, he’d purchased his 3-D glasses and has every intention of watching the world implode from the front row. Global misery but cause for our enjoyment; the world an oyster of wailing entertainment.

We arrive at our gold-and-dragon-studded destination and Die Antvoord cozies up to the bouncer under that most remarkable of spells, blind and unrepentant confidence. The bouncer, unimpressed, gives in, and we cut the line and forgo the entrance fee. This is China and you bear the genetic stamp of past superiority.

Once inside, a row of 12-15 eighteen-year old girls feign to greet us with a nauseous smile. They are waiting to escort you – not into some sinister champagne room – but merely into the dance hall, where they’ll accompany you through a game of dice and possibly drink an ice tea. It was difficult to say if they came with the entrance fee. We pass, though not before Die Antwoord studiously inspects the lot of them, smacking his lips and squealing in delight. He’s a perfectly noxious character, almost Pavlovianly so. One gets the impression he simply cannot help himself.

Inside, the club is more ridiculous than one could have imagined: a veritable freak-show of new and frivolous money-gone-wild. The main hall is at least 20,000 square feet and centers around a 360-degree bar staffed by giant women with supernaturally white dresses, heels and make-up. It looks out on a stage where a washed-up wedding singer moans into a microphone, extolling the evils of men in a distinctly Filipino accent. There are three stunning European girls to my right, each sporting spandex bodysuits and fabulous fops of hair. They are accompanied by a motley of self-assured Eurasian men in sport jackets, unabashedly bored though pretending otherwise. I have no idea where I am. 

All around us are elevated stands where men in suits furiously slam wooden cups upon the table: they’re playing Chinese dice with unparalleled vigor. Our South African has negotiated a free round of drinks so stick around we must. Whilst he begins his techno-trance I-have-an-invisible-crystal-ball-from-middle-school routine (someone must’ve coined a proper verb by now), the Oregonian and I take to the dice. If nothing else I learn to signal to ten in Chinese – though was too entranced by what came next to give the di their due.  

Then came the deluge. The lights go dim and an army of stiletto-strafing doxies storm our ballroom of deranged bemusement with enormous champagne bottles, each of which sprouting 12-inch sparklers to announce their arrival. The ceiling retracts and a cloud of oversized balloons falls upon the audience. The speakers launch their final assault – a techno remix of “Happy Birthday” gone mad. Projector screens descend from every corner playing double-time sequences from Alvin and the Chipmunks; Russian go-go dancers – male and female alike – emerge from the darkness in hot-leather pants to spur us closer to desire. The girls beside me giggle and bop their heads; the men take protracted pulls on their Double Happiness ciggs while nonchalantly surveying the spoils of economic growth on meth. The song continues, unabated, for fully twenty minutes. It was the most surreal experience I've had in years. 

Culture shock occurs when the totality of something utterly foreign fully sinks in. You’re gasping for air in an ocean of great, white, unabashed and unforgiving Otherness. But this wasn’t necessarily cultural as much as aesthetic overdose, sensory overkill, a bludgeon rather than a bullet to all things considered. That said, it was still a triumph of sorts – an ode to unbridled wealth and wanton confidence, to youth and flagrant indiscretion.

I popped by the bathroom on my way out. As I approached the communal urinal, a little man appeared behind me. To my great, if not unwanted, surprise, he immediately placed a hot towel upon my neck and began massaging my shoulders as I relieved myself: a perfect melée of shame and satisfaction. Herein was my first and only Shenzhen massage, received whilst peeing next to three inebriated locals, Happy Birthday still blasting in the background. I jam a bill into the tip jar and abscond into the slothful summer smog.

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[1] It shall be repeated on a great many occasions that the Chinese smoke more than any other human specimen in history (and having spent considerable time in Paris, Missouri and Egypt I say this with no hint of irony).