Nagoya, Japan.

Lafcadio Hearn wrote this in his book Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan in 1894, and it still rings true:

"Do not fail to write down your first impressions as soon as possible," said a kind English professor whom I had the pleasure of meeting soon after my arrival in Japan: "they are evanescent, you know; they will never come to you again, once they have faded out; and yet of all the strange sensations you may receive in this country you will feel none so charming as these." I am trying now to reproduce them from the hasty notes of the time, and find that they were even more fugitive than charming; something has evaporated from all my recollections of them--something impossible to recall. I neglected the friendly advice, in spite of all resolves to obey it: I could not, in those first weeks, resign myself to remain indoors and write, while there was yet so much to see and hear and feel in the sun-steeped ways of the wonderful Japanese city. Still, even could I revive all the lost sensations of those first experiences, I doubt if I could express and fix them in words. The first charm of Japan is intangible and volatile as a perfume.

It is so hard to commit oneself to writing, but I had a message this morning from a total stranger who read my blog, and asked if I was still alive. So, thank you, stranger, for spurring me into action. I have been in Japan for four weeks. I left China, spent about 2 1/2 weeks in Iowa, a week in Oregon, and then the bright lights and big city of Tokyo. I was greeted in Shinjuku by old friends from the US, people I hadn't seen in years--Mariko, Yuriko, Wataru, Himi, Nami (well, I did see Mariko in China and we traveled to the Stone Forest near Kunming).

I came as part of the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program, along with over a thousand other new participants (all young people), and they put us up in the five-star Keio Plaza in the middle of Shinjuku (the Times Square of Tokyo, the world's largest city). Sleep was elusive. We were in Tokyo for three days, and everyone was in an exuberant mood, the strange perfume of mania permeated the three-day orientation. There were banquets galore, a lesson on how to bow, and all kinds of individuals with interesting stories to tell. I met a guy who had lived in the same 20-unit apartment in Eugene, Oregon, the same time that I did. I met a Taiwanese who was born in the same hospital as I was, in Iowa City, Iowa. Before I knew it, we were whisking down the continuously welded tracks of the Shinkansen (bullet train), sailing past Mt. Fuji at 250 km/h. Nagoya is a mere 104 minutes from Tokyo Station by train, six hours by bus.

Nagoya's one of the commercial centers of Japan, the hub of Aichi Prefecture, responsible for a huge chunk of Japan's manufacturing and agriculture output. Here is the headquarters of Toyota Motor Company. It is the third largest metropolitan area after the Tokyo-Yokohama-Kawasaki conurbation and Osaka-Kobe. 2.2 million people live in Nagoya.

My apartment is small, but you would expect that. There is a large bathtub in one room, and a toilet in a completely separate room (as it is in all Japan). You must take off your shoes upon entering the home, and put on special shoes when entering the toilet room (and take them off before leaving the toilet room). My apartment overlooks the Ueda River which is full of carp and turtles. Across the street is a manga (Japanese comic) shop and a hair salon called "Hair Beauty Queen." There is a Chinese restaurant (run by Japanese, I checked) 30 seconds from my door and a subway station about one minute away. Next to the There are vending machines on seemingly every block, selling hot & cold drinks, beer, and cigarettes. Japan is very expensive.

I teach English at Tempaku High School three days a week, and it's a 25 minute walk there. The fourth day is spent at Showa High School, and the fifth day at Nisshinnishi High School. You must take your shoes off upon entering the schools, and put on special slippers which are only worn indoors. You must put on special shoes for the gymnasium, as well. My employer is the Aichi Prefectural Board of Education. It has been hot and humid lately. I arrived in Japan on the hottest week of the year, and there have been plenty of days that cleared 40 degrees Celcius (100 F). We are also warned that Japan is prone to natural disasters and in the event of an earthquake, you should open the door as doors can be warped in an earthquake and may not open afterwards.

Yuka lives in Nagoya too, so I see her most days. She lives five subway stops away. Last weekend we went to a matsuri, a traditional Japanese festival which is usually held during the summer. There have been a lot of festivals lately, especially around the week of O-Bon, the Buddhist festival for the dead. At matsuris, there is music, plenty of food, people in yukata (light cotton summer kimonos) and wooden sandals that go click, click, on the asphalt. The older women move much more naturally than younger people with the necessarily restricted range of motion that walking in a robe imposes. Also there are small parades of people singing in masks and costumes, taiko (drum) performances, and beer. We witnessed a taiko performance at another matsuri held under Nagoya Castle. And lots of fireworks.

I also have visited Japan's first Robot Musuem which is in Nagoya. We had a BBQ under Okazaki Castle, next to a river. I have been eating a lot, enough to worry Yuka, but the food is so good. I often find myself photographing dishes placed in front of me. I hope to see my friend Javier soon, a Spaniard from Pamplona who lives in Yamagata, in the northern part of Honshu Island (the main island of Japan). Next week I will give an aisatsu (greeting speech) for the students and staff of my schools, along with some bows and courteous expressions. Last week I attended the five-day "Aichi Prefecture Seminar for the Improvement of Japanese Teachers of English Communicative Competence" in Kanie (蟹江), which translated literally means, "Crab River."

These are my first impressions of Japan.

On the May 1st Wu-Yi Holiday, Lester, Will, and I took the night bus to Ruili, arriving in the mid-morning. The signs were in Chinese, Dai language, and English. We had some noodles, and I took a taxi to the border, the opulent Jiegao, dubiously rich as it sits on the border with one of the poorest countries in the world. The Chinese border guards informed me that I must have a pre-arranged guide if I wanted to enter Myanmar. The sent me to Hai Wai to arrange the paperwork. So I took a taxi back to Ruili, to Hai Wai, and was told that this office dealt with the affairs of overseas Chinese, not foreigners. I went around the corner to a travel agency and she wrote something down which I could not read, I found a taxi driver who took me to the destination—which turned out to be the border again. Jiegao.

The border area seems to be a Special Economic Zone, a thumb of land that crosses the Ruili River into what used to be Burma. It is a gleaming development of new buildings, wide streets, nice cars, mansions, and Burmese day laborers sleeping under giant banyan trees. There is a brand new custom house that puts American border crossings to shame. And this is the Burmese border.

This time at gate I met a friendly border guard whose first words were, “I wish you have a good trip.” She then went out of her way to find me a guide, but there was none available at 3 p.m. She gave me a phone number and told me I should come back the next day.

I took the taxi back to Ruili, where I met up with Letser & Will at Bobo’s a small drink shop. Very crowded. We tried some Myanmar Beer, not bad but a little expensive at 15 yuan.



Somehow I made it through the night. Lester’s tremulous snoring made it hard to sleep. At times he’d stop breathing and suddenly be gasping for air. This happened in 15 minute cycles. Will did his snoring bit as well. The bedbugs played their part on my back. The mosquitoes whispered in my ear, and the heat kept me sweating. At 6 a.m., I was up and ready to go. I wanted a quick bowl of noodles and then to be at the border around 8. I couldn’t get Lester & Will going. They were arguing about Tiberius or some other Roman emperor, blah, blah, Quo Vadis. I didn’t care—I just wanted to eat!!

Finally I made it to the border. We found a guide—I just had to wait for him to cross from Burma and meet me in China. In the meantime, the Chinese border guards were chatting away with me—I later saw on the Burmese side that I was the first foreigner to pass through in two weeks. One brought out a digital camera and had me pose for a couple of pictures, one by myself, and one in an “action pose,” looking at my passport with another border guard. This was not the US. I don’t know if they were taking pictures for fun or for propaganda purposes or because I was a potential spy—I was warned about this on the way to Ruili by a Chinese.

So after an hour, I made it through Chinese emigration, with my guide a friendly fellow named Tun Khaing. We went to a tiny immigration station where some surly guards in drab olive green army uniforms filled out paperwork. Above them was a portrait of Myanmar’s Dear Leader, General Than Shwe. A woman filled out all my papers and the guide was the one who actually stamped my passport. And immigration officer was too busy chewing betel nut and spit a large load of red juice into the garbage can. He smelled like cheap chewing tobacco.

We went to the office of the agency who was to escort me to Lashio. This area of Burma is a center of opium and methamphetamine manufacture and a smuggling gateway to China, not firmly under the central government’s control. This is Shan State, and most of it is closed to foreigners, so you must have some permits, a guide, and a driver to escort you five hours to the first open town after China. I sat in that office, which was also a home, for two hours. I had to sign a form that I was here for traveling, and not for political or religious reasons. I just wanted to go!

Burma is an hour and a half behind China. I didn’t know time zones also were adjusted by 30 minutes instead of just hour blocks. That gained me some time, and I chatted with a few people, one man who was translating a Burmese document into Chinese. Finally, we climbed into a dilapidated Toyota. My companions were a Chinese woman from Wuhan who was on her way to Mandalay, her guide a Chinese-Burmese girl from Hsipaw, my guide, and the driver, who was also a lawyer.

The steering wheel was on the right, as most cars I saw, but the cars drive on the right as well. It made passing slow-moving trucks a little dangerous, especially as the roads are narrow. However, there are not many cars. Most people wear the traditional longyi, which is a kind of sarong. Almost all women, children, and some men smear, sprinkle, blotch, stripe their faces with thanakha (powdered tree bark) as make up/sunblock. It gives them a peachy complexion. The red droplets all over the ground are now blood but the remains of betel spit.

The road we were on turned out to be National Highway 3, which would be a blacktop county road anywhere else. Sometimes we got stopped by a cattle traffic jam, but other than that there was not much traffic. Some huge Nissan trucks were heading for China. We stopped for lunch at a roadside restaurant, staffed by children. They had a buffet style meal, all you could eat for 2000 kyats, about $1.60.

We went through two checkpoints where I was twice reminded not to take any photos. The authorities time-stamped my papers. This was self-financed oppression, as the officials required permits in order to keep track of the movements of the people. It has been said that Burma is a prison with 40 million inhabitants.

We made a brief stop at the driver’s father’s house. His father was a lawyer too, 84 years old and could speak English, Burmese, Chinese, Shan, and French. I got dropped off in the small, sleepy town of Hsipaw at the Mr. Charles Guest House. I got a room with a bathroom for $5, including breakfast. I immediately made a dash for Nine Buddha Hill to catch the sunset. A lone Westener was up there, passed out in a chair. I told him, “You’re gonna miss it” and he glanced up at me in a glassy red-eye stoned stare. He was on something—hash or heroin, take your pick. The sunset was spectacular and all my huffing and puffing got me up there just in time. On my way down, some kids shouted, “Bye, bye!” to me as I walked past—a welcome break from all the obnoxious “HELLOOOOOs” I get in China.

I walked over a long rickety wooden bridge that spans (not for long, I imagine) the Dot’htawaddy River. I squeezed between a massive Nissan truck and the side of the bridge. Back in town, it was dark. There were streetlights, but they weren’t on. There was no electricity. Some shops had their own generators which supplied light, and some families were eating candlelit dinners, but for the most part it was dark. If you go to Burma, bring a flashlight.

Three older men said hello to me and invited me to sit down for a beer. One man was 80 years old. They were Shan people, which are related to the Thais and the Dais of China. We chatted for a few minutes and I stepped into a restaurant called “Burmese Cuisine” which I later found out was called “Forget Me Not.” It’s run by three Burmese sisters and a mother. I watched Korean music videos dubbed over with Burmese pop music. I had some curry, rice, soup, and five vegetable dishes for 1200 kyats, less than $1. After that, I went home and fell asleep. My first day in Burma, and I was feeling great peace. It is known as the Golden Land.

The next morning, I got up at 4 a.m., jumped over the wall of my hotel (since the gate was locked), and went to the candle market. The market was packed! I listened to some Shan opera music (think marimba/Zappa/Indian time signatures/Steve Reich/Beijing opera). I walked past a Christian Chinese school that was having Chinese class from 6-8 a.m. The teacher let me sit in and watch. The classrooms were indoors but open to the outside. They were learning the traditional Chinese characters, not the simplified ones they use here in Mainland China.

After this, I went to a monastery. Burma is a heavily Buddhist country. I saw monks everywhere. Every boy must go through a few years of being a novice monk, and I saw many boy monks walking down the street, barefoot, with metal jars asking for alms. A monk came down and talked to me in English, and showed me around the temple. In the background, I heard a beautiful melody that was being broadcast over loudspeakers day and night. He told me they were reading a Pali sutra and it would take seven days and nights to finish. The main hall of the temple’s floor was teak wood. You always have to remove your shoes when entering a Burmese home or temple. The main hall had some beautiful statuary, long locks of women’s hair hanging from the ceiling (so they would have beautiful hair in the next life), old photos of monks and the last saopha of Northern Shan State and his Austrian wife.

He told me that the word “Shan” is related to “Siam,” the old name for Thailand. The reason it was “Shan” was because, “the Burmese don’t know how to close their mouths!” He also told me that Thai/Dai/Shan people were in India, in Assam State. I also met some ethnic Thais in Vietnam (Ban Lac, Hoabinh Province).

The next thing I did was rent a bike. I biked out of Hsipaw and through some neighboring Shan villages. Most houses didn’t have electricity, were built on stilts, and had thatched roofs. Below the house would be a work area/living room/small shop/chicken coop. It was hot, this was hot season, about 35 degrees Celsius. I finally made it back to Hsipaw, had lunch at Mr. Food. I saw a funeral procession. It started with someone carrying the graduation portrait of the deceased (this seems to be the most prized photograph for parents), followed by chanting monks, friends bearing flowers and incense, a pickup truck overflowing with people, and then hundreds of Japanese motorbikes.

I biked around some more, found a coffeeshop on the Dot’htawaddy run by an Australian woman. She had been living in Burma for nine months. We chatted for a little while, but it looked like it would rain so I biked back to the hotel. The staff turned on the generator and some kids broke out an old videogame console and played for a while. Then it was time for some Burmese films, which always seemed to involve the military and fighting and propaganda. I chatted with one staff member who had excellent English (as many Burmese people do) about her plans to come to Yunnan Province. Everyone should come to Yunnan.

That night I went to the Burmese restaurant again, bought a ticket for the morning bus to Mandalay, and went to sleep. It had been a long, eventful day, and I felt a little sad to be leaving beautiful Hsipaw. There wasn’t really much to do there, just the atmosphere of the place made a great town to relax and hang out.

At 5:00 a.m., the bus pulled up to my hotel (they even pick you up). The man who had sold me the ticket the day earlier was there. He was bouncing with energy. I told him he had a lot of energy for 5 a.m., and he told me that he had played two tennis games the day before. Two weeks ago he had played against a professional tennis player. He didn’t smoke or drink or chew betel nut, and he meditated twice each day. He apologized that we would have to change buses in another town.

The road out of Hsipaw ran up and down mountains and through tiny villages. After two or three hours, we stopped in a town to change buses. I had a small breakfast of dahl and rice in a wooden shack while they were transferring all the goods to the new bus. I stepped on the bus and saw the floor covered with bags of potatoes. The entire bus, the aisles, even under the seats were full of bags of raw potatoes, so for the next six hours my knees would be banging against my chin while I sat next to a mother, her baby, and her young son. Half the bus was people, the other half was crammed full of goods going to market, along with plenty of goods strapped to the roof. The bus was in terrible condition—a 1970s era Japanese bus that they probably didn’t want anymore in Japan so they sold it to Myanmar.

We went through some other small towns and past the Defense Training Center, the military’s headquarters which was a set of beautiful buildings set on finely landscaped grounds. This was surrounded by the wretched poverty of a country which has been on lockdown ever since the military takeover in 1962. The generals live rich and opulent lives in a resource-rich nation while most of the population struggle through their day-to-day lives.

In 1988, the military allowed elections, which 85% of the population voted for the NLD party, putting Aung Sang Suu Kyi in power. The authorities quickly invalidated the results, killed hundreds maybe thousands in the ensuing protests, and threw Aung Sang Suu Kyi in jail. She is still under house arrest. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. I encourage all of you to read more about what’s going on in Burma. They are cut off from the world, and it’s a tragedy.

The required paperwork for someone entering the JET Program includes a physical exam by a licensed, practicing doctor and an FBI Identification Record, which proves I have have no criminal record. I also have to fill out an IRS form 8802 to claim US residency so I don't have to pay Japanese income tax. There is a foreign earned income exclusion on overseas income of less than $80,000, so I won't have to pay US federal income tax either. The strange thing with the IRS form is that I have to pay $35 for a one page letter from the US Dept. of Treasury that states I am a US resident for tax purposes. So I have to pay money for a tax form in order to not pay taxes.

A student helped me complete the physical exam at the nearby People's 533rd Army Hospital. I paid 25 yuan (about $3.23) for a physical, urinalysis, and chest X-ray. The doctor escorted me through the hospital, first giving me a tiny shot glass of a plastic cup and telling me to go to the hospital bathroom (which looks like any other public bathroom here). I had never been in a Chinese hospital. From first glance, there was not much privacy. In one room, people were sitting around with IV's stuck in their arms (which is a common treatment for colds/flu, but I think it's a little drastic). In the next room, a nurse took my blood pressure while doctors tended to a screaming infant. I had to take my tiny cup upstairs to the lab, ducking under the neon signboard. One old man in a Mao hat gave me a thumbs up. After we dropped off the cup, I went to the vision room. There they checked my sight. Instead of the Roman alphabet, the sign had the letter "E" rotated at different angles--I had to point whether it was facing up, down, left, or right. They checked me for color blindness. I read the numbers back in Chinese.

In the next room, they looked up my nose. That wasn't on the form. We passed an "AIDS room" which I assumed was for HIV testing. Some old needles were in the garbage can, but I did see a syringe on the floor. Most of the basic areas (blood pressure room, weight/height room) in the hospital resembled an American hospital from the 50s, plain white walls, older medical equipment, nurses in white hats. However, there were some places, like the X-ray room which looked as modern as any American hospital. The hospital was clean, just not flashy like Western hospitals (although there is a new hospital in Kunming run by Canadian doctors that costs just as much as American hospitals). The entire test took about an hour. I am grateful my student could walk me through and translate, as the doctor did not speak English.

I must send in my fingerprints for the FBI record. I tried doing this at the downtown police station, but I was told that they don't provide this service, so I must go downtown to the Immigration Control Center (出入管理中心). I met one nice woman there who spoke English, but informed me that the Chinese police only do fingerprinting records electronically these days, and they have no way of printing the form out. She suggested I try my neighborhood police station. So I tried that, and they sent me to the Panlong-qu district station. No one wants to put ink on my fingers and press it down on the form (which I have duly printed out on cardstock paper--I even provided the ink). I am beginning to think that it is a matter of face. Only criminals get fingerprinted in China, and for the police to fingerprint me would be a loss of face for me. That's the only thing I can think of. I emailed the Japanese consulate about this, hoping they will allow me to get fingerprinted once I return home to the US. And no, I don't have a criminal record!

Tomorrow is first day of Wu-Yi Holiday, which celebrates International Labor Day (May 1). We have the whole week off--it's one of China's three Golden Week holidays. I decided to go to Myanmar (Burma). I've been thinking about this for a long time, and now is my opportunity. Pyidaungzu Myanma Naingngandaw (The Union of Myanmar) has a consulate in Kunming, and I went down there to get my visa. It is in an old building and the elevator is often out of service. I had to walk up to the fifth floor (not so bad as there is often no fourth floor in China, similar to there occasionally being no 13th floor in the US). The consulate office was bare except for some old furniture, completely different from Vietnam's plush Kunming consulate. I didn't see any computers behind the counter, although there may have been one in the back room. Some young Myanma people were working and spoke fine English. Two Chinese people were dropping off a huge stack of Chinese passports.

I sat down at a ramshackle table covered in glue. I had to fill out three forms and provide three photos. The forms asked for my name, occupation, father's full name, etc. The woman kept using White-Out on my entries and I had to keep doing it over. First, for the occupation, I had to list where I worked. So I wrote it in Chinese (I thought it would be more comprehensible than writing Xinanlinxueyuan). She said, "No Chinese." So I wrote "Southwest Forestry University" and the address of the school. She said, "No address" and used white-out on the address. I marked that I was arriving by land, and she changed that to arriving by air. I signed my name beside the word "Signature." She used white-out there too and told me I need to sign *under* the signature line. She white-outted my Chinese address and told me to write my American address. By the time I got everything done, my application looked like it had been brushed over a couple times with white paint. She asked me when I wanted my visa, today or tomorrow, although I could see that in the meantime it had already been put into my passport. I said tomorrow as it the price was cheaper (I want as little as possible of my money going to the government of Myanmar). The people there were friendly though. Throughout the ordeal, the young woman was chatting in Burmese on her cellphone about TrustMart (local supermarket) and presumably other non-governmental business

Tomorrow I will teach two classes then take the night bus to Ruili, the "Vegas of China," the border town with Myanmar. My friends Lester and Will are going to Ruili, but will not cross into Myanmar. My friend Ðinh was going to go with me, but canceled at the last minute to go back to Vietnam for the break. From the border, I must hire a guide and acquire necessary permits to allow me to travel to Hsipaw in Shan State. From there, I hope to continue to Mandalay, although I don't have enough time to make it to Bagan (something amazing, like Angkor Wat in Cambodia, it's a pity I can't make it there). I heard that you can't reenter China through Ruili, so I will probably have to fly back to Kunming from Mandalay or Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Some people object to visiting Myanmar because of the repressive government. I understand this. However, I feel it's important to have grassroots contact with the Myanma people. Aung Sang Suu Kyi (the Nobel Laureate for Peace), although generally against traveling to Burma at the moment, said in 1995 that "Tourists can open up the world to the people of Burma just as the people of Burma can open up the eyes of tourists to the situation in their own country if they're interested in looking." A few people objected to my coming to China because of its human rights record. However, I feel my being here has made much more of a positive impact than negative. A few Chinese object to my going to Japan. However, I'm going to Burma (and Japan, and China, and the US). I have always been interested in Burma, and now's my chance to go.

I just need to make sure to tell everyone about what I saw.

So this story will continue. Last week I found out that I have been accepted into the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program. Next month, I will find out exactly where in Japan I will be placed. I arrive in Tokyo on August 5. I plan on arriving in Iowa around July 12.

Last weekend I went to Heijing, an ancient village in the Chuxiong Mountains, about a six hour train ride from Kunming. There is one train a day there, and I think that's the only way to get there. When we arrived at the station, we were met by a multitude of horse carts which took us about a mile to the city gates. We crossed Five Horses Bridge and entered the village proper. Heijing is known as a "salt city." The salt mines have been used for hundreds of years. Even Marco Polo supposedly commented on them. There is one main street--no cars in the whole place lined with lanterns and wooden buildings. The town is not quite that touristy, nothing like Dali, although tourism is the mainstay of the economy. At night the town comes alive with folk dancing and traditional music. People break out their traditional costumes (it's an Yi village) and sanxianqings and erhus and play and sing and dance in a circle all night long. Old people and young come out. In the surrounding mountains we met a 100 year-old woman. Apparently the mountains are full of old people--the locals said it was due to the clean air and water. All in all, a beautiful place.

The train ride there was a challenge--it's a local train, stopping about every 10 minutes from here all the way to Panzihua, Sichuan. People are getting on and off all the time, loaded down with bailing wire, boxes of live chickens, people smoking cigarettes, screaming babies, large baskets of vegetables carried on farmers' backs, straw hats.

A couple of weeks ago, Lester invited me with his friend Palindrome to visit Bamboo Temple, on the northwest side of Kunming. We took a minibus up, up, up into the surrounding mountains and explored the site. There is a room full of exquisitely life-sized clay luohan (arhats or noble ones), carved by the master Li Guangxiu between 1883 and 1890. There are surfing Buddhas (standing on blue dogs, turtles, giant crabs), one with very long eyebrows, one with a thin arm stretched all the way into the ceiling! I saw something like this in a cave in Baoshan, but the level of detail capturing the varieties of human expression.

The day after that, I biked to Tanhua Temple, whose pagoda is within view of my apartment. The grounds are very peaceful--people playing majiang & cards, sleeping in hammocks--so I sat down at a picnic table and started correcting student essays. Soon I noticed people hovering over me and looking over my shoulder, trying to read the students' text. There is no privacy in China! I quickly finished my work and climbed up to the top of the pagoda, which I hadn't done since my first week here. I was much more familiar with the city and could recognize many sites. I even could see my apartment from the tower. Looking downtown, I saw the familiar Industrial and Commercial Bank of China's spiral-top skyscraper along with all the other massive buildings that make up a booming city of 3.5 million.

I have witnessed so much change here in less than eight months. Buildings going up and down. My favorite hot pot place is now a pile of rubble, along with the rest of the city block. The landscape is constantly changing as familiar landmarks go down, replaced by new multi-story apartment complexes and office buildings. We are in the middle of the largest human migration in history--the flight of the rural Chinese to urban areas. There must be housing and facilities for all these people, so progress continues at an astounding rate. I have gotten used to living in a construction site. Even the shortcut I used to take home is now a foundation for a new building.

I saw a jazz concert a few days ago. It was put on at Nordica, a Swedish-run cultural center/cafe/art gallery/(and what I strongly suspect to be an underground church). The musicians were all Chinese, teachers at Yunnan Normal University (Teacher's College). I was greatly impressed with the skill and intensity of the piano-bass-drum trio. They even brought on a professional singer (Chinese) who brought the house down. It was an amazing event, and my first time to see jazz in a long time.

A couple of weeks ago, I was getting short on money (due to my Guam interview). Suddenly, the office manager, Wendy, of the Foreign Languages Department called me. "I haven't seen you for a long time," she said. Then she gave me 570 yuan for giving a guest lecture and judging some speech contests last semester. I immediately went to Mandarin Books (by far the best English language bookstore in Kunming) and bought Atop an Underwood, the early writings by Jack Kerouac. Then I went to Prague Café and had a pizza and some beer.

I am very sad to be leaving Kunming in July. I was seriously thinking of staying at least another year, but I worked so hard to get into this JET Program, and it's a big deal--less than 25% of applicants make it in. Also, Yuka said she'd go with me wherever I end up in Japan, and I can't pass that up. I miss her too much. But I will make the most of my time here in China, and will sure to be back as soon as possible, you can count on that.

There is something about Asia that I've really grown to love, something that keeps drawing me back, and it's not just the food. It's the people, of course, but I can't seem to put it down precisely. I just know the draw is there, and if anything, is growing day by day. In four months, I will be in Japan, trying to speak Japanese once again, eating okonomiyaki, hopefully sending emails back about the strange and exciting and wonderful experience of there, too. But also with a tear in my eye for China, for it will be sad to leave and you know I love it dearly, a love like that of a native son's.

It was kind of a sad farewell seeing Yuka off--she's in Japan now, and then off to the USA next week, but I'm busy back at work. School started last week, and I've been doing all the teaching stuff--planning classes, grading 160 papers a week, running the film club, etc. I am coming off a 2+ month holiday and it's been tough transitioning back into work.

After my third day of class (which ended at noon), I came home to find Yuka and a mutual friend Lilly waiting for me. "Do you want to go to the hot springs?" they asked me. I didn't have class until 3 p.m. the next day, so I was all for it. Some Lilly's classmates joined the happy group, so ten of us ended up taking a bus out to the nearby resort town of Anning. It's on the other side of the massive Lake Dian, a geothermically active area full of hot springs. After we checked into the hotel, we went out for hotpot. As soon as we walked into the restaurant, a man stood up and said (in Chinese), "Oh behalf of the government of Anning, I welcome you!" and handed me a beer proceeded to toast me. I decided then that I like Anning. After hotpot, we went for some karaoke. Two hours was enough for me (and I had been up since 5:30 that morning), so Yuka and I called it quits at 11. However, the rest of the party kept singing away until 1 a.m. In the USA, we have baseball/football/NASCAR as a national pastime; the Chinese have karaoke.

The next morning Yuka, Lilly, and I did some searching for a good hot spring. There was no shortage of facilities; it was just matter of finding an outdoor spring (who wants to sit in a white-tiled room?). Finally, we found an outdoor "Japanese-style" hotspring consisting of 13 pools in the middle of the forest. It was early, so we three had the entire complex to ourselves. The proprietors took it a step further and added some ingredients to each pool--one was lemon juice, one was rose petals, and one was milk. It was a relaxing way to spend a couple of hours, although it was very difficult remaining awake for the rest of the day. My 3 o'clock class was inevitably short.

One advantage of working at a forestry college is the campus--there are over 300 species of trees here. Kunming, being the Spring City, is glorious once real spring comes around. All the trees and flowers are in brilliant bloom and everything smells wonderful. Yuka and I also got to see the cherry blossoms at Cuihu Park. I got a lot of good pictures and short video clips of the traditional music going on there every day--Yunnan Opera, huge choruses singing communist folk songs, some traditional minority dancing. It's been sunny and 27 degrees (around 75 Fahrenheit) every day for weeks. Welcome spring.

Two weekends ago Yuka & I got invited to a luncheon at Lilly's grandparents' house. It was a jaozi (Chinese dumpling)-making extravaganza! When we arrived they were pounding out the dough from scratch, and rolling it out into perfect flat circles. Also it was a sushi-making extravaganza! There was a woman there whose family was from Henan, but was born in Guangdong, and did her Cultural Revolution time in Hainan. So she was speaking Mandarin, Cantonese, and Hainan minority dialects. Her husband, also an employee of the forestry college, is a moss expert who speaks fine English, Russian, Mandarin, Kunming-hua, and some native Yunnan dialects (from his Cultural Revolution time). Yuka speaks Japanese, I try. So it was a very multicultural party. I have become quite accustomed to eating spicy foods (three times a day, every day), but it was the first time in six months I had had sushi, and the accompanying wasabi (Japanese horseradish), which is a completely different kind of spiciness. The first jolt, tinging in my nose and throat, almost knocked me off my feet. A second warning to myself & others: take it easy on the Japanese mustard, too. There was the great triad of beverages served at every Chinese banquet: Coca-Cola, Sprite, and orange-drink (beer and baijiu are obvious fixtures in any establishment great or small and therefore don't even need to be mentioned).

The next day one of my students invited Yuka & me over to cook, and we made jaozi again. By this time I was quite adept at folding the pastry up into perfectly formed jaozi--I had been trained by a northern Chinese expert (I have heard, from Northerners, of course, that the Southerners don't know how to properly make jaozi). The small, subtle four-movement gesture he taught me resembled a martial art, but in the palm of one's hand. In Japan, they have a similar dumpling called gyoza (which I assume derives from the same etymology), and Yuka was applying a completely different folding technique. However I proudly adhere to the Northern school of dumpling-making.

I am still waiting to hear from Japan about the results of my JET application. The interview results and subsequent recommendations are sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Japan, and it's Tokyo that makes the final decision. The anticipation is killing me. I have about two more weeks to go.

On Guam I thought I would try to catch up on American culture: I watched some Cops, Court TV (they were trying to figure out what to do with Anna Nicole Smith's remains, and the judge started bawling when he was reading his decision--I didn't even know Anna was dead!), Mountain Dew, Taco Bell, lawyer commercials. Dick Cheney was out of his "undisclosed location" was even on Guam the same day I was.

On Guam, there's no public transportation to speak of, just these $2 shopping trolleys that shuttle all the Japanese tourists between the Hilton, Hyatt, etc. and the mall, factory outlets, etc. I had nothing to do the first day, so I rode around on that and practiced my Japanese with the tourists, helped them read the maps, I bought some deodorant (haven't seen any in China) at K-Mart.

The next morning I went to my interview. It was about a 15 minute walk there, so I decided to take a taxi and keep my shoes shiny and suit sweat-free (I had my suit tailor-made for me in Kunming--it fits well and looks great...the shoes were quite a problem to find--most people just laughed when I told them my size). The interview itself was surprisingly low key and congenial. I signed into the consulate and was soon brought to a room. There was a panel of four interviewers: a former JET Program participant, the JET Program Coordinator, the Japanese Cultural Attaché, and the Consular General. The two Japanese people introduced themselves in Japanese, but I was nervous and didn't catch much, well, really anything. I'm so used to Chinese these days. I was across the table from them. They seemed impressed that I started a film club here and judged various CCTV Cup English speaking contests. The Consular General complimented me on my "excellent" recommendations. They also asked me how I planned to incorporate my musical background in the JET Program, and the Consular Cultural Attaché followed up with, "What Japanese music do you like?" I responded that I like the shamisen, and they all gasped an "Oooooohhh!" in that way that only the Japanese do. I forgot to bring up that I saw Hiyako Marumi (famous enka singer) live in Gifu and got a t-shirt. I've been kicking myself ever since.

The interview was a little over 30 minutes, and I was getting some good signs from them, especially when the head honcho asked the ex-JET to offer me some advice about being successful in the program and she gave her schpiel, and then added, "But you've had plenty of international experience and teaching experience, so you'll do fine." I'll find out in early April if I get accepted into the program. My thoughts about the interview seesaw from second-guessing my answers and feeling less than confident, and feeling like I'll make it in.

So that was that. After that, I met a girl who was also interviewing and she asked me out to lunch. We went for some Mexican and margaritas and then spent the rest of the day lying on the beach talking about China and Japan and Eugene, Oregon and the String Cheese Incident. The beaches in Guam are excellent--sugar-white sand, clear, shallow, warm water, scuba diving, snorkeling, coral reefs, palm trees.

I was quickly becoming broke so the day previous I had changed my ticket and went to the Philippines for a few days, not knowing anyone there or anything about it, no guidebook nothing, just showed up, and after a quick series of strange events, ended up on my way to downtown Manila on a Friday night. The Philippines is the strangest place I have ever been. In some ways, it's very similar to the USA. Everyone I met (except for little kids) spoke perfect English, all the signs even in the backstreet neighborhoods were always English, English newspapers. But then there was a chaotic Asian element to the Philippines, and often I saw crushing poverty.

The first night I stayed in the heart of Manila, Ermita, and was a little nervous. The taxi driver was helping me find a hotel, driving through chaotic streets filled with cars and people and jeepneys, everyone was out eating and drinking, middle aged American men holding hands with teenage Filipino girlfriends, a male cabaret called "Manhunt," thumping music, rock bands playing in the bars. I was dropped off at the Hotel Sandico, next to a bar called "Hussy's." Two or three girls were placing their faces against the glass, trying to seduce passersby into the the blacklight bar. Every hotel and convenience store had a security guard at the door. I checked in to my hotel, quickly walked across the street to the 7-11 bought some San Miguel beer for $0.40 a bottle. The bottom of the receipt says, "Get a FREE WWE Slam Card for every P65 purchase. 36 designs to collect!"

The sign on the hotel said that no male guests were allowed past the lobby (but "Female guests ok"). I took a dingy elevator up to the third floor then quickly retreated back to my room. I watched a little Filipino TV, and could understand bits and pieces. The language flitted back and forth between Tagalog (with a lot of Spanish words) and English expressions and phrases. There was also a cheaply dubbed Japanese program. Then I got tired trying to figure it out and went to sleep.

The next morning, I got up and went for an early stroll, past the the big Ermita church, through a small park full of sleeping homeless, and soon the taxi driver "Dito" López and his wife. Dito and his two daughters Ces and Sauce work at the airport for hotel services. I talked to them a long time the night before. They invited me to stay at their home. So I went to the municipality of Navotas, north of Manila but still Metro Manila (whatever that means--11 million+ people).

Manila is the most densely populated city in the world (41,000 people/km²), four times denser than Tokyo. (District 6 has 68,000+ people/km².) That day, I had breakfast at a streetside stand--fried eggs and some kind of rice casserole. I asked Dito if they used chopsticks in the Philippines. He laughed. We walked down to the park alongside Manila bay and saw kids swimming in the dirty water and desperately poor squatter houses. I met a lot of people, Dito's friends. They all spoke perfect English. After that, I sat in the Lópeces' back yard and read my book and Gloria, the mother, aka "Mama O.G.," brought me some additional reading material--some back issues of Us Weekly and Our Daily Bread. She made some fish soup for lunch and we drank some buko (coconut drink). We said Grace.

In the afternoon, their elder son showed me around downtown Manila. First we toured Intramuros, the oldest district in Manila. This walled city was built by the Spanish in 1573 - 1606 and was the seat of colonial power. The city also includes Manila Cathedral and several Baroque churches (UNESCO World Heritage Site). The site It also played a pivotal role in Philippine independence as José Rizal, the national hero, was imprisoned.

We walked past Chinatown and into Rizal Park. The park is huge--it includes a Chinese garden, Japanese garden, the Department of Tourism building, the National Museum of the Filipino People, the National Library of the Philippines, the Planetarium, the Orchidarium and Butterfly Pavilion, an open-air auditorium for cultural performances, a relief map of the Philippines, a fountain area, a children's lagoon, a chess plaza (where one blue-eyed Filipino challenged me to a game, but only if I bet some money, so I declined--I might as well give him the cash), a light and sound presentation, and the Quirino Grandstand. Middle school students were practicing dance routines, there was some karate lessons, and vendors sold snacks and drinks out of bamboo shacks. We bought some kind of hot drink containing tofu and a sticky sweet fruit paste. It was delicious.

In the evening, we walked along Rizal Blvd, past the enormous and heavily guarded US Embassy (one of the most prominent buildings in Manila), to the Baywalk, a 2km promenade beside Manila Bay. From here you can witness some of the most spectacular sunsets in the world (due to all the pollution). There are kaleidoscopic lamp posts, al fresco cafes, very good live cover bands, coconut trees. I had a "continental breakfast" for supper: eggs, toast, French fries, coffee. After that, we stopped in a high class dining establishment were we were checked for bombs. This also happened at shopping mall. We walked around Malate and then hopped into a jeepney.

Jeepneys were originally US Army jeeps left over from WWII, converted into short distance transportation, but now they are constructed in the Philippines but remain true to form. They are brightly decorated and highly colorful with messages such as, "King Lord," "Justine," "John 3:16," etc. The sides are painted and the back is elongated with two benches that can hold a half dozen people each. You climb in an out the back, over the sign that says, "God Bless Us." There is a bar across the ceiling to hold onto and colorful lights and music to provide atmosphere. I passed my money up to the driver, a sweaty guy in a tank top and headband. He counted it while driving and then and passed back the correct change. It's really cheap--rides start at 14 cents.

That evening, I played with the kids, Cyrus, Ulo (Big Head), and Estrid(?) (aka Ah-ah), and then went to bed.

The next morning, I had a breakfast and some coffee and then went with Dito to the Navotas park again. There was a huge group of people of all ages dancing, doing aerobics following an enthusiastic leader in a sweat suit and thumping music. They start around 6 a.m., before it gets too hot. It continued until 9 a.m. After that, we hopped on a bus to meet Dito's friend. We walked down a long hallway, past some guy sleeping in a mosquito net. At the end of the hall, we went into a tiny apartment of a young woman. She served us fried eggs, bread and coffee. She only spoke Tagalog. She and Dito spoke for about 20 minutes, then we left. He later told me, "That's my second wife. Don't tell anyone. We've been together for three years."

We rode a jeepney back to Navotas. Dito had to work so I sat on the side of the street and took pictures of passing jeepneys and chatted with the other guys who sat there. They always seemed to be there. I asked one guy with a mullet if they were there every day. He said, "Yeah, we just sit here and smoke cigarettes and drink." I started talking to one guy who invests on the Manila Stock Exchange. He invited me in to play some billiards next door, and brought some snacks and San Miguels. Soon Dito reappeared and we went across the street into someone's courtyard.

Soon a big plastic bag full of San Miguel bottles appeared, along with with white mango in vinegar and other snacks. There were about six men there, and we sat and chatted, making jokes. Eventually I asked to use their toilet. Someone said, "Hey, just use the wall. It's a postmodern toilet!" Later, another guy, about 60, introduced his teenage kids. He said, "Yeah, I almost forgot to have kids." Another guy there looked about 35 but showed me his driver's license: 62. They kept saying, "Hey, it's the Filipino Way!" I learned to say "Cheers" in Tagalog: "Tagai!" or "Toast!" It was a fun afternoon.

Later that evening, I watched the first episode of the second season of Big Brother Pinoy (Big Brother Philippines) and soon became sleepy. I had to leave early the next morning, so I went to bed. At 3, the family woke me up, made me coffee and drove me to the airport. I thought it would be interesting to see a quiet night in Manila, but the opposite was true: at 3:30 in the morning, people--whole families--were walking around, playing cards, eating in restaurants. The town was still busy, although traffic was significantly lighter. Soon I was on a plane to Hong Kong, a boat to Shenzhen, and then back in China.

By the time I got to Shenzhen I was very hungry. I left the airport in search of a cheap restaurant. I heard someone say, "Laowai! (foreigner)" and turned around to see a middle-aged man and his wife with a bag of groceries. I chatted with them a while in Chinese (they're from Harbin) and they took it upon themselves to help me find a restaurant, along with the help of another young man. It's good to be back in China. I never cease to be amazed with people's friendliness. I ended up eating at a place with an Italian guy and his Cantonese girlfriend.

Now I'm back in Kunming. Yuka's and my college friend Mariko came to visit for a couple of days. We went to Yuantong Temple, a Tibetan temple, Stone Forest (a UNESCO Geopark), ate at a vegetarian restaurant where the chefs make everything look and taste like meat, and ate Kunming BBQ here in Bailong Village. I start teaching next week, and Yuka and Mariko are on their way to Leshan (Big Buddha) and Xi'an. Yuka will be back in Kunming next week.

I took a late morning flight out of Kunming to Shenzhen, one of China's richest cities (on the border with Hong Kong). I was fortunate that they let me take Yuka's suitcase as a carry-on, as I could get off the plane very quickly and make a mad dash for the port. There was a ferry that was due to leave at 2:00 p.m. for Hong Kong International Airport (my next stop). If I would have missed it, I would have risked missing my next connection, but there was no problem. Before I knew it, I was sailing in the Pearl River Delta for Sky Pier (Hong Kong Airport's Port). They even refunded the Hong Kong tax money that I paid on my plane ticket when I got there (HK$120). There was an altercation with a very, very fat angry Chinese man, his group of friends(?) all in Hong Kong Disneyland attire, and a poor airline representative. It was strange hearing Cantonese again, with its elongated final tones drifting up or down.

After I got out of the port, I re-emerged into the Western world. This was the first time in six months. I was surprised to be surrounded by English books and magazines in the airport bookstore. I stared in wonder for about 20 minutes...things I completely forgot about--the shelves and shelves of business books, National Enquirer, pornographic magazines with their plastic wrap and black covers so only the titles are visible, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal...none of those things I have seen in six months. I also saw a plethora of Western fast food restaurants, lots and lots of foreigners, people in super-trendy clothes...it was a little overwhelming.

Someone (I forgot who) remarked about their China experience, how it all feels like a dream now. I had a similar feeling, like stepping through the looking glass, back into the Western world. Hong Kong, especially the airport, is firmly placed in the Western world.

The next stop was Manila airport. Here's a guide for the Manila airport, in 18 easy steps:

1. Fill out an immigration card on the plane. Get off the plane.
2. Walk over a disinfectant cushion (ala the UK during the foot-and-mouth crisis). There are also infrared cameras hanging from the ceiling at this point and a doctor closely watching the temperatures of each passenger.
3. Get in line and go through immigration, even if you're just changing planes. So I got a Philippines stamp, and had 21 days to stay in the country, even though I told them I was going to Guam.
4. Get in line and wait for your luggage.
5. Get in line and go through customs.
6. Walk outside the airport, and go down a road for 10 minutes to a different airport. Some people were taking jeepneys (very cool transportation in the Philippines), but I didn't anticipating having to have Philippine pesos. It's not clear where you're supposed to enter the other airport, but a security guard let me through a gate.
7. Walk up an obscure staircase and get in line to enter the airport. Show another security guard your passport and airplane ticket. If you don't have a ticket, you have to show your itinerary. If you couldn't print your itinerary for the past few days because every print shop in Kunming was closed for the Chinese New Year, he'll get a wadded-up print-out from somewhere and look you up.
8. Get in line and go through security. You can leave your shoes on.
9. Check into your flight and get a boarding pass.
10. Get in line and go through security again. Take off your belt and shoes and put them into the x-ray machine.
11. Give an official 750 Philippine pesos or US$15.50 for "airport improvement and security development tax."
12. Get in line and go through immigration. First you must fill out an emigration card.
13. Go through customs.
14. Find your gate and go downstairs. At the bottom of the stairs, give a security person your passport and boarding pass.
15. Give someone else your carry-on items so they can search it.
16. Someone else will wave a metal-detecting wand around.
17. Give someone else your shoes (take them off) for inspection.
18. Board your next flight.

I arrived on Guam this morning at 4:45 a.m. Back in the US, the first time in six months. I slept for a few hours in the airport until it was time to check into my hotel. After 5 a.m. or so, the airport was completely deserted except for security people and airline workers. I was awoken at 8 or so by Filipino flight attendants laughing loudly at dirty jokes. I decided to save a couple bucks and walked from the airport to the hotel. Nowadays, I think nothing of walking 30 minutes for something. It's no big deal, but I forgot...this is America, even though I'm in Guam. I saw the familiar roadside debris of Bud Light cans, empty packs of Doral. Some people shouted "Eyyyy!" at me, as some Americans shout at pedestrians where pedestrians are uncommon. I also haven't really thought about low-riders and sub-woofers, hip-hop music, backwards baseball caps, desolate sidewalks (I was the only pedestrian). It's strange being in America without a car.

This island is in the west Pacific, three times closer to Manila than Honolulu. There is a huge Navy base and Air Force base. There are lots and lots of Japanese tourists. There are nice beaches, but mostly Guam is used for duty-free shopping. I needed some supplies and headed for K-Mart. Guam has the world's largest K-Mart in the world. It's not nearly as exciting as it sounds. The locater signs in the store (housewares, pharmacy, plus sizes, etc.) are in English, Chamarro (local language), and Japanese.There was an interesting snippet I caught overhead between standard K-Mart muzak: short grammar lessons in Chamarro. I met a woman working at the airport from Palau. She taught me "thank you" in her native language: "muu lang." I also see many Melanesians, Filipinos, S. Pacific islanders. Some people are huge. I went to a restaurant tonight and guys as big around as they are tall kept eating and eating and eating, presumably keeping up their sumo physique.

Most people seem very laid-back and have a good sense of humor. They often lapse from English into other languages, things I have never heard before but include a lot of Spanish and English words. Most of the Japanese tourists here don't speak any English, so many signs are only in Japanese. I helped a family find their destination on the bus today and they seemed a little shocked that I could understand what they were talking about. When they got off the bus, they each waved to me, one at a time, in deep gratitude.

Tomorrow morning at 9 I have my interview at the Guam International Trade Center, 6th floor. The Japanese Consulate General is there, and hopefully this will get me into the Japanese Exchange and Teaching Program in August. That's the whole reason why I am there.

Also I wanted to save some money, so I changed my ticket and will go back to the Philippines two days early (cheaper than Guam, whejavascript:void(0)
Publishre nothing's cheap). From there, I'll fly back to Hong Kong, take a boat to Shenzhen, and then to Kunming. I was intrigued with the Philippines and need to see more. But now it's time for sleep.

Yuka and I took the night bus down to Hekou, on the Vietnam border. This bus was a sleeper bus, bunk beds, room for about 30. The beds are quite small and not designed for a Western frame, so I wasn't too comfortable. But we made it to the border just in time for the flag raising and the Chinese national anthem, signifying the opening of the border for that day. After we passed the border formalities, we walked across the Red River and into Lao Cai, Vietnam.

Vietnam is booming right now. It has the second fasted growing economy in Asia (8% last year, behind China's 10% but ahead of India's 5%). It just joined the WTO a couple of months ago. Bush was in Hanoi in November, I think that was when. So many things in Vietnam were similar to China, lots of construction, concrete buildings going up left and right, a burgeoning middle class, great optimism for a chance at a better life. However, Vietnam was different from China too. Sure, the Chinese influence was there, but the writing system uses the Roman alphabet (or something similar enough), so it was much easier to read things. There was a definite French influence from years of colonialism, and definitely their own "Vietnam-ness" which makes it completely unique from anywhere else. One US dollar is about 16,000 dong. It was not fun counting all those zeros. I ended up dividing by 2000 and thinking in terms of Chinese money, which was easier as prices in Vietnam are similar to prices in China.

We found a minibus driver who would take us 30km up to Sapa for 20,000 dong (about $1.25, or 62 cents each). We rode up through the winding mountain roads to a beautiful village underneath Vietnam's highest mountain, Fanxipan. This area is full of Vietnam's ethnic minority groups including the H'mongs, Black Thai, Red Thai, White Thai, Dzao, etc. Many people here, including the men (which is not usually the case in China), were wearing traditional clothes. Everyone in this town was in the tourist business.

Before we stepped out of the minibus, representatives from no less than hotels had crowded on (we were already full with 10 people on the way up). "You stay here $5 a night brand new hotel it's not in your guidebook mountain view come check it out if you don't like it no problem, ok?" We had pamphlets, businesscards, brochures crammed into our faces. We decided on the Green Mountain Hotel which did have a great view, private bathroom, balcony overlooking the mountains, and plenty of hot water for $5. We decided to go for a walk.

"Hello? Motorbike?" A guy pulled up on his motorbike. "No thanks," I said, "I just want to walk." "Hello, moto!" another guy shouted as he pulled his motorbike up. It was something we would hear consistently for the next two weeks. Granted, as we rode the bus and made stops, any person getting off, it didn't matter where, Vietnamese or foreigner, would get the same treatment. I didn't see many people walking in Vietnam.

The next morning, we found a baguette stand doing egg sandwiches for 3000 dong (about 15 cents). We also found a decent coffee shop, and had my first cup of decent coffee in six months. The Chinese are not big coffee drinkers, but the Vietnamese do it right, along with French pastries, baguettes, wine from the highland university city of Dalat, music. We walked down to Cat Cat, a H'mong village down the mountain about 3km away. We had to pay 3000 dong to walk the road. There was a beautiful waterfall and a pretty destitute village, people all sewing the blankets and clothes that were hawked all over Sapa town. The hassle here was much less, and we did see a new school being built. We chatted with some H'mong girls playing a game similar to jacks. Everyone speaks English and takes US dollars: "There are H'mong people everywhere, even in America," one girl told me. I knew this to be true as my friend Amanda told me of the large H'mong community in the Twin Cities, among other places. "Yes, that's right, I said." They of course had things to sell as well, but didn't seem to care if we bought anything. There were so many other tourists with more money to spend than me, a person on a Chinese university teacher's salary. Sapa's nice, really incredible views, but as Yuka said, "We're trapped." You can't go anywhere without having to pay or being offered something to buy.

We spend two days in Sapa, then took an overcrowded minibus back to Lao Cai, where we were dropped off at the driver's friend's or brother's restaurant, serving "Western food," also booking train tickets, which we prefered to do by ourselves 50 meters away at the train station, for cheaper. We ate next door to the station, a place decidedly not on the tourist maps, and chatted with the owner. He gave me a kind of sauce with orange chili peppers, ginger and sugar, and then something to drink that helped with digestion. When we entered the train station, a security guard pushed us to the front of the line and got us past all the scalpers. He even wrote down the price to make it clear. We booked a hard sleeper (6-berth sleeping car) to Hanoi.

Hanoi is called "The Paris of the Orient." I've never been to Paris--my only exposure to France was Calais which I'm told is not the best France has to offer--but I have been to Montreal, "The Paris of the North." Hanoi is not very similar to Montreal. But Hanoi is a great city--lakes, rivers, stately colonial-era mansions, "Hello-you-want-motobike" people in green safari hats ala the British in Egypt, superb coffee, art galleries, a maze of shops, ancient pagodas, Ho Chi Minh's preserved body. There are hardly any cars but tons of motorbikes. When the light turns green, it sounds like a motorcycle derby--every time. There is even a jazz club with live music 7 nights a week, and plenty of English language bookshops which is a rare treat in Asia. We went to The Bookworm and chatted with the Vietnamese owner. I picked up Wallace Stegner's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "Angle of Repose" for 80,000 dong, about $5. The owner pointed out a place for us to eat, a fancy outdoor place where local Hanoi people went, very delicious.

I wish we would have spent more time in Hanoi. The next day we took a city bus to Ha Dong station, got off to tons of men grabbing us and pulling us toward the buses they were selling tickets to, going to Halong Bay or wherever. Yuka cleared about ten of them off her with a judo move and a "Don't touch me!" We scrambled for the bus station office and found someone responsible looking in a uniform. I said, "Ha Tay," the province that were bound for, and he pointed out the correct bus. Soon we were on our way to Xuan Mai, about 30km southwest, home of the Forestry University of Vietnam and my good friend, Chairman Mao.

While we were waiting for the bus to get moving, some young girls came on the bus, begging for money, but soon gave up and just played with us, braiding Yuka's hair. Another man tried to sell me some books...I tried to explain that I don't read Vietnamese very well. The bus driver climbed aboard, gave a couple of big honks, clearing out the non-riders from the bus and miscellaneous debris in the station lot, and we got rolling. Outside of Ha Dong, the road was crowded with bicycles and motorbikes. It was completely flat and straight, but for some reason, many people became carsick and were vomiting into conveniently provided small plastic bags and throwing them out the window. Before we knew it, the bus pulled up to a dusty stop and the driver informed us that this was Xuan Mai.

We hired some motorbike drivers to give us a ride to the forestry university and boy, did we suprise the guards at the front gate. I showed them Dr. Tran's (aka, Chairman Mao) namecard and also Dr. Tran's son Kha's mobile phone number. Soon a Western woman pulled up on her motorbike. Her name was Susan, from Australia, doing research, and the only foreigner in town.

"They called Professor Mao and then they called me," she said of the guards. Soon Mao and his son Kha showed up on their bikes and took us out to lunch. We left our bags at the front gate guard station.

We were greeted at the restaurant with a bottle of scorpion whiskey. In fact, two scorpions were inside, along with various herbs and who knows what else. It was strong, smooth, and sweet. I warned Yuka not to smell it before drinking. "Chuc mung!" Several other officials from the university were there, one the director, with a hammer-and-sickle pin on his lapel. He spoke excellent English. Yuka and Mao went to the restaurant's fish tank and chose a catfish swimming around for our hotpot lunch. Another official had lived during Soviet times in East Germany and spoke German (many older Vietnamese have been educated abroad in other former communist contries--Mao himself lived a while in Leningrad and was educated at Beijing Forestry University). They were all familiar with my university (the one in Kunming that is). Many had been there.

There were numerous toasts and photos. Soon another bottle of scorpion whiskey appeared and was opened, and consumed. The Vietnamese call it ruou--there were also gigantic bottles of cobra whiskey and some other large rodent-sized reptile--this was in restaurants all over Vietnam, as is paojiu (fruit and herb whiskey) in China. After lunch, we rode back to Mao's house, met his wife and looked at pictures. He showed me an award he won from Cambridge University--"one of the 2000 outstanding scientists of the 21st century." Another researcher from the university with excellent English came and chatted for a while. Mao opened his bottle of baijiu from Lijiang (spiced with ingredients from Xishangbanna, Kunming, etc.) and we had a couple drinks. Soon, it was time to go. I climbed on the back of Kha's bike and Yuka onto Mao's.

Leaving his house, which is situated on a small slope, Mao lost his balance and fell off his motorbike, crashing onto the pavement, Yuka tumbling after. The crash left a large scrape on Mao's cheek. He was all right, but shaken up. Yuka was ok. Don't drink and drive.

The next morning, Yuka wasn't feeling well, and Mao and Kha met us at the hotel to go for breakfast. I went with them but Yuka stayed behind. After a bowl of rice noodles, we continued to a small shop to see another Vietnamese friend of mine. His parents own it and greeted us with a draft of cold beer (this is at a 8:30 in the morning!). We ate peanuts, had some tea, some coffee, and chatted in Chinese, a little Vietnamese, and a little English.

I went back to the hotel and took care of Yuka. She was in bed most of that day. I took a step out to use the Internet and found a net bar--2000 dong per hour (about 13 cents). I got lots of strange stares and offers for a motorbike ride. Not many foreigners make it to these parts. Some people sitting in front of a shop summoned me over. I sat down and tried to chat with them. They gave me some pineapple and put a little salt on it. A guy offered me a cigarette. I declined. He then offered me some heroin and a prostitute, a young bored-looking woman sitting with us. An old woman with missing teeth cackled a laugh. I decided it was time to be on my way.

The next day, Yuka was feeling better so the two of us and Kha rented a car and driver and headed for Haobinh City. We climbed up, up, up into the mountains once again and ended up in a village called Ban Lac. The people here are ethnic Thais and live in huts with thatched roofs and on stilts. We were invited into one for tea and sat on the bamboo mat floor. The guest room had no furniture and plain walls. We sat on a hand-woven rug. It was very pleasant. The day was a communist party holiday (the 77th anniversary of the Party), so there were not many tourists. The pace of life was slow and not as aggressively touristy as Sapa.

After lunch we went for a tour of Hoabinh Dam (which supplies electricity as far south as Saigon), had to pay more than double the Vietnamese admission price and 10,000 dong for a required guide that spoke no English and didn't let us into "sensitive" places in the dam. After that, we went to see Ho Chi Minh's massive statue (over 20m tall) which is visible across the entire valley. A friendly Vietnamese girl we met that day took us to the market and had Yuka try on a new pair of jeans. Later we realized that Vietnamese do not wear jeans with worn out knees (as Yuka was wearing). Some kids pointed at her jeans and said something to me, probably along the lines of, "Hey, get your girlfriend some decent jeans!"

The next day we headed for the beach. We had a couple carsick bus rides to Haiphong, then took a ferry to Cat Ba Island in Halong Bay (UNESCO World Heritage Site). This was slow season, so there had to be twice as many motorbike drivers as there were foreign tourists. Every ten seconds we were offered a ride, which we continued to decline. The beaches were splendidly deserted and the offshore (and onshore) scenery is spectacular--limestone rocks and islets jutting out of clear water for miles and miles.

One day we actually did hire some motorbike drivers and went up to Cat Ba National Park. On the way up the mountains, we stopped at Hospital Cave. During the "American War" (as it's called in Vietnam), this cave served as a secret hospital. One old man, still in his North Vietnamese Army uniform was a caretaker. He showed us around and explained each room in broken English: the kitchen, the officers' quarters, the operating room. Then we came to the meeting room. Suddenly his eyes lit up and he broke into a rousing song whose chorus went, "Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh." You could tell that he had some strong memories from that time and the bare room seemed to fill up with the spirit of the time. His name card sitting beside me now says, "Vu Dinh Khoi--Distinguished War Veteran." He didn't seem to care that I was American or that Yuka was Japanese. He put his arms around us and posed happily for pictures. "Vietnam and America are good friends," he told me, and this is becoming truer each day.

Cat Ba National Park is gorgeous and the hikes and views are spectacular. That's all I have to say about that--the rest you'll have to see to believe.

After our lazy days lounging on Cat Ba, we made it back to Hanoi, took a night train to the border, crossed the Red River once again and spent a day in the boring border town of Hekou, China. It was nice being able to speak Chinese again.

Finally our night bus to Kunming was ready to depart. It was a sleeper again, and an older model, well worn. It proved to be the worst bus trip of my life. For the first four or five hours, there was no road. They are currently building a new expressway linking Kunming and Hanoi, and we were taking a bumpy dirt road instead. People were smoking and spitting on the floor. I saw one guy blow his nose on the floor. The bus lurched and rocked incessantly, dodging earlier landslides and midnight traffic with deafening honks. We had top bunks and I was clutching the sides with an iron grip for fear of being thrown off. There were numerous times I was bucked into the air like a rodeo clown. I was wholeheartedly determined that if I fell, it would be anywhere but on that floor. The bed was too small for me and if I tried to lie on my side, my hips would start aching from the jolts of the bus and the wafer-thin mattress provided no cushion against the metal frame.

The entire ride reeked of diesel fumes--I suppose there was a major leak. The guy next to me was snoring loudly. We stopped a couple of times, but there was no bathroom--we just went behind the bus in the middle of the night, our shoes encrusted with mud. After 14 excruciating hours (the bus was over two hours late), we finally made it to Kunming. It was another hour on a crowded city bus (no seat), and then finally home sweet home and a long hot shower. Later that day, Yuka and I blew our noses--the tissues were blacked from the diesel fumes. Next time, I will look closely at the long distance bus before getting on.

We got the call at 2 p.m., 30 minutes early. The moving people were here. I had spent the entire morning hastily throwing all my Chinese belongings into boxes and bags for the move. We had an abundance of students there to help, three people from the Foreign Affairs Department, the cleaning lady Mrs. Jiang, and a four-man moving crew. They all dashed into my apartment and threw it into the moving truck, while my boss Mr. Li was saying, "Go, go, go!" Soon two taxis skidded up to the apartment, and Lester, Marietta, and I crammed into the back and that was it. Good-bye, old apartment. I won't miss you, mosquitoes.

The night before, I had gone out to Wei's Pizza. They had just opened in a bigger, better site near the Kunming downtown pedestrian mall. This place is owned by a Dutchman named Alex and his Chinese wife Wei. It has a big brick oven and cooks up good pizzas and other Italian food, along with a little Chinese (of course), Indian, and Mexican. It's a great atmosphere and an extensive foreign-language lending library. I ended up playing pool and chatting with some expat Dutchmen (there is a sizable Dutch community here), including one guy's interesting stories about bicycling from The Netherlands to Turkey, flying to Beijing, and cycling down to Kunming.

We had about three hours to get settled into our new apartments, which are housed in the brand-new International Center for Exchange and Cooperation. There is a chandelier in the lobby, a front desk, and two security guards staffing the place at all hours. The elevators were in operation, so the move went very, very quickly. I am in Apt. 918, which I'm told is a fortunate number in Chinese, as it sounds like "jiu yao fa," which has something or other to do with prosperity. Also a student told me that moving to a new place at the end of the year is a prosperous thing to do. So I look forward to 2007.

At 6:30, we three foreign teachers were escorted into waiting black cars and driven to a nearby fancy restaurant. Mr. Yang, the vice president of the school, drove us (the Foreign Affairs Dept. & foreign teachers). This was our Chinese Christmas dinner. The restaurant was about to hold two simultaneous wedding feasts on the third floor, so we got to see the beautiful brides standing out front and kids chasing each other with silly string. The banquet was the best I've had so far in China. We had some Yunnan red wine, duck soup, grilled squid, plenty of tasty vegetable dishes, mushroom soup, sea bass, grilled eel, steamed wholewheat bread dipped in honey, watermelon...there must have been about 20 dishes. After that, it was time for bed.

The next day was Christmas Eve. My students held a Christmas party in one of the classrooms, and even acquired a PA, organized games, had two huge bags of oranges, singing, dancing, and a girl showed up with the guzheng, a Chinese zither, which she played very beautifully and gracefully. My Chinese teacher Ben gave me a framed paper cutting of a Beijing Opera character, which I really enjoy. I played some guitar, but then I had to make it to Marietta's for her Christmas Eve potluck (one of her students asked me if I would be going to the "Lucky Pot"), where we chatted until late in the night and drank a little Jamaican rum.

The next day was Christmas and I was at work at 8 a.m. (it's not a public holiday in China, although it's widely celebrated). I taught two classes, went to my Chinese class, gave 35 oral exams (it's finals right now) in the afternoon and dashed off with Lester and Marietta to a Christmas dinner. It was held in a former factory now art gallery called the Loft. There is a Scandinavian restaurant inside called Nordica, and that's who put on the smorgasbord. We had something equivalent to a church dinner, talked with some of the many Swedes (this couple had taken the Trans-Siberian railroad from Moscow to Beijing), and saw many nice Chinese families. I tried a few glasses of gloog, mulled Swedish wine. The organizers also put on a show of Christmas music and acting. After this long day, I was exhausted once again.

We got back to our hotel/apartment and the girls at the front desk stopped us from going upstairs. From behind the front desk came oranges, Japanese sweets, chocolate, a huge cake (made in our school's canteen), a box of beers. We all congregated around the table in the lobby and celebrated Christmas with the security guards and hotel staff. I was obliged to grab my guitar and sang some Christmas songs with Marietta.

I counted something like five Christmas parties that I went to.

The rest of the week was spent giving oral exams and written exams. I have 150 written exams to grade...some are obviously plagiarized. There's all these composition model books that are in the library and I have a feeling that some of them ended up in students' laps during the exam. After one test, I found one book that was left behind, a page dog-eared to something similar to one of the topics the students could write about (I didn't tell them what they would be writing about beforehand, but these composition books are organized by topic). I haven't graded these papers yet, so it's possible that it's not as bad as I fear. I did keep a close eye on them during testing, but some of 'em are just so crafty! I am looking forward to reading the exams, though, as some students have consistently written great pieces--some that would even put native English speakers to shame.

The oral exams went pretty well. I had the students bring something to read to me, and then draw a random topic from a hat and talk about it. I was surprised by some of the results. Some students who had never spoken in class had very, very good English! Also, I was often surprised and amused by the selections brought in to read. One student, whose English ability is undoubtedly at the top, read the directions from the back of her lotion bottle. Another one read from the script of the horror movie "Saw." Most surprisingly, a student came in with a book of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" and other poems and read "A Supermarket in California." He had bought the book (it's in English with Chinese translation) in a local bookstore. I asked him if Ginsberg was banned in China--"Howl" can be pretty shocking. He said, "Not any more!"

On Dec 26, there was an earthquake at the bottom of the ocean off the southern coast of Taiwan. I don't believe anyone was hurt, but some underseas cables connecting Asia and North America were ruptured. Consequently, Internet access has been horrible the past week. I am able to access Chinese sites, so I can read the news on China Daily and Xinhua and occasionally Japanese news, but it is usually impossible to reach any American websites.

I worked seven days straight. New Year's Day is a public holiday in China, and Jan 2 and Jan 3 are school holidays, so we had to make those up on Saturday and Sunday. I gave my written exams those two days so now I'm done teaching for two months...I hope to be done with all the grades by Saturday.

Sunday night, I was to have a New Year's Eve party at my apartment. I invited many people. But at 5:30, I was asked to go with the Foreign Language Dept. for a banquet. We would leave at 6. I thought it would be no problem making it back in time for my party. So I went. We went to a nearby fancy restaurant (different from the Christmas party) and sat in the center of a large room. Glass beads were strung from the ceiling completely surrounding us. We were brought out dish after tasty dish. At my table was the Communist Party Secretary of my university, his deputies, the directors of the Foreign Language Department, we foreign teachers, and a couple Chinese professors of English. My neighbor at the table went around and toasted each person with a shot of baijiu (Chinese whiskey), the waitress following him around with the bottle and refilling his glass. Everyone kept toasting the party secretary. Even his driver came in for a toast. Lester, Marietta, and I were toasted numerous times, maybe three times by the party secretary alone. Needless to say, things got pretty rowdy by the end of the banquet, but it was all in good fun. I told my hosts that I needed to go home, and, no, sorry I couldn't go with the party secretary to the next place and drink more. So he had his driver give me a ride back to my apartment.

When we arrived at my apartment, the driver got a call on his cellphone. He told me (from what I could understand of his Chinese) that plans had changed and I must accompany him to the World Expo Garden Hotel. The party secretary had specifically requested that I go there. So I got back into the car and went to the super-fancy hotel, where we sang karaoke on the big screen and danced on the dancefloor until midnight. So this is how I rang in 2007 in China.

Yesterday, I went downtown with Lester and two students. Everyone in China was in downtown Kunming yesterday. We tried to hop on bus 71, but it was full. We waited another 10 minutes for the next bus, but that one was packed too. After 15 more minutes, a third bus came by, fuller than ever. Then we spent 10 minutes trying to flag down a taxi. Finally we made it. Traffic was horrendous. Everyone was out shopping. It was like the day after Thanksgiving in the US. At times the sidewalks were so crowded, they spilled out into the bike lanes, and eventually into the streets. My students kept taking me to fancy department stores to look at clothes I could I went to sleep last night exhausted.

Today two of my students invited me to KFC. Going to KFC or McDonald's is a big deal in China. It's essentially the same as the US, a couple items are different on the menu (it's hard to tell though, as the menu is in Chinese), but it's pretty much like being in the US. I hadn't been to KFC in years, in fact I don't even remember the last time (considering I'm a vegetarian). I suppose that's why people like it. To me, it just seems like a perfect representation of the mediocrity in American society that Ginsberg was "Howl"ing about. It seems to go against the grain of Chinese culture--here eating is a great, perhaps the greatest, social event. Most people object to the idea of "fast food." A good meal will take hours, and be well worth it. But this allure and mystique of America is a strong draw. I guess it's my job here to try to show them the other great things that the US has to offer, other than car culture, crass consumerism and big box retail, lowest-common denominator pop music, blah blah blah.

On New Year's Eve, I bought a scroll of calligraphy done by a giggling master here from Yunnan. He even wrote my name and country down the side (in Chinese, of course). It says something about Yunnan, and Yunnan being a center of Chinese traditional arts. He was also giving a demonstration with the maobi (calligraphy brush), and I tried my hand. One's handwriting in China is traditionally a sign of character. I wonder how my character looks.