To Inner Mongolia

银川 Yinchuan

December

Cold water slaps the tiles at my feet. I find the soap and washcloth by the streetlamp light filtering in through my bathroom window. I expect the slightly chilled winter-time shower to be uncomfortable at best, but instead find it refreshing. I rinse and cut the water.

Lathering up my face, I wonder how effective my shave will be without any light. My headlamp is dead. Been dead for weeks. Dripping and naked, I scurry about the dark apartment until I ferret out a lighter with a small LED built in the backside and flick the switch. Ducking back into the bathroom I deem the pathetic beam grossly ineffective. Then a light goes off in my head (but not in my house). One more scramble and return and I have a beautiful orange glow radiating out from a candle stuck into a jelly lid. I happily set razor to skin and find the light source to be far superior to my powerless ceiling-mounted heat lamps. The mobile candle-stick can be variously positioned along my sink-top, for an unprecedented shadowless neck shaving experience. I am quite pleased.

Beita, North Tower, Yinchuan.

In two hours I am catching a train out of Yinchuan bound for Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia. During my final stages of packing and preparation, my pre-paid electricity ran out and *poof* lights out. I foolishly hadn't recharged my electricity card (I hear Sabrina laughing in my head, "You are such a 猪头, zhutou! [pighead]) and had no time to go out and take care of it now. Ergo, cold shower and shave by candlelight.

A brief errand to school, two buses to the new city, and I meet Sabrina in front of the train station. "You know there is a new train station opening soon?" she tells me. I had heard something like that, and ask her where. "Just the next street over," she points. "Right next to this one."

Sabrina is seeing me off because all the tickets are sold out. She tried to get a ticket for me a week back since she lives much closer to the station than I, with no luck. So she rang her friend that works for the railroad, and told me he would be able to finagle a spot for me on the train, I just needed to be there. Sabrina has the 关系, the guanxi, the connection to the goods.

An Yinchuan sunset.

Over peanuts she tells me her friend isn't working tonight, but her friend's friend is going to help us out. She has his name. I am relatively unconcerned. If I can get on the train I'll find somewhere to pass the ten hours to Hohhot.

The electronic board signals that the train is arriving. We queue up and watch with amusement as my fellow passengers sprint to the platform to board. It doesn't seem that essential to take off at race pace to get on the train, but seeing as I still don't have a ticket we decide to compromise and approach at a brisk jog.

Sabrina spots the first available conductor and asks for her friend's friend. He points us further down the line of cars. We proceed. She asks the next conductor and he relays the news that her friend's friend is not working tonight. Sabrina politely explains my predicament. The railway man, though rushed and hastily dispatching a swarm of other passengers and their questions, tells us to step on the train and wait for him in the dining car. He'll be by later. Sabrina has the foresight to check his name tag before we board. 张建华, Zhang Jianhua.

在火车上 On the train

The dining car is well lit and a few of the kitchen and rail staff are seated within. Some are chatting, others are punching numbers and copying information into log books. I sit in an empty booth. Sabrina sits across the aisle, nervously checking the time. Departure time is 9:13 pm. We have eleven minutes.

Almost immediately a very large, box shaped man wearing white cooking clothes takes a fancy to me. The female employees surrounding him giggle as he pokes and prods me with inquiries and meaty gesticulations.

"Where are you from?"
"America."
"Oh! America! Excellent! You speak Chinese very well!" He thrusts a leg-sized forearm up into the air to demonstrate the level of excellence.
"No, no. Not very well."
"What do you think of China? Good or bad?"
"Extremely good."
"Yes, China is good." His square face and squinty eyes nod approval. "Are you a student?"
"No, I'm a teacher."
"How much do you make a month?" Sabrina tries to interject out of politeness, but it is typically the third question I am asked by everyone I meet, so I am used to it.
"Six thousand yuan a month."
"Not enough. Not enough." A deep frown creases his lined face and he shakes his head. "You're a foreigner, you should be making more."
"No I think it's enough."
"Not enough!" he barks. "How old are you?"
"Twenty-eight."
"Are you married?"
"No, but I have a girlfriend in America."
"You should get a Chinese girlfriend."
"No, no..." I begin to reply but he stops me short.
"Yes, Chinese girls are very gentle. Extremely gentle. Much more gentle than American girls."
"How do you know that?" A bit of incredulity creeps into my voice.
He slams his beef-fist onto the table for effect. I feel the aftershock several booths away. "Much more gentle!" Case closed.
After the S-waves have subsided, I add, "American girls are gentle too." Wenrou, loosely translated as gentle, is one of the highest virtues for a traditional Chinese woman to have. He looks skeptical.
"Are you used to Chinese food?"
"I am. I like it."
"How about mutton?" The region is known for its mutton.
"I don't eat meat."
"You don't eat meat!? Why not?" he demands.
"I'm Buddhist."

Vegetables.

My forthcoming friend contemplates this for a moment then heaves his refrigerator of a frame out of his booth and crashes it into mine. He grips one of my hands that had been resting on the table and turns it over. He pets my soft palm with his coarse meat patty. Releasing me, he cocks his arm up, elbow on the table, and indicates he wants to arm wrestle.

"You eat vegetables. I eat meat."
I'm not sure how this plays into his proposition for a competition.
"Come on. I'm fifty-nine. You're twenty-eight. I eat meat. You're a vegetarian. Let's go."
"You're about the same age as my mom," I tell him. This seems to rouse his enthusiasm.

Meat. (photo from here.)

We clasp hands. He says something I assume regards the rules, so I nod. We begin. After a tense start, he raises an eyebrow and points to my other hand on the table, indicating I can't apply counter-pressure with that one. He clearly has his game face on. I maintain a reasonable defensive position for a while but it's clear from the beginning I don't have a chance. I stick it out for a few moments longer then fold. My large companion is pleased.

"It's because I eat meat and you eat vegetables," he adds his conclusive condolences. "You should eat meat." He hefts the refrigerator once more and throws it down in his original location, filling the booth with his mass.

During our match, Sabrina had walked over to the door, spoken briefly with a conductor, and returned. Now she sits across from me, looking more nervous and eyeing her phone every two seconds. We have five minutes. Conductor Zhang still hasn't shown and we are approaching departure time.

The white-garmented carnivore pulls a victory cigarette from a crumpled pack and offers me one.
"I don't smoke."
"Ah!" He exclaims approvingly. This particular abnegation passes inspection. "Chinese people. We all smoke." He lights up.

All of a sudden the station scenery begins to creep alongside us, pillars becoming mobile, platform a flowing river of cement. "Oh no!" Sabrina cries and runs to the door. She implores briefly with the doorwoman to let her off, but to no avail. The train left three minutes early. Sabrina's shoulders drop and she drags her feet back to me. "Oh shit." Her forehead is creased with worry, she nervously fingers her phone.

Sabrina reenacts her on-train frustration. Photo by Chris.

With various queries directed throughout the dining car Sabrina gathers that she can get off at Shizuishan, half an hour away, wait an hour at the station and catch an Yinchuan-bound train home. She'll get to her apartment around one am. I feel like an ass since she is here to send me off, to do me a favor. The fridge chef has continued his questioning throughout the ordeal, but I have turned my attention towards Sabrina, and the inquisition gradually loses momentum.

The train workers disband and go about their duties. We sit quietly for a few minutes. I try to reassure Sabrina. Conductor Zhang approaches us down the aisle and is shocked to see Sabrina there. She explains what happened, and he offers what he knows. He arranges a ticket for me. We thank him and make our way back to car 14.

We arrive and are escorted into the employees' car, which is quiet and dark. I am surprised and delighted. I deposit my belongings on my bunk, fold down the stow-away seat in the aisle, and plop down next to Sabrina. We chat in hushed voices until her stop arrives. We hug and say goodbye.

Uniformed and plainclothed workers file past me in both directions. I swing my legs back and forth to make room for their passing, smiling at their mildly shocked faces. I hear mutterings of laowai, and waiguoren, both words for "foreigner" in Chinese. One woman stops and asks where I'm from, and is quite taken aback when I answer her and continue the conversation. After our chat concludes, I hear the mutterings change to, "Wow, this foreigner can speak Chinese." I smile. I feel welcomed and privileged to be traveling in the VIP car.

The hard sleeper cars have three-walled, open cabins with six bunks per cabin, three lining each wall. A low bunk near the floor, a mid-bunk, and I high bunk squished up against the ceiling. I had slept in a high bunk once before and found it claustrophobic. The low bunks turned into communal sitting areas until the lights were extinguished. So I opted for the middle bunk for a bit more privacy without sacrificing breathing room.

Looking out of the West Tower, Baisi Kou, near Yinchuan.

Fortunately, the beds are long enough for my greater-than-the-average-Chinese height. Nice and firm, they are equipped with a thin pad, blanket and sand-bag pillow, bound in by a railing so itinerant sleepers don't end up assaulting their down-bunk neighbors. I strip off my multiple warm layers and settle in to sleep amidst the rocking of the train.

What seems like moments later, I am torn from sleep, the air rent by what sounds like a Paul Bunyan-sized weed whacker. The kind with the raspy, scathing pull-cord that never seems to get the motor started. Over and over the pull-cord saws through the cabin, through my ear drums, through my groggy brain. What the hell is that?

I roll over and gaze down through my sleep cloud upon a whale of a man, pasty white flesh flowing out of his bunk in all directions. His face is smeared along the rear wall and his limbs are twisted and contorted in a variety of extremely uncomfortable looking angles to fit in the narrow space. And I thought my bunk was tight. It's warm on the train and the Chinese Michelin Man has stripped down to his tight, white briefs, bulging at maximum capacity and threatening to burst and spray underwear shrapnel into oblivious victims' cubbies.

The swollen girth of my cabin-mate endows him with unusually voluminous snoring capacity. The titanic pull-cord tears through the otherwise still night air once more. I can't tell if it's the locomotion or the resonation that's vibrating the walls around me. With each heave of the cord, the metal, glass and plastic surfaces enveloping me shudder violently. I ponder if the structural integrity of the car will be compromised by this incredible force, shearing the protective shell in twain and sending us soaring into the night.

He tosses and the sawing abates. His nasal cavity must have cleared out the phlegmatic pileup that was preventing passage of oxygen. I too toss and bury my head in my pillow. Nodding off in the rediscovered tranquility, I wonder how Sabrina is doing. My rumination is shattered by renewed eruptions from the human volcano, shards of thought raining out of my middle bunk. I bury my head deeper and dream of easy breathing.

爱运动 – Love sports!

It’s tangy and watered down, with a lingering aftertaste reminiscent of burped-up fruit. I stick out my tongue for better ventilation. The label claims “blueberry” but my taste-buds register cheap gin. 爱运动 (ai yundong), Love Sports, my choice of sports drink re-hydration after my late morning run down the Tanglai Canal. A stone’s throw from my apartment, the canal is a great place to be outside, shaded by the many trees that line the water’s murky edge. It also provides protection from the exhaust and clamor seeping from the city streets, which can’t quite penetrate the peaceful corridor.

Casually spinning the bottle in hand, I find a diagram that displays the primary activities that the drink is best suited for: running is first (I chose wisely), followed by yoga, breakdancing, shopping, KTV (karaoke with Chinese characteristics), and using the computer. That KTV is indeed an electrolyte vacuum.

Most striking is how many primary Chinese sports are left out.

The widely popular badminton and ping pong have their standard indoor following, with gyms and sports clubs dedicating large spaces to courts and tables. Some folks take their badminton very seriously here, and they will certainly crush you if you step up to the challenge. In the streets, mothers and daughters, boyfriends and girlfriends, and school classmates will all take up a racket and shuttlecock to play sans net, batting around the birdie in the open air with glee.

Saggy but savvy old timer. Photo from here.

Parks and public squares often have outdoor ping pong tables that are free to use, just bring your own paddle and ball, and I rarely see them empty. In the new Karate Kid movie young Dre steps up to a pong table with an old-timer wearing a saggy white undershirt. The bespectacled old man begins casually, respecting the youth and inexperience of his opponent. That is, until Dre slams the ball over the net, with attitude, to impress a cute girl watching nearby. The warm-up is over, and the old man proceeds to pummel Dre relentlessly with excellent form and style. That scene captures the essence of the pong and badminton circles, where skill level and competitive ferocity far exceeds initial impressions.

Beyond these traditional games, the recreational Chinese sports scene gets a little more exciting and eclectic. Old men squat on small stools along the sidewalk to xia xiangqi, play Chinese chess. The pieces are blackened with hand oil from countless arthritic fingers and the grid is worn away from the vigorous “eating” of opponent pieces. Slamming an attacking disc upon your adversary’s with stout force is thoroughly encouraged, creating a very satisfying clap of thunder in culmination of your valiant act. And indeed much goes into each move of a street side chess game. A large crowd of variously aged male “experts” gather round the board to freely express their idea of what tactics you should employ. Only after carefully considering each piece of firmly delivered advice can you undertake your next move.

Typical Chinese Chess gathering.

I played once with my students at school during a break between classes. I had to slap their hands to keep them from moving my pieces for me. I would slap one hand and give them an ogre stare, but by the time my glaring eyes returned to the board, the student on my blind side had already moved my piece for me, silently nodding in approval. I don’t see this kind of interference amongst grown men, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.

In the evenings, a cacophony fills the public squares. Drums and cymbals pound and clang from one corner, while music blares forth from cheap speakers positioned in the other. These serve the throngs of group dancers, which gather in great numbers in nearly every open space in the city. The majority of the crowds are women over thirty, though there are sometimes giggling little girls who jump in for a few minutes, and the rare, bold male. Most forms of dance have the participants arranged in an evenly spaced grid, going through coordinated steps in unison and moving in a square-like pattern. These styles follow the cheap speaker music. The drum and cymbal dance typically requires brightly colored flags and scarves that the performers wave about them, following the cues of a whistle-blowing conductor.

The dancing is a great social event, with many people milling about the perimeter and chatting, both elderly and young. Children romp about and their parents catch up with friends and gossip. There are also more traditional dancing events where couples spin each other about to music played amidst the summer evening air.

Some fishermen enjoying a summer afternoon.

Chinese city folk are particularly taken by the unique challenges associated with riding bikes. Bikes fill the streets throughout the day, with riders wearing everything from military fatigues to skirts and high-heeled boots. Most are absurdly large or far too small relative to their respective user. Nearly every bike in circulation appears far older than me, and it is the rarely cared for machine that has ever received oil or new brake pads.

Despite the mechanical deterioration and sizing setbacks, a variety of skills are painstakingly pursued. To showcase their brute strength, the local cyclist will often bear one or more people on the rear rack, who in turn may carry a baby or a sack of potatoes. If there is no person to haul, large quantities of fruits and vegetables, bamboo poles, bricks, and dogs will all suffice for the cargo.

In order to display their sixth sense of direction, the typical rider will spend frighteningly long periods of time not looking where they are going. There is always something more interesting than the road in front of them and the locals know this, so they are forever prepared for endurance rubber necking events in which they may keep their eyes entirely askew for a minute or more.



Children on lunch break from school raid a 24 Hour Fitness.

Bravery is also a coveted trait. Trials testing the fortitude of one’s will include running red lights, cutting across all lanes of traffic without looking, darting in front of large trucks, and slalom cycling on the sidewalks. Without a helmet.

Bike handling is a skill the local rider takes very seriously. To be able to best perform the above-stated maneuvers with appropriate efficacy, one must train rigorously. Skill specific workout sessions may utilize riding with one hand, the other engaged in smoking a cigarette, holding an umbrella, or talking on the phone. Graduating to the next level, one will incorporate one or more of the above mentioned acts into a single workout. Fortunately for the novice, the average speed of transit is at a near-walking pace and therefore crashes do not carry such severe repercussions. Unless of course you are run over by one of the larger and less proficiently operated vehicles on the street.

A mid-summer favorite of older gentleman is a noon-time breast stroke across the brisk Tanglai Canal, funneling water from the Yellow River through the city. Swim-capped heads bob up and down across the turbid, stool-brown, silt-laden water, as the current pushes them downstream and downtown. After their crossing they will drip dry on their walk back, speedos offering them maximum ventilation during the stroll.

A wonderfully unique staple on city streets here is what I call 24 Hour Fitnesses. They are basically playgrounds for adults, with a large variety of well-maintained exercise equipment for moderate stretching and strengthening. Elliptical machines, swinging leg stretching devices, pull up bars, parallel bars, shoulder motion wheels, butterfly presses; all free of charge and well-used. Throughout the day, it is rare to see an empty 24 Hour Fitness anywhere in the city.

Morning fan taiji from my kitchen window.

Morning taiji must also be mentioned, though the numbers pale in comparison to the other represented sports. Regardless how crisp the morning air, elderly practitioners will gather out of doors to execute slow, calculated, graceful movements through a series of postures and forms, sometimes wielding a sword or fan to enhance their practice.

High intensity, low duration workouts are all the rage in Western endurance sports preparation. Well, China has long known about the benefits of this kind of training. I have always wondered how the people here age so gracefully, and I have witnessed their secret. All-out sprints of grandparents chasing naked babies through the streets. And to really maximize anaerobic and lactate threshold development, both parties will laugh uproariously to limit their O₂ intake. Quite ingenious.

My standard running and cycling get-up.

And in this way the people here stay quite fit to a ripe old age. The group dancing, taiji, chess, fitness centers, and ping pong tables keep the populace outdoors and socializing. Engaging friends mentally and physically in these activities keeps the mind and body healthy. I think our culture could learn quite a bit from this model as we age and become more reclusive, spending more time on the couch with a remote control than in the sun with a good friend.

The sun reflects off the last of my爱运动, reminding me of the final effort of my day’s workout. I grimace and swallow the last drops of the reputedly rejuvenating fluid. Though running is about as common as seeing a foreigner in these parts, (not common), I feel grateful to be partaking in the wonderful, widespread love of sports. Sharing yet another human love that needs no language to communicate is worth every drop of vomit-flavored sports drink in order to be able to do it again the next day.

Shiver me Limbs!

The end of June, 2011.

I meet Phil in the early morning hours after buying some fruit and fried breads. We cruise through the already bustling streets en route to our bus, which will take us up to 三关口 (Sanguankou) our climbing destination for the morning. We arrive at our stop, and entertain a number of taxi drivers and pedestrians by our mere presence. They quickly endeavor to assess our equipment, its integrity, and how much it cost us. Hands begin passing over bike frames, checking the suitability of the padded seat, honking horns and ringing bells, gauging the value of each item as if they were preparing to auction it off in a few minutes time. Several men cycle through to lift and assess the weight of each (conveniently undertaken after we’ve already taken off our panniers). 不太重 (bu tai zhong), “not too heavy” is the verdict.

Phil and I prep the bikes to go under the bus, which he informs me may not happen at all if the driver is feeling particularly prickly that morning. Seats down, wheels off, bags off; all amidst the constant banter and questioning of our audience. They want to know where we’re going, what we’re doing, what everything cost, if we’re married. We try to keep track of our dismantled components in the crowd, all the while trying to put back a 包子 (baozi) or two, steamed buns with a variety of filling. This morning I went with the 韭菜 (jiu cai) a garlicy oniony vegetable that’s quite tasty.

My buddy Richard and my bikes on the road.

The bus screams up and the ticket lady ambles off  to appraise the situation. Phil and I quickly dive under the bus, rearranging all the luggage to suit our needs. Ticket lady laughs as I sprawl prone in the belly of the beast, shuffling this bag there and that sack there. Soon we establish a sizable alcove and stack our bikes underneath. We leave our peanut gallery on the sidewalk to harangue the next passing 外国人 (waiguoren), foreigner, that passes by, of which there are few in the city of 1.5 million.

On the road, we settle sleepily into our seats, passing idle chat and the remaining 包子 between our teeth and along our tongues. Phil regales me with harrowing adventure tales of gnarly whitewater and flipped kayaks in the Alps, round-the-world airport scrambles, and a Guatemalan bus station that defines the word chaos. I enjoy the tales as the 贺兰山 (helan shan), Helan mountains, climb into sight, capped in cloud.

The 西夏王陵 (xixia wangling), Xixia tombs, one of the area’s biggest tourist attractions pass into view on the scrub plain. Mausoleums constructed over a thousand years ago to safely encapsulate some dead ruler or another, the earthen beehives are a stark contrast to the surrounding flats (“a pair of muddy nipples,” according to Phil). I watch them float by against the overcast backdrop as the bus banks westward to the mountains.

Standing atop the Great Wall at sunrise.

Soon we pass through the old Great Wall, stamped earth that has lasted since the Ming Dynasty constructed it in these far western reaches of their empire seven hundred years past. And then we are off the bus, in a cold gusting wind blasting down from the mountains. Clad in shorts and t-shirts, us mountain hardy fools neglected to bring much of anything warm. To add to the fun, the clouds are descending upon us, and drops begin to fall from the sky. We smile stupidly and hop on our steeds.

The headwind is large, and we could walk faster than we are pedaling. With only a couple kilometers to go before turning off the pavement, we bend our heads into the breeze and will our legs to work. They fight back. They refuse. Muscular mutiny. And I just fed them! Ungrateful bastards.

At our wash winding out of a steep canyon, we turn onto the sharp cobbles and debris and pedal shakily past goats, sheep, and a farmer/shepherd before finally dismounting when pebbles turn to boulders. Lock the bikes to a tree, grab our bags, and we’re off!

Dodging a few rocks kicked down on us from the local fauna, we wind up canyon around sharp dry bends in the river bed and arrive at our cliff. Phil’s crag is quite nice, being so close to the road and rather accessible. He and his compatriots are likely the only hands and feet to have scaled this wall, and he affectionately tells me how he has named several of the climbs after a busty friend’s cleavage and crack.

Sunset east of the Yellow River.

The hike up has warmed us, but it is by no means comfortable. The warmth quickly evacuates our bones as we harness up and eyeball the wall. I offer to lead a climb, and am soon awkwardly scaling a crumbly, dusty crack with two questionable pieces of gear, sharp rock, and dirt in my eye. I love it. As I pull out of the dihedral on broken rock, with little behind me that would remotely catch a fall, I am shakily reminded how and why I love climbing so much. I slowly set up an anchor at the top and peer back down at Phil, still belaying me, and wrapped in a brilliant neon pod from head to toe. Ordinarily functioning as a waterproof cover for his bike packs, he has converted this blindingly bright shell into a kind of cocoon, and looks quite happy about it. Dancing around in the canyon bottom, trying to stay warm, with a huge shit-eating grin on his face, I can easily see how he and I would naturally become good friends.

A bit more grabbing and high-stepping later (technical terms for climbing), and it’s raining. Sideways. The wind is now punching across the mountain side, left hook, right jab, right up my shorts. We decide it might be a reasonable time to head home. So we scramble back down the slippery rock to assemble our gear and say goodbye to the crag for the day.

Camp along the Great Wall.

We wheel our bikes back to the road, mount up and begin our initially slow roll down the hill. Phil crams the last of his 包子 into his cockpit and we begin to pick up speed. The drenched asphalt could have bred concern of hydroplaning, but instead Phil and I glimpse an opportunity of reduced friction to go as fast as we possibly can to get the hell down to some warmer pastures. Whirring wheels and water sailing through the air accompanies our rapid acceleration to 60 kmh as we play leap frog with freight trucks coming down from the mountains.

The air warms rapidly and we are soon too hot. Back in the flats we resume casual conversation as we pedal toward a noodle joint for some sustenance for our ride back to 银川, Yinchuan, our home. All in a good morning’s fun.

P.S. As usual, I forgot to take photos this trip, so the photos posted are from a cycling trip a couple weeks prior.