His Sound Was Driven Out

Is Hunan tropical?  No.  Is it semi-tropical?  I don’t think so but it must be awful close.  Outside it’s just stopped raining and we’re on a highway heading up through a world of green hills that extend forever.  I notice that I’m not marvelling at their raw, innate, natural power.  It is China and there is always too great a density of humanity for that.  These hills are better appreciated for all the work people have done to work around them and beside them. 

I must have traveled through three dozen tunnels by now, on this trip.  Nome of them have been especially long, the longest one was maybe a few hundred yards.  But each a phenomenal effort, certainly.  There is another elevated highway under construction off below me that will tee with this one here. I’ve asked the driver if he’s heard the weather.  Tis’ the second person who told me later today will be sunny.  But then he reminds me that you ought never to trust the weather people. 

Fenghuang left me confused, I must say. The setting cut down to a winding river between the green hills provides an idyllic start.  And there are many obviously redone water front buildings in a faux old style along with a dozen older fashioned, facsimile, reproductions of building that were or perhaps never were.  And there were many, many Chinese people.  My word.  Some were in groups ploughing along behind a flag poking up above a raincoat.  Some were independent, couples, or families.  And of course there were lots of young people looking for fun. 

Chauvinist perhaps, but I’m going to say that China is still learning to use its spending power to demand something different.  So much uniformity in entertainment.   Clearly if the foreigners were here in numbers, they would push a certain kind of commercial response.  With Chinese in such volume driving the spend, we have a chain store mentality to the whole village.  One group must own a large portion of the town and have deiced place the same sort of store in over and over in different locations.  I wouldn’t note if it had been a trinket store, because I’m not shopping or trinkets.  But, as mentioned yesterday, there were profusion of drum stores which were so glaringly out of place.  Someone must have decided that vaguely “ethnic” looking bongos were precisely what visitors would buy.  Furthermore, someone must have decided that having a young or sometimes not so long woman playing the drum at the entrance would no doubt lure aspiring Mango Santamaria’s into the store and generate sales.  We saw eight such stores last night.

And if bongo stores were the sum of the noise pollution, that would be management but of course it was only a small annoyance that came to the fore when anyone walked passed such a store.  We must have passed twenty-five places with young men playing acoustic guitars and singing earnest but unconvincing pop songs.   I joked with my friend that perhaps we were unaware that there was a budding Elliott Smith among them but before I could decide if one guy or another had something to say his sound was driven out by the next crooner a few steps away.

There were also six, perhaps nine different places that decided that what the ancient riverside township really need were mega-volume clubs, with DJs yelling, and sirens wailing and a few men standing around the bar.  I would never want to stay in the old town with this absurd volume threshold.  If it were silent it might feel a bit more like Venice at night, or perhaps Varanasi meets Venice at night but the noise-pollution is so overwhelming it can only be something China ruined in a Chinese sort of way.  Even if someone has the courage to say this is a compromise and a degradation of Fenghuang life-quality  the city administrators will no doubt complain that they are interrupting commerce.  This will take another generation. 

The stones were slippery and my feet hurt, walking back home to our hotel, avoiding people.  These days few people stared at us, though we were probably only two or three other foreigners we saw amidst what must have been seventy-thousand tourists.   Very few people called out "laowai."  Progress.  No one seemed to care about us.

Saturday 05/12/18

Our Fourth Drum Shop

Pulling into Huaihua, trying to shake a mood.  We’d forgotten something in the cab on the near miss ride to the train station in Beijing.  I’d had a rotten call with a client last night.  I was about to begin four days on the rode with my dearest friend and his girlfriend, who's lovely.  They’d traveled ten thousand miles to be here and all I could think of was work. 

I figured I’d try to get an Di Di here in rural Hunan.  The app told me there was no one to be found.  I passed one and then another driver, prosthelytizing.  No thanks. No thanks.  No . . . OK.  How much?  I bargained a bit and we were on our way.  This is very different terrain here in Western Hunan than the rolling farmlands I'd visited in Hunan just a week or so back.  We cut through one and then another mountain.  I did my best to finish as many phone calls as I could before arriving at Fenghuang. 

We were dropped off at a bridge, up above the city, above the river and our hotel proprietor came out to meet us.  Up a winding path, to what I assumed as a bluff over the old city, we soon were settled in our rooms.  I had a very civilized porch and a commanding view of the remarkable river town and called down for the owner to bring me up a few beers.  Another call, this time a conference call between Moscow and Sidney from Fenghuang to try allow for one of my staff to work on a new project for a client I enjoy speaking to. 

We headed out in a light drizzle and tried to get our bearings.  There were lovely old roofs and winding narrow streets and twisting pathways across the river on streets with many, many, many Chinese tourists. I didn’t see another “foreigner” the entire time.  We settled upon a simple Hunan restaurant, outdoors, not far from an outdoor, dance-class din.

Later we walked and walked and realized that the main “city”, the fabled buildings we’d seen in all the photos was further up river.  At night, lit up it was rather evocative, walking through one medieval alley way, under a walkway up to a bend in the river.  But as we’d been warned, Fenghuang is rather mobbed with Chinese tourists, marching behind the tour guide flags, seeing all that they are required to see. 

I was getting tired, by the time we passed our fourth drum shop.  A terribly bored young lady sat in the doorway banging away aimlessly.  It all had the feeling of an expansion plan that someone drew up in a board room, many miles from here.   And now we walk swiftly as its started to rain. 

Friday 05/11/18

Strange, Dreamy Blue

My guests who were visiting today went out to the Great Wall.  I thought I’d get quite a bit done while they were away.  I had a cup of coffee, read my emails, glanced over the paper, did a call or two and as I was considering a late lunch, they rolled up back home.  They didn’t need any tending to, but I felt like tending to them.  I felt like I ought to stop being productive much earlier than I'd otherwise supposed I would.

This evening I had a dinner I'd agreed to a long time ago with a colleague to attend to.  He had a a wonderful guest in town who I'd met before.  She’s a good conversationalist.  I’ll make time to do this, even though my colleague always chooses places that are 90 minutes drive from where I live. 

This is the new traditional.  We have duck, and there is a strange verisimilitude of a traditional Beijing opera performance, with a woman, or was it a man, as the tradition holds, who sang before a blue screen with shadows behind her casting a strange, dreamy blue mood.  And there were subtitles as Beijing opera often has for tourists.  “I------------------------------------------------------------------ am angry.”   “He-------------------------------------------------- has cheated.”

As always seems to happen on Thursday evenings I must duck out before the dinner is over and  cut into a hallway in the back of the restaurant to take a weekly call with a client.  I adjust the seat, find a place to plug in, check the reception and stare down a waitron who is confused as to why I am here.  In my mind I’d have time to prepare.  By the time I’ve cleared all away, there are barely a few minutes left.  I don’t have my thoughts together.  The call doesn’t go well.  Later, when I head back to my table, my hosts have left.  The show is over.  It’s time to head home.

Thursday 05/10/18