EMEISHAN

It is or is not a coincidence that Emeishan (pronounced UH-MAY-SHAHN, kind of) is pronounced in a way similar to 'amazing', so you can say them both quickly in quick succession and succeed in muddling them up, muxing them ip, so to speak. Welcome back to blogworld, writer of BS (sure is better than PF, anyway) -- and there's plenty more where that came from!

Emeishan, or Emei Mountain, is significant for various reasons, all of which are available for your perusal at Wikipedia.org, a fantastic new resource brought to you by the May Administration - String and Stabbel, forever and ever. 

It's one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains of China, and is therefore teeming, and incredibly well infrastructured. Perhaps disconcertingly so. Stairs, dozens of thousands of stairs, carry tourists by the mill to a heavily built-up peak, whereupon a gilt Buddha light fountain waves to a tumult of clouds. And oh yes there are hotels and restrooms, cookies and all the rest, shucks. 

It stands at 3,099m / It is 3,099m tall / Its height is 3,099m / Its highest point is 3,099m above sea level / Elevation = 3,099m. So many ways to say the same thing, it's no wonder people lose sleep over where they'll be in six months, or what colour the decking ought to be.

A common occurrence:
(in Chinese)
hey, you lot are foreign! guys, I found a bunch of foreigners!!
(chiming in)
oh wwaaaaw foreigners!!! hey, go and stand next to them while I take a photo.
(giddy)
hey hey hey HEHEEYYYY WWOAW YEAH
etc
etc
etc

So I photograph the photographers in a trite, meta-theatrical effigy to the act of retaining pictorial dignity, or some such bogus.

Ram got a chilli shirt (name has been spoonerised to preserve nominal anonymity).

Tibetan macaques make a living by pick-pocketing unwary passers-by and undercutting the human vendors (that is, vendors which are human, not vendors of humans) with their stolen wares. Poor Sophie got assaulted by one and was forced to surrender a flagon of flavoured water, bless. We saw the bottle in question being exchanged for intimate favours by a shrewd social media magnate the following morning.

This (picture below) reminds me of that mediocre Stereophonics song A Thousand Trees, of which the op-fejwafewnv;----- but it's slightly too boring to talk about here. I had a trivia point but it's not worth it. I mean I like the Stereophonics, or at least I used to, it's just that quite a lot of their music is, how to put it - bland// Like they're not trying to invent, or innovate, in the way some other musicians or bands are.
Who's original then, B?
Well, I'm glad you asked. Tony Allen - Losun, is groovy. Obviously Gambino, and Ryo Fukui was back in 1976. Also, you could listen to Treece, and I will forever love Dizraeli, whose lyrics are bottomless. Childsplay, Kieren Hebden, PBU, Quantic, Aphex and the PSS. Caps duly doffed.

Had a bit of a scare as the cable car (from near-summit to tru apex) collapsed under the weight of so many years of service, leaving 98 of us dangling from a shoestring five sixths of the way up. Silver lining - spectacular views as we slid to the bottom, landing on our various bottoms in a bruised and bloodied pile.

It being China, there must be people, so here they are in force (though actually it was quieter than it could have been, truly).

The last few weeks here have been fab. I hope yours have too. In 11 and a half hours I will turn 23, and thereby be 11 and a half hours closer to the next large-scale event, the significance of which is overwhelming, understudied, overbearing, undeniable, overdone, well done, blue.

Here's to the fools.

NOVEL EXCERPT: Richard, Jenny and a pair of Antediluvians

Eight minutes later, Richard returned. Jenny was etching something pornographic into the tabletop, scratching at the surface with a house key. She looked up, her gaze holding something devilish, almost diabolic. Richard grinned.

“Two Antediluvians, shaken and stirred.”

“Champion. Tell me, what goes into an Antediluvian? Does it require a sprinkling of arched nose and too-thick reading glasses? An artificial grey patch and stupid wizened curl?”

“Cherimoya, or custard apple. It's one of the only tropical fruits I can handle,” he said, gleaming.

“What do you mean? You don't like mangoes, papayas, pineapples?”

“Yes yes, of course they're fine. But anyway they've been normalised. They're no more tropical than palm trees, which are scattered round Torquay harbour like breadcrumbs, leading nowhere. But there are others, real fruits of the tropics which haven't been integrated into the British palette.”

“For example?”

“For example,” he leaned back. “Well. I'll tell you, but first, to your health.”

“To ours.” They clinked, drank, winced. There was an uncomfortable silence during which their eyes met.

“Richard?” Jenny's face had coiled into a mutated spring, darkening in three areas.

“Oh, dear,” he said, letting the brownish yellow liquid flow back into his glass. “This cherimoya's rotten. That's rotten luck.”

“It's awful, Richard. Awful. Don't take me back there, I won't allow it.” Her face was still distorted. He passed her a serviette to mop her chin, then went back to the bar. His thick wrists slid along the top, feeling the rough matte wood for signs of wear.

They were given lime daiquiris, a platter of carbohydrate-based snacks and half a dozen cans of Diet Coke as compensation. Reimbursement was impossible.

“The system doesn't allow it,” he told her.

“Bloody typical. What do you call these?”

“Mini Cheddars, only they're not. They're posher.” He threw two into his mouth, only one making its target. The other collided with his unshapely chin and made him blink.

“They're pretty good. Crunchy. And these?”

“Thins. Cheese thins, I suppose.”

“Anything that's called a Thin is bound to be disappointing.”

“You're right.”

“I know,” she said. “You were going to tell me about tropical fruits.”

“I was. There's one I can't handle, though I can't recall—” He stopped short. Was he about to recall? His mind had been washed clean of childhood remembrances and adult guilt, was untarnished by all the shame of a human life. He thought of tropical fruits.

“Richard?”

“Durian. Oh, my.” His eyes began to trickle. “I remember. I can't stand it. But how did I know I couldn't?” Some shred of long-term memory wedged deep in his cranium, jogged by the fact of a dodgy cherimoya? Was it so fundamental, so formative as to survive hibernation, to be roused by the sudden sensory reference?

“Durian?” she said. “I've heard of it. I heard a story about a kid.” Richard groaned. “My father used to work at a secondary school, before he died. He's dead now.”

“Secondary school.” His mouth opened and a spindle of saliva fell, hung an inch long from the corner of his mouth.

“Not far from here. They used to celebrate Ivory Day.” The words made Richard's stomach twist. “It was really archaic. They all dressed up in robes and hung chandeliers and draped insignias on sheets in the Great Hall, the Ivory Hall. Talk about bloody antediluvian.”

“Elizabeth,” he said.

“That's it. That was her first name. Christ, to think, all those wars. That's what constituted a hero. Can you believe it?”

“Unbelievable.”

“Yeah, well, what happened went down in the annals. They split the fruit in some creepy, pseudo-masonic ritual. Elder and a Minor, textbook weird. Poor soul chosen at random, gallumphs onto stage with his tail between his legs, two thousand eyes trained on him begging for a false move. Fucking kids. Kids love failure. So do adults, mind. We're barbaric. Richard?”

“Barbaric. You're right.”

“I know. So the kid gets up there and he's got this problem with his bowels. Nobody knows about it but him, maybe his parents. Actually I bet they do know but they've not let on that they know, leave him in the dark, neglect the sucker. Barbaric.” Jenny slurps the last of her daiquiri and instinctively cracks a can of Coke, cruising into the present tense. Her palette dries easily so she likes to have a drink to hand. She sips the fizzy drink, immediately regrets ridding her mouth of lime tang. Picks up the coupe and drains the dregs, craving citrus. Wonders if a daiquiri should even be served in a coupe. She's sure it isn't. What an establishment, mouldy fruit and misaligned glass/cocktail combinations. Muses on its origin – glass, not cocktail – remembers a classmate years ago telling her of Marie Antoinette's breast, sliding into glass in conical perfection. Perfection? She imagines her own breasts being cast into silicone, handled by masters of ergonomics wearing white gloves and marvelling at her body. Artful hands playing her like an instrument. Future generations drinking from her shapely bosom. Indirectly but still. The prissiness of it all. Buxom, delightful.

“Richard? Are you with me?”

“Yes.”

“Good, because it's just getting to the good bit.”

“The good bit? What happens next?” Richard reclined sideways to nearly horizontal, world spinning about him, his weight propped under one elbow. Drool formed an eel-like bridge between the left corner of his mouth and his forearm, slid like a snail-trail onto the table. Jenny barely noticed, she was thunder and lightning.

“Kid goes up there, knees trembling. He's heard of the durian, knows how bloody dangerous it is. How fucking stinky it is. And he's got this problem with his bowel whereby all is let loose if too pongy a pong strikes his nasal cavity. This really is a recipe for disaster, you appreciate.” Jenny slurped at her Coke.

“So the leader, elder, whatever masonic bogus he goes by, slices the fruit in fitting with tradition. Tradition, that's who's to blame here.” A car horn carried into the room via the open door. “He cuts it right in half, its scent wafts kidward. Kid balks, freaks, doesn't know what to do. What can he do? He's at rock bottom, there's nowhere he can go.”

“What happens?” Richard almost shouted, somehow counting on Jenny to rewrite this memory for him, as it flashed past his eyes in a foray of fleeting images. Dreadful, haunted images.

“He shits his pants, Richard. The whole room hears it. There's a deathly silence, you understand. The sound of knife through durian husk is practically amplified by the reverence in the room. It's a palpable silence broken only or at least first by the sound of knife through husk, then second and louder and more dreadfully by the sound of this kid passing gas, sludge, brown matter filling the space between his behind and the cloth of his pants. It's pathetic and tremendous and unbelievably tragic. I almost couldn't believe it.”

“I don't believe it.”

“It's true.”

“I don't believe you. You are telling me this.” His faced drained of all colour and he lost consciousness. He slumped further in the booth, his chin inching closer to the table until it rested grubbily on the off-black lacquer. He was out for a minute, like a light, like a candle.

It's going to be alright

Isabella and I enjoyed a braai, or barbecue. Non-Chinese, possibly Pakistani. Watermelon and seeded flatbreads, stuffed things and poor hogs hanging from their feet, stripped of their gonads. Gonads were laid out in shining baubles on tabletops, almost glistening in the purple sun.

We visited a contemporary art gallery in the south of the city. Are contemporary art galleries always works of contemporary art in themselves? This seems to be the case. I have not encountered one which runs contra to the rule. GOMA, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Tate Modern, that little one in Venice, the Guggenheim (haven't been, but from the outside!!), etc. I even took a couple of very contemporary photos of the contemporary art space, so as to accentuate and so on. The ceiling looked like stairs to me. The building had none.

Barely even altered the contrast. Look at her, glued to her nothingness in this expansive black-white-grey monolith myth of a hall, art in herself.

Something clicked recently, a sort of phenomenon which has come to light in my head in the last week or two. It's about the relationship between the old and new, those who do and those who document, the rugged and the pristine. There is a rift in so many ways - behavioural, habitual, maybe even ideological - and the natural response of the present generation, who perch on the edge of a thousands of years-old series of dynasties and handwritten histories and instead look upwards to the stars through a pixelated lens, is to ogle. Ogle and boggle. Because people doing things with their hands - that's fascinating, really. It is, especially if the current vogue is to cover up as much skin as possible so as to avoid getting any darker, play LOL (League of Legends) on your iPhone in order to pass the time, and go to the canteen three times a day for your sustenance. One student of mine said her boyfriend was ugly because he was too dark. They used to call him Blackie. How does one approach that?

So Sophie and I went to stay with one of my students in her hometown. We were invited and we accepted and it was a joyous thing. Her town (they call it a town because it has fewer than two million people or something, tower-blocks galore) is called Zhongjiang and is terrific, relatively calm, colourful and inhabited by fine people. We did some very Chinese things, which I will recount here.

First, Mathilda's favourite cafe, complete with school friends and even a sun, which appeared out of nowhere. Guess how much taller I am than them. Shots which better illustrate this to follow.

We were treated SO well that we almost felt guilty. One big family dinner (big like eight on one table and eight on another) was tofu, beans, chillies, ribs, two soups, hot aubergine with veg and other gubbins, cold aubergine with spicy gubbins, pickled cabbage, fatty meat on mauve kindling (unidentifiable & I didn't ask), and the pièce de résistance, a ginormous bowl of seafood, incl. crab, mussel, clam, prawn, other & other.

Family meal #2 (similar crowd) was traditional Sichuanese hot-pot with ingredients incl. taro, potato, see-you-tomorrow mushrooms (und I did), cow stomach, various meats, chunks o' fish, big green leaves like pak choi or similar, and more. Everyone has a small bowl with their own bespoke combination of oils, parsley, spring onion and chilli. It is great fun, and we had our own private room!

It left us feeling bloated and squishy-faced.

But merry, and that's the important thing, ey chaps?

Meals at home were similar, though marginally less opulent. Green beans and mapo doufu, egg and tomato soup, so on so on. M's mum is a qulinary queen and made us feel tremendously welcome. She even facilitated the making of dumplings (jiăo ze), which were boiled and steamed and let off a lustrous honk when they were done. Here we are in a dumpling frenzy. Frenz in a friendsy.

I suppose, in life, in everything, there are those who got it and those who don't got it. In this, in the construction of dumplings, I currently don't. There are artists, dough-deft and unimaginably suave thereabouts, popping out twirls like nobody's business. I, by contrast, am a rookie, newbie, fuddle-handed loser. But, I say, do they all taste the same? Yes I believe they do.

Much taller. A head and maybe shoulders taller.

It actually becomes a hindrance in social interaction. Kids look up at me with horror in their eyes, stricken as if by a demon or monstrous spectre. They scurry to their parents with tears wetting their irises. What am I to do?

The citytown of Zhongjiang is watched over by a North Tower in the north, and a South Tower. In the south. Must I spell everything out?

Ascent of the former made us giddy with altitude, or just excited to be alive. For what is one day but a continuation of the last? And what is life but a sequence of graduating days? Blessed are those who have foregone Chronos in favour of Kairos.

The shaoyaohua, or peony flowers, bloom annually and with notable gusto. Fields awash with white and pink specks, wonderful, resplendent, beauti-- and trampled by keen photographers, eager to make their mark in the cyberverse.

I, for one, think they could be a band. Wistful, lackadaisical, either carefree or careless (we love that in a band, don't we, isn't it cool).

This was taken at the top of I think the South Tower but I may have got them confused. Tradition here is to take a red ribbon (different ribbons have different inscriptions which in turn signify different things and in turn mean different consequences for those for whom you do the thing), write upon it a message, dedicate it to a person or persons, walk to the top of the wee mountain, up all the steps, sweat as you go, walk three times around the actual tower clockwise, then three times anti-clockwise, and finally tie the ribbon around any low-hanging branch of any tree available. The trees are quite replete with red ribbons, let me tell you.

I took, I wrote, I dedicated, I walked, I sweated, I orbited thrice one way and thrice the other, I tied. I sent positive thoughts and wavy vibrations. Did you receive them? Perhaps you know who you are.

Then, at night, we played ninja under neon lights.

And later, mahjang with a swish electronic table.

There's another thing which clicked a while ago but which hasn't come up naturally in relation to any of the pictures. But I guess I shouldn't be bound by pictorial representations of things: words can paint pictures, though inefficiently (1000 vs. 1, I'll take the 1). This has to do with the Chinese way of utilising the land. It is different, or 'ours' is. Ours? Who are we? What is us?

As there are 1.3 billion people here, pragmatism and utility are first priorities in a lot of processes. Canteens are enormous and churn out vast quantities of food, very cheap, for hoards of hungry hippos. Wastage is wastage, but the children are fed. Everything is made in order to accommodate hundreds or thousands or millions of people. The subway carriages are bigger than London's; the roads are wider, have more lanes; local small-time bakeries are constantly constantly constantly producing loaves, and constantly constantly constantly have queues; towerblocks are in perpetual construction, popping up like Lego tenements; in the outskirts of the city, gigantic roads are mid-way through being built, and jut out at the sky 15 floors up in order to one day ferry people upon people upon people.

And the land: if it can be changed to better suit its purpose, it is. Whereas in England or France or for that matter most of Europe, you'll nip around and see mostly large flat or hillside fields either growing maize or sunflowers or hemp or lying fallow or being pastoral with grazing animals etc etc., the actual lay of the land existing in its own way, in Sichuan much of the land is shaped and sculpted in order to suit the needs of the country, the people of the country. The terrain is constantly being redesigned, reshaped, remoulded, in a bizarre and at times saddening demonstration of power of machine over nature. Seeing this process mid-way is the most strange: the land sits bare like a big brown pudding being carved up. Gradient is no good, so hills become steps, and vehicles need access, so mudded highways are scraped into the soil, laid over so that the system is practicable. 

I don't know. I guess it's completely normal. And it fits with the unabashed nature of social interactions - there are no political or societal reservations (as a whole, anyway) about redesigning the land they inhabit, if it thereby becomes more effective, more productive, more utilisable. It is a triumph of change, progression or something, in a country heavily preoccupied with its own ancient history. I find it interesting.

*

Coming for you

squeaky faced

Every day

cut and paste

Weighing up

less speed more haste

London town 

where I was graced.

**

Big love goes out to my main gal on this day, entering a new gorgeous year and taking off in more dimensions than can be articulated. ♡

NOVEL EXCERPT: Josie Haybottom is late

PROLOGUE (of sorts)

Josie Haybottom is late

*

At 05:01 on that fateful October morning, Josie awoke in a wet bed. Her bed was wet with urine, her own. The sun still slept.

Her brother, it seemed, observed an etiquette vastly transliterated from her own, regarding prank rules. To her, unconscious meant unarmed; to Drew, it meant easy pickings. He had been told the previous day about the trick of soaking your victim’s fingers in warmed vinegar-water during NREM3 (approximately 20% of a sleep cycle, his learned compatriot informed him). Roused by his alarm at 04:45 ante meridiem, he prepared silently while the blood throbbed in his ears. He crept into his sister’s bedroom, taking with him a tub of water estimated by his elbow to be damn near close enough to body temperature.

Needless to say (but hell, let it be said): the prank paid off. He watched on, petrified, feet fastened, shivering with gratified anticipation as the puddle grew. Josie released a soft groan, and stretched out her back. It clicked. The sound jolted Drew back to the immediacy of reality and he scarpered. In his rush he trod with full force on a stray Lego cube – Josie had not forgotten the value of tangible play, regularly creating for herself miniature worlds in which anything at all was possible, as long as it was constructed exclusively from quadrangles and could be connected, top and bottom, in the prescribed way.

Drew yelped to high heaven, quite unable to inhibit his reflexes against such a burst of visceral pain. The bolt shot up his leg and reached his brain before he could suppress it, and his cry rang forth. Josie’s torso snapped up like a spring, frightened into consciousness by her brother’s gasp. She retorted with a breathy AGH! which alerted Drew. Blenching at the thought of her impending revenge, he swung round and flung up his foot, wishing to soothe it for immediate escape. He lost his balance again, semi-somersaulted with a flying scissor-kick into the air, and landed on his bottom, unprotected but for a thin layer of pyjama cotton.

A blunt twinge seared from his left cheek and reverberated like a ripple through his rump. Josie tossed her duvet from her bed in order to reprimand her brother for waking her without permission, only to discover her compromised position. She sat in a pool of her own doing, warm and wet to the hilt. Her blood proceeded to poach. She knew her brother’s dastardly ways and knew in a second that he was the culprit. A ragged, fuming electricity began to pop and bubble in the pit of her stomach. It seethed and blew gales within her, raising her up onto her hind legs. Towering above Drew, she gained vantage, therefore advantage.

Standing now, a lioness in her prime, she roared with hearty rumble, her mane full aflame and plumage lit. She bounced once, twice, and then flew like a falcon onto her brother’s back. Her faithful talons sank in, prompting the blood to flow where it may. Drew’s sharp shriek could be heard from three doors down: Norwegian Ms Jerry in the yellow cottage at number 135 awoke with a start, shot up and knocked her head KATHUMP on the bedside lamp, wherefrom a searing bulge could be seen until a week later; sickly old Reverend Harklestamp, the Dane in the blue house opposite, yelped and defecated where he lay, staring up at the majestic compass which adorned the mantelpiece; down the hall, the fractious pair’s biological mother (their house was red; they didn’t have any fish) opened her weary eyes and, disorientated for a moment, flailed out beside her, thwacking her partner square on the nose.

Josie was in her element. All four limbs wreaked their most vengeful wrath upon her brother, inflicting so great a shock that he lost all consciousness. Drew crumpled under his sister’s bulk and, landing directly cube to cube, suffered comprised potency and generous scarring. Let that be a lesson to brothers all.

Unfazed by the hyperbole of the situation, and dehydrated after the fracas, Josie went downstairs for a cool glass of coconut milk. Coco was unassailable.

The morning's set-to had, however, taken its toll on Josie's foot-to-eye coordination. Steps were too much. Her humanness raised its gnarly head – or, more precisely, the minor discrepancy in length between her right and left legs went uncompensated for – she fell, oh how she fell!, with uproarious calamity. On her third step, her foot only narrowly shaved the stairlip, and clumped onto the level below. This knocked her so off course that she came tumbling down, step by step, with a series of percussive thumps which roused the whole household. Her mothers both, biological and nominal, came bounding out of their room, skipped down the staircase to find their daughter (biological, titular) star-fished on the tartan-rugged floor, florid and moaning. Knocked unconscious like her brother, Josie soon awoke to find herself one tooth down, a certified resident of sore-town.

*

Whoever said a weekend's a weekend's a weekend clearly hadn't tried ALL weekends

Lakeside fishermen swing their lines into the murk, their baits dolloping dolefully, splosh mimicking a fish & amusing passers-by with promise of success. To them, a day is a day is a day. If it rains, it pours. What are the scores, Georgie? Attitudes are blunt, stances lackadaisical, decisions whimsical, rods flimisical, mine's a popsicle, don't call my dog fickle, dime nickel, only a trickle, bibble bibble bibble. Bibble!

*



[the inmates are playing cards and betting with cigarettes]
Martini: [rips a cigarette in half] I bet a nickel.
McMurphy: Dime's the limit, Martini.
Martini: I bet a dime.
[Puts the two halves onto the table]
McMurphy: This is not a dime, Martini. This is a dime.
[shows a whole cigarette]
McMurphy: If you break it in half, you don't get two nickels, you get shit. Try and smoke it. You understand?
Martini: Yes.
McMurphy: You don't understand.

Oh, Martini!

*

At least, when all's said and done, there's Ofo. Ofo offers users lots of options, or rather, is one of lots Ofo ptions. These are like Boris bikes, only yellow, and cleverer. You download the app - either Ofo, Mobike, Bluegogo or I think there is one more; pay a deposit; scan & ride! There are no docking stations, so bikes are scattered EVERYWHERE like pock-marks on a glorious chocolate & banana cake. Pick up wherever, leave wherever. One quai a pop, that's about 12p, and they ride like low-riders. In fact, when it comes to comfort, I'm sure they're fantastic for people of smaller stature than myself. Not designed for chaps over six foot, but they do make for smooth zoomin'.



This weekend just passed was the Chinese festival of 清明节. Got that? Oh, what's that? Can't read it?!!? Imagine how I feel!! OK, so the festival is called Qing Ming Jie, or All Souls Day / Tomb-Sweeping Day. It is a time for honouring one's ancestors, so many people go back home to their families, visit the graves of dead relatives, sweep their tombs and leave them food, wine, tea, chopsticks or other goodies to help them in the hereafter.This year it was observed on the 4th April, and merits two days' holiday. Lessons were rescheduled, so all told we had a three and a half day weekend. What do you do on three and a half day weekends? Climb a flipping mountain.

I had met some students a few days earlier, in the field in the middle of the track, who had taught me a brill new Chinese card game called Gān Dèng Yăn, whose company had been swell, and who had invited me to go climbing with them at the weekend. Two and two together = here we are! / were. We're down now.

Spot the Soph! She's ever so sophiesticated.



At the top of a large amount of stairs, there was a wonderful temple, with shrines and joss sticks, the works, and these elegant lampshades. I suppose they were hoping no one poked around inside them whilst no one was looking and saw the IKEA logo!!!!!!!



It was a treacherous walk up a great many steps, mud plains and grassy knolls, but we all made it alive, sweaty betties to the hilt and smiling with more enthusiasm than I ever thought possible. Wait for the apex though, because when in China, you have to take photos of everything along the way up the mountain, including collective selves. This is not obligatory but compulsory, and is actually rather fun. Besides, my comrades' (woah, politically turgid word considering my location!) penchant for pictorial documentation rendered my own camera almost ruddy futile, and my eyes free. Hoowah.

Here is #1 of boss team looking boss. From left to right, I give you Fei Long, nominal chief of our band (he instigated our first meeting, brought the climbing gear, wore the sunglasses, had arms bared, etc., thus earning his title); next is Lou Xian, principle photographer and dutiful translator/teacher of Chinese language; on the right of me or to MY LEFT is Chen Xie, second-in-command on the climbing front and all-round calming presence; Zhou Yu, who faintly resonates with punk vibe and certainly knows how to dance; young Sophie, whom you know, pulling the cha V like an absolute stinger. Who you gonna call?



Here, again, in this photo taken by Lou Xian (principle photographer in action) I plundered centre-stage for all it was worth, turning side-on in order to appear extra casual, like this climbing business is, has always been and will forever be a righteous doddle, no more no less. Sophie is competing for Lou Xian's title, as evinced by her indefatigable efforts to snap the snapper while she snaps. Fortunately we are all pacifists so no real snapping occurred.

At the top, we discovered (much to my chagrin - I bet the bastards already knew) that we weren't the first intrepid explorers to ever reach the summit. Many families live there, and they cook up a darned good bowl of dàn chǎofàn - egg fried rice. We gobbled and slurped from the darned big bowl, and another of scrumptious cabbagey soup until...

it was all gone!

We hung loose for some time, letting that pile of rice move downwards to the bottom of our stomachs, and then, as if to tempt and taunt fate, we shook up the Christmas crystal balls of our insides, letting rice-snow scatter in whorls and torrents about our stomach-walls.



What does that mean?? -- It means we went climbing // for real climbing! Here is one of me doing the old switcheroo on a boulder that thinks it's cleverer than me. Little does it know that I have sentience on my side, and elbows made of steel (and a rope attached to my pant-line which catches me if I fall - HA).



Zhou Yu is triumphant, for she hath scaled that wall with both thumbs raised and clothed in flowers or birds. The wall and rugged ropes tried their darnedest to pinion her but she is strong like an ox and nimble like a hare and multifarious other similes and is thereby unpinionable, and grinning.



I know not what we rep, but I rep with the reppers. My neck has grown a thumbs-up so what choice do I have??!



Abseiling is great.



By this time, we had each of us accumulated quite an appetite. Fortunately for us Angles, our Chinese cohort had thought ahead! Part of our luggage during the ascent was food, two bags overflowing with all sorts of colours and leaves. Sun down, tummies grumbling, the knives and the axes come out, and we get down to the real Hannibal Lector stuff. Where are they? They're right here, cooking up a storm!

This was kind of like hot-pot, but I suppose was more accurately maocai. Things fried and then stewed and boiled and separated and flavoured, marinated and freshly chopped and all kinds of joy. This was a serious feast and left us all feeling fantastic. Finish with coffee and a bit of dark choc Toblerone (my contribution) and a quick game of tag -- wahey!! 

We camped on the floor of the restaurant shack, and had a swell brek too! Heavens above.



This mountain has caves, which we entered. I reminded Sophie of The Descent, a film about a crew of half a dozen women who enter an untapped cave system, become trapped and are hunted UNTIL DEATH (no spoilers) by undead freaky deaky flesh-eating and morbidly hungry humanoids. So that was nice.

Here she is now, debating escape routes with the other girls while I watch from on high, crouched on all fours and dropping globules of saliva onto the rocky floor. Or maybe they are deciding who they will eat first - me or Fei Long? I got out long before they did, so the joke's on them.



The land here is joyous, and therefore glows a lustrous pink. Its luminescence can be felt and heard, especially to the synesthetic among us. Zhou Yu spent some time listening to the intricacies of the hillside fugue and grew half an inch as a result. These truly are remarkable dales.



Lunch was more of the same, more of the terrific same. Hyuk hyuk hyuk.

Many Chinese hands make much light work, and much tasty food. Sophie and I watched in quiet admiration as none of them chopped their fingers off, silent but for a steady gastric rumble.



Chicken feet really are a thing here. They're in all the shops, and I've written about them before, but this was the first time I've borne witness to young folks just like us eating them simply because they want to. To us, thus far, they've been something of a novelty, possibly a source of bemusement, curiosity, etc. But these chaps were wolfing them down as apperitifs, no holds bARRed. Different people, different methods. Sometimes it's one toe at a time, sometimes the whole thing goes in, gets churned with molars and spittle, and emerges after two or three minutes as a mere pile of brittle. That's good work.

Are they toes? What's the word? Talons, claws, digits...

Doesn't Lou Xian look happy with hers? And when she asks why I'm not happy with mine, what should I say? Shit on your customs, it's weird! ? or perhaps I should say to the claw, it's not you, it's me. But is that honest? It is the claw. It's the very fact that it is a claw.



We got right muddy in the cave and I LOVED it. We all made it out alive and kicking (though not each other, remember pacifist comment above). I was invited to sit down by this lady, who probably used to have more teeth, but whose face and manner held more wisdom and character than any fully betoothed human I know.



All told, it was a groovy two days. We made friends, we ate, we even guffawed. We moved with the tide of the hour, and it was good. Credit to Lou Xian for the bulk of the decent pics here. Snapper strikes again.



Our journey home lacked some of the peach of the holiday, but we had each other, and we put our minds to work on picking up new words (well, Sophie put her mind to work on sleeping, and you can't say fairer than that).

*

Round-up:

I had a discussion with my doctors & nurses class yesterday about their own practical and theoretical perceptions of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) versus so-called western medicine, and it was very interesting indeed, even using only quite basic English.

I'm reading Zadie Smith's first book, White Teeth, and it's bloody wonderful. Honest & sensitive handling of different people from different places, blunt rendering of London beauty and ugliness, human beauty and ugliness, totally possesses the playfulness of a first piece of writing or first novel, not weighed down by duty of writing at all, semantically and thematically fun, funny, modest; takes no prisoners, having a good time with it.

I wrote out a full two A5 pages of pinyin Chinese yesterday or the day before about various things, using almost all the words I've learned over the last few weeks. Slowly but surely it's coming, and I can say some things! Pls don't test me. Thx. Been drinking lots of walnut milk - sweet, wholesome, nutty, faintly woody, everything I want in a carton.



when daylight stings your daylight wings
you dwell too long in velvet rings

a bluebird stops and slowly chimes
along with tales of loving times

and roving hymns to spark a smile,
mark the sun, a twinkle dial

no more weight, no hardened wings
for now's the time to chime and sing

*

dig??????????????????????????????????????/