~ Okay, travelogue!

The most wonderful thing about Chinese prostitutes, or at least these young girls, is their infinite allure. They are born with a proclivity for preserving their natural, most innocent coyness. I get the distinct impression that most of the youngsters here are virginal, untouched, and somehow able to preserve the first character of their vestal, spring-blossom-like inexperience and curiosity - apparently even after having laid a hundred guys. Giggling as they see me come inside, the girls scatter from the room, running back behind the curtain as if expecting me to chase them onto the nearest bed. But I don't even know where I am, abandoned, not at my hotel, but at a brothel which only resembles a hotel on the outside... Feeling that the clever Chinese are out to confuse me to no end, I consult my road map with help from the pimp, grinning over my shoulder at the few girls brave enough to peep at me from behind the curtain. Then, I heft up my bags for a walk across the bridge to my hotel.

The name of the Traffic Hotel is precisely appropriate, judging by the sick smoke and dust smothering the city all around, and the 66 public busses parked next to the hotel. The hotel is designed for poor travellers like me and costs about 5 dollars a night. Each room has three beds, and it's tight, but cozy. The hotel is full of back-packing Americans, Europeans and a few Chinese, too.

Two guys are already lodged in my room, archetypal youngsters attracted to the new East. They are Americans on a sort of "package-career-tour" which includes study of Chinese language and an "internship" (i.e.: slave-labor) with a big multi-national-joint-venture company. (Remember one thing: only the executives get to be grossly over-paid in these sinister, hilariously medusan companies...)

I go with Tom and Frank, in search of a real Sichuan restaurant, and we find one. They tell me some hairy stories, making me laugh: only two weeks before they were in Beijing as NATO forces (Americans) "accidentally" bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. The two fellows had a tough time getting taxis to give them rides for an entire week, especially as the Chinese media took advantage of the tragedy to saturate the country with anti-American info.

I wander with the them around remnants of old Chengdu, once a very pretty and quaint old town made of red bricks. Here, the ancient streets are as naturally articulated as human arteries carrying the life-blood of Earth's oldest continuous civilization. China is such a frustrating effort of the imagination for Westerners to grasp... (The controversial psychologist Jung once warned that if you grew up in the West, immersed in the Christian milieu, then you would be ill-advised to attempt conversion to Buddhism or Hinduism because he believed Europeans and Americans could not achieve any effectively acculturated understanding of the East, which he assumed would be necessary for a genuine religious experience. Since Jung presumed that Westerners were psychologically ill-equipped to achieve understanding of Eastern faiths, he advised that any such attempt at conversion would only confuse and so make us, "lose our centers.") Of course, such a critical warning need not be applied to the study of culture and polity, and we realize that Confucius, the longest-running mind in the ancient and modern history of China, was fairly basic in his program of feudal dominion: he preached a pragmatic doctrine, and was a code-obsessed and rather fusty patriarch; in fact, he was an old-fashioned dogmatist who today would be classed among the most stuffy of right-wing conservatives. Confucius is quite easily understood by the typically unimaginative official intellectuals employed as politicians and professors throughout the Western world nowadays...

...Unfortunately, Western prejudices about China are often inspired by the impenetrability and self-supporting insularity of Oriental culture. Language is a great part of this barrier. Yet, everybody knows how closely Chinese expatriate communities stick together overseas, in America, or anywhere, and that they generally made almost no effort to mix and meld with their host societies for generations... Dear, dear, now why is that? Wait, wait a few more years for your mind to open, pal. The Chinese, if not completely blind, are perhaps blessed with some innate wisdom about societies outside their own; since the Western world is obviously very different, so most Chinese realize that there's no way they can transform it into something Chinese... So why bother trying to integrate? If your Chinese compatriots are also living abroad, and in the same neighborhood, then it's easy to speak only with them, right?

Of course, the experience of mixed-"race" couples yields up many peculiar predicaments borne of stubbornly innate dispositions. Many foreign boys cannot understand why their Chinese wives force them to do things their way; likewise, the wives will steadfastly fail to comprehend how or why things ought to be done differently from the Chinese way. Dear friend, if you are in any way disinclined to fulfill your destiny as a grey-suited father, do not marry a Chinese woman unless she's a freak - and already very wealthy - for she will make you slave for money and infants until you run away, bored into premature age! On the other hand, if you feel born to be a family man, you are perfectly content with the Chinese lady, who makes no big pretence, nor is in any way shy to admit, that her dreams involve making babies, buying houses and driving fancy cars.

Now, times have changed a little bit, and some variants have crept past the age-old, universal familial destiny. Besides the usual pros, ordinary rebel babes can sometimes be found in China. But don't be fooled too easily - most of these "deviants" are actually stuck in the chrysalis stage of their development, and only wait for the "right man" to ignite the next phase, which entails a sudden reversal of philosophy, mutual cocooning and spontaneous rebirth as a "mother-to-be." Instantly, the svelte, "free-woman" of the wild world is replaced. As others have said before me: the people populating oriental cultures, especially in Taiwan and Japan, are experts at social mimicry. While adopting many ostensible forms of Western behavior, including a few of the subtler social mores, they have had their own culture for thousands of years - and this reality is usually overlooked. All people end up carefully concealing their more naturally innate traits beneath the surface of their pretty social games...

The tiny, crooked streets of Chengdu's denuded old town are squeezed between the new, straight avenues. These small alley-ways comprise only a single sliver that survives from a much larger jigsaw. Big slices of this exotic pie can be found still extant in other, smaller Chinese towns: Weishan and Douge in Yunnan, and Suzhou and Yangzhou in Jiangsu... I love these old Chinese streets, because they were made for living in, close to your neighbors. Such streets put people in each other's laps, and it is the easiest, most natural thing to walk outside and start chatting with the folks next door. Indeed, at dinner time, the children and parents of old Chengdu and Yangzhou come outside to socialize with their neighbors. You seldom see folks in America's sprawling suburbs wander even halfway up the block for a chat: we must use cars and telephones before we can touch other people. So, community life isn't as detached in these old Chinese neighborhoods, since folks are able to fulfill their humanity more easily, living close to each other. It's a heart-warming sight and yet it baffles me: I feel as if I really missed something, not growing up in such a place!

Our walk leads us to a restaurant like a classy bistro. Sichuan food is rightfully famous. We choose standard, universally loved dishes - like eggplant in tart oyster sauce - and this one is truly saucy, not oily! Then something unexpected is given us: "Flower-Shaped Tofu." It's a simple delicacy made of softly-textured tofu laid out in a mandala-shape - exactly like a giant open flower - garnished with cucumber slices and tasting very light and melting.

The next day, walking alone, I get photos of two white statues: there's an acutely chiselled dame playing a lyre in front of the musical university, and a famous poetess of the Tang period named Xue Tao, situated in a park named after her...

Xue Tao wrote few poems, about eighty. She got around too, and didn't need to get married to enjoy her guys: typical Chinese rich girl from the past. Today, the tiny park she calls home is worn-out, but the bamboo trees are lush. Xue Tao's statue resembles many other contemporary female statues in China and you will discover that her facial features resemble a softer version of Shakyamuni Buddha. The statue is also reminiscent of the southern Chinese deity, Kuanyin... You could even mistake Xue Tao's image for a Manchu, since her face does appear more Korean than Chinese. Except for her too tiny mouth, that seems to come from another land again. It's her inflated cheeks that trick my discernment. Anyway, looking at such ideal features, it's easy to suspect that nobody remembers what she actually looked like. Let's just say the sculptor's image crosses woman with a rosebud fairy. She looks a subdued and crafty thing. The sculptor had skill: Xue Tao looks such a woman, and her smirk confides that she's the one who so obviously knows!

About statues: if you spend enough time in China, you will be able to guess which statues were made recently, and which are actually vintage relics: all the newer ones tend to resemble each other and the old ones have more individualized features. In China, the imitation of established artistic forms has been the only acceptable technique for mastering the arts of painting and sculpture. China's history has much depth, and the forms of art familiar to each era were easily isolated from one another by vast spans of transition and the great distances between places. Today in China, as contemporary methods of artistic training go on, as in the past, through copying popular techniques and styles, the reduplication of similar forms has tended to spread uniformly across the nation rather than having the more ancient appearance of temporally individuated schools, which were slowly diffused and evolved separate, regional stylistic norms. (Places took a long, long time to happen in China.) The point is this: if you see two statues depicting two different historical personages from ancient Chinese history, and they resemble one another, then you can infer that they are probably comparatively recent sculptures; or, that they were created concurrently in the same place during a specific dynasty.

This inference may later fail as you discover some genuinely ancient paintings, in Tibet, for example; whereupon, seeing the close similarities between different manifestations of related deities in the same temple, you may conclude that the norm for Oriental painters was only to imitate features - deliberately, and for hundreds of years - all for the sake of easy recognition. However, you may also decide that Eastern religious art is bred of traditions which sanctify particular canons of authority while statues of famous personages are not bound by anything but the whims or fashions of particular historical moments. Anyway, no matter what you think about fashion, form and authority - many people would like you to accept the popularized notion that religious painters and their uniform styles are concerned with an idealism that connects to an acutely refined demand for supplying the receptor with direct spiritual inspiration. That requirement for being able to develop an inspired experience and spiritual achievement is supposed to be more important than having any absolute authority. In fact, the several varied schools of Buddhism clearly evidence the singular importance of an ever-evolving historically sub-divided tradition, and consequently, the development and espousal of several very individualized routes to achieve enlightenment.

Du Fu was another famed male poet of the Tang dynasty. He came from the east of China to live as an exile in Chengdu. Today, you can pay a visit to Chengdu's "Thatched Cottage Park," dedicated to Du Fu's memory. It's a more interesting place to visit than Xue Tao's park. Du Fu wrote many fine poems, and like the work of Li Po, his poetry has been translated into several languages and made famous around the world. His park is verdant and large and it's a great place to stroll with a girl. I regret to add that there are no parks dedicated to football heroes or golf pros anywhere in China!

...A pleasant fellow in the Tibet tour booking office at the Traffic Hotel tells me that no authority outside Tibet is allowed to give me a permit to enter it - unless I pick up and pay for a tour package, in which case, permission is faxed from Lhasa to Chengdu by the police bureau! My present destination is Xinjiang - north from Tibet - so the authorities there will have no jurisdiction over Tibetan destinations. Even so, the travel agent is encouraging, and says I ought to go on without a permit and "see what happens," since I'm travelling by plane and bicycle. I won't bother visiting the PSB - the "Public Security Bureau" - a civil police office charged with handling all foreigner relations. They would only reiterate the words of the travel agents: "Join a group of two or more other travellers to arrange an official tour." This usually means a flight and a couple of nights in Lhasa hotels. This "tour package" costs twice as much as the normal price for a ticket to fly from Lhasa back to Chengdu. One reason that the authorities team up with the travel agents, a theory espoused by the travel agent himself, is that the number of hotel beds in Lhasa is limited, so the authorities need to keep tabs on how many foreigners are permitted into the city during any given week. My flight to Xinjiang, China's westernmost province, requires no permission.

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