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21 May 2007

to Tibet - Day Three: Shit Hits the Fans

I passed out around six pm last night. By four am i was feeling sane again and awake to boot. The ransacking of the buffet for breakfast put all of the vital stores back to full capacity. I was ready for anything.

Which is good because we hired a driver to take us to the Great Wall. Clear skies and screaming hot sun. It was a long walk up to the Mu Tian Yu section from the parking lot. There's little to be said about the Great Wall without coming across like a postcard. You're just supposed to see it first hand. A number of tourists got really excited to see topless sweaty brothers and rushed forward to get photos taken with us. Some of them would bare their chests as well. An amusing and bewildering experience. Outside of that and the toboggan ride back down the hill the other highlight was reaching the end of the tourist zone. The wilderness taking over the wall and the breakdown of the bricks. It really made me think of how fucking old this thing is.

Back at the hotel we watched some TV to rest up for meeting the tour group. I don't have high hopes for tour groups. It's just a bad idea. Compared to two years back with a group of all Chinese doctors this was going to be interesting for its wide grasping couples and singles. Our host Yao Sun corralled our attention. A wordy middle aged Chinese man in a rolled up safari hat and "good-to-go" travel wear speaking with much flare of lens, aperature, f-stop and photoshop jokes.

Deliberation could no longer hold back our visit to the town's premiere and fateful Peking duck dinner to be followed by Peking opera. Well the dinner was one thing but brother and i would not be staying on for the opera. And just as well. This lucky non-meat eater was dished out many plates of vegetable dishes that obliged me to complete their consumption out of obsessive compulsive disorder, gratitude and duty.

It was quickly revealed that these vegetables were dripping in grease and presumably bathed in duck fat and chicken broth as my guts turned to tight poisonous coils of vipers. They would bite periodically with increased frequency as Jason and i walked back to the hotel. He had better sense than to dig in deep of the Exxon Valdez. So alone i would stop every half a block to double over in pain until ultimately i was crippled at one of the busiest intersections in downtown Beijing where multiple shopping centres and pedestrian under passes met. I hunched on a flower bed curb while bro ran off to find stomach magic at a pharmacy. Discomfort and physical anguish rose over half an hour with threats of explosive conclusions. I stopped believing in ponies. I stopped believing in butterflies, rainbows and happy endings.

Worst case scenario: the traffic cop some twenty feet away sees me in a cold sweat. Gaunt, colourless, rocking back and forth looking over my shoulders the cop apprehends me and picks me up triggering a diarrhetic onslaught and my cloud of laughter. China doesn't treat drug users well and i certainly looked the part.

Other worst case scenario: I make it to the tiny shrub i've been eyeing up, drop my drawers and take care of business. Duty is duty. I get busted for public defecation and spend many hours with a half assed translator trying to explain myself to the authorities.

Both are pretty good stories worth laughing at from the safety of my East Van home. During my wandering fantasies i had edged my way away from the cop to where i could see behind a wall. There was a short box shaped thing and a homeless dude sleeping behind it. Other than that, a totally open lawn with a few trees barely as big around as my two legs. Jay was back with some herbal pills, two for one he said. Curiously he had a new pair of shades. "Too late" i said, "it's at the gates" and so revealed my plan.

Bro runs over and scares off the homeless dude. I dash across the twenty feet of open field and dump one behind the box thing. At worst a citizen sees me and i figure they're way more scared of a six foot tall Chinese-Newfie with a scruffy beard, long hair and pants around his ankles spraying feces all over their town. Bro counters with plan B. He jumps out and throws a block while i hop behind a much closer skinny tree and head for home, which is good because honestly i didn't believe i could cover more than two steps with out some dinner falling out. Like clockwork we moved and i was crouched down with my ass against a wall taking the most public relief i will have ever taken in my life for the sixteen million residents of China's capital.

Everything happened so fast. And right as one pedestrian turned his head, mouth agape in astonishment a tremendous chorus of voices ushered out the tail end. I lept up like a cat on fire and the by-stander whipped his head around to see what the racket was. I had a fifty-fifty split perception. Either it was the Olympic Shit Posse cracking down on vagrant turds or the city was behind me all the way cheering on my fecal victory.

We ran off for the hotel, and saw that it was a troup of cadets barking out army chants as they jogged by, oblivious to my wrongs. On a glance back i noticed the homeless guy was actually a construction dude having a read.

Holy shit

joel

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