day: 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 epilogue

02 Jun 2007

to Tibet - Day Fifteen: Chengdu but Quickly

Caught a bus, caught a plane, saw a temple, checked into a hotel.

We've been in farmlands, temples and villages of a few million, tops. Chengdu steams with ten million people. Rapid contrast from a four thousand metre drop in altitude from modest mountain people down into a sweaty humid basin of metropolitan decadence. Vanity at its most obvious. Our local tour guide went so far as to profess the residents' unabashed love of spending money they have very little of. A trend encouraged by the government. So a city of some three million or so bicycles buys two hundred and fifty cars a day, seek to obtain lavish homes and decorate themselves in fine clothes. Why wait until you're dead in a tomb to look good? Despite the initial gag reflex to open wholesale consumerism and superficiality the complete one eighty turn of environment was a welcome kick in the stagnant pants of this tour. This long established city of more than two thousand years hadn't recieved a homogenous facelift like the townships of Tibet. There were time honoured tangles in the cityscape that you could see efforts were made to destroy the old and raise the new but always pockets of history remained like belly scars on a liposuction victim. Old houses and jagged alley ways tucked under the arms of knuckle scraping monstrous overhangers.

Right after lunch we ducked into Fudu Gardens, built up around the Tong Dynasty poet's cottage. The cottage itself was a remake of the original. This modern version with carefully arranged furniture felt a few Disney automatons short of a perfect presentation. In the garden was the real gold mine though. A heave of fresh air from the greenery seasoned the olfactories with something other than human waste and crackling dryness. Our guide rushed us through to the art store at the end of the rainbow which was a clever front for the garden's open air souvenir and gift shop. No surprises there.

Once done selling us out she took us to our hotel for an hour to freshen up before heading for dinner. Bro and i opted out regardless of how cool the restaurant looked from the outside. We instead we found an extraordinarily large outdoor shopping mall. Which was great if you wanted Adidas brand anything from any of the half dozen Adidas stores within a three block radius in addition to a cast of characters flashing similar apparel at us. I've found the best way to deal with pushy street vendors is to reply in loud and rapid English thus revealing their hoax in that they only learned to say "Adidas? You, come here."
I was not in the mood for any brand of athletic gear that these abundant stores had in spades. Nor was interested in wedding gowns, watches, name brand fashions or jewelry even if the store was called "Pirateship" and staffed with an excessive number of sirens in tight black outfits surely positioned for their illustrious knowledge of these decidedly un-nautical looking chunks of bling. I had much interest but no stomach for rows upon racks of meat skewers up to and including entire squids waiting to be fried before your face. I did however find no resistance in ordering a bowl of something. Initially my hope was to walk away with a bubble tea but what i ended up with was something far more otherworldly. One of the girls behind the counter picked out a small bucket and dumped some crushed ice in the bottom. She showed me five fingers and i started pointing at things that looked good in the food bins under the display glass. Well the two of them laughed at me and tried jabbering in Mandarin at me and i responded in a bunch of English that didn't make much sense to even me. At a linguistic stalemate they shook their heads laughing again and began telling eachother what to do. I had no idea how to convey that i just wanted them to put whatever was good in the tub but soon enough that's what was happening. It looked like the foreigner special. First a couple of safe bets were tossed on the ice: pineapple, strawberries, mango. And then we ventured into the red and black bean compote territory. The last stop was the cherry tomatoes and various jellies. Grass jelly, colourful tapioca slop and other viscous chromatic drips. It was worth the eight yuan easily.

In the city square some guy sang through a veil of bubbles over canned music. Again the traditional music meets modern technology. An awkward marriage revisited latter that night at the opera and acrobat show. Let's first say that the circumstance of our trip is not of that of deep cultural value but a watery representation fabricated for arm chair adventurists. The scope of this country's artisitic integrity surely must lie far out of reach from our ping pong padldles that push us along submerged rail tracks in our small world carriages. That being said the night started out innocently enough as a glamourous MC trotted out on stage under a spotlight in a bright red Chinese dress to introduce the opening act in lengthy Mandarin phrases then switched to her man voice to rapidly, cheerfully deliver a brief and equally confusing string of English that for a moment i thought was an order for jelly on ice with fruit toppings. Translation aside, the events were easy to piece together from the pixel board on stage left and the tippity tapping of Chinese instruments.

The following act veered from live music to good old fashioned giant pot and table foot juggling backdropped by a kind of pre-recorded no-sass Dixie Chicks theme music of a long and repetitious nature to allow for time to kick most of the furniture and rubbish found backstage over their heads in every possible direction. The two girls finished up with pizza dough spinning some towels on one of their available sets of limbs while the other balanced said windmilling gal overhead. I was kind of hoping the bottom one would start spinning the top juggler like a piece of pottery. No such luck. I was still wowed by a goof ball tune and some outstanding balance and coordination feats. Haha. Feats.

Next up, an older gentleman in a vanilla ice cream Chinese flavoured suit with greased hair strode over to his chair dead centre stage and rested his Erhu on his knee for his solo. The Erhu measures about from hip to head with four strings played by bow. Sounds like a fiddle of sorts. He adjusted the mic placement and shifted his weight to find his sweet spot. Serious, he meant business. The anticipation of the mournful echoes of time bemoaning lost love or the beauty of a waterfall in the bosom of China's national flower set me straight up to arc my ears from the second balcony. The pixel board scrolled out "War Horses Rushing in Battlefield" or some such hot blooded title warning that this piece would be of a lively tempo. Before my eyes could dart away from the green lights, a familiar tearing of a horse neighing ripped through the house system all across a non-hushed crowd chatting loudly into cell phones. The music was full bore. Like a MIDI steed cut loose from it's analogue restraints to run free in digital fields of consistent synthesized drum beats and string not swells. The hand of mother nature slid the master fader to keep the virtual symphony perfectly in co-volume as the dynamic of the composition called for it. Yet still our hero sat at ready on his mark as stunned as i was by the Iron Maiden light show and automated robot music stripping away generations of dignity from our ear linings. He came to with a fury in a last ditch attempt to redeem his artform, fight back against the ugly passage of time, a caveman in Encino, another pants down anochronism. It was a losing battle that he couldn't turn, even to fight fire with Eddie Van Halen up on the top fret wailing his bow to make fire.

The game was over. The lights were flashing last call ambulance ride critical condition as the whole of it cried on its way into a closing body bag "NO! We want to be cool! We want to move forward!" I was laughing without pride and without control. Shock laughs. Relics, monuments and institutions took a fall, but the real hurt of a cultural revolution staring me in the face was this crippled modern connection. A scramble to bandage the wounds in the fields of artisans to bridge the gap in the development of a creative identity that is relying on second hand lowest common denominator fallout of north american popular culture. A backwashing source pipe of information and inspiration censored and confused, free of critical thought and progressive senses to move forward culturally. Drawing pictures of tuna referencing the biggest fish in the smallest pond.

joel

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