How Did I Get Here?

The morning I left Litang the industrious street cleaners were already at work: two tubby pot-bellied pigs sniffing at the pavement curb and meticulously consuming all the rubbish in their way. It gives recycling a whole new dimension…

The bus dropped me off in Kangding, a forgetable but convenient cross roads town used for passing through and not discovering. The town equivalent of a one-night stand. Nestled deep in the folds of a valley, its life force is a torrentious river coursing through its centre.
The only notable event happened on my last night just before I fell asleep. I kept on hearing scraping, shuffling noises outside the window, I thought it was people coming back to their rooms. Finally I got up and looked through my window which overlooked a narrow alley. To my utter horror I looked down on a man’s head, climbing up the wall (I was on the 2nd floor), towards my open window. With the volume pumped up to max, my voice was my only weapon: “Hey, what are you doing??”, I hollered at the faceless intruder. Thank god spiderman didn’t think it necessary to answer my idiotic enquiery into his crepuscular activities. It was enough to change his mind and he lurched onto the other side of the alley wall, scrambled onto the roof, and melted back into the amorphous darkness.
I had to tie the window closed with my shoelaces, as the iron pegs were missing (from a previous burglary?). While doing so it dawned on me that I have no problems in dealing with a prospective burglar, but confronted with a cockroach in my room, I’m reduced to a pathetic, hysterical wreck who has to accost complete strangers to kill or get rid of the harmless ‘tresspasser’.
I’ll be the one in the safari park that would rather throw herself into the jaws of a lion than stay in the car with a grasshopper. [read on]

Sun-Wed, 10-13 June 2007

I never thought I’d miss Vietnamese men in any way. But I was wrong. On the bus to Zhongdian I fervently longed for their compact, small frames. In comparison, Chinese blokes match their country when it comes to taking up space, firmly lodging themselves with the same puny disregard for their neighbours’ right of space.
Call me petty or fastidious, but a stranger’s arm rubbing up against mine drives me to rabid distraction.
So my 5 hour journey to Zhongdian started with a silent but critical elbow wrestling match with the over-expansive body mass next to me. I tried desperate tactics: I positioned the rough edges of my bracelet in such a way that it would dig into his skin. But he clearly had enough blubber on him not to be bothered. I knew it was a hopeless battle, and in the end I had to resign myself to entertaining sick thoughts about amputating his arm.

I opened my window and tried to concentrate on the magnificent scenery. My appreciation of the surroundings was short-lived. The guy in front of me was leaning out the window and spitting at the trees, like a pissing dog marking its territory. I prudently closed my window.
I looked round the rest of the bus. The vinyl on the side panels and ceiling was peeled off, exposing the loose and rusty rivets like decaying teeth. The curtains had died long ago and been reborn in the lower caste of kitchen rags, tied in a knot and hanging lifelessly from 1 or 2 hooks. With every death rattle this sickly carcass was begging for scrap yard euthanasia. [read on]