DATELINE:XI'AN - The Guts of China

Sigh, another day gone by, in this weird so-called vacation of mine. I must note, for those wondering, I passed the International Date Line when arriving here, obviously, so usually as I am typing these things it's past midnight where I am at, while many of those who read it are just getting started with the previous day. Weird, right? It's just past midnight, Thursday morning, here in Xi'an, China - back in Los Angeles, it's Wednesday morning, 9am. Boston is a little easier since it is an even 12 hr difference (so, 12 noon wednesday there). Anyway, you get the point.

So to get right into it - last night I was hoping to get out and party, but that didn't end up happening (once again) for various reasons, mainly I will chalk it up to the fates conspiring against me. Still, May and I did escape from our tour group in order to meet up with a local friend of hers, in Beijing - she brought us to a really tasty hot-pot spot (shabu shabu of the non-japanese variety). Yes, best meal we've had this entire trip, easily..

Today (Wednesday), we hopped up out of bed, packed all of our crap, and met the group in the lobby, as it was time to depart the capital city of Beijing and head to the next stop on the tour, Xi'an (a former capital of China). We bussed out to the aiport, only to find out that may + my tickets weren't available along with the entire rest of the group (one of the guides' tix was missing as well). We had to bus over to a different terminal (which must have been, honestly, a good ten miles away - not kidding!) We got in, hurrying to catch our flight on time, they scan our luggage and SHIT there's a problem. May bought Zippo lighters (real popular over here) back home and brought as gifts for some friends, well I guess those don't mesh with procedure so they started going through our bags and trying to throw the lighters out. She was pissed, as they were worth like $80 altogether, and convinced them to let her ship them at the airport's post office. So we rush over there (clock is ticking!) and they had just finished washing the goddamned floor of this little tiny hovel of a post office.. " you have to wait for the floor to try before you may enter!" They were being dicks, arguing with us and the security guy. Anyway they won and we waited, dropped in the mail, ran to get on the plane, bingo all set. Short flight (2.5 hrs or so, if that) and when we got there, found out that the plane the rest of the group on got delayed anyway so we hadda wait another hour for them to show up.

We finally met up and trucked through Xi'an for some sightseeing. very, very different place than Beijing. The latter being a building-up Industrial, modernized city, Xi'an feels like a bit of a dustbin by comparison. It just feels like someone decided to plunk a huge endless city into the middle of a heaving-dry desert - even at nighttime, it's disgustingly swealtering. I imagine the local folks are quite hardy for living here. The visuals were amazing, kind of unlike any environment I have ever been in - I must have snapped hundreds of photos. The buildings were lovingly detailed with pipes, Tubes, AC ducts, and exposed wiring the likes of which you'd see in a late 70s cyberpunk flick. Horrible and gorgeous at the same time. It's all doused fairly evenly with a laer of poverty, no doubt aided by the climate, so it's fair to say there's a very particular mood exuding from this place not quite like one I have noticed elsewhere. At the same time, in some ways, very familiar. Sort of like a more urbanized, non-mexican van nuys in certain ways.

We got dinner at a Dumpling Specialty place - nothing wonderful, but certainly better than the past several meals they've fed us! After that was a traditional dance show, which was impressive, but overlong. It tuckered everyone out, all were back to the hotel and in bed by 10pm, wild huh? The thing is, we pack so much into these days that I think people's batteries are just being superdrained..

As for me, I was determined to go out and sample some of the local flavor. As I've no accomplices to accompany me at the moment, I had decided to go out my lonesome - which is good for some reasons, bad for others.. but regardless I shoe'd up my already-exhausted dogs and hit the pavement. A bellman pointed me in the direction of bars, though 15 minutes looking that way yielded nothin', so I just kept wandering. I didn't wanna just call a cab and say "take me to a club!" for a number of reasons - I was by myself, what if they took me somewhere super-far away and it got expensive, or to some place filled with boring-ass tourists (tourist trap), or the other kind of tourist trap where you could get ripped off, mugged, etc (yeah, this sorta seems sketchy enough to be that kind of a city). Anyway I wandered aimlessly, past 11pm on a Wednesday night. The streets were pretty active, considering, between cars and peds.. lots of people hanging out on the side of the road, on their motorscooter things or just chilling on stoops, or wandering with their girls to or from wherever. a few stores open here and there but nothing enticing looking. I wandered for awhile, still nothing, eventually i ducked down some really narrow alley that looked like it was brimming with activity. it was sketchier than the main drag but at least it looked like there would be something interesting going on (if anything, maybe there'd be some bars down here!) Just more of the same, lots of people in little clusters, hanging out.. tiny rooms that looked kinda like barber shops, filled with people jawbonin' and smoking (the rooms just looked like thick clouds). People were grilling up all sorts of stuff on either side, tony dens of people playing mahjhongg, chess, stuff like that. It kept going, i kept walking, but it was getting late and nothing was looking like it would be welcoming to a white dude who spoke only english, so I started heading back.

it felt awfully weird, obviously they didn't get many white folks down this way, i really felt out of place. Sort of like a ghost drifting unnoticed thru the middle of the street, something for people to avoid and try to ignore, as it was breaking up their rhythm, their regularity. it felt both cool (to interrupt and disturb it) and awkward (to not know where to go or where to belong) at the same time. I am a city guy, a night guy, so wherever I am I will gravitate to an area like this, the off-the-beat area where the regular tourists wouldn't wanna be, at crazy hours of the night when stuff is dead and people are crazy (I guess they don't wanna be there for a good reason..!)

It is hot here, hotter than Beijing. Even in the dead of night it was uncomfortably hot - today should be worse. This place isn't bad, it's very interesting and unique but I look forward to getting somewhere that I can relax more, shortly.