xie xie China

Wrapping up things from China as I sit on the plane for my 15 1/2 hour plane ride over the Pacific, so yeah I've got a little time to kill.  Since being in China for nearly a month, I've just come to the conclusion that a question you just don't ask yourself is "why?".  While you are constantly wondering "why" (why is he doing this, why do they do it this way, why do they eat that, etc...), there never really seems to be a logical explanation for so many of the things you see while traveling in China that you eventually just become a part of it, and there are probably just as many Chinese wondering the same thing about myself.  The people are really friendly, particularly the English students.  There is a rooftop bar above a hotel that we frequent after dinner for a game of pool that a lot of the students hang out at.  They are always looking to practice their English so an evening spent here is full of all kinds of funny conversations with all sorts of random people from travelers to students.  Some times the conversation can change subjects as quickly as the weather does here, but I get a kick out of talking to all of them.  I had a guy put his hand on my shoulder  and touch my chest and abdominal area and tell me "I like your physic".  He says you have these as he grabbed his chest and explained that "I have these" as he grabbed his own chest and stomach, "but they only fat" and laughs.  He says I think I need to learn from you, in a context like please teach me right now how to get into shape haha.  None the less there's a lot to learn about a country by talking in depth with educated English speaking students.  They've also taken us to some incredible places in town to get late night eats.  It seems that most Chinese people have English names in addition to their Chinese name, that are often chosen by themselves and have nothing to do with their Chinese name.  I've met people with names from Henry to Apple or Breeze.  Henry, asked us if we could take him climbing with us the next day.  He showed up the next day precisely when we told him we would leave with his lunch packed and ready to go.  When we got to where we were climbing at we learned that he didn't want to climb but only to watch, he says "no I think it's too dangerous for me, I only look".  Darryn taught him a friendly lesson while we were out about littering after he innocently threw the plastic package from his lunch on the ground at the crag we were at.  He thought it would be okay because it would be "fertilizer" and Darryn sort of gave him the run down about what's appropriate to leave on the ground and why.  Henry felt that because he was Chinese that it was okay to put those things on the ground, but was quick to understand what Darryn was telling him and would respecfully ask us after eating even his fruit if it was okay to put on the ground.  There are often piles of garbage found in random places that would be absolutely beautiful besides the fact there is random garbage strewn about.  This is not unlike many other places I've traveled to, some better, some worse, but I wouldn't consider China a dirty place, especially for the amount of people that occupy the land.  I've seen piles of garbage and random litter in just as many beautiful places at home that was probably put their from purely lazy and disrespectful people rather than ignorant or uneducated.  Once you have been in China you certainly understand why they enforce the one child law, because it is very overpopulated and it shows even in rural areas. 
It's funny how you can become a "regular" at a place even if you are a tourist in the middle of China.  I've got a few favorite places in town that I go to eat or have drinks etc.  I've gotten to know some of the owners very well and am often greeted by name when I come in and they usually ask if I want what I ordered last time.  There is a guy at one of the clay pot rice restaurants who is the owner and chef and speaks really good English.  When I come in he always comes out from cooking to take my order because his staff doesn't speak English, and always makes exactly what I want to my preferred spice level.  I've often come in to eat when he wasn't there and they call him on his cell phone to take my order to relay to the chef. He also made me one of Yangshuo's specialties which is a dish known as beer fish.  They fry up a whole fish in a spicy beer sauce covered with mixed veggies.  When I ordered it he walked a few blocks away and came back with a bag.  He showed me inside the bag and sure enough it was full of water with a live fish swimming inside of it that I was about to have for my dinner.  I guess that's one way to assure freshness!  I had one of the bartenders named Fem ask me where I was last night after I didn't show up the previous evening for pool.  There are some great street food stir fry joints that have about 20 different choices of pre chopped veggies and meats out in little baskets and they just give you bowl with a pair of tongs and you mix up your own dish to be fried up all for about $2.00 including a drink and side of rice.  A popular desert here is sugar cane, and you just buy a 4 foot stick of it from one of the vendors that hauls the sticks around by bicycle trailer and go to town like a primitive animal spitting  out the core after you get all the juice out. 
In the climbing world, Robbie has taken off for the UK to visit his grandmother which has left Darryn and I to climb together nearly every day right up until my last evening in Yangshuo.  We've tried to visit different crags everyday.  Some times it's more of an adventure trying to find them by bicycle than climbing is. Riding our pink beach cruiser style bicycles through the traffic in town is actually an adventure in itself.  You really get to see a lot of different areas and ride through a lot of small villages on the way that provide an interesting insight to the way of life in rural China.  There are graves all over, often in the front areas of peoples homes or just alongside the roadway.  They are generally big piles of dirt covered in some stones and maybe some decorative cement pieces.  They are easy to distinguish because many of them have the remains of fireworks all around them which are traditionally lit off near the grave to scare away the bad spirits.   Darryn and I have gotten along really well and climb a very similar grade so it's been a pleasurable time climbing.  We ticked a couple of multi pitch routes together which has been a nice change of pace from doing single pitch routes and offers some great views.  The only problem with the multi pitch climbing here is the unstable weather.  We began a multi pitch one day that seemed like a perfect day, not too hot and not raining.  We got one pitch up and before you knew it we were completely soaked through in the middle of a monsoon with thunder and lightning to add to the fun.  Being high and wet on a cliff in a lightning storm is obviously less than ideal so we made a quick retreat to some caves at the bottom of the cliff where we sat for at least an hour while we watched so much rain come down you could hardly see out of the cave.  Darryn and I were climbing at a crag with two other Chinese climbers one day who were doing a multi pitch route to the right of us.  While we were getting ready to climb we heard a bunch of noise and a loud scream.  In an instant it was raining down dirt and rocks near us and a huge crash came down in the trees followed by silence.  We were both sheltering ourselves under the cliff and wondering what the fuck was going on.  Darryn hollered up to them out of sight to ask if they were okay, also followed also by silence.  We were both thinking the worse but finally one of them yelled that it was okay.  We then saw the small car sized boulder that they had pulled off from up above that landed in the bushes.  Fortunately they were both okay, we were okay, and the climber that pulled it off only had couple of bruises on his stomach from the incident.  Goes to show another reason wearing a helmet is never a bad idea even at the bottom of a sport crag when you are belaying.  Back at the Climbers Inn I was sitting on the couch when a group of new climbers were freshly arriving from the airport.  As they walked past me I actually recognized one of them, a guy named Paul who was a Kiwi that I had climbed with last year while we were both in the Blue Mountains of Australia.  Small World!  He was visiting with about 6 other New Zealand climbers.  We all went out to dinner for a traditional chinese dinner that evening with Lilly who helped us order all of our dishes. 
My last evening Lilly took Darryn and I out to eat at an Indian Restaurant that we both really like.  Lilly isn't much a fan of any other food than Chinese, but was a great sport about pretending she liked the food.  She generously paid for both of our meals and said that the guest never pays.  The climbers inn has a great sense of community and Lilly is so great about everything that it's more like staying at a house where she is mom.  You are definitely treated as a guest and not a customer.  I stayed awake most of my last night to finish up some gift shopping, get a massage, and adjust to the time change I'll suffer from when I get home and have to shortly go back to work, yikes!  I'll be overnight in LA and home the next day to close out just over two months of traveling and climbing that has been nothing but awesome.  I can honestly say I love the life I live!  I'm as excited to come home and enjoy the rest of spring and summer as I was to leave when we were closing out winter and I was getting antsy.  Traveling, while not always glamorous at all times, is so refreshing and educational in so many ways that one could never understand that doesn't.