Jamie Doom...

answers his own rhetorical questions.

Big Holes, Monkey Voices, and Chicken Toes

Camping went off without a hitch. Mountains were hiked, photos were snapped, new associations were made, a lot of chicken feet were eaten (none by me), and along the way I got a closer look into Chinese group psyche.

On Saturday I received a cheery wakeup call from Mr. Quan at 5:45. At first I didn’t mind because I incorporated the ringing of the phone somehow into the amazing dream I was having about ditching the camping trip and sleeping all day. But soon I realized that the phone really was ringing, and I answered with my standard 5:45 A.M. greeting,

“What?”

Twenty minutes later, wearing camping attire and a backpack, I met Mr. Quan at the front gate of the school. He explained that he wouldn’t have woken me up so early, but we needed to eat a good breakfast before our big day of hiking. He was so happy and chipper. He petted my backpack and hiking shoes and cooed like they were baby puppies or something. Soon we were slurping noodles and pounding hot cups of tea. Things were looking up. We were getting out of Haikou, away from our daily routines, and into the county. This was going to be good times. And so it was.

We met about forty other hikers at the hiker meeting place. We piled into two large busses. Even though the busses were large, they were equipped with comically small seats—well comically if you aren’t riding in them for six hours. I’m not complaining, just reporting. Around 1:00 PM we stopped for lunch at a remote forest ranger station/restaurant. “We need to eat a big lunch so we can have strength to hike.”

My fellow hikers ranged in age from 22 to 60. Most of them make up China’s silently emerging Yuppie class (Hush Yuppies?). Many of them were decked out head to toe in North Face, Columbia, Jack Wolfskin and Mountain Hardwear. A large portion of the camping club members had went the military route—full camo down to their boots. A few of these guys had improbably large knives attached to their sides. I wondered what it was like riding in a cramped seat for six hours with a knife that would make Rambo blush attached to your body. I didn’t ask. Others were just normal people (and judging from how they packed and what they were wearing) that may have got on the wrong bus. Some of the ladies were wearing nice blouses and stylish shoes. One man was wearing some snazzy slacks and a shiny, fake Italian, dress shirt.

One of the “fun parts” about the trip is that every new member of the club is assigned a nickname—and is called that from then on. As it turned out, this impeccably dressed gentleman owned his own clothing store. His nickname was “Ten Percent Discount.” I guess the ladies on our bus had cleverly given him this name in hopes that he could hook them up with shiny, fake Italian, dress shirts. You could suggest your own nickname; and if it was clever, they would use it. But ultimately the other hikers would usually decide one for you. One young man was named Dog Meat (his favorite dish?), while his girlfriend was named Disagree(a sign of things to come), another girl Papaya, and Mr. Quan was stuck with the name Bandit (evidently his hometown is famous for outlaws).

I pondered my own hometown’s residents (Asheville N.C.) and asked Mr. Quan the Chinese translation for “Trust-Fund Hippy.” I gave up trying to explain it when we got to “hippy.” Somebody wanted to call me McDonalds, which received a couple of chuckles. I proudly suggested in my broken Chinese the catchy name “Waigou Mogui” which means “Foreign Devil.” A still silence came over the bus, then mercifully the silence was broken with polite laughter, soon everybody was laughing politely “no, no.” Finally I suggested the name “Bu Zhi Dao” which means, “Don’t Know.” I explained that was my standard answer for most of the questions I would be asked. I proved this several times over the course of the weekend much to everyone’s enjoyment. So now I had a nickname and had eaten two incredibly large meals, so I was ready to hike.

But not so fast. After we ate, we had to drive three more hours to see a “big hole in the ground.” Well at least that’s how they Mr. Quan kept describing it as we were bouncing around rocky hair pinned curves with all the windows up and the A.C. off. I started to tell him that if I had wanted to get up 5:45 in the morning to go see a big hole in the ground with knife-toting guys named Dog Meat, I would have stayed in North Carolina; but I kept quiet once again, and happily we arrived at a nice cavern. We walked around the cavern, which had unfortunately been tagged by generations disenchanted graffiti gangsters obviously marking their hood.

“Oh, you have Bloods and Crips here too?”

Near the cave was a nice, scenic river. As Mr. Quan and I walked back down the road to the river, we met one of the G.I. Joe looking people. He had his twenty inch knife blade out and was punishing a small, pitiful looking bush that was growing by the side of the road. He looked up sheepishly then finished the bush off with a few more wacks. We gave him wide berth as he suddenly rushed passed us to search for more offensive vegetation.

I picked up some flat stones, so I could impress Mr. Quan with some good ole-American- stone-skipping-know-how. I proudly skipped a few rocks about ten times across the river. I looked up at Mr. Quan and nodded as if to say “this is what we do when we have the amazing combination of flat stones and rivers in America.” I turned around to skip another rock; but suddenly out of the corner of my eye, I saw a rock go whizzing into the river. It skimmed the surface of the water beautifully, skipping maybe twenty or twenty-five times before it left the river on the other side.

Mr. Quan is a rock skipping genius. I looked at the my own stone still in my hand and half-heartedly skipped a good four times. I declared Mr. Quan the best rock skipper I had ever seen. I told him that in my mind, rock skipping is an essential test of manhood, and he had passed with flying colors. He thanked me for all the praise and wistfully told me he didn’t get to skip rocks much any more.

Back on the bus and bouncing around more dirt roads, we headed further away from civilization. We stopped from time to time to take roadside pictures and fix flat tires. By this time it is getting to be about 6:30. I wondered if we were going to make it to the camp site before dark. Mr. Quan shrugged his shoulders. It hadn’t occurred to him or anyone else to worry about that. At about 9:00 at night we get to the place where we will leave our bus. At least it’s a full moon anyway.

We load up our backpacks with sleeping bags and tents and set off into the jungle to find our camp site. As we are getting to the edge of the jungle, on camo attired man wanders back and tells me through Mr. Quan that I sure am lucky. He says it a few times, while rocking back and forth on his heels. I bite. “Why am I lucky?”

“You are lucky because foreigners are forbidden to enter this forest. You must have got special approval from Beijing.”

I stared at him blankly. Of course I didn’t get special permission. I just paid my 250 RMB. What was I supposed to say? Well, I wanted to say a lot of things—things like—“don’t worry, I can’t see anything anyway because we are hiking through your secret jungle at TEN O’CLOCK AT FREAKIN’ NIGHT.” or “Why are we forbidden to enter the forest, because we might steal some of your amazing hiking/camping secrets— wait is that a guy with a suitcase*?” But instead I just nodded and kept my mouth shut.

*Inexplicably an older couple had brought a red suitcase on wheels. I wondered if they had visions of rolling it through the jungle. Luckily a strong young man hoisted it on his backpack for them and lugged it the two miles to the campsite for them.

Even though the campsite was only a couple of miles in, it took us a good two hours to hike there because forty-plus people of various ages were hiking single file through thick jungle in the dark takes time. We “rested” every fifteen minutes. The trail was wonderful when I saw it the next day in the light—a dense rock and root strewn trail that crossed over bubbling brooks several times as it winded its way through a jungle with hundreds of plants I had never seen before.

At the campsite we put up all our tents. Most of the people in the group had packed in with large expedition style packs (think Sir Edmund Hillary’s sherpas without the snow or the Everest). I thought this was like the large knives, a lot of overkill. What did they have in all those huge packs? We were only camping overnight. But as they began to unload their huge backpacks and rolling suitcase, I found out. They had packed a lot of food "because they would need their energy for the big hike (which by this time I doubted was actually a reality)." Yep, their bags were crammed full of food, and not just food but more specifically--chicken feet.

Want culture shock? Ride around ten hours packed uncomfortably in a bus with twenty people that stare at you and chant your nickname every fifteen minutes, hike two hours into blackness, and when you get there, hang out and watch forty-plus people suck on chicken feet while they put up their North Face tents. But in all seriousness, it was a blast! And they had forgot about the hiking song time, so I didn’t have to sing for them.

Before we went to bed around 1:00 AM they told us about the rare long-armed monkeys that lived in the forest. There are only twenty-something of them left in the world. We probably wouldn’t see them, but if we were lucky--very lucky--maybe we would hear them. OK, I’m just here to hike. I don’t need to see any monkeys to make it a success. I awake the next morning to the sound of monkeys calling. I wake Mr. Quan up and tell him to listen to the monkeys.

He says: “I don’t know. I have never heard this monkey before.”

“Well, it’s definitely monkey noise. And they are the only monkeys that live here, so it has to be them,” I say feeling suddenly like Jane Goodall.

“How do you know it’s a monkey noise,” he says.

“Whenever somebody makes a monkey noise, just playing around imitating a monkey…it sounds almost exactly like the sound we are hearing,” I say feeling stupid but also feeling very right.

As it turns out, we were hearing monkey noises. Around 8:00 AM, we hit the trail to hike to the top of Overlord Mountain. I felt a little better about the impending degree of difficulty of the hike because all the older ladies and a few fat people were staying back at the campsite. One older man was going which did cause me some consternation.

As it turned out, the old fella was a beast. During our six hour hike, he hiked our butts off. He made it up first and made it down first. I thought, when I’m his age I want to be in be that fit. Then I thought, sheesh, I want to be that fit now. On a side note, Ten Percent Discount had changed into a new set of snazzy clothes for the hike. I would see him in two more outfits before the day ended—each one clean and neat. And he was no less a hiking fiend than the old man.

The hiking was wonderful. It wasn’t too difficult, but steep and difficult enough to be interesting. It may sound corny, but it was just nice to be on the trail again. I like the familiar burn in my calves, leaves slapping my sweaty arms and my ears stopperd by the breeze rushing through the jungle. I made friends along the way. We chatted quietly, so as not to scare away the monkey. Several spoke English much better than they let on the first day. Then a wonderful thing happened. They began to ignore me. The trail and possibilities of monkeys was more interesting than whatever I was doing. And when I felt I had blended in with the hiking group, I became the happiest. I was pounding on a thick trail through forest, and I was in my own world with my own thoughts, and it all seemed familiar to me. We didn’t see any monkeys that day. But thirty of us had gone up a mountain because it was there and deserved to be hiked.

When we got back to the campsite we had a nice “I just got done hiking feeling.” The hikers were happy. Bags were opened again and insults and good natured jibes were tossed around with chicken feet and granola bars (by me). Soon we hiked back out to our bus. In the daylight, this hike only took us about forty minutes. Mr. Quan and I hiked fast and furious way ahead of everyone else. We used this opportunity to discuss the past two day’s events.

“Did you have fun?” he asked.

“Yes, I love it. It really made me happy to be outside. Did you have fun?”

He took of his shirt and grinned. “I love it. I can take off my shirt way out here and nobody cares. I have made new friends this weekend. I like it because there are no bosses or positions here, only nicknames. We are all the same. We are all out here to just enjoy ourselves. If I had my shirt off in Haikou, people would look at me and say I was a hoodlum.”

That night the bus trip home was long. We ate a huge supper at the same Ranger Station because we needed our strength after a long hike. We got back to Haikou around 11:30.

Mr. Quan looked at me and said. “I don’t want to go back to my apartment. I don’t want to go back to work tomorrow. I don’t want this weekend to be over.”

I nodded. I told him there were times in my life in the past when I felt the same thing—the dull ache of daily routine piling up on you. I told him, that is why I was happy to be in China.

“It’s all different here. I love it. Don’t worry though, we will go hiking again.”

“If we do, I’ll feel very lucky.” Mr. Quan said.

I nodded, but I already felt “lucky.”

posted by: jmedoom at November 11, 2003 15:16 | link | comments (7) |

Comments:

#1  11 November 2003 - 14:39

 

I didn't know you are from Asheville. I went there twice and hiked a few places along blue ridge pkw. Beautiful town and mountains. Oh, I am from China, now studying at UGA. I went to Haikou too, looking for a job without success. I enjoyed very much reading your post. But "skiping water twenty times, And landing on the other side the river". hmm, i don't know.

Anonymous

#2  11 November 2003 - 14:40

 

I didn't know you are from Asheville. I went there twice and hiked a few places along blue ridge pkw. Beautiful town and mountains. Oh, I am from China, now studying at UGA. I went to Haikou too, looking for a job without success. I enjoyed very much reading your post. But "skiping water twenty times, And landing on the other side of the river". hmm, i don't know.

Anonymous

#3  11 November 2003 - 15:06

 

Asheville is beautiful. I think that Athens is a cool town as well. As far as the "skipping twenty times" thing... "I don't claim to be writing things as they happened, I only claim to be writing them as I remember them happening." --Tobias Wolfe Thanks for you kind words though. --Jamie

jmedoom

#4  11 November 2003 - 15:54

 

:) that explains it! I was just joking. Even if it was a little exaggeration, as long as it is fun, I'll enjoy reading it. You seem to be a real happy person,always having a good time. I like that.

Anonymous

#5  12 November 2003 - 08:51

 

I am happy.....except when people poke holes in my rock skipping assertions....heh heh...--Jamie

jmedoom

#6  12 November 2003 - 19:17

 

Hey man, just found your blog. like your writing. I remember hearing while traveling (briefly) across your island that there were rare Reeses monkey reserves up in the mountains, like the last of the species or something. You've just removed my doubts; however, I think also heard this was the same species where AIDS came from... but I don't pretend to know what I'm talking about. Anyway, i'll be checking back for more. Envious of your hike, we never did anything that cool w/ our employers, just got paraded around for free advertising; but in my book Hainan is a step above the rest of China. Cheers.

Anonymous

#7  12 November 2003 - 20:01

 

Yeah, I guess I would have sounded smarter if I had bothered to learn the names of these monkeys. Nobody has ever accused me of sounding smart though. :-) I went your website, and I gotta say. I like it. I understand the "getting paraded around." Sometimes I feel like "elephant man" here, but usually I am having too much enjoying everbody else that I don't notice. --Jamie

jmedoom

Comments: