HuangGouShu waterfall and the 50RMB wife!

This is the second pending part of the Guiyang post. The most impressive part of the Guiyang trip was the HuangGouShu (Yellow fruit tree, though I didn’t see any yellow fruit trees!) waterfalls. But whatever it may be called, the place is worth the 2 hour journey from Guiyang.

In short, the specialty of this waterfall is that you can walk behind the entire width of the waterfall and see the waterfall through the cave windows and cave halls. So you get the unique view of this pretty big waterfall from behind it. The noise and just the feeling that you are standing behind a roaring waterfall is very captivating! It’s a round trip hike following one wall of the valley towards the waterfall, enter a cave that goes behind the stretch of the waterfall, exit the other side and follow the other valley wall outside. So it’s a loop that traces the river and the back of the waterfall and again the river from the other side. Ohh I definitely need to tell you about the idea of a hike - Chinese style! To reach the trail that follows the river, you have to hike down 700 feet or so from the top of the mountain. But na-ah, the Chinese saw the amount of crowd to this place and being their usual efficient self, they figured out how to make this whole experience of hiking down very easy and methodical! They have built one humongous escalator down. Yes, I am not kidding. It’s a long, very long, very, very long escalator down the valley wall! Somewhere around 400-500 step escalator, 5 minutes ride and not a single sweat, you have hiked 700 feet!!!

Of course there is the matter of 50 RMB wife. So they say, the initial investment of getting married is very less compared to the expensive life long servicing cost! :) Believe me, I did not make this up. I heard it from someone recently. And true to that fact was this whole 50 RMB wife episode! So during our "hike" towards the waterfall, there was a small show kind of thing. There were beautiful young Chinese girls dressed in their ethnic wear, singing and dancing. So we stopped to take pictures. Once the song got over, the girls came around and started garlanding guys in random (the garland was basically a colorful tote bag kind of thing). The guys were trying to run away. I was wondering why were they running away and attributed it to shyness. Some of them (I guess the ones who were as ignorant as I was!) got caught and taken to the stage. They were dressed up with the ethnic stuff like capes, crown and extra garland kind of things! Then they were made to posture and hug these girls. Yeah, of course, each got their own beautiful girl to stand beside them!

And when the whole thing was over, I saw them paying some money (I thought it was usual tipping) and I was amused why others around were making fun of those guys on the stage. One of my friends realized that I was completely unaware of what was happening and came around to explain me the story and meaning behind all this. Seems this was the traditional style wedding and those guys were role playing in the wedding and they had to pay 50RMB to do it. Those beautiful girls were now their "wife"! Whoa, coming to think of it, I was standing right there and no one picked me. Damn! This is certified racial discrimination. Who do I sue in China?!

The Medical Check-up "Assembly Line"!

Chinese are definitely very organized! I would say way too organized based on my experience when I went to take the mandatory medical checkup for my work permit.

Have you ever seen an assembly line? If not in person, maybe on TV? The assembly lines like the ones Honda has to build its cars, or the ones computer hardware companies have to assemble their motherboards? If you haven't seen or don't remember, please allow me to paint the picture of an assembly line first. Say, Honda is assembling the car body. Its not like the old days where the car is assembled at a single spot and workers move around it assembling. Now the car-being-assembled moves from one spot to another, and as it moves forward it is slowly built up by adding one or two pieces at a time! With this system, remove the people and you can add robots that will do the intensive, manual, repetitive work. Each robot specializes in doing one job and does that job only, forever. I hope your mind has a rough picture of the assembly line now. Infact, its beautiful and mesmerizing to look at an assembly line.

Now all you need to do in the painted picture is to remove the car and imagine me instead of the car. Ofcourse, remove the robots and put in nurses. Yes, I was a patient in the check-up assembly line being 'serviced' (ofcourse, not assembled, that would be weird! Wouldn't it be?!) by a bunch of nurses.

So for the medical check, you go into the clinic, fill out a form and register. That's it! You get a full assembly line service, nuts and bolts to upholstery and body panel to quality checks and full body wash with wax and tire dressing. Oops! Sorry, I fell back to the car analogy. You definitely don't get a full body wash with wax and tire dressing, you almost get an equivalent of everything else I mentioned for the car!!! :)

There is a long hallway and either side are rooms labeled ominously as Ultrasound, X-Ray, Blood sample, Gynecology, etc!! You are guided by two cute female staff onto the chairs that are placed along the walls of entire stretch of the hallway. Then the 'servicing' and jigsaw puzzle starts! Oh yeah, I will explain the jigsaw puzzle part of this assembly line in a short while! You kickoff with blood sample. Two nurses sit behind a counter. You get to sit in front of the chosen one and thrust out your hand on the counter. You get a very efficient and awfully quick wipe down of your arm with alcohol and in goes the syringe, all this in a blink of an eye! Even before you can make a face showing you are afraid of syringes, you are staring at the blood draining out of your arm. They definitely use the shock factor to their advantage. Before the shock is over your blood sample is done and you are out on the hallway for the next servicing stop!!!

Now comes the jigsaw puzzle. This is why I said they are efficient!! Once you get out to the hallway you don't blindly go to the next stop. Instead, you are expertly guided by the two cute staff to a chair in front of one of those many stops, whichever is free. So they are constantly working on the puzzle of moving people around between the stops based on what's available. You are even politely suggested to move one chair closer to the door of the next stop when the person in front of you goes in to that room!!! I bet they are experts in queuing algorithms! :)

So there was this French girl in front of me in the registration line. Once we went into the hallway and recognized this awesomely well oiled, efficient servicing assembly line, we couldn't stop laughing. By the second stop once we realized the puzzle part of it, we started to bet which one of us will finish first. Care to guess who finished first? Ofcourse, logically its me!! Why so? Did you read the list of stops we had that I have listed above?! Yes, there was an extra Gynecology section that I didn't have to go!!!!! Woohhooo... India beats France in this Chinese assembly-line-puzzle!!! :)

All in all, I had a very comprehensive medical check, infact, enough checks in those 30 mins that I have not had all these years of my life!!! Wont you now agree that the Chinese are super efficient and good at puzzles too?! :)

Guiyang and the Chinese Charm

Lucky. That’s what I should describe myself as. I land in Shanghai and what do I find myself doing in two weeks? Travelling to one of the less developed areas of China and to a breathtaking waterfall - HuangGouShu. Lucky not just because I caught the morale event at work right on time, but because of the place we visited. I am so tempted to label my very first outside visit in China with the words Chinese Charm and I am giving in to the temptation. I am sure China has more places and charms to wow me in days to come and I am going to go hunting for superlatives. But I sure did experience some chinese charm in this visit.

The trip was amazing and it got better by the minute! We landed in Guiyang Friday afternoon and there was a long, very long team meeting. Yes, I did groan too. But like I said, the trip got better by the minute, so looking back I think the meeting was a good starting point and I am happy we got it out of the way first! Ohh, I forgot about the lunch before the meeting. The charm started right there as soon we landed and went to get our lunch. Yes, culture or location or people don’t matter. Its always food first and true to that universal fact , we went for the food first! We went to this local minority owned restaurant. They had their traditional welcoming act for us. They were dressed up in their colorful ethnic wear, sang (though, I didn’t understand what were they singing, they might have as well been cursing us melodiously!) and gave us rice wine. As usual, being the genius I am, I didn’t have a clue it was wine. Assuming it was traditional tea, I gulped it down and it sure did hit me! It was definitely a wine falling on the stronger side of the spectrum!

So, with meeting and some skillful chair dozing out of the way, we started for an early - no, I should say very early - dinner. Sure, I don’t blame your incredulity. I thought it was interesting too. We had only a four or five hour gap between lunch and dinner, with only a meeting in between, to show where all our energy from lunch went. But you have to realize the chinese style of eating is sometimes called grazing. You eat little and often. Ha, but you wont believe the word grazing when you see the pictures of our dining table. But remember that each table serves atleast eight people! After dinner, we decided to walk back to the hotel. This is when the chinese charm started hitting us fully head-on. Guiyang is developed for sure. The infrastructure is pretty good compared to a lot of Indian cities and there are enough skyscrapers and shopping malls. But the people still retain the eastern, old style charm. So the city is a clash of times. Modern buildings, decent new age infrastructure compete with the charm of crowded road-side, open-air, flavor-filled (a little bit of road pollution added for a good measure) food shops. Looking past the dirty pavements and the clash of times, the local faces that is the most important part of this whole system is what makes the place charming. They sure are more curious than people in Shanghai. They stare at you, because they don’t see as many 'Laowei' (foreigners) here. But all it takes on your part is a smile, not even that, just a hint of a smile or a nod of your head. That turns those stares into a gleeful delight. It makes you happy, forget you are in a foreign place with no knowledge of their language or custom. If at all anything, it only inspires you to learn the local culture, the local language and to go interact with the people more! Ohh, that reminds me to caution you. If you are a person who is conscious of people looking at you curiously, come prepared. You will definitely get a lot of attention here! You will feel special. If you are a 'laowei' looking for a little 'pick-me-up' ego boosting experience, this is the place, I would say!

We ended the day with a chinese foot massage. It was good but it made a impression on me from a more philosophical point of view. We were chatting with the girls (yes, definitely the masseur needs to be a girl, if not, don’t even bother rating it, because the charm of a massage is half dead already!) and that’s what started me thinking. When you have enough to enjoy your life, when you are travelling the world, live in relative luxury you sometimes tend to forget the state of majority of the people in the world. Those girls have come to Guiyang from distant parts of China in search of work. They work and live as masseurs in this massage place. They get boarding, food and a 800RMB per month salary for a 14 hours a day, 6 days a week work schedule. But you have to realize that these girls are one of the well doing ones as per developing-world standards. And when you spend 100RMB for a one hour massage, some of the pleasures of the massage goes down the drain when you hear the tough situation they are in. But believe me, I am not exaggerating when I say those girls are doing relatively well compared to local standards. So don’t worry, indulge yourself and get your massages once in a while. You do surely help them with your business.

The awesome waterfall - HuangGouShu, the 50RMB wife and the Karaoke bar have to come in the next report, in a day or two. I still have this one page virtual barrier to my writings!

Chopstick Betty

Using chopsticks has always been tough for me. Whenever I try, pain and embarrassment overcomes the enthusiasm to use the chopsticks. The embarrassment factor multiplies when you try to use chopsticks in its home country, China! You are not just a dark skinned amusing specimen, you are now a dark skinned chopstick ignorant amusement! So that's the intro to the story of my crash course on how to you a chopstick by "Chopstick Betty"!

Ken - the awesome Sante Fe consultant assigned to take me on the city orientation tour - took me to this amazing Chinese restaurant - Din Tai Fung - near the Yu Garden in Shanghai. They have some out of the world dumplings. Seems they have a branch in LA too, but not sure if the food will be this good there. Ahh, I digress. So the place was very sophisticated, the waiters and waitresses were polite and welcoming. The food was great - dumplings and spinach and Fried rice. The only hiccup in this whole setup was my chopstick wielding skills! But they were considerate and polite enough to bring me a fork and a knife. Cant blame them for not knowing that I am from down south Asia where the only cutlery we use to eat is the plate that holds the food. They don't seem to know that I am from a place where we believe that the human body is self sufficient when it comes to the feeding tools! Again, I digress! And ofcourse, when the restaurant people are considerate, my ego steps in to take stock of the situation and naturally to make it worse. So I bravely go for the chopsticks and see if I can make a fool out of myself. Yeah, I know, that's just rhetorical. I should have known when the beautiful Betty started giggling while pouring out beer into the glasses. Still my ego is lurking around the table and wouldn't let me realize that she is giggling at the way I was handling the chopstick. All I could think was how cute she looked when she was laughing, not knowing it was at my expense! Time passes, one or two dumplings dives on to the table from the chopstick, instead of my mouth. I notice Betty circling around our table shyly and whispering something to her colleagues. I keep fighting with the dumplings and the spinach and even the rice. Yes fighting, because I was not exactly eating them. Part of the food fell on the table, part on my plate and only what was left clinging to the chopstick made it to my mouth! Overall I was proving enough quality amusement to the people around me. Unable to take this anymore, Betty steps in with a very polite, smiling offer to teach me. Though I am pretty sure her mind was thinking (in Chinese, ofcourse!), "Those delicious dumplings should go into the mouth, Einstein, not to the table!". Infact when she stepped in to show me, she did it so swift picking the dumpling , dipping into the soy sauce and placing it on my cup, that for a moment I thought she was actually going to feed me!! Anyway she showed it again, even brought another pair of chopsticks and walked me through the steps. She was genuinely ecstatic that I was able to follow her directions and pick up the dumplings easily. Not that I became an expert, but I felt I had conquered something huge and she was actually beaming with pride.

So that's the story of the beautiful Betty (btw, Betty is not an invented name to keep the girl's identity secret, its her English name!) teaching the ignorant south Asian in the mysterious art of chopstick usage. The simple girl who couldn't bear the sight of a stranger making a mess of the fine delicate art of chopstick usage, the modest girl who spoke only a few English words like Thank you and Please compared to my zero Mandarin vocabulary, the "Chopstick Betty" will always hold a special place in my heart.