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最近我找不到有汉字的电脑，可是在 Cambodia （东南亚）我今天找到了。我们现在都很好。这星期我们和一个很友好的日本人碰见了。他叫Yuske, 他也骑自行车在一个特长路：日本到澳道理。他二十四岁而且他也带来了一个吉他。所以我们天天跟他又骑车又弹唱音乐。太好了。他打算跟我们骑到泰国，以后我们去印度他还往南走。

Yuske：我们新的日本朋友，他现在跟我们去泰国。

取乐Yuske,意外 ，我们两天前和两个年轻的欧洲人在路上碰见了；那个男的是法国的女的是俄如萨的。他们已经花十八个月从法国骑自行车到东南亚。他们和我们有差不多一样的目的：好一点了解我们的世界所以他们可以帮助建设世界和平。他们有很都很好的故事。他们现在往北走，我们往南走，可是我们一起花了一个晚上野营。他们去了中亚州在特高的山而且根很多特好的人认识了。他们的故事让我们希望也往中亚洲走，可是我觉得我们今年没有机会。欢迎上他们的网站：www.common-life.org

Elena (俄国) 和 Gael (法国)

我肯定想中国，可是我们几次在涝洼找到了中国饭店和中国人。我们在那里吃了很多中餐因为我们想了天天吃中餐，我特别想红烧茄子，南瓜和排骨 =）我找到了中国人的时候，我想跟他们聊天因为我就不会说东南亚的话。这几次我找到了好玩。东南亚的人是很好的人，可是我必须照会说英语的人跟他们聊天。所以我现在少一点很本地人聊天。不过我们弹唱的音乐越来越重要，是我们的国际话。

我希望祝你新年快乐！我在网上看到中国冬天天气的问题，让我很悲哀知道那么都人不会今天回家过春节。我希望你可以好跟你的亲人在一起好吃好聊天好高兴高兴生活。这春节我们都因该记得生活的最重要的部分：亲人，朋友，平安，和聪明点的回答为了我们世界的问题，最后让我们有世界和平。我祝你和你的亲人平安！

-高竹 （Peter)

After little more than 2 weeks of beautiful cycling in Lao, yesterday we crossed our third international boundary, which in Southeast Asia are coming quite frequently in these smaller countries (3 countries in 5 weeks opposed to China for 3 months).  Several people had told us how terrible the dirt road is in Cambodia coming from Lao, naturally leading to growing apprehension, but we were thoroughly pleased to find a brand new paved 2 lane highway built by the Chinese that was just completed last July 2007, as foretold to us several days ago by a very experienced middle-aged Swiss bicycle touring couple, Mr. and Mrs. Karl Gunthard, whom we met on the road.  It is the same road with the same name (Hwy 13) as in Lao, only newer, in better condition, and even less traffic than Lao which we thought would be impossible.  Excellent.

 

From here we are planning to spend about 1.5 weeks heading south to Phnom Phen, the capital of Cambodia, where we will spend some time with Celina, one of my Maryknoll friends who has been doing mission work there for 2 years.  She has graciously found a host family with enough space for us.  I’m looking forward to learning more about this country by seeing the needs and responses of various organizations through Celina and her friends’ extended experience here.  Since we were unable to visit our German friend, Kathrin, in Vientiane Lao, due to route and timing, this will be our first visit to an old friend since Kevin and Kaishan’s wedding in Guangzhou and Hong Kong back in Nov 2007. 

On Jan. 30, we had the pleasure of meeting Yuske, a 24 year old Japanese man in Pakse town, Lao, who is also cycling far – Tokyo, Japan to Australia. 

He had planned to leave that afternoon when we arrived, but after talking with Nakia (who lived in Japan for 3 years) and having lunch with us, he decided to stay the night in a Guesthouse with us – good choice.  The next day, Yuske decided instead of going straight to Thailand, to join us first to Cambodia and then on to

Bangkok.  Yuske also enjoys music, especially blues, and is also carrying a guitar on his bike!  He is the first cyclist we’ve met who is also carrying a guitar (though we did meet a middle-aged Chinese man with a saxophone).  We jammed together at our guesthouse that afternoon and have played several times since.  Our common songs are House of the Rising Sun and a blues riff in E.  Nakia has also been a great student and has learned the Japanese lyrics for one of Yuske’s favorite songs.

Because of Lao’s beautiful natural environment, clear skies, and sparse population, we’ve been camping more and more.  In fact, we hit a new record last night with 4 consecutive camping nights.  Unlike in

Vietnam’s dense populated countryside, Lao’s countryside even right off the main north-south Hwy 13 that we’ve been on for the past week is very sparsely populated making it easy to find secluded camp sites. 

However, after meeting Gael and Elena last night (biking from France to Beijing and then back to France – www.common-life.org), we’ll try asking people if we can camp in their yards to increase our interaction.  Gael and Elena told us that most of their time in

Cambodia, if they tried to camp away from people’s houses, the people would come out and invite them to camp right in their yards anyway.  Indeed last night, the one house of neighbors came out to our site smiling and talking to us in Khmer (the Cambodian language) even though we didn’t understand, and re-started our dieing fire by putting on all the big logs we had for quite a large fire, we think, to keep away what few mosquitoes there were, and possibly to keep away evil spirits (according to Gael and Elena’s understanding).  See the post below, “Gael and Elena”for more info on their incredible journey. 

 

Something that has surprised us is how dry Lao and northern

Cambodia are.  I was expecting jungle, and although our first 150km in Lao from Vietnam on Hwy 8 had plenty of old growth forest, it wasn’t humid and soon gave way to younger forest and cleared areas reminding me a bit of Kenya’s semi-arid landscape east of Nairobi, seemingly parched by the dry season’s powerful sun.  After crossing the border yesterday, the

Cambodia side has many small brush fires burning in the forest for no apparent reason as there is no agriculture there.  Much of the forest along the brand new 2007 Chinese-built highway has been cut down and now has patchy fires, perhaps to clean the forest floor and hopefully not simply slash and burn. 

The benefits are that mosquitoes have been kept to a minimum and it’s been easy to find dry wood and start camp fires. 

FYI: Lao is Laos.  For some reason, English has added an “s” to the local and therefore actual name of the country, perhaps analogous to Vietnamese boiling down “

America” to “Mee.”  Conversely “Vietnam” in English is the same as in Vietnamese minus the space between the two words,

Viet Nam.  How about calling every country by its real name in its local language? 

It was getting late and we were hoping to make it another 18km or 1 hr to Stung Trung town, especially since it is the first and only town for another 160km in this northern forgotten and unpopulated part of Cambodia.  It wasn’t meant to be though, as instead we were blessed with running into two other seekers with similar goals - young people in their mid-twenties also bicycling the world for greater understanding and goodwill…but in the opposite direction.

Meet Elena and Gael, found on-line at their website: www.common-life.org

  

Elena is from Russia and Gael is from France.  They’ve been bicycling from France for 18 months, having extended their original plan of 1 year to over 2 years, planning to end also in France around December 2008, going back through China and Russia.  As we found with Kuang Sub and Su Ji from Korea, Gael and Elena were extremely talkative, pouring out many of their incredible experiences especially from Central Asia for most of our (camping) evening together, perhaps since they don’t have a larger group like us to float around in to process what they’re experiencing with different people…or maybe they’re just on fire for what they’re doing, or both.  Either way, they are an inspiration to us. 

Unlike us, they were not afraid to tackle India in the summer and parts of Central Asia (“the stan’s”) in the winter – the most direct route from Beijing to Europe.  They told us of high mountain climbs with their loaded bikes, one 50km uphill, an amazing 20km long plateau at 4000m above sea level with no one around, brakes icing up on a different occasion, and camping in -30 C (-10 F) weather.  Confirming reports I’ve heard from other cyclists, they raved about the kindness and hospitality of the people in Kazakhstan, Kashmir, Uzbekistan, and

Kyrgyzstan.  So often when they would be pitching their tent, people would come out and invite them to stay in their homes, to eat, drink Vodka, and occasionally party with their friends and family. 

However, they were perhaps most excited about their experience inPakistan.  They said they thought Pakistan was their favorite country so far on their journey, the people having given them a warm welcome with nearly all not caring much for politics (which seems to be common trend in the world among average citizens).  They traveled safely through areas close to Afghanistan and though they were there a few months before last fall’s turmoil in Pakistan over the opposition leader returning and later being assassinated, Karl Gunthard from Switzerland who runs his own bicycle touring company (www.bikereisen.ch) told us last week that he was there last October and November during the thick of it and that he had no problems from those political issues as a bicycle tourist.  “You biked through

Pakistan?” I asked Karl surprised.  “How was that?”  He looked at me with a smile, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “Fine.  It was just fine.”

Gael and Elena also told us they ran into two Americans traveling in Pakistan by motorbike, who told them likewise that they had had no difficulties and instead similarly had had positive experiences with the Pakistani people.  Moreover, though Gael and Elena didn’t go to Afghanistan, they had met another couple who had traveled safely through Afghanistan, though the couple said they did feel it was a bit more dangerous which required additional caution.

One of Gael and Elena’s goals, similar to us, is to seek the truth about a country’s situation and the character of its people first hand, instead of blindly relying on bent and imperfect media sources and worse, commonly held misconceptions about countries and their people (stereotypes).  Beyond the common human error of projecting the violence and turmoil of a small number of countries onto whole regions (as in the Middle East and Central Asia with regards to Israel – Palestine, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan) and even onto whole continents (as in Africa[1] with regards to Sudan and Somalia), another such misconception, among many residual fallacies left over from the Cold War that French Gael and Russian Elena have faced together, is the idea that Central Asian people (from countries like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan which used to be part of the Soviet Union) don’t like Russians and didn’t like life “under the USSR.”  I mean, the USSR was a “bad” and “evil” thing, right?  Were they not the “enemy” from the American sphere’s perspective?  How could anyone possibly have liked the USSR and what they did?In fact what they found, proving Gael and his west European education wrong, was contrary to this line of thought.    1) Central Asians warmly welcomed Elena and talked with her and Gael (in Russian) about how they like Russia and Russians – in addition to enthusiastically explaining their culture and sharing their lives with them, taking advantage of their common language, Russian, unlike most cyclists that pass through who don’t speak Russian.  2) Many Central Asians also talked about how they had liked life in the Soviet Union and the advantages they had, one big one being that the Soviets brought in better education, and for free.

This is similar to what I found among a couple of my Serbian friends living in Beijing and among East Germans in Wittenberg when I studied there in 2002.  I don’t remember anyone in Wittenberg jumping to say that life now is better than before the Berlin Wall falling in 1989.  Instead, most said the DDR (East Germany) had advantages that are now lost, while unification withWest Germany and a capitalist economy have brought different advantages and the best system would combine both.

Beyond sharing their experiences with us, we were impressed with their organization and involvement in a project with UNESCO to build a database of the world’s monuments and their having a formal sponsor from a French-Swiss bank which has allowed them to extend their trip, buy a new tent and a lap top computer, in addition to a French bicycle company that initially gave them free bicycles.  This has got us thinking about how we here at Fueled By Rice could more precisely encompass our principles and goals with a product or project now, besides a probable end product like a book or video, in addition to considering possibilities for sponsorship.  Advice welcome.  For now one of our main goals is being realized with the production of this website, allowing you to experience our journey with us and to learn some of what we are learning via this blog, the photos, and the videos.  Thanks for your interest!

We only had one evening with these quality people, but their effect on us will be felt on the rest of our journey.         

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[1] Africa in fact is the second largest continent and has the largest number of countries - 47 of them- of any other continent, yet is most commonly clumped together simply as “Africa” even in sentences when specific countries of other continents are being named – listen for it while people are talking.  Although many African countries have had turmoil over the last 50 years during which nearly all fought wars to gain independence from their European colonizers and occasionally civil wars to deal with conflicts stemming from arbitrarily drawn borders by Europe, currently, there are only a few countries with war and major violent conflict: Sudan (Darfur region) 20yr civil war between north and south, Somalia – over 10 years of anarchy and war lords, and for the last month, Kenya, due to public discontent over their rigged presidential election.

Ok, sorry to have overwhelmed you. It appears that my December post titled, “Is there a just way to make US$1 million,” having asked for comments, has received the least number of comments of any post on the site. I don’t want to scare you away. There are no wrong ideas or answers here. Since in Vietnam and Lao we continue to see major income gaps between rich and poor (brand new gold-tan Toyota Hilux 4-door pick up trucks for the have’s VS. dump trucks used as buses to move The People around), please allow me to revive the discussion:

From my original 3 questions, I want to focus only on #2:

Is there a just way to make US$1 million?

One of the ideas that came up in the discussion we here at Fueled By Rice had was authors. If one writes a highly successful book and makes US$1 million, that would probably be a just way to make that much money. Perhaps a central idea here is that as long as the money one earns all comes directly from the fruit of their own labor, it is just…assuming fair prices. I’m sure there are other possibilities and even arguments against this.

This raises questions about the justness of investments, banks, and the stock markets where one makes money from money by simply putting it in the right place at the right time. I’d be thrilled if someone could argue for the justice in earning money from stock markets and banking.  I myself am earning interest on a savings account for doing nothing but having put the money in the account. 

Any thoughts would be great.

Thanks,
Peter

Whew. The first internet bar since Pho Chao in Vietnam…200km ago! 

The distance may look small on a map, but the difference between Lao and Vietnam is like night and day.  We entered Lao on Jan 19th, after climbing a long 5km mountain road to the pass/border.  Vietnam had been cloudy and cold in the previous week, contributing to Adam and Jim’s day-long illnesses.  The moutain pass seemed to be holding the clouds on the Vietnam side though.  As soon as we crossed the border and started going down the steep valley road, the clouds thinned and soon the sun was shining full force, warming us once and for all.  60km in, it became so hot that we can’t bike comfortably from 11:30am - 3pm due to intense sun.  Luckily the weather is dry so the shade is cool.  For the 5th time or so now, I think we’ve finally arrived in the tropics.  I’d be surprised if the cold caught up with us again.

Besides sunshine and warmth, the other thing we immdiately noticed in Lao were the huge trees, certainly old growth all along highway 8 from Vietnam to Lao’s main north-south highway, 13 (these two highways are two of only a couple more paved roads in Lao).  What an obvious difference in lumbering policy.  I’ve never seen such big trees in China or Vietnam, though given their populations, its understandible that their wood resources are strained.  With 30 million people in Vietnam, even the countryside has a dense population.  We found it difficult to get more than 100m away from a house for camping.  Lao on the other hand only has 4 million.  So even though we’re on the main highway, the traffic is very light compared with China and Vietnam.  I’d heard about bikers loving Lao due to light traffic on this good road, but I had no idea most of Lao feels like a national park with by far the cleanest freshest air and water I’ve seen on the trip.  This has opened up wonderful camping possibilities, though the night before last we stayed with a family (Vin) who invited us in when Drew stopped to ask about tire shops.

We’re resting today, but look forward to continuing our journey south to Cambodia through this beautiful country, where most people live in small villages mostly composed of wooden houses on stilts.  Unfortunately some things are more expensive than Vietnam since they have to be imported, but fortunately people seem more honest in their commerence with us.  Another pleasant difference here in Lao is that although children and adults still say hello to us whenever we pass by, nearly everyone says hello in their native language, “Sa-ba-dee,” with a tone that seems more genuine and less mocking.

Four days in and we’re naturally still adjusting to some big differences in culture and language that the China - Vietnam border divides. A funny thing, international borders are.  We are new in this culture, and now clearly see how comfortable we were in China - that we understood much of the daily culture, knew the pricing, and could speak the language.

We had been cold under grey skies in western Guangxi prov, China for more than a week. Though rather symbolically, the day we pedaled out of Pingxiang city to the Friendship Gate 18km away, the sun began coming out and was full force by the time we reached the moutainous border crossing.  It has been warmer since, however the nights remain cold: 5 Celcius (41 F) on Jan 2, when we woke up from camping in a dry rice field near Bac Giang town.  The first 2 days were beautiful and amazing biking - slightly down hill for over 100km, winding through a gorgeous moutainous valley following a river.  50km northeast of Hanoi, the land flattened out into fertile fields of rice and corn.

The language barrier has been tough, and it comes through mostly when we have to order food.  Jim’s phrase book has helped us, but so much that we were able to easily communicate to people before (about our trip goals), is now lost to non-English speakers.  Although we have run into 1 or 2 English speakers each day, most people don’t speak English northeast of Hanoi.

A major cultural difference that I am slowly learning how to handle, is pricing, negotiating, and rip-offs.  The Vietnamese play hardball.

Adam shared a proverb he’d heard, “The Cambodians plant rice, the Laotians harvest it, and the Vietnamese sell it.”  Moreover, an old Frommer’s travel guide at our current guesthouse discusses how Vietnam is more expensive than other SE Asian countries and how the Vietnamese always seem to be on the go (by motorbike), from 6:30am when the roads are clogged, until they fall over exhausted in the evening…go go going forward, up, ahead, making money where ever possible.  I’m slowly beginning to accept this as a different cultural characteristic, but I must admit that for the first 3 days, I was quite upset and put off by it.

To be fair, on all three days in Vietnam so far we have also run into a nice person who is eager to help us (a guy helped us find an inexpensive guesthouse and restaurant our first night and talked with us for a while about Vietnam, and a highschool senior tried to help us find a guesthouse in Bac Giang, though failed), and there were a few people in China who tried to charge us more than the going and fair price (so thankfully we’re experienced when it comes to negotiating prices and handleing those uncomfortable situations).  However over our 3.5 months biking in China, I can maybe remember maybe 5 such unpleasant instances.  In our first 3 days in Vietnam, we’ve had 2 major situations and I’ve had 2 or 3 minor situations.  I think in addition to the basic cultural difference and our lack of language power, the fact that Vietnam has so many more foreign tourists (I saw over 100 in Hanoi just biking to our guesthouse in 15min) with plenty of money and who are weak bargaining rookies, has contributed to my sour impression that Vietnamese will rip me off at every turn if I’m not on my guard - and this has nothing to do with my being specifically American, just my being a Western tourist.  I’m sure most westerners just pay the first price quoted without thinking much beyond, “wow, only 5.00 dollars or euros? That’s CHEAP!” when in fact $5.00 for a room or 1 meal is quite a bit in these economies, and to some extent disrupts local economies.

Our two big attemtped rip-off instances involved two different small restuarant owners in two different small towns.  Without language, we immidiately started writing down prices to bargain and to confirm them after we entered Vietnam - espcially since EVERYTHING has to be negotiated and the current conversion is confusing: Vietnamese Dong run 16,000 / US$1.00.  (Vietnamese small town restaurants, like Chinese, do not have menus, one simply looks at the meat and vegetables available, and orders from those, so there are no “listed prices.”)

In a noodle restaurant one evening (for a late night snack), Adam, Nakia, Drew, and I asked about noodle prices, and the female owner wrote down 6,000 per bowl.  We asked for 3.  When it came time to pay, she asked for 45,000 total, over twice the price she’d written down (6,000 x 3 = 18,000).  She was adamet and confident that we owed her 45,000 (we’d recieved nothing else, no drinks or other side items).  We had a body language banter for a few min, mostly involving each of us pointing earnestly at the old and new written prices.  Confident that we were in the right, though confused and trying to find our error, we forgave 2,000 and left her a 20,000 Dong bill.  When we walked out, she didn’t yell, follow us out into the street, or otherwise make a big fuss as we would have expected if we really did owe her 45,000.

The next night, in Bac Giang town, we ate at a small street side family run restaurant (as we always do).  We almost left before ordering because their first quoted prices were too high.  Nakia stayed on though and bargained the prices down to nearly half the original prices.  With these prices, the rest of us agreed to stay and eat there, dispite being a bit put off by the attitude of the young woman from the famiy doing the bargaining.  The prices were written down: 15,000; 15,000; 20,000 for the 3 dishes, plus 15,000/big communal bowl of rice which we had 2 of, so 80,000 total Dong, but the total wasn’t written down.  At the end of the meal when I went to pay, the young woman totaled the bill, and wound up with 175,000 Dong.  It seemed high, I looked confused, and asked Nakia what she had negotiated and told the others the total to which they all were surprised.  Nakia came over, and noticed the written prices per dish were different, and actually was a whole new sheet of paper.  When we motioned that we thought the total was too high, and we wrote down the old prices, the young woman loudly said, “No, no, no,” and was clearly upset.  Had we not been sure of the other prices, her confidence and anger probably would have convinced me just to pay it to avoid continuing the unpleasant confrontation.  However since our money is tight, we’re seasoned travelers, and the total was SO much higher than it should have been, we continued to assert that we knew 80,000 was the agreed upon amount.  The young woman walked away flustered, back to the family’s dinner table were they were eating, and continued eating her rice.  An older woman got up from the table and came to the desk where we were standing with the bill. She’d watched the previous scene and looked at the bill as we continued (as best as we could) explain that we’d agreed on lower prices before ordering.  She quickly agreed to what we were saying, wrote down the correct total (80,000) herself next to the 175,000 total, and even gave us proper change for the 100,000 bill we paid with. 

We were all troubled by what the young woman had tried to do, and were confused that she’d even try to rip us off after writing the prices down.  Curious about the whole situation, after I’d paid, I took the sheet of paper with both her and the older women’s totals to the table where the family was eating to ask the younger woman about the difference.  I remained in silence since I don’t speak Vietnamese, shrugged my shoulders to show my confusion at the difference, and I tried to have an inquisitive and neutral facial expression to be non-aggressive about my inquiry.  The young woman was clearly upset upon seeing the paper, pushing it out of her sight, and speaking quickly and nervously while motioning for us to leave.  One of the young men at the table spoke a few English words, saying that she was wrong or bad, and that they were sorry, to which a few others at the table agreed.  We left upset and disspointed that we must have seemed like such fools to the young woman that she attempted such an obvious rip off.

We initally thought there must be something in the language that we’re not getting, some how there must be other symbols that mean higher numbers, like letters that we’re mistaking for numbers that mean larger amounts.  However the other restaurants we’ve eaten at have been straightforward and stuck to the originally written down prices.

Finally, this morning I came down to the small front desk to ask about the washing machine we’d been told we could use yesturday and to ask for a map.  The washing machine turns out to be a service, for which it costs 20,000 per pound, and the front desk attendant estimated my rather small load to be 3 pounds and gave me a total of 60,000 dong (about 30 yuan, US$4.00, or 3 nights stay for me in other guesthouses).  I told him I thought it was too expensive, so I’ll just wash it myself. “Ohh, You can’t wash clothes in your room.”  This was a surprise to me, we had a bathroom sink that would work just fine for my essentials. “Oh, then I’ll just not wash my clothes,” I repled.  He reminded me, “You can’t wash clothes in your room, or you have to pay.”  “OK, don’t worry,” I said.  “I’m also looking for a map, do you have one?”  He found a small clearly used map in a drawer of the front desk and opened it up carefully as something had been spilled on it and the creases were sticking.  “Is this map free?” I asked.  “No no,” he said. “Its 10,000.”  Since I’d seen Nakia’s bigger map for the same price she’d purchased yesturday, this seemed high to me, and I told him so.  I then noticed an old price tag up in the corner that said “5,000.”  I brought this to his attention, which embarrassed him, and he said, “Ok, 5,000.”  Seeing a clear and recurring pattern in my interactions with Vietnamese selling me things, I told him that I’d read Vietnamese are known for being business-minded people and often look for ways to make money.  Is it a part of the culture?  His unclear response told me he really didn’t understand what I was asking about, but he said since I’d been traveling for a long time I wasn’t like other foreign tourists who didn’t pay as much attention to prices.  I then told him, “Since this map is small and its obviously been used, how about 3,000.”  “Ok,” he said, and I went off to find a bowl of noodles for breakfast of which they first told me the only noodles they had were 20,000, until I saw a hidden poster-menu that listed different styles of noodles including 8,000 and 12,000 kinds. 

On day 4 in Vietnam, I’m slowly coming to accept this different, more aggressive bargaining culture and I’m much less upset than two days ago.  I keep reminding myself that I’m a guest here and its my responsibility to learn how to play by Vietnam’s rules.  Maybe the ambitious Vietnamese business attitude is connected to global economic justice (see previous post, “Is there a just way to make US$1 million?”).  I can imagine it might seem quite just to the Vietnamese (and others) to play Robinhood with their comparatively wealthy foreign tourists, and if the foreigners don’t realize or mind that they’re being ripped off, then there’s nothing wrong with it.  Maybe I should even let myself get ripped off and knowingly contribute to righting past injustices.  But no, for this one, I will strive to better learn how to play the bargaining game, Vietnamese style.

There is on-going needless bloodshed tonight.

Kenya, Dec 29-31 2007 has seen violence and chaos break out in Nairobi after fraudulent elections.  I have several friends who still live in Kibera slum (1 million residents in a 2km square area), the heart of the violence, in addition to Maryknollers (Americans) doing mission work there.  Nearly 100 people have already died (as of Dec 31 2007) (over 300 have died as of Jan 5), and the tribal violence continues.

See article on the International Herald Tribune:

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/12/31/africa/AF-POL-Kenya-Elections.php 

Moreover, while most of us are also aware of Sudan’s Darfur region, Somalia has become worse than Darfur and grossly deglected by international bodies due in part to Darfur’s high attention in the last 6 months.  Yet Somalia continues to live in chaos, violence, and fear due to anarchy since the mid 1990s, which again sparked up in the last couple months, creating a living hell for all people there.  Minneapolis - St. Paul has many Somalian immigrants who have come from that violent hell who can undoubtedly would appreciate all the outreach, support, and friendship-building availiable. 

Please keep Kenyans, Somalians, Sudanese, and Middle Easterners from Saudi Arabia to Iraq to Afghanistan to Pakistan in your prayers and pray for PEACE around the world, that all people around the world may see the light and say to their leaders who propagate extremism, intolerance, hate, and war of all kinds due to power and economic insentives (”The Military Industrial Complex,” as coined by former pres. Eisenhower): “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! NEVER AGAIN WILL WE KILL ANOTHER!

“WE ARE ONE, BUT WE’RE NOT THE SAME, WE GET TO CARRY EACHOTHER” -from One by U2

“THERE’S NO ONE JUST LIKE ME, YET AS DIFFERENT AS WE ARE WE’RE STILL THE SAME” - from Season Suite by John Denver

My dad recently asked me what I thought about while biking 4-5hrs a day, 6 days a week. My response? The automatic answer: “Oh, I don’t know, not much.” Sometimes I do zone out as I pass by fields, farmers, villages, markets, fields, farmers, villages, repeat. But I quickly realized, actually, I think about a lot, usually in recurring themes, as I try to synthesize new and recent experiences from this bicycle expedition with my past life experience and knowledge. I think about so much that at first it was difficult for me to grab any of the slippery ideas swimming past in the rushing stream of my mind. Here it goes for today though…

As we move west in Guangxi province, China, I’ve noticed the standard of living get simpler and simpler (or lower) – especially after Guangdong province, China’s economic powerhouse. Now that we’re within 100km of the Vietnam-China Friendship Highway border crossing at 凭祥Pingxiang City, market towns are more spread out with sugar cane fields more expansive. Today’s 60km ride on a sheng dao (provincial highway) brought us through 2 or 3 towns, whereas we would usually hit one every 10-15km in other provinces. The small villages we pass now are increasingly composed of mud-brick houses with old Chinese-style slate roofs and make-shift scrap wood doors. The boxy multi-story concrete buildings that define modern Chinese architecture are fewer and fewer. These villages are “old school,” homes to the old lifestyle that is nearly the same as it was 200 years ago. The old way is changing quickly in rural China, but is not in danger of extinction…yet.

Today’s sheng dao was surprisingly empty, with thankfully very few honking trucks and long distance busses that usually deafen us on the bigger roads. The asphalt surface is brand new, would-be steep hills have been broken down and reformed into gentle slopes. The mountains we went through before Shangsi town (our Christmas town) gave way to rolling hills of sugarcane, and despite that crop, looked quite similar to spans of corn fields in Minnesota between Minneapolis and Rochester. On one of our breaks about 30km west of Shangsi, two women – a middle aged daughter and her mother – growing sugarcane offered us each a whole 1.5m long stalk for free, slicing off the tough skin with a hooked machete. It didn’t seem to matter to them that we already had two long stalks our Shangsi guesthouse boss had given Drew, which he was eager to stop carrying. At one point, Jim was holding four stalks. “Have some more tangzi!” they told us several times. “Women chi bao le! (We’re full!)”

Down the road, we came across several young farmers driving water buffalo carts loaded with freshly cut sugarcane. We stopped and asked them a bit about sugarcane farming. They were surprisingly light-hearted, clowning around with us and their buffalo, though steadily unloading their carts onto the side of the road. Just before turning back to get another load, one of the young men said about their work, “Xinku. XINKU! 辛苦 (exhausting and difficult!)” We watched them laboriously and clumsily turn their buffalo carts around, at one point temporarily blocking the road as a truck came flying around the corner, and slowly head back down the rocky field road.

Further down the road, parked in front of the first and only fanguan (restaurant) we saw, were three luxury cars - a BMW, SUV, and Volkswagen - all very new, and ridiculously out of place in this little town of 500-700 residents. The sight of the BMW made me want to smash its wind shield or better, take a rock and scrape it along its side, digging into its perfect paint finish (no offense Bavarian Motor Works). I was as surprised as you at my thoughts. Why in the world did I have such a strong reaction?! Sure, I’m on a bicycle tour, and most people when on bikes hate cars (and vice-versa), but still. In the US I frequently see BMWs and probably more SUVs than cars, and it usually doesn’t bother me so much. So what’s different? It got me thinking as I was restraining myself.

There were several factors at work in my mind.

First, last fall I happened across an auto show in Chaoyang Park,Beijing. At the BMW booth, I couldn’t help but notice that a standard nothing-fancy sedan was over 1.5 million Yuan (US$192,000.). Granted,as far as I know, China has a 100% car tax, but I was quite sure I didn’t know anyone in the US who would pay even US$150,000 for a BMW. Heck, why not buy a house with land for that price? In Beijing though, I saw plenty of BMWs. In fact many were fancier and bigger than that one at the car show, as the one we saw today in nowhere Guangxi. Last year I heard a statistic that China now has more millionaires (in US$) than the US, a symptom of the increasing income gap that seriously threatens China’s “harmonious society” campaign.

Second, I had just talked with the sugarcane farmers who used ox carts, were working hard, had very little material wealth, and directly vocalized the difficulty and dissatisfaction with their lives to us.

Third, I am familiar with the problem of unqualified and undeserving Chinese coming into wealth and power (which certainly happens through out the world in different ways too) which makes witnessing the income gap more bothersome. After working in two Chinese universities and talking with foreign teachers at those and other Chinese universities, I understand that although in the minority, there are a reasonable number of young Chinese who receive the privilege to study at a university simply because their families have excess wealth and/or good connections with people in positions of power (关系guanxi). I taught such a class of students for 1 month during my first year in Jilin, China. They were by far the worst students I’ve ever taught. Out of a class of 15 students, the most I had show up were 10 on the first day, and by our 4^th class, only 1 student showed up 15 min late until I told the department about the situation and requested the class canceled. I’d never met such students who lacked respect for a teacher and seemed to not care at all about their education or their futures. Moreover, their English levels were quite poor for the college level (except for one), the lowest of all my classes at that point. Yet, at that University, it was those students and those students only who had the opportunity to study abroad in the US at the sister college – an opportunity my regular hard-working English Department students dreamed of having but in reality had no possibility of attaining during their undergraduate studies at that school. The head of the special department of these special students agreed to cancel the class and was well aware of the problems students in this program created. I learned I wasn’t the first (or the last) teacher to find such problems with these students. After asking the senior foreign teacher about the situation, I learned that most of these students had comparatively low test scores, but came from wealthy families and so were allowed to study there. Not only were they basically guaranteed a BA degree unless they REALLY messed up, but they didn’t have to worry and stress out about finding a job like nearly all other Chinese students. Their families also had contacts that would land them high paying jobs after their graduation. I then understood their lack of interest and effort in my class and was dismayed by the injustice created by misplaced wealth and power, similar to the “Old Boys Club” and getting “Grandfathered” into American universities one’s rich father or grandfather had attended in the past. Americans have since taken a stand against similar situations, but from what I can tell, it is still strong in the growing upper class of

China.

Fourth and finally, I recalled a thought one of my friends had shared with me during one of my visits home in the last 2 years: “I doubt if there is any just way to make US$1,000,000.” Is there a truly just way for an individual to make US$1,000,000? This is a huge question begging reflection, questioning the justice of the whole global capitalist economy. The 5 of us had a vigorous discussion over lunch as we sat beside the BMW in the poor town where we spent US$8.00 for a large lunch for us all.

Analyzing global economic justice is enough for more than one PhD dissertation, but a few main ideas surrounding the injustice are as follows:

1) Perhaps the most important factor for Europe’s and the US’s advanced state of development is from its superior fire power in the colonial days (1500s-1900s) when each country used violent force, thievery, and slavery to boost its own wealth. Thus, the current global economy has grown directly out of the last 500 years of colonialism. During this time, powerful nations at first stole raw materials and labor from less powerful nations resulting in driving the 1850s Industrial Revolution beyond its otherwise natural capacity and thus cementing their comparative advantage in the world economy (i.e. in the case of Spain and Portugal stealing gold and other valuable resources in Latin America while destroying whole civilizations including the Incas, Mayans, Aztecs, and other ethnic groups with a total of 60 million people dieing in Latin America alone as a result of direct war violence or through disease from Europeans in the 1500s-1700s, and the African slave trade, which greatly contributed to building the US’s young economy). Later, the European colonial powers cheaply bought raw materials from the same poorer countries and expensively sold finished goods with forced and Europe-favored trade agreements, which still existed into the mid 1900s in countries until violent or peaceful revolution changed this situation – the latter exemplified by India in 1947, under Gandhi’s leadership, or the former in Kenya’s revolution for independence ending in 1963. Europe and more indirectly the US, have never stopped benefiting from this historical economic pillaging and associated advantage. Furthermore, in the last 50 years, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have been accused of using loans and aid money to lure and bully developing countries to enact economic policies that are favorable to the European and North American countries controlling those international institutions.

2) If there were no poor people living in comparatively terrible conditions desperate and eager for work paying even the lowest wages, the current global economy would literally collapse. This is what has made China the world’s economic center and why every large American company has flocked here to manufacture its products – it is so profitable because everything is cheap (and security for investments high) in China but prices remain high back home – buy low sell high. This is why everything bought in the US and Europe is increasingly, if not Made In China, is made in Latin America or South East Asia. Check your shoes and clothes tags. The whole system stands on the shoulders of the poor and inherently depends on there being many uneducated poor people willing to work repetitive, tiring, and mind-numbing jobs.

3) It takes money to make money. After an individual, family, corporation, or national government has X amount of money it becomes easier to make much more money through investments and even for individuals to stop working (early retirement) – i.e. living off the interest of a US$1 million CD, mutual fund, or other investment – more realistically, a combination of all of these and more. Certainly, after acquiring X amount of money, one never must return to physical labor as a means to make a living. On the other hand, a poor investment could lead to loss, but connections and good credit make it easy enough for the well-off to recover from bankruptcy.

4) Inheritance of large amounts of wealth leads to misplaced power in individuals not based on intellectual ability, informed and logical decision making ability, morality, or responsibility.

5) Just living in the US and making US salaries where it might be possible to save a million bucks over a life time for retirement is called in for analysis. This is because our economy is based on 1 & 2 (the requirement of the current system to have poor people in other countries competing with each other to work comparatively undesirable jobs) and most retirement funds are based on investing in large corporations through stocks and mutual funds, who’s board of directors are likely exploiting their advantageous geo-economic position, or perhaps forgetting loyalty to employees to cut jobs to raise stock prices in order to make millionaires out of themselves and other stock holders before retiring.

During our conversation, I recalled a Kenyan book I’d read after living there in 2003. It strongly criticizes the current world economy which is largely based on taking advantage of the poor and low wages (as mentioned above), and vividly illustrates this in the Kenyan experience: Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s famous book, Devil on the Cross. Ngugi first wrote the book on toilet paper while imprisoned in 1977 due to his involvement in communal theaters performing plays dealing with political corruption in post-colonial Kenya, and upon release the book cast him into continuing exile. It deals, in part, with the process of rich European and North American business leaders going to developing nations, finding locals to be puppets in their new branchs, and in turn making them rich by local standards and teaching them the whole questionable business of making money off the labor of the poor. I’d highly recommend it both as in insight into the above issues, and as an insight into the challenges of African development. 

Speaking of Kenya, Dec 29-31 2007 has seen violence and chaos break out in Nairobi after fraudulent elections.  I have several friends who still live in Kibera slum, the heart of the violence, in addition to Maryknollers (Americans) doing mission work there.  Nearly 100 people have already died (as of Dec 31 2007), and the tribal violence continues. Please keep Kenyans, Somolians, Sudanese, and Middle Easterners from Saudi Arabia to Iraq to Afghanistan to Pakistan in your prayers and pray for PEACE around the world, that all people around the world may see the light and say to their leaders who propagate hate and war through economic insentives (”The Military Industrial Complex,” coined by former pres. Eisenhower): “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! NEVER AGAIN!”

I also remembered a short story one of my St. John’s advisors assigned, The Ones Who Leave Omelas by URSULA LE GUIN. This story is also quite provocative in its metaphorical depiction of the world’s economic and material inequality (though in some ways a bit further removed from reality) and responses to it. You can find the text on-line here here however,
this html is missing the last paragraph, which I’ll put at the bottom of this post if you’re interested).

Another book written about an alternative, more just world system I read in my class, “Justice in the 21^st Century,” at St. John’s that I’d recommend is Edward Bellamy’s book, Looking Backward 2000-1887, written in 1887 about a better future. It is utopian, and an interesting contrast to the anti-utopian book, 1984, written by George Orwell in 1949 in response to WWII and rising communism. 1984 is one of my favorite pieces of fiction.

Don’t get me wrong, my purpose is not to make you feel terrible and guilty about your material life, whatever it may be. I do, however, believe these issues are worthy of meditation and reflection, as they are directly connected to one’s daily activities and long term goals. I also believe that you have thought about these things before. It is likely that these or similar thoughts caused some level of discomfort, a feeling of helplessness, perhaps a feeling of thankfulness, and then were dismissed. I don’t have a comprehensive solution (like Bellamy), and no, I don’t think communism as it has so far manifested itself is a reasonable response either. But before I share varied responses from some of us here at Fueled By Rice, I’d like to open all of these issues up to your thoughts and responses:

1) Imagining yourself in our position, having seen the sugarcane farmers and then the BMW, SUV, and Volkswagen in front of the small restaurant in a small town, what are your thoughts and reactions to the obvious income gap in China?

2) Is there a just way to make US$1 million?

3) What makes one way, method, or path to US$1 million more just than another? Are there some characteristics that you can name?

I welcome you to share your thoughts, through the “# comments” feature of this blog, where you can post your ideas directly on this website.

Thanks for thinking!

**LAST PARAGRAPH OF**THE ONES WHO LEAVE OMELAS (missing from the version on the link above)

At times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go to see the child does not go home to weep or rage, does not, in fact, go home at all. Sometimes also a man or woman much older falls silent for a day or two, and then leaves home. These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth or girl, man or woman. Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the houses with yellow-lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas. (from The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction )

I can’t go anywhere in China (outside of Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong) without running into people who want to talk to me. This has been a blessing and a curse. Naturally, some are more serious and want to spend more time with me than others. Many just yell “Hello!” or “Hello?” at me in their loudest, highest pitch speak-to-the-foreigner voice, or ask about my height, “Whoa!!! You must be about 2 meters tall! How tall are you?”  I’m in fact 1.98 meters tall (that’s 6ft 7in for those Americans who haven’t yet converted to the much easier and more logical Metric system) so I spend a lot of time saying this in Chinese, “Yi mi jiu ba” “1 meter 98.” This is certainly my #1 conversation starter with strangers in China. Americans also occasionally comment on my height, but nearly all of them will catch themselves either at the beginning or just after saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sure you get this all the time,” which is fitting because many Chinese have been telling me recently, “Americans are very polite, aren’t they?”

Perhaps this comes as a surprise. New Yorkers certainly don’t have that reputation, and even Minneapolis rush hour drivers would become embarrassed if they heard this while driving. However, I think the Chinese are on to something. I’ve begun to think that in general, Americans - though a far cry from the refined Japanese who are often mistaken to be basically the same as the Chinese in Western minds - are more polite than Chinese. Heck, even in Mandarin, after someone says “thank you” (”xie xie,” pronounced similarly to “she-a she-a”), the frequent response for “you’re welcome” translates into “don’t be polite” (”bu yong keqi”). Moreover, many of my Chinese student friends would tell me in English after I’d say “please” or “thank you to them, “We’re friends Peter, don’t be polite.” You see, to the Chinese, using these niceties that my mid-western Minnesota-nice parents raised me on puts a distance between people, a distance that has no business in a close friendship. I understand this, but I still say “Please” and “Thank you” a lot, even when receiving my change after buying anything although meeting awkward laughs of the check-out women.

But where the Chinese beat out America is in plain everyday hospitality (not everyone had the privilege of being influenced by St. Benedict =)).  In fact recently, I can’t get away from Chinese hospitality.

Li Chan Long was more serious in wanting to talk with me, though my fatigue at first didn’t allow me to fully appreciate him.  I was in a larger market town, Gaozhou 高州 western Guang Dong 广东 province China, Dec 14 2007, in the middle of a photo shoot on our rest day.  I was on a bridge, squatting down trying not to be obvious, hiding behind my camera, observing and snapping as people passed by.  My technique failed to keep young Chan Long from noticing me.  He stopped right by me, drawing more attention.  I ignored him until he spoke to me.  I answered a few of the regular, basic questions without stopping taking pictures, where are you from, what are you doing, etc.  He was impecibly patient.  He waited for 10 min until I was satisfied with some shots.  It was 2pm and I hadn’t eaten lunch.  He offered to take me to a cheap place across the bridge.  He’d already eaten, so he just sat at the table while I ate fried noodles (chao mian in Mandarin, chow mein in Cantonese).  We chatted.  He was growing on me.  I forgot how tired I was and how I’d rather have a break from talking to new people, and gave the Chinese conversation what ever energy I could muster.  He is a middle school student, and repeatedly said he was very happy to meet me because he’d never met a foreigner before, though his face rarely broke into a smile.

During our lunch conversation, he invited me to his home to meet some of his family.  His parents were out, but two of his sisters and one of their children were home.  His home was near the restaurant, and quite humble.  It was in the old courtyard style, one story, but not well kept.  It laid in the shadow of a newer highrise apartment building.  We drank tea, took a few photos together, and chatted.

“America is much better than here,” Chan Long said.  

“Although some things like the standard of living and general material wealth is higher in the US, the US also has its problems,” I told him. 

He, like most Chinese I talk to, was surprised to learn that there are poor people and even people without homes who sleep on the streets in the US. 

“I guess every country has homeless people,” Chan Long said. 

“Just about,” I said.

We continued to talk about the desparity and inequality of opportunity between American school districts based on different economic levels and property taxes of their residents, racial and economic conflicts, how money is king and the US government is becoming more and more controlled by big bussiness (and vice versa) which can sometimes hurt normal people, how many Americans have the money but not the vacation time to travel abroad, and as a result of the latter two, increasingly have a negative and fearful world view due to mistakenly projecting the violence and chaos of a few countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somolia onto the whole world outside the US and Europe (there are in fact 194 countries in the world, with a generous majority free of major violent conflict). 

I had planned to meet with my fellow fueled-by-ricer’s, so I excused myself.  Chan Long insisted on walking me back to the dormitory we were staying at across the river.

A day later, one of the owners and cook at a small town restaurant took kindly to us during lunch, and invited us to stay at his home for free.  Again, I was tired after a morning of biking 50km and eating a big lunch, but when he aproached me smiling after we’d finished our meal, I found the energy to engage him in conversation.  He soon was inviting us to stay at his home for the evening. 

“But there are 5 of us.  We’ll be too much trouble for you,” I told him.

He insisted. “No problem.  You’re welcome to stay at my house.  I have alot of space.” 

He had recently built a large house, with his parents and several other family and friends living there.  An extra unfurnished room and lightly used living room were open to us.  It was a bit out of town, but it was a beautiful space to roll out some sleeping bags.  We arrived around 3pm, and after escorting us to his house and showing us around, he left again on personal business, telling us that we could come and go as we pleased, there was no need to lock the door because he had nothing worth stealing and the area was safe - very generous and trusting of him.  We met his wife and two children later, who befriended Adam.

The following day, (Dec 17th) we ate a late breakfast after riding 20km.  I went ahead as Jim stopped by the post office, and others were looking for more fruit and baozi but I wanted something of substance.  I found a typical breakfast noodle restaurant stall and asked what they had and how much a bowl of wide noodles (hefan) was.  The boss took great interest in me, and chatted with me while his wife prepared the noodles.  Drew also ordered some hefan after getting baozi (stuffed steamed buns) next door. 

When it came time to pay, the boss said, “My treat.  You don’t need to pay.”

“No really, I’m embarraced, we’ll pay,” I pleaded with him.

“No no no, don’t worry about it.  It’s free.”

That evening, in a small market town, Nalin 那林, Guangxi province 广西, I was walking around alone and again found a bridge to take some photos.  Passing children on their way home from school noticed me, laughing and talking loudly about the foreigner.  After 5 min or so, I got up to leave, and a man came out of a small restuarant and told me there was someone who wanted to buy me dinner.

“Oh, but I already have other pla…” I began to say.

“Come, come.  Here he is,” the man lead to me to another man sitting at a table.

He was a math teacher at the local middle school, and insisted on buying me something to eat.  He suggested a dish with meat and a soup.  I took his suggestion, though he told me I could order what I wanted from the owner’s shelves of vegetables and meat beside us.  It was a shorter dinner, but we had a pleasant chat for about a half hour.  He’d nearly finished his own dinner by the time I started.

The same night, 2 hours later, I was walking back to our hotel after some exploration, and I stopped at a food stall with out door seating to see what they had.  A man sitting down, got up and came over to greet me.  He then invited me to join him in eating shaokao (Chinese BBQ meat)  I reluctantly agreed, embarraced by all the hospitality I’d been experiencing lately.  He also wasn’t local, but had been temporarily living in Nalin for 3 years playing a role in the construction of a new and very nice concrete county road (that seemed much more like a provincial highway).  He was very eager to chat with me.  Apparently I was the first foreigner he’d met who could speak Chinese.  He said he’d seen foreign teachers in his home city of Yulin 玉林 (80km away) before, but had never spoken with them.

Amazing. 

A free breakfast, free dinners, and places to stay.  This certainly doesn’t happen every day, but much more frequent than I’ve ever experienced from strangers in the US.  In fact, I can’t recall ever having had the pleasure of being treated by a stranger in the US.  Unfortunately, I’ve realized that I’ve also never treated a stranger, let alone a foreign stranger, to dine. 

During my 3 years in China, during which time I’ve received a warm and enthusiastic welcome from people nearly everywhere I go (one of the guys at this internet cafe actually just bought Jim and I milk drinks!), I’ve often reflected on the sometimes drastic difference in the treatment of foreigners between the US and China.  During my early months in China, Jilin City in 2004, I was just learning Chinese and could barely get anything out.  To many people though, it didn’t seem to matter.  I’d say, “Ni hao,” (hello) and many would say, “Wow, your Chinese is so good!”  On the other hand, if someone in the US speaks less than perfect English, or with a heavy accent, the reception is often not so warm, sometimes even cold. 

Why is it that some Americans look down on foreigners or recent immigrants?  Is not nearly every American the offspring of an immigrant?  Is not the fact that the USA is a country of bold and courageous immigrants one of the key defining features of America’s identity and strength?

When it comes time to pay the bill, Chinese culture is never to split the bill.  One person pays for everyone, be that 2 people, or 10.  Not only that, but it is an honor (or “gives face”) to pay.  Whoever invites the others is expected to pay, but other times it’s not so clear who should pay.  This often results in friendly banter and fighting, sometimes involving physically pushing people away from the boss, to pay.  If one protests the other paying, the common response is, “Next time.”  It expresses that they want there to be a “next time,” that the relationship is sure to continue and grow.

When was the last time you took a foreign stranger out to eat or into your home?  The thought alone really pushes the average American’s comfort zone.  But for many Chinese, it’s as natural as using chop sticks.

广东，广州 (Guangzhou city [Canton], Guangdong prov) is essentially the epicenter of the famously booming Chinese economy.  Far in the south, just 2 hours from Shenzhen (mainland city started in the 1970s to faciliate the regional economic growth direclty across from Hong Kong) and Hong Kong (an economic “miracle” since the 1960s due its then status as a British colony and detachment from the mainland’s chaos of that time) its location location location that explains Guangzhou’s selection to be the factory central of China…with Shanghai and Tianjin playing in a close 2nd and 3rd.  After biking south 50km from Guangzhou, its been solid development and factories, and I expect it to be so down to Shenzhen, the port.

 Its of course the abundant labor that drives China’s economy, and those that fill the jobs often come in from the countryside with courage enough to seek a better life through higher incomes than agriculture can offer, and are willing to take the risk to move to a big city without pre-arranged work.  Guangzhou, due to its reputation as the economic and factory folcrum of China naturally attracts a comparatively large percent of China’s rural migrants.   Although countless construction sites in addition to its factories absorb an incredible number of these people, a surprising number of migrants who can’t find work (and therefore don’t have the dormitory housing that still accompany many jobs in China) make due with sleeping on sidewalks and under bridges.  Walking by them naturally makes me uncomfortable.  Most sleeping by 10pm, they look peaceful and comfortable enough.  It seems they’ve gotten enough to eat, this eases my unease.  A bowl of rice is, afterall, 1 Yuan (US$0.13).  But I still think of the luguans (cheap hotels) I’ve stayed at in the last 2 months, and how though most westerners would never even consider staying at them due to the lower standards, they’d be a far cry better than sleeping on the street.  But tonight, I’m not just at a luguan.  I’m at the Landmark Hotel, for Kevin’s wedding.  Just about as opposite on the socio-economic scale as one can get.

I’d often heard from people in the north - in Beijing and in Jilin - that Guangzhou was “dangerous” with “high crime” and is China’s least safe city.  Not that Guangzhou natives are more apt to stealing, but people told me its the poor migrant workers who steal.  Now my second time to Guangzhou, even if some statistics that I haven’t seen prove this, I’ve never had any trouble whatsoever.  I often tell people that China is the safest country that I’ve ever been to.  China’s obsession with walls and gates and guards seem to go well over board with a strong culture of early to sleep, early to rise, but no matter the reason, Guangzhou in my experience joins the rest of China in being very safe, not to mention rural Chinese people being overly more friendly and open than urban dwellers.  Perhaps my height scares off would-be pick-pockets, for they do exist in all Chinese cities, but I do think the northern perception of Guangzhou is a bit off.

When we 5 fueled-by-ricers pulled our bikes along side new BMWs, Mercedes, Audis (yes, the Germans dominate the Chinese car market), by the front door of the Landmark Hotel, in our dirty clothes, with our dirty bikes, carrying out dirty luggage, the perfect harmony of cleanliness, of niceness, that is characteristic of the typical Chinese facade of quality and wealth was disrupted.  Immediately, guards and car park guides felt uncomfotable with our presence and immdiately told us we couldn’t “park” our bikes here.  “No problem, we’re just taking our luggage off our bikes.”  “You can’t park your bikes here, go around back across the street to the bike coral.” “Ok, we just have to take our stuff…   Yes, yes, we’re guests here are your hotel.” 

Culture shock.  Really, we should fit in perfectly at the Landmark.  We’re foreign, and foreign means firstly wealth to many Chinese.  We all studied in America and have the ability to go to the US, which alone classifies us in the top echeoleon of world citizens.  We are, afterall, middle class, so the Landmark and its niceness, its cleanliness, its class, its fancy-pants image, yes yes, it’s all a part of who we are.  But its a part we’ve all seemed to have left behind when we started this bike trip, if not earlier in our lives.

As we passed through the lobby, our arms loaded with our Chinese road-grit-ladden bicycle luggage in our dirty biking shirts and beards, I felt uncomfortable, a misfit.  We’re used to staying in common low-end Chinese hotels in the rural areas…well, see the luguan photos in the Photo section yourself.  No, we hadn’t driven our cars to the Landmark.  Yes, reducing carbon emissions and helping to halt Global Warming / The Climate Crisis is sometimes dirty and unglamorous, dispite the romance of our trip that sometimes comes across this website.  Biking is sometimes dirty, dangerous, and uncomfortable (What?! You mean you have to use your own energy and muscles to propel yourself?)  But in the end, IT IS SO WORTH IT.  Until we have solar and wind produced electric cars, street cars, and light rails, riding bicycles instead of driving the internal combustion engine whenever possible is KEY to slowing and eventually stopping the Climate Crisis in the next 20 years.  We hope that our (rather extreme) example of how effective bicycles are in human (and luggage) transport may encourage you to keep that car of yours parked a little longer between outings.

Although our stay at the Landmark was very nice (after we worked through several staff people over the course of 1 hour to figure out where we could park our bikes) and we are SO GREATFUL to Kevin and Kaishan for their generous gift to us of 2 nights stay during their wedding, I realized that we have something in common with the jobless migrants sleeping out on the streets.  Its a common human weakness to judge someone by their outward appearance instead of a person’s internal character, but it must be overcome.  In modern China, image and surface looks are everything.  I’ve found the impression or illusion of quality is more important than there infact being quality.  One of Gandhi’s profound role models taught him this key life lesson, the role model himself wearing simple and rather dirty clothes daily.  Looking down upon people sleeping in the street, on people with the courage to try to better their lives through their own initiative and effort, leaving families behind, standing up to try to participate in some small way in China’s booming economy to balance the dangerously enormous income gap, is illogical and void of compassion and empathy.  Some Landmark Hotel staff may have looked down on me in a similar way because I don’t fit their image of a wealthy guest.  I’m foreign, yes, but…dirty shirt and arrived on a bike?  Confusion.   

2am walking the 5km back to the Landmark from an Irish pub the wedding party had migrated too late in the afternoon upon Adam’s insistence of not taking a taxi (The dirty “T” word), two women pulled me aside while I was ahead of the group.  At first moving their fists to their mouths, I thought they were thirsty, so I offered them my bottle of water.  No, not thirsty.  When they learned I speak Chinese, the sharades ended and they clearly told me that they were hungry.  Although most migrant workers are male, they’d just come to Guangzhou alone several days earlier from the countryside looking for work, but unfortunately hadn’t found any yet.  Their money had run out, most having been spent on their standing train tickets.  Having become a bit leery of giving cash to beggars in Beijing, I offered to go with them to a store to buy them food.  Half expecting them to tell me to forget it, they eagerly agreed.  So we walked about a block and found a latenight pulled-noodle restaurant.  They sat down at a small table in a corner, obviously embarraced in front of the restaurant boss as I ordered for them.  I ordered the standard beef noodels for them, just a hair over US50 cents a bowl.  It was late, I was tired from walking.  I didn’t sit down to talk more with them, though I wish I would’ve had the energy.  They smiled and thanked me, I wished them well.  Walking back I wondered if 1 bowl each would be enough.  Could I have helped them any more?  I worry about them, 2 women without work in a large city, in a country with plenty of prostitution for its overly male population due to years of selective abortion favoring boy-children in a 1 child policy environment.  They’re just 2 of countless others.  2 I had the honor of meeting, God bless them on their own journeys.

Interesting how Guangzhou’s migrants’ stories sound so similar to that of my great great great grandfather who immigrated to the US from Germany in the early 1860s at the age of 21.  And so similar to the stories of today’s Mexicans, South Americans, Somali, Hmong, etc in the US, and Eastern Europeans in Western Europe…

In the end, people are people - 人就是人。Its unfortuante so often our own identy depends on creating divisions, building walls, spreading sepratism in the form of loving those similar to ourselves and hating those perceived to be dissimilar.  Us and Them.  And though our identies are not identical, as John Denver sings in his Season Suite, “Yet as different as we are, we’re still the same!” At the very least, we may offer mutual respect to our fellow humanbeings.