First you must know that natto is a very strange fermented bean slime that japanese eat for breakfast - if they have not already rushed to work. It is soya beans gone-off with a lot of slime that you can stretch to about 30cm from the bowel. quite disgusting looking but really addictive after a few weeks here. i love it of course. anyhow, this is the tale of how natto was discovered. there was once a powerful emperor Tamo Dou Fu who ruled japan with a strong hand. he had 3 chief samarais - Shoguns I think they are called. Shogi Mochoto was very sly and clever, manipulative and obedient. Shogi Tamodorobo was very strong, fierce, fearless and disciplined. The third Shogi Gagaping was smelly, lazy and idiotic but the emperor trusted him more than the other two who were ambitious and plotting to take the throne somehow and secretly trying to build their own power basses. Gagaping was not like that: this silly samarai was just lazing all day long.
There is a series of terrible earthquakes and whenever the japanese families sit down to eat the food is shaken off the table and eated by rabbits or discarded because you can never eat off the pristeen floors. the people become famished and restless, they clamour for something to be done about this. The emperor sends out the frist samarai to reason or kill the moster under mount Fuji who is shaking his divine kingdom so unreasonably. On the way the Shogi Mochoto meets a dog-like stinking slimy creature who begs for a small teaspoon of soya sause to mix with his dinner (natto is mixed with soya sause to make it more slimy) the shogi casts the dog-god natto devil away from him and then enters mount fuji and is crushed by the collosal monster under the mountain. The emperor sends Shogi Tamodorogo to slay the monster and he also meets king natto stinking who begs him for a little soya sause. Shogi Tamogo also beats the natto devil away with his stick althougth like the first shogi he had plenty of soya sause to give away. He proceeds to mount fuji and pulls a gun on the monster who is impervious and crushes him ruthlessly. The lazy, smelly Shogi no-good-boyo very reluctantly sets out and meets the natto creature, but since he has a lot of soya sause and it is easier to walk without so much he gladly gives the dog natto fiend some soya sause and they pal out for a bit and he tells the dog about his coming dilema. king natto gives him some soya beans and tells him to put them in his sock and if ever he gets into trouble he should pull them out and they will save him.
He sets off to mount Fuji and is scared shitless by the huge eathquake devil monster but he remembers teh dogs advice and pulls out the beans in his sock which - due to the excellent conditions in that socky environment - have already fermented to an advanced stage and Gagaping throws them at the beast who is tied up in huge spider-like webs of natto-slime. When he is all tied up with natto Shogi Gagaping finishes him off with a fart to the face which does not quite dispatch the monsterous creature but leaves him unconscious. The earthquakes that were rocking Japan don`t altogether stop but become far less frequent. Shogi Gagaping returnes to the emperors palace and is the new stinking hero. However the emperor is furious - you only concussed the monster - you have not stopped the earthquakes all together - you have done a half assed, jerry-built, hash up job! He is secretly jealous of the samarais popularity and disgraced by his lack of personal hygene. Shogi Gagaping is worried and once again pulls out the soya beans which are fantastically-far fermented by now and gives them to the emperor pleading forgiveness. The emperor is even more upset by this idiotic and maloderant gesture but at that very moment an earthquake shakes the court and the natto does not spill from the bowel. It is the new saviour-flavour wonder food. The smelly shogi becomes an even greater hero and his sock is the national tresury - which may remind some readers of that royal devotee to the late king Fatto even more!
In his recent anger the emperor gets a heart attack and has no choice but to make Gagaping the new emperor.* He has no intention of accepting the responsibility and pulls out the natto beans once again which turn into the begging Natto Dog he met on the top of mount fuji. Gagaping gives him the crown so he can continue lazing about.
A golden age of vegan peace dawns on the great island of japan and that is why japanese to this day eat natto every morning to remember their greatest ruler in the history of Japan and to guard against earthquakes knocking their food off the tables. The flag of japan is a giant natto bean on a white sky sometimes with strings of natto slime coming off.
THE END
*The alternative:
The emperor Tamo Dou Fu feels very insecure with his new popular Shogi Gagaping and tres to kill him in the night but Gagaping pulls out the beans once more thinking the emperor has gone mad with hunger and feeds the emperor who is actually a secret anti-vegan and accidently dies from the totaly vegan meal.
Friday, October 19, 2007
NAGOYA
Triin and I arrived in Nagoya by train and hooked up with our www.couchsurfing.com hostess Changmi - she is super - she took us to a Halloween party where we played and then jammed with the band - amazing guitarist and a saxophonist to make Kevin buster blush - almost. The waiter there suggested we went to another bar called Jajaa - where we did rinse out. The owner started playing guitar and then the bar-lady started playing ukulele and a big guy turned up and started banging the drum. After a few surupticious phone calls a few more members of the band turned up. One took down the tambourine and proceeded to rinse, another sang like a frog, a really cute little girl who looked 13 years old came in smoking a cigarette and wearing a motorcycle helmet and the BIG drum-banger picked up an accordion and put it on her - pining her slight body onto a chair under the weight of the giant accordion. By the end pretty much everyone in the bar was rinsing on a bizarre collection of ancient instruments of music: bass drums, conta-bass, wash-board and whistle! They made some fantastic music!
We set up a gig there for the next Sunday. The musical exchange died down and they all faded into the night, we followed them around 5am.
maybe check their website:
www.jaaja.jp
Jaaja is the name of the band leader`s cat who died, he wrote a song about the funeral and called the bar after the dead cat and there is a cat sculpture above the door. Japanese are so delicate. I was so impressed! They touch things with such care and respect - I would not say love but that is perhaps an unavoidable human emotion that comes anyhow. They obvious love what they do and when you do anything with such tenderness you enter a state of meditation where you have deeper feeling and sensitivity for your actions and the results. I am very impressed. It is like the science of the soul revealed. Very quiet and calm. Our hostess` mum has a cafe and we went to see her and she gave us sake cups that whistle when you drink them and parchment from a Korean almanac from 150 years ago - printed in the old fasioned way - she just tore out pictures - she uses the paper to paper the inside of antique Japanese furnature for her antique shop. She was so kind!
I was thinking about dreams - I thought that opening a bar like the jajaa bar would be a project I would like to take on but you know all my life projects have been too big to be possible really so I did not know how to start them. That is why I am just floating around the world!! He He!
What are your dreams out there guys? Anyone wants to publish a book by a hobo who has bummer around Asia and Europe and painted pictures all the way?
* * * *
We were invited to a performance of Indian classical music in a temple. The owner of the temple - the caretaker monk - sadly died last year and his son who had been educated in Shri Lanka and England came back from his life abroad and reentered the world of Japanese formalities, duties, responsibilites and the life of a monk. In Japan monks and politicians and other jobs that you thought would take some ideological motivation are all heireditory - the present prime minister is the son of a former prime minister - everything is very clique and closed to outsiders it seems, old duties to other families, loyalty lasting decades of years are all the major virtues - not so much good policies. Anyhow, this poor boy has been handed the golden begging bowl and is a very reluctant monk but since he is in charge of the grounds he opened the doors of a beautiful empty nunnery on the site of the temple for travellers. He was accommodating a group of Indian musicians. In fact they were Japanese kids who work in factories in Japan for six months then spend all their money studying sitar and tablas in India for as long as they can until their money runs out. They were really great musicians but I have started to spot the weak point in Japanese cultural armour - they are often too polite, they work together like one man but they are always aware of the people around them - this sometimes means that in those moments when you have "divine inspiration", when your soul tells you to do something quite exceptional they will not act, staying this side of living Nirvana because they cant seem to take their friends with them. Those moments don`t happen so often and it is very good of them to come back to us - Good or bad, I think it means they strive less for personal enlightenment than Social Acceptance. On paper that is less selfish but somehow less effective for the good of the world and more importantly Japan. That is all just uninformed supposition of course. We had to wait till very late before we left the temple, our hostess had taken out her violin and the hippy kids had started to teach themselves how to play it and she could not ask for it back saying she had to work at 8am - I could see she was smiling at the girl and thinking - oh I need that violin back, but did not say anything. So as she eventually drove home I chatted to her from the back seat keeping my eye on her eyelid and breaking the silence whenever it looked like it was sinking! The hippy Japanese family had played songs that lasted 20 or 30 minutes with the same refrain over and over. It was impressive, pathetic and very tiresome so I read American Gods in the beautiful bathroom with the preheated toilet seat cover and the recording sloshing sounds so you cant hear your own farts and exhaust sounds effects. Very cosy, and then I worked on a new theatre show for next weekend.
lots of love
jimbino vegan
We set up a gig there for the next Sunday. The musical exchange died down and they all faded into the night, we followed them around 5am.
maybe check their website:
www.jaaja.jp
Jaaja is the name of the band leader`s cat who died, he wrote a song about the funeral and called the bar after the dead cat and there is a cat sculpture above the door. Japanese are so delicate. I was so impressed! They touch things with such care and respect - I would not say love but that is perhaps an unavoidable human emotion that comes anyhow. They obvious love what they do and when you do anything with such tenderness you enter a state of meditation where you have deeper feeling and sensitivity for your actions and the results. I am very impressed. It is like the science of the soul revealed. Very quiet and calm. Our hostess` mum has a cafe and we went to see her and she gave us sake cups that whistle when you drink them and parchment from a Korean almanac from 150 years ago - printed in the old fasioned way - she just tore out pictures - she uses the paper to paper the inside of antique Japanese furnature for her antique shop. She was so kind!
I was thinking about dreams - I thought that opening a bar like the jajaa bar would be a project I would like to take on but you know all my life projects have been too big to be possible really so I did not know how to start them. That is why I am just floating around the world!! He He!
What are your dreams out there guys? Anyone wants to publish a book by a hobo who has bummer around Asia and Europe and painted pictures all the way?
* * * *
We were invited to a performance of Indian classical music in a temple. The owner of the temple - the caretaker monk - sadly died last year and his son who had been educated in Shri Lanka and England came back from his life abroad and reentered the world of Japanese formalities, duties, responsibilites and the life of a monk. In Japan monks and politicians and other jobs that you thought would take some ideological motivation are all heireditory - the present prime minister is the son of a former prime minister - everything is very clique and closed to outsiders it seems, old duties to other families, loyalty lasting decades of years are all the major virtues - not so much good policies. Anyhow, this poor boy has been handed the golden begging bowl and is a very reluctant monk but since he is in charge of the grounds he opened the doors of a beautiful empty nunnery on the site of the temple for travellers. He was accommodating a group of Indian musicians. In fact they were Japanese kids who work in factories in Japan for six months then spend all their money studying sitar and tablas in India for as long as they can until their money runs out. They were really great musicians but I have started to spot the weak point in Japanese cultural armour - they are often too polite, they work together like one man but they are always aware of the people around them - this sometimes means that in those moments when you have "divine inspiration", when your soul tells you to do something quite exceptional they will not act, staying this side of living Nirvana because they cant seem to take their friends with them. Those moments don`t happen so often and it is very good of them to come back to us - Good or bad, I think it means they strive less for personal enlightenment than Social Acceptance. On paper that is less selfish but somehow less effective for the good of the world and more importantly Japan. That is all just uninformed supposition of course. We had to wait till very late before we left the temple, our hostess had taken out her violin and the hippy kids had started to teach themselves how to play it and she could not ask for it back saying she had to work at 8am - I could see she was smiling at the girl and thinking - oh I need that violin back, but did not say anything. So as she eventually drove home I chatted to her from the back seat keeping my eye on her eyelid and breaking the silence whenever it looked like it was sinking! The hippy Japanese family had played songs that lasted 20 or 30 minutes with the same refrain over and over. It was impressive, pathetic and very tiresome so I read American Gods in the beautiful bathroom with the preheated toilet seat cover and the recording sloshing sounds so you cant hear your own farts and exhaust sounds effects. Very cosy, and then I worked on a new theatre show for next weekend.
lots of love
jimbino vegan
NARA
Johney and Mary went to the coast for a few days and on Wednesday Triin and left Osaka on our rusty bikes - we slept in the hills just East of town overlooking the huge twinkling grid of the city. We camped out on the balcony of an old peoples home and the window in the bathroom was slightly open so I slipped into the warm tub at 11pm and soaked for a bit before drying off in the balmy night with my t-shirt. I was surprised no one discovered us - the next morning we cycled down hill and got lost and found ourselves in Nara - the problem is cities just mould into each-other so it is hard telling where you are and where the next city is because when you ask "Where is Nara please!" many people say "This IS Nara!" when you are 10 miles form the center! Anyhow, we pulled into town on a lovely sunny evening after a rainy morning on the bikes. We found a little shopping street and made some coin then eat and looked at some of the sites in the dark - the pagodas are magically lit-up as were the imperial ponds and other beauty spots. We found a nice tree in the gardens with not too many deer about us and I was surprised how well I slept. We woke in the misty edge of dawn as the deer screeched and yakked around us and I practiced some of my Chinese trumpet to keep them company. We went to see the GIANT BUDDHA in the biggest wooden structure in the world, which is a 19th century replica of an even bigger earlier wooden temple that burnt down. It was awesome with a huge dark Buddha sitting and waving his hands. I did a nice picture but unfortunately he does not look so vast on a sheet of A4! I`ll have to paint some tiny airplanes flying around his knees! We had a nice picnic and heard many cries of "SEEEGOOOOIII!" (amazing) by japanese school groups spotting my tall bike and monster costume - often as young as 4 or 5 years old and all in their matching uniforms except the girls wear red hats and the boys are in yellow hats. Extremely cute! We played some more music trying to milk Japan as best we can for the long journey through poor countries next. We had packed up and were heading for a cafe to drink a cuppa coffee over a game of Chinese Chess (Triin beat me this morning!!! HOW!!!). A guy who had been watching us earlier told us in shaky English that he was a hairdresser and invited us to have our hair put in order for free. I needed my moustache cutting out of my mouth and Triin had been talking about having her hair cut for a couple of weeks so we went to his jazzy salon and tried to ignore our terrible new CD which he proudly put on his stereo - oh dear!!! Some of it is OK but it is good and natural that we are dissatisfied - otherwise we would just have to give up playing music! He did a very smart job and pretty quick with hair shampooing and washing and drying and even a back massage! I looked on the menu, which said it would have cost $50 each! So I look quite presentable - except for my clothes! Hope a tailor sees one of our street shows. Well, actually I am looking ok for clothes because I often wear my Gagaping - famous Japanese cartoon monster - costume to keep warm. Triin put on her big yellow Chinese anorack and we cycled for 6 hours solid to get to Kyoto from Nara. A lot of the journey was through windy back streets of the eternal city. In the tourist guides it says that Tokyo, Nara, Kyoto and Kamagawa were all the capital of Japan at one time or another - well, although they are as far as 400km apart they are pretty much continually joined by housing so you could say they are still the capital. I stopped at a manual workers store to buy some construction slippers - the wrestling boots with detached toes that workers in Japan wear! We finally arrived in Koyoto and played a little more music and were kicked off our favorite spot for the third time this week by very polite policemen. I guess it is not our favorite spot any more - pity though. Tomorrow we go to Nagoya for the street festival but tonight we stay with our good friend Naho who is so lovely!!! All the best
love jimmy
love jimmy
RUGBYin KYOTO
We had a very jazzy show in a very arty teahouse in Osaka where people spoke very quietly and everything was very atmospheric as Japanese sipped herbal teas and delicate glasses of wine. We finally met our old drummer Jay`s performce pal in Osaka - quite an interesting girl but not performing until December! A very up front lady - she is so engaging that I felt like I was naked just talking to her - and then I pulled up my pants!!!
I hid in the cellar before the show started and the others started playing - they did not know where I was. I thought they did because someone put lots of chairs on top of the trap door so I thought it was Johney or Mary playing a joke. Mary played three songs on her own - which were great - she has a voice like a cannon and a great pace - rhythm - dramatic and very watch-able! Then Johney and Triin gave up waiting for me and started playing as well and I jumped out of the hole knocking all the chairs everywhere - it was so funny - no-one knew I was there. We had a wild show and I wore my huge green Dinasaur costume for the second half, which was boiling hot. The next night we had a show in a pub called the Pig and Whistle which was FULL with skinhead white foreignor rugby fans. We were a bit worried that they would not like our music but after 3 songs they were going crazy - one blond English lout was thrusting his pelvis all over the shop - he almost smashed the bar with a battering ram pelvic lurch! Very vulgar but impressive for the pure relentless determination of the man! I performed the New Zealand war dance called the HAKA with a skin headed fat New Zealander who was a gardener who grows Bonzai trees and had come to see his teacher`s teacher - a 98 year old Japanese farmer in the mountains who has little trees that are 400 years old which his great great great grandfather planted. Well, that is all cool but he was still quite a lout but he just could not stop laughing when I performed the Haka so I did a solo show and ended with a flying kick at an empty bar table which everyone loved - even the bar staff - who gave us all free drinks although they could not believe we did not want alcohol!! The others went home after the gig - it was about 2am between the two international games - but I stayed up in the pub trying to stay awake and reading the newspaper until 6am when the New Zealand v France game started. It was an amazing game - there were a few French one of whom was very noisy and funny but a few New Zealanders were not in a joking mood and at the end I was looking over my shoulder anxious that in the last minutes a fight would break out. I think they would be concentrating on the TV even as they fought each-other, the game was so tense and exciting!!! New Zealand went ahead and then France and then back again and finally France won. The French man bought everyone beers (it was then 6.30am) and the New Zealander mad thug who threatened to "punch his froggy face in" a few minutes before, cried on his sholdier as the Frenchman`s wife gave him consoling kisses on his beer and tear stained stubble skull. I was too tired to enjoy the scene to the full and walked back to Naho`s very crowded flat on the outskirts of town singing and playing my ukulele as the sun rose and the turtle doves coo-ed in the tree tops around the ancient temples and rock gardens of Kyoto.
I also saw the next rugby match of England verses France- poor France - but I think England were very close but played well and were not unjust to win. Someone had to win unfortunately, I was thinking of inventing rugby and football with perhaps no touch line or goal posts - you just play and play until you are tired - maybe even no sides - could be interesting. Football is a very natural old sport that is so obvious that it must have been invented by humans when there were more monkey than man, but I love rugby because it was invented when an excited school boy picked up the ball in a crazy moment at a football match and said - "come and get the ball off me!!!" and everyone in the game thought - ok we will jump on him. And they ran around like crazy, jumping on each-other hell-mell, willy-nilly and decided they would do it again the next day because it made them feel so gay!
Anyhow, that is just my idea of how things happened.
Good luck Argentina.
Enough gay banter
lots of love jimmy
xxx
I hid in the cellar before the show started and the others started playing - they did not know where I was. I thought they did because someone put lots of chairs on top of the trap door so I thought it was Johney or Mary playing a joke. Mary played three songs on her own - which were great - she has a voice like a cannon and a great pace - rhythm - dramatic and very watch-able! Then Johney and Triin gave up waiting for me and started playing as well and I jumped out of the hole knocking all the chairs everywhere - it was so funny - no-one knew I was there. We had a wild show and I wore my huge green Dinasaur costume for the second half, which was boiling hot. The next night we had a show in a pub called the Pig and Whistle which was FULL with skinhead white foreignor rugby fans. We were a bit worried that they would not like our music but after 3 songs they were going crazy - one blond English lout was thrusting his pelvis all over the shop - he almost smashed the bar with a battering ram pelvic lurch! Very vulgar but impressive for the pure relentless determination of the man! I performed the New Zealand war dance called the HAKA with a skin headed fat New Zealander who was a gardener who grows Bonzai trees and had come to see his teacher`s teacher - a 98 year old Japanese farmer in the mountains who has little trees that are 400 years old which his great great great grandfather planted. Well, that is all cool but he was still quite a lout but he just could not stop laughing when I performed the Haka so I did a solo show and ended with a flying kick at an empty bar table which everyone loved - even the bar staff - who gave us all free drinks although they could not believe we did not want alcohol!! The others went home after the gig - it was about 2am between the two international games - but I stayed up in the pub trying to stay awake and reading the newspaper until 6am when the New Zealand v France game started. It was an amazing game - there were a few French one of whom was very noisy and funny but a few New Zealanders were not in a joking mood and at the end I was looking over my shoulder anxious that in the last minutes a fight would break out. I think they would be concentrating on the TV even as they fought each-other, the game was so tense and exciting!!! New Zealand went ahead and then France and then back again and finally France won. The French man bought everyone beers (it was then 6.30am) and the New Zealander mad thug who threatened to "punch his froggy face in" a few minutes before, cried on his sholdier as the Frenchman`s wife gave him consoling kisses on his beer and tear stained stubble skull. I was too tired to enjoy the scene to the full and walked back to Naho`s very crowded flat on the outskirts of town singing and playing my ukulele as the sun rose and the turtle doves coo-ed in the tree tops around the ancient temples and rock gardens of Kyoto.
I also saw the next rugby match of England verses France- poor France - but I think England were very close but played well and were not unjust to win. Someone had to win unfortunately, I was thinking of inventing rugby and football with perhaps no touch line or goal posts - you just play and play until you are tired - maybe even no sides - could be interesting. Football is a very natural old sport that is so obvious that it must have been invented by humans when there were more monkey than man, but I love rugby because it was invented when an excited school boy picked up the ball in a crazy moment at a football match and said - "come and get the ball off me!!!" and everyone in the game thought - ok we will jump on him. And they ran around like crazy, jumping on each-other hell-mell, willy-nilly and decided they would do it again the next day because it made them feel so gay!
Anyhow, that is just my idea of how things happened.
Good luck Argentina.
Enough gay banter
lots of love jimmy
xxx
MOUNT FUJI
Mount Fuji was totally freezing. Wobbling around light-headed in the rain and sweeping wind and tripping on the black volcanic gravel. The Japenese climbers we passed on their way down were with ski sticks and waterproof head to toe moon costumes shook their heads at us, saying "OKI KAZE" (big wind) while I, in my giant green dinasaur Gajaping costume and Chinese farmers $1 sneakers and Triin in her poncho and ear-ache hat, trotted up the gravel path with a rucksack full of tofu and water. Mihel, our "trust me I`m Polish" buddy who shows me Aikido "Defense" moves while I am quietly reading my book on the sofa and beats my botty-wotty at chess told us we would need at least 4 litres of water each.
I drank about one cup of water the whole journey - that is from the bottle, I probably drank about 4 litres just leaving my mouth open for the rain to slosh into. We went up till Mikel, who boasted he had trecked for 3 weeks alone in Nepal and checked his alititude GPS computer every 10 minutes decided to head down. Triin and I said we were going on up a bit just so he would not give us his mountain conquoring stories again later and then, when our feet were frozen and I was pretty giddy from the thin air and thick rain, we headed down pausing to eat triins delicious mess of pumpkin and oatmeal surprise - the surprise was that it was the best meal we have had in Japan!
Anyhow, we got down, dripped all over the base camp cafe and then hitched a ride to the station and looked around the small town of Chizorka - a dull enough place - a couple of government-issue temples and I bought some socks with separated toe sockets then chilled at the couch surfing hosts place. We had to pay him 4000 yen for the transport and the stay and food thrown in so it was a bit expensive and not so cool - he paid for a bunch of sake and his friends came over and got drunk and it was all a bit lame so I table taco-ed his glass sitting room table and then sat down to write this email - sorry other way round - got to go and taco that table. We leave tomorrow for Kyoto where we have a couple of gigs. We have a poster that says very politely that we would accept any donations of food, money and accomodation and please please please help us - it makes busking much easier. We are mostly just playing bums music on the street- sitting out with the music notes all over the place - the good old fasioned way- being paid to practice! No great show but I have some tricks hatching.
I drank about one cup of water the whole journey - that is from the bottle, I probably drank about 4 litres just leaving my mouth open for the rain to slosh into. We went up till Mikel, who boasted he had trecked for 3 weeks alone in Nepal and checked his alititude GPS computer every 10 minutes decided to head down. Triin and I said we were going on up a bit just so he would not give us his mountain conquoring stories again later and then, when our feet were frozen and I was pretty giddy from the thin air and thick rain, we headed down pausing to eat triins delicious mess of pumpkin and oatmeal surprise - the surprise was that it was the best meal we have had in Japan!
Anyhow, we got down, dripped all over the base camp cafe and then hitched a ride to the station and looked around the small town of Chizorka - a dull enough place - a couple of government-issue temples and I bought some socks with separated toe sockets then chilled at the couch surfing hosts place. We had to pay him 4000 yen for the transport and the stay and food thrown in so it was a bit expensive and not so cool - he paid for a bunch of sake and his friends came over and got drunk and it was all a bit lame so I table taco-ed his glass sitting room table and then sat down to write this email - sorry other way round - got to go and taco that table. We leave tomorrow for Kyoto where we have a couple of gigs. We have a poster that says very politely that we would accept any donations of food, money and accomodation and please please please help us - it makes busking much easier. We are mostly just playing bums music on the street- sitting out with the music notes all over the place - the good old fasioned way- being paid to practice! No great show but I have some tricks hatching.
TOKYO
I went to a very interesting expo on ARCHITECTURE! It is a strange genetic disease! This guy in question was called Antonin Raymond - and his deseigner wife Naomi. Some nice stuff - real nice! I am re-reading a pretty good history book by AHMED RASHID - called "Jihad, the rise of militant Islam in central Asia". I read it and now and going to read it again this time with my mouth closed. Well, I am slowly starting to really enjoy Japan - we found some spots where we make some money and worked out it is MUCH better in the big cities after dark and I bought a huge animae character costume and people are really friendly when I am about town playing the jazzy green dinasaur dress. At the moment I am staying in a tiny apartment with triin, me , our wacky wacky host whose name I am still not sure of and a nice girl called Satchmo or something similar. The dude is a photographer and has been snapping us silly and invited us to stay. He left his computer on all night so when I woke up and climbed over everyone to go to the toilet. I decided to get some emails done in the dark dawn. At first I was FREAKED OUT by Japan - little money, cold people, high prices etc... but I am starting to enjoy it since I have started relaxing and met some cool folks. it is still warm enough to sleep in the parks but there are quite a few annoying insects, mosquitos and policemen and ants. I had a great outing for 3 days and 2 nights to Enoshima and Kamakura - I want to go back!!! My brother Henry (25 years old) is a BIG BUSINESS man but still very kind and generous and calmer than me! I will hopefully get him to come to the beach one day. he works his office job but needs to get out of town more and the house too and so does his girlfriend Sapna.
INTERNET
I am in the most amazing internet center known to Jimbino Man. It is built under a church which itself looks like it has a satalite link with God and the Arch Angel! Apart from going to pray there seems like little reason for an intelligent well-rounded human being to leave the internet-center. It has a huge video library - mostly manga - a quiet cafe, showers, about 6 different kinds of internet-booths from a group sofa to watch movies with friends (or spend the night if you are homeless - at 20 dollars it is cheaper than most hotels). Massage chairs, Japanese cross-legged chairs and 'business chairs'??? There are free drinks so I am sloshing up to my ears and can feeling my belly fizzing with ginger ale and something called "vitamin guard". For an extra dollar you get a blanket-sized towel and can shower! And I forgot to mention the all-you-can-eat ice-cream, hot coffee and tea and cheap food you can order.
Welcome to japan
Woheee!
Welcome to japan
Woheee!
Friday, October 5, 2007
shanghai shuffle
We were sad to leave our drummer Jay in shanghai - he had been great fun and his musical contribution was inspiring and real fun. we miss him a lot.we stayed up late playing hot dice and hot jazz.
but good news is we found a new rhythem section!
Monday, September 10, 2007
Osaka to Sendai
OKEY - Im not tired - it is 5am - i guess the morning coffee and then afternoon coffee and coffee jelly drink??? and coffee chocolate cookies had their combined effect. Situation: Japan - the boat from Shanghai arrived yesterday morning after two days and nights at sea. A lot of chatting with other travellers, one nice show in the foyer of the medium sized ferry, some reading, relaxing in the big bath watching the blue sea and tooth ache and catching a cold from the air conditioning - sneeze!
I met a particually interesting polish boy with a Pushkin haircut exactly my age and like me he looked several years older anｄ is going bald but he was really intelligent and had a lot of expereince. He was very Polish and respectable and rough at the same time. My friend Martin used to call me the Noble Brute, this dude was one too, less brutish but more irrideemable. A very interseting man.
We cycled from the port into Osaka and i went to sleep in the house of our couchsurfing host who was out but had left his door unlocked for us - total dude! Lots of impressions - Osaka is very tidy, the locals are not so curious as in china and things are very developed and people generally seem quite sophisticated! Today we worked hard all day looking for places to play music and earn money to go to the sendai street jazz festival - it is about 700km north of here but it costs about 250 dollars to take the train there. You can take a train across the WHOLE of china for 70 dollars! People had been telling us we would make bags of money here but noone who told us that had every tried playing on the street and my suspicions that we would not be instant underground jazz heros seem to be true.
I played about 7 hours of music today in several bars and cafes and on the streets around town - a few people like our music but they dont really give tips - just buy a cd and most dont like the music enough to buy a cd so it looks like i am not going to be able to visit this jazz festival which finishes tomorrow. We all felt a little depressed so we went to a cheap-looking fry up joint. It was good food but it cost 30 dollars instead of 3 dollars each like we had expected. All a bit bummed out, I had just had an argument with a european customer in a bar. We were all depressed and came home with our tails between our legs.
We met a really nice japanese local who took us to several cafes and bars and a ceramics shop to play music and sang along in japanese. He was so funny and like a fairy. He asked if we could play some songs and the bar owner said yes. However after our first song I heard a group of white men laughing and saying - "Go back on the street where you belong!" I was a little shocked. I passed the hat around and they gave me angry looks. We played one last song and I thought - shall I just leave, but no, I went back to their table and said "Excuse me, please keep your negative comments to yourself, there is no need to be so rude!" I was pretty furious, after 9 months travelling around Asia we had never heard comments like that and I hope i am correct in saying that we are playing better than before. Well, I got into a big argument and the meanest man said that if I cant take some comments from the crowd I should not be a performer. I was really angry, I really felt he deserved to be hurt - his friends supported him but one was trying to calm things down. I was very upset and triin was crying for the next 20 minutes so we gave up playing music and went and got ripped off in this expensive restaurant. I am cooler now, as i write the black sky is turning grey up over the skyscrapers of Osaka and somewhere there is a cockeral calling.
I still want to try to go to Sendai for the festival because it may be fun but at the moment i am quite bumbed out by Japan. It seems like I had arrived in the land where all the things I had complained about in china were in abundance: Coffee, a strong currency, privacy in public, orange juice .. well that was about all - but here I loose all the curious, kind Chinese and we are ignored by most people as we perform. No crowd, maybe one or two people watching from a safe distances. And everything is just too expensive to afford. On the money we earn we lived much much much better in China!!! many many times better. I hope this is just a bad first impression if not, I am considering making enough money to get a new china visa and for the boat and giving up on japan totally. I guess I got to visit my brother henry in tokyo but I found myself agreeing with triin that although we did not want anyone hurt, it would be a good thing in our little minds if china had invaded japan and this place was full of uneducated, funny, curious, unliberated and mellow chinese who returned our smiles! I hope my opinion changes. I think it is hard not to visit china and japan and not have an opinion on their common animosity but even with the police control, lack of freedom, sheltered and restricted possibilities of most people in china I like their current culture more than the japanese so far..... I hope this is just a bad first impression - if it was this bad in the first 2 days, I am afraid the next few days will just underline my suspicions.
3 days later in SENDAI
Up in north east japan. Taking express trains through the night at 250km per hour. Looking at the tiny streets below, clean, neatly lined, lights for shops and everything so clinical - all zooming past. We had bought the regional ticket but I allowed myself to be shown to the express train - just a stupid tourist! Despite the fact it is bullet shaped and it arrived at 11pm instead of 7am, Triin did not realise we had taken the wrong train until we were stopped at the barrier at sendai. I did not tell her so she would put up a more convincing protest if we were asked. The guard wanted 100 dollars from us and we showed them our 2 dollars in change, they told us to phone our couch surfing friend to come and pay up 100 bucks so we phoned Autumn who said she would meet us at her metro stop and then we ran. Instead of heading for the metro we ran into the shopping mall, jumped over a gate and a plastic hedge and found ourselves in a Play Station Major Intersection. Electric doors opening into halls full of Pochenko players and a white noise of whirling pinball machines. We bounced from corridor to corridor and fell out of the main exit into the black street rain. I upped my umbrella and hid in a queue of commuters. Although we were under a shelter others had their brollies erected so I did too and looked sneaky eyed behind it eksplaining to Triin why we had run, until our autobus pulled up and we scampered on.
Our couch surfing hostess Autumn welcomed us with sushi and smiles. I am going to give japan a week before I write a comdemnation to the UN and encourage all my chinese friends to invade with their cheap restaurants, limited education, smiles and money mad communism. We just harvested some runner beans and cucumbers from Autumns allotment and she is taking us surfing now so I am going to have a day off work.
All the best jimbino
(code name: James)
I met a particually interesting polish boy with a Pushkin haircut exactly my age and like me he looked several years older anｄ is going bald but he was really intelligent and had a lot of expereince. He was very Polish and respectable and rough at the same time. My friend Martin used to call me the Noble Brute, this dude was one too, less brutish but more irrideemable. A very interseting man.
We cycled from the port into Osaka and i went to sleep in the house of our couchsurfing host who was out but had left his door unlocked for us - total dude! Lots of impressions - Osaka is very tidy, the locals are not so curious as in china and things are very developed and people generally seem quite sophisticated! Today we worked hard all day looking for places to play music and earn money to go to the sendai street jazz festival - it is about 700km north of here but it costs about 250 dollars to take the train there. You can take a train across the WHOLE of china for 70 dollars! People had been telling us we would make bags of money here but noone who told us that had every tried playing on the street and my suspicions that we would not be instant underground jazz heros seem to be true.
I played about 7 hours of music today in several bars and cafes and on the streets around town - a few people like our music but they dont really give tips - just buy a cd and most dont like the music enough to buy a cd so it looks like i am not going to be able to visit this jazz festival which finishes tomorrow. We all felt a little depressed so we went to a cheap-looking fry up joint. It was good food but it cost 30 dollars instead of 3 dollars each like we had expected. All a bit bummed out, I had just had an argument with a european customer in a bar. We were all depressed and came home with our tails between our legs.
We met a really nice japanese local who took us to several cafes and bars and a ceramics shop to play music and sang along in japanese. He was so funny and like a fairy. He asked if we could play some songs and the bar owner said yes. However after our first song I heard a group of white men laughing and saying - "Go back on the street where you belong!" I was a little shocked. I passed the hat around and they gave me angry looks. We played one last song and I thought - shall I just leave, but no, I went back to their table and said "Excuse me, please keep your negative comments to yourself, there is no need to be so rude!" I was pretty furious, after 9 months travelling around Asia we had never heard comments like that and I hope i am correct in saying that we are playing better than before. Well, I got into a big argument and the meanest man said that if I cant take some comments from the crowd I should not be a performer. I was really angry, I really felt he deserved to be hurt - his friends supported him but one was trying to calm things down. I was very upset and triin was crying for the next 20 minutes so we gave up playing music and went and got ripped off in this expensive restaurant. I am cooler now, as i write the black sky is turning grey up over the skyscrapers of Osaka and somewhere there is a cockeral calling.
I still want to try to go to Sendai for the festival because it may be fun but at the moment i am quite bumbed out by Japan. It seems like I had arrived in the land where all the things I had complained about in china were in abundance: Coffee, a strong currency, privacy in public, orange juice .. well that was about all - but here I loose all the curious, kind Chinese and we are ignored by most people as we perform. No crowd, maybe one or two people watching from a safe distances. And everything is just too expensive to afford. On the money we earn we lived much much much better in China!!! many many times better. I hope this is just a bad first impression if not, I am considering making enough money to get a new china visa and for the boat and giving up on japan totally. I guess I got to visit my brother henry in tokyo but I found myself agreeing with triin that although we did not want anyone hurt, it would be a good thing in our little minds if china had invaded japan and this place was full of uneducated, funny, curious, unliberated and mellow chinese who returned our smiles! I hope my opinion changes. I think it is hard not to visit china and japan and not have an opinion on their common animosity but even with the police control, lack of freedom, sheltered and restricted possibilities of most people in china I like their current culture more than the japanese so far..... I hope this is just a bad first impression - if it was this bad in the first 2 days, I am afraid the next few days will just underline my suspicions.
3 days later in SENDAI
Up in north east japan. Taking express trains through the night at 250km per hour. Looking at the tiny streets below, clean, neatly lined, lights for shops and everything so clinical - all zooming past. We had bought the regional ticket but I allowed myself to be shown to the express train - just a stupid tourist! Despite the fact it is bullet shaped and it arrived at 11pm instead of 7am, Triin did not realise we had taken the wrong train until we were stopped at the barrier at sendai. I did not tell her so she would put up a more convincing protest if we were asked. The guard wanted 100 dollars from us and we showed them our 2 dollars in change, they told us to phone our couch surfing friend to come and pay up 100 bucks so we phoned Autumn who said she would meet us at her metro stop and then we ran. Instead of heading for the metro we ran into the shopping mall, jumped over a gate and a plastic hedge and found ourselves in a Play Station Major Intersection. Electric doors opening into halls full of Pochenko players and a white noise of whirling pinball machines. We bounced from corridor to corridor and fell out of the main exit into the black street rain. I upped my umbrella and hid in a queue of commuters. Although we were under a shelter others had their brollies erected so I did too and looked sneaky eyed behind it eksplaining to Triin why we had run, until our autobus pulled up and we scampered on.
Our couch surfing hostess Autumn welcomed us with sushi and smiles. I am going to give japan a week before I write a comdemnation to the UN and encourage all my chinese friends to invade with their cheap restaurants, limited education, smiles and money mad communism. We just harvested some runner beans and cucumbers from Autumns allotment and she is taking us surfing now so I am going to have a day off work.
All the best jimbino
(code name: James)
Sunday, August 26, 2007
JAZZ WORKERS LONG MARCH
Since April 2007, the Jazz workers have paid homage to the King of Thailand, playing his music in markets across his kingdom, crossed through Cambodian fields full of tourists blowing up cows with rocket launchers for 5 dollars a cow, ascended the length of Vietnam to meet Mr Diamond and Mr Strong in mad Hanoi, through the mountains of Yunnan, along the Red River and the Yellow River and waved their flag upon the peak of a mountain 5000 meters above sea level on the Tibetan plain.
After charging past the Terracotta army in Xian and the broiling heats of Chengdu they arrived at Shanghai where they worked hard on the metro and various bars about town to make enough money for the ferry to Japan. On a rainy morning they cycled through the wild markets of Shanghai to the ferry port and loaded onto the boat for the richest per capita and most notorious Asian country after Guadaloupe!
Jimbino pondered the challenge that lay ahead as he sploshed in the ferry sauna hot tub crossing the yellow sea to the sausage shaped island!
After charging past the Terracotta army in Xian and the broiling heats of Chengdu they arrived at Shanghai where they worked hard on the metro and various bars about town to make enough money for the ferry to Japan. On a rainy morning they cycled through the wild markets of Shanghai to the ferry port and loaded onto the boat for the richest per capita and most notorious Asian country after Guadaloupe!
Jimbino pondered the challenge that lay ahead as he sploshed in the ferry sauna hot tub crossing the yellow sea to the sausage shaped island!
Pleeaaasse phone me!!! CHINA CALLING!
We have now been one year in Asia - the first cities we visited were shanghai and beijing - there chinese would rush up and give us their business card - some of them hardly able to speak any english at all - one woman gave us a photocopy of her passport with her email written on the bottom. we received emails from these people the whole 6 months we were in laos, cambodia, vietnam and thailand saying - "when are you coming back to china? please phone me!" I sent a group email from japan and one girl sent a screeming email - how did you get to japan without coming through shanghai - pleeaaasse phone me!! - and i dont know who on earth she is! I explained that my office is a rucksack with bits of food floating about, an old book, money in 4 different currencies, unsent postcards and a torn map of the world ... so i apologise but our production is not always the most reliable! But, after sailing to japan two months ago we are starting to make plans to return to the middle kingdom - shanghai indeed - in about 2 or 3 weeks and then back to beijing. At first we had a pretty tough time in japan but i found 20,000 yen on the street - 200 dollars - and have earnt a little money so hopefully we will go back to china with some coin. We have been putting off returning to china as things get more and more excting in japan! But when we do get there it is going to be a little test of extreem memory.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
CHINGLISH
We have seen so many hilarious Chinese English mistakes that this blog is dedicated to them. From the WATERY COFFEE bar to the THE UNORIGINAL NOODLE restaurant where you can purchase Spicey Fork, the sightings are endless, hilarious and for real! "No Speelling" sign on decorative rocks (from spelliology - the science of potholing) and "NO STRIDING" sign on the ferry because they just had to put a stop to pasengers striding here and there - I think they meant specifically jumping off the boat onto the jetty! This sign board (above left) on a Chengdu building site propounds some real head boggling universal truths!
JIMBINO found his oatmeal vegan paradise in this strange restaurant in Xian (below left) while the nearby store front had some mind boggling Rastafari prophesies for sale!
But this sign on the boarding outside the EGO bar hits home with some heavy opinions!
CHENGDU
ABOVE - show in the french cafe in CHENGDU china
This artical goes with a video of us
www.youtube.com/godandanpizza
We are back in China proper. Triin and I hitched a ride with two nice tunnel engineers from YaJiang - the journey took 16 hours (over two days) and they took us to a delicious restaurant on the way and feasted us like emperors! They gave us dinner on the way AND before we were quick enough gave us 2 dollars for our cd when we were doing a street show. The main driver was food crazy and stuffed himself with a smile while popping stomache pills from eating too much the night before. His mate was quiet and firm - a bit like Laurel and Thomas Hardy! Only the day before we had been walking in the desolate mountains with two jackets on and now we are back in the plain of Chengdu in a huge city where most men only wear trousers and flip flops! There is one street here where they sell lots of hot-pot and I swear most men there are half naked! Lots of people have umbrellas against the sun! I gotta cut my beard down from winter size to spring cut. The chinese DUUUUUDDish drivers dropped us at the very door of our hostel and left us with their phone number and the standard frienly chinese order to phone if we have ANY problems
! We packed up our bikes and started sweating again after a week in the cool mountains!Right: Johney and Triin at Wenshou temple
We pulled round at our couchsurfing hook up (anyother plug for http://www.couchsurfing.com/) Douglas, a vegan multi talented chinese ethnic amerian musician! He was no less cool than we had hoped. We gave him 3 kg of mushrooms from a tibetan selling them on the side of the road which he cooked a huge vegan mess of delicious grub on our first night at his place and then we recorded some of my songs including Douglas soloing on the viola and peepa (Chinese lute) which sounded fantastic. At our gig in the little bar a few days later Jay, our new drummer Jay, a real live cat from New Orleans, appeared after literally weeks of confusion and near misses! His drums and animation are now driving the band harder than ever which is great. Shows have been so much more fun and the dancers have much more rythem to roll to! We are all mega pleased we hooked up... eventually!
We also met a very nice man called David - an American Jew who was staying in the same hostel for a few nights and very pleasantly and politely offered Triin and Jimbino to some adult entertainment in his private room that evening or whenever. His website is hilarious and has a few pictures of us http://www.californiaman500.com/
Another American dude we met was Dumpy, otherwise known as Dumpster. He took us bowling where Johney got three clean strikes in a row. He was great fun and gave us all books about killers and travel disasters. Here is a photo of him interrupting a low key street fight outside a muslim restaurant to ask for more salad!
Below: Triin and Calyforniaman500 and Dumpy
So after much music, a bit of recording, several gigs, wild streets shows and amassing a new fan club centred around Seadna and Cam, two tall western boys with long hair who dance half naked non stop through all our shows egging on locals to get down. On the first night we met the wild pair they turned the street show into a carnival! Slowly the Chinese locals got more and more excited - first the kids and then the middle aged men - there was one moment when about 20 kids were doing cartwheels in every direction like human fireworks and an old local whose name was Disco because he had been yelling at us to play disco music all night - stepped up and started conjuring up the dragon. He did not dance but fought a host of imaginary fiends, demons, flying worms, you name it he slayed it with alternating slow motion and top speed finger pointing and precise foot steps in a swirling crouching dance about the bumpy street. The dude ended up bartering his hand painted fan for our cd before cycling off into the n
ight!
We could have gone to the panda sanctuary where you pay a lot of money to see chinese zookeepers trying to get pandas to mate but instead we went to see the goast ride under the Peoples Park in an old bunker. An utterly tacky, half-assed entertainment in a mildewed bunker with bizarre rooms leading off with such decoration as a table stacked with earphones and a broken picture on the wall - nothing scary but a lot to mentally scar the sensative and perceptable!Left: Seadna table taco-ing the radio table in the haunted bunker ride. Above: Seadna and Triin in the damp bunker
The actual mechanical monsters were more amusing that scarey - the highlight was a laughing bearded man sawing a guy in two pieces down the middle but many were no longer functioning and the camera flash seemed to show them being half finished as well! 
To enliven the place we all decided to hide and scare other visitors! We could not find Johney and when we got out he told us he had laid in wait to jump out on us but had instead accidently petrified a bunch of Chinese tourists. We all had a great time in Chengdu and Triin and Jimmy arrived at the station 10 minutes before the train for Xian left.
Below: Cover for the jazz workers first CD - LIVE IN NHA TRANG
To enliven the place we all decided to hide and scare other visitors! We could not find Johney and when we got out he told us he had laid in wait to jump out on us but had instead accidently petrified a bunch of Chinese tourists. We all had a great time in Chengdu and Triin and Jimmy arrived at the station 10 minutes before the train for Xian left.
Below: Cover for the jazz workers first CD - LIVE IN NHA TRANG
All in all, what with the good friends we made, I think it is my favourite city in China! We purchased our tickets to Japan and arrive there on the 6th september after a brief stay in Shanghai!!!Right OUR MAIN MAN IN CHINA - SIMON!!!
love
Jimbino
xxx
MORE TIBET
Above: monks in a restaurant - Yajiang
12th August 2007
My friend Ludovic Hubler, the first man to pursosely hitchike around the world not spending a penny on transport and passing Antartica on the way, said life is not a restaurant but a buffet - you stand up and take what you want. I agree with him, life IS a buffet, but at the same time you have to fight the ninjas who are jumping out of every corner trying to make you give up all your energy and relax into the drugged river of conformity. A strange buffet! Only today, for example, I was offered horse cheese, one of the stranger foods I declined here in the Tibeten autonomous region of Western Sichuan. Yes, I am now 4000 meters above sea level - now that is a big dive! I'm gonna get on my speedo swimming pants and make several thousand tripple twists and salto mortals before I hit the brine!
Triin and I are in Litang, Western Sizhuan - I slept in the bus next to a woman who was mumbling over her prayer beads in Tibetan the whole way. We stopped at a restaurant - well, a stone house in a valley with some dogs, a few yaks and a temple not far away. To go to the toilet you had to judge the length of the chain holding two dogs to opposite sides of the gateway and dash through - something like a computer game except you dont get cramp in your legs but dogs jaws. I went to look at the temple because the food I had already in my belly was already not agreeing with the wiggly-woggly pothole-massive road. The temple turned out to be a nunnery - lovely bald nuns showed me around - i dont know, do you take you hat off or leave it on in a buddhist temple? The temple stood in the centre of a walled complex and the nuns had their quarters in cells along the high walls. There was a tree or two but otherwise all you could see were bare green rolling mountains and a sparkling stream running down the middle. However, when you look closer the earth is like a carpet of flowers. Star-like yellow and white flowers, little orange buds and clumps of colourful heather.
12th August 2007
My friend Ludovic Hubler, the first man to pursosely hitchike around the world not spending a penny on transport and passing Antartica on the way, said life is not a restaurant but a buffet - you stand up and take what you want. I agree with him, life IS a buffet, but at the same time you have to fight the ninjas who are jumping out of every corner trying to make you give up all your energy and relax into the drugged river of conformity. A strange buffet! Only today, for example, I was offered horse cheese, one of the stranger foods I declined here in the Tibeten autonomous region of Western Sichuan. Yes, I am now 4000 meters above sea level - now that is a big dive! I'm gonna get on my speedo swimming pants and make several thousand tripple twists and salto mortals before I hit the brine!
Triin and I are in Litang, Western Sizhuan - I slept in the bus next to a woman who was mumbling over her prayer beads in Tibetan the whole way. We stopped at a restaurant - well, a stone house in a valley with some dogs, a few yaks and a temple not far away. To go to the toilet you had to judge the length of the chain holding two dogs to opposite sides of the gateway and dash through - something like a computer game except you dont get cramp in your legs but dogs jaws. I went to look at the temple because the food I had already in my belly was already not agreeing with the wiggly-woggly pothole-massive road. The temple turned out to be a nunnery - lovely bald nuns showed me around - i dont know, do you take you hat off or leave it on in a buddhist temple? The temple stood in the centre of a walled complex and the nuns had their quarters in cells along the high walls. There was a tree or two but otherwise all you could see were bare green rolling mountains and a sparkling stream running down the middle. However, when you look closer the earth is like a carpet of flowers. Star-like yellow and white flowers, little orange buds and clumps of colourful heather.
We pulled up in Litang and chose a way too spicey bowel of noodles - I could feel the end of every single hair on my head and waves of heat echoing through my brain and making my finger nails tingle. Then we struggled to find a place to stay - one hotel cost 350 yuan but after a bit more searching we found a guest house for 10 yuan each. It sits on the main road above a yak butter tea cafe which looks nice but seems not to have anything vegan on the menu apart from hot water. I am in no hurry to go back to the room - it was dreary enough in the day time - four mattresses on pallets with strange traces of dripping down some of the walls, graffitti in chinese and tibetan and a blue light just strong enough to drink vodka by. Anyhow, it is a bed and I am tired. The 20 steps to the first floor leave me panting like a porn star.
We did a show and made 100 yuan - which was the cost of our bus journey and hostel so that is OK. It was quite a show - I have to take huge breaths to get any sound out of the clarinet - I think it is working no worse than it ever did, but it is hard to blow up here. When I get down to sea level it will sound like a trumpet and my singing will make Pavarotti sound like a shy footballer trying to remember his national anthem.
We did a show and made 100 yuan - which was the cost of our bus journey and hostel so that is OK. It was quite a show - I have to take huge breaths to get any sound out of the clarinet - I think it is working no worse than it ever did, but it is hard to blow up here. When I get down to sea level it will sound like a trumpet and my singing will make Pavarotti sound like a shy footballer trying to remember his national anthem.
Among our audience were a few really outstanding specimens, a woman in a long robe with a coin belt and sitting on her long plaited hair was a big fury orange hat giving her an extra foot of height! Some really dirty people - I heard Tibetans dont wash and I believe it now - some rough characters have mud and soot on their face and many of the kids have little Hitler moustaches of snot but all so smiley and nice. And although they may not wash much they sure do look dope - some really smart dressers - about 70% of the men wear a broad white kind of cowboy hat on one side of their head and never seem to put their arms down the sleeves of their jackets, just draping them here or there over their body. Many women also wear cowboy hats but many wear blamonge white cakes on their heads like the English aristocratic women wear to the big horse races or women of African origin in the Southern United States wore to chuch on Sundays back in the Charleston days... ahh! Wow - they look so good!
A few guys have long knives and pretty much everyone has long flowing black hair except the monks who have it cut short and often wear a long golden visor like a welding mask pulled up. The horse seems to have been replaced by the motorbike but they deck it out with bizarre finery - flowers on tall metal stems, streams of coloured leather from the handlebars, stickers galore and metal studs all over the mud guards, small carpets over the saddles, stereos blasting Tibetan folk techno and even a Chinese flag to add colour. These are riden by monks in full purple robes or kids looking as young as 12 years old. The skin of some locals is almost central African brown but with shining bright red cheeks shining like toffee apples! Some women take care to keep pale skin and they look almost ghoastly with their bright red lips and red cheeks shining out of sheet white skin. We took a stroll out to the plain - a totally flat expanse of emptiness with mountains rising up in the distance. a few horses and yaks stood about and a nomad tent or two. Very impressive.
* * * * * * * * *
I have been now roughly 6 months in china and only 1 week in tibet and although in all this time I have never dreamt of chinese my dreams recently have been full of Tibetans: trying to steel my passport, Tibetans staring at me, long hitch-hikes and more. We played again in Litang - 4000m above sea level and I found it much easier to play this time - I was not panting after each song like a dog in the sahara. Triin and I went for quite a stroll - up the mountain behind litang - I mean up and up and up. I think we must have ascended another 1000m when we came across a nomad camp. The dogs were barking but further away from the tents than us so we approached carefullly and asked for some water. The air is a little dry sometimes up here. The husband was about to set off on his motorbike somewhere but dismounted and asked us inside. The tent was held up with hundreds of ropes - like a Hornblower schooner - and the black material had an inside lining of black plastic bags to stop the rain getting in. I guessed that they collected the rainwater somehow because it was probably a little scarce up there on the mountain. One child lay asleep on one of the many blankets that lined the inside of the tent. Two others hid behind their parents slowly getting used to our presence. The father was the one who invited us in, his wife seemed to be the lady who gave us tea and some food and then there was an old lady who waved her prayer wheel constantly sometimes hitting the bell weight against one of the two inner tent poles. There were three children and one more young woman. The eldest child, a six year old girl, was really communacative after being at first very shy and she insisted on pouring my tea and laughed and smiled a lot and surprised me by suddenly spitting in the face of this other woman. Perhaps she was the second wife or even the slave. She stood at the back with a big smile but did not say a word or even laugh with any noise. They husband asked if we were hungry and we said we were a little hungry so they took out two bowels and opened a canvas bag hanging by the earth oven - it was full of a powder which they mixed with sugar and some hot water. Triin was amazed - "Hey this is Kama" - that is an Estonian finely milled powder mixture of roasted barley, rye, oats and pea flour. It is basically Tibetan Haferflocken or porridge. And just as delicious as its western equivalent! I declined the nob of yak butter but it still tasted great. I did some but bongos and crab walking and even a handstand which almost brought the tent down on the Sampa high - for that is the name for this basic meal in Tibet, maybe spelt samba! I dunno.
Anyhow, they did not accept the offer of money for the food or my huge pair of sunglasses for the man of the tent hold, so we departed and headed up the big mountain waving at them as we left and calling out TASIDELI - which means hello, goodbye, goodluck and everything in tibetan for me cos it is the only word I know, and Samba of course. We walked backwards up the mountain, more interesting and less tough than walking right ways - and very slowly we headed up. I even carried Triin a couple of times. I have a new walking stick which I found in chengdu and which is as precious to me as Frodo Baggins magic ring of power. Despite all my misgivings I let her carry it and felt my energy wane! Anyhow we made it to the top where a pile of stones stood and some tibetan prayer flags and a fantastic view over .. you guessed it... more and more and more mountains! There seemed to be some clouds closing in our way so we headed off down hill which was tough because it was too rocky to rolly-polly and Triins filp-flops fell off when she ran. We followed a little river in a steep gorge like the river than leads into Smaulgs misty mountain and apart from the many yak on the way we spotted some small round marmots running into their holes in the distance. The yak are really much smaller than western cows - about the size of a seaside donkey but with long tails that almost touch their necks and thin necks and strange shabby growths of often dreadlocked hair. Some have white patches but if they do have a white head their eyes are always ringed with black like an executioners mask. They run more often then western cows do and the bigger ones have long bending horns. Enough yak chat.
We made it back to Litang and after our last night here started walking out of town. We had walked about 6 km uphill along the empty road with all our bags before we got a ride. I think our chauffeur dude was some general in the army because he was very glum and only waved at a group of soldiers on the whole journey. He did not talk to us at all after the first 5 minutes during which time he told us he was on holiday which sounded as credible as our assertions of being from Zimbabwe.
Although he was going to Chengdu let us out where he stopped for lunch - that is ok - he had a comfy big american 4x4 but I guess we can find another ride as good. Litang was a town half tibetan and half chinese with a big army presence. The army baracks are guarded by young boys with what look like potato guns - but I guess they fire haki sacks or something. I dont feel able to judge on the free tibet issue but I was amazed by the amount of building work going on in the two big temples we visited. A lot of money is coming in from somewhere to make some of the most beautiful places of worship I have ever seen. Amazing wood carving and huge statues of buddha and fantastic wall frescos. really astounding. Unfortunately I left my camera charger in chengdu for the whole of this adventure so Iwas not able to take photos but I did many paintings
<- painting of temple in Litang by Vegan 
Lots of love
Jimbino
Decked in full-tibetan attire, white stetson,
long side buttoned robe and chinese army boots!
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Chinese Tibet
Above: Tibetan Dagoda on the top of a pass, river and discarded truck, typical Tibetan house.
Chinese Tibet
We left most of our bags bicycles to Chengdu and we're cruising around west-sichuan, which is more tibetan than chinese. Our route: Chengdu-kangding-xindujia-yajiang-litang. Those Tibetans look sooo dope! Such a pity we don't have a recharger for our empty camera battery. Jimmy has been drawing some pictures, but it's not fast enough to catch all the cool characters we see on the streets. The keywords are: cowboy hats, sunglasses, big coats with golden linings, messy hair/hair plaited over their head with red string/ hair with heavy decoration; long dresses, wedding hats... Besides nice dressing I think Tibetan people are also very beautiful. Today me and Jimmy had a 4 hour ride in a van over bumpy roads to Litang. We had a bad meal of too spicy chewy noodles with some riverweed and ????? and after that walked around for a while and found a cheap and pathetic place to stay. The police in these chinese-tibetan areas are much more strict, in the last town we we're forbidden to play music, because we were not respecting chinese culture and other rubbish like that. It seems also that they have somekind of a rule that foreigners must go to expensive hotels, because in some hostels they just don't accept us with an explanation including words like "police, foreigner, go to a hotel." But there's also many places that don't follow the rule, so it's not really a problem.
johneyhitching with his bass in the back of a truck!
Still we're having a great time walking on the huge grasslands and in the mountains and in the town itself as well. I've tryed out some yak stuff -yak butter tea, hot yak milk, yak cheese. Cheese was sour and tasty, tea a bit wierd but not bad and the salty milk I didn't enjoy too much. Johnnie went back to Chengdu to meet up with Jay who will hopefully start playing the drums in the band.
Triin-Tzi tzi-Tiesi. (my estonian-tibetan-and chinese name)
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Jimmy's ride - Lijiang-Panzhihua
Lijiang-Panzhihua
YUNNAN August 2007
I made 30km the first night from Lijiang - up over a hill and a little way down but it was steep, quite wet, dark, I had bad breaks and every outside bend stood on the edge of a precipice, so I decided to stop by a barn and threw down my sleeping mat and bag under the cobwebbed eves of the woodshed and slept soundly despite the rain - just enough shelter for Bino! It is always very satisfying to get a good nights sleep in conditions most people would think were squalid and would not even consider resting in.
The next morning I exercised my wrists and foot break system for two hours as I decended the steep slope to the roaring Yellow River. Over the bridge was a gentle incline - not as bad as I had feared. I cycled about 20km in the rain, stripping off to avoid getting wet clothes. The clouds were drying up when a spoke on my back wheel snapped - the second ajacent one. I was looking at it by the side of the road when a dude with a truck stopped and told me to get on. I was not against it since the road was uphill and I had been invited out of the blue. He wanted to practice his English. OK - fair deal! He took me up a giant mountain that would have taken about 4 hours to cycle up and we chatted about beer and God and rice until he dropped me in Chengshan. The third street bike-repair-man was able to save my wheel. A very crafty fella! He did not even try to take off the rear cassette - the others said they could not help because they did not have that tool - instead he just hammered the button end of the spokes flat into a hook and put them in the other way! Very sly, and it worked fine! I set off after a bit of lunch and purchasing some provisions in the local stupidmarket - namely a big packet of haferflocken (oatmeal)!
The road descended for the rest of the day. From midday I made about 60km hardly peddling at all as I wound down scenic mountain roads in the drizzle. Beautiful ride! I was getting tired however, even a small incline felt tough but I did NOT want to stop in the little town where I had thought to eat. It was alive with staring Chinese and seemed like I would not have found any quiet spot to rest the night there.
I pushed on hoping to find a quiet roadside restaurant a bit further on where I could surrepticiously camp out nearby - on the sly. The road turned uphill suddenly - uh oh! Then it really started raining and night started falling too. Things were not looking good when suddenly I saw some little bungaloes by the side of the road - no Chinese family in the country lived in houses with windows facing out. most farm houses have a huge surrounding protecting wall with all the windows facing an inner courtyard. I cycled through the pouring rain and asked if it was a hotel - yes - only 10 quai a night. OK! Ill take it. The wife cooked me cabbage and Dong Tofu (delicious - even in a soup) and I took a warm candle lit shower, dried up, changed clothes and eat! Very contented. The best hotel in the world if you ask me! Nice little hut to myself under a bamboo bush. I slept like a log in the royal bed and lingered with my book in the morning until the sun came out to dry up all the rain at 10am. I set off up another long hill - this was tough - it was about 25 km up up up but never so steep that I needed to get off and push but still hard! Especially after I had been invited to a lunch of boiled squash and pickled cabbage. Anyhow, by about 2.30pm I made it to the top with a lot of help from the euphoric and energizing Sydney Bechet CD and my new cd player, a really thoughtful and generous present to myself, thankyou Bino! From there it was down hill all the way to the next town. However, the jazz workers flag blew off the back of my bike so I had to park and walk and hitch-hike about 3km back up hill to find it wet and crushed in the middle or the road - but found!!!! Honour saved. I took a short cut crosscountry straight down hill avoiding the swerving road and then picked up my bike. By about 5pm I pulled into Da something - I had thought of stopping there but it was just too ugly looking to contemplate. Everyone was black with oil from fixing cars and there was no pretty marketplace or old builidings visible from the road so I set straight through. Soon after I came to a hill and a truck drew along side me and I motioned to request to put my bike on the back. The driver nodded. A really nice dude from Panzihua - we chatted a lot considering my terrible Chinese - he invited me to dinner and drove like a maniac over the bumpy road to Panzihua. We arrived at the town and his boss sent him on another job but the station was 30km from the centre of town so I thanked him and set off.
YUNNAN August 2007
I made 30km the first night from Lijiang - up over a hill and a little way down but it was steep, quite wet, dark, I had bad breaks and every outside bend stood on the edge of a precipice, so I decided to stop by a barn and threw down my sleeping mat and bag under the cobwebbed eves of the woodshed and slept soundly despite the rain - just enough shelter for Bino! It is always very satisfying to get a good nights sleep in conditions most people would think were squalid and would not even consider resting in.
The next morning I exercised my wrists and foot break system for two hours as I decended the steep slope to the roaring Yellow River. Over the bridge was a gentle incline - not as bad as I had feared. I cycled about 20km in the rain, stripping off to avoid getting wet clothes. The clouds were drying up when a spoke on my back wheel snapped - the second ajacent one. I was looking at it by the side of the road when a dude with a truck stopped and told me to get on. I was not against it since the road was uphill and I had been invited out of the blue. He wanted to practice his English. OK - fair deal! He took me up a giant mountain that would have taken about 4 hours to cycle up and we chatted about beer and God and rice until he dropped me in Chengshan. The third street bike-repair-man was able to save my wheel. A very crafty fella! He did not even try to take off the rear cassette - the others said they could not help because they did not have that tool - instead he just hammered the button end of the spokes flat into a hook and put them in the other way! Very sly, and it worked fine! I set off after a bit of lunch and purchasing some provisions in the local stupidmarket - namely a big packet of haferflocken (oatmeal)!
The road descended for the rest of the day. From midday I made about 60km hardly peddling at all as I wound down scenic mountain roads in the drizzle. Beautiful ride! I was getting tired however, even a small incline felt tough but I did NOT want to stop in the little town where I had thought to eat. It was alive with staring Chinese and seemed like I would not have found any quiet spot to rest the night there.
I pushed on hoping to find a quiet roadside restaurant a bit further on where I could surrepticiously camp out nearby - on the sly. The road turned uphill suddenly - uh oh! Then it really started raining and night started falling too. Things were not looking good when suddenly I saw some little bungaloes by the side of the road - no Chinese family in the country lived in houses with windows facing out. most farm houses have a huge surrounding protecting wall with all the windows facing an inner courtyard. I cycled through the pouring rain and asked if it was a hotel - yes - only 10 quai a night. OK! Ill take it. The wife cooked me cabbage and Dong Tofu (delicious - even in a soup) and I took a warm candle lit shower, dried up, changed clothes and eat! Very contented. The best hotel in the world if you ask me! Nice little hut to myself under a bamboo bush. I slept like a log in the royal bed and lingered with my book in the morning until the sun came out to dry up all the rain at 10am. I set off up another long hill - this was tough - it was about 25 km up up up but never so steep that I needed to get off and push but still hard! Especially after I had been invited to a lunch of boiled squash and pickled cabbage. Anyhow, by about 2.30pm I made it to the top with a lot of help from the euphoric and energizing Sydney Bechet CD and my new cd player, a really thoughtful and generous present to myself, thankyou Bino! From there it was down hill all the way to the next town. However, the jazz workers flag blew off the back of my bike so I had to park and walk and hitch-hike about 3km back up hill to find it wet and crushed in the middle or the road - but found!!!! Honour saved. I took a short cut crosscountry straight down hill avoiding the swerving road and then picked up my bike. By about 5pm I pulled into Da something - I had thought of stopping there but it was just too ugly looking to contemplate. Everyone was black with oil from fixing cars and there was no pretty marketplace or old builidings visible from the road so I set straight through. Soon after I came to a hill and a truck drew along side me and I motioned to request to put my bike on the back. The driver nodded. A really nice dude from Panzihua - we chatted a lot considering my terrible Chinese - he invited me to dinner and drove like a maniac over the bumpy road to Panzihua. We arrived at the town and his boss sent him on another job but the station was 30km from the centre of town so I thanked him and set off.
It was an easy enough ride - along side the steaming fast muddy river - the Yangze I believe! Wow - even going down hill full speed, I was just keeping up with the speed of the spanking watercourse. I bought a corn on the cob and some water melon and that empowered me! I pumped with renewed energy and the nightfall did not make any difference because Panzihua seemed to spread into several different towns all along the river - all with wild 18 century looking smoke stacks choaking out smoke and even flames. I liked it! Like Karl Marx Stadt in its heyday or the Rhurgebiet or Chemnitz, Sheffield, Nottingham or the Black Hill country backy in the day! Eye opening if you could risk the soot! Everything was black and dirty - probably enhanced by the evening misty clouds. On the cycle ride to the station I met a few wierdos: one motorcyclists trailed me for about 15 km - that is a long time on a cycle!!! I think he came to the restaurant I eventually eat at near the station and stared at me as I eat but i am not sure because he did not have his helmet or goggles on. Anyhow, I read and drank tea until staring-mjan left and then pulled into the yard of a block of flats full of exercise machines. I warmed down, twisting, shaking, wiggling and pushing on each machine as I brushed my teeth then I set up my sleeping bag under a MaJong shelter and tried to sleep. Too much tea and some mosquitos messed things up and then it rained very hard - eventually I moved the camp to a better position and made the mosquito net nice and big and got some good sleep before dawn.
At dawn the Shuffler came and made a few laps of me. An old guy who did slowmo moonwalking - shuffling around me without seemingly moving anything except his slow eyelids. That made me feel it was time to wake up - I did not want to turn into a Kaaba for every pensioner in the block and I wanted to get to the station to see if there was a morning train. I was not even sure I could put my bike on ANY train so when I had packed up and arrived at the station and found there was not only a train but a spare seat for that afternoon AND posibility to put my bike on it, all for 80 yuan (8 euros) I was quite delighted!
I had everything done by 9am and went to get some breakfast after which I visited the market. Quite an assembly of grizzly meat on display. I watched one man pick frogs out of a sack. The frogs were so big that when they perched on the palm of your hand there was not much space left. Here is the grizzly bit so I wont make too much of it: the dude then slit their insides down from the mouth to the but and pulled out their guts. I think they were dead then - he chopped off their heads and sold them for a pretty penny! Nearby there were very very ragged locals selling mango seeds! I saw one dog like lady, whose boobs were almost revealed behind her shredded shirt, slit the seed with somekind of metal blade and gobble up something inside. They looked quite poor!
I could have still used a coffee but finding a cuppa here is as hard as finding a man to sell you fresh headless frog or mango seeds in London so I collapsed in this internet site. It has been a good last few days but I will be happy to see the others in Chengdu!
lots of love
jimbino
xxx
boats in Panzhihua, all the rest of the pics are in Lijiang.Saturday, July 28, 2007
TIGER LEAPING TOAST
We are in Lijiang, in northern Yunnan, south west china. We went for a big walk for two days up Tiger Leaping Gorge. We were so lucky, the rain stopped the night before we left and the next morning was as fresh as Bizzy Bee - we were ready to walk! We took the bus to the gorge, bought the entrance ticket and then started walking up a little track with a French boy and his Romanian Canadian girlfriend. They were very interesting and Jimbino chatted non stop about books, psycology, Wales, mountains and Marx and only shut up for a really steep ascent when he had to catch his breath and concentrate on walking! It was a fantastic meader - we walked up to about 26000 m (ok - we started at 18000) and then along a rocky path on the edge of the mountain through water falls and up and down. Our two new friends had met in Iran - they were both travelling single in the same direction (europe - iran - uzbekistan - turkmenistan - tibet) so they hooked up. They were real fun! We strolled on chatting and laughing, stopping now and then to look at the raging water of the gorge below, the mountains with bikinis of cloud and grey glaciers or the pretty flowers and beautiful horses and goats by the path and many gigantic waterfalls along the way! It was like strolling in paradise. It was so nice to be chatting - I was distracted all the way by interesting conversation - normally when I am cycling I am quite bored most of the time! I wish i could meet some other cyclists like these guys - the road would be so much easier.
Anyhow, we came to a hostel around 6pm and drank lots of tea and eat some dinner and rented a dormatory bed forthe night. The people staying there were a big mix and some very interesting characters, a chicken farmer called Chicken, from Alabama with an accent like a sherriff in a John Wayne movie. Johney said: "Folk like that dont leave home often!" There was an interesting guy from Bruxxles who had lived in lots of French colonies and was real smart about politics - some boring English kids buying real estate in China - lynch the yangguedze (foreign devil) landlord!!!! - and an american dude who lives in south africa and has travelled a lot and laughed like a volcano and taught us Phillipino card games! He was hilarious. I stayed up late until the owners asked us to sleep and then I stumbled in the dark down to the dormatory by the conceiled light of the clouded moon sailing over the big mountains.
The next morning the clouds were having a market day in the gorge - patches of giant mountain appeared through a sea of white and then vanished again in a few seconds! Jimbino was quite spellbound and did some Chinese paintings with ink and brush which worked out well but only impressed him how hard clouds are to paint. He just can't paint clouds like those Chinese dudes - they are so good at it! We walked down the mountian after a tastey apple pie and rice porridge breakfast and then returned to our starting point the day before along the road at bottom of the gorge. Landslides had blocked traffic so it was quiet and easy going and we had to clamber over some impressively massive rocks, as we scrambled over them we watched the mountain carefullly for more lithic droppings. It was very impressive and mae one feel very small but full of life. We came eventually to the Tiger Leaping Gorge, the rock in the middle of the raging waters which the gorge is named after. Legend tells how the hunted tiger jumped onto a rock in the middle of the raging water and then to safety on the other side using this rock as a stepping stone, thus fleeing to safety in two giant leaps over the rushing apocalyptic crashing rapids. It is very hard to believe - unless the tiger had wings! Maybe in the dry season, but it would been impossible when we were there - the river was so fast and big and raging- before the gorge it is about 80 meters wide and is then squeezed to about 20m width by the narrow gorge and added to by the many mountain streams pour into it so it powers its way through like drain water in a torrential downpour! The water was roaring and crashing, blooming like a muddy brown flower exploding open and then shutting up again. There were white veins like the river was straining to the max and the water seemed to be like a bubbling and boiling monster cauldron but going too fast to get throthy! It looked like something in a Mad Martin canvas.
Triin and Jimmy were very impressed but suddenly discovered Johney had taken the rucksack with Triin's purse in so we had to hitch-hike back to Lijiang - the FIRST car stopped and the speedy Cantonese driver (who said he would never pick up a Chinese) zoomed us to Lijiang and left us near the hostel. Triin's feet were quite tired and blistered so we limped back home and that evening we met our first ESTONIANS of the journey! Triin could not believe it but they were not very cool - they played card games and drank beer and hardly raised their heads from the card table the whole time Triin told them about her adventures! She looked like she wanted to hug them all and she found it really hard to speak Estonian for the first time in 9 months but she said she would not talk to them for one minute in Estonia - they were the kind of kids she did not hang out with. It was funny. Anyhow, we did it - Jimbino said she wouldn't meet any other Estonians for the whole journey. Later they saw our street show and liked it and laughed a lot and we sang the Estonian song for them! Funny!
Heading for Sichuan soon!
Jazz workers plunge on!
Anyhow, we came to a hostel around 6pm and drank lots of tea and eat some dinner and rented a dormatory bed forthe night. The people staying there were a big mix and some very interesting characters, a chicken farmer called Chicken, from Alabama with an accent like a sherriff in a John Wayne movie. Johney said: "Folk like that dont leave home often!" There was an interesting guy from Bruxxles who had lived in lots of French colonies and was real smart about politics - some boring English kids buying real estate in China - lynch the yangguedze (foreign devil) landlord!!!! - and an american dude who lives in south africa and has travelled a lot and laughed like a volcano and taught us Phillipino card games! He was hilarious. I stayed up late until the owners asked us to sleep and then I stumbled in the dark down to the dormatory by the conceiled light of the clouded moon sailing over the big mountains.
The next morning the clouds were having a market day in the gorge - patches of giant mountain appeared through a sea of white and then vanished again in a few seconds! Jimbino was quite spellbound and did some Chinese paintings with ink and brush which worked out well but only impressed him how hard clouds are to paint. He just can't paint clouds like those Chinese dudes - they are so good at it! We walked down the mountian after a tastey apple pie and rice porridge breakfast and then returned to our starting point the day before along the road at bottom of the gorge. Landslides had blocked traffic so it was quiet and easy going and we had to clamber over some impressively massive rocks, as we scrambled over them we watched the mountain carefullly for more lithic droppings. It was very impressive and mae one feel very small but full of life. We came eventually to the Tiger Leaping Gorge, the rock in the middle of the raging waters which the gorge is named after. Legend tells how the hunted tiger jumped onto a rock in the middle of the raging water and then to safety on the other side using this rock as a stepping stone, thus fleeing to safety in two giant leaps over the rushing apocalyptic crashing rapids. It is very hard to believe - unless the tiger had wings! Maybe in the dry season, but it would been impossible when we were there - the river was so fast and big and raging- before the gorge it is about 80 meters wide and is then squeezed to about 20m width by the narrow gorge and added to by the many mountain streams pour into it so it powers its way through like drain water in a torrential downpour! The water was roaring and crashing, blooming like a muddy brown flower exploding open and then shutting up again. There were white veins like the river was straining to the max and the water seemed to be like a bubbling and boiling monster cauldron but going too fast to get throthy! It looked like something in a Mad Martin canvas.
Triin and Jimmy were very impressed but suddenly discovered Johney had taken the rucksack with Triin's purse in so we had to hitch-hike back to Lijiang - the FIRST car stopped and the speedy Cantonese driver (who said he would never pick up a Chinese) zoomed us to Lijiang and left us near the hostel. Triin's feet were quite tired and blistered so we limped back home and that evening we met our first ESTONIANS of the journey! Triin could not believe it but they were not very cool - they played card games and drank beer and hardly raised their heads from the card table the whole time Triin told them about her adventures! She looked like she wanted to hug them all and she found it really hard to speak Estonian for the first time in 9 months but she said she would not talk to them for one minute in Estonia - they were the kind of kids she did not hang out with. It was funny. Anyhow, we did it - Jimbino said she wouldn't meet any other Estonians for the whole journey. Later they saw our street show and liked it and laughed a lot and we sang the Estonian song for them! Funny!
Heading for Sichuan soon!
Jazz workers plunge on!
Saturday, July 14, 2007
DALI
The Jazz Workers are currently rinsing out in the streets of a littletown called Dali - in South Western China - the birth place to tea I hear! The mountains are big and the busking is bountiful and they found a very comfortable dirt cheap hotel where Jimbino spends all day finishing his old songs, Johney cooks coffee and practices bass and Triin draws, reads and sleeps a lot! The hotel has a huge coal heater with a mini industrial chimney (illustration by vegan right) and really comfy rooms for 1 dollar each!
The rooms have a fantastic view of the mountians on one side and of the lake and park to the East. Jimbino goes out early each morning in his new shepherds cloak made out of palm tree leaves - seriously neolithic - to buy some plastic bags of soya milk (Do Jiang), some bananas and some Yunnan peanut pancakes from street vendors, then after another lazy breakfast to the wild yells of old Chinese men playing loud games of croquet in the park next door, Triin and Jimbino may perhaps go for a walk on the mountain or a game of badmington in the park.
On their first such walk up the mountain - they set off for the summit, un-aware that it is 4000 meters high! Dali is at 1900 meters above sea level but still that leaves a long way to go! They started walking through a Chinese graveyard and up a very steep hill. It was quite tough work forTriin and my Jimbino's flip-flops were not happy. They came near the chair-lift and decided to try to hitch a ride - Triin climbed onto Jimbino's sholders and was trembling as the chair hit her in the chest. She managed to hold on and pull herself into the seat as she floated about in the air. Meanwhile, Jimbino had climbed up the pole and waited for the next chair to slip along. When it came within reach he threw himself at it and holding onto the side bar, twisted into the seat like a pirate attack! It was pretty scarey because the chair was waving all over the place and he suddenly found himself many meters above the ground! Only a few minutes later, he realised that there was a safety bar that you can pull down from over your head! Haha! He yelled at Triin to put her's down too! He also noticed that three seats behind them - about 40 meters away - two policemen were sitting - it was the most laid back police chase you have ever seen - all parties just chilled as they all chugged up the mountain at the same speed. They sat in the chair lift for about 20 minutes and found when they got off that they had only ascended 600 meters. They jumped off and hid from the Police in the monastery for a bit - they probably did not care but the monks were delighted to have visitors and behaved in very unholy fashion, touching Triin a lot, asking straight up for money and being noisy.
The peak was still 7 hours walk from there but the Chinese have built a beautiful cycle path into the some times sheer cliff edge along the length of the hills - incredible piece of work and what a view - a truely wonderful walk past waterfalls, huge canyons, wooded valleys, virtical cliffs with tiny little temples perched on them. To get up to one temple you had to climb a rough staircase with a sheer drop to one side and handles carved into the solid rock of the mountain to hold onto! Very hairy but quite impossible to attack - if that was the idea!!!
Photo of the temple on the cliff and the dragon pool
Jimbino took a swim in a freezing cold mountain pool - one of the seven dragon pools, where the 7 wives of the dragon of Erhai lake used to bath. Jimbino must have scared them away cos nonymphs came along to splash with him in the freezing cold waters!
Above: The biggest chinese chess set in the world on the mountains by Dali and a local temple!
They hung out with some rainbow family in Dali - there was a rainbow festival nearby but the Chinese police shut it down but lots of hippies are chilling in Dali in the meanwhile. They are pretty nice kids - very chilled out, almost rendering some frozen, but some are really cool and pleasant and have not succumbed totally to Nirvana! I guess there are more cool people among them than you find in your average collection of westerners in asia! We did a couple of shows for them and they were very enthusiastic but the guy whose bar they performed at (Dragonfly bar) and who had talked about 'supporting musicians' and promised the jazz workers a cut of the bar ended up giving us an insulting 5 euros each after a really hot show - and he did not even give us the full price for our cd! "Here's 2 euros 50 - OKEY?" he said walking away with the cd! It may sound stupid talking about money but he made us feel worth shit despite the fact that we need money to travel. His name is Brian and he is a cheap bastard! Thanks to him, for the rest of our lives we will be able to say after a low paid gig - well at least we earnt more than that stingy Brian gave us in Dali.
OK enough PR! We met a super cool rapper from Denver called Flesh (www.myspace.com/fleshinthesun) really great lyrics and dope rhytms, reminding me of Roby Wan Grip! I dug his stuff so bad! I hope we meet again!!! We soon leave for Li jiang - 2 or 3 days cycle north of here! lots of love the Jazz Workers
Photos left to right: morning after camping in a little temple
a church in china is a rare sight-Dali
chinese dude welding Jimmy's bike for 3 yuan
The peak was still 7 hours walk from there but the Chinese have built a beautiful cycle path into the some times sheer cliff edge along the length of the hills - incredible piece of work and what a view - a truely wonderful walk past waterfalls, huge canyons, wooded valleys, virtical cliffs with tiny little temples perched on them. To get up to one temple you had to climb a rough staircase with a sheer drop to one side and handles carved into the solid rock of the mountain to hold onto! Very hairy but quite impossible to attack - if that was the idea!!!
Photo of the temple on the cliff and the dragon pool
Jimbino took a swim in a freezing cold mountain pool - one of the seven dragon pools, where the 7 wives of the dragon of Erhai lake used to bath. Jimbino must have scared them away cos nonymphs came along to splash with him in the freezing cold waters!
Above: The biggest chinese chess set in the world on the mountains by Dali and a local temple!
They hung out with some rainbow family in Dali - there was a rainbow festival nearby but the Chinese police shut it down but lots of hippies are chilling in Dali in the meanwhile. They are pretty nice kids - very chilled out, almost rendering some frozen, but some are really cool and pleasant and have not succumbed totally to Nirvana! I guess there are more cool people among them than you find in your average collection of westerners in asia! We did a couple of shows for them and they were very enthusiastic but the guy whose bar they performed at (Dragonfly bar) and who had talked about 'supporting musicians' and promised the jazz workers a cut of the bar ended up giving us an insulting 5 euros each after a really hot show - and he did not even give us the full price for our cd! "Here's 2 euros 50 - OKEY?" he said walking away with the cd! It may sound stupid talking about money but he made us feel worth shit despite the fact that we need money to travel. His name is Brian and he is a cheap bastard! Thanks to him, for the rest of our lives we will be able to say after a low paid gig - well at least we earnt more than that stingy Brian gave us in Dali.
OK enough PR! We met a super cool rapper from Denver called Flesh (www.myspace.com/fleshinthesun) really great lyrics and dope rhytms, reminding me of Roby Wan Grip! I dug his stuff so bad! I hope we meet again!!! We soon leave for Li jiang - 2 or 3 days cycle north of here! lots of love the Jazz Workers
Photos left to right: morning after camping in a little temple
a church in china is a rare sight-Dali
chinese dude welding Jimmy's bike for 3 yuan
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