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!

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.

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 night!

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

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.

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.

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!

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.


johney
hitching 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)

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.

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.