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