Planting Garlic in a Beijing Hutong

The hutongs of Beijing are being torn down. They are thousands of years old. The people are left to find their own way in a world they do not understand. Thousands grow rich at the expense of the millions. Does this mesh with your idea of a Communist state?

Our world is becoming complicated. Cold War ways of thinking about Asia in particular are useless, damaging to our foreign policy. I wish more Americans would use their wealth to see, really see, our World, and understand that it is not as we were taught in school. Go and experience for yourselves, the lives of people, who except for accident of birth, are not that much different from you. Remember that; not that much different from you.

Tibetan Thanksgiving

This family took us in, hungry, tired, near hypothermia at nearly 15,000 feet elevation in Tibetan Sichuan, China. We are still thankful.

Thanksgiving is more than a holiday for us. Thanksgiving is a way of life. It is a value we carry with us each day. For that we can thank Claire’s mother Delee. Her life was cut short; we were with her, and it changed the direction of our lives, changed us to the core, forever.

In Asia one is constantly reminded of just how easy we Americans (Australians, Europeans…) have it, what good fortune is ours. Of the five thousand miles we have ridden our tandem in Asia, much of it has been where the lives of the people are a struggle. Most do not separate work and life, they work except when sleeping, and often sleep where they work.

So, as you gather around the turkey and dressing this day, remember the people who have less, and be thankful for where you were born. Send them good wishes, prayers, and a part of yourself, for just a moment this special day. Enjoy, as they would, be thankful this day; and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, be thankful.

It’s easy: just go to the right column of this Home page, and scroll down to article subjects, and click on 2009 Asia Adventure and it will take you to the first blog, Shangri-la; Journey into Myth, search for Reality.

When you get tired of reading, looking at picture or videos, you can just bookmark the blog where you are, so you can start where you left off, the next day, or week. At some point, I’ll have the posts on their own Adventures page, when I decide on a format.

Even if you think you’ve seen all of the posts, you will find things you missed the first time around. If you missed checking for a few days, you probably missed something interesting! With my short term memory, I’ll find something interesting! And don’t forget to look for our articles at Just One Opinion; many of them have basis is what we have learned during our travels.

Your comments are still welcome. Enjoy!

Man throwing a net on a backwater of the Mekong in Cambodia

“With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow – I have still joy in the midst of these things. Riches and honors acquired by unrighteousness are to me as a floating cloud.” Confucius

Before we began our Asian tandem bicycle adventure, I read Confucian quotes and often couldn’t relate.  This I chalked up to lack of depth on my part, and perhaps the enigmatic (to us) nature of Eastern thought.

Muddling my way through jet lag on our return, and as one friend opined, postpartum depression at the end of another adventure, I pondered the above Confucianism anew, and discovered I suddenly understood. Oh, I had known the surface meaning, from earlier adventures involving discomfort, danger, but not the full depth of his thought. I suddenly noticed that he says, “…have still joy…”  not “…still have joy…” as I had first read it. His meaning was hidden from me until I had eaten enough coarse rice, drank enough wood smoke infused water and slept sufficient times with my bended arm for a pillow.

To have a still joy, a quiet joy, a joy devoid of external condition, of riches or renown, is to have a profound joy, a lasting joy. I will look back on the past four months for as many years as I have left. I will remember the struggles, the discomforts, the challenge of the unknown, even the moments of  near panic, and I will smile. Confucius traveled China, seeking knowledge, seeking deep understanding. And Claire and I did also.

On this blog we have shared the light moments as well as the challenges and discomforts. I hope in coming months, as we integrate the lessons learned and share them, that you will be enriched through our seeking. And then I hope some of you will open a new path for learning, and seek out the adventure that fits your nature and capabilities. We all have the desire to continue to grow, to explore the previously unknown, no matter our age or condition in life. To suppress that desire is to suffer loss.

Here’s to your adventurous 2010, and beyond.

Happy New Year

Happy Christmas from Bangkok

Happy Christmas from Bangkok, from Bob and Claire and Lucky. P-bear, Lai Lai and Foster send their best wishes from Tucson.

We’ll celebrate by crossing the International Date Line on Christmas Day. Does that mean we get Christmas twice?

Happy Christmas

Claire and Bob Rogers

PS. See a video of us having a look-back at our Shangri-la journey from Bangkok, Christmas Eve day.

To be fair, the Red Army was always friendly to us. Many of the drivers of these trucks gave us thumbs up, we were just afraid to show the camera. Then they might have not been so friendly.

We often come across people who want to share their troubles, their very personal stories with us. Perhaps it is because we will pedal out of their lives, and carry part of their burden with us. They are right. This is the first time a person has been so bent to telling us his story, that he ignored or forgot that we could not understand a word he said.

One evening, after a hard day in the saddle, we made our way to the fandian at our small Chinese guest house. A man sat at a short table, on a tiny stool. He was bent and nodding. When he saw us he began to insist that we join him in a drink. He had a bottle of clear liquor on the table, and a full meal, untouched. We politely refused and ordered, but he continued his invitation. The waitress tipped an imaginary bottle behind his back to indicate that he was drunk and to ignore him.

He began a speech of sorts. It included numerous Meiguos, accompanied by thumbs up, meaning he liked America. We  politely listened for awhile and said several times, “Wo ting bu dong,” which means “I don’t understand.” This did not deter him and he went on with what increasingly became clear to us,  a tale of personal woe.

He was small, middle aged and Han, dressed in his Saturday night black and red athletic shoes, patterned jeans, and what looked like an army jacket, sans patches; perhaps he had been a soldier. As he got deeper into his cups, his emotions found expression in his face and hands. He touched his eyebrow, rubbed his hand from forehead to chin, shook his head. Once he traced a tear coming from his eye with an index finger, and even used it to show him slitting his own throat.

The three employees tried various ways to get him to leave us alone, and laughed quietly when it became obvious that we were trying very hard to understand him and failing.

There was something about the intensity of his emotion that held us. The expression of his being flowed unabated, as he desperately tried to get two lao wai to understand his pain. He needed us to listen. Even if we all knew we could not understand him, he had to tell his story. We had to listen.

Finally he sank lower on his stool as the alcohol began to take control, and we rose to leave. But we had to do one more thing – touch him. We both patted him on the back and told him it would be alright, things would be better. It may have been the first time he had been touched in a long time. It was all we could do. It was the right thing to do. We will remember it for a long time.

After a while, we learned to adjust our positions and use extra blankets to prop up our knees. We tossed and rolled through the curves and bumps of the night, glad to not be riding Zippy on these steep, switch-backed and largely unpaved roads. Being at the very back of the bus (not by choice), meant that some bumps launched me clear of my bunk, landing me in a completely different position than the one I’d carefully arranged. I finally started using my safety belt when, unable to sleep around midnight, I watched the bus driver pass fuel trucks on blind curves of a particularly mountainous road.

Lessons learned: Take advantage of every bush break or you’ll regret it later; Women: bring your funnel so you can stand on the roadside along with the men (ignore the curious stares), and never, EVER step anywhere you can’t see (I almost went over a ten-foot wall at the 2:00 a.m. stop and ended up covered in mud from catching myself).  Thirteen hours into the trip, we were just getting the hang of it, so you can imagine our surprise, when at 8:00 a.m., we learned we were already in Jinghong and and had to hastily offload and ready Zippy.  We didn’t expect to arrive until 7:00 p.m. and had planned to shoot a video, read, nap and enjoy the scenery. We’ll be glad to get back on Zippy tomorrow.

Another Transition

Hibiscus in Southern Yunnan

Woman cops a Nap while selling Chickens

Bob:
All we had read about these long haul sleeping buses was that the experience was torture. We are both fairly small people, and that must have helped us find reasonable positions on the tiny beds. We have a motorhome with two bunk beds at the back, and they are two feet longer and a foot wider than these bus beds. The scent was not as bad as it could have been; only one man insisted on smoking, out the window he thought, while we were stopped. I would have died in the old days when smoking was allowed anytime during the trip.

The road was very rough and I am glad we didn’t have to put Zippy through that section; he’s had enough of the fist sized rocks, deep potholes and mud, thought I expect SE Asia will provide more of that.

Besides the great change in plants and weather from 2000 meters down to 550 meters, we have noticed that many of the people do not speak Chinese, and many of the signs are in another language, perhaps Bai (Thai/Lao?). We will soon find out; off tomorrow for a few days cycling in the humid hills for the border with Laos.

I like the food here. The hot is a SE Asia hot, hot but it goes away after awhile, unlike Sichuan hot which lingers. We ate at a street fandian twice today: a bowl of rice topped with any mix of at least a dozen different selections. I picked a smokey fatty hot pork and a couple of vegetables. Yum. I think the best food in Asia is found on the street, but then we never eat at high end places for foreigners; we eat what the people eat.

We sat on a stone planter with construction workers on stools or squatting, shoveling in the good stuff. We went back this evening, tried some different toppings to the rice, and a Snow Mountain beer, as we watched the rush hour of mothers hauling young school children on bicycles, recyclers on their truck/tricycles, buses and motorcycles.

Small groups played cards on short tables under the palms, settling in for a long evening of street socializing. There is no place like Asia. I think we’re going to like this part. I’ll let you know if the hills are smaller after a few days.

Lucky Goes Tourist at the Three Pagodas

School Girl Stopping For A Read

View From A Street In Dali

Working

Quiet Street in Dali