Multiple near-death experiences in the Fuzhou taxi cabs.

I got into the Fuzhou airport and there was a giant banner greeting me. It read:
"Fuzou: No. One in China."

Everyone probably knows this already but riding in a taxi cab in China is scary. There appears to be no decipherable rules along the road, and yet somehow accidents are few and far between. Or so I thought until one day during a traffic jam I saw a scooter strewn across the street and a lone white helmet lying in the middle lane, 20 feet away from the moped. Intersections had no signals, or if they did they were wholly ignored, as every vehicle dived headlong into the four-way messes, somehow deftly maneuvering among themselves to make it safely to the other side. One day I even saw a car make a left U-turn from the rightmost lane. Bizarre. On more than one occasion I was so sure that the taxicab I was riding in would collide into oncoming traffic that I would audibly yelp from my seat, after which everyone in the car, including the driver, would laugh heartily at me. Silly me, we were only driving on the wrong side of the road at 70 km/hour. Yeah, right.

Two rivers.
 
On my 3rd day in China my uncle drove us out to another bustling city an hour away from Fuzhou where my grandparents were from. We took a few back alley streets to my Grandpa's old home where his brothers and cousins and their kids live to this day. My Grandmother was also from this city.



Anyway, as we were driving back my uncle showed us a small river right outside of town. He explained to us how my Grandmother had gone there to say goodbye to her friends before she moved to Shanghai to be with my Grandpa. She and her girlfriends had gone to that river and cried as they bid their farewells. It's strange to think that my grandparents, as ancient and venerated as they're made out to be, were once people our own age who had lives before they became simply known as the progenitor of a lineage. It also makes me sad that think of where me and my friends will be when we have to say goodbye. Karen may go back to Hong Kong one day, Carrie might follow the LJM to Japan, Janet is already in NZ... and God knows I don't want to be living on Felson for the rest of my life. I already know it's going to happen, it's just a matter of when.

The day after that, we took a 2-hour long boat ride upstream a second, much larger river to the resort site my father acquired outside Fuzhou. I guess my family is in the business of eco-tourism now, and I'm a shareholder. My uncle is the project manager. Here is where the 100-m bungee jump and 50-m cliff dive are going to be:



Sounds a bit sketchy but my dad assures me, "Safety is the No. One Priority"

It's 4am and I am wide awake. Unlike my wiser traveller compatriots, I had neither the stamina to stay up the whole night before I departed from HK, nor to remain awake until a regular hour once I arrived back in LA. Now I am fated to type feverishly, dreaming of a Double-Double, hunched over my computer before sunrise. (I missed it dearly while I was away. Both the sunrises and the Double-Doubles, I mean.)

The last entry I made is funny to read over. I meant to write more enjoyable things, like how I scaled the Great Wall of China or took a ride up a river in a Chinese junk boat. I suppose I was highly irritated after leaving Beijing but honestly I had a pretty amazing trip from start to finish. I first arrived in Fuzhou where my Uncle Sam has lived for 15 years. Even though it's considered a moderately sized city relative to Chinese standards, it was still huge. All of the building were built fairly recently, and would have looked nice except everyone dried their clothes outside their balcony windows, making even the most impressive Wilshire-esque edifices appear straight out of a shanty-town.

Two things I can't understand why Chinese people do not adopt: the Mechanical clothes dryer and the Seated Toilet. In weather as humid as China's, it has to take days to dry your clothes outside on a hanger, and I can't imagine them getting all that fresh when they finally do dry. Secondly, the problem with toilets on the ground is multi-fold. The challenge of squatting and peeing, a coordinated ensemble of events that involves the contraction of some muscles to maintain your floor balance in conjunction with the relaxation of certain other muscles to allow for the the flow of urine, is made doubly impossible with the carriage of 15-lbs of extra weight right above your abdomen. But like I said earlier this is only part of the problem. These bathrooms always carry an acrid smell apparently because people miss the target when they pee, especially women. And who can blame them? Not only do they have to squat over a filthy ground toilet, they need to fiddle around in their purses looking for a little pack of tissue because these "bathrooms" make you bring your own! Seated toilets would take all the guesswork out of peeing in China, if you ask me.

Highlights from my Vacation:
-Multiple near-death experiences in Fuzhou Taxi cabs.
-Two rivers.
-The Great Wall of China and Beijing Muslim Hot-Pot.
-Karen and Sherry reunited at last!
-The Beyond-loaded Asian rapper with the Universal Appeal.
-Shopping, shopping... more Shopping.

And more. I'll try to expound at a more decent hour.