January 25th: double chicken day in Guiyang

Day 131

Slept uneasily. The fried dumplings didn't sit right. My guts felt accordioned. We woke for complimentary breakfast, Chinese fare. I ate a few rolls, sipped some tea. Mike hunted down some herbal stomach remedy and some 7up. We stepped outside into a complete 180 of the previous day: overcast and cold. Boo. The temperature had dropped about 30 degrees, the sun went back to playing Salman Rushdie.

We ate at Dico's, a kind fo KFC knockoff, had chicken sandwiches and coffee, giving the old bowels a break from the daily onslaught of picy and such. The Dico's girls were doing some weird dance routine in the back dining area. The piped-in music, which played an every-genre Broadway version of "Happy Birthday" now just kept playing the same pop song they were dancing to. After the fourth time, we left. The novelty had worn off. We then wandered around marketplaces browsing, happened upon a huge indoor center where we purchased some elaborate carved wooden pipes for friends.

A square we passed was filled with children and adults spinning tops with bull whips. Bizarre sight. Like "discipline your toy" day or something. We also stopped by a music store, checked prices on guitars and ehrus. Back at the hotel, we had troubles with the key card. It wouldn't open the door, so Mike went down to tell them. The girl at the desk insisted it worked, so Mike returned and it still didn't work, having waited for the slow elevator 15 floors both ways to be in the exact same predicament.

I went down with my trusty phrasebook, told her the keycard didn't work and she told me, "I think it does." I gestured for her to come with me and said "Then you come and you show me," increasingly unable to conceal my anger. She sent the monkey-suited bellboy with me instead and the card still didn't work. He went away, let us in with a passkey and kept coming back trying different cards and at last one worked. The ordeal took about 45 minutes to sort out. Unacceptable. Having worked at hotels before, all they had to do was re-encode it to begin with, whether they believed us about its non-function or not. I suspect that's what they ended up doing anyway, with a bunch of wasted time and two dissatisfied guests to show for their "saving face/ not backing down in front of others" ways.

I felt a tinge depressed today, whether it was physical fatigue or road-weariness, or having reached the half-way mark of my time in China. I miss my family, my friends and my culture. I want to walk down the street without being gawked at, nor hearing massive phlegm conjures all the time, nor breathing in coal dust and prevalent spicy food air, nor hearing insincere parroting "hellos" all the goddamned time. Maybe it's the weather. My brain needs warmth and colors to function properly. I'm extremely thankful for Erin Rock and Matt and Lindsey (you are missed, kiddo!) and Mike and Heather. Without them I probably would have gone apeshit long ago. Everyone needs a fellow witness to this thing called life, especially abroad.

After napping, we took a cab to an internet cafe to feel something of a connection with our friends distant. Hotmail revealed I had 12 messages on myspace.com, which I couldn't access from that day. Nuts. We then took a cab to a supermarket, or so we thought. When we got out, a fruit stand and a liquor store lay before us. We turned around, but our cabbie had driven off. We walked around trying to stumble across one, ran into a KFC instead. We were hungry and not in the best of moods since we spent a 10 kuai cabride to not be at a grocery store. Once inside the two queues became one as one girl put up a Chinese "closed" plastic tent on the counter. A kid came in behind us, went up to her, and she removed the plastic tent, started waiting on him. I barked, "Bullshit!" before I could stay my tongue. It was the most blatant hurtful snub-to-the-Westerners I've ever witnessed. Mike was uberpissed and wanted to leave, but I thought that would be "backing down" so we stayed, forced someone to serve us, ate our Western crap food in sullen vindicated silence.

A cab ride back, and then we secured snacks for the train ride tomorrow. I watched some of "Dumbo" with the sound down because it was dubbed and had never realized how mediocre the animation was before. Slept.