Mo Monestary Mo Blues

I'm sitting in another Internet cafe right now in Shigetsu, Tibet, but don't have much time to update this blog as my two German companions Rafael and Simon are waiting to get in and out of here as quickly as possible, probably because the combination of the high altitude (4500 meters above sea level) and the cloud of Tibetan cigarette smoke here are rendering the three of us akin to that old woman in the anti-smoking commercials who takes a drag from her cigarette through her throat.

The overwhelming sentiment from the bulk of our tour group of 10 is this: NO MORE MONESTARIES! Yes, what else should we have expected from visiting Tibet, you ask. Still, there are only so many yak-butter cauldrons that I can stand. The last time I left you we were embarking on our first day in Lhasa at the Drepung Monestary, where Richard the Brit was trying to convince us of the hilarity in throwing Tina into a large vat of yak-butter. After Drepung we headed down to Potala Palace, the Tibetan monestary of all monestaries that looms over Lhasa on its throne of stone. It was clear that at this point, our travel guide was working the incompetence angle, as she had somehow managed to purchase 6 tickets for 10 people. Before long, it would become painfully evident that she knew little about her people or her religion, as she began to answer questions as if she were talking to a group for the deaf. For example:

"Kun Kei, is this statue of a buddha or of a dalai lama?"

"It is a statue of a buddha."

"Which one?"

"It is either the buddha of mercy, the buddha of the future, the buddha of protection, or it's a statue of the 14th dalai lama."

We eventually found a German-speaking Chinese tour guide, and I discovered that understanding 30% of what he was saying was much better than listening to 100% of our own tour guide spewing bullshit at us in our general direction.

(I may be kicked out of here at any minute, so don't be surprised if I end with a sentence fragm

The Tibetans are coming, the Tibetans are coming!

Today is Day (1-2-3-4, yes) 4 of my physical and spiritual trip through the Buddhist heartland of Tibet. I am now seated next to smoking Tibetans playing various computer games at this fantastic Internet cafe in Lhasa, capital of Tibet. It has been a good few days. Where to begin? Well, how about at the beginning?

On Saturday Tina and I met at Hongqiao Airport in Shanghai to head to Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, which borders Tibet, where we were to stay one night before flying straight into Lhasa the next day. It was at this point that Tina suddenly remembered that she had forgotten her jacket at home. I've always wondered how people could suddenly remember that they forgot something, but the solemn look on her face suggested that I not point this out now. For those of you who don't know Tina, she is basically constructed (at 5'0) to wear big Gore-tex puffy jackets, so to see her without one in the face of camping at base camp Everest was also too much for me to bear...so I let it all out in a hail of giggles.

In the end, I'm a nice guy, and when we arrived in Chengdu I rang up a friend of mine who was a Chengdu native, and was returning home for the National Chinese Labor Holiday. Her name is Han Ting, and she was nice enough to point us in the right direction: Pacific Mall, where Tina was fortunate enough to find a puffy Gore-tex jacket and win two ceramic mugs in a raffle. We finished the night with a foursome surrounding famous Sichuan hotpot. where I ate pig and duck liver and drank warm Sichuan beer. Then we returned to the hotel.

A note about the rest of the tour group: 4 Germans, 3 Turks, and one very sarcastic Brit. My experience at Intel working with Tolga Kuru (the Mad Turk of Materials) is that Turkish people are the coolest people on Earth, next to Hobbits and Outkast. These three were no exception to the rule, and immediately set the tone for the trip when they got out of the airport at Lhasa and lit up their cigarettes, declaring that smoking was the best weapon against altitude sickness. Who cares what their reasons were, it was a cool thing to see.

Our first day in Lhasa was supposed to be a rest period, a time for our bodies to adjust to the high altitude (3500 meters above sea level). The first person to truly suffer from this was a big-bellied forty-year old German named Rainer. We drove to the gate of the famous Potola Palace, winter home of the Dalai Lama. Rainer and I decided to walk the 4 or 5 kilometers back to the hotel, and it was around the 1st kilometer that I noticed that he was walking slower and slower and conversing less and less. I asked him in my broken German "Bist du gut?" and you replied that the week before, in preparation for the impending altitude sickness, he had visited some specialists in Chinese medicine, and also went to an acupuncturist for the first time. Perhaps, he remarked, he was feeling a little strange in reaction to the needlework.

That first day in Tibet was filled with napping and complaining, as more and more of the group began to feel the symptoms of altitude sickness. Strangely enough, perhaps due to the sheer massiveness of my head, I felt quite normal, although walking up stairs was (and still is) quite literally breath-taking.

Day 2 in Lhasa was filled with activity, starting with a morning trek to Drepung Monestary, a home for monks and destination for local worshippers. I had not read much about Tibet or Buddhism, and in fact I had not even read our own itinerary, so everything was a surprise to me, from the dirty beggar children to the stands selling Oreo cookies outside the chapel. The Monestary is indeed a holy place, each room filled with prayer books and statues of buddhas, teachers, and dalai lamas. Monks are stationed in every room, helping the piligrms with their prayers and making sure that no tourists are taking pictures unless they've paid the requisite fee. All the pilgrims are decked in traditional Tibetan robes, and most of them are old, since the only people who have time to pray at monestaries every day are those who have already retired. Many of them were carrying bags or tubs of a creamy white substance, which I was told was yak butter. Every chapel has a huge cauldron of burning candles, and the pilgrims scoop the butter into the cauldron of candles while chanting. Our tour guide told us that this was a tribute, part of their prayer ritual, with the ultimate goal being the attainment of enlightenment. I wanted to rush out and get the stuff myself, but at the point the altitude kicked in and I felt plenty enlightened. Plus, the yak butter really smelled quite awful, not stinky but heavy and pungent. Little did I know that I would be surrounded by the stuff every place that I would go in Lhasa.

Suddenly, Richard (the Brit), who had been chatting quietly with the tour guide, ran towards the rest of us and told us to hurry. When asked why, he responded in memorable fashion: "The Tibetans are coming, the Tibetans are coming!" The early morning had turned to late morning, and throngs of pilgrims were making their way into the chapel rooms, chanting and scooping yak butter wherever they could. The idea of being surrounded by waist-high yak-buttered chanters did not appeal to Richard, and though I was titillated by the thought of it, the Turks quickly came and dragged me away.

The night is getting late here and I have a 10 hour drive to look forward to tomorrow, but there is plenty more to write about in regards to days 3 and 4, but I'll leave it for when I next find an Internet Cafe, which I believe will be in Kathmandu at the base of the Himalayas. Wow, it's crazy that I just wrote that out.

Guten Nacht, mein Freunden! (those four years of German in school are beginning to pay off, and you'll find out why in the next entry).

What the Duck?

Who says China is a patriarchal society? Well, it truly is, but the existence of "ducks," or male gigolos, is evidence that there's a small faction of women clamoring for their portion of the companionship by. Having heard about a "duck bar" in Shanghai, where female patrons went and paid for an evening's worth of company from some finely sculpted porcelain Adonis, my friends Keith and Mao and I decided to see for ourselves what these "duck bars," were really like. Furthermore, Keith, being one of the most sexually desirable men in all of Shanghai, was interested in filling out the application.

"Women stare at me all the time. I say it's time to start making them pay for it," he said. Of course, I'm making him seem like a self-absorbed lout, but he's really not. He just wants a 60 year old Shanghai-nese sexually frustrated grandmother with a monstrous beehive to be his sugar-momma. Or sugar-grandmama. But then again, who doesn't?

After making a few calls to our female friends, who curiously enough all pointed me to the same duck bar, we decided to head over and have a look-see for ourselves. When we stood in front of the bar, which was located on the 5th floor of some mall, we were unsure if this was the right place. Where were all the old ladies waiting in line to get in?

Then we saw a skinny orange-colored Chinese boy walk out in the tightest of leather pants and a shirt that could only mean "rip me apart, my Chinese queen!" Atop his mop sat designer sunglasses, and a cigarette sat between his pouty lips. He brushed passed us on the way to the bathroom, and all three of our gazes matched his every step.

"OK, this is definitely it."

We paid the cover and walked in. I think that a part of all three of us were hoping that the rumors we heard about duck bars were true, and that they would indeed be overflowing with young lonely mistresses of older rich men who were looking for thrills when their sugar-daddies were away on business or back with their wives. And of course, the old Chinese ladies that Keith coveted so. Instead, all we came across were tables and tables full of young men, all similarly decked out in the same fashion as the stud in the hallway: tight pants, tight shirts, and faces that belonged in gay porn magazines. Four of them sat at each table, most of them casually smoking cigarettes, the others just looking really bored. Appropriately, the music on the dance floor was Justin Timberlake, the prettiest of all the pretty boys. But worst of all, there were no women to be found at all, save for one, a toad-like creature in sunglasses who turned out to be the pimp. Needless to say, it was quite a surreal experience to be in the middle of this massive role-reversal. I kept expecting all the guys to start cuddling with the pimpstress, one on each side, with another giving her a back massage and another cleaning her glock.

I called the waiter over and casually asked him why there were so many men tonight.

"I don't know. It's odd, isn't it?"

"Is this a duck bar?" I inquired.

"No!" he responded, defiantly. "These are all customers."

I looked around again. Nary a woman, all men. There were about 60 of them just sitting and doing nothing.

"Tell me the truth. My friend wants to be a duck. Can you tell us who we can talk to?"

"Sir, I'm serious. These are all customers. I don't know why there's such an unsual amount of men tonight, but these are definitely not ducks."

Right. And I'm voting for George W. Bush.

I heard weeping next to me. I turned to Keith, who had his head buried in his arms. I asked him what was wrong.

"They're all so beautiful!" he sobbed. "How can I compete with such beauty?! These are the most beautiful men I've ever seen."

"This Jack and coke is really watered down," interjected Mao.

As I tried to comfort Keith, telling him that his hair just needed to be a tad spikier, the pimpstress received a call on her phone, then promptly stood up and did the Clapper.

CLAP CLAP!

15 of the boys sitting around us stood up, got into a single-file line, and followed the pimpstress down to a room in the back. 2 minutes later, 14 of them walked back. They had lost a teammate.

There's something to be said about this kind of objectification. Our sex are often criticized for engaging in thoughts and activities that render women nothing more than mere objects (beauty pageants, strip clubs, Anna Kournikova), all in the name of sexual equality. But wouldn't it be more equal if we just had more duck bars in this world? Then we could objectify away and not worry about the imbalance.

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, flaps its wings like a duck...then hopefully one day it will be my friend Keith. Jia You!