kun shan

I stayed two extra days in Xi'An, doing nothing but sucking in the pleasant atmosphere of the aesthetic parks, the bustling downtown, the kited ancient courtyards. When I finally left, it was on an overnight train heading east, back towards Shanghai.
I decided to make an impromptu stop in Kun Shan, which, thanks to a new high-speed train making it a mere eighteen minutes' commute from Shanghai, has now been resorbed as a hefty addition to Shanghai's tumescent metro area. Thomas Friedman called Kun Shan one of China's four or five Silicone Valleys in The World Is Flat; it's a wealthy little suburb of about a million people, boasting miles of manufacturing plants and factories, in which a significant hunk of the world's semi-conductors, computer peripheral parts, cell phones, fiberoptics and solar energy panels are being churned out by propsering Taiwanese-owned-and-operated companies looking for cheaper land and labor than available in flourishing Fomosa. The Chinese nickname for its downtown, rife with business owners' expensive-looking spawn and Taiwanese cuisine, is therefore 'Little Taipei'.
My aunt and uncle, themselves both Taiwanese, own a pair of companies that profitably make and manufacture industrial scales and computer gaskets. They moved to Kun Shan nearly a decade ago to save on operating costs, and, due to the area's rapid growth, have prospected land and labor options in rural China and Southeast Asia. I spent a couple of nights recuperating from satiated wanderlust in their gated community, quiet save for the patter of two boisterous golden retrievers.

xi'an, continued.

Xi'An's other major ticketed tourist spots are the old Bell Tower (a traffic roundabout bedecks it now), the complementary Drum Tower (across the street, behind a bumpin' Haagen Dazs), and the Big and Small Goose Pagodas. The Towers mark the axis of the downtown area, around which spiral unpretentious live music venus, neat coffee houses and bars, and, most notably, the Muslim Quarter.

I spent about two days wandering through that delightful maze, tasting (lots) of local delectables - kicky, garlicky shredded pork, sandwiched between lettuce doughy, baked starch; lumps of sweet gluten sprinkled with candied dates and sugar, skewers of glazed fruit, heavy twists of cinnamon-laced bread. Open-air butcher shops buzzed with flies and smelt of blood and hooves, tourists, hawkers, children packed the narrow streets. Further down, Muslim women swathed in linens sold apothecary curiosities, brocade, lacquered treasure boxes, incense holders, jade and ivory jewelry. Less exotic stands resembled any American Chinatown, offering faux designer scarves, handbags, sunglasses, luggage. Overhead, kites flown by children in the Tower courtyard drifted lazily through a cloudless sky.
Negotiation is an integral part of the culture of Chinese commerce. Nepotism and networking dominate a disproportionate amount of white collar business. Western taboos like bribery and insider trading are more or less standard practice, although the recent influx of wholly-owned foreign enterprises, international joint ventures, and multi-national corporations setting up shop in China have curbed these tendencies, or at least brought them into question. I have mixed feelings about these deeply unegalitarian but firmly-rooted cultural practices being slowly strained out by globalization, but after business hours, on the streets, and particularly here, in the heartland, it’s clear that the customs’ spirit is still routinely exercised. Haggling, which frugal I had swiftly adopted and polished in urbane Shanghai, is a procedure that resembles a courtship. It goes something like this:

Customer: How much is it?
Vendor names price
Customer: What’s the lowest price?
Vendor names price typically at 20% discount
Customer names price up to an additional 50% discount
Vendor laments the economy; redacts price to a 30% discount
Customer restates desired price
Vendor laments current operating costs; redacts price to a 40% discount
Customer states desired price a third time
Vendor acquiesces; transaction transpires

Three times a charm; incredibly, buyers and sellers in open-air markets are almost always able to come to an agreement. It’s a fun little dance, if you’re up for it. Unfortunate are the ignorant who don’t know the standard script; unenlightened are the meek who back down at the first sign of obstacle.
I picked up some souvenirs (and man, was the haggling fierce in touristy Xi’An – the first bad sign was that the hawkers spoke English), and then sat down for a traditional entrée – a thick, hard slab of bread grated into a savory lamb broth – for dinner before retiring.

xi'an.

I so anticipated the impending trip to the States that I failed to venerate, in a timely manner, the nicest few days of my travels.
On the morning I left Tibet, I was starting to feel a little weary of the road. Two days spent retracing bumpy tire tracks from the Nepalese border back to Lhasa and the prospect of another fifty hours in a hard sleeper train were, together, draining. I decided to break the trip into two segments - a thirty-six hours detour to Xi'An in small ShaanXi Province, chased by two days of recuperation before taking a sixteen-hour train from Xi'An to Shanghai.
Xi'An, the ancient capital of terracotta-warriors-fame, can be analogized to the American Pacific Northwest, in that everybody in China loves it, but nobody (relatively) actually lives there. It's famously livable - a sleepy two million neighbors keep it cosmopolitan to a practical, but not overwhelming degree. An independent artistic stronghold, its film and music scenes are singular in a country where Taiwanese-imported hip-pop blare monotonously from every stereo, iPod, nightclub, commercial break. Easy access to the same bordering mountainous zones that made Xi'An an attractive capital for eary emperors maintain its people's modern-day reputation for being adventurous, athletic, environmentally-minded. Centuries of Muslim influence are evident in Xi'An's architecture, and, more eminently, its renowned cuisine.
I knew about all this in a vague sense from living in Shanghai, and, more explicitly, from the last few weeks of travel. Xi'An, for most backpackers, is the east-west prelude to Chengdu, which is the gateway to Tibet, XinJiang, YuNan. Still, I thought of Xi'An as just another Chinese city - a convenient rest stop, as opposed to a destination.
As it turned out, I ended up lingering for four full days in Xi'An. It was a place that, upon first viewing it from the train station situated underneath the Ming-dynasty parapets that defined Xi'An's first proper borders (the city has since bled out from under them to over twice its original geographic size), it was impossible not to like. Some of the sentiment was admittedly relief - neon lights, fruit vendors, bus stops and a panoply of drug stores reassured me that I was in China proper, again - but the rest lay in the ineffable sense of comfort I felt as I boarded a south-bound bus to my hostel. It wasn't dauntingly exotic or sophisticated. It was clean, bustling, well-lit, amiable. I thought of individuals who I had liked on impact; Xi'An was the first place to exude comparable charm and warmth.
It was Friday night when I arrived. My hostel was located near to the Big Goose Pagoda, one of Xi'An's four major tourism spots. It was only a short walk from the local bus station, but it took me nearly thirty fascinated minutes to cross through the Pagoda square and the adjacent park. Dim, tasteful paper lanterns lined elegant, well-preened walkways. Sporadic streams of water illuminated by subterranean colored bulbs shot up in grass and concrete clearings, to the delight of shrieking children. Late-night vendors sold steaming paper cups of cilantro-flavored stew, glazed candied fruits and roasted chestnuts. And music! I passed a live garage band of teenagers playing at a small crowd with no discernible age demographic. An old woman chortled falsetto Chinese opera, while a make-shift band of tired saxophonists and drummers swayed around her. I was most amazed, when, following the sound of traditional xun and flute melodies backed by thumping bass beats, I discovered, like some fairy bacchanal, a packed plaza of middle-aged Xi'Anese doing the electric slide in time to the music, which was coming from a stereo set duct-taped to a bicycle.
I was in high spirits when I checked into the Square Youth Hostel, and in even higher spirits when it became evident that the owners didn't have a strong grasp on the concept of a hostel, and had instead built a brand-new, luxurious hostel-priced apartment complex. My six-bed 'dorm', for instance (which remained unoccupied by anyone else during my stay) boasted a balcony, washing unit, and fluffy feather comforters. It was nearing midnight then; I strolled back through the park, sat down, and enjoyed the warm night air, full of fragrant scents and music.



After a restful night's sleep, I spent my first day knocking off the terracotta warrior museum, situated about an hour outside of Xi'An. Here, stoic stone figures stood guard in menacing formation in vaulted showrooms (just like in my seventh grade textbook insets!) The tomb of the megalomaniac Qin ShiHuang, China's self-declared first emperor, located about twenty kilometers from the warriors, remains unexcavated.