Meet the Winner

The park ballroom dance practise wasn't the only shameless dance we have seen in China. The next day we took the 20-hour train from Chengdu to Kunming further Soutwest of China. As always, we were the common joke for the other passangers. When the conductor was checking our passports, some other passangers grouped around her and insisted seeing our passports. The next thing we saw was people circulating our passports and laughing out loud. We couldn't figur out what was so funny, our faces in the passport photos or the fact that we didn't come from the same country (this has been often hard to explane. "What, Switzerland? But she said Finland."). Anyway, one girl got especially fascinated by us - or to be honest, by Thomas. It was 3pm in the afternoon but she seemed to be already a bit wasted by the beer she had in her hand. Five minutes later she was suddenly in our cabin chatting with Thomas (me she totally ignored). "What's your name? Do you like to dance." And then "Let's dance!" Before we had time to react, she had put on Chinese pop on her cellphone and started... well... kind of lapdancing around Thomas (me still sitting next to him). The show attracted also other passengers around our cabin. Now the joke was on her (or maybe still on us, who knows). Thomas as a gentleman tried to stay as polite as he could in that situation. "You dance really well, but maybe you can continue it later", he said, already blushing because of the unwanted attention. Finally, the girl understood the dance was leading nowhere and left. We decided to lock the door for the night - just in case. After all, it was 11.11. - the famous singles' day in China. Two ones are supposed to equal two and two ones made the date especially lucky.

Also in the city of Chengdu, meeting the Chinese went hand in hand them being a bit  tipsy. Like we all know, speaking languages gets easier during the dark hours and only way for us to communicate with the locals is to speak English (or Russian, like with the guy in the park). This brings us back to Friday night in Chengdu when we tried again our luck to meet the locals.

First we had dinner at the Tibetan neighbourhood of the southeast Chengdu which hosts some authentic Tibetan cuisine. After all, the province Sichuan (or Yunnan) is the closest you can get to Tibetan culture without the special travel permit you need for going to Tibet. Chinese visa is not enough, you need to be at least 5 people from the same country travelling together or a married couple to even apply for the special permit. China has strenghtened the travel permission to Tibet because of the recent tensions. Especially during the party meeting there have been problems at the Tibetan areas also elsewhere in China. At least according to the Free Tibet organisation, already several Tibetan monks have set themselves on fire during the past days to demonstrate the Chinese influence in their region. They know that the world's attention is now on China because of the party meeting so it's an effective time to promote their cause.
But China being China, this wasn't going to be allowed, at least not in the heart of Chengdu. We have seen an impressive amount of police officers in every Chinese city we have visited (serious environmental problems and the unequal distribution of wealth have incresed the demonstrations in China during the past five years. China now spends more money on maintaining the inner harmony, e.g. guarding its own people, than for defency) but the security was rised to a new level in Chengdu's Tibetan neighbourhood. There were police cars and minivans filled with police officers everywhere. Four cars in one crossing was a minumum.
Even in Beijing the security forces were alerted. One soldier attending the daily flag ceremony at the Tiananmen square was carrying a fire extinguisher. Just in case there was some Tibetan in flames.
In Chengdu, the Tibetans hanging out in front of their small shops or restaurants looked at the patrolling security forced amused. Indeed, there is something funny about how much China has to protect itself from its citizens. After all, it is supposed to be the People's Republic of China.

Despite the "alarming situation" (not) we had a lovely dinner in a small Tibetan restaurant. The food was good but as imaginary as you can imagine the food is up in the mountains (Tibet is mainly located up to 4000 meters). In other words, it was yack and lamb meat in diffent forms, usually wrapped in a wheat dough or in a dumpling. Good but nothing special.
While I was using the restauran toilet (and almost surprised a monk peeing), Thomas made friends with the Tibetans dining in the same place. The only message they got through was that our next destination Kunming was a bad choice for some reason. At least they seemed disappointed when we told that - maybe we should have travelled to real Tibetan villages in Sichuan instead of sticking into Chengdu neighbourhoods. Actually, it was our original plan.
Before the trip started we wanted to travel to some Tibetans villages in Chengdu or Yunnan, which are pretty popular destinations among tourists. But then, on the road in China, I started the book mentioned earlier "When a Billion Chinese Jump" by Jonathan Watts. (Already before the trip many China-specialists in Finland recommended the book but I could only find time to buy it in Beijing.)
The book starts by describing what tourism has done to traditional Tibetan villages, like Lijiang and near by Zhongdian (now Shangri-La, the new name mainly being a marketing trick; there's no undisbutable location of Shangri-La). These former Tibetan villages have been largely rebuilt for the use of tourism. The sensitive nature is under serious threat if not already destroyed. The traditions have been bulldozed under four-star hotels or changed into money-making tourist attractions. Like my friend Aaro described in his travel blog, http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aerotrevel/1/1249085682/tpod.htmlin some places, like in Litang, you can even pay to attend the local "funeral". In the mountain villages the tradition is to cut the flesh of the dead person open and bring the body up to the mountain for the birds to eat the remains. Despite being a logical way to treat dead ones (from earth to earth and so on), a group of tourist taking pictures of birds tearing the flesh seems more like a mockery than preserving real traditions. So we decided to skip these "traditional Tibetan villages".

A lot more eco-friendly way of travelling was to stay mainly in the big cities. If there are already 5 million people living in the city of Chengdu, what harm could two extra tourist do? After all, the "real China" is now based in cities. For the first time in history the urban population has outnumbered the rural population in China.

This brings us back to how we met the tipsy Chinese on our night out in Chengdu. After the Tibetan yack meat feast, we took a taxi to the famous bar street of Chengdu. With no language in common, the taxi driver confirmed the destination by demonstrating drinking.
Yes, that's the place!
There were bars lined up along the river that crosses the city. Every second place played Gangnam style on repeat so we chose one which didn't. It turned out to be a good place.
As a couple you usually end up drinking alone but not in this place.
Before even finishing the first beer we had made about five new friends, all of then local students of the Sichuan university. First we toasted with the guys at the next table, two minutes later they were sitting next to us, bringing more beers and trying to force us smoke non-filtered cigarettes. One of them could speak some English so we learned some important stuff in Chinese. Our new friend Yang teached us how to say "we are all brothers" in Chinese because "Mao said that" (no idea any more how to say it). And this was a guy wearing a smart shirt and an expensive-looking watch around his wrist.
Teaching Chinese was funny only for some time so we had to come up with new ways to communicate with our new friends. The common language was based on what we found in the Lonely Planet phrasebook. Luckily the Chinese seem to love games - and there were some dices on the table also this time. LeeLee (or LeiLei) teamed up with me and Yang with Thomas. It can be hard to learn new game without anyone explaning the rules (especially when the game is based on bluffing) but after around 30 rounds, we got the rules. No idea what the game is called but it was great! (Have to play that with Beat and Nicole in Burma.)
Of course, me and LeeLee kept winning - and not because she was cheating all the time. But it may have helped.