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We went deep into Hunan, a province in southern China about a thousand miles from Beijing. A few Communist party officials had to be wined and dined before Baifan, the producer of the documentary, was able to get us into this area to shoot. Lots of hosting and toasting. That's such a big part of doing business in China. I've seen Baifan in action and he was clearly a master at it. You have to be a bit of a bullshitter to do it right and he was proud to tell you he was a master bullshitter. He taught me a few of the basic points -- just enough so that I wouldn't embarrass myself or offend anyone at meals we had with important officials (and I, as the visiting Westerner, usually had the most important seat to the left of the host, or the second most important seat to the right (or the left?) of the host -- the most important seat generally being where the host would sit, the seat facing the door of the private room where we'd gathered. By the way, the least important person would sit in the seat with the back facing the door). I did a lot of toasting and felt pretty good about it but supposedly only barely scratched the surface of mastering the subtleties of it.

There were many stops along the way before we got to the village that we would call home for the next month but these two photos represent pretty well the extremes that we saw:



First is the picture of the dudes hanging out in one of the few air-conditioned spots in the grim 'frontier' town that was our last stop before we got to the village which was an hour away by cab. I don't know if 'frontier' is the most accurate description of this town, or 'grim', but it did feel a bit like a mining boom town. Indeed, more than likely, it is many times better than it was ten or twenty years ago, and might be on it's way to getting better still. But if this is a transitional period it's one that looks to these poorly informed eyes like a 'grim, frontier' town. Because there is a lot of mining going on in this part of China making a few people really rich really fast and this town in the middle of nowhere seemed to have all the disparity of wealth and hardship that comes with that sort of thing. But even though it was grim in some respects I met some really friendly people there and got treated by them to some good food so, yeah, I might be exaggerating, but I like the effect so I'm going with it. I can only speculate but I think it's pretty good speculation that these dudes were among the lucky few to be reaping the big rewards from the mines. And I can only speculate that the row of "hotels" that lined an entire long street of this relatively small town were not entirely meant for sleeping, but where's the fun in not speculating?



The second photo is the closest I could come to capturing what is the fun and charm of the dangerous business in China that is the sharing of rides with family, loved ones, boyfriend, girlfriend, friends on whatever two-wheeled vehicle, motorized or otherwise, can be found. I would roll down the window and start firing off pictures whenever we passed somebody precariously and casually sitting side-saddle on the back of somebody's bike as they whipped through crazy traffic. I never got the perfect picture but I like this one of the girl and her father. This was taken in Changsha, the capital city of Hunan Province and our first stop after a three-hour plane ride from Beijing. [I'm not sure what 'extremes' I was thinking of when I first posted and compared these two photos. Openness and sincerity against corruption and cynicism, maybe? Sit-up-straight or slouch? I dunno.]

That's Changsha in the photo below taken from my hotel room and a good look at the pollution that's being generated in China by the rapid economic growth of the past 20 years. It looks like this pretty often although this was during the summer and it's worse then. In August I went from Beijing to a place that's about an hour away by rapid train. Lots of country in between. I was looking forward to getting away from the pollution for a bit but even the wide countryside that we passed through was covered with this gray haze.






This rapid development can be haphazard. That big ferris wheel you can see was built in some frenzy of exuberance about the future but now it just sits there, barely used. Not that that's necessarily representative of Changsha's economy, because the joint did seem to be jumping even though it looked overbuilt. I asked if the many recently built buildings were more or less fully occupied and was told that they more or less were but the answer seemed a little vague or evasive.

Changsha is also the birthplace of the insanely popular Chinese version of American Idol. I was told that the distinguishing feature of ChangSha is its long and famous history of being an entertainment capital.

But no wave of western-style political correctness has hit Changsha's entertainment venues. Baifan took us to see one of Changsha's best variety shows. A good time and a good show -- like the Ed Sullivan show on a good night, maybe, but without Ed -- so I hope my Chinese friends will forgive me for focusing now on what Westerners might view as a negative.

Chinese hatred of the Japanese is not mild, to put it mildly. I don't condone this but given their recent history with Japan you can hardly blame them and it seems like it would be this way even if the government didn't occasionally fan the flames of this hatred whenever they find it helpful. Be that as it may, it did seem very strange to this Westerner's eyes to watch this skit making fun of and excoriating the dirty Japs, all done in broad slapstick by a troupe of dwarfs... Ah, China, your delicate beauties are ever before my eyes. I'm tossing in the photo where you can't see much of anything but a beam of light to give you a sense of how much the audience loved the Japanese bashing and how much excitement the dwarfs caused when they marched a little Japanese soldier at gunpoint through the audience.
















Below are some pictures of the overnight train we took from Changsha. We slept stacked three to a wall. Cozy. Many people say they can't sleep at all on these things but I slept like a baby to the rocking of the train.









Below is an alley in the 'frontier' town. This looked to me like it could be right out of one of those dystopian Asian animation flix so I thought it was a cool picture for that reason. But seen in context it wasn't quite as grim as all that. All you had to do was turn around and you'd see a fat clump of fruit stands right there bursting with color.






Here's an addendum to the two-wheeled ride-sharing photo from above. Don't know why this fascinated me so much. Of course, bikes are such an important part of being a city in China and I loved seeing the various combos of people on bikes and imagining the stories connecting them. I'm pretty sure this guy was actually working. Kind of a taxi service. I think I took these pictures in the city where our overnight train let us out. Back in Beijing I'd sometimes see little kids singing softly and swinging their legs straddled on the back of a bike while tapping in rhythm on their parent's back as they rode to school.





















And below is a kid taking another form of transportation to school. We later saw other trucks like this crowded with people on their way to the market. I took this picture as we were coming down the final stretch of our journey to the village in a cab. It was an hour-long ride and in spite of our weariness from all the traveling there was a lot of picture taking going on and a lot of marvelling by all parties at the beauty and strangeness of this place that most of us until then had only seen in photos.