jamie doom

I have found since I have been living on the Island of Hainan that my ear and nose hair is growing at an alarming and equally adverse rate to the hair on my head. I don’t know if something in my diet or the tropical humidity, but this is phenomenon that is becoming a more certain reality with each passing week. I don’t ever recall noticing hair around my ears in the States. Granted they are white and fine, but still. I don’t know much; but sheesh, I’m twenty-eight years old. I shouldn’t be worrying about sprouting nasal and ear shrubbery until I’m at least fifty. It is more than a little disturbing. Plucking hurts. It’s a full time job trying to take positive action against the gangs of renegade follicles that have migrated from the perfectly suitable living quarters known as The Top of My Head to become Dwellers of the Ear and Nose Caves. And they move there to do what? To sprout out at the worst times, scaring away small children and beautiful Chinese girls, is what. What did I do to deserve this? Am I being punished for something? I used to make fun of my grandfather’s old European bushy brow sensibilities. Maybe that’s why. I don’t know if I can blame this on China. Maybe it’s my time—my lot in life –to be a bushy nosed Slovak looking fella. I haven’t noticed excessive nasal and audio canal hair in the other good people of Hainan, but I haven’t exactly been looking. I take heed to the whole, “worry about pruning the foliage sprouting in your own nose before you point out someone else’s bit of grass.” I’ll be sure to keep you all up to date. And…I thank you (and to think I find myself still single…unbelievable).

Camping went off without a hitch. Mountains were hiked, photos were snapped, new associations were made, a lot of chicken feet were eaten (none by me), and along the way I got a closer look into Chinese group psyche.

On Saturday I received a cheery wakeup call from Mr. Quan at 5:45. At first I didn’t mind because I incorporated the ringing of the phone somehow into the amazing dream I was having about ditching the camping trip and sleeping all day. But soon I realized that the phone really was ringing, and I answered with my standard 5:45 A.M. greeting:

“What?”

Twenty minutes later, wearing camping attire and a backpack, I met Mr. Quan at the front gate of the school. He explained that he wouldn’t have woken me up so early, but we needed to eat a good breakfast before our big day of hiking. He was so happy and chipper. He petted my backpack and hiking shoes and cooed like they were baby puppies or something. Soon we were slurping noodles and pounding hot cups of tea. Things were looking up. We were getting out of Haikou, away from our daily routines, and into the county. This was going to be good times. And so it was.

We met about forty other hikers at the hiker meeting place. We piled into two large busses. Even though the busses were large, they were equipped with comically small seats—well comically if you aren’t riding in them for six hours. I’m not complaining, just reporting. Around 1:00 PM we stopped for lunch at a remote forest ranger station/restaurant. “We need to eat a big lunch so we can have strength to hike.”

My fellow hikers ranged in age from 22 to 60. Most of them make up China’s silently emerging Yuppie class (Hush Yuppies?). Many of them were decked out head to toe in North Face, Columbia, Jack Wolfskin and Mountain Hardwear. A large portion of the camping club members had went the military route—full camo down to their boots. A few of these guys had improbably large knives attached to their sides. I wondered what it was like riding in a cramped seat for six hours with a knife that would make Rambo blush attached to your body. I didn’t ask. Others were just normal people (and judging from how they packed and what they were wearing) that may have got on the wrong bus. Some of the ladies were wearing nice blouses and stylish shoes. One man was wearing some snazzy slacks and a shiny, fake Italian, dress shirt.

One of the “fun parts” about the trip is that every new member of the club is assigned a nickname—and is called that from then on. As it turned out, this impeccably dressed gentleman owned his own clothing store. His nickname was “Ten Percent Discount.” I guess the ladies on our bus had cleverly given him this name in hopes that he could hook them up with shiny, fake Italian, dress shirts. You could suggest your own nickname; and if it was clever, they would use it. But ultimately the other hikers would usually decide one for you. One young man was named Dog Meat (his favorite dish?), while his girlfriend was named Disagree(a sign of things to come), another girl Papaya, and Mr. Quan was stuck with the name Bandit (evidently his hometown is famous for outlaws).

I pondered my own hometown’s residents (Asheville N.C.) and asked Mr. Quan the Chinese translation for “Trust-Fund Hippy.” I gave up trying to explain it when we got to “hippy.” Somebody wanted to call me McDonalds, which received a couple of chuckles. I proudly suggested in my broken Chinese the catchy name “Waigou Mogui” which means “Foreign Devil.” A still silence came over the bus, then mercifully the silence was broken with polite laughter, soon everybody was laughing politely “no, no.” Finally I suggested the name “Bu Zhi Dao” which means, “Don’t Know.” I explained that was my standard answer for most of the questions I would be asked. I proved this several times over the course of the weekend much to everyone’s enjoyment. So now I had a nickname and had eaten two incredibly large meals, so I was ready to hike.

But not so fast. After we ate, we had to drive three more hours to see a “big hole in the ground.” Well at least that’s how they Mr. Quan kept describing it as we were bouncing around rocky hair pinned curves with all the windows up and the A.C. off. I started to tell him that if I had wanted to get up 5:45 in the morning to go see a big hole in the ground with knife-toting guys named Dog Meat, I would have stayed in North Carolina; but I kept quiet once again, and happily we arrived at a nice cavern. We walked around the cavern, which had unfortunately been tagged by generations disenchanted graffiti gangsters obviously marking their hood.

“Oh, you have Bloods and Crips here too?”

Near the cave was a nice, scenic river. As Mr. Quan and I walked back down the road to the river, we met one of the G.I. Joe looking people. He had his twenty inch knife blade out and was punishing a small, pitiful looking bush that was growing by the side of the road. He looked up sheepishly then finished the bush off with a few more wacks. We gave him wide berth as he suddenly rushed passed us to search for more offensive vegetation.

I picked up some flat stones, so I could impress Mr. Quan with some good ole-American- stone-skipping-know-how. I proudly skipped a few rocks about ten times across the river. I looked up at Mr. Quan and nodded as if to say “this is what we do when we have the amazing combination of flat stones and rivers in America.” I turned around to skip another rock; but suddenly out of the corner of my eye, I saw a rock go whizzing into the river. It skimmed the surface of the water beautifully, skipping maybe twenty or twenty-five times before it left the river on the other side.

Mr. Quan is a rock skipping genius. I looked at the my own stone still in my hand and half-heartedly skipped a good four times. I declared Mr. Quan the best rock skipper I had ever seen. I told him that in my mind, rock skipping is an essential test of manhood, and he had passed with flying colors. He thanked me for all the praise and wistfully told me he didn’t get to skip rocks much any more.

Back on the bus and bouncing around more dirt roads, we headed further away from civilization. We stopped from time to time to take roadside pictures and fix flat tires. By this time it is getting to be about 6:30. I wondered if we were going to make it to the camp site before dark. Mr. Quan shrugged his shoulders. It hadn’t occurred to him or anyone else to worry about that. At about 9:00 at night we get to the place where we will leave our bus. At least it’s a full moon anyway.

We load up our backpacks with sleeping bags and tents and set off into the jungle to find our camp site. As we are getting to the edge of the jungle, on camo attired man wanders back and tells me through Mr. Quan that I sure am lucky. He says it a few times, while rocking back and forth on his heels. I bite. “Why am I lucky?”

“You are lucky because foreigners are forbidden to enter this forest. You must have got special approval from Beijing.”

I stared at him blankly. Of course I didn’t get special permission. I just paid my 250 RMB. What was I supposed to say? Well, I wanted to say a lot of things—things like—“don’t worry, I can’t see anything anyway because we are hiking through your secret jungle at TEN O’CLOCK AT FREAKIN’ NIGHT.” or “Why are we forbidden to enter the forest, because we might steal some of your amazing hiking/camping secrets— wait is that a guy with a suitcase*?” But instead I just nodded and kept my mouth shut.

*Inexplicably an older couple had brought a red suitcase on wheels. I wondered if they had visions of rolling it through the jungle. Luckily a strong young man hoisted it on his backpack for them and lugged it the two miles to the campsite for them.

Even though the campsite was only a couple of miles in, it took us a good two hours to hike there because forty-plus people of various ages were hiking single file through thick jungle in the dark takes time. We “rested” every fifteen minutes. The trail was wonderful when I saw it the next day in the light—a dense rock and root strewn trail that crossed over bubbling brooks several times as it winded its way through a jungle with hundreds of plants I had never seen before.

At the campsite we put up all our tents. Most of the people in the group had packed in with large expedition style packs (think Sir Edmund Hillary’s sherpas without the snow or the Everest). I thought this was like the large knives, a lot of overkill. What did they have in all those huge packs? We were only camping overnight. But as they began to unload their huge backpacks and rolling suitcase, I found out. They had packed a lot of food “because they would need their energy for the big hike (which by this time I doubted was actually a reality).” Yep, their bags were crammed full of food, and not just food but more specifically–chicken feet.

Want culture shock? Ride around ten hours packed uncomfortably in a bus with twenty people that stare at you and chant your nickname every fifteen minutes, hike two hours into blackness, and when you get there, hang out and watch forty-plus people suck on chicken feet while they put up their North Face tents. But in all seriousness, it was a blast! And they had forgot about the hiking song time, so I didn’t have to sing for them.

Before we went to bed around 1:00 AM they told us about the rare long-armed monkeys that lived in the forest. There are only twenty-something of them left in the world. We probably wouldn’t see them, but if we were lucky–very lucky–maybe we would hear them. OK, I’m just here to hike. I don’t need to see any monkeys to make it a success. I awake the next morning to the sound of monkeys calling. I wake Mr. Quan up and tell him to listen to the monkeys.

He says: “I don’t know. I have never heard this monkey before.”

“Well, it’s definitely monkey noise. And they are the only monkeys that live here, so it has to be them,” I say feeling suddenly like Jane Goodall.

“How do you know it’s a monkey noise,” he says.

“Whenever somebody makes a monkey noise, just playing around imitating a monkey…it sounds almost exactly like the sound we are hearing,” I say feeling stupid but also feeling very right.

As it turns out, we were hearing monkey noises. Around 8:00 AM, we hit the trail to hike to the top of Overlord Mountain. I felt a little better about the impending degree of difficulty of the hike because all the older ladies and a few fat people were staying back at the campsite. One older man was going which did cause me some consternation.

As it turned out, the old fella was a beast. During our six hour hike, he hiked our butts off. He made it up first and made it down first. I thought, when I’m his age I want to be in be that fit. Then I thought, sheesh, I want to be that fit now. On a side note, Ten Percent Discount had changed into a new set of snazzy clothes for the hike. I would see him in two more outfits before the day ended—each one clean and neat. And he was no less a hiking fiend than the old man.

The hiking was wonderful. It wasn’t too difficult, but steep and difficult enough to be interesting. It may sound corny, but it was just nice to be on the trail again. I like the familiar burn in my calves, leaves slapping my sweaty arms and my ears stopperd by the breeze rushing through the jungle. I made friends along the way. We chatted quietly, so as not to scare away the monkey. Several spoke English much better than they let on the first day. Then a wonderful thing happened. They began to ignore me. The trail and possibilities of monkeys was more interesting than whatever I was doing. And when I felt I had blended in with the hiking group, I became the happiest. I was pounding on a thick trail through forest, and I was in my own world with my own thoughts, and it all seemed familiar to me. We didn’t see any monkeys that day. But thirty of us had gone up a mountain because it was there and deserved to be hiked.

When we got back to the campsite we had a nice “I just got done hiking feeling.” The hikers were happy. Bags were opened again and insults and good natured jibes were tossed around with chicken feet and granola bars (by me). Soon we hiked back out to our bus. In the daylight, this hike only took us about forty minutes. Mr. Quan and I hiked fast and furious way ahead of everyone else. We used this opportunity to discuss the past two day’s events.

“Did you have fun?” he asked.

“Yes, I love it. It really made me happy to be outside. Did you have fun?”

He took of his shirt and grinned. “I love it. I can take off my shirt way out here and nobody cares. I have made new friends this weekend. I like it because there are no bosses or positions here, only nicknames. We are all the same. We are all out here to just enjoy ourselves. If I had my shirt off in Haikou, people would look at me and say I was a hoodlum.”

That night the bus trip home was long. We ate a huge supper at the same Ranger Station because we needed our strength after a long hike. We got back to Haikou around 11:30.

Mr. Quan looked at me and said. “I don’t want to go back to my apartment. I don’t want to go back to work tomorrow. I don’t want this weekend to be over.”

I nodded. I told him there were times in my life in the past when I felt the same thing—the dull ache of daily routine piling up on you. I told him, that is why I was happy to be in China.

“It’s all different here. I love it. Don’t worry though, we will go hiking again.”

“If we do, I’ll feel very lucky.” Mr. Quan said.

I nodded, but I already felt “lucky.”

I’m going hiking this weekend with the foreign affairs official at the school, Mr. Quan. Mr. Quan is twenty-six years old, cheerful, helpful smart, and extremely good at his job. I consider him one of my best friends here in China. Weekly, he and I have long, broad discussions about American and Chinese culture, economics and history. His generation is old enough to be traditional themselves but young enough to understand the next generation of Chinese coming behind them. He had provided valuable insight into China on more than one occasion. Last week when we were talking, I told him that I really missed hiking. Hiking is the one thing I haven’t done much of since I have been in China, and I really wanted to get out and do some hiking. We went online, and I showed him pictures of the Appalachian Trail and explained the entire hiking culture behind it. He said he also loved to hike, but that he never had time for “leisure activities” anymore.

Later that day he came to my office very excited. “Jamie, I have found a hiking club based here in Haikou. We can go hiking on the weekends.” He is a happy, upbeat man by nature, but he seemed especially cheered by the thought of getting outside and sleeping in the woods. He and I then made plans to join the hiking club. We are going this weekend to a mountain range called the Overlord Mountain Range in the southern part of the island not too far from the beach resort town of Sanya. There are a rare species of long haired monkeys living on that mountain. I’m taking my camera and will be telling you all about it here.

So all this week, Mr. Quan has been coming in every day to give me the countdown. Around five on Monday he showed up and said, “Only four more days.” We went to two “hiking specially stores” in Haikou. Neither store had a large selection of hiking gear, but I already have some good hiking shoes and a backpack. The hiking club will provide tents and sleeping bags. I picked up a North Face shirt for less than twenty bucks at one of the stores, so I was happy. Mr. Quan has some hiking shoes as well. We are going shopping for hiking food tomorrow.

Today, Mr. Quan came in and told me about his training regime for the hiking trip this weekend. He is already in great shape, but he told me he had been running more this week etc. Then he said something that made me smile and still makes me smile when I think about it. He told me he had been practicing “his song.” He then asked me if I had been practicing “my song.” I of course didn’t know what he was talking about.

“My song?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Quan. “At night there will be a campfire and everybody will sit around and eat and sing songs. I have a bad voice, and I don’t want to be embarrassed, so I have been practicing my song. You should have one picked out too.”

I didn’t know what to say. He was so sincere and honest when he said it that I couldn’t laugh. When I normally make plans for camping, it doesn’t occur to me to pick out a song too. To him it seemed like a rational act though. And he is really excited about this trip. In addition to being the college’s FAO, he is studying to get his law degree on the side. I get the feeling that he doesn’t get a lot of R and R. This will be a great chance for him to escape the office and hang out with the boys.

So anyway, I guess I had better pick out a song before the big hiking trip. I could sing the Chinese Standard English Song: “Yesterday Once More.” However after living here for five months, I’ve decided if I ever sing that song again on purpose I want somebody to put a bullet in my brain.

“Yesterday Once More” is omnipresent in China– lurking somewhere in the background, the volume about to be turned up. It’s mind boggling. It’s a national phenomenon. Everybody knows it. Everybody sings along on the chorus. I even heard “Yesterday Once More” Muzak in a restaurant which I thought was totally redundant. I don’t understand how they entire country doesn’t get tired of it. I mean we have stupid songs that are popular for six months, but then we move on to another stupid song. Not so here, unless you count “I’m a Big, Big Girl in a Big, Big World.” Karen Carpenter, you are missed…in China anyway. Maybe if she could have seen how popular her song has become in China, she would have eaten a twinkie or something at the last minute.

So these days I’m busy training for the big hike. I just hope my voice is ready.

So this past weekend I went to a Halloween party dressed as Mark Anthony. Erin went as Cleopatra. Normally, I get a lot of attention here in China because I am a foreigner and because…well let’ face it…I’m hot. But the fact I was only wearing a toga and sandals as I got into the taxi didn’t seem to register in the faces of the gawkers on the street. I was receiving the exact same penetrating gazes as usual. I may have stumbled on something here. I no longer can achieve shock value. In China, me being me on the street is shocking enough for everybody. If I wear a toga, they just assume that’s what I would usually wear. I am completely free now. Free to be me. Free from expectations. I can now throw off the chains of good manners, smart fashion sense, and hygiene…like…like…the Germans or the French. Ooooh. It’s disappointing when you realize your “cutting edge” social idea is already a way of life for people of two entire nations.

When I arrived at the Halloween party, my costume was a huge bomb. All the Chinese party goers kept asking me why I came as a Buddhist monk. I pointed out that my robes weren’t saffron, and my wrapping method was an obvious Greek style. If I spent more than two minutes explaining my lame costume, they would shake their heads and say with a big smile and glazed over eyes, “Oh yeah, I know, Greeks!” Which is roughly translated, “I’m humoring you because you’re an idiot, and maybe later you will speak more English to me.” In order to clear up the confusion, I spent much of my evening eating hotdogs—a decidedly un-Buddhist action I felt.

One of the Americans approached me and complimented me on my Julius Caesar costume. I told him that my lack of head garland should be a big indicator that I was not in fact Caesar. Everybody learns the proper equation in college: man + toga - garland = Mark Anthony. (insert compulsory Et Tu Brute joke here) I then complimented him on his costume idea, Tacky American Tourist, right before he told me he hadn’t changed into his costume yet. Costumes can be a cruel, messy business sometimes. The host’s of the party made jack-o-lanterns out of gourds, and they were great. Apples were bobbed, children were scared, and English was spoken the entire time—like a big scary English corner–so everyone had a good time. My favorite costume of the evening was a young Chinese student who came as an apple tree. She had spray painted her hair green and stuck paper apples all over herself. It was a simple and effective costume. There was no confusing what she was. Nobody mistook her for say a banana tree or a Hari Krishna. She probably went home very satisfied. For two hours she had been an apple tree…and people had understood.

I on the other hand had not faired so well. I had eaten way too many hotdogs. In America, we often eat the left over parts of animals in the form of a hotdog. In China, no part of any animal is ever “left over.” Realizing this forced me into a deep, almost meditative, contemplation about the composition of Chinese hotdogs. Also, I had allowed myself to become a bit irritated during the evening. My toga kept coming unwrapped at the worst times, like when I was putting on the mustard or having my picture taken with the Pirate.

During the taxi ride home, the other Americans were also quiet. I was riding comfortably in the front seat. The four in the back were packed a bit tighter. All the windows were down, and we were lost in our own thoughts amid the sound of swirling breeze, beeping taxi horns, and busy mopeds. Ten minutes passed; we rode on into the Haikou night. Even the taxi driver’s face possessed a wide-eyed distance . No doubt he was pondering the meaning of obscure side streets, monotonous meter beeps, and the constant leaving and returning of humanity. Then finally from the back of the taxi, the silence was broken.

“That apple tree was a really good idea.” We all nodded silently in agreement. I adjusted my toga.