Zebra Music Fetival review (Day 2)

Baoli Park, Chengdu

May 1-3rd, 2009

Zebra is the first music festival I’ve attended in China, and apparently, the first music festival in general for many of the attendees who made the trek out to Tulip Park, located next to the Panda Breeding Center in Chengdu’s northeastern suburbs. As it turns out, like everybody else I talked to, I was very impressed with the organization and crowd turn-out and participation.

The festival organizers have clearly done this sort of thing before: the park was well-signed, with ample distribution of port-a-loo and waste/recycling bin facilities. The main stage is truly impressive, with a powerful lighting and sound system, and carried the big-name pop and rock acts. The two smaller stages cater to specific genres—Panda (Xiongmao)—just like its Chengdu club namesake--hosts DJs playing electronic music ranging from drum-n-bass to hip hop, and the Deputy stage, organized by local indie hub Little Bar, hosts alternative guitar bands. Curiously, the festival’s Chinese name is “Robot,” and images of cute round robots abounded on signs and screens. 

The crowd, while a good mixture of families and backgrounds, was still predominantly young students and 20-somethings out for a good time. Beyond the music, one of the most interesting ways to pass the time was to scout out the fashion scene. On the whole, classic rocker apparel, including dark drainpipe jeans, and high and low-top Chuck Taylor’s were well-represented. Apparently, pork pie hats are all the rage, for both genders, and for girls, super-teased hair was making a huge comeback, alongside panda eye/Robert Smith make-up. I spotted one guy with a classic Moz-style coiffe and plenty of prerequisite takes on the traditional Johnny Rotten spikes, mohawks and emo fringes.

The best, and most puzzling outfit was undoubtedly a young bloke wearing a full-length Jesus-style muumuu. He’d also gone to the trouble of getting a silver hand printed on to the top of his shaven skull. It made exactly zero sense to me until a friend mentioned that some Cosplayers—in which one dresses up as Anime characters (this is Asia, after all)—were out in costume. Behind the main stage, a hippie-Africana drum troupe was banging away merrily, surrounded by a disproportionately large crowd of people. I figured this was because some of the drummers must have been foreigners, and given the sort of dread-rocking, free-spirited types who often make up such drum circles, they would prove the perfect spectacle to curious Sichuanese kids, a little more insulated than their east-coast brethren, busy forming impressions of these strange, wild-looking laowai all the while. It turns out though that a high-profile Chinese movie star was shooting a scene there, and folks had just swamped the place for a gander.

Music festivals in general tend to attract a diverse brand of folks, and I’m used to seeing plenty of spacey, tripped-out ravers and “permanent festival-goers” at Coachellas and other similar gatherings. But it was a trip seeing the reactions of locals to my fellow foreign friends. I spent most of the afternoon hanging out with friends’ Josh and Heather, who had set up a tent and camped the previous night. Josh and Heather—of the local rock band Proximity Butterfly—both sport spectacular dreadlocks, and locals come up often to have their picture taken with them. An Australian friend, Cam, also happens to have locks. While hanging out by their tent, he would also have locals come up asking for pictures.

“You know I’m not in the band, right?” he would ask.

“That’s OK. Can I still get a picture with you?” they would ask.

And because seemingly every Australian but me has dreadlocks in this city, our friend Jessie, would get the most wide-eyed looks of all. Blessed with fabulously artistic taste, Jessie has pink/blonde dreads, a number of tattoos and piercings, and was wearing a leopard-print dress and pink Docs…in short, she looks about as un-Chinese as you can get. While leaving the park that night, we passed a row of security guards in formation. One by one, as they turned to see her, their jaws would literally drop, eyes wide as a baby visiting his first zoo, in utterly confused, fascinated wonder.

As for the music: overall, it was quite good, without being some display of breakthrough artistic innovation. We came just in time to catch Reflector on the main stage, an energetic pop-punk trio who—from the bass player’s theatrical strumming to the lead singer’s snarling vocals—screamed Green Day. Such music is a good fit for these sorts of events—it requires little prior knowledge of the band or music to nod along, and the band’s fierce attack and tuneful songs carried the audience stylishly. The kids close to the stage were having a blast, bouncing along with double rock-sign fist pumps, and there was the occasional crowd surfer.

The band which followed, Underground Baby, sounded similarly Green Day-esque, if with a slightly more expanded pop-rock sound. It may have been simply that I was standing further away from the stage, but they lacked the intensity and magnetism of Reflector. The slide continued with VC Super VC, decked out in all-white, exposed-chest Bowie-era t-shirts, with hats and boas to match. Their songs moved even further into bland pop-rock territory, including a couple of contrived solo ballads.

All of the bands, however, lacked nothing by way of on-stage theatrics—from extended windmills to timed leaps and back-against-back 80s guitarist camera close-ups—it seems every band that played has earnestly studied footage of Woodstock and Live Aid. Watching these boys with their long hair, matching suits and skinny pants strut about, it felt like what I imagine it might be like attending a Chinese theatrical production of “Romeo and Juliet”: all the moves and lines are perfectly orchestrated, but it feels somewhat second-hand and inauthentic. But, rock and roll has always been about miscegenation and cultural borrowing (some might say theft), so in the end, who cares? The crowd certainly didn’t mind the moves one bit.

The best act on the main stage that night was surely the New Cools, who drew further back for inspiration to the sort of synth-driven quirky new wave of XTC and the Cars. Their lead singer had charisma to spare: wearing a neon multi-colored white tracksuit, he robot-danced and squealed bi-lingual hooks like “Everybody is here now!” (In English) and “I want to be a famous director!” (In Mandarin) As always, it was fascinating seeing how bands, as well as the jumbo-screens before them, split between Chinese and English. At one point, the screens flashed: “Make some noise!” and “Clap your hands!” sans Chinese. There was a delay of a few seconds before enough people caught wind and the crowd kicked into action. Also interesting were the public service announcements, which varied from: “You’re here to cheer on the bands, not to pick a fight!” and “Sing along, but don’t spit!” right through to the rather Chinese: “You follow orders…because you are Zebra music fans!” 

My favorite act of the day was Chengdu locals Mr. Chelonian (though I was informed that their name should in fact be “Mr. Turtle”). Either way, as last band on the Deputy Stage, they rocked with a sort of Guns ‘N Roses-meets-Peter Tosh swagger, jumping from bouncy reggae and ska rhythms to Little Richard “four to the floor” and Black Crowes-evoking blues jams. Such a rich mixture of styles displayed a kind of rock literacy and technical fluidity rare among other local acts. The singer in particular, has a smooth verbal dexterity unusual to Chinese singers, sounding like Brad Nowell if the late Sublime singer had grown up in Guangxi rather than Long Beach. I would also have to give their fashion style a thumbs up: the singer, in a loose polka-dot shirt, bandana and long curls, evokes Axl’s glory days, the bass player is all Slash, while both were off-set by the (excellent) guitarists Dali-hippie vibe. In such a way, they seem to neatly summarize the wonderfully eclectic hodge-podge of rock history that comprises China’s contemporary indie scene. 

Highlights from Flatnose: the Axis of Post-Soviet Totalitarianism tour

Ali Khan: From Delivery Truck Driver to Indian Don – Amritsar, Punjab

I met Ali Khan through my host in Amritsar, a pharmacy shopkeeper named Pankaj. He wore long, white kurta pajamas that washed gracefully down his rotund, teddy-bear shape. I had just flown in from Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, and was surprised at how refreshed I felt, back in the warm, chaotic streets of India. Having started off my journey at a Sikh wedding reception in Delhi almost three months ago, there was some sweet closure in finishing in Amritsar, home to Sikhism's holiest place of worship, the Golden Temple.

Ali Khan, referred to by others as "Babaji," meaning "Spiritual Leader", quickly took me under his wing. He proved a charming host: instead of crashing on Pankaj's couch, as is generally the case through Couchsurfing, Ali got me a free room at a nearby hotel, and free food at the M.S. Food Plaza next door to it. A powerful "fixer," known to practically everybody in the area, he devoted most of the two days I spent in town driving me around on his Honda motorcycle: to local sites, to client's homes, even to discuss trading opportunities between India and China with local wholesalers. But most generous of all, he opened up to me in a remarkably candid fashion, giving me a depth of insight into his profession, opinions and experiences that far less interesting people would ever care to offer.

If ordinary people have a problem, they talk to Ali. His power comes through his connections to high-ranking officials, and using this advantage, he gets people what they need—for a commission, of course. His three cell phones ring consistently. ("My office," he joked, referring to them.) While sitting in Pankaj's pharmacy, I watched an auto-rickshaw driver and his family come in, kneel respectfully before him, and ask for assistance with getting a doctor to inspect the driver's failing eyesight. They also asked him to visit their home, so that a neighbour they have been fighting with will stop squabbling.

"They just have to see that Babaji knows (the family), and their neighbours won't cause them any more problems," he explained, with a dash of boastfulness.

Coming back from the Pakistan border, where an evening show of patriotism runs nightly, we stopped at the home of a widow, whose husband was killed by terrorists. She sought a promotion in her government teaching job, but if she asked her superiors directly, she risked them demanding a huge sum of money or worse, to sleep with them. Ali could get her the promotion whilst saving her significant face.

Not all the requests he gets are major. When leaving a restaurant, the owner's son asked Ali to talk to his father about getting him a motorbike.

"I'll get you your bike," he responded.

In all the dealings I witnessed him attend to, Ali was never distracted or dismissive. He grants everyone an attentive, kind audience, and it is partly through his immense, natural charisma that I think he has become so powerful. Everywhere we went, people approached him and lightly tapped his knee, a sign of respect afforded to seniors in India. Some seemed to look upon him wearily, but most, even if they might fear him somewhat, displayed sincere affection towards "Babaji."

"Some people call me a criminal, because I deal in bribes and with goons (hired thugs)," he told me, unapologetically.

"But without me, how would all of these average people be able to solve their problems?"

A native of the troubled Kashmir Valley, Ali spent 13 years in the Middle East, working his way up from delivery truck to manager within the fast food industry. But after meeting his current wife, he moved back to Hyderabad in eastern India in 2003, hoping to work in a BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) center, using his fluent Arabic and English, or to open a fast food restaurant. After an unfruitful year of searching, he was unemployed when his sister-in-law asked him for help. A local don was illegally building on her land, a practice most people without connections in India are essentially powerless to stop.

Ali went to the illegal construction site, where he said he encountered about 25 goons, intimidating men who earn their livelihood through violence, or its implicit threat.

"You may be able to hurt me," he told them. "But I am from Kashmir Valley, and my family will send men to come down and destroy all of your families."

He was bluffing of course, but the local don bought it, and Ali was able to save his sister-in-law's land. Word spread fast of a new don in town, and soon people were approaching him asking for assistance in their own affairs. Without trying at all, Ali became a broker between the local dons--the same ones he had stared down previously--and ordinary people.

As his power grew, he took the extreme step of having a police officer fabricate a charge against him, imprisoning himself for 21 days in India's largest prison. There, he became friendly with five major dons doing time inside, and it was partly through them that he learned some of the extortion-and-blackmail methods he explained to me.

"I don't keep enemies," he explained outside the pharmacy. "I either make peace with them, or destroy them completely."

One method he has employed involves calling in false charges against an enemy, each charge being called in to a different police station. After being released from one prison (a good beating having taken place inside), the person is immediately arrested by the next station, and so on each day, until he agrees to submit to Ali. The police stations take the bribe, and people learn not to make trouble with him.

In a drunken rage, his neighbour in Hyderabad once tried to attack Ali with a sword, narrowly missing. Ali had charges pressed against him in Punjab, on the other side of the country, where the neighbour was detained for five months, while his family begged Ali to release him.

Exploiting the country's inefficient bureaucracy and utterly corrupt police force is fine and well, I thought, but how does he establish such high-ranking political connections, those through whom his power ultimately rests, in the first place?

Often enough, he laughed, through the same bluff he used against the local don in Hyderabad. Ali will call up a police superintendant or similar official, telling them that he knows their superiors, even if he does not. He doesn't disclose his intent to them, but merely takes them out for meals, and later on, drinking whisky until 4 am. By about the third or fourth session out, in the midst of their drunkenness, the official will have revealed some dark detail about himself that Ali can later use for leverage when asking favors.

"Illegal property, women, booze, drugs...every man has a weakness," Ali smiled. "And I am very smart at finding a man's weakness."

When chatting inside the hotel, waiting for Pankaj to open his shop, Ali showed me a photo of a young woman he kept on his cell phone.

"You see the mark on her neck?" he asked, unusually sombre for someone extremely convivial with those he meets.

"They used telephone wire to strangle her."

The woman was 19, a young bride who Ali had cared for like an uncle, buying her saris when her single mother could not, even sleeping in the same bed and washing her when she was already 17. Ali had helped to arrange her marriage to a very wealthy family. The bride murder though, was not over a supposedly insufficient dowry amount, as with other cases he has dealt with, but education. He believes the girl had gotten into a fight with her host family over continuing her schooling, and they had beaten her. Shamed and afraid she would complain to outsiders, they decided to murder her, then bribe the police and cover up the investigation, claiming it was a shower accident.

When the girl's mother called Ali after finding out what happened, he gathered 200 people to go to the groom's home. There they lay down on a nearby highway, stopping all traffic, whilst chanting the provocative slogan: "Pakistan! Zindabad!" ("Long Live Pakistan!")

But why chant "Long Live Pakistan?"

"Because if the media comes and senior police find out that there have been some pro-Pakistan protests in this district, the local police will be in serious trouble," he explained.

Having turned the police over to his side, Ali had the bridegroom arrested and the 200-odd crowd stormed the station, beating him. Presently, his family is paying huge sums of bribe money to keep him from imprisonment, and have hired a powerful lawyer (Ali knows him) to represent them. Yet for now, Ali thinks they will try to keep the groom inside for fear of revenge murder. Every 14 days after temporary bail, he sends a group of people to hurl insults at the groom outside court.

Ali took the murder personally, like losing his own daughter, and the rage is subdued but still clear as he retells the story.

"I broke every piece of glass in their house. The windows, the kitchenware, the TV...everything."

And even though he usually doesn't believe in killing, he has discussed the matter with the bride's mother, who has a 14 year-old son. As a minor, if he shot the groom himself, the boy would only be in jail for seven years, particularly given the connections that Ali can pull.

For a man who doesn't read or write Hindi, Ali wields remarkable influence over the handful of cities which he constantly travels to and from. But when I asked whether he preferred his current job to, say, an ordinary white collar profession, he responded immediately.

"If I could choose, I would like a family life like Pankaj's...maybe to own a restaurant. I don't want much from life," he confided.

"But I'm in too far now. If I don't do anything, people call me. If I sit at home, the police will ask for me."

It sounded surreally like a scene from a "Godfather" movie, except shouted over his back through the dusty, crowded streets of Amritsar, whilst he took me to the train station.

Besides, what would the cities that Ali works in be without him?

For me, a traveller who grew up with the chance to live and work in a society that offers opportunities and a system of rule of law that most Indians could never imagine, I find it difficult to consider the sort of brute street justice he metes out desirable. Yet for the hundreds of ordinary people that he has helped, sometimes on commission, but sometimes on donation basis, Ali gets them the dowry sum, the reduced hospital payment sum, the promotion...the small benefits that allow them to get by a little easier in a system where normally only an elite few pull every string.

On my second day in town, Ali took me to visit a former client, who was feeling unwell. Her husband and children treat him like family, and his concern for her, like his concern for Pankaj and many others that I met, went well beyond that of some stereotypical, cold-hearted gangster. I asked him if this empathy for others comes from his Muslim faith (A heavy smoker and drinker, he considers himself a "bad Muslim.")

He shook his head. "I've always had it inside me, ever since I was a child."

"Call me when you get to Delhi," he requested, before leaving me at the station platform. "Otherwise, I'll be worried all evening."

But before the train even arrived in Delhi, he was already checking in.

--

Mohammad and Mike: Escape plans, from the Mythic Cities of the Silk Road – Khiva/Bukhara, Uzbekistan

Mohammad and Mike are both keen on emigrating to the West. But where one has a plan, the other is simply hoping for something special.

Mohammad is Uzbek, but his English flows with a natural, American accent.

He studies English in Nukus, the capital of Karakalpakstan, which is an independent republic within Uzbekistan. I had just come from Nukus the previous day, having separated from the travelling friends I'd made first in Esfahan in Iran, then bumped into in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, and who were also travelling on to Uzbekistan. Nukus is home to the famous Savitsky Art Museum, which houses thousands of paintings by Uzbek and other artists that were considered unfit by critics during the period in Soviet history when only official Stalin-approved Socialist Realism artwork was allowed. I'd gained a quick, fascinating introduction to a land few people have heard of, let alone pronounce. We'd agreed to meet up in Khiva, famous for its slave trade during the mythic days of the Silk Road.

Mohammad makes money as a tour guide there, but had agreed to show us around free of charge to see some lesser known sites, outside the iconic mud-thatch walls that enclose Khiva's old town, from which the European tour groups that flock rarely step out from.

"Some of the old people complain that things were better during the Soviet times, but that's because they are lazy. They expect the government to give them a job," he told us, as we walked towards the Emir's old guest palace.

"Look at that girl over there. All she can do is manual labor, carrying that bucket of water. But I can earn money through my language skills."

As he showed myself and some backpacking buddies around, effortlessly rattling off facts all the while, he begun to quiz us on moving to London. Cost of living, opportunities as a Russian teacher, getting a student visas...in exchange for his insight into local Uzbek life and a free tour of town, Mohammad was learning how to make it to the promised land. A good trade, all in all.

In contrast, Mike, as he had us call him, was less smooth about his intentions. I met him through his friend, Sukhrob, the only local in Bukhara that agreed to meet up with me, a few days after we left Khiva. We went to a bar near Lyabi-Hauz, the peaceful square around a pool in the city's famed old town.

After less than an hour, Sukhrob left suddenly, apparently to take care of some sort of business. When we had first met, I asked Mike what his job was.

"Personal trainer," he'd responded with some hesitation, and Sukhrob had interjected to help him explain he works in people's homes. But soon after, he told us he was a school teacher, and invited us to speak to his class of 14 year-olds tomorrow. My travel partner Caroline and I agreed to go the next morning.

When Stalin carved up the Central Asian states, he handed them national identities where previously only semi-nomadic tribes and loose ethnicities used to exist. In Uzbekistan, Bukhara and Samarkand, two of the most famous cities of the Silk Road period, are majority Tajik speakers. So it was interesting to see how Mike, a native Tajik speaker who considers himself Uzbek, referred to Tajiks from neighboring Tajikistan.

"I don't like them. Tajiks are wild," he told me. "They don't know how to behave properly."

Hungry for a taste of Uzbek club life, I headed out with him, after dropping Caroline back at the hostel. Soon we were walking in the pitch darkness, out from Bukhara's winding, narrow old town streets, away from all the tourist restaurants and handicraft stores and hotels, and into the main political center, that separates old from new Bukhara. The utilitarian Soviet football stadium was on our left, new monuments, celebrating the rule of President Islam Karamov, and stark, rectangular glass government buildings stood on either side of us.

There was hardly another soul out, it was extremely dark, and I was walking towards a club in some posh hotel with a man I hardly knew. At some point, I wondered, will my good faith in strangers I meet online in Russian and Tajik-speaking, post-Soviet Uzbek dictatorships land me in harm's way?

The club felt seedy and desolate, and charged a cover I wasn't willing to pay for both of us. Mike had apparently neglected to bring any money, and on my shoestring budget, I decided it was time to head home.

After giving up his efforts to get me to walk to another club, Mike agreed to accompany me back, and soon the topic shifted to overseas friends. He spoke of two acquaintances that had made it to Australia, and begun to ask about his prospects of finding work there. Not wanting to get his hopes up, as with the many people who ask me to help them go to Australia that I've made on this trip, I told him that they only take skilled workers in particular fields, and that even then, it's very competitive.

"But what about other jobs?" he asked. "Like a construction worker, a car washer...jobs like that?"

Mike claims to have taught himself English alone, which would be quite an achievement given his relative fluidity. He begun to curse the Uzbeks who'd made it to the West for failing to help people such as himself to come over. This in turn led to a more general screed about how the people today are "too wild, rude and selfish."

As we neared the hostel, all I could mutter feebly is "Good luck with your dream," as he referred to it. But he continued to press me on the topic, using the euphemism "selfish people" to imply, well, me. Just as we reached the steps of the hostel, he gave it one last pitch:

"I'm still waiting for some one person to make my dream come true," he continued. "Maybe I can give that person a gift, like some money, and they can write me a letter to go to Australia..."

I looked to him, a young, pimply-faced man, hardly 20, likeable enough and with English skills far superior to most of his peers. He saw in me some golden opportunity he had to push for, and though there are millions of others just like him, just as there are millions of beggars who yearn for your change, I thought for a moment of saying something other than outright refusal.

Something along the lines of: "I can see if I know somebody," or "I'll see what I can do to help."

But instead, I awkwardly spouted: "Well, I'll see you tomorrow morning then," in reference to our earlier agreement to talk to his class.

Caroline and I waited for him the next morning for half an hour, and when Mike didn't show up, neither of us was surprised.

--

Hossan and Hassan: Smoking in an Empty Club in Tashkent

Where Mohammad and Mike are working on getting there, Hossan and Hassan have already made it. Well, at least out of Uzbekistan, which is no small achievement, given the amount of activity one sees at Tashkent International Airport, the most desolate, emptied airport I have ever seen. There, you cannot even buy goods in the local currency, Som, but must use Euros, Pounds or Dollars.

It is surely a symbol of the country's continuing struggle for national identity, when the national opera house, in staging its traditional Uzbek dancing performance, uses Russian to introduce performers, rather than Uzbek. But later that evening, having attended the performance, a mix of traditional dance with sporting efforts at belly dance, flamenco, samba and pop idol, I met Hossan and Hassan, twin brothers, at Diplomat-S, a club in the heart of Tashkent, Uzbekistan's Russified capital.

It was not quite midnight, and few people had arrived that Halloween evening. Almost all of the tables were reserved, and as the evening wore on, we were shuttled about by bouncers and bartenders telling us the few locations within the club at which we were entitled to stand.

"90 percent of the girls here are prostitutes," Hossan explained, and proceeded to educate me on prices and tastes.

"I don't like Uzbek people," he told me, "even though I am an Uzbek. They just want to f*ck each other all the time, for money...Kazakhs are better. I don't look Uzbek, so if I talk English to them, they think I'm a foreigner."

When I asked what he does, he told me he is a model and an actor. He pulled out an iPhone, and fast-forwarded through a video to show me clips of him punching a bag, talking to girls and other scenes from a film released in 2007 throughout Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. When Hassan came over, he showed me a popular Sprite commercial in which Hassan jumps into a pool.

He spoke of the model girls he slept with while modelling for over a year in Bangkok, of working for Diesel in Dubai, even of a short-lived stint as an English teacher in China, which happens to be my most recent job. Yet I can claim no affiliation with Christian Dior or Brazilian models, as Hossan does, with almost effortless cool.

"Why did you come back to Tashkent?" I asked, if he disliked the place so much.

"To get married," he said, matter-of-factly. At 26, he felt already past the ideal age for Uzbek youth to marry (23 for men, 19-20 for women) and he wanted an Uzbek wife.

"Uzbek wives are better," he went on. "If you marry a Russian or a Korean, they will want more things. But an Uzbek wife will cook and clean for you."

--

Park, North Korean refugee to Trinidad and Tobago, Coconut Product Seller

I have a penchant for providing biographical details to strangers that are outright false. In high school, I convinced my entire grade that I was moving to Perth, two hours away, and would never see them again. The morning back from holidays, one of my best friends punched me so hard in the arm I struggled to write in class. Different professions, unusual hobbies, the riding of kangaroos to work in Australia...if there's an audience gullible enough to believe it, who am I to deny them a good yarn?

So it was a match made in backpacker heaven when I found out that James, an Englishman I travelled in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, had successfully conned the Chinese into believing he was the drummer in an Eagles' cover band. Why the drummer? So he wouldn't have to sing for curious locals, of course.

In Iran, I found that many people thought I was Afghani, due to the large number of Afghani refugees and immigrants working there. In Uzbekistan, try as I might, people refused to believe that I am from Australia, continuing to tell one another that I am Korean. So, rather than fight it, I decided to become, in a story developed with James, an honorary North Korean.

Over pints in the Blues Cafe, an American-inspired bar in Samarkand, once capital of the legendary Timurid Empire, we hatched our tale. A refugee from North Korea, I had arrived on the shores of Trinidad and Tobago, where James, a native there, was a coconut farmer. We had gone into the coconut industry with a fellow travel partner, a half Sri-Lankan Englishman named David, who we concocted to be our spiritual guru. His sect, an obscure offshoot from Sikhism, replaces the Sikh turban with half a coconut, and we three were currently business prospecting in Uzbekistan.

"What's your name?" asked a friendly Russian at the bar.

"Uhh...Park," I replied after a lengthy pause, having decided on the spot that "Park" worked well in the case that I accidentally spurt my actual name.

The next evening, when James and I were delivering our pseudo-biographies to another bartender, she responded "Korean? Oh, our bartender is Korean too!" The back door swung open and sure enough, out she came, looking vaguely Korean. It was only then that I recalled that Uzbekistan, amongst other Central Asian countries, has a significant numbers of Korean immigrants that had been brought over during Stalin's reign.

My face dropped. The only Korean I know is "Anyang haseo!" and I doubted that would cut muster before a native Korean speaker. The game was up, and I was about to send our merry ship sinking, ever so embarrassingly, to the bottom.

"Speak Chinese!," James whispered frantically, seeing how speechless I had become.

Of course! I am a Chinese-speaking North Korean!

So, after asking if she was Korean in Chinese, the bartender didn't respond. But she wouldn't have known anyway. It turns out, thankfully enough, that she, like many young Koreans who grew up in Central Asia, does not speak Korean, (nor Chinese), but simply Uzbek and Russian. Off the hook! But only narrowly.

In their inability to speak Korean, with Russian names like "Sergey," who was my Korean-Uzbek taxi driver, I felt an abstracted but distinctive solidarity. I too did not speak any Chinese at all before moving back to China in order to learn it, and was quite happy to assimilate into Australian society, much in the same way that Koreans in Central Asia seem to have there.

But next time you're in Uzbekistan, if you're ever hankering for a change of diet, having tired of the plov (pilaf) and shashlyk (lamb kebabs) that form the staple of Central Asian cuisine, you can thank heavens they didn't stop making their own cuisine as you tuck into some delicious kim chi and bi-bim-bap!

And as for Park and his fellow enterprising coconut sellers, they too have been left behind in Uzbekistan.

(Written originally in November, 2008, during travels through Central Asia and India)

Flatnose On the Road presents: Dispatches from India!

The following were originally sent out as emails, but I thought I'd put them up for those interested. They're not technically about China, but I figured that this being my main blogging venue at present, I'll place them here for your perusal.

I traveled in India for about two months from August to September 2008, before heading for Iran, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. For more on Iran, please visit my site: couchsurfingiran.blogspot.com

--

"Dinner with the Commissioner" - Jodhpur, Rajasthan

When Arvind, my Couchsurfing host in Jodhpur, a city of 1.2 million located in the western state of Rajasthan, found out that I was invited to dinner with the Kiran Soni Gupta, he was amazed. He'd seen her name mentioned in local newspapers. At the time, I had no idea that she was the District Commissioner of Jodhpur, maybe the equivalent to being mayor of a city. At the time, she was just an interesting profile on Couchsurfing, who sounded like she was involved in good work regarding women's empowerment and poverty relief.

At first, we weren't sure if he should come along to dinner. I offered to call, but he rejected the idea firmly. But after his brother-in-law, who worked with her, vouched for her character, he decided to come and meet her, planning to then excuse himself from dinner. Excitedly, we washed and changed into our best clothes, before riding out by motorcycle to her house.

"Commissioner's House, Regency Road," she had told me, when I asked how to get to her place. "Everybody knows it."

The guards opened the gate, revealing a lush, shaded residency, redolent of Indian civil service opulence. It was grand by Western standards, positively other-worldly compared to regular Indian housing. We were seated in the waiting room, filled with Kiran's own artwork, images of her with George Stiglitz, former chief economist at the World Bank, Amartya Sen and other notable figures in international poverty relief, and a collection of degrees and awards. One of Kiran's personal servants brought out two glasses of water. After taking them off of the platter, the servant stood there awkwardly, bent half over, motionless. His pose resembled that of a crooked flamingo, if flamingos held silver platters. It took us a moment to realize that he would wait in that very position until we returned the glasses to the platter.

We knew that the Commissioner herself was coming when another servant returned to place three cell phones on a sofa. He lined them up precisely; parallel to each other, with one separated from the other two, before leaving the room. Arvind and I looked at each other incredulously, and I fought back a grin at the absurd pomposity of their service. In an earlier time, they probably would have worn penguin suits and bow ties, but in this day and age they were more casually dressed in long-sleeved shirts and trousers.

Soon enough, Kiran herself arrived, along with her 11-year-old son, Vishnu. Despite our initial apprehension, we found her to be incredibly inviting, convincing Arvind to stay for dinner despite his polite protestations. Dinner was suitably immense, with over a dozen different dishes that varied from local Indian to Chinese to Western, from vegetable Manchurians (Indian-Chinese-style veggie meatballs) to penne pasta to daal and chapatti. Kiran was warm and genuine, happy to speak at length about her accomplishments but also asking—and actually considering—our own careers and concerns. Her school-age daughter and son sat with us most of the time, though her husband, District Commissioner of Jaipur, a neighboring city, was not around.

We discussed her decision to return back to India after completing her graduate program at Harvard, while most of her peers choose to take on better-paying jobs in America.

"There's no other job in which I know I can make such a difference in people's lives," she explained. Such a line, so clichéd in the hands of ordinary public servants, sounded so genuine coming from this radiant woman. She also talked of the difficulties involved in getting villagers in Rajasthan—regarded as socially backward by other Indians—to let their girls leave the village to carry on their education.

Remarkably, she hosts and meets Couchsurfers often, despite her busy schedule. Even when away on business, she makes an effort to have some of her servants show guests around town. And beyond us foreigners, she regularly hosts local citizens, such as my own host, Arvind, explaining that "her door is open to everyone." And while elected officials regularly make such claims, I got the feeling that Kiran actually meant it.

On the way home, Arvind was grinning from ear to ear.

"This is the first time I've seen someone from the government like that," he gushed, explaining that all his previous encounters with public servants have been negative.

They normally treat you as if you're below their "dignity," he said.

"If India had more people in government like Kiran, even just 10 percent, this country would be so much better," he gushed.

--

"Black Town/White Town" - Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu

Arriving in Pondicherry, a former French colonial possession on the east coast of Tamil Nadu, the heart of India's south, brought difficult questions to mind. It is split, historically, into "White Town" and "Black Town," where the French and the locals respectively stayed, and the schism remains stark today. What they now call the French district, is a charming seaside village of neat, elegantly maintained cathedrals, hotels and homes in delicate pastel hues, all built in an architectural style unmistakably French. Its quietude and beauty immediately felt a world away in the Tamil part, split off by Canal Street, which is as loud, crowded and dirty as any Indian town, where beggars constantly hound and a combination of open sewers and piles of rubbish combine to form a smell quite undesirably memorable.

To be in a town in India where you actually want to linger on the street, rather than get to where you're going as quickly as possible, is a rare treat. And so we lingered, taking pictures of glorious overgrown flowers and gliding in zig zag patterns through the French town on our rented bicycles.

But in talking to Judy, who is Chinese-Canadian, about why we enjoyed the French district so much, dark post-colonial thoughts of race and inferiority were difficult to stymie. Were we merely worshipping our former oppressors in preferring their tranquility, their fresh pain au chocolat, or their language, still spoken on its streets? If so, were we acknowledging in some way that French, and with it Western culture, is better than Indian culture? And so that colonialism was in part justified, that India was better under the British, that we yellow and brown people of the Orient are still only playing catch-up to the White man?!

Such a train of increasingly-extreme concerns pored forth, as we sat in the main park of the French town with local Tamils, in a suddenly uneasy leisure. Our multi-cultural Obama-era educations taught us that black is beautiful, and my Caucasian friends often downplay their ethnic heritage as "boring." Yet my time in China and India has exposed, through its white skin-bleaching beauty products and fair-skinned Bollywood and Hong Kong superstars, a distinctly colonial-aping worldview, where if White isn't necessarily superior, it's certainly looked upon with a chip-on-the-shoulder and an ever-present acknowledgement of greatness.

I was reminded of a time walking through Sichuan university, when Ai Yan, a local friend, pointed out the foreign (mostly Western exchange student) dorms, which are significantly better kept and equipped than the ones for Chinese. When I asked why foreigners necessarily got better accommodation, her response was simply:

"Of course they do. They're foreigners."

Later, Judy argued that this wasn't necessarily the case, and that it's a matter of what one is acculturated to like. That being products of Western upbringing, it was natural for us to find the French district and its European heritage more to our liking, though not necessarily superior to India. I wanted to agree with her, looking out across the rocky shore as a homeless woman slept beneath a bronze Gandhi statue. We travelers must constantly check our conclusions: genetics and race as inherent causes should not be tied to culture and history, in considering the differences between two countries. Surely, if anything, the post-colonial era has taught us that much.

But in traveling these stretches of East and South Asia, in observing the relationship between global trade, nationalism and racial identity, I feel like these complex questions of moral righteousness and economic power are easier to rationalize and deconstruct from the Ivory and Corporate Tower, than when living within, or merely passing through, its gross divisions in India.

What happens in Mengla, stays in Mengla

China’s southernmost town of any reputable size, Mengla sits an hour away from the border with Laos, with Burma to its southwest and Vietnam its southeast. The Lonely Planet described it simply as “dire.” But after having spent the requisite day here in transit to the idyllic, thatch villages and yet-to-be-clear-cut mountains of Laos, I would have to disagree. For following our brief night on the town, it turns out we’d reached China’s own miniature Las Vegas, as in: “What happens in Mengla, stays in Mengla.”

Staggering off the bus, still wiping the grogginess from my eyes, we began the hotel search. We ended up choosing a “love” motel, as signified by the hourly rate listed behind the front counter and the two condoms that sat on the TV table inside our room (definitely not standard practice here). At 40 RMB for the night (about 6 dollars), for a decent room and en suite, it’s hard to complain. I did, however, find myself dodging more gobs of phlegm on the stairwell than usual. Though spitting is still a universal habit for many in China, a moral code appears to exist, holding that saliva should be released outdoors, in a gutter, or at least, not on the polished floor of a hotel. Not so in Mengla, unfortunately.

Later that evening, we were walking to our room from dinner—the town having not shown much to date as far as potential nightlife—when we were alerted to some sort of spectacle, by way of ear-jabbing techno pop, thumping out from a side road. At first, Judy thought it was “old lady group exercise,” found across China, whereby dozens of old women perform a series of gentle aerobics, usually in parks, to an eclectic range of tunes. In Shanghai, perhaps, but this was Mengla! Down a rocky dirt path, into a yet-to-be-rebuilt clearing, a traveling family circus was mid-show, their tinny speakers blaring, trailer truck parked behind. This is the sort of amateur entertainment show that travels year-round through scrubby Chinese towns like this one, entertaining suntanned laborers in worn, dusty suits.

A girl no more than eight years, wearing a pink tutu over faded black tights, was doing a backward arch upon a pyramid of chipped stools. That they were so crooked and poorly constructed only enhanced the act, as the stools barely managed to stand upon one another, let alone support a person. The girl, in painfully slow backward rotation, picked up a flower off the stool with her mouth, then just as slowly returned upright, holding up the flower in what should have been a dramatic posture, but which in this case only announced: “There…look, I did it again, just like I did the night before, and the 500 nights before that,” her bored scowl meeting the halfhearted applause.

Next, two boys on unicycles took to the stage, basically a small square mat of tarpaulin, wearing bright polyester that vaguely evoked, without even trying to pass for, a traditional male silk tunic. They cycled around in jerky circles, picking up a cardigan and hat that the MC, probably their father, threw to the floor. Many times they fell off, but the crowd just laughed, and the boys hopped back on. After enough circles, they began to motion to the crowd for cigarettes. After a few punters obliged, they requested lighters. The smallest one, perhaps nine, managed to light his and blow smoke at the crowd, all the while jerking around atop his unicycle, drawing some course laughter from the gradually growing ragtag audience.

We left the circus behind, traveling a few hundred metres before I stopped at a tiny dive bar to inspect the ethnic minority music video that was playing inside. Like all music videos, it featured several buxom young dancing girls. These ones, though, instead of underwear and booty shaking, flogged traditional dress—lots of metal jewelry atop head, rainbow colored clothing—tame dancing and singing in a dangerously high, whiny voice. Somehow, it seems almost all Chinese folk traditions, regardless of minority, have had the misfortune of inheriting this vocal style. One of the owners came out to convince us to drink, explaining that this was an Aini ethnic group bar.

We sat down in the shabby darkness, having decided to try Xishuangbanna province’s local brew: “Kingstar.” It was, even by Chinese standards, unappealing. Chinese beer, compared to good European beer, tends to be light, weak and flat. By custom, you drink it down in one go in small glasses while playing dice games or belting our earnest C-pop ballads. Kingstar takes all these attributes, then adds the additional quality of tasting vaguely of urine*. Bad luke-warm beer aside, we were there out of ethnographic curiousity. Aini language, at least in Romanized form, looks like a cross between Aztec and Thai, with generous amounts of playful consonant-marriage.

“Qaz qwza nga lkuxay,” the karaoke subtitles flashed, as images of made-up Aini lasses in sashayed amid palm trees and tropical flowers, or sat timidly with boys on floating bamboo barges. “Sing a song for us!,” I asked the bargirl, who got through a quarter of the song before being drowned out by the rousing interpretation of some beered-up Aini boys, probably migrant laborers. We clapped before taking leave, leaving behind our half-drunken Kingstar. In China, there are no laws about carrying alcohol, and we foreigners revel in this freedom, often swilling booze straight from the bottle en route.

Continuing home, we passed a handful of brothels, staffed by various minority girls, according to our guide, who’d taken us through several different minority hill villages the previous day. According to him, some minorities don’t possess the concept of prostitution, making it easier for them to end up in the trade. Finally, we arrived back at Love hotel, located next to a nightclub, if the music was anything to go by. But now, what was this? Music pumping from inside our hotel as well?

“It’s gonna be a loud night,” Judy predicted. Where earlier we’d been discussing how sleepy Mengla seemed, it turns out the town had been primping for some wild clubbing action.

In the mini-nightclub on the first floor were ten or so dancers, bouncing around against the epileptic trance of lights. They jumped about as if on happy pills, the men in their forties and fifties, the girls half their age. The song ended, and the dancers retired to their booths. “He jiu, he jiu!” (“Drink booze, drink booze!) the owner shouted, his shirt lifted to his chest, proudly displaying a Laughing Budda-size gut. Out in the stairwell, a john, his drunken eyes closed, had wrapped himself around a bored-looking prostitute. We wound past them, dodging the saliva gobs as we went.

It turns out that Mengla, a border town on the edge of China and Southeast Asia, could be described as a number of things. “Seedy?” Without a doubt. “Quirky” also works well. But never “dire.”

*How do I know what urine tastes like, you ask? My answer: you just do.

NB: These pics, sadly, are not from Mengla but rather Kunming and Jianshui, other places in Yunnan.

Jianshui Roast Tofu: from factory to table

Despite Jianshui’s 1200 year history and prominence in the history of southern Yunnan, it remains largely anonymous. It is here, in this town of around half a million residents, with its large clumps of intact hutongs filled with pre-modern Chinese life, that inquisitive food enthusiasts can sample as well as learn the process behind “roast tofu,” a simple yet delicious snack unique to Jianshui, and eaten ubiquitously in homes and eateries throughout the town. A large grill slowly roasts the small, bitesize cubes to golden perfection as diners pick them off to dip into small sauce bowls, spiced with a combination of peppers, peanut sauce and MSG. Meanwhile, the house “roaster” tallies each customer’s tally of tofu cubes by throwing a single grain of corn into that customer’s counting bowl, constantly replenishing the grill with fresh cubes. At two mao per cube, Jianshui’s roast tofu makes for an affordable, nutritious addition to the bowls of noodles that they accompany.

A leisurely walk around Jianshui’s numerous hutongs will easily offer more quintessentially traditional sensory experience than entire months in China’s urban bubbles might provide. Rattan baskets, fried frogs and vegetables drying stand outside of crumbling wood and brick houses, narrow doorways tempt the curious into ramshackle courtyards. Down one street, just outside one of the town’s renovated gate towers, we discovered a series of Jianshui tofu cube manufacturers.

The process of making these cubes is quite remarkable to watch, similar in some ways to watching a skilled Hui noodle maker as he pulls his “la mian,” or observing miniature dumplings being kneaded and sealed. These are some of the more readily watchable (and often mesmerizing) skills of the Chinese culinary arts. Jianshui tofu cubes, handmade by women ranging from girls to the elderly, provide a similarly delightful spectacle, moulded with prodigious speed and uniformity using a simple cheese cloth.

Whilst wandering this lane, stopping regularly to peer in on more women at work, we spoke with a local who invited us to observe the process at his neighbor’s factory, located in a narrow building that, from the outside, could easily pass as another home. Outside, a leper was begging, a horse drawn cart was filled with leafy greens freshly picked from the fields behind the street. At Mr. Sou’s factory, we were shown the vats in which the soy beans, imported from Shandong, are soaked overnight. They are then ground into the soft tofu-like matter which we consumers recognize. From small buckets of this soft cooked tofu, the shapers take small handfuls, adding them into the cheesecloth, which they then wrap around and squeeze, removing excess water. The newly shaped cube is sat down on a tray, in eight by eight rows of 64. She then unwraps one of the previously wrapped ones, which have been left to set for a short while, before repeating the entire process. Shapers estimate that they can manufacture between three to four hundred cubes per hour.

I’ve been able to find Jianshui-style roast tofu in Kunming, Yunnan’s capital city, but nowhere outside of Yunnan. If anyone has found restaurants elsewhere selling this delicious snack, let me know!

White Would Be Better

Being Overseas Chinese in China has numerous advantages. Clothes here fit me better than they do larger foreign friends, I escape the constant ogling and unwanted attention that others face and, if I were to choose to do so, I could probably settle into a more permanent life here with greater ease. But most recently, on multiple occasions, I’ve found myself on the receiving end of more racist discrimination than I ever experienced in the United States. The irony being, of course, that it’s from people of my own ethnicity. Chinese people are passing me over because I’m Chinese.

When going in to apply for teaching positions at a nearby English school, we were informed that there were no full-time positions available at that branch, contrary to what an Australian friend had told us the day before. When another friend, who is Caucasian, went into their office a few days after to enquire about openings…what do you know?! A position had just opened up again.

Soon afterward, I received a text message from a musician friend, Tim, looking for other foreigners to play some concerts around Christmas. There exists in China what we laowai refer to as “foreign monkey” work: where foreigners are paid (very handsomely, by Chinese standards) to play music, dance around in a club, model, and do promotion for businesses. The main requirement for such work is not talent or experience—most of the work is done by English teachers or foreign students--but ethnicity. Work does exist for Blacks and non-white foreigners: a woman working in entertainment showed me a video of some Black friends performing “traditional African dance” in stereotypical African clothing for a local event. But most of the time, they want White folks.

In the case of this Christmas gig, I told Tim that I’d be interested, but to check with the agent if I would be able to play. Though Chinese have tended not to say: “Whites only” up front, at this point I figure it saves both parties more trouble if I, in a nation as supposedly proudly nationalistic as China, to admit that I, though born and raised in the West, am--should I be ashamed?—in fact, yellow. Tim called back, apologizing for his agent, who said that “they already had one Chinese,” and that they were not interested in another.

“Maybe in a few years they will be more interested in how well people can play their instruments, rather than just having any White guy who doesn’t even know how to play,” Tim, a German who plays drums, said, trying to console me.

“It’ll take a lot longer than that,” I told him.

It can feel odd, discovering that the time when my skin color tends to matter least is when hanging out with foreign friends, despite being the only non-White one. Within our small bubble of liberal, college-educated Western outlooks, we laugh at the absurdity of such situations and consider at what point does the “foreign monkey” work become too close to corporate whoredom. One friend drew the line on a “Foreign Santa” competition sponsored by a giant Wal-Mart-wielding mall, which invited foreigners to dress as Santa and say “a phrase in Chinese (!)” for cash prizes.

Until recently, I’ve considered this mostly at the behest of consumers. I don’t think shifting the blame on to society relieves a nation of its racism, but in some way, it softens the blow of this now all-too-familiar snubbing. English companies charge extremely high rates, and for parents shelling out hard-earned cash toward their child’s future American degree, they want a charming, handsome young foreigner teaching little Kevin how to pronounce “these and those.” Somebody from one of those rich, developed Western nations. That somebody, to their minds, is White.

An American recruiter for one of the major English companies in China told me over brunch of a particularly tough new visa officer in Dalian, in northeastern China. Whereas the requirements for English teachers were higher than normal there—China is a haven for less qualified teachers: a bachelors degree, a proper TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certificate, two years of education experience—there was one, surprising new kicker. You have to be White. African-American, Singaporean…Overseas Chinese? “Forget about it!,” he told me. This was the first case in many years here that he’d seen such racism at the official level.

Whiteness, as we know well the world over, holds a great deal of privilege. And while many of the foreigners who come to China bring with them some sort of “global village” openness and a desire to break down racial and national distinctions, we quickly realize how differently, and in many ways how deeply conservative, Chinese society regards race.

So what is one to do, as an Australian-born Chinese seeking a piece of the action, as so many foreigners are currently doing, in this supposed future world super power? Study as I do, my Mandarin is a long way from fluency. Beyond that, also, is the remarkable cultural chasm that, though shrinking, still exists between Westerners and Chinese. (Try as I could, I struggled unsuccessfully to get the Western concept of “muzak” through to my normally savvy tutor.) Simply put, there’s no going around it: I’m not from China. But, whereas I will never pass as Chinese, I’m not quite foreign enough either.

There’s little point in trying to single-handedly change the mindsets of 1.3 billion people: that’s not my job, and besides, people trying to change things in China who aren’t officials tend to walk on thin ice.

Part of me is ready to go home: to return to the comfort of fluent self-expression and Fox serials and, though we love to bag “PC” culture, good old anti-racism legislature. And yet, with the West’s decidedly uninviting job market, and having already gotten this far with what is, by all accounts, a difficult language to learn, I continue to stick it out. It’s hard to ignore, as well, the sheer leisure and freedom that being a foreign teacher in China provides: many jobs offer comfortable salaries on two days of work per week.

Still, there are moments at which I simply shake my head. This afternoon, my company called to invite me to a celebratory dinner, asking that I also invite a foreign friend. My girlfriend—a Canadian-born Chinese—piped up: “I’m foreign!”

“Can she be ethnically Chinese?” I asked.

“Uh…White would be better,” my Chinese colleague informed me. At this point, more out of humor than anger, I prod a little further.

“Can they be black, or brown…or yellow?” I continued, with perhaps a hint of ridicule.

“Um, I have to ask the boss,” he replied.