My friends Amanda, Madeline and Chelsea are trekking together through China. Amanda's been there for some time, speaks the language and all. Chelsea tripped up from New Zeland, and I hadn't a clue that Madeline was going to meet with them there. Anyway, In the interest of global interconnectedness I thought I'd post a couple emails.

It's impossible to relate our full experience in Nanning; suffice it to say that most people there had clearly never seen a white person before (thanks, Chairman), much less a six-foot-tall Chinese-speaking one and her two female travel companions. Entire city blocks literally stopped dead to gawp as we passed. There was the occasional laughing, pointing, or menacing stare, but mostly people's jaws just sort of fell slack and they gaped wide-eyed at us everywhere we went. On my part, the hilarity of the situation quickly turned to irritation, which was in turn replaced by a frightening degree of hostile aggression. We quickly left.

Kunming is great. Quite a few tourists seem to have passed this way before, as evidenced by the more relaxed reception we've received by the locals. Among some of the odd sights we've encountered thus far include a simmering hot-pot of various fake meats, including quite sickeningly realistic mini-weiners; and two Tibetan guitarists who moonlight as "fire dancers" and whose act consists primarily of repeatedly inserting and withdrawing flaming sticks of fire into their crotches in time to very up-tempo disco music. Never boring, eh?

Today we went to the "Stone Forest," which is sort of self-explanatory. It's a whole bunch of naturally-occurring standing-stones in the midst of an evergreen forest. It was gorgeous, though we didn't explore quite as much as we'd have liked to on account of the searing heat and general lethargy.

On the hour-plus route there and back, we passed field after field and paddy after paddy. Farmers toiled unendingly in the kind of heat that makes me want to strip off my own skin. It's amazing the sort of terrain these farmers have to work with. The land has been so over-cultivated (thank you again, Chairman) that it's turned to a ruddy clay; in wide expanses it looks like satellite images of the surface of Mars. I watched one woman with some sort of hoeing implement turn over earth on a patch of hillside land that one would imagine could only be summited wearing the sort of spiked boots with spurs that repairmen use to climb telehphone poles. Why do my people live in a land where they can slog about in Laz-Y-Boys and waste food by the kilo, when this woman has but a shit wooden tool and a bad back from farming rice she's not even allowed to eat from a mountainside that I could barely walk?

Like I say, never boring. Cheers, Chairman.

That's from Amanda. Here's Madeline's take on roughly the same timespan:

imagine you're walking down the street, which is crowded with about three times the amount of people you're accustumed to seeing, and the second you set foot on the curb, all eyes on that block turn and are focused on you. and not just a casual glance, outright staring, gaping open mouthed pointing and talking about you. this is what has become the standard reaction to us three white girls, one of which is taller than anyone they have ever imagined being and has a mass of super curly hair. and then imagine thier faces when that girl can speak perfect chinese. anyway, it was interesting leaving hong kong and heading into china because in hong kong, there are so many different people, and everyone has seen what other people look like.

from there we went to guongzhou where we stayed in the nicest hostel i have ever encountered. the city appears to be the place to go if you're a westerner looking to adopt a chinese baby, there were hourds of new parents wheeling thier new little ones around. but as we went further into the city we saw no white people, and i think a lot of people there had never seen one by the way they reacted to us. it's a bit offputting having that much attention focused on you, but they just don't know how to react to us. we went to a tradition chinese medicine and herb market there which felt truly authentic. dark aisles, groups of men sitting playing cards and smoking, the smell of incence burning musty, and bags brimming with the strange and exotic. we saw so many unrecoginizaable herbs, dried snakes, lizards dries and flayed and stuck on a stick, deer tails, bugs a plenty, scorpians, tendons, seahorses, on and on.

from there we went to nanning on an overnight train. we got in at 5 in the morning and had 12 hours to kill before the next overnight train. we found out early on that the specilaty of the city was canine cuisine, and tried to avoid to ares of town where the dogs are sold. we went to a huge park called Bailong gongyuan or white dragon parkoverflowing with ponds and pagodas, and groups of people doing tai chi, or learning to fan or sword dance, we fed koi, we wandered. this place was worse than guongzhou in how inconspicuous we felt. within the park it was ok, people got excited when we said hello in chinesse and we got a lot of smiles. so we would smile at everyone and say hello. as the day progressed, it was harder to feel friendly and by the end of the day we were giving off looks that were communicating "what do you think you're looking at?" it was a tiring day, but i think it was good to have the experience of being in such an extreme minority position.

kunming which is in the yunnan province was our next stop. the country side is beautiful and we have been seeing so much of it from the trains. rice paddy upon rice paddy, farms, brick buildings on top of waterways, rocky hills rising into the mist. it feels really surreal somtimes. i have to stop and think at times "i am in china" and it's hard to believe. it is so different here. i wouldn't have been able to do this without amanda. it's wierd to not evem be able to read the signs or communicate at all. it's alienating. and i am lucky that such a close friend was willing to be translator. it gives so much more tot he trip than having to hire a guide.

we have been in kunming for 3 days now and it has been lovely. we have seen blue sky for the first time. the layer of smog is not as thick, but i have developed a cold i think my body is having a hard time keeping all the pollution out. this is more of a tourist destination, so we haven't had quite as much attention. we went to a bird and flower market which was so much fun. i have found i have a special place in my heart for market places. the people teeming about, the festive air. we bought trinkets, we played with baby ducks which sent amanda right to heaven cause she is a huge duck lover, and then we promptly went and found a toillet to wash our hands cause none of us want to end up with the bird flu. we went to a vegetarian restraunt that served up the most amazing looking meal to date. there was the multi fake meat stew they put on top of a flame so it would boil through your meal with little fake meat wieners bobbing on top. and there was the gelatinous violet soup of "8 amazing ingrediants." but it was actually really good despite appearances and it was so nice that amanda and chelsea didn't have to worry about meat sneaking in. peoples interpretation of no chicken, no beef, no fish, no pork, no meat, is very liberal here. they say yes, yes, understood and then your tofu comes swimming in beef. i have been getting a lot of dishes to myself by default. next kind of by accident we went to the camel bar and saw live music, guys doing chinese pop songs with pretty acoustic harmonies. and then they did the fire "dancing' which involved twirling around, licking the fire sticks, swiping them across thier bodies and then plunging them into thier pants repeatedly. then afterwards they came over and chatted for a while and then dedicated a song to us called "because i really love you" which according to the bar tender, they had never done before. i guess we are making quite an impression.

yesterday we went to shilin on a day trip, to the stone forest which is vertually a forest of large limestone pillars rising up. it was a bit of a tourist trap though, and i'm not sure if it was worth the 2 hour cramped ride in the smallest van in memory in the blazing heat.

we are leaving kunming today on an overnight bus.

we are having a great time. it is amazing to not have seen these girls for so long, but we're such good mates that we just fell right into it again and having been having the time of our lives. even the bad times, well they're bad, but when you're traveling like this, it's just another part of the process. we have dubbed this the voyage of discovery and that title has proved very apt. chelsea gives a big hello to all. she has been doing a great job learning bits of chinese, but unfortunately it doesn't really stick in my head. with all the tones and everything i am at a bit of a loss.

Color me green with world-travel envy.