Poopy
China isn't letting my access blogspot again. I had a good three week run of access.
Don't expect any more posts to This is my Blog for at least a month.
Don't expect any more posts to This is my Blog for at least a month.
2005-11-18
The Long and Winding Road
I tried to keep a daily journal. I really did. But it just wasn't going to happen, in the end. Something in my temperment is stopping that from going on -- my day to day record of my existence is in my writing and theory work, and I just refuse to face facts.
I've been in Qingdao for the last few days, and not in a good way. I stopped eating around the time I got here (Finally had a full meal tonight!) and I've been a strange bundle of nerves and twitches. It doesn't help that the place is a strange, dingy little town, full of tourist traps but somehow without the tourists. There's this strange aggressiveness to everyone that I find really alien, like they expect to run at the pace of Beijing or Hong Kong but aren't, and so are frustrated. Lots of the place is sort of run down, especially the areas I've been wandering around.
Yesterday I walked north, up past the shopping districts, theoretically headed to the passenger ferry terminal to book passage for Shanghai (they didn't have any) but really just wandering around strange parts of town. I walked along the railway tracks, through increasingly decaying neighborhoods, read pro-liberty (What we want is equality. What we want is fair law. What we want is good work.) on the side of the tracks, crudely hung over with government safety slogans (everyone protect your life and be careful for coming trains!) I ended up walking with a group of old men also wandering along the tracks. They didn't quite know what to make of me, but they didn't ask me any questions and I didn't answer any. I walked down the tracks, over broken metal overpasses, past the ferry terminal, through fields of metal bars and concrete blocks, past by trains bearing coal from everywhere. And damn.
Damn.
I just wanted to keep on walking.
In the end, though, I came to a run-down old train stop -- one that must have been built for a farming town during the fifties when every town got its train -- that had been swallowed up by the city and nearly abandoned. Of course, being China, there were a couple of official looking guys just sort of hanging out in it, swapping bike repair tips. The stared open-mouthed at me as I walked by. I wandered out onto a high street run with rotting apartments and shining shacks, where the prostitutes giggled at me and clapped their hands and banged metal drums for my attention. [hey, don't you think I'm pretty] No, but you've got a pretty laugh.
I slowly walked my way back, but damn, I could have walked that rail forever.
So that was yesterday.
I've been in Qingdao for the last few days, and not in a good way. I stopped eating around the time I got here (Finally had a full meal tonight!) and I've been a strange bundle of nerves and twitches. It doesn't help that the place is a strange, dingy little town, full of tourist traps but somehow without the tourists. There's this strange aggressiveness to everyone that I find really alien, like they expect to run at the pace of Beijing or Hong Kong but aren't, and so are frustrated. Lots of the place is sort of run down, especially the areas I've been wandering around.
Yesterday I walked north, up past the shopping districts, theoretically headed to the passenger ferry terminal to book passage for Shanghai (they didn't have any) but really just wandering around strange parts of town. I walked along the railway tracks, through increasingly decaying neighborhoods, read pro-liberty (What we want is equality. What we want is fair law. What we want is good work.) on the side of the tracks, crudely hung over with government safety slogans (everyone protect your life and be careful for coming trains!) I ended up walking with a group of old men also wandering along the tracks. They didn't quite know what to make of me, but they didn't ask me any questions and I didn't answer any. I walked down the tracks, over broken metal overpasses, past the ferry terminal, through fields of metal bars and concrete blocks, past by trains bearing coal from everywhere. And damn.
Damn.
I just wanted to keep on walking.
In the end, though, I came to a run-down old train stop -- one that must have been built for a farming town during the fifties when every town got its train -- that had been swallowed up by the city and nearly abandoned. Of course, being China, there were a couple of official looking guys just sort of hanging out in it, swapping bike repair tips. The stared open-mouthed at me as I walked by. I wandered out onto a high street run with rotting apartments and shining shacks, where the prostitutes giggled at me and clapped their hands and banged metal drums for my attention. [hey, don't you think I'm pretty] No, but you've got a pretty laugh.
I slowly walked my way back, but damn, I could have walked that rail forever.
So that was yesterday.