September 15, 2007

XICHANG

We have traveled to Xichang to visit David Walton and see why he has chosen this city to be his home.  The weather here is perfect, a nice contrast to too hot temperatures in most of China.  The population is 150,000 and the elevation is about 4000 ft.  This is a beautiful green mountain pass of a valley, the traditional home of the ethnic Yi people. Today Xichang is famous for being the home of the Chinese Satellite launching station.

Being a mountain pass there has always been activity here, and the Yi fiercely controlled the region for a long time.  Today you see many Tibetans, many Hon Chinese and many Yi people  in the streets.  You see few Gringos, and we are stared at most all of the time and often greeted with shy “Hello’s” by passersby’s.

DAVID IN CHINA

David is well known in China largely because he did a series of television shows about western China when he arrived here because he was shocked at how little Chinese people knew about western China.  He is also well known locally because he is an 80-year-old white American male who always wears a suit and bow tie and walks and takes local buses etc.  You can’t help but notice him.  He lives here speaking no Chinese.  He teaches English and has a large following of students who delight in looking after him. Being David, he of course is involved in many projects, “consulting” for any number of businesses.

He wants to build and manage a small Inn here, which will also have residences….what he is talking about really is a retirement community that he will design and manage.  There is a beautiful lake in Xichang and he has located the perfect site on a hillside overlooking the lake.  We signed up immediately.  I can think of no one who would better design such a community.

The thing about China that makes it such a good retirement destination is that the living is easy and inexpensive.  The stress level is low.  The markets are a pleasure.  Public transportation is good.  It is very safe. Not once have I felt insecure or nervous about my safety.  And the price here is hard to beat.  David lives in a lovely three-bedroom apartment for which he pays $500 a year.  His utilities run between 5 and 10 dollars a month.  Today after swimming at the lake the 4 of us ate at a barbeque stand and drank beer, total bill was less than 4 dollars.  Joe and I got great haircuts from David’s barber.  Joe’s cut cost about 60 cents, and mine was a little more, about 65 cents, because I had my hair washed.

ENGLISH CORNER

This morning we went with David to the weekly “English Corner”.  In Xichang this meeting is held at the local library.  There were 30 to 40 people there, all with the goal of practicing their English.  At the table where I sat, there was  “Frank”, who loves slang and had a weeks worth of phrases from movies that he needed to know the meaning of….”what is to be horsing around?”…….there were two shy girls, so shy they would barely speak; and a man who spoke really excellent English who worked as a translator for Yi people in Chinese court; and an English teacher in middle school who was very serious about education but who spoke very hard to understand English; and Marshall, a student of David’s, who wanted to know about American families, saying as an only child he felt lonely some times.  And on and on….people would leave one table and join another, all very anxious to improve their English.

 

WESTERN FOOD

We had been longing for some old fashioned American food after a month of being fed large lunches and dinners most every day…..between 20 and 30 dishes would come to the table, all of them wonderful, but…..too much food.

In Xichang we enjoyed eating in Grandma’s Kitchen…..not quite right, but still good to have a break from eating Chinese.

PAVERS

Walking on the sidewalks of China there are many different sorts of pavers.  Many have functions that are apparent, for example, those with a pattern that allows for drainage and or for small plants to grow through the open spaces in the design.  Pavers can be in a variety of colors, which is useful to designate a bike lane, or a parking area, for example. There is one paving pattern that we have seen most everywhere.  The pavers are about 18 inches wide with a raised cylinder shape about three inches long and half an inch wide.  This paving pattern changes near the curb, where it becomes small raised circles.  Turns out these pavers are a brail pattern for the blind to follow.

 

SEX IN CHINA

Every night in our hotel room the phone rings, usually just after we have gone to sleep, and a woman’s voice says a few words and I say “who is this?” and she then hangs up.  Then one night Joe answered the phone, and after her Chinese words she said ”massage?, massage?”, before Joe hung up the phone.   After we get our calls, we can  hear the phone ring in the next room.  Very annoying.

Clearly, every night in hotel rooms, one is solicited for “massage”, which, we gather,  seems to involve sex.  We see no streetwalkers on the streets, because they are safely, for both themselves and their clients, situated in the hotels.  Looking for I don’t recall what Joe one day happened upon the down stairs rooms where the girls work.  Good for the girls, excellent business for the hotels, and it keeps the sex business in a place where the government can keep things in control.

At the hotel here in Xichang we see on the floor plan of the hotel that there is a sauna on the 4th floor. We think, what a good idea, let's go and have a sauna.  We go to the 4th floor and can find no sauna.  We ask the girls cleaning a room where the sauna might be?  They dissolve in giggles, but manage to tell us it is downstairs.  So off we go, and we find a large room with couches and a long desk.  There are a few gals behind the desk, and several men standing around.  There is a hallway where many girls are hanging out.  We ask about the sauna, again, everyone dissolves into giggles.  Finally we insist of being shown the sauna.  We go through a curtained off doorway with a man who then tells me I can go no further. He leads Joe away, and I return to the main room and almost trip over all the girls who are crowed into the doorway trying to see what is going on. Joe returns to report that the place is similar to our Sin River only a low class version.  By now we get the picture, however, I say I want to visit the women’s side.  It is totally pathetic.  They have the sauna, the steam room, soaking tubs etc, but none of them have been turned on for who knows how long. On the men’s side there were 7 or 8 guys in various states of bathing.  Anyway, we did provide everyone at the hotel with a good laugh.

-

- ^{Back-------------------------------------------------------------------Next}