| As just one example, walk down the street in Guiyang, and you will, at some point, likely find yourself behind a toddler wearing a one-piece with a slit in the back and his/her ass hanging out. If you are unlucky, you will see this toddler crouch down and defecate in the middle of the street, with his/her parent watching with adoration. This is one of the reasons Chinese people have you take your shoes off before entering a house; this is also why you are warned never to drink the tap water here, and why many residents are probably living with some form of Giardia; and this is the reason you eat undercooked forms of street food at your own peril.
Fortunately, when we did eat street food today, we ate Chinese Muslim noodles - a real delicacy, which you can see being made here:
It's yet another simmering noodle soup - that makes sure nothing is left alive. Mike tells us this is one of the perhaps inadvertent ways the Chinese make sure to compensate for their cities' sanitary problems: they eat food that is cooked to a crisp.
After lunch, it was a cab out to Huaxi, the suburban town where Guizhou University is located, and then a small mini-van bus to our real destination: Qingyan, an ancient walled town in the countryside built in 1320 that is a shopping/recreational destination for locals (photo at right).
This is what old China must have looked like before it was destroyed in Mao's cultural revolution: narrow cobblestone streets, pagoda style roofs, vendors selling weirder and weirder stuff. I shared some Chodofu ("stinky" tofu) with Mike; stopped in and considered buying stomach-aiding ginseng from Chinese doctors, but backed off; then helped Emily buy some embroidered silk pillowcases for 3 American dollars each.
On the way back, I watched the scenery change from countryside back into dense city, and in that transition, I felt like I was watching a highlight film that might be shown at an Imax theater after, say, a nuclear war.
From the thick forests, Shire-like villages and clear air comes a typhoon of ecological and human chaos - a sea of cars with no emissions controls belching black smoke (sidenote: I'll never complain about Denver's auto emissions tests again); half-naked seniors hanging out of windows in crumbling buildings; the air slightly throat-burning and fuzzing one's vision; soot, grime and sweat everywhere; no sense of order at all.
 That last point has been the most surprising: In a country that is known as an authoritarian police state, we have seen almost no police, military or government presence at all. That's not to say that the Communist Party/Chinese government (they are one in the same) isn't here - they are definitely somewhere here in Guizhou, and we are told they are far more obvious/overt in places China considers more ethnically and politically unstable (think: Tibet). But they aren't out in force at all - and there is certainly no evidence of mandated, state-run ideological "communism" or communitarian sentiment anywhere.
This is Mad Max way beyond thunderdome, a science-fiction movie's post-apocalyptic entropy on steroids. In that sense, it is a disturbing real-world example of what happens not with mere "deregulation" - but with absolutely no regulation at all. And what's really scary is that this is the country that could lead the world into the 21st century.
Dinner consisted of a family-style meal at a local tea house and beers. I feel - as usual - mildly nauseated, this time probably because Mike tells me the half beer I drank - like most Chinese beers - had traces of formaldahyde in it. I'm sitting here waiting for Emily to get out of the shower (the shower consisting of a 4-and-a-half-foot high spigot in the corner of the laundry room) so that I can take a "shower" and scrub the day's grime and soot off my body. As the humidity, bugs, loud city noise and indigestion persist, I'm thankful for all that I have - decent housing, health care, fairly clean air, a loving family a great dog (and dog nephew!), and, of course, the immodium in my medicine bag.
DAY 7: Fish Heads and No Running Water
 Ni how from Anshun, the "small" town of about 500,000 people west of Guiyang (photo of the downtown strip at right). I am writing to from a Mac laptop and a wireless connection, but that's about all the evidence that this place is actually in the 21st century, and not a time warp. The hour and a half bus ride over to Anshun cost about $5 american dollars and was not nearly as bad or eventful as our previous bus rides. Other than being constantly stared at by the Chinese passengers, we felt fairly comfortable on the Greyhound-like Hyundai cruiser.
Anshun is a place Mike calls a Chinese version of an American Indian reservation because it is a small town with a majority Hmong (ie. majority minority). It sits about 4,000 feet above sea level and is nestled among mini mountains dotted by rocky crags. Dustin, our Peace Corp host, tells us the main industry here is a big beer factory, an airplane parts manufacturer, and local tourism (the town is a waystation between Guiyang and Huang Guo Shu, billed as Asia's largest waterfall).
Upon arriving in the center of town, we walked up the main drag and negotiated our way to a Jiaozi (dumpling) stand. Mike and I shared a plastic bag of pork Jiaozi drenched in soy sauce.
We then took a cab out to Anshun Teacher's College on the edge of town. Dustin, who teaches here, met us at the gate and let us up to his fifth-floor (!) walk up, where we dropped off our bags. Then it was back out to the gate to catch a bus to Anshun's street-food market.
On the way to the bus, we walked by a giant backhoe tearing chunks of rock from a nearby cliff. There was no construction perimeter whatsoever - massive boulders were literally being torn off a mountainside within a few feet of passersby. This reminded me of the telephone repair crew in Guiyang that we earlier walked by - a crew that was hammering down a 30 foot-tall concrete pole, while watching their friend suspended on top of the pole with no safety line. In a country experiencing a neverending cycle of construction and destruction, it seems "safety" - like "hygiene" and "sanitation" - is another one of those relative words, defined more in 19th century terms than 21st century principles.
At the street-food market, Dustin reached into a plastic vat of bubbling water to examine various live grass carp for the meal. He pulled out three separate fish by their tails, and finally selected a particularly gray-brown monstrosity, which the cook then ushered away in a plastic bag for execution. You can watch the scene here:
Within 10 minutes, a coal-heated buffet tray was on our table, the now-broiled fish covered in a red-brown stew of hot peppers, zuchini, celery and eggplant:
The dish was yet another that taught us about the physicality of eating in China. Meals here, because they are so often eaten family style, are structurally social - everyone is picking off the same dish and serving each other, which encourages far more interpersonal interaction than a meal in which everyone is isolated within their own plate. Additionally, hot meals are like a visit to a flavored steam room - you are actually bathing in your effervescing food, whether you are diving into a sizzling fish stew or chop-sticking your way through a simmering plate of noodles. Add to that the intense spice of Guizhou/Sichuan food, and its no exaggeration to say that I've sweated like Moses Malone through every hot meal we've eaten.
After dinner, we met a number of Dustin's students, who were eating nearby. They are all training to be English teachers, and they eagerly tested out their language skills on us (sidenote: many total strangers on the street who know a bit of English have come up to us to similarly test their skills - we get many "hellos!" from people, who are then thrilled to hear us say "hello" back - a validation that they have communicated in English).
Their language skills were impressive, but what I've most noticed is their - and the larger society's - lack of interest in Western/American culture/politics. It's not that there aren't some Western brands and ads around - there are, chief among them Pizza Hut and KFC. It's not that there isn't any Western pop culture - there is, from pirated DVD stores chock full of Hollywood flicks to China's national obsession with John Denver's "Country Roads" ditty (I'm not kidding - Chinese young and old are obsessed with this song, to the point where they see Americans and start singing it to you). And it's not that the Chinese aren't full of questions for us about America - they are. It's that, from what I can tell through magazine pictures, television images, newsstands and conversation, America and the West really just aren't of central concern here.
I'm not lamenting that reality at all - in fact, I think it's pretty refreshing. In my previous travels to places like Japan, Egypt and Mexico City, America's cultural imperialism was everywhere - its news and governmental actions a spectacle of interest, intrigue and gossip.
Not here, and that realization makes for some good perspective. For instance, yesterday I came into Todd and Jessica's apartment from the crushing poverty and bustle of the Guiyang and checked my email. In my in-box was a trough of press releases, action alerts and "breaking news" alerts about American congresspeople, political interest groups and celebrity "news" - all written as if they are earth-shatteringly important and globally significant. But "important" is a factor of luxury - it is "important" that Nancy Pelosi is holding a photo-op today, that some no-name Senator wants help meeting an FEC fundraising deadline, and that Michael Jackson died for those who have the "luxury" of, say, functioning sewer systems.
Of course, after a week of these kinds of powerful and depressing epiphanies, everyone needs an escape, so after talking to the students we then hit a DVD store which offered almost any movie - new and old - for extremely, um, affordable prices. I bought the entire 4-disk Rambo collection for $5 american dollars (which, on second thought, might be the same price you could find it in Blockbuster's discount rack).
 Before going to bed back at Dustin's, we had to trek over to Bethany's kitchen for a Money Pit-esque water run (Bethany is the other Peace Corps volunteer here in Anshun). Why did we have to go all Walter Fielding and get water, you ask? Because Dustin's apartment has no running water - at least not right now. So in order to "flush" the toilet (a western toilet, and not a pit/squat toilet, thank god) you have to pour a pail of water down the hole - water that we had to fetch from the other side of campus. In this, we were told we were vicariously living a typical Peace Corps experience.
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DAY 6: Beyond Thunderdome
