Yichang!

Something magical happened last weekend: I left Enshi. The destination: Yichang. My favorite punctuation for this paragraph: the colon. My mood: the happiness. It was: great. Item being revoked if my former teachers see this blog post: my diploma. Dig: it.

I wouldn't say it was a monumental day in my life, but I made a lot of big steps. I travelled by myself in a country where I don't speak ten words of the language (well, I wasn't by myself, but I didn't know a soul). I've always been hesitant to travel alone--I don't think anyone enjoys doing it, unless you're one of those crazy nut-job Peace Corps people--but something happened on Friday that made me grow up and travel by myself. I can't explain what. I think I decided that life here was far worse than any Deliverance nightmare that could happen in the Chinese country side. So my students took me to the bus stop and I hopped a ten hour Chinese sleeper bus ride to the metropolis of Yichang, home of my friends.

I rode a Chinese sleeper bus from EnShi to Yichang. In China, there are two types of buses: sleeper buses and sitter buses. The sleeper buses are nice, because if you are under 5' 4" you have the opportunity to sleep the entire trip in comfort. The sitter buses, according to my students, are the scourge of humanity. I rode the sleeper bus on the way there, and a sitter bus on the way back. On the sleeper bus I had a cot to my own, a blanket, and a nice window view of the Chinese country side. On the sitter bus (really a van), I was wedged in-between chain smokers and a vomiting baby, a loud-man driver who stopped the van every twenty minutes to pick up hitch hikers, and a guy who kept hocking loogies and spitting them on the floor. I prefer the sitter. I like my space.

I arrived in Yichang at six in the morning with a massive stomach ache and two hours of rest. Yichang is an interesting place. It's home to the largest free-standing damn in the entire stinking world (no really): the Three Gorges Damn, a massive construction project that once fully operational will be capable of destroying small c-class planets and giving power to close to four hundred million people ("Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battlestation!" bu wah ha ha ha). But I didn't see the damn. Yichang has much cooler things to offer: American friends!

I have some old friends from my college days (you know like last May) who teach at the Three Gorges University in Yichang, and they are super-awesome. When I got there, Brad, Beth and Amy--who have been here over a year and are pretty much fluent in Mandarin Chinese--had a whole day planned of showing me the city, and it rocked. The happiest I've been in China.

The day started out with an hour nap; then Brad cooked banana pancakes for everyone. After recovering from my stomach ache (non-pancake related) Brad and I headed out to lunch with three other students. During this time, I saw some Indians (Indians!), which just goes to show the differences between Yichang and Enshi. I'm pretty sure most of the people in my city have never seen a person with dark skin, ever.

Around four, my friends decided to go to the local Yichang House of Pain. When we arrived, we were ushered to a shady basement room where a Chinese misogynist administer unspeakable amounts of torture to my feet for the two inhuman hours. They never got me to talk, but they tried: they boiled my feet using steam, they hit pressure points on my burnt feet, they painted my tootsies in hot wax, they even raked my feet with some sort of device they lovingly called "The cow-bone." And when that didn't work, they walked on my back. I'd rather not talk about it. The pain is gone but the memories will linger forever...

And then we went to Pizza Hut! Which, in case your wondering, is akin to a fine French restaurant in America. We were greeted by a hostess at the door, and we had to wait! Amazing. The pizza's good stuff too, and it tastes just like American pizza and costs just as much. The entire time I was thinking about my Pizza Hut at home where you can normally hear conversations such as: "And I told him to git outta here before I called the cops, because I know for a fact that issa ill-eagle for an ambulance worker to talk about who he done picked up and I don't care who he picked up or just what that guy did in High school, because he shouldn't be coming in here and talking about his job like that and whats your last name again? That'll be 13.95."

So goes the night. Yichang is a beautiful place, and I am so thankful to have friends there. The little weekend trip saved my sanity and probably is, like I said, the happiest I will ever be in China. Thank you friends. I spent 23 hours in the town and 22 hours on the road, but it was worth it. There is a ton more to write about the journey, but I have promises to keep, and kilometers to go before I sleep, and kilometers to go before I sleep.

"I'll see you in the morning if nothing happens."

p.s. I also picked up some awesome DVD's there. Yichang has an American DVD alley. We went there in-between the torture and Pizza Hut.

p.s.s. Can you find the malapropism in this blog post?