Jimmy, Petey, and I do Wuyishan

Now for a long overdue post on the wonders of the Wuyishan (武夷山市) city and landscape, in China's southern coastal Fujian province. See photos. My travel companions were one stout Englishman James D. Pennington (Jimmy) and one imaginary companion, Peter Hessler, a The New Yorker journalist and author of two insightful, non-fiction accounts of life in China, Rivertown and Oracle Bones. On the journey, I read the former while Jimmy read the latter, so Petey was always with us, oft-quoted, and his observations compared to ours. We love you Petey!

The trip was a tale of mistaken assumptions. Points 1 & 2 are clearly my own damn fault:

1. it is rural! (it was not)
2. the weather is warm! (it was not)
   
3. the people are warm! (unfortunately, several who we encountered were notably not)

We had one tourist trap encounter at a Wuyishan street-restaurant that served assorted vegetables and meats tossed together in a wok. For a tiny bowl that they whipped up--not nearly sufficient to feed two young strapping lads such as ourselves--we were quoted a price at least 3x too high. When we balked at the waitress, aiming to walk away without eating and without paying, we were accosted by the obstreperous manager. His swearing at us in Wuyishan dialect created quite a scene on the street, bringing “face” into play and rendering hopeless our efforts to reason through the situation. He proceeded to call the police.

“Showdown in Wuyishan” surely would have been fine drama, but I decided to cut it short at that point. We paid, and left with a few pitiful comebacks—weak because A) we didn’t understand his insults; and B) cursing is not classroom Chinese. My calculation was that Mr. Obstreperous had far better odds with the provincial police than two foreign devils, leaving us a 20% chance of paying plus a tour of the local police station, 70% of just having to pay up anyway, and a 10% chance of skipping off scot-free. In any case, there was a 100% chance of spending a minimum of 2 stressful hours sorting it out. We later found out that Wuyishan is infamous for such schemes to rip-off tourists.

Grandpa Kai also became thankful that Shanghai has reliable, required taxi meters. Bargaining fares in Wuyishan was a constant uphill battle, since we were clueless as to distances and appropriate prices. We also had the pleasure of a taxi driver who made side stops to pick up prostitutes and piss drunk girls (at midday, no less), and not-so-subtly urged us to take advantage of them. He blasted super-loud techno and was super-cool, and, to our great delight, was our driver a super-coincidental three times!

Yet Wuyishan also had its charm in people and places, lest you think it was all trouble. The highlight was a hike through the tea-cultivated mountains that serendipitously reached a picturesque monastery, where a Daoist monk offered us bitter Oolong tea (Wuyishan’s most famous product). Though this modern monk had a PDA device and a yin-yang adorned business card, the relative tranquility and stunning view made the long trek worthwhile.

Another fond memory is of a local restaurateur’s hysterics:

Jimmy: Can you catch fish in the river? (in Chinese, with English accent)
Restaurateur: [Hopping around on one leg, gesturing wildly] Ohhhh yahhh, you betcha!!! (in Chinese, with Fargo accent) They are EXTREMELY delicious!!! If you catch, we will devour them together!!! My precious... my precious… my precious is extremely delicious!!!

Unfortunately, all the fish we saw were in protected nature refuge upstream, so the only thing we came close to catching was pneumonia. I think the restaurateur had already devoured all the downstream fish.

Finally, along the lines of my last post, “Why Chinese is so Damn Hard,” we had a miscommunication over pork steak and bamboo rafts. The former is zhūpái (猪排), a term with which we were familiar. Unfamiliar, but very close in pronunciation, was the latter, zhúpái (竹排). Even worse, despite repeated requests for clarification, none of the locals explained zhūpái using the word "boat." C’mon China: "Bamboo raft" is not an everyday vocab term for us stupid foreigners! Instead, we were left wondering why everyone was encouraging us to sit on a pork steak—a fitting reflection of our misunderstood, misunderstanding visit to Wuyishan, China.