Going to Gansu for the National Holiday

Reports of daily life at home in Chengdu will follow people, I promise, but for now, it's the 0ne-week National holiday, and so I'm leaving for Gansu province for 6 days. I'll send an update from there too, of course.

FYI # 1 before I explain further: I've been fasting for Ramadan. For the religiously challenged, yes, it's currently Ramadan. I'm not Muslim, but I've done Ramadan before and I like it, and it's a good opportunity for me to study the Qur'an and pray and learn about Allah. So there you go. Fasting entails no food or drink between sunup and sundown, for one month. Generally Muslims will have a large meal together (iftar) after sundown, but since I have few Muslim friends here, I've been breaking the fast alone most days, so it's been a pretty lonely Ramadan so far.

Lanzhou (兰州) the capital of Gansu (甘肃) is 22 or 23 hours away by train. I'm going with Reshalati, my Uyghur friend (above) to see her patroness' 5-year old son, who attends the only Islamic elementary boarding school in China. Kind of a complicated story. But we'll be trespassing on the hospitality of all sorts of friends of the aforementioned rich Muslim lady, which may very well be awkward, but will at least be nice in that I'll have people with whom to break the fast. Most people are Muslim up in Gansu. Hui, which is the category made for Chinese Muslims who don't fall into any specific ethnic minority. Reshalati is Uyghur, for instance, which is an ethnic minority group that is almost 100% Muslim, speaks Uyghur, not Chinese, and look very different from "Chinese". This woman and most people in Gansu are Hui, which means they speak Chinese, look Han, they're fairly "normal Chinese" ethnically, they're just Muslim.

What else we'll do up there is actually at this point a mystery to me. I have the feeling we'll be more or less at the mercy of our hosts. It should be interesting, and I'll let you know how it's going.

Back to Chengdu, the City of your Dreams

I went back to China. I did it right after family camp. Just 3 days back in Montreal with Laura, sandwiched between the Maine woods and a road trip 7 hours down to JFK airport in NYC.

And now I'm here. Back in Chengdu, alone again (naturally). And I'm not blogging about it because it's amazing. China's not more amazing than Montreal. Or less. I'm blogging about it because I have more time to write here, and because you jokers (and I do love you) tend to read about what I'm doing with more interest if it's "abroad". So here you are; I'm about as abroad as it gets without lipstick (and that could be arranged).

Chengdu is still spicy and lovely, the way I left it. It's cloudy too, as usual, and it's a testimony to its pleasures that that doesn't really bother me all that much. There are more skyscrapers, more cars and more foreigners than (oh so far back) in 2005. But most importantly, everyone still speaks Chinese, which is overwhelmingly the most important reason I'm here. You'll hear here about what I'm up to, and you'll hear new songs and see new pictures, but you won't get much musing about modern China, Beijing 2008, human rights or the intersection of Confucian and Daoist values with waning levels of political indoctrination, rising numbers of middle class citizens, etc, etc, barf. Barf. Barf. At least, I hope you won't. I'm here to learn about China by learning Chinese, not to pretend I know anything about things about which I know nothing.

That said, I don't want to come off like I think politics aren't (a) interesting or (b) essential to keep abreast of. I'm just not going to talk about them. Sadly, working, eating and sitting on the couch in China doesn't make most people less racist, or more politically or culturally savvy than working, eating and sitting on the couch in Montreal. Me included. So really, wouldn't you rather just hear about what I'm doing this weekend? Well you're in luck! That's what you're getting.

Love, love, blog readers and news needers. I'll try to write a lot. Not a lot, actually, just a little, often.

Here's Nate Frederick, a good friend and a bearded rainbow, riffing about Chengdu down at family camp.

Fast Times at Family Camp

Family Camp in Maine was the bomb. What bomb? The proverbial bomb. My brother Benjamin showed up at my window in Montreal August 10th and he and I hopped a night bus down to Boston. At 6 in the morning we called the camp directors and found out they were driving up from Boston that morning, so they picked us up as we were playing guitar outside South Station.
Laura was there, Cam was there, Evan, Lizzie, Nate and Molly were there. Marinne too, which was nice because she's one of the best people to play Wicked Words with on intellectual late nights in the dining hall. Evan, Lizzie and I also had the pleasure of taking Jordan (from L.A.) on her first canoe ride ever, which was probably more exciting because it was a crowded nighttime stealth canoe ride over to the Owatonna beach to surprise the others and play Essence around a campfire.

Now to the chase: Everybody coupled up this summer. No joke. From the 16-year-olds to the old camp veterans, you'd have thought it was springtime in Bambi they way everybody got all twitterpated. So a lot of PDA and gossiping. Result: mild scandal and total hilarity. Good times.

The bun run (everybody canoes 2 miles down the lake at 6 am down to eat sticky buns) had a Harry Potter theme this year, which was perfect because I'd been getting into the band Harry and the Potters, and was waiting with bated breath to read the 7th book. Benjamin and I played the Weasly twins. Here are pictures of all of it, the bun run and camp fun, plus a song from the aforementioned wizard rockers. And all you HP haters, incidentally, can eat it. That large, proverbial, it.

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Abitibi - Témiscamingue

Abitibi-Témiscamingue is both the great white north and the wild west of Quebec, immortalized in Raoul Duguay's kicking "La Bitt à Tibi" among other places. It's full of trees and lakes and moose and bears and gold mines, mostly. Used to be part of the Northwest Territories until it was annexed to Quebec.
Laura had been pining for Abitibi since she read about it in "Mon Beau Far-Ouest" and so at the end of July we rented a car and made the trek up.

Highlights:

-Val d'or, mining town extraordinaire. We stayed at a bed and breakfast and saw Debbie Woo from high school, who is now a surgeon and stationed all the way up there.
-Refuge Pageau, where we saw bears, lynx, owls, moose, wolves, foxes, deer and raccoons.
-The cool and clear water of Amos, reputed to be the cleanest in all Quebec. And it comes right out of the tap for free. Our first taste of it was alongside succulent poutine and guédilles at the local Valentine.

We spent two days at the Parc national d'Aiguebelle, east of Amos. The highlight was taking a canoe trip and watching a mink fish off an island for half an hour. This was an intense mink. It caught a fish bigger than its head, I kid you not. Mink swim with their heads out of the water and their butts splash a little when they dive, but they catch fish like gangbusters. They're also the most prized fur-bearing animal in Canada (don't wear fur).
On the way out of Abitibi we had breakfast in Rouyn-Noranda, Canada's national copper capital, and drove around the city a bit. After an 11-hour day of mostly driving, we made it back to sunny Montreal as the sun was setting, with only time enough to be sad that we'd be both leaving it a week later.

Pictures!

Abitibi is great, Montreal is great, Amos is very cool, we saw two bears in the wild. Admit that that's pretty awesome, no? Awesome enough that I went over my 300-word limit. Cut me some slack, I'm out of practice. A Québec song for you all today. Enjoy.

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