Yesterday we met some of my aunt's family and we got a lot of red packets of money. So far, I've collected about 1300 RMB worth of lucky money (about 20000 yen), which is not much, but it's packets of 10-20 RMB each, so you can see how many packets I have! One contained 300RMB, so it doesn't count for much. I bought some groceries for our HK trip today and it came out to be about 14 RMB which is about $2.50 CDN. I bought a lot of stuff! Eating here in Guangzhou is unbeatable for price and taste. Americans must love it here! IT's just greasy food all day long and endangered animals and weird animal parts being eaten. I told you I saw some crocodile meat, right? It was really juicy looking. Anyway, to try to bring the paragraph back in order, today, I went to a shopping district of Shang-xia Jiu Lu (the Kanji is pretty easy: UP, DOWN, NINE, ROAD. So it's Kanji you should even know!) Anyway, a lot of foreigners were there and my mom was shopping crazy and so my sister and I waited for a long time outside shops and the sewers stank and there were so many people (think Nagoya Station times 10 for people and times 1 for area). I got bored so I stood outside the shop and started to do the robot dance, pausing every once in a while and my sister pretended to give me some money (I gave her some spare change) and I got a crowd gathered around me. A lot of people asked me if I was a real human being. Some people said I was a foreigner from the West because I didn't look Chinese and the foreigners said, "Hey look! There's some weird dude doing the robot! Sweet!" I wasn't very good because I kept cracking up and couldn't keep a straight face, especially with the gathering crowds. My sister was laughing a lot so forgot about the smell and the people. That's all that was important. I did it next to a guy in a chicken suit blowing a weird musical instrument and he got mad at me because people kept staring at me instead of him. My sister took a picture with a counterfeit Minnie Mouse guy in a suit thingy.  BTW, I now wish to perform the robot in random locations around China. Maybe I will make it a photo essay.

 

I will do it badly.

 

Also, kids attacked me yesterday and eat my ears.

 

 

Yesterday I met my extended family from my aunt's side of the family. There were 23 new faces that I met and quickly forgot because I had no way of finding out who they are. I don't know if I'll ever meet them again either, but I guess they are family.  The kids went all insane on me and started to play weird games with my mind and body.  I got 17 pockets of money so I'm a little weirded out by that experience.  We were going to go to the zoo today but it's raining.  Sometimes it's better to chill out, I guess.

 

I went to Dianxia and Shaquai (???) the last two days to see my ancestors.  It was pretty cool.  By ancestors and their land, I mean the area where they are from and the area where at least one of them had a dynasty. This is pretty ridiculous since I went to see the Chan Clan Academy and there are so many Chan (chen, etc) in the world, there's not much point in saying they are related very much. So I don'tknow of the Liang/Leung Dynasty's ruling area really is ancestrial.

 

However, the view from the Dianxia mountain and crazy penis rock formation and vagina rock cave makes for interesting look as well as the China Sex Musuem, celebrating 5000 years of culture and sex in China's long history. There are Korean words written everywhere so I assume Koreans also enjoy 5000 year old sex rituals. I didn't get to go into the Sex Museum, but the front has a woman riding a giant phallus.  However, the Penis Rock (or Vigour Rock, Man Stone, and various other names) was really big. It's a 28metre rock formation in the middle of the valley.  The diameter is 7metres. A guy on the tour commented that he didn't need to take a picture of the rock because he had something similar in his pants. A woman commented that he could not compare. Chinese women also think bigger is better.  Most of China feels the same.  Americans?  Nah, probably just different than Japanese.  Chinese women will skip the size issue if you have money. Hmmm...very American. I only say that because there are lots of short ugly guys here with really tall, beautiful women. The guys look rich.  The regular looking guys get ugly girls and good looking guys (like me) are stuck taking care of their mothers who have forgotten what it's like to travel.

 

Anyway, after the penis rock, we stayed in a hotspring resort and had a small villa to ourselves. It was real nice except when they refused to let my sister go into the pool with swimming trunks because girls had to have something more revealing on. My sister was forced to take off her swim trunks and go with her swimming other clothes, the bottom parts I do not know.  Meanwhile a guy went in with his underwear.

In Japan you wouldn't have this problem because everyone is naked.

 

Naked is good.

 

The next day, we went to see a monestary that was built 1500 years ago by the Liang Emperor. There were 400 monks in training there. A lot of people prayed to buddha, not realizing you don't need to pray to him because he can only observe and give answers that you already know. Oh well, they pray for selfish reasons, like everyone. Then they fight and kill and murder. Religion, when organized, is just a killing machine.

 

I ate a vegetarian lunch and looked at some medicinal fungus and drank some.  I liked a mushroom and nothing happened. My mother smacked me in the head. Also, some people from Beijing got really upset everyone in Guangdong was speaking Cantonese, which happens to be the dialect of the area.  I got yelled at by this old lady who also yelled at a nice old lady who travelled all over the world. It was because the nice lady was telling me about her travels. She is having a good retirement, I think. Also, travel makes you nicer because you see the world. 

 

Anyway, I got to chillax and take a bath.  My philosophy isn't complete without the sex part.  Vancouver, I'm hungry. :)

 

Ah, I am still sick as an old man here in Guangzhou and I still managed to do a bunch of random things.  This week started off pretty relaxing.  I went to see my Aunt again and we hung out, went to this area where Dr. Sun Yat Sen has a memorial built for him in the middle of the city.  I went to the park where my dad used to play (it's a man made park and it's 100s of years old so the trees are pretty old). I don't kow the name of the park very well, but it's to honour the 5 goats and the 5 maidens from heaven who brought food to South China, thus making us a rich area of chinese cuisine.  It's pretty interesting I guess.

 

Then I went to this 5 star hotel about 2 hours away from Guangzhou City in Haizhou City (I think) to climb Mt. Laofu (Laofushan) which is the #34 place of spirits to gather in China.  I think ie's in the top 3 for beautiful mountains.  It was a pretty nice mountain of 1300m, but we never got that far up cuz of 70 year old ladies and 3 year old kids.  Most adults were in their 40s and 50s.  My sister and I were the youngest.

The hotel was pretty nice.  A lot of people were Hakka people so they had a weird dialect, but I could pick it up faster than Mandarin.  Maybe I'll just start my way up to Beijing and get there language eventually.  Besides, Mandarin isn't even a Beijing dialect, from what my relatives tell me.

 

Also, my nephew (? I gues?) finally warmed up to me and now won't leave my side.  I guess it's better than him telling me I'm not even the same kind of species as him.  He's 5 and likes animals.  Oh wow, so do I!  I talked to him about dinosaurs.

Anyway, I'm sick.  I wish I wasn't.

 

pictures on my flickr account.

So the last few days, I've been pretty down due to my stomach acting like achild being taken off breast milk.  I'm not entirely sure what went down, but I believe the fatty foods and the frying of absolutely everything is the cause of that.  This is why McDonald's is incredibly popular here, I guess.  In Beijing Road today, I saw two Mac'rs a few metres from each other, equivalent to Vancouver's famous starbucks corner on Robson and Thurlow. (google earth it)  I guess Cantonese people really like their greasy foods.  And KFCs are everywhere too. 

 

Healthy does not exist in this part of the country and I really hope that when I'm allowed to leave this part of China, I get to see the other people.  Maybe in the north, people are better.  I have this feeling that the southern Chinese are similar to southern Americans, except that in America, most of that is stereotype, but here, it seems to be true.  Everyone is struck dumb by paranoia from daily news reports of muggings and robberies.  Where old ladies lose all their belongings because some kids decided to "help" the old carry heavy bags up a flight of stairs.  The thing to do here is to avoid help and never bother asking for me.  If they seem kind, they are probably from the North, cuz the northerns are the ones who are causing the breakdown of society (according to my relatives).  Why? I asked.  My paranoia is getting just as strong.  "Do you know that the best way to control people is with fear?" Well, mother says, "So what? How else do you get 1.3 billion people to listen?" I guess I have to agree that if you tell people the streets are constantly being watched by thieves, who will stab you for the equivalent of $1 Canadian and then jump into traffic to commit ritual suicide like a japanese business man, then I guess fear is good.

 

When I walk around these streets and around the place where I was born, I wonder what really happened here in China.  My mother said that China was never a rich country.  What about all those stories of the great dynasties and heroics?  "Oh, they existed all right.  Even Shaolin Kung Fu exists now, but we were never rich." But what about happiness? "Oh, we were happy then. We didn't know that the West was taking over the world and we didn't care. Our emperor knows it all." I'm very confused...

 

Anyway, my stomach developed some kind of trouble, my mom got scared of pricing to Beijing and maybe our entire trip will be called off.  Why?  My mom has learned to never trust a single person on this planet.  How she managed to fly back to China after 27 years and decide to hide inside my uncle's house is a mystery to me.  The commies really did a number on her.  She told me today that they sent her at 16 to work on the farms where the food she grew was given to the commie generals to distribute to the people, where she made no money doing the work that she did because it was for the good of society and good of her own health to keep fit.  They kept her doing work like that for 8 years.  For 8 fucking years of my mother's youth, the commies took that away from her and made her do nothing.  It turned her into a frightened middle aged woman.  She is afraid to even learn English, even though she's been Canadian for the past 20 years.  She has no friends because she thinks people wll just come and take away thigs she values. 

 

This story, she never told me.  Now she has.  Now this kind of thing is happening to some 16 year old girl in North Korea.  F'em, let's blow that dickhead president kim jong il out of the sky.  No one should have their freedom taken away like that.