Bird
Dye Painted Fabric

Le Sacre Coeur
mixed media

Dew
oil

Polar Bears Have Black Skin
etching

Penguin Cloud
woodblock print

Yeti
4×5 film

India Sketches
pencil, charcoal, ink

Mahabodhi
ink

Ice Bridge
photo collage

P Step Step Step Step Ste
etching

H a p nes
etching

Boracay
mixed media

Boracay Bat
mixed media

Boracay Giant Sloth
mixed media

Cebu Panda
mixed media

Cebu Monkey
mixed media

Sterotypical Mad Scientist
dye painted fabric

Smiley
dye painted fabric

Human
dye painted fabric

Panda | dye painted fabric

Bear
monotype

Sheepish
monotype

Fish
monotype

Chicago
mixed media

Instinct
lithograph

I have all of these collected in a book. However, you’d have to find me in person or send me a message if you want one. Fortunately for you, though, all the images are online! You can also check them out on Flickr.

The hotel room, designed to make you feel at home, or rather, like you aren’t somewhere many many miles away. Sometimes I’d rather not stay in a hotel room. I’d rather get out and see the streets and the people and be woken up by that chicken or garbage truck or loud music that comes at around six in the morning.

Other times I’d rather hole myself up in that well equipped space, and just let my mind decompress. It’s really about what the head needs: more input, or less.

Foreign places are some of the most inspiring, intriguing, interesting, and all those other i_____ing words out there. A world full of new distractions that works on all of the senses. Walking down the street to get a bite to eat can be an adventure.

Yet sometimes the head can get too full and it just needs to take, well, a mental dump. Free from distractions and newness, where the temperature is always the same and so too, the artwork on the wall is always horrible.

All of this multiplies when traveling with someone, and the threshold becomes higher to venture out into the true unknown if you both aren’t up for anything.

For a long while I didn’t want to stay in any hotel because, well, how drab. But sometimes that’s what the head needs, even more than the body (although the whole regulated temperature and nice big bed provided their own reliefs which put the mind at ease in their own way).

This hotel was provided by a host, undoubtedly one of the best hotels in the city (signaled with one of the highest and most neon-illuminated signs in the city). So thank you to that host; the Chinese people I’ve met are some of the most hospitable I’ve ever met.

Although I must add, one difference about Chinese hotels? Most have the added “feature” of a KTV on one of the floors. Then again, I try to stay as far away as possible from all the forms of KTV, so maybe that’s a strike against hotels.

Using a payphone, how traditional.

Our hosts thought it amusing to dress us up in the traditional clothing found now at tourist stops, like the southern great wall in Hunan Province.

Parts of China are some of the most remote, at least land farthest away from the sea. But with all of the transportation options now available, it doesn’t seem so far away as it once was. In a way, the distance has gotten smaller.

Even in the height of travel (Spring Festival, when almost everyone travels home, possibly one of the biggest migrations of people on the earth) it’s still possible. Well, you might end up standing for a whole day on a train, and if heavy snow comes and people are stuck well then it was really bad, but even with that it still all works pretty well.

I had to take nearly every form of transportation. Even if it meant drawing a picture of a bus and pointing to the words of the next town I wanted to get to.

Long Distance Bus.

On the train. Each compartment like this has six bed surfaces on each side but during the day or when not sleeping everyone sits at the lowest level.

Local bus in Changsha.

Taxi in Chenzhou.

Local bus in Chenzhou. Which gets pretty crowded.

When I was in the heart of China did I realize I had no clue what the country was like. Throw away the conception of communism and replace it with one of some befuddled but very effective capitalism.

Now throw away the conception of temples and replace it with lots and lots of skyscrapers and cranes. Everywhere I looked, even in the middle of the countryside, some new tall building was being erected with a crane on top.

Even the cities I’d never heard of are big cities. Big like Chicago big. And there are a whole ton of those unheard of cities. Like Changsha (below).

The cities I had heard of, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, go on forever. Shanghai is perhaps one of the biggest cities in the world. As I was taking the train out of Shanghai all I saw for miles outside of the city were developments and factories, new bigger buildings and more cranes. Driving down a highway in Beijing was endless skyscraper after skyscraper, like downtown stretched for the whole city.

I had to take on a new perspective. The scale of roads and intersections were multiples bigger than what I’m used to. Many intersections in the big cities seem vast, even in the cities like Changsha. Something like six lanes and room for bikers or electric bikes too. Even the sidewalks look big.

Crossing the street becomes an ordeal, especially if you don’t wait for the walk sign. And few do.

Some intersections could pretty much fit a football field inside of them. When six or so streets converge at one point, that’s when there’s a whole system of underground tunnels to navigate through, and I ended up on the wrong street on more than one occasion.

The buildings are tall. The highways are long. The people are many. This beast is big.

If you’ve ever heard the superstition that you’re never supposed to flip a fish after eating one side before getting on a boat or while on a boat because then the boat will capsize, there’s a solution. At least that’s the superstition in China, so they slice the fish down its belly and open its cross section so both sides can be cooked and both sides can be eaten without hassle.

Most of the time anyway.

It took five years and a return to China until I understand the difference.

While eating some pork wontons at a local noodleshop in the cold, two things happened: 1) The food was so warm in the cold air that after I ate it I could breathe steam like a dragon, and 2) There was that taste again. I asked my friend eating with me and discovered, yeah it tastes different than all the meat I’m used to because this pork didn’t taste like pork, it tasted like how pig smells.

Not my favorite meal. But I kept thinking about it and realized sure enough these wontons had a particular earthiness that doesn’t exist in the antibiotic injected slab of boneless meat I pick up at my local grocery store. The smell of dirt. The presence of bones. The skin still attached. These were just parts of the taste. Possibly this taste is most visibly differentiated by seeing the chicken head and all.

This is more present than ever in a local delicacy: stinky tofu. It smells, literally, like shit. I’m pretty sure it might be bathed in manure. But all the locals agree: it smells horrible, but they can’t stop eating it.

It’s possible to tell if there’s a stinky tofu vendor blocks away because it is so fragrant. Other businesses have tried to force stinky tofu vendors away from their own storefronts because it constantly stinks up the place. But the people love it. Certainly an unexplainable craving for that bizarre taste could grow, it just didn’t happen the first and possibly last time I tried it.

I was working and having culinary adventures in China for a while but now I’m back stateside, so expect lots more to come, very very soon! Photos, videos, adventures, games, culture shock, maybe even some gushiness about how much luxury we have in the states.

Seriously though, I might even rank the Chinese food above Thai food. It’s that good.

There’s diversity. I know the stereotype is rice but I ate more rice in the Philippines than in China.

There’s noodles, for about $1-2. If you go to one of the la mian (pulled noodle) restaurants, many of which are owned by the Hui ethnic group from northwestern China. You can watch as they take a slab of very glutenous dough and pull it apart, halving it, pulling it apart, each time doubling the number of strands they have, until there are hundreds of noodles pulled in just a few minutes from a mound. They even have pictures on the wall so you can point out what you want. It works out well because the same photos are at each of these Hui restaurants, so you always know what’s on the menu.

Proud noodle maker

Shy noodle maker.

There’re dumplings, especially good with the peanut sauce, mmmm.

Never before has egg and tomato tasted so good even if this photo doesn’t do it justice.

Five kuài (about 80 cents) will get a spicy chicken sandwich that is as addictive as crack.

Twice I ate food surprise. What is food surprise? A food you eat and later ask, what is this? And Surprise! It’s dog. Which had a very un-chicken like taste. And frog. Which made me want to give up meat altogether, if short lived.

_______________

About the meat. It’s never really the main course like in America. More often it’s added for the taste. I almost feel like a vegetarian, or a meateterian who prefers veggies while here.

Then there’s the fact I never feel full after eating this food. It’s all so light, sometimes a bit oily, but my stomach is a bottomless pit of a black hole stealing away all the veggies and meat and rice and noodles. That’s where chips ahoy comes in. I will intentionally eat cookies after a chinese meal not only because I have the biggest sweet tooth this side of the universe, but because it’s the only thing that adds that heavy layer in my belly and really makes me feel full. The chop sticks weren’t helping this phenomenon, because I would eat bit bit bit, surely slower than with a fork or spoon. But the wood chop stick texture is actually very suited for eating.

The first couple times I ate western food again my belly felt like it was going to burst. Immobilized heart pounding food coma bowling ball in my stomach full the only thing I could do was pass out. I guess I miss Chinese food.

You know those Chinese restaurants in the states? Well, I wouldn’t describe them as authentic. Certainly no egg and tomatoes, but maybe I’ll have to look for my other favorite dish: eggplant. Eggplant?! I still can’t believe it. Never have I appreciated its well cooked purple mushiness until now, shooting from the lowest despicable tastes straight to the top just like Fermina Daza’s taste for it in Love in the Time of Cholera.

That’s one of the things I’m always surprise by when I travel.  I get rid of those preconceived notions of food or people and end up loving the impossible.  Even eggplant.

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Note: Thanks to chinesefooddiy.com for the photo of eggplant, beijingmadeeasy.com for the egg and tomato, and youtube user jyaki2 for the la mian video.

The local grandmother invited us to sit down in their front yard and offered us some beverages and had a guitar to play too.

My friends and I needed a respite from the sun. When we sat down there was a quick gathering of these curious but shy kids. Only a foot away, had the fence not been there I don’t know if they would have gotten so close.