Who is saying what Part 2

This is a typical conversation between me and a rickshaw driver here in Chengdu. I'm standing on the side of the road trying to flag down a taxi and a rickshaw driver comes cruising by looking for a customer. I put my hand down before he drives past me, so he knows that I don't want a rickshaw:

Screech of rickshaw brakes, rickshaw swings into the curb in front of me:

"Where you going?"

"It's too far for you."

"Where you going!?"

"It's way too far for you!"

"Come on, tell me, where do you want to go!"

[I tell him, he answers:]

"Are you nuts?! That's way too far for a rickshaw!!"

Kinesiska nyåret: förberedelser

Nyårspynt säljs på varuhus i Chengdu ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

Imorgon är det Nyårsafton och ute på stan är det hetsigt värre med det sista bestyr inför årets högtid. Det går knappt att få tag i en taxi, ricksha eller ens en svart taxi. Igår tog det 45 minuter att hitta transport. Vi var åtta personer strategiskt placerade runt en korsning som kämpade om samma bilar. Till sist fick det fick bli en motoriserad san lun che (”tre-hjulad-fordon”) körd av en pensionär. Tyvärr tog elektriciteten fort slut i batteriet så vi fick hoppa av halva vägen och leta ny bil i detta kalla vinterväder - det blev en san lun che till. Jag bekymrar mig alltid över att förarna klär sig alldeles för kallt, många bär inga mössor eller så. Men dagens hade enorma motorcykelhandskar och säkert tre lager vinterställ under ytterkläderna. Polisen i Chengdu är annars väldigt restriktiv med san lun che och ricksha nu förtiden men tillåter många att tjäna en extra hacka innan nyår samtidigt som de hjälper till med transport då så många taxichaufförer har återvänt till sina hemorter för att åter vara i familjens famn.

Ur På kinesiskt vis:

Dagarna före nyårsdagen fixas och fejas det. Man städar in i minsta vrå och köper hem mängder av festmat. Man pyntar hemmet med snittblommor och alla sorters levande blommor som symboliserar återfödelse och ny tillväxt. Blommar dina växter under nyåret för det med sig extra framgång och belöning under det nya året. Man dukar fram skålar med apelsiner och fat med åtta olika sorters torkade frukter och frön. Barnen får nya kläder och skor – helst i lyckofärgen rött – och presenter inhandlas till vänner, familjens åldringar och övriga släktingar.

Det är nu man pyntar ytterdörren och huset med inköpta avbildningar av dörrgudar, nyårsbilar och lyckotecken; hänger upp röda lyktor och nyskrivna verspar på remsor. Man går till banken och hämtar ut mängder av nya, fräscha, oanvända sedlar som sedan stoppas i röda kuvert (hongbao på rikskinesiska eller laisee på kantonesiska). Kuverten delas ut till ogifta familjemedlemmar, ungdomar och barn under nyårsafton.

Nyårsafton är också en bra dag att besöka tempel där man bränner rökelse, tänder ljus och ber om saker inför det nya året. Under de femton dagar som nyåret pågår hålls tempelfester och uppträdande i parkerna. Man kan se lejon- och drakdanser och beskåda folkopera, äta godsaker och träffa vänner. Det är en uppslupen tid med påtagligt härlig stämning. Nu ska hela familjen samlas igen, man ska få lite välbehövd ledighet under årets tråkigaste årstid och alla försöker unna sig någonting gott.

Dagarna före det kinesiska nyåret är också i princip alla kommunikationsmedel i Kina fullt upptagna med att transportera familjemedlemmar kors och tvärs över det väldiga landet. Stationerna är knökfulla med förväntansfulla människor i finkläder belamrade med packning och presenter. Sedan, under vårfestens första vecka, avstannar Kina. Bra att veta om man turistar i landet eller ämnar bestämma affärsbesök under denna tid.

På kinesiskt vis ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn/Ica förlag, Forma Publishing

Monks and moms

Photo ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

One of the strongest memories I have from my first trip to Bangkok in the late 1980s was the incredibly slow traffic along Sukhumvit Road, creeping along in a public bus for literally hours with no sight of my destination and elephants walking beside us faster that the bus. Nowadays a trip to Bangkok is a pleasure due to the speedy, clean and efficient Sky Train. I spotted this sign on the train a few weeks ago and from a distance first thought that it said "Please offer this seat to moms". How nice. 

Darjeeling

Red panda/Mt Kanchenjunga Photo ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

A short hop, skip and a jump (actually a short flight with Kingfisher Air from Calcutta to Bagdogra near Siliguri in West Bengal) will take you to the foothills of the Himalayas, the tea plantations of Darjeeling and the precipitous roads that lead up to the mountain state of Sikkim. Sikkim has the smallest population of any state in India and is only slightly larger than Goa in size. From north to south it's maybe only 100 km long but because you drive for hours and hours along winding roads with switchback turns the feeling is of a much larger place. Arriving in Darjeeling from the flat Bengal plain the contrast is enormous. Hot, dry flatlands rapidly turn into tea fields and then the up, up, up begins. Along the way you will probably bump into the World Heritage steam "toy train" and make room for it to arduously pass by. You will rapidly overtake it again as it is very slow!

We took a minibus in the rain from Bagdogra Airport and after 4 hours we arrived in Darjeeling, no more the quiet hill station of Raj days but now a bustling market town and center of the local tea industry. Here and there amongst the new concrete buildings old Darjeeling can be glimpsed, sad and droopy but still charming none the less. Old evergreens like the Windamere Hotel and the Elgin still keep up appearances and an Afternoon Tea at one or the other of these is a must. Darjeeling tea is a wondrous brew, all fragrant and light and delicious, not at all as dark and robust and powerful like Assam tea. Tea is sold all over the town, but the best is probably found at Nathmull's.

Darjeeling, like Gangtok, is all ups and downs. After a while your feet start longing for something flat to walk on! A good town walk is up to the Padmaja Naidu Himalyan Zoological Park (to see the red pandas, Indian tigers, Himalayan newts and cloud leopards), then on to the Himalayan Mountain Institute to pay your respects to Tenzing Norgay and look at the museum that honors Mt Everest and mountain climbers. (Paddy visited Darjeeling in the 1950s and remembers sitting as a small boy in Tenzing Norgay’s lap. He and his brothers were then presented with ice axes by Tenzing and Paddy can still remember his warm smile and laugh.) After the museum you can continue up to the walk around the top and hope to get clear views of Kanchenjunga (above). The Big "K" is the world's third highest mountain at 8586 m and is a stunning sight visible from Darjeeling on clear days. (Everest can only be seen from Tiger Hill). Continue through the monkeys grooming themselves in the late day sun and you’ll wind up just about right for Afternoon Tea at the Windamere!

Oh Calcutta!

Howrah Hotel Photo ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

My first visit to India left many impressions, some physical, most mental. I wouldn't dare judge all of India from this one short visit to Calcutta but I must admit it shocked me a bit (sorry I am too old to make Kolkata stick in my mind). Such colors, smells and chaos, abysmal poverty, absolutely noxious exhaust fumes, uplifting beauty, wobbly heads, sweet smiles and nasty stomach problems - even Fellini couldn’t have dreamt you up. Calcutta was like a city long forgotten, an architectural Miss Havisham in a state of utter decay.

We arrived in the middle of the night on a China Eastern flight from Kunming and were driven to our hotel in a canary yellow Ambassador taxi. The Ambassador is like an old Volvo Amazon, shaped like a Glyptodon and the very personification of the Swedish slang word for a taxi (bulle). It drives like a tank and the engine get’s so hot you could fry an egg on the car dashboard. How Indian driver’s survive day in and day out inside these taxis during the height of the hot season is a mystery to me. Every ride with an Ambassador turned out to be a vehicular adventure-nightmare, juggling for position in the totally erratic traffic, racing alongside rickshaws (both bicycle and human), motorcyclists, scooters, food carts, enormous loads seemingly carried only by two human legs, cows and towering, monster Tata public buses, grinding their gears, revving their motors and belching out carcinogenic, nasty black fumes, ready at any moment to eat you up and spit you out onto the filthy pavement only to find yourself crushed under the total mayhem that is everyday life in this city.

I loved these taxis, cheap and so close to street level, where riotous scenes flashed by my window in an endless horror show of urban humanity: people bathing in water from overflowing pipes and storm drains, the water brown with filth from the human waste deposited directly into those very gutters. Squatter's slums and roadside chai stands and colorful sweet shops. The chaotic advertising and wonderful English in the newspapers, ”The Hurly Burly Gift Shop”, ”Frank Ross Pharmacy, Serving Humanity for 100 years”, ”We regret to announce the demise of Mr Aravind Muckerjee who has now gone to his heavenly abode”. The back’s of public buses with their handpainted signs: Please Honk! or My India is Great! Women in beautiful saris and salwar kameezes, made out of cloth the color of every butterfly species known to man. But of course, the fumes coming through the window of an Ambassador could bring down an elephant.

We stayed on a floating hotel on the Hooghly River (”inventively” named The Floatel) and then on the return journey in a much more downmarket dive called The Howrah Hotel, promptly renamed The House of Horrors. The HH is situated on the other side of the Hooghly by the train station and has been around for over 100 years. Several Bollywood films have been made at the hotel which does have quite a dramatic air to it - albeit a musty, crumbling air. (The local West Bengali variety of Indian movies are called Tollywood as they are made in the Tollygunge area of the city. This is of course the home of film director Satyajit Ray.) A faded picture of India’s most well-known actor, Amitabh Bachchan, was pasted to the wall, photographed in the courtyard of the hotel. The hotel must once have been quite magnificent but today it is both a boarding house (never a good sign, men in dirty singlets and dhotis lounging about, staring at you or into space) and a hotel. We got the ”fanciest” room for about 100 yuan/sek for four people. That price says it all, you can imagine what the room looked like. But we did survive the night with no problems and no bedbugs (which Burton had gotten at the fancy-smanchy Floatel). Emy laughingly pointed out the ancient ”Suggestion Box” in the lobby and wondered if we had enough time to write down all that we thought of the place. The HH did have lovely floor tiles though….

I read several books I will gladly recommend during my two-week stay in India:

Indien, elefanten som började dansa, Per J Andersson
Karma Cola, Gita Mehta
The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga, (just won the Man Booker Prize 2008!)
City of Djinns, William Dalrymple (about Dehli actually, not Calcutta)