Thursday, November 17, 2005
a never-ending trail of poo
if there is one thing that is true and constant about my china experience, it is the fragile framework of life and death, the inescapable indeterminacy of good and evil, the indescribable indefinitude of joy and pain, the utter uncertainty of the before after and inbetween... that is associated with my bowels.
i mean, really, if i could figure out how to go one month in china without having the overwhelming nagging urge to describe to a total stranger this new and wonderful and exciting shape color form structure design habit behavior size weight degree magnitude profoundness texture ability skill cognizance coherence intrepidity i found of my latest bowel movement, i would be a happy man. or maybe i would lose a little piece of happiness i gain from the all-out shock effect that brings on people's faces, but i'd still be content to lose that in the face of gaining a little peace of behind.
and i know that all foreigners refusely complain about this crap all the time and it's a big topic on all the expat boards and myeh myeh myeh but this blog is for me and i need to type this out for my own mental health so go on and read about excursions into the andes somewhere else, this posting is going to be primarily about fecal matters.
case in point: just recently i was sick for a couple of days due to my curiosity-killed-the nature to want to try new foods while i'm here and an almost suicidal oh-yes-please-thankya-ma'am nature to want to please people and eat whatever i'm offered. i was at a friend's house whose mother is oldskool chinese and is really fun to shock with my ability to understand her spoken dialect (which is pretty much just mandarin with no tones, which is pretty much what i speak anyway.) so she gives me this little thing in a small package to chew on while we're waiting for food to be cooked. it's this little thing that looks like half a nutshell with - well, to go with the current subject matter - shit smeared on the inside of the shell. now it certainly didn't smell like that nor did it honestly look like it, but in retrospect, i wouldn't be at all surprised. my first tipoff should have been when all of the other youngish people in the room declined to eat what i was eating. here i am now imagining the old grandma then cackling off to her room, hands rubbing together maliciously, mercilessly prophesizing my soon-to-be fate. but she seemed nice. and the thing was in a package for mao's sake. i mean, it certainly couldn't kill you if it was allowed to be packaged by the fda of china (fecal dung admin?) and sold by reputable thosekindathing sellers, right?
so yeah, i think the intended effect of such a thing is to heat up the stomach, put fire somewhere in your body, offset and imbalance in the qi or something of the sort. it certainly struck a chord in my qi. i ate next to little at the later luncheon and had a ruff time playing badminton afterwards and could hardly stomach anything around dinnertime. i could see the sticky brown sap on that nutshell working its way deep down into my inner stomach lining and all of my white blood cells and pseudoribogangleowhatevers setting up defenses and closing down all access points in preparation for a long, drawn out siege. and what a battle it proved to be.
at this point i hesitate. one, because i don't want to get my blog censored in any way. and two, because i really don't know how much some people can handle. it would be my pleasure to describe the whole of my episode in graphic detail, omitting nothing, eviscerating the contents of my bowels for all to see. but i fear repraisals. so i'll go more slowly, and see how far i think i can really go.
but going back to the original point of this mock essay, this kind of thing happens all the time. this is just one of many. oh, and also, by the way... china's great! come to china! learn the language, eat the food, converse with the people, dance, sing, be merry! bunches of fun for the whole family!
back to pain. so i went to bed that night without eating much (nor excreting much) and awoke in total pain. it had been a restless night, thanks to my stomach, and i think i may have also been dehydrated due to my stomach really giving me urgent messages that it did NOT need anything more put down there. but then came the inevitable battle. no, not between going or not going to school as it was a monday. that was easy. not. but instead, do i listen to my stomach giving me sensible advice to keep further combatants from entering the fray, or to the rest of my body with is also sensibly demanding further nutritional elements to be added to the bloodstream? i was at a loss, but i wagered a daring bet and went and got some donuts from the local donutesserie. and boy did they taste good to my taste buds. and boy did they not fit into the battle plans my white cells bodies were working out within.
think of it this way: let's say one day that tensions between taiwan and mainland heat up to a degree that they are pointing big guns at each other and swearing in slightly different dialects, and then all of a sudden an island pops up out of nowhere between the two land masses, populated by people that look like donuts. "don't fight, guys," they say," life is sweet! here, have a bite of us and forget all your squabbles. if you like sprinkles, we got'em." now, do you think that either of the two sides are going to listen to that nonsense. especially since the donut-folk are speaking english for some reason? no. instead, china annexes the minor land of donutia and uses it as a staging ground for further hostilities, in essence gaining a foothold over taiwan when before they may have been at more of a stalemate.
thanks a lot donuts.
so yeah, not a wise decision, i guess. but that's all "behind" me now, so to speak, as i proved later that night with prolific glory. and the next day i just felt like, well, crap. all i could put in me was water and juice and maybe some bread of sorts. i was a desolate wasteland of indoorness. i slept as much as i could, that being my swear-by panacea, and watched a couple dvds, those also being cure-alls of a.. more different sort. i drank a lot of juice later on and commiserated with my roommate kyle who happened to turn up sick just in the nick of time for me to have a sick buddy. i don't claim to be his contagen, but i don't deny it either. i just kinda.. snickered, as the younger brother (long abused by the elder) often does when his older brother's uppance finally does come down from the parents high above, smote down to the earth and writhing in fiery agony. especially when the elder does nothing and the younger just whelps from habit, bringing again the unjust judgment from above. that one's especially nice. or when you take some money from mom's purse and then they immediately blame him for the act, just cuz you're the youngest and the little angel and all that. wohohoooo, that one's sweet. but where was i. oh yeah, kyle was sick, so that was nice.
but that night was not so nice. cuz all i'd been putting in my stomach was sugars and starch and water and not much else and i think my whole body was fed up with the process, so it revolted. my whole body revolted. and i'm not even sure what that means. was it revolted by me? am i that disgusting of a creature? or did it just revolt against me, the highest authority, the supreme will? this i'll never know. i can only go from facts. and the facts stand thus: i was woken up at 1:30 in the morning by a burning in my stomach and chest (the last ditch effort of the mysterious nutshell thingy to kill me off, or just heartburn, either way not cool cuz it felt like they were setting up flaming catapults in my sternum) and a general feeling of tight constriction in my chest and lungs and heart and brain and throat. it was just a sucky feeling. my first thought, need water to cool the fire. second thought, oh that's totally going to make me throw up. third thought, yeah, well, so what? what are we gonna do then, huh? you're so smart, you figure it out! fourth thought, all right all right, let's do this. and so i drank the water, felt better, felt worse, threw up, felt better for a while, felt slightly worse, but went to bed after a while of mastering my own body and quieting the hordes of pugnacious demons within.
i'm totally never touching one of those nutjobs again. ya hear me? neer.
back to my point. this stuff happens all the time. eat a bowl of ramen, later that night you feel an imbalance in the force and you know it might just be a longer night than you planned on. eat what you think are three square meals with nothing amiss and yet the next morning you're late for class for good reason. try to eat all western food for a while, still doesn't work. eat nothing spicy for a while, nope. eat a lot of spice, whoa jeez, you're asking for some fun times explaining that one to the judge. whatever you try, there are always ramifications; in this life, or in the next.
but at least there will be some good stories to tell.
i mean, really, if i could figure out how to go one month in china without having the overwhelming nagging urge to describe to a total stranger this new and wonderful and exciting shape color form structure design habit behavior size weight degree magnitude profoundness texture ability skill cognizance coherence intrepidity i found of my latest bowel movement, i would be a happy man. or maybe i would lose a little piece of happiness i gain from the all-out shock effect that brings on people's faces, but i'd still be content to lose that in the face of gaining a little peace of behind.
and i know that all foreigners refusely complain about this crap all the time and it's a big topic on all the expat boards and myeh myeh myeh but this blog is for me and i need to type this out for my own mental health so go on and read about excursions into the andes somewhere else, this posting is going to be primarily about fecal matters.
case in point: just recently i was sick for a couple of days due to my curiosity-killed-the nature to want to try new foods while i'm here and an almost suicidal oh-yes-please-thankya-ma'am nature to want to please people and eat whatever i'm offered. i was at a friend's house whose mother is oldskool chinese and is really fun to shock with my ability to understand her spoken dialect (which is pretty much just mandarin with no tones, which is pretty much what i speak anyway.) so she gives me this little thing in a small package to chew on while we're waiting for food to be cooked. it's this little thing that looks like half a nutshell with - well, to go with the current subject matter - shit smeared on the inside of the shell. now it certainly didn't smell like that nor did it honestly look like it, but in retrospect, i wouldn't be at all surprised. my first tipoff should have been when all of the other youngish people in the room declined to eat what i was eating. here i am now imagining the old grandma then cackling off to her room, hands rubbing together maliciously, mercilessly prophesizing my soon-to-be fate. but she seemed nice. and the thing was in a package for mao's sake. i mean, it certainly couldn't kill you if it was allowed to be packaged by the fda of china (fecal dung admin?) and sold by reputable thosekindathing sellers, right?
so yeah, i think the intended effect of such a thing is to heat up the stomach, put fire somewhere in your body, offset and imbalance in the qi or something of the sort. it certainly struck a chord in my qi. i ate next to little at the later luncheon and had a ruff time playing badminton afterwards and could hardly stomach anything around dinnertime. i could see the sticky brown sap on that nutshell working its way deep down into my inner stomach lining and all of my white blood cells and pseudoribogangleowhatevers setting up defenses and closing down all access points in preparation for a long, drawn out siege. and what a battle it proved to be.
at this point i hesitate. one, because i don't want to get my blog censored in any way. and two, because i really don't know how much some people can handle. it would be my pleasure to describe the whole of my episode in graphic detail, omitting nothing, eviscerating the contents of my bowels for all to see. but i fear repraisals. so i'll go more slowly, and see how far i think i can really go.
but going back to the original point of this mock essay, this kind of thing happens all the time. this is just one of many. oh, and also, by the way... china's great! come to china! learn the language, eat the food, converse with the people, dance, sing, be merry! bunches of fun for the whole family!
back to pain. so i went to bed that night without eating much (nor excreting much) and awoke in total pain. it had been a restless night, thanks to my stomach, and i think i may have also been dehydrated due to my stomach really giving me urgent messages that it did NOT need anything more put down there. but then came the inevitable battle. no, not between going or not going to school as it was a monday. that was easy. not. but instead, do i listen to my stomach giving me sensible advice to keep further combatants from entering the fray, or to the rest of my body with is also sensibly demanding further nutritional elements to be added to the bloodstream? i was at a loss, but i wagered a daring bet and went and got some donuts from the local donutesserie. and boy did they taste good to my taste buds. and boy did they not fit into the battle plans my white cells bodies were working out within.
think of it this way: let's say one day that tensions between taiwan and mainland heat up to a degree that they are pointing big guns at each other and swearing in slightly different dialects, and then all of a sudden an island pops up out of nowhere between the two land masses, populated by people that look like donuts. "don't fight, guys," they say," life is sweet! here, have a bite of us and forget all your squabbles. if you like sprinkles, we got'em." now, do you think that either of the two sides are going to listen to that nonsense. especially since the donut-folk are speaking english for some reason? no. instead, china annexes the minor land of donutia and uses it as a staging ground for further hostilities, in essence gaining a foothold over taiwan when before they may have been at more of a stalemate.
thanks a lot donuts.
so yeah, not a wise decision, i guess. but that's all "behind" me now, so to speak, as i proved later that night with prolific glory. and the next day i just felt like, well, crap. all i could put in me was water and juice and maybe some bread of sorts. i was a desolate wasteland of indoorness. i slept as much as i could, that being my swear-by panacea, and watched a couple dvds, those also being cure-alls of a.. more different sort. i drank a lot of juice later on and commiserated with my roommate kyle who happened to turn up sick just in the nick of time for me to have a sick buddy. i don't claim to be his contagen, but i don't deny it either. i just kinda.. snickered, as the younger brother (long abused by the elder) often does when his older brother's uppance finally does come down from the parents high above, smote down to the earth and writhing in fiery agony. especially when the elder does nothing and the younger just whelps from habit, bringing again the unjust judgment from above. that one's especially nice. or when you take some money from mom's purse and then they immediately blame him for the act, just cuz you're the youngest and the little angel and all that. wohohoooo, that one's sweet. but where was i. oh yeah, kyle was sick, so that was nice.
but that night was not so nice. cuz all i'd been putting in my stomach was sugars and starch and water and not much else and i think my whole body was fed up with the process, so it revolted. my whole body revolted. and i'm not even sure what that means. was it revolted by me? am i that disgusting of a creature? or did it just revolt against me, the highest authority, the supreme will? this i'll never know. i can only go from facts. and the facts stand thus: i was woken up at 1:30 in the morning by a burning in my stomach and chest (the last ditch effort of the mysterious nutshell thingy to kill me off, or just heartburn, either way not cool cuz it felt like they were setting up flaming catapults in my sternum) and a general feeling of tight constriction in my chest and lungs and heart and brain and throat. it was just a sucky feeling. my first thought, need water to cool the fire. second thought, oh that's totally going to make me throw up. third thought, yeah, well, so what? what are we gonna do then, huh? you're so smart, you figure it out! fourth thought, all right all right, let's do this. and so i drank the water, felt better, felt worse, threw up, felt better for a while, felt slightly worse, but went to bed after a while of mastering my own body and quieting the hordes of pugnacious demons within.
i'm totally never touching one of those nutjobs again. ya hear me? neer.
back to my point. this stuff happens all the time. eat a bowl of ramen, later that night you feel an imbalance in the force and you know it might just be a longer night than you planned on. eat what you think are three square meals with nothing amiss and yet the next morning you're late for class for good reason. try to eat all western food for a while, still doesn't work. eat nothing spicy for a while, nope. eat a lot of spice, whoa jeez, you're asking for some fun times explaining that one to the judge. whatever you try, there are always ramifications; in this life, or in the next.
but at least there will be some good stories to tell.
