9/11

9/11 10:30am CST

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Today we're heading out of Lhasa for Nanning, by way of Kunming and Shangri-la (yes, a Chinese city renamed itself that). The airport is about an hour out of Lhasa. Wouldn't you know it, our flight is delayed. I also lost my Germ-X alchol wipe going through security. I guess I'll have to get some ghetto Chinese version. The whole day is gonna be eaten up by flying. At this point we might not even be done by midnight.

Even at the airport, paper towels and tissue paper is non-existant. They know that if they offered any for free, the first person to come up to the dispenser would take all of it. This sort of ethical problem is long-standing enough that there's a term for moving away from it -- becoming civilized. Whenever someone does something like that, it's called not being civilized. And of course the goal as a nation is to become ever more civilized. Exhortations to become more civilized in various facets of life are plastered on signs everywhere. For example, I've seen in some bathrooms a poster that says, "one step closer to the urinal, one giant leap for our civilization." Because you know, splatter and pissing on the floor is a legitimate issue.

Eventually, we land in Nanning. One of mom's classmates, Lin Jin, is there to pick us up. He drives us on the nice Nanning highway system to where we'd stay for the night. Before we get to the hotel, he first swings by a noodle joint and has us sit down for a bit of a night snack. Nanning is in the province of Guangxi (Wide West) which is next to the province Guangdong (Wide East). Both these provinces are well in the area of China where Cantonese is spoken. Cantonese, like Mandarin, is subject to various dialects and local variations. Lin Jin and my dad are from counties that are fairly close to each other in Guangxi. The Cantonese they speak is quite different from that spoken in Hong Kong and Canton, but it's still mutually intelligible. These variants are probably far apart as a Puerto Rican from New York and a good ol Southern boy -- slight vocabulary difference and large accent difference. As far as Cantonese and Mandarin... if a Mandarin-only speaker listens carefully, he might pick up 25% of sentences/phrases a Cantonese speaker is saying, by similarity in sound and context.
The noodle soup Lin Jin ordered was excellent. It was savory and had nice and soft noodles. You can think of it as a Chinese version of pho, devoid of the Vietnamese style spicing. It was served in a big sandstone pot. Because of the air bubbles in the material, it acts like a thermos -- cool to the touch even when there's hot soup on the inside.
When we get to the hotel, it's pretty swank. It's not even a nice one. I guess it shows the level of refinement in Nanning. I have pictures.