I am counting down the days until Spain. Don’t get me wrong, I love China and I am having a great time. There just happens to be something that I am really looking forward to. More than you know…

We found a really good sushi place at 1912, the place where all of the young people go, full of clubs and restaurants. The sushi is incredible, and compared to pipe-tobacco stuffed turtle marinated in duck blood it is the best fucking thing that has ever been in my mouth. Four of us ate an incredible amount of sushi, the waitresses were laughing at us, and had 6 big bottles of Asahi, and the bill was no more than $15 apiece. It’s really amazing.

We present our project on Saturday. With the cancer scare, communication problems within our group and general orienting (pun totally intended) ourselves to China, we are a little behind. The next few night will be busy, long ones. But I’m having fun, and the work is interesting, so I refuse to stress too much about it.

I will talk to you soon. I am going to try to update as often as possible. I forgot to mention in my last post about the Suzhou Gardens that Natalie Portman was there. I didn’t see her, but some of my friends did. A little celebrity sighting made me feel at home.

Here are some photos:

This is, admittedly, a bad photograph but it has a good story behind it. I needed a panoramic overview of our site so I found a tall apartment building. I asked (well, pointed up and then at my camera) if I could go to the top and shoot some photos. The guy was young and cool and escorted me to the top. He took me to a balcony that had about a 5 foot wall that was hard to shoot over, but was working fine. He motioned for me to follow him and I obliged. He led me to the roof that was surrounded by an 8 foot parapet. He motioned for me to climb an air conditioning unit, and he climbed behind me. I didn’t want to seem like a pussy, so I did it for America. The next thing I know I am kneeling on an 18 inch parapet trying to shoot photos. The security guard had the back of my shirt in his hands to keep me from falling. This Banana Republic shirt is nice, but I don’t think these buttons are going to hold my 175 lbs. from falling 33 stories. My hands were shaking, so the panoramas are a little blurry. I didn’t want to look down, so I just pointed my camera downwards and this is what I got. Keep in mind this is someone who was supposed to be guarding my security. But he was nice enough to allow me on the rooftop.

The obligatory group photo sitting on a giant Buddha. I rubbed his belly for good luck and then immediately Purel-ed my hands for good health. I’m top right in the white T.

This kid kept jumping up and down trying to get in my shot. He would have been annoying if he himself didn’t make such an awesome shot. Old and young Chinese people make for good photographs, but everything in the middle bores me.

The (literal) fabric of the city.

I took this the first day when i was still getting used to my camera. The quality is shit, but the mailbox is great.

Some locks on top of the Purple Mountain. There were hundreds of them and I have no idea why.

I’m this confused everyday.

24, 23, 22, 21……..

Photo by BL.

I bought this hat in Suzhou because my neckface was getting sunburned. I figured all of the locals wore them too, but I didn’t see any other pointy hats around town. It did the job of sun blocking, but I began to feel really racist. I felt I was a caricature of what people imagined Asians to be, so I had to leave it in a planter. It was only $3 and I got this photo out if it, so it was worth it.

Exhaustion. I slept about 3 hours last night. Today we woke up at 6:00AM to catch a train to the town of Suzhou, two hours away from Nanjing. Once we arrived, we walked to the “The Humble Administrator’s Garden” (that’s a translation which I’m not sure translates well. I also heard it called “The Unsuccessful Politician’s Garden”. Either way, I am pretty sure the name is a Taoist reference.) which was originally built in 1509 during the Ming Dynasty. It was nice, and it was a good place for me to continue getting used to my Nikon D80 that I recently purchased.

Afterward we had some more crazy Chinese food. Some of it was OK, but once again everything resembled what it was when it was living. The tofu, mushrooms and rice were great. China is making me a vegetarian.

Next we went to the new I.M. Pei designed museum (this is his hometown). I wasn’t crazy about the architecture. It’s a contemporary interpretation of the traditional Chinese courtyard, and while there were a few nice moments, overall it bored me. And I got lost coming out of the bathroom, the circulation is a bit unclear. The art was a little repetitive, but in the cafe I saw a really cool coffee maker (should have taken a picture) that I had never seen and I want to try to find one to buy. It looked like something from a laboratory, and the coffee was fantastic.

Left the museum and just wandered the streets taking photographs. Old Chinese people have the greatest faces. I wanted to photograph every one of them that I saw, but a lot of their great faces were giving me weird looks. Walked down side streets and wondered why there were so many hot, slutty looking girls working in barber shops and foot massage clinics. Also wondered why they wanted to cut my hair and massage my feet so badly. Found out they were whorehouses and everything made a lot more sense.

Then we hired a bike taxi and had him pedal us to the Buddhist Pagoda/monastery/temple. SN and I rode and I shot a lot of video, it’s amazing what you can get in China just by pushing the record button. He told us 20 yuan ($2.61) but we knew how hard he worked pedaling two Americans in the heat and decided to give him 70 yuan ($9.15). Seven bucks between the two of us totally made this guys day and that felt good. I’m pretty sure this is what people with too much time and boring conversation refer to as “Paying it forward”. Anyway, I totally paid it forward for my first time.

Once at the Pagoda, we ascended the steep spiraling staircase up the 15 (or so) levels. The views were beautiful, but climbing up and then down took whatever energy I had left out of me. As you ascend the concrete openings you walk through get smaller. I had just snapped a photo of the sign that read: Lookout, Knock Head, when I walked through the opening without looking out, and totally knocked head. When I got to the bottom of the pagoda, I walked through the monastery and saw some monks meditating and some large awesome looking Buddhas. I thought that if I was anything I would probably be a Buddhist, but then I thought that they get up early and I am not much of a morning person and decided that i won’t be Buddhist after all.

Got back on the train and had two warm Budweiser’s and shot some video out the window. I realized that Donovan lyrics had been in my head all day, so I listened to some on the iPod. Remembered that Donovan was Buddhist and figured out why the lyrics were in my head. After Donovan, I had Bikini Kill lyrics stuck in my head. So I listened to that and figure that those lyrics were probably there because the men are dicks to the women in this country and the women are mostly super submissive. They need some Riot Girls here.

Images of Suzhou:

Photos from Nanjing to come soon…

China is unlike anywhere else on earth, at least anywhere that I have ever been. The language barrier is gigantic, etymological reasoning that works in Europe is non-existent here. To order food we have been pointing at menus with hopes of not getting anything too weird. Results are 50/50 and some of the more odd food we have eaten includes:

• Some sort of Black Snake.
• Eel of all varieities.
• A bowl of fish (which had to have their heads bitten off, then you eat like a Snickers Bar).
• Coagulated Duck’s Blood.
• Duck eggs buried underground for a year, then boiled and served.
• Something that I am pretty sure was a turtle stuffed with pipe tobacco, but I am yet to get a positive ID on this one.
• Ducks Head for appetizer.
• Cow Stomach.

As Americans, we tend to like our food to not resemble the animal that it came from. The Chinese have no qualms with this, and though it grosses me out, it does seem silly to disguise the obvious fact that we are eating an animal. The Chinese also don’t waste much of an animal; when you are eating chicken, no part of the chicken is spared. I am still getting used to the food.

If I thought the language barrier was unsurmountable w/r/t ordering food, something else came along that was 10X more insurmountable. (I will preface the following few sentences with this: I am completely OK.) About 3 nights ago I was lying in bed when I found a hard lump on my left testicle. It was inside on the actual testicle and about the size of a BB. Needless to say it fucking freaked me out and I was up all night perusing testicular cancer websites. I had also been having a dull pain in my lower abdomen, which coincides with the symptoms listed for TC. The next morning I went to the hospital with IW-R, NR, BL, and a Translator. Chinese hospitals are fucking crazy. The reception lobby resembled the betting cage at the horseraces; people pushing their way to the window with money in hand, disrespecting the notion of a civilized queue. I finally (via and with infinite gratitude to the translator) found my way to the Urologist. The Chinese, surprisingly, have much different views of privacy then I would have imagined. While my pants were dropped and my balls were in the hands of another man, the door was open and hospital staff and other patients were coming and going as they pleased. I had already embarrassingly explained the words dull, testicles, lump, pain, abdomen, ejaculate and narcosis to my translator. The even more surreal part came when there was a man feeling my balls with a three-way bilingual conversation taking place. When you are in the midst of a cancer scare you want to know every word your doctor is saying and I was only getting about 20% of it through the translation. He felt the lump and told me to go have a urinalysis done. I went to the next horserace cage and the woman handed me a cup and pointed at the bathroom. Again no privacy, and I pissed in the cup and walked by all the other people in the waiting room carrying a cup of my own piss. NR lightened the mood by saying, “Nice color, mate.” The urinalysis was performed on the spot and it said that the problem was not my kidneys, but my testicles.

At this point I was fucking terrified.

They told me to return the following morning for an ultrasound. After a very long 18 hours of foreseeing my future as a man with one testicle, and thoughts of impregnating the next woman I saw, I returned to the hospital. I had to drink gallons of water for the ultrasound, and this waiting room was completely bizarre. The Chinese have a spitting problem which you think would be controlled in a hospital, but the NO SPITTING ANYWHERE signs seem to be more of a suggestion than a rule. There was also a man smoking. The queue for the urinalysis was even more pushy than the reception line. After I finally got on to the ultrasound table and dropped my pants (the 3rd time the translator has been exposed to my thunder) they rubbed a cold gel onto my balls and performed the ultrasound. No privacy here either, I was behind a very transparent curtain and while in the queue I had seen many boobs and penises through the curtain and knew that mine was now prominently on display. After the ultrasound was completed the man spoke in Chinese to my translator and the translator said “everything is good.” All i could say is “no cancer? no cancer?” to which they all laughed and said “No, no cancer.” They thought that I was out of my mind for even thinking cancer, but that is what every damn website told me it was (well among 11 other possibilities, but of course the mind assumes the worst.)

I went to one more specialist to have my balls fondled in front of the translator again, and my ultrasound results were read. The conclusion is that I don’t have cancer, it could just be a cyst, or an allergic reaction, or a slight hernia, or torsion… but I am fine until I get back to the states to have it checked out.

The bottom line is: No Cancer.

All of the privacy issues aside, Chinese health care is pretty great. Everything was performed and diagnosed instantly. And what would have probably cost me close to $4000 in the states cost me roughly $24 in China. Twenty four fucking dollars for 3 specialists, an ultrasound, and a urinalysis.

I owe more than I could ever say to the people who helped me during the hell of these two days. NR was great, he lightened the mood a bit, spoke frankly with me and made sure that I received whatever I needed. If I didn’t already thing IW-R was the coolest woman in the world, I definitely do now. She was with me the entire time and made me feel more comfortable in a fucked up situation then I could imagine. This is the second time BL has accompanied me to the hospital and stayed until we found out I was alright. Anything I can do to pay you back, I will. And to Xiaofeng, my friend and translator, who helped so much in an incredibly embarrassing situation, my deepest gratitude. I would not have been able to do any of this without him, and he totally went out of his way to be there and help a relative stranger. Thank you, I love you all and my gratitude is sincere, infinite, and real.

So now my balls are the center of discussion, which is generally how I prefer it. I am fine and back to work. I have a lot of catching up to do. Apologies to my family and loved ones, I didn’t want to call you until I had something concrete to tell you. No need to worry you.

I am 100%. My balls are bulletproof.

I leave for China in a couple of hours. I think I have everything packed. I don’t want to mention how many thousands of dollars of electronics I have stuffed in a single backpack…

I am having last minute “I’m forgetting something” jitters but by the looks of my overstuffed bags that seems impossible. I won’t be back in the states until August 2nd, but keep watch here as I should be posting work/photos/videos of my entire trip. Stops include Nanjing, Beijing, London, Barcelona, San Sebastian and Berlin.

I am hoping that China has the same impact on me that India had on Alanis Morissette. And by that I mean, of course, that I will write a silly, albeit catchy, hit pop song when I return.

Here we go…