A tiny glimpse of my childhood

Like scars that never quite heal, I carry memories of people that made an impact in my life. They may mean nothing to you but they are everything to me.

I met Steif when I was 10, he stopped me to ask for directions and in a way I have followed him since. He taught me the proper way to ride a bicycle, and how to enjoy life. When I was 10, Zimbabwe was a paradise, colorful and throbbing with a rythmn of life. People were happy, well fed and life was worth living. If you were an NGO worker dying to make a difference in a developing country, Zimbabwe was were you wanted to be. The tourism bureau sold it as the land of smiles and sunshine (365 days of sunshine!) and the national parks overpopulated with wild animals sold themselves. Steif was doing research in Zimbabwe living a perfect life in a beautiful colonial home too big for 2 people and spending most weekends on his bike, motorcycle or Alfa Romeo trekking weekend adventures across the African landscape. I spent most of my weekends trying to win his heart, he hated children but I was determined. Eventually he took me along on some of his adventures. I remember one hot Saturday, we spent all day fixing the motorcycle, I don't remember whether we did fix it or not, but I remember being with him eagerly fetching this or that and cowering in fear of reproach each time I touched something I shouldn't have or stepped on an important part. I also remember cleaning up with the hose, cooling ourselves from the hot sun.

Twice a week after school I would count the minutes till the bell rang, then with my oversized backpack I would run all the way to his house praying for two things, one that he would be home from work and two that he would have time for me, the first was not always the case but the second always happened. It would take him time to unwind sometimes but he would always find something for me to keep myself occupied. One day I could help him plant something in the garden, another day we would sit outside and read dutch magazines while he enjoyed a cold beer and I, my glass of orange juice. Another day we went through music tapes listening to Mutukudzi while I helped him translate what Oliver was singing about and before I knew it, it was 2:30 and I had to go home. I would find every excuse not to but eventually I would have to lug my oversized backpack that always chaffed my shoulders and made me sweat and take the longest way home reliving my afternoon. Eventually I got him to share his weekends with me, weekends were important for him because he worked so hard in difficult, remote areas where he taught uneducated mothers how to take good care of their infants, the last thing he wanted was to spend his free time with a high strung 10 year old who never seemed to shut up. Soon enough, there we were cycling to the pool with our bag full of cheese sandwiches, fruit and lots and lots of books. We would spend the whole morning at the pool before the crowds came then head home for lunch and more sunbathing. One weekend we went to Tsindi ruins, a couple of hours drive away, this was exciting for me because I had never rode in the Alfa Romeo. I remember being strapped in the back, feeling the warm breeze on my face and watching the white clouds against a shocking blue sky as they sailed above me from the open sunroof watching Steif's strong hands on the wheel. Then there was the time we went cycling for a whole day! I didn't enjoy that much, was hot and tired and cranky by the time we got home and then I had to go "home."

I remember the sleepovers, I had my own "room" which was a corner of a large bedroom. My bed was a mattress with a canopy of brightly printed material with busy patterns that frightened me at night when I could not sleep. Steif would say goodnight to me then head back out to entertain friends, from my room I could here the laughter and clinking of glasses, soft music in the background, every now and then someone would remind a loud talker there was a child sleeping. I remember the book I spent weeks writing on the weird contraption they called a computer. I had my own floppy disks to save my work and I would print pages and pages on the dot matrix printer. I lost that first effort when the computer crashed but I will never forget the hours I spent "working" knowing Steif was nearby to help fix the printer or edit my latest chapter. I knew that child was me and that thought always comforted me to sleep. The night they had their farewell party, I was allowed to stay as long as I wanted and to also sit with the adults. I was mesmerized by the adult talk the wine, the smoking, the food and the dozens of people who obviously felt the same way I did about Steif. The next morning was the best, everyone nursing a hangover including myself (from a little experimentation) we had our nutella and cheese breakfast outside in the sun, read our papers,and hopped on the cycles for a few hours of swimming. On the way back I gave myself a headache desperately trying to find a way to prolong the weekend and not go home.

My friends have childhood memories of barbies, gi joes, play ovens and of playing street games. I have memories of sun bathing, fixing motorcycles, coffee under the tree, dinner conversations under starlit moonlight, mornings spent swimming at the pool and road trips on weekends. I guess a childhood well spent is not always conventional, not everyone gets a barbie doll but every child should experience love and moments of bliss in their lifetime.

Ayi Jane

China can be a lonely and dark and inconvinient place. Without the language you cant order food, flag down a taxi or even go to the local fruit market. Without connections you can’t get illegal cable tv, open a bank account, navigate the visa system, get discounts at the hospital or gain access to drugs or any illicit services you might be in need of. It is possible to mimick and point your way out of things, but the whole experience may leave you feeling like an inexperienced mime in a small budget movie. Once you get the hang of it though, you will quickly begin to flourish from efficiency to efficiency. From figuring out online banking, taobao shopping, to getting your neighbourhood grocer, shoemaker, locksmith, tailor to make housecalls you will soon have the world at your doorstep. Armed with connections and language; a multitude of avenues will open up, a Pandora’s box of opportunities burst forth and lay at your feet.

This is where your Ayi comes in. Ayi is the general word we use for the maid who also doubles as the nanny, translator, consiglieri, broker (for countless services, chef, bargain hunter, business partner (more on that later) and all round maintanance supervisor. Ayi is usually in her late 40s, an empty nester who likes to keep busy with an amazing tolerance for children and adults who do not speak the same language as she does. She may speak a little English or non at all but that’s not really a deal breaker when it comes to her indespensability. Everyone needs an Ayi because they are lonely. Neither I nor any of my friends have physical deformities that prevent us from cleaning up after ourselves, but we all can’t live without our Ayis. To us; having an Ayi is a charity initiative, an economic booster, social advancement experiment(if you prefer) and if we are honest with ourselves, a hail Mary answered in the nic of time to save us from ourselves. Ayi will clean, cook, pay your bills, manage all the maintanance work around the house and all the while she is tending the baby, calling in your food order and transcribing for you the simplified pinyin for that chinese foot cream which does wonders for your bunions. She will also listen to your problems and secretly try to medicate you of any ailments she might pick up on during her cleaning investigations. A friend of mine practically ran a pharmacy dispensary out of his apartment from potions and tonics dutifully provided by his Ayi during SARS. She even had custom made embroidered masks one for each day to keep him sanitized and fashionable.

I inherited my Ayi from an internet stranger (shanghaimama2010) who wrote a long narrative on “how wonderful and hardworking” Ayi Jane had been to her sweet family. “It’s a shame we can’t take her with us…” Omit names and the advertisement would have worked just as well for an abandoned Rottweiler looking for its next good home. Nobody ever tells you it barks at the moon and is not house trained. Her negative attributes were strategically absent from the well written essay but alarm bells should have sounded when I came across the overuse of the word “great!” Ayi Jane turned put to be a no nonsense military sergeant, she never smiled and worked on the clock, if she arrived at 10:05 she was gone by 12:10. She didn’t like that I slept late, sometimes not alone and didn’t wear enough on cold days. On the day of her interview; she arrived with a folded well used list of what she “didn’t do” scrawled by pen neatly in English. (1. No handwash underwear; 2. No pay bills; 3. No dog shit, …)her prerequisites though reasonable were a bit intimidating. At the end of the interview I had handed Ayi Jane the keys to come to my place three times a week at double the price including transportation fee to and from her home and she had agreed to work much less than she had ever done previously. Something definitely got lost in translation but at USD$80 a month, I still had the better end of the bargain. Her real name was 吴小接 but she called herself Jane to make it easier for us stupid foreigners who are too lazy to learn Chinese. Three times a week, Ayi Jane would go from toilet to kitchen methodically touching every appliance and surface with a wet cloth leaving watermark tracks which to her were a sign of “cleaning.” She was averse to all the bleach and multipurpose cleaners I supplied. When I insisted she would simply pour a cap or 2 out in the sink to prove she was using the stuff. She would “organize” all my cds and dvds making sure all my “Friends” Dvds were in the box marked “MadMen Season3” and anything with signs of nudity hidden way beneath piles of books on the top book shelf where my innocent self couldn't reach. This is where I found all my “Nip Tuck” episodes. Dust was dutifully swept under my couch, my bed and any other crevice she could find. Anything indicating I was sexually active was thrown away or hidden in hard to reach places again to protect the innocent. When laundry became an issue, I took to leaving mounts of color coded laundry neatly lined up for her to throw in the machine since left to her own devices; Ayi Jane would simply mix my whites with a pair of red socks and blue dyed jeans. She would argue that washing 3 same colored shirts at a time was a waste of soap, water, electricity and most importantly her time. My Chinese not being good enough, I cried and pointed to my ruined silk shirt then showed her on my pocket calculator how much it had cost me to purchase the shirt. She got the point but not before she scolded me for spending too much money on a shirt. Ayi Jane loved to cook; along with some fruit and veggies she would pick up for me she would bring her own assortment of vegetables and unidentified dried meat that would boil away while she cleaned leaving a stench that took days to air out. This she would eat with a bowl of steaming rice while she squatted on the floor of the kitchen, left overs would be packed up in ziplock bags and stored in my freezer next to my vodka bottles. It was clearly understood this food was not for me. At one time I had a heated exchange with Ayi Jane after she had gifted me with a pair of sensible undies insisting my thong under wear hardly covered anything and looked suspiciously uncomfortable. She wanted to throw them away and I staunchly refused on the grounds of invasion of privacy. She thought I was being uptight and unreasonable, probably brought on by my choice of underwear.

I went on a trip to Thailand one year and left my apartment keys with a friend of mine who lived out of town. I neglected to tell Ayi Jane I had guests staying in my absence. Big mistake, she called the cops on my friends who had a lot of explaining to do, luckily they knew enough sign language to show the policemen my copy of the keys and a welcome note I had prepared for them, not sure what difference it made to ease their predicament though.

After 2 years with Ayi Jane I moved to Africa. She cried, I was confused. Was she crying because I had not given her a severance package or because she was going to miss me? Our relationship had not exactly been warm and convivial but never the less she cried and helped me pack. As she packed all my belongings she would ask if I absolutely needed this spoon, this shirt, these shoes? I mostly gave in so I guess we are even. I have a more tame Ayi now, who keeps her nose out of my business and I let her do her thing. It helps that I always make sure I am not at home when she cleans and she in turn makes sure I pay my bills.

It's a set up!!

So I have been set up for a blind date this weekend. This is huge because I haven't really met people in this way before and after years fixing my friends up and trying to get them to reciprocate, it took me crying in my beer while stroking their terrified cat and double dipping from the hotpot for them to realise the situation had reached a crisis level. So I have a fix up this Saturday, few problems though - I don't really know him and have no way of googling or cyberstalking him beforehand which makes me very uneasy. The thing about a set up is because it is what it is you miss the whole drama played out at bars around the world and the anxiety and terror of approaching someone in a room full drunk people and deafening noise. The other problem is that I am quite used to meeting people on ok Cupid, Craigslist, Adult friendfinder, Viber, match.com, e harmony you name it - at least there I know what I am up against. SWM means single white male, active means he is old, dinner date means you will get a free meal but you are going to pay for it one way or another, possible LTR means he wants a regular sex partner and anything that contains the words "hook up," "professional" "top" "bottom" or a picture if someone's privates is self explanatory. It's quite easy to spot a psychopath in a bar or online, you just have to read between the lines or monitor his relationship with alcohol. A blind date however might prove a bit difficult to read especially if your good friends have vouched for him it's not really appropriate to demand his criminal record or his shrink's contact details. So I have come up with some ways to protect myself if things don't work out. Since he is a friend of a trusted friend, I am not aloud to use my taser or post his bad behaviour on "the dirty.com" so here is what I am going to do.


I am going to underdress in an effort to put him off in case he likes his women looking like streetwalkers.


When I get to the restaurant I am going to walk past the table if he is hideous, I understand this might confuse my friends who are also joining us for dinner but I will head straight to the bathroom and send a quick text that I left the gas on and I need to go and save the lives of thousands of people who live in my apartment complex can we have coffee later this week?


If he looks decent, turns out to be a racist, anti Semite or averse to dental hygiene, I have a friend who will give me a "something bad happened" call and I will respond accordingly.


Should we survive the dinner and head for drinks and he starts getting fresh I will just tell him "this was fun but in really need to get home and tuck in my boyfriend who is in bed with the flu."


I can see how this can be counterproductive to my mission but my friends completely misunderstood. I was only crying because I was talking my dog Legolas that was stolen and eaten by my evil friend! I don't think my situation is at intervention level yet, it's still nice to know I have friends who don't want me to die alone!

Scaling the Great "fire" Wall

I live behind the great (fire)wall, which means I have no access to youtube, blogspot, facebook, twitter, funny or dieor any other social platform that promotes unencumbered free speech. I don’t think the powers that be had me in mind when they made their censorship laws but their decisions definitely affect me and my ability to stay in touch with my friends worldwide. We are not in a in a social media blackhole with no access to the outside world unable to interact digitally with whoever we want about whatever we want. My social media life is quite active and current on Sinocentric platforms that makes it easier for my friends to interact in a way that’s more accessible to us. For every facebook, twitter, youtube, blogspot we have an alternative that does the job in terms of keeping us connected if not better then pretty bloody close.

Instead of Facebook and Twitter, we use Weibo which has 400 million followers and counting. The only downside is you have to be able to read some Chinese otherwise your browsing is limited to the small amount of English content which defeats the whole purpose of networking.

Skype; though not firewalled is rivaled by QQ which I find more user friendly and versatile in terms of file sharing, group chatting and relaying information to a number of people at the same time.

Youtube has nothing on Youku – if I can watch Bollywood silent movies and download whole episodes of Downton Abbey at will without encountering content restrictions then I am not missing much in my life without Youtube.

My wechat is whatsapp and instagram wrapped in one sweet package that allows you to leave voicemails, send photos and find people in your area who are using the same app Google was kicked out of the mainland a few years ago after they refused to sensor content addressing the 3 t’s (Tiananmen, Tibet and Taiwan) but it works just fine through its Hongkong servers. You can also just "Baidu" which is just as useful. By far the most successful/popular alternative is Taobao – your Amazon.

On Taobao you can get flowers delivered, get shoes made and find hard to find food items delivered to your door within hours or days. A friend of mine bought his cat on Taobao. He did have to go to the address provided for pick up but I am sure he could have had it delivered along with food and complementary toys to his office if he needed to. I get all my Halloween costumes from Taobao and last Christmas our Butterball turkey was from there. I don’t know how they do it but it works.

For my birthday this year I was gifted a VPN which I can’t explain too much about since its not exactly endorsed by law but everyone is doing it:) I felt I needed one after years of hiding behind the wall, I was getting out of touch with my past which is spread around the globe in 4 or 5 countries. I also miss friends who have since left China to return to the real world where DVDs and music come from Netflix and itunes not from a bicycle cart on the street. Most importantly I have 7 nieces and nephews, 4 of whom I have never met living in 3 countries. Then there are friends’ weddings, birthdays and milestones I keep missing and would love to be a part of if only virtually. I can’t exactly expect people to get that top of the line espresso machine for my wedding present if I have been socially absent from their lives this long. If I was up for burning bridges though I could still be content with my thousands of followers on Weibo and 20 feeds an hour from friends around China on wechat. I think the fact that the worldwideweb is not an established monopoly makes it easier for it to be adapted and reproduced to fit the needs of wherever you are in the world.

If I wasn’t an expat, I would have very little use for Facebook and Twitter. On Weibo and wechat you are free to talk about what you want with whomever you want as long as you are not an anarchist and are fairly bilingual enough to network with non English speakers. Smart people know that Indigenous social media can no longer be ignored if one wishes to dominate the virtual world of social media. Even Brad Pitt gets it, he made his first Weibo post on January 7th and within hours he had been forwarded 47,000 times, had 22 000 comments and over 140 000 followers – and his post didn't even make sense! (Lol) Facebook may be the Cocacola of this generation but its certainly not the only thirst quenching beverage out there anymore.

New Year's - China style

Happy New Year! Year of the snake that is...Our new year comes a few weeks after everybody else's so we have lots of time to realistically adjust our expectations for the coming year. Instead of one day of celebration, it's 30 days of festivities which start in a wave of excitement but end in sleepless nights of noisy fireworks at all hours, irritation because everything is closed and a bad case of the "Shanghai cough" thanks to the smoke pollution added to our already clogged atmosphere from all the burning and lighting of fire works. Shanghai shuts down, the streets empty and everyone goes "home" to be with their families. Even the homeless go home leaving me all to myself with my beloved streets of Shanghai. As if preparing for an impending natural disaster stores, kiosks, banks, offices, restaurants and public buildings are all boarded up and padlocked and waves of people swarm to the train stations, bus stations and airports to take part in the world's greatest human migration, but unlike the dwindling annual wildebeest migration Of East Africa; this one gets bigger every year. An estimated 3 billion trips are expected to occur between now and the end of February on the mainland alone. That's nearly twice the population!

I will not be one of the 3 billion, am staying put this year. On February 10, I will walk to my friend's house at 4pm ( while I still can navigate through the haze and traffic) and just before it becomes too dangerous to be out ( you cannot undo the damage of a firecracker hitting your eyeball.). Around this time my grocery store aisles will have been emptied out of all the liquor, fruit and candy - last minute purchases for local Shanghainese. We will eat snacks having exhausted all our culinary enthusiasm and efforts during Thanksgiving/ Canadian Thanksgiving/ Eid and Christmas stuffing turkeys and glazing ham, mashing hummus and seasoning gravlax ( you have to appease everyone's nostalgia and Christmas always ends becoming christmakwanzaka ensuring everyone gets a sliver of family tradition factored in). Chinese New Year is more chill thank goodness. We will drink wine, listening to music while waiting for the firecrackers to subside, along the flying debris and clouds of grey smoke. Once it gets dark the fun really starts the sky lights up in rainbow colors to the sound of a thousand shotguns and its brilliant and captivating and loud and erratic - like synchronised chaos. For a couple of hours it's fun and entertaining, until you realise it's not subsiding but getting worse, every household has their own of box of boomworks. This is when the drinking becomes a tonic to deal with the noise and the

For my Chinese friends however the fun is just starting, lazy susans are stacked with dozens of dishes acting as all kinds of good luck charms for what's to come when the clock strikes 12 and the new year begins. There is the requisite fish for "prosperity and togethernes", dumplings ( jiaozi), Kumquat fruit, mandarins for abundance of wealth especially gold, maize (corn) for growth and abundance, lychees for close family ties, meatballs for family reunion, noodles for longevity, peaches for immortality, peanuts and pomegranates for multiple offspring. My personal favourites are rice for fertility and luck, rose apples for "calmness" or as I prefer to see it for keeping one's shit together mentally, seaweeds for "good hair" and exceeding wealth, pineapples for luck of the gamblers, onions are for cleverness, lettuce for guaranteeing a pregnancy and watermelon seeds for multitudes of offspring ( which is a bit counterproductive with our current one child policy.) You don't get fresh tofu because the white color signifies death but I think it's just because its disgusting and tasteless, hardly suitable for such a special occasion. And if you are going to have chicken, it better be presented as a whole; head, feet, torso and all for family unity.

Generations of families will gather in the evening around the tv to watch a large performance extravaganza filled with famous singers, comedians, dancers, poets you name its a 3 hour cirque du soleil comedic performance. The format is predictable and light hearted much like "dinner for one" except the production gets bigger and better every year as technology pushes the envelope further. Coffee tables will be piled with 8 different sweets and fruit for snacking and off course symbolism. There will be cups of steaming tea bai jiu flowing freely as well as a tray of expensive cigarettes. The fireworks and firecrackers are lit at intervals to ward off all kinds of demons and evil spirits that may try to mess with someone's good fortune in the coming new year. In villages and small towns, hundreds of villagers will come together to create and perform a lion or dragon dance for the occassion (this you just have to see for yourself, its pretty cool.) "Piles of "money" and incense are burned in crude piles on the streets to honor the dead and piss off foreign neighbours who can't stand the smell. It doesn't stop there, it's tradition to buy lucky under wear, protective gear against said demons and evil spirits. These are always red and are to be worn as often as possible throughout the year. The noise, the chaos, the excess of food, 40 proof alcohol ingestion and red bloomers I can never fully understand - but then again my friends find it difficult to wrap their minds around the Easter pageant of chocolate bunnies and hot cross buns, I have since given up trying to explain why it's justifiable and symbolic for an overweight white haired man dressed in red who sneaks into the house to eat cookies, drink milk and leave coals under my tree if I have been "naughty" while a red nosed reindeer prances outside waiting to whisk the old man off on his trip around the world in one magical and snowy night delivering gifts. Strange practices aside, the sentiment of New year is still the same, it's a time to party, spend time with family and a time for hopeful beginnings While all of you can only hope for a year of good health, an excess of wealth and good fortune, I have 8 pairs of red panties guaranteeing all 3!

Ni hao and welcome you to my blog!

Hi there! So I have been thinking about this project for a while and I finally have the time to do it. For most of you its that long overdue letter I should have written in the past 10 years. For some of you its a chance to finally get to know me. Most importantly I hope I can successfully answer recurring questions that I keep getting asked everyday and hopefully give satisfying answer that will put the whole “Is your hair real?” question to rest once and for all. Just kidding, I am a bit of a sidewalk celebrity here (who knew dreadlocks could do that for you?!) Which makes for interesting daily adventures. Oh yes I also hope to get some questions from some of you which I will be glad to answer as well. I am not big on photographs but will be happy to share some from time to time to illustrate a point.

Climbing Wu Zhi Shan

I am all about challenges so when we heard there was a mountain that needed climbing; my travel partner and I were on the next bus out of Sunny Sanya in Hainan to a little town just 2 hours away called Tongzha. This is the capital of the Li and Mao prefecture and the starting point for anyone venturing the Hainan highland wilderness. Let me tell you just what an adventure that was from the get go. The only buses that go there are the ones that have been used by locals for decades, anybody including chickens and agricultural products can board the bus. Bench seats but cheap fare, no AC but we have radio, no TV but the people are the friendliest and most sociable ever. Humble Island dwellers, the Hui people make you feel right at home just by their smiles and how they go out of their way to make you feel welcome. After arriving in Tongzha We found out we had missed the only bus that could take us to the village at the foot of the mountain. Apparently this bus only leaves a couple of times before noon. The only other option was to hire a motorcycle, an idea my travel partner lit up at. We haggled for about 5 minutes with a couple of very rough looking guys who wore bloody red teeth from the juice of a stimulant root that is as common as chewing tobacco in the area. Finally we settled on 60 Yuan each and we were off! What started off as a Kodak moment adventure soon became a numbing experience and finally a potentially dangerous situation set on the backdrop of the most amazing green mountain scenery I had eve seen. The valley we bumped and bounced through is virtually untouched. In our 2 hour bike ride we passed all of 3 cars, a bicycle and spotted a farmer in a rise paddy on the foot of a terraced mountain. The spectacular view completely enveloped our anxieties of all the possible terrible things that were bound to happen to us where we the unwitting stars in a made for TV horror flick entitled “Foreign girls in the valley of the unknown.” Two root chewing (for them) and cigarette breaks (for us) later we finally arrived. It was 6:17 on the clock and dusk had already set in however, the monster of a mountain’s silhouette was unmistakable. We peeled ourselves off our riders’ sweaty backs, attempted a few unsuccessful stretches and paid our riders, double the bargained price totally shocked at the kindness of these men. On top of that they took us to the cheapest hotel in town, a beautiful outdoorsy structure of four star caliber that was cheap only because nobody in their right leisurely minds would subject themselves to a two hour bumpy ride for fun.Early the next morning, freshly showered and sore from the ride we ate a leisurely breakfast in the all glass rondavel dining hall. Everywhere was green Pasteur and cute little fields with straw hated farmers toiling away as the morning sun chased the morning mist around them. Disappointingly the mountain was shrouded in mist but it was still breath taking. I could not wait to go climbing. We hitched a ride from the hotel manager and were at the foot of the mountain by 8am. Then it started to rain. We bought some plastic rain covers but they soon proved useless. Except for the first 500 meters, Wu zhi shan is 1867m of vertical climb, all the way to the top! I found it easier to go on all fours supporting myself with roots and stumps of century old exotic trees. Wu zhi shan is tropical, heavily vegetated and bearing thousands of plant species, not to mention all the insects! The next 2 hours were no fun. The air was thick with a misty humidity, it was drizzling and the foliage was too thick to offer any view off the mountain. This was only the first half! The translation of Wu zhi shan is, 5 finger mountain each plateau representing a finger. It took 2 hours to reach the first finger, the view was unbelievable. Quiet, mysterious everywhere just thick vegetation. With nothing else to do, we had made friends with 2 Chinese gentlemen who were kind enough to share their water and snacks with us. Being city gals, we had brought with us, Chap Stick, mirror, cigarettes, a tiny canon digital camera which we almost lost when one of us slipped on our uphill climb and cash. It goes without saying that the only thing that actually proved slightly useful was the strawberry flavored Chap Stick I licked on every now and then to quell my hunger.It was half an hour to the next finger, nothing spectacular there, much like the first one. The next hour to the middle finger was something to write home about. The temperature dropped to near freezing, I only felt it when I had peeled all my layers off because of the sweat only to hurriedly put them back on. By this time I was not tired, not thirsty, not much of anything really since adrenaline had taken over. I was single mindedly bent on reaching the top, it was not fun anymore, it was my challenge, my Everest. The mist by now was surrounding me, I could only see as far as my hand could stretch. I knew I had company by the sounds of my friends yelling their allegiance to this mountain that was kicking our adventurous butts. When you are hundreds of meters off the ground, it's not corny to yell out “Wu zhi shan wo ai ni” if it’s going to give you the next boost to get to the top! Looking at the mountain from the ground, you think, piece of chocolate cake. Being on the mountain with no way but up to go for the next, who knows since you can’t see past your forward step; you think, oh my God! Enduring near death experiences like jogging on what you think is a piece of heavenly flat surface only to abruptly stop in front of a 50 m drop right into the mountain or to negotiate your way around a piece of granite rock supported by a rusty chain you think, nothing you just do it because at this point on you have to beat the mountain, it has become your nemesis. I was not tired when I reached the top, the third finger which is the highest plateau. My body felt beaten, cold, hungry and thirsty but my mind was deceiving me. The last hour to the top taught me the equivalent of everything I learned during my high school years. As I slowly smoked my victory cigarette which incidentally was also food I started to cry. The scene of dotted villages through the misty haze was unbelievable. The dwarf trees that grew in awkward contorted shapes as if they were kowtowing to the sky were straight out of the classical oriental paintings. I am not ashamed to say I did not make it to the last two fingers, that would have just been too much for me considering we had no water, no food and no more cigarettes. Another two hours brought us back to the bottom and with that I endured a slight ankle sprain, a lower back injury from slipping on a slope and hitting a blunt stump on the way down, numerous bites from goodness knows what, rib locking hunger pains and dementia inducing adrenaline. I have a new respect for people who talk to themselves. They have seen the other side