F*ck, Drink, Shit: Notes From a Westerner in China

Welcome to F*ck, Drink, Shit — a raw, unfiltered notes-from-the-road account of one westerner in China, chasing soap, cheeseburgers, and sanity through the chaos of Kunming.

In the morning, I went back to Guilin Station and stood before an incomprehensible train schedule filled with sprawled out cities listed by times, with no clock in the train station of course, and not a single solitary person who I could communicate with- least of all the guy behind the window at the “English-Speaking” line. But I was perfectly happy. This is one of the parts I love the most. Strange as it seems, I enjoy being lost. I want to be gone, disappeared, vanished, if only for a while. I want most of all to not know where I’m going, and to know that I have all the time in the world to get there.

More than a week has passed, and it’s slowly starting to sink in. Usually at this point in your week-long vacation, your brain rings an alarm that tells you it’s time to wake-up. To really go off into the world, you have to have some money and time saved and no strings or attachments. You have to go as if you are never coming back. There is no more past. Whoever you were is not who you are now. You only see the present. There isn’t even a future. It almost feels as if you were on a tether, but with enough miles between you and your former existence, with enough time out here in the middle of nowhere, the tether is tightened to the point of snapping.

It’s a wonderful life, traveling. To be unattached, independent, able to go anywhere or do anything at all is the best feeling in the world. Nothing can catch you, touch you, taint you, or hold you down. One roadblock simply leads to the clearest path and destination. What time is it? Train’s almost here! Where are we going? I don’t know, but it’s here! Get on!

This is the only way to travel. Life becomes a joyous thing if you let go and embrace its mystery. If you only try to do things according to plan, you only end up disappointed and neurotic because things rarely happen according to plan. No matter what you do, it’ll be a mystery, and all the plans in the world can’t change that.

This kind of unplanned wandering is what any honest backpacking China essay eventually comes back to — the mystery is the point.

So I stand in line and scan the times and the hours. Kunming. Another 20 hours in the hard seats. Why not? It moves me further west along the map. If you’ve done the hard-seats once, you can do them again. You can condition yourself to do almost anything once you’ve been stripped of options. You learn to adjust. You make yourself at home. Another shelter is another shelter, and a cushion starts to become a rare treat in the travels of the wandering man for whom the sidewalk is a primary means of comfort. Water and a guaranteed meal? Beautiful. A bathroom? Even a hole in the ground is too good for me. Any stall with a door is a luxury. You brush your teeth with the same water in the same bottle you drink and wash your face with. Everything becomes self-contained. You are your own world. You become acutely aware of every possession, exactly how many cigarettes, how much change, how many days since the last shower. Your backpack becomes sophisticated and highly organized; zippers hold little treasures you almost always need at some point and thus reward yourself with dopamine from your brain as you wipe your butt with that extra napkin you so sensibly saved; carefully tear open a spicy mustard packet; experience satori ramen on the side of a road. . .

Kunming. The City of Eternal Spring. The city’s moniker comes from the unique combination of its location south near the border of Myanmar and its high elevation. This crazy combination keeps the city in one season all year round- springtime- which sounds amazing. That’s why I was disappointed. Because what good is spring without fields of flowers blooming everywhere as proof of this phenomenon and frolics through the fields and baseball games? For now, I’m stranded in this city until my bus to Lijiang leaves at 8 o’clock. I’m not really interested in anything the city has to offer at this point. I just want to get what I need and get back out. There’s a lot that a great city can offer in terms of culture and architecture, museums and restaurants, but this city ain’t one of them. To me, mediocre cities are the worst. They’re not places to go; they’re places you get stuck in. Hopefully not for long.

Better make the best of it. I decide that since I’m in the city, I might as well take advantage and search for things I won’t be able to find later on the road. These include a few creature comforts like batteries and internet access, and necessities like soap and toilet-paper. But more than any of these things, at the top of my list of things to hunt for is. . . a cheeseburger.

I hate to admit it, but I’m really hankering for some cheap steroid-pumped beef slathered in secret sauces and smacked with a slice of yellow cheese. I hadn’t had a grease-bomb since Beijing, where KFC seems to be the crowd favorite, and since that last Zinger at the train station, it’s been nearly a week since I’ve had my fix. I’ve mostly relied on street-food and those little lunch buffets where you can fill a tray with greasy pork and stir-fried vegetables for cheap, but this shouldn’t be confused with fast-food. There’s no rush of euphoria when you eat it, or the regret and crash that soon follows.

I thought I was ready to abandon all fried meat shoved between two pieces of white bread once I went on this trip. How wrong I was! It hasn’t even been two weeks, and to be honest, I’m already getting a little sick of Chinese food. I need a break. Most of the stuff you find is pretty good, and nearly any meal costing less than a couple bucks should merit no complaints. But the American in me is starting to go through withdrawal. I’m starting to dream about burgers and fries and soda. It’s been too long since I’ve seen my friend in garish clown makeup welcoming me into his greasy arms. I decide to search for the golden arches.

But before I could satisfy my McLust, I would need to wash my hands first. I was educated on the dangers of neglecting basic hygiene after becoming a shitting inferno for two days straight. No more goat-petting was obvious. But in addition to this was the reaffirmed lesson that washing your hands could possibly save your life. However, this is harder to do than one might think. You definitely won’t find a public bathroom with soap or toilet paper in China. You have to supply your own. Out here, you got your standard dank squatty potty, with the toilets either operating by box and chain, or by a bucket with water you manually “flush” with a pail, which is all fine and good. You get used to it. But so is free access to soap in public bathrooms. Clearly, some top men in the upper chambers of commerce had to make a decision at some point, wondering whether it would be worth it or even possible to supply the entire country with free soap and toilet paper. So when in Rome, or in this case, a random Chinese city, you’ll need to improvise and engage in behaviors you once thought were reserved for homeless guys in bus depots. Get familiar with the water. Don’t just rinse your hands, get sexual! Go full neck and body, wash your face and blow your nose right in the sink. Walk out soaked in all that sweet, sweet tap water.

I’m fucking starving, but I can’t eat until I lather up with bar or liquid. I can’t shake the feeling that I have bird-flu on my skin. Probably because I was at the bird and fish market, playing with birds and fish. And lizards. And snakes. Dammit! They’ll let you fondle anything! It’s a regular petting zoo over there! Tell me you won’t hold a baby pig if an old lady puts it in your hands. Tell me! What have I learned?! Nothing!

I decide to make it my mission to find soap in China, just to prove some kind of point. Oh sure, I could buy some soap at a local supermarket, but how do you even find one? Every shop I walk into I have no idea what they’re selling. My imagination and reality never match up. The last place I walked into thinking it was a dry-goods store only sold tea. Another shop I walked into only sold jars with animal brains. Come on! Is there not one fucking shop in this city that sells things that normal people need?!

My indignation at being kept in this filthy state of contamination sets me on course for this little mission, wandering into as many buildings as I can and poking my head into so many bathrooms one would suspect I had a sick fetish for the smell of urine. I check in banks, poke my head in back-alley kitchens, and even walk into a couple of people’s homes “by accident”. Mostly, they think I’m some kind of beggar as my gesture for soap is simply rubbing my hands together in a lathering motion which to them seems to mean I’m pleading for coins.

Finally, after much wandering, I find what I was searching for the whole time: the Golden Arches.

As I see the golden arches shining down the street from a distance, my heart begins to palpitate. I suddenly remember the love for a friend who I had turned my back on for so long. I break out into a run, falling onto my knees, gazing up at that most beautiful sign.

As I get myself together, I walk into the restaurant and am greeted by the most amazing smell anyone could ever smell in the world. The bustle of adults and kids of all ages, crowding in nonlinear lines to get their Macs and other strange Chinese varieties of sandwiches, like Teriyaki and Shanghai Spice, move to the front and order, and wait impatiently on the side.

It’s everything I remembered it to be and so much more. Not only that, there is a bathroom. Emboldened by the sweet embrace of odorous fries, I kick in the door prepared to say, “Aha! Even here, in the sweet land of the free, there is no . . .”

But I am cut to the quick. My words die upon my lips. There, I behold the holy, the amazing, the grail in the mirage- the hand-pump liquid soap dispenser, and the automatic drier right beside.

I hit the pump and let the oily soap roll around on my skin before I even wave my hands beneath the motion-sensing faucet. I lather slowly, letting the antibacterial gunk strip away the top layer of my skin. My epidermis tingles. That’s how you know it’s working!

I turn on the water, luxuriate with the bubbles, and allow them to foam upon my skin, almost hearing in my deranged mind the dying cries of millions of bacterial cells disappearing into thin air from my hands.

I leave the restroom triumphantly. I look like I just had sex. My hands feel clean, and I am able to finally touch my own face without feeling disgusted.

I am ready for my lady. My big fat Mac. Bring her to me. I want to lay with her.

“Prepare to land.”

“Sir? There’s nothing there. There are no nutrients, no vitamins. . .” “I said prepare to land!”

“Preparing to land.”

The boy blinks at me.

“Give me a . . . wait. Where’s the Big Mac? Oh, I see. Still number one, even in this country. Everything’s so different. . . and yet, the same. . . Let me just get . . . I’ll just get a Big Mac. And fries. Do you have orange soda?”

The boy robotically types in my order, takes my money, and shoves me aside. He even says, “Next!”

It brings a warm feeling to my heart.

“Ah, good old McDonald’s, where things make sense.”

For a moment, I am saddened by my dependence on this feeling of familiarity. Is this a moment of weakness? Or am I just hungry?

Finally, my Mac arrives.

I bring her close, and take that first sweet taste.

But something is wrong.

The Big Mac, I realized, tasted. . . exactly the same!

Wait a second. Wasn’t that what I wanted? Wasn’t that what I expected?

But as soon as I took that first bite, something began to swirl around me. The bright lights of the restaurant, the familiar greasy slickness of the tiles beneath my shoes, the brightly lit menu and the lonely stools along the windows. It was all the same, so exactly the same, as any place in the world!

I was trapped. What was I doing? Why was I here? I didn’t belong here! Not me! Not now! No! No! No!

“I don’t want to live in your plastic world!” I cried with my mouth half full of hamburger and fries. The two police officers looked at me curiously across the restaurant.

Something was wrong. Why was I starting to choke on my food?

Was this world-peace? Or world annihilation?

“Every Mac tastes the same! Don’t you see man? Every Big Mac tastes exactly the same! How can this be? How can these Macs possibly travel so far and still taste exactly the same? What is this world coming to?”

“Big Mac?” the McDonald’s kid asked and began taking my order.

“No, damn you, no! Not this time. Not ever again.”

I needed to set myself free. I needed to free those fish from their tanks, let loose the birds singing in their cages, burn the piles and piles of plastic the world was sitting on until we all choked on it!

I ran out of the McDonald’s screaming, desperate to find something real.

China. 1980’s. Deng Xiaoping takes over as leader, overhauls Mao’s collectivist system, and opens China up to foreign trade. The farmers approach the pigs on Manor Farm and ask, “Well, what can you animals make?” Deng, the small chain-smoking pig at the table smiles wryly and says, “Anything.” He places a piece of plastic on the card table, and to the astonishment of the farmers, begins to burn it with a lighter. The plastic begins to melt. With his free hooves, he molds it into a million different things: plastic toys, plastic furniture, plastic tools, plastic office supplies, plastic motorcycle parts, plastic electronics, and somehow, even plastic medicine.

“That’s the beauty of it,” Deng smiles. “We can always make more.”

The farmers roar in approval. The pigs begin oinking joyfully. And as smoke fills the room, we look from pig to man, and man to pig, and cannot tell which is which. . .

Why does every Chinatown look the same? Who made the executive decision that every street had to be filled with table after table of cheap, useless trinkets? And who are these idiots who keep buying this crap?

I decided to devote the rest of my afternoon to some undercover sleuthing in an attempt to find some answers. I began to watch people like a hawk, hovering around certain tables as if I was a street-vendor, eyeing shoppers in pause, preparing that secret ironic smile reserved for suckers- watching as they fingered the traditional wares, tried on random accessories, and brushed up against the bootleg T-shirts racked in abundance.

But what I found was quite different from what I expected, for I had foreseen myself ending the day by knocking over the money tables like Jesus in the temple; but no. I only found that it was not the street-merchants who were to blame, but the endless supply of indecisive morons they had to deal with! How many times can one touch, pick up, and turn over a single piece of crap sitting on the table, and even compare it to the other identical pieces of crap beside it as if they weren’t pumped out from the same fucking factory?

Truly, I felt their pain. They took it much better than I did, of course, and I was asked to leave after scaring a female customer while leaping out from my observation nest hidden within the t-shirt racks. But I couldn’t just leave. I felt bad. I was bad for business. A business that was already so frustrating and left nothing but bile in the spirit of the vendors who perhaps experienced just as much bile in their souls from trying to coax the earth to produce more radishes than it could.

Well, such is the lot of the poor and the destitute, the ones who live at the bottom and are resigned to sell whatever they can just to survive. What do they care that the earth is being polluted and that the oceans are constantly filling with more plastic than fish every fucking day? Those are concerns for the rich, the elite, the bourgeoisie. Don’t bring that shit over here, buddy! Are you going to buy something or not?

And to show my solidarity with the working class, the street-vendor, whose lives are so misunderstood by their lack of enthusiasm at your purchase, I finally bought a t-shirt that said:

“Kunming: The City of Eternal Spring.”

That’s F*ck, Drink, Shit in a nutshell — the paradox of chasing the exotic and coming home with a McDonald’s receipt and a t-shirt slogan. For more unfiltered travel writing in this vein, read Tarantula Burgers, another backpacking China essay from the road.