The number one reason to spend time in China is something that cannot easily be put into words. I’d love to find some foreign word that we don’t have in English like, “Fahrvergnügen” or even “Je ne sais quoi” (ironically) that perfectly describes it, but I want something that fits a little better, something that gives a real sense of the buzzing, buoying energy of the place, that magical charge that infects some foreigners for life.

Huángshān

Years ago my friend Vince Zappa and his wife (Americans) spent the first half of their honeymoon visiting some fellow Americans who were teaching in a small village in China. She had a decent time, but when the second half of the honeymoon arrived she was ready to head down to the resort in the Philippines. He was, however, entranced and had no interest in leaving a dirty little town to go to a fancy resort. Vince couldn’t get enough of just being in China. He got ripped off at a restaurant he liked and decided he didn’t care enough to stop going, that instead he’d just be more careful. He was willing to put up with hardships in this weird new place because something captured his heart.

When I first visited China many years ago, it was only for a few weeks but that was enough to trap me. Before we went I liked spending time around my Chinese friends in college and being around Weíshí’s parents and relatives. Weíshí’s second aunt taught me how to play Májiàng and I learned the numbers and directions. I liked the sound of the language, the beautiful characters, and the endless (and I do mean endless) “old Chinese sayings”. But something different happened when I arrived in Běijīng and later visited Xī’ān and Huángshān. I was hooked. I couldn’t get enough of the beautiful mountains, the scrappy street venders, the peach orchards, and above all the endlessly chaotic nature of everything around me. The magic hook is somewhere in that chaos and the way that people are so energized to make things happen. The Chinese people of today don’t bother with safety or laws or aesthetics: they charge ahead and build and make and haul and try.

When Weíshí and I visited the Great Wall we walked the whole length of the top of the restored wall. As we reached the far end, we heard grunting and whispers somewhere on the other side of the large stones that surrounded us. The sounds continued and got closer. The section of wall we stood on was a huge distance from the ground. We walked over just in time to see a hand grasp for the top. I leaned over and saw a series of people standing on each others’ shoulders and the person on top struggling to pull themselves up. Mystified, I grabbed onto his arm and helped him over the wall. He breathed heavily for a moment, then reached inside his jacket as a few more people pulled themselves up behind him. He fumbled a bit more and then, like a magician pulling flags from his sleeve, began heaving out pile after pile of “Great Wall” t-shirts. He immediately tried to sell me one. Apparently there was a fee to sell things on the wall, and they were either too poor or too scrappy and cheap to pay it.

Of course in the midst of this scrappiness and chaos there is still a swirling undercurrent of ancient history spinning through the signs, bricks, buildings, language and culture. It’s all still there, like the old tent that holds the circus. Something in the beauty of this whole mess is the China magic, the magic that entrances, lures, and captures the hearts of people like me.

This is another very simple but extremely useful system, especially when keeping all of your things in bags or a backpack. In my case, after lasik I still sometimes get very dry eyes in the morning. I have to fumble around in the dark, or in a bag, and somehow manage to find a bottle and pour whatever’s in it into my eye. It would generally be better for my happiness and the sleep of those around me if it wasn’t a bottle of shampoo or glue. The cool hack is to wrap the bottle in tape, and put a predetermined set of folds into the tape. You can easily grab bottles and, by feeling for the folds, know by count if it’s a bottle of shaving oil or the lifesaving drops.

But the image of two young lovers leaning into the wind isn’t what stuck with me about my experience. Walking through China I felt like I was climbing on board the Titanic as the nose was plunging into the dark ocean. Every person I talked to was running past me, trying desperately to find a way off the boat. There I was, strolling around with my head up and an inflatable life boat under my arm asking, “hey, where’s this great band I’ve heard about”?

I asked about wéi qí (Go) playing. Some people had heard about it, but almost no one knew how to play. Traditional music? Maybe I could try the big theater in town. Kung Fu? I am training with an absolute treasure of China. Master Lǚ has incredible skills earned over a lifetime of intense practice and he’s one of the only heirs to a fascinating branch of Kung Fu. These skills can only be passed down orally and through direct instruction. The small group of people I train with, the people who will carry this knowledge to the next generation if it is to survive at all, are almost all foreigners: American, Canadian, French and Japanese students. His old Chinese students, from a time when his school was huge, are running businesses now. No one in China has any time to mess around with anything that doesn’t make money. They are running for the lifeboats.

It disappointed me greatly, but I can’t blame the Chinese people. Their lives have been wrecked by revolution, violence and starvation for decades. Now that they have a chance to get out, the air is thick with poison and the food and water are equally questionable. Money is the life boat that can literally save the lives of their family and they will stop at nothing to get it.

Fairness

But pollution and poisonous food aren’t the only reasons people want to escape. Even more so is the sense that there is a complete lack of fairness. No matter how hard you work, if you don’t have the right connections it means nothing. The people I talked to felt that in Germany, Canada or the US they would have a fair chance to earn a living through hard work without having to be related to someone in power. They felt like the laws would be fair. They felt like things that weren’t working could be fixed because they could gather with people and make change.

I grew up in a place where I’ve been taught to believe that if I don’t like something I can work to change it. That ideas is deeply, deeply ingrained in me. It’s still difficult for me to think about being completely paralyzed, as many feel they are in China. I’m not talking about petitioning a Senator to make big change, I’m talking about feeling like a street is dangerous and should have a stop sign, and knowing that I can get the community together to get that fixed. Or that I can get a group together and get some land to start a small community garden. If you can’t talk to the people in power (or they don’t have to listen) and you can’t form or gather in groups, there is nothing you can do that won’t get you shot or imprisoned.

In the end, I don’t think China will sink. Many will die in the icy water. The fortunate few will escape to western countries and live out the last days of prosperity there before those places sink. Ultimately China, like the US before it, will slowly make efforts to clean up the disastrous mess they’ve made while building the empire. In a couple of generations, the children or grandchildren of the people who escaped will be looking for a way to get back on board. If I’m still alive I’ll be happy to teach them all of the culture, kung fu, and wéiqí I’ve been saving for when they are ready.

The oils that naturally keep your head and hair healthy are replaced when you remove them. If you strip away all of the natural oil with shampoo, that wonderfully efficient little machine you live in (your body) responds by pumping out more. It takes a while for it to recognize that not stealing the oil isn’t a one time thing and you’re serious about letting your head do its job. In the transition, about 3-4 weeks, it’s gonna get thick up there as the little pump keeps running at the same high speed.

Washing with water every day I’ve had no trouble. My hair feels thick when I wash it, but it doesn’t smell or feel dirty. Some people worry about that, or experience small amounts of itching, and they resort to a baking soda wash to remove some of the buildup. I’m guessing that this only slows down the process as your head says, “see, see?! I knew you didn’t really mean it! I’m not cutting back the oil supply!”

At the same time… I was fascinated. What would happen? I kept putting it off, wanting to let my head know I was serious. Today I caved in. I had to know. I mixed up a little cup of baking soda and water and brought two half lemons into the shower. I poured the baking soda in my hair first and let it sit for a few minutes. I massaged it in and then rinsed it out. Immediately my hair was twice as light. Terror gripped me. I’d gone too far! Wasted two weeks! It did, however, feel really nice and soft.

The next step is recommended so that your hair doesn’t smell like baking soda, although I’m guessing it’s also because you need the vinegar, an acid, to neutralize the baking soda, a base. I couldn’t find vinegar fast enough so I grabbed a lemon, also very acidic.

Now, here’s the trick with lemons in the shower. It turns out that picking up lemon seeds off of a wet floor is like wresting a greased pig. With your thumbs. They kept creeping closer and closer to the drain but I couldn’t get a hold of the feisty little critters. I finally slid them, ever so carefully, all the way up the shower wall until they hit the soap dish. There was a tiny lip, and my hope was that… if I just barely tipped them over the edge onto my waiting thumb… I could just… and with a yelp of triumph, I popped them off the wall! …and back onto the floor. The third time was the charm and I managed to wrestle them into their original plastic bag.

The comb was the finishing touch. I ran it through my hair briefly and then looked down in horror. There were thick chunks of something coming off of my head! Was it globs of grease? Chunks of skin?! What disgusting or terrifying thing was happening to me?! Then I looked a little closer. And took a taste. Mmmm! Zesty! It was chunks of lemon peel.

And so here I am, smelling zesty and feeling good. My hair feels great. I hope I haven’t backpedaled too far. I’ll keep you updated.

So my amazing and daring new scheme for ultralight travel has apparently been kicked around for a while already.

The Extreme

These are the people who are playing like I am: lets see how hardcore we can be.

Neverending Voyage
Some dude named Eslevy
Karol Gajda Ridiculously Extraordinary
One Bag Manifesto
As We Travel They’d be lightweight without the heavy camera gear
Wilderness version (There has been a lot of work on wilderness ultralight travel, this is just one riff on it)

The Moderate

These are sites dedicated to sane, normal humans who might need to look respectable at some point in their travels.

Wiki How 1 Bag Travel
One Bag

We’re All One Big Brain!

But as I pointed out in my encouragement to blog, every contribution to the pool of experiences gives us all more options and data. The first few people who refuse to use shampoo are freaks, but after you can find hundreds of people telling their stories, it seems more realistic and the collective data points draw out a real path for less extreme humans. The kinks get worked out collectively and we all win!

The New System

I’m keeping this in mind as I develop the next version of my ultralight backpacking system. I’m trying to find light new ways to handle more cold, as I’m hoping to make it up to Korea on this next round and the winters in the southern Chinese city of Fuzhou were in the high 30s F (3 C). While not freezing, those temps are a whole other thing when there is no heating. Anywhere. And you have to sit in a classroom for hours on end without moving.

Gear Reviews

In the process of researching new gear, I found some decent reviews, but also a lot of useless complaints like, “This medium sized shirt fit horribly. It was a disaster. I’m 6’5″ tall and weigh 420 lbs…” I also found a lot of people listing their gear without talking about why they made certain choices and, more importantly, how did that work out? I’m going to make an effort to nerd out about the features of things I’m reviewing and talk about how I got to my final packing list, and then post an update after I’ve suffered with it for a while.

Coin Funnel

From reading all of these other sites I’ve also learned that, hey, I should be using affiliate links to gear so that if enough people try the things I like in the end, Amazon will sprinkle some coins on my head and I can buy a bowl of noodles on the road.

I’ve set up a scale. I have a spreadsheet. Let the reviewing begin.

I’ve had some pretty weird hair colors and styles over the years (and have stuck with the dilbus) but I’ve always washed it every day. The thing is, when you’re home with your parents recovering and not leaving the house… suddenly you have time to try whacky new things. The whole “no shampoo” thing has been going on for a while now. The process takes about a month, it seems, before your head stops freaking out and trying to make up for all the oil the shampoo bubble squad was stealing every day. Once it settles down it is, apparently, quite nice and low maintenance. The bonus is that you don’t dump a lot of questionable chemicals onto your head. Even better, for me, it means that my ultralight travel pile gets one bottle lighter!

Of course, no shampoo doesn’t mean I’ll never wash my hair. It just means I’ll do it with water. There are a number of other solutions to use during the transition time, including apple vinegar and baking soda, but I’m sure that’s just for wusses.

So today it begins: 30 days without shampoo. And then..?

Here is a pile of blogged scribblings about other people’s experiences:

Sean Bonner

Sean Bonner update on Boing Boing

Fulfilled Homemaking

Ridiculously Extraordinary Karol Gajda

Free The Animal, although this guy is too willing to be a freak to make this seem mainstream!

Living the Simple Life

Sadly, he died back in April, 2000. Our plans of dancing beside him amidst some kind of bizarre beach party near his place in Hawaii were wrinkled and twisted and now, here we are, with Terence sliding around through the ether somewhere and Steve and I separated by a continent.

Happy New Years Steve and Terence. I’ll find a way to make this up to you guys.

Watch Terence do his thing: (skip video forward to 2:45 where he appears)

People often ask me where I’m from. I tell them, “Austin, Texas”. But I grew up outside of Chicago. Some would say I was “from” Chicago. But of course, I was born in Hamburg, Germany, even though I only lived there for a year. I suppose most accurately I’m “from” my parents.

Both of these questions seek to quickly know a person. When someone asks me, “where are you from,” the core of the question is about understanding what shaped me, what kind of person I am, if I can recommend good restaurants there, and if I might know their brother in law. It’s a conversation piece (in terms of restaurants and brothers in law) but also a way of putting me into a convenient box, the “midwestern” box or the “hippie” box. It’s for this reason that I use Austin as their reference point. Despite traveling all over the world, Austin, like no other place, felt like home the minute I arrived. As a box, it fits well enough. I like natural food and hippie things like yoga, but I also like to throw on a cowboy hat and work hard building things in the sun. The suburb where I went to high school has fewer of those things, and wouldn’t stand a chance at giving someone that visual.

Despite the fact that I’ve spent the last few nights sleeping in a basement in Chicago, and the nights before that in D.C., people still refer to me as “living” in China. It certainly best defines my headspace at the moment. I’m taking a break here to recover, but I have a long way to go learning Chinese and extra pairs of underwear in a garage in Fuzhou. If I really thought about it, I’m not sure I’d say I live anywhere at the moment.

I do believe that places shape us as well as represent us. In all of this talk about “moving”, “living”, and being “from” places it’s interesting to think about what list of places would best give someone a sense of me. If I were going to get a list of places tattooed down my ankle, that would define me to someone who found me sleeping, what would they be? Through my parents I’ve been heavily influenced, and defined, by places I’d never been in Europe. I would have listed China long before I began “living” there these last nine months. Austin and St. Charles would have to be on the list along with the Punjab in India.

What would your list be? Do you wish there were more places on it?

Over time I discovered that it wasn’t just a weird fashion statement. In the U.S., women are obsessed with finding new ways to burn themselves like rotisserie chickens: not too much, just the right amount of brown. They spend their hard earned money on places that will let them sit inside, in artificial sunlight, and rotate and cook just long enough to look like they’ve been outside.

In China, the aesthetic of choice is the whitest possible skin. The sunscreen (although most people don’t use it) actually makes your skin lighter with bleaching chemicals. The umbrellas protect the carefully preserved skin from the ultraviolet and… there’s more. As I started to walk around with girls, as I am wont to do, I found myself underneath their little protective domes. Mysteriously, I noticed that every time I was walking around with a girl, life was more pleasant. It was ten degrees F cooler! Not only that, but when it rained instead of wrapping my body inside a jacket, trapping more of the 90 degree heat, I was nice and cool and dry.

It took a few months to break down a lifetime of American hipness training, but I finally picked up an umbrella and never looked back.

In fairness, I have to point out that Ray Jardine, ultralight backpacking freak and guru, was the first. He’s not one to fear fashion risks, to say the least, and in Beyond Backpacking: Ray Jardine’s Guide to Lightweight Hiking he talks about how much he loves umbrellas on the trail. I thought it was one of his freakier ideas when I read it years ago and had forgotten about it. Now I’m sold. Despite carrying as little as possible when I travel, I keep a little friend called the “Happy Rain” that I picked up in Taiwan tucked into my backpack and it’s a permanent part of my ultralight travel collection.

• Most likely hypothesis: On a twelve hours overnight bus back from Hong Kong, China to Fuzhou, China the bus circulation wasn’t working properly and/or there was a carbon monoxide leak into the bus. (CO poisoning)
• I arrived to two days of extremely intense headaches that made everything feel like a fog.
• For the next two weeks I had a hard time focusing and my brain felt really tired and confused.
• I went to the hospital and they weren’t much help.
• I suddenly deteriorated rapidly to the point that I couldn’t use a web browser.
• My friend helped me get at ticket to Taipei, Taiwan, where the hospitals are much better.
• By the time I tried to get to the hospital, I couldn’t open a door or speak clearly. I was experiencing the same symptoms as advanced Parkinsons combined with confusion.
• I saw three doctors, including two neurosurgeons, and got another MRI.
• By the end of it all, when the last doctor was seeing me, I was coming out of the worst of it. The MRI looked clear. I was given blood flow drugs and told to chill out and see if it improved.
• I could now open doors, walk around, and talk at almost full speed.
• Basically functional, I decided I couldn’t miss our movie opening at IDFA and, although weird, flew to Amsterdam.
• During the time in Amsterdam I overdid it enough to have the shaking and confusion come back for little visits. I decided to return to the States and rest and recover in a safe environment.
• I am now at my parents’ place outside Chicago recovering from a combination of jet lag and the poison, hoping to be feeling much better in a month or two. I’m still a little shaky here and there and my brain gets tired but nothing like the near-death experience I was having in China.

There is a lot to process emotionally. I really thought it might well be my last few days, if not of life then of being a functional human being. At this point it looks like at best I’ll be right back to myself and at worst I’ll have these minor shakes and slightly diminished mental capacity for the rest of my life. Carbon Monoxide poisoning is a gnarly and unknown beast. So, you know, avoid it!