The last couple of days your ricelovin’ friend hasn’t been up to any adventurous stuff, apart from the pig’s stomach who seemed to be flying around on it’s own little adventures. It has since then settled down and now the pig spends most of his days together with his Apple at the Mix hostel, where the Little Tiger is currently working as an adventure fixer. The owner of the Mix hostel, Mr Mix is currently rebuilding the hostel, with new showers, a small roof above the main area and a small bar where the laowais will soon be drinking themselves to death! So in lack of own stories to tell, yours truly will now tell you a story about a real Mr Ben.
At the Mix hostel there is a constant flow of adventurers coming and going each day. Sometimes they stay for just one day, other times they stay for whole months. Each of them has their own story to tell as do Mr Mix: http://mixshell.spaces.live.com/.
The maybe funniest and stupidest story your favorite adventurer has heard this time around is about a cocky boy from the country where they eat long pieces of bread, riots at least once a week and where the wine flows in below somewhere their growing moustaches. Since our cocky friend is a real globetrotter and could master a few phrases of putonghua he decided to go to the Emei Shan all by himself. Also he would save a few francs instead of joining a tour or let somebody else take out some commission, he thought for himself.
So he went to the busstation early in the morning and bought a bus ticket to the destination. Satisfied with this he smiled for himself on the bus and praised himself for his excellent pronounciation. A few hours later he arrived, strangely he couldn’t seem to find any mountain anywhere in sight and therefore he did the Chinese waving to get a taxi. He told the taxi driver that he wanted to go to Emei Shan. The taxi driver started laughing and thought that this laowai must be crazy. He explained that our cocky globetrotter was in the city of Meishan and not Emeishan. He suggested that the laowai should take the bus to Emeishan since it was to far for the taxi to take him there.
Not discouraged by his failure our friend the cocky globetrotter went back to the busstation and bought a ticket for Emei Shan. Happy to finally be on his way to the real destination he smiled to his reflection in the window and started humming La Marseillaise, while nibbling on his croissant.
A few hours later he arrived at his intended destination. Instead of buying a bus pass to go up the mountain he decided to climb the mountain since he had to live up to his globetrotter status. He felt like the great Yao Ming as he started off with his backpack and walking stick, but actually he looked more like Gandalf the gray. A few minutes later he started to feel tired in the legs and decided to have a rest. After a few more meters he gave up and decided to go back to cozy Chengdu and Mix hostel instead of climbing the misty Emei Shan.
Back at the hostel, a few francs poorer, a staffmember called Orange asked him why he was back so early and how the Emei Shan had been. Our cocky globetrotter told her his story, since you can’t blame him for the lack of self-distance. Five Qingdaos and two glasses of Great Wall later he had told everybody at the Mix his story and the legend lives on about our cocky globetrotter who is now ready for new adventures in the country where Jackie Chan promotes herbal shampoo that will probably make you bald. (Airen tried this two years ago, but was unsuccessful due to the level of the hairiness of his body)
//Your Fei Zhu, reporting live from Mix Hostel, Chengdu, Pig’s Republic of China
