The Great Escape

Traveling with a group of kung fu students is harrowing, hard work, and a ton of fun. I’d do this again anytime, as long as ‘anytime’ means once a year, and only with plenty of Vitamin E handy for everyone.

Highlights:

- Billy getting the Great Rift Valley of cuts on his hand on the very first night in China, then swearing me to secrecy about it. I told him he needed stitches, but he waved that off. I’m no doctor, but I know that when you can see muscle and white fat in the cut, you should probably get help. But all he did was stick a skate sticker over the top and pull a book out of his back pocket. What book? "Tough Jews." I hope there’s a chapter on him.

– Driving through the mountains with the Han Solo of bus drivers, along switchbacks even a horse might not be able to handle. Our man drove full speed around turns that made Lombard St. In SF look like the 101. This made one of the gang, a soon-to-be-professional kickboxer, so scared he stood the whole time, just so he’d have a chance to jump out of the bus if it flipped. Okay, so physics is not his strong point.

– I came up with some ridiculous comedic material on this trip. As usual, 99% of it was improv and in context, but funny as hell. If only I’d written down everything, I might have a full routine by now. Where’s my scribe? The whole trip was pure heckling madness. No one got away with anything. Guys started berating themselves just to avoid our wrath. I christened the boys at the back Statler and Waldorf after the Muppet hecklers. It was beautiful.

– We managed to offend almost everyone from Foshan to the Tibetan border. Two of our tour guides thought we thought they were prostitutes, and got angry. Tom managed to defile a 600-year old buddhist temple. We had to bribe an old lady to let us get away. I was drunk in shangri-la and peed in someone’s shower. And I’m pretty sure some of us can’t fly China Southern Airlines anymore.

– We got gouged constantly, every time the bus stopped. The tour company we used is designed for Chinese tourists, of course, so watching the peddlers’ eyes and prices double in size upon seeing us was high comedy. I didn’t buy anything while in the West, but had to assist in a few haggling sessions. I guess they figured the husband of a world-famous negotiator is better than nothing.

– An example of the gouge: I was looking at a jade bracelet in a glass case. I asked how much. They replied, "168,000 rmb." (That’s almost $20,500.) I laughed and they brought out the cantonese-speaking manager. Before I said anything – before the bargaining had even begun, he tossed out a new price: 5800 rmb ($707.) I walked away, flabbergasted. I’ve seen it before, but it still shocks me – was that even real jade? David Mamet needs to come here. And people think this place is communist?

– Another example of the gouge: our hotels would attempt to charge us for the silliest things. The condoms in the rooms were minibar-style, and a few of the gang got charged. So we always knew who had scored. One guy paid $45 for an 8-minute call to the U.S.. One hotel tried to charge us for a missing remote, when all we did was move it from one table to the other. And once, we got charged for dirty towels. Hello? Isn’t this a hotel? Are you sure this isn’t Sprint P.C.S.?

– Clubbing in China is actually pretty sweet. They favor high-energy trance and house music, right up my alley. They also remix western songs with local ones in new ways, like they do in india. This aspect of the trip has been the most shocking, actually. I expected Jackie Chan sings Madonna, and instead I got beats.

– Getting drunk at high elevation is a different experience. In Shangri-la, I got the most sustained buzz of my entire life. It lasted for hours and hours. The lack of oxygen (we were at 13,000 feet) makes you lightheaded, so maybe the beer gets you drunk faster, but I didn’t cross over into ‘wasted,’ until the very end, hours after I got the buzz. Someone needs to study this. Dancing, of course, is a different animal. Shangri-la had the best dancefloor I’ve seen in a long time – it was metal and acted just like a trampoline. My buddy and I got some serious air, like the Africans in "The Air up There," banging our heads into stagelights and rigging. It wasn’t designed for behemoths like us. It was fun, for a couple of minutes until I completely lost my breath. And yes, it was the elevation, not my body mass index.

– The elevation is a tricky beast. Were were over a mile high the whole time, with trips into 13,000 to 15,000 feet. Dizziness, being out of breath, weakness, were all par for the course. Couple of surprises, besides the buzz: one of our tough guys passed out at the top of a mountain. Totally caught me by surprise. And at the basecamp, a mere 12,000 feet, another unlucky chinese tourist fainted on me in the bathroom, knocking me further into a stall. I had to get security to help him. He woke up and shrugged it off – I don’t even think he knew what happened. Most chinese in the south live at sea-level their whole lives. It shows. I wonder if having asthma prepared me at all for not being able to breathe up there. I didn’t pass out, as some did, though I did buy oxygen a couple of times, mostly to help with hangovers and food poisoning.