SHAOSHAN & THE NONSENSE THAT COMES WITH LIVING HERE

The next morning we took a train to Shaoshan, Chairman Mao's hometown. Shaoshan is very tiny, but at one point 3 million peple per year were coming to pay homage at Mao's birthplace so the government built a train. Shaoshan was a cool place. We saw the Mao Museum, a mixture of propaganda, historical photos and personal effects of Mao. Some things were really interesting, like the first modern Chinese flag or Mao's own Little Red Book, but some of the things were a bit too esoteric for me (such as Mao's toothbrush.) We also visited Mao's house. It was bigger than I had expected but had as many soldiers guarding it as I would have thought.

After The museums we went into town to purchase souvineers. I bought a handful of Red Books from the Cultural Revolution and some more Mao hats. I have both blue and green. Blue is for the peasants, green for the government and the military. I've been wearing my green one for a few months now, and every now and then someone will approach me and seriously ask if I am in the PLA (People's Liberation Army.) After the shopping we had lunch - the best tong su li ji (sweet and sour pork) I've had since I've been here.

Then I went back to Kunming. Every person who I told that I had been to Changsha told me how much they had hated it. A few even offered up reasons as to why "all people from Changsha are assholes." My favorites came from a friend who is a psychologist and another who is a historian. The psychological reason is that, "Hunan food is the spiciest in China, and people have hot tempers if they eat a lot of spicy food." Interesting theory. The other theory I liked is that, "Changsha people have been bred for centuries to be assholes. They were the Qing Dynasty's special forces. During the Taiping rebellion, Changsha was the only town in Hunnan that held off the rebels." Naybe it's the food, maybe it's the bred hostility, but if you're ever in China, I suggest you skip Changsha.

Today my phone was stolen. The irony is that I had bought the cheapest phone so it wouldn't get stolen and it worked for 6 months. Since I save everythingm I was able to dig through months of junk and find the original SIM card info. China Mobile, which is usually incompetant on a good day helped me and made it very easy for me to keep my same phone number on a new phone. Alltold, it was an unplanned $50 expense, but I have friends who have been through a half dozen phones in a year. If your bike gets stolen in Kunming, you can go to the stolen bike market and buy it back (or a better one.) Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, there is no stolen phone market here.