Staring intimidatingly into two fresh black eyes, I barked menacingly, ‘reach for the sky!’. No response. I yelled, ‘this town aint big enough for the two of us’. Zip. ‘It’s not a laser. It’s a little light bulb that blinks’. Nothing. ‘Somebody’s poisoned the waterhole!’. Nada. ‘Who are you calling busted, Buster?’. Zippo. He just slumped aloofly on his backside upon a grassy verge, nonchalantly chomping his way through a mound of bamboo. The lardy giant panda was seemingly uninterested in impressions of my beloved Woody, yet the cowboy in me refused to be repressed. A few days after my showdown with the 50-or-so Chengdu pandas, I was in the one-horse town of Songpan, trotting unstably towards the magically entitled, Ice Mountain. Continue reading ‘To Songpan, and beyond!’
Archive for September, 2007
The red-faced King of the South paced nervously around his ageing palace, closely followed by a fidgeting guard. If either dared peer out through the ornate wooden shutters and across the blood-tainted river, they would of been overcome with terror. Advancing towards them at a frightful pace were a pair of canons in search of a mount, two intense looking horsemen, a shuffling pair of holy men and a pentad of pesky pawns. Just visible on the misty horizon, stood the palace of his ageing adversary. Within the stone sanctum paced his royal rival, robed immaculately in hereditary velvets of black. I took a gulp of Tsingtao, ‘your move, loser‘. The ‘Concubine of Chess’ and my current archenemy, ignored my tactical taunts and swiftly took aim with her Chinese Chess piece. She followed with a fearless sequence of freshman moves, intent on seducing my King into an knee-trembling demise. Concubines throughout history would have been outrageously envious of Reb’s panache as a short time later an eerie silence descended, and it was over. I gulped the last of the Tsingtao and shot a blurry gaze towards the two dispirited Kings, stubbornly perched upon my fantasy’s thrones in a now barren, death-swept kingdom. ‘Draw?’, I proposed. We agreed, but next time I won’t let her off so easy. Continue reading ‘Answers on a Postcard’
My mother always said vegetables were good for me, so for 21 years I munched my way through her gloomy carrots, astringent runner beans and even the odd heap of pungent spinach. Then I cut the apron strings, and phoned her weekly, for 4 years, to ask her how to recreate the sloppy, lifeless clumps of sentiment. It was with a combination of this deep-rooted craving and my slow retreat from Chinese flesh-based sustenance that I found myself sitting in a Jinghong vegetarian restaurant, across from Reb, my recurring itch of an accomplice. Along with a feast of imitation crispy duck, sweet and sour meatballs, chinese cabbage and seaweed in flour came a vibrant 33 year old, called Joe the Bridge. Continue reading ‘Bee for ‘Banna’
