This is China's hippy town. It has skinny girls walking around in sarongs, occasional dredlock sightings, electro bands that use djembe drums, hippie veg restaurants, and reggae parties.
It also has ganja growing all over the place. By the canals, next to the house, in the alleys, all over, sometimes in explosions taller than me. Of course i wanted to pick some, but quickly realized that i don't know how or what to pick. i know there's boy and girl plants, but i don't know the difference. i didn't see anything like what i've seen before.
Anyhow, i picked some stuff that looked like something, but was told it was male, and no good, and smoking the seeds can make you go crazy. In the not high, and not good way.
Anyhow, the city is quite nice, and even if an overabundance of bars and one crappy dance club isn't what you're after, in the day time it's pretty easy to get out to a little village with superduper old buildings with roofs covered in grass. There's old people sitting around, wearing strange traditional clothing, which makes me wonder how they can still exist like that, considering that they do have access to the modern worlds. Also all the people look at you (me) like "what the hell is this waiguo ren dude doing here, hiding his camera, like we don't know that he's here to objectify and exoticise the lifestyle that i've always had, and my mother always had, and her mother ..." etc etc etc.
Well it's cool that nobody set up a fucking souvenir shop there yet. Maybe next year, eh? Those Han chinese folk have it down to an art.
tomorrow i'm off to Lijiang. which i think will be smaller,. but sorta the same. Stay tuned.
1 comment:
stoked to hear of this town, q. the whole world needs more roberts creeks, especially countries like china.
on the herb, smoking the seeds making you crazy is a myth, popular in south africa too where the plant grows wildly. the wild plant is something quite different from the cultivated bud we buy here. you need to smoke more of it to get equally high -- tougher on the lungs, but also a more natural and relaxing experience, depending on how much you like the act of smoking itself. do avoid the seeds, because they don't help the matter, ie, don't roll them in, but they def. won't kill you. unless china's plant is somehow different than africa's. seems unlikely. male or female shouldn't matter, in my understanding. only matters as to whether it will reproduce or not. basically it sounds like the same sitch as in s.a., whereby the plant would grow wildly in farmer's fields. like a weed. out in the bush, when i wanted to smoke some, we paid a farm boy $2 to stuff a bunch in a bag. so he literally just cut off the twigs and gave it to us. we cut out the twigs, removed the seeds, rolled it up and smoked it. to proper effect. i'd do it if i were you.
peace
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