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Keeping with the theme of travel, but disregarding the topic of corruption, today we will be taking a drive up a precariously steep cliff edge road, towards a village called Liannan, in China.

Allow me to quickly introduce Liannan before you start throwing your bum-mud at me, shouting, “say another funny!”

Liannan, pronounced Lee-en-nan, or ‘summin’ like that, is a village situated up in the mountains, with its resident’s blind to modern life, truly, it’s like guerrilla fighters still in their bunkers because no one told them the war is over, i.e. these guys haven’t got a fu*king clue what’s going on.

At this stage into the story of ‘Clueless in Asia’, I am still employed by Dick, albeit coming to an end soon, I am still there, unfortunately, and that simply comes down to the fact I didn’t/don’t like change.

I get upset with the fact I have to change my accent when I speak to Google, “OK Google, ya’ll hear me now, huh?”, I have to say in ‘American’, cringing every mouthful of the way because she doesn’t understand English, I mean, my English accent.

During one of my very few holidays, my wife decided to show me some ‘Chinesey sh*t, stuff that I had naively hoped to see before I went to China. She did this with the desire to salvage the utter feeling of disappointment I had accumulated thus far because I went to China with rose-tinted spectacles expecting to see Qipao dresses, Temples, and Dynasty Warriors, I certainly wasn’t expecting to see poo, piss, pollution and poverty.

Allow me to expand on that in greater detail, just in case you couldn’t create that image for yourself.

There I was, under the impression that China was a country brimming with martial discipline, art, culture and among other things that Jackie Chan and Zhang Ziyi had misled me to believe. China is, in part, utterly lawless, not that laws don’t exist, because they do, it’s just that people pay no attention to them and no one enforces them.

Art is not encouraged, to my knowledge no art classes are taught in public schools and creativity seems essentially dead; Chinas creativity is like an old man’s erection, it was once full of spunk, but now it’s empty and useless.

Most importantly, culture, where were all those beautiful ancient buildings you think about when you consider China? I’ll tell you where they are, they’ve been knocked down for a factory; a factory that makes Poundlands supplies!

And it’s with that lack of satisfaction that I snatched the opportunity that my wife was offering with both hands, literally by grabbing her face and shouting, “yes!” into it.

We packed an overnight bag, jumped into the car and set our phones to destination, Liannan!

My wife’s (she wasn’t my wife at the time) parents decided to join us on this trip, I believe they both wanted to be there to witness the spectacle of my faces first sign of happiness and satisfaction at something Chinese…apart from their daughter of course.

So, after switching positions, her dad jumped into the pilots’ seat to take us all to Liannan, a drive some five hours away.

As we left the city, my view from my backseat window became less grey and more…another shade of grey, just lighter and with a dash greener. We took pitstops at every petrol station, and at each one we did, I became more and more of an eyesore for the local people. My guessing of, “they’ve never seen a white person before”, became less of a guess and more of a fact with every stop away from the city.

For the last few stops, I stayed seated and buckled in, feared to get out just in case I was kidnapped, and buckled in to prevent said kidnapping to be made easy; plus, the toilets were rank, so like, yeah… no way I was using that sh*t.

Whilst listening to some Bosa Nova like a boss (selected by her dad), we had reached the most magnificent of roads, laid high up, passing through the mountains and forests. Thick hues of green intertwined and brushed into one another with passing wind to create a never-ending sea of tidal canopies. We were the only car cruising smoothly down what looked like an unused road, and the very reason I cannot show you a picture of this idyllic scenery illustrates how tranquil it was. In other words, I was far too busy enjoying the view to distort it by looking down a lens.

After a silent drive as we all looked out from our windows, invited by the breath-taking scenery, we had reached what seemed to be the start of Liannan. A massively steep road that laced around the mountain; it reminded me of strawberry laces, you know, the sort you’d find from the ice cream man or newsagents. The road was so thin and…well, for want of a better word…droopy. It was a road perched shyly on the cliff face and inhabited by the odd cluster of families.

There we were, in silence…and then.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEP!

Her dad began thumping the car horn, beeping as he drove, BEEP BEEP!

Suddenly, what seemed like a moment of time standing still, turned into my chest hurting and my heart beating rapidly as we drove up the road.

“The drivers here aren’t good, we need to warn them so we don’t crash and fall off,” he said, shouting over his honking.

“Oh…okay” I yelled out nervously, annoyed as to why no one mentioned to me the risk of fu*king death! We’d been driving for hours and had countless pitstops, all valid opportunities to casually bring up the fact that her dad planned on waking up a mountain and, oh yeah, you could either be paralyzed with fear or fu*king die!

Trying to remain calm, I sat with my head looking down at my camera’s screen, but that made me feel sick from motion sickness. I tried looking out of the window, but the blur of tarmac made me feel more sick, though, if I was going to die, I’d rather be looking out the window than I would looking at my camera with a picture of a fu*king sh*tty toilet on it from one of the pitstops!

As we whizzed up the mountain beeping the car horn at every turn, it became apparent to me the necessity of said beeping. Drivers came down at reckless speeds and in cars that resembled ones you’d find in places like Liverpool, without wheels and doors and probably running on syphoned fuel (only kidding Liverpool, I can bear you like you)

Along the road, stray dogs ran with children from one side to the other, seeming disturbed by our presence. I began to feel like an intruder, an outsider and a disturber of the peace. My wife’s mum had turned in her seat looking back at me and said, “It’s very different here. It’s not like our life at all…We’ve never been here. ”.

This slowly unravelling confession made me feel like my only source of knowledge to my surroundings was taken away, as now apparently the people whom I was in company with didn’t have a bloody clue either! We were going to get eaten by mountain orcs for sure… or worse, squeal like pigs!

Regardless of all the worry, danger and sh*tty toilets, we made it to the outskirts of the village wall. We parked to the side and as we did, villagers gauged us from afar, peering at us whilst paused in the motion of farm work.

To note, Liannan is actually a place you can visit, in fact, they rely on tourist to come and walk the village paths and buy crafts made by the elders. I don’t want you to think we just pulled up to some ancient gates, revving the engine shouting, “Oi! We want to show the foreigner some chinesey sh*t!”

The village itself was consistent in its building materials, meaning that every hut, wall and step was constructed using the same stone and slate. We began by walking up steep steps dug into the mountain, steps that weaved tightly between close knitted family huts; snug huts with families perched around open fires, cooking.

As we passed them, they eagerly ran out to sell us ‘village crafted souvenirs’…’tat’, to you and me. I had to brush away their hands as they reached out to grab, tugging at us to encourage spending. After knocking back the starving cave-goblins using our bags, we continued up and came to a clearing which seemed to be the villages ‘stores’, a cluster of doorless huts sat in an opening as the path widened. Each room contained harvested products for the villages consumption, but only one appealed to me. Soy!

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Okay, so, I didn’t actually shout out, “soy!” and get all enthusiastic, I’m British after all. I did, however, let the words, “soy” fall out of my mouth with the same amount of enthusiasm you’d use if you were saying… I don’t know… “Bono”.

After purchasing, sipping, and then immediately spitting out the immensely fresh ‘n’ hot unsanitized soy drink, myself and my wife took a diversion away from the village walls and headed for a clear opening to get a shot of the hilling mountains that overlooked and surrounded the village.

We stood for a moment whilst the feeling of realization fazed over me, the fact that I had to come so far to find a piece of undisturbed China. A place where the government weren’t in control and a place where they weren’t able to demolish their own culture in favour of malls and cheaply built apartments.

I began to see the mountains as a barrier, a shield and protector, preventing and making difficult the governments ruthless greed of destruction, and then construction. We spent a while sat on the edge of one of those bulbous-esque mountains, breathing deeply as much clean air as possible before we were back into modern China.

We left the mountain tops and entered back into the village, where I wondered amongst the people, standing out like genitals in swimming shorts. I was encouraged into every hut to purchase utter garbage, like snakes in piss filled bottles, made to conveniently cure whatever problem you’re having, and dried skins of lizards, great for maintaining erections or again, great for whatever else you’ve got going on… or not going on.

“I’ve got a cold.”

“Ah, you’ll want the horse pubes.”

“Sorry, I meant I have a broken leg.”

“Yeah, broken leg, that’s horse pubes too.”

“…Money proble”

“Pubes.”

“… I see.”

Slapping away said offers by expressing utter disinterest and boredom, I met up with my wife’s parents to take our first family portrait together. I positioned my tripod and set up the camera to my liking; little did they know, I fu*king hate having my face digitized. I’m as uncomfortable with having my picture taken as I am with answering my front door… or being molested (all invade my personal space).

Quickly switching off the camera, so as to not let them see my work, we took back to the continuing path that went on to even greater heights, scaling up the entire mountain. I continued forward, not wanting to look back as to savour the view, saving it for when I got to the top of the steps so that I could turn my back and look at the mountains of Liannan.

Finally, I had seen some Chinesey sh*t.