Communication Conundrums

October 11, 1999
Web posted at: 12:32 p.m. EDT (1632 GMT)

By Dan Buettner

Children on the streets of Kashgar pose for a picture

I knew communication was going to be an issue on AsiaQuest when Colleen stepped out of the locker room wearing paper panties on her head.

As part of our exploration into Chinese Traditional Medicine we had visited a massage therapist. The Chinese believe that massage heals by increasing blood circulation and the flow of "life force" they call "Chi." Colleen was given a towel and blue paper panties, which-it must be said-looked like a shower cap. She undressed, wrapped herself in the towel, put what she thought was the shower cap on her head and stepped into the massage room. When we saw her, we erupted into laughter. When Colleen realized why, she did too.

	VIDEO
Asia Quest - Report: Day 6

Colleen has an extremely good sense of humor.

In Africa, Latin America or Europe, where words are written in Latin script, an English speaker can at least make out some word meanings (mucho in Spanish = much in English, for instance). Here in the western extreme of China, people speak two languages-Mandarin and Uighur-both completely incomprehensible to most of the team. Uighur uses Arabic script; Mandarin uses a simplified Chinese script- both are vastly different from our Latin script. Here, we can't even understand maps. I am dumbfounded.

A curious man tries out one of the team's mountain bikes

The other day, we cycled through downtown Kashgar on our way to Hotan. We got hopelessly lost before we left downtown. Traffic is the very epitome of din and chaos. Donkey carts and cyclists compete for space on the narrow side lanes while buses, trucks and cars barrel down the center lanes. Pedestrians cross wherever and whenever they want while motorists honk at everyone and everything. No one stops at intersections or roundabouts. We got hopelessly confused, unable to read any street signs or distinguish one street from the next. Finally we stopped and asked an old bearded, bespeckled Uighur man for directions to Hotan. He seemed to understand. He drew out a map with his finger, which I perfectly understood. But it led to the hotel, not Hotan.

Later that morning, in an outdoor market, I ordered tea to go with my breakfast of Shiao lung bao - spongy dumplings stuffed with sheep meat. After one bite, I asked for tea, using the Chinese word, cha. Nothing happened. I got up and pointed at the teapot. The waiter poured me a cup of hot water. "No, no," I said. "Cha, please give me some cha." Five minutes later the waiter delivered me a bowl of dou fu nao, which is a fermented, liquified tofu.

Communication is just one of the many problems plaguing us as we enter this second week of AsiaQuest. With each of these reports, you're supposed to see an icon that you can click to see a video. Last week, the team spent approximately 65 hours to produce five of these videos, one each day. This morning, we got an email telling us that none of them ran, some problem with how we sent it, I guess. We are crestfallen, demoralized and aren't quite sure whether we have the enthusiasm to do it again this week.

Since the Chinese government refused us a permit to use our satellite dish, we have to count on land lines to transmit our reports. The fact we can do this at all is a miracle, but a troublesome miracle. Slow and bad connections are the norm. A couple of days ago in Yengisar, the only phone we could find was at a bubble gum kiosk. There, locals line up to use a cheap plastic phone to call friends and family. When it was Jerome's turn, he opened his laptop, plugged it into the computer and tried to log on. The Kiosk owner, a Uighur woman with a round face, freaked out. Kyle managed to pacify her, but by the time she settled down the combination of the commotion and a never-before-seen laptop computer had attracted a huge audience. With 40 people looking over his shoulders, he tried for over an hour to log on, only to get a 30-second connection, then a dead line.

These problems add to what a growing conundrum: are we an expedition or an Internet production team? When you're spending 65 hours a week producing, it leaves little time for exploration.

If next week doesn't get any better, we may all be wearing paper panties on our heads.

Pedals Up!

Dan