A Burmese-ish Interlude

moving on anyway >>>>>

2007-06-02T23:03:00.000-07:00

Well.....

When Ojo did finally show up at the hotel, he was a state. torn up, naked, wet, like a beaten dog. he'd lost everything. how? I may never know.... gambling? mugged? I don't know, and if he did, he couldn't talk about it.

After the nightmare of Ruili Town, we knew we had to get the hell-yeah out of there. We booked. As soon as he was rested up enough, Ojo and I moved on. With our (proverbial) tail between our legs. trying to turn the page. make the most if the rest of the time we had over there together.

And the day was looking brighter too. The mountain air, the fresh cool air, cleansing us, with the windows down. There were gorgeous trees with red blossoms like berries. and farm land. a country road. the river we followed into the mountain valley. heading up into the southeastern streamers of the Himalayas, following a huge tributary of the mekong river -- i forget the name of it. but god it was great to move on.

R's PISSed

2007-03-30T21:30:00.001-07:00

Ojo goes missing in Ruili Town, on a bender no doubt, leaving R to freak her shit for a few days in the hotel waiting for him to show. After two days -- instead of checking the local morgue or the ditches on the outskirts of town -- she is just pissed off.

How to have a good time in Ruili Town.... finale

2007-03-22T06:11:00.000-07:00

The last thing one does in Ruili is of course to sample the local distillation of soma. Ojo just has enough money left after loosing his passport.

At the Border (mahna mahna)

2007-03-15T19:58:00.000-07:00

R and Ojo start off easy at the Burmese border with this formal introduction to Ruili Town. In spite of their best efforts, however, things get a little out of hand. In search of the long lost heart of Ruili Town, Ojo heeds the call of the night, and slips away.

Has Ojo finally met his match?

The Baijiu Bomb = A Battle in Every Bottle

2007-03-10T19:36:00.000-08:00

Ojo takes us out for a night in Ruili. And takes himself to the next level with the local brew. At 30 cents a hand grenade, maybe you can buy happiness after all.

Gummi Beari Juice? Oh yeah. We'll buy a case of the stuff before skipping town, for sure.

Driving inspires deep thoughts on the internet

2007-03-08T13:15:00.000-08:00

Drop in on Ojo and R's conversation on their drive out to Ruili. pretty much the deepest conversation to happen that day on earth. power to the people.

First Impressions of Ruili Town

2007-03-08T10:04:00.002-08:00

Is it all that? Is this really the deep dark den of inequity that everyone writes about?! hum...

At first glance, the city is completely nondescript. Other than the tropical palms and saronged burmese men, it's like any other new Chinese town, with its history bleached out by rapid growth and ill-charted gdp mandates. concrete lords, over extended bank loan growth, hollow, uninhabited infrastructure. decaying before it was ever alive.

Ruili, where did you go? where are your casinos and whores? your addicts and smugglers? oh ruili, have you yielded to the mainland order? We are looking for you!

But after a few days, you start to see it, the soul of sin emerging from the strip malls.

May the seedy underbelly actually be belly up!?

The Plan Stan (and what to do with lushy Ojo)

2007-03-08T10:04:00.001-08:00

Rbeka breaks it down in the Kunming hotel for a little pre-road planning and concept. At least she's clear, if not optimistic, about what she expects from her brother -- lushy lish lush lush.

What the hell is my brother doing? Is he gay?

2007-03-08T05:55:00.000-08:00

Ok. please, people, can you help me here? help me understand, what is Ojo doing?

4am Ojo on the Toilet

2007-03-08T02:14:00.001-08:00

After drinking Rbeka and the entire wait staff under the table, Ojo retires to the bathroom in the Kunming hotel to record this intimate confession. Thoughts and reflections on the adventure that lies ahead.

How to quit smoking....

2007-03-08T02:14:00.000-08:00

Ojo proves himself to be a decent older brother after all.

Rbeka Arrives in Kunming

2007-03-08T02:08:00.000-08:00

Still reeking from last night's escapades, Ojo comes out to the airport to meet Rbeka's plane. They almost miss each other, but Ojo catches her at the last minutes as she's getting into a taxi. It's been a while since they've seen each other, and while since she's been in China. It's good to be back, smell the air of freedom and Paris.

On Jade

2007-02-24T09:10:00.000-08:00

Ok. first off. I like the jade shit.

Did you know that the finest quality jadeite is more expensive than diamonds, the most expensive gem in the world. impressive. no? supposedly one of the seven or so jadeite mines in the world is located right across the border at Ruili.

Also.... I dont know if you saw my blog entry/comment from a while ago, but i talked about the idea of making "gambling" a central theme. starting with the casinos, the sex workers, the HIV, the drugs, the illegal trade, then to your tretcherous driving in an unsuited vehicle, and then how it relates to our quest and the ultimate quest for shangrila/happiness/wisdom, etc. It's all a gamble.

The jade trade fits into this motif as well. In one of the articles you pulled, it talks about the gamble of buying jade stones because you cant see how rich the color is until you cut the stone. so youre buying and selling purely on speculation. you dont want to cut open a window, because if the color that is revealed is worthless, you won't be able to get it off your hands. So what you sell for 20 bucks could be worth thousands, and vis versa.

I read one story about a guy in bangkok a couple years back who spent a small fortune on a stone. he was offered triple fold for it, but turned the offer down. he wanted to cut the stone himself. So he put it in a polishing machine, and watched the color reveal itself, a pale opaque cream, a worthless color, and blew his brains out right there in front of the polishing machine.

i think it be interesting if we could develop the theme of "gambling". taking risks, life being a gamble, all you can do it hedge your bets, no one can know what god's plan it, it's all luck, and the like.

The jade stone also feeds into a second theme that I see developing, a theme of "seeking". Jade in traditional chinese thinking is a symbol for eternity, immortality, perfection, and what is that but the ultimate quest. the search for shangrila, return to paradise, mythic and spititual reunion, etc.

"Pao Putzu, a Taoist philosopher once said that jade originally flowed from the mountains as a liquid. Ten thousand years after, it crystallized into a substance as clear as crystal. If the right herb is added to jade, it again reverts back to a liquid. Drinking this liquid confers the gift of long life."

so I like the jade. Let's keep that.

what do you think>?

SCRIPT

2007-02-21T16:12:00.000-08:00

Ruili: Den of Iniquity 10 min

(1) sony 1 min
V/A: Blue sky, descension, captain announcement, the backs of Chinese heads anxious to deplane, feet down metal ladder stairs, etc.
Additional Audio Track: some minimal electronic song, spacious but building up intensity, anticipation -- moves into an overlay with some traditional Asian music like the guzhen; or maybe some mainstream Chinese music, like the type they blast in the train 30 minutes before arrival.
Tone: Alienation, similar to "Lost in Translation", dramatic and heavy

(2) sony 1 min
V/A: Baggage conveyer belt, bag shouldered, walk out into greeting area, walk out to the curb, zooming on Ojo ontop of his car in boxers passed out with a bottle of jameson and sunglasses waiting for you.

(3) canon and sony 30 sec

Wide shot from back inside car, trunk slams shut, siblings get in, driving, parking.

(4) sony 1 min

The hotel room is covered with print outs and pictures, a map with highlighting of where we will go. The wall is entirely covered, and Rbeka goes into her bag, producing ...? a can of spray paint, painting her interpretation as Ojo opens a bottle of tequila.

5) canon 130 sec

night drive to ruili with conversation about town, road, interspersed photos of ruili, video footage slowly growing longer with Rbek and Ojo talking about the gem we need to find for our mother (Rbek mostly as she knows the story) maybe some footage of prostitues and others being asked until this footage replaces the driving...

Then the twist???

We drive into ruili with power, not confidence but sense of purpose and only the ways of discovering it. This can be the plan we lay out in the hotel room. though what would you think about me inviting a bunch of xiao jie toward the end and invite them to have a glass of wine and stay their 45 minutes for 300 rmb each. might have some interesting questions, or just an ending motion for that scene.

once in ruili we get steadily broken down, problems we arise to only to find more. then...

a) do we hear about a place up a forgotton dead end valley?

it ends when we set off to go.

Frames for Tengchong

2007-02-16T21:17:00.000-08:00

Just a collection of details that caught my eye here...

1) Mt. Yunfeng Daoist Temple was initially built in the Ming dynasty. But the buildings that stand today were all built in the 80s, in the post cultural revolution era.

2) According to legend, someone chased a deer to the top of the mountain, but the deer disappeared suddenly, only leaving footprints on the stones. Thinking it supernatural, he built a temple on the mountain. [similar to chasing Shangrila down a dead end road?]

3) In a way, it sounds like an old world Ruili -- always an important stop on the southwestern route of the Silk Road, moving products from Afghanistan, India, Sichuan, etc.

4) The Volcanos sound cool.

Frames for Ruili

2007-02-16T19:58:00.000-08:00

I'm jumping the gun I know. We dont have a mission or a concept yet, but I just wanted to get these notes down.

Have you read this yet? "Sex, Drugs and Roll the Dice," Time, Spetmeber 27, 1999, at http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/99/0927/ruili.html.

1) A place where two countries meet: one expanding in all directions, laying tenticles, planting seeds, spreading influence; the other barey penetrable, stagnant and sufficating (is it imploding? how would anyone know if it was?).

2) No smoke stacks, no manufacturing, no purpose other than servicing the border. Purely a service economy.

3) "Only at dusk do the streets suddenly fill with food stands, vendors with heavy baskets balanced on poles over their shoulders, pedal-cabs on the glide. The lights come on and Ruili becomes its real self."

Reminds me of Spirited Away. This place is haunted. Day to night would be a nice juxtaposition to capture.

4) This is ground zero for China's Aids epidemic. In 1989, local officials found almost 150 heroin users were HIV positive - the first confirmed cases in China.

5) Chinese are going to help Myanmar develop their off shore natural gas fields. They are considering putting the pipeline to feed China through Ruili.

6) The Chinese are building a railline through Ruili to connect with Myanmar. Preparation is under way on the 366-km Dali-Ruili western section of a massive trans-Asia rail plan. The Dali-Ruili railway is expected to cost 10 billion yuan (1.2billion U.S. dollars), to be completed by 2010.

5) Other aspects: gem markets, jade, prostitution, AIDS, condoms, casinos, banks, illegal trade in animal parts,

Your Script

2007-02-15T17:28:00.000-08:00

I was looking for your script, that piece that began like lost in translation. because i had an idea i wanted to add to it...

1)
I pick you up and take you to a hotel room that I have decked out with papers stuck on the walls depicting our trip: print outs of google earth, diagrams, notes, photos, art. You take a good look then pick up a razor and go to work on the collage with magazines of your own you have in your bag; I could have a book mao art and Beijing magazines and post card advertisements ready.

Maybe you would just pull out some spray paint and dust it into some beautiful painting! Yeah, that’s the idea, and then?

2) We're driving at night talking about something, and this is interspersed with dark dark shots of Ruili. Maybe photos.

What are we looking for in Ruili? An old person you read about?

Car is Wired

2007-02-15T16:41:00.000-08:00

I got a power inverter and unlimited wireless internet for the car in march. I still can't find someone to build a pivoting arm computer table. Everyone just tells me it's too dangerous. Sweet.

What if that car is a rent-a-car that i have "modified" and trashed because hey, full coverage.

Concept: the mission

2007-02-15T04:09:00.000-08:00

Beautiful. But the concept will be tricky to arrive at - so let me start a discussion around it, okay? I think Taina's concept is good but it also goes without saying. and that in itself could be good or bad based on the siblings, you follow me? In itself us being us is not an action.

I think our strength can be that we bring a special energy with us, playing off each other, popping into situations, performing "interventions" as the conceptual artists call it. . .

if we could somehow capture ourselves third person - lots of steadycam, maybe us arguing with the camera as if it were another... and then seek to perfom interventions (cause it is so fun to get people's responses!)... maybe we don't want to tie down the interventions - these could evolve with our situation, i'd think, for them to feel realistic.

maybe if we had an underlying mission, something we never say in the video, that could help unite everything ... this concept. . .

my friend said we should be searching for Shangri-li-la... that kind of fits with our tryptic below - the search for nirvana, yo - and this could be the mission on the surface - but really, you want to kill me on video, you know, something else underneath while we ask everyone if they've heard where shang-gri-li-la is.

So crazy brother crazy sister do crazy things searching for Shangri-li-la...

Next...

1) Ruili: den of inequities

2) Taoist mountains: volcanos and countryside

3) Toward Tibet: on a dead end road

bury something at the end of it? tie ourselves to crosses to feed the vultures?

What we need is a concept...

2007-02-14T09:05:00.000-08:00

1) Sure we could use Youtube. In my experience, the single advantage to using Youtube over Metacafe and Revver is that we can rip off copyrighted music. On the otherhand, it might be interesting to be constrained by that too.

2) I like your idea of three parts. 1) Ruili: den of inequities; 2) Taoist mountains: volcanos and countryside; and 3) Toward Tibet: on a dead end road.

3) Taina had an interesting way of conceiving of the project. Yesterday, after checking out the blog, she wrote: maybe you should try to make it into a pilot and see if you can sell it: crazy siblings going to crazy places doing crazy things.

4) In terms of moving forward on our design and product concept, I think first we need to decided what this is about. In one sentence. Is it like Taina said, "crazy siblings going to crazy places doing crazy things" or something else?

Once we have that, it'll set the overarching tone.

Once we have that, then let's decide the production contraints -- which by the way i like the idea of production contraints.

We need a concept. What do you say?

RUILI

2007-02-12T01:53:00.000-08:00

Ruili (simp.: 瑞丽市; trad.: 瑞麗市; Pinyin: Ruìlì Shì) is a city with 110,000 inhabitants and an area of 860 km² in the Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan province in the southwest of the People's Republic of China.

An older name of Ruili is Měngmǎo. 勐卯; ruì means "fortunate", and lì means "beautiful".

Democracy Hottie

2007-02-11T22:03:00.000-08:00

thanks for putting up her pict. been so many years, amazing how people change. of course i assumed at first you picked an old post prision picture of my main squeeze just to f with me. but for fairness sake, i now see these are the only picts on the net. people should remember her however, how i do when i stare through my computer screen and think of how things could have been if she had only met me instead of that other guy... oh wel, again and again, yah...

video structure / production

2007-02-10T22:47:00.000-08:00

what about how we put this up? Are we thinking youtube? if each one cannot be longer than ten minutes, do we want to consider a timeframe protocol for a series of videos?

Maybe 3: Ruili, Mt. Tao, dead end valley; each ten minutes with an openning, problem, solution, new problem, etc.?

And from a production angle, it would be nice to have simple tasks we have to do on camera. no matter how hungover, angry, or whatever, we can always agree to follow a simple set of tasks that guarantees us the footage we need.

it would also be nice to not always be itching to video but rather to have contained structured events we do and then have time to experience things just for ourselves...

might be calming. what do you think?

Script shots 1

2007-02-10T14:04:00.000-08:00

Arrival Scene

(1)
V/A: Blue sky, descension, captain announcement, the backs of Chinese heads anxious to deplane, feet down metal ladder stairs, etc.
Additional Audio Track: some minimal electronic song, spacious but building up intensity, anticipation -- moves into an overlay with some traditional Asian music like the guzhen; or maybe some mainstream Chinese music, like the type they blast in the train 30 minutes before arrival.
Tone: Alienation, similar to "Lost in Translation", dramatic and heavy

(2)
V/A: Baggage conveyer belt, bag shouldered, walk out into greeting area

(3)
Wide shot, the siblings meet, hug, smile and walk out into the taxi area

Driving up 'Nu Jiang"

2007-02-07T02:34:00.000-08:00

So you can see the road and river (Nu Jiang) and town here, Gongshan. Let's see what we can dig up on this dead-end upstream valley road. what are the chances they grow opium or manufacture speed and will just kill us when we arrive? maybe we should check in with the embassy about this trip, so somebody knows...

2007-02-01T22:53:00.000-08:00

You see the road heading north on the east side of that mountain range; this is a traditional caravan route up out of Yunnan to Lhasa. But there is also another road heading north in a valley over the mountains just west of this road. I can't find good enough maps, but we might google earth it to see what possibility there is for getting out of the head of that valley. My maps make it look as though the other road just ends at the northern head of the valley. Otherwise we take a road more travelled (we know it) but then we could stop in Lijiang, Zhongdian, and maybe even press on the La Musa through Aba. If you have enough time, we might find the real Shangrilila, ya?

north yunnan burma border road - a dead end?

2007-02-01T22:51:00.000-08:00

so you know the road closest to burma heading north - that just dead ends right? If so that means we either take the next road north to the east, or else we go south along the border...

preliminaries

2007-01-31T07:11:00.000-08:00

Thursday, February 1, 2007

okay. this has potential. granted my car doesn't get stolen.

you can make this about learning to control
yourself... and also helping me to take me to new
spiritual heights... ha.  we could both have our goals
for the trip...

or whatever...  you know it's just going to be madness.
i think having a blog attached to a youtube is great.
especially when the video will be so full of meaning
- being ours of course;)

don't you remember our trip through europe talking to
some of those people.  man we had a great moment at a
bar interrogating this guy, and with our small video
snapshot cameras and your high quality mdv, i think we'll have
ample opportunity to ali g some poor backpackers. i
only wish i had my wireless equipment - which is in
Iraq...

Here's a thought - why don't we make friends with some streetwalker
and agree to double her fee if she picks up someone we identify.
We could meet the guy before, talk to him, then have the sex worker
bring him to our hotel room, where i'm smoking a huge joint.

incidentally, do you mind if i start my blog -  ...  i know she's a
"syco mind-games playing bitch now" so i know what i'm
getting into and i have a plan.  i think i've learned
how to survive.  you see when i was home this
christmas there wasn't a day i wasn't stoned - and i
never fought with the family, never didn't walk away
when the urge to hurl something or leap through the
window.  My "dulled" state even permitted me to take
some heat, lighting control fires, as it were, to keep
christmas safe for the children, and the family together.
so here's my idea; i have to make sure i have at least
ten grams of hash before we start our trip.  I'll bake it,
cook it, give the pills to the restaurants to mix into the
food as we travel, and of course i'll keep a pack of joints
at the ready for the first time you get mad at me.  if i'm stoned
the whole time, i can't get so upset when you inevitably
get mad at me for being of the inferior male species.  and
i won't have the drive to do real damage if i walk off again,
when you rip into my lecherous nose picking and my lisp.  but if you
really want to get me, there's no telling what way the deviant
inside is likely to get control of.  And this trip with my sister
i want to make sure i don't go looking for anything stronger than
tequila after we have our first gloves off hello nasty and i'm climbing
the streets at four am all cave man...  see there is the possibility for
growth in sibling relationships.  this will not be a repeat of prague,
after finding a trail of money that led to your passport, did you ever
know I woke up later that night in some vip room at a gay underground
nightclub where the guys had their shirts off and were putting on body
paint and arm bands with condoms and lube.  a weird situation to wake
up to on the couch, passed out.  yeah - don't want to go there in
Ruili...  hideously infected by hiv, while the possibility of having
the best heroin across the border, five young masseuses on amphetamines
but they never have any emotion left in them...

The Route

2007-01-27T20:59:00.000-08:00

Ok. So. This is a chunk of southwestern Yunnan. The "Old Burma Road", as far as I can tell, connected the old capital of Xiaguan/Dali to Burma through what is now Ruili. It's still the same road today that goes through Baoshan and Luxi, and serves the major (official) border crossing between Myanmar and China. (I think there is a second one farther south in Xishaungbanna.)

This map is the best shet I could find online. But one of the travel books I saw in a store here shows this segment in greater detail. It shows a road that heads south from Luxi, running south toward Lancang, but west of Lincang. I need to go back to the store to check out the map again, to see which of these little villages shown here it went through. This travel guide, I think it was a RoughGuide, had a paragraph that described backpacking along that road, truck stops, places to stay, etc. Which at least means it should be "open", i.e., legal, but my guess is unpaved.

The thought was that we could start at the Taoist mountain by Tenchong, check out the inequities of Ruili, and then head south along that road. Jinhong is the big city down there, right? The road back to Kunming from Jinhong is probably desent, if long. or maybe we could swing north to Lincang and cut back toward Kunming that way.

Oh and that big river, the Lancang Jiang, that's the Mekong. (I wonder where they are building all those dams that's are turning the river into a trickle by the time it reaches Thailand. Maybe one of them is in this region?/

Sibling Interlude No. ?

2007-01-27T18:27:00.000-08:00

This post authorizes the launch of a pre-trip discussion of "Sibling Interlude 2007: Border Rows." Jpole and Rbex, let's storm the brains and juice some lemons.

HOOOooo HU yAah...... Burma watch yourself, baby, because we are coming to haunt your eastern front and tease out your porous border....