Chapter 24 Traveling Notes

The next day’s competition was a friendly match. With the exception of Black Glasses and Poker-Face, who both displayed a bit of PK power, the rest of us were dragging our feet. Although Xiao Hua seemed to have an innate talent for it, his performance wasn’t particularly amazing.

Without professional training, it was impossible to master the art of shooting matchlock guns consecutively, but by the end of the competition, Xiao Hua and I gradually got the hang of it. By that time, however, it was already too late. Clearly, training and talent were indispensable when it came to such complex sports.

As a result of this, the more well-rounded local teams ended up competing for first, second, and third place. We did receive points because of Black Glasses and Poker-Face, but we didn’t end up placing because the rest of us dragged them down. They both got a lot of cheers, though.

The whole event was very fun, and Jiang Bai took a lot of embarrassing photos for us.

Eventually, Jiang Bai went to see us off. It looked like he wanted to say something but was hesitant, so I asked him what was wrong. “Can you not go to Guangxi?” He asked me.

“Why?”

He looked at us silently for a while before saying, “It’s nothing. I’m just a little reluctant to part with you all.”

Men in this region showed sincere emotions, but it was obvious to see by the look in his eyes that he wasn’t really reluctant.

Xiao Hua and Black Glasses were going to Vietnam and Cambodia. I didn’t know what they were going to do there, but it seemed as if there were still some remaining problems they had to deal with. They were heading in the same direction as us for part of the way so we’d be traveling together for a while. We’d obviously be taking two separate vehicles, but I was still very happy since it was always better to have more people when you were out having fun.

Fatty told me in the truck that there were many famous lamas in Jiang Bai’s family, all of whom were eminent monks. In the local area, they were even regarded as famous mystical figures. I couldn’t help but wonder if he saw something.

Then I suddenly remembered that when we were leaving, he and Fatty had been talking to each other. “What did he say to you?” I asked Fatty.

“He said that sometimes when we go to a place, others need to meet us instead of the other way around,” Fatty said. “Anyway, you know that they all talk in riddles like that.”

There was a time when I made a lot of predictions and came up with a lot of plans. If you made a plan, the key thing was how you actually relayed it. If you could clearly say what you could see or foresee, then the trajectory of the whole plan would change.

So, I could understand why these people liked to sound so mysterious.

Our two vehicles headed towards Guangxi and then separated in Kunming.⁽¹⁾ After that, we continued making our way to Guangxi. Throughout the trip, we ate, drank, played billiards, cooled off in streams, had picnics, and drank tea by the various lakes (thanks to the fact that they were well-equipped). Xiao Hua said that people like us spent our whole lives on the road but never actually traveled.

The whole point of traveling was to see a new world, but we were actually revisiting old places we had been to before. The main reason for our trip was to see our friends and relatives and talk about everything that had happened over the years.

For example, we could visit Dingzhu-Zhuoma’s grandson Tashi.⁽²⁾ But after thinking about it carefully, I realized that there was a high probability he wouldn’t want to see us again, so I decided to drop the idea.

Seeing the scenery and experiencing a new world… we had already seen a lot of beautiful scenery, and although this road would never end, it shouldn’t be the main theme of our trip.

For people like us, traveling traditionally meant that you would bring something back whenever you went out, kind of like hunting. So, I made an agreement with Fatty that we would make a new menu for Xilaimian and bring some dishes we found along the way back with us. This actually wasn’t an easy task, because we had to bring back the ingredients for those dishes as well.

Going to Guangxi was actually part of the route we would take to get home to Fujian. For our last stop, I wanted to go to Hainan to take a look at the southernmost Fei Kun Temple.⁽³⁾

The trip to Guangxi exceeded our expectations, and I soon understood what Jiang Bai’s words meant.

Throughout the whole trip, there were some very relaxing and pleasant parts, but there were also some very confusing and creepy parts.

The main reason was that in Vietnam and Cambodia, the geographical location and prevalence of spirit mediums in villages led to a very complex and fanatic religious system that basically amounted to “one village, one religion”.

Based on the data I had seen, the main god worshiped in one of the villages over there was Teresa Teng.⁽⁴⁾ There were also people who worshiped half-corpses, and some who worshiped people who had deformities. In any case, they had everything over there. Most of these small-scale religious systems adopted a form of fuji,⁽⁵⁾ and since these villages were mostly concentrated in the deep mountains where little traffic came through, it was very easy for the people to blindly obey and accept such practices. The local spirit mediums had a lot of authority and handled things in strange ways, and the believers were all very religious.

These bizarre religious systems all competing against each other began to infiltrate into the country, resulting in all kinds of bizarre tragedies.

This information sets the stage for how our trip to Guangxi started.

This trip is something that has chills running up and down my spine even when I think about it now.

<Chapter 23><Table of Contents><Chapter 25>

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TN Notes:

(1) Visuals (I just did a super general location search if you couldn’t tell and drew a line from Kunming to Guangxi):

(2) Dingzhu-Zhuoma and her grandson Tashi were the ones who guided Wu Xie and the squad to Tamutuo/the Qaidam Basin in English Volume 5 “Deadly Desert Winds”. Tashi’s first mention is Chapter 20 and his grandma is Chapter 17.

(3) They’re basically Poker-Face temples. The information about Fei Kun Balu Temples can be found in Daomu Biji Extra 7.14 (Little Brother Zhang and Zhang Haiqi infiltrate a wedding procession at Potluck Capital).

(4) Teresa Teng (1953-1995) was a super famous Taiwanese pop idol who achieved cult status in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mainland China, and Japan. The pinyin of her name is actually Deng Lijun (邓丽君). Info here.

(5) Fuji is a method of “planchette writing“, or “spirit writing“, that uses a suspended sieve or tray to guide a stick which writes Chinese characters in sand or incense ashes. Info here. If it helps, the weird little tool you use with Ouija boards is called a planchette.

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Pic added 12/12/2022 (fan translation courtesy of me).