Hey, where in the heck did all my market models go!?

There is no bargaining down with this fine lady!

An Ethnic Minority elder in the village for the daily market.

An exotic and beautiful girl in Dali for the big annual festival. She was most obliging to pose for us with her hat on or off!

A reunion of all my old girlfriends and a fond toast to our grand China adventure!!

I want to thank Dianne Gardner for encouraging me to do this series and for all the effort she did in putting it together. I wrote the blogs in my usual tongue in cheek humor and nonsense and hope that you got some enjoyment out of it. Most of the 25 artists shared my joy, excitement and enthusiasm on this trip. For me it was extra special as I have made a large part of my painting career painting unique and exciting places around the world and China is truly one of my favorites. It had beautiful and unique scenery and wonderful, exotic people and villages to paint and photograph. Some of us plan on going back next year in the same area and also venture at least into the Tibetan area in the provinces of Yunnan and Seichuan. It is a bit difficult to get to some of the places, as first of all it is a long plane ride of 20 hours to get there. (I highly recommend Eva Air from Seattle to Taipei to Hong Kong and then Dragon Air to Kunming or Guilin. You can upgrade on Eva Air to a business class for around $250 and belileve me it is worth it! Coming back is an ordeal as it took most of us about a week to get back to any semblance of normal! You leave Taipei and get home a couple of hours before you have left! You will find China quite cheap for now, even with the dollar so bad all over. The area we were in is one of the most beautiful in China and that is in the Provinces of Northern Guangxi, Guizhou and norther Yunnan, particularly the Dali area.The food takes some getting use to, although in Dali, a beautiful city, you can get some great western food in the foreign section of the old city for low prices. You must have a guide or translator as few of the people speak English and as you can't rent a car, your translator or guide must have transportation which should be no problem. There are art stores in Dali, where you can get supplies and small bottles of turpentine for next to nothing. I took along some extra money as I am a small time collector of small time oriental antiques and such and you can get some really fine things for a pittance what you would pay here. Most everyone bargains and they will start high and I soon learned to start really low, they will roll their eyes, but they will know that you aren't going to go for some outrageous price and I had a real great time having fun with the bargaining and respected what they were trying to do. Go to have fun, keep a great sense of humor and you will have a real fine experience!! Thanks for taking the time to go through this fractured summary and going along with some of my nonsense. I hope that you get to visit this enchanting and quickly changing country sometime soon." Take care, Ned

Xizhou, north of Dali

A typical kitchen, no microwave popcorn here!

"You ain't gonna get any of your decadent french fries here!"

A typical home in our village of Xizhou, north of Dali about 25 miles.

As I said before, the markets were very colorful and lively.

A great orchestra and dancers performed for us one afternoon in the Linden Art Center patio.

Xihou market scenes

The markets were full of lush and colorful vegetables, fruits and Ethnic minority people.

This woman ran a stall full of tempting things to buy at very cheap prices!

This was the busy, exotic and colorful market in our village of Xihou every day.

Yeah, I think the Lakers win it in 5 games!

The old men looked wise and had a lot of character.

We'll take a quick interlude here to explain this blog thing since some of you may be confused. A blog starts out with day one and everyday we add to it gets posted ontop of day one. So if you want to read these blogs in order you need to scroll down to the bottom of the list and start from there. I can't do much about the order of things. Hope this hasn't confused too many people.

Well how quickly things can turn around! After the Yao wedding ceremony (yes, it is a true story) Monique seemed to take it all quite well, although I may have overplayed my hand a bit with all the lovely Yao women treating me like royalty. She seemed OK, but at dinner that night, a bit of jealousy came out and when I left and came back she was talking to aome guy sitting at the table next to us. They both had ordered the Viper Soup and struck up a lively conversation over it and one thing led to another and before I knew it they had plans to go to the computer store and check on some new digital calculator models. He is some kind of engineer and they were both excited over this goofy high tech stuff. Well, I didn't see her all night and she called this morning and said she had found a better deal. I figured it was the polyester suit that he had on, but then she really hurt me by saying he had fewer liver spots on his hands than I do.I also found out that she was only hal f French and the other half is Ukranian, go figure! Well, I was a little shook up and this is twice in about three months! I went down to the river and was contemplating ending it all, when I spotted a magnificent looking rock. I instantly was so taken by it I forgot all my past losses. It is a very beautiful rock and if you hold it up to the light just at the right angle it looks a bit like Marilyn Monroe's tummy! So I am back on track now and this time I will be sure not to take my lovely for granite again!! I know, I know it is painful, but now you know the deep hurt that I have suffered over Monique and by now you should have figured out that Monique has been my fantasy girl on the trip! The Yao wedding ceremony actually happened and I will show pictures when I get back, unless I can get a better deal than my pet rock, Marilyn. Well all that being said and if you have no life and are still reading this you will be glad to know that the weather today rea lly sucked! Worse than Seattle, it was cold and rained all day. John Bambaugh and I went down to Yangshou and took a boat ride on the famous Li River. The weather was so bad we had this large boat all to ourselves. We came over 6000 miles to see one of the most beautiful sights in the world and could barely make the mountains out in the fog and rain! the other 35 people show up in about two hours and will not be too happy with the rainy forecast for the next few days! Taking the Chinese buses was quite an adventure, as we seem to be the ony English speaking souls for a thousand miles in all directions, but with strange noises and goofy drawings we are "greasing the pig" as they say. I have been spending money like it is going out of style, but have gotten some wonderful things for the house and some real cheap things for friends! One of the sales girls downstairs said that she would marry me, but then after I had spent a lot of money on things, for some reason her enthusiasm h as dropped. I also have a suspicion that John has told her about Marilyn.. Enough for now, in spite of the lousy weather our spirits are high, even more so after a few sips of some great rice wine and we look boldly to our adventures ahead. I got some great responses to the wedding news, that will be hard to top, but I am looking for every opportunity I can to do better, so keep reading, or at least fake it! Miss you all, that's a lie, not yet anyways! Ned.

After about eight cups of rice wine a little smoke and some dirty jokes to bond with the citizens.

The party started to get a little wild!

Things also started to get a little foggy!

A very amiable Dong villager elder.

Heading out. Notice some of our artists painting across the river.

Believe it or not I got married in Longshen,China this morning! We had traveled from Guilin, one of the more beautiful cities in the world to the mountains to see the Yao, an ethnic minority group with very colorful costumes and traditions. We went to what was suppose to be a wedding celebration, and lo and behold, I was the lucky guy out of 200 to be picked to get married! I had my choice of about 12 young and beautiful Yao ladies to be the most fortunate bride. To made a long story short, they dressed me up and we all danced together to the delight of the crowd. They have a wonderful and peculiar custom of the ladies pinching the grooms posterior, and the harder they pinch, means that they love you more! I will shamelessly report that I received some very painful pinches! We also danced, which ends with everyone slamming their posteriors into each other as a final closing, one couldn't make this up. I then had to sing to the bride, and my spirits sank, as I sound like a cat caught under a fence. I panicked and couldn't think of one single love song, and let it be said that "The Saints Go Marching In" is now considered a love song in China. To retrieve my honor I gallantly got down on my knees and kissed the bride, no not there, but on her lovely pearl white hand! The crowd went wild and I picked the fair bride up in my arms and exited to the rear! That was about it, I got a beautiful Yao marriage gift and am now an honorary member of the Yao group!

It was a lot of grand fun and afterward we went on our way to see the mountaintop village of Longshen and all the way on the long and arduous hike up and back down, people were laughing about it all and I had at least a dozen wonderful Chinese girls insisting on having their picture taken with me! I felt like some sort of instant celebrity and shameleesly took advantage of flirting with the whole bunch of them! Now you are probably asking what Monique thought of all this, but to her credit she took it as a great sport and even egged the ladies on! It was a great adventure to see the old villages, as many are set alongside a beautiful river with rice paddies and mountains all around. Most of the elders have never been out of the village in their whole lives and never want too. I bought a lot of gifts and spent a lot of money for photographs as the Yao have been introduced to the outside world of the tourist. Not a pretty sight, but what can one do? Tonight we ventured out of our hotel restaurant sanctuary to a local Chinese restaurant. On the menu was Bamboo Rat, Viper Snake soup, King Snake and other such abominable offerings. We stuck with Braised chicken and rice. and walked up town, (very nice and modern). We ran into a Mcdonalds and treated ourselves to a couple of sundaes.

That is the latest from Guilin, the rest of the 35 artists and friends are to arrive tomorrow night. Guilin and the area around is extremely beautiful with lazy rivers running throughout town and surrounded by the grand rock formations that it is so famous for. Quite a country of contrasts, but their is no doubt that China is roaring into the 21st century with grand zeal and enthusiasm. Well enough for now. Thanks to those of you that have responded with you wonderful comments and I hope that I can get back to you all. I will keep this so called blogging up as long as I can and hope that I am not being to boring. Take care, Ned

Part of our welcoming committee. It is a tradition to greet guests with a long line of fine ladies "making" us drink rice wine on the steps to the village entrance! Men, where have our women gone wrong?