The Peripatetic.

Clothing for sale in a downtown Pasto market . . . or is it Anytown, China?

My dear Pastuso friend, Mario, is going to faint when he reads this. No one — until now — would posit that Pasto is anything like China.

I cannot recall seeing a single person of East Asian decent — let alone Chinese — there.  I last lived in Beijing, which is a far cry from the densely bio-diverse forests and rolling, sparsely populated hills and mountains.  Pasto has a volcano; China does not.  Pasto has indigenous populations coming in to town, dressed in their own garb, looking for a hospital but struggling because they barely have a command of Spanish.  Pasto is the capital of the State of Narino, which boasts more biodiversity than the Amazon, but few have reported on it after years of guerilla conflict.  But next to this immense diversity, much of it untouched by man, next to this active volcano and in the midst of one of the most culturally diverse regions of a very culturally diverse country, it can look like China.

Adult evening dancing, a community activity prevalent in China but here, too, in Pasto.

There was something familiar about it, but the wall-art at this venue did not look anything like what I saw in China, but the basement of this otherwise popular bar in Pasto turns into a community dance center.  In open squares of the public parks in China, I often heard more traditional music blasting from a tiny stereo, and there many people would dance in unison.  In Pasto, too, they were learning and dancing in unison.  Unabashed, learning to dance in public for the evening’s exercise.

Pasto Karaoke

Perhaps it would be better to say that here, Pasto looks a bit like Japan, because really all the karaoke bars in China came, initially, from their eastern neighbor.  In any case, karaoke abounds in China and so, too, in this little bar in Pasto.

Pasto's Great Square

Big public spaces filled with tiles or cement and then local art on the side .  . . or the lone man, sitting quietly on the edge.  In China, this would be an old grandfather out to get some fresh air, but in Pasto, my friend-turned-guide for the day told me the park stragglers are the unemployed after a number of setbacks in the local economy.

Pasto Fried Food

Traveling a little outside of Pasto’s borders, we stopped en route to a village. We ate fried fish and fried potatos, but a local resident — in this case a sweet mother — cooking fried anything with rice to fill you up for under $1 is just like Chinese fine quick cuisine dining.

Pasto Eyes

And finally, the best similarity of all, is the way that locals with no resources to travel or see the outside world can look with kindness and excitement upon a probing foreigner.  Kindly eyes.  That is what makes trips to either country worth it, ultimately.

Next post: an abundance of culture and history all its own, Pasto really isn’t like China . . . only sometimes.