Fumbling Through China

When we committed to travelling independently for three months in China, without a guide or tour company, Dan, and I also accepted the challenge of getting ourselves through many a "technical day."

I call the time allocated to travel between each destination a technical day because it is qualitatively different than a day when you're settled somewhere.

As we move through the interior of China, such transitions are demanding, physically and mentally, because our planning, research and language training frequently prove inadequate. The country is changing too fast for our research to keep up, and our carefully studied Chinese phrases are met with blank stares.

As a result, a technical day involves delays, rethinking, fumbling through my dictionary and engaging people in a manner that could be mistaken as street busking.

A Huddle

In recent years, there have been on average 30 times more domestic travellers than foreign ones in China. As a result, odds favour us being the only non-Asians around, and our energetic miming as we seek directions for a restaurant or attraction is a curiosity, often attracting a crowd. The ubiquitous huddle forms when the individual we've asked must consult others. It grows larger when passersby notice Dan is left-handed, a curiosity in China where the sinister tendency is discouraged in schoolchildren. When I attempt to scratch out a street map on a notepad, revealing that I, too, am left-handed, cameras come out of nowhere.

One technical day, we enter the train station in Taiyuan, a nowhere place midway between Beijing and Xi'an, seeking a ticket to Pingyao, a historically interesting walled city a few hours south. I stiffen for the struggle ahead. We have enough vocabulary to find the correct ticket hall, but are stalled there, staring at the crush of people. The signs all use Chinese characters and are meaningless to us. Which wicket should we approach? Where are the schedules?

Another Huddle

I study what might be a queue. Queues here are large groups of people who collectively swell and stretch and knot and rush forward with each completed transaction at the wicket.

Then, all at once, a hero emerges. He wears a uniform and holds a big stick. He intuitively understands us, despite our weak Mandarin. He is a janitor by employment but an ambassador by sensibility. This attentive man takes us under his wing, sweeping us from one line to another. Only partly occupying the old, Mao-style green jacket that hangs on his thin frame, he looks something like a broom himself, tall and gaunt, with sharply cropped grey hair standing on end like bristles. He leans his broom on the wall and, like a traffic cop, parts the crowd with an outstretched hand, the other one motioning to us to step up to the ticket window.

But we can't do that. If we are to retain the moral right to criticize the tendency of people in China to butt into queues, we have to model the behaviour we value. But the broom man doesn't understand. Grabbing my hand, he continues to pull me forward to the front of the line, while my husband takes my other arm, steering me to the end of the line.

Dan has won and he massages my sore arm as we wait at the end of the line. Our sweeper plants himself and his broom next to our cases, striking a seriously protective pose. Reaching the wicket, we are told, "Mei yo." This either means they don't have any more of what you've asked for or they didn't understand your question and want to save you the struggle of trying to be understood. In both cases, you're dismissed.

But our angel will have none of that. Running interference with his broom held sideways, he makes a hole in each queue across the big hall and pushes us through to an office where he bangs on the glass for someone to come forward. Our ambassador explains what we want, and a huddle forms, making us hopeful.

Then a young man, overhearing the discussion, offers assistance in English. He explains that our request for first-class seats cannot not be filled. Only third-class seats, called "hard seats," remain, and the attendants do not think that we, as foreigners - or perhaps as older foreigners - would like such seats.

But it's late, and we don't have a choice. The attendant was right in assuming we wouldn't want the hard seats; like most Westerners (especially "older" ones like us, in our 50s), we prefer to pay a little more for the comfort and smoke-free air of first class. But it isn't possible now, so to everyone's surprise, we purchase the ticket. The janitor beams, nodding his head with the vigour of one having carried the day for God and country. We shake his hand, thanking him again and again.

Glancing back as we pass through the turnstiles, I see him continue to wave after us, with the broad, sideways stroke that cleans a window so the light shines through.

It will be night when we reach our destination, the walled city of Pingyao. In between the station and our hotel is a gauntlet of taxis, pedi-cabs, guest-house touts, blaring stereos, vendors of candied crab apple, and mules. In short, it's the normal street life of small-town China separating us from a soft pillow at the successful end of another technical day. (Adapted from my story published in the Globe and Mail, 2007)