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)

Shopping in China

We’re shopping in China. It doesn’t matter the name of the city. What follows is my anthology of shopping experiences.

 

Nuts. As we wander through street markets, I wonder what the people think about us, browsing, uninformed, more inclined to admire food than buy and eat it.

For instance, we come upon a nut vendor. The wagon is loaded with hazelnuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, almonds, peanuts in and out of the shell, pistachio nuts, and dozens more we didn't recognize. Dan is attracted to the form and colour arrangement since it will make a kind of geometric photo he likes to collect. He asks the vendor permission to take a picture, not of the vendor, rather to shoot his wares. Satisfied, Dan praises the vendor in carefully constructed Mandarin. “Your nuts are beautiful”.

Eggs. We fall on a boiled egg vendor who is tending what's known as "century eggs'. These are brown eggs hard boiled in tea, cracked at the point of hardness so the solidifying whites turn the colour of tea. While century eggs are common enough in China, these are different than others I’ve seen. The boiling liquid is filled with prunes, cloves, nuts, and I get a whiff of fermenting fruit. The concoction smells to me like the Christmas I'll miss in Canada and I call Dan over. Before long, each of us has our head pressed deep into his steaming cart. No we don't want to buy anything. We just want to plant our faces over his poaching machine and make cooing noises. Then walk away.


Bargaining. Dan is in his element in a marketplace where no prices are fixed. He's a talented negotiator by North American standards although everyone knows that the bar is raised here. I observe the bartering over a silk polo shirt starting at 180 Yuan (about $27).

"180!! You mean three for 180!"

"This is finest quality! 135."

"40".

"125. Final offer"

“50.”

“100, Final offer.”

I feel like a spectator at a tennis match following the volley of "final offers". As someone who always pays full price with a smile and a tip, I'm both embarrassed and exhausted. Dan is just warming up.

Supermarket. My introduction to supermarket shopping was in Shenzhen, specifically in a westernized suburb called the Overseas Chinese Village. Our friend tells us that this is the area in which Chinese, like himself who have worked or studied abroad, feel most comfortable when they return to China. The village offers a kind of western urban environment that the returning expats have come to enjoy. It’s spacious and well-treed. A university campus is at the centre of several acres of parkland. Walking paths wind past fountains, waterfalls and well tended plantings, spreading out from the heart like veins towards a cluster of high rise apartments. These modern residences hover like planets around their sun, which is this case, is none other than a WalMart superstore.

Unlike many westerners who recoil from what you find in a typical supermarket in China, it fascinates me on several levels. I’m a cook for one thing but admittedly with slim experience judging from the assortment of ingredients I’ve never worked with. I am riveted to the range of natural products giving evidence to the cliché about people from Guangzhou province (according to our Chinese friend): “they eat everything in the sky except planes; everything in the water except boats; and everything on land except cars.”

While the selection of live fish and reptiles was sometimes off putting, the other side of the story about Walmart is that Dan and I found these supermarkets consistently clean, well organized, and well serviced.

Besides the food, another special characteristic of supermarket shopping in China is the number of employees on the floor. Two young girls patrol each section of an aisle. They answer your questions, help you reach up for a product, and generally spend their day arranging and rearranging the goods. I see one. She’s attached herself like a gnat to a shopper. I think it’s safe to approach the toothpaste. Too late, another one has discovered me and plunks herself between me and the shelf.

She waves her arm across the array of brand choices.
I know, I can see that.

She points to the price sign.

I know, I can see that.

I’m saved by Dan who suddenly shows up. He’s scowling. We both know what the issue is. Despite the differences between China and Canada at the supermarket, there’s one thing they have in common; spouses will get separated there and the husband will spend fifteen minutes looking for his wife.

Packaging. There is a proverb that goes something like “purchasing the box and returning the pearls”. This refers to someone who is so taken by the image, he lets go of the substance. It speaks to a character flaw shared by people of any origin. In respect to China, though, since they manufacture beautifully decorated boxes there, the instructive power of the proverb loses something. During the annual moon festival, stores are heaped with “moon cakes”, tasty confections, individually wrapped and packed in over-sized ornamental cardboard boxes that take marketing into the realm of art. Given a choice between an empty box and pearls, I’d take the box. Unfortunately, Dan didn’t share my opinion. Always practical, he refused to spend postage mailing empty boxes back to Canada. Still, I managed to keep a small one stashed at the bottom of my case and I treasure it today. It’s the perfect place to store my pearls, a lovely set I bought from a street vender in Zhouguang. (by C.Moisse at maturetraveler.blogspot.com)

Soft Sleeper in China for a Hardened Traveller

Lesson: Not all first class trains are created equal.

I was in a mood. So was my husband, Dan. Traveling independently in China for three months is hard work and the effort was wearing us down. With minimal language training, lots of time, equal portions of curiosity and naiveté, what began as an adventure to stretch our travel legs, was sapping our spirit. Although our goodwill was sagging, curiously, our resolve was strengthening to complete what we began. Six weeks into the coal-infused air of central China, it had become an endurance test, a mental game of Survivor. We said we’d do this. We shall do it! But every now and then, the last words of our gentle, soft-spoken Mandarin tutor back in Canada came to mind: “Don’t go alone. You crazy people”.

We had been stuck for three more days than planned in the small city of Pingyao, an UNESCO world heritage site, while waiting for a train out. Originally a banking center during the Ming dynasty, the atmospheric walled city is just enough out of the way along the Beijing – Xian rail corridor to have protected it from both the destruction of the cultural revolution, and, more recently, real estate developers. Few trains stop here.

Once our tickets finally came through, we looked forward to one night in what’s known as a soft sleeper cabin, first class. At least I looked forward to it, since Dan prefers air travel. It had been a struggle to talk him into taking this side trip. And now, I hadn’t counted on the difficulty of getting tickets out since most trains barrel on through to Xi’an from Beijing without stopping. Instead, I was hoping for the best. I had read Paul Theroux’s classic, though now dated, travel book, Riding the Red Rooster, about travelling by rail in China. Rather than being turned off train travel, or for that matter China, I was fascinated and challenged. Dan remained skeptical.

Once in Pingyao, the news about the sleeper was not bad, but not really good either.

 Fellow travelers explained that the mail run train would not be as comfortable as other first class trains running popular routes. We would be in a small room with two bunk beds and a central table. The car is smoke free except at the platforms between cars. There would be a western toilet at one end and a squat at the other end. Booking a room in the middle of the car would protect us from the smell at either end. I was grateful for the advice. It did nothing for Dan except sustain his low expectations.

We were standing on the platform in the place indicated by the attendant where our numbered car would stop. A French tour group assembled a little further down. Chatting amongst themselves, they encircled their leader, linked arms and burst into song. One chorus of "Auld Lang Syne" later, the chain broke, tissues were pulled out and backs slapped amid much hugging. One woman sobbed. Dan leaned into my ear, “Either she’s sad to be going home, or she’s taken an overnight train in China before.”

When the train arrived, we had three minutes to board. My eyes followed the numbers – thank God for Arabic numerals – and we squeezed our way along the crowded narrow corridor. I recognized our unit at the same time a cloud of cigarette smoke escaped from inside our cabin. I felt a tantrum coming on. No! This would not be our smoke-free cabin for which we paid a premium. Sure enough, two middle-aged men sat by the window, puffing at cigarettes.

The last time I was this angry, I was with my sister-in-law on the first hole of a golf course back home and two men behind us teed off while our balls were still in play on the fairway. I pulled out my cell phone, called management and demanded the offenders be pulled off the course. It was downright dangerous behavior on a par three course and I wasn’t going to put up with it today on my50th birthday, nor on any day. My younger sister-in-law, for her part, made a mental note to talk to her doctor about estrogen.

Today, I have no cell phone, but luckily I see a policeman down the hall and shout, “Wo bu xihuan yan!” pointing to the two men.

With few words in Mandarin, little grammar and poor pronunciation, my screaming “I don’t like cigarettes” to a policeman was met with a blank stare, a frustratingly common response to our attempts to communicate. Mandarin is a tonal language. Most utterances risk multiple meanings depending on pronunciation. For example, to one ear I was deriding tobacco, to another ear, I detested salt. Someone else might hear that I didn't like eyeglasses. However the anger was well communicated.

Our cabin partners put out their cigarettes and never lit up again, more likely out of respect for foreigners than fear of a befuddled policeman. Many men smoke in China so their actions were not unusual. Anti-smoking bylaws are new outside of Beijing and Shanghai and puzzling to many in the provinces. Before leaving Canada, Janet, my Chinese-Canadian friend, had prepared me for local customs as best she could.

“Expect people to be on their best behavior in a train when they see you.” But she also cautioned me to keep cool myself. “Displays of anger are frowned upon. Do not remove a fly from a person’s head with a hatchet.”

And it was true enough. I needed to relax. The two gentlemen cleared the table, fanned the air out the window, smiled and quietly read a magazine. I felt ashamed about over-reacting. Every now and then they would leave the car for a cigarette elsewhere, gently closing the door, nodding an apology which underscored my feeling that it was me who had lost face.

I settled into a corner of the top bunk, head buried in a book. It was night and that was just as well. The previous week traveling by day into Pingyao from the resource-rich north, I was saddened by the view, an heavy industry-scarred landscape, giant pyramids of coal, and tongues of fire from metal towers licking a grey horizon.

Throughout the night, sleep was difficult. As a mail run, the train stopped and started with an irregular wrenching that shot me forward, backward, and side to side on my bunk. Throughout the night, each of us was given a good trouncing. I felt like I was being disciplined for losing my temper. And as if I had not lost enough face already, one really good shunt sent my head hard into the wall.

At 7 a.m. the next morning, bleary-eyed and steeling ourselves for the crush of taxi drivers ahead, Dan and I wheeled our cases out of the station in Xi'an. The “I told you so” from Dan would not come for a few hours. We have an agreement, struck at the beginning of our trip to China. Dan won't curse me before noon. (by Carolann Moisse at http://www.maturetraveler.blogspot.com/)

My Travel Recommendations for Pingyao

China. The Code of First Impression

It was 5:45 in the morning when the howling started. Half a dozen giggly young ladies pounded the hotel room door next to ours. Then they rang the doorbell, over and over and over again, all the while laughing and shouting to each other. You didn’t have to understand Mandarin to get the gist of what they were saying. “Let’s go people! Wake up. The bus will leave without you.”

My husband Dan jumps out of bed to chastise the noise-makers. The tour group on the floor in our hotel in Beijing was off to an early start. Two hours before he usually rises, my husband Dan, was off to a bad start.

Dan closed the door behind him, his eyes swollen from jet lag. The noise continued down the hall despite his attempt to intervene, first through sign language using what he thought was the universally understood, “Shhhhhhhh”, and then by calling the hotel reception. I anticipated an attitude forming and tried to head it off.

“Yes, I know they’re loud, but look at the language. It’s full of vowels. Sound carries. It’s not like English that can be mumbled without moving the lips.”

“It’s rude and inconsiderate to yell in the hallway like that before six in the morning,” responded Dan.

“Go back to bed. They’ll be gone soon.” I know however he’s making up his mind about China.

Noise in China, both people and street noise, is a recognized problem. Returning tourists all have their own stories about noise pollution. The cities don't hum with activity, they scream. TV monitors blast from elevators, public buses, restaurants, lobbies, and storefronts. Drivers lay on their horns substituting for traffic lights and road rules. Clerks positioned at sale items in department stores shout to customers as they pass, like touts, to inform them about a discount and urge them to buy. Business and pleasure travelers think nothing of shouting to each other in the hallway late at night when they return to their hotel room. The din is ever present.

In a bid to make China show well during the 2008 Olympics, the Chinese government launched a campaign to force a code of conduct on its citizens, particularly focused on Beijing. Fines were introduced for noise polluters. Drivers honking in quiet zones and vendors using loudspeakers to attract customers were fined. At the time, Beijing’s environmental bureau indicated that half of the complaints they received from westerners related to noise pollution.

It’s hard to fathom how a code of conduct could be enforced on any city of nearly eleven million people. And even if it could, the ordinance wouldn’t stop noise in hotel hallways made by people oblivious to their public surroundings. And besides, the Chinese have a tradition of living outside, communally. A hotel is just one such communal place.

Empathy aside, my husband will now weigh each new experience against his bad first impression, honed in the wee hours of a Beijing morning. It’s natural. First impressions are powerful and sticky; other negative experiences affix themselves to a first impression like dead fish to coral. A barrier goes up. Years later, when the newspapers are talking about a western resource company being bought out by Beijing interests, I know he’ll be against it, instantly, before the facts are known. Such is the lasting power of being awoken too early one cold and dark morning while still in the grip of jet lag.

Future fears aside, I start dressing and say to Dan with as much sympathy as I can muster, “Get over it.”

There are some well known annoyances that everyone talks about when they travel in China. Besides the problem of noise, people spit on the street, not just a little pat, but a smoker’s gigantic wad that announces itself like rolling thunder. While there are fines for spitting, I’ve not heard that behaviours have changed much. There's also the hard fact that subway travel brings out the nose-pickers. Dan and I quickly ran out of our hand sanitizer, something that was harder to come across than I would have thought given the number of big box shopping centers.

A former Chinese colleague of mine told me a story about her brother who returned to China to work after many years of living in Canada. When she paid him a visit, she found he had changed. He was irritable and quick to anger, even about small things. He explained that he had been beaten down by the environment, the crowds, the noise, the pushing and lack of order. So eventually you behave the same way but you're internally conflicted because you think it shouldn't be that way. There's a kind of emotional meltdown that happens. Survivors like Dan and my friend's brother push back and get angry. People like me catch a cold.

So three months of travel in China exposed, and then expanded, the limits of my tolerance. I’ve learned that acceptance is like a muscle that needs to be exercised. There wasn't a day that went by that I didn’t get the equivalent of a full body workout.

Motivated by the now past Olympics China hosted in 2008, the Chinese government did as much as it could to influence urban behaviours, both inside and outside China. For example, there was concern that some of its citizens were tarnishing China’s image abroad by practicing the same behaviours in foreign countries that the government was trying to discourage inside the country. The Spiritual Civilization Steering Committee and the National Tourism Administration issued an etiquette guide in 2006. It asked its nationals, when travelling abroad, not to litter, talk loudly, spit, and especially, respect queuing.

During my travels in China I saw no evidence of a code of conduct in practice. Perhaps, in 2006, it was simply too new, or too localized to Beijing. So every day, I assessed what I saw, heard, and experienced and went up and down about how I felt about China. I've concluded that, there are two societies grating against each other like tectonic plates. One world, that surely looks and feels like many small towns in my own country would have in 1925; the other, like some futuristic urban setting from 2020. I've seen photographs of my great-great-grandparents who lived on dusty, brown streets without indoor plumbing. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine that the tobacco chewers of that time spat on the street. Such behaviour was just part of the times back then.

Here and now in China, this century-old world remains, albeit in new digs. It's sometimes a street away from the glass towers housing China's urban sophisticates.





Evidently, you can construct a new country with steel and glass faster than you can introduce urban-friendly behaviours and educate about hygiene, government-imposed code of conduct notwithstanding. It's simply going to take more time.

I've learned that lacking sleep is as much a disadvantage as lacking language skill. When I’m rested, I’m up for the day's communication challenges. But what we needed most during the three months we spent back-packing in China was a good night’s sleep. Each day, it required all our mental strength to negotiate our way through the rows of honking taxis, wayward motorcycles, touts, fruit vendors, shoeshine boys, donkey carts, chopped pavement, bicycles, blaring stereos - the normal life of the street separating us from a soft pillow at the end of a day.

Eventually, we learned how to come to terms with hotel noise, the shouting in the hallway that never quit as busloads of Chinese tourists came and went. We adopted a code of conduct for ourselves. We bought ear plugs, and wore them. (C.Moisse at maturetraveler.blogspot.com)

A Word About China

My connection with China began a few years ago when I transferred offices and met a recent MBA graduate called Xiaoyu on an intern rotation. He was introduced once, but that wasn’t enough. I would need him to repeat his name each and every time we met at the elevator. Xiaoyu was such a foreign sound, so unusual to my ear, so forgettable. It sounds like sh-ow-you, the “ow” pronounced like the vowel of “cow”.

He accepted my forgetfulness without taking offense or mocking me. I would discover that it’s not the Chinese way to take away “face” from another. I tried harder. He helped me with my pronunciation and perhaps he found some encouragement in that I took it as a challenge to speak his name easily, without pause. I didn’t give up like my colleagues, who would shout down the hall, “Hey, “X-Man”.

Eventually, I became comfortable with the name. In fact, as my self confidence grew, I tutored others. Having mastered the delicate art of Xiaoyu, I felt empowered. My colleagues rolled their eyes.

I was surprised therefore when Xiaoyu’s fiancé suggested one day that if I wanted to give him a nice wedding gift, she would teach me how to pronounce his name correctly.

Chinese is a tonal language, variations in stress and rise and dips of a voice can change the meaning of a word, or a name. Pronounced one way, my friend’s name translated to “little rain”, and another way, it meant “small fish”. My husband Dan winced upon learning that his own name, mispronounced would translate to “egg”.

What I started to learn about China then was that nothing is easy.

So a few years after that, as part of our preparations for three months backpacking in China, we took some language training. After all, if we already had difficulty pronouncing a person’s name correctly, we needed serious help. We would discover later, though, that despite nearly a year of Mandarin study, we would never be able to order food in China. While we studied hard enough, there were enough variations of pronunciation between provinces, that ordering chicken in Chengdu would be understood differently in Kunming. Truth is though that we learned less Mandarin from our teacher than we would have hoped. Instead, we acquired through her painstaking efforts, and finally to her satisfaction, a fraction of fear she thought appropriate to our ambition. Our teacher’s parting words to us in Mandarin were “don’t go”.

So in China, none of our waiters were ever impressed by our language study. Nor could they appreciate – being rushed by the crush of diners waiting to order - our achievement in being able to say the name Xiaoyu like a native. A charitable waiter might raise a brow and question us further when, to his ear, we ordered engine oil. Although he may not have served many westerners, the common thinking was that a foreigner went for something stir fried.

Eventually however we could communicate enough to buy plane or train tickets, check into a hotel, and have a toilet fixed. And in the end, we learned that pointing to an aromatic, mouth-watering heaping plate on the next table was worth a thousand mispronounced words. (by C. Moisse at http://www.maturetraveler.blogspot.com/).

My Travel Recommendations (for getting around China on your own)