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In Nanjing, for the first time on this trip, I get the opportunity to stay with a Chinese family at their home. Getting there proves to be a bit tough, though. The bus ride from Jiangyin to Nanjing is a breeze, but then finding the right local bus isn't. There are several bus stops outside the main building of the bus station, but still inside the gated area. On the street outside, there are several more, so which one do I go to? And which direction? I see what I take to be my bus, no. 327, arriving at the stop outside, so I hop on and show the driver the slip of paper with the characters of the bus stop where I'm supposed to get off. He studies it for a moment, then nods almost imperceptibly, so I sit down, trying to manoeuvre my backpack in a way that it doesn't bump into anybody.
After a good 30 minutes, anxiousness starts setting in, as I have no way of knowing where I am. There are no announcements, no visible signs at the bus stops, and the driver seems to have all but forgot about me. Who could blame him?
It's not his job to take care of a lost laowei. I ask the middle-aged lady sitting next to me if she can help me out, showing her what I wrote down, pointing in the direction of where the bus is going. She just looks at it, looks at me, and starts a conversation with the person standing in front of her about me. I don't get any indication that she understood what I wanted or cares, so I ask a younger chick standing close to me. It is kind of hard to activate her and snap her out of the transit anonymity, but in the end, she appears to know where the stop is, and with much gesturing I get her to promise to let me know when we arrive there, at least I think as much. Another 15 minutes later, the bus stops, and she motions at me and towards the door, so I quickly grab my bags, say 'Xie xie' and hop off before the driver shuts the doors.
***
I call Amélie, the daughter of my host family, who fetches me shortly afterwards. I ask her why she chose such an unusual
name as her 'English name', and of course she tells me it's from the French film 'Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain'. The thing is, she thinks it's pronounced 'Emily', and being a linguistic purist, I teach her the correct pronunciation to avoid potential future embarrassment.
In fact, the English names-issue is a rather curious chapter in itself. Chinese who start learning English at one point or another choose or are allocated an English first name. The majority of the names chosen don't have anything to do with their Chinese names, which is understandable, for how do you choose something that's similar to Yunzhe, Jie, Wei, Jing, Yang? The result is mostly a random, non-descript everyday name like Elizabeth, Jane, Helen, Judy, Lisa, Catherine or John, Jeffrey, Phil, etc. Sometimes, though, one comes across more...'creative' female names like Amber, Crystal, Candy and seriously atrocious ones like Vanilla, Bubble or Queenie. These names might be chosen in the belief that they 'sound nice', or, as rumour has it, are given by young male English teachers from the triple-A countries to make the girls sound like strippers or to sexualise them.
In any case, I follow Amélie to her home, which
is a small flat inside a dilapidated grey apartment block. Her mother greets me by completely ignoring me, while her father nods when I say hello to him. He's busy cooking dinner in the tiny kitchen, and half an hour later we sit down to eat. The parents don't speak any English and don't seem to be too interested in communicating with me anyway, but they sure as hell went all out to prepare a nice dinner for me. Gain face! There's some fake meat stir-fried with soy sauce, a bowl full of sautéed lotus roots with onions, another bowl containing enigmatic greens, and the ubiquitous rice, which the mother squats down to dish out from the rice cooker on the floor. I sit there, a bit timid, waiting for the right moment to start tucking in, which arrives when the dad starts gobbling the rice, then stops to look at me, and motions with his chopsticks to eat. I obey gladly. The food is absolutely delicious, and I eat until my guts are about to burst. When my rice bowl is empty, the mother takes it without uttering a word, squats down and fills it up to the top
with more rice.
Later, Amélie takes me on a little walk around the neighbourhood, which is in the North of Nanjing, so it's as authentic and untouristy as it gets. We walk past myriad street food stalls, zigzagging to evade cars and cyclists forcing their way through the crowd. After a while, we arrive at the foot of a massive double-decker, double-lane highway and railway bridge spanning across the Yangtze River. Amélie tells me that the impressive construction was built in 1968, and that at that time, it constituted one of the proudest achievements of the Mao era. I catch a glimpse of some Socialist-Realist statues on top of the bridge, but unfortunately, when we want to go up via the staircase, we are impeded access by two young, humourless guards. The explication they give is that it's too dark already, and that the stairway is inadequately lit.
***
Having slept rather poorly on the couch in the living room (if it had been only 5cm longer, it would have been perfect, but do you know that feeling when you're trying to stretch out and your knees are still slightly bent, and it just doesn't
work out?), I rub my eyes, shake off the cobwebs, and take the bus to the centre. After having a breakfast of my usual hot English milk tea with sago pearls and a few baozi with red bean paste and custard, I visit the beautiful Jiming Temple. It costs a few kuai to enter, but at least they give you a bunch of incense sticks in return. The temple is very spread out over a large multi-level area on a hill, and I really take my time walking around and soaking in the peaceful atmosphere, enhanced by the perpetual comforting Buddhist chants resonating throughout the temple grounds from the stereo. On the uppermost level, I light the incense, imitating the locals around me in order to do it properly. Luckily for me, the temple has its own vegetarian restaurant, where I order a noodle soup with fake duck, which unfortunately turns out not to be as yummy as my beloved fake duck in Australiland (imported from Taiwan).
Later I take a stroll along the picturesque Xuanwu Lake, which has a few scenic islands accessible via bridges. Incredibly, for the first time on this trip, the sky is blue and
not obstructed by haze and smog, and the sun is out, shining benevolently for me only. I cross over to the first island, where I take a little nap on a bench, until I'm woken up by an astonished construction worker standing in front of me, saying: "Oh! Laowei!"
I proceed to walk on the City Wall of Nanjing, which was built during the Ming dynasty, when Nanjing was established as the capital of China. The wall overlooks Xuanwu Lake, Jiming Temple and Purple Mountain in the background.
***
As Amélie is busy working all day (she's Chinese after all), I meet up with Kayley and Casey from the US and two local Chinese guys, Alex and what's-his-name, in a Yunnanese restaurant. They're all Chinese language students at the famed local university. We order lots of food, including tofu and hot chips made from lotus roots. The latter are incredibly spicy due to the many red chilies that have been fried with them, and are incredibly crispy and tasty, probably the best fries I've ever eaten. We wash it all down with Chinese jujube juice (ask a German to pronounce that correctly) and Harbin beer.
After that, they take me to a student pub, which is packed to the gunnels with young people from all kinds of places. There's even some Kenyans, Nigerians and Ethiopians. It's great for me to get an impression of the local student scene, way better than to hang out in a tired old backpacker watering hole. The drink of choice seems to be little buckets filled with vodka mixed with any type of juice. Most chicks in the pub appear to have one of those standing in front of them. These buckets are very cheap and they contain enough alcohol to last you the whole night. I content myself with another Chinese beer.
We sit on a large table with a lot of people who all seem to know each other. There are three very young, blonde chicks from the US who don't look very intelligent, nor do they sound it when they talk. A Spaniard is busy playing tonsil hockey with one of them in front of my face. I avert my gaze and talk to the Chilean chick next to me in Spanish about the finer details of Chilean culture. The Peruvian chick opposite me chimes
in, and we have a good laugh about the estadounidenses. The Spanish tío stops his makeout session every now and then to engage in trivial conversation with me. After a while he puts on a conspirational face and tells me in Spanish that the blonde Merkin chick in the middle is still free, nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more. I thank him for the gratuitous information and continue drinking my beer, not without slightly shuddering when I take another peek from the corner of my eye at the roughly 19-year old blondie, who just sits there staring vacantly into space, her mouth half-open.
***
The next morning, I make my way to the no. 1-must see attraction of Nanjing, the 'Memorial for compatriots killed in the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Forces of Aggression', or, as Amélie called it, the 'Japanese kill Chinese-museum'. A large statue of a mother looking up at the sky in desperation, holding her dead child, is what visitors see first there. Passing through the turnstile, I enter a large, spread out courtyard with several sculptures and memorials that commemorate the roughly 300,000 Chinese who died at the hands of the Japanese
occupying forces in 1937. Inside the Memorial Hall, historical records, photographs and objects related to the massacre are exhibited. Photography is not permitted, but many individuals from the endless flow of Chinese tour groups with same-coloured hats take out their mobile phones or point-and-shoot cameras anyway, only to be shouted at and told off by the militaristic guards.
The exhibition is very harrowing, as expected, but some of the exaggerated, persistent repititions of 'Japanese aggressors' and complete dehumanization of Japanese people somewhat hurt the sombre atmosphere. There's really no need for that, every sane person realizes that what the Japanese did there was pretty wrong, so just tell it as it is, and leave out the propaganda.
Afterwards, I take the metro to the foot of Purple Mountain, and start hiking up towards Dr. Sun Yat-sen's Mausoleum. Dr. Sun Yat-sen, by the way, was a revolutionary and the first president of the Republic of China in 1912. After a good one hour of walking and a healthy amount of confusion due to inadequate signage, I arrive at the entrance to the Mausoleum, which is more like a theme park. There are countless food and souvenir stalls, balloon vendors,
ice cream sellers and thousands upon thousands of people. I seem to be the only foreigner, which had already been the case at the Massacre Memorial, so I attract a bit too much unwanted attention. On the way up, people start oooh-ing and aaaah-ing once they behold me, and one middle-aged lady is brave enough to ask me to take her picture with me. When her friends realize this, they start lining up to do the same. Just as I'm having my picture taken, arms around two other crazed, made-up middle-aged ladies, I see a blonde white chick walking past me, the only other laowei, laughing at my situation, which makes me a tad embarrassed.
I arrive at a building, thinking I've finally made it all the way up, but when I pass through it, a massive three-level stairway unfolds before my very eyes. Crikey, I think, and hike up that one as well, enter the building on top, and the same thing again! I must be caught in some sort of place where the space-time continuum doesn't apply. Confused, I look to my left, just in time for my picture to be taken by a Chinese guy, who
then gives me the thumbs up. I look around to see if there's an elevator to nowhere, unmistakable sign that I won't get out of here in one piece, but nothing, so I hike up the next set of steps, walk into the building on top, and finally find Dr. Sun Yat-sen's Mausoleum.
After taking a few obligatory pictures, I make my way down again, trying my best not to be detected by any Chinese people. Near the exit, though, a girl standing there, arms around her boyfriend, discovers me and says: "Oh! Herrow! Beautiful!" I thank her, smiling broadly and pointing out that she already has a fella in her clutches, which prompts her to only tighten her grip on the poor bloke.
***
Back home, Amélie suggests we watch a film. She wants to know what type of films I like.
"Do you like action film?"
-"Yeah, sure. Maybe we can watch a Bruce Willis-film."
"Who's that?"
-"Bruce Willis? The guy from Die Hard? Muscular, kind of baldy, with a bloody wifebeater and barefoot?"
"Wifebeater?"
-"Never mind. Um, what films do you have?"
"A lot.
I can look on internet. Do you like comedy?"
-"Hm, yeah, why not? What type?"
"There's this film, I've seen already, call '50 First Dates'."
-"...Isn't that an Adam Sandler-film?"
"I don't know."
-"Adam Sandler, the guy who does all the bad comedy films. Dark hair, overbite, dumb-looking face?"
"Oh, I thought that was Brad Pitt!"
-"Brad Pitt? How can you confuse Adam Sandler with Brad Pitt?"
"I don't know. To me white men look all the same."
-"Oh, alright then. Well...let's just watch that film then."
Thus I suffer 90 minutes of tomfoolish torment. If you're not familiar with the plot, it goes something like this: Adam Sandler lives on Hawaii, for some reason, and falls in love with Drew Barrymore. He chats her up in a restaurant, they spend a splendid day together, and make a date for the following day. But on that day Drew doesn't remember him, because she suffers from short-term memory loss as a result of a car accident. So Adam Sandler has to try and win her over again every day. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but he keeps trying, hoping
to find the best method that will break the vicious cycle and make her remember him.
The film tries to find a balance between obnoxious potty humour and romantic, 'quiet' moments where a hint of tragedy is palpable, only to be nipped in the bud by Adam Sandler. It almost feels as though the director tried his best to undermine his own efforts to add a little depth to an otherwise shallow plot by letting Adam Sandler be Adam Sandler. One scene in particular, in which Adam Sandler is angry and desperate and extremely sad due to the forlornness of the whole situation, and drives his yacht at high speed to another island, crying and singing along to 'Wouldn't it be nice' by the Beach Boys, is just embarrassing to watch. He takes this sad and melancholy and great song and makes a complete mockery of it, alternating between making over-the-top angry faces and looking like a three-year old brat bawling his eyes out, all the while crying and sobbing and sticking his tongue out and singing along like a fucking retard, aggressively mocking himself for having exposed a warmer and gentler side of his character in this film.
Who could possibly like this trainwreck of a movie? Fart joke-adherents would be confused by a toned down Adam Sandler, romantic comedy-aficionados would be insulted by Adam Sandler. Who am I kidding, there must be millions of people who watch this abomination and find it's right up their alley. Mine shall henceforward strictly be an Adam Sandler-free zone, even if future hosts insist on watching one of his flicks with me. There's only so much of Adam Sandler I can take.
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Andrea
All white men look the same....bahaaa!! Great blog. Your homestay experience is brilliant, with 'Emily'...when you travel you really do experience the stuff other people never see.