Arriving in China and Rachel the Entrepreneur

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We left Vietnam on the sleeper train, all comfortably settled into the middle and bottom bunks and nervously waiting to cross the Chinese border in the middle of the night. We had heard many tales of guards with big guns confiscating tourist’s guidebooks - due to Taiwan being listed as an individual sovereign state. So with the guide books buried deeply within all of my underwear, we apprehensively rolled into the border, to see what this country, that has a somewhat tinged international reputation, was really like.

Firstly, the border crossing went extremely smoothly. The guards completely ignored us (perhaps due to the fact that it was 3am) and we returned to our beds feeling a little bit silly about the underwear precaution but nonetheless, officially in China with guidebook in tow. We finally arrived at our destination in Nanning only to step into a sea of people all jostling and shoving to get out of the station quickly. Once outside we felt slightly overwhelmed by the new culture. There seemed to be people everywhere; old ladies and businessmen alike were hocking phlegm out onto the pavements or into dustbins, everybody was staring at us with keen interest that our unsettled selves were interpreting as malice and Tom had his first run in with a Chinese public toilet which isn’t the most pleasant of experiences, but I shall elaborate later.

We sat our selves down in our shorts and t-shirts in the (relatively) freezing weather and made a spontaneous decision to book another train onwards to Guilin for that afternoon. After finally figuring out which queue to get in out of the 30 at the station, still slightly intimidated by the amount of people, we stood and patiently waited whilst person after person pushed in front of us. When we did eventually reach the counter we spent another twenty minutes trying to explain to the ticket lady exactly what we wanted through the art of mime and the help of the guidebooks translation of Mandarin characters.

When it was finally time to board the train, we were pushed back into the sea of people where we began our Chinese education in the art of pushing. Once on board the train we began to realise how friendly Chinese people are, hardly anybody speaks conversational English yet when we couldn’t find our seats everybody wanted to join in with helping the foreigners. Once the seats were located, we realised that Tom and I were separated. I spent the first 3 hours of the journey opposite three Chinese men, who were getting very excited by trying to take pictures of me on their camera phones without me noticing. Eventually they plucked up the courage to ask my name, age and where I was from and we began to hold a pre-school style conversation with their broken English and with me pointing to the Chinese characters in the language section of the guidebook. After about an hour of conferring amongst themselves they managed to write me a message asking ‘can I see pound?’ Luckily, with some rooting around, I found the only pound coin in my possession which they were delighted with. Tom would say, ever the scrooge, I sold it to them. I however maintain that following my business instincts, when I told them they could keep it and they insisted I took the equivalent in yuan at the slightly inflated exchange rate listed in the guide book, it would have been simply rude to refuse (I think I may have missed my vocation in banking, I could make a killing in currency exchange!)

Five hours later and the train pulled into Guilin. We said goodbye to our new friends and began to practice the shoving technique. Once outside the station we were thoroughly exhausted and hadn’t done any research as to where anything was. Luckily for us, the first foreign tourists we had seen all day emerged from the station behind us, as you would, we proceeded to stalk them, deciding that they would lead us to a hotel. One long walk and a short taxi ride later, we arrived at a suitable (except for being up 7 flights of stairs) hotel, where I had my first cup of delicious Chinese tea before we completely crashed out for the night.

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Comments

[Gill Carr]

China
This blog sounds great - really exciting and a trip into the unknown. I suppose that China is not as touristee as some of the other places you have been to. Glad you are improving the Anglo/Chinese relations Rachel -perhaps banking is a job for you when you get back!! look forward to hearing more about China - loved the pictures of Tom on the back of the bike in the last blog Lots of love Mum xx