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Published: October 9th 2006
Pantuo Rock, Putoushan Island
It's gonna fall at any minute... or will it stay up for another 150 million years?China
China was a huge culture shock for both of us. Coming from the quiet empty spaces and huge blue skies of Mongolia, the crowds, noise and pollution of China really struck us. And it wasn't just that. China is so different. Everywhere we went, what was normal here was so different to what is normal at home. So please forgive us for what will be a long read, but we really wanted to write about some of those things that we found the most different, or challenging, or funny.
The people We were by turns utterly charmed and then completely grossed out by some of the behaviour of the Chinese people we came across. We loved their friendly and unembarrassed interest in us. There are no qualms about staring here. Let alone asking if we'll pose for photos (current count Daren 7 v Abbie 5 - apparently Daren looks like Toby Maguire in Spiderman). And people would do double and triple takes to get a good look at us. If we caught the stare and smiled, we were usually rewarded with a huge grin back. We also got loads of waves, 'hellos' and people practising their English
on us. And most of the people we dealt with were incredibly courteous, friendly and honest. Some went well beyond the call of duty to help us. Admittedly we did have our share of jobs-worths as well, but overall, the level of service was high.
The flip side is habits such as extremely loud hoiking and spitting in the streets. This was constant, particularly in Shanghai, and something that was hard to get used to. We both found ourselves dodging around huge gobs of spit on the street. This hasn't escaped the authorities' notice however, and there have been active efforts to get people to stop. The latest we read was that tour guides would be made responsible for ensuring that Chinese tourists didn't engage in such bad behaviour.
Queuing is still a developing art in China. We spent a lot of time in very long queues at train stations and getting into tourist attractions, but the existence of these queues didn't seem to stop people from pushing to the front or just jumping the queue altogether.
While the Chinese might be adopting queuing slowly, they seem to have taken to the mobile phone as fast as
any other nation. There appears to be something wrong with the handsets they get here though - they must have very bad receivers because everyone has to shout down them. And their volume control must be set very low because plenty of people seem to need to use them on loudspeaker. What we were really amazed by (and this may simply be demonstrating our ignorance of Buddhism more than anything else) is the extent to which monks have adopted mobile phones. Perhaps all the frantic texting is a new form of devotion, or maybe Nokia has found a direct line to more heavenly beings.
And finally the most unsavory incident was when we only narrowly missed being peed on from above by a small child whose mother had pointed him and his very full bladder over the very crowded walkway we were ambling along. A poor Chinese couple just ahead of us bore the brunt of it. Maybe this is an obvious outcome of China's 'one child' policy. Everywhere we went, where we did see children, they were typically accompanied by parents and grandparents, and there seemed to be far too much forebearance of loud screams and misbehaviour. No
Spiritual AND Enlightened, Lama Temple, Beijing
Or wondering where the next ice cream kiosk is. wonder they are known as 'Little Emperors'.
Chinglish We were regularly entertained by the use of English in China. It is used in a particularly unique way, which although understandable, is often quite funny. We got into a habit of collecting phrases from Tee shirts we saw that either didn't make sense or were just outright funny. Our favorite was a fake Kappa 'England' track suit top, that had a paragraph or so of text which began 'Arse-ninja'. We never managed to finish reading it because we were so busy laughing and wondering what an Arse-ninja was. We have also seen 'Wanxy' and 'Love Soldier'.
However, the Chinglish doesn't stop there. There are many public notices that make liberal use of it, and we've included a selection of these in the photos for people to enjoy. However, it is worth wondering, with China's increasing influence on the rest of the world, how much of this Chinglish will actually start to affect English as we know it today. We very fear that problems.
Traffic Although China might profess to be a classless society, people find other ways of expressing their superiority (or inferiority as the case
Monk, Lama Temple, Beijing
Deep in spiritual contemplation, but we think he's wondering where his mobile phone is. may be) and the roads are a prime example of this.
At the bottom of pile are the pedestrians. They have no rights. Although there are footpaths, these are regularly used for more important activities such as bike repairs and other shops. And if the roads become too busy, bikes and scooter riders won't think twice about using them as additional roads. And as a pedestrian, if you hear that loud scooter horn, you ARE expected to move. There are pedestrian crossings. However, the little green men here mean something quite different to what they mean in the UK. Here they mean something like 'if you don't have a will, now would be a good time to write one'. This is because in China road rules seem to operate more like 'guidelines'. Cars turn right at red lights which usually means turning across pedestrians on their little green man. And bikes and scooters seem to consider themselves as pedestrians when it comes to traffic lights which means they ignore them. Though we have noticed that there seems to be one benefit of being a pedestrian which is that it is perfectly acceptable, if not encouraged, to go out and
about in your pyjamas.
Next up the pile are bikes. These are everywhere, and seem to be the main mode of transportation for most Chinese. Not only are they good for getting from A to B, but they can perform a number of other functions as well. We saw them used to carry around such small personal items as multiple televisions, wheelchairs, 10 foot high stacks of cardboard and industrial size gas bottles. Some have been modified to operate as mobile BBQs. We could see the benefit when the owners needed to escape from the ever present inspectors. They can also be used as mobile beds, seats and battering rams. However, even with so many benefits to them, bikes are still forced to give way to scooters, cars, trucks and buses.
Scooters come slightly above bikes because they have horns. Loud horns. And the best thing about these horns are that they are the perfect multi-purpose tool - better even than a mobile phone, camera, PDA, MP3 player, hairdryer and iron all combined in one sexy nifty unit. In China the horn (and this is true of car and bus drivers as well) is regularly used as an
alternative to brakes and indicators, it's also used to communicate your presence, your intention to overtake, that you are coming through like it or not, that you better damn well not pull out that side road buddy because I'm not slowing down for you.
Cars come next in the pile, which is simply down to size. And almost all in-car experiences we had felt like Kamikaze missions. Which also explains why big vehicles such as buses and trucks are at the top of the pile. The bigger the better. On our coach journey back from Putuoshan Island, we had a driver who used the bus like an offensive weapon. He had no qualms at crossing the centre line, forcing all approaching cars off the road if he hadn't finished his overtaking manuouevre in time. And his horn use was a work of art.
Also classlessness is displayed on the rail network. Instead of second and first class seats, and second and first class sleepers, they are called 'Hard sleeper' and 'Soft Sleeper'. Amusing when talking to other travellers who haven't yet travelled by train, as they often ask 'how soft is hard sleeper?' or ask how thick the
Preying Mantis, Great Wall of China
Having just consumed its mate, with Fava beens and a nice glass of Chianti. Ff-ff-ff-ff-ff.... mattresses are...
Changing China When I was young, if you had a wristwatch, a sewing machine and a bike you were rich. Ten years ago, if you had air conditioning, a washing machine and a television, you were rich. Now, I'm not sure. Maybe if you have a car you are rich.
The guy who said this to us was probably in his early 40's. He was a business man, with his only daughter at college in Canada. This statement probably best summed up what was evident everywhere we went in China, which was the enormous pace of change and development, where world record setting tower blocks and Maglev trains sit uneasily alongside old towns where houses have no internal plumbing, and where the poverty is evident. Having said that, these old parts of Shanghai and Beijing are disappearing at speed. We had first hand experience of this in Beijing when we tried to find a bar listed in Lonely Planet of 2004, only to find that the whole block had been razed to the ground. In Shanghai, the old parts are being pulled down to put up tower blocks. One Shanghainese guy we met explained that the residents were offered cash, but not very much, or the right to be rehoused in an apartment, but these were typically a long way out of the centre. It's hard to see that the 'peasants' are getting the best of the deal.
Perhaps the most
obvious sign of the pace of change is the air pollution that was present everywhere we went in China. People wear face masks on the streets to avoid it, and we read somewhere that lead levels due to pollution are twice as high as is regarded safe for humans.
Although signs of development are everywhere (such as shop front dentists where the public can watch while you have your root canal), we still found it very frustrating not to be able to access the BBC website, and only to be able to use Chinese Google. It was also really weird going to Tian Anmen Square and thinking that the significance of the place to us is for an incident that most Chinese people don't know the full story of.
Beijing
Smog. People. This place is huge. Forget whatever we wrote about Moscow - it's just been trumped. What with local estimates of population being anything from 14-18 million, you can understand why. Oh, and they're hosting the olympics in 2 years time, which means a little building work. Well, I say little, but here, they've flattened entire neighbourhoods, and a lot of the sights are getting makeovers.
Having said all that, we were pretty impressed and reckon the 2008 Olympics will be bloody amazing.
Our time in Beijing was notable for the fact that we suddenly had a social life. We arranged to meet up with people from our UB - Beijing train. Admittedly the entire block of the place we agreed to meet up at had been demolished, so it never worked out, but in the process of trying to find it we met Chris, a Canadian on secondment in Beijing, also trying to find the same bar. We went for drinks elsewhere and picked his brains on places to visit in Thailand.
We also met Jaizki and Susana, an enthusiasic Basque couple doing almost the same trip as us but in the opposite direction - Singapore home to Spain. We went out for dinner with them and got loads of great photo tips (check out their photos on http://blogs.elcorreodigital.com/pasajeros - they are beautiful and the source of some envy from us) and had a lovely night out. And we fully intend to take them up on their invite to stay with them in spain, the next time we're in Europe...
Other than
socialising we did do some stuff during our five days here. The Great Wall was a day trip, and we found a relatively quiet section to climb. Yes, climb. The sections in the best state of repair are in the mountains, and parts of that are actually staircases. But what they took in sweat, they made up for in views. It really is a very impressive sight. We were lucky enough to be sharing our tour with Brian and Kitty - an American/Taiwanese couple living in Taiwan. Thanks to their Chinese skills we had the best meal of our time in China - and probably one of the cheapest too.
We also visited the Forbidden City, which is huge and grand and pretty beautiful, but crammed to bursting with tourists, Chinese and foreign alike. We avoided the obvious parts and sought out the hidden corners to avoid imminent mental breakdown. It worked and we think we felt like we managed to see the best of it (though were very sad to discover that we'd missed the Starbucks right in the middle of it). To those other poor suckers who paid for the audio guide because they had also read
that it was narrated by Roger Moore, we shared your massive disappointment! In reality it was more like a female chinese quantity surveyor focussing on the size, volume and circumference of the buildings, rather than the goings on behind those forbidden portals.
And of course we visited Tian Anmen square with its giant neon clock counting down the days till the Olympics. The rest of our time was spent mooching around, especially the main shopping street of Wang Fu Jing, drinking beer and watching the enormous numbers of people go by. We had a lot of admin to do in Beijing which seemed to kill a lot of our time.
A - One particularly hilarious admin incident was me having my legs waxed. But to save our male readers from the horrors of the female beauty routine, I'll leave this one for the girls over a few glasses of wine once I get back...
Xi'an - You'll Never Leave
Overcast and trapped are our strongest memories of Xi'an. What we thought was a provincial town on the map turns our to be a city of over 7 million people, one of the oldest cities
in the world, and historically the start of the original Silk trading route . The weather never lifted in the five days we were there. Five days as opposed to our planned two, as getting out of the town was found to be nigh on impossible. We eventually managed to escape, but seeing as we were only here to visit the Terracotta Warriors, we found we spent a lot more time getting to 'know' Xi'an than we wanted to. Oh, and Xi'an is one of the most heavily polluted cities in China.
The Terracotta Warriors are bandied about locally as the 'Eighth Wonder of the World'. Amazing really as the Chinese didn't even discover them until 1974, having been buried and forgotten for over a millenium. They are special, the main chamber being a football stadium like structure over the main pit that contained thousands of these lifesize pottery soldiers, all with individual features. There are thousands of them, however many still remain buried, awaiting the time when science has the technology to retrieve them in their full technicolour glory, rather than the sombre browns and blacks that they are today.
Shanghai - neon madness
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Dragon Stone, Forbidden City, Beijing
This is one huge piece of carved rock. so than Beijing, the intensely modern and the old and impoverished sit uneasily next to each other here. We couldn't help but be impressed by the huge skyscrapers and magnificent neon skyline of Pudong at night. We visited Jin Mao tower, now the fourth tallest building in the world. Up to the 56th floor to the cafe of the Grand Hyatt hotel, and above us stretched an atrium of another 30 plus floors. The views are tremendous, especially from the huge windows in the toilets. Neither of us felt the need to go any further up the tower and see the view from the 88th floor.
This contrasts with the old town on the other side of the river, where people live crammed in small tumble down houses without internal plumbing, and literally prepare food on the street and where people make a living hawking kebabs, or repairing bikes or scooters on the pavements.
Our time in Shanghai coincided with the Golden Week holiday when China celebrates its national day and the Moon Festival. Everyone gets the week off. As such transport is impossible and everyone descends on Shanghai. The main road of the Bund which is the
major promenade in Shanghai is closed and filled with crowds and crowds of Chinese (and many interested tourists). There was a huge police and army presence in the streets, but it always felt more celebratory that dangerous. We, along with many locals, waited almost breathlessly for fireworks which were never forthcoming.
Putuoshan Island
We'd bumped into some Germans in Mongolia who had suggested Putuoshan Island as a good place to take refuge from the crowds for a couple of days and see a bit of what old China was like.
It took a harrowing taxi ride to get to the wharf and then a slow overnight boat ride to get to the island, which turned out to be a major Buddhist site and a place of pilgrimage for many Chinese. But it was also much less crowded, green and really rather pretty - in a temple theme park sort of way. It also had beautiful golden sandy beaches. It was just a pity about the red-brown polluted sea that they fronted. We visited many of the major Buddist sites (and took loads of photos) only spending one night, but it was enough to help us chill out
Guardian Lion, Forbidden City, Beijing
The Chinese are now claiming that they invented football - we disagreed but didn't want to tell this fella to his face. a little bit.
Getting out of China
Sometimes committing ourselves to not flying makes getting places a fiddle. To get from China to Vietnam we had to take a 32 hour train ride from Shanghai to Nanning. Thank goodness for Damien, a Brit living in Shanghai, who taught us Canaster and helped kill the time. We arrived at Nanning at 1am. Then up again at 6 to catch the 8am train to Pinxiang. We were too late to get allocated seats so we had to settle for standing tickets. We did manage to get seats, otherwise the 3.5 hour journey might have been very painful. From Pinxiang we had to catch a tuk tuk like contraption (motor bike with a flatbed on the back) to the Chinese border. This took 20 hilarious minutes and was one of the more fun moments of the trip. Then we had an easy time getting through the Chinese border control at Friendship Pass. The Vietnamese side of things is another story, and will have to wait for our next blog.
We are in Vietnam now. We've left Hanoi and are currently in Hue. We leave here tomorrow for Hoi An where
we expect to spend a couple of days. Then we'll keep heading south. We have to be into Cambodia by the 18th October as that's when our Vietnamese visas run out.
Phew - it feels like we're on the homestretch now and not to far from NZ...
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Jay
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memories of China
your exploits brings back good memories of our visit to China a while back. Like you found the people extremely polite but really curious - and yes they do love to practice their English with you. Mind you on the flip side go to meet a family that gave us a master class in using chop-sticks - they could see were struggling and came over for a chat. Did you try the fried scorpians in Beijing's street food stalls- apparently very good for you (so they said anyway) - I declined. Hope the rest of your trip goes well.