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Published: March 2nd 2008
Fireworks display in Jiāxīng
View of fireworks from our flat - they are supposed to mark the end of the New Year period. Despite this, we still hear fireworks most nights.There is only one way to say it: China is tremendous. Quaint, wonderful and tremendous. We've been so well treated since we have arrived, that our arms are black with repeated pinching. However, the trip to China, and navigating to Jīaxīng was not always so easy, though it was character building...
We left Hanoi by bus (as all the trains were full) and headed to the Vietnam-China border. The journey through northern Vietnam's dramatic mountainous scenery was surprisingly painless - mainly due the roads being in better condition in this part of the country (most Vietnamese roads look like the surface of the moon). Our bus even had a stewardess on board, who wandered up and down the aisles handing out free water and cans of 'congee' in syrup, and every now and then she would appear to give instructions in Vietnamese. We assumed she was here to help with the border crossing and to generally point people in the right direction.....we would be sorely disappointed.
After 4 hours on the road we arrived at the border, where chaos and confusion ensued. Everyone had to get off the bus, and collect their luggage from underneath the vehicle. The bus
steward had given us “ID badges”, with the name of a tour company on (we think), that we had to wear around our necks. Once everyone had disembarked and grabbed their belongings, the bus drove away, taking the stewardess with it, and we were left standing in a group outside a small building.
I should mention at this point that we were the only western people on the bus. There were no signs in English....and not that many signs in Vietnamese come to think of it. And we had no idea what we were meant to do next. We could see the border in front of us, just past the border building, and there were people walking across it towards China. However, our particular bus group was standing in a huddle going nowhere. We didn't know if we were meant to stay with our group and cross the border together, or whether we should do our own thing. We needed to get on a bus at the other side, so we were wary about just wandering off in case we got stranded.
When in doubt, do what the locals are doing Some of the Vietnamese passengers
disappeared inside the border building and returned bearing cards, that they eagerly began to fill out. We guessed that these cards might be similar to the arrival and departure cards that you are given in airports, so Toby ventured inside to see if he could find some. Conveniently, there were another three coaches full of people standing directly in front of the doorway, some walking in, some walking back out, some just standing there and others wandering in circles. It was absolute bedlam.
While he was gone, more buses arrived, dropped off groups of people, and left. After a while Toby emerged empty handed. He couldn't locate the mysterious cards, so we stood around and speculated as to what we should do next, and whether we should take our (fairly large amount of) luggage through the 100+ people pushing and shoving each other (Vietnamese people don't queue).
I had never really appreciated before just how helpless you can feel when you speak nothing of a foreign language. We have been to other countries where English is not widely spoken, but we've always known a few words or phrases that we can use to get us by. In fact, we
Jiāxīng on our first morning
The view from our flat across Jiāxīng city - was just a little bit chilly! do prefer to make the effort to learn some of the lingo in most places we visit. But in Vietnam, we had been so preoccupied with trying to learn Mandarin, that we had barely picked up a couple of words of Vietnamese.
In the end, we decided to go into the border building, and see if anyone approached us. We figured if anyone can push through a mass of people, it would have to be us, since we stand at least a foot taller than everyone else, despite also carrying our massive 45kg suitcase, and 3 other bags. Maybe if we tried to cross the border, someone would stop us and direct us to the right area? So in we went.
Inside the building there were people and bags everywhere. There was no room to move, let alone locate any officials. The cards were not on display anywhere. Eventually we spotted a desk with 2 border guards sitting behind some glass. We approached looking confused, and they handed us the cards, conveniently stored out of sight under their desk, which we filled out. From there, they gestured towards another tiny desk area in the corner, around which stood
a swarm of people all pushing each other and trying in vain to press their faces up to the glass counter. Behind the desk sat 2 or 3 border guards, and an enormous pile of passports, which they were leisurely stamping, in no particular order.
This, we discovered, was where we must surrender our own passports before we could cross the border. Neither of us was particularly comfortable about throwing our passports through a window onto a pile of hundreds of others.......but we had no choice. We had no idea how our passports would be returned to us after they'd been stamped, or if we'd ever see them again. Apparently the Vietnamese weren't sure they'd see their passports either, because they were watching through the windows.
At this point we'd been at the Vietnamese side of the border for nearly an hour and had progressed a whole....10 feet.
Border officials are like bouncers at night clubs. Don't get angry or act aggressively to them, you never know what will happen It is worth noting at this point that we did see one other “westerner”, an Israeli guy with dreadlocks who we had also seen at the Chinese embassy in Hanoi when we were collecting our visas. At the embassy he was quite angry, getting aggressive with the Chinese officials because he couldn't get a visa of the length he wanted. Apparently he turned up at the border with the wrong visa and an attitude to match as well. He gave the border officials his passport and a credit card... and later he got angry with them when he didn't get what he wanted and they hauled him away into an office upstairs. We didn't see him come out.
So... after leaving our passports, we noticed some of the people from our bus were going outside, and we followed them and waited nervously. Every now and again, an official would appear with a pile of passports and call out different names. After a while, ours appeared - which we gratefully snatched away - and finally we were able to cross the border. It had taken us 2 hours to get this far.
Crossing the border was a surreal experience in some ways. For a start, here we were finally entering the country that we would call home for the next 15 months. We felt a real sense of achievement just to have made it this far. Secondly, the sheer contrast between the 2 countries was never made more apparent than when we entered the officious, clean and new-looking building that housed the Chinese passport control. Here, there were computers, signs in Mandarin, Vietnamese and in English, and the customs and arrival cards were also stored on tables in little holders, where they could be plainly seen. There were helpful officials who made sure everyone had an arrival card and customs declaration, and that everyone headed in the right direction. There were clearly defined and signposted queues! It was glorious!
There was even a speaker phone in front of the officials where you could leave feedback on their service. We waltzed through the Chinese border control in approximately 15 minutes.
Nanning
Once through the 'other side', we boarded another bus bound for Nanning - a city about 200km north of the border, and where we would be spending our first night on Chinese soil. The bus was new and clean, the roads were smooth, and the constant trail of roadside garbage which you see nearly everywhere in Vietnam was absent. We didn't realise that we had been in Vietnam so long that this would shock us, but it was a pleasant surprise.
Catching the bus, instead of the train, to Nanning probably wasn't the best idea we've ever had. You see, unbeknown to us, Nanning's long distance bus station is a good 20 minutes drive out of the city centre. This wouldn't normally be too much of an issue - except that we were carrying more bags than your average traveller, and we had been in such a rush to leave Hanoi that morning, that we had no Chinese currency on us at all.
Bring local currency into a country..... like you didn't know... We had been led to believe that the bus would drop us off in the center of the city, not too far away from our hotel. The train station is right in the center of the city too. So we weren't too concerned about not having much cash, as we thought we could probably find an ATM, foreign currency exchange (which every international airport has), or just walk to the hotel. Not so.
On arriving in Nanning and discovering we were miles away from the centre, we attempted to find an ATM. No luck. We asked people in Mandarin where the ATM was, and they said that there wasn't one, or that it was very far away. We thought maybe the taxis took credit card. No luck. We thought maybe we could catch a taxi to the city centre, get the driver to drop us outside an ATM, and pay him there. Erm.....No. The problem with asking people complicated requests in a foreign language is that you're never quite sure that they have understood you, but don't want to do what you have asked... or that they're just completely unsure of what you are saying altogether.
Finally, we resorted to the time-honoured traveller's trick of standing in a bunch of Chinese people and looking pathetic. People talked to us, the majority of which we didn't understand and they looked at our Vietnamese currency and two American dollars with interest, but didn't seem in any hurry to take us anywhere. Eventually, one of the taxi stewards took pity on us, wandered off and got another Chinese traveller, Michelle, who spoke English. Michelle quite literally saved us: she swapped our Dong with her Renminbi (she explained that she was studying international trade and often went to Hanoi). She then put us in a taxi with her, drove to the city, and took us to an ATM before walking us to our hotel.
At the hotel we discovered that our Internet booking hadn't registered with the hotel, so Michelle negotiated a lower price with them and gave us her mobile number and email address in case we had trouble booking train tickets the next day. There are angels walking this earth, and it turns out that they look like short Chinese women.
The rest of our evening in Nanning passed without incident. We quite liked the city really - or at least what we saw of it. It looked fairly impressive at night, with its skyscrapers all a-glow with neon lights. We walked past groups of Chinese people in parks, some of whom were doing ballroom dancing, and others who were doing something like line dancing. There were also some people setting off fireworks in the street... It was all very quaint and interesting.
We were also something of a novelty in Nanning. The Chinese people appeared fascinated by us, and would stare at us, slyly take photos of us, and say “hello” to us as we walked by. They were very shy though and usually wouldn't approach, but just watch us from a distance. At dinner, you would see them walk past our restaurant, where we sat next to the window - they would glance inside, do the sort of double-take that should have taken their heads clean off their shoulders, walk backwards to have a good look and maybe take a photo before wandering off. I don't think they see many foreigners in Nanning. We felt very welcome, and very safe there.
We didn't have much of a chance to explore Nanning as we had to leave the very next day, and board a train to Jiāxīng - the city where we would be living. Despite it being just after Chinese new year, and despite the trains being extra busy, Toby set off on his own to the train station the next morning, and returned bearing 2 soft sleeper train tickets to Jiāxīng! He had managed to order them almost entirely in Mandarin. Quite a feat really.
The Journey to Jiāxīng!
We had a couple more confusing moments whilst waiting in the train station to board our train. They don't get many foreigners in Nanning: when you tell someone that you don't understand them, they don't speak more simply or slowly - they speed up and get more agitated and animated. We found this when, one after the other, several Chinese men approached us and talked really quickly in Mandarin, whilst gesturing towards the sky. We would tell him that we didn't understand, and would then wander off.
The men were holding two large planks of wood, connected by rope, and they kept pointing at us and at our bags, and then they'd point again towards the sky. The first two men that did this, we ignored, and moved away from. We had, after all, been told to wait in the waiting room with all the other passengers. By the time the third man approached, we had worked out that he wanted to do something with our large 45kg suitcase, but we didn't know what or why. In the end, we let him take it, and followed him close behind. This turned out to be a good decision. You see, to board the train, you had to go up several flights of stairs, and across several platforms - and the men with the planks of wood and rope will carry your very heavy suitcases across to the train for you. The assistance wasn't free of charge, but was still quite helpful!
In fact, once on the train, we encountered yet more helpful people. A friendly Chinese woman who lived in America, and translated the entire menu of the buffet car for us. We also had to call our school to tell them when we would be arriving at Jiāxīng so they could pick us up - however, our mobile chose this moment to stop working. A Chinese man who we shared a compartment with, and spoke no English, allowed us to use his mobile phone. He also wouldn't accept any payment.
This is how we have found the Chinese people to be so far - very welcoming and very helpful. We haven't been anywhere near any tourist spots though, and sometimes we wonder if we might have enjoyed Vietnam more if we had stayed away from tourist spots there. English is not necessarily widely spoken here, but our Mandarin is improving all the time, and that combined with a lot of sign language is getting us by.
More to come about Jiāxīng and those little monkeys we teach.
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Joe Maruca
non-member comment
What a story ....
Hi folks, That was very compelling reading; a sensational journey ..... keep it coming. Regards, Joe