Papa Al's Stuff
Lost and found in China
Editor's note: Papa Al shares his observations after a three week trip to China. If you want to see more, find Papa Al in Facebook.
Papa Al
Everyday that I leave the hotel, I’m lost. I have to find my way to a new hotel or I have find my way back from sightseeing through a series of grunts, hand signs, and poor Chinese. Wo yao qu… means I want to go… Wo yao qu Guting Zhan. That’s “I want to go to Guting Station,” which was close to one of my hotels. The trouble is they answer in Chinese. Then I say, “Duibuqi, duibuqi. Wo shi Meiguoren. Hui shuo yidian, dian.” I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m American. I can speak only a little.
If Japan is the land of the rising sun, Thailand the land of smiles, Hawaii aloha. China is diversity.
Old and new. Rich and poor. Mostly automatic flush toilets and a few troughs for both men and women. Squat toilets are not pretty. I saw one on the “D” or fast train that went straight down to the tracks. Everywhere there is construction. In the cities. In the countryside. New, new next to old. Chinese are coming to the realization that old is precious. That it brings back good feelings of old times. In the 80’s and 90’s, they tore everything down in a mad rush toward modernization. Now they build old, Disneylike, or refurbish old with toilets and electricity, air conditioning, remote controls and designer ambience.
A friend asked if I saw a guy in a coolie hat pulling a richshaw to take a picture for him. All the rickshaws I saw were powered by pedal bicycles or motor cycles. But I saw an old lady staggering under the weight of god knows what at each end of a dark flat sweat stained, stick perched on her left shoulder. Her knees were bent and the weight made the poles bend and flex to the rhythm of her walk. There were a lot of farmers with coolie hats.
China is full of surprises.
For instance, the maps you see on the internet are mostly wrong. They make places look small that are huge. They love big open spaces. A park that looks small on the map could be huge. Several laowai or foreigners who live in China confirmed my suspicions. They said Chinese maps lack scale. They make them to fit the page.
The Suzhou map I had looked like you could walk from one World Heritage protected garden to another. But the truth is Suzhou is a large city with a tiny part of it preserved for both laowai and Chinese tourists. The Shantang Canal with its red lantern lights glimmering off the water is just one tiny street amidst several square miles of high rises, buses, and pollution.
It takes 20 minutes city bus
ride from Lingering Garden to Humble Administrator’s Garden.
You have to ask the bus driver to tell you when to get off. You
need to know the names in Chinese… Liú Yuān and Zhuō Zhèng Yuān.
Very few Chinese actually speak English, though they learn it in
school.
If you ask them something, they frown and look like they’re mad but they always answer in some way. I think Chinese are basically very friendly and helpful. Several went out of their way to help me.
In Guilin, in a mad rush to get away from a tenacious taxi driver, I walked for several minutes into the night not having a thought of where I was. When the driver finally gave up, I was totally lost. A young man was walking beside me. I asked in Chinese, “Hui shuo Yingwen, ma?” He answered, “Yes.” He walked me 30 minutes to my hotel. In Hualien, I sat next to a guy who taught English. We spent five hours together.
The gardens and the canal are beautiful. But the shops alongside and leading to them are unabashed commercialism. Store after store of hawkers and curios. And Chinese hawkers don’t know the meaning of the word “no.” You say “no,” they keep going on. You need this, yes? Very nice, yes? You like? You need body language and frowns to make them understand you really mean “no.”
And people!
I HAVE NEVER SEEN SO MANY PEOPLE.
At the parks on a sunny day. In the shopping malls. I have never seen so many shops. At the train station. Mobs. In the subways, streams of people flowing into and past each other. Chinese seem to be culturally motivated to flow. If there is an exit or entrance, they move to fill every last space, as if moving forward a few feet would get them there faster. They don’t seem to believe in giving each other space. If you’re waiting in line, they will move ahead of you, to the side of you, up close behind you, until everybody is packed into the line like sardines.
Not everything is cheap.
My standard for eating became if the shop had glass in its front. The glass did not have to cover the entire front. Just a pane of glass will do. Chinese like open air. I guess air conditioning is expensive. But some stalls are just that. They could easily be selling food in an alley. They seem to like alleys too. If it’s food on the sidewalk cooked on a hand pulled cart, jiaozi or dumplings could go for yi kuai wu or one fifty yuan, which is about 25 cents American. That’s six dumplings. In a fixed stall they easily run 2 yuan. In a shop or restaurant with glass it could be 8 yuan. If it’s enclosed and the staff wear uniforms it is probably 18 yuan. That’s almost $3 at 6.8 yuan to a dollar, getting close to American prices.
You could go to a fancy restaurant with a sign covered in gold leaf and pay maybe 48 yuan for noodles. I did.
Before I left for China, I read and was told that people would approach me to practice their English. I’m ethnically Chinese and look Chinese. No one, not one person, came up to me to practice their English. I saw one man on a bus give a 20 minute Chinese lesson to a Caucasian man, who smiled and listened intently. Everyone within five seats of the lesson was listening intently. I asked directions of a policeman and he gave me a three minute Chinese lesson, holding on to the card that I had given him with my directions written in Chinese. I couldn’t just leave the lesson, I needed the card.
Traffic again is flow.
When they beep their horn, it basically means watch out I’m not stopping. Usually it also means I’m not slowing down either. They sometimes stream past red and green lights at 40 miles an hour in city streets. One electric tram which operated on a sidewalk and park walkway didn’t even beep. He seemed to expect people to sense he was coming and move out of the way. I rode with him ten minutes and he didn’t hit anyone. Came close. Everybody moved or at the last moment he stopped or slowed.
The buses are the worst. Big 50 seat buses don’t slow down, and they squeeze through openings with three inches to spare on each side. At least they’ll slow down for that. Crawl through to be more precise. If you meet one on a one lane road or a road packed with stalls, parked carts, vendors and pedestrians, the rule seems to be the smaller vehicles backs down. The bus will go nose to nose with the offending vehicle and almost push them back. Lanes mean nothing. They seem to be a general guide. I’ve been stuck in the middle of the road with traffic flowing on either side of me.
Nobody stops. Nobody slows down. And in three weeks, nobody hit me. They beeped at me.
Can you bargain?
The consensus is no. The Chinese are smarter than you. My friend says my Chinese is not good enough. She says her Chinese is not good enough. You need to speak the dialect of the place you’re at. You need to know the lowest possible price.
Chinese seem to believe that
anything that is not the lowest possible price is a bad price.
You got ripped off. Though themselves would be glad to rip you
off.
One tout waited for me while I went into a tea garden to look around. When I came out, she finally wore me out and got me to follow her to her home. “Pianyi,” was the only word I understood. It means cheap. “Pianyi, pianyi yidian.” She wanted 50 yuan for a small box of Longjing tea, considered China’s best. At the tourist street in town, one stall wanted 25 yuan for the same box, and you know he will go lower. At the airport, they wanted 140 yuan. She said you can trust the airport tea is fresh.
The only deal I got was on a boat ride. Six ladies followed me for 30 minutes. I had been told a boat ride on a small boat was about 40 yuan. But the river was too high, and the small boats were not going out. The first price for the big boat with the engine was 250 yuan. Even for me, I think my voice was indignant. I told her I was told that a boat ride was 40 yuan. She countered that was for small boats which were not going out.
I said no, I wanted to see the river. She pointed me down a small alley. We walked. I was afraid she was leading me to get mugged. The alley was very small. We walked more than 10 minutes. Finally, we
broke out
in a clearing at the boats. Apparently the bus driver had let
me get off too early. I said I wanted a Coke. I told her I
wanted to go to the fishing village, which I had read was
quaint. Actually, the town I was in was plenty quaint enough.
She led me to a restaurant. I didn’t want a 5 yuan restaurant Coke. I wanted a 2 yuan Coke like you get on the street. I drank the Coke. Another lady sat with me. She spoke even better English. Why did I want to go to the fishing village? The boat didn’t go there. I said I didn’t have to go. I just wanted to see it. She said, well then. So, I said, how much? She said 148 yuan, but don’t tell anyone I got it for that. Hao de. OK!
I also got a cotton Chinese style shirt with cloth buttons for 50 yuan. The silk ones cost upwards of 600 yuan or about a hundred dollars. The lowest silk ones were 450 yuan. The most expensive cotton ones were 90 yuan. You have to know numbers to survive in China.
If they sense you’re laowai, I think they are very liable to charge you more. I paid 10 yuan for a 4 yuan bus ride. I got charged 10 yuan extra for a meal after I had walked out of the restaurant and not disappeared fast enough. I paid a whopping 100 yuan too much for a taxi tour that lasted two hours. I admit I am now prejudiced against Chinese cabbies.
I think I rode every mode of transportation
possible. Airplane, city bus, double decker bus, mini bus,
taxi, subway, tram, trolley, tuk tuk, rickshaw, ferry and feet.
I caught the rickshaw when no one could tell which bus to take
and they pointed me across the street in an area where you
cannot cross the street for a very long block. The sidewalk is
barricaded from the street. The only people to proposition me
for women were the rickshaw drivers. And China has something
called KTV, which is a very fancy karaoke, where you can pay
extra...
In Taiwan, the center of the city for a visitor is the Taipei Main Station. It’s both a rail and metro station. It is huge and the signs are confusing. A few Taiwanese people admitted to me they had been lost in the terminal the first time through. You have to understand that the subway is called MRT and the train is called HRT.
If you want to see Taroko
National Park(they say Tai-roko and won’t understand you if you
say Ta-roko), I recommend taking two days and staying overnight
in Hualien. I did it in one but did not stop to walk, hike or
stroll. I left on the 7:10 am train out of the Taipei main
station. It got into Hualien about ten. I had to wait till 11
before the city bus to Taroko left. I couldn’t get anyway to
tell me how to find another bus, like a tour bus. They just
pointed at the building where the city buses stop. The bus
stopped at every local stop. It took two hours to get to the
main point in Taroko,
Tienhsiang.
Tienhsiang has
restaurants and the one hotel in the park. That left me four
hours to play before my 5 p.m. train reservation back to
Taipei. But you have to time the bus back.
I decided to try for a taxi
back.
But not many taxis make it up that high. So, we asked someone to share their taxi with us back down. They agreed but did not want to stop anywhere as they had stopped everywhere on the ride up. OK. So, no pictures except from a moving car or bus.
Hong Kong has the world’s longest elevator. It goes from the city’s current (May 09) tallest building on the Hong Kong side up the mountain through residential high rises and small shops and restaurants. It’s a great area. The bottom is called Central, but you can’t tell a taxi to go to Central because the buildings are so big that Central is about a half mile wide, at least. It would be good if you get the name of your street and a cross street written in Chinese to get you back. You can show this to taxi drivers, people on the street, at a bus stop or in the subway.
Tip: Even a Hong Kong resident did not know this when I arrived. The Mid-level escalators at Central only run one way. They run downhill from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. and the rest of the day till midnight they run uphill.
Tip: Ask a local where to go to buy a bowl of Hong Kong noodles. They are the best. Flour noodles with egg and shrimp flavoring!
Zhongshan is a completely new city. There was not an old building in sight. Tip: if you want a taxi to give you a tour, always negotiate the price before hand. If they can’t speak English well enough, too bad, move on to a taxi that will negotiate it with you. They can be stubborn and insistent, but they will not resort to physical violence.
Guilin is one of the those cities
that are larger than they look in the map. The main street is
called Zhongshan Lu. Every city has a Zhongshan Lu. Sun Yat
Sen’s Chinese name is Sun Zhongshan. He came from that area.
You must be precise in telling a cabbie where you want to go,
you must say Zhongshan zhong lu. Which means the middle part of
Zhongshan Lu. It’s a long street and it makes a difference.
Pingan was the most unimaginable
place I visited in China. You take a two hour plus bus ride
from Guilin Bus station, which is very confusing. You have to
go around the building to the back to find the Pingan bus.
Don’t take the tour they offer you at the airport. It’s 400 RMB.
At the hotel, they will offer it to you for 140 RMB. If you are
gutsy enough to take the public bus, it’s about 15 RMB for the
first bus. They change buses at the bottom of the mountain,
where it begins to get really steep and curvy. I don’t know how
much it is for the second bus, but I met a laowai who did it.
Then you have to pay a 50 RMB entrance fee to hike up to Pingan
village and beyond.
I took the 140 RMB deal.
Had lunch and stayed one night above the clouds in a authentic looking Yao minority style house made of rough cedar. But instead of sharing an extra bedroom with some farmers, I had a hotel room in the cedar house with TV, AC, western toilet and clean sheets. The laowai I met just hiked until dark and made hand signals for food and sleep to get lodging for the night. He was way beyond Pingan. He was very happy with the outcome.
On to fabled Yangshuo. Ten years
ago, this was a sleepy farm village discovered by a few
backpackers. I found it on a website called China Backpackers.
But Yangshuo is famous all throughout China. And now probably
the world. It’s old backpacker street is now closed to cars and
is a pure tourist mall, full of varnished knick knack shops and
cute cafes, all with internet connection.
All the guidebooks recommend not taking the 400 RMB ferry from Guilin to Yangshuo. You can ride on a bus from Yangshuo to Xing Ping for much less (like 4 RMB) and then ride a boat on the most scenic part of the river. They wanted 250 RMB for that small trip when I was there, so the moral of the story is: China changes fast, all the guidebooks are out of date, including probably this one (May 09).
I bicycled a short part of the
Yulong River on the west side of Yangshuo and hiked—it really is
quite a climb—to the viewpoint at Moon Hill. But the view, as I
was told when I was ready to quit climbing, is worth it.
Tip: the vendors who are cooking dog and hanging it up for display are sensitive about laowai taking their picture. I imagine they have had their share of bad press. But when I was there they were still hanging the dog up in the morning. Tip: go before 8 a.m. because they dog will be sold and gone before afternoon.
Tip: Xing Ping is the small village that Yangshuo used to be.
Tip: Shangrila is like Disneyland. It’s a very complete representation of old Chinese culture.
Shanghai has more new construction than I have ever seen. They are preparing for the 2010 World Expo. Even the locals grab their purses and bags when they walk into the intersection of the Bund and Nanjing Lu. There are more huge computerized signs on Nanjing Lu than I have ever seen. The locals go the the French Concession area about two miles west of the Huangpu River on Huaihai Lu. Lu means road. That area is almost quaint except for a few humongous digital signs.
The Shanghai metro system is the best. The signs are in English and Chinese. They are color coded and numbered. Streams of people go to each platform. So you can’t really get lost. They are maps everywhere including a sign on each side of the platform that tells you (in English and Chinese) every stop that the train coming through on that platform made and will make. You can take a Metro to Nanjing Lu (Nanjing Dong Lu—is east Nanjing road). You can get to Huaihai Lu.
The stop for the famous new, built to look old, Xintiandi is called Huangpi Nan Lu. Or you can get off at Shanxi Nan Lu or Changsu Lu.
Suzhou, the Suzhou you read about in the travel books, is a tiny little jewel set in a large modern city. It is so tiny it is laughable. They call it the Venice of China but there is no comparison.
But it is pretty. So pretty that
modern Suzhou brides flock there to get their wedding pictures
taken, often in old style beautifully modern qi pao or cheongsam
dresses. They all look as beautiful as actresses all dressed
up. Red lanterns at night. To get the best pictures, find your
spot about an hour before sunset. They will turn the lanterns
on early so you can get great natural light pictures.
Tip: if you like hot food, try the cong you bing. It’s Chinese pizza. Made with a great chili sauce that they put on quite generously. But as a Korean-Chinese I didn’t find it too hot. Very nice. With green onions and sesame seeds. Great. Go down the west side of Shantang Street to the old side without the red lanterns. Tip: I found a compass handy.
Hangzhou is the place to hangout. Several miles of lakeside are treelined park. With many park benches at the edge of the water. After about 5 p.m., you can find quite a bit of quiet and solitude. If you tire of walking there is an electric tram that will take you from one end to the other for about 20 RMB.
You can pay 28 yuan for a scoop
of Haagen Daas, which they say is imported from America. Or you
can walk across the street from Xihu (West Lake) Tiandi, the
trendy section of the park, and find a restaurant with glass and
locals for about 20 yuan a bowl of noodles.
No glass if you remember is cheaper still.
The touristy shopping street is called Qing He Feng Lu.
Hangzhou because of the ability to sit and watch a sunset over the water in a park was my favorite.
