China
If there is one word that comes to mind when I think about China it is ‘dirt.’ I don’t think anyone bothers to clean anything because it would be impossible to keep it clean anyway. The dirt didn’t really bother me—what did was the throat clearing and spitting in the streets. It’s a national pass-time. Now, you’d think the sidewalks would be cleaner as a result; however, saliva and dirt only gives you mud. The streets are dirty, the buildings are dirty, the cars are dirty, the toilets are dirty, the pet dogs are dirty, the women are… well, they were good on the eye; like flowers in a bog.
For the Beijing leg of the tour I opted for a package that included hotel accommodation a return flight from Seoul. It was the cheapest option, and eased me into travelling in China without the need to do too much research. As it turned out, it was just me and the guy I went with on the tour, in a mini bus with a driver and a guide.
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That was fine, but as with most tours you get taken to destinations that are not on the itinerary in the hope you will spend money, like a pearl farm outlet and a Chinese medicine institute, etc. Me and the other guy were not impressed with this and had no intention of buying anything; both the driver and the guide were not impressed with this because it meant they didn’t get a commission. So an underlying tension was there, but they weren’t too bad about it; I’ve heard of some tour guides who are outspoken and demonstrably pissed off with tourists who have the gall not to part with their cash.
Anyway, we got to see the major sites, things I’d heard about when growing up. Although the part of the Great Wall we saw just outside Beijing was narrower than what you generally see in photos, the surrounding scenery was spectacular. And I really wish I’d seen more of the old backstreet, dirt poor side of China. It was the first communist country I’d ever been to, but it didn’t seem like it–it seemed just as capitalist as anywhere else. Surprisingly, the Starbucks in the photo above was located in the heart of the Forbidden City.
Some nights were our own for us to do our own thing, like getting one of those famed foot massages. Now this was one of the highlights. I’d recommend it to anyone. We were shown to a room and seated in a very comfy lounge chair. Our feet were then soaked in a wooden bucket full of warm herb-fused water. After that a gentleman came in with toe cutting and cleaning implements. Before I knew it he had a scalpel and with one slice per toe was expertly removing my toe nails. I was a little concerned at this, but needn’t have been. When he was done the massage girls came in. Mine was young and pretty. Sitting on a stool, she spread her legs and with my feet between them lent over and started work on them. It was, as you can imagine, somewhat pleasant. Her hands were powerful, like a man’s. The whole process took around ninety minutes, after which my feet were in heaven.
After the Beijing tour was over, I departed on my own for the solo portion of my trip, taking a flight to Xian. Xian at night, around the market areas, was pretty amazing, especially over Chinese New Year. It was a sensory overload for me, with bizarre sights and sounds at every turn. I loved it.
One night, when walking back to the main part of town, a surreal incident occurred. In a dimly lit area off a main road, a small elderly, leather faced woman with a baby wrapped to her back approached me for money and, as usual with beggars, I attempted to avoid her. She kept countering my moves with sidesteps of surprising agility. So I quickened my pace to get away and with that she began to get physical, pushing against me and grabbing me. On cue, as probably trained, the grubby fat-faced kid behind her flung his head back and started singing out some children’s song. So there we were doing a kind of macabre dance: me trying to get away, the woman clinging to and blocking me, and the rosy cheeked kid on the woman’s back twirling with her in the struggle and loudly singing skyward.
Of course, I was in no danger, but it was kind of nightmarish nonetheless. Eventually, we ended up on the footpath of a main street. She still had a steel grip on my coat and was muttering things and nodding her head to motion at the kid behind her. Things were well beyond tugging at my heartstrings. I raised my arm and fist and hit her arm as hard as I dared away from my coat. It was the only thing left to do. She gave me a hurt look but I was beyond caring.
You’ve got to expect beggars in China. But with them you also get touters who are equally annoying. I expect it’s worse for those, like me at the time, who are on their own. One good thing about my next stop, Nanjing, was the admonishment locals gave to beggars who hassled tourists like me. That didn’t really happen elsewhere to the same extent.
I flew on to Nanjing inspired by Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanjing. There was little left of old Nanjing; and there is little to indicate a legacy of atrocities on a massive scale, except for my first stop as soon as I got there, the massacre memorial museum. It is showing its age and is perhaps not well funded. Here you can see the actual bones of some victims, where they were buried together.
What stuck in my mind were the bones of a woman whose pelvis had a nail hole through it. Nails that had been used by the Japanese were also on display–they’re about the circumference of a finger and twice as long. The Japanese would nail their victims to death with them, perhaps to save bullets. But a nail in the pelvis suggests acts of perversion and torture took place in the process of killing, which concurs with some of the stuff I’ve read. The Japanese still haven’t apologized for or even really recognized as fact what they did in Nanjing and throughout China.
Next I travelled to Shanghai by bus. It stopped at a well-known hotel and my idea was to get a taxi from here to my hotel. That was my first mistake, for I encountered who is quite possibly the dumbest taxi driver in the world. When I got in the taxi, I announced to him my hotel name explicitly, a name which had the word hotel in it (this is important to note), and showed him details about it that I’d printed from the Internet. He immediately recognized the name and we took off.
I had a bit of an idea of the layout of Shanghai from maps I’d seen and when we passed certain landmarks and headed across the river, I became concerned. My hotel, I knew, was in the other direction. I debating what to do, seeing that we were soon in a less built up area on the outskirts of Shanghai. I couldn’t quite figure out what kind of scam was being pulled. It didn’t add up. The driver then stopped on a wide four lane road, motioning to me as if to ask, where to now? At this point, there was some confusion, as I thought he know where he was actually going. He then pulled off into a more deserted street, and I resolved that there was no way I was getting out of that cab.
What transpired next was a long interlude of communication failure. I gathered that the hotel I’d mentioned had the same name as the suburb I was now in. So this taxi driver, of all people, had no idea what the word “hotel” meant. It got worse, because the hotel number I printed from the Internet was out of date or wrong. I then showed him several maps I’d also printed. No luck there. He didn’t seem to understand maps, especially if they had English on them. He just shook his head and looked at me.
Keep in mind that all of this went on for quite some time. So I was beginning to get quite annoyed, but I kept things cool and started with the basics. I got him to understand that the map I was showing him was a map of Shanghai, the city we were in. I had some success with this first step. Then I finally got him to understand that the large picture on the map I was pointing to was of Shanghai’s Pearl Tower. This also succeeded. Then I indicated for him to go there. At least around there, I thought, there’d be someone who spoke English.
Despite his IQ, he managed to get me there. After being dropped off, he probably headed off to create chaos elsewhere; I headed directly for the Hilton and approached a door man who was able to get me a taxi directly to my hotel. In the end, I wasn’t really upset about the time and money wasted because I considered it a privilge to have met and experienced the dumbest taxi driver in the world.
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Speaking of the Pearl Tower, I warn everyone not to buy a ticket to go up to it’s observation decks unless you are there early. Sure, it looks pretty on the outside, but the building is simply not equipped to handle many people and there are pathetic security measures which slow everything down further. I had a horrendous wait of over two hours, which I couldn’t easily escape from after a certain point. Once finally at the top, I had an extra wait to go to the toilet, to relieve some most uncomfortable gas and diarrhea that had been bursting to get out an hour back. The guy in there just wouldn’t come out, even when I kicked on the door—he was talking on his mobile. When he came out I saw it was one of the staff. I let him have a stream of expletives. I recommend avoiding the Pearl Tower altogether and going instead to the observation deck atop the Jin Mao Building where the Hilton is located.
I also recommend being in Shanghai for the last day of the Chinese New Year as I was. Make sure you’re in a hotel with a good view of the city. Of course, there are fireworks going off all over the place throughout the week at this time of year. However, on the last night the intensity increases leading up the midnight. At midnight the whole city erupts with fireworks in every direction and as far as you can see. It was a truly amazing site, as if all Shanghai were under bombardment. I’ll be going back one day to see that again.
