I was very excited a few weeks ago when the people at eChinaCities mailed me via Facebook to ask if they could rerun a few of my China blogposts on their site, starting with my Nightbus to Wuhan series. I think this is the first time anyone had asked to do this with any of my posts so I was high fiving the air with great satisfaction. Then it turned out they proclaimed to have a million unique visitors a week or something ridiculous, so I started dreaming of Chinese book tours and speaking appearances, I could be like the alive guys who crashed in their plane in the mountains somewhere and ate people kebabs, I would travel the country telling of my near death travel experience, which would mean more buses, and more 47hr long bus trips, oh the joy.
Actually I needn’t have got too excited, the sites not sent a single referral back to the zig (at least when I wrote this, which was on the 4th April, I’m queuing content and everything now, the zig has gone pro) and there’s only been one comment on there which is about tying a cow to a bus, I think it’s sophisticated new spam, I mean who wouldn’t approve a comment about a cow tied to a bus? Sneaky spammers. Its possible the comment was more entertaining than my article.
Anyway, while I was over there stalking myself, I started looking at the job section and came across this gem of an ad. Equal Opportunities law has not quite arrived in China yet, I circled the requests that would be slightly frowned upon um, just about everywhere.
Well at least I know I needn’t bother applying for that job which is a shame because I’m extremely qualified for it, being at least 170cm.
Greetings from shiny happy Hong Kong. We finally made it out of frozen China, securing a flight from amongst the hundreds of thousands of people trying to get somewhere for the Chinese New Year. We passed Guangzhou train station one day after the riots that saw a crowd of 100,000 people storm the police barriers and run for the trains. We saw a few near riots when we were in Xi’an station (one fucker swiping my wallet, which had only 50eur or so and no cards in it though), luckily those amazing scenes are now a fading memory and we’re heading onwards and upwards (well if you cheat and turn around and face south).
Hong Kongs really interesting, like a sort of Diet China….
The day started like any other, an ignored 7:30am alarm call, arriving several hours later at 11am, forgetting to read the time of the last shuttle to the Great Wall, missing the last shuttle by 30minutes, sitting disappointed on the steps revelling in our laziness and deciding what else to do with the day, and the plan for our second try the next day.
“The guide book says if we had four people its only 400rmb a day to hire a taxi. We need to find two other people”, I said.
“hello, do you speak english?”
Bingo!
I look up to see two Asia men, one has just hit the other and they are both laughing hysterically at the stupidity of asking us if we speak English.
“Yes, a little I reply” making the international symbol for a little with my thumb and index finger.
“Ah okay, we would like to go to the great wall, do you know which route we have to take?”
(If I was an expert on Great Wall travel information would I be sitting on a step holding a Great Wall map looking disappointed, 30mins after the last bus).
So after explaining to them that they like us are lazy, and too late, we tried to coax them into sharing a taxi between the four of us. They’re not keen. “But Chinese people will try to trick us, they try to steal things from your stomach!”
“You mean kidneys?”
“Yeah, yeah your kidneys, we heard stories before we came here about it.”
“Geez, Korean people are a little paranoid. Maybe in the past, but the Olympic Games is here in half a year I think they’ve progressed a little since the kidney stealing days of the past, maybe out in the middle of nowhere but in Beijing, in a registered texi, I’m pretty sure we’ll end the trip with both kidneys.”
Slowly after long negotiations with the taxi driver, many repetitions of exactly what we wanted we managed to convince the Koreans that it was safe to get into the car. The 1hr journey passed easily, spent bonding with Hu and Jo:
“Are you man and wife?”
“No, but we’re a couple”
“Ah, so are we (trying to hug Hu, both laughing). We met during Military service in Korea, we are macho men.”
“What job did you do during your Military Service?”
“We did paperwork”
“Oh, very macho paperwork I bet”
We discussed my love of Korean Cinema and Korean Electronics, what age you get married at in Korea (usually around thirty), that Korea is nothing like China in a 100 and one ways that make it definitely better and explore the never ending depths of Korean Paranoia:
“You’re from England? Very Dangerous there, lots of racists. My friends were in Mcdonalds in London and people……threw trash at them. Not a safe place. People there look down on the yellow people. ”
“You’re from Germany? Oh, also very dangerous many hooligans there!”
I just hoped the Great Wall was still hooligan free or we’d have to hide the Koreans in the boot. Hu and Jo were hugely entertaining, taking nothing seriously, always laughing, joking and playing, it was like travelling to the Great Wall with two Labrador puppies. As the Great Wall came into site and we pulled into the car park there was a Korean car orgasm of oohs and aahs, which only increased as we began the climb up the wall. They entertained us all the way, if there was a tunnel they were running through it, they took photos every step both on the way up and down of them in a variety of poses – I’m superman, I’m a dog running on all fours, I’m muscle man, they had boundless energy and soon raced off well ahead of us taking photos at a rate of one memory card full a minute.
The wall was everything that we’d be told and more, stunning. The photos will describe it better than I could even try. I still had a fever, but tried valiantly to complete the ascent, not helped by having a really bad throat and cough, being a mouthbreather, having no breakfast, and being very lazy by nature. I was soon overtaken by an waddling, overweight, middle-aged woman as I lay flat out on my back frantically hunting for just a little more oxygen, Annett forcefeeding me cake. Annett graciously walked at my pace, pretending that she had more gears to walk faster, if she wasn’t such a good girlfriend and required to water and feed her wiltering plant.
As we neared the top Hu and Jo came bouncing back down. “We’ve been cheated!” they said angrily. “This is the not the Great Wall”. “Looks like it to me, its a wall, stretches as far as the eye can see and there’s a rabble of Mongolians trying to destroy it on that side.” “No it cant be it just stops up there, the taxi driver tried to cheat us”. We check the guide books, the wall should stop, Annett and I are not convinced anything is wrong but we had back down to the taxi. The Macho Men Koreans have raced ahead to declare war in the car park. Turns out this is the other Great Wall spot, not the main Badaling area where everyone goes. We confront the driver, who speaks no English, or Korean, or German, or Spanish which is all we have in our language arsenal, but we deduce that the driver wants another 50rmb (5eur) to go to Badaling as we spent two hours here already. Hu reaches into his jacket pocket to pull out not his kidney, but a mobile phone. He calls his friend who speaks Mandarin, recital of Korean War and Peace begins, minutes pass……Phone handed over to Taxi Driver, recital of Mandarin War and Peace begins, minutes pass……Taxi driver says well you have to pay. Annett fumes, I do my version of fuming (a slightly quizzical raise of the eyebrows), the Koreans who we later find out are the softest people on the planet and will do anything to avoid conflict want to pay. Annett and I refuse. Phone passes back to Hu, who discusses our refusal to pay again with his friend. Days and Weeks pass. Phone is passed back to driver. Year pass, I’m losing the will to live, a few more hairs and my patience, phone is handed back to Hu, minutes pass. We ask very clearly and strongly that the person on the phone tells the driver exactly this:
“You are trying to cheat us, we wont pay you a penny more, take us to Badaling or we’re getting the bus back to Beijing and you get nothing”. But we suspect after the no-conflict for Koreans chat that what ends up being given to the driver is
“Thank you for your kind and gracious offer Mr Taxi Driver sir, good day to you. Please hold whilst we discuss this tremendous opportunity for you to take some more of our money with our new international friends”.
Many minutes pass. We walk away. He follows. I give up, it’ll be dark if we don’t get moving soon, the Koreans would pay for our whole 5mnth holiday if we so much as asked and it avoided an argument, hell will have to freeze over before Annett will budge, I offer 30rmb which is less than 10% of the overall 300rmb fare and we got two extra hours for it, deal is done and we’re moving again.
We arrive at Badaling. Relations with the taxi driver have soured, he now wants 200rmb of the 330rmb upfront before he will drive us back to Beijing in-case we don’t come back down from the wall to his taxi. I’m going to throw myself off the damn wall, ideally I’ll land on his stupid taxi. The Koreans will happily pay. Annett and I make you’ll have to pry it out of our cold dead hands look and he settles for Jo’s jumper as a partial deposit. Why he thinks I’ve a strong enough emotional attachment to Jo’s jumper that would stop me getting the bus back I don’t know, but the deal is done and we can go. Relieved we get out of the car, angry at the Taxi Driver. Then I turn and Jo’s slipping him a 10rmb note as a tip, presumably as he is feeling guilty at not giving him his trousers as well.
The view is much better at Badaling, the wall sweeps across the mountain side as far as the eye can see, but there’s also about 800x as many people, a Starbucks, hawkers a-go-go, and luckily as I was physically dead from the climb at the last area – a cable car.
We did return to the taxi, tired and awaiting the next chapter in the Great Wall Taxi Korean Fiasco. But the journey back was relatively smooth and quiet, we pass the time with such culturally nourishing topics as
“This is a strange question, but we use this word a lot in Korea, what is the correct way to pronounce shit?”
“shit”
“Ah, shit!” (Both repeat it a few times)
“What is it in Korea?”
Shebar (Shebarrr). The r adds emphasis. (We practice)
Its Schiesse in Germany. (Both repeat it a few times) . Oh I like that, sounds powerful (Repeating it again).
On arriving back I pay, the taxi driver then gives me 5rmb back that I shouldn’t have and I wonder if the whole “you have to pay me more now” was not a con but a loss in translation. Either way we got to the Great Wall despite our laziness and had great fun with our new Korean friends and kept both kidneys, which feels like success at that point.
Sorry for the lack of posts lately, I greatly like writing them and less like leaving my notepad in Wuhan with at least three finished posts that i cant remember to rewrite. But now we are in Beijing, Annett the master klutz managed to flick her glasses off her head with her own finger, smashing the lens which we have to wait 4 days to be replaced. But it turns out the roads and train are still closed because of the weather, so we have no choice but to wait it out or buy a 200eur flight. I think we’ll do a little of both.
Anyway:
1. China’s freaking huge
Hands up who didn’t pay attention in geography class (raises hand) . Its mindbogglingly huge. China’s that playground kid who does share his toys, is there any possible reason why a country should be this big? I know you and the Mongolians have been noisy neighbours in the past, but why not show them a little love baring in mind 90% of their country is uninhabitable anyway due to the cold. Or give me a little land down near Thailand so I can open my long planned ‘Pieland’ the worlds first pie encrusted country. As ask any English man, nothings as good as when its in a pie.
Just crossing a small fraction of China the colossus is mind-numbingly painful. Want to hop to the next city? No problem sir, you can take the train that will just take 76hrs. I’ve heard of long-distance trains, night trains, china has going to rob you of your entire youth trains. They’re not journeys, they’re full blown pilgrimages.
2. Labour costs are looowwww in china
No wonder everything in the world is made here. There’s an astounding amount of people employed to manage a task here. Do you really need 8 people to run that hotdog stand? I see you’ve had to add a layer of hierarchy and employ a manger wearing a slightly better uniform just to keep track of whose turn it is to rotate the hotdog next. I’m not an economist but is it wise to have your staff outnumbering your product? I used to have a only shop in places where the customers outnumber the staff rule in Europe. Here that would mean I could shop in my bed, and the shower.
To put things in perspective I was told that the average wage for a hotel worker where we were staying in Xian was 600rmb, or 60eur a month. At that rate you can see why they have so many staff everywhere, human labour is a negligible cost.
3. Its cold in winter
I’m not sure how it is normally, but Annett and I arrived full of optimistic smiles and tshirts smack bang into the middle of the worst Chinese weather for 50years. The country has ground to a halt. Imagine China is so hungry every-ones about to eat their own fingers, then someone announced there’s a train sized loaf of bread just pulled into the train station, then you’ll have some of the idea of the chaos that awaited us at Xian train station, it felt like the city was being evacuated. Today was a warm record for our trip so far, 0′c and our first glimpse of the sun in two weeks. Our minibus skidded twice in a circle on the motorway back from the Terracotta Warriors, we luckily missed the central reservation but passed at least 5 cars who weren’t so lucky. This bus I managed to get a picture of managing to miss its bridge:
I’ve experienced brain freeze whilst eating ice cream, but here you can randomly get it walking down the street. The result is momentary bewilderment and a questioning of why the hell you came to China in the first place when there are so many places not located in the frozen section of the world supermarket.
4. Chinese people are lacking in our idea of interpersonal skills
Who just burped in my ear? Ah thanks guy behind me in the queue, but I didn’t order any dessert. As I said in the bus post, these guys are a torrent of odours and saliva, if there’s a hole that something can come out of it will with great frequency everywhere you go in China, there is no notion of privacy here.
5. You haven’t driven until you’ve driven in China
The whole country’s one big banger race. Its just a destruction derby and don’t worry innocent pedestrians you can play too! The red/man green man guide is just a system to help line up the pedestrians into groups to make it easier for passing buses to mow them all down without having to swerve. When driving the horn is your voice, your lover, your battle cry it can say anything from “good day sir” to “coming through” to “get out of the fucking way” to “i’m going to kill you skinny white man, oh yeas I am, just watch me!”. Car doors open only to allow car drivers to spit more easily, as taxi drivers don’t appear to ever get out of their taxis judging by the smell and trash, except maybe to kill or mame fellow drivers not following the horn blowing rules.
But even more amazingly, in some sort of chaos theory, anarchic way it sort of works. Everyone is expecting the unexpected at all times, and they can react to the ever changing mess of cars and pedestrians wriggling around in-front of them. Nothing quite grinds to a halt despite the tidal wave of people at every street corner waiting to come crashing into the six lane wide road the second there is a glimmer of space.
6. The food is actually not that bad.
Sure if you want to you can swim out the “here be monsters” deep end of Chinese cuisine, to find such delights as sheeps face, fish head, dog etc etc. But actually sticking to menus that have pictures I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the food, perhaps a year of German “chinese food” has helped in lowering my expectations. We only made one mistake ordering “crude chicken” from one English menu. I hoped it was just the translation that was crude, but oh no jackpot time, i’ve had ago at guessing the recipe:
1. Take whole chicken (dead or alive)
2. Fry chicken
3. Add Spit, belch and fart as required for flavouring.
4. Fry some more (actually a lot more)
5. Remove and throw against wall
6. Scoop up shattered chicken parts and serve
I held my first whole fried chickens head in the grip of my disbelieving chopsticks. I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t have the balls to eat walters head (he has a face, so its only right he have a name), or even feet. But I did pick away at what other part of walters body scared me the least.
7. Chinas not an easy place to travel in
- You want to host the Olympic what now? hahaha I thought you said Olympics for a minute there! I have absolutely no faith that they can manage the olympics, from what I’ve seen from the bus nightmare they can barely manage a bridge. They speak the least english of anywhere I’ve ever been, most of the time asking for help will result in people just laughing in your face. Their interpersonal habits would only win a medal in the “least welcoming to the western world” event. There’s just no space here for the estimated 6m people who will come to Beijing for the Olympics, at present they have 600,000 beds available. Its the heart of off-season here, sometimes we don’t see a westerner for days yet the basic things like booking train tickets, finding taxis, finding anyone who can help us with anything, negotiating the purchase of orange juice is bafflingly difficult. Chinese people are not unfriendly, but at the same not exactly all hugs and kisses either and I’ve lived in Germany for a year, I’m comfortable resting my head on a cold shoulder.
8. I still really like it here and would recommend it.
Its hard. Its nowhere near relaxing. You wont make friends for life. The weathers harsh. But everything here is an experience. Usually a hard experience. But isn’t that what we signed up for? This place is a riot, its endlessly surprising, challenging, shocking, entertaining and for rare moments when it shows its real face to you, when the sun is shining even breathtaking.
I’m glad we did it first, everything will be easier after backpacking in China, I just hope it doesn’t feel too easy.
This breaks the order a little bit, but it turned out to be an eventful stage in the trip so i’ll post this now while its fresh in my memory and then work backwards to Shanghai and the general china posts later. I’m sitting in the bunk of a Chinese night-bus. Its my first time on a night-bus, i’ll describe the scene for you:
Ever wondered what its like to be a chicken in a chicken coop? You should ride the Chinese night-bus. A mere 20euros will secure you a prime coop for 14 hours of fun all the way from tongkau to wuhan. None of the freedom of free range here sonny, exhaling is strongly discouraged.
Its a normal sized bus, split into three rows. Each row has 7 sets of top and bottom bunk beds with metal frames. Your legs go under the head of the person in front and the back of the bed archs upwards to create a pocket of space for the person behinds legs and feet to fit. In total about 45 of us are on the bus. The aisles are so narrow that I have trouble walking down them and i’m almost so thin i’m 2d. Fat people are not welcome on the night-bus, not that china seems to have any. I’m lying under the green standard issue night-bus duvet. The duvet smells of death, chinese death (cigarettes, and fatty food). When I say lying, i am in fact lying. In England I’m only noticeably tall, because i’m even more noticeably thin, the two combined emphasising each other making people want to buy me a warm meal or two. But in China i’m 2inches or so below the put in a cage and poke with sticks height. My height has caused no real problems in China until now. Climbing into the bunk I feel like that little folding guy in Oceans 11. Perhaps George Clooney will wake me up during the trip to take part in a heist at the mirage. The bunks not designed for anyone over the dizzy heights of 5ft 10′, lying with my legs straight is impossible. I got cramp just looking at the bunk. Climbing in well…let me see if i can just…that’s it…a little more….legs back tiny bit…..wrap them round my head….hip bones connected to my thigh bone…do the hokey kokey….success! Only the third least comfortable I’ve ever been in my whole life. To my right is a window (i’m in the right hand-row). I’m pretty sure its there for the amusement of people looking into to the bus at the passing freak show, than for ours looking out.
I don’t think we’re the most popular people on the bus. Perhaps because Annett has a psychological disorder that requires her to need the toilet two minutes after we waved goodbye to the last one. A clue should have been when I heard her practicing the mandarin word for toilet “cesou” repeatedly as she was getting into her bunk, before we’d even left the bus station, even though we only went to the toilet 10mins before we got on. The crew now look at us like we’re retarded, making such a big deal of signalling and verbalising exactly where the toilet was on the first pee break (her requested pee break) that I thought he was going to follow me, unzip and hold “it” for me, in case i missed.
The head of the crew is the driver, a Chinese version of john wayne, and his crew of 4 helpers. He’s missing the spiky star on the back of his heel, but i’ll forgive him. He looks like he and his crew have pounded rubber on these roads for century’s. We should be in safe hands, as Chinese roads are like nothing i’ve ever seen, “destruction derby” springs to mind (more on that in another post). None of them speak any english so lets hope whats to come is simple and straightforward.
We’re three hours or so into the journey, me, Chinese John Wayne, 40 or so passengers, and a ranting german girl on my left. “Chinese people are so disgusting” (no-one in China speaks a word of english it seems) she is shouting at the top of her voice, as the man in the bunk above spits into a carrier bag. Not a subtle spit, the full blown hock and release proudly sported by all Chinese people at 5 minute intervals. Theres a “better out than in” belief here in china so its totally okay to spit, burp and fart at will. Particularly spitting, they spit like we breath, that hooocking sound will be the sounds track to this journey as it has been to the past two weeks. The guy on her left snoring loudly and with enough conviction to make me think he would snore through an Armageddon. I’ve already heard the woman behind me burp and fart numerous times. The person behind her is one of those “phone people”, they frequent public transport the world over, you know the sort – i must take this phone call or the world will end. No I’m far to important to not have the volume set at maximum. Shes taken more calls in the last hour than I receive in a year. All she ever seems to say is “ar” (add a Chinese accent for effect), either shes friends with alot of dentists or she has a slightly limited vocabulary. I have a slightly limited patience.
In front is the road, another 11hrs or so of it, snaking through the Siberian like landscape (its freezing in China, there’s snow everywhere, more on that in a later post) resulting in us crossing a depressingly small chunk of China the colossus. Its time for me to count sheep. By the time I’ve counted my way through the baa’ing population of Wales we might be somewhere near Wuhan, the next stop in the China adventure.
I’ve been slow on the picture front, but Annetts flickr stream has raced ahead so you can see some pictures here.
Good news, we’re still alive! Bad news we’re 1/25th of the way through the trip. Volcano Schlenker still simmers without eruption. All is good. The first tick was in the box marked “Dubai”. Here is the review:
Of all the places to start the trip, Dubai was a excellent first stop. Its clean, simple and easy to travel around and not that much more of a culture shock than a trip to Brick Lane, if you throw in a little sand, water and religion. Its winter there so temperatures were a perfect 20′c or so at best.
You can’t possible fail to get up early enough to pray. They’ve been thoughtful enough to place deafeningly helpful audio reminders every few hours (or so it seemed). Especially for us, our hotel being located on the front steps of a mosque. Internet research paid off fruitfully here. We ended up smack bang in the heart of the center, of the most important, of the core, of the midst, of Dubai’s backside - in a Moroccan fort in the Old Town. A long way away from the oppressive luxury of the strip. We hardly saw any westerns around are hotel which was nice. They looked as surprised to see us as we looked surprised to not see more people like us. We were surrounded by the hustle and bustle of the little shops, stalls and daily trading. I’m not exactly sure how society there worked, but it seemed too so I kept quiet. I am sure that you shouldn’t balance that much on a cart, bicycle, our children, a lorry though. This place brings a new meaning to ”health and safety violation”.
The most surprising thing was the omnipresence of religion, and the almost total non-presence of women from daily life. If I can borrow language from my university days dubai is a ”sausage fest”. But very quickly you don’t notice that there you barely see women, that no women ever drive, that if you do see a woman you’ll only see her feet and eyes, that every man keeps staring at Annett, much to her annoyance. Its their culture, so you accept it. But i’m surprised that I was so comfortable with it, maybe because I wasn’t the one being oppressed and i’m a secret chauvinist or more likely because we were leaving almost as soon as we arrived, and they had beaches and cocktails and stuff.
The contrast between the old town and the rest was huge. Price wise about 500%, as we paid for our two mains and 5 drinks in our hotel the price of a side portion of rice in s restaurant overlooking the stunningly imposing “7 star” Burg al Arab hotel.
This is the conversation I had with a taxi driver on the way to the airport:
Me: Do you like Dubai?
Taxi Driver: No, not really.
Me: Why not?
Its not my country, even if I lived here for 100years it would still not be my country. I’m from Pakistan, one day I will return there.
Me: I read that’s the most dangerous place in the world right now?
Yes that is true. Many people killing each other. Its the Americans though that made my country more dangerous.
Me: I think the Americans make every country including their own more dangerous.
Yes, I think so too.
Me: I admire your patriotism.
And I did as well, particularly how he spoke about Pakistan. Since then I’ve been thinking about where home is for me, and hopefully one day i’ll speak about somewhere like he did Pakistan. Lets see.
In conclusion Dubai is the quintessential desert mirage. At first so promising and tempting. Then after you rub your eyes, theres nothing really there.
Now onward. We’re in Shanghai, its freezing, nearly literally, hovering around the 3′c or 4′c temperature mark. We packed for 23′c to 24′c so that left a little cold shock to the senses. More on Shanghai later, for now I’m hungry. Let me try and find some of that screaming monkey brain Alex was telling me about
Hey everyone, here is the first of many new the zig on the road posts. Its going to be shorter than the rest as I already wrote my Dubai review offline, but forgot to bring it with me today to the Internet Cafe. We’re now in Shanghai, its great. We prepared for 20′c and its about 4′c, but aside from thats its a fascinating city of chaos to get lost in. More to come. Hope your all well.
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Thanks for stopping by and sharing in some of my experiences from the memorable to the mundane.
I'm now living in Berlin, Germany and mostly working on The Hipstery.
