Wednesday 8 May 2013

As Far As It Gets





The sun will go down in another hour or so. It's the same time of day my brother and I would cruise around our neighborhood on our Diamondback dirtbikes, enjoying the taste of young freedom before our mother would call us home for dinner. Here on a concrete square on the other side of the world, in between the buildings of Kunming in the Yunnan province of China, young children with basketballs, slingshots and plastic bows and arrows giggle and jump all over each other. Their mothers haven't called them inside yet.


I've been in China for three weeks now - country number 57 of my lifetime. I remember while planning my trip, my cousin told me, “China might be the only place I've ever been where you may seriously need a guide.” His words remained in my head as I deplaned in Beijing, wondering what awaited me. Hong Kong hadn't been too difficult, but I knew mainland was likely to be another story. And since I'm here to tell stories...

April 18th, 2013

The difficulty didn't take long to present itself as I punched my pin into the ATM keypad and up came several options, all written in Chinese. I looked around and summoned the nearest person in hopes that she might be able to guide me through the options. She shook her head and shrugged in apology. This was the first time of MANY that I would find myself surrounded by the proverbial language barrier. After a lap around the airport to locate the one English-option ATM, it was time to get moving. So imagine my surprise as I arrived at the dark, empty ticket booth of Airport Express, the train I counted on taking to my accommodation. Apparently, it stopped running at the same time my plane landed. Time to queue for a taxi, right? Well, my taxi driver did not understand a lick of English, the language in which my address was written. Needless to say, my turbulent arrival in Beijing was an excellent introduction to what was to come.

I decided my first day in Beijing should be low-key. I would run some much-needed errands at the nearby mall, enjoy a nice meal, and do some research on the city to decide how I would like to spend the following days. I passed a Starbucks and MacDonald's on my way into the mall, and laughed a bit to myself at how many westerners sat inside. “Why do people travel all the way across the world and choose the same hang-outs they have back home?” I wondered. I've always thought that was a little bit ridiculous.

Two hours and seven unsuccessful attempts to eat lunch later, I found myself at the Starbucks counter, pointing to a tuna sandwich with an answer to my question and an unavoidable breath of laughter escaping my nose. Not only were there no English menus in any of the restaurants I went to, but I was also unable to identify enough of the ingredients in the pictures I saw to be sure I wasn't ordering beef, pork or something else that would scare the lights out of me when I found it in my soup. I had some humble pie for dessert.



I did eventually find some menus with “Chinglish”, and reading them often brought me to tears with laughter. Skype conversations with my parents almost always included me repeating what I read on a menu, eliciting an eruption of my mother's contagious laughter.
**
"Sauce detonation cowboy bone sand pot rice"... ?
                     




















Food never ceased to be an issue for me. I'm not a vegetarian,but I don't eat red meat, pork or onions and I don't enjoy fried food...and I came to CHINA! (Insert very sarcastic tone and rolling eyes.) No matter how carefully I studied Mandarin food vocabulary, there were often surprises. It took about ten days before I concluded that it would be “Socialismo, pork or muerte!” I bid farewell to my dreams of fresh fruit and yogurt for breakfast and accepted that rice noodle or pork dumpling soup would be my new morning companion. I can't say that I got used to all of the things I saw on menus and on display. Even high-end restaurants offered fried dragonflies, grubs and other insects, and you can believe that I developed lightning-fast dexterity for page-turning when I would stumble upon the pictures of these options.

The language barrier presented itself again and again, sometimes at moments most unexpected. Chinese women use pads, not tampons, and just like back home, there are several types from which to choose. The differences described on the packages aren't particularly clear to a non Mandarin-speaker. All I could do was laugh when I discovered I would need to learn the Mandarin word for “underwear store” so I could purchase some new drawers to fit the diaper-sized pads I had accidentally purchased.

My Chinese adventure changed quite a bit when I travelled to the southwestern province of Yunnan, down near the Tibetan border. Back in October I became quite close with a Shanghainese girl who I spent two weeks trekking with in Nepal, and we agreed to travel together for part of my time in China. Once we met up, I not only understood menu options, but was able to ask the million questions I had about this culture that was so foreign to me. One day we were taking a walk in Shangri-La (which, by the way, Chinese spell “Xianggelila” in Engrish.) I was excited to find a popcorn vendor and bought a big bag so Maggie, her friend and I could share it. Both of them declined when I offered the bag. “Aren't you afraid to have so much popcorn?”, Maggie asked. “Uh, no. Why?” “Because you can get cancer.” Her friend nodded in solemn agreement. It's amazing what you learn about different beliefs when you spend time away from home.



We had a lot of good laughs, sometimes because of my developing Chinese, and other times because of Maggie's explanations. One afternoon in Lijiang I saw an interesting-looking menu written in Mandarin outside a cafe. I asked Maggie what it said. “They have different types of wine.” she explained. She pointed to one of the options. “This one is to celebrate losing your vaginity!” she exclaimed. Aaaaaand a new word was born.

I've always gotten a thrill out of visiting places that feel different from home, and China was no disappointment. I'll admit that I won't miss having rice noodle soup for breakfast, and that on our last morning in Yunnan when I told Maggie I wouldn't mind having something different and maybe healthy, I didn't even bother to argue when she led me into MacDonald's for an Egg McMuffin. It somehow seemed significant – like my trip to China had come full circle.







On my last evening in Beijing, I thought about it all. China was a fascinating, confusing, dirty, hilarious test of patience. I loved it all and I was ready to go. I packed up my bag, went down to the nearest soup joint and ordered pork wontons like a well-adjusted visitor...and spent the next fifteen minutes picking out the large chunks of beef hidden in between the pork. China itself is like one big wonton, full of surprises.



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