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.
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