51 Days Later... What we thought? (A LONG burble!)
Trip Start
Sep 01, 2007
1
56
58
Trip End
Oct 22, 2007
Hong Kong,
China
Sunday, October 21, 2007
When Annie and I were setting off on this adventure we expected to be going off to a land and culture completely different and foreign from anywhere else we had been before. This was enough to fill us with emotions such as excitement, anticipation, a bit of nervousness and a touch of apprehension.
Imagine our surprise that, over the last 51 days of travel, not only has it not been as foreign as we were anticipating but rather lots if things were far from foreign, some even familiar and, amazingly, we recognised similarities between China and Africa on a number of occasions!
It also seems that, wherever you are in the world, the same rules apply; if you can't speak the language of the land you should be able to smile, learn to greet and thank people in their own language, be able to laugh out loud at yourself (a lot!) and be able to use a form of hand signal and smiling sign language that crosses all barriers, language or otherwise.
Over the course of this trip we really have been lucky enough to meet some amazing people who have been friendly and helpful regardless of the fact that the only words we can say to each other in each other's language are "Hello", "How are you" and "Thank you". Sadly not everyone has been of this nature and temperament so we have had a few not so pleasant experiences. These range from the pick-pocketing and attempted mugging experiences of Ulaanbaatar to some surely hotel staff and restaurant waitresses. I guess this is common of most countries and especially big cities but not fun to experience when it happens in such a foreign land. Thankfully these have been somewhat few and far between and far less memorable than the fun experiences like the fish hotpot restaurant in Lhasa where none of us could understand each other but we still managed to have the most delicious meal or the wonderfully helpful ladies of Moon Mountain who went off and got me a bamboo stick so I could "see" down the many hundreds of stairs. I could go on but would only be repeating what you may have already come across earlier in the blog. Suffice is to say there were FAR more happy, fun, friendly and helpful people and experiences than anything else.
Unfortunately though it also feels like China has moved from a society of equality in Communism, even though some were "more equal than others", to one of Dictatorship mixed with Capitalism. We were constantly surprised and amazed at the level of obedience and following of the rules to the letter. I guess that, given how new this move to the "new China" is, there is still a lot of the old Communist lifestyle bred and ingrained into people.
Amusingly but of great concern is what we discovered to be one of the most common questions asked by tourists visiting China, "Is that pollution or weather?". It is so often that you cannot see the sky, even though it is a really warm day, it looks like a dismal November day in London. The guides usually say it is weather related but when you are in Beijing, Chengdu or any of the many other factory filled cities there can be little doubt that it is pollution. I know there is much concern about the Beijing 2008 Olympics and the air quality. With the façade that the Chinese are so good at portraying, I am sure they will shut down all industry and traffic in Beijing and wherever else necessary to have a blue-sky fortnight for the Olympic Games. The future of the country and environment is a much greater concern and one I really hope China will address soon. It is scary the level of pollution. We did not drink ANY water that was not either out of a bottle bought in a shop or boiled in the kettle in our room or somewhere we could see the kettle. The pollution was also evident whenever we scraped or cut ourselves, it took a lot longer than normal to heal and, without antiseptic ointment, the smallest ones would become inflamed and angry in the course of just a day.
There are also some not so nice aspects to China and the Chinese people that we have experienced which we have learnt that many other travellers and even local people feel the same about:
· ; The first is the guides who are assigned to us. Sadly for them they are "programmed" so have very little ability to think outside the itinerary that they have been given. Mostly they are young and pretty inexperienced, throughout our travels we did not see any guides, be they with Western or Chinese groups, who looked over the age of about 35! This annoys a lot of travellers and, us included, end up firing guides or telling them off which is a real shame, they do want to help, they just don't know how. Thankfully we did have a few with a bit more of a free-thinking spirit so we got to experience real life on a number of occasions.
· ; The second is hygiene. It is astounding how people who can conjure up such delicious food, create such enormous monuments, build bridges, roads and buildings that rival those of any other country, cannot lift their level of hygiene! From the toilet tirades I have written about to the men and women, often including the well dressed ones, who are constantly making the most disgusting hawking noises ending up with spitting into the street or wherever they happen to be. We had this everywhere from trains to taxis, Shanghai to Tibet and everywhere else we ventures. I have mentioned Paul Merton's TV travel around China, during which he said that the same man was following him around China making these noises. Well, it seems he left Paul and, after fetching his wife, followed us! Surely China you can do something about this?!
· ; Another topic of conversation amongst travellers we met was the extreme variances in price for the same thing in so many places, mostly food and drink. It is definitely not the actual monetary value in Dollars or Pounds that is in question or even under discussion but rather how certain foods and drinks can vary so greatly from one place to the next. The best examples are water, coffee, beer, the staple dish of noodles with veggies or an equivalent local meal and, strangely enough, having your laundry done in the hotels. Taking the currency as a unit rather than the specific currency it is as this is a worldwide phenomenon that tourists and travellers discuss, complain about or are even shocked by. We paid anywhere from 2.5 to 10 for the same bottle of water, coffee is a real luxury so can be London prices or higher. As a great comparison - in Lhasa we went for coffee one day and paid 120 for the two of us while in an evening we could go for a delicious meal and pay just 56 or 60! Meals themselves could be extremes too, from the amazing fish, veggies and beer of Dali for just 38 to a lousy tourist-trap of a stir fried meal in Xian that even the guide only considered so-so for a whopping 120. Finally there's beer; we drank and enjoyed the local variety wherever we went and a giant 600 millilitre bottle cost from an amazing 2.5 in a great Beijing restaurant to a whopping 35 in Hong Kong! Anyone travelling for more than a few days is likely to need to have some clothes washed, the difference from one hotel to the next can be mind and pocket boggling, we paid so many different prices to clean the same garments it is almost laughable. This is another topic we heard discussed a number of times with other travellers. Like anywhere, people see tourists as "rich pickings" and will do their best to make a quick buck. That said, the value of our currency, in general, went an incredibly long way so this cannot be a complaint, just an observation of some sort.
· ; The last one I'll mention (before I sound like a whinging traveller) is the modern, 20- and 30-sommething year old Chinese. We managed to have conversations, via our guides, with a few middle-aged and older people and it is clear how sad they are that the young are ignoring tradition in pursuit of money and materialistic gains. As I said already, this is hardly surprising given that China is such a fast-emerging Superpower of industry, finance and the world in general. As a result, there are MANY giant shops and shopping areas all bigger and noisier than the last, blaring out music at ear-bashing decibels and showing giant size TV's in a bid to attract the customers in to buy their wares. This is no different from any emerging population in a state of revolution, it's just happen at such an incredible rate I wander where it will end?!
I am sure that not everyone sees the African Chinese similarities so here's what we saw, mostly based on our personal experiences of South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and the rest of the Southern African countries that we have visited:
· ; China, like Africa, is a boiling pot of opportunity, anyone who has a good idea and an entrepreneurial spirit will be in heaven. It only takes half of one percent of the Chinese people to make 1.3 million people, imagine having a product that 10 percent of the Chinese people want?! I hope to come up with that one day :-)
· ; A similarity that no country wants but is really easily evident is the widening gap of the rich and the poor. From the gleaming giants of Shanghai to the dusty homes of many a city suburb or countryside village tells this story. It is amazing how many people live in homes where the kitchen is either a small stove or, for the more fortunate ones, a small out-building housing the luxury of a fridge. Most of these same people share a bathroom and toilet not just with their courtyard neighbours but rather with an entire block of homes and families. These are the luxuries we saw in the old "Hutong" neighbourhoods of Beijing, we saw far worse in the smaller villages around the country.
· ; Another interesting similarity was in the education and speaking of English. Our guides were very proud about the fact that they had spent 4 years at university learning English including language, grammar, literature, history and anything else they could. Sadly, it seems that unless they were one of the really fortunate students to have a foreign lecturer with an English speaking background, their grasp and understanding of the English language is at a very basic level. One of the most notable being the mixing up of the sexes when talking about him or her, she or he, this is equally common in Africa.
With all of these and other observations they are just that, observations and NOT criticisms, I wish I had such a poor grasp of Chinese, Zulu or any of the many other languages we have been lucky enough to hear on our travels around the world!
Wow, this turned into a VERY long burble of thoughts and opinions but remember, that's all they are, my thoughts and opinions, not necessarily fact or things you agree with me on, that's the great thing about the Internet, it gives us all a platform to write, vent, suggest or just burble about stuff that we want to.
