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lisinan
Entry 3 of 20 | show all | print this entry |
i'm not spending a terribly long time in the north-east, but after arriving in haerbin yesterday (and with dalian in recent memory) i was beginning to wonder if it was time well spent. there are hardly any other backpackers/tourists here (and the few that are here are all russian) and i started to think that maybe there was a reason for that. but sometimes the universe just rewards you for being open to your surroundings.
i found my hostel without too much difficulty this time. lonely planet's bus instructions weren't totally correct this time either...but a lot closer. if i'd followed the instructions exactly i would have gotten off the bus one stop after the hostel and started walking in the wrong direction. thankfully, i noticed the hostel sign out the bus window and made it there just fine. i'm beginning to think that the woman who wrote the north-east province chapters of the lonely planet china guide never actually rode any of the bus routes she was writing about. the hostel is very bare bones...obviously geared at chinese tourists not foreign ones. the bed is as hard as a rock and the pillows are stuffed with some kind of small grain or pulse. there are three computers but they are always off. when i ask about the 'yintewang' (internet)...i only get small laughs and knowingly shaken heads in return. i think one time the woman at the desk tried to explain to me that the person responsible for the computers was asleep...they might want to check to see if he's dead. the hostel is five kilometres south-west of the city centre...but the buses are cheap and easy to use. it only really adds 20 minutes to whatever i'm doing...and it's the only cheap option in town.
haerbin actually draws more tourists in the dead of winter than any other time...even with temperatures that would scare the most hardened of canadians. the main attractions are the ice sculptures that go up during the winter festival (late january to early february)...apparently they are very elaborate and beautiful. at any time of the year haerbin's got an interesting russian influenced area called daoliqu...with a cobblestone pedestrianized street (zhongyang dajie), russian built buildings and the eastern orthodox church of st. sophia. zhongyang dajie runs right to the river which is lined by the unfortunately named stalin park. i found the whole area underwhelming at first...it's essentially become a shopping district and whatever allure the russian architecture might have had seemed to have been swallowed up by brand names and advertisements.
i was sitting on a bench on the edge of all the commotion trying to think of what to eat when a chinese man introduced himself to me in rough english. we proceeded to have a vaguely dysfunctional conversation in english (with the occasional word in mandarin here and there) aided by my phrasebook and his mobile phone...he has some motorola model with a touch screen and a mandarin to english dictionary. he would use his stylus to write the chinese characters and then have the phone translate it for him. he could even get the phone to speak the english word in case he didn't know how to pronounce it. i was amazed at the character recognition software...it almost always recognized the characters properly...and they're far more intricate than roman letters. it was all very pleasant until in response to my explaining where i was planning on going to next (wudalian chi) he started going on about wanting to help me buy tickets. i instantly assumed that the whole conversation had been about getting to this point...that he was, as so many have done before, attempting to butter me up so that he could get paid. normally i would have just gotten up, excused myself, and walked away...but for some reason i didn't. i let him call his 'friend' to find me a bus ticket. it turned out that his friend couldn't get me the ticket and that i would have to go to the bus station...my new friend assured me that he would come with me. his constant assurances 'not to worry, please don't worry' had the opposite effect. but still i let myself be carried along, walking with him to a bus stop to get back to the train station (the bus station being right across the street). he paid for my bus ticket...only one yuan, but still my worry increased. i started to feel a little better when he brought me to the actual bus station and not some travel agency where he would get a commission. and then he acted as translator for me to buy my bus ticket...the cost of which was exactly what it was supposed to be. i started to think that maybe he really was as he presented himself...someone who simply wanted to help a visitor to his city and country out and make sure that everything went smoothly. i told him that i might as well buy my train ticket back to beijing that i would need later while we were here...he gladly acted as my translator again, and again everything went as it should.
i learned that his name was lisinan and that he was 26. he asked me if i was hungry (i was starving at this point). he said that he wanted to take me out for dinner...i explained that i was vegetarian (chisu de) and while he thought it was weird he gladly accepted the fact, and even ate the same food as i did. he took me somewhere i never would have gone on my own and ordered us both dumplings and pickled vegetables and a thin corn meal soup of some kind. he refused to let me pay for anything. he showed me the money in his pocket (to assure me that i wasn't wiping him out) and told me that when he was in canada then i would have to pay for everything. next stop was to visit his mother in a nearby hospital...a clinic that dealt only with eye injuries. he stopped to buy her food on the way. i must admit to feeling suspicious again at this point, wondering if this was the endgame...showing me his ailing mother and asking for monetary help. but it quickly became apparent that i was being unkind. his mother was friendly, offering me milk and fruit from her own personal stash under her hospital bed. i sat and waited while lisinan talked to his mom and gave her her dinner. i was obviously the topic of a discussion among all the people sharing the room (6) that i had no way of understanding. as we left lisinan explained that his mother had told him to stop visiting her and to go and show me the sights!
so he showed me around some more...by this time it was dark and i discovered that daoliqu is far more interesting at night...everything was lit up and energized...and the russian influence had come alive somehow...zhongyang dajie felt almost european in a way that it hadn't during the day. lisinan brought me to a pool hall and we played pool while waiting for one of his friends to arrive (a woman who's name i can't remember), after which we all went to the church of st. sophia...was is a major nighttime hangout spot it turns out. the square around the church was packed full of people playing the chinese version of hacky-sack. it's pretty much the same but the 'sack' is a strange amalgamation of beanbag, badminton birdie, and lawn dart. since his friend had arrived lisinan had become less interested in struggling through english with me...and as i was getting quite tired i sensed it was a good time to make my exit. i said goodbye to them both and they saw me off on a bus back to the train station (where i would catch another bus to get back to my hostel).
so a day that had started with a sense of listless uncertainty turned into one of exploration, both physical and cultural. but the transformation only occurred because i left myself open to it. though wary of the situation, i gave it a chance to become other than what i suspected it to be.
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