Crossing over to the Cambodia

After six days of sun, sand and water in Thailand, I made my way to Cambodia. I took a bit of an unorthodox route. My last stop in Thailand was the island Koh Samet and after that, most tourists from there enter Cambodia via the southern coast. But as I only have 26 nights to travel and I wanted to get to see Angor Wat (which is in the north of Cambodia) as soon as possible, I decided to go via a less common border crosing called Nam Lek.

As this border crossing was not a common spot along the tourist trail, I persuaded a couple of Dutch backpackers to come with me. It helped me a lot because it meant that I woud not have to do the route by myself and it would help to share costs along the way.

So early in the morning we got off Koh Samet by boat. Once we got to the main coast, we shopped around for a minibus to take us to Characbruchtri, a transport transit city close to the border that was quite far away from where we were. The minbus tour operator charged us only 200 baht each (4 euros) for the minibus, but then it turned out that the minibus was full so he put us in a comfortable taxi, for the same price!

3 hours later, we arrived in Charabruchtri and had numerous taxi touts harassing us to get into their vehicles at overinflated prices (1000 baht) to the border. Being fed up with how they were all trying to rip us off, we went off for a walk in the hot sun exploring Chrabruchtri in the search of a cheaper mode of transport. It was tiring doing this because the sun was blisteringly hot and we had no idea where we were going because there was no map of the city in the lonely planet guidebook.

 After a while, a kind man picked us up and told us he would take us to the border for 300 baht in total. We quickly accepted the offer and jumped on to his pick – up truck. After an hour and a half of travelling, we arrived at the border crossing. We got out and paid the man 300 baht but the man wasn’t happy. A teenage girl helped interpret and told us the man wanted us to pay 1000 baht. We told her what we had initially agreed but the man would not have any of it.

So he tried to get other locals to help support his case including a police official, but nobody wanted to get too involved. As you can see, lawlessness is a common feature in Southeast Asia. In the end, we apologised and paid him an extra 200 baht. He grudgingly walked away.

After that, we went to get our Cambodia visas. We were led to a small, dirty room with a table inside taking up most of the space. An official and two ordinarily dressed men were sitting at it with all sorts of documents sprawled across the table.

We sat down, showed them our passports and they asked us 1100 baht. This is twice the actual price of the visa and the lonely planet guidebook warned us about this scam at the border. We asked if we could 700 baht, but the main man at the table simply smiled at us pleasantly and said it was not possible.

It felt very strange to be haggling with officials at the border crossing because normally you get a visa at a fixed price; nothing more and nothing less. And given the nature of the place we were sitting at: an untidy table in the small dirty room, did little to make us think we were in a real official building. It felt more as if we were negotiating a deal with the mafia!

As it turned out, they made us an offer we couldn’t refuse because we needed our visas to get into the country. Instead of 1100 baht, they asked us to pay only 1000 baht. How generous!

Once we were past that ordeal, we walked a bit and found ourselves stuck in a dirty, dusty poverty-stricken village. Dust paths were there instead of normal roads. Stalls were aligned on all sides, where people wore dirty clothes and children could be found running around half naked playing in the dirt and picking rubbish off the ground.

Quickly enough, we got into another taxi to get us to our final destination Battambang, a quiet riverside town. This time the cost was much cheaper; only 200 baht per person although we feel could have haggled the driver down further. My two Dutch friends and I put our backpacks in the boot and slipped into the back of the car.

When the time came to get going, the taxi driver just stood outside smoking and chatting with his friends. He was in no rush to go.  After 10 minutes waiting in an over-heated car, he got in and picked up three other men and a baby girl! One of them squeezed himself next to me and the other two men shared the front passenger seat with the baby girl. The taxi set off….what a journey!

We didn’t see any real roads for 3 hours. For the whole time, the taxi was racing along dust paths through the forest. Holes could be found everywhere but our driver was very good at dodging them. Every time he drove over a big bump, all over of us in the back would fly up and narrowly miss hitting the ceiling with our heads.

I was also exhaused from travelling so I tried to get some sleep along the way, but I kept on getting interrupted every time we hit a bump. Once we got to Battambang, we landed on real roads and started travelling much faster. We were so relieved to be on a real road again that I could hear my Dutch friends breathe a huge sigh of relief. That was one trip that certainly made me appreciate infrastructure!

First stop: Bangkok

Hello again, as you can see, I am back at blogging again. I didn’t write anything for the last 8 months because I had been kept very busy with teaching English and learning Chinese.  It was also very difficult to continue blogging because my blogsite was blocked by the “Great Firewall of China”.

But now I am back, so I am going to tell you about what I am doing now. I have just reached the end of my first year’s contract and I have been given one month’s contract break from work. As it is now absolutely freezing in Beijing right now, I decided to travel around South East Asia.

When I first started wandering around it, the first thoughts that came to my mind was that it was like a Mediterranean version of Beijing. The weather is warm and humid, the sun is shining, the people are laid-back, BUT everybody is Asian, the language is unfathomable and the roads are completely packed with cars. Throughout the day, the roads are constantly busy. Everybody is going somewhere on their car, scooter or Tuk-tuk (which is a the Thai version of a motor rickshaw). This makes life as a pedestrian quite risky.

More than a couple of times, I have had to cross a SIX lane road where there was no traffic lights or traffic warden except for a VERY VAGUELY painted zebra-crossing on the road. But of course, I couldn’t just walk across the road because every time I looked to my right, I could see an army of scooters and cars racing towards me.  So I just had to wait for the right moment to leg it to the other side!

Another thing that everybody should know when visiting Bangkok is that if ever you get offered help from stranger on the street, ONLY BELIEVE 20% of everything he says. I was on my way to see the Wak Samet, which is a majestic temple in the middle of the city, and I must have had at least three men stop me and ask me in a strong Thai accent “Wheeerrrr aaa youuu gooiing mai frenddd?”.

They are usually very open and friendly and start off by pointing out some interesting places to visit in Bangkok. But after telling them the temple that I currently going to, they would jump up and say “NOOO, mai Frrennd, it is closed today! The monks are sleeeeping! But you can go to this temple and I will take you there”. Then, they would point me their tuk-tuk and invite me to come with them.

According to the Lonely Planet guide, this is a very common scam.  A Thai stranger, usually well-dressed, comes to offer you help and then tells you fibs about how the place you are going to visit is closed.   Afterwards, he will take you somewhere else and get paid commission for it afterwards. So after I was harassed a couple of times, I just started ignoring strangers approaching me in Bangkok. It can get quite tiresome sometimes because everybody can see you are a tourist and everybody is trying to persuade you to go somewhere or do something just to squeeze some money out of you.

Apart from that, Bangkok is a really beautiful city.  Temples are dotted all over the place and they are really majestic, gorgeous places to visit.  I can’t transfer any of my photos of them now, but when I can, you will see them.

Take care for now!

Bridging the language gap

One of the reasons I was attracted to going to China was the challenge of learning Mandarin. I can speak French, German and Spanish fluently and I have even had experience of learning Estonian and Luxembourgish. So I am aware of the many difficulties one encounters when learning how to speak a foreign language. Learning Chinese, however, is ANOTHER KETTLE OF FISH….

Testing my memory

Firstly, Mandarin is completely different to any other language that I have ever learnt. One of the things that has made learning European languages relatively easy is that they share many words with very similar pronunciations. The French and Belgians say dangereux and the English say dangerous. The Germans say die Tür while I say door. The English say mustard and the Spaniards say mostaza. When I was learning Estonian, I even had it pointed out to me by a German friend that while the Germans say Zwiebel (meaning onion), the Estonians say Sibul. Indeed, this shows to what extent European languages have borrowed from each other!

However, you can’t find any of that in Chinese. The words used in Chinese are so different from those in European languages!  This makes the task of memorizing Chinese words doubly difficult. For instance, I keep on forgetting how to say the word for pineapple which is bōló. Instead, I always say lōbó. So to help myself remember how to say pineapple in Chinese, I try to visualise the spelling of the words bowling and lobster and tell myself pineapple in Chinese is more like bowling and less like lobster. By making weird associations such as these, I can remember Chinese words more easily.  As you can see, memorising Chinese words is a real mind trip!

“Toning” my language

Another distinguishing feature of Chinese is that it is a tonal language. This means that the Chinese use 4 tones and one ‘toneless’ tone to express the meanings of different words. For instance, if you say mā, you mean mother, if you say má, you mean hemp. Alternatively, if you say mă, you mean horse and if you say mà, you mean scold. If there is no accent on the vowel, it is a ‘toneless’ tone (visit www.nciku.com for audio examples). Not only does this mean that I have to learn what to say, but I also have to learn how to pronounce it. If I don’t, it can lead to some excruciatingly embarrassing situations….

During one of my Chinese lessons, my teacher was teaching me the prepositions for on, in, under, inside and opposite. To help me remember them, she showed me her belongings and taught me the words for mobile, pen, keys, book and bag. Then, she hid her belongings and I had to hunt around for them in the classroom. Whenever I found an object, I would have to say where it was e.g. The keys are under the table.

So I went around looking for her belongings and coming up with appropriate sentences. But after I had found her mobile, keys, book and bag, I still had difficulty finding her pen. So I gave up and asked her Where is your pen? by saying Nĭ de bī zài năr? But as soon as the words left my mouth, she went absolutely hysterical and turned her face to the whiteboard to stifle her laughter.

After about five minutes of this puzzling behaviour, she finally gave me a clue and I found the pen. Later on that day, still not understanding what had happenened, I asked one of my colleagues about it. She chuckled and told me that bĭ (third tone) means pen, whereas bī (first tone) is the word for vagina. So I as it turns out, just by using the wrong tone, I had just asked my teacher Where is your vagina?

One other thing that makes speaking Chinese difficult is that the pronunciation feels completely unnatural. The reason for this is that Westerners and Chinese use tones for different linguistic purposes. In Europe, we use tones to express our feelings. So if an English girl is angry, she will use a sharp, falling tone e.g. No! , whereas if she is surprised, she will use a rising tone e.g. Really? In Mandarin, however, people change tones all the time to express the meaning of different words. Hence, when hearing a group of Chinese speak to each another, it is easy for a foreigner to think that they are having an argument when in fact, they are probably just using many “angry” tones to communicate the meaning of certain words. As a result, I tend to struggle when making sentences in Chinese because I have to use tones that I instinctually do not want to express. Often, I just end up making a set of random gurgling sounds in a bid to make myself understood!

Another embarrassing incident occurred was when I was eating at a Chinese restaurant a few weeks ago. I was sitting at a table with some friends and one of them was a Chinese woman. We were served some delicious appetizers and after noticing the way she was ravenously eating the food, I tried to say It looks like you find it very delicious. However, instead of actually saying that, I ended up saying nĭ hěn hăo chi which means you look very delicious. This of course just caused an uproar of laughter at my table and her boyfriend wasn’t very impressed.

In spite of these faux pas, I still find communicating with the Chinese to be a real pleasure. Most of them don’t understand English and sometimes this means that I have to do quite a lot of finger-pointing to get my message across. But generally they are very helpful and hospitable. I have struck up a really good relationship with my local grocer who is a hyperactive man with a scary skullet. Even though my conversations tend to only be about very basic things, he always gives me a smile and a jolly old Nĭ hăo! (Hello!) whenever I pass by every day. Daily gestures such as these go far in making me feel welcome in China.

Have you ever had any funny misunderstandings when speaking in a foreign language?  What happened?

Feel free to leave your comments in the box below.

Pyromanialand

One of my strangest experiences has been celebrating the New Year twice in the same year.  The first time was in Luxembourg on the 31^st December 2009.  The second time was in Beijing on the 13^th February 2010.  Hearing people in China wish each other a happy new year felt weird.  It was as if my New Year celebrations had been extended over two months!

However, there are some major differences between the New Year celebrations in Europe and China.  Firstly, the date (as indicated above) is different.  In Europe, we use the Gregorian calendar which means that our New Year’s Eve is always fixed on the 31^st December and each year indicates the number of years we are living after Jesus Christ (eg. 2010 A.D.)

The Chinese, on the other hand, use the Lunar calendar.  For them, New Year’s Eve falls on the New Moon that is closest to the beginning of spring and it is fixed on a date in between 21^st January and 21^st February (depending of course when the New Moon takes place).  Each month in the Chinese calendar is measured in lunar phases, which implies that the first day of each month is always a New Moon.

Another distinction is that China New Year celebrations are not restricted to one night only:  they go on until the full moon, which is two weeks later.  As a result, most Chinese refer to this time of the year as the “Spring Festival”.

In the West, New Year’s Eve is a night when you go out with your friends, make merry and drink champagne.  In contrast, the Chinese New Year is a two-week holiday that is celebrated as a family affair, a time of reunion and thanksgiving. It is a time to honour ancestors, commemorate departed relatives and make sacrifices to Heaven and Earth and the gods of the household.  During this period, the Chinese congregate with their family and relatives and have a big family banquet on New Year’s Eve to acknowledge the presence of their ancestors.

Families also broom their houses before the New Year as it is considered a way of sweeping away bad luck that has been accumulated over the past year.  For dinner, they eat dumplings, lotus seeds, lychee nuts, tangerines and oranges, which are meant to symbolise wealth and good luck.  On New Year’s Day, children receive red envelopes decorated with gold symbols and filled with “lucky money” from their parents.  Everywhere decorations are hung wishing everyone good luck and prosperity and as red is considered a festive colour, you see an awful lot of it everywhere.  Below is one example, which is the front door of the apartment block that I am living in.  The characters on the door signify “Good luck and happiness!”.

Here are a series of lanterns that the Chinese put up on the fifteenth day of the Spring Festival.

2010 being the year of the tiger (one of the Chinese zodiac signs), you can also see many tiger pictures wherever you go.

But the biggest difference between New Year celebrations in China and Europe is definitely the number of fireworks that are lit. OH MY GOD, the Chinese LOVE their fireworks!

Men can be seen on the street lighting fireworks that shoot up in the air and explode into thousands of colours.  If they are not doing that, they are lining the pavements with long strings of bangers that look like two metre long red snakes.  Children are waving sparklers in the air with great wonder and excitement.  Many mothers stand back under shelters to keep an eye on their children and observe the festivities from afar.

Some fireworks, when lit, turn into exploding balls of white light on the ground.  Others just look like pieces of dynamite, which explode so quickly off the ground that you don’t have time to see where the remains went.  There is nothing aesthetically pleasing about them:  they are just designed to pierce your ear drums!

You also have to be cautious when walking outside.  A couple of times, I have had bits of cardboard fly into my face even when I was reasonably far away from the explosions.  As for air quality, there is NO air quality.  The fireworks create so much smoke that you can almost taste it when you go out.  Beijingers apparently refer to times like these as “foggy days”.  What a sense of irony!

Another striking difference between China and the West is that when the Chinese get started with their fireworks, they DO NOT STOP.  They go on exploding them for the duration of the spring festival!  I have heard so many fireworks explode over the past two weeks that I am convinced the Chinese are a born pyromaniacs!  Never in my life have I seen people be so enthusiastic about fireworks!

Personally, I love watching fireworks when they are for one night.  But when I have to hear them for two weeks solid (day and night), it can be excruciating.  During the day, the streets were so loud that it sounded as if drug gangs were emptying out rounds of machine gun bullets into a wall.  At night, I could only sleep if I was wearing earplugs.

The fireworks were also absolutely thunderous.  Some of the explosions were so loud that I felt genuinely shook up.  On top of that, all this noise triggered off the car alarms.  So the more fireworks I heard exploding, the more likely it was that they were going to be accompanied by an orchestra of ringing car alarms.

The fireworks, however, were at their loudest at midnight on New Year’s Eve.  OH MY GOD!  It was DEAFENING!  There was such a cacophony that I couldn’t even hear myself speak.  It really felt like being in a war zone.

BANG!  BANG!  BANG!  RATATATATATATATATATAT!  SCREEEEEEEEEECH!  CRACKLE!  POP!  CRACKLE!  POP!  RATATATATATATATATATATATATAT!  BANG!  BANG!

The way Chinese men go about setting off their fireworks is also interesting.  Back at home, generally speaking, we are bombarded with stories about people getting their fingers and hands blown off by fireworks and we are often told to take great care when handling firecrackers and so on.  As a result, people tend to take many precautions and if you see someone setting up a firework, it is more than likely that they will run as far away as possible once they have lit the fuse.

On the other hand, I believe that Chinese men would consider this wimpy.  After watching the way they behave, it seems to me as if New Year’s Eve is an opportunity for them to prove their manliness by acting as nonchalantly as possible when lighting an explosive.  Typically, a man will walk into the middle of the road, plant his box of 8×8 mega-fireworks on the ground and use his lit cigarette to light the fuse.   Then, once the fuse is burning, he will walk back to the pavement as slowly as possible as if what he had done was the most casual thing in the world!

Finally, it is without a doubt that the Chinese create more of a mess on New Year’s Day than the Europeans.   Here are the remains of fireworks that I found outside my apartment block the day after all hell broke loose.

Happy Chinese New Year!

A culinary (mis)adventure

Do you know what this is?

Nor did I when I saw it in the supermarket.  I saw quite a few of them around and thought there wasn’t any harm in trying one of them.  After all, what could be wrong with eggs that have a little colour on the shell?

So I bought a box of six.  Back home, I started cracking one of them open in order to make scrambled eggs.  I got the shock of my life when I saw this.

Have I just stumbled across a dinosaur egg?  Has this been stolen from some angry Mummy brontosaurus?

Wanting to make sure it wasn’t alive, I cracked more of the shell off to see what was inside.  I discovered what can only be described as an embryo.

As I was curious to see what a baby dinosaur looked like, I cracked off the rest of the shell to see what was inside.

After seeing this greenish paste oozing out, I almost lost my appetite!  I was still under the weird impression that I had bought a dinosaur egg from the supermarket, a bit like in the cartoon The Flintstones. After agonizing over what on Earth I had just cracked open, I threw the egg away and made myself some ham sandwiches for supper.

The next day, I inquired about this to one of my colleagues.  After a lot of giggling, she let me know that I had actually bought a duck egg.  Apparently, they are supposed to be a very common Chinese delicacy and are “most delicious when eaten with boiled rice and sesame oil”.

Euuurrrrrgh! How could that be “delicious”????

I asked my good friend Wikipedia how they were prepared and apparently, they are preserved by coating them in “a mixture of clay, wood ash, salt, lime and rice straw for several weeks”.  This explains why the “yolk becomes a dark-green cream-like substance with a strong odour of sulphur and ammonia while the white becomes a dark brown transparent jelly”.

I still had five of those eggs left over and wasn’t sure what to do with them.  Every time I would open the fridge door, my eyes would deliberately steer away from the sight of them.

A week later, however, I mustered up the courage to taste one of these Chinese “delicacies”.  I reluctantly cracked an egg open and cut the smallest sliver possible.  After closing my eyes very tightly, I put the piece of black jelly into my mouth and gingerly started chewing.

A few seconds later, my eyebrows loosened up and I swallowed.

It actually didn’t taste that bad!

I can only describe the taste as “alkaline”, “egg-like” and “very rich”.

In the end, I cut up the rest of the egg and made a rice dish out of it.

I wish you all a Bon Appetit!

• What about you?  Do you easily get squeamish about food?

• What has been the weirdest food that you have ever tasted?

• What did it taste like?

The Hazards of Commuting

Learning how to travel in a new city can be a challenge.  You have to memorise new street names, become familiar with the underground network and be a little extra careful wherever you go.  In Beijing, however, there are a few other things you have to get used to…

Pushing my way through

The first is overcrowding.  My god!  Beijing can really get crowded!

This is most common in the subway stations.  Trains, platforms, escalators and stairs are nearly always packed with people.  Whenever I take the underground on my way to work, I am always part of a throng of commuters.  Sometimes, the crowds get so big that my personal distance from others diminishes by about five sixths and I end up feeling as if I am just one of the masses.

This can make finding my way around the city quite tricky.  If I am on an unknown underground station and end up going in the wrong direction, I would have to do a U-turn and push my way against the flow of the crowd.  Sometimes, even just doing that is impossible.  There have been one or two occasions where I have had to go with the herd until I could find a spot to study the map.

Another effect of overcrowded subway stations is that escalators no longer help you move faster as they are conventionally supposed to!  More often than not, queues form on both lanes of the escalators.  So if I am in a hurry, it is usually quicker for me to race up or down the stairs!

Trying to step off the train at the right station is also challenge.  Often, trains are just choc-a-bloc with people and during rush hour, the crowds can be overwhelming.  This means that when I want to get off at a station, I always have to plan ahead and move as close to the doors before they open.  If the train is crowded, this often means jostling passengers blocking you.

The worst trains to catch in Beijing are on line 1.  I have been told that they are officially part of the busiest subway line in the world and to be honest, I am not surprised!  Even when it is not rush hour, the trains is just packed.  When I use it, I usually don’t even need to hold on to anything because I am squeezed in-between six or seven people.  In many ways, it feels like being at the front row of a rock concert!

When commuting in Beijing, you also have to get used to the way people get on and off trains.  For instance, if you go to any major European city, the etiquette is that you should always wait for the passengers to get off the train before stepping in.  In Beijing, this rule doesn’t apply (or rather doesn’t exist!).

If you are waiting to get off a train in Beijing, the people outside will just not wait for you to get out!  They will push their way through, no matter how many people want to get off.  So to make sure you get out, you have to shove your way through first before the doors close.  Once I saw a middle-aged woman fail to get off the train because too many people were coming in and she was not close enough to the doors!

To people who have never experienced this kind of environment, they might easily think that the Chinese are terribly rude commuters.  But it is difficult to make such a generalization.  From my experience, many Chinese passengers are actually quite pragmatic when it comes to letting people off trains.  Many times, I have seen passengers communicate to each other their intention to exit a few minutes before the train stops.  If possible, people will usually make space for those getting off before the doors open.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Beijing has one of the biggest city populations in the world, namely 17 million people.  If one has to deal with crowds on a daily basis, pushing one’s way through hordes of people just becomes a part of life.  Elbowing one’s way on to a train might not be the most polite thing to do, but it is certainly more efficient than waiting for a throng of people to get out before waiting for another to move in.  The Chinese don’t like wasting time!

Before entering the subway, you also have to get your bags scanned.  Scanners can be found at every station.  Apparently they were put in place just before the Beijing 2008 Olympics as a counter-terrorism measure in a bid to prevent people from carrying firearms, knives and explosives on to trains.  Since then, they have just been left in operation and everybody who has a bag has to pass it through the scanner before descending to the platform.

The funny thing, though, is that although I see scanners at every subway station, I still get the feeling that security is quite lax.  In every spot, I see signs listing the number of things I am forbidden to take but I have not once seen a guard stop a passenger and ask her to empty out the contents of her belongings.  It seems to me as if these scanners have been left in place just to give the impression to foreigners that the authorities are tight on security when in fact most Beijingers just use them because they are told to.

Dodging vehicles

One of the first things I noticed in Beijing is how traffic lights are almost routinely ignored by everyone, pedestrians and drivers alike.  Although they are everywhere to be found, I get the impression they are just another way of adding colour to the city, rather than having any functional purpose.  Even on crossroads, where you have to traverse three lanes, I see Beijingers cut across whenever possible in spite of the flickering lights.

Also, the idea that pedestrians are entitled to a right of way on a zebra crossing, as they are in Europe, doesn’t seem to exist here.  Usually just before I cross the road, if I see a car coming my way, I just let it pass first, no matter whose priority it is.

Given this environment, most pedestrians defiantly create their “own” right of way.  Some Beijingers just cross the road without even going over a zebra crossing.  If they are on a four lane road and they see a car coming, they just let it pass and then cross the next lane.  While this may be an offense in Europe, in Beijing, it is just another part of life.

Oh the joys of commuting!

How about you?

• What are the biggest challenges you have ever had to overcome when travelling in a new city?

• Have you ever had any near-death experiences just trying to get to work?

What to do (and not to do) at Tiananmen

In this blog, I am going to tell you about my first visit to Tiananmen Square.

When I arrived there, I was completely stunned.  Tiananmen Square is so much bigger than I expected it to be!  After having looked at photos of it back in Europe, I had always thought that it was maybe twice the area size of La Grand Place in Brussels, which is approximately under 1 hectare (10,000 square metres).  In truth, Tiananmen Square is 44 hectares wide (440,000 square metres); approximately 22 times bigger than I had anticipated!  I guess it is not always possible to capture everything in a photo.

What made the square even more impressive were the swarms of Chinese, Korean and Japanese tourists queuing up in front of the Tiananem (Gate of Heavenly Peace) to pose for a photo.  I had never seen so many Asians before in my life!  It is difficult to estimate how many of them I saw around me but it was easily over 8,000.  I only saw one Westerner, which was a surprise, and given her way of not dawdling about, I assumed she was a local.

Another striking thing about being surrounded by so many Asians is how short they are.  At home, I would describe myself as medium height (1m84) but in Tiananmen Square, I really felt like a giant.  On average, most people’s heads would reach up to my shoulders and only very occasionally did I see someone taller than me.

Hello!

I turn my back and see two Chinese girls wave to me.  They look like teenagers.

I say hello back and we chat for a bit.  One of them is called Holly and the other is called Linda.  They ask me if they could practice speaking English with me since they do not have much contact with foreigners.  I say okay and start to relax a bit, knowing that I have some new Chinese friends to talk to in this swarm of strangers that I find myself in.

They explain to me that they are university Art students from Xi’an.  I am really surprised to hear this because I had thought they were 16 or 17 years old.

They tell me they are presenting their calligraphy works and paintings from Xi’an and take me to their exhibition.  We step into this bungalow in which scores of calligraphy and paintings are stuck up on the wall.

I am amazed.  The paintings are so beautiful.  They show me different pieces of artwork, indicating which ones are theirs and which ones are their teachers’.  Many of the artworks have exquisitive depictions of the seasons painted in water colours on rice paper.  They show me around explaining to me how they use silk paper to protect their paintings and tell me what the Chinese characters mean.

Afterwards, they stretch out a scroll of rice paper and draw a few characters for me.   Here is what they did:

The character at the top means ‘happiness’  To the left, you can see ‘2010’ and to the right, you can see my name written in Chinese.  It is pronounced ‘Tomase’.

Afterwards, they tell me they are raising money for their university scholarship and ask if I would be interested in purchasing any of the paintings up on the wall.  I ask how much and they say 280 RMB (around 28 Euros).  I think about it, then turn down the offer, telling them that I first need to settle down and move into my apartment.  Instead, I offer a 20 RMB note as a charitable gesture, take the scroll and leave the exhibition.

Outside, one of the girls runs back to me, thanking profusely me for the offer.  As I am “generous”, she and her friend propose to give me a guided tour of Tiananmen Square free of charge.  I ponder over this and I think there is no harm in it, so I accept.

We cross the road and walk around the square.  The girls show me where Mao’s Mausoleum, the National Museum of History and the People’s Hall is.  I am completely astonished by everything.  I have never ever been in a place quite like this.  Maybe it is because the square is so wide or the fact that I have never been surrounded by so many Chinese before in my life.  The whole environment feels so different to anything else that I have ever experienced.  Never before I have felt like more of a foreigner in a place than I have here.

This is China, I think to myself and take a deep breath.  I slow my pace of walking and slowly try to take in everything bit by bit.

Afterwards, the girls walk me to the hutongs.  They show me the beautiful courtyards and the narrow alleyways.  I didn’t take any photos of what I saw because I didn’t want to attract too much attention to my camera.  I was feeling to “foreign” and didn’t want to take any risks.  So I just stayed put and continued walking (I will put more photos of hutongs in my future posts).

After 15 minutes, Holly says she is thirsty and proposes that we go into a teahouse to drink and take refuge from the cold.  I gladly accept.

Again, we walk into another bungalow, with green walls, small brown tables and red lanterns hanging up from the ceiling (you only see bungalows in the hutongs – this was due to an old government policy banning buildings more than one floor high because it was seen as bourgeois).

A young girl, no older than the age of 16 walks us into a small room in which several jars of tea leaves are standing.  To be honest, I have no idea how old she really is.  All I know is that she is short and by Western standards, she looks as if she was 16 years old.

We sit down and make ourselves comfortable.   The little girl serves us sweet potatoes, watermelon and various cups of tea for us to try.  I watch how she makes the tea over a wooden box with a drain on top.  She serves us tea in very small, porcelain cups.  I am very impressed.  The tea smells so exotic and delicious.  The flavours we tried were lychee, fruit, jasmine and pumpkin.

We have a good time chatting about our favourite types of tea and I ask to buy a box of lychee tea leaves.

The bill comes and it turns out to be 1200 Rmb!  Each girl has to pay 350 and I, 500 as I also chose to buy the tea leaves.  I comment on how expensive it is and ask my guide if we can bargain it down.  She speaks to our tea server but the girl shows us on the menu that each tea is worth 30 RMB and insists that the calculation on the bill is correct.  The Art students concede it is very expensive but can’t seem to bring the price down.  So I sigh, regret not having asked how much it cost before and simply lay my money down on the table.

After walking out of the tea house and feeling ripped off, I am reluctant to spend any more money.  I make up the excuse that I need to go and meet someone and say goodbye to Linda and Holly.  I amble off to the Tiananmen metro station feeling very bewildered.

Three days later, I meet my boss and tell him about my experience.  He bursts out laughing and tells me he is 99% certain that the girls I met were not Art students at all but scam artists.  He tells me that they work everywhere around Tiananmen Square.  Apparently, the average minimum wage is 100 RMB an hour but a scam artist can earn up to 500 RMB an hour if he succeeds in tricking the tourist.

I am just flabberghasted and think it over carefully.  I had been scammed in Beijing!  My God!, I say to myself.  These Chinese can be really crafty little buggers!

What do you think of this experience?

• Have you ever been scammed?  What happened and what did it feel like?

• What do you think of scam artists?  Are they evil crooks or they just part of the tourist traps that you find in any city?

Below are a few other things I saw at Tiananmen.

Finding my way in Beijing

Hey everybody!

As I arrived in Beijing about two weeks ago, you might be surprised to only hear from me now.  Don’t worry!  I am fine and all in one piece.  Let’s just say that I have been having a few “Internet connection issues”.  But with the help of a few friends, I have now managed to get access to my blog site again so all is well.

China is awesome!  I have never been so overwhelmed by a country.  I have had so many strange, unusual and fascinating experiences so far that it is difficult to know where to start.  So in this blog, I am going to focus on the most striking things that I saw on my first week in the “Middle Kingdom”.

One of the things that impressed me the most on my first day are the Chinese characters.  EVERYTHING AROUND ME IS IN CHINESE!  In a way, maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised.  Wasn’t I supposed to expect this?  But when all the things that you rely on to find your way around an unknown city are completely illegible to you (signs, posters, restaurant menus, etc), it certainly has a strong psychological impact.

This had quite a dizzying effect on me.  I had been feeling so jet-lagged when I got to Beijing that when I saw everything in Chinese, I really felt as if I was in a dream where nothing around me made sense.  All of a sudden everything felt surreal and mind-boggling.  I had to pinch myself a couple of times just to check that I was awake!  It also dawned on me that my life was now going to be very different.  I would now have to familiarise myself with a host of alien sounds and characters just to find my way around here.

Having said this, I should stress that quite a few things are translated into English.  But they are not very common.  When you come across them, either they confusing, they make sense but the spelling is not correct, or they are just plain hilarious.

Another striking aspect about China is the food.  In my first few days, my diet dramatically changed from a Western one to an Eastern one.  When I had to choose what to eat, many times, I had to select things that I had never ever seen before, let alone know what they were.   For my first supper, for instance, I placed something on my plate that looked like the head of an animal but I wasn’t sure quite which creature it was.  So I went to ask one of the Chinese waitresses.  After a lot of head-scratching, she finally came up with the words “duck head”.

At first, I thought it would be revolting to eat the head of a duck.  But then I thought of Jessica and her advice to immerse myself in to Chinese culture as quickly as possible (see comments from last blog), so I just went for it!  In the end, I actually liked it quite a lot (Thanks Jess!).  The meat was very rich and tasty, even though there wasn’t too much to pick off the skull!

In fact, most of the Chinese food is absolutely delicious.  I haven’t had time to sample all of the different kinds of Chinese cuisine here but my favourite foods are dumplings with pork, spicy chicken with cashew nuts and deep fried bread rolls that you dip into a mild, sweet cream.  There have already been two  times where I have been to a restaurant and said “This is the best meal that I have ever eaten in my life!” and I rarely ever make such statements.

Another thing to keep in mind about the diet in Beijing is that Chinese people typically only eat warm food.  For example, during my first week, the most common things I saw the Chinese eat for breakfast were deep fried bread rolls, porridge, egg and boiled pumpkin.  During the day, they like to eat things such as noodles, deep-fried dumplings, spicy soups and egg-fried rice.

For the first five days, I managed to live on this kind of diet.  Afterwards, however, my body really started missing the food that I am used to eating in the West, especially the cold, fresh and sweet food that you normally have for breakfast (cereals, fruit, jam and bread, etc).  So when I actually had my first bowl of Chocopops and Rice Krispies in Beijing, it felt like the best bowl of cereals that I had ever eaten in my life!  Now, I just try to keep a balance of between the West and East.

Of course, the next most interesting thing about Chinese food habits are the chop sticks.  EVERYBODY EATS WITH CHOPSTICKS.  When I used to go to a Chinese restaurant in the West, I always tried to eat with them but it was always quite a challenge.  Often, my food would go cold before I even had time to finish it.  But here in China, I seem to have picked up eating with chopsticks very rapidly.  I have seen so many people around me eat with them that I have just ended up imitating everybody else.

I have also noticed many benefits to eating with chopsticks: you only need to use one hand to pick the food, it helps you digest because you eat in smaller pieces and it feels more relaxing than eating with a fork and knife.   I guess we in the West just like to shovel our food down our mouths! 

Let me know what you think of the photos!

Why go to China?

“I am going to China…”

I gulp in disbelief.

“I am going to China in one week…Oh my God”

To seek relief from this overwhelming idea, I march to the world map, which is stuck up on a large wall at my parent’s house.

“Maybe if I see China as just one of many countries in the world, it will make the thought of going there less intimidating”

I gaze at the map and measure the lateral distance of China.  Then, I compare it to the Europe…

While my thumb is comfortably placed to the West of Cork in Ireland, my pinky finger has landed on some place called Atyrau in Kazachstan…I gulp again, only this time more nervously.

“OH MY GOD…I AM GOING TO CHINA!”

To take a step back from reality, I go to the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea and ponder over my thoughts.

“Why am I going to China again?”

Three months ago, I had decided to go teach English in Beijing for one year to get some more work experience and to explore the world.  Making this choice wasn’t as easy as choosing whether to buy white or brown bread at the supermarket, of course (even though that can quite tricky too).  I could have gone to teach in any part of the world after all;  Poland, Argentina, Indonesia, you name it.

However, having read about China’s ancient cultural heritage, its incredible, rapid rise to economic power and the social transformations that it is undergoing, I knew I had to go.

To illustrate this, here are a few interesting facts:

-China is one of the world’s oldest civilizations with archeological evidence dating back over 5,000 years (way before the Roman Empire even got started!).

-China has had the fastest-growing major economy for the past 30 years with an average annual GDP growth rate above 10%.

-In two decades China has experienced the same degree of industrialization, urbanization and social transformation as Europe did in two centuries.

-The demand for learning English as a foreign language in China is so huge that it has resulted in a massive recruitment drive of approximately 100,000 foreign teachers per year.

Insurmountable cultural barriers?

Yet one of the recurring ideas that I have heard from people I know who have been to China is that it is a country unlike any other.  The most common words I have heard used to describe China are “different” and “alien”.  Indeed, this is less than surprising given the long accounts I have been given of strange Chinese customs such as openly spitting in public spaces, the ‘delicacy’ of eating duck feet  and the fermentation of liquor with dead lizards.

But surely every culture has its quirky habits?  Can’t one look beyond strange cultural customs and learn how to appreciate people as they are?

When I raised this point, many of my “China” friends said it is very difficult to form any meaningful relationships with the Chinese.  Amongst the reasons they gave for this, the most common have been that very few Chinese speak English, they are very reserved and it is impossible to learn Chinese.

I have read many articles online listing the difficulties of learning Mandarin.  Many claim that speaking Chinese is extremely difficult because its tonal structure is completely foreign to Westerners and writing it, even worse, because it involves spending endless, strenuous hours memorizing characters off by heart.  Once, I read online a 2,000 word rant about an American who gave up learning Chinese after a three year struggle with the language!

Even if you do attain a level of fluency in Mandarin, I have been told it would not be very useful since a multitude of dialects and other indigenous languages are spoken across China.  Knowing how to speak Mandarin is one thing, but managing to recognise the different sounds and accents that Chinese make in their language is quite another!

But in spite of these challenges, I still feel that it surely can’t be ‘impossible’ to become integrated into Chinese culture.  Language does not have to be the only way to make meaningful relationships with other human beings.  For example, someone who feels European doesn’t say he is European because he can master all of the European languages.  Human bonds can also be formed on other grounds too.

What do you think?  Am I being too naïve?  Am I talking a lot of twaddle?

I would be very interested to know what you think.  Feel free to leave comments in the section below.

I am going to Beijing on the 15^th January 2010.  Once I have settled in, I hope to keep you informed about my experiences and reflections on China.  Take care!