March 28, 2010 Paying attention in Beijing
In every travellors trek there comes a point when they realize that they really need to start paying attention. It has occurred to me that I need to pay attention to China, because there are consequences for not paying attention.
China is massive in every way you can imagine: geographically, in population and in cultural differences from the West. It is a country of contridictions: progression and regression, order and control, tradition and abandonment.
I didn’t know what to expect when I arrived into Beijing. I had probably spent the most amount of time out of all I my months of travel planning, planning for China. This was necessary to apply for the expensive visa and to ease my mind for a culture I could not begin to understand from the comfort of my house in the States.
3785 miles from Abu Dhabi I arrived into an early morning Beijing. Passing through customs was easier than I had imagined after reading my Lonely Planets entry advice that went a little like this: be prepared to have this book confiscted upon entry. Guide books like lonely planet are not popular with the Chinese government for their awknoledgement of Taiwan as a soveriegn nation. I was therefore pleasantly surprised to enter China with no hassel and in under a third of the time it took to enter the UK (thank you London!).
Because I am a public transportation genius and a yuan-pincher, I opted out of the 100¥ taxi and hopped aboard the fancy airport train into Beijing proper. Part of me did this to shock the two Americans (16 year old and his mother I met in line for customs) and partly because after navigating the metros, trains and buses in the UK to Morocco to Turkey, I felt confident I could make it on my own. And I did. From the airport train I transferred to two local metro lines to get to the red walls of Tianamen Square. Like the gigantic awestriking appearance of the Roman Coloseum coming into view, so to did the sudden appearance of Tianaman Square shock me. There as I rose up from the underground and I could see the red walls of the square slowly come into view, I laughed out loud. Here I was in China. After trekking across four continents my feet had finally landed me in the iconic epicenter of thousands of years of a civiilization that probably ate on gold plates before my ancesters realized they could cook meat with fire. My feeling of awe did not last long when I remembered that I hadn’t slept in 32 hours. And that I was lost with a map in English, sign posts in Chinese and hundreds of people pushing me from all sides as I stood on the sidewalk with my mouth open.
The Chinese have no concept of personal space: on the trains into the city center people maxed out the capacity of the cars. People cut ahead of each other and pushed others in order to stand their nose to the sliding door and their back to the avalanche waiting to happen of coughing, spitting and sighing bodies. As I watched I was amazed by the lack of awareness people have for one another. My fellow train comrades were pushing through a sea of people as if there were no one around them. At first I was shy to this behavior but once I realized that I would be pushed out of the train I quickly became aggressive and barrelled (i was afterall wearing my backpack and a dayback so when I pushed, I barreled) my way to stand back to back with complete strangers.
Back at Tianaman Square this girl from Oregon was lost. The only directions to my hostel were get off at the 2b exit for Tian’man East and walk. “walk” as in propel yourself forward but not which direction or for how far. I had a map but this did not have my destination on it (a reoccuring issue as I will describe). So I started walking. On my mental map I knew I was staying on the eastern side of the Forbidden City. So I walked and I walked…and walked in a giant circle for 1.5 hours. When I stopped to ask directions no one could help me because no one spoke English or could read the romanized Chinese street name or even cared that an exhausted, stressed out, smelly foreign girl was passing by them twice to four times. In Turkey, if I was lost I would immediatly have a kind old Turkish man not only read my map but probably lead me to where I needed to go himself. In Morocco, I would have been surrounded (lost or not) by 10 boys all trying to lead me for a fee of course. But the Chinese? No one cares. Perhaps if I lived in a society with over 1 billion people I wouldn’t care about one more – and a foriegn one at that.
After this 1.5 hours of wandering I found a street on the map that I recognized. Aha! I thought! Maybe I won’t have to regret not paying for a taxi afterall!
30 minutes later I am still walking. Exhaustion was numbing my sensability because I did just what I intended not to do in China: not pay attention. I allowed a motor bike taxi man to lead me to his bike and take my only map into his hands which he smudged with his enthusiastic pointing. I had enough sense to ask how much the fare would be before we started (¥3) and relaxed as much as one could who is nearly hysterical with exhaustion. The ride was through the grey-
blue maze of hutongs encircling the Forbidden City at a pace that left me remeniscent to the jeep ride I had in Selcuk Turkey that left me gripping on or falling out onto the highway.
Within no time the driver had found the hostel. We park diagonal in the alley and he turns around and asks for money. I gave him 3¥ and he shouts what the hell to me in Chinese. I was tired yes but I am no stranger to haggling or even people shouting at me in languages I cannot understand. I pushed the money at him and he pushes a placard at me. The placard clearly states 300¥ for hotel transportation. So he demanded 300¥. I told him no in rapid English because not only did he mislead me but the ride was only 5 minutes long to a budget hostel that I probably could have still found on my own. My denial, exhaustion and lack of patiance combined with this man’s insistance and shouts was leafing to a situation that was quickly escalating out of control. When I tried to open the door to get out, the man puts his hand on my daypack trying to hold me there. I busted the door, threw the contents of my purse at him, removed his hand from my bag and nearly fell out of the bike cab onto the hutong stones. I shouted sorry without feeling and entered the hostel hoping he wouldn’t follow me inside. He didn’t.
A couple things about paying attention in China: final price negotiation is subjective and money is business and China is all business.
In my exhausted state I had the surprising forsight to wear my money belt for the first time in my world trek so what I emptied from my purse was 20¥ give or take, not all of the money from the last of my travellors checks.
As my last post details, I had to cash my checks giving me just enough money to eat and sleep for the three days it took to sort out my bank issues.
By the time I was able to sleep that night I had been up 46 hours. In that time I passed a state of exhaustion unknown to me before and this, combined with several cups of coffee and a long hot shower, propelled me for those 46 hours.
In my time at the hostel before I slept I met some cool travelors from the States and the Netherlands. Together we gorged ourselves on Chinese hot pot, beer, street candy and stories. Ending my first day in China on a good note and a new healthy awareness for the importance of paying attention in China.
Traveling! Sent from my iPod
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