Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2001 22:29:43 -0800 (PST) From: colin roald Subject: first impression of China
This is a caffeinated country.
Thailand and Cambodia are ganja countries. No matter how aggressively the moto drivers charge the gates when a train pulls in, you know it's a short burst kind of thing and purely for business -- the moment the last tourist is out of sight, they'll doze off again.
China's not like that. The Chinese seem to be cranked on caffeine and nicotine 24/7 -- they're always checking you out and looking over your shoulder, not because they want to sell you something but out of plain nosy curiosity.
I feel wired just walking in to this country.
Got on the train yesterday in Hanoi before dawn and rode the unheated compartment six and a half hours to Dong Dang, the last town before the border. There were four of us foreigners trying to cross that day, so we decided to band together manage the crossing. Two Australians, Robin and Shelley, and a lone Japanese guy, Kosi. We bought some yuan from a group of street corner money-changers -- four ladies with purses full of various currencies. Unloading the remainder of our Vietnamese dong gave us enough yuan to get through the border to the Bank of China in Pingxiang.
Getting to the border was a 5-km ride up through a mountain pass in the rain, on the backs of motorcycles -- the kind of thing one would only do because there didn't seem to be any other options. It took about half an hour to get Vietnamese permission to leave the country -- the guards became suspicious because my visa number had been scrawled on my visa in different handwriting from the rest of the visa information. I suppose that made it look altered, though it was the Vietnamese embassy in Bangkok that had done it. So I cooled my heels while they hummed and hawed over it; Robin and Shelley also had to wait because their forms had gotten wet and the stamps had smeared. Kosi I guess just suffered guilt by association.
Getting to China was then a 5-minute walk in the rain through no-man's-land. In addition to the usual arrival form, they also made us fill out quarantine forms that, among other things, inquired if we suffered from any mental illnesses.
Then the four of us shared a taxi for the drive down into Pingxiang. By the time we finished changing money and made it to the bus station, it was 4:45 (three hours elapsed to get from the Dong Dang train station, plus we lost an hour to a time change crossing the border), and we were just in time for the last bus of the day to Nanning at 5:00.
The drive was through pretty scenery -- farmland interspersed with dramatic hills -- but unfortunately daylight only lasted for the first hour. After that, there was a pretty entertaining Hong Kong chop-socky movie and a lot of insipid Chinese pop music videos.
Nanning is more or less the Indianapolis of China. That is, it's a largish provincial capital where more or less nothing of significance has ever happened. Still, I'm in China, which is interesting enough on its own. There are more people around who can speak a little English than I expected, so it hasn't been too difficult getting around, and I seem to have enough novelty value that people are keen to help out. In the restaurant at lunch, there was nothing resembling an English menu (or even a pinyin transliteration), so I tried ordering something likely (steamed pork buns) from my phrasebook. No have, but the group of waitresses huddled and flipped through the phrasebook until they found something they did have -- peanut chicken with chili peppers and I think papaya -- so I ordered that.
Tipping in China is so unknown that when I left an extra yuan on the table (about 12 cents), one of the waitresses ran after me to return my lost property.
One week left. I'm heading more or less straight to Hong Kong -- will get there in a few days.
c. -- colin | opportunity calls from a payphone, bruno. you never roald | get a chance to call it back. (christopher baldwin)