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Kat's China Commentary on M's Week Seven Days One & Two: So my friend Marietta meets met me at the plane, and the first ordeal of the trip began as we attempted to get a cab. Some 'fake' cabbies attempted to offer us rides for Y200, and even once we were in a 'real' cab, the driver had turned the meter toward him so we couldn't see it. He charged us Y95 and this was an absolute ripoff according to Marietta who threatened to turn him into police. The ride normally costs about Y55, with a Y15 toll. The exchange rate here is eight yuen to the dollar, so even at Y95 it was perhaps USD$12 - not bad for a 45-minute cab ride. Lots of things are stupidly cheap. A beer is five yuen, for instance, although a bottle of water is 20 yuen. So westerners tend to drink a lot of beer and coke as it's not safe to drink the tap water. If you do, there's something called 'The China Syndrome' which is similar to a nuclear meltdown but it happens in your gastroinestinal track instead. The first day we went to the Lama Temple in central Beijing. Although Marietta and I were dragging, we thought we should do something. The Temple was built for the Dalai Lama, the spiritual ruler of Tibet. From what we could make out, the Dalai Lama and the Puchen Lama only held worship there once or twice, but yet they built an entire small village of temples for them with more Buddhas than you've ever seen. There were wood Buddhas, silver Buddhas, golden buddhas, little Buddhas, happy Buddhas, slightly grumpy Buddhas and even an 85-meter high bronze Buddha. Some scary-looking Tetonic characters had drapes over them as they were doing unspeakable acts with small concubines. The Chinese government doesn't think this is something appropriate for either the locals or the Westerners to see, so they've been draped and placed behind glass so you're not tempted to sneak a peak. Outside the temples were massive fire pits that looked like barbecue grills. The! Temple is still in use, which is a bit odd as technically religion doesn't exist in China since its a Communist country. However, it appeared that plenty are devout as they were clutching handfuls of incense to burn in the barbecue pits and then bowing deeply, repeatedly and ever so reverently that there seemed to be little care on their part that they were doing so in public. It's easy to forget China is a Communist country - until you see where one day they just mowed down a minimall to widen a street. There's no such concept as 'easements' or having to negotiate with land owners as the people only recently had the opportunity to own property. Mao's photo is still on the money here, even though he died in 1976. Although he killed more people than Hitler, his orange-coloured corpse is still one of the country's No. 1 tourist destinations. People wait in line for up to six hours to file past a glass enclosure in which he was laid to eternal rest. Others signs include what appear to be many 'makework' jobs here. At restaurants, two people typically stand outside just to say 'Ni hou' or hello to you, and it's not uncommon to have four or five waiters just hovering inside who appear to do nothing. Afterward, we walked through a 'hutong' area. In Chinese, 'hutong' means alley which is somewhat these aging ghettos lie along a long, narrow street. Here, poorer Chinese residents live in small warrens of communal rooms surrounding a small patio. Several generations or families living together isn't uncommon in a hutong. The government has torn many, many hutong down in favour of stacking people in beige high rises around the whole city; the apartment complexes look so strikingly similar that it makes it difficult to know where you are in Beijing as these buildings give the whole city an odd sameness that you wouldn't have in a typical Western city. The hutong area feels quite poor, with grey walls throughout and small doors that glimpse inside to shabby-looking patio areas. In the Hutong, elderly men sit outside playing games or passing the time. Small shops the size of a walk-in closet that clearly must be frequented only by the Hutong residents sit along the narrow street. I went to a tailor's yesterday where Marietta got a suit and some dresses made. There are actually numerous tailors working in this large shop, situated on two floors. They have small tables tucked into the corners. The rest of the place looks like a massive fabric shop. As far as I could tell, each little fabric area was something of a separate stall, so they competed viciously for business from the people who come to the tailors. The Chinese sell like no one else. 'Ni hou! Ni hou!' the women would shout as I would go by and then pull out lengths of fabric to try to pitch to me. They kept pointing out that some fabrics wouldn't wrinkle, as if this were the ultimate selling point for any fabric. It occured to me later that they probably get a lot of businessmen (and some women) who travel a lot for work, so it made sense. From my own experience, having a suit that doesn't wrinkle can be extremely valuable when you're traveling on business. I decided to have three dresses with matching jackets made, and then three pairs of trousers and three skirts. Marietta and I are having Chinese style dresses made from the same green silk fabric. At first, choosing the fabric was fun but after about an hour of relentless sales pitching from the diminutive Chinese ladies, we were both exhausted and walking zombie-like around the store. Then, I had to go pay. Almost no business in China takes credit cards, but this tailor's store would take Visa, JCB and Amex. So I gave them my American Express but the magnetic stripe is wiped out as some hapless sales girl at a London shop placed my card on one of those demagnetising pads that warn 'Do not place credit cards here.' I tried to explain that they needed to punch the numbers in. They just could not understand that, and doggedly ran my card through the machine about 20 times. Then, they indicated they thought we were bad people because my card wouldn't work. I didn't! have any other cards on me they would accept, so Marietta ended up giving them her Visa. For some reason, credit cards are a concept they can't quite seem to grasp well. We even had to pay for our plane tickets to Shanghai in cash, and all hotels except for the very large Western chains require you to settle your bills in cash as well. At the same time, extremely few ATMs accept Western cards, so it's all quite a hassle. They will need to sort this out before they host the Olympics in 2008 as I can't see a terrible many Westerners cottoning to this fairly archaic societal value. Yesterday, we ran some errands. This may seem like a small thing, but in Beijing, it's either an adventure or a hassle depending on what you make of it. We needed to get some 'feminine products' so we ended up in a pharmacy. Once again, they had a woman who just stood at the door, quietly. Her job clearly did not involve security work. The first woman we ran into said 'Chinese medicine.' We assumed she could speak English so we tried to ask her if they had what we sought. However, she kept saying 'Chinese medicine,' and after awhile it became evident she didn't know anything further. Finally, I showed them what we were after. At this point, about four women had come to see what the Western women wanted. This experience isn't uncommon, says Marietta. A small crowd surrounded her in a store as she debated on what hair conditioner she should purchase. This sounds like a small thing, but try figuring out the word 'conditioner' in Chinese characters and you'll begin to understand. Anyway, we made our selection and once outside, we checked them out and found there was some sort of pills enclosed in the package. Hmmmm. I hope this has nothing to do with the one-child policy. We ended up going to eat the first night at some Taiwan restaurant. In China, it's extremely common to serve meat still on the bone and crab in the shell. However, they only give you chop sticks to eat with, so it's a bit baffling how you're supposed to sort this culinary dilemma. We ordered a fantastic crab dish made with a fragrant ginger sauce spiced with green onions. However, it was so frustrating trying to get the crab out of the shell with no ability to crack the claws that we finally gave up. I did knock one claw on my plate with loud bangs against my plate at one time, resulting in frowns from the four nearby staffers who then scurried away to get us napkins -- but no other utensils. Curious. Last night, we went to a lovely outdoor restaurant in the embassy district that was filled with foreigners. The menu seemed about 80 pages long with delightful English translations such as 'large intestine with fishy sauce.' Yum yum. The theme of leaving meat on the bones and shellfish in their shells continued. Whilst there was no dog on the menu, you could get a whole turtle in sauce, whole rabbits in sauce, whole pigeons in sauce... you get the picture. We ended up ordering scallops, beef and prawns. Everything is very heavy here, and even the vegetables arrive soaked in oil. They do serve rice, but at the end of the meal. We ended up going out to some nightclubs last night. At the first one, they served extremely cheap beers, so it was packed with university students who are backpacking around the country or students. It was more or less filled with westerners. So we left and went to another club, which had two drunk Western girls dancing to music. All we could figure was that they were regulars who would dance when the 'band' went on break. So then we went to another nightclub and danced until about 4 a.m. drinking a few too many Jack Daniels and cokes. I couldn't drink any more beer and it was the only drink they could seem to understand. I tried gin and tonic' and they just couldn't get it, and Marietta had an extremely difficult time ordering a vodka and cranberry juice, so she ended up getting sprite. Oy vey. We're off to go to some markets as we're a bit slow today, and we'll try to sort out how to get to this wild part of the Great Wall and our trip to Shanghai next week. We're also going to go to a Chinese department store. Marietta has been here studying Chinese for seven weeks and she lives in a small dorm room that's actually quite spacious, with a separate room off the bedroom. However, many things do not work well here. It's a concept called 'mafan' which means red tape or hassle. For instance, her shower curtain doesn't stay up. We debated it and thought it was too much 'mafan' to try to get the clerks at her dorm to sort it, so we're just going to go buy another one. A friend of hers whom I met last night named Marc had a similar problem. His toilet wouldn't flush as the top was off the back of the unit, and that's where the flush button resides on Chinese toilets. He explained this in Chinese to his landlord, who then demonstrated that it definitely worked! as he put his hand into the water and pulled out the plug. He expected Marc to do this every time he needed to use his bathroom. Finally, Marc decided to pay half of the cost to have it fixed as it was too much mafan to get the landlord to do it. . I'll write more later. Love you much, Kathleen
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