The Dumb Laowai

Much has been written about the “Golden Week”, most of it incapable of accurately representing the full depth of its absurdity, if only because it would require hundreds of pages to fully consider the phenomena. Short of writing that book, which would sell dozens of copies, all one can do is hit some of the low points and paint a fuzzy picture of hell.

A recent Expedia poll of hoteliers declared the Chinese tourist to be the overall worst in the world. The China National Tourism Administration announced that more than 60% of the population would be traveling during last week’s National Day Golden Week. That in itself is a scary combination.

To put this in perspective, it might help to know that the China is only 2% smaller than the United States in size and yet has more than four times as many people. Imagine if every single person in the US decided to travel at the same time. Now double that number. Now increase it a little more. How relaxing do you think your vacation would be? Don’t forget that most of those people are going to be as socially pleasant as a drunken Philadelphia sports fan on a bad day.

Where lines do form, they are still sort of a vague concept, far from universally understood. Even when you are in line you must defend your position from those who still think you’re just forming a rugby scrum. This is done by keeping full body contact with the person in front of you. It’s a very intimate experience and deeply ingrained in the psyche. I found myself on a moving sidewalk in an aquarium with a woman permanently attached to my derriere. When I finally turned around to exhibit my annoyance I found that there wasn’t anyone for 20 feet behind her and her husband. It just seemed to be instinct for her; she had to keep contact with me to avoid someone cutting in, even though there was no one around. Thus was spent an entire week.

Hotel prices double and triple during this week and my girlfriend, LD, was not about to let me spend enough to stay somewhere that takes reservations, drastically increasing our adventure quotient. She also likes to ask for and listen to advice from anyone on the street, so most of our excursions would appear on a map as endless circles. We were turned away by most hotels and rejected a few ourselves (the idea of us staying in same-sex, dorm-style rooms with 7-10 strangers was more interesting than appealing.) We ended up in a windowless room with a running toilet, non-functional television, two rock-hard single beds and only hand-towels.

When traveling by train, it is impossible to buy a round-trip ticket so the next morning was spent wandering around town trying to secure a way back to Beijing. Better hotels make tickets available to their guests but we weren’t in that kind of place. After blindly insisting that there had to be somewhere other than the train station to buy tickets, we wandered the town for two hours in a fruitless search, LD not speaking to me. I gave in and we settled in for an hour in line at the station.

The rest of the trip was spent wandering around Qingdao, trying to avoid being run over by mobs wearing identically colored ball caps following someone waving a flag and yelling in a megaphone: the much loved tour groups. Nights were spent at the Beer Festival, which is another story in itself. Everyone wants to drink with the foreigners and have their picture taken. We were forcibly adopted by a rural family one night and could not escape. They kept pouring us beer and shoving dried fish in our faces. Even the one year old son got into the act, but he was so excited to drink with me that when we tried to clink glasses he ended up throwing it at me.

LD and I depend on our PDA dictionaries for a great deal of our communication needs. Hers tends to be a little more earthy than mine and when she pulled up the term tubaozi to describe our hosts, I actually sprayed the table with a mouthful of beer. Mine just says rube, hick but hers said clodhopper. It became a much used term for the remainder of the trip.

Of course by Sunday the entire country was trying to get home. Arriving back in Beijing, we found over 200 people, all with excessive amounts of luggage, waiting in line for a taxi and opted for a bus. The crowds were so bad that we decided anywhere was better than the train station and hopped on the first one we saw. Our co-travelers were very kind in assisting me onto the bus, chanting something I understood to be “1, 2, 3, heave!” Unfortunately my arm had somehow been forced into an elevated position as if reaching for the sky. It was 30 minutes before I could lower it. Two hours later, we finally made it home, vowing never again.  

 

 

I usually avoid short commentaries as this blog is written primarily with family and friends in mind; people who show a little more patience in slogging through excess amounts of drivel. Today I just can’t help it. Plus I’m headed for Qingdao and the beer festival, so my memory may not survive the trip intact.

As my Chinese girlfriend and I played cards and watched local television last night, a very somber ceremony was shown on the news. LD (little dictator) put down her cards with a very worried look and asked “Who died?” She followed along for a while, through the mass moment of silence and wreath laying before letting me know that it was simply the National Day (think of it as a Chinese 4th of July) ceremony at Tiananmen.

I realize that it is a day of celebration and remembrance, but I’ll be damned if it didn’t look more like a state funeral. We went back to playing cards; her relieved and me confused.