Original posted in London to New York blog, April 22, 2010
Beijing, China
DURING his excellent Googlewhack Adventure stage show, Dave Gorman launches into a string of coincidences and absurdities which have occurred during his attempts to compile a chain of elusive Googlewhacks.
Each tale is linked, in increasingly frantic tones, by the phrase: “It doesn’t make sense”.
And after 10 days in China, that is one phrase used more than any other (with the possible exceptions of “same again, please”, “No, I don’t want to be dragged into your market stall to see your range of tourist tat”, “Oh look, another Buddha/ temple/courtyard”, “Who’s clothes were they anyway?” or “What flags have you got?” – explanations follow in the next couple of entries, but the last two must wait until we are out of Chinese jurisdiction).
- The sheer number of people – it doesn’t make sense.
- The inability to drive in a straight line or on the right side without an accident every few hundred yards – it doesn’t make sense.
- The fact all the market stalls appear to sell the same thing, yet they make a living – it doesn’t make sense.
- The fact we managed to buy pretty much everything for a fraction of the asking price (bar one Irish haggler who started with a high offer and tried to work down) – it doesn’t make sense.
- That you can stuff yourself silly 24 hours a day for mere pennies, yet the entire population seems to be thin and healthy – it doesn’t make sense.
- The sheer number of western, capitalist brand names in the high street in such a supposedly closed-off, communist society so proud of its own culture and traditions – it doesn’t make sense.
- That we went from getting sunburn on Xi’an’s city walls to snowball fights on the road to Datong in the space of three days – it doesn’t make sense.
- The foresight of previous generations to build all the major attractions on the other side of a gift shop from the entrance – it doesn’t make sense.
And neither does so much more about this wonderful, intriguing, mystifying country.
But throw it all in together, check your western preconceptions in at customs and somehow, taken as a whole, it makes perfect sense.
To the extent that being thrown straight back into the western world – this is being written on one of the many poolsides of the Diamond Princess cruise ship as we sit dockside at Qingdao on our second day at sea – is equally as big a culture shock as arriving in China in the first place.
Admittedly, by the final day in China more than one of us needed an escape from the mountains of Chinese food (or food as they call it in these parts) which were routinely placed in front of us.
Thankfully, Old McDonald had seen fit to build one of his golden arches just down the street from our hotel, causing some frantic backtracking from early scorn poured on those with fast-food habits. Never has a Big Mac tasted so good. Nor been served so politely.
China has treated us well and has moved straight to the upper echelons of places to visit again.
But let’s rewind to where you left us – in our Beijing hotel attempting, without success, to flick M&Ms into Fran’s mouth in the early hours of Day 32.
What followed on the rest of Day 32 – for those of us who eschewed the trip to the Summer Palace – was a rare off-day and a chance to catch up on washing and get a little personal time.
So the day was spent arguing with a tumble dryer (and the French people who kept taking my stuff out of it) and being accosted by over-enthusiastic vendors, convinced new T-shirts, jewellery, handbags, statues of Buddha, Mao’s Little Red Book or whatever they were peddling was top of my shopping list.
Topping the list of memorable sellers are the bloke selling our favourite snack “sticks” with the constant tab on the go, the guy who nearly set fire to my arm (twice) as he tried to prove his lighters worked and the young Chinese girl who was actually dangling off my arm at one point as she tried to physically drag me into her shop.
By the evening my clothes still weren’t dry – it took an early-morning alarm to chuck them back in the dryer to be ready for packing – and the normal suspects were reconvened for another mountain of food in a traditional Chinese restaurant.
Eight meals, eight sets of drinks, assorted side dishes, decent tip which they insisted on chasing us out of the restaurant with to hand back – 320 yuan. About £4 each.
We then retired for a quiet(ish) evening in our new local, the still flag-strewn Bar 365, which was enlivened by our elder statesmen Duncan and Mary taking to the dance floor and Mike’s perfectly-timed tribute to Roy Keane – one of which was charming, the other reduced us to giggling fools for at least five minutes.
Mike was at it again the next morning – after we had stripped down our bags with merely enough clothes for our five-day tour of the provinces – when he spoke at just the wrong time during our tour of a silk factory, inadvertently volunteering to eat the by-product of production, the worm.
He had the perfect opportunity to wash it down with something more appetising on our next stop, downtown Beijing’s main, big-name shopping area.
While most of the group scurried around the designer stores, went hunting for much-needed necessities (our hunt for deodorant was still proving fruitless) or, in the case of Irish compadres Dave and Leila, got lost on a single street, our motley little crew found our idea of shopping heaven – a market street crammed with street food vendors.
Not that everything had us licking our lips. Even Phil’s willingness to eat almost anything was not enough to persuade him to try scorpion on a stick or entire baby bird, while the starfish on a stick were priced out of the market.
Having fuelled up on spring rolls, sticks and some weird dumplings whose liquid filling Phil managed to spray all over Mike, we headed to our toughest shopping test of the trip – the Pearl Market.
It is difficult to explain quite what an assault on the senses this is – a four-storey indoor market selling designer label clothes (of distinctly dubious origin), leather goods, jewellery, electrical goods (of even more dubious providence) and pretty much anything the modern global traveller would want.
But that is only half the story.
Each stall is manned by one or more assistants who are not going to wait for you to have a look at their stock. They will shout at you, physically pull you to their store, block your way and generally get right in your face.
It could be intimidating, but it is, largely, good natured and amusing. The trouble is, if you smile at it, they take that as a sign of interest and double their effort to lure you in.
By the time we emerged, blinking and shellshocked into the sunshine to compare our purchases – and tried to outdo each other on how much we had haggled them down to – we were all a bit exhausted.
For the record, my purchases were leather cord necklace (most of the guys are now festooned with more necklaces than the girls), a shirt of exceedingly dubious taste and a T-shirt, which resulted in me being briefly held captive by three small Chinese women who would not let me out of their stall until Phoebe and Fran turned the corner and distracted them.
What we needed after that was a good rest. What we got was our final night on a train, heading south to Xi’an and the Terracotta Warriors.
Exiled to the back of the train – 12 carriages away from the rest of the group with only Marlo making the long, late-night trek down to visit in his train-issue paper slippers – Nick’s Bar stocked up for one final time with beer (before any of us remembered we didn’t have a bottle opener), vodka and rice wine and welcomed new resident Dave for his indoctrination into life in the bar.
He instantly made himself at home, showering his beer bottle over Nick’s bed in an attempt to open it using the door handle.
He was in good company, Mike had already soaked Nick’s bed in a bizarre exploding beer can episode.
At least three of us had a good, dry night’s sleep…
