Little Trouble in Big China

Tai Chi in the park

This was my first trip to China, indeed my first trip to East Asia, and I was surprised by how difficult I found it. This had far more to do with me, and my own shortcomings, than with China. I didn't speak the language, I couldn't even read the language, and I was unprepared for how few people speak any English. I also struggled with the difference between my image of China, and the reality, often finding the cultural gap more like a chasm.

Traffic in Beijing

A friend of mine once said that New Yorkers place such extraordinary value on their personal and public space because they have so very little of it. I found the same to be true in London; people in both cities visibly react whenever someone violates the code of acceptable social behavior. Even relatively small infractions like cutting in line or eating smelly food on the subway produces disgust, or even open anger.

Train conductor

This is not the case however in China. As a product of current Western urban sensibility, I found the lack of personal/public space awareness astonishing and in some cases, just plain gross. I lost count of the number of people I saw and heard coughing up giant loogies and spitting them on the street. Even worse, I also lost count of the number of people leaning over on the sidewalk, closing up one nostril, and sending a flabbergasting amount of phlegm streaming out of the other. Hundreds of people coughed or sneezed on me without covering their mouths. One woman sharing a sleeper train carriage with me decided to cut her nails, sending the remnants flying all over my pillow. Another train-mate held her months-old baby over the trash can instead of taking him to the toilet, resulting in streams of pee all over the carpet. I saw a different child on the same journey squatting down in the train aisle to take a dump. Everywhere I went, the concept of queuing was non-existent; people just shoved their way to the front of line regardless of the children/invalids/pensioners in front of them. Cars, motorbikes and bicycles all routinely ignore traffic lanes, speed limits and even street direction, making crossing the street an act of faith. When I was growing up, the phrase "chew with your mouth closed" was almost as common as "get your elbows off the table". But in China, lip-smacking and soup-slurping is unremarkable, and surprisingly loud.

These are all of course, my problems. Nobody in China seemed upset/disgusted/perturbed by anything I saw, and indeed why should they be? I fully acknowledge that my issues were just that. MY issues. Not China's issues, mine. I relay them here in the interests of full disclosure only.

Wedding Pictures in Xi'an

And just in case I sound too much like someone who just spent months in utter misery, sitting in polluted air, in grimy cities, surrounded by rude people, let me share some of the other memories that pop to mind thinking back on the trip. There was the evening in Xi'an, when I got to play ping-pong with an old Chinese man who spoke zero English and trounced me solidly. There were the local people out in the parks at all hours, or on street corners, learning ballroom dancing moves, or practicing sword techniques, or playing dominoes. There were the daily Tai Chi lessons that I relished every morning with a Chinese doctor on the river boat. There were the couples I saw everywhere, decked out in their wedding finery, getting their pre-nuptial pictures taken, sometimes months before the actual event. There was the free ride a cabin-mate on the sleeper train journey from Kashgar to Urumqi gave me to my hotel. There were the kids who yelled "Hallo!" and "How are you?" and even "I love you!", before dissolving into giggles. There were the dozens of fascinating fellow travellers I met on the road, and the delicious food I ate, and the incredible sights I was privileged to see.

Zaijian China, and xie xie.

Kids in Karst country