The Rickshaw Ride....
I spent the entire summer plus a few weeks before and after in China, the year before the massacre in Tiannamen Square. Most of that time was spent in Shanghai, where I lived in a dorm at Shanghai University and attended class there 8 straight hours a day trying to learn Mandarin. Wood benches. 100 plus degrees. No air conditioning or fans. Teacher didn't speak a word of English.
After 3 months of this excruciating and wonderful torment a small group of the western students also attending and I decided to tour China together. We all agreed to go to Beijing, so off we went there by train, together, where we had an incredibly awesome stay, which included renting bikes and cycling through Beijing's side alleys, going to the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, and many many other experiences I will treasure forever.
Then came a time when we all wanted to leave Beijing and go elsewhere, but everyone had a different set of priorities and interests. Rather than compromise and give up going to places I knew I might never again have a chance to visit, I chose to head off on my own.
Getting a train out of Beijing to nowhere wasn't a huge problem, even though I'd come to realize 3 months of trying to learn Mandarin hadn't advanced me much beyond being able to say hello. At least a few of the station agents understood my sign language and pointing at a map well enough to guess where I wanted to go. And they were accustomed to ignorant westerners- the chinese word for foreigners translates to "barbarians."
So off I went, on a sleeper train, never having thought food wouldn't be served (nope, everyone else knew to bring a thermos of tea and a picnic). Bed consisted of a wood platform , 3 rows up, with a too-thin mattress, positioned right below a speaker that blasted out announcements I couldn't understand, all night long, all day long. Have I mentioned the town was 29 hours away by train?
No food, little sleep, one small bottle of water, and as few trips to the "toilet" as I could manage, as there was no TP or running water to be had in that horrible little space.
So yes, I was very very happy to finally arrive in that town, even when only a rickshaw was available to take me away from the dirt-floored train station.
But....just that little distance away, and far too many Chinese "dollars" later, there I was. Somewhere. Not at a hotel. Everyone staring at the bedraggled smelly bewildered barbarian as she consulted her guidebook again.
This is when I learned what it meant that over 200 dialects are spoken in China and outside of major cities even non-local Chinese have no chance of being understood. Ah, the number of times optimistic Chinese peeps knelt in front of me, drawing characters in the dirt, looking up at me, waiting for a glimmer of recognition...
Sadly my lessons had focused on spoken Mandarin, not reading that impossible language. At the zenith of my capabilities I could recognize perhaps 70 characters or so, but couldn't write even one that was legible.
The universal hands clasped prayerlike under chin, closed eyes, and a pleading where?????? had to suffice. Miracles- it did. Long story and lots of no - understandings later, I was allowed to stay for a few nights in what is somewhat comparable to a hostel. For Chinese workers. Needless to say, the accommodations weren't anything recognizable as hotel - like. This was 2nd - 3rd world China, long before Shanghai rose up as a 21st century city, and in any case, I was in a part of China that hadn't changed so very fundamentally in many hundreds of years and probably hasn't yet.
But.....I meant to keep this short and will try to do so.
I bought a tin can of OJ from a dust covered shelf in what was, I suppose , was a grocery mart though it had perhaps a grand total of a few handfuls of goods, and I was so so thirsty by then I glugged the whole can down before I tasted the very sharp wrong taste of rusty tin. Yep. It actually had an expiration date on the can- wonders!! and yep, the OJ was expired. By 3 years or so.
Food poisoning followed. Two days worth of running down the hall from my "room" to a communal toilet, which was a hole in the ground- literally, with no toilets, sinks, showers, or TP.
I returned from one of those treks to find someone had gone into my things (room doors barely closed, and didn't lock). My camera was stolen, and all my traveller checks I'd tucked away in my camera bag. Bummer.
I didn't manage to laugh about it at the time, but oh what a scene followed! I had to report the stolen camera because Chinese authorities took inventory upon my arrival in the country and " missing" electronics and such upon departure caused major major problems.
As luck would have it, a pair of mislaid Japanese travellers materialized out of somewhere, and so I tried to explain to them, they used their Japanese- English and back dictionaries to understand, then their Japanese-Chinese dictionaries to explain to the dozen or so Chinese military officers who showed up to investigate.
They finger printed and poked at everything and scowled a lot, mostly at me. The sole female officer asked via the Japanese fellows- where is your husband? Do you have children? and looked at me with great pity when she learned I had neither. She told her comrades, I think, because there was a great lot of shaking of heads and clucking following a long speil by her to them, with her pointing at me and looking sad.
I'm still digressing, sorry. The camera wasn't found, the thief probably bribed the police away and everyone but me felt satisfied by the outcome.
But. I was not deterred. I had insisted on visiting this town because I intended to see a Buddhist statue marvel on a nearby riverbank, and I was going to get there! Somehow! Food poisoning or not! Though, I genuinely did believe I was over the worst of it.
And so it was I got on a bus that I could only guess was going somewhere out of town and so maybe near where I wanted to go. Maybe.
It was Sunday, when Chinese have off and go on excursions too, it was well over 100 degrees, the bus had no cooling anything, and it was packed like a NYC subway at rushhour.
I was standing, in the middle of the aisle, packed in, breathing in the odors of sweat and garlic and exhaust fumes from the bus wafting in from open windows.
I lasted maybe half an hour, don't know for sure, before I felt a wave of nausea. I knew for a 100% fact I was going to puke. I prayed I could last til I reached an open window.
I thought back, desperately, to those lessons learned on wooden benches in Shanghai. Had I learned the word for SICK??
Aaah. I had! And I remembered it! "Gombay." (Phonetic translation).
It helps to know this: Chinese is a tonal language, which means the exact same word can have 4 utterly different meanings.
So...I said gombay to those closest to me and pointed to the closest window. They didn't budge, just looked away. Louder and louder, more and more desperately I said gombay until at last I was reduced to yelling-sobbing GOMBAY!!!!! as I began to push my way to a window.
And then? And then the bus stopped, and I saw people handing money out windows, and from the front of the bus on back passengers were passing popsicles back my way, then inexplicably trying to get me to take one, and that was IT!
I lunged for the window, squashing everyone who stood or sat in my way, leaned out the window, and puked and puked.
When I could hear over the sound of my own retching I heard a bus full of people laughing hysterically. What??
Head back in the bus, I saw many hands holding melting popsicles, many of my fellow passengers laughing loudly, but clearly not AT me. What?
Then,through gestures and a few words understood on each side, I understood the joke. Gombay means sick....but said with a different tone it also means popsicle.
Those poor people thought I was the rudest barbarian EVER, screaming a demand that I be given popsicles, immediately.
LOL!! I'll leave it there, but see? That rickshaw ride was not even a warmup for all that followed.
And I don't regret a second of ANY of it.
love you all.
cguru:
