10. A curiosity thing

Karl and I were travelling towards Zhengzhou, a major city with numerous rail links around the country, hoping to buy onward tickets to Qingdao, a city on the east coast, as soon as possible. The train station at Hua Shan housed all sorts at midnight, the place was like an abandoned warehouse. Broken old seats were all that was on offer for the people either waiting for a train or sleeping, and flickering dull lights cast dark shadows in corners and on faces. In the near dark, with people shuffling around either waiting for trains or bedding down for the night, we were greeted by several people begging for money or cigarettes who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Other Chinese travellers spoke up for us and booted those people outside.

Jan and Sam caught their train to Beijing a couple of hours before ours arrived at 1AM. The carriage was closer to antique than the one we had been on a few days earlier. With no air conditioning, we had to open the window for some fresh air. It wasn’t very comfortable, as the rail-track and horn noise from outside was quite irritating, but I felt relieved to have secured place to sleep and was soon dozing.

Having barely woken up, we arrived at Zhengzhou station at around 7AM. The intention was to get the first train to the east coast so it was supposed to be as short a stop as we could manage.

I hadn’t had a chance to use a toilet since leaving our hotel room the evening before, so nature was calling quite loudly. I was resigned to the fact I would have to use the public facilities at the station. I was desperate to the point that I had to put off buying the tickets for ten minutes. Plenty of faces were turned our way outside the exit gates and even more so inside the ticket hall. Karl looked for the correct ticket queue while I scanned the walls for a toilet sign with no luck.

We dropped our bags in the centre of the busy halls floor and Karl sat down with them, while I walked back outside into the already hot sun, spotting a sign indicating the way to the toilets around the corner. The alley housed merchants selling fresh fruit and produce and the white guy gained instant notoriety amongst the locals. The signs pointed up some stairs to the second floor of the train station and with each step, the stench grew more apparent.

People looked up, seemingly amazed that a foreigner was going up to the toilets, and when I thought I was getting over the attention, something else hit me like a sledgehammer. The odour within ten metres of the door made me feel like using the gutter on the street.

The smell was rotten and the heat and humidity didn’t help. I wanted to turn and run but I really needed to go. Choking on the taste in my mouth, I paid the small fee for the privilege of using the establishment, less than Y1, and ventured into the smelly facilities.

Lined up along the right hand wall were a series of partitioned cubicles with waist high walls and no doors. A single channel ran through the centre of all the partitions from the far end of the room towards the entry, and water flushed all the excrement down the channel from one end of the room to the other. I walked past several occupied cubicles, now privy to many men squatting over the channel, some reading the newspaper, before I found a clean one for myself and dropped trousers.

It wasn’t the first time I had used a squat toilet but it was the most public. As I squatted above the channel, the water flushed other men’s excrement towards the far wall through my cubicle below my nose. I gagged and nearly vomited, but managed to hold myself together and got on with it so I could get out as quickly as possible.

People were peering in as I was doing my business, my blonde Mohawk gaining a lot of interest from those walking by, and I understood the Mandarin speakers as they spread the word to “Go look at the American.” I was now a notable attraction. I knew I would be before I went in there, but it didn’t prepare me for it.

I walked out feeling dirty and humiliated, trying to laugh it off with a chuckle and shake of the head. That didn’t work, so I remained embarrassed and uncomfortable.

“How was it?” Karl asked once I had made it back to the ticket hall.

“Ask me later,” I replied.

I practiced what I was going to say to the ticket officer as we lined up. With Jan gone I was now the Mandarin expert, so Karl was expecting me to do the talking, not that either of us pretended I was competent. He had heard me try to order a bottle of coke often with the same failed result each time.

Before I could begin fretting we were at the front of the line and I reassured myself making a mistake now wouldn’t be as humiliating as the toilet.

“Qingdao, liangge, yingwo, xiexie,” I said, which I hoped meant we wanted two tickets to go to Qingdao on the hard bed option, thank you. The lady behind the counter didn’t look confused or ask me to repeat it, and gave us two tickets. All I could understand from what was printed was that the tickets were for 9PM that night. The time was 730AM, so we had thirteen hours to waste in Zhengzhou.

In the sunlight outside, we both murmured something about breakfast. We walked across the square and busy roads, avoiding the few touts already out to offer rooms and the like. Not sure what to expect after Xi’an, I was surprised to find Zhengzhou to be a large, modern city, with shopping malls, neon lit bars and restaurants, not that we could find anything that was open. We saw a shopping mall and precinct, and on the ground floor, McDonalds. Whether it was a lack of a better option or an odd craving for shit plastic food, we waited outside until opening time at 8AM along with a few other people. Once inside, there was no breakfast menu so we ordered burgers.

“What are we going to do for twelve hours?” I asked Karl, not really expecting a response that would help.

“Well,” he began, “I know this guy that travelled for three years straight. He didn’t stop in the same place for any more than a couple of days, but would find himself waiting for trains and buses a lot. When he did that, he’d go find himself a seat in a café or park, and read the day away. He’d just buy himself a coffee and sit in the corner and the shop owners wouldn’t be able to boot him out until he finished it. He would just sit there for hours until the train came.”

“Sounds pretty cool,” I said, “but I don’t know if I could handle it for three years though.”

“I suppose, if you have to handle it, you do.”

So I was resigned to the idea of a day cruising around wasting time.

It would be a new adventure for me. I had wasted plenty a day watching television, reading or playing games but this didn’t feel like travel. This felt frustrating.

We were an instant hit with the locals, being watched as we walked down the road to a park we hoped to rest in. I voiced a little bit of awkwardness at being watched so intently to which Karl elbowed me good-naturedly.

“Y’know,” he said, “I bet they’re telling each other to ‘check out those two handsome devils’.”

I instantly wondered if that was what the people in the train station toilets were saying about me.

Neither of us had slept much and wanted to relax. We stopped at Renmin Gongyuan, the “peoples park”, but it was busy and offered little opportunity to rest. Unfortunately, the park was alive with kids playing on the waterslide rides and boats for hire at a small fun park nearby. People strolled through talking loudly, and young and old couples walked by, arm in arm, girls held hands, and boys laughed and joked throwing their arms around one another.

We lay down trying to ignore the noise, but were interrupted by the guy who was mowing the lawn. We took a seat by the river but with so many boats cruising by and friendly hellos and waves directed at us, we could only read and enjoy the surroundings as much as possible.

A friendly couple who both studied English came up and began chatting to me about Zhengzhou and enquired how long we would be in town. They were noticeably disappointed.

“Would you like to teach English for the day?” the young man asked. I declined, telling them I would only be around for a few hours and wanted to see some of the city. They were obviously disappointed

After a conversation of a good thirty minutes, explaining where New Zealand is by utilising my English-Chinese dictionary to explain the word “hemisphere”, the couple excused themselves only to be replaced by more people wanting to speak English to me.

While Karl sat reading quietly, young men walked up and asked to have a photograph with me and my Mohawk. I obliged but was beginning to find all the attention quite creepy. They were well meaning and pleasant people, and I enjoyed the chance to practice my Chinese and help them with their English, but it was just a little scary as they lined up to say hello.

We tired of the attention and noise of the park so went looking for the bars Zhengzhou had to offer. All had signs saying they opened at 6PM, which was a disappointment as we were looking for somewhere to watch a New Zealand rugby match, which began at 330PM. While we were walking around we got a good look at the city. Zhengzhou was a very clean, pleasant place. Many of the streets were lined with trees with no litter around on the swept roads. The pedestrian-only shopping precinct, which seemed to be bicycle-less, offered all sorts of high-tech products and top end clothing ranges. It was comparable to any major city mall.

We had a drink by a fountain where a young man sat beside me asked if I wanted to buy clothes. He offered a card suggesting he sold Nike clothes. I declined, saying I couldn’t afford Nike clothing.

“Oh, is not real,” he said. “Fake.”

I wasn’t surprised but was now even less interested. He then offered me a tour through his manufacturing plant nearby. I declined again, although later I wished I had joined him. The opportunity for a guided tour through a sweatshop doesn’t happen very often. As the young man finally gave up trying to sell us stuff, I came across another interesting little quirk of Chinese culture.

A shopper and a salesman at a stall nearby began arguing loudly, which escalated into a screaming match. The furore gained the interest of many people, including us, and like moths to a flame, they began crowding around to find out what was happening, some running into the group from across the road. The two verbal combatants were still yelling as the shopper pushed her way through the crowd and both she and the salesman didn’t seem prepared to stop until she was out of his eyeshot. The crowd watched the slinging match silently, like it was a verbal tennis match.

We went back to the train station, joining the hundreds of people waiting outside with their bags, and were approached by a man proving to us how much, or more precisely, how little English he could speak. He was filthy, dressed in what seemed to be twenty-year-old clothing and shoes, and needed about five years worth of showers.

“T-R-A-I-N S-T-A-T-I-O-N,” he spelt out, reading from the large neon lights above us.

“That’s real good,” Karl said and began tapping his foot. “Foot. We call this a foot.” The man responded with complete consternation. He and the group that was beginning to crowd around us didn’t understand at all. I figured I could try a little of my limited Chinese.

“Zai Zhongguo, nimen dou shuo ‘Ni hao’,” I said, which means “In China, you say “Ni hao”.” And I went on. “Zai Xinxilan, women dou shuo ‘Gidday mate’,” which means “In New Zealand, we say “Gidday mate”.”

“Aaaah,” was the communal reply, accompanied by mutterings of Xinxilan, and a couple of them tried to say “Gidday mate”. This conversation lasted for around twenty minutes with us being the centre of attention for a crowd of around twenty or thirty people. We struggled to understand each other until one man who spoke English well joined the group.

“New Zealand is a beautiful country,” he said.

“Have you been to New Zealand?” Karl asked him.

“No, but I have seen pictures.”

Now someone was there who could converse in both Chinese and English, the crowd not only began barking out questions, it also grew like wildfire. We got a little uncomfortable so excused ourselves with the excuse of finding dinner and worked our way through the crowd. We crossed the busy road and walked into a restaurant.

We were wondering how to order and feeling aimless, but a lady who was standing in line explained the Chinese menu and helped us get a simple rice and vegetable meal. Then we headed for the train, a day filled in.

Karl and I got to our bunks on the train and were greeted by several Chinese men who spoke a little English choosing the topics of Jackie Chan movies and football.

“New Zealand not good,” we were told.

“Yes, we’re very bad,” Karl replied.

“I support Manchester United,” one man said.

“I support Chelsea,” said another. The rest of the men listed the European football clubs they followed from halfway across the world. Neither Karl nor I were football fans so when asked about our teams, told them about rugby. We even included a quick demonstration of a rugby tackle. They were disinterested to the point of asking us if we like Kung Fu movies.

After they demonstrated drunken boxing, we were soon listing the few Hong Kong and Chinese actors we knew.

“Jackie Chan,” I said.

“Ahhh,” the men said, a knowing smile growing on each of their faces.

“Chow Yun-Fat,” I said, to which they responded appreciably.

“Jet Li,” Karl said, receiving the same smiles.

“Bruce Lee,” I said.

“Who?” they asked.

“Bruce Lee,” I restated, “from Enter the Dragon?”

“Maybe he’s called his Chinese name here,” Karl said.

As the night went on, a thick layer of smoke filled the carriage, as most of the passengers were playing cards, smoking and enjoying a drink. There was absolutely no regard for the wishes of non-smokers on the train so we had to bear it. The same situation had happened to me on buses and in restaurants since I had arrived so I was growing accustomed to the smell.

The conversation began to die off so one of the men walked to the other end of the car and brought back with him a law student from Tian’an named Susan. She spoke excellent English, and with her translations, we had a long conversation with many of the people in the carriage, including more football, travelling around China and food.

“He admires you coming to China,” Susan said, translating for one particular man. “Carrying your bags around a foreign country is something many Chinese people wish to do.” She said it is very difficult for Chinese nationals to travel the world due to political reasons.