13. The character building option

We met Jan and Justin and spent the afternoon in the central shopping precinct of Tianjin stopping at Starbucks for a coffee before being approached by hundreds of beggars. One in particular was memorable. He moved around on a skateboard as he had no legs, and displayed his deformed spine with no shirt on his back. A ball of skin and vertebrae protruded out two inches from the small of his back. Seeing this deformity five minutes after spending Y20 on a hot chocolate made me question my priorities.

We went to the train station where Karl, Jan and I were leaving for Shanhaiguan, northeast of Beijing. Supposedly a short trip, we took the cheapest option available, the Y25 bench seats. As we were saying goodbye to Justin outside the station doors, a woman walked up to tell Karl and I to go home.

“China is a dangerous place,” she said, Jan interpreting. “You foreigners should go home.” It wasn’t clear whether she meant that we Caucasian foreigners are the danger or if she meant we foreigners are in danger. Either way, the situation seemed ironic when she began hitting me quite hard in the gut and chest.

The call came to board the train at 630PM, and the sweatbox with wheels offered no comforts. The train carriage was packed with people and horribly uncomfortable as with no air conditioning the air was sweltering. We fought our way past the many people in the aisle and booted the people in our seats off them. The panelled wood floor was covered in mud and grease and the walls were covered in condensation. It was loud, smelly and people shuffled about without really moving much as we were packed in like a stock truck headed for the freezing works.

Again we were the attraction of the month, with all eyes on the non-Chinese men, which was obviously intimidating me to such an extent that Karl felt the need to ease my nerves.

“They’re all saying ‘check out those two handsome devils’,” he said.

“I never thought of it that way,” I muttered under my breath.

After sweating it out in the sauna for twenty minutes, the train began moving, and with the windows down, the wind chill cooled us off.

People standing in the aisle had to lean on me for leverage as the train shook from side to side while we clipped along. There was nothing in the way of handles or bars for them to hold on to so all the people sitting on the end of the rows were used as props.

After a few stops, the crowded aisle began to thin out and people moved around looking for vacant seats to fill. A man stood beside me and used my shoulder as leverage, however he didn’t used his hands, his hip, or not quite as acceptable, yet at least understandable, his bum. Instead, he thrust his pelvis out and rubbed his groin against my shoulder. As the train rocked from side to side his penis rubbed against me repetitively. Uncomfortable with this, I bent over, moving my shoulder towards my knees, but his groin followed. I kept bending down further and once I had my chin at kneecap level, he finally got the message that he couldn’t lean on me like he was. I was near crying, near punching him in the face, and near throwing up when he gave up and moved on. I felt violated.

Jan and Karl were laughing, and I could understand their amusement. Jan explained and I had noticed it myself that Chinese people have less of a personal space than Kiwis. That may excuse some things, but not a penis rubbing against me. If it were a woman or child in my position it wouldn’t be funny at all.

The short trip turned out to be longer than anticipated, after a few excruciatingly long stops to let the express - read more expensive - trains go by. We passengers were forced to sit in the stifling heat without air conditioning again. With people disembarking with regularity, more space was available and families began to stretch out over the carriage sleeping under tables and seats, babies and small children resting on chests and bosoms. The floor was no less hospitable from earlier, mud and grease covering every square inch, yet they lay in it anyway.

Some men were drinking and playing cards loudly, throwing their empty bottles out the train window and having a jolly old time. All night, glass smashed outside as the train trucked on leaving their mess behind.

Night was upon us and the windows began to be closed as if it was too cold with the outside air flowing in. Jan began a running battle with two gentlemen across from us for control of our window, as they seemed to be freezing with it wound up, and we were stifling when it was wound down.

I finally stopped complaining about our surroundings after a while. Here I was going through a few hours of torture for the sake of saving a few dollars during my adventures and the rest of these people were just trying to get home.

The train finally arrived at Shanhaiguan at 1144PM, over-friendly taxi drivers outside the station as per usual, whom we ignored. Ignoring them didn’t work, as per usual, so we tried to tell them to go away, which also, as per usual, didn’t work. The cheap hostels said they couldn’t accept foreigners telling Jan the government wanted foreigners to use the more expensive hotels. We had to go looking for the next best option.

We reached the old town walls and followed the tall ancient stone construction northwards to a road with a gate to get inside. A taxi driver followed hell-bent on earning our dollar. None of the streets were signposted and no hotels were open. The taxi driver and his accomplice continued following, yelling that we needed their help.

It was harrowing, yet for some reason I was kind of enjoying it. It was a damn site better than being on the train, that’s for sure. I was the first to concede defeat though.

“What are we gonna do?” I asked the others. We hadn’t discussed what we were doing, and no one had shared a plan they’d thought of.

Karl’s nose was buried in the map that was illuminated by the dull street lamps and Jan was looking around aimlessly.

“Look, I can handle taking turns to sleep in one of the parks back down the road,” I said, “and I can handle jumping in the taxi, ‘cos he seems to think he knows a hotel. You guys need to decide.”

The taxi driver was standing beside us as we had our discussion, Karl waving him away and even pushing him away in his irritation. Jan and I moved over to the car while Karl looked up and down the road in desperation, as though he was searching for an escape hatch.

Finally, he conceded the defeat Jan and I were resigned to and jumped in the taxi with us. A five hundred metre drive later and the taxi arrived at the gates to a hotel without any signs. It looked more like an embassy than a hotel with six-foot high steel fences and a security guard on the gate. The driver had to lean on the horn for the gates to be opened, the staff not seeming too enamoured by our presence. Jan bargained for a room for us that proved a much better option than the park down the road.

Before I went to bed, I was thinking how stupid it was arriving at night, in a town without pre-organised accommodation.

“I’m never doing that again,” I said in the luke-warm shower, scrubbing my shoulder vigorously.

The next morning, we took a bus to Laolong Tou, Old Dragon’s Head, where the Great Wall meets the sea. There was quite a few people crowding around the entrance gate and an elderly Chinese man turned and asked me, in English, where I was from, which I replied to.

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

“Have you been to New Zealand?”

“Yes, when I was young and an academic,” he replied. That made me wonder who this guy was. Judging by his age he could’ve been an academic before or during the Cultural Revolution, and if that was the case he either is an extremely lucky person to have not been targeted by the Red Guard or he was on the Communist party’s side. For him to have been allowed to go to New Zealand I was guessing the latter and for him to be an academic communist suggested a certain amount of power. While touring around the countryside, one doesn’t come across many elderly Chinese nationals who speak English.

“Why did you come to China?” he asked. “Are you an English teacher?”

“No,” I replied, “I… um… I came to see the sights.”

“Ahh, okay,” he said, nodding and wished me farewell. The conversation seemed to end abruptly, maybe because of my answer. I think he could tell I just reached for an answer that sounded nice.

Much like Badaling, the Wall at Laolong Tou was refurbished with polished stone and jotted out into the sea half the length of a football field. Legend suggests a dragon’s head was connected at the very end and has disappeared in time. We visited a shrine nearby and watched as speedboats filled with tourists swung around the sea taking them for a wild ride with no one wearing lifejackets. Maybe they were not a requirement for Chinese thrill-seeking companies.

Later, Jan, Karl and I had returned to Shanhaiguan looking for any kind of dinner available. The hotel we were staying in was situated within the old town walls, the northern wall being a section of the Great Wall. These walls collectively protect a part of the town that consists of run-down housing made of concrete brick and tin, streets ranging from shoddy to literally dug up pits, and a large communal dining area that looks more like the blackened concrete handball courts of New Zealand high schools.

Amongst this mess of bricks and tin, we walked down what, in a previous life may have been a street, but was now a narrow track wide enough for people to walk single file, planks crossing deep trenches to link with the shops on either side. The food shops looked half stocked with few cans and bags on the shelves. The people and place seemed to survive on very little with no cars to be seen and nothing much available in the shops. I was thinking the place was obviously a deprived area until we passed a plank that led to an Internet café filled with young people playing computer games like Counter Strike.

To one side of a small alleyway nearby, an unwashed, unkempt old man, dressed in crappy old clothes, sat on a bucket. His beard covered his chin and upper-lip in a black and grey fur while his eyes, half-closed with wrinkled corners, were fixed on me. My first consideration was that he was probably a beggar as he looked, dressed and sat exactly like many beggars in Beijing and other cities. He was staring at me like a lot of people did. Normally, saying “Ni hao” worked to get a smile out of people, so I tried.

“Ni hao,” I said, smiling, which was greeted with not a stir. He just continued staring.

He had probably been sitting there all day with nothing to do. I was waiting for him to thrust his hand or pot out to ask for money, but then a mobile phone rang. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a flip phone more technologically advanced than mine and raised it to his ear.

“Wei, ni hao,” he said into the mouthpiece as he looked into the distance. It was becoming more and more difficult for me to ascertain just how incongruous this country could really appear.

The southeast corner of the town walls had been breached leaving a gap for pedestrians and small vehicles to get through to the town outside where more restaurants and hotels surrounded the train station and major roads. A small roadside restaurant beckoned, and with Jan to do the talking, we drank some beer and ordered some food.

“Would we like to try the bird dish?” she translated for the waiter.

“Should we ask what kind of bird it is, or just say yes?” Karl asked.

“Just say yes,” we agreed on.

Three skewered birds the size of a robin were placed in front of us, barbequed charcoal black on the outside, with dry and bland meat on the inside.

I didn’t want to eat it all but Jan implied it was a bit of a delicacy and to not eat would be an insult. I smiled to the cook at the grill surrounded by caged birds inside and gulped down an extra bottle of beer to make up for the bland taste of the food.

“Why did you come to China, Chris?” Jan asked as we ordered another beer in case the taste of bird returned.

“I don’t really know,” I said. “Why did you come here?”

“I don’t know either. To see the place, I suppose.”

Maybe I didn’t need a reason, I told myself. People make up reasons that are complete rubbish all the time, and all I did was buy a ticket, save some money and get on a plane. Why I needed a reason wasn’t really for me anyway. It’s almost as if people wanted my excuse for being there. I downed another beer and tried to not think about it.

We stopped at Beidaihe, a small coastal resort town due south from Shanhaiguan, as Karl and Jan wanted to go for a swim. They ran into the yellow sea, joining the many men in Speedos, and I was left on the beach watching the tide wash in plastic bottles, Styrofoam, and cigarette butts.

Fishing boats cruised the waters in the distance and what looked like oil drilling platforms sat on the horizon. Describing this place as a beautiful resort beach was a stretch. After her swim, Jan went for a walk down the beach, returning to report the cockroach-like bugs had taken over the rocks to the south, like Weihai and Chengshan Tou.

Salespeople interrupted our rest selling beaded bracelets and necklaces or shells off the seashore. Jan refused to talk to them as she had sworn a vow of silence in Chinese. When the touts noticed she was with two white men they saw her as the path to selling us crap. With her telling them she didn’t speak Mandarin, Karl and I were left to mock them instead.

The sales pitches were lasting anywhere from five seconds to ten minutes. One man showed us a shell, which we tried to ignore so he took another one out of his bag, which we tried to ignore so he took another one out of his bag and so on. I felt like paying him just to get lost. He tried to get us to buy one for Jan, pointing at the shell, then me, then Jan, who wasn’t watching.

“Jan, would you like this seashell?” I asked.

“No,” she said, not looking up.

“Sorry mate,” I said to the salesman, “she’s not keen.”

“Maybe if you showed us a different seashell,” Karl said, which the man seemed to understand. Finally he gave up and the beach was bliss again until the next sales people breached my sunlight bubble.

As we left via the promenade near the beach, Karl and I went looking for a toilet and Jan sat by the roadside waiting. There was some odd music growing louder by the moment and could only have been a band travelling around the area by vehicle. When we came back, the music was gone and Jan was pissed off.

“Did you see that?” she asked.

“What?”

“The band on the truck?” she said, pointing down the now empty road.

“Um, no.”

“Fucking Chinese people,” she said.

“Huh?”

“A band was throwing pamphlets advertising their show from a truck. On the truck with them were two caged lions and a chained bear.”

“Shit,” Karl and I said, looking at each other.

“Some Chinese people are assholes,” Jan added, looking down the road the truck had gone down, not hiding how upset she was. “This country is fucked.”

“Mmm,” we agreed half-heartedly.

“So, I’m going to get an ice cream,” Karl said. “Who’s with me?”

“Yup,” I said, “and you Jan?”

“No,” she mumbled, beginning to sulk, “I don’t feel like one.”

We nodded and walked over to the stall across the road and bought something chocolate in a cone each. As we walked away, one of the women at the stall said something to her friend.

“Fuck you,” Jan said in a rage and directed a tirade of mumbled swear words at the women at the stall. Karl and I stood frozen by fear. “She just said, ‘They’re so mean, not buying their translator an ice cream’. Fucking Chinese people.”

“Oh.” A lot of people thought Jan was our tour guide, which was kind of true since she did a lot of our bargaining, but they also thought she was our lackey too. It was a rough situation for her to be in considering she wasn’t expected to be foreign. At times this was a blessing, she admitted, but at times such as these, very irritating.

On the way to the train station the band with the caged lions and bear went past, still playing the terrible music and throwing pamphlets at people on the streets. I was instantly pissed off too.

The cages were barely large enough to fit the two fully-grown lions, and the bear was squashed into one by itself. Their plight was magnified further by the absolute din the band was making, with irritating noise from drums and wind instruments barely able to be described as music although loud enough to drown out the sound of the very sick diesel engine of the truck they were on. Any respect I had for the Chinese authorities and government was severely tarnished in that moment. If there had to be officers on every street corner in central Beijing policing the way pedestrians cross the street, they could afford someone to do something about caging lions and bears cruelly.

The people of this town followed our every movement just as every other group of people from every other town we’d been to followed our every movement. I was getting pretty accustomed to it but I couldn’t help but note it.

“Surely these people have seen a foreigner before,” I said. “I know it’s novel, but still, why do they get that interested in a couple of white guys?”

“It’s still a relatively new experience to see foreign tourists,” Jan said. “There just isn’t the same mixture of cultural heritage here compared to other countries.”

“Just consider,” Karl offered helpfully, “they’re all thinking ‘Hey, look at those handsome devils’.”

We bought tickets for a high priced train with fantastic interior, hot water for drinks and meals, well managed toilet facilities and air conditioning. It wasn’t just a contrast from the train to Shanhaiguan we had endured; it was a completely different world. I much preferred this stylish carriage, as opposed to the character-building option from a few nights previous.

We bid each other farewell and went our separate ways once the train arrived in Beijing. It was early evening and the sun had gone down when I walked to the subway to meet Meang in Wudaokou. On the steps down from the station square, I passed a man sitting on an old leather briefcase, attired in striped polo shirt, black dress pants and shoes. He looked up at me, smiled, produced a cell phone from his pocket and placed it to his ear. He didn’t dial, he didn’t press any buttons to receive a call, nor did he speak. He just kept looking and smiling at me.

I smiled back, trying to hide my bemusement by remembering to remain polite and continued walking down the steps toward the train platform. Soon, he strode beside me, briefcase in hand, not saying anything yet still holding this phone to his ear. I could feel his eyes boring into the side of my head.

Waiting for the train to arrive, he stood only at arms’ length from me, still with phone to ear, still not speaking and still watching me intently. I waited for the train hoping to lose him in the mad scramble for seats that was always on the cards.

Once the train arrived, people pushed on and off the carriages. I found a space standing in the aisle with my pack, while the man took a seat directly in front of me. His phone was glued in place and his silent, smiling gaze freaked me out more and more by the moment.

The entire ride, this man watched me with his phone up in position and not a word uttered from his lips. I waited and waited for the interchange station stop, feeling the pressure of this man’s interest in me, hoping he wasn’t a mad man but resigned to the fact evidence so far suggested that he was. I considered he could’ve been listening to a message service, but reception on the trains was usually terrible.

The doors opened at my stop and I practically leapt from the train, throwing my bag out like a lifeboat to land on. I looked to see if he was following me, but he wasn’t.

Still seated, he calmly pressed the aerial of the phone back into the casing, closed the phone with the flick of a wrist and placed it back in the pocket from whence it came. He was smiling to himself now, seemingly proud for whatever reason. The train began moving again and I spun on my heels, breathing a sigh of thank-fuck-that’s-over, and headed for my next train’s platform.

Sitting on the bench seat aboard the light-rail train as we were approaching Wudaokou, a few Americans stepped on board. I was soon engrossed, watching their every movement. As they stood around, chatting about sightseeing in the capital, I couldn’t help but listen in on the conversation. It was a big shock after a couple of weeks, to see foreigners and hear English in a conversation in which I was not involved.

And to an extent, I was actually thinking, “Check out that group of handsome devils.”