2. Huanying, huanying (Welcome)

“Don’t get kidnapped by taxi or bus drivers, and don’t follow the hotel touts.”

This, I was told by Meang, is the secret to surviving your first five minutes in China. When you walk into the arrival hall of the train, ferry, airport and bus terminals, your first task is to get past the hotel touts and people selling “organised” tours. Your aim is to get to the relative safety of the outside world in one piece. Of course, in the public squares outside the train stations, other, more sinister people lurk seeking out those people in obvious virgin territory.

The first time I walked through a throng of this heaving humanity all intent on “earning” my money was when I arrived in Beijing International Airport.

As the plane circled above the capital city at night, dead straight lines of street lamps ran in horizontal and perpendicular avenues near-continuously. The grid below me looked like the most straightforward, yet time-consuming game of connect-the-dots ever conceived. Having circled for a few minutes, as though he was perusing the offerings of a buffet, the pilot seemed to select randomly from the plethora of straight runways below, without any great degree of discrimination, and began our descent.

We touched down safely onto a solid platform, the pilot having selected wisely. I had no idea what to expect in terms of modernity in the buildings at the airport, but as we taxied to the terminal, I saw one simple building only a few levels high with large red letters spelling out Beijing Airport in both Chinese calligraphy and English. I was reminded of the domestic terminal at Christchurch Airport, New Zealand: a largish warehouse-like box, doing its utmost to not look like an over-hyped petrol station.

The arrival hall was on a par with the outer shell of the building, the carpet design of 1970s triangles and circles, and plastic bench seats moulded in the “don’t sit here” fashion. I had to stop at the men’s room on the way to border control, and was asked for a tip by the young man who gave me a hand towel after I washed my hands. Having never tipped anyone before, I wasn’t sure how much to give, so handed over HK$10 and received a wide smile for my trouble. If I ever need a hand towel in a toilet at Beijing International Airport, I know he’ll be on my side.

Border control was operated by stern officers in grey suits with black trim, which seemed extremely close to Gestapo uniforms I’d seen in old world war two movies. Having joined the back of the queue due to my men’s room stop, I had to wait nearly an hour until being called past the yellow line. I offered the biggest smile in my arsenal to a scary woman in grey while she checked my passport, checked my face, checked my passport, and checked my face again. She barely spoke in the five plus minutes I stood before her, which explained why it took over an hour between getting off the plane and to my bag.

Finally, I was waved through customs, and beyond the glass doors I could see Meang waving to me from within the crowd waiting at the gate. I recognised his big cheeky grin before anything else. He stands at a healthy five-feet, which had earned him the nickname “Five-foot-Assassin” during his time at University in New Zealand. I returned his waving as I walked through the doors to China proper, smiling like a gimp as we hadn’t seen one another in nearly two years. While I was distracted, a man grabbed my bag and proceeded to walk shoulder to shoulder with me.

I stopped, pulling on my bag to make him stop too. Still holding on, he pointed out the exit door, saying something I didn’t understand, but took to mean “I will take you to the city, now come on.”

As he tried to continue walking away with my bag, I responded by smiling, tapping his arm to imply he let go, and said, “Fuck off, lumberjack.”

He resisted, speaking again while pointing out the door, but was interrupted by Meang, who, having worked his way through the crowd, told him to go away in Mandarin. That was the first time I felt I wouldn’t survive in China without help, and would not be the last.

“Brother Five-foot,” I said, giving him a relieved hug.

“Huanying, bro,” he replied, pointing at my hair. “Flock of seagulls attack you before you left?”

He took my bags from me and we walked out to the car park and were accompanied by a driver Five-foot had hired for the trip to and from the airport. We piled into the car and headed for his apartment. Private drivers can be found throughout the city offering their services for prices comparable to taxis, only they’re not affiliated with any legal organisation. This particular driver apparently was mates with Five-foot’s landlord, hence hung out by the apartment complex waiting for business. They pass the day playing cards, Chinese chess and smoking with other drivers. Getting a ride was, as Five-foot explained, as easy as walking to a car park and waving some money around. Getting stabbed might be as easy too, so I figured I’d be a little more subtle than that.

Feeling around for my seatbelt, Five-foot said not to bother as the car swung from side to side while the driver searched for the lane that best suited our direction. Careering along the virtually deserted late-night motorways, the odd car passed from every undesirable angle, hands on horns as they neared, and our driver responded in kind. I was scraping around hurriedly for any sign of my seatbelt, nearly losing skin and bone from my fingers while in the frantic process. Alas, the near new Volkswagen sedan may have had air conditioning, electric windows, a CD player, and beautiful upholstery, but obviously, seatbelts weren’t on the list of mod-cons in demand in China.

We passed a blue truck, its missing hind door replaced with a canvas canopy, which, being tied back, revealed several pig carcasses laid on the steel floor. Tomorrow’s lunch was being delivered to waiting butchers and restaurants through the twenty-degree heat of the early summer night. Food safety procedures here, it seemed, were not as strict as New Zealand’s.

After a thirty-minute drive along a multitude of eight-lane roads and the driver playing a game of psychological pinball from one steel barrier to the other, at speed, we arrived at Five-foot’s complex each thankfully in one piece. The guard on sentry duty, who looked too young to legally leave a New Zealand high school, watched as we drove past his station at the gate. He didn’t stop or search us, or take any action other than allowing his curiosity to follow our movements from the car once we had stopped.

Five-foot’s apartment was on the second floor of one of the twenty story buildings that made up the uniform complex. I was now stepping into a home built from a socialist town-planning scheme. Altogether, I counted maybe fifteen such buildings of relative size, shape, and faded pink colour resembling those at Diamond Hill, Hong Kong.

The hallways were dark and grey, although a loud foot stomp and clucking sounds from Five-foot reached a noise sensor that automatically switched on the lights, illuminating bare concrete walls, floors and ceilings. Five-foot welcomed me into his home, a four-room apartment with white tiled floors and pine trim passing itself off as China’s answer to a simply elegant home décor. Soon, we were watching Chinese television, which included a music and entertainment concert beyond my comprehension, and then caught up with all the gossip about mutual university friends and reminisced before I crashed onto a bed.

The next morning, Five-foot took me for my first adventure in Wudaokou, northern Beijing. We were going to a restaurant for lunch with his classmates. It was a ten-minute walk, full of surprise, intrigue, and death defying stunts.

Dirt and grime seemed to hold everything together. The streets and buildings were long overdue for sweeping and dusting, and the brown haze in the sky blocked out the sunlight yet left a Strepsil-like orange capsule in the sky.

“This is nothing,” Five-foot told me. “On bad days, I can’t see the light-rail station.” He said this as we walked towards the elevated commuter trains, less than one hundred metres away.

Wudaokou is a busy-getting-busier district of Beijing, with restaurants and shopping galore and residential complexes filling the surrounding area. These serviced the growing international influx of Mandarin students attending the universities nearby, such as Five-foot, and the rising number of middle class families effected by the country’s industrial leap in the past couple of decades.

The roads were like rush hour in any New Zealand city and the footpaths were, well, like the roads of rush hour any New Zealand city. Pedestrians shared the paths with cyclists, scooters and cars, all in varying degrees of motion, from stopped to speeding. Car horns blasted away continuously, either telling all that someone was in the way, or just responding to other horns, like an ongoing cockfight over who has the loudest sounds.

Shopkeepers played loud music and stood in doorways clapping and shouting at people walking past. The louder the better it seemed, as if pure distraction is a lead-in for spending and consumption.

Young women walked in pairs or small groups, holding hands as they chatted, while perusing shops or wandering the streets. Young men also walked in small groups, often with their arms around one another, hands on shoulders or holding each other’s arms. The affections displayed between the young women were much more acceptable to me.

Then Five-foot pointed across the busy road and started walking.

Traffic lights may universally change from red to green to amber and then back to red, but that doesn’t mean motorists have a universal response to them. Indeed, I was to find out soon enough that no matter the light colour of the moment, anyone turning right (driving on the right-hand side of the road in China) would go regardless. Cyclists, cars, buses and anything else on wheels was coming round the corner at us.

“Don’t worry,” Five-foot said, “you’re white. There’s no way they’ll hit a white guy.”

After dodging the bikes, cars and anything else the road could throw at me, we made it to the footpath on other side as my fight or flight system pumped endorphins throughout my body. Of course, cars and bicycles on that footpath had to be avoided too.

We walked past the light-rail station, numerous beggars with pots in their hands and eyes trained on my every movement. The pots had a single coin taped loosely to the handle and with the shake of the wrist, a metallic clatter enquired of pedestrians if there was any loose change available. After a rattle, these pots were thrust in my direction and followed me, like a traffic cop with a speed radar gun, until I had passed. The sight of a Caucasian obviously triggered thoughts of wealth and generosity. Voices murmured in a humble, thankful way, until they received nothing from me.

And I was introduced to the one true national pastime – spit.

We were walking down very busy streets, while all around, numerous people heaved back in their throats, gathering a massive clump of saliva, and distributed it into rubbish bins or onto the footpath. People could be heard and seen, passing by in buses, taxis and on bikes, doing likewise. There were people stepping out of restaurants and stores, all for a casual spit and perusal of people passing by. And they were oblivious. The people walking by, and the people sitting at restaurants didn’t seem to take any notice. It was just a part of life here.

We arrived at the restaurant with my health still intact, as far as I could discern anyway, and my meal of simple meat and rice with a coke chaser seemed like the greatest meal I had ever eaten.

Much of the discussion at the table was conducted in Mandarin. Five-foot’s classmates were from Korea and spoke only a little English, hence the only way they could communicate effectively together was to practice what they learned in their Mandarin classes. This left me listening in for what I understood, which wasn’t much, apart from the odd reference regarding New Zealand, me, and whether I would teach English or learn Chinese, which I still hadn’t decided upon. Would I do something constructive with my time, or go sightseeing instead?

I had no answers for them, and was quite ambivalent about getting involved in any classes or work on offer, but I figured I had time to choose.