23. Idiot taxes

Jiandong and Chong Ke had suggested I take the train when leaving Jilin, but the bus seemed like the easier option. During my travels in the northeast I had enjoyed the new luxury cruiser buses and I hoped the next journey to Haerbin would be similar. The price for each mode of transport was comparable but getting a bus ticket was easier than a train ticket, even if it did increase the dangers. Chinese roads are infamous for death and carnage.

I evaded the touts outside the bus station by putting the psychological blinkers on to ignore what they were trying to sell, and once inside, lined up for a ticket. I only had to wait fifteen minutes for the bus to depart. No seats were available by the departure gate, so I sat on my bag waiting amongst the throng of people coming and going. I was less nervous in the departure lounges now, with the noise levels and people constantly moving becoming less intimidating over time.

Children ran around me playing and getting into mischief while parents chatted away unworried about what the kids were doing. Touts offered cheap cigarettes and food, and I was constantly waving people away. The place smelt of stale cigarette smoke, much like any indoor hall, wangba and restaurant, which was becoming quite pleasant now I’d been in the country a few months.

A man approached asking in Mandarin if I was going to Haerbin. I nodded, and he led me by the shoulder to the front of the departure gate queue. My ticket was checked and accepted and I was seated on a crappy, old, stinking, uncomfortable bus with a spring poking into the small of my back. This was not what I wanted to pay for.

We left the station with all the seats full and the first stop was two minutes down the road where the bus driver turned into an alleyway, broke out some stools and put more people in the centre aisle. The bus was literally packed shoulder-to-shoulder, front to back and then departed Jilin.

I wondered if I had got on the correct bus. There are cowboys in China who drive old buses, which they don’t keep in good working order, run the same route as the organised bus and collect payments and tickets for which they are reimbursed. They look to fill every seat and once they’ve done so they fill the aisle, which is illegal, and once they’ve done so the bus is on its way.

I was sitting shoulder to shoulder between two very smelly people, which was okay since there was no air conditioning and I was sweating and stinking myself. I was getting paranoid again, thinking I’d got on the wrong bus. I had failed to check the bus number printed on the ticket against the number painted on the bus. My mind wandered back to all the times I had been ripped off, and I started beating myself up for being stupid.

I found more evidence I was not on a regulated ride when the bus passed a bus stop, complete with mini-restaurant and toilet facilities, and stopped fifteen minutes up the road. Available at our stop, a broken down old shop offered a limited food selection and drinks hidden in a fridge out the back. One solitary toilet for all on the bus to line up for was by the road and if the outside was anything to go by, the inside was not a desired restroom option.

Once on the road again, we passed car crash after car crash on the side of the road. Cars had ploughed into trucks had ploughed into buses had ploughed into trees. There were too many incidents to count, and our driver seemed to desire being another statistic himself and taking the rest of us with him. The bus flew around corners and overtook large lines of trucks, forcing traffic coming from the opposite direction onto the grass on the side of the road. I rolled my eyes to block all the mortal thoughts out and watched as we passed another truck parked on top of a car.

After a couple of hours, narrow back-roads becoming large inter-provincial highways, then industrial farm equipment centres grew into tall towers and a corporate zone. Cars and trucks shared the roads and paths with pedestrians and cyclists, along with a few horses towing carriages. We were in Haerbin, another capital of the north.

Within minutes of stopping on a side street around the corner from the bus station, I knew I had been duped. I looked for a bus number on the front windscreen but there was none, even though there was one on my ticket. While hunting down a hotel room, I walked past the bus station and saw a modern bus marked Jilin to Haerbin with a shiny new paint job and clean windows. People in uniforms passed out luggage from the freight compartment and the number on the back window corresponded with my ticket. I had subsidised all the other tickets to Haerbin for the passengers on my bus. I felt stupid. Again.

“Live and learn,” I said through gritted teeth. “At least I got here though.”

I looked at a room in the train station hotel, fleas bounced off the bed and the smell from the communal toilets blew throughout the corridor and rooms due to the draught from the gaping holes in the walls. A door to another room opened and, stretched out on maybe six beds, were twenty grown men and women either sleeping or watching television. Condensation was dripping from the ceiling in the non-air conditioned sweltering room.

Having opted to pursue other accommodation, I took a big breath of comparatively fresh air outside and walked into the central city area, two kilometres northwest of the bus and train stations, and found a hotel in the middle of the obligatory shopping precinct. The staff spoke some English, which I thought would help.

After arguing about the room price for fifteen minutes, I realised I had no cash so had to go looking for a bank. Upon my return we argued over the price of room insurance, or bond for another ten minutes and I finally paid and went upstairs to partake in a hot shower as I had gone without for a few days. Unfortunately, I would go without for a while longer.

“What time is hot water available?” I asked at the front desk a few minutes later.

“Seven o’clock tonight,” the lady at the desk said. Cool, I thought, that’s only a few hours away and I don’t have to smell myself in the meantime. This reminded me of something else.

“How much to wash clothes? Laundry service?” I asked.

“Y70,” was the total suggested after we had added up all my garments that stank like week-old margarine and rotting orange peel.

“Ya what?”

“Y70,” was the response. I had heard her correctly the first time.

This was probably the most I had been quoted to do laundry since I’d arrived in the country, and probably reflected how desperate these hotels thought I was to get some washing done. Their hands had just rifled through my dirty, stinking shirts after all.

“Not paying Y70,” I told them. “Do you know somewhere I can wash them that is cheaper?” They laughed and said no. I didn’t expect them to help me with this but there was no harm in asking.

“Wash in your bath,” one of the ladies at the counter said. I figured I could do that again.

At 7PM that evening, I tried the hot water without luck.

“What time is hot water available?” I asked again, having returned to the front desk.

“Seven o’clock in morning,” said the lady. My hand hit my forehead with a thud.

I walked out and found an Internet café down the road. It operated differently to other cafés, in that customers paid the total hours before logging on and the computer automatically logged off at the end. That worked, as it stopped me from playing on the net for too long. I paid for an hour and wrote emails to a few friends and family, letting them know I was still alive and kicking. When the little dialogue box told me I had one minute to go, I logged off.

I was walking behind a group of very attractive young women on the way back to the hotel. They all held hands, which added to how collectively attractive I found them. When one woman turned, reached back in her throat for a hunk of phlegm and spat it into the gutter, my attraction diminished somewhat, for them all.

The next morning, I woke up to my alarm at 7AM and started up the shower. I left it to run for a minute and when I returned it was cold. For fifteen minutes, I played with the tap, played with the nozzle, let it run for ages, and tried what I thought was everything before giving up.

“Hi,” I said to the guy behind the desk, “I’m in room 620, and I haven’t got any hot water.”

“Seven o’clock tonight,” he said.

I went for a walk before I strangled someone.

At the northern end of the central city, Songhua River dissects the urban area from the parks and reserves reachable by taxi-boat and cable car. Stalin Park, on the city side of the river, was alive with stereos, people, shops, game stalls and carnival booths. I had planned to go to a reserve across the river but assumed it would be just as reserved as any other area designed to attract tourists, that is, not reserving anything conceivably sellable. So I skipped it.

I kept walking, and no matter where I went clothes and electronics stores were everywhere. I wasn’t interested in shopping but couldn’t avoid it. I would turn a corner, and there would be another row of shops, stereo’s blaring out loud music and staff clapping at the doorstep.

Walking through any shopping area in Chinese cities, it was easy to spot people standing outside shops trying to attract attention, usually screaming advertisements such as specials of the day. Often there was someone who, lacking prices or specials to advertise, simply clapped continuously. They wouldn’t say anything, wouldn’t move and wouldn’t respond to eye contact. They just stood there clapping.

Five-foot had said the advent of the clapping work was due to laws regarding employment numbers per square metre.

Chinese laws of the past mandated requirements that businessmen must employ so many people to work a certain sized area, probably as means to keep farmers in work and spread wealth accumulation. This law is still in effect even in shoe stores and restaurants, so I saw a lot of service people standing around, not seeming to do much. Clapping is just a way to make someone look needed, or required at least.

While I thought of this during my wander through central Haerbin, I made not one purchase nor did I take much notice of what was for sale. I ignored most of it, looking for something else to do. I scoured back streets, found another couple of parks and a large church, but couldn’t find anything interesting to fill my day. I went back to the Internet café from the night before to relax and waste the early evening.

My time on the net was nearly up and a dialogue box popped up on the screen to tell me I had ten minutes left, which was ample time to finish my emails.

As I did so, a lady from behind the counter walked up and spoke to me. Her comments included the words “wu kuai,” Mandarin for Y5. I understood this, but nothing else that she said.

“Budong,” I told her. I don’t understand.

She repeated herself, including the “wu kuai” part, and pointed at the computer screen.

“Budong,” I also repeated. I figured she was telling me to give her Y5 to pay for more time, but I wouldn’t be staying so tried to tell her I was leaving. “Shi fen, wo qu.” I said this hoping it meant that I would go in ten minutes. I do admit that this could mean, “I don’t know the capital of Nigeria”, but I was pretty sure I was correct.

She responded by yelling at me, tapping the screen, saying the “wu kuai” thing again and stopped me from writing and sending emails.

“Budong,” I said again.

“Budong,” she snarled, her eyes bulging out of her head as her nose wrinkled up and her top lip curled off to one side. “Budong, budong, budong.” By now, my time left on the net was around six minutes. We had gained the attention of everyone frequenting the place and I felt like hiding under the desk.

“I’m going in six minutes,” I reiterated in both English and Mandarin, hopefully. I was starting to get irritated which complemented the confusion I was suffering.

She responded by pulling my chair away from the computer desk, getting in my way and yelling the “wu kuai” thing again. She started going right off, yelling at the top of her lungs, and I couldn’t understand a word.

“Budong,” I stammered incredulously. She threw her hands up in despair, showing her anger and irritation, but thought twice before giving up completely.

“Wu kuai,” she said again and said words I didn’t know. She spoke slowly and loudly, great lot of help that it was. With only four minutes to go on my prepaid log-on, I was could feel blood rushing to my head. She continued pointing at the screen and saying something I didn’t understand, demanding Y5 from me after I had already paid for my hour. I’d even bought an overpriced bottle of lemonade from them.

I sat there chewing teeth for a moment while she kept yelling. When the dialogue box popped up to say I only had two minutes left before being automatically logged off, I hit boiling point.

“Get out of my face, you fuckin’ bitch,” I yelled in English. If I could say it in Mandarin I think I would have. “I’m leaving! I’m leaving!” I pointed at the door saying in Mandarin that I would go. I logged off everything, stood up and pulled a Y5 note from my pocket, walked over to the rubbish bin and shaped to lob it in. I stood there for a moment, looking at the people around the room and then into the eyes of the stunned lady who had been yelling at me moments before. Fuck it, I thought, I’ll get a nice ice cream for Y5.

Walking back to the hotel, I was irate. I hadn’t showered in days and all my clothes stank. I was in a city in which all I could find was a massive shopping hell and I’d paid for a luxury bus to get here and got on a shit-can box with wheels instead.

Nobody understood me and I didn’t understand anyone, and I was getting sick of it. After the situation I had just been in, on top of the things that had happened in the previous few days, I felt useless again. I felt stupid, unprepared, and out of my depth. I felt like I had wasted my time coming to this city that was clearly not my scene. And I tried to draw differences in this place from any other that I had been to in China. The more I thought about it, the more the cities and places merged into one big shopping spree. It must’ve been me.

Why I was testing myself, and what I had to prove, I didn’t know. If I was trying to be brave, I must’ve been failing. It dawned on me that it was completely stupid to traipse around China trying to prove myself when I didn’t know what I was trying to prove. As I ate my ice cream, I admitted to myself that I was sick of the place.

By the time I got back to the hotel, I had decided I didn’t want to be in China anymore. This was only cemented further in my heart when I tried the shower again.

The next morning, there was still no hot water. I packed and went to the front desk to demand hot water or they would lose my business. It was pretty obvious they were either incompetent or stringing me along, but most likely it was both.

They told me 7PM that night, which I laughed at and demanded my bond back. They found this rude, but I was beyond caring about breaking social taboos. Saving face could go to hell. Once the money was in my wallet, I walked back to the bus station.

“Get me the fuck out of this shit-hole of a city,” I said to the ticket counter lady, who looked perplexed, so I corrected myself. “One ticket to Changchun?” She understood that.

On the road headed south, my mind was stuck on all the annoying things Chinese people did. They pushed in line for train tickets and endlessly tried to sell things even though I made it clear I wasn’t interested. One day, a man tried to hijack a taxi from Five-foot and I as we put our bags in the boot after lining up for twenty minutes. After we both yelled at him, he smiled and apologised as if he didn’t realise what he was doing.

I would walk along a narrow footpath between a bicycle parking area and a building. A cyclist would pass by then stop on the footpath directly in front of me, blocking the path while he or she found a park for the bicycle. I would be stopped in my tracks with no way to get past. Why he or she chose to pass me if they would block my way a second or two later wasn’t an issue to them as any thought of me never entered their heads. This wasn’t just a one off example but a regular occurrence.

If I voiced my irritation, they would smile and apologise, nodding as if they understood the error in their ways but I could tell they were only doing so to avoid any great conflict. Saving face. After a while, my instant reaction became to swear at them and push past, making sure they knew I wasn’t expecting nor accepting an apology.

The thing I was most irritated by was the smile and apology. I could tell these people didn’t give a rat’s ass about what they did. They only did so to avoid being seen as completely bad. I don’t recall any sincere apologies in one of those instances. That insincerity was what irritated me.

As the bus continued to Changchun, I was stewing big-time.