28. The dancing trees of Goat City

In search for an authentic dining establishment, hoping to find somewhere that offered very Chinese meals, I found the aptly named Come and Wait Restaurant.

Situated below ground level, I was shown, during the busy lunch period, to a seat sharing a booth with a smoking businessman. He’d finished his noodle soup and had settled in with a cup of green tea and newspaper. I was handed a menu in Chinese. Looking repetitively at both sides of the plastic covered sheet of paper, I couldn’t work out any characters at all. Normally, I could spot the chicken, beef, noodles and rice characters but struggled until the businessman, who’d noticed my consternation, pointed at the menu and then at the corresponding meals situated on tables around the room.

Thanking him, I smiled and tried to get the attention of the staff but was constantly ignored. As each staff member walked directly past my raised hand, some occasionally caught eye contact with me yet continued with other work, refusing to answer my hand waving. This went on for a few minutes and as that chip began to rest on my shoulder again, the businessman stood up and yelled to get the attention of the entire restaurant full of patrons while he berated the staff.

The staff all started calling out back at him beginning an argument about whatever he had said. The staff all stood at the front door projecting their voices to our booth on the complete opposite side of the room and soon four or five other people were yelling from all corners of the restaurant. I was pointed at constantly, other dining patrons looking at me intently and the businessman eventually sat down, hopefully at the arguments end then looked me in the eye and nodded. I nodded and smiled to him, which seemed a cue for him to fire up another smoke in satisfaction and find his place in the newspaper.

The waiter arrived quickly, still mouthing off at the businessman who spoke back harshly. I pointed at the menu indicating what the businessman had suggested was a dumpling soup, and hoped the argument was over.

After I had waited another ten or fifteen minutes, which is a long time to wait in Chinese restaurants, the soup arrived. The businessman left and I was able to settle into the booth myself until a young couple were placed opposite me as an audience to my burgeoning dining etiquette. As delicious as dumpling soup is, I always find it difficult to eat with chopsticks, which was pretty obvious as I splashed the bowls contents over the table.

I mopped up the puddles on the table with extra napkins I’d liberated from tables nearby then put up my hand to ask for the bill. Having been ignored for another five minutes, I walked to the front counter to pay and was ignored again. I raised my arm, waved, made eye contact and brought out my money, hoping someone would take it off me but there wasn’t any sign of interest from the staff. I figured that the moment I headed for the door they’d come screaming, so grabbed the door handle to see what happened.

One of the waiters bounded up the stairs immediately bellowing in an angry hastened tone. I responded by looking him in the eye and waving my money at him. Whether he’d got the picture or I had, the bill was paid and my experience of waiting at the Come and Wait restaurant was over.

A few hours later, Steve, from the USA, Eric and I were getting slightly drunk in a park on Shamian Island. The island is near the central city; maybe four stops via the metro, from the central People’s Square. It’s barely an island but is outset from the northern bank of the river by a fifteen metre wide canal. We were facing the southern bank of the river, as bright neon lights blinked continuously in the night inviting us over to the nightspots only a ferry-ride away.

Earlier that day, a French woman who had stayed at the hostel had problems leaving the country. During her travels, she had her passport stolen and, having had it duly replaced, was struggling to get a replacement Chinese visa. Without that visa she couldn’t get to Hong Kong for her flight home and she was emotional, bordering on distraught. Steve, having a good background in Mandarin after spending a lot of time in China, went with her to the Public Securities Bureau, the organisation that polices, amongst other things, visa activity in China. He spent the better part of a day with her discussing and debating with the bureaucratic officers. Finally, she was granted a visa that allowed her to pass into Hong Kong and get to her flight.

Hurriedly, she thanked Steve, not knowing what to say.

He, also not knowing what to say, said something akin to, “Happy to help”. They swapped email addresses, hugged and she took off quickly. And he was left to bask in the subdued afterglow, not sure how to express himself after doing something so magnanimous for an absolute stranger.

Eric shared about teaching English in Japan and about his girlfriend there, and along with my own recent experiences and insights the three of us dwelled openly on some interesting internal issues, which we shared. Eric shared feelings of disassociation with his homeland. This was something we all shared.

We discussed why a Canadian, a Kiwi and an American would meet in Guangzhou, China. What on earth led us to arrive at this place and why would we begin a conversation with people we didn’t know, which was becoming very deep and introspective. We had known one another for less than a day, and were already delving deeply into each other’s lives.

“Do you like China?” I asked.

“Sometimes,” Eric answered half-heartedly, “but usually, no.” And Steve and I nodded our understanding. “I like my home town a lot more than here, but sometimes it’s just not fulfilling.”

“Home doesn’t place us in the same emotional state as travel,” Steve added. “If I could be the same person at home that I am when I travel, I would feel much closer to a free spirit.”

“But are we free spirits here, really?” Eric asked. “Are we trying to represent some place, or some thing? Is it more profound, or less, than that?”

And we pondered and couldn’t come to any great conclusion.

We sat, drank cheap beer and enjoyed one another’s thoughts well into the night. It seemed a difficult thing to grasp, why we were there and of all the answers forthcoming, none were right, and none were wrong.

We chatted with no reservations. I wondered what made my approach to these two guys different from how I perceived Jiandong and Chong Ke, the two basketball players I had befriended in Jilin. It could’ve been that they were travellers too, or that they were also foreign to China. Maybe my defences had dropped after Ling Xi.

Heather had just arrived in the country, having flown to Hong Kong earlier in the day and jumped on the train up to Guangzhou soon after. A blond haired, blue-eyed American, she walked into the hostel with a pack on her back, back straight and energised, and looked bright eyed. She would notice people staring at her basically any time she would be in public in China, her appearance was that foreign, but she said she had travelled throughout Asia before so the attention would not be so new as it was for me. She asked a few of us for instructions on how to get train tickets and options were offered regarding the train station, the travel shops nearby and the expense of it all. She then went get tickets to Kunming.

The next day, I was walking out the door as she was walking in having been to an art gallery in the morning.

“Where are you off to?” she asked.

“I found a cheap Internet café yesterday,” I said, “and I’m going back to check in with some people.”

“I’d love to check emails,” she said, her eyes lighting up. “Could I please tag along?”

“Sure thing. It’s on the other side of town, maybe thirty minutes away.”

“Cool,” she said. Five minutes later, she had herself organised and we were off.

“What are you doing in Guangzhou,” she asked, as we walked towards the metro station.

“I’m going home,” I said, “and since I’m running out of money, I figured I’d wait for my flight here. How about you?”

“I’m going to Chengdu to study Chinese,” she said.

“Cool, it seemed like a nice city when I was there. Watch out for the cops.”

“Yeah, it’s cheaper to study there than Beijing and Shanghai,” she told me, “and I’m hoping I’ll be speaking Mandarin to people more often.”

The metro station was quiet, which was surprising considering it was situated in the middle of such a large city. The train arrived and there were no seats available. Maybe Shamian Island was in a quiet part of town.

“Don’t people seem to look depressed when they’re on these things,” I said, pointing around the carriage.

“Yeah,” Heather agreed, “maybe because they’re off to work, and we’re on holiday.”

After we had paid for our time at the Internet café, we both realised we’d forgotten to eat, so tried to buy some food at the café. Confusing the issue, however, was the fact that Heather is a vegetarian and there was no English menu available. My notes helped me get fish, beef and chicken based meals but did not include vegetable dishes this may suggest a certain degree of healthiness, or lack thereof, regarding my diet, and also proved useless when ordering a meal for her. The staff looked lost as we tried to get the vegetarian message across to them. My Mandarin skills were useless in the Cantonese-speaking city, not that they were particularly effective in other places either.

We considered waiting until after finishing with our emails but as we were both starving, we persevered. Heather took a gamble and ordered some rice with something described as green while I ordered a curried beef dish. Our respective meals arrived at our computer desks, and Heather’s asparagus spears looked very appetising while my meal was inedible. Apart from the rice, I barely touched it.

Just up the road, the Memorial garden to the Martyrs was a great place for a walk and a chat. The paths and bridges circled around and across a lake, small ponds, several monuments and lily pads galore. We walked past two trees that were intertwined and curving around one another, both having grown to maybe thirty feet tall.

“They look like they’re dancing,” Heather said, looking into the branches above. We continued walking, as I thought about how she had described those trees.

“You see the world in an interesting way,” I said, pointing back as she looked up at me quizzing my comment. “I would have described those trees as having grown with and amongst one another. You skipped that and saw something beyond the straight forward yet, still understandable.”

“Maybe it’s the way I view nature,” she said. “I grew up in the outdoors, seeing plant life as producing something more than just growth. My father’s approach to nature was to understand and appreciate not how it acts, but that it wants to act.” And I felt humbled.

“I wonder why I didn’t attain that,” I said. “Maybe because of my upbringing or maybe it’s just the way I am. How do you think you became like that?”

And she pondered this. She pondered a lot of things. We had a few things in common.

“I’m pretty sure my upbringing led to me being somewhat the person that I am,” she began, “but still, I may have been born a little different too.”

The next day, we went for a walk down one of the main streets of Guangzhou, before she decided to go back to the hostel for a rest and I went to another park, Yuexiu Gongyuan.

The large park was situated on the side of a hill, and included the tall monument to the five celestial goats of which Guangzhou, meaning Goat City, is named after. It stood in a courtyard surrounded by six-foot blue metal barriers, hiding construction beyond. Nearby, a lawn bowls club was situated at the summit of the hill. It wasn’t busy but with gates open and the greens immaculate, it was obviously not redundant.

A museum at the top of the hill was filled with the usual historical artefacts I had come to expect from a Chinese museum and on the decks outside, views to the north and east took in the high-rise buildings encircling the hill. The skies were grey and engulfing air pollution wrapped itself around the buildings like cotton protecting them from any untoward attacks, disturbing the view in the process. It was disappointing but not surprising.

While the walk around the park was slightly strenuous in an enjoyable way, and the views of central Guangzhou held my interest for at least a few minutes, I was really missing someone to talk to. Maybe I would’ve talked anyone, but it felt like I wanted to talk to Heather. And it felt good. She was a special person to meet and I enjoyed being around her. She made me feel more in touch with myself. Then again, maybe I just felt like talking to someone and she didn’t tend to interrupt.

I stopped at the People’s Square on the way back to the hostel, finding green trees, a central pavilion, small square courts and uncut but plentiful lawns. As I walked through the aptly named Square at maybe 3PM, it was absolutely crowded. People of all ages were out socialising in different yet similar ways.

On one particular tree lined path, many different activities took place. A group of women were taking part in traditional fan dances. With crowds moving around them, they continued the cross between line dancing and tai chi. The sound of the fans opening was one singular “Frap”, as maybe twelve in total, opened as one. The music the fan dancers played from a stereo competed with the music from every other stereo that was nearby.

A group of slightly younger women practiced their cheerleading, as if the Dallas Cowboys were about to run onto the Square. With stylised star jumps, kicks and half-turns the cheerleaders called out in Chinese, smiling and puffing out their breasts at the end of each movement.

A ballroom dancing group of maybe fifty, with their own stereo playing and step routines being enforced took up an area beside a pavilion housing onlookers who rested in the shade. People seemed to line up to get involved and others pushed their way onto the makeshift dance floor, and there were many people, including myself, just watching. I wished my own dancing didn’t look like a bull-seal guarding his natural habitat.

Spread around the square, amongst the many other groups doing their own dance routines, older people exercised, quite a few doing tai chi, without the fans. Others played a version of hackey-sack, kicking to one another what looked like a small beanbag crossed with a shuttlecock. Their skills were sublime as they showed off by doing such things as kicking the bag up from behind their backs using the bottom of their feet. Others played badminton and table tennis and many were content to just sit and chat or have a wander, like me.

In the area to the north of Shamian Island, dark and narrow streets offer food markets, restaurants and Japanese porn DVDs for all and a misguided stroll at night led Heather and I to become lost quite quickly.

We were hunting some dinner and with an abundance of choice, settled on a small restaurant’s noodle specialties, buying cheap beer from the stall next door. Ordering was a mission again, involving the staff and passers by in our explanations, rising to our feet from the plastic stools and lino-covered tables to deliver farm animal noises straight from kindergarten. I was happily sussed with my chicken noodles and Heather had done some practice, managing to find something green for herself too.

We chatted the night away talking about USA and New Zealand history, about Asia and China and, once finding our way back to the island, got an ice cream and sat down by the river as I had done with Eric and Steve.

She left for Kunming the next day before going to Chengdu for the start of her classes. I didn’t know how to say goodbye or even if I needed to. We had spent only a few hours together over the period of a few days, yet it seemed enough to know her quite well. I wondered what our time would have been like had we met in New Zealand while I was at work, slightly closed off from the way I felt in Guangzhou. Maybe I wouldn’t have spent much time with her at all had we met while I was in Shanghai only a few days earlier, I was so wrapped up in my depression.

We hugged goodbye outside our hostel room and she walked out the door. I sat down and began chatting to an Englishman who had arrived an hour earlier.

As I chatted to people there, I thought about the way I’d treated women in the past. I didn’t express to Heather that I was attracted to her, and she looked confused when she left, as though she expected something more than a hug. If Heather wanted to kiss me, I would have obliged without protest. I didn’t give her my email address, and maybe she’d expected it. I felt like I’d slipped back into hiding and pretending to not care.

Swarming from the White Swan Hotel, across the road from the hostel, American families made up of Caucasian parents and their adopted Chinese babies were like a plague all over Shamian Island while out for daily strolls.

Restaurants, cafés and tourist shops had ramps for the thousands of prams rolling by each day and were never lacking for customers despite the overblown prices of goods and food. Stalls surrounding the shops by the hostel offered Chinese name cards and portrait services along with toys and baby products, from prams to nappies to baby harnesses.

Part of the fee paid to the adoption agency goes toward their stay in the White Swan Hotel, as they have to stay in the city for the first month of their adoption. The amount of money exchanging hands for an adoption to go through was, I was told, US$25,000. Numerous discussions from a few of the backpackers had mixed opinions, although disdain directed at the Chinese company running the enterprise was common.

I assumed most of the children adopted are girls, judging by the clothes they wore and toys their parents bought. This wasn’t surprising as boys have been the in-thing in Chinese parenting fashion these past few millennia. I assumed many of these girls have been dumped by their birthparents, whether figuratively or literally, and this enterprise was selling kids to foreigners merely to make money from it.

It struck a pretty raw nerve in me but it wasn’t surprising. I’d heard the phrase “sell your own kids to make a buck”, and here I saw it first hand. The foreigners paying these prices, I considered, were encouraging the practice.

I don’t have the answers though. If the girls weren’t adopted anything could happen to them. Sex slavery is a very real thing in the world and that’s where a lot of these girls could end up. Not so extreme, but also slave-like, many daughters are sent to the cities to work in manufacturing plants, while sons are sent to school. The realities of this world were tough for me to consider. I’d never really thought about this stuff until Shamian Island.