Highlights from my trip to China – Part 1 – American, Chinese, and the Crazy Frenchman

Today I just came back from China after a two week vacation to Beijing, Xian, Shanghai, and Yangzhou.  This was the first time the hubby and I traveled to another country together and it was quite an experience.  It was also the hubby’s first trip to mainland China so he had a few reservations.  For example, he asked me if the hotels were “okay” and if they had hot water. Since I’ve been back to China quite a few times in recent years I assured him that they were quite fine.  He was also afraid that he couldn’t breathe correctly because I told him that the last time I went to Beijing the rain made my sweater dirty.  Surprisingly, this time Beijing was quite clean and the sky was clear and blue.  I think whatever mandates they implemented for the Olympics really worked.  Nevertheless, the hubby thought that the cities all smelled a bit weird.  In his words, “I know the city smells because when I fart I can’t smell it.”

Anyway, here are some of the funnier “Americans in China” moments:

1) We met a lady named Irma from Los Angeles  at the airport who was travelling with her nephew.  She happened to be on the same tour as us.   On the first day of the tour the bus took us close to the Olympic Village in Beijing and as we passed by the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube a Chinese bus slowed down right next to our bus so we were face to face to its passengers.  Irma was so excited that she started to wave frantically at the local Beijing folks in the other bus and took out her camera to take pictures of them.  The people in the other bus were quite amused and also took out their cellphones and cameras to take pictures of her.  The hubby and I were cracking up at this scene because Irma was so excited and yelled “HELLO!!”  After the Chinese people took out their cameras she said, “they must think I’m some crazy American lady!”

2) Our tour took us to the home of a local artist in a “hutong”, which is a word describing the older courtyard style dwellings in Beijing.  One of the ladies asked the artist, “how do you do your laundry?”  The artist answered, “I have a washing machine” in Chinese.  Since I understood Chinese I laughed out loud before the translator translated what the artist said.  Another lady asked, “how come your dogs don’t bark?”  The artist, translator, and tour guide all cracked up at that question and answered, “I don’t really know”.

3)  Many public Chinese restrooms still have “squat holes” where you do your business by pulling down your pants and squating over a deep hole.  Some of these restrooms don’t have doors so you can see people squatting down.  One of the ladies went into one of the restrooms and saw an old lady squatting there and she ran out of there in horror.  Then she told everyone what she saw.  I thought it was pretty funny since those kind of restrooms were pretty standard when I went to elementary school.  They are actually slightly more hygenic since your skin doesn’t touch anything.

4) We also visited a Chinese elementary school.  In Chinese elementary schools you have to do these eye exercises everyday and supposedly they keep your eyes healthy.  So when we visited the school the kids were in the middle of these exercises.  The Americans were quite bewildered and wondered why the kids were rubbing their faces and brows.  I said that they were eye exercises and did a few of them.  The tour guide thought it was pretty funny.

Now, the Chinese also have their quirks that the Americans found funny or crazy.

1)  One guy visited the Beijing Zoo on his own to see the giant pandas.  He said that the Chinese people didn’t care about the pandas, but instead they were crowded around the common squirrels.  He found it funny because we have squirrels running everywhere here in America.

2)  The public parks are filled with people singing songs, playing games, dancing, and practicing Taiji.  My husband asked me, “how come Americans don’t use parks like this?” The tour guide explained that people in China retire much earlier than Americans.  Women generally retire at age 55 and men retire at age 60 so a lot of people have nothing to do but to enjoy themselves.    Chinese people are also very social so they like to get together to play in public places.

3) Chinese people don’t really adhere to traffic laws or stand in line.  The traffic in Beijing was  quite orderly, but once you get to Shanghai, then you’ll see people creating lanes out of nowhere and busses coming dangerously close to crushing other cars.

4)  Some Chinese people have never seen white people before, and some of the people in our group became tourist attractions themselves.  Several people received requests from random Chinese tourists for pictures because they had blue eyes or red hair.  They got quite a kick out of this.

Okay, now onto the most bizarre being we encountered on the trip.

Our group took an overnight train from Beijing to Xian.  Each couple had their own room on the train and the tour guide told us not to open the doors for anyone at night because sometimes there can be thieves on the train.  So everyone went on the train warily that night.  Around 1 am, I got up to use the bathroom while the hubby stood guard by the door.  When I came out of the bathroom a creepy white guy was standing in the hallway blocking my path.  He had very pale skin, beady green eyes and reddish hair.  He stared at me for a couple seconds and I said, “excuse me”, and he let me pass back to my room.  My hubby looked out some more because he thought that guy was quite creepy.  He didn’t want to go to the bathroom while leaving me alone in the room so he waited for the guy to leave.  After ten or fifteen minutes the weird man still didn’t leave so the hubby locked our door and started to press the “Attendant” button.   Suddenly, we started to hear loud pounding on our door and the cabins next to ours.  The man also tried to open several people’s doors.  According to the hubby that man stared him down while I was in the bathroom, and he reeked of alcohol.  The pounding went on for about 10 minutes and we heard some doors opening and random people speaking.  We simply hid in our room and slept until morning.

The next morning, the ladies next to our room started to talk about a “psycho killer” that came knocking in the night.  Apparently, one of the ladies really needed to go to the bathroom so she opened the door and the man stared her down and then stuck his tongue out at her.  The man also peed all over the floor of the bathroom in our traincar.  Another couple apparently didn’t lock the door so he actually got into their room.  The man in that cabin pushed the guy out.  One of the ladies speculated that the man is  a French boozehound, and my hubby and I started  laughing because one of the songs on Rock Band 2 is Psycho Killer by the Talking Heads and that song has French sprinkled throughout.  The hubby also expressed that it was ironic that all of these foreigners were expecting some Chinese thieves, but instead the psycho was not Chinese at all.

Later when we got off the train the hubby really wanted to find the crazy guy and snap a photo of him, but we didn’t see him.  However, a lady in our group spotted him in a group waving a French flag.  This experience certainly brings new meaning to the lyrics “Psycho Killer Qu’est-ce que c’est?”

To be continued!

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