Stragbasher Moves On
Created | Updated May 8, 2002
The story so far. I am in China and this is news to most of the people who know me.
Guangzhou, where we arrived at 10pm, used to be called Canton and now it's a seething metropolis, a booming industrial city of 4 million. The book warns that accomodation is horrendously overpriced - and we'll probably have to pay in hard currency. After struggling off the platform it's my turn to go in search of the next move - there are two stations in Guangzhou and we're at the wrong one to stand any chance of catching an overnight sleeper, if such a thing exists.
Amanda was left on her own with our Pickfords challenge, and started to worry that I was seemingly gone for good. I made it back eventually, but had been firmly hooked by the touts in the ticket booths at the entrance. Try as I might I couldn't find a way to extricate myself from the attentions of three pretty girls, and eventually capitulated and let them find us a hotel instead. Not only were they lovely, one of them spoke English, and the room rate was extremely attractive. Plus there was a bank next door, and the hotel accepted credit cards.
At this I have to make a small confession. Ever since I fell out with American Express a few years ago I have refused to buy traveller's cheques, and have relied on having a suitable piece of plastic in my pocket. The book tells me that even in China you can get a cash advance from a visa card, and as we were in a hurry when we left HK we didn't stop to draw extra cash first. So we're wandering around in a very foreign city with barely enough money for a meal, much less an onward ticket, and we're extremely tired. No-one speaks English, nothing makes sense, we have too much luggage, and it's probably all my fault.
So a couple of hotties with the solution to everything seems like a pretty good deal to me. Right?
Next thing we know we're all bundled into a taxi together, which is very cosy and pleasant, and the atmosphere is noticeably more cheerful. Amanda's having fun, but we're both a little uneasy and can't figure out why. At the Xin Hao high-rise hotel the girls pay for the taxi and we are whisked straight to the eleventh floor, where a sinister man behind a desk in a guest-room-cum-office writes out a 'hotel voucher' for us.
By this time we've also picked up a bell-boy in a spiffy red uniform who is straining to follow us around with all our gear piled up on a ridiculously ornate cart contraption. It transpires that he also speaks pretty good English and avidly joins in the discussion about our future plans. Everybody seems strangely concerned that we go to the bank in the morning to get cash, and eager to see us get safely on our way - they even go so far as to write out the address of the bus station and tell us how much the taxi fare should be.
There was something odd about the whole business that neither of us could put our finger on, and we were both wondering what we were being set up for. I felt like a character out of some urban myth who was going to wake up minus one kidney or something worse. But panic never does any good, and sometimes it's better to relax and let your subconscious tell you what the problem is when it figures things out - if it ever does. So we go with the flow and try to enjoy being VIP'd, with a fair amount of success.
Then they wave us off and somebody with 'housekeeping' written all over her takes us to the reception desk to actually check in. Curiouser and curiouser. The room was comfortable and incredibly well equipped - it even had a fire extinguisher, smoke hoods and oxygen masks. Very kinky. It put me in mind of a comment in the book about China's allegedly burgeoning sex industry.
But nobody visited us during the night, and the bill was exactly what they told us it would be - not much really. In fact it all worked out swimmingly.
The only snag was that the bank couldn't give us any money.
They had an ATM outside which we tried with various cards, all to no avail. The people inside understood our intention, but didn't speak more than a few words of the unfathomable barbarian tongue between them. So they took us out to the machine again, and in the course of demonstrating that it wouldn't give us any money I contrived to get my best mastercard retained. Bummer!
I got it back, eventually, but they certainly weren't happy at having to unlock the back of the machine for me. And we still didn't have any money.
So we went back into the hotel and hung around at the reception desk being hopeless until they got on the phone in search of a way to get rid of us. Half an hour later we were at the main branch, where a cash advance took about ten minutes and cost noticeably less than the book told us it would. I had also figured out by this time that the problem was simply one of computers not talking to each other in the same languages - the Bank of China thought my PIN was something different from what I had chosen and so wouldn't give me any money. When I persisted it assumed I was trying to guess the PIN of a stolen card and kept it.
Human operators can't make the same mistake. They just have to see that my card and passport have the same signature and photo, which happen to correspond with the person standing in front of them, and break out the various rubber stamps required to approve the forms in triplicate I had to fill out. Oh, and there's a minimum withdrawal the book didn't tell me about which maxed out the card in question. But never mind, we were on our way again.
Crossing Gangzhou, incidentally, was our first look at modern China. My ideas about how it's supposed to look hark back to TV documentaries in the 80s; masses of expressionless, identically dressed people on identical bicycles against a backdrop of drab lowrise buildings. The reality today is streams of traffic, mostly smallish motorcycles or taxis but with a surprising number of Mercedes and BMW type vehicles. In fact, as we were discussing it we saw our first Rolls Royce. Lots of high rise buildings of shiny glass and chrome, with the ground floors given over to all manner of western-style stuff catering to a great many people who seemed to be extremely fashion conscious.
At the bus station our taxi was mobbed by professional porters and by this time I was more than happy to pick one at random and hand him the heavy stuff - the best investment I made that day. He steamed through the crowd and deftly inserted me close to the front of the queue. Less than five minutes after arriving I was face to face (through a glass screen and microphone arrangement) with a bewildered cashier who didn't have the faintest idea of what I was about.
Normally in these cases it's pretty easy - you just write the name of where you want to go and hey presto. But the Chinese don't normally read western characters and I had no idea what the ideogram for Haikou was, or even if I could buy a through ticket. If not then which of the two ports servicing the island did I want, and how did I communicate my choice? If the blooming guide book was any good it would have the Chinese names for towns by the entries for them. (Just a suggestion.)
We got there remarkably quickly with the help of a map and a bit of guess work on both our parts, the cashier turning her screen to face me so that I could look at all the heiroglyphics and nod wisely. Then I dole money out until she tells me to stop, and we have our tickets - although I'm not really sure where the bus is going, or what time it's due to arrive, but I do know that we have an hour to kill. So, after planting Amanda in a safe corner with the barriers to movement, I head out in search of internet. Why? Because I haven't written down the telephone number for the school we're trying to get to and consequently have no way of letting them know if/when we will/have already arrived.
Now if I had set out in search of Mahjong sets my mission would have been easily fulfilled. At least half of the shops in the area were dedicated to the game, and most of the others were only good for mobile phones. (I didn't stop to check out the choice of musical rings, for fear of exposure to bad karaoke classics that would plague me for the rest of the day.) Had I been looking for alternative ways of getting somewhere I would also have been incredibly successful. I found the 'second bus company of guangzhou', and 'the guangzhou passenger transport company', even something called the 'fashionable terminal', but no internet. In the end I just wandered around gawking.
Probably the most memorable image, ie the one most conforming to all my preconceptions about how China is supposed to be, was on the foot bridge across the road to the bus station. It's absolutely seething with people heading in both directions, everybody keeping right, with different staircases for up and down. And there are 'traffic' cops in domed combat helmets and flashy yellow scarves on duty at the ends. Two women stopped in front of me, right at the intersection of two walkways, to figure out which direction to take and incidentally stopping everyone else. Instantly the cop leapt into action, lifting his megaphone and pointing it at them - then pressed a button which sounded a police siren! cool!! I was left marvelling as they scuttled away, then had to hurry into the vacuum they left behind before I attracted the same kind of attention.
Back at the bus terminus I had another new experience - Chinese public toilets. I saunter in, holding my breath, and can't help but notice that the walls between the stalls are only chest high. Through the open door I can also see that the 'toilets' are simply a long channel running the length of the room. If I ever have to go I'll make sure I'm upstream, I'm thinking as I pee, but on turning arouns it's even worse. I catch the sad, patient, eye of an elderly gentleman squatting down to do his business. There are no doors! Yuk!! And I won't be bringing a book with me either.
And so, buttocks clenched firmly together, we catch the bus south..
