Ultimate Tourist

I have been playing my role as Ultimate Tourist particularly well this week. Some people would call it method acting. I would call it method acting too. Whatever. It's impressive. Even I'm impressed. I rented a four person bicycle; something that I didn't know existed until I saw it. They pretty much fuse two bikes together which is fun, I guess. But the problem was that we only had three people and that it was built for Chinese people. FYI, the Chinese are, on average, a solid head and a half shorter than me. This resulted in a number of rather painful encounters between my knees and the handlebars which did not make me the happiest camper in town, but I soldier on. 

 

Probably the all time low of the week was buying tickets for a my Christmas Day train ride (purely functional, despite how much fun it sounds). After not being able to buy the tickets in the first line I stood in, I was prompted to queue in the elderly, baby and disabled line. No shit. I know I have white skin, and I don't understand Chinese, but I'm not disabled.  For better or worse. Then they must have decided that having white skin and being a giant wasn't actually a disability and I was told to go and line up in a third queue. And all this kerfuffle because an O had been written in place of a 0 for my domestic train trip. Oh, China.  

I went to some hot springs too, and had fish nibble at my tootsies. I am exceedingly ticklish and having whitebait sized carnivores nibbling at my poor feet was not something that I warmed to. I had to concentrate really hard on not moving and scaring them away which most of the time sounded like the best idea I'd ever had. A mild form of Fear Factor Fish Edition. 

I don't know if you have any Chinese friends, but the Chinese love karaoke. Like love love karaoke. I think New Zealanders could love karaoke too, if they were totally gone, if you know what I mean. But no, here they love karaoke completely sober. I don't really understand the appeal of sitting through a minimum time slot of one hour listening to your friends sing along terribly and make a complete hash of all your favourite songs, while you will still be able to remember it all perfectly clearly the next day. Some things are made to last, and some things are made to be experienced only once. And sober karaoke is one of those one time things for me. 

But on the topic of being sober and on the topic of music, I also had my first live Chinese punk rock experience. And it was just that, an experience. My buddy on my right blocked his ears and waited for it to be over. My buddy on my left got amongst and bobbed her head up and down to rhythm of the drums. Her only criticism after the show was the show was too low key, she would have liked something more 'hard core.' Not a concept that I understand because I like music with some sort of melody and maybe some words, rather than just inarticulate screams. But I can do anything for two hours. So I put my experience down to just that, experience. 

A very merry Christmas to you. Peace and good fortune. 

Rando

Curiouser and curiouser - that's how China is. Random events strangely linked by two girls from New Zealand, which yesterday dropped to one. I was abandoned by the roadside. Not literally, but you get my gist.  

FYI, if you really want to stand out at an event where everyone looks amazing, I would recommend attending in a complete lack of sparkles, glitter and make up (of which I had none, because that shit is heavy and ain't nobody got room for that in a backpack). You may not stand out in the way that you want to, but you will definitely stand out. The father is Miss Scotland (who was casually bidding thousands of pounds on auction items at this years 'Miss World Charity Gala') recognised us as Team New Zealand. He attire was the most expensive looking suit I have ever seen, with a shirt that was a shirt but that wasn't made of shirt material. I don't even know what that shit is called, all I know was that it smelt like money. I believe that our total inability to do fancy was out identifier. So we did stand out... Which I guess is good, because all publicity is good publicity, right? 

You know how when you get a bit tired and your filter starts to go. A beauty pageant is kind of like that, but on steroids because everyone feels like they can comment on your appearance and conduct. Four of the top contenders for Backhanded Compliment (also know as Straight Up Insult) of the Week are: 

"You could compete in Miss World next year, if you went on a diet" 

"You look beautiful. I didn't know you could look beautiful. When you are at the hostel you don't look beautiful."

"You're a vegetarian? But you're not skinny!"

"I'm worried about you two [my friend and I]. You always seem to have a large glass of wine with you." 

I am also learning to keep sleep as a priority because I  stop thinking straight when I get tired. For example, I met a Dutch guy at the hostel and proceeded to tell him, in detail, about the one Dutch person I don't like, in the (relative) sea of Dutch people I have in my life. Not good. 

Ah well, if I were perfect life would be no fun and we would have nothing to work on. So henceforth, to improve myself, I will prioritise my sleep, stop carrying around a large glass of wine, go on a diet, always wear make up and work on my aura as a vegetarian. That should be enough for a start, anyway. 

Finally, a shout out to Miss World New Zealand. You were my pick. But it turns out that beauty pageants are as random as my trip to China, which is as random as a random number generator. So yeah... 

With a Sprinkling of Meat

China changes people. It does. There are no two ways around it. I know that I am changed woman. Yes, sir. For example, when I arrived in China, I had been a vegetarian for two years. Not so any longer. I have progressed to 'vegetarian with a sprinkling of meat.' In my early and hopeful days here in China, I google translated the word 'vegetarian' on my phone that I might have a hope of communicating my dietary infliction to the Chinese people. It turns out, the word vegetarian does not appear in the Chinese vocabulary and is a foreign concept, usually met with a shake of the head, hands and 'no.' I do my best to find tofu or, heaven forbid, vegetables. And if I do get lucky and find my desired dish, they are usually presented to me with a sprinkling of beef, or pork, or chicken or ox. Apparently carnivores have more fun anyway... 

I have also been entertaining myself with the game 'Count The White People.' It's pretty self explanatory. And yes, I know and fully understand just how racist that sounds. But the fact of the matter is that it just kind of adds a bit of an end goal to the normal people watching that goes on. It's just such a novelty to see someone else who shares your skin colour. If you really have a problem with it though, you can comfort yourself with the fact that the locals want to take photos with my travelling companions and I because of our fair complexion. If that's bit racist, I don't know what is. On one particularly successful evening, we reached 16 white people in a period of three hours. Which was absolutely astounding and has been the topic of much (excited) discussion since. Although it got pretty confusing when we went to see the pandas... Are they predominantly white with a little bit of black or black with a smattering of white? 

But we have moved on from mainland China to the land of sunshine, blue skies, palm trees, mangos and beauty pageants. It's nice to be somewhere we can see the sunshine and can sit outside without 5 merino tops on. Actually, it's nice just to be able to sit outside. China in winter is pretty grey and pretty cold. It's also a pretty big country, so despite still being in China we have managed to find sunshine.

We attended our first beauty pageant event last night. And in the eternal game of never have I ever, that we continually play in our lives, never have I ever felt so out of place at an event. More on this to come, as the events of (a very elaborate) Miss World 2015 unfold before my eyes. 

Hot N Cold

We have now progressed from Tibet to China proper. When I was in Tibet, I thought I was in China. I was wrong. Now that I am in China, I am in China. Not an easy distinction to understand, I don't think, unless you have been to both. Nevertheless, here we are in China. 

I feel like I am in some sort of strange rendition of Katy Perry's 'Hot N Cold.' I mean that in a literal sense, at least for the chorus. Let me explain... Nothing in this country is straight forward. Not ordering food. Not getting from one place to another. Not buying tickets. Not paying for things. Literally anything you can imagine gets more challenging with no verbal language, limited body language, no money and the Chinese culture. 

I'll start with the basic example of trying to get instructions out of people on the street... 'You're hot then you're cold, you're yes then you're no.' We would turn up to one bus station, and the locals would tell us to go to the train station. The attendants at the train station would tell us to go to a different bus station. At the second bus station, they tell us to go to the South Bus Station, so we ask for a second and third opinion before discovering that no buses go to our desired location because it's winter. 'You're in then you're out, you're up then you're down. You're wrong when it's right...' 

And that's only one example... We also went to this small town in The Middle of Nowhere, China (which took us 5 days to get to, but that's a story for another day). Only to find  when we arrived that we were cashless (in a cash only system) and no ATMs were reading our credit cards (i.e we were fucked). It was looking like two hungry girls and two cold nights under the stars. I spent a good portion of the evening the phone to the bank at home and visa, organising our emergency cash pick up. But come morning, the banks (which Visa International had told me I was to pick up my cash from) simply said no (much like the computer). To directly quote both banks I visited, 'our bank doesn't have that function, please go to the other bank.' To say I wanted to slap the bank tellers around would probably be the understatement of the century.


Ordinarily, I would say that I am a relatively patient (if not patient, at least calm) person. Not so in China. I have wanted to punch more people on this country in the last two weeks than I have at home in the last twenty years. Needless to say, China has a way of pressing people's buttons. The spitting doesn't help. But it's not all bad. The food is amazing. When you get somewhere epic, it is epic for sure. But getting to that epic place may just be the end of you. However, I resolve to continue to try and see the epic places here until I am ended. Even if the yes's are no's, the rights are wrongs, the ups are downs and the ins are outs.