The border crossing from Loa Cai in Vietnam to Hekou in China was like jumping from a cramped and hostile frying pan into a giant, inveterate, friendly fire.
We quickly moved on to Kunming, the capital of the Yunnan province, after a long struggle to find the bus station in Hekou, which we walked past twice, being completely unable to read any signs - our first experience of the impossible Mandarin script. The Chinese have been helpful when we ask for directions, but we have to be shrewd with who we trust, as some point in any vague direction, and smile, rather than suffer the humiliation of admitting that they havn't the foggiest.
We have spent our first full day in China now, I can't believe how quiet the streets are, and they're massive, busy streets with buses and cars and scooters, but most of these are electric and wierdly silent, much like the Chinese.
We saw an ambulance speed right past us, but the sirens were so quiet we hardly heard them. No hassling, and hardly any honking - whereas in Vietnam they honk their horns rather than brake. We had a really strange arrival last night. At the Kunming bus station we were being hassled by a taxi driver (standard practice) after arriving by long distance bus and as we tried to ignore him we asked for help from a likely looking Chinese girl. When she offered to help us take the bus to the centre of town the taxi driver grabbed her by the throat, pushed her back and shouted at her (with me, Kae and a gigantic Canadian inbetween) for so long (him being backed up by a couple of other taxi drivers) that the police turned up. The Chinese girl was going to be taken for questioning in the police hut next door and didn't seem happy with this, so we all accompanied her to back her up. Eventually, after we got our story accross, they handcuffed the sneering little bastard and made him sit on the floor. We then had to wait for a more official guy to turn up and the police were making us tea and handing around nuts, and showed us a 'magic trick' with a banknote (he showed us how to do it - rookie mistake, so I took the floor and dumbfounded half a dozen policemen and the Canadian couple with my magical ability to see through the top card of a shuffled deck).
The final drama played out when the Chinese girl's Aunt and brother turned up, had a good go at the scrote in the handcuffs on the floor and then the Aunt whacked him round the head, hard, twice, and the brother took a running kick to him knocking him over, shoulder to shoulder with the police who were pretty relaxed about this but eventually insisted that they stop. The police paid for us to get a taxi into town and that was that, we swapped contacts with the Chinese girl, shared a dorm room with our new Canadian amigos and spent the day hanging around with them today.
Chinese food is interesting, and quite tasty, once you figure out how to get some. All they have on show for us to point at from the streets is offal, chicken feet and duck heads. We would have rather eaten a blind masseuse and so we approached a busy restaurant, where you pay and probably order at the door. So we handed over 10RMB (1quid) each and made complex faces and hand gestures at the woman, communicating brilliantly that we didn't know what we wanted, what she was saying or what to do, and walked inside.
Lot's of people queuing at windows and sat around tables collecting and eating food. We stood in a queue. The Chinese don't actually queue, so we realised we weren't stood in a queue and we asked for help. I asked the waitress for a clue loudly enough and someone who spoke a bit of English came over to save the day and we were told to just sit down and be quiet.
Food was served, and we were given at least 5 plates each. One with herbs and greens, one with 2 raw quail eggs, one with a selection of sliced raw meat, one with crunchy pig skin, some cold noodles and a couple of soft white bits. We sat very still and looked around. At last a man came over with 2 massive bowls of steaming broth and we poured all the ingredients in and enjoyed the area's speciality, our first 'over the bridge noodles'.
After a second night at the Hump Hostel we arranged a much needed Chinese lesson for a couple of quid. We wrote down some of the basics which have been very useful so far. The most interesting lesson was how to count to 10 with your hands. Numbers 1-5 are standard finger counting. 6 is our hand signal for phone, or 2-legged spider with your thumb and pinky pointing. 7 is as if you were making a shadow puppet of a rabbit head with no ears. 8 is a gun or the sign for 'loser'. 9 is a hook with your index finger like a claw (angry face optional). 10 is a cross made with both index fingers, as if you were warding off a vampire.
Before leaving Kunming for the historic tourist town, Dali, we spent a couple of hours tea tasting with a group of Westerners. We learnt a bit about the different teas about town, and how to use the complicated and ceremonious tools necessary to make a brew. Here we met an English couple who agreed to join us for dinner at a food court that we had tried out earlier that day.
At the food court, you put some money on a card and find and jealously guard a table, some of you walk around an underground trail of choices and pick out what you like. Here we tried the stodgy and cheap steamed buns that always give you gas, some with sausage meat inside, some with custard.
In the end, I was happy to leave Kunming for more rural and historic towns even if we did go to see the new Sherlock Holmes film in English. Onward to Dali, and sadly, the last time we've seen any life-size statues of robocop in the streets, with a big red button on his 6 pack that either calls the rozzers or brings him to life in the name of justice.
No comments:
Post a Comment