Experiencing China

Day 2: Travel Travails
Guangzhou, on a train to Guilin, Guangxi Province

Lord, I praise you for broadening my vision for your world, for bringing me into this new land. I admit already to an impatience with my surroundings - the dirtiness of Guangzhou, the chaos of the bus/train station, the chaos of traffic and the crowdedness of the city. Help me to lose my own ethnocentricity. Help me to serve Tony this week and the Chinese whom I meet. In this new experience, I wonder about my calling as a writer, an artist, as one who has a passion for college students; I wonder about applying such passions to missions work.

I believe it was George Bailey, Jimmy Stewart's character in the classic movie It's a Wonderful Life, who said that the three most glorious sounds to the human ear are "train whistles, boat anchor chains, and plane engines." Must say that I agree. Traveling brings learning, adventure, and an explosion of cultural growth for me. Already I've been in planes, trains, subways, taxis, and now an overnight train to Guilin.
I've exchanged money twice and had my passport and visa scrutinized and stamped multiple times. Nothing like worldwide peregrinations to inspire and tire.

Yesterday was the first I've ever ridden in a taxi. Just never had occasion to do so before; avoid it especially in new places where I can't speak the language. And the first I've ridden in a train in four years. I wish we made better use of trains and other public transportation in the States.

Last night, upon arriving in Guangzhou, Tony and I took a taxi to his school/residence for 30 yuan and then unpacked a bit. It felt good to unload all my stuff and rest. But we quickly decided to catch a train to Guilin in the Guangxi Province, from where we'll take a bus south to Yangshuo for a few days of relaxation and travel before he has to begin teaching again next week. We decided to try and make an overnight to Guilin but to no avail. Tony thought he remembered one leaving the station fairly late. But we didn't get to the station until 11:15pm (23:15). After fumbling our way through a ticket "line," (they do not in fact form lines here, but rather thrust forward en masse and no one seems put off by this), we asked for two tickets on a "hard sleeper," but found out that no more Guilin trains were departing that evening. So we bought tickets for tonight and after haggling with a dozen taxi drivers (all at once, it seemed) who offered to drive us to our distant region of town for 400 yuan (about $50 US !!), we found a driver who'd take us for 50 yuan. The taximeter ended up reading 62 yuan, which we were happy to pay as we had to go quite out of the driver's way and late at night. It seems everything's negotiable.

As we left Tony's school for the train station, terribly late in the evening considering we're dependent upon public transportation, we happened upon a taxi zooming right past the front gate of the school. The driver, who went by the English name Echo, ended up being a local college professor of History moonlighting as a taxi driver (schools are still on break for the Chinese New Year). He invited Tony to speak at one of his classes on America, though Tony later told me he doesn't feel he'll be able to because of his own time constraints and the general policy of his organization to not, in general, pursue such opportunities. Tony answered Echo's invitation with his standard "Perhaps," Tony's usual, indirect response to many things in China. He feels this kind of indirect dialogue is the cultural norm. English speakers like him receive such invitations daily and he must be wise with his time. But he suggested that I go in his place as I want to meet college students anyway. I hope this works out as I would be thrilled to have such an opportunity.

I believe I may have witnessed the beginning of a guanxi relationship. Chinese guanxi relationships are a kind of interdependency in which individuals make a reciprocal exchange for needs and favors. These relationships, I've had it explained to me, form a kind of web of interpersonal connections, friends helping friends of friends, and so on. It's not an easy thing for non-Chinese to grasp, I'm feeling, and so it's difficult to know when there are or are not expectations. Echo drove us from our remote location to a nearby hotel where we could catch another taxi to take us across town to the station. He bargained with a couple of other taxi drivers to try and lower our fair to the station, and in fact we swung a ride for 30 yuan. In return, Tony and I are wondering, the hope may be that Tony will lecture for Echo's class. To honor this expectation (though "expectation" is probably too strong a word), Tony will offer my services instead and thus reciprocate. Well, we think this is what needs to happen.

Guangzhou and mainland China are starkly different than Hong Kong, noticed this even just crossing the border; though Guangzhou certainly has it's Hong Kong-like aspects in architecture and culture. We were afraid I'd have some trouble at the border as my photo is fairly old and my signature has evolved immensely (and messily) over the years; didn't realize it until I handed the border guard my passport and entry form, which contained vastly different signatures. But we had no problem.

Today we relaxed, ate some noodles, watched television, and Tony opened his care package from friends back home - letters, audio tapes, music, photographs, nachos and salsa, Velveeta cheese, licorice, peanut butter - all the goods he misses while away from home. Most of the television we get is from mainland China, much of which seemed to be daily or weekly sitcomish shows featuring fantastic martial arts battles - warriors soaring fifty feet through the air, somersaults and kicks mid-stream, magic, mysticism. We do get television from Hong Kong as well, including ESPN and news shows; much European soccer and internationally competitive table tennis. If certain controversial articles come on from Hong Kong, the screen flips to color bars for several minutes after which an unrelated article resumes airing.

More and more people have internet access in China, more in number than any other Asian country and the number's growing. Wonder how authorities are responding to it, though. Read an article last week about closings of some 150 internet cafes in Shanghai, reportedly because owners didn't have proper licensure and were allowing pornography to be viewed. Also read something about how the spiritualist movement Falun Gong organized a mass meeting in Beijing via the internet, unbeknownst to the government. Tony tells me it's impossible to connect to the CNN website from China. It's blocked. Still, the internet is a difficult animal to cage.

I'm still in awe, Lord, that I'm here and am thrilled to be hanging out with Tony, taking time to pray with one another. I'm pretty beat as some jet lag is setting in; the body clock is catching up. Hopefully I can sleep well tonight.

The sleeper train proves that China is not designed for those over six feet in height. I had to crawl into the middle of three sleeper bunks, two and one-half feet of vertical crawl space. I bumped my head several times; didn't know my body could maneuver in such ways in such tight spaces. This proved to be a great source of humor for an older Chinese gentleman in a bunk near me. He snickered and noted my height with a level hand measuring high above his head. He rasped the English word "basketball" as he shook his head, laughed, and ate an orange sliver.

Mark

Various ways to get around Guangzhou

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