This year I spent 6 weeks with some friends (mostly with my friend Tanja) in China. Here are some of my experiences, from my Traveller's Diary:
21.08.2006 Peking
After a 9 hour flight (I was already fed up with flying after one hour) and a pretty long Taxi-Drive (with a lot of honking through the Chaos) we arrived in a Youth Hostel in a country, where people talk rapidly all the time, stare at you openly (either interested or hostile) and comment on your poor chinese
talking with a happily "wow, your chinese is really good!" (holy cow, I only said 3 words...). Fascinating.
Everything is pretty chaotic, dusty and...well..."ugly" would be mean but it kinda fits - but I like it!!!
The total Helplessness that overcomes you facing the masses of chinese characters (you haven't learned yet) is a little annoying sometimes, but you find your way through in the end. And when you peacefully eat your well-known McDonald's menu, the staring doesn't even bother you anymore.
And the park around the corner is kinda beautiful (although the buildings are pretty dusty).
Sentences of the day:
"What the..."
"I feel like the people here are lying to me" (concerning the comments on our chinese...)
22.08.
Today was a "look-at-culture-and-pretend-to-be-a-diligent-and-interested-sinology-student-day". Well, more or less. Me and Tanja went through the Forbidden City and found out that all
of the buildings look more or less the same. And, that the Chinese are not only weird, but can
also be annoying. Three times people absolutely wanted to take a picture with us (e.g. a group of
crazy youths). We are like SO great...
And the people with their stupid "Mongolian Art Exhibition" were also really annoying. They talked to you like hours until you finally knew what they wanted...man, they got on my nerves...
All in all, everything is rather beautiful but not really impressive somehow. But the Jingshan Park behind was really nice and you had a wonderful view. The best were the souvenir-shops there! Tanja and I got 4 chinese paintings for 20 Euro! We couldn't believe it...we had thought it was the price for one (and thought it was cheap) but it was the price for four!
The Beihai-Park was also really nice but the way back was SO LONG...and we had to go past a guarded military area. The policemen are really scary there. Stare at you in such a hostile way...
Thanks to the city-map we found the way back and could give our hurting feet a rest.
Sentences of the day (most of them we only thought):
Would you please...
- go home. (really way too many people here)
- dress your children better. (most infants in China wear pants with a hole at the bottom, so that they can pee whenever they want to and don't need diapers. Pretty gross...)
- stop annoying us with your stupid Mongolian Art Exhibition
- "My sister/friend/etc wants to take a picture with you" and again some grinning Chinese put their arm around you for the picture...
The good thing in China is that you can talk in german all the time (about them) and they don't understand a thing. Can be pretty funny sometimes^^
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3 comments:
You forgot to mention how they always, always try to sell you stuff you absoluteley do not need.
Like when you´re walking into a shop to try on a jacket and they wanna sell you pants. Or when you walk into McDonald´s, ask for a Happy Meal, and they hand you over a BigMac and some weird looking, purple TaroPie. ^^
It would not even help to show it on the menu, they would just turn the menu over, smile, and say:"I think you should buy this!":)
Was a damn good trip. Can´t wait to get back there!
Haha I know^^
But this is the first episode, so there are a lot more experiences like that to come!
It definitely was a good trip. Kinda miss Xinxiang sometimes ~
Hey, I wear pants like that, too! I can't tell you how much more efficient I've become since I started...
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