There I was, a 6-month China veteran, standing in the middle of a Beijing street, having my first ever argument with a tuk-tuk driver, while my shell-shocked parents and younger brother gaped in awe. To my credit, the argument was in Chinese. Not to my credit, my part of the argument consisted of about 3 phrases over and over: “You didn’t say that.” “You said 20 kuai.” “I said 4 people, you said 20 kuai.” Ai yo. Not the greatest impression for my parents’ first go in China.
I know I am by no means an expert regarding China. But I guess it’s easy to get complacent as a resident (even a temporary one) of the country. Sure, I’d been overcharged for taxis before. I’d even had to walk several blocks from major transportation hubs to find a taxi driver that would use the meter. But I’d never been taken by the “one price at the start, a different price at the end” scam. I felt ashamed, angry, disappointed, sad, and betrayed. I had even chatted for a few minutes in Chinese with the driver while we were on the trip. To get screwed as if I was some laowai tourist on holiday was like a stab in the back.
Of course, that’s exactly what I was: a laowai tourist on holiday with her laowai family. And for the first time in several months, I realized that I didn’t have so much of a grasp on this country as I thought I had. It wasn’t just the tuk-tuk driver who gave me that impression, obviously. Many things that I had control over only days earlier seemed to slip out of my grasp as soon as my parents and brother arrived.
Our soft sleeper train tickets to Harbin, booked well in advance through a travel agency by my mother, turned out to be in different cars. We had unwisely planned to leave Beijing for Harbin the same night they arrived – leaving no time to adjust to the culture shock that hit my family full-force.
My brother is 5’10”, pasty white, has red hair and a red beard, and has gauged (slightly stretched) ear piercings. Not even a typical laowai by Beijing standards. None of us was prepared for the staring and the subsequent discomfort it caused all members of my family. Then came the different-car tickets (thankfully, two were in the same car and bunk, so we put my brother and mom together in there). Then came the shouts of, “Hello!” “Lookie!” and “Tour guide, tour guide!” that I had become accustomed to ignoring, but that they (understandably) had not.
We soldiered on to Harbin, and good thing. Once my brother fell asleep on the train, all stress was forgotten. A good night’s sleep in a soft sleeper bunk on those fabulous Beijing-Harbin trains can chase away any worries. I’m just thankful we didn’t try hard sleeper at all during the trip.
The rest of the trip had its speed bumps: we were unable to get a taxi (or a pair of taxis) on our return to Beijing, even at the “official” train station waiting line; our travel agent couldn’t get us tickets from Beijing to Huang Shan, so we had to skip that part of the trip entirely and found ourselves on a 10-hour delayed flight to Nanjing. We found ourselves becoming increasingly flexible as the trip went on, and we ended up having a great time. But for a few minutes there, I thought China was going to be a lost cause to my family forever.
Ahh yes, the ol’ relapse! One of the many charms I’ve found of this country is my complete inability to fully grasp it. There have been so many times that I’ve felt like a full fledged veteran only to have the harsh reality of this strange place slap you right in the face.
Heck, me posting this will probably come back to slap me right in the face. I mean, I haven’t even lived here for 2 years and I’m trying to give advice to someone. What on earth do I know?
Probably nothing, and I may never. I guess I don’t have much to add to Comment Land here, other than you are certainly not alone in your faux graps of China, and you probably never will be.
That’s alright, sometimes the solidarity of other lost laowai is enough to make you feel like you’re not so lost. 🙂 Thanks.
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Live and learn (to laugh at yourself and China).
I once traveled with a 6′ pasty American, blond, vegeterian, who knew not a stitch of Chinese. To teach him how to use chopsticks in some greasy cafeteria in the middle of Xi’An, with a crowd of 100 Chinese looking at his every move. Each drop of rice was welcomed with a collective gasp. What trouble we got into, but upon reflection it was all great character building.
China never ceases to surprise. I don’t think it gets easier the longer you stay. You just get “different” experiences crossing your path.
I feel for your brother… Me and my boyfriend both look like aliens to the Chinese in the small town we live in… we have dreadlocks which causes so many comments, stares, being pointed at, laughs in the face and some even pulling our hair! i’ve started to ignore almost all of it, but when they come to pull my dreads that’s when they cross the line…….
Ah the taxi scam – usually they are trying to scam you, BUT….please do remember if you have limited Chinese you can miss out on some important info the taxi driver is giving you. Once when my Chinese wasn’t so crash hot after picking up a friend at the BJ airport upon arrival at our destination the driver added 10kuai to the quoted price – I wasn’t a happy camper and let the driver know it. I later found out the 10kuai was a mandatory toll gate fee for a road we needed to take, I felt a little sheepish for the verbal bashing I gave the poor guy. Also, recently in the taxis in Wuhan you can see a sticker on the dashboard requiring a petrol surcharge of 1 kuai – if you can’t read Chinese theres you wouldn’t know why the taxi driver is slapping the extra kuai on to what the meter reads…
If someone pays more than 8 yuan for a sanlunr che they are either an idiot or desperate. 5 yuan will usually get you anywhere within reasonable reach of this form of transportation. Being that you are a “veteran” I would think you would know better than to pay tourist prices (20rmb) for a ride in these vehicles. Getting stuck paying twice that and unsuccessfully trying to bargin down to 20rmb is really ridiculous… Especially considering Beijing taxi meters usually start at 10 yuan.
What Im getting from what’s written here is that you are inexperienced and unaware of how things operate in China and that you are disappointed in Chinese people for not pampering your family while they were here on vacation. Im not quite sure what your reasoning was in writing this much less sharing it here. In any case it would be more productive to try to write what you could take away from this experience in order to help readers rather than just bitching and moaning about how you dont know what you are doing.
Katie – thanks for the post. I’ve been here only two months and I often feel the frustrations you describe. ChinaMack, she posted to help people like me feel less alone, and FYI: not knowing all the local norms does NOT make you desperate or illiterate. Knowing or not knowing the going rate for a taxi, a tuk-tuk, a pedicab, or ANYTHING does not make you ‘aware of how things operate in China’. It makes you aware of what things cost in one neighborhood in one city, so you can sound like an obnoxious know-it-all when you tell other people. How things operate is far more nuanced and complex and something your bigoted brain will never grasp. We’re all trying to navigate life as best we can – being in a new country makes it more difficult, and more exciting. Try to relax and enjoy the ride while you can.
“There I was, a 6-month China veteran”
Katie – I think the oxymoron of an opening says it all. You should never put the words “China” “6 month” and “veteran” in the same breath.
I’ve been here for over 10 years (cringe) and still consider myself a newbie in a lot. If it makes you feel any better I still have “china moments” like these still – albeit with a little less frequency
I’ve been here 5 (omg!!!) years now, almost to the day. For Spring Festival I spent a week in a village in Shandong. Hole in the ground toilet, no heating, water from a well… all this I could handle… what gave me real CULTURE shock was that nobody could speak putonghua (Mandarin) and I could understand NOTHING of their dialect. I was also the first laowai they had met, and from dawn to dusk, crowds were coming to stare and point at me. I thought I’d got over the language barrier and the staring (and I’ve done 3 years of my time here in the sticks), but go an hour or two outside a major city and it’s a different world.
These kinds of moments are not reserved for laowais only. Even for Chinese folks, when travelling out of local province/city/county/town/village, things can get very tough.
People often think of China as a monolithic country/culture/people, but forget to realize the diversity and disparity of regional languages, cultures, urban/country-side social/economical differences. The ‘China’ as we know today comes from literally thousands of years of integration and assimilation of diverse population/cultures, and this is an ongoing work-in-process with different degree of success in different regions.
I as a laozhong feel like a foreigner myself under many circumstances.
I have only spent a total of 5 months in China and feel as vulnerable as an infant sometimes. I was surprisingly struck by this fact only a few days ago. My Chinese friend whom I depend greatly on mentioned something about us being overcharged at a local place and how she realized that we were because she went with some people who were actually from this area,(she is from the same province but different city) and when she commented on the rather high prices on the menu, she was told, those prices are for outsiders, meaning people who did not speak the local dialect, not just foreigners. It just never occurred to me before.