China: Day One v.2.0

I did manage to take the right bus this time (really, after more than a year in Korea this shouldn’t be a problem) and after just two short hours (it takes me longer to get from my house to the airport than it does getting from the airport to China!) I touched down in Hangzhou.

Waiting at the airport for me – snacks and colorful “T. Paul Buzan Welcome to Hangzhou” sign in hand – was my friend C. Unfortunately, C. was also waiting for me at the airport yesterday (I couldn’t get a message off to her until after she’d left her apartment) so I was all kinds of apologetic at first.

I promised to make amends through dinner and/or drinks and the ever amiable C. seemed satisfied.

My little bus hiccup at the start of this journey notwithstanding I’ve gotten to a point where essential day-to-day Korean – getting around by cab, ordering food, telling a girl she looks pretty – isn’t too tall an order. So it is strange to be back in a place where I have all the linguistic aptitude of a babbling infant. Bacon once wrote, “He that travels into a country before he has some entrance into the language goes to school and not to travel”. With my Mandarin limited to just “hello” and “thanks” I reckon I’ll be putting Bacon’s maxim to the test.

C. on the other hand, who is on her fourth year in China, was wheeling and dealing in sounds that only confused me and before you knew it we were being herded (along with more people than I thought reasonably safe) onto a very crowded bus.

My view from the bus gave me my first taste of China: narrow, three and four-storey buildings built along the highway (they reminded me of tenement housing in NYC) with scraggy looking gardens in front of them (popular housing with the nouveu-riche, I learned); an incredible number of people riding about on bicycles; a preponderance of Western establishments like Starbucks and McDonald’s; lots of big, shiny buildings with men in suits milling about them; foreign cars of every make and model – Mercedes’, Fords, Audis – on the road.

I try my best to travel with no expectations or preconceptions about a place. In travel, as in much of life, these tend to lead to disappointment; or, at the very least, they can obscure the true nature of a thing making it hard to appreciate it for what it is. But I couldn’t help finding myself surprised by my first impressions of China: everything was so new, so modern, so moneyed. I don’t know what exactly I may have been expecting, but I guess that wasn’t it.

On our way into Hangzhou proper C. and I made a couple of transfers and each bus (improbably) was more crowded than the last. Despite the crowds I noticed a serious reluctance on the part of the locals to sit next to the two chatty foreigners. That much is similar to Korea. I wouldn’t call it rudeness so much as a certain shyness. And perhaps, at least in my case, it is well-founded: I usually reward the brave or desperate soul who sits next to me with a (no doubt obnoxious) degree of talkative friendliness.

When we arrived at Hangzhou Normal University (where C. lives and teaches) a light rain was falling – more like a mist, actually. We made our way through the drizzle and throngs of students to the dormitory C. shares with her friend J. Although J. has her own (by Korean standards) ridiculously spacious apartment she shares one with C. (they refer to their set-up as a “trial marriage”) and a grumpy, overweight cat named “Xiao Fu”. After introductions (J. offered me the sole use of her apartment during my stay – awesome!) the three of us headed off with another teacher for dinner at a local French restaurant.

The food I ordered – salmon pasta and an incredible tomato basil soup – was excellent. There was also wine. I couldn’t give you the specifics (my tastes are provincial: I eat like a Viking and drink like a peasant) but it was tasty and complimented the meal very well. And it was so good to be eating something that wasn’t rice or fermented cabbage for a change.

Now don’t get me wrong: I love Korean food. I mean I L-O-V-E it. When I finally make my way back to the States it is gonna be hard to go without my daily dose of gimchee. But when you’ve been eating one type of food pretty exclusively for a year-and-a-half a little variety, and especially variety of such a delicious quality, is awfully nice.

A few hours and a full belly later we headed back to the dormitory. Decided to keep things chill the first night: I got a big week coming up.