The Daily Diary of a Wandering Restaurateur
A Few Final Thoughts on China

This was my third trip to China. My first visit was in October 1981 when I made the first hot air balloon flight in the country in conjunction with the opening of an inn in Taishan. In July 2002, Marv Hunt and I came over to explore a potential restaurant consulting project in Shenyang, about halfway between Beijing and the Korean border.

As it turned out, the project never happened, but Marv met Miao, his future wife, who was working as a part-time manager of one of the restaurants. (All I got was a bunch of photos that I still need to edit and upload!) We had the pleasure of traveling with Marv and Miao on this trip. It was great to have her with us as a friend, guide, translator ... and resident negotiator.

I do not profess to be an expert on China although seeing it over even this brief span of time gives me an appreciation for the mind-boggling pace of change in the country. China is at once very old and very new. It is different and often strange even to experienced travelers. So before wrapping up this particular Trip Report -- and without trying to create a guide book -- I want to share a few thoughts and impressions that didn't seem to fit neatly anywhere else in the daily narratives. I hope you will find some of my observations amusing or helpful ... or perhaps, even enlightening.

In the end, the real benefit of travel is always what you learn about yourself rather than what you see in the places you visit.

Traveling in China:
You will never learn this language and you will scarcely grasp the culture, even if you study up on both. For most foreigners this mandates seeing China as part of an organized tour group. Personally, I think tours restrict your options and insulate you from the culture you came to experience. However, in China it is essential that you have someone (preferably native born) who can translate, negotiate, and help you navigate the cultural differences.

We were SO fortunate to have Miao traveling with us. On the Yangtze cruise, there was a group of younger people who had hired a private guide to travel with them. On the cruise in Guilin, I talked with a man from Maryland who was traveling alone but said that he always found someone at each hotel who spoke enough English to make the necessary arrangements for him. You always have the option of joining a group to see a specific sight (like the Great Wall) and you can hire a local private guide and/or a driver for a very reasonable price.

This can also be a good way to save money. For example, if we booked the Li River cruise in Guilin through the hotel, it would have been 500 RMB each which included bus transportation to the boat and bus transportation from the end of the cruise back to the hotel. You would, of course, be subject to the time schedule of the bus unless you wanted a private car for the ride back, at which point the price was 600 RMB. Miao got us the same cruise for 370 RMB each plus a private van to take us to the boat and bring us back for another 60 RMB each. So we saved 180 RMB each (about $25) and we could work pretty much to our own schedule.

Chinese English:
When we were in Geneva a few years ago, we stayed with Michel and Monique Sommer, members of our Affordable Travel Club. They operate a language institute for business people and diplomats. One night we were talking about what it would take to get some of my books translated. Michel said, "You never want to translate anything into a language other than your mother tongue. I speak five languages fluently and I can teach you to understand any of them, but I will only translate into French for that reason." His point was that, while you may come to understand another language, you will never be able to express the subtle nuances of meaning behind the words unless you grew up speaking it.

In China there seems to be a fascination with the English language ... or at least with English words and letters. Perhaps it just signifies that China is finally taking a place on the world stage. It seemed like half the young people we saw were wearing shirts with English words on them, even though the words themselves were often misspelled, bore no relationship to each other or were part of sentences that were grammatic train wrecks. I tried to get photos of some of these shirts but couldn't find a smooth way to do it without appearing disrespectful (or voyeuristic!)

I appreciate that so many of the signs and printed pieces included the text in English as well as Chinese ... but it did make me wonder who was doing the translation and why they wouldn't have someone with a better grasp of English at least review the copy. Still, I suspect the results are no less laughable than what I would come up with were I trying to craft an English phrase into meaningful Chinese!

Miao called all this "Funny English." She didn’t mind our poking fun at it and thought it was funny too ... although many times we had to explain it to her. Her English has improved significantly, but she still needs to expand her vocabulary (don't we all?)

Over the last three weeks I have shared several examples of "funny English" and here are two more: "I'd Rather Be a Guilinese Than To Be a Supernatural Being" is the slogan of the Guilin Tourist Bureau. (A committee must have come up with that one.) "Exotic Ocean Your Life" was the marketing theme from the window display in a clothing store. Both left me wondering, "Uhhh ... what was that again?"

Oh, and I loved this advisory on a package of cashews: "This product is nitrogen-sealed. Please serve it as quickly after openning it. Maybe you can put it in jar."

Chinese Food:
There are an amazing number of regional cuisines in China and I urge you to try those you can handle. Unless you are Andrew Zimmern (host of "Bizarre Foods" on the Food Network), there are many items you will not be tempted to try but go a bit outside your comfort zone and see what turns you on. You might be pleasantly surprised. At the worst, you will get a good story out of it! This is where having a local to steer you in the right direction really helps.

Even with a wide range of regional choices, we found that a diet of Chinese food got old after awhile. Most four and five-star hotels had a "Western" restaurant, but these had a decidedly Chinese flair as well. The need for a dietary break is the main reason we splurged on a pricey Italian dinner in Shanghai. Of course, you can find McDonalds, KFC and other US fast food formats in all the major cities, but we don't patronize them even at home!

That is why we appreciated the western buffet breakfasts at our hotels. Typically the breakfast buffet offered Chinese dishes like noodles, bao (steamed buns), steamed/stir fried veggies and the like or more Western choices like eggs cooked to order, bacon, sausage, potatoes, french toast, fruit, breads, pastries and so on. I was surprised to see baked beans on the buffet in every hotel we stayed in. Even in China, scrambled eggs and bacon have a ring of home that helped us stay balanced ... and filling up on a high protein breakfast like that usually negated the need for lunch.

The Chinese service ethic varies. At most of our hotel breakfast buffets the servers were so diligent as to be irritating. Leave a cup or plate with fork or knife sitting around for a second and it will disappear before your eyes. We had to swat away more than one server who was practically snatching away plates as soon as you took the last bite. Strangely, getting a refill on coffee could be an exercise in patience.

Chinese Toilets:
The typical Chinese toilet is little more than a ceramic hole in the floor. You plant your feet on each side and squat. Oh, and remember to carry your own toilet paper as it is seldom supplied. (That is also what the wastebasket is for. Yuck!) Thankfully, we didn't find these fixtures in any of the hotels we stayed at but they were still the norm in most restaurants. Ironically, the Chinese invented the sit-down flush toilet we have all come to know and love. While we tend to think of the squat toilet as rather primitive, it is really more practical and durable. Not much can go wrong with a ceramic hole, there are no moving parts to fix and no lid or seat to clean. While the design of this device can be a challenge to unbalanced Westerners with bad knees, it makes perfect sense in Asia where instead of standing around or leaning on something, people tend to just hunker down.

I would be remiss if I didn't also point out that there appears to be some sort of government rating system for public potties, this one at the Ming tombs. It was, in fact, a fairly nice place to pee. It was also the only one we saw with a rating sign.

Lodging:
I first came to China in 1981 to help open one of the first hotels specifically designed for foreign travelers. There really were few other options. By 2002 the quality of lodging had become better, but was still disappointing by US standards. The hotels have improved dramatically in the last six years, to the point where I don't think you have to worry about finding acceptable lodging, except perhaps in the backwater areas that see very few tourists (and you probably wouldn't be going there, anyway!)

The government rates the hotels, although somewhat unevenly, from one to five stars. Those rated three stars and below are really just for Chinese tourists. I wouldn't suggest anything less than four stars and even the five-star properties are not expensive by US standards. All the hotels we stayed in had high speed Internet access in the rooms. Sometimes it was included in the rate, sometimes it was an extra cost. Sometimes breakfast was included, other times not.

My biggest hotel problem was with the beds -- they were rock hard, to the point that I was dealing with some serious back pain. The only solution seemed to be to ask for a couple of extra duvets and fold them up under the bottom sheet as a cushion. As with hotels anywhere, the rack rates represented a wishful maximum, not a practical market price but I don't think we ever paid more than half of the posted rate. The lowest price we paid was around $65 a night, the highest was $125. Hey, it's China ... every price is negotiable!

Split Baby Pants:
We frequently saw small children wearing open crotch pants -- more like a pair of chaps, really -- no diapers. This allowed them to "go" pretty much at will. Very different. Miao explained that moms know intuitively when to spread their child’s legs and let them go. Margene saw an old man going in the shrubbery on a main street in Hangchou, a city of six million.

Miao said that if the child had to do “number two," the mom would hold them over a toilet. It seems like the split pants idea would work better on the farm where mishaps could be absorbed by the great outdoors but Margene said she saw a young boy "fountaining" in one of the parks in Hangzhou and a three or four-year old girl defecating along a city street as we were on our way to the Yichang airport. Note to self: watch where you step!

But it appears this toddler fashion is on its way out. Is it because the sight of baby buns offends? Doubtful. Piddle on the cement? Maybe. Poo piles on the sidewalk? Certainly. But I am told that the makers of disposable diapers have a huge hand in pushing out this “quaint” and “unhygienic” practice. Surprise! They want to convert millions of toddlers’ parents to disposables on the grounds that it’s cleaner, more modern, better for “mental development” (?!) and the environment (?!!!!!) ... oh, and raking in big bucks while they're at it!

Sooo, let’s take a centuries old, natural, practical and free solution to baby poo that happens to require an intimate parent/child bond and replace it with something manmade, non-biodegradable, possibly toxic and expensive in so many ways. I acknowledge that the answer isn't cut and dried, but it is probably easier than we think. Like re-prioritizing and putting profit lower on the list. Or better yet, re-defining profit!

Dissent:
We didn’t read too many newspapers, but we did see an article in a China English paper that was critical of the Chinese government. (A southern provincial government’s dept of social services was way behind in issuing a vendor licenses for completed nursing homes. Thousands of folks were dying, who were on waiting lists. Lots of anger and complaints toward the government process.

On the Three Gorges cruise, Margene rode the chair lift up to Fengdu with the tour guide, English name: Summer. All the guides were locals. I asked about the village that had already been covered by the flooding. She said 2000 years of history was gone. People were angry/sad and she sounded very sad herself. She now lives in a high rise in a new town built on the opposite bank. She has to walk up seven stories to her new apartment.

So yes, there is dissent in China, but it appears to be under the surface and kept relatively quiet, all for the common good. The primary goal is to keep social order. Understandably with over a billion people keeping order is a big task. Of course, maintaining social order started long ago, not just with Communism. Confucius is still highly regarded, as is Taoism.

Airlines:
China is BIG -- very big. Distances between cities are greater than they seem on the map. Flying, of course, is a great time-saver and you want to save time wherever you can. Even with a flight, we effectively lost a day any time we moved between cities since most airports seemed to be a 1-2 hour van ride away from the cities they served. Ticket prices were quite reasonable but varied depending on who you were (Chinese nationals seemed to get lower fares than we could) and through whom the tickets were purchased.


We flew on China Southern, China Eastern, Hainan and Shendong. All the planes we flew on were new Boeing or Airbus equipment (one commuter-type Embraer), usually with more legroom than on US airlines. They fed us every time ... even on the one-hour hops! The planes were very clean, announcements were made in English and Chinese and most flights offered continual video entertainment.

Money and Banking:
China is modernizing at light speed, no doubt spurred on by the desire to present a progressive face to the world as hosts of the 2008 Summer Olympics, but also because of the rapid growth of their economic middle class due to their embrace of capitalism. On my first trip (1981), ATMs were unheard of. In 2002 they were rare. Now they are everywhere ... although in Xi'an I had to search around for one that would work with my Visa debit card. That was the only time I had much of a problem, though.

You definitely want to be able to get cash from an ATM. Credit cards are readily accepted at hotels and some larger restaurants but rarely elsewhere. This is painfully true when buying airline tickets so don't expect to be able to make flight reservations online (or elsewhere) unless you have a Chinese Visa card. Bottom line: you will need to have a ready supply of cash ... and most likely a travel agent.

You might be able to exchange dollars at a bank, but it will take forever. The banks all have rows of seats where you wait until your number is called. It reminded me of getting my drivers license. Even when you get to the window, it is unlikely that your teller will speak much English, so forget about trying to do any in-person banking on your lunch hour! ATMs have 24-hour access and offer instructions in English. The Bank of China has the most branches (and therefore the most ATMs) but their connection to the international computer system seems to be sporadic. Don't panic if the machine declines the transaction and tells you to check with your issuing bank. Just take your card to another bank's machine. Banks and shops are open every day.

The currency in China is the yuan, also known as the RMB. Alas, the once-mighty US dollar has been steadily losing value against the yuan as it has against every other world currency. The exchange rate was once pegged at 8.5 RMB to the dollar but had fallen to 7:1 when we were there.

Group Behavior:
Shoving your way to the head of a line had been normal behavior in China for years, but due to the Olympics, the government has been conducting queuing exercises with the population to teach them to line up and wait their turn. In 2002, pushing and shoving to the front of a group or pile of people (no line) was OK, but no longer. In fact if you cut in line now, the group is likely to let you know in no uncertain terms that you are WRONG and must return to your proper place.

Yelling at strangers for bad behavior also appears to be acceptable. Miao yelled or argued in Chinese with anyone who tried to cheat us, cut in line ahead of us, “dissed” us or was rude to us in any way. They not only took it, but backed down and behaved more properly.

Driving:
You do not want to drive in China. The country's newly found willingness to line up and behave does not extend to the highway. On the road, shoving your way to the front is still the norm. As a result, traffic is a messy tangle of cars, trucks, busses, pedestrians, bicycles and scooters -- all trying to occupy the same space at the same time in a ballet I have dubbed "The Street Dance." All this comes with LOTS of horn blowing, close calls and near misses. We saw a few fender benders and the occasional injury accident, but far fewer than I would have expected given the general chaos. And for all the aggressiveness, there was little evidence of anything akin to good old US road rage.


I think the problem stems from the fact that cars have only recently become available to the masses. When I was first here in 1981, the only motorized vehicles on the roads were trucks ... and there were not a lot of those. Passenger cars were rare and typically only for government officials. Even six years ago, I still saw a lot more bicycles than cars. But now all that has changed.

There are old trucks on the road but no old cars. That's because virtually all of them have been purchased in the last five years. This also means that their drivers were never behind the wheel until then, either. So just imagine what it might be like to be in heavy traffic in the midst of several hundred thousand impatient teenage drivers on power trips! Scary.

Size matters on the highway -- the bigger your vehicle, the more people are forced to yield to you ... or so goes the theory. Of course, the size issue puts pedestrians at the bottom of the right-of-way list unless they just take it by sheer strength of numbers. Lane lines are merely a suggestion as is the intended direction of travel and a two-lane, two-way street can quickly become a one-way five-lane road. If you can begin to imagine any of this, you have some sense of why you do not want to drive in China!

Spitting:
Frequently clearing one’s throat and spitting is common to both sexes and it doesn’t seem to matter where they are at the time. Margene even saw an employee spit on the floor of the bank, although she said it was prompted by his spontaneous cough. We are not talking about quiet spitting, either. The release of a Chinese phlegm bomb often follows a irritatingly gravelly clearing of the throat and lungs. Spitting is so ingrained in the culture that there is a complete lack of embarrassment about the habit.

With the Olympics looming and the country on display to the world, the government has been trying to educate people to stop this practice, obviously with less success than they have had with getting people to form lines. Genie gagged a number of times at this loud gross practice.

On the Street:
Hello hats! Hello maps! Hello, looky-looky. These are the calls from the gauntlet of vendors one usually has to fight through coming and going from any tourist attraction. The row of vendor stalls in China Silk Town in Hangzhou -- literally hundreds of them lined up side by side -- was no different. All these people are essentially trying to sell the same goods to the same people in the same way.

The Chinese way to do this seems to by A) trying to yell louder than the next vendor, B) by promising a lower price than anyone else and C) by doggedly staying in the face of the "prospect" while continuing methods A and B in the belief that if you can stay in front of them long enough, eventually they will come to their senses and see the wisdom of your offer. The result of this assault, of course, is exactly the opposite of what these hawkers want to believe. The more intense the assault, the greater the tendency to shut it all out, categorically ignoring everything and everyone who is pushing something in front of you.

The Chinese love to shop almost as much as they love to haggle prices. Even in "legitimate" stores, the price is usually negotiable, sometimes remarkably so. Walking away (as many times as necessary) does wonders to bring down the price ... and a Chinese person will always get a better price than a foreigner.

Europeans, Americans, "round eyes" or whatever we are considered these days are no longer the oddity we once were. When we are out and about, the Chinese, especially young people, love to say hello and use the English they are taught in school. Hearing “hello” is common. Responding with “ni hao” (hello - pronounced like "knee how" with a slight lilt) gets a big smile and giggle. Saying “che che” (thank you - pronounced like "shay shay") does too.

However, “hello” is not to be welcomed by a foreigner under all circumstances. Sometimes it’s an invitation to be hustled and scammed. A smiling, friendly American can be a gullible target. One night we were dogged by a young man who told us, in English, of how he had been abused by his father and needed money to get back to school or something. If we made a comment or asked a question, he just repeated part of the story. Bottom line: he really didn't speak any English, the story was memorized and the whole thing was just a scam trying to happen.

It is good to be open to what is around you, but watch your possessions. Never look suspected scammers or unwanted pitchmen in the eye or acknowledge them in any way, even by saying no. Just pretend they don't exist and keep walking. Sad to say, sometimes it’s best to be rude.

Odds and Ends:
There are even items that don't fit into this list of items that don't fit. Since Margene took the time to jot them down, I will take the time to share them with you. So in no particular order, here are a few more random thoughts:


The People:
With few exceptions, we found the people of China to be warm, open, curious and inclined to be helpful. Their lives are not prosperous by our standards, but they seem happy, they have a strong sense of family, they love their kids and they are survivors. There are also a LOT of them! It just reminded me once again that life goes on in a lot of different ways and a lot of different languages ... and it goes on very nicely, thank you. For all the spectacular sights we saw in China -- and there are so many of them -- the memories that will stay with us the longest are of the people.

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© 2008 Restaurant Doctor