Hilarious and embarrassing incidents in China

As soon as I landed in Shanghai I knew that communication will be difficult because of language barrier. I thought not playing Dumb Charades (DC) during college days and not learning communication through signs or Chinese language was a mistake. But soon I realized even well at DC or sign language is not going to help.

The first experience of it happened at the hotel apartment where I stayed for a month and a half. I am a pure vegetarian (but not vegan) and the apartment had kitchen room but no vessels. Housekeeping provided me with necessary after I selected few out of a list provided to me. I realized later that the gas stove was bigger for the cooking vessel and the plastic handle of the vessel was getting burnt spreading the bad smell. I called up the housekeeping and asked them to send a replacement bigger vessel. To my astonishment, after sometime a service engineer came to the apartment and verified all the Air Conditioners and told that everything is fine. I couldn’t stop my laugh as they had misunderstood my requirement and thought there is a bad smell inside the room!!!. Finally, to one more non-English understanding or speaking housekeeping person (I am not complaining, since the jobs should be given to local people if they are good at it irrespective of their lack of international language) with the practical demonstration of my requirement.

I met few Indians in the hotel and soon we became good friends and one of them had his own story. On the first day he had searched for a microwave oven in the kitchen and found one which when switched on becoming little hot (he somehow tested it since couldn’t understand Chinese characters written on it). He had kept a bowl of rice inside that for cooking. After half an hour he found that nothing had happened with the rice. So, he reported housekeeping about the non-functioning microwave oven. A person came to check it and then only he realized that it was a dish warmer!!!

Now let’s move over to the funny incident happened at office. I was sitting in a cubicle which was used by a person with the last name ‘Hong’. When pronounced it was heard as ‘Whom’. I got a call on my extension and the person at the other end was speaking in Chinese. I said I don’t know Chinese and asked ‘Whom do you want to speak to’. He said ‘Dwei’ (That’s right). I repeated the same question couple times to receive the same reply. I handed over the call to my friend who happened to come to my cubicle. He explained the conversation when it got over and both of were laughing and you know why.

This one is more embarrassing to me and may be laughing stock for you. I had gone for a trip to Beijing and had booked a hotel room. I reached the hotel to find that there are no rooms in that hotel with the price at which I booked. There was a communication problem! But fortunately that hotel had dormitories since it is under HI international youth hostel banner. There was one bed available in 5 bed dormitory and I gleefully took it. I was totally tired and sweating because of my daylong trip to great wall. Hence, decided to take bath and get fresh. I dressed down to my undergarments with a towel around me. I was entering the bath room, there was knock on the door and someone came in. It was a lady!!! She greeted me. I was shocked as it was embarrassing to me. I just said I have to take bath and quickly closed the door of bathroom. After few minutes silence I heard few more persons entering into the room and chatting. I could hear a male voice in them. After getting fresh I came out and greeted others sitting there and got to know that it is a ‘Mixed Hostel’ and rightly adjusted to the conditions. My suggestion for those, who are traveling and want to be economic, to look for a youth hostel. If it is an international hostel then you can meet persons from other countries which is a good experience. One of them in my room that day was a Chinese traveler, three were from England.

(Morning in Beijing, Near Tian'anmen Square)

If you don’t visit the Forbidden City, a group of palaces, (UN designated national heritage center) in Beijing then your trip is not complete. This was the power house of China for more than 500 years from mid-1400s till the new government was formed in 1924. I visited this place and spent around 6 hours in enjoying the beauty of the buildings, the artifacts on exhibition. Tourists around were very cheerful and were eager to take a photograph with me (a VVIP)!!! I don’t the reason for it but let me tell you one thing, there were 2 attractions wherever I went, the second one was the artifacts or the buildings and the first one is –

It's me

My expedition to the Great Wall of China

The only object on earth that can be seen from the moon as quoted by astronomers, the most famous place and the undisputed new 7 wonders of the world – The Great Wall of China (Chan Chun in Chinese) was inviting me to visit it. I did an expedition to this majestic human made wonder. Also I visited Forbidden City (the place where rulers of China belonging to various dynasties lived) and Temple of Heaven park (Tiantan) at Beijing, both declared as national heritage center by UN. Also, shared are the moments of rendezvous with people whom I met during my trip.

I woke up in the morning at 5 am to still find the train speeding towards Beijing at around 160km/h (printed on the coach). I couldn’t sleep because of bad back ache and my problem with sleeping while traveling or sitting. But now I am learning this art at office by taking a small nap after the lunch.

It was exactly 7:06AM when train reached the platform of Beijing station, as printed on the ticket!!! Amazing time sense by China railways and this is where Indian Railways should improve. When I compared, I felt Indian railways have few things better than China i.e, online train booking, a best example of application of Information technology.

With the help of subway map plus the information given by my friend Song Jian for the trip, I reached the Tiananmen Square (“Tia an Men Quancha” in Chinese) to which the China tourism bus station is nearer. At this station one can find information for an arranged trip to around six sections of Great wall. I approached the people (most of them were Chinese) around to get directions to reach this station but they were horrified to see an English speaking person and were running away. Fortunately, one fellow explained the directions in Chinese with lot of body gestures. I followed his directions to find myself in front of the monument in Tiananmen Square!!! , I was directed to a wrong place. At this juncture, I decided to read the map properly by myself and to match it with what ever I could see around. It was a good decision since I figured out which direction to go and started in that way. After walking for half a km I got confused and approached a group of cops standing there for help. A person approached me while I was speaking to cops and said he will take me to great wall. I had already read about thugs who try to mislead and takeout all the money in the disguise of travel agent from an article http://www.tour-beijing.com/independent-travel. Before I said something that person started to pull me towards his bus. Angrily I shouted ‘NO’ and the cops understood my situation. One of them realized my need and offered to take me till the bus station and rightly he did. So, if you find yourself in similar situation then be brave and be vocal as it may help.

The ticket price was 110 RMB including the bus fare, entry ticket to Great Wall (35 RMB) and an entry ticket to a Buddhist temple (20 RMB). The section of great wall that I chose to visit was ‘Mutiyanyu’. Initially I had planned to visit the most famous section ‘Badaling’ which is the one showcased by media as Great wall. But that day there was a biking competition on the highway going to Badaling.

As the bus was filled with Chinese tourists and there was only one seat vacant. The trip coordinators (all ladies J) unanimously chose me as the person to fill that seat among remaining 30 odd tourists, few of them foreigners. The way they selected and pushed me towards the bus broke a laugh riot among all the present.

Finally, the bus started its journey at 8:40am and it took 2 hours to reach the destination. Whatever the trip coordinator explained in Chinese was duly converted to English by a lady sitting next to me with her twin cute kids of age around 6. Now, don’t tell that all Chinese look like twins, quadruples …. One should be there in China to understand the different appearances of people. They may look same in colour but the body structure and face looks are different for each individual. I will explain my study on Indo-China human appearance differences in another article.

I am sure one can get excited and happy as he sights the Great wall for the first time which happened with me too. Somehow I controlled my enthusiasm to have a closer look at it and walkon it until our bus stopped. You can buy the ticket to cable car which would take you to the foot of the great wall. While climbing by cable car the view of fully stretched Great wall drives you to speed towards it. You can see it standing on the top of rigid mountains and seeming eternal in its length. There are two ways that you can chose to walk, one the flat path which will not tire you and the other a steeper section. I decided to walk on the steeper section as it would give me good views of the surrounding and enable me to take photo of its visible length. Also, this section is normally ignored by those who are not adventurous. Once started to walk you may think about the efforts and agony of masons who had strived hard to build this majestic defense structure which was used to stop the Mongolian attackers from the north. You can find towers at around hundred meters separation which were used for monitoring and communication. The early method of communication that is fire semaphore was used here where lighting fire once denoted enemies of strength less than 10, 2 denoted less than 100 so on so forth. In between two towers at the half way from each there you can see houses for the guarding soldiers who used to take rest in them when their shift completed. The width of wall is around 7 meters and the height is around 10 meters. The stones for the construction were brought from far away places and it really amazes to find that this was done when there was no technology and machinery to lift those heavy rocks and binding them with cement. Few parts of the wall was ruined which is renovated by the China government. The difference between the old and new constructions is clearly visible. You can take a cannon view through a small cannon that is cemented on the wall (newly done, I believe). If it was used in the past then because of its strategic location it could have damaged the advancing enemies heavily.

You get only 2 hours to spend on the wall in arranged trip and I had finished 1:15 hours on the wall already. So, it’s the time to head back to the bus. You can see a long queue of the tourists waiting for their turn to get on the Sliding Car by which you can reach the base camp. I was not lucky to ride it since I had very less time left with me and with the heavy heart I took cable car ride.









You can do shopping of Chinese articles at the bottom of the hill. But beware, as it happens everywhere in the world, as soon as a foreigner is spotted the marketers attack you and the price of the article will be sky-rocketed. Take my advice for the best way to shop (anywhere in China but not in standard marts where the price tag is placed on the articles) that is start bargaining from 1/20^th of its original price (its an empirical formula that I used in most of t he cases) at least and you will get it for 1/10^th of what they quote.

The bus started towards the Buddha temple, as I kept watching the great wall through glassed windows of the bus till it went out of sight.