The magic of yesterday has run dry. This morning I took the express train to Tianjin from Beijing and thought I would magic my way into the perfect sleeping accommodations before catching the ferry to Korea tomorrow. I ended up walking around for an hour hoping to run into something special and realizing that Tianjin is nothing like Beijing, with a surprise around every corner. Instead I’m in a way too expensive place where the internet is behaving itself (meaning I can’t access google to search for the info I need because China is mad at google for not agreeing to censor itself) and I have no idea how or where to catch this ferry to Korea. I brought my little speaking translator to the front desk girls hoping to figure it out. They got confused enough to call up an English speaking friend on their cell phone and have her talk some sense into me. I have no idea what she said, but I agreed and thanked her for it.
I took this confusion as an opportunity to step away from ferry plans and rethink what I’m carrying around on my back, because it hurts. It’s funny how irrelevant all those “necessary” items start to feel when you’re a pack mule and carrying it every step of the way. Shampoo? What’s the point in clean hair anyway, what about all those essential oils everyone keeps talking about, do they count for hair? Soap? Who needs soap? We smell that way for a reason… right? That’s probably how that donkey felt at the Great Wall yesterday. Damn all these bricks and your cash from tourism, let’s just hang out and chew on some grass. I’m not sure what I’m talking about anymore.
This whole staring thing, while cute for a second, is starting to get on my nerves. Imagine you’ve just woken up, you’re hungry, you haven’t showered, no coffee or anything, and you’re wandering around in a world full of signs that are saying nothing comprehensible. You’re not on top of your game, while each and every person that passes you seems completely willing to miss their train to work just so they can stop dead in their tracks and stare at you while you plod down the street in your morning stupor. I have to constantly remind myself that almost everywhere in the world it’s considered rude to punch people. OK, calm down. I’m not going to punch anyone. I bet I could win, though.
Dinner was interesting. I went to this fast food place that Lonely Planet recommended. Their menu was full of pictures. Perfect. They sent over a guy who kind of knew some English and I asked him for something with chicken. He pointed at one and then stared to second guess himself. He said he wasn’t sure because it was really spicy, but it also looked like there was something else on his mind. I assured him I could take it, but he still seemed to think he should find another dish. He couldn’t find the right words to talk me out of it, so it was settled. The dish showed up and it was indeed chicken, cold chicken that had been sent through a meat slicer, bones and all. I had no idea how to separate the chicken from the bone with chopsticks. I started to use my fingers and then remembered I was already creating a spectacle just by existing, so I gave up and ordered a noodle dish. I took the chicken to go. It’s sitting next to me now. Maybe I should find some chopsticks and practice on it.
So there we have it. All my magic has dried up and I’m stranded in Tianjin where they charged me two dollars for a sixty cent beer and my talking translator only causes more problems. Send some good juju out into the air for me and maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow with all the answers. Smooch.
This is the view of Tianjin from my window. So far I have not found it all that exciting visually, but maybe I’ll wander around tonight and see if anything looks sexy in the dark.
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| Thank god for photo menus. |
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| This is for Heather and Jill, who want to see what I’m eating.Nothing too special here; fried chicken. |
I’m still alive. Strong like cockroach. A smidge of information, a few English phrases, a dash of battery operated talking translator, and a good dose of magic got me to Tanggu where, on Thursday, I’ll catch a ferry to South Korea. I think there’s something to be said for planning light, but I’ve learned that in places where you don’t understand the alphabet and can’t say or understand even three words, you need to at least have most of the info for the next destination lined up before you leave behind your reliable source of internet access. I’ve found a good technique is looking up the names of where I need to go (train names, cities, hostels etc.) written in Chinese and then email them to myself. I save them to my iPhone and show it to people when I need to say where I’m going or what kind of ticket I need. It works. I wish I had done it before I left for Tianjin.
After many hours on the computer I was able to figure out that the ferry leaves from Tianjin Port, which is not in Tianjin any longer, but in Tanggu, an hour away. Then I had to figure out how to get to Tanggu and find the port, and probably find a place to stay, because it sounded like the ferry leaves every four days but the only schedule I came upon was posted in 2008.
I managed to talk the bus information out of the front desk girl. There’s one thing I can check off my to do list. Now I’m on the bus and have no clue what’s going to happen next, I’m just on the bus. I haven’t paid for a ticket and I don’t know what my stop is, but I’m pretty sure I’m going in the right direction… I think. I pulled out my translator and by a miracle I found the ready made phrase “Can I buy a bus ticket on board?” (This really is a miracle as it doesn’t have phrases like “How much is the room?” but is plentiful with phrases like “Forward my calls to…” Yes, forward all the calls from my Chinese associates to my nonexistent phone number so we can have incoherent conversations through my talking translator, but I’m not at all interested in how much you’ll be charging me to stay in this hotel.) I tap the guy next to me and show him what it says, and without looking at me he says, “OK, OK.” Like “Yeah, I know.” and looks away. What does that mean? Maybe he can’t read, I think.
I was starting to feel a little fucked. No one smiles. Everyone stares like I’m walking around with my head on fire. I don’t have a friend or a helping hand anywhere. I began to say little comforting things to myself; everything is going to be OK. You’re not lost; you’re here, blah blah. The guy next to me started doing a lot of texting. He reached over and on his phone it said, “What stop are you going to?” I tell him. More texting, and then about five minutes later he shows me the phone again “Is someone there to meet you?” Through this method (Later I find out his girlfriend was feeding him the English.) he figures out I’m taking the ferry to Korea, which he thinks is a dumb idea, too slow. The stop came and we got off the bus. He paid for his ticket and mine as well. He started asking a cabby about the port. The driver said the ferry doesn’t leave until Thursday, which was my suspicion, so I’m set to walk around looking for some low priced dump to stay in. Tanggu has zero tourists, because there’s nothing to see really. So there’s no such thing as Hostels, just hotels. Bummer.
The guy seemed really worried that I had no place to stay. He couldn’t think of how to tell me where to find Internet or a hotel, so he just tells me to follow him home and puts me in his cab. I decided this was the mystery of magic at work and agreed. Plus; I wanted to see inside a Chinese apartment. The cab driver obviously thought the situation was hysterical. I couldn’t understand his words, but from his gestures I knew he was saying the boat is a crazy idea. It’s the same price and faster to fly. So we had a little sing language debate over it. I guess he won, judging by the fact that he got way more laughs out of it.
We arrived and headed up to the apartment. I think my host was feeling a bit flustered because he stopped at the wrong door and started looking for the key under a mat and a door that did not resemble his at all. We made it to the right door, took our shoes off, and he brought me a pair of slippers. This instantly made me feel odd. I’m guessing they belonged to his girlfriend. I imagined her coming home to see this strange alien lounging on the sofa in her soft red slippers. It didn’t seem right.
We did some Internet searches for hotels, but he was hungry. He said I should wait for his girlfriend. She speaks English and will be home in five hours. OK, I guess we wait… He asked me if I was hungry and went out to get some things for lunch. I was excited to have some Chinese home cooking. I posted up on the couch and started to discreetly look around the apartment. All of the appliances, the computer, television, water cooler, and telephone, were wearing lacy little outfits, custom sewn coverings with frills and bows. He came back fifteen minutes later with a plastic bag that was full of something alive, flapping around inside. Fish.
It turns out the water had been shut off, so he wasn’t able to make lunch. He put the fish in the freezer where they continued to bang around until they slowly suffocated, while he watched TV, and I fell asleep on the couch. When I woke up he handed me a little sausage shaped package of bologna with an excited, cartoon penguin, wearing a scarf, on it, and a bottled “Juice Milk Drink.” They seem to be wild about milk here. My Japanese roommate on the Trans-Siberian Railway turned into a party animal on his last night and drank a fifth of Vodka mixed with milk. I make no judgments. I just declined to partake. This apple milk drink was not as weird as I expected. It was actually kind of pleasant.
He left the apartment again and about five minutes later someone was banging on the door. Oh god. What should I do? I tried to open it but had no clue how. It was some strange system of dials and moving bits that I’ve never seen before. The person on the other side started shouting, sounding kind of angry and scary. I answered back in English and they shut up. Seconds later my host (I still didn’t know his name) comes in with the shouter, his girlfriend. She smiles and says her name is Claire (I’m not sure I believe her, as it was very difficult for her to say. I’m guessing she did that for my benefit, as I probably wouldn’t be able to pronounce her real name). She also told me her boyfriend’s name, and I still have no idea what it is. They went into their bedroom, without another word to me, and she starts doing something that sounds like shouting again. I can’t say for sure though. I don’t fully understand the cadence of Chinese. I think people are arguing with each other but when I look, they’re smiling. So, they were in there, fighting, not fighting, having a lovely chat, who knows, for about thirty minutes. Finally I decided to knock on the door and move things along.
Claire tried to get me into an empty room at her uncle’s house, no dice, so they walked me over to a hotel nearby and sort of gave the staff the run down. “Look, we found this white girl at the bus station and didn’t know what to do with her. She thinks she wants to take a boat to Korea and we couldn’t talk her out of it. Can you take her off our hands until the ship sets sail on Thursday? She doesn’t know how to do or say anything on her own, which is fine for you, because you can talk about her while she’s still in the room.” They took me. They took me and put me in a windowless and unventilated room that has had ten million cigarettes smoked inside of it, and the “bed” is a box spring with a fitted sheet over it, but it’s clean and they let me drink beer and eat chicken in there, so I guess I won’t complain.
Through another series of fortunate events, with helpers and participants, willing and unwilling, I was able to get to Tianjin Port and purchase my ticket. I was flashing my talking translator at this cab driver, trying to negotiate a price, when one of the guys from the hotel ran out and cleared some things up with him. He named a price for the roundtrip to make sure I got back to the right place. It was a good thing. Once at the port, the cab driver ended up following me in. I think he wanted to make sure he didn’t lose me, and his fare for the trip back. Although he was a complete curmudgeon and totally unhappy about it, he explained things to the Port Authority, figured out the ticket office was, actually, miles away from the port, up into this big building on the 5th floor in some tiny, dark, corner office. I never would have been able to figure that out on my own.
I was in Tanggu for three days, going nuts trying to occupy myself. I finally saw the assless baby pants in action. This little boy suddenly stopped walking and got a far away look in his eyes, the kind my cats get when they’re using the littler box. His mom sensed it all and reached down to open the pants up a little bit and he peed all over the sidewalk. It was a little messy, some got on his pants and his mom, and when it was all said and done he was standing in a puddle of pee, but I guess the system works with a few quirks. Other than that I would walk around for hours in straight lines, so as not to get lost, taking photos of air conditioners, and hunting for Internet. The Internet was down at my hotel, so I’ve been out of communication. On my last night, I finally stumbled upon the big ass shopping area. People everywhere in the streets with neon lights like Vegas, street food vendors, and even a Starbucks! Tanggu was suddenly amazing.
Don’t fret all you China lovers; I’m not done yet. I’m coming back in a couple of months and I’m gonna get friendly with the pandas. Stay tuned.
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