Chapter 9 Faced With Death in China.
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| Foreigner at play in the countryside |
As already stated, life in China for the foreigner is not about being followed around by the secret police all day, and constantly being pulled up in the street and asked for your identity papers. Apart from checking into hotels and buying plane tickets, the only time you would expect to be asked for your passport would be when requiring some government assistance involving paperwork.
The only time that I have ever had anyone 'check me out' (and that unfortunately includes 'sexually') is when I was in Fengkou one day with Mingxing. A nice man approached us on the street and grabbed my hand and shook it while using Mingxing as translator, to welcome me to China. He identified himself as representing some town official and said that he would like to invite us to dinner. He asked if he could have a mobile phone contact number so that he could later in the day make the arrangements, and asked all the usual questions like, did I enjoy China, how long had I been here, what did I do here, and where did I work. It was the most gracious and expert grilling one could ever hope for. At one point (to indicate that I understood what was going on), I asked him if he would like to see my passport; which he did not. And no, we never got that call.
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| Side Street in Hong Hu |
Everyone in China is of course required to carry identity papers, and that includes the foreigners. For the most part however I do not. I usually only carry identification when I travel, although on at least one trip to Hong Hu I forgot to take my passport. Drawing the attention of the regular or secret police is the least of your worries in rural China. It is the ordinary rural populace that you have to watch out for, because if they are not used to seeing foreigners, your presence is going to attract a huge crowd of 'gawkers'.
It was during my first year in Hong Hu that my brother and I drew the largest crowd of onlookers that one could imagine, and it did get a little scary. We were out shopping for meat and vegetables when we ran into our teaching coordinator and a few other teachers. They were on their way to visit someone who was sick. (I think from memory it was a teacher's mother). For whatever reason, they decided that we should join them, and as we began to protest the changing of our plans, the crowd began to gather.
In China, if a half a dozen people get together on the street, everyone else wants to know what is going on. Perhaps it is a remnant of the hardline Communist era. At any rate, so many people gathered, that the whole street got blocked off, and vehicular traffic came to a halt. Drivers were blowing their horns and Taxi drivers were getting out of their cars screaming at the crowd. And I must add here that this was not some 'tiny' one lane back street.
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| Temple on the Yangtze River |
Eventually my brother and I escaped, but still a sizable crowd followed us. Up near Long Ke Duo supermarket we stopped to talk to someone for some reason, and found ourselves still surrounded by somewhere between 50 and 100 people. We eventually hightailed it up to the River Road at a fast past, leaving all but a couple of kids behind. I did write about that incident somewhere, and if you go read my stories you are bound to come across it; probably in better detail.
Being a foreigner attracts a lot of attention. You can expect people to point at you, scream out that a foreigner is coming, or just plain scream. One day I was coming out of the supermarket when a woman who had her head down whilst looking in her bag, bumped into me. She got two syllables of an apology out of her mouth before she saw my face, at which point she just screamed and ran.
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| My first winter snow |
Then again there are those scores of students who just want to meet a foreigner and practice their English. Unfortunately, because most of them have just memorized questions, even your simplest answers are not understood, and these conversations become something that you want to avoid. Naturally of course, until the student begins talking, you have no idea whether he/she has any real ability. To reiterate something which I think I may already have mentioned, I have met 2nd year English majors who did not know the meaning of 'What is your name?' or 'How old are you?' Unbelievable but True! I will be talking further on this topic later in the book.
Then there are the people who are just so thrilled to see a foreigner that even though they don't speak English, they will come up and shake your hand and welcome you to China, and should any of their family be around, particularly kids, they will insist on you meeting them all, and the poor kid who may never have uttered an English word in class, is forced into a situation of losing face if he can't speak in the presence of the foreigner.
Another more normal phenomenon, is when the family of a Chinese friend wants to meet you, and it was because of one such event that I came face to face with death. Tobias, (the man who took me to the bathhouse), had a cousin who was getting married, and I was invited to the wedding. As much as I wanted to take my camera, I had already learned a little something about what happens when the Chinese see you with one. Everyone wants their picture taken with you - even though they themselves will never end up with a copy.
The wedding was in the countryside (meaning out of Xindi), in a place called either Shakou or Sakou. Local people pronounce both 'sha' and 'sa' the same, so I don't know which it was. Sakou is a little village somewhere behind Hong Hu lake. It had only rough dirt roads, and by virtue of its position in relation to the lake, it takes some time to get there.
I was welcomed of course as an honoured guest, and fed cigarette after cigarette after cigarette until my throat burned. (Even if you don't smoke, it is a good custom when attending some special event, to take with you a couple of packets of expensive cigarettes, and either offer cigarettes around on an individual basis, or present a pack or two to the special persons at the event).
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| Jung Feng Village Hubei |
The traditional wedding takes place over 3 days, and this particular day was to be the one on which the groom went to 'take his bride' from her home. This involves both the ritualistic 'breaking down the bedroom door' and the paying of dowry. Whilst it all seemed rather scary to me, Tobias kept reassuring me that it was all in good fun.
We travelled in convoy from the groom's house to the bride's house, went through the appropriate rituals, and together with all the 'linen' gifts, set off to return to the groom's house. I was in the last vehicle with I think, about 11 other people, and all the quilts, pillows and linen were stacked around us in the minivan - thank God!
As we were travelling along a dirt track atop a steep embankment that ran down into a stream, we hit a bump in the road, and something, perhaps the steering, snapped. The driver lost control of the vehicle and it spun around and promptly ran into a huge tree. Were it not for that tree we would have ended up in the river, and were it not for all the linen, most of us would have been hurt.
One passenger in the front seat received a broken leg. My friend Tobias also hurt his leg. No one in our convoy noticed what had happened, and all the passengers began flagging down local cars whose drivers then transported them off to the hospital in Fengkou. Eunice and I were the last to get a lift, and on the way to the hospital to find Tobias, I finally let Eunice know that I was bleeding from the back of my nose (I hit it on the side window).
Well as it turns out, everyone, including the man with the broken leg were fine, and after Tobias and I had been checked out by the doctors, we took a cab and headed off to the groom's house. Never have I seen so many Chinese people both concerned for my health and glad to know that I was fine. As one uncle or grandfather remarked, had I died, it would have been bad luck for the bride and groom! Thanks Grandpa!
When I hit the window of the van as it spun (did I mention that we were sitting on wooden planks - not seats?), I received a hairline fracture in my nose, and it gave me pain for several months, but not as much pain as having to face the wrath of the school administration. I had committed two unforgivable breaches that day. Firstly I had left the city center without telling the school authorities, and secondly, I got hurt. It was made quite clear to me that if anything had happened to me, the school would have been in big trouble. (Nevermind you! - I thought - What about ME?)
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| Yes I did join them to cut rice |
As a result of that day's events, the school informed me that I was to go nowhere without either permission or being escorted, and that included going to the markets. Being a good (western) citizen who was quickly learning Chinese ways, I accepted the edict and promptly ignored it. This was however, not the first time that the school had sought to control my physical movements. Within a short time of arriving in Hong Hu, the SARS epidemic broke out.
The first I knew of the epidemic was advice received from my family back home, and at that time, I was actually extremely ill. I had a racking cough, a fever, and a rattling sound in my left lung. My first reaction to the news was sheer panic. My illness, which reoccurred in the summer, was probably something caused by using the air conditioner; 'legionairres' perhaps? (Thereafter both in Wuhan and in SuZhou, I disinfected the air conditioner before ever using it.)
At any rate, it did not take too long for news of the epidemic to reach HongHu, even though my brother and I did try to tell the school authorities about it. Being westerners and constantly on the net, we were constantly checking for all the latest updates, but every time we informed the school, they simply would not believe us because: 'We haven't been told yet!' We eventually worked out that from the time the Beijing government made any announcement, to the time the school knew about that announcement, ten days elapsed.
Because of the seriousness of the event, and lest we got ill or died and the school was inconvenienced by such, we were instructed to remain in our apartments when we were not teaching. We did try to make it known that if being exposed to the general populace in the streets was likely to infect us with SARS, then being locked in a room with 75 students would undoubtedly kill us. Being confined to quarters was not something that my brother or I considered acceptable, so we didn't accept it, and our lives went on as usual.
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| Lazy River. Water tastes a little funny though. |
The Epidemic (which by the way, according to locals, was caused by eating pork, eating chicken, or mosquito bites, or all three) did result in Government edicts restricting travel. No one could leave their own province. Fortunately for foreigners, they were allowed to leave the country. As summer holidays arrived, and with no where to travel in China, I paid for a return trip to Australia. Two days after I paid the damn thing, the government lifted travel restrictions. Bloody Murphy and his damn Law!
Travel restrictions and the ever present possibility of death in China are like breathing, eating and sleeping - they are normal. Prior to my coming to China, my brother on numerous occasions informed me that yet another Chinese plane had crashed; and after coming to China I was sent photos and read newspaper reports about Chinese airline safety records, that have left me shuddering. Just last month I took three flights, and every time, as the plane began to take off, I would recite a prayer. It goes like this: 'Dear God in Heaven, I pray that this will be a safe and uneventful trip. If not, then see you soon!'
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| O.M.G. |
Taking a domestic flight in China can be a real hassle if you are organising it yourself. You bloody foreigners of course arrange it all through your travel agents, blissfully unaware of how much you are overpaying for your tickets. Knowing the ticketed price and the possible real price, last month I was searching the internet for tickets when I came upon a site selling those tickets for four times their face value. The target market however was the United States.
Unless you are in the habit of dealing with your own preferred travel agent, the final cost of your ticket is like a lucky dip prize. In the Qinchuan Holiday Inn in Wuhan, the business office usually sells tickets at about 30% off the face value, but that does not mean everyone is going to give you a discount. Even if you have already checked the discount prices on different websites like Ctrip, once you get into a travel agent, you may find the ticket selling at face value. It is just better to be armed with information in advance.
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| Jockey straps keep it running. |
I usually organise my hotel accommodation through Ctrip, but last month I booked a plane flight through them, and had it not been for some technical problems, I would have booked all three flights with them. At the time that this chapter was written, (2007), Ctrip could only sell domestic tickets, which meant that you couldn't buy a ticket to HongKong or Macau, because they are international destinations. Go Figure!
In Macau, I was trying to get a ticket online, and found the local airline website. There was no problem checking out schedules and prices, but do you think I could find where on that site I could hit a button that would allow me to actually BUY a ticket. The wonderful staff at Hotel Taipa (Taipa Island) finally stepped in and got me organised through a local agent.
I took the Hotel bus to the Ferry Terminal; the Ferry to Shenzhen, and the airport bus to Shenzhen airport, before I ran into Murphy the Irish Leprechaun. (Most people would like to catch a Leprechaun and get three wishes. Me, I'd like to catch one and put the same curse on them as one of them at some time in the past, put on me.)
We boarded the plane 10 minutes after the departure time and discovered that the air conditioning was not working. Some technicians were there fixing it. The Stewardess apologised for the situation, but announced that as soon as we were airborne, everything would be fine. Then she announced that the tower was grounding all aircraft for one hour because of a storm somewhere. As Murphy's law would have it, the only passenger on the whole plane who decided to kick up a fuss and rant and scream and carry on, was the guy beside me. We finally arrived in Chengdu two hours late.
Ten days later when I left Chengdu, Murphy once again greeted me at the airport. My plane was due to leave at 4:40pm and I had been advised to be there two hours earlier. Hotel check out time was 12pm, and it was apparently going to take me 1-2 hours to get to the airport. Mingxing and I had breakfast at 11:15am, after which we took off for the airport. The local bus that took us there took just 45 minutes, and I found myself with almost 2 hours to kill before check in. Mingxing, despite my protests, stayed with me the whole time.
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| Just Beautiful |
When I finally went through security and got to the departure gate, once again I saw that the plane was scheduled to board ten minutes after departure time. Just as we were ready to board, a storm hit us, and once again I found myself grounded INSIDE the plane. The delay meant that I missed the last direct bus to SuZhou from Pudong Airport in Shanghai, and had to take a shuttle bus to the railway station and hope there would still be a train that would pass through Suzhou that night, and that I could actually get a ticket.
Murphy of course only likes to catch people off guard, and so even before I arrived in Shanghai, I had decided that I would be happy to pay for a taxi to the Holiday Inn beside the Railway station and pay 500 rmb for the night. It was one of the few times I have been able to fool that Leprechaun. The shuttle bus from the Airport departed within minutes of my boarding it. The queue in the train station was short. There was a ticket to SuZhou, and I had 45 minutes in which to smoke to my heart's content and stretch my legs.
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| Muslims after Ramadan in Hong Hu |
Apart from plane crashes, the most likely cause of a foreigner's death in China, (smog and food poisoning not withstanding), would be a traffic accident.
Frankly I don't know how the traffic regulations in China are worded, but I tend to think that there are only two of them. The first is that there are no rules; and the second is that you must obey the first one.
If you have ever tried to cross a street in Rome or Amsterdam, you will have an idea of what it is like in China.
"On the flip side" of course, it is quite possible that you the foreigner might be the cause of someone's death in a traffic accident. As I related earlier, many Chinese are shocked to see a foreigner, and it is amazing just how many pedestrians I have seen smash into each other because they were watching me and not the people around them.
In Hong Hu there was this guy on a motor bike who smashed into the two foot high cement garden bed on the side of the road because he was looking at my brother and I. There was a little girl who while riding one direction, was faced the other direction looking at me. First she ran into a parked car; then into another bicycle rider, and then narrowly missed being killed by a motorcyclist.
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| Heng Ji Village |
For me personally, the best place to watch 'near misses' is at Mingxing's home in the countryside. His house is about a 30 minute walk from the main road and sits facing a dirt road, [a cement road since 2008] that drops off on the other side into a creek.
If I were to ask you what your reaction would be to seeing a Chinese man sitting on the porch of a farmhouse on a dirt road out beyond 'hicksville', you would probably not have one. But for the Chinese who rarely see a real live and up close specimen of the foreign devil, seeing one squatting on the porch of a Chinese farm house on a dirt road miles from anywhere, is positively mind blowing.
The shock of seeing me sitting on the porch is displayed both audibly and physically. I've seen people lose control of their bicycles, motorbikes, cars and trucks.
I have yet to see one actually crash however, but there was this one time when I gasped and closed my eyes, not wanting to witness the impending event. A big blue truck was passing through and the driver, as drivers are wont to do, glanced over at the person sitting in the early morning sun. As his gaze returned to the road ahead, it suddenly hit him that I was a foreigner. His mouth flew open and his head turned; and so did the steering wheel. There was nought but a metre between the truck and the embankment, and for a split second I thought he was a gonner for sure.
One should never underestimate the effect upon a Chineseman, (or student) of finding himself face to face with a foreigner.
R.P. BenDedek
Email: rpbendedek@hotmail.com
Hardcover Publishing inquiries welcomed!
R.P. BenDedek is the pseudonym of an Australian who has been teaching in China since 2003. He currently lives in Baotou in Inner Mongolia. In addition to contributing to Magic City Morning Star News as a columnist, he also is an assisting Editor for the Newspaper.
Additionally, BenDedek is the author of 'The King's Calendar: The Secret of Qumran' at www.kingscalendar.com
