Amit Sinha's Travelog

In the past ten days or so, from walking around the monuments in
Beijing, to buying train tickets, to roaming around Shanghai and
bicycling through Sozhou, I’ve begun to develop an understanding and
appreciation for this part of China, the people, the chaos, the
development, and life out here. While my observations and experiences
here could fill reams of pages, the most striking thing has been how
quickly I’ve picked up the important phrases required to get along here.

When moving out of the touristy realm, finding a place where you can
order from an English menu, or look at pictures and point, can be
difficult. Luckily, the mates I’m traveling with have a working
knowledge of Chinese, as well as a Mandarin phrase book. However,
sometimes even that’s not enough, so tonight I had to walk around the
restaurant and point to dishes that looked attractive and then had
one of the owners who knew about ten words in English, confirm
whether they were chicken, pork or beef, and meat, and not intestines
or abdomens or other interesting body parts that are relished in this
part of the world.

In summer, words you learn very quickly end up related to drink- My
favorite phrase is asking for a bottle of cold beer (bing ping
pijou), and then changing the ‘pijou’ to ‘shwey’ and getting ice cold
water anywhere.

You begin to recognize some Chinese characters, like the symbols for
entry and exit, or more interestingly, the sign for Internet, which
is two crosses in a box. I was pretty excited to make the discovery
today that the sign meant “net”, by seeing it used in a tourist sign
for some place that had a net… I thought that was pretty neat.

I’ve really had a wonderful experience in China, and have tons of
experiences to share. Will share them, as well as post my pictures
very shortly… Its a fascinating country, and I’ve seen so little of
it.

The first time aI heard of Kunming was when I booked my flight for
Beijing from Vientiane, and had to change planes here. I figured it
would be a tiny provincial airport. It might be provincial, but its
in no way tiny. Kunming, from the air, is a sprawling metropolis, a
collection of ugly buildings against a backdrop of lush green
vegetation. I even saw a lovely golf resort from the air!

The airport is massive, and a hub of chaos. There are people
everywhere, more so than in India, and the airport has facilities
equal to any western airport, barring ATMs, of which I found none. In
sheer size, its probably larger than Mumbai’s airport, with 50 check-
in counters, eleven security check lines, and seventeen gates. And
the flights from here are mainly regional.

Here’s an example of the purchasing power of China – At the airport I
came across a huge billboard for Golden Throat Lozenges, with none
other than Brazil’s Ronaldo holding a packet of the company’s product!

I was stopped while clearing customs, and in addition to asking me my
life history, the officer proceeded to take every article out of my
backpack, which I had painstakingly packed in Australia so as to fit
all the items without bursting, and now my order had been disrupted.
It took me about twenty minutes to repack everything, and yet it
wasn’t the same. A couple of stitches came undone, and my backpack is
now at serious risk of coming apart.

While the customs official was inspecting my items with great
interest, I found it mildly amusing that most of the articles that he
found interesting were Made in China! Mundane things, like durable
cleaning cloths that my mum had me pick up in Australia, a sliding
photo frame I got for my birthday from my cousin, my iPod and laptop,
and the backpack itself… all were made right here, in China!