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PrefaceWhile I traveled in China, I read many books but was particularly taken by the writing style used in Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen. The following is written in a similar style, grouping common experiences or insights together instead of summarizing my trip chronologically. I hope this format exposes the ebbs and flows of my trek as well as the moments that made a lasting impression. I extend my sincere thanks to everyone involved with the Avery China Adventure program and the ICF for this once-in-a-lifetime experience. Dancing in China
The focus of my trip was to learn and teach swing dance while traveling through China, so I’ll start with my experiences related to dance. Beijing and Shanghai had been ‘swinging’ for about one year prior to my trip, so I began my five-week trip in those two cities in order to get acclimated to China’s dance scene. On my first day of exploring Beijing, which was also my first full day in China, I received a call from River, the local swing dance teacher. She told me that the next day she was going to be in a photo shoot for a national Chinese newspaper about swing dancing and could I come, and could I wear swing attire? It took little persuading – I was thrilled to get the chance to meet up with the swing dancers so soon after my arrival, and with such an entrance! The next day I met up with River, Darren (a Canadian expat), and Eric, another American swing dancer who also happened to be traveling in Beijing. We dressed up in our swing duds and danced at the local studio while a photographer snapped away. Two weeks later, while walking in Shanghai, I received another phone call from River. She told me to go by the nearest newspaper stand and buy a “Modern Weekly” – there I was, in the Lifestyle section of a Chinese newsmagazine. Needless to say I bought four!
River had arranged for us to go to dinner with several local dancers after the photo shoot. At dinner River unexpectedly announced that since Eric and I were both in town at the same time, why didn’t we teach the swing dance lesson together that night? Luckily Eric and I had both been trained in similar styles of swing dance so coming up with a lesson plan was pretty easy. Twelve students, of mixed nationalities, swing skills, and English comprehension, were eager to see what these new US imports had to offer. The lesson was great fun but more difficult than I expected given the mix of skills and languages. I began to worry that the four-night teaching gig I had scheduled for Nanchang would be difficult without a partner. Eric was scheduled to fly back to the States in three days, so I sent a note to Jimbo, the swing teacher in Shanghai. Although I had not met him yet, I asked if he could go with me to Nanchang to teach and perform. I decided it was worth it to spend money out of my own pocket to have a partner than provide a frustrating experience to the people in Nanchang.
The next week in Beijing I had the opportunity to meet Adam, the leader of the Beijing swing scene. Adam, although raised in California, is Chinese. He moved back to China for a job opportunity and after a year was desperate for some swing dancing. He decided since no one else was doing it, he would start a swing dance scene in Beijing. He met River, a Chinese woman who speaks American English like she’s lived in the US all her life (she says she learned it all from watching Ally McBeal and Friends), in a salsa dance club and convinced her to be his swing protégée. I greatly admire Adam for his entrepreneurship and his kind hosting. Adam wanted to make sure I experienced all of the Beijing swing scene, so after participating in his swing dance lesson, a group of us went over to The Big Easy, a faux New Orleans bar with live jazz music. We danced until the trio gave up on us, and I went back to my hostel that night worrying that no other city could live up to the experiences I had in Beijing. Of course I was wrong.
Xi’an was on my itinerary because the city hosts a special dance performance show that recreates ancient dances of the Tang dynasty. It was a nice change of pace to be watching instead of being watched. While I’ll admit the performance had the artificial glitz and glamour of a typical tourist experience, the essence of the old dances and the music of the ancient instruments still connected to the history of dance in China.
I arrived in Shanghai on the same night as one of their special swing events – a swing dance party on July 3rd in honor of American Independence Day. American independence might seem an odd reason to celebrate in China until you realize that Jimbo, the organizer of the swing scene in Shanghai, is a Californian. The dancers I met there, however, had less interest in fireworks than they did in good swing music and dancing. Germans, French, Chinese, and Japanese filled the dance floor at Bynoon Music Bar. That night I simply mingled and danced because I knew I’d have plenty of time to teach the next day at the regularly scheduled Sunday lessons. Jimbo had invited me to teach both the beginning and advanced classes at their local community center. The classes were small, just four local Shanghai women. Jimbo was amused by how verbal I was as a teacher given that most of my students couldn’t understand what I was saying. He said he was the same way when he first started teaching dance in China. He gave me some tips on how to use my body more and my mouth less the following week when I taught again. It was good advice and came in handy on our trip to Nanchang.
One of my goals while I was in China was to interact with ballroom dancers in the local parks. I had read about this phenomenon in my Chinese culture books – about elderly Chinese gathering in parks to dance in the mornings and evenings. In Beijing and Shanghai, however, all I could find in the parks were people practicing tai-chi, fan dancing, sword dancing, aerobics, and calisthenics. Once I arrived in Nanchang, however, I found the ballroom dancers! The hotel at which Jimbo and I were staying was directly across the street from the major city park. On a Saturday morning I got a call from Jimbo, who said, “Come to the park, I have about 20 people here who are watching me dance!” So off I ran and when I got there, I was greeted by applause from a crowd of dancers. Jimbo and I proceeded to dance swing to their version of a Chinese jitterbug song; they loved the swivels and shimmies. We then taught them a few moves, laughing a lot and having a great time. I also danced mambo, samba, and cha-cha with their teacher and a couple of other gentlemen. All of my undergraduate ballroom training really paid off! They encouraged us to come back the following morning, which we gladly did. We taught and traded moves for another couple of hours. It’s one of my sweetest memories from the trip.
I had arranged to teach and perform for four nights while in Nanchang. My contact there was a 76-year old German woman who was determined to bring “culture” to Nanchang. Each night began at 8:30pm at the Denver Bar, a recreation of a Colorado-mining town watering hole with cowboy hats, rifles, and wood stools as standard decor. About 50 people could comfortably sit in the bar, and we could fit about 15 on the dance floor at any one time. We started off each night performing two to three songs, dressed in our best swing dancing attire, to which the crowd responded with great applause. After a break we would offer a lesson, sometimes having to do a great deal of persuading to move people from the safety of their barstools. Once they were on the dance floor, they participated with vigor. We would dance off and on until about 10:30 p.m., taking generous breaks so we could talk and mingle with the people in the bar. After the Denver Bar, Johanna had us scheduled at the Manhadan (Manhattan) Bar. By the time we got there every night, we were exhausted but elated. We performed another two or three songs there and then socialized with the bar owner and his patrons until we dragged our tired feet next door to the hotel. Meeting the Locals
On my last night in Beijing I went to the little dive outdoor restaurant around the corner from the hostel. The hutong was dark by this time, but the restaurant (really just a collection of tables on the street in front of the building that housed the kitchen) was doing a brisk business along with the fruit stands next door. The window to the kitchen displayed a sign that read: "Delicious Food. Low Price. Good Value." That, along with English on the menu, made it an ideal stop for me. After ordering, I sat at a little table and wrote in my diary. I heard someone behind me say "very good" in Chinese-accented English. I turned, smiled, and said "very good" back to him. He mimed the action of writing, so I wrote the words VERY GOOD for him on my diary. Then we repeated the process with the words I LOVE YOU. A little girl shyly watched us; I’m guessing she was about eight. I handed her a postcard of Hollywood and said "gift" in Chinese. She was very excited, clutching it to her chest then running off to show her friends. The man I was talking with pointed at it, asking me what it was. I look up "movie" in my dictionary, pointing to the Chinese characters and say "Hollywood". They say “AH! Hor-wood! Yes, yes.” Then the cook came out for a smoke and sat at my table. With help from the little girl’s grammar school knowledge of English, my Chinese dictionary, and the pictures I brought from the States, we shared our ages, we talked about my family, his family, my car, the beach, and I complimented his cooking. It was a sweet and friendly exchange. Only my fatigue from a long day sent me home.
For the first couple of weeks, I battled a chest and nose cold. By the time I reached Xi’an, I was feeling pretty miserable and sounded like a decades-long smoker every time I coughed. At my hostel I befriended a local Chinese girl who spoke very good English – in fact, she came to the hostel once a week just to practice speaking English as preparation for her English exams. I asked her how to say “cough” in Chinese so I could go get some medicine, and instead of just telling me, she actually accompanied me to the pharmacy. After what seemed like much conversation with the three pharmacists on duty (they all came to the counter to see what ailment the foreigner had), I was faced with the choice between one box that I couldn't read, but that had "codeine" on it in English, and one that I could read that was labeled as "Chinese herbal medicine for cough." I opted for the herbal medicine and now I’m a believer in Eastern medicine! It worked much better than the US medicines I had been using for the previous week.
I went to the Yuyuan Gardens while in Shanghai for two reasons. The first was to see an amazing labyrinth of rocks and old Ming-style buildings. The second was to sample “xiaolongbao,” the traditional Shanghai dumplings filled with crabmeat. There was a line of about 25 people waiting for the to-go version of this dumpling so I decided to venture inside the restaurant and have a sit-down lunch. Being just one person at a very popular and busy restaurant, they decided to seat me at a round table with seven other people. I sat there awkwardly trying to avoid staring at my Chinese tablemates but with few options of places to look since we were seated in a circle. Once the dumplings arrived, however, we all lost any self-consciousness and dug in. The advantage of this awkward seating arrangement was that I was able to steal a few dumpling-eating techniques by seeing how the locals ate theirs.
I was far from ever feeling like I ‘blended in’ while in China, but after about three weeks I started feeling like quite the China regular. I began to bump into people I'd met in other parts of China and we’d greet each other like old neighborhood chums. Like when I bumped into the Australian house builder at a Shanghai restaurant -- we originally met in Xi'an. Then I met two other Xi'an friends in the MacDonald’s (I was just using the restroom, I promise!). A week later I happened to see some old hostel roommates from Shanghai while I was in the subway. It's "a small world" even in China.
I was in the Shanghai Museum, looking at a fascinating collection of minority clothing and handicrafts. I mulled over these costumes, thinking of my Cultural Studies training about the problem of academics and travelers exoticizing "the other.” To my amusement, at just that moment a little Chinese boy asked to take his picture with me! I laughed out loud, realizing that I was the exotic other, even amidst all of these Chinese minority relics. Of course I happily obliged.
I was walking through a park across from my hotel in Nanchang with Jimbo. We had just finished teaching our impromptu swing lesson to the local ballroom dancers. We walked through the rest of the park, watching Nanchang’s older generation practice Chinese opera, play mahjong, and do various forms of exercise. Suddenly, a teenage boy appears in front of us and asks us if we would like to participate in "English Corner." At first I am wary of his invitation, having been subject to so many “student art show” invitations in Beijing and Shanghai. He explains, however, that English Corner is an area of the park where people meet to practice their English. As we approach that area of the park, we are mobbed by kids and adults, all asking questions at the same time. After answering the initial questions and asking several of my own, I brought out a book of photos from home. They were particularly interested in the picture of my brother, his wife, and their newborn twins.
I hit it off with one of the local girls the first night I performed and taught in Nanchang. In our conversation, we got on the subject of food and I told her I was very interested in learning how to cook Chinese food because the food was one of my favorite parts of my trip. To my delight she told me she was a great cook and offered to cook dinner with me while I was in Nanchang. A few days later we met at her friend’s apartment and we made a feast of ten dishes: eggs and tomato, fish chopped up and put whole in the dish, eggplant, tofu and pork, sweet corn, and quail eggs with spicy dipping sauce. It was magnificent - both the food and the experience. Being a Tourist
Lonely Planet recommended a dumpling restaurant
not far from my hostel. They truly were the “best dumplings”
as the write-up promised. What was even better than the food was
the fact that I went there by myself, ordered in Chinese and actually
received what I thought I had ordered. Plus I was able to remind
the waitress to bring me the tea I had ordered in Chinese. It
was the little victories while traveling, like successfully ordering
a meal, that were the best part of my days for the first couple
of weeks.
Shanghai itself seemed a bit harder to navigate than Beijing. The tourist sites aren’t quite as plentiful or easy to access. I was shocked to find that most of the subway stations didn’t have English on the maps – then I was amused at myself for expecting it in a country whose native language is Chinese. I realized how pampered I had been in Beijing. I missed camaraderie of the friends I had made in Beijing; the swing dancers in Shanghai seemed less interested “hosting” me and only expected to see me at dances or lessons. I also had to adjust to my new accommodations, a hostel in which I shared a 6-bed dormitory with five other Chinese people (whereas in Beijing I had bunked with other foreign travelers). My roommates were very eager to practice their English – there was hardly a time I could be in the room without having to talk about my home, my school, my reason for traveling, my likes and dislikes. It was quite charming on one hand, but very tiring on the other.
I tired quickly of eating at restaurants with English language menus, not only because the prices were often higher, but also the food choices were limited and bland. Because I spoke just a little Chinese, I could only order about two dishes and soon tired of them as well. I decided to throw caution (and a few yuan) to the wind and just order straight from the Chinese menu. I went into a cute looking little place, was handed a Chinese menu, confidently scanned the menu and pointed, saying "I would like one of these" (a phrase I learned from a fellow traveler early on). I waited with anxiety. There was a picture of a whole duck on the wall. Last time I had duck my stomach did flip-flops the whole night. What had I ordered? There it came, a beautiful pile of Chinese broccoli, bamboo shoots, and chicken in brown sauce atop a pile of white rice. I was in heaven. It was the best meal I had my whole trip because the ordering process was such an adventure. After that my point-and-order method was hit-or-miss, but I was always proud of myself for taking the risk. Transportation
After a quick couple of days in Xi’an, I took a night train back to Beijing (about 11 hours). In the four-bunk cabin, I shared the evening and morning with five people: a man with his four year old son, a woman with her four year old son, and one other man. This was actually my second cabin; a gentleman had asked me to switch tickets with him so he could be in the same cabin as his wife and mother. In the new cabin, I was on the bottom bunk, which served as a couch for both the bottom and top bunk passenger until bedtime. I was looking at the man and his little boy playing and talking out in the hallway and thought how much nicer it would be for them to have the bottom bunk so the little boy wouldn’t have to be hoisted up and down. Using pantomime, I asked the father if he would like to switch beds and he gratefully accepted. For the rest of the evening, the little boy would occasionally look my direction intently as he nibbled on a little treat. He would look at his father, who nodded and smiled at him. Then slowly and shyly, he would walk towards me holding out a treat. I would say "thank you" in Chinese and pantomime how delicious it was. The next morning I gave him a California postcard. He said “thank you” back in Chinese, then his father told him to say "thank you" in English. He beams and says "tanchu!” It was a great moment.
I took a day trip to a remote part of the Great Wall on a tour arranged by my hostel. There were several foreign travelers packed shoulder to shoulder in the minibus. On the way home, I awoke from a Great Wall climb-induced nap to see white smoke pouring into the van. In my groggy state, I couldn’t decide whether to jump out into Chinese highway traffic or to stay in the smoking van. Luckily, the driver quickly pulled over to the side of the road near a gas station. After about half an hour of attracting a lot of attention from pedestrians and other drivers as we all stood on the sidewalk discussing the situation, another bus on the same tour pulled up and we piled in.
I took the opportunity to visit Suzhou for the day, about one hour by train from Shanghai. I had read that touring Suzhou by bike was a great way to see the city and all of its gardens, but from what I had seen from the traffic in Beijing and Shanghai, I wasn’t so sure I would survive the adventure. It turned out to be one of the best decisions of my trip. On my little pink bike, I was bobbed and weaved with the best of them!
The other excitement concerning Suzhou was the train ride home. I purchased a “hard seat” ticket because I had read so much about this mode of train travel that doesn’t actually provide you an assigned seat. What's more, they sell more tickets than there are seats (well, benches really, like diner booth benches). Once the gates open for boarding, the crowd madly rushes to the landing (two men actually got into a pushing fight over who would get on the train first). Unfortunately the train was already full when it stopped at Suzhou, but I found a nice little corner where I sat on the floor until the next stop, when I grabbed a bench seat. It was quite fun for the experience and I was THE attraction on the train; I believe my fellow travelers were quite amused to see the foreigner squatting on the floor. On ChinaI don’t believe I can make one summary statement about my Avery China Adventure. My trip was so unlike any travel experience I’ve ever had; from Argentina to South Africa, I’ve never traveled in a land that still felt so mysterious by the end of the trip. I feel like I would need years in China to truly contextualize what I experienced. Because of that feeling, I hope this trip was just the first of many trips to China. I did walk away with some general impressions, however: it's not as crowded as I thought it would be; the length of China’s history is almost incomprehensible; people do still spit on the street, but after living in the pollution of Beijing I understood why; China is changing at a furious pace in the face of globalization; the bathrooms are much less scary than I had been lead to believe; it’s easy to misinterpret the rush of getting on and off the subway as aggressiveness; it’s important to travel in smaller towns like Nanchang where people are inclined to invite you into their lives in a more personal way; Beijing is a wonderfully vibrant city that seems to pulse with the ancient culture of China; traveling alone in a country in which you don’t know the language is definitely a challenge but certainly surmountable; the cuisine of China is both fascinating and delicious; and dance is truly an international language that creates an immediate bond across cultures. |
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