alisaurus

I meant to write this ages ago, but kept putting it off. So here, finally, is an account of my journey to China and first few days there. It’s mostly taken from what I wrote at the time, with some changes, so appologies for the not so eloquent style and switches between tenses. I think for this to make sense, it needs an introduction. I have never travelled a long distance on my own before. I can get from Orkney to Edinburgh, via Aberdeen, and back by myself, but that’s it. And I cried the first time I did it because I didn’t know how to get from Aberdeen train station to the ferry terminal. I was 18 at the time. I’ve also only ever been to one country outside of the UK, and that’s the Netherlands, where I have family. I also worry about everything if I don’t know exactly how it’s going to turn out. So this is me going to China on my own. Right, let’s go…

15th August 2007 - Orkney to Edinburgh

I left Orkney with my family, and we drove to Edinburgh (after the boat, of course). On the way, we played various games on the themes of I Spy and The Alphabet Game. Hilarity ensued.

In Edinburgh, I met up with some friends and we went to see “The Redemption of Christopher Cant“. It was an unusual show, from a man who goes by the name of Shining Bear. The link is to a review that says pretty much what I thought. I don’t think I would have gone to see it if it hadn’t been for ROLF HARRIS! We all went for Rolf. Susan and I tried to get a picture with him afterwards, but an angry man told us to go away. No one gets between me and Australian celebrities! …except for that man. Afterwards, since it was Edinburgh Festival time, I walked around with my mum for a while, taking in some of the free street performances, and teaching her how to avoid leafletters.

16th August 2007: Edinburgh to Amsterdam to Beijing to Kunming

Mum and I got a taxi to the airport at 8am and Dad and Eoin followed in the car. The driver we got was the nicest one I’ve ever had. She was a lady, and really polite and helpful and friendly and drove fast but didn’t throw the car round corners. When we got to the airport she took my suitcase out for me and pointed us in the direction of the enterance and check-in area.

Mum and I queued at the check-in and were among a lot of asian people. Mum jokingly said that if I didn’t get a response from YNNU then the people at the front of the queue would help me. I said they were probably Japanese. When we got to the front of the queue it turned out they were Japanese! Go me! We checked my suitcase in then went to meet dad and Eoin in the restaurant. I got a cup of tea, a smoothie and some toffee waffles, but I didn’t have time or room to drink the smoothie and couldn’t take it on the plane with me.

I’d been trying for several days to get a reply from Yunnan Normal University to confirm that I’d have a place to stay and someone would meet me at the airport when I got to Kunming. I tried phoning the uni again, but got no answer, so I phoned a member of staff on their mobile and she gave me another number to call the office, but it didn’t work. I gave mum and dad my login details for my e-mail so they could check for a reply. After I went through the security bit (at which, for the first time ever, I didn’t get searched or made to switch on my laptop or anything!), mum phoned me and said she’d checked my e-mail and there was a reply saying I’d be collected and also gave the address of the student hotel. That was such great news.

After a while I boarded the plane. I was sitting next to a Chinese girl and… I can’t for the life of me rememeber anything about the man on the other side of me. I had to faf around trying to find my mobile in my bag to switch it off, and made the girl stand in the aisle, so although I realised I’d forgotten to take out my iPod or a book, I didn’t want to disturb her, so just left it in the bag and did nothing throughout the journey. I can’t remember what I ate or drank either. I think I had a coke.

We got to Schipol airport in Amsterdam and I asked a lady where I should go and she pointed me in the direction of the terminal I needed. I stopped at the toilet on the way and had to wait aaaaages. I found the terminal and found out which gate I’d be leaving from and what time to check-in, then found a seat to sit on. I listened to some music and wrote in my journal. Then I decided to look for a place to exchange money but in the 2 places, neither listed RMB as things they could convert into, so I left it. I looked around a few shops and then got a sausage roll, bottle of apple juice and the biggest almond biscuit in the world from a cafe. Thankfully they accepted cards because I didn’t have any Euros on me. They also didn’t have a chip-and-pin machine, which was lucky because I don’t know my PIN. I sat and ate them, then as I was finishing, a couple came along looking for a table. I said they could have mine as I was just leaving, and they were very thankful. I sat at the first place for a while longer, then went through security and waited in the lounge. There were 2 ladies and a baby in front of me and a member of staff kept coming over to speak to them, trying to sort out something to do with the baby. The baby’s name was Andre, which amused me no end. I never think of a baby having that name. We boarded the plane and I was sitting between a polish girl and a russian man. The man was really large and kept flopping over the arm rest into my seat, and his legs were taking up my leg room, which annoyed me a bit. In front of me, was a Chinese couple with a baby. The cabin crew spent a lot of time chatting to them and fussing over the baby. “The baby travels on an Irish passport? That’s something else!” The plane had a TV screen that alternated between films, TV programmes and information about the flight. The films weren’t great, but they showed Monk which made the whole jouney for me! Watching the information was really interesting. I would say we flew in an arc over Russia and Mongolia, but I’m pretty sure it’s only really an arc on a flat map. Anyhow, it was cool to think where we were, and interesting to see the time change each time we entered a new timezone.

17th August 2007

Today has possibly been the strangest day of my life. The plane arrived in Bejing at 8:55am. It was really humid as we walked into the terminal and I felt sick. I got myself through quarantine, customs and… border control? Though I felt as though I was going to pass out in the queue for the last one. When I got my suitcase off the carousel I thought I hit the lady behind me because she jumped back, but she said she was just moving back to give me space.

I had £140 of Scottish notes so I went to a change place and asked to change them for RMB. They refused and said they only accept and showed me a sample of an English note. Scottish notes are exactly like English notes, you can spend them in the same places and are worth the same. There are just several banks in the UK that can print notes, so there are several different looking notes. I was quite annoyed, and figured it would be the same elsewhere and didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t go around with that kind of money on me, and I needed more Chinese money.

I found out that I needed terminal 1 but the escilator that went to the next floor was broken. I found the guy who helped me with my bag on the plane, and asked if he was going to the same place. We found another escilator but my case got stuck in the bit before the escilator, but he helped me with it. We got upstairs and he said that this man was going to show him the way, and I was going to follow, but a lady caught me and said to give her my ticket, so I did and she took me to terminal 1, along with 2 men, one of which took my suitcase. They showed me where I should check-in, then took me to get a cup of tea. At first I thought all this was amusing, then I thought something might be wrong. We went to this tea place upstairs, and I ordered some tea. After the waitress brought it, the lady asked for 300元 for their services. At first I told her I didn’t have enough money, so she asked for dollars, which I also didn’t have. Then I realised they were just trying to extort me, so I told them they hadn’t said anything about money before they helped, and they couldn’t take advantage of me like that, and I wasn’t going to give them any money. The lady argued for a bit saying she’d taken me all the way from terminal 2, then she gave up and they left, looking rather moody. I was considering not drinking the tea, and leaving, but I’d payed about 128元 for it, so I thought I’d get my money’s worth. While I was drinking it, feeling very shaken and upset, the waitress came and said, “Excuse me” and handed me a piece of paper. It had written on it in English, “Excuse me, that woman and those 2 men are theives. If they come to Beijing again they will be prosecuted.” After the first people I met in China abused my trust so badly, it really touched me that she’d done that. Although I was really upset that I’d been made to go and have that tea which I didn’t want, I was relieved that I’d avoided paying them anything, and had learned a valuable lesson. One that I could have learned a much worse way.

I found which gate my plane would be leaving from, and found a seat nearby. People kept staring at me, and men kept sitting next to me even though there were lots of other free seats, and staring at me. I felt quite uncomfortable. I only saw about 5 other white people pass through the area the whole time I was there. The Chinese people there seemed very different to British people in an airport, or maybe people in a British airport. I’m not sure quite how, but their mannerisms and way of talking. A lot louder and less reserved. I kept nodding off to sleep, then my leg would jerk or my head would fall backwards and I’d wake up again. It was horrible. I hadn’t slept much on the plane, because I’d left at 5:30pm and wasn’t tired, but now my body said it was bed time, but since I was in China it was 9am. I’d lost Thursday night and I couldn’t make up for it. I’d been cheated out of Thursday night! This guy walked past and said something in Chinese to me and pointed towards a desk. I didn’t know what he was saying, but he kept shouting it at me, then he left. A few hours later, he came by again and said it and I asked what he meant, and he said “check-in”. I told him it was too early for me, but he insisted I followed him. I got up and went to the departures board, and showed him my ticket. He found it on the board and said it leaves in the afternoon. I told him I knew, so he said to change it to an earlier one. I said I couldn’t, and didn’t want to, so he told me to check-in at 1:30, then left. I don’t like being singled out because I look different. While I was there, a mother and her young daughter were sitting in front of me, and the daughter kept running around and hiding, and dancing and singing “祝你生日快乐” (Happy Birthday to you). She was so cute. She knew she was being a little bit naughty hiding behind the chairs so she kept doing it. She peeped round from the one next to me and I waved and smiled and she grinned back then ran away. It was adorable.

It got to about 1:00pm so I thougth I’d try and check-in my baggage. I waited in a queue and there was a middle-eastern man in front of me. He said he didn’t speak much English but asked if I was going to Urumqi. I said no and showed him I was going to Kunming. He asked my name and Nationality. I didn’t catch his name, but he was from Azerbaijan. I couldn’t get across my nationality. I tried all variations on Great Britain, and he kept throwing names of European countries at me. He let me go in front of him in the queue and after I checked my stuff in, he asked for my phone number, which I declined to give him. Jeez. What is wrong with these people? I’m not attractive on a good day, and today I was looking gross. I had lots of spots and blocked pores from being ill, I was soo tired and I hadn’t washed in about 24 hours. Also, how exactly do you expect to talk on the phone to someone you don’t have a language in common with?

When I went back from there, the seats were taken, so I sat on a raised bit of floor and wrote my journal, and closed my eyes for a bit. At around 2:15 I thought I’d see if I could go through the security gates, and I could. I asked the girl who checked my passport if I needed to take my laptop out of my bag or leave it in and she said “yes”, which was confusing as I gave her options. I got to the scanner and the man asked, “你有电脑吗? Laptop?“, which I understood in Chinese, so I took it out of my bag and went through security. All was fine. I found the waiting lounge for gate A11 and found a comfy seat. I listened to all the anouncements which were made in Chinese then English and tried to understand the Chinese before they said it in English. I got all the flight numbers, gate numbers and destinations right. I wanted people to be impressed when I stood up right after they called my flight in Chinese, before English, but I don’t think anyone noticed or cared.

On the flight to Kunming, I was sitting next to another little girl who slept for a lot of the time. Her mum came across as not awfully friedly, so I didn’t talk to them, or really look at the little girl, but near the end of the flight the air hostess wanted her blanket back, and when the mum woke up the little girl she pushed her away and rubbed her eyes, and I went “awww” and the mum smiled at me. A bit later, the girl looked up at me and I smiled and she smiled back. It’s nice connecting with people like that. I was insanely tired and fell asleep every couple of minutes, but it seemed like everytime I fell asleep, the air hostesses came by asking if I wanted someting or other. That was annoying. I had 2 glasses of peach juice, but didn’t eat the meal as my stomach was killing me, and my digestive system was doing hella weird things. It seemed to take forever to take off, which was strange. Like half an hour.

When we got to Kunming, I followed signs for something like “arrivals and exit”. I didn’t see anything about baggage collection and I ended up outside. I thought I’d gone the wrong way, but I kept following signs and ended up back inside and at the baggage bit. The baggage took a long time to arrive but mine was one of the first few cases to come through. I went through a bit where they checked my passport, ticket and luggage ticket, then let me through. I looked around for someone with a piece of paper with my name on, but didn’t see anyone, then a girl and a man came up and the girl asked if I was “Ali for Yunnan Normal University”. I thought I probably was, so I said yes. I didn’t catch the guy’s name but he works at the university. He was tiny. The girl is a student, studying teaching Chinese as a foreign language and her name is 小米 (Xiaomi, “little rice”) or Miki. She spoke excellent English and told me she’d been learning it for 7 years. I didn’t understand much of the Chinese she and the guy were speaking, but I did understand when he asked me “你累吗?” (are you tired?). We didn’t go straight away because she said that she’d heard there was a Chinese popstar arriving and wanted to see her as she’d never seen a celebrity before. We looked through the glass and she pointed out an attractive girl in a white t-shirt wearing sunglasses and headphones round her neck. I’d seen her in the Beijing airport and she must have been on my flight. I told Miki and she told me off and said I should have got her autograph or spoken to her. I didn’t know she was famous though. I didn’t think to ask who she was. It may have been someone I’ve heard of. I couldn’t see her eyes because of her sunglasses, but she reminded me of Jang Nara (though she’s Korean, not Chinese). We waited in line for a taxi and people kept giving Miki cards. She had a stack about 2cm thick at one point, then she left them on a wall. When we got in the taxi and started driving off, someone through a leaflet through the window and it hit me. She said she was sick of getting leaflets, so we wound the window up. The taxi was… well it’d be a wreck in Britain. The windows didn’t wind up properly and the pane of glass that came up overlapped with a bit of plastic at the top, but not watertightly, there was a dodgy looking metal and plastic structure separating the driver from the passengers and Miki’s door wouldn’t open from inside so she had to wind down the window and open if from outside. We got to the hotel and they checked me in. They asked how long I was planning to stay, and I had no idea. I assumed it was for the whole year. They settled on 3 days, and said that we’d go to the university next week and they may have somewhere else for me to stay. They took me to my room on the 7th floor, and we took the lift. Someone who worked there got in the lift on about the 3rd floor and Miki was telling her something and showing her the slip of paper we got from reception, then said “是她” (it’s her) and pointed to me. Then they laughed, as it was obviously going to be the foreigner. We got to my room and tried to make some plans for meeting, but Miki’s phone isn’t working, so she gave me her dorm number. I think we arranged for me to meet the guy in reception on Monday, for him to take me to ICIS. I’m going to see Miki at some point, hopefully, and she’ll show me good places to eat and stuff. In the mean time, she drew me a map of the immediate area and marked on the hotel, a restaurant (she couldn’t remember how to spell it so she wrote “Res. Having meal“), Dona Donuts, the bank, post office, hospital, ICIS building, super market and the gates to the campus. She also gave me the police number.

I felt really ill and just wanted to sleep, but the room was so humid. The bathroom didn’t appear to have any loo roll, but there was a basket of food and shampoo samples, that I assumed were complimentary. In the bathroom were some toiletries, and a stand of things that said on the front that guests had to purchase them. That made me think the other things must be free. This stand contained some quite amusing things: “man wash sanitary lotion”, “woman’s wash sanitary lotion”, condoms and “man joy sex oil”. Not sure what that is, but I’m pretty sure I don’t want it. In the other basket was biscuits, juice, noodles, shampoo with Coco Lee on the packet, and some other things I didn’t recognise. The Coco Lee shampoo made me smile. I might just keep that. I was told there was internet in all the rooms, but I couldn’t find any indication of it, and the wireless didn’t pick up anything. I was wondering how to find an internet cafe, then I looked out the window and to the left was a sign saying “网吧“. What luck!! I started doing a bit on my laptop, then felt too tired, so I got changed and went to bed. It was difficult to sleep because it was so hot and there was a lot of noise in the building. I found that my phone had picked up a Chinese network and I got a text from Vodaphone telling me the prices on that network. I’ll probably get a Chinese SIM card, or a Chinese phone, but for now I’ll use this. I texted my mum and Rory, and told them how unhappy I was, and their replies cheered me up no end, and made me realise that things probably would get better, and I remembered how much I hated Edinburgh when I first got there. I found Lord Edinbear Tedinburgh (the teddy that Rory and Susan gave me) in my suitcase and snuggled up to it, on top of my sheets, and tried to get some sleep.

18th August 2007

The next day I still felt really sick and overheated. I went out to try to buy some food, but the only thing I recognised was muffins, so I bought some and managed to eat a couple, and I drank lots of water. I managed to find an internet cafe by asking people in Chinese, and had a very basic conversation with a cleaner. I wandered round a little outside, but felt terrible, so went back to the hotel. I spent a lot of time sleeping and trying to consume muffins and water without throwing up.

19th August 2007

Considering the amount I’d eaten in the last 4 days, unsurprisingly, I still felt terrible. I slept a lot, then in the afternoon, I took a taxi to the train station and bought a ticket to Guangzhou. I felt ridiculously pleased with myself. Then I walked to a hotel and met Justin and his mum, and we went for dinner. Justin is a friend from Scotland who was visiting Kunming at the time. After spending the last few days alone and ill, in a city I didn’t know my way around, and hardly speaking the language you’ve no idea how wonderful it was to see someone I knew. I think the worrying contributed to how ill I felt, because I managed to eat fine that evening. We met various people, and I managed to leave my big suitcase with someone while I went to Macau. Justin’s parents also exchanged my Scottish money for Chinese. (Thank you!!) By the end of the day, I was feeling pretty great.