White Tiger Path 4.2 - The Year of the Rat has Arrived - January 2020
After returning from Chongqing, we made some key presentations to the leadership of ECNU, received some gifts and had a few big nights before some of us decided to travel a little more before heading home.
On January 1st I rose early and made my way to Guilin and Zhangjiajie with a fellow Canadian to take in some of the sights while others went to Sanya to be in 28-degree sunny weather. We took the bullet train down and one of the most impressive and scary sights was watching a three-year old navigate a smart phone and social feed more comfortably than me. This little tyke would be scrolling and consuming videos on some kind of app while his parents busied themselves with their own phones.
Guilin was very impressive because of the Li River Cruise where the banks were lined with huge Karsts that made for spectacular views and the Reed Flute Caves which was a marvellous and expansive cave. Guilin itself was very nice as well and we took it easy hanging out, eating, watching some movies at our lovely hostel and doing some low-key touristy things. The weather was okay, but a bit overcast and rainy.
Following Guilin, I was in Zhangjiajie, the home of the floating mountains, which according to the Chinese, were the inspiration for Avatar. It looked as if swords of stone were rising up from the earth piercing the clouds as if they were pillows. We hiked a fair amount in pretty shitty weather. It was wet, it was cold, and my waterproof jacket hadn’t been resealed in a while, which made things more uncomfortable. The hiking was fairly intense and steep, and where normally the harder the hike, the better the payoff, there often wasn’t a payoff as we would get to the top of a Karst and wouldn’t be able to see anything because of the cloud and fog. There was a McDonald’s at the top though, and that was a welcome surprise. Our best views came from the valley floor that wove between the towering karst as well as from the tallest and heaviest outdoor elevator (as claimed by the Chinese) in the world. It was a glass elevator towering 326 metres into the sky and provided a cool experience starting in the clouds and dropping down below them to reveal phenomenal sights.
This national park also provided the cleanest air I’ve breathed in China.
There were tons of pesky monkey’s harassing people there too, and at one point one jumped on someone to steal a weird hotdog type thing from him, after which, the rest of the monkey’s basically attacked the one who had stolen the hotdog, to get their fair share.
Our hostel experience was also bizarre. Cold enough to see our breath in bed, we were the only two people in the hostel, they didn’t turn on the heat, and had an incessant Ayi who was too full energy. She would babble at us often, trying to convince us to buy something, trying to get us to eat her dumplings, and at one point, while I was trying to warm up and nap, barged into my locked room and started speaking to me saying it was time for me to eat and wouldn’t leave, so I had to get up, essentially take her by the hand and exit her from my room saying ‘no' the whole time. It was a classic old person moment as opposed to a Chinese moment though. It was just so strange.
Then we returned to Shanghai and it was time to start saying goodbye to Canadians as they would be boarding planes to return to their home provinces in my wonderful homeland. We capped off our final day together with a dinner at Global Harbour (the mall near campus where we all shared our first experience of China together) and popping a bottle of champagne on the 50th floor hotel patio overlooking our campus and the city at large. It was a great way to end what has been a memorable and life changing time together.
As an aside, while we’re pretty close to the mall, I wanted to highlight something I first noticed at the mall.
It is what I’m calling the collective consideration and it is an agreed upon informal social contract among the whole country. One where the Chinese have (mostly) accepted the personal sacrifices and inconveniences for the betterment of everyone. I think in some cases this makes the country a far superior place, like in dealing with massive epidemics or knowing that the que is king, but in other instances, it seems like it could be making China a worse place, such as in the lack of free speech which results in a certain steadiness and consistency throughout the country, but at an extremely high cost, specifically when looked at through a western lens.
My favourite social contract within China is with regards to staff using their cell phones. If said staff are not busy with or at work, it is perfectly acceptable for them to be on their cell phones doing whatever they please within the boundaries of the capacities of their phones. Customers are okay with it, employers are okay with it, and the staff, I’m sure enjoy being treated as if they’re responsible individuals who can recognize when it is an appropriate time to check their text messages throughout the day. It is often the case that I would walk into a store, see the staff on their phone, they would look up, say hello, I would say hello back, then they would proceed to follow me until I was down browsing. The cellphones aren’t getting in the way of their work or their attention to the customer.
But now back to our regular programming.
Four of us Canadians and a Chinese friend then proceeded to Perry’s to give that place a final goodbye and our Chinese friend must have been very sad to see us go because he sent us off correctly, getting us right drunk.
Since the 12th, I have essentially been here on my own, exploring the city, planning my father’s trip to China, as well as my trips for when I leave this wonderful country. With this newfound solitude a couple more observations moved to the front of my mind that I would like to share with you:
If I had to guess, I would say 85 to 90 percent of my movements and communications have been documented or recorded somewhere by the CPC, mostly through my cellphone and CCTV cameras throughout the country. There is also a military surveillance plane that often circles Shanghai and flies over my campus at a minimum of a couple times per week, but upwards of 4 to 5 times per day, during the more sensitive times I guess.
To break up with someone in China, or to tell them you are no longer interested, if it isn’t that serious yet, you can give your counterpart either a pear or an umbrella as the pronunciation of these words in Mandarin is very close to that of “I want to break up with you”. I’d say give it a go here in Canada, just make sure to include the correct wiki page so that the interpretation is correct.
With Chinese New Years around the corner and the year of the rat coming up, branding has done a hard switch from Pigs (2019) to Rats (2020) everywhere. Disney and Mickey Mouse have been the real winners and have taken advantage to a somewhat disgusting degree. Micky is everywhere; I was recently at a high-end mall in a well to-do neighbourhood and walked passed a Gucci pop-up. They had a crossover piece available (gucciXmickey), a hoodie, that was going for close to $2000.00 CDN.
This opportunity has been beyond tremendous and eye opening. I’ve met some incredible people and discovered things about the world and about myself that I’ll always have with me.
I’m grateful for not only having a program like this available to me and young people in Canada through Canada World Youth, of which I’m a huge proponent, but also for the support that all of you and others have given me on this journey. In large part, it’s your support that afforded me this opportunity.
It was a rather large decision for me to turn down a couple pretty fantastic work opportunities after I finished exploring parts of North America when I left a job at a bank back in the fall of 2018, for 5 months in China. And it’s impossible to know what those other opportunities would have brought for me or where I would have been at this moment had I taken one of them. What I knew for certain then, is that this opportunity was one I didn’t want to pass up on and it hasn’t disappointed or seemed like an experience I will ever regret. I have the rest of my life to work in Canada, but my time to travel while young was fleeting. I’ve grown as person, I’ve learned a tremendous amount about the world around me, and I have a better idea of China, a major partner and factor in our world as Canadians as well as a better idea of myself, something that I, like a lot of people, have had to be patient with.
-Bai Hú
Bonus Story:
We had been in China for almost 4.5 months by this point and I was harfing some serious dartage. Adrienne and I had finished up guilin and had taken a long train ride to Zhangjiajie to see the floating mountains. We found our hostel, after struggling at the train station, and were greeted by a Chinese man who spoke English and his mother who did not. We explored the hostel, found our rooms and saw the roof that had a view, but not a good one.
My habit was to wake in the morning, watch my breath for a while lying in bed, struggle to launch myself from out underneath the covers and hurriedly put some thick clothes on. From there, flip flops, and then the journey up the cold, dark staircase to the roof for a morning dart or two or three.
Foolishly, on this particular morning, I closed the door to the roof too firmly and securely not wanting to get smoke inside the building as I didn't know if I was allowed on the roof or to smoke up there.
I didn't realize about the door initially though and harfed pretty good on a couple cancer sticks before thinking about going back in to relieve myself on the squat toilet with a really lovely poo all primed up good from the dart. When I went to go inside though, I could not open the door. There was no handle or way to pry the door open.
I grew anxious as the pressure in my bottom built up. It was coming out soon regardless of location, I panicked and looked for an exit that wouldn't include anyone else in my foolishness and lack of awareness. There were no options besides squatting in the corner and still be stuck up there or calling out for help and dragging Adrienne up the stairs to be my saviour, if she could hear me.
I heeded to the latter and banged and yelled for what felt like 10 or 15 minutes before hearing Adrienne’s voice call out, 'Ian, is that you?, what the fuck!’. I screamed back for her to get the fuck up here and as she did and as the steel door opened to reveal my escape, the pressure below the belt immediately subsided and I lit another dart before shovelling some breaky in and climbing into fog for the next 7 hours. Ouch. That was one of the story of ayi's crazy fucking roof.