Travelling through China allows asking the most
straightforward questions to impossible situations. Today has been no exception. It was a lovely day, meeting business
colleges and old friends. With the day
drawing to a close, I am motivated by the fact that I still need to go from
Yingkou station to Dalian
station, a mere 1 hour high speed train trip in relative luxury before I can
rest. Dinner was however a final hurdle
to clear before I would be released.
Dinner was good with traditional Chinese food on the menu
tonight. Entering the dining room, a
pile of minuscule prawns were waiting on a plate. It was a blob of perfect rosy-pink placed in
the centre of the table. I was allocated
a spot to sit and started manoeuvring the little creatures into my mouth. The next plate to arrive had the driest beef
imaginable - little rectangular cubes deep fried to death, and stacked into two
towers. As a South African I'd be
ashamed to say it was good, as we like it so raw that the pulse should be
steady and strong. But it was good. It was so good that it made no work of washing
down the allocated beers in a continuous pattern of synchronised drinking from
a small glass as the Chinese like to do.
Soon after that, white rubbery things arrived. I offered to declare this as shelled mussels,
but my hosts insisted it is seafood. This
was good and slippery, which allowed some break from sloshing beer down my
throat. The cousin of this seafood was
next soldiered into the dining room. I instantly
recognised it, despite the efforts of the cook, hacking it to pieces in a low
quality disguise. It was an octopus,
drowning in green stick like things, which I decided had to be asparagus stems
after a quick taste - being corrected once before, I kept this as my own little
secret. This I also liked as all this
seafood were just perfectly cooked using minimal spice and a hint of garlic. Topping the meal was a big dish of Chinese
cabbage stems. I suppose the soft parts
are fed to old people with no teeth, and thus being part of the younger
generation, we had to make do with the chewy bits.
Talk around the table was sparse. I always find it difficult to have lengthy
debates with people that do not understand English too well, and notice the
translator loosing speed as I gather momentum in whatever dogma I choose to
spread to my unfortunate audience. So I
stuck with safe topics like, our beloved president Zuma's intellectual ability, and the
Chinese culture is changing so fast that these sorry sods around the table have
not a snowball's hope in hell to cope past the next five years. Then I noticed that somehow I've been cheated.
There were six large beers finished, and
I had three on my lonesome. If we were
only two at a romantic dinner it would have been fair, but I happened to be one
of four. I also noticed that the lady
translator had one glass poured at the start of dinner which made the two Chinese
men, girls, to say the least.
Just then, right before I could get up to be driven to the
train station, another dish arrived. Despite
the anticipation of a daring plate of otter knob-ends, boiled pig snouts, or
something alike, it was dumplings. So we
ate that, and finally it was announced that enough time lapsed and I would be
released for the train journey.
I was fortunate as the one glass strong translator would do
the driving and the other two stumbling men were left to their own devices. Earlier in the day I did remark to this woman
that I also have an Audi A4, but mine does not go as slow as hers. I am sure this stuck and must have been the
most inspiring motivation ever announced to her ears. She drove so slow, hopefully under the
influence, swirling and sticking like a trained PAC-man to the dotted line,
that instinct kicked in and I went on the lookout for cops. Then she slowed down and the thought of missing
my train entered my head. I had only 45
minutes before the thundering devil would disappear into the dark. Right then I stopped worrying about the cops
and feared continental drift will surely now cause us never to reach the train
station. It would just float away.
We must have been dining closer to the station than I though
as we reached it after only 27 minutes, and I noticed the car gained a full 11 kilometres
of highway travel in that time. The
agony was over, and another Audi dishonoured with an exhibition of slow
driving.
I reached the station in time to present my ticked to the
officer at the turnstile, who instantly realized that a foreigner will not be
able to insert his ticket correctly into the illuminated slot for it. I thanked him for his clear-mindedness and
set off to where the train would be stopping.
The seasoned traveller that I am, I made my way to the
marked medallion where the door for carriage no 1 is destined to appear, and
this without any further assistance despite the efforts of another uniformed
railway employee. I did not even put a
foot across the white line which you are not supposed to cross, a real model
citizen, I thought.
When I reached my seat, A11, I realized that I did not leave
China .
The seat was clearly marked with the
remains of peanuts, raisins and an empty water bottle. Despite the efforts of the Chinese government
and mothers all over the world to promote cleanliness, the previous occupant of
this seat left the remains of his free snacks and ran for the door, to
disappear into the night. I fear to
speculate about the nature of the crisis he had to attend to. I now face a huge dilemma at the end of the
journey. Do I leave the remains of my
free snack to announce my embrace of the Chinese culture, or do I take it with
me, impress my mother and remain a foreigner?
Tuesday 21 May, 2013
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