Sayaka Chatani

China Trip 1

Now I am sitting at the Kansai International Airport, waiting for the flight back to Taipei. A big typhoon is crossing over the Kansai area right now, but fortunate enough, there is no rain, no big wind at the airport. I still have to wait another hour so try to record some of the impressions I got during the trip to Beijing/Qingdao.

My first trip to the Mainland China was fantastic, full of new experiences. A lot of "bloggable" incidents happened during the entire trip, but since I did not bring my iBook baby with me (yes, Michi brought his, of course), I will write down only some of them whose impressions are still clear.

Our first day in China turned out to be the craziest. I had never taken as many kinds of public transportations in one day as I did that day. Michi and I were in Takarazuka (a suburb city of Osaka), and our destination for the day is Qing dao via Beijing. We took Hankyu train to Osaka, JR to Shin-Osaka, and then switched to Shinkansen bound for Tokyo, where we took Narita Express to the Narita International Airport. I was already a little tired by the time we got there, but both Michi and I had done this before several times, so this should not be a big deal. Moreover, we were excited about getting on the IranAir, which neither of us had ever taken before.

Nodding and Eye Contacts by Iranians
The airplane was going to Tehran via Beijing, so naturally, there were a lot of Iranians on the plane. The flight went pretty smooth. Michi was almost the only Western-look guy on the plane, and as he walked inside, many Iranians smiled and nodded to him, but not to me. This "eye contact" thing often happens among Westerners in Tokyo, but the meaning of this seems completely different in this case. In Tokyo, that is more like a confirmation of the "we are cool guys hanging out with Asian girls in this big city" sort of group identity. But the smile the Iranians gave to Michi is more like "we welcome you even though we do not like what America does."... do we think too much?

When Michi, a white boy, and I, an Asian girl, go out, it cannot go unnoticed that this kind of identity recognition based on race is going on around us, and it's quite entertaining most of the time. We can probably publish a book only about our funny experiences in different countries.

Getting Train Tickets
After we arrived at the Beijing Airport, we took a taxi to the Beijing Railway Station, where we were planning to buy tickets to Qingdao. We knew there was a train leaving at 22:00 which would get us to Qingdao by 8:00 next morning. At the station, I was in a shock. Soooo many people.... We managed to get to the ticket counter after waiting for hours only to find no ticket left for the 22:00 train. The next available one was 2:00 am. I calculated that we would still reach Qingdao around noon, that would not be that bad. When we asked when it would arrive there just for confirmation, the lady at the counter said "it's arriving at 5:00 pm." 15 hours of train ride... The crowd of people behind us was pressuring us so we bought two tickets, and went to sit at a fast-food shop to discuss whether we should go. After unproductive discussion, we decided to give it a shot.

Posted by sayaka at August 1, 2004 12:44 PM | TrackBack