View over snowy Xi'an

Chinese have a concern with 'good luck' and doing patterns right - good feng shui, symmetrical buildings/grounds, putting things in the right place, entering gates from the right direction, etc. There are lots of symbols of good luck, long life, wealth, etc - characters, animals, etc. We touched a feline statue creature in a certain way then put our hands in our pockets, meaning our pockets would soon be full of money. There are a number of things like that.

*

I'll just talk briefly about Chinese TV. There are ads every 15 minutes, and the ads are similar enough in style and substance to ours. Although there was one... it said that older people would like this product, that it was a good gift for your parents. Mei said there were a number of ads using this theme because of the Chinese idea of filial piety - you should look after and do good things for your parents. So some ads style their arguments along these lines. Also, Chinese people often buy much more good and expensive gifts for their loved ones than we would. It shows that you really care about them and are looking after them.

There are about 32 channels [the broadcasting differed between the cities we visited, this was just Beijing], but Mei had trouble finding something she wanted - they were all serious, news/informative style shows, or angsty movies with lots of tears and fighting. "Why can't they just have fun?" Mei asked in frustration, "life is hard enough, you don't need to see more hard stuff on TV." But she found a historical drama/comedy she liked.

There was one channel with some English-language content, like a show teaching kids English and a talkback show, but everything else was Chinese.

*

Chinese people talk loudly; many sales assistants and store owners shout at you in sharp, harsh, loud voices. People let their mobiles ring for ages before answering them, and then talk at the top of their voice, no matter where they are or who many people around them are trying to listen to something else.

I might briefly mention the people in our tour groups. Mei is very outgoing and always makes people laugh, and it's the Chinese way to be readily friendly, so she was often found conversing with and joking with complete strangers, from the lady in our hotel to the guys in front of us in the bus.

Our Beijing tour group featured a talkative ("annoying", said everyone else) woman and her elderly parents who were from the countryside. Even I could sort of tell, too, just from the way they looked and acted. The father would spit on the floor in restaurants.

In Xi'an, the first day there was another foreigner in our tour group (the people in our group seemed to change every day), a lone guy in his late twenties. I don't think he really spoke English. I haven't seen that many foreigners on our whole trip; last night at the show there were some announcements in English, but I looked like I was the only English person in the whole theatre. But then, winter is not the tourist season, and China would be hard to get around and enjoy if you can't speak Mandarin, so I guess it's not surprisng there are few Anglos. Many of the ones I have seen don't seem to speak English anyway, which would make things even harder, because while there are a few signs in English, you'd be hard-pressed to find other languages.

Our tour group in Hangzhou was less friendly; people kept to themselves. Our guide was a bit arrogant and unhelpful and rude, and smoked like a chimney. (*laughs* I'm suddenly reminded of an old man in Xi'an who worked at the great Buddhist shrine, helping people to light their incense sticks. In the short time I was there he spat on the ground about ten times - so respectful! I just remembered it because this tour guide was also smoking around a sacred Buddhist site.)

*

I haven't seen much funny Chinglish, although I do enjoy the pictures that accompany signs like "beware of slippery", with little men sliding to their deaths down a cliff. There was a chewing gum that called itself "vapour release chewing gum". I know what it meant but it gave me a mental image of gum which, when first bitten into, would cause a leak out of which clouds of yellow-green toxic gas would billow out.

*

In China I soon became a real cheapskate. Partly because I didn't have money to burn, and partly because my friend kept saying "we can get that cheaper somewhere else", I'd always look out for the cheapest prices. This was okay. I still filled my suitcase entirely - it weighed in at 19.9kg, lucky! If I'd bought every cool and cheap thing I saw, no way could I have fit everything. But I got a cool jacket, some cool sneakers, lots of souvenirs, some very nice jeans...

China vs Australia

The memory of some ladies engaged in loud, sharp-voiced haggling, reminded me of something I noticed about Chinese people - they engage in exchanges quite foreign to me. There are things they can say or do naturally that I would find very awkward. For example, when our tour group tried to rip us off, Mei said "we can't let them get away with this" and proceeded to engage in lengthy discussions and negotiations with our tour guide. I didn't understand any of it but we did get a refund.

In Australia, it is extremely unlikely that a tour group or any company would try to go back on the deal you'd established. Thus I can't imagine Aussies engaging in a serious yet not angry or passionate conflict so easily, discussing things for ages to work them out. I wouldn't know what to say, personally. But they do it so naturally.

A different type of negotiation is that of bargaining. The fact that I couldn't understood the language gave it a kind of mystical quality - I mutter to Mei what I want, she and the proprieter go off in a barrage of words - and then she's turning to me telling me how very cheap I can get it. What magical combination of words led to that outcome? I don't feel like I would know what to say, at least without some practice. In the case of the loud women hagglers mentioned a couple of paragraphs earlier is an example - they were negotiating prices on a piece of jewellery for literally half an hour. [I know because we got stuck waiting in the bus for them!] I mean, how can they find that many things to say? They must repeat themselves a lot.

Other things too. I remember Mei sharing our excess food with the lady who manned our hotel floor so we would be on good terms with her. I found this kind of cool but couldn't imagine doing it myself. Even if I could speak Chinese, I would find it so foreign to go up to a near-stranger and offer them gifts. What would I say without sounding strange? (Side note: We did seem to get on good terms with her because she brought in a little heater just for us, and stitched together part of my coat which had broken, and one time Mei invited her to sit in our room and watch a popular TV show with us. *So* different to Australian culture!)

I suppose when you grow up in a country and a culture you just pick up the way of dealing with and talking to people common to that country. But it's a reminder to me that effective communication isn't just about knowing the language and the words - it's about how to use them appropriately in the right context. And *that* is something hard to just pick up.

*

Our second day in Xi'an, there were English speakers in our tour group. We talked to them a bit; they were from Perth and were just finishing a two-month tour of China. They seemed nice enough, but how did they manage to get around China with no Mandarin? Mei translated a few things for them, but I want to know how they'd have managed otherwise - how and why did they sign up for a tour conducted entirely in Chinese? The woman in a brief question about a place we were visiting, pronounced "qing" as "quing"/"kwing". How can you travel China that long, how can you communicate with anyone, if you don't even know that 'q' is a 'ch' sound? Very interesting question, which I certainly didn't ask. Still, they were nice.

[I remember Mei didn't think they were all that nice. She had been helpful to them, translating stuff for them etc, but although they were polite and thanked her, and talked to us when we approached them, they didn't initiate any conversation with us or really get involved; they kept to themselves. This was in great contrast with the Chinese people on our tour, with whom Mei was soon joking and having a long conversation with after a few minutes. These people asked her why the other Aussies were so aloof and 'cool' and she tried to explain the differences between Aussie and Chinese styles of communicating. Later she asked me about it too.

I said that I thought they had been quite nice and friendly; their 'aloofness' had seemed quite normal and natural to me. After all, they didn't know us, they probably wouldn't see us again after that day, we didn't have that much to say to each other, as Aussies they enjoy and respect our right to more privacy - they didn't want to 'impose' on us by giving any unwanted attention by talking to us a lot or trying to 'hang out' with us, especially as they were a couple of decades older. These are the things I thought, and tried to verbalise to Mei.

I don't know... in some ways I like the Aussie way better, in some the Chinese. Since I am an Aussie, I too have more need for privacy and I don't want immediate great friendliness with anyone I meet in case I don't like them yet I have to talk to them or hang out with them when I don't feel like it. On the other hand, how much more enjoyable and nice is it to be able to instantly enjoy someone's company and have fun with them even if you've just met?

Back to China journal page