China

Not a word

5 days before home we flew from Auckland to Beijing, to finish off the trip in style by checking out China’s capital. Having been in English speaking environments since Christmas, we knew China would render conversing with the locals slightly tougher, but the ‘no I don’t want to buy your souvenir toot’ technique that we had perfected in Thailand, was sure to do us proud. Arriving late on a Wednesday night we decided to get a taxi to our hostel, given that we didn’t have a clue where it was and the address sounded more like the menu at my local China Chef takeaway. Showing the taxi driver the address of the hostel was met with blank looks and general dialogue that needed subtitling. Here is where we realise that it wasn’t written in Chinese and they couldn’t understand our fancy Western text. Like our wily Thai friends, the fact that he didn’t know the destination didn’t deter him and we got in the car and drove. He was a nice man though, and we chatted the whole journey. We may have both been speaking different languages but I felt we both knew the score. Next thing I know he interrupts our scintillating chat and phones a friend that could speak English, and I read out the address in my best Chinese. It was never going to work given that her English wasn’t that great, and I couldn’t pronounce ‘Changchunjie’. So we carry on and eventually we magically make it to the right area, stopping a few times bang in the middle of the road for us to get out and look, looking back now I have no idea why we bothered as there was no English written anywhere so we could have been standing right next to it and still not have a clue. Eventually we made it and found our hostel where we were 2 of 5 Westerners staying there!