Em.'s In & Outs

I have just returned from my first trip to mainland China. It will for sure stay entrenched in my memories, although I still need to sink it in. The trip being only 5 days long, I have just explored the surface and spend most of my energy focusing on having fun and enjoying it, but I still came up with some questions...

I went there with Mark and Mita, whom I already referred to. My friend Vris from Hong Kong crossed the border from HK to Shenzhen with us and helped with the communications, and once again, picked all the right items on the menu for lunch! Oh I trust this girl on food! Going to China was a very spontaneous decision, as we received our double-entry visas on the Wednesday and left on the Thursday! The original plan was to go to the province of Yunnan, which is famous for its diversity of landscape and peoples, but since the train ride was a bit long, we opted for Guangxi instead (which is closer to Hong Kong; just 16h on the train one-way!). The province being promoted as a ''backpackers' paradise'' with ''typical'' Chinese sights, it looked good for a first trip.

The train ride was of the most fun! Even though lots of people in and outside of Hong Kong warn people about the train being dangerous (lots of thieves, incidents, it's slow, etc. etc.), we had the best time. We were in the hard sleepers cabin, which had 6 bunks (3 high!) and no door, but we spent most of our time in the restaurant wagon eating, drinking and smoking, and talking about love, revolution, globalisation, and trying to incarnate our ideal of being ''healthy, corrupt and sane''... I felt in a song by La Rue Kétanou (Et on se refait le monde sans que le monde ne s'en aperçoive!

We got to Guilin the morning after leaving Shenzhen. The moment we got down the train did we start getting singled out as tourists. Knew it would happen. Still trying to figure out how to approach being harassed for buying stuff and going places and stuff. I could relate my experience with that of Valérie in Thailand, where she had been sold random tour packages that didn't happen, and was ripped off by random people. I guess we were lucky not to end up in a random place :) After hesitating greatly facing these men that were offering us a ride to Yangshuo, we finally got there.

At that time did I start realize how the language barrier was affecting me. It is the first time that I can not communicate; Latin languages are easy to learn since I know French, but even after taking Mandarin for two months I could not pick up most of what was happening around me. I realized I didn't even know how to say ''toilets'' or ''how much is it''. Big shot in the ego. I guess that has to do with the clearly antiphatic feeling I had towards all the other White people I saw in the streets.

Speaking of White people, the trip to China was yet another event in the unfolding of my thinking on the issue of ''race'', which has kept on escalating since December (strangely coinciding with my trip to Chad and the starting of the Anti-Oppression Committee). It also exacerbated my anger at myself and my incredibly bad habit of being totally, utterly, continuously lost in my thoughts and my own little imaginary world. The reason I'm saying is that there were things going on live under my eyes that I could not notice. Mark and I were talking about how things like race and gender influence one's travel experience, but right in front of my eyes he was getting yelled at by a woman and laughted at by a waitress, without me noticing. I felt stupid. It makes me mad to be White and to have free privileges that I don't deserve more than anybody else. I hate being treated differently because I am seen as a walking cash machine.

There was another incident in the trip; on the second day, Mita got a thing in her eye which wouldn't go away. We decided to go to the hospital. Unforgettable, yet puzzling decision. It was so strange to enter this place; far from tourists' eyes, it was like a blast to remind us that we were in a Communist Country. Slow, inefficient public services are the reality, and a ''first come, first serves'' system prevails. Which meant a baby that was bleeding on the head was not seen as more of a priority than my friend... who had a small thing in her eye. I got so angry, and the fact that I could barely communicate with the doctor (which was smoking his cigarette alone in his second floor office with his uniform full of God knows what) really made me realize I need to learn more Chinese.

On the other hand, we did have lots of fun in China and enjoyed doing some touristy things(actually, ''travelling'' things --- ''the tourist sees what he has come to see, the traveller sees what he sees''). There were very pretty scenery, items and phenomena to observe (why do I always feel like a student of life lol?)- mountains, caves, rice paddies, lanterns, architecture, temples, etc. Swimming in the Li river was good, so was the bike ride, going to a bar with live music and experiencing the nightlife. Obviously the World Cup was still there. We did some shopping and some bargainning, got nice silk and cashmere stuff for my family and got a chinese stamp graved with my name on it (so egocentric lol). But overall I guess I will never be able to distinguish most of what was going on there.

It was good to stare at the window in the train, sketching in my book, see some new stuff, some recurring things. At the same time as I was thrilled about being in China and experiencing it fully, I feel strange about looking for comforting things such as records store when I'm in China. Lots of pirated DVDs there, even ones that were banned such as Memoirs of a Geisha. To your deception maybe, I did not get to try dog meat! I had a terrible back pain for the whole trip for some unknown reason, and I went for a massage with Mita in Shenzhen on the way back, and it made me feel like I was like anybody else going there. Which is bad; lots of guys in our program go to Shenzhen for massages... And cheap prostitutes. The downturn of the Yellow Fever I guess.

A couple other thoughts. When I was in China, I felt like I could sense its growth under my eyes. Just like Shenzhen used to be a small fishing village twenty years ago, I had the feeling like the economic boom was awaiting places like Yangshuo when we were sitting and having some beer fish at Minnie Mao's Restaurant (!!) and there was construction live right two meters from us. Hum... Then I must say I have been working a lot on tolerance and the sense of compromise necessary while travelling with other people. I must admit not knowing myself enough yet to assert what's my favorite way of travelling. Still figuring that out.

On the way back in the train, I woke up early as our cabin mates were having a loud conversation. Then I met this nice Chinese policeman in the restaurant wagon. It felt so strange when he was reading my IR stuff on Japan-China relations. It got me wondering about whether people here understand that China is the ''hot topic'' outside of it. I'm trying to imagine being in Québec and meeting a foreign student who came half-way across the world to study my place of birth. Hawkward.

In conclusion, this episode of the trip made me feel like another La Rue Kétanou song (Je ne sais pas ou je vais, mais ça je ne l'ai jamais bien su, mais si jamais je le savais, je crois bien que je n'irais plus!)