The China Diary (3 of 10)

Many of my memories of China today relate to travel. 

There was the inordinately long flight there and back -- made longer by having to avoid Soviet airspace.  There was a gleefully panicked sprint through the Tokyo airport where we had to catch our connection from Vancouver to Hong Kong: two chaperones, nine students and a surfeit of carry-on luggage must have made for quite the spectacle as we stampeded from one gate to another. 

Travelling in China was markedly different from what we were accustomed to in the West.  Hong Kong, given its Benevolent British Overlords at the time, was a gentle initiation into a new continent and country.  Once we left that small island of relative familiarity (surely an intentional first stop for young Western travellers), our education in the realities and stark contrasts of a foreign culture began.

The tour buses were cramped, seemingly made for the generally more diminutive Chinese than us relative behemoths; the trains were utilitarian at best, I vividly recall several hours spent sitting on two plywood boards nailed together at right angles and covered with vestigial snot-green linen while staring out the window at the endless rice paddies rolling by.

One afternoon I sat on the bus and composed a poem I entitled Away in a Tour Bus, sung to the tune of Away in a Manger.  I still have the original copy of it, scribbled on two folded sheets of Xian Hotel (Shaanxi Province) stationery.  It is, overall, a little less than complimentary.  I seem to have been seeking rhyming words rather than those emotively indicative of the experiences.  (I'll post most of it  at the end of this series -- most, for some of the verses are rather more lewd than what I'd prefer to admit to today.)

I seem to have assumed a rather contemptuous attitude in much of my communication, which is at odds with the memories I still have of the two-week trip -- it being one of my life's most fabulous experiences. 

Apparently, I was a 14 year-old poseur in China.

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Monday, 20th March 1989
Jinling Hotel
Nanjing

We finally left Hong Kong today.  We had to get up at 5:00 AM because we had an early train to catch and still had to eat.  So we ate, got our jackets and took off for the train station.  So we took the train to Cantong and toured the city for a couple hours.  We then left for the airport and caught a plane for Nanjing.  About 20 minutes before we landed, it seemed that the pilot got majorly pissed.  We started wobbling from side to side as if the pilot wanted to have a little fun with us.  We then landed (obviously) and took a bus to the Jinling Hotel (real nice too) and then we had dinner, a meeting (boring), and then had to do this.
Goodnight.

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This picture was taken at Tiger Balm Gardens while still in Hong Kong.  Though the gardens were nice, I recall being totally surrounded by apartment buildings, most of which were accoutred in countless thousands of poles of bamboo scaffolding, tied together seemingly rather tenuously by bamboo strips.  It is, apparently, even stronger than steel scaffolding.

I'm the chubby little pecker on the far right.

Comments

[Linda]

This is so interesting, Simon. You had a flair for writing even then (I am amazed that, at 14, you used the word "vestigial".)
I just found myself humming Away in a Manger/Tour Bus.
Take care, have a good weekend. How's the flooring coming along?

[Mark]

You seem also to be surrounded by girls. What was the girl-to-guy ratio on that trip?

[Simon]

It was a 2:1 ratio of girls to guys. If only I had been old enough to realise the full potential of that!