My first night back in China I staid in Shanghai
with my friend Owen. The next morning he took me to one of the many
transportation offices around the city where you can buy tickets for the high
speed train to Beijing. Owen travels to Beijing quite a bit, and had just
bought a ticket there the week before. When we arrived at the intersection
where the ticket office was, we could see the sign from the street, but the
office itself looked dark. When we approached we found that it had been
completely gutted. What had once been a storefront squished between other
stores was now a gaping hole in the wall, with boards, bricks and other debris
littering the floor.
It’s not so much the fact that the office had moved,
but the sheer suddenness and frequency with which this happens in China that
makes every day living here an “adventure.”
And this of course is not quite as strange as an
experience my friend Calvin had last year. He had just moved to Beijing and was
staying in a hotel until he found an apartment. One morning when he stepped out
of the elevator into the lobby he found that the hotel lobby had been
completely gutted overnight. All that remained was piles of debris on the floor
and a man on a ladder taking out some electrical wires. Not sure if Calvin ever
had to pay his hotel bill…
My most recent adventure after my return to Beijing
was trying to register with the local police department. All foreigners staying
in China have to register their residence with the local police within 24 hours
of arriving in China (if you stay in a hotel, they will take care of this for
you). Of course this is one of those bureaucratic regulations that ends up
being a lot more complicated than it should be. Last time I had to do this, I
went to a small police station just down the street from my apartment. It was
pretty easy. This time however, finding the right police station proved to be
more difficult.
A few days after my arrival, I asked around and
found a police station near my apartment complex. When I arrived however the
police informed me that this was the wrong station, and in fact I had to travel
several miles to a big police station that was supposedly in charge of
registering people in my complex. This would involve riding my electric bike
across a large highway and along a river, the policeman said vaguely. He gave
me the name of the station and told me to ask people along the way where it
was.
So I set out down the highway and 20 minutes later
arrived in the general area where I thought I was supposed to be and started
asking around. When asking directions in China, you should never rely
completely on the directions of the first person you ask, even if he/she seems
100% certain of what they are telling you. Chinese people would sometimes
rather lie and make up a story, than lose face by admitting that they don’t
know the answer to your question. They also tend to give very vague directions.
So after asking about 5 different people, I finally found myself starring at
the gate of the police station about 100 meters in front of me. There was just
one problem: a river lay between the police station and me.
Ironically I was standing under a giant bridge, but
since this was a highway bridge there was no way to get on it and no pedestrian
or bike crossing. Looking around, I went up to an old peasant, trollish-looking
man who appeared to be camping out under the bridge and asked him how to get
across the river. “I’ll take you across on my raft,” he said, “But you must promise
to someday give me your first born child…”
Ok, I was kidding about that last part. He basically
just told me there was a bridge a mile to my left, and a mile to my right, and
I could pick one. Then he went into the normal “Chinese peasant who’s never
seen a foreigner before” routine and started asking me all kinds of questions.
I gave him the shortest answers possible and then took off before he had an opportunity
to “make friends” (i.e. ask for my phone number).
After another 10 minutes riding up and down a
series of bumpy, half paved, half dirt roads, I made it to the police station. I
was anticipating some trouble, since I was technically late in registering and
there is a fine associated with this offense. I told the officer that I’d had
trouble finding the place (which is partly true), and she let me off the hook. Rules
in China are generally flexible. After that I began the long journey back to my
apartment…
Finally, this post was partly inspired by a thread
that’s been passed around by email recently: 42 Things
You’ll See Only in China. Check it out, it depicts quite accurately and
humorously many of the strange things that happen here.
