We left the peace and calm of Shamian Island today and made our way
to Zhaoqing. Seeing that Starbucks had a free wifi connection we
stopped off for a quick check of mail and ended up spending a fair
chunk of the day there uploading photos and doing other stuff.
Having caught the metro here we decided to whimp out and got a taxi
the last few kilometres to the bus station. The doorman at the
Marriott helped us to explain where we wanted to go and before long
we were in the thick of downtown traffic.
Our first impressions of Chinese traffic were
that it was pretty ordered and far less chaotic than in Hong Kong. I
have now changed my mind. Except for the lack of cows on the street
and the quality of the buses (good) we could have been back in
India. Cars, buses, scooters came from all directions and no one
paid any attention to any lanes marked on the road. It is certainly
not a city that I would want to drive in. The bus depot seemed
equally chaotic with taxis fighting with each other to get into the
lane to drop people off.
There is a big modern looking waiting room at the
bus station and a small ticket office outside and to the left. With
Lonely Planet in hand we pointed at the Chinese characters for the
place we wanted to go to - success it worked! A point at my watch
confirmed that the next bus left in five minutes, not long for us to
work out where to go. The bus ticket was mainly in Chinese
characters but we could decipher the date, time, our seat numbers
and the price. There were other numbers but we had no idea what they
were or where to go. Fortunately the lady on duty at the bus
terminal door took a look, smiled and pointed for us to go upstairs.
It then made sense. "2 43" means second floor, gate 43. The gate had
our destination in pinyin and it was only then that I was confident
we were heading in the right direction. The barcodes on our tickets
were scanned and we were waved through to the correct bus.
The girl attendant on this bus spoke no English
so it was down to charades for storing our bags. We hopped on, she
came round with a free bottle of water, which seems to be standard
practice and off we went. I do not know the name of the bus company
we were with but they had an interesting livery. The attendant wore
a lime green jacket and the seat backs were in Kermit the Frog
green. Yuk.
The high rise mega city of Guangzhou gradually
started to be left behind but it was simply replaced by smaller
scale housing. Between Guangzhou and Zhaoqing there were some
stretches of non built upon landscape but these were few and far
between. Any space where land had not been built on was turned over
to crops. We passed rice fields, flower farms, a winery and a whole
range of other stuff growing away quite happily in what looks like
very sandy soil. Water is everywhere about us either as rivers,
small ponds or irrigation channels. The ponds were usually duck
farms and their banks were full of white birds being fattened up
before going to market. Where the land was used for agriculture
small shacks were dotted about, clearly the homes of the people who
farmed there. Again this drew parallels for me with India. The whole
area seemed somehow full to bursting with people and activity.
Being pleased with ourselves that we had managed
to get a bus to where we were going we soon learned our first lesson
of bus travel in Asia. As the express motorway went off to the left
we carried straight on and stopped a couple of times before reaching
Zhaoqing. The slower route probably worked in our favour as we got
to drive through some of the smaller towns and larger villages along
the way. Here there were more parallels with India. Dusty pavements
lined busy roads to one side and led to ramshackle housing on the
other. Some of the blocks people were living in looked unfinished
with no panes of glass in the holes for the windows. Where windows
existed, they were usually surrounded by metal grilles which created
the sensation for me that people living here must feel imprisoned.
Kids were wandering up and won and the same as
kids the world over the were simply mucking about with their mates.
We passed a couple of sleeper buses and both agreed they were
something we would try to avoid. They seem to have seats that
recline almost horizontally and are lined in tow tiers down either
side of the bus bunk bed style. When we pulled up next to one there
is actually a third row down the middle of the bus. They look like
they have barely enough room for your average Chinese person. As I
am head and shoulders above most, let alone Stef, I think it would
be a very cramped and uncomfortable way to travel.
On the edge of one town one of the sleeper buses
looked like it had pulled in to a stop, the give away being all the
people on scooters carrying a hard hat, a cheap alternative to
taxis. Although they are probably very cheap a scooter taxi does not
look to me like the safest of ways of getting from A to B. A
sizeable crowd had gathered by the bus and we thought it was just a
popular route and that these were people pushing to get on the bus.
Not so. A slight traffic jam had built up behind the bus and as we
passed it there were signs of confrontation. The drivers side window
had been smashed in and the windscreen looked like a couple of
bricks had been thrown at it. It was the first sign of anger that we
had seen. The Chinese pride themselves on being able to retain their
cool and losing your temper in public results in a loss of "face"
for all concerned.
While we were in Starbucks I had read the notes
in the front of our Chinese dictionary - a sure sign of boredom but
this time round it worked in our favour. It explained how to track
down the Chinese characters, identify the pinyin (roman alphabet)
equivalent and from here translate into English. It sounded easy
enough so we gave it a go on the bus. On the seat back in front of
us were four characters and we managed to decipher three of them.
Next to the "no smoking" symbol were eight characters. We cracked
two but the rest eluded us. Some are very simple but others are
extremely complex running to over twenty strokes. AS there are about
fifty thousand characters in existence we have a long way to go but
we only need about twelve hundred to be able to read a newspaper.
Rather than the little over an hour we had
expected the bus to take it was just under two hours before we
reached Zhaoqing. The sun was starting to set and was a solid orange
ball set against a grey sky. Strangely, compared to pretty much
every other sunset I have seen the colour of the sun did not extend
at all across the sky. It was just a single disk of contrasting
brightness against the gloom. Much smaller than the three million
mega city pf Guangzhou, Zhaoqing's three hundred thousand residents
still seemed to live in densely packed accommodation, particularly
compared to the similar sized towns we have been to in Canada. That
said, the countryside is not far away. On the way into town we
passed a man on a scooter driven van which was in effect a large
wire cage. Inside was a great big porker of a pig!
Zhaoqing is set against a mountain backdrop and
the city has grown up on the shores of a lake. Whilst calmer than
where we have been to before it is still a real hustle and bustle of
a busy place. Our preferred hotel was a short walk from the bus
station so we hoisted our packs and set off, laughing at the scooter
taxi chaps who were trying to persuade us to get onto the back of
their bikes. Even though this is a sizeable town and one that gets a
reasonable right up in Lonely Planet we got the feeling that not
many foreigners come here. We stopped for a late lunch before
checking into the hotel and near to us was a group of school girls
all chattering away filling in job application forms. Every now and
again I heard a bit of English and I am sure they were trying to
work out a sentence to ask us a question but their courage failed
them.
We crossed the road and headed for the Duan Zhou
hotel. From the outside it looked smart and modern but as we got
closer and then into reception it looked as if it may have seen
better days. Nevertheless our spacious room cost us only £10 a
night. We spent some more time trying to decipher Chinese characters
in preparation for trying to get a good evening meal. Lonely Planet
lists a street with food stalls which we passed coming from the bus
station. Having walked past it we thought we would try to find
something a bit more up market. We rejected McDonalds, KFC and Pizza
Hut hoping that our ploy of basement food courts in shopping malls
would pay dividends. It did not!
Undeterred we ambled back down the road our hotel
is on. It seems to be one of the main roads in town so we reckoned
it was a good bet for food. Shops filled the street on either side,
some blasting out music at defeaning decibel levels. We passed the
local cinema with its adverts for Harry Potter and were tempted to
see what it was like dubbed into Chinese. We both thought we would
probably find it funny for a while but would then want to leave.
Turning back to the hotel we spied pictures of
food and steps leading up to a restaurant. It was large, clean and
we were met by a friendly smile. As we walked to our table I knew we
were in for more fun. The menu was under a sheet of glass on the
table top. There was no pinyin and no pictures in sight. For the
first time in our lives we were hungry and had no easy way to
decipher what was available. We had brought our dictionary with us
but stupidly had left Lonely Planet with its menu decoder in our
hotel room. Fortunately, our waitress had a sense of humour and soon
we were all giggling at our combined attempts to order food.
Rice was understood but then putting "fried"
after it resulting in a bowl of chips rather than rice. Pork and
chicken were understood but then she pointed us to the relevant
sections of the menu where different options were listed. She
finally sussed that we did not understand the characters and when
she pointed at a dish we just said "yes, one please". Vegetables was
easy, we just pointed to the table next to us where a mother and
daughter were eating. They had a dish brought to them and the mother
tried it and spat it out in disgust. Next thing they were up from
their table. It looked like they were so incensed at something going
wrong that they walked out without paying but not before the mother
did an almighty clearing of her throat and spat loudly next to us. I
think she spat into a bowl but it could have been on the floor. The
spitting is still something we are not used to.
With our chips we had a large portion of steamed
pak choi and then two bowls that were entire meals in themselves,
one sweet and sour pork, the other fatty and bony chicken. It was
not a bad meal and we washed it down with fragrant jasmine tea.
There was far too much food for us to eat and the whole lot cost us
about £3.
