Dumbfounded in China

July 13th, 2013.

Three months into our year-long journey we had now arrived to our fourth country China, where we were going to stay the fourth month. China requires to have all hotels booked beforehand when you apply for a visa, so we had booked them. We cancelled all of them except the first one on arrival though, because our travel plans were very open in China. When we knew what we were going to do next we booked new hotels instead.

Soon after arriving to Jinghong we started searching for a taxi to get us to our hotel. As I mentioned in the last blog Chinese can be very rude (much more than citizens of other countries), which we've noticed from our earlier travels to China, and our first contact to a local person was going to be one of the most memorable and disgusting ones.

An older taxi driver lady was waiting for a customer near the bus station, so I walked over to her and showed her our hotel name written in English - in English, because we'd forgotten to print it in Chinese. As soon as I showed her the paper she started screaming at me full force like I had just stabbed her or something even worse! Before I could even respond to that she spat right at my feet, showed me her middle finger and an angry face. I was dumbfounded from such an angry response to a normal human communication. Sometimes you gotta wonder what goes on in some peoples heads. I didn't even ask her nothing, I just walked over and showed her the paper. Maybe she didn't like tourists at all. So this was our welcome back to China. What a nice start to our month long stay here.

It actually took us two hours to get to our hotel from the bus station as the taxis didn't want to deal with us, even though we were friendly, as usual. Some of them actually let us open the taxi door and speak to them, but as soon as they noticed we don't speak Chinese they got quite angry and showed us out! Finally a local young woman who noticed what we were going through, and who also spoke English, called a taxi for us and told the driver where we wanted to go. We couldn't thank her enough, she saved the day. The bus and taxi stations were actually quite close to our hotel, although on the other side of the river. We knew it's 3 km from the taxi stand to our hotel and we could've walked there, if our luggage wasn't so heavy. I had downloaded some Chinese language apps and maps to my tablet, but we couldn't use it now because it was out of power. Hopefully travelling in China wasn't going to be as difficult as this. Taking two hours to travel three kilometers is crazy and it depressed us a little that we didn't speak the language.

The taxi driver we got was an honest one and didn't charge us extra. He also behaved like a normal person, which was a relief after the first horrible contact with a local. Our hotel was very nice and seemed to be quite new. The workers didn't speak much English, but getting the room was no problem. The hotel was in a modern part of the city, where everything looked new and the people seemed wealthier from the average Chinese. Our hotel could've been in a worse neighbourhood, but we usually know what we're getting, as we follow some rules at booking hotels. If only we could've afforded such nice hotels as this throughout the trip.

Gate to the hotel and Dajin Buddha Pagoda area, where Xuanwei Ave.
and Menghan Road meet

Four Seasons Spring Inn is a good hotel,
but the staff hardly speaks English

Four Seasons Spring Inn

Today we decided to check out the hotels surrounding areas. We didn't have to walk much to find reminders of what some of the citys tourist attractions are; the main street Wanxiang Avenue in the Pagoda area is lined with amazing tall elephant and peacock statues on both sides. When Chinese do something they do it big, like the Americans. This was already evident when we crossed the border from Laos to China, the scenery immediately changed completely to huge buildings, parks, gateways and statues. Chinese and foreign tourists come to Jinghong to see its Elephant Valley Nature Reserve, where you can spot other animals as well, and the center of Jinghong has a Peacock Lake Park and Manting Park, which has a peacock aviary. We knew its quite hard to spot the elephants in the park, so we passed on that and later went to see the Peacock Lake Park.

Wanxiang Avenue with elephant and peacock statues leading to the Pagoda

One of the many peacock statues on the street

Jinghong (capital of Xishuangbanna) was for centuries the capital of the Sipsongpanna kingdom and is located near some of China's most important tea-producing mountains. Xishuangbanna is rich in nature, historical and cultural resources, noted for its folklore, rain forests, rare plants and wildlife. The main inhabitans are Dai people (thus the name Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture), and other ethnic groups include the Hani, Aini (Akha), Bulang, Lahu and so on. Bulang are only found in Yunnan. One of the tourist attractions here is to visit the ethnic villages.

The amount of electric motorcycles in this part of the city is unexpected. Kari was nearly hit with one, as we didn't hear it coming. Everyone was either driving those or what seemed to be brand new cars. Even Finland has worse cars on the streets! Like I mentioned earlier, people in this part of the city seemed wealthier from the average Chinese, so they probably can afford new cars. As we didn't know much about Jinghong we were happy to find at least one attraction; the Dajin Pagoda, which is located right at the end of the Wanxiang Avenue. Nowadays the attractions in China can be very expensive, even more than they are in the USA or Europe, but the Pagoda was free of charge.

Dajin Pagoda

Pagoda inside

Pagoda window detail

Dajin Pagoda

View to the city from Dajin Pagoda

The sun went down earlier here than in Laos, so we had to find a place to eat under the city lights. It wasn't an easy task, as all the signs are in Chinese. The restaurant we chose might've had its name in English too, but we don't remember its name and I can't find it from Google. The restaurant owner walked over immediately when we went in and wanted to say hello. She had just opened the business and everything looked nice. When you travel in China you'll soon notice that many want to have a photo taken with you, at least it was so with me, so the restaurant owner wanted to have a photo with me. Maybe because I'm blonde it was often me they chose for a pic from our group (we later got company to few places), but I'm just guessing.

We had some Western food, because the restaurant happened to have it on the menu, and we figured we're gonna have enough Chinese food on the rest of the trip anyhow. When we finished the dinner the owner wanted to offer us free cake! You never get anything free anywhere so we were baffled, but couldn't say no. Our first day in China was full of mixed emotions and events.

The mysterious restaurant

City lights

City lights

July 14th.
It was raining hard as we woke up on Sunday. Most of the year Jinghong is hot and humid and now it was a pleasantly warm and humid. We walked down to the restaurant for breakfast and decided to give first try to the Chinese notes we got from Julie. The notes clearly worked well, as the restaurant girls disappeared fast into the kitchen. We couldn't order exactly what we wanted, so we waited in suspense to see what they were going to serve us. What we got was a pretty typical Chinese dish; soup, which included Chinese cabbage, tomato and egg with rice. We had to pick out the egg from the soup, as we don't eat them as such and usually try to avoid them. Normally we would've passed the whole soup because it already included animal product, but because we weren't sure when we were getting our next meal we decided to just pick it out. Somehow the girls were able to explain to us that they had ran out of noodles. What are the odds that a Chinese hotel runs out of noodles! We also got cold bottled green tea instead of hot tea, but that was our mistake, we just picked something out from their drinks menu and it happened to be a cold drink.

Chinese notes written by our friend Julie

We wanted to rent bikes for the day, so I used the Google translator with our hotel staff. They had fun about it, I don't know whether it was because I had to use a device to "speak" with them or the translation was gibberish, but they finally understood me. They asked us to follow an older lady who took us to a rental company, but it was closed. Then the lady took us to another place, but because the deposit was as high as 1000,- (US dollars) and 50,- for a bike, we decided to walk to the city center instead. The rain didn't last long, so we had another nice and sunny day to walk around the city.

The Xuanwei Avenue outside our hotel area mostly had electronics, car parts and car service companies lined after another. We had to follow this dull road, with nothing to see, to the river. The Lancang River, also known as the Mekong River elsewhere, runs through the prefecture and passes through Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. We soon found our way to the Hanging Bridge crossing the river, and the views from the bridge were impressive. The bridge itself was already impressive, but the scenery mixed old and new; towering skyscrapers near the mountains and old boats and houses near the river.

A vehicle on Xuanwei Avenue

Hanging Bridge of Jinghong

Lancang/Mekong River and the growing city

Cruise ships on Lancang River

Sandbank message in big stones

Although we've travelled in Asia since 1999 I still find it a little bit tiring when most of the people stare at us. Sometimes I've played with the thought of dyeing my hair black when I travel to Asia just to blend in with the rest. So here we were again, walking around and everybody staring at us. I guess they had a good reason to wonder about us, because during our stay in the city we didn't see any Western people! It was a strange feeling we hadn't had in a long time and reminded us of our first trips abroad, when we didn't meet much foreign people in some places and none from Finland. We felt kinda lonely out here.

We met all sorts of people during our first days. At one store I met two young boys who had fun with me, they joked something in Chinese to me and laughed and I joked back in Finnish. They asked my name and when I asked theirs it was too much for them. They disappeared fast, calling my name many times between the store shelves. Some people yelled something to us, some were interested in us and some were helpful. At one street we noticed what seemed like a few strange men following us. They might've been thieves, as one of the bridges closeby had some kind of a warning sign in Chinese and also recommended holding hands with kids while on the bridge.

Binjiang (Bianjiang) Park starts on left

Jinghong center has a lot of technology shops (phones, computers) and fashion, but we passed them since we couldn't really buy anything during the trip. The city seemed like a nice place and we soon found the Peacock Lake Park (Kong Que Hu), where you can enjoy some water fun. Later we bought some cake, sweet stuff and juice from a local bakery, because we couldn't find a decent restaurant from the streets we walked in. Or then we just didn't spot any due to the Chinese signs, and we thought asking people was too much trouble then. Jinghong actually has a lot of restaurants and even a bar street right by the river, but I don't know how many of them serve vegetarian food. We decided to go back to the hotel for dinner, as we'd already walked around the city most of the day.

Peacock Lake Park

So much sweet stuff, all single wrapped in plastic!
What a sweet, yet terrible sight.

Did we come to Miami?

Mystery entrance 

More elephant statues in the city center

Even the way dividers are beautiful here

Fog machines to cool down your face

Gateway to somewhere

Crossroads. Asian people use umbrellas in the sun.

When we took a taxi we decided to just jump straight in when one of them stops, so the driver can't get away. Funnily this worked. We showed the driver our hotel card written in Chinese and also used our hands to show the way. He seemed to know where we were going, so we were relieved there was no hassle this time. When we stopped he asked for more money though than the meter showed. It wasn't supposed to cost that much, but we paid since he only asked for a euro.

We had a perfect timing, as the rain started again right when we stepped into the hotel lobby. The morning rain had dried up fast from the streets and so did the evening rain. Later when we ordered dinner I tried the Chinese flash cards from an app. The app worked well, although again the hotel didn't have everything we wanted, like tofu. We got rice and the vegetables were again just Chinese cabbage! Maybe they understood the vegetable part wrong, but it started to look like there isn't any other vegetable in China...Of course we knew there is, but we probably had a miscommunication. We also asked for chili sauce. My orange juice didn't come in a glass, they refused to sell glass only, so I bought the whole big carton of Minute Maid! At least they understood us now and left eggs out of our dinner. The workers had a lot of fun again when we used our computers and notes. Hey, whatever works, right?

Our dinner; tofu, rice and cabbage.

We stayed in Jinghong only two days and nights. It was our gateway to China from Laos, and we needed to move on to Kunming, which we had made actual sightseeing plans for. On the morning we were leaving Jinghong we had another misunderstanding with the hotel staff. We needed a taxi to the bus station where the busses leave to Kunming, and the staff booked us flight tickets to Kunming! We asked them to cancel them and decided to get a taxi ourselves from the street. The hotel staff were very friendly and tried their best to understand our notes and Chinese apps, but it seemed like they weren't helping us enough. Who knows what adventures we were heading into with them...

While waiting for our bus to leave we were watching the people at the station. Some bus driver was loading living ducks in bags inside the luggage holder (not inside the bus, but below where the big luggage goes to), some people were spitting and some blowing their noses right at their feet! It was nothing new to us, as we've seen this before in China, but it's still disgusting to see. The Chinese busses have many trashcans on the bus aisle and we didn't know how multifunctional they can be. Again people were spitting and blowing their noses into them and throwing diapers and all sorts of trash in there. They were full in no time. The smell in the bus was quite terrible; a mixture of various foods, sweat, baby poo...Although the busses in China are quite clean I can't recommend this type of travel for everyone.

Trashcans at bus aisle

We had travelled for twenty minutes, when we were stopped by the police. They checked each passengers passport or ID and luggage. Because it took a while one woman decided to now find a bathroom. Our bus left without her, but she was lucky, as her husband was in the bus and yelled at the driver to stop. We didn't get far and she ran to the bus. It was at this stop we saw the first foreigner so far. We should see more of them in Kunming, which is the capital of Yunnan and a tourism center with several universities, important economic, cultural, and educational institutions as well.

Stopped by the police

As our travels continued in China we noticed that the older people seemed to have some problems with tourists, one reason might be the language barrier, but quite a few of them seemed truly disgusted when they saw us and didn't hesitate showing it to us. Our friends who have travelled, and some of them lived in China, have experienced the same thing. But the good thing is the younger people are easy to talk to - they even seem interested in the Western people and came over to talk to us. Many of them greeted us in English here. Not everyone behaves badly here, there are all sorts of people in every country. But it would be nice if everyone treated you as a decent human being, not a walking wallet like they do in some places.