Lost in Translation

We arrived in Xi'an late last night. I was cross-eyed tired by the time we made it into our rooms. I have been in China for five days now and I have yet to eat any substantial Chinese food. Amazing isn't it? We have been going to Indian restaurants for dinner. I think it's pretty funny. We also hit a Pizza Hut in Beijing on the first day. I really wanted to try the KFC in Xi'an but we are leaving in the morning tomorrow.

But first, there is much more blogging to do about Beijing.

On Friday morning, we hit the ground running from the get go. After an arduous trip to the Bank of China to exchange money (note to future travelers: you get a better exchange rate at the Bank if you use traveler's checks. And they will change your money back at the thend of the trip if you keep your receipt), we piled onto the bus to head to the Forbidden City which is in the center of Beijing.

We first started looking at Tiananmen Square. It was enormous and FILLED with people. The square is 880 metres south to north and 500 metres east to west, a total area of 440,000 square meters, which makes it the largest open-urban square in the world (from Wikipedia). It is the open square where the Ming emperors used to address their subjects. A short walk away is the Forbidden City which was built in the 1400s. It has over 8700 rooms and is enormous as well. The tour books all said that it was really amazing and they were right. Outstanding.

The tour itself was going to take three hours of walking. Yowza. It would be exhausting for anyone but the heat was insufferable and many of the people wanted to take breaks along the way. I felt bad for them because the guide was NOT accomodating to the ages of our group. He just grew frustrated when they asked for breaks. Annoying.

Anyway, we headed on our way and were snapping pictures all along (or trying to anyway because the guide barely paused at each place). However, it was absolutely impossible to keep track of everyone in our group. There were literally millions of people in this place and over 80% had darker skin and black hair. I was with the group for the first hour and a half but then I stopped to take a picture of this engraved wall. When I looked around not 10 seconds later, everyone had gone. There was a gate that I realized that they passed through. I crossed the gate and remember those 8700 rooms that I told you about? Well, this was one of the open spaces that led to many of those rooms. The group was no where in sight. I utterly panicked. But then I was set at ease when I saw an Uncle from our group. I ran up to him to see if he knew where everyone went and he was as lost as I was.

At this point, I was scared - but not for myself. I had money, I had a business card with the address of the hotel to show to a cab driver, but I knew that Mom was going absolutely nuts at that moment. While she is aware that I am 28, fairly worldly, and have my head on straight most of the time, she felt like I was her responsibility. Uncle and I ran back to where I last saw them and we stayed there for a while. But since we didn't see anyone, we decided to continue to keep going. We were totally at a loss as to what to do. I was cursing myself for not writing down our tour guide's mobile number the first day when he gave it to us. I also thought about calling the hotel to see if they knew it or could help me somehow but for some reason I thought that wouldn't do anything. Dummy girl.

Meanwhile, Mom HAD realized I wasn't there and just broke down. She said that she wasn't moving from the spot until I came back. Somehow, she was convinced to keep going but then the search began. Now, this is another thing that I feel really bad about: the group spent a solid hour searching for me instead of enjoying this magnificent palace. People were running from one side to another trying to catch me among the millions of other tourists that were there that day.

Back to what we were doing. I remember that the guide had said that we were going to exit to the North Gate so we headed that way. We also remembered that the bus was supposed to meet us on the other side so we decided to try to find the bus. When we exited, we didn't see our party nor did we see our bus. We couldn't get back in so we were kind of stuck at this point. I asked a few workers where I could find the bus but of course, they didn't understand me. Finally out of total frustration, I stood at the exit and just started shouting, "Does anyone speak English?!" People walked by and looked at me like I was nuts but finally, a man with his son stopped and patiently listened to my story. He said that he would translate for me to talk to the officials. They suggested that I go make an announcement overhead. I said I'd rather go find the bus. Little did I know that if I had just gone to make the announcement, I would have been reunited right then because they were doing the exact same thing at that time.

We found out where the bus was and headed in that direction. But we didn't see a bus stand like there was at the Great Wall. The buses just kept moving along this one street. We walked up and down and didn't see anything and I saw a police car. I approached them but they didn't speak English either. Since I was losing all sense of public decorum, I once again started shouting for English speakers. Finally, a group of Caucasian folks came along and I asked them if they spoke English and they said yes. But they were Russian and their tour guide spoke only two languages: Mandarin and Chinese. So the conversation went like this: me in English to Russian woman; Russian woman in Russian to Chinese tourguide; Chinese tourguide in Chinese to Chinese police officer and back again. What did I learn? The buses were not allowed to stop there; they could only pick up their passengers.

We headed back to the North Gate.

Once there, I became restless for them to walk through the door again so I shouted my now almost-mantra to the exiting crowd and a teenage boy stopped to help me. I decided to get my announcement over the PA system but didn't know how to get the officials to say it over the system. I decided that it would be good for me to have someone write it in Chinese so they could understand what I was saying. The boy didn't know how to write Chinese but his dad did so I wrote it in English, the boy dictated what I wrote to the dad in Chinese and the dad wrote it in Chinese. Or I thought he did.

I headed to the officials that I talked to before and showed them my sign and trying to charades "announcement" the best that I could. They set me down the hall (I was back in!!) to a woman worker and did my little dance again. She pointed me down to the exit again. Obviously, my years of Bharatanatyam training was not paying off. Instead of listening to her, I decided to try to find the the thing myself. Feeling no sense of shame or timidness anymore, I found the first group of Caucasians I could and asked them if they spoke English. Then to avoid the aforementioned scenario, I asked if their guide spoke English and the guy said yes. I asked him to point her out and as he was doing that I saw Harris, our tourguide.

His first response, "Omigod! I TOLD you to follow our flag." What I wanted to say: Dude. Had you been doing your job, you would have noticed that two of your group members were gone sooner that you did. Beyond that, if you weren't RUNNING through the Forbidden City with a group of elderly (very tired) visitors, I would have never seperated from the group. The aunties and uncles were so happy to see me and told me that Mom had been crying for a solid hour. I ran to her and she just broke down again. I can't tell you how awful I felt at that moment (and for several after). We grabbed Uncle from the otherside (he was the lookout in case they came through the exit) and moved on to more important things - like lunch.

The rest of Beijing when I am in Shanghai. No more posts for a few days because tomorrow we are heading for our river cruise. How am I going to live without my daily fix? No one is really sure but it many not be a pretty sight. Until then. . .