China, Up Close and Personal

As we currently sit in a Chinese train station, we just came across an article online entitled, "Lots and Lots of Rocks – Guilin and Yangshuo, China" by Phillip Donnelly. David and I both laughed so hard we had tears streaming down our faces. You know those moments at a comedy show when you look at each other and say, "That's so true!" Well we both said that the entire time. Literally everything he wrote is exactly how we've felt. So here are a couple of my favorite snippets; warning to the family members he paints some vivid pictures and uses some choice words. :)

"There are few things in life more depressing than finding yourself in a Chinese bus station early in the morning. The sound of hawking phlegm; the hoards of barking Chinese tourists chaotically milling to and fro, as if war had just been declared and they only had 10 minutes to flee for their lives before the Japanese arrived; the indecipherable Chinese characters on notice boards that you can’t help looking at in the vain hope of finding where the ticket office is hidden, or suddenly and miraculously developing the ability to read them; the unhelpful staff who can’t or won’t understand your pigeon Chinese (“qing-mai piao-na li”/ please-buy ticket-where”); the innumerable dodgy characters who seem to have made a profession of hanging around bus stations eyeing up peoples’ bags, like vultures waiting for a moment of weakness; filthy begging bowls being stuffed in your face; scheming taxi drivers determined to get that fare of a lifetime by attempting to charge you ten times what they’d charge a Chinese. It’s all made worse by the hunger pangs in your stomach because you just can’t face another bowl of stir-fried vegetables covered in slime."

Though somewhat negative it is very accurate...And even better is his description of Chinese bathrooms, in which every single one we've had has a shower and a drain right next to or above the toilet. And everywhere you go there are squatter toilets (holes in the ground), very rarely were there "western" toilets. Sometimes even hotel rooms have squatters!

"They are best described as ‘functional’, in that they just about perform all the functions they were designed for. However, Chinese efficiency has led to the elimination of certain unnecessary features. Why bother with a toilet seat, for example, when you can just squat over a hole in the floor and drop your stool like a bombardier, and enjoy the innocent fun of listening to it come to a squelchy stop from a height? And to take things one step further, why bother separating the toilet from the shower when you can combine the two by simply placing a drain in the floor? In fact, if you really wanted to save time, you could conceivably poop, shave, brush your teeth and shower all at the same time! To think of all the time I’ve wasted in my life by not doing these things simultaneously. I could have saved at least 30 minutes a day. Some quick calculations show me that I’ve wasted about 1500 hours in my life to inefficiency. If only I had spent that time learning Chinese, I could thank them for their insight."

Couldn't have said it better if we tried.

Zai-jian!

David and Kristen