Month One in China: Needing a break and breaking the bank—-By Suzanne Mahadeo
By Suzanne Mahadeo
I’ll be the first to admit that it was probably my fault. Two Americans venturing off the beaten trail after only a month of being in China wasn’t the brightest idea. But it was my first two days off since arriving at the Guangzhou airport to teach summer school for six hectic days a week. I was armed with desperation to escape the city’s thick air and traffic jams of Audis, Minis, and Mercedes. I began to solicit advice from English and Chinese-speakers alike about where to go to “find nature.” The outlying Hong Kong islands were a repeated suggestion, but out of the question as my first month’s pay had not yet found its way into my bank account. My helpful boss asked his mate for some advice about where two hippies lost in the city could go for a weekend on the cheap and came back with the suggestion of Zhaoqing.
After a tiny bit of Googling and asking around, Zhaoqing seemed to have what we needed: it’s 88KM away from Guangzhou and filled with parks, lakes and karst mountains. With borrowed Internet from the Boomerang Bakery in Zhujiang New Town, we excitedly booked two nights at the “Zhaoqing Heijang Peninsula Hotel,” a four-star hotel with a hostel price. We packed our bags, finished up our day of teaching, and took a cab to the train station with our Chinese-speaking South African friend from work. He was on his way to Hong Kong for the weekend and helped us secure our tickets to Zhaoqing. Parting ways with someone who spoke Chinese may have been where our impending peaceful vacation decided to turn into a disaster.
On the two-hour, 22Y train ride, we taught ourselves how to count from 1-999 and were quite proud of how our Chinese was progressing. We ordered Snow beers from the train cart and waved at the curious toddler who ran up and down the aisle to stare at us for the duration of the trip. There weren’t any other Westerners headed to Zhaoqing on our train and we may have been a strange sight.
We arrived at the Zhaoqing station after dark and followed the Chinese Exit signs, which we were able to read after seeing it all over the Guangzhou metro stations. The sound of bass and rhymes floated through the clean air and as we came out of the train station we saw dozens of college kids dressed in jeans jamming out in a parking lot. The city smelled of freshness and I was already excited to see it in the daylight.
The first taxi driver we saw walked up to us with a big grin and we happily whipped out the Chinese address for our hotel. He nodded reassuringly, waved us into his taxi, and proceeded to ask us questions in Chinese. He laughed when we said we didn’t understand and then he asked plainly: “American?” We said yes and I winded down the window to enjoy the fresh, crisp breeze like a house dog let loose for the first time. I could see the silhouette of a lake through the forest trees that lined the winding highway. My joy was tempered by the concerned look I saw on Ben’s face as he peered at the meter about 10 minutes into the drive. He mentioned that the hotel we had booked should have been south of the train station, but we had been going west since we got into the cab. The sound of a cuckoo sprang up each time the fare increased 5Y and by the time the meter said 88Y we both started to wonder where we were going. We politely coughed up a “Ni How” from the backseat and tapped on the driver’s shoulder a few times. He pulled over at a gas station and we asked how far he was taking us, since our hotel was supposed to be 5 minutes away. He took out a piece of paper and wrote “100KM” and pointed straight ahead. We asked him to wait while we called a Chinese friend from school. We explained the mishap and asked her to tell the driver to turn around. His bellowing voice and large movements in the front seat shook the car as he talked on my phone. He gave us back the phone and before we received the translation, he started the car and started to drive once again. He lit a cigarette and his burning embers blew in the wind from the front seat to the back. He sped up and my friend told me that he was not going to turn around because we were already halfway to our destination, at 36KM, and that it would be “dangerous” to turn around on the highway. She said there was nothing she could do. We thanked her and hung up, with a sinking feeling that our plan to have a cost-effective weekend getaway was about to be flushed down a squatting toilet.
The meter started to cuckoo every few minutes and before we knew it, our fare had hit 165Y, which would have been the same amount as a train ticket to Hong Kong. We sighed in the backseat, and then started to call other Chinese-speaking friends in the hopes that they could reason with our kidnapping taxi driver. The fare was still climbing as we sped down the desolate highway, with the cuckoo echoing in the car and cigarette ashes falling into my lap…200Y, 250Y, 300Y…no end in sight. I tried to rationalize that a taxi ride in NYC would be this expensive, and then realized that I would never be stuck in a cab with someone who refused to turn around or let me out. A friend suggested we call the police and as I seriously considered it, I saw the sign for the “Heijang Peninsula Hotel” across the bridge. When we pulled up to the hotel, 125KM away from the train station, 1.5 hours after getting off the train, our fare had stretched to an enormous 568Y. The taxi driver frantically puffed on his cigarette as our friend tried to translate for us that our fare was unfair and that we would be happy to negotiate a price that was reasonable for both of us. His English was perfect when we said, “No! 568.” We gave him the full fare, he peeled out of the parking lot, and we wandered into the hotel feeling like we had just been to a funeral.
The lovely women standing at the check-in counter were in an overly giddy mood for the ordeal we had just been through. I would usually find it amusing when pretty girls ask me for something in another language and I don’t understand, but this time, I pointed at my passport and wallet for every question they asked me. Soon enough, the hotel manager came to speak to us in English. We had apparently been driven to a different province in the border county of Fengkai. We really didn’t know where we were, or how we were going to get back. We asked why the hotel had Zhaoqing in its name if it was so far away from the train station. We were schooled to the fact that Zhaoqing is pretty big.
We received our key, went to our room and tried to put the wallet-gutting experience behind us. Flipping through the hotel’s brochures, we saw that there was the “world’s biggest rock” in Fengkai. It required a taxi to get there, so we skipped that idea. The hotel itself was built in very recent years and filled with clean, plush carpeting, huge and modern showers, recess lighting, comfortable beds, and flat-screen TVs. If anyone is ever in Fengkai, I would definitely recommend it.
The next morning, we tried our best to pick around the meat-heavy breakfast at the hotel restaurant and then took a walk around the river of the fisherman’s village outside. The town itself has 10,000 people and it felt a bit like stepping back in time when we saw people dragging nets along the water. There were also great, big, wooden ships lined up against one another, covered in clotheslines and satellite dishes.
After our walk, the hotel staff helped find us a taxi to the bus station and the nice manager of the hotel even drove his motorbike to meet us on his break to make sure we had found the correct bus. Within an hour, we were on a bus back to Guangzhou for 90Y each.
The journey back through Zhaoqing in the daytime allowed us to see why we made the journey in the first place. What I imagine when I picture China’s karst mountains, endless patches of banana trees and long white clouds came to life outside the wide bus windows. For those images alone, I will be heading back to Zhaoqing.
Only this time, I’ll walk to a hotel. Or learn Chinese….