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9.
Traveling As a Couple Just Isn't the Same As in a Group!
From Beijing to
Xian
By Tom Darby
(Editor note: Tom Darby teaches sixth grade at Pruitt Military Middle School in the St.
Louis Public Schools. He is also a Captain in the Army Reserve and is
currently on active duty with the 389th Engineer Battalion.)
Traveling to China was an awesome experience. I was fortunate enough to experience some aspects of the trip twice. The trip was made even more
enchanting when my wife, Julie, was able to join me for my fourth week in
China. We spent time in both Beijing and Xian, cities I had recently
visited with our group of teachers from St. Louis. I was placed in the
auspicious position of being able to act as a pseudo tour guide as we
revisited some key sites and shopping areas that I had seen just two weeks
before.
The contrast between traveling in China with a large tour group and as
couple was enormous. Each tour guide we had during the trip was
extraordinary (except for one) and even more so when my wife and I were
being chauffeured around Beijing and Xian with our own driver and guide.
The main difference was the size of the vehicle. Driving in Chinese cities
appears very chaotic to the untrained eye, yet it appeared reasonably safe
high up in a chartered bus. The rule seems to be that the larger vehicle
always has the right of way. As my wife and I toured in a
four-door sedan we had the thrill of dodging between larger vehicles and charging forward
through traffic, only this time we were at the bottom of the food chain
when it came to right of way at intersections. We had the distinctly
uncomfortable feeling more often than not that we might be chewed up and
spit out by the city's traffic. In the end we always arrived unscathed,
uneaten and on time, but we learned to stop looking at the
other cars bearing down on us.
Julie and I had topnotch guides with a bounty of information to share, but
it was fun to have recently seen many of the same sites and to share my own
tidbits of information. When I had toured many key sites around Beijing
with the St. Louis teachers group we had a number of rainy days. The week I
toured many of the same sites with Julie we encountered 40 degrees Celsius
days (that's 95 degrees F!) and hotter temperatures on very sunny days. The
Temple of Heaven with its distinctive blue tiles was a very different sight
when sunny and crowded compared to when it was rainy and solemn.
When we toured the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square on our own, we felt why the
great emperors escaped to the Summer Palace during the heat of July.
It was also extraordinary to circulate through some key shopping areas in both Beijing and Xian. As a big group we were constantly assailed by every
sort of street vendor, but it was easy to move on. Julie and I both truly
enjoyed the bargains and the shopkeepers we bargained with in the Muslim
Quarter of Xian. We bought some wonderful artwork, scrolls and fans and
some fun knick-knacks for friends and family back home. The shopkeepers
inevitably encouraged any interest in their wares with a suggestive "Just
looking?" They knew if we continued to the next shop we might find exactly
the same vase or dish or painting. They loved to deal, writing a number on
a pad or typing it into a calculator. My response was always "No, no, too
much" and a counter offer that was ridiculously small. The haggling was an
art, usually ended with both parties feeling they came away with the better
deal.
Some things are the same everywhere. We enjoyed perusing the full-scale shopping malls of both Beijing and Xian. We enjoyed the incredible variety
of products available (fifteen kinds of washing machines!) and the
impeccable service. It seemed a shame to travel so far across the world to
find a shopping center so much like home, but it was also comforting to be
in a familiar setting. Besides, at that point in my four week journey, it
was more practical to shop for new underwear than to do laundry. Finding
the right section of the nine-story department store was an intriguing
challenge; figuring out the right size was pure luck.
Eating in a big group was an experience more like that in any American
Chinese restaurant, with many dishes on the lazy susan, and getting a
chance to try a little bit of everything. The fish would goggle at us with
eyes still intact, and we would always breathe a sigh of relief when the
server brought out the watermelon, the dessert signaling we could finally
stop eating. When it was just the two of us eating, we still had too many
dishes in our attempt to taste several things, but the tour guide tried to
find out what we liked, so we had several versions of cashew chicken, and
still a variety of barely recognizable cuisine. I finally gave in to the
ease of McDonalds, at first as an experiment, then as a comfort after four
weeks of foreign food. The fast food was pretty much the same, fries and
burgers, cokes and ice cream. We even went to a Pizza Hut and an Outback
Steakhouse, "for research," to discover they did things pretty much the
same, with good onion rings, and classic pizza. Of course, for the average
Chinese, these meals would be an exotic indulgence, but for me, it was
relaxation and escape. I was a little homesick, especially for a Big Mac.
So for Julie, it was not quite the "taste of China" she might have hoped
for, but she still experienced enough of Real Chinese Dining to satisfy
her.
The experience of China was just as wonderful the second time around.
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