My best friend and I are on a whirlwind tour of China. In Shanghai, we walk the Bund. Go to a museum on the beginnings of communism, for which we have our finger prints taken and bags inspected. Irony is not lost on us as we traverse the crowded streets of China Town which is far larger and more impressive than ones in Sydney, New York or San Fransisco. At night, as seen from our riverside vantage point, the lights of futuristic sky scrapers flicker and change colour. There are shopping malls for goods of every taste and budget. And then there’s jade. Lots of jade in every conceivable Chinese design from ornaments to jewellery and enormous artworks.
While riding high speed trains that are so smooth and fast you don’t feel as though you’re moving at all, we see landscapes of endless, flat, green fields interspersed with clusters of tall housing estates like forests of concrete. Most of which are unoccupied.
Another city, and we’re thrown into the deep end of high pressure sales. First it’s the silk traders with their pillow and bedding ensembles. Then, it’s the tea traders with their ‘exclusive’ green tea. A woman extols the virtues and health benefits of that particular tea which we can buy at home. As for the Chinese medicine? We have a branch of the business in the next suburb from mine. However, in the home of tea, it is difficult to find any, green, oolong or jasmine at dinner or lunch. Chinese prefer hot water or soy water with their meals.
I appreciate the enterprising business people who use apps to translate their words. Often you have to re-translate the translation in your head to get the meaning. For example, ‘pepper’ means ‘chilli.’ All my apps are Google-based so I’m living in a bubble, unable to say the things I want to say. Yet, we make out well enough with body language. “Talk louder.” My friend encourages.
Another city, and there’s a pearl market. I feel sorry for the oysters sitting in tanks of water, destined for the chop. Each oyster has a pearl for every year of its life.
Walking one part of The Great Wall, my friend’s legs are swollen. We are told the heat is the cause. Apparently many western women are affected. I see some men suffering from this as well.
Trudging the streets in this high humidity, there are middle aged local men who roll up their t-shirts or singlets exposing their sometimes paunchy bellies to the air. In a different tour group from ours, the middle aged white men pose for a photo imitating the locals with their beer bellies hanging out unattractively- It’s the ugly face of Western tourists.
I adore the kids with their button bright eyes, and squeezable cheeks. We’re enchanted as we watch the people dancing in the parks in the evenings. Mostly women and children line dance. It is a tradition begun by Mao to build communities. It encourages strong bodies and healthy hearts, it’s fun and it’s free. Men prefer to play cards or gamble. Families and friends are out on summer nights enjoying themselves. I wish that we in the west had that kind of closeness. We seem so disconnected, too concerned with litigation and workplace health and safety, and of course, stranger danger.
At a restaurant catering to Foreigners, we ask for chicken but are presented with something incredibly, indescribably, inedible we vow to remain vegetarian while on the rest of the tour.
Out in the streets, a boy on a moped points at us and says, “Look at the white people!” I understand Guilao which means ghost man. To which we shrug. It’s true we are white, a novelty and a thing to be pointed at.
Most everyone we come across looks at us with surprise or curiosity and treats us politely. We are smiling and polite, too. I feel happy here.
In Beijing, our group is baked in the broiling sun while walking through Tian’anmen Square and the Summer Palace. Thousands of people swarm both places. Some wait in queues for two hours or more to see Mao’s body.
In Hutong, we ride rickshaws, our drivers sweat profusely. We visit acupuncturists and traditional doctors. Wander the main mall dreaming of the cash to spend on luxe goods. We barter like amateurs in markets. Are rain soaked as we look at sleeping pandas. We dine at a family home and are enthralled by a man who is notorious for his fighting crickets. I allow his pet crickets to walk on my arm and film one of them chirping.
Today, the group is taken to a jade outlet. I would rather not go, but we have no choice. The visa states were are not to leave the tour at any time.
In the warehouse, a worker risks silicosis while carving and drilling lumps of jade for our entertainment. I see pieces of rough-hewn rock in unattractive forms. We are dragged through the show room with its gaudy silk embroideries and thousands of pieces of jade in all shades of green and in qualities as different as night from day. The best and most precious has few to no inclusions and is translucent.
In that store, and in others, I see very few pieces that are as good as the bangle my husband bought me as a gift a few years ago. It was pale, sage/apple green, the same colour as my eyes. I wore it on my left wrist. In Chinese culture, jade bangles are like western engagement and wedding rings. They are symbolic of love, fidelity and marital attachments.
I treasured that bangle. I don’t know how it happened, didn’t strike it, bang it, damage it accidentally or otherwise but unfortunately one day, it simply snapped in two. That happened the year my husband was diagnosed with cancer. He died eighteen months later.
