Articles by Eric Tindall

A Foreigner in China
November 20, 2006 by Eric Tindell

One of the greatest perks that comes with living in China is the opportunity to travel this complex and fascinating country. From the Great Wall and Forbidden City in the North to the Tibetan Plateau and Sichuan countryside in the West to the mega-cities of the East, China has no shortage of attractions to keep even the speediest tourist busy for years.

But the centuries’ old temples and dramatic natural scenery aside, the most memorable experiences of a trip through the Middle Kingdom will be your interactions with the people who live there. 
           
China is a country that has spent much of its modern history completely isolated from the rest of the world, which has left many of its citizens with a deep curiosity about people from foreign countries. And even though recent government policies have encouraged an “opening up” to the outside world, foreigners are still seldom seen outside Beijing, Shanghai, and a few other select tourist attractions. As a result, many of the country’s 1.3 billion people can go months without spotting a foreign face. And when they do, they might just show a little bit of interest in what they see.

Translation: If you look non-Asian, prepare to be treated like a celebrity in some parts of country.
           
The adventure usually begins on the train out of Shanghai, where, if you buy the lowest class hard-seat train ticket (usually rarely more than $10), you might be cramped in a standing-room only car among migrant workers going home to their families for the first time in a year or farmers carrying knapsacks of unsold produce. Dumbfounded as to why a foreigner would be riding in such conditions, they will not shy away from initiating conversation, offering you some of their snacks, or inviting you to participate in a card game that you do not have the vaguest idea how to play.
           
But the real fun gets going when you get off the train at some rural or suburban city. As you walk through the train station, you will meet dozens of stares from people who have suddenly stopped talking or even stopped walking so they can focus their attention on the new attraction that has just appeared in their town. Some will shout out a “Hello!” and feel proud that they were able to finally put their English schooling to good use. The more assertive ones will actually approach you and offer you to guide you around their town or take you to a restaurant, thrilled that they can hang out with a foreigner.
           
When you wind up at the intended tourist attraction, where cameras abound, prepare to be photographed…alot. Chinese tourists will not shy away from asking you to have a picture taken with them or their children. It goes without saying that it can be easy to steal the show from whatever must-see sight everybody is actually there for. I guess that ancient shrine just is not as interesting as the white-skinned, blue-eyed boy standing next to it. 
Some visitors to China can’t get enough of being the center of attention. Others can’t stand it. But whether you love it or hate it, it’s as essential to a trip to China as any other experience you might come for. With the country preparing to host the 2008 Olympics and globalizing at a feverish pace, the celebrity treatment will hardly last forever. Twenty years from now I doubt that those Chinese parents will still be proud of that picture they took of me with their children back in 2006.

Forget the Great Wall
October 24, 2006 by Eric Tindell

Forget the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Terracotta Army. What really stands out in China is the food!

Any language where the phrase, “Have you eaten yet?” (Ni chi le ma?) can be used as a greeting must come from a country that takes its cuisine seriously. If you take a walk through any Chinese city and observe the blocks of bustling restaurants, canteens, and street vendors, you’ll receive confirmation of the important role that food plays in Chinese culture. No discussion about China would be complete without and examination of its famed cuisine.
Let’s start with the Chinese menu. It’s a sad irony that one of the chief necessities in China (food) can also be one of the most challenging to obtain. Chinese menus are usually nothing more than a laminated sheet of paper with a bunch of Chinese characters and prices scribbled on it. Decoding that into something comprehensible might possibly be one of the most arduous decryption tasks known to man (or to a non-Chinese reading man). Not only can the characters for food items be incredibly complex and hard to memorize, but also are ambiguous and depend heavily on the context in which they are used.  Even if you know what the characters in a dish mean, you still may not know what the dish is. In translating dishes from Chinese to English, you might get names like “Oil explodes chicken” or “hot fry and hot taste.” How are you supposed to know what this means without already possessing a deep contextual understanding of Chinese cuisine?

So what’s the solution? Those who can speak a little Chinese can simply ask what dishes the restaurant has or what dishes it recommends. And those who cannot?  Well, pointing at a random dish is always fun. Some of the best (and worse) dishes I have had in China came as a result of pointing at a collection of characters that I thought looked interesting.

Whatever process you use to order a dish, you are bound to get a plate of something that satisfies your hunger. The good news is that this is almost always delicious; even if you do not know what it is your eating (and sometimes it might be better not to know). You will quickly learn not to complain about what food you are served and feel fortunate that you are even eating a complete, filling meal. 

But the real dining experience is not found in the restaurants. It’s found in the streets, which, during meal hours, are lined with vendors cooking all sorts of delicious little treats. The lack of health, tax, or business regulations in China means that anybody who wants to make a few extra kuai cooking and selling food can freely do so. As a result, nearly everything can be found on the streets: Dumplings, kebabs, noodles, fruit bowls, buns, omelets, and even deep-fried grasshoppers. The best part is that you can see what you are ordering and ensure that it is being sufficiently cooked. And the price can’t be beat. You can stuff yourself for about a dollar eating street food.
           
So while climbing the Great Wall or walking through Tiananmen Square might be exciting in their own rights, the real adventures of a trip to China will revolve around food. Whether it’s ordering it or eating it, Chinese cuisine will give you a memorable experience. You’ll discover that Chinese food is so much more than orange chicken, chow mein, and fortune cookies. You might even discover a fondness for frog, pigeon, or snake while you are at it!

Old Shanghai
October 9, 2006 by Eric Tindell

Take a walk through the narrow alleyways of Old Shanghai and you might feel like you have just traveled back in time. On either side, you will be flanked by old, ramshackle houses, which have undergone little change since the Qing Dynasty. You will witness men emptying their chamber pots, women knitting in the streets and laundry hanging from the windows. A few curious stares might even come your way as if you were the first foreign face seen in ages. But walk a few blocks further and you find yourself on glitzy Huahai Road, standing in the shadows of top-end hotels, fancy restaurants, and mega shopping malls, sporting names such as Dior, Chanel, and Louis Vuitton. Such an experience of both extremes would not be anything out of the ordinary in Shanghai - The City of Contrasts. Having lived here for the past three months, I am hard pressed to find a city where both old and new, rich and poor, first world and third world be seen more vividly and profoundly than in China's wealthiest and most populous city.

In Shanghai, it is not shocking to see a rich businessman driving a Rolls Royce at the same intersection as a migrant worker pulling a rickshaw full of bottles and cans. It is not uncommon to see extravagant, ultra-modern skyscrapers towering over crumbling buildings that saw better days in the 18th century. You would not raise an eyebrow if you encountered a woman who was in such poor shape that she could barely lift her head off the ground when she begged for money while at the same catch a glimpse of one of the most fashionable, healthy and excessively dressed persons you might ever see. Such stark contrasts illuminate Shanghai's central role in the fastest growing economy in the world. Spend some time in Shanghai and you will see how much the oft-hyped economy has impacted the lives of Chinese people. It is clear that some people have been able to ride the train of economic growth to prosperity that their parents could have only dreamt of. For others, it has simply been too fast and has left them in the dust. But the contrasts observable in Shanghai are only a microcosm of the contrasts observable in China as a whole. The urban and rural divide is perhaps the most striking contrast and a journey to the countryside will remind you that China is still a developing country, regardless of what the economic statistics say. Absent are the breathtaking skyscrapers, world-class restaurants, and pulsing streets that are so ubiquitous in Shanghai. Instead, you will find dirt roads, old, deteriorating wooden houses, some of which have yet to be wired with electricity, and acres upon acres of farmland, as the main inhabitants still get basic sustenance from agriculture. Spend some time in these areas and you might be hard-pressed to believe that you are in the same country as the exciting metropolis of Shanghai and not in some poor third-world backwater. It will quickly become clear that despite the country's impressive economic growth, many of the country's 1.3 billion people have yet to feel the slightest of impact from it. While the country's free market reforms have been responsible for the surging economy, they have also deteriorated the socialist safety net. As a result, many are still mired in poverty and struggling to survive. And while many in the West currently see China's surging economy and prospering cities as evidence of an up and coming superpower, a visit to the country will reveal the other extreme. It still has a long way to go. Even in Shanghai, you are never more than a bus ride away from the third-world.