Have had a crash course in Hohhot's very separate Chinese and Western cultures within the same week.
The Chinese part was meeting Yinghong today and seeing Hohhot through a native's eyes; that is, the way a native wanted me to [note to self: Tibet is not a good dinner table topic]
The Western part was last week. It was messy and bewildering and strangely comforting all at the same time.
I was invited out to a 'party' on the other side of the city by J. Navigating the taxi driver with my abhorrently limited Chinese required three phone calls to three different people before I finally deposited myself on J's doorstep. It was worth the hour of girls-getting-ready that followed; wine, hair-straightening, eyeliner, gossip. Something I've missed.
Taxi to party accompanied by paper cups of vodka-laced Miranda in the backseat. Arrive at huge apartment complex on outskirts of city and am suddenly confronted by a roomful of fifty or more loud, boozed foreigners crammed around food, alcohol and, oddly, electric guitars.
Considering I'd seen maybe three other foreigners in six weeks, this was a bit of a shock to the system.
A bit more vodka and some incomprehensibly foul Mongolian horse-milk wine (?!) later, I was fairly comfortable with the situation. Talked rubbish to an endless stream of people from all corners of the earth - England, America, Denmark, Greece, China. Mostly guys. Mostly thoroughly enjoying life here in Hohhot.
Ended the night on a slightly harrowing note. I'd turned down the offer of drinking the wee hours away on imported Bicardi and coke [and winding up on someone's floor] and left my original company to attempt flagging down a taxi. By this time it was 2am and, despite slurred advice that it was nigh on impossible to get a taxi in this place at this hour, I set off. I'm stubborn like that.
Arrived at locked gates outside apartment grounds to be ushered into guard's headquarters and barked at in Chinese. A phone call to T and some rapid Chinese later, a button was pushed and I was directed through the gates. Mad gestures towards the highway either meant "Go this way and you'll be able to flag down a taxi," or "P*** off, then".
And so it came to be that, at two o'clock on a Saturday morning, I was walking down an empty road in a barely-familiar Chinese city in almost utter darkness, numbed by fear and rum and with no f***ing idea where I was or how to get home.
Strange, how your head copes in these times.
I'm not ashamed to say I did the only thing I could think of doing. I prayed.
Lights ahead. Lights became car. Car became taxi. Taxi stopped. I got in. Driver confused by address on business card. I attempt pronounciation of the only road I know. Driver nods. We drive.
Fifteen minutes and fifteen kuai later, I am yanking my coat off and yahooing at being home, sweet home, in my manky apartment.
Harrowing, yes. Stupid, yeah, that too. But I survived. And I learned some things:
- Foreign teachers in Hohhot are generally those who have found they can live in near-luxury here and do. Hence the market for crazily-priced imported Australian wine and Fisherman's Friend.
- Foreign teachers tend to stick together. And party together. And not much else.
- It is possible for one to live in Hohhot with all their home comforts and hang out with people who have the same eye colour and same shaped nose.
- Hohhot is a bloody nightmare to navigate if you don't speak Chinese.
- Miracles do happen. Or, there is really is Someone looking out for me up there.
Anyway. Everything's an experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment