How Was China?

Upon returning from any grand trip such as this, everyone asks: HOW WAS YOUR TRIP?!

I long to wiggle out of answering this question. I’d like to say so much, but these questions typically occur between volleyball games as you line up to take a sip of water. How can I say something thoughtful and eloquent, my mouth dribbling with water?

My mother and I spent 2 weeks in China in October, 1 week in the capital Beijing and 1 week in the southwestern city of Chongqing. The following anecdote sums up the bewilderment that was this trip. Imagine, you are sitting in your hotel room on the thirteenth floor….

You are hungry. You open Google Maps to peruse the local food options. There appears to be no food in the area. Hmm… You decide to take a casual stroll around the neighborhood.

Your epic journey begins with crossing a busy street, with cars, bikes, motorbikes, and foot travelers whizzing by you at every turn regardless of what color the light is. It all flows seamlessly and no one dies. Nearby, a random guy is randomly doing tai chi next to a random bush.

As it turns out, there are dozens of places with food just across this street. Despite choosing a place with pictures, you are only 50% sure of what you ordered. You gaze up at the wall and note the restaurant is called “Moderate Warm Feelings Interaction.” Fun!

The beans you ordered are so salty you feel like throwing up. You try to communicate this to the staff but they are confused. Google Translate has probably told them you are done with your saline bag. You experience less than moderately warm feelings about this interaction. You leave.

Still hungry, you pass by five restaurants, three bakeries, and two nut and seed vendors. Still on the same block.

The convenience store has milk that appears to be approved by cats. Or maybe it’s for cats? I enjoy not knowing for the rest of my life.

You see a window filled with unrelated but tasty-looking edible items and a long line. Now, this makes a lot of sense! You point to the duck leg, three sesame buns, and NOT at the duck heads. Although they are probably good, you’ve experienced enough edible excitement for one day.

Gnawing on your duck leg, you broach the busy street again. The bustle has only increased as the masses grow in their hunger and post-work urgency. You approach your hotel thinking you’ve seen it all just in this one trivial stroll to satisfy hunger.

You have not. There is now a man with a llama on a leash outside of your towering hotel in the middle of this bustling metropolis. The llama is hungry too.  He’s feasting on the tai chi bush. You go to bed and do it all over again the next day.

One friend put a fun twist on the “how was your trip?!” question: If you had to sum up China in two words, what would they be?

Here’s two words: sweet olive. Imagine everywhere you go you are enveloped in a sweet, tantalizing fragrance as if god plugged in a gigantic world air freshener. Soon, I discovered it was the blooming season for sweet olive, also known as sweet osmanthus. We had arrived just in time for the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival.

Another two words: no English. Translating the minutia of your daily existence gets tiring, but it also forces you to realize just how much language controls our worldview. Upon encountering the vast hordes of people that live in China, most of whom don’t speak English, the significance truly hits. The number of people who can speak both English and Chinese is comparatively quite small, which means that our view of the world’s second most populous and third largest country is constrained by the perspectives of the small number of people who can speak both Chinese and English. And that doesn’t even take into account the unpredictable translations.

Speaking of unpredictable translations, here are a few of my favorites:

• Six-foot travelers (insects)
• Earth Dragon (The Great Wall)
• Leftover Lady (women who aren’t married by the time they’re 30)
• Duck shit tea (actual menu item encountered at a cat coffee shop)

Yet another two words: unfathomable abundance. The sheer magnitude of manufacturing and production was an experience all on its own. Imagine walking into a store and seeing 50 different pairs of furry slippers, all less than $5. Wow! Should I get some? Then you walk a little further and realize there are 10 more stores within a 100 ft radius selling the same, possibly trivially different slippers. Then you realize you are just on one tiny bustling block in one tiny bustling neighborhood in a city of millions and millions of people and millions (billions?) of slippers.

More two words: Weeping willows. Cooking oil. Multigenerational parks. Constant motion. Poetic harmony.

China is a busy place, and it is a place where people pay attention to details. No street was unswept. No block was unwatched. Trees had scientific labels attached to them for nerds like me. The plant lady within me was more than satisfied.

Why restrict to two words? How about feeling completely mentally obliterated by one of the most intense bouts of speech-dulling wonder and bewilderment heretofore experienced in one’s life? How’s that for volleyball water fountain talk?