China
After all the stressing out about plane tickets, train tickets, and hostels, we actually made it to China. We made it to the Great Wall and Tiananmen Square and stayed at a wonderfully helpful hostel in Beijing. The hostel helped us out enormously, actually, since the language barrier in China made it nearly impossible to communicate with anyone.
“Hello, hello,” said one waiter, pointing at everything on the menu. “I do not want meat,” I tried to communicate. “I just want vegetables.” “Hello,” he said again, pointing at random things again. “Hello, hello,” he repeated again and again. He went to go get someone else, and we thought maybe this person spoke English, or maybe some English besides the word hello. This other man came to the table and started pointing at things and making gestures, and after a while of trying to get across the concept of no meat, we realized that there wasn’t a single English speaking or semi-English speaking person in the whole restaurant, and it really was time to give up. So, feeling like idiots for not being able to communicate at all, we left the restaurant and found another one with pictures on the menu.
Later that night, we had another encounter that was funny because of the language barrier. My friend Brittany had to use the bathroom, so she asked a man working at the bar we were at if they had one. After a few minutes of trying to communicate, he seemed like he understood and showed us to the back of the bar. It seemed like we were on the right track, but then he pulled out a plastic chair and looked at Brittany triumphantly like he had finally gotten what she needed. We erupted in laughter and told him that that wasn’t what she was saying. The other person working at the bar finally understood that she needed a toilet, not a chair, so he laughed loudly and told the other man where to lead us. This time, he showed us outside and across the little road to an outside one stall hole in the ground, where he pushed us both inside. This was sort of funny since it was just a one person type place, but it was definitely better than a blue plastic chair in the middle of a bar.
After leaving the bars that night, we had a scarier encounter dealing with language. We took a little ride with a cyclist, and since our hostel was so helpful, they had a handy little map showing the address so that we could show people where to take us back to. The guy seemed like he understood, so we hopped in and started going. He went down some creepy dark alleyways that we had never been down before, and we assumed they were shortcuts. “This must be where he is going to rape us,” we said, joking. Then he turned around to look at us, winked, smiled, and made a little clicking sound. This man had not understood one single word of English that we had said the entire time, and we say the word rape and he turns to wink at us?? This was truly terrifying, especially since we were still going down dark alleyways. Later on, he turned around and pointed to Brittany, then me, then himself, and made a motion with his hands to look like a pillow, that we took to mean “sleep.” “He wants to sleep with us? Is that what he is saying!?” We were worried. When we said anything about his motions he would turn and smile at us again in the creepiest manner possible. Then, it started raining harder than it had been and he stopped and extended a plastic covering over the cloth covering that was over us. Then he smiled at me and firmly shook my hand. This was sort of odd since it was the middle of our ride, but oh well. Once we finally got to where our hostel was, he made motions like we hadn’t paid him enough, but this was the price we had agreed on when we started. So we paid him what we said we would, and walked through the dark and creepy alley to the door of our hostel. This was still sort of scary, though, since the driver was still standing there looking angry about the money situation, and we thought he might run after us. It was a pretty terrifying ride home, but we felt safe back at the Llama Temple Youth Hostel, our home in Beijing.
Even after we left Beijing to go back to our other home, the ship, we had some major trouble. We arrived in the Qingdao airport and showed a cab driver our yellow sheet that the ship gave to us so that they could take us to the port. They seemed to know where to go, but after a while we realized that the driver and his friend (who was in the cab) were completely lost. We had to play pictionary just to get across “ship” and “water” which made us wonder what that yellow sheet actually said. Then we pulled up to this gated, dark area where we couldn’t even see water. I even got out and checked all the doors around this building to see if we could get through to the other side, but they were all locked. “How could semester at sea do this to us? Are they serious? What are we supposed to do now?” we asked. We ended up actually calling the ship and getting better directions for the cab, and then we got out and walked through the maze of construction and steel to our home sweet home.
All the stories that we have from the language barrier are pretty interesting to look back on, but at the time it was pretty frustrating. It wasn’t like it was just a certain area that we were in, or just one day that we couldn’t communicate, it was the whole time in China. I was glad to actually be given a culture shock after being more shocked at the other countries’ similarities to the U.S. rather than differences. Sometimes, though, it just got so tiring. At times I get tired just from talking, but when you have to make this huge production out of getting one little thing across, that is a whole other story.
