Our last shitty day in Xi’an

Monday, October 4th, 2010 in: News

When Dan and I got back to the hostel, we checked back into a different room and hit the showers. Our roommates were all French, and they couldn’t have been all bad, since they were listening to Rodrigo and Gabriela when we came to put our bags down, but as with most French people I’ve encountered in China, they pretty much stuck to themselves and ignored us. All the better, I wasn’t in a very philanthropic mood to begin with. After we had washed the day’s grime away (or at least gave it our best try), Dan and I hit the hostel bar, playing some ping pong in the dark and chatting up a few other guests. One older Australian guy was there with his brother and their family, and we bought each other beers and decompressed our frustrations re: China until the wee hours of the morning. I also met a nice girl who was teaching English in some random place and came to Xi’an on holiday, and she gave me the great idea of renting bikes the next day.

The hostel rented bikes for something silly, like 10 RMB for the whole day, plus deposit. We set off, trying to avoid the careless drivers and taking note that they never checked mirrors; actually the world for “blind spot” is the same word for “everywhere but forward.” OK, maybe not, but you can imagine. We circled around the inside of the city wall, looking for an entrance to actually get on the wall. We’d traveled about a 1/4 of the way around it when we spotted an open gate, with a ticket office (of course, what in this town ISN’T a tourist attraction?) It would be 60 RMB to go up on the wall, and rent a bike. But we already have bikes, can’t we just walk them up the ramp? “No, you can only ride bikes on the wall that you rented from the top of the wall.”

Well, fuck that, we aren’t renting two bikes each today. It wasn’t that it was that much money, we were just tired of people taking advantage of us, we had to exercise our right to say “no” every once in a while, to remind ourselves that we weren’t at their mercy; we had a choice if we wanted.

So, we continued to go around the wall, stopping at some random antique shops to see what kind of souvenirs I could snag. This was not the tourist end of town, but these were real antiques, with real antique prices. As cool as it would be to have some of these things, I could live without them. One of the shopkeeps was actually really nice, and invited us in and explained a few of the items to us. I think there might have been something about being the shop with the foreigners in it, as he made kind of a show of ushering us in and serving us tea, but he was just a friendly guy and didn’t pressure us into buying anything. I couldn’t afford it, but if I could I would’ve bought something from him, because he was the first person in Xi’an who wasn’t just trying to squeeze money out of us. He was happy for the company, and we were happy to oblige him for a few minutes.

We decided to go to the outside of the city wall and ride through the parks that surrounded it. Of course, the city had long since outgrown the wall, so it was just there to charge people to go stand on top of it, but it’s a distinction worth noting (again) that this is one of the few cities with its wall preserved. The park that ringed the outer perimeter was very green and peaceful, with the occasional break in the scenery (and the wall) to let the flow of traffic continue to pump cars in and out of the central part of the city. We happened upon a sort of outdoor impromptu concert with a live 4 or 5 piece band of traditional Chinese instruments and a woman singing beautifully into a microphone that mangled her voice into sounding like a 1930’s radio. It was an unfortunate effect, but the performance was still impressive, and parked out bikes and walked over to join the sizable crowd that had gathered to listen. Unfortunately, it was as if the Spaniards had just landed in Tenochtitlan for the first time; it’s kind of hard not to notice two obvious foreigners in a crowd of Chinese people. A younger guy and a middle-aged woman kept coming up to us to chat, to which we responded to the best of our abilities, despite the annoyance of being distracted from the performance we were trying to watch. They kept making a fuss over us and we weren’t quite sure what was being said, so Dan led the woman away so he could hear better without being such a distraction to the other patrons. I stayed where I was and played dumb (it’s not hard when you are dumb), and kept watching the show. The young guy was next to me and said something about selling flowers for either 10 or 20 kuai, and I politely refused. I had no need for flowers. A few foreigners even more waiguoren-ish than us walked past the performance and gawked for a few minutes, taking photos before stalking away. Nobody bothered to talk to them, it was too obvious they wouldn’t understand.

Dan came back and said he gathered the flower sales were somehow in support of the band, which he was happy to do if they would just let us enjoy the performance. He didn’t have change so he handed her a 100 kuai note, and they asked what we were “buying,” ie how much we were giving to the band. I said the 20 kuai would be fine and Dan sort of waved his hand in the confusion and frustration that they were making such a big deal out of this, and they served us some hot tea that we didn’t want. The woman walked over to the where the microphone was standing and made a big show of taking flowers and putting them onto a sort of stand, then going around and placing ribbons around the necks of the musicians. I thought it was quite a big fuss over 20 kuai, but then afterwards the woman pretty much avoided us, having gotten what she wanted. Confused, we called her over and asked about our change, and she dodged the question and left again. It then became clear that they had taken the entire 100 and that’s why there was such a fuss, they had basically robbed Dan in broad daylight under the auspices of soliciting charity. Dan had to practically chase her down to get her to talk to him, and now that he made it clear that we didn’t mean to give it all and wanted change, she first pretended she didn’t understand, then went and took down the flowers and ribbons, making Dan out to be a stingy bastard in front of the crowd. She then took the mic and started singing who knows what, preventing any further interaction with her. Enraged and embarrassed, Dan decided it wasn’t worth trying anymore, and although there were more people who genuinely just wanted to be friendly and talk, we rode off in a huff. I was a impressed by the con and how she had managed to play the situation so well, but Dan was in a legitimately bad mood, not just at having been hoodwinked by this wrinkled troll, but also at himself. “You know what my mistake was? Giving them any money without knowing exactly what was going on.” He debated whether to go back to try to explain to them why they were upset, but he realized that if he did, the troll would find some way to turn the situation against him, even if he were trying to straighten it all out in good faith. As it stands, we just don’t have the command of the language or knowledge of the culture to diffuse this situation, and our best option right now is to walk away. We biked back into the wall and immediately found some souvenir shops on the outskirts. I stopped to get a fan for some lucky person, and decided on a very nice one carved out of fragrant wood. The man demanded 80 kuai, and I countered with 30. He countered with 35, but I wasn’t in the mood for bargaining so I literally said “30 kuai, come on!” and he relented, just easily enough to make me realize I should’ve asked for less. Oh well, I didn’t pay 80. Dan was still seething.

We continued to ride around town, ending up back outside the wall. We stopped at another park to enjoy the “workout” equipment. Two ladies approached us and began to talk about religion. We realized they were actually proselytizing to foreigners, in Chinese. I had to give them credit for balls, but Dan put them in his place with a logical atheistic counter to their preaching before we started off again. We got back close to the concert park and I asked Dan if he was still thinking about going back. “Nah, it’s not worth it.”

We biked to the goose pagoda and walked around the compound in all of its boring splendor. We’d grown weary of the tourist traps and decided to head back to the hostel to get a move on. We biked back and exchanged the bikes for our backpacks, which we took to the tasty noodle shop down the street, stopping at the ATM from the day before so I could withdraw the rest of the cash I owed Dan for the plane tickets. Upon arriving at the ATM, I’d realized that my card wasn’t in my wallet, and deduced that the ATM had actually eaten my card the day before. We stood in front of the ATM, counting out the money, and the machine never even beeped at me to take my card. I later was told that many ATMs don’t even return the card unless you hit a specific button. That’s some awesome systems design. It was after 7pm and the bank itself was closed, so there was no one but a useless guard to talk to. Come back tomorrow, he said. We can’t, we’re going to Beijing tonight. Huh, shrug. Thanks buddy.

Dan managed to cheer me up at dinner by telling me embarrassing stories about himself, and we had to scarf down our noodles and hurriedly try to hail a cab. We still had to upgrade our train tickets to sleepers, or we’d be stuck in hard seats with all the peasants for the next 14 hours…

---