If Shanghai is a mystery, full of old school versus the new, not quite knowing whether the two should ever meet, then Malaysia is like a big warm hug you would get from your grandmother. You know the one I mean, the one that envelopes you and makes you feel warm and safe.
I had the pleasure of experiencing both in a near month long trip. I had visited Malaysia before and fell in love with it all over again. The people, the culture, the food (spicy!) and the hospitality. But this blog is dedicated to Shanghai, a place I had never visited. I experienced firsthand the dramatic difference a 5 hour plane trip can make when you are in Asia.
I am sitting in Pudong International Airport, surrounded by people from all walks of life. There must be a dozen languages flying over the top of my head. It is the first time I have heard a collective mix of Australian accents in nearly four weeks. And I’m smiling to myself, thinking how much I loathed my first week in Shanghai. And rather sad that after two weeks in this eclectic country how I am sad to leave.
Living in Sydney I experience the cultural differences between the two cultures. I thought it had prepared me, even just a bit, for the adventure I was about to undertake as I travelled here. I was so wrong it is almost comical.
Let me explain.
My grandparents travelled to Asia in 1977. They returned, after many weeks away, with photos and slides of China. The buildings were magnificent, the people smiling, the architecture amazing. I remember the red dressing gown they bought me, it had a big blue dragon on the back of it and I wore it for years, even when it grew too small. From their trip I had an image of China in my head that was architecturally beautiful and very old.
I arrived in 2012 to be met by huge buildings, a hell of a lot of smog and a country full of people who did not speak English and who, outside the hotel, did not show the slightest interest in speaking English. I was overwhelmed just trying to communicate with people with my 10 or so words of Mandarin (that stretched to about 30 by the time I left.. Nothing when you consider the complexity of the language).
The humour of people running up to me in the street and taking my photo time and time again soon wore off as did the 11 marriage proposals I received in the first two days. I expect to pop up in lots of family photos someday, such was their interest in the tall blonde woman.
Week one saw me in many “humorous” situation. I was with two Americans and we got chased out of a restaurant that was clearly open for business by a toothless woman sucking on a corn cob, she dead bolted the door after us just to make her point and stood there waving her hands and yelling. I got chased around a park by the meanest looking dog you have ever seen in your life (it was a Chou Chou – gosh they are mean) eventually scared off by an 80 year old woman with a stick and one night in the pouring rain, a man jumped out of his car and chased me off the pedestrian crossing, furiously waving an umbrella, enraged I was obviously taking too long to cross on the “green man” (he chased me for about 100 metres and it was mortifying – god knows what he was yelling, thank goodness it was near the hotel and the concierge came out and “saved” me).
By week two I had had enough. I was over the dismissiveness of the locals, frustrated I didn’t speak Mandarin and furious I had to spend another week and a half here. Shanghai is a very lonely place when you don’t speak the language and you stand out like a sore thumb.
By Tuesday, miraculously something had changed. Maybe it was the fact I just kept smiling, regardless of how I was feeling. People were starting to talk to me in broken English (and me to them in VERY broken Mandarin), and what we didn’t understand we used charades to get our point across. Slowly, things didn’t seem so futile.
By Thursday night I drew the courage to catch a taxi to Yu Garden to go shopping, not fearful like I had been the previous week. And by the time Friday night, the night I am writing this, came around, I was beginning to feel sad to be leaving.
I had experienced an ocean of emotion in a country who really don’t give a hoot for western ideas or western people. They are suspicious to the point of ridiculousness. They may have embraced technology and sky scrapers but they have not embraced “outsiders”. That is until they are convinced you are there to do them no harm. And I imagine that takes a long, long time.
I would not rush back to China, although I fear this may be to my own detriment as Beijing is apparently a cultural experience and a half. Perhaps one day I will lose the feeling of not belonging, of being laughed at, mocked and photographed at every turn (and did I mention those 11 marriage proposals, funnily enough their English extended to that!). This trip gave me a good old fashioned dose of what it must be like to arrive in a strange country, surrounded by people who don’t speak your language and who make no attempt to help you. Perhaps remember that next time you are asked, in broken English, for directions by someone who is clearly struggling.
Farewell Shanghai, you taught me lessons I deserved to learn. Maybe I will see you again one day.
