Upon arrival in Beijing International Airport, you go through extensive lines for verifying your visa and passport, as well as a quarantine check line, where they have computers that can recognize if you have a temperature or not as you pass through. Usually in an airport, getting your baggage takes the most time, but in this country, it’s the visa line for foreigners. As you exit the customs area, non-licensed taxi drivers try to get your attention to offer taxi rides into the city. Driving around Beijing is one of the things I enjoy most, as you can see all different kinds of vehicles and people. The bicycle is the clear winner of popular vehicles, with drivers of all ages mounted upon them. I hope one day Amsterdam and Beijing have a competition of whose population uses the most bikes. The city taxis are everywhere too, and for some reason the drivers need extra protection, and there usually is a metal or plastic cage all around them. The first time I went into one of these taxis, I felt uncomfortable, as if I were in the back of a police car. Above all, my favorite vehicle has got to be the motorcycle with the side seat. One of these days I will pay someone to let me ride in the side seat!
Everything in China is difficult without speaking a little Chinese, although the people are eager to help as much as possible in English with the basic words such as: lady, please, good price, and beautiful. That’s good for me because my only basic words in Chinese are: I, you, am, (not) very good, excuse me, sorry, and (no) thank you. Fortunately, when you are introduced to people at work who have learned English in college, they use an English first name as a nickname, which makes it easier to remember everyone’s names. After meeting over 10 people with different Chinese names, it does get difficult. To be fair, I asked them to make me a Chinese name, which is Lin Na. I can even write it in Chinese!
In the evening, we went out for dinner in Ho Hai area. Ho Hai is this area where there’s a man-made lake, and many bars and restaurants around it. It’s beautiful at night. When we went, it was particularly cold, being that it was most likely -6C. As we shivered, walking around the lake with the team, I kept hearing people yelling. I asked my coworker if somebody was yelling because he/she was lost, but she simply replied that they were exercising. Now for the normal American, that does not make any sense. I had to ask her again. Apparently some people believe that yelling is a good exercise for the heart, and they do this as they are doing other physical exercises in the park by the lake. I had read in another magazine that some Chinese believe that taking a dip into very cold water is healthy too. Brrrr! I like to think my warm coat and gloves is just fine. As we got closer to the lake, I noticed it was almost entirely frozen! No wonder we were cold!
We had dinner at a very nice restaurant where they gave us their own private dining room in the back. In order to get to this room, you walk past a beautiful flower garden in an inside patio. Once we arrive to the room, I kindly ask for help to go to the restroom, as I cannot say this myself in Chinese. My coworker escorts my boss and I to the bathroom, not too far away. Once again, we find ourselves in a bathroom incident. My boss goes first and opens up the door to the stall, and immediately backs up and asks me what to do. “What do you mean, what do you do?” I ask. I look at my coworker, who looks at us, confused about why we are confused. So I take a look at the bathroom. Ahhhhhhhh. It’s a squat-system: no toilet, just a hole in the ground. Now we must come to the decision of a lifetime: hold it or go. What the hell, when in Rome…
Conclusion: going to the bathroom in China is practically a callisthenic exercise. For you to understand this, I must explain it to you, step by step, so that you imagine that you are in this situation. First, you go in and close the stall, and quickly start to figure out the logistics of how to squat over this hole without getting your pants wet. There are little indicators on each side of the toilet-hole that are for your feet, which are about shoulder-length apart. Once your pants are down, you have to figure out how far down they need to be, for them to be out of harms way. With a deep squat you are in business, although now you are in a delicate praying mantis balancing act that you never would really wish to have to do, particularly in this situation. God forbid you have to go for a long time, because if you aren’t used to squatting for a long period of time, your legs quickly get tired, and then you reach to each side for your arms to help keep you balanced!
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