One of the things I’ve heard about China before arriving was that the English translations I would see on signs and literature might not be the best use of English.  While in Beijing, we saw lots of examples of signs that were just funny.  In the pool area of our hotel is a sign that says “Slip and fall down carefully”.

While at the Beijing Amusement Park, most of the rides included Alcoholism as one of the symptoms you might have to prevent you from going on a ride (“You must not ride this if you suffer from Heart problems, pregnancy, or alcoholism.”  I kept imagining recovering alcoholics staying off these rides in case they caused a relapse.

Most of the Westerners we saw in Beijing were not English speakers (or at least not as a first language).  We heard people speaking Russian, French, and Swedish . . . but all the signs that were translated, were shown in Chinese and English.  My son pointed out to me, when he saw a sign that said to turn off you cell phone instead of mobile phone, that they were specifically translated into American English.

Some of the signs were okay, but so many were either vague (a sign along a river bank says “Please away from the water”) or complicated (the instructions for how to pay for food in the Food Republic food court at the APM shopping centre on Wanfujing street is impossible to read).  Some are intentionally cute and funny, like a sign in the Olympic village that says “The Grass is smiling at you”.

This is often referred to as Chinglish.  The BBC ran story while we were still over there with several other photos of strange Chinglish signs.  The story is here.

Outside the Forbidden City (on the East Gate) is a set of posh toilets.  (The only reason I call them posh is because it costs 1 yuan –about 10p– to use them.  The sign above the doors in Chinese says that it’s the room for men to urinate in.  But, here greeting you as you enter one of China’s most revered treasures, is my favourite sign of all:

The kids love saying it, now.

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2. Scaffolding in Tiananmen Square
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Well, wouldn’t you know it?  The entire time we were in Beijing (two whole weeks!), several of the monuments in Tiananmen were covered in scaffolding.  In this picture on the right, you can’t even see the “Peoples Republic of China” characters because they are behind green scaffolding.

I kind of felt like Chevy Chase in National Lampoon’s Vacation when he drives cross country to Wally’s World to find out that it’s closed.  I wonder what tourists to New York thought in the eighties when the Statue of Liberty was in scaffolding for months while they refurbished it for the 1986 anniversary.

The 60th Anniversary of the PRC is taking place next month, so they must be getting ready for that.  Even the Monument to the People’s Heroes in the square was covered in scaffolding.

It wasn’t too bad at night, you could still see the characters when they were illuminated.

Despite all the maintenance, the square was packed every day we went (we found ourselves back at the square about 4 times in total).

I mentioned in the earlier post that I was surprised by the number of Chinese tourists.  For some reason, I expected all the tourists to be from the west.  But most of the tourists were from around China making a once in a lifetime trip to see their capital.  It’s no different than the tourists in the States who make the cross-country trip to Washington DC.  I’ve been living in England so long I forgot what is was like being in a big country.  In fact, the Chinese tourists had more reason to be visiting than I did, I guess.  They weren’t put off by the maintenance work at all.

Another site that was closed was the Science and Technology Museum.  We took a taxi across town the visit the museum, but when we arrived (and our taxi left), we found that it was closed for a month for renovations.  There were several ‘unofficial’ taxi drivers swarming around like vultures in the front of the museum trying to get us to take their taxis to another site like the Beijing Aquarium.  We stood there, not sure what to do—but I was sure I didn’t want to watch fish at an aquarium.  I noticed a man with a young boy who seemed to have made the same mistake we did and was trying to decide where to go next.  He was being hounded by the drivers just like us.  I walked over to the man and asked him where he was going next.  He seemed surprised that I was trying to talk to him in Chinese—but I was obviously not a driver and not trying to sell him anything.  He told me that they were going to find the underground train and go to the Military Museum.  I asked if we could follow them.  We had only been taking taxis until then, so it sounded fun.  The drivers were annoyed, but we all walked off.

We walked with this man’s family (himself, his wife, and their son) and another family they were friends with for about a mile and a half to the underground station.  They were visiting from Inner Mongolia.  We talked about school out there and they were very interested in our 3 children.  They didn’t speak any English—but they told me their son was learning English in school (he didn’t want to show me what he knew).

There were two boys in their group.  I asked if they were brothers.  One boy’s mother told me that they couldn’t be brothers because China has too many people.  They could only have one child.  I knew this, of course, so I felt a little stupid.  Then I asked if they were cousins.  No, she told me, they are not cousins but only friends.  The one child rule came in in 1979.  I realised that China would not have siblings, but I never considered that this would one day mean no cousins, no uncles, no aunts . .

It took us ages getting to the subway station—the other Dad, being a tourist too, really had no idea where the station was but shared my keen sense of direction.  We stopped and asked a lot of passers-by for directions.

The subway train we rode was very crowded.  The Beijing subway at 2pm was like the Central Line at 5pm.  It took a couple of hours, but when we finally arrived at the Military Museum . . . it was closed.  It was Monday, and the museum is always closed on Monday.  But I didn’t mind.  This was the only real time we were able to have a lengthy conversation with a Chinese family.  If the Science Museum had been open, we wouldn’t have been able meet them at all.

It was a great experience.

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There’s so much to talk about Beijing.  It’s difficult to know where to start.  I’ll probably have more than one post on this trip, so I hope it doesn’t bore anyone.

I spent most of the time speaking Mandarin.  I’ve been studying it for so long that it often felt odd listening to so many people speak it too.  A lot of people out there speak a tiny amount of English but a surprising amount spoke none.  When I spoke Mandarin, people seemed to really appreciate it and enjoyed having conversations on various subjects.

For this trip to China, we went as a family.  It was good for the kids to see another country and experience what another culture is like.

I have three sons- aged 4 to 11.  This turned a lot of heads.  Everywhere we went, people would comment on our children or we would hear them commenting to each other (“三个儿子”) about how many kids we have.  Many Chinese people would stop and tell me how strong my family is.  Some told me about the one-child policy and we did feel very guilty for bringing three.  Some asked me how many we were allowed to have in England.

When I imagined going to Beijing, I imagined going to Epcot Centre.  I figured that since the Olympics last year, the place would be entirely Westernised.  If I wanted to see “Real China”, Beijing might not be the place to do it.  I expected to see mostly Westerners and everything would cater to us.  But I was wrong.  We saw very few Westerners at all.  The ones we did see were Russians.  I saw no Western kids at all.  Most of the people we spoke with were tourists from around China—making a trip to their nation’s capital.  So, we, a family of 5, were the object of much interest.

In our first day in Beijing, while walking along the Wangfujing shopping street, we were frequently stopped by Chinese people asking to take their pictures with us.  I noticed a lot of other people took out pictures without asking at all—like you would take pictures of animals in the zoo.  Once a few people posed for pictures with us, people started to swarm and everyone wanted to add us to their photo albums. Some people wanted pictures with only the kids.  Some young ladies wanted their pictures taken with me alone (the extra weight doesn’t matter in China, I guess).  For a while, I thought they might have mistaken us for someone famous (like that guy last year shouting “I’m not Michael Phelps” while everyone crowded around him).  It was a lot of fun, actually.  We felt like we were famous.  It was cool—on the first day!

Everywhere we went, we would be stopped at least once for a photo opportunity with someone.  We posed with everyone—kids, parents, teenagers, and a family even made their old grandmother sit down next to us on a curb in Tiananmen Square to take a picture.  After a week, whenever someone would walk up to us carrying a camera, we would start to pose.

After a few days, my younger boys started to protest and make faces when people took their pictures.  We tried to explain how this is not polite and that they should smile, but it really did become overwhelming after a while.  The standard pose for pictures in China seems to be the two-finger peace symbol—so that’s how we posed.

Once, while riding a hired boat in the lake at Beihai Park, a family followed around the lake in their boat for about 20 minutes until we stopped and let them circle around us to take a picture.  We sat in our boat—everyone making a peace symbol and smiling.

All over China, people are returning from their holiday to Beijing and showing their friends pictures of us.  Weird.

Even when we weren’t being photographed, we were being watched.  We had many meal where at least one person from the next table was turned around in their chair watching us continuously.  I would look at them, just to acknowledge that I knew they were staring and said Ni Hao but they would continue to watch us like we were a show for them.  After a few days, I got used to this.  But, if you have kids—especially more than one—you know that you sometimes need to raise your voice (“Don’t pick that up off the floor!”, “Just don’t touch him, okay?”, “Whoever is kicking had better stop!”) and it was difficult to do this when you have several eyes on you.

We spent two weeks there.  We saw Tiananmen Square, the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Olympic Village and several other sites.  I’ll write some more on what it was like in future posts.

I plan on returning to China (to Dalian) in a few months to meet with some software companies.  But for now, It’s nice to be home.

Related posts:

1. Back from holiday
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I didn’t choose it, but it was assigned to me.  I’ve been using it here and there for the past 19 years.  I occasionally start up conversations with Chinese people I meet on the street (sometimes to the embarrassment of my family) and try to read Voice of America articles online from time to time.  A few years ago, I paid a tutor to meet me during my lunchtimes once a week so I could practice speaking and reading Mandarin.

photo credit: nuomi

It is a skill that is not critical to my job, but I try to maintain anyway.  A few years ago, I was able to translate (surprisingly well) for a group of Chinese visitors who were involved in a joint venture with the company I was working for.  Last year, I met with an official at the Chinese Embassy in London where we discussed software offshoring for almost an hour—entirely in Mandarin.

But I’ve never been to China.

I’ve always intended to go, but there was always a reason it was not possible.  Most of the time, it was too expensive to go.  Then, with small kids, it was just too difficult.  Sometimes, the scarce holiday time was used to go back to the States instead—to spend some long overdue time with my family there.  Even this year, I had scheduled a trip to Dalian, but had to cancel because of problems with my UK visa being transferred to my new American passport.  Sometimes it feels as if I will never make it there.

Tomorrow, I’m going to Beijing.  I’m very excited.  This is the one place in the world I’ve always wanted to go.

There are still possible obstacles in the way.  Already, the travel agent has given me problems about the fact that the first name on my plane ticket is not spelled exactly as it is on my passport.  “I’m sorry, we can’t change it now.  Even though it is an E-Ticket, you either have to rebook the flight and lose all of your money, or hope that the Customs and Excise people are reasonable and let you through.”  Even though my visa and passport are in order, my trip may be cut short due to bureaucracy around the ticket.

I’m also concerned about the swine flu.  I’ve been reading all over the web about people being put into quarantine for 7 days in China because someone on the flight had a temperature.  From what I’ve read, someone will board the plane upon landing and take everyone’s temperature with a temperature gun.  If someone who sits around you has a temperature, you could be spending time in quarantine.  I thought about waiting until Swine flu is over, but who knows when that will be?  There will be another reason next year not to go—and the year after that.

When I was first learning the language, we had Chinese teacher who would talk about the streets of Beijing.  I can remember trying to say something I considered complicated in Chinese—stumbling over the words—tones all wrong—and I’m sure it sounded horrible.  He would look up at the ceiling while considering what I had said.  To be polite, he would always say, “It wasn’t exactly right, but if you were on the streets of Beijing, they would understand what you just said.”  Well, we’ll see.

Last year, when I met with the official at the Chinese Embassy, I mentioned that I started learning Chinese in 1991—soon after the Tiananmen massacre (“Note: NEVER mention the Tiananmen Square massacre to someone from China!”).  I told him that I planned on visiting China one day, but wasn’t sure when.  He looked at me and said, “Eric, China has changed so much since then.  It’s completely different.” I’ve been watching the news and know that China is growing quickly.  But, when he said that to me, I felt kind of sad—like I was letting it slip away from me.  In the movie “Dances with Wolves”, Kevin Costner’s character chooses to go to the frontier so he could see it before it is gone.  I feel like I need to go to China before it changes further.  I want to see China while it is still China.

I hope I’m not too late.

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2. UKTI "Doing Business in China and Hong Kong" seminar
3. Dalian CISIS trip in jeopardy