British Born Chinese visits North and South of China - Part 1

Entering Beijing

Well I've just gotten back from a one month trip in China, and travelling from Beijing to Guangzhou on a 23hr journey by slow train and getting in touch with my families cultural roots, and what a great experience it was.

My travel itinerary was Beijing for 7days,during Chinese holiday week in the first week of October then Guangzhou for 7 days and then Beijing for another 7 days. The first thing that comes to mind in staying in Beijing are the following: stand up toilets often with no toilet paper( bring your own), lots of people, crazy queues esp when waiting to board a long distance train, and beggars.


To be honest for the first week I wasn't too fond of being amongst Beijing people and my first experience of stepping on a bus and having to stand because there were no seats and a loose window rattling beside my head threatening to crack and cave in whilst the bus driver was hooting every second wasnt a good start, but by travelling with my mainlander friend, the trip managed to transform from one of hate and unfamiliarity into one of love, and that now im back in the dismal U.K. i can't wait to leave and go back.

Course living there in the long term would no doubt raise it's own set of issues but having travelled from North of China to South then back up to North again ( I didnt get to visit the middle but will do some point later) I can safely say that North is where I feel i fit in the best.

Fitting into the crowd

Being a BBC who has had little contact with the east, for me there's a huge difference between talking about being Chinese on the blog and having discussions about FOBS and BBCS and actually being in China and when you get here just being surrounded by so many Chinese, to me such arguments are considered obsolete.

 Despite lots of reports of mainlanders reputed to have messy and disgusting habits,  I didn't really experience anything of the sort. In fact, for me the best thing was just queuing up with the people and seeing their smiles and pride in taking photos in front of Mao. I mean where in the UK would you see so much patriotism? Would even an English family visit Buckingham palace on a holiday? London is pretty much a tourist area for European tourists, brits tend to stay in or do other things.

The only negative experience I can recall is when I was pushed aside by a photographer who was taking photos of a family, I guess maybe he was a hired hand by the look of his professional camera equipment. Granted his rudeness pissed me off, and when it happened again( !) but at a different photo spot , i wanted to say something but thought probably best not to.


The only other bad experience I had of the famous Chinese queue barging was when I was queuing at a weighing machine in a Guangzhou supermarket on a hot day.  Naturally being first in queue, I handed him my Chinese pears when, a small woman pushed me aside-  kid in one arm, bag of apples in the other - completely ignoring me. Then i tried again - another woman appeared -quickly shoved her bag of mushrooms infront of me. So this was starting to piss me off. Then low and behold on my right a small woman appeared - bag of fruit at the ready. So this time I gave her an retaliating stare. She backed away and I managed to get my Chinese pears weighed.

In retrospect its easier to say ' ah that's China' but compared to the horror stories I had heard before getting here,, I'd guess that people are getting more mannered.

For the first two weeks, I was accompanied  by my mainlander friend and in the first week in Beijing  with his friend from Mongolia visiting Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, was a great experience. Visiting these tourists sites, yes, but specially being amongst the people.

Whilst the west is in decline, China is on the rise, and to be part of that felt great,  as nothing swells the Chinese pride than being stuck in a crowd of happy , grateful mainlanders who are queuing up to have their photo infront of Mao's portrait, and you definitely don't feel as a 'minority' as you'd normally feel as a BBC in the UK.

For now, as much as the quirks that take some getting used to, like the Beijing taxis hooting all day long outside your hotel, the constant spitting, ... the errs and aars of the Northern accent, all I can say from my first experience my nationalist pride was reinforced and Beijing made me feel quite welcome.