Ape Rifle

Just thought I’d drop in a net cafe to electronically announce that Chongqing is one of the CRAZIEST cities I have ever been to.

If you have yet to visit it, think of a mini-Manhattan crammed onto a mountainous peninsula, huge buildings jammed impossibly close together as they hang off cliffs, top hills and look over Industrial Revolution style brownbrick housing (itself somehow impossibly cluttered on and over cliffs and hillsides). If the “cookie cutter” planning of most other Chinese urban centers is getting you down, then definitely check this place out. There is not a wide, straight or level street in sight! The hilly layout makes for some crazy views: you are walking on a sidewalk that all of the sudden turns into a narrow passageway that’s twenty floors up! Roads randomly turn into elevated highways that twist off to who knows where, and staircases seem to randomly go up and down to streets that are somehow above AND below you. Sound confusing? It is!This place is rather easy to get lost in, as I found out about 20 minutes after I got here. But that’s half the fun. Chongqing is the real world stand-in for Gotham City of Batman fame, especially at night when every building shines with radiant, tacky neon.

Of course, this city is also seriously dirty. The Chang Jiang smells like a sewer, and the air makes you think you are in the heart of a forest fire. But as a unique urban experience, it’s tops. For such a large Chinese city, there are a surprising amount of old neighbourhoods still around to explore, with markets and alleyways winding up and down staircases all through the hills. The sheer congestion of trying to cram all of this onto a narrow peninsula makes for some amazing energy. And don’t even get me started on the hotpots and pineapple beer…Chongqing, will you marry me? Tons of pictures on the way (from the whole trip) when I get back to Hangzhou.

Well, here I am, sitting in Kunming once again. It seems that a decent number of my China experiences include a few days of relaxation in this great, sunny town. However, the detailed travelogue postings can wait. Instead, I thought I’d relate a quick story which I feel amply demonstrates that, even on vacation, living in China can at times be quite frustrating for lost foreigners. Here goes:

Yesterday I realized that my cell phone was quickly running out of funds. Since I have to meet up with some fellow travelling co-workers in Chengdu (I’m currently alone in Kunming), I figure a dead phone is of not much use to me. Problem easily solved, I say to myself. I’ll just step into the nearest China Mobile branch and fill ‘er up with a sweet 50RMB.

I quickly find such a place, but am informed they only have 100RMB cards. Oh well, no big deal. The clerk then fiddles with my phone before telling me she can’t get through. She phones the China Mobile service number on her phone and it doesn’t work either. The system is down for a bit, she says. No problem, I can wait.

A few minutes later the system comes back up, but she still can’t get the number to work on my phone. She calls over her friend, who proceeds to take my phone apart to scientifically examine the SIM Card. The newcomer asks me where the number is based, and I tell her Hangzhou. She then informs me that she is sorry, but that my phone won’t work in Yunnan. I tell her that is strange, because I have just spend the past two weeks using it all over the province, hence my lack of credit on the phone. They give me my money back, I leave.

Down the street I see a large China Mobile office. Perfect! I figure such a palace of telecommunications will be able to deal with my Zhejiang Province number. I find my way to a clerk, but my number seems to freeze up her computer (it doesn’t exist or something). She then informs me that to deal with out-of-province accounts, I will have to go to some super central branch. She scribbles down the address for me on a piece of paper. Given that me and handwritten Chinese characters don’t mix very well, I have to ask about 4 people along the way before I find my destination.

The building is huge, and there is a two-storey China Mobile logo on the front. I’m in business! If any place is central enough to deal with my “foreign” account, it should be this one.

I walk to the information desk and inform them, in my best broken Chinese, that my phone number is based in Hangzhou and that I need to put money in my account. I am instantly directed upstairs to windows 2 and 2, the “global account services”. Any minute now, I should be strolling out of the building with some fresh credit to blow on SMS messaging.

Alas, it was not to be. The clerk tries to enter my number into her computer, but again it seems to freeze. She asks her co-worker to try at her desk, but to no avail. Apparently my phone number crashes China Mobile’s network. The clerk informs me that my number is from outside of Yunnan and thus cannot be accessed. I ask her (in approximate broken Chinese, of course) where the wisdom is in letting people use their phones all over the country if they can only fill up the credit from their “home” province. She doesn’t know. And I don’t know why the global account services counter can’t deal with things outside of Yunnan province.

So if anyone out there knows how to deal with this sort of fiasco, please let me know!

After two overnight sleeper trains, four days in Shandong province, a day in Shanghai, six hours in Pudong airport and three hours in bus, I’m pretty much too tired to write any sort of coherent blog entry. But since I’m leaving for Yunnan province tomorrow and will be crashing around the Southwest for several weeks, I figured any entry was better than nothing, literary masterpiece or not.

I was going to write up some detailed comparison between Hangzhou and Zibo, firing up the great “North vs. South” debate that expats seem to love. Instead, due to my fatigue (and unfinished packing, yikes), I’m thinking I’ll just post some pictures instead. Needless to say, my trip back to Shandong threw me back into the China I first experienced, bringing back memories (and smells) that my time in Hangzhou, with it’s southern coastal glitz and numerous Starbucks, has been busing burying. I must admit that life in the capital of Zhejiang province is much more comfortable and cosmopolitan, but in the end Zibo is probably a better window on what is truly going on in this country. That little ol’ industrial town is China unleashed. It exposes bare many of the serious problems this country is facing, but its genuine friendliness is quite the relief from some of the nouveau riche snobbery encountered in the bigger, “everything is fine and getting better” urban centers.

So that’s all for now, the detailed comparison will have to wait for a while (don’t worry, I’m working on it in my mind).