Travel Diary: An American in Beijing(2)

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Orr Shtuhl is a summer intern at chinadaily.com.cn and a recent graduate from the University of North Carolina. This is his first time to China, a trip he prepared by learning how to count to five in Putonghua.

You may see him on the streets of Beijing, pointing at things he's trying to buy, reading maps upside down, or trying his skills at spitting. The following are his diary entries during his two-month stay.

Sunday, 5/20/07 | And Found

I woke up at 3 am on my first morning, unadjusted to Beijing time. One DVD and 15 Mandarin flashcards later, it was late enough to attempt some grocery shopping. After consulting my shopping list - "toilet paper, water" - I crammed Duoshao qian? (How much does this cost?) into my wallet, repeated in vocal Mandarin: "Hello, thank you, 1 2 3 4 5," and stepped into the cool, blue morning.

Just outside my residential block is the shockingly floral Yuan Dynasty Park, with straight walkways lining a smooth, reflecting canal. It was early on a Sunday, so the only vital signs in the streets were construction workers (eating), unaccompanied dogs too fluffy to be strays, and armies of seniors doing calisthenics. Some seniors moved forward with jogging motions, taking small enough steps to be passed by other seniors walking leisurely. But most of the morningfolk gathered on concrete squares, following a spry instructor in exercise-video fashion.

Above the tinny echo of their New Age aerobics recording sounded an orchestra of raucous sound of clearing throats and spitting. Public expectoration is at serious levels in Beijing, where city officials have resorted to a public awareness campaign to calm the habit before the 2008 Olympics. Yet the unambiguous bilingual sign of park rules had no effect on these citizens, whose habit I found so charming that I relieved my sinuses of Beijing smog and hocked a few myself.

The first order of the morning was finding a bathroom, so my hopes peaked and crashed when I bent my steps toward a WC sign, only to find a complete drought of toilet paper inside. I'd been warned of this - even more crucial than packing a toothbrush was TP - but I forgot. Another warning chimed from memory as I surveyed the unforested stalls: China squats. My apartment was blessed with a Western chair-style toilet, but the classic Chinese receiver is more like a porcelain pit jutting an inch out of the tiling. This was function, not furniture; leafing through a newspaper was probably out of the question.

Disheartened and unrelieved, I left the park in search of breakfast. A muddled exchange with a server at a small eatery earned me a tasty meal of Chinese comfort food: a fried empanada-like semicircle filled with salty chives and clear noodles, and a sweet sesame dough ball (ma tuan). At only 2 RMB, this was my first real victory of the day.

Emboldened by my purchase and by the increased volume of my digestive organs, I explored farther from home base in search of toilet paper or a stocked restroom. A short, sprawling building marked "International Department of Health\" looked appealing - clean, with bilingual signs - so I approached the woman sitting outside with a reflective orange uniform marked "P" (parking, I learned later). After a brief exchange in which I used two vocabulary words (bathroom, left), I figured I'd gained permission to walk through the open hospital doors. Inside, I was like a spy. Every footstep was secret, every sign was gathered intelligence. Like a toddler testing his parents' limits, I was pushing for access, seeing how far this would work before I was outed, and every inch was a thrill. It was probably a public building, but I was not part of this public, and it felt like stealing.

On the long way to the bathroom, I passed a hospital store, which sold meds, soap, TP (!), snacks, groceries, and laundry detergent. I checked the bathroom for toiletries and found it empty, so I doubled back to buy some. Outside the bathroom, a doctor was wheeling a reclined patient on a bed, and I felt a bit guilty: I'm stealing these people's resources. These bathrooms are for the ailing and their loved ones. A healthy man passed me, headed purposefully for the toilet with some tissue balled loosely in one hand. Do they all just keep reserves in their pockets? Well, it's been 30 hours; I'm suffering too.

But when I got my plastic-wrapped roll of TP in my cargo pocket, photo memories of porcelain pits flickered on my brain. Stained, smelly pits that maybe had plumbing. I was just a few minutes from home, where I could install my new roll! A grocery had opened in time for the journey home, calling for a few purchases: water, bananas, beer, more TP, towels (all pastel-colored), and a carton of unrefrigerated milk that took a quarter hour to pick out and was extra sweet and a little salty. I wanted to try more exotic groceries but felt silly buying anything without knowing what my eating schedule would be like at work. Consoling was the total, which came to roughly 6 $USD for four small grocery bags. Comforted by spending power and the safety net for financial mistakes it provided, I took my bounty home, holding the bags at my sides as proof of citizenship.(By Orr Shtuhl)

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