If only the word Propaganda began with the letter “C”. Instead we will have to make due with confusing, colliding and competing communist capitalism, censorship and conspiracy, coercion by the former champion chairman and comrades of China. This is The Big C.

I referred to China as ‘the big C’ before our arrival because I was, frankly, a little apprehensive. I had that feeling in the pit of my stomach much like I did upon our arrival into India, the feeling of, ‘whether I like it or not, I’m here now….’. But now as look out the window of my Trans-Mongolian railway compartment as we leave rural China behind, I still can’t get over how un-scary China was. In fact, it was possibly one of the easiest countries we’ve traveled in.

Not only was China easy, it was warm and welcoming and has in place one of the smoothest and most efficient tourist infrastructures I’ve seen. Apparently the rest of America had received this information already as I think half the American population was holidaying here. The rest of the world owes a big apology to Americans for giving them a hard time about never leaving America. Oh, they do! Just only to China by the looks of it as we saw more Americans here than we’ve seen anywhere else in the world. Old ones, young ones, bus loads of them being guided around by chipper and enthusiastic young Chinese tour guides carrying a ‘follow this flag’ flag, making China the new Europe. And everyone, including David and I, was having a great time. Which begs the question, in light of historical as well as very current events, is it politically incorrect to love China?

I felt conflicted throughout our time in China. I believe the tourist industry has received some wonderful guidance from somewhere or someone for they know exactly what western visitors need and want and they deliver with sincere excitement. The hostels are splendid dens of western comfort and security housed in some of the most traditional and spectacular Chinese buildings. One doesn’t have to work too hard to find English menus, the toilets aren’t too challenging, transportation is fine and they don’t blare the Chinese pop karaoke on the buses nearly as loud as the Thais do.

And a circuit of China is truly a star-studded sight-seeing affair. I can now exclaim the glories of The Terracota Warriors, the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Yangtze river, China’s many stunning gorges, mountains, ancient walled cities, simple and elegant courtyard houses and twinkling lanterns. In the end, who can blame tourists for going home wearing “I heart China” t-shirts? But, I can’t help but feel that we have all been duped, we have fallen under the spell just as the Chinese citizens have.

You see, the heartbreaking stories are hidden farther beneath the surface here than they are in other countries we’ve visited. It takes a bit of work on the part of the tourist to keep in mind the things we’ve read. It would be so much easier for us if the Chinese walked around with thought bubbles over their heads, “I am an 8 year old girl and I take care of my entire family and don’t go to school because my life isn’t as valuable as my brother’s”, “I am a writer and my work is banned”, “I was arrested for speaking my mind”, “I had the land my family has toiled for decades taken away from me and was left with nothing”. I’m not making this up for drama, these things and worse are happening right now, today. But if you believe every Chinese citizen we saw interviewed for any news story, the entire country thinks and is actually proclaiming, “The future is bright!! The government is great!!”

David and I had righteously declared a personal boycott of China out of human rights principles and were slightly dismayed that our Trans-Mongolian dream had to start in China, forcing us to go. And now that I have been and left, I will resume my critiques right where I left off. However, while I was there, within the great walls and away from free speech and most outside news of any kind, I found myself lamenting we didn’t have more time. We devoured our Lonely Planet’s advice and went on a sight-seeing, Chinese food eating spree and were quite happy to be doing so. I don’t know entirely know what to say or how to justify what might look like hypocrisy except to say that it would probably happen to you too and you, also, would come home with the t-shirt.

As we continue to eat our way around the world, we are pleased to offer you, our dear readers, tonight’s special dish:

Fried Put Down Bag, Dried Veg Tabasco with Pepper

So, place your napkin upon your lap and toast both the wondrous and bizarre as we bring you the best and worst culinary China has to offer.Nowhere in the world quite sets the expectation of fine food more than China. It was probably the first international cuisine any of us ever tasted and so holds a special place in our hearts – the exotic orient brought to our doors in polystyrene containers and plastic bags. Does Kung Pao Chicken taste the same here as it does at home? Is there really no such thing as Chop Suey in China? Can the Chinese make a decent wine? Well, the answers are yes… and no (with the exception of the last question which is a definite NO)

First, some background. Chinese cuisine is, like a compass, divided into four directions or schools of cooking: north, south, east and west. Each supposedly distinctive and each one supposedly better than the next. Apparently these schools are such a big deal they warrant a multi-million dollar movie being made about their culinary competition. Lady Iron Chef is a Hong Kong film where the two heroines battle it out kung-fu style for regional cooking supremacy. Somehow I can’t see British or American regional cooking doing likewise: is Yorkshire Pudding better than Trifle or is Applebees better in Florida or Maine? But we have now traveled all around this great country and I can tell you that I can’t taste the difference but then why should I when it all tastes great? I’ll leave the debating to the experts whilst I get on with the eating.

Here’s how mealtimes work for us:

First we must find a restaurant. The Chinese do not cook at home so there are restaurants everywhere but we have to find another one and then another and then yet another until all our basic criteria are met: other people are eating there, it has a menu in English, plastic food or pictures and there is no sign of rats (live ones that is, rats on the menu are fine).

Chinese authorities care for the welfare of the dining public so many restaurants offer a combination of the following qualifications proudly displayed by placards in the entryways:

• The Chinese Famous Flavor Dish Award presented by the China Hospitality Association. The certificate is written in English but the dish they were awarded it for is in Chinese so we’ve no idea if we should order it.

• China Tourist Board Star Rated Toilets. One to five stars signify the quality of squat toilet. Five stars probably means it actually flushes.

• Beijing City Council Sanitation Rating (A-F). It appears to be law that all restaurants in Beijing must display this rating on a big sandwich board outside their doors. Many don’t so we can assume they got an F which probably means other restaurants are very proud of achieving an E or above. Never once saw an A.

On to food selection. Without other diners’ dishes to rudely gawp at in an attempt to identify their meat content or without some other form of food reference, it is likely we will eat the only words we know: Chow Fen (fried rice). Our guide book has a menu decoder but it’s utterly useless. Here’s an example or something we can order by showing the person the Chinese characters from the book: snake. We long since dispensed with it and moved on to pointing and making animal sounds. Unlike many other cultures where a restaurant specializes in one type of food, Chinese eateries will make anything, anything that is if you know how to order it. But, as hard as this sounds, we have only ended up once or twice getting chow fen as the default. Usually it works out. As often as not, a handwritten English menu is dug up from somewhere and then the fun can really begin. The English menu contains not what the restaurant can make but only what it can translate and sometimes the translations leave us more confused than the Chinese characters. As well as the obvious spelling mistakes, some foods just don’t cross the international dateline. The menu may look like this:

• Fried Put Down Bag, Dried Veg Tabasco with pepper

• Cat’s Ears in Dough (Poodle)

• Dogmeat with Veggies

• Braised Donkey

• Candy Yam

• Rat Stir Fry

• Boiled Bull Frog

I don’t do rat, dog or donkey. Rats are dirty, why on earth would you eat something that daily consumes its own weight in trash to live. Dogs are cute (but they often lick their own bums). Donkey is not a luxury meat, it’s lower on the food-chain and evolutionary scale than horse and we all know to avoid that. Bull Frog might be OK. I like French frog’s legs but I’ve seen the frogs in the market waiting to be sold and they are big ugly toad like creatures. Perhaps if Kermit was on the menu it would be different. Sarah wants nothing to do with the humble bull frog. Of course, every part of ‘normal’ animals are on offer including trotters, heads, feet, livers, tongues and brains but, hey, waste not, want not.

As for pricing: cheap. Bottom of the quality scale is $2 a dish. $4 is about where we like to be and, of course it goes up from there. One main dish, one veggie side and two bowls of rice rarely comes to more than $8 for two people and we are stuffed afterwards.

Now, here’s a funny thing about rice. In China they say ‘rice is life’. If that’s truly so then people must be dying all over the place because at every meal except one, our rice has failed to materialize. I don’t know about your Chinese table waiting experience, but rice, just the plain old boiled/steamed stuff, would be the one thing you wouldn’t forget; after all, it’s 10 cents a bowl and everyone eats it. I would just bring it anyway, ordered or not. But no, not for us, we have to ask for rice multiple times before it appears. And then, because we ask for it multiple times from multiple staff it appears multiple times on our bill.

The food quality is generally great. Not as greasy as you would think and the veggies are always top notch, fresh from the market. The sauces are just what you want them to be: a little spicy but still with flavor. Imagine going to an expensive Chinese restaurant where you live. Here, that’s the everyday norm and it’s sometimes better. However, the portion sizes are often so large we tire from the continuation of the same flavor but we generally only have one full meal a day so the volume is just what we need.

Beer. A good subject. There are two brands of beer on offer throughout the whole of China; T’sing-Dao and ‘Local’. T’sing-Dao is the national brand; started by the Germans when they owned the Chinese city of Qingdao and continued by the Chinese when they booted them out. It’s a really good lager – as good as the native Dutch lagers. Local Beer is whatever is brewed locally. The local breweries must steal the T’sing-Dao bottles because it often comes in the same green vessel complete with ‘T’sing-Dao’ embossed on the glass but with a hastily applied local label. It ranges from gassy to explosive. It also has a nasty habit of coming out of you in the same liquid form it went in. Beer is also cheep and they drink a lot of it. 600ml of T’sing-Dao is about $1 to $1.50 and local beer is cheaper than tourist water.

Oh yes, the wine. I nearly forgot. It’s bad, avoid it. It is however, made from grapes and not pineapple which makes it better than wine in the rest of Asia.

Eating in Asia is always an adventure and it often makes me wonder if we’re not a little bit fussy in the west. Sure, hygiene is nice but it doesn’t seem to be too important. Menus are whatever the chef can knock up and who needs a dishwasher when there’s a perfectly fine standpipe in the alley down beside the restaurant. However, what I miss most about eating in the west, and no, it’s not the service, is ambiance. We like to take our time, chat, gaze at each other over candlelight and sip our coffee at the end. In China, the food comes quick (except boiled rice) and you need to leave even quicker when you’re done not because of table turn but because the florescent lights have caused temporary snow blindness.

Next to Mongolia, home of mutton and little else. Stay tuned fellow food fans.

The Asians have a particular way of going about their bus business and it isn’t the way we go about ours. Riding the bus anywhere in Asia appears at first to be a step back in time; the lack of humanity and civility being almost too much to bare. Then, after enough bum-numbing, vomit inducing, deafening and death defying miles you can’t help but wonder at the total humanity of it all. It’s a humanity that is lacking in the west. We are cut of from our fellow humans by our iPods and desire to just get to where we’re going without interacting with or catching a cold from the guy sitting next to us. Take away the iPod and make the common cold the least of the ailments you have to worry about and the bus becomes the connection between you and your world with a chance to chat to your neighbours in the process.

For those who’ve forgotten our previous explanations or didn’t read them in the first place, here’s the lowdown on how buses in this part of the world work. Firstly, you need find the damn bus. There are generally two places in town from where one is almost, but not definitely, able to catch a bus: the bus stations. Yes, two of them. One for local buses and one for long distance. What actually constitutes local versus long distance appears to be the actual size of bus. Short, shitty ones for the short shitty trips and longer crappy ones for the longer and infinitely more crappy journeys. Now, it is entirely possible to go to some destinations from either station and the trick is know where the best buses depart from, trip length or cost is not important as I will now describe.

Some trips may look short on paper but if they go through many villages they will get longer. Not because of traffic but because of passengers. You see, the bus stops are wherever the bus stops and that is usually wherever the people either wish to alight or board. That could be, and often is, about 50m from where the bus last pulled over. There’s no ‘next stop’ button on the bus and rarely a ‘bus stop’ sign on the street. The trick seems to be to wave at an oncoming bus, if it stops, great, otherwise just stand there wondering why it didn’t pull over for you. Handy if you want the bus, infuriating if you’re on the bus. Sooner or later, 1km has involved 10 stops. Once you get going again, it will be time to stop – this time for fuel. Everyone will get off the bus and head for the less than sanitary bathrooms. Sometimes, the bathroom is right outside the bus or even against it. Five minutes later, the horn honks and everyone clambers back on board for the two minute trip around the corner to the local bus station, where, once again, everyone will alight in order to purchase whatever stinky and wholly unsuitable for bus travel food they can find. Soup in a plastic bag is NOT a good travel snack. The bus may sit at this small town station for a while. Not to give everyone a chance for nourishment but to try and drum up more business. Unlike our world, there is no contract awarded to one bus company, here as many bus companies as there are buses can compete for routes and customers. Shouting and cajoling occur as people are lured onto the idling or moving bus. Once all are aboard, including geese, grain and other rural necessities, it’s time to pull away. But, you may not get very far, if the bus isn’t full to bursting point, the bus may well crawl along the road as the conductor shouts out its destination trying to persuade anyone to climb aboard who vaguely thought they might like to go where the bus is ultimately heading.

Once the driver can get a clear shot at the road it’s time for the in-flight entertainment. It is always, without fail, music video karaoke. Loud, obnoxious and uniform. Regardless of the song, at least a couple of people on-board will know it, or think they do, and will start singing. Often the song isn’t even in the native language of the people and subtitles appear to help everyone out. We have been fortunate to crack the secret of why everyone in Asia can sing any song. The English subtitles that appeared on one bus trip were in fact, phonetic. We could ‘latra lee gay trom pooh’ with the rest of the bus – a brotherhood of man at long last. The songs are so insipid and repetitive, it takes only two minutes to learn the tune and three minutes for it to drive you insane. Any bus that advertises DVD is to be avoided except they all have it so what’s the point. If you’re lucky enough to have a malfunctioning video system, don’t worry because someone on the bus is bound to turn on their cell phone and blast not only crappy music but crappy quality crappy music at you. It doesn’t matter if the passengers are 8 or 80, they all love this terrible music and they all know it. Even the driver loves it too. AHHHHH!

Where was I? Oh yes, cost. The bus is almost always cheap. Pennies in some cases. But there’s a good chance you’ll die on one so the savings you make can be offset nicely against your repatriation costs. Sometimes the bus costs more going back the same route you came out. Why, I’m not sure. Perhaps your survival on the way out has boosted the moxie of the driver. Speaking of which, drivers are often only drivers because they are sitting in the front seat, no other qualification appears to be necessary. If the driver’s fatality rate is low then he gets the easy routes otherwise the tricky, mountainous routes go to those less experienced. Seniority has its advantages.

Our Asian friends overcome the stress of bus travel by immediately falling asleep. Often they are asleep before the bus has even left the station and make a point of both fully reclining their seat before there is anyone sitting behind them and taking up both seats with bags and smelly food. Even assigned seating offers false hope as they often cannot or choose not to read their ticket. This holds true of airplanes as well but fortunately the flight attendants know all their numbers and sort out conflicts with ruthless efficiency. On the subject of flights, many of our Asian friends think the plane is a bus and they can get up a pee whenever they want (i.e. whilst we’re landing) and that seat belts are there to please the airline, not aid in their safety and that rushing onto the plane guarantees them a better seat and rushing off the plane makes their luggage appear quicker. The other day, the girl in the window seat tried to climb over Sarah and I as we were waiting for the jetway to come to the plane as if we were holding up her exit. We both snapped “Wait!” – she immediately understood.

Back to buses – travel sickness seems to be a big problem in this part of the globe. Nearly every bus journey involves someone puking and plastic bags are often handed out before the bus even leaves the station. Blocking the aisle is a plastic bucket that is for trash, puke, pooh and phlegm. Although often the phlegm just finds its way from the back of the throat directly to the floor.

The most important part of the bus is its horn. It tells everyone it’s time to go and tells the other road users that this bus is coming through and if your bus/truck/car/bike/cow/goat/stray dog/small child/grandmother is in the way then it won’t be in about five seconds. It could well be that the extra air pressure caused by the constant sounding of the horn actually propels the bus along faster although that has not been scientifically proven. What has, however, is that air conditioning uses more fuel thereby ensuring that the a/c is turned on only when all are suffering equally. This is usually after a couple of people have puked. That retching sound is the driver’s cue to turn on the air which does a lovely job of circulating the smell of vomit around the bus. Once you are shivering, its time to turn the air off again.

It all sounds so horrendous and, for the most part, it is. We have paid our travelling dues. We have gathered enough stories to keep everyone entertained at Friday night happy hour for years to come and we are too old and too jaded to believe we are somehow ‘finding ourselves’ by enduring the same hardship as the locals. We generally favor trains to buses and planes to trains. The purists will argue that flying is not the way to experience the local culture but I disagree. In China and many of the Asian nations we’ve visited, air travel is cheap and the ever expanding middle classes are using it to get around. We’ve been the only westerners on a couple of flights with the rest of the plane being as Chinese as the the people on the buses and trains. But, there’s something quite magical about taking the bus. You get to witness the country in great detail. For the locals, this can be the only way to get around and so not only do you see the land close up, you see them close up too. Often they will smile at you, sometimes stare, someone will always try to help even though the only word you both have in common is ‘hello’. Most of the time, however, they leave you alone and just for a moment you stop being a tourist and are just another human among the billions, on their way to some place to do whatever it is you need to do.

If you truly want to travel, use your nose. Not as a direction finding instrument but as the sense that informs your desirous brain that you’ve arrived. Arrived at what is unclear until you get there and that all depends on what you’re looking for to begin with. In the case of China, I know we’ve arrived at the more challenging aspects of travelling because everything smells vaguely of pee. When life smells like that you know you’re in the real world and not on vacation. Sometimes it smells very much of pee, or in the case of the small child who took a dump right next me on the floor of the train carriage we were in, it smells distinctly of poop.

And there, right in the opening of my piece, is the aspect of China that I find the most distressing. Not the lack of carriage constipation or railway aware regularity but in the general attitude the Chinese appear to have for the cleanliness and therefore the environmental health of their great nation. A two hour hardseat train ride and a six hour bus journey gazing out of filthy windows through rural China has left me feeling distressed, frustrated and a little angry.

As we rode the train I saw the worst of China’s great leap forward. Industrial waste turning water ways crimson red and lime green and chimneys spewing black smoke into the sky. Within meters of this, rice paddies and cultivated fields. In other words, food and pollution sharing the same water table. Seven of world’s 10 most polluted cities are here and acid rain falls on 30% of the country caused by burning the coal that provides 70% of the county’s energy needs.

The government owns all the land – the entire country – and then leases strips of it back to the people on thirty year contracts. Of course, being literally a peasant and having a contract with the federal government is about as binding as it sounds and many people are finding their land is being taken away as the federal and local governments accept whatever incentives, legal or otherwise, are being offered by the industrial sector to build roads, dams, factories and power plants. These are all things promising the great efficiencies to improve every-one’s lives but in reality, improve little and damage much. At least special interest lobbying in the US makes the pretense of going through the proper legal channels – here it’s every man for himself on all levels of the ladder.

As we travel through rural central China, whatever square meter that is not industrialized is farmed. But I use that word loosely, there is not much earth science going on. The land is divided into plots and appears to be over-farmed to the point of being barren. There’s none of the lush green we saw in the rice paddies of Vietnam, just sick looking crops being worked completely by hand. It is almost as if the agricultural revolution never happened. There’s no crop rotation and no fallow land. Any soil that is not growing crops seems to be growing trash, heaps of coal and scrap metal. Desertification is a huge issue. China’s dust-bowl is the largest in the world and desert now covers one-fifth of the country.

I saw mountains today. They were not mountains like the Pacific Northwest but rather razorbacks of rocks, sharp and dramatic escarpments jutting out from an otherwise featureless but sharecropped landscape. Occasionally the local people had left their mark by building a temple or pagoda looking up to or down from the peaks but most of time the peaks were mirrored by factories and coal plants. Each peak seemed to have a companion chimney and around the power plants, pointless, dirty towns sprung up to house the workers.

But, I’m nose ahead of myself. What do these guidebook facts have to do with the kid, his crap and my train carriage? My theory, based on no empirical data whatsoever, is that it’s hard for the Chinese to clean up their act when all they can see around them is ugliness. I’ve seen people throw their plastic bags into the sea and dump their water bottles out of moving trains. In a way, why should they care? It’s the government’s land after all. The great dream of collectivized communism has come full circle to its inevitable nightmare. The people here are doing just what we all do. Ask yourself this: how many times in your life has the wind caught a scrap of paper from your hand? I bet of those times you were at a scenic spot you probably ran around like a lunatic trying to catch it. But, when you were in a city, somewhere you unconsciously believe not to be a thing of beauty, did you put forth more than a half-hearted attempt to retrieve it? When we perceive something of beauty we can’t help at a personal level to try and preserve it but ugliness begets ugliness and that, I believe, is the fundamental issue here in China.

It’s not that the Chinese are dirty people; they like hygiene. The restaurants provide you plates, bowls and glasses in a shrink-wrapped bundle at the beginning of your meal to demonstrate that their implements are clean and professionally washed. Disposable chopsticks are popular because they are considered more sanitary than washed plastic ones. However, the plastic the plate bundle came wrapped in is casually thrown away and 25 million trees are felled in China each year to provide the population with wooden chopsticks. The point they miss is that waste generated by the things that are there to make life cleaner, safer and easier be they wooden chopsticks or hydro-electric dams, will ultimately make life worse if the by-products are carelessly dealt with. Of course, this is not a uniquely Chinese problem but their government doesn’t seem to care about the power plants so why should the population care about a plastic bag?

The smell of China’s progress is not all that great and as it launches itself into the modern world the odor is getting worse. Don’t believe what you read in the press, China is a developed nation, not a developing one. You can still be a developed nation but have a great deal of poverty, take the USA as an example. They know of and own automobiles, air conditioners, TVs and DVD’s yet somehow get an environmental hall-pass on global warming issues. The day when the world considers them to be ‘developed’ and therefore responsible and accountable they will be big and powerful and with nobody as large to tell them otherwise, they will, just like the USA, refuse to play by the rules. China takes the mass production that we in the west and, it must be said, they themselves count on for cheap plastic things and sacrifices itself to make a buck or two. I’m trying to take photos of the dirt, waste and filth because this is the real China but I don’t want my digital memories of this fascinating place dominated by those images. I find myself photographing how I would like it to be: exemplified and amplified by the nice tourist areas we visit. The government is good at putting a clean face on certain things and so am I but I need to follow my nose and get down to the nitty gritty if I’m to leave this fantastic place with a perspective that I can least fool myself into thinking is balanced and representative. In the meantime, the great leap has happened. Whether it’s forward or not remains to be seen. Think about that the next time that little sticky label says ‘Made in China”.

 My mind was running wild imagining what Chinese Immigration would be like.  David and I both admitted that going through any immigration makes us  a little nauseous.  Even Dutch immigration never failed to make me sweat a wee bit even though their toughest question ever was aflirtatious , “Do you speak Dutch?”  There was the time, I don’t think I ever documented this, during all my back and forth between Amsterdam and London that Heathrow immigration almost didn’t let me into the country and I have a ‘coded’ stamp in my passport as a souvenir.  This means that from April of this year for the next six months they will view any of my attempts to enter England as mildly suspicious on account of them thinking I’m actually illegally living there.

 But this is a whole different ball game, right?  This isn’t the Lovey English or milk-drinking Dutch – this is CHINA!  Now tell me who in their right mind would be relaxed about entering China for the first time? Fortunately, the only other westerner on our ferry, a girl from Germany traveling alone, had made friends with a Chinese girl and they were in line in front of us.  Every calming word the Chinese girl said to the German girl David and I overheard and it was calming us, too.  We also knew that the Chinese girl was studying in Seoul and she was coming home to visit her parents who were just on the other side of immigration waiting for her.  Her pure excitement put me at ease as well.  What bad could possibly happen trying to cross a border that this adorable little thing was so clearly excited to cross?

 We felt sorry for the German girl when she was questioned at length, had two additional officials called over to review her passport and was eventually taken off to the side.  “Poor girl, she must have done something really stupid”, we thought.  Hah.

 In Asia, you must walk up to the immigration officer one at a time.  No happy, skippy, lovey couples going up together.  So up I went all by myself, looking back at David and thinking of “Not Without My Daughter”.  Will I ever see David again?  However, I instantly put on the polite, confident smile that I think impresses immigration officers and assures them that I mean no harm and chuckled inside at what I thought was the man’s innocent curiosity as he looked at each and every stamp in my passport seeming to say in Chinese, “oh, what’s this?  oh, this one is pretty…”  I noticed that he kept returning to the Nepal tourist stamp……and then he called over his supervisor.  My knees started to shake so badly they could have triggered an aftershock.  His supervisor was equally concerned about the Nepal stamp and wanted to know why we had visited Nepal, why we had visited India and also how much money I had in the bank.  Fair enough, I can understand their concern about Nepal.  They are probably on high alert for Tibetan sympathizers right now.  However, I felt a surge of panic at just what kind of sympathizer they thought I was when I wasseparated from my passport and from David and was taken to the ‘special room’.  I was trying to hold it together but my knees, I was certain, were going to betray me at any step.

 What transpired was definitely the most difficult immigration search I’ve endured but also the most cordial, mildly humorous and kind of sweet encounter – almost as if I’ve volunteered for a Coke vs Pepsi taste test and they were excited to have me participate.  Inside the room were five girls who could not have been older than 25, all were adorable, all had the hugest smiles and all seemed more girlishly curious about the contents of my pack than official.   They did have me remove every single item from my rucksack and my daysack.  They looked at every piece of clothing, they looked inside my shoes, they smelled every lotion and potion in mywash-kit and wanted to know what everything was for, they looked at every picture on my digital camera, they flipped through every book, looked at every scrap piece of paper.  They asked where certain things came from, wanted to know if this or that was Korean or Taiwanese.  Theygiggled at my supply of contact lenses and wanted to know the difference between my heavy rain jacket and my light one.  In the end, though, they helped me pack everything back up, gave me back my passport which had magically re-appeared and escorted me out with big smiles, big waves and sang in unison, “Thank you for your cooperation!!”.

 Thank you for entering with Chinese Immigration!  We hope to see you at another checkpoint in the near future!

 David says that he was asked not one single entry question, he was told not to worry about me, that it was all routine and they even helped him take is pack off while he waited for me, sympathizing with how heavy it must be.  By his description, I’m surprised they didn’t offer him a cup of tea.

 Of course we then had to clear customs as well and I, again, had to empty out my entire rucksack and the male customs officer, again, looked at every single bottle in mywash-kit, infinitely more confused about the face wash and shaving gel than the girls had been.

 In my mind’s eye, a small cheering squad met us with flowers and balloons on the other side, congratulating us for making it through.  In reality, though, it was a Chinese police officer.  Yet another uniform.  This one, though, only wanted to help by safely putting us into a cab and wishing us a good visit.

I love disaster movies and especially ones where ocean liners are concerned. I’m writing this entry not from an ocean liner but from a very large international ferry currently in somewhat minor melodrama, adrift in the Yellow Sea between Korea and China. The ‘slow boat to China’ is certainly turning out to be slower than anticipated which has given me the opportunity look about the ship and its passengers with a Poseidon Adventure/Titanic type eye.

First I need to set the stage. The Weidon Ferry leaves Incheon, Korea twice a week heading for Qingdao, China. Normally the crossing takes fifteen hours; leave 17:00, arrive 10:00 the next morning. The ship is large for a ferry, almost the size of a small cruise ship and is majestically named The New Golden Bridge V. We enter through a lobby, that tries hard to shout grandeur with its teak reception desk, spiral staircase and faux flowers but its shabbiness and tired state only manage a small whimper of disappointment. Our cabin is for four, but we have it to ourselves. It is comfortable enough; we haven’t paid sufficient money to dine at the captain’s table however we have paid more than steerage so will not be sharing sleeping quarters with 20 of our Chinese brothers.

Act One, Scene One: The departure

Departure from Incheon is smooth. Nobody waves us off, they are too busy loading a thousand Kia automobiles onto the biggest boat I’ve seen in my life. There is a general excitement about the ship as people hang over railings watching Korea drift into the distance. But an uneasiness descends like, umm, say fog, when it is realized the boat failed to blow its horn on departure. Perhaps it’s a foreshadow. If we could understand either Korean or Chinese I’m sure someone on the boat is reassuring other passengers that all will be OK – these ships are built to withstand not having blown their horn. For the purpose of this movie plot, I’m also sure there’s, say, an old lady who’s just a little nervous at sailing so far from shore and especially at night. Perhaps she is going to see her grandchildren in Qingdao. Whilst we were waiting to board in Incheon we noticed a group of Chinese woman who were splitting up a rather large amount of cash between them, there was a definite ringleader and she looked mean. In this plot, they will be the shifty looking characters who may either cause what is to follow or perhaps we’ve all misjudged them and they will turn out to be our saviours. Our script is missing small children, perhaps about 12 years old who will later show their bravery by doing adult type heroic acts. I hope they’ve gone overboard. I love kids but Korea is full of them and they never seem to be in school but right at the tourist activity where we are.

Act One, Scene Two: The restaurant

The wait staff are surly, actually downright miserable. We are not dressed in our finest Edwardian ball gowns or chic 1970′s brown velour tuxedos but we do enter the dining room a respectable thirty minutes before the kitchen closes. This, however, appears to be too late and with neither a smile nor apology we are told to leave. Sarah protests by pointing at the sign on the door and then to her watch; her watch being a good thirty minutes inside the time on the door. They relent and we eat not to the sound of ship’s orchestra but to the clatter of underpaid ferry staff cleaning dishes,

Act Two, Scene One: The next morning and fog

All around clocks are telling passengers what time it is aboard ship. Because we are crossing timezones the ship must have it’s own time but based on last night’s dinner debacle that time appears to be completely random. We take no chances and are first in line for breakfast. We notice the sea has disappeared and so has the sky to be replaced by a blanket of thick, yellowing fog and we are stationary. Multi-lingual announcements are being made over the ship’s P.A. but the multiple languages do not include our own and the crew make no effort to let us know what’s going on. We eventually find one crew member who can help but her customer service priorities lie elsewhere and she must first tell us that the karaoke is now free, the cafe is open for delicious coffee and snacks, the Duty Free shop is having a sale on perfume and the ship’s sauna will be made available to men first after 1pm. Oh and that Qingdao harbor is closed due to fog and nobody knows when it will reopen. And so the wait begins.

Act Two, Scene Two: Free soup

From this point onwards everything on the ship (apart from what we really wanted: coffee and beer) is free. What this really means is that every meal will now consist of soup and kimchi. After three meals the soup was just a watery seaweed concoction and I was beginning to suspect we had run out of food and some guy was hauling up the anchor from time to time and picking the soup ingredients from the chain. Probably due to scurvy, meal times also become erratic. Breakfast was followed an hour later by lunch and dinner time lasted a full twelve minutes. In times of adversity, the English turn to the teapot. The Koreans, it appears, turn to karaoke. The ship’s two karaoke rooms were going full blast from dawn until dusk until dawn. It appears that the stress of being lost at sea and the bargain of free singing are complimentary when all hands might be lost. A small plot point that may have escaped your notice: Our ship’s name, ‘The New Golden Bridge V’, demands closer inspection. Any ship that is named ‘the fifth’ begs the question of what happened to the other four. It is also the NEW Golden Bridge, implying there was an undetermined number of ORIGINAL Golden Bridges preceding the five NEW ones. Were they all lost in the fog? Is our fate predetermined? All kinds of rumors start to circulate the ship. How could a ship that sails at night, when it’s dark, not be able to sail in the fog? Seoul just culled tens of thousands of chicken to prevent bird flu. Could this ship be infected? Are we all in quarantine? Are we to be boarded by pirates? Will this really be the final season of ER on NBC and will George Clooney make a guest appearance?

We lost our patience with patience and cribbage crept along. We people watched but after a few hours the same people had passed us by three times. We couldn’t even stroll laps on deck, most of it was restricted. We took to looking at the lifeboats, trying to figure out how they worked, but that just became depressing. Our iPods worked until our ears rang but we were always a little afraid we would miss a P.A. announcement with The Eagles blasting our eardrums. Why though, I’m not sure, because neither the announcements nor The Eagles make any sense when you’re lost in the Yellow Sea with a bunch of Chinese and Koreans.

The Finale: The chains

On the third day, we had consumed the last of our rations, well, skipped yet more soup and kimchi and, although we’d only been up for an hour, decided to take to our bunks for a snooze. There seemed to be little else to do but wait for the vultures. And then, a grinding noise throughout the ship woke us from our dreams of terra firma and hamburgers. The chains, the chains…. The orchestra played the movie’s rescued theme and we jumped up and down hugging each other in delirious relief. We had been rescued, it was all going to be fine, the shifty looking Chinese women had nothing to do with the plot after all.

The ship’s anchors raised and we set sail, in just about the same thickness of fog as had been present all along, for dry land, for T’sing Dao beer and for China. But would they let us in the country? That, movie fans, is for the sequel.