Back to Beijing
Sep 21st, 2006 by Michael Max
Shanghai isn’t China, the same way that New York isn’t America. It’s a hotpot of traditional, post modern, dreaming of yet to be, salted with a blood lust for commerce. It’s different, and it knows it too. The night train that departs Shanghai now includes a boxed dinner. The Shanghaiese I share the cabin with are proud of this. “Beijing trains don’t give you meal, only our Shanghai trains are that good”. They fail to mention it looks rather like airplane food.
I’m glad I went for the xiaolong bao before getting on the train.
…
Half a dozen Beijing bound trains all arrive in synchrony at 7:14am, disgorging a flash flood of passengers. Outside the station it is already filled with those coming and going, as well as those there to scam a RMB or a hundred. I should know better than to talk to people that offer me taxi’s. I ask anyway, out of the curiosity. 150RMB for what should be a 20RMB fare. I laugh and don’t even bother to continue the negotiation. Head off down the road a few blocks to see about catching a ride away from the hubbub.
Easier said than done.
I find a cab at an intersection, tell him where I want to go, and hear “I don’t know where that is”. Further down are 4 gold and green, the new colors of the taxi fleet, Hyundai. There is a woman looking official, I ask if it is her cab, she grunts and points to the red eyed smoking a cigarette cabbie.
“feng qun yuan, you know where it is?” I get a slack eyed, “NO.”
There are another 3 cabs there, and I already know the answer. I ask the woman “why is it so hard to get a cab?”
“OH, it’s rush hour, there are no empty cabs”. My Chinese is good enough to understand the answer is “piss off, we are not interested in taking you anywhere”.
Ah, Beijing with it’s gravity that comes from centuries of imperial history. I remember this.
It’s a butterfly in the breeze series of figure eights before managing to get to the People’s Health Publishing Company, where my friend and classmate Chris is editing English for a massive project that involves translating hundreds of Chinese medicine texts into English. I did not realize that our foreign market for Chinese medicine texts was worth such an effort.
Perhaps this Chinese medicine is good business after all.