Snake lunch, since I can’t resist a request

[fbhjr]

It was a long morning with a bad factory, but fancy tea provided.

(Left to right: Joe, their engineer, me, Bing, US rep, two guys to make sure I was happy with the idea they had run off with 1 million of my companies money.)

As I sat at the restaurant with the owners of the company I was visiting in China and their “friends” a waiter came in carrying a bag. In the bag was a snake.
“Does this snake meet your satisfaction?” Joe asked me.
I looked at the snake in the bag. I had eaten snake before, but not in a very long time. And, that was canned snake that was pre-cooked.
“Looks fine to me,” I said.
Lunch was always a big deal when I was there. I was, after all, the representative of a customer spending millions of dollars. While they seemed outright distressed I wouldn’t drink alcohol or smoke, they made the best of it. Toasts were made, with me drinking soda, and everyone looked happy. (Apparently the tea is not considered acceptable for toasts. Once they started, I wasn’t given any more.)
The waiter came back and put down two very small glasses in front of me. One had a clear liquid, one had a red liquid.
“What are these?” I asked.
“The venom and blood of the snake,” Joe told me.
“What am I supposed to do with them?” I asked.
“You drink them!” he said.
“No thank you,” I said. “I’ve got some soda here.”
They were on the rotating table in front of me, so I turned it around to face him.
“Why don’t you drink them?” I asked.
“It is a great honor to drink them,” he said, turning the table back to me. “I give our customer this honor.”
“The honor is all yours,” I said, rotating it so they were in front of him again.
“You should drink them,” he said, turning them to me again. “They will increase your vision.”
“I see just fine,” I said, turning them back again. “By all means, improve your vision.”
“I insist,” he said, and started them back around.
“I also insist,” I said, putting my hand on the table so it stopped rotating in front of their engineer.
He looked at his boss. He looked at me.
He drank both.
Joe glowered a bit. I shrugged and raised my soda.
The waiter brought in barbecued snake.
It was too dry and very spicy.

When we finished the meal, Joe explained to me that driving 4 hours each way was too much for him to bring me back to Shanghai that night. So, he had bought me a first class train ticket back to Shanghai. They would drive me to the train station and I could get on the train there.
The US rep handed me a ticket with nothing on it I could read.
We set off for the train station.


I got out of the car. The US rep said “the first class entrance is on the right”. I turned to look and they drove away quite quickly.
The guide books were clear that there is a different kind of train ticket for Chinese citizens and visitors. You can apparently get in trouble if you have the wrong kind. I had no idea which kind I had.
I walked towards the first class entrance.
The young woman in the army uniform with the machine gun made it plain she wanted to see my ticket.
She made it equally clear I did not have the correct kind of ticket to go in that entrance.
No Chinese was required for that. The machine gun motioning towards me was enough.
I went over to the main entrance.
It is all one big room inside. Very big. Full of people.
It was pretty clear to me that I was the only foreigner there, and something out of the ordinary.
It was like watching people do the wave. Everywhere I looked people were looking somewhere else. But, out of the corners of my eye, I was the center of attention.
I can’t read Chinese. But, I can match shapes. I matched the shapes on my ticket with the shapes on the signs and went over to a door with the same symbols.
There were lots of people on benches waiting.
I sat down next to a man with two kids. They hadn’t learned the trick of turning away when I looked at them and stared at me full on. I smiled.

I took out the postcards the little old woman in Shanghai had forced me to buy to cross the pedestrian bridge and began filling them out.
“Shanghai?” the man next to me asked.
“Yes,” I said with my very limited vocabulary of Chinese. “Where is Shanghai.”
He continued to talk in Chinese, pointing at the postcards and himself and the entrance we were sitting near.
I took that to mean he was going there too and I was in the right place.
I thanked him.
A while later an announcement was made in Chinese. Everyone stood up. A short time later another one was made, and everyone sat down.
“The train is late?” I asked in English.
He said something in Chinese with a clear shrug of “what can you do?”
I sat down too.
Eventually they made another announcement and everyone got up again. This time they let us out over a bridge to a train platform.
People got in lines. I got in a line.
“Wrong line,” a young man said to me in English. “You must match number.”
He showed me his ticket and pointed at the ground.
I had not realized the lines were numbered. I had number 7 and was in line 3.
“This way,” the young man said. He led me over to line 7, losing his place in 3.
The train with a big Mao pulled into the station and everyone got on.


The train was VERY crowded. There were two levels, but I couldn’t even get to the stairs, much less up there.
The doors closed and we set off. The folks on the train seemed less worried about looking at me. But in that crowd, they didn’t have much choice.

As we pulled out of the station, someone was fighting their way through the crowd. The ripple in the crowd made its way over to me. It was the man who had sat next to me in the station. His kids were not with him.
He came up to me.
“Very good,” he said in Chinese and shook my hand.
I realized he had left his kids somewhere else in the train to come and make sure I had gotten on and was in the right car.
“Thank you,” I said in Chinese.
He shook my hand again and then pushed his way through the crowd back the way he had come from.

We went for a while and we stopped.
I had no idea where we were.
“Shanghai?” I asked the crowd.
“Not Shanghai,” a young man near me said.
This continued for several more stops. We’d stop, I’d ask, he’d say no.
It got to the point where he’d just start telling me no as we pulled into a station.

Gradually the train got less crowded. Eventually I could sit on the stairs.
As I did, an older Chinese woman came down the stairs. When she got to about my level I stood up to let her past. We looked eye to eye. She looked down at her feet three steps above where my feet were and gave a gasp.
She hurried past me and disappeared.

Eventually there were only a dozen or so of us in the car. One of whom was the “not Shanghai” guy.
Then, we pulled into a station and he turned to me.
“Shanghai!” he shouted and pointed to the door.
“Thank you,” I said in Chinese and we both stepped out into the city.


I had enough to public transportation and took a cab back to my hotel.
The elevator up to the 46th floor where my room waited seemed like a very long ride.


That ended the week I spend in Shanghai on my first trip to China. The next day I flew off to Hong Kong to terrorize aluminum companies.
Their tea was not as good as in Shanghai.

Comments

[malterre.livejournal.com]

What Frank fails to mention is that were it not for the kindness of the Chinese citizen, I would be Frankless and the "no Shanghai" was all in Chinese.
*whew*

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

Bu Shanghai!

[cissa.livejournal.com]

Shanghai FTW!

[palusbuteo.livejournal.com]

The next day I flew off to Hong Kong to terrorize aluminum companies.

*gasp* Frankzillachan!! *runs*

:D

I am also grateful for the people who decided to help you. Maybe they realized if they didn't and "something happened" to you, the authorities would track them down and "ask questions". Other than realizing you were NOT in the right place and knew it would do no
good to have you get lost et al.

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

There was no need for that man to leave his two kids and come check on me. And, if something had happened to me, no way he could ever be connected to it.

While I was very important to the companies I was visiting, I was nothing to China in general. If "something happened" it would have been considered my fault and none of the folks there would have suffered for it.

They were just very nice people who were very willing to help out a stranger.
I'm not sure I would have been given as much help here if I needed it.

[ravena-kade.livejournal.com]

Thank goodness for the nice people that our paths cross.

[cissa.livejournal.com]

This is so cool.

[cissa.livejournal.com]

This is so cool.

[pallid-regina.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's an amazing story!

My dad went to China when I was a kid. It was a great trip for him, he saw a LOT of Chinese theatre, but back home things were rough. My dog died and the guy housesitting for my dad tried to kill his boyfriend in our house while they were both coked out of their gourds.

Somehow I've always associated China with someplace I would be likely to die because I didn't know something. In fact, one of my recurring nightmares is literally not understanding something in China and being slowly sliced apart by a huge corkscrew sort of knife, it cuts my body into pieces with excruciating razor-like edges moving SO SLOWLY.

LOL. So my point is: I'm glad you didn't drink the snake and I'm even MORE glad that you made it back to your hotel. The kindness of strangers is awesome.

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

Well, I never saw a slow corkscrew slicer there. And, I visited quite few factories. So, I wouldn't worry too much.

The folks there were very nice and helpful. But, I stayed in the well populated areas too.

[evrgreen.livejournal.com]

I'm glad that the Chinese people were willing to help you out! I think that many of them would tend to help an obvious stranger/foreigner in their land - I know that I try to do the same if I encounter someone who appears to be unfamiliar with things and in need of guidance/help. In general, I've found that the poorer, more 'common' people are much more likely than some more 'sophisticated' people to offer to help a person out out.

Once, when I was in Germany in business, I got fairly lost. There were no German speaking people volunteering to help me, and only some would try to help me when I asked directions in obviously poor/broken German. This was in a pretty big city, and they were all like well-dressed bees, buzzing at high speed to their appointed tasks, with no concern for a confused Amerikaner except to avoid running into me. For a contrasting example, Laura and I took a trip to Costa Rica, and intentionally avoided the big city (San Jose) and all its pre-canned tourist excursion packages. I just rented a 4x4 pickup and off we went across the country. The roadmaps down there are really more like suggestions, and we did sometimes get lost. The Costa Ricans speak a form of Spanish that is actually more like Portugese. I didn't speak any of their language when we got there, but I did my best in translating words from their common latin roots into French, and then into English. I brought a small spanish dictionary with me which wasn't much help, and in spite of the obvious linguistic barriers, I found that most of these people would really try very hard to help/communicate with you, even if they didn't understand any English. IT also helped that the U.S dollar was also a readily accepted currency down there, and I would always buy something from a person (if they were a vendor) or I'd give them a dollar or two if they helped me out. For many of them, a dollar or two was a almost full day's wage, so they'd often try to help me further after I thanked them and gave them the tip. I'm sure that there are plenty of examples that contradict these two, but in general, whether I've been in Louisiana, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Hawaii, or where ever, it is usually the "ordinary Joe" type of person in that culture who will readily help if it looks like you need it. Trusting in the compassion of strangers can be a very uplifting/rewarding experience, most of the time.

[evrgreen.livejournal.com]

Oh, I forgot to mention -

I'm glad that you avoided the dreaded "Essence of Snake" which seems to be often offered to visitors in that region of China. While they do consider it an honor to be offered to drink these bodily snake fluids, I've known some fellow co-workers who became quite sick after doing so, and we were all advised to avoid this on any future visits. Aside from the grossness factor of it all, I think that if one had an injury in their mouth that could allow access to your bloodstream in any way, some bit of that venom and/or blood could get into yours - it is possible this is what happened to my coworker.

But mainly, it is just gross. Some of the Chinese people understand that this seems like a very unpleasant thing to most westerners and the understand/take no offense if the offer is declined. But, some less worldly Chinese people seem to take it as a personal insult if you decline. Oh well.

Food Abroad

[gilden.livejournal.com]

Well, At least you avoided the Chicken-ass.
I was not so fortunate during my Thailand business trip.
I suppose I should do a post-with-pictures of that trip.