Ok, I get it, I am exotic

From all that I had read and heard about China, I knew that staring at foreigners is a pretty common practice. It is not considered rude to even point and stare. However, I thought that by foreigners it mainly referred to the westerners, the white people. I had no idea that I would be a rare species in China.

There are so many Indians in Georgia Tech/Atlanta. I think there are 150-200 Indians in all of Beijing. Effectively, there are more Indians in the ECE and CS departments at Tech. It was really unusual for me to be the only brown person. Arkansas was better than Beijing !

I had to get used to being stared at pretty soon. Usually I hang out with Warren and I always thought that people are staring at him because he is white. But I soon found out that I was wrong. The first time I took the subway by myself, I could notice all the lingering stares. For the first few times I always thought if something is wrong with my hair or if I have something on my face.

Since then, there have been several amusing instances with this whole staring business.
I was on my bike, waiting at the intersection and there were a bunch of Chinese construction workers crossing the road. As they walked in front of me, every single person turned their neck by 90 degrees to stare at me. And a few pointed too. Awkward.
Another time, I was leaving the dining hall from my bike and this little girl was having dinner with her family. As I was getting my bike out she saw me through the glass door and started pointing at me and then poking her family members to look at me. I waved at her and she broke down into a fit of giggles.
The most interesting incident was in the gym. I joined this private gym because you have to pay even at the school gym. Everyone at the gym is Chinese. I usually go with headphones on, so that I have the "please don't talk to me" look going. I am used to people staring at me in the gym. But on my second day, I was working out and see this person staring at me a little more intently than others. And then he walks up to me and starts talking to me. I still have my headphones on, so I remove them and he says namaste. He spoke English and told me that he watches Bollywood movies. It was a short conversation. However, that was not the interesting part. The interesting part was that as soon as the guy started talking to me, everyone in the gym was staring at us. The decibel level fell down significantly, no creaking of machines or the chinese white noise. This one person who was doing shoulder presses, *stopped* mid-way with his arms up to observe our interaction. And after my short conversation was over, they all just went back to their own business as this was an everyday thing.

I asked one of my Chinese friends what is the whole reason behind the staring business. I was curious if it was my recently cropped hair. He just told me that I am exotic here. I guess I am ...

I got my identity back !

I finally got my passport back yesterday from the Chinese officials. (And they did not confiscate it because I was Indian, every student has to get a residence permit)

It wasn't an easy process to get a Chinese visa in the first place for me. Indian passport, US visa, staying in the US. I had to go to shady Chinatown in Atlanta to find an agent who would get the processing done for me as none of the standard companies would accept my passport. Obviously the agent was Chinese and the service fees were half of what the other companies charge but it did take some digging around to get it done. At the end I did get my visa in the US. The "X" visa - Chinese student visa. I don't know why they did not pick a better alphabet. "X" sounds like you are doing something wrong, or that you are a reject.

Once I got to Peking University, I had to apply for a residence permit. The residence permit requires the original visa application, health forms and around $70 in cash. The story about the health forms will be a separate post. I can't seem to get anything travel related right in the first go. So after running around with the forms, I finally applied for a residence permit. That meant that now I did not have my passport for the processing time of 2-3 weeks.

I also have gotten locked out of my room twice because I do not have my residence permit. The dorm here assumes that you will get your residence permit in 30 days. If you don't, they cancel your card access. That happened twice. First, at the end of the 30 days and the second time when they updated my access but my passport still hadn't arrived.

All is resolved now though. I have my passport back, my electronic card works and I am not scared of being imprisoned indefinitely without an identity !

Train Travel in China - II

The ride to Xi'an from Beijing was eventful to say the least.
We enjoyed our 2 day trip to Xi'an and did all the touristy things as Warren had blogged about earlier.

After a ginormous hot pot lunch on Saturday, we were ready to head back home. However, we were already traumatized by our first train experience and absolutely did not want to be late. We did not want to run or get wounded on our way to the train.

We left the hot pot place at 4pm. The interesting thing in China is that cab drivers change shifts right before rush hour (which starts at 5-5:30ish). As luck we would have it we were trying to flag down a cab during this shift change time. Being at a busy intersection with *two* white foreigners sadly did not aid us in hailing a cab. So we took the bus to the "nearest" stop to our hostel. By this time Warren, Kristin and I were getting nervous. Our train was at 6:40pm. And we could not afford to miss it. We got off the bus, much further away from the hostel than we thought we were. We then speed walked next to the Xi'an city wall for a good 20 minutes. Kristin was pretty torn between trying to decide if she wanted to know the time or if she didn't. We got to a busy street and got this rickshaw-taxi hybrid after much haggling. It was quite a thrilling rough ride back to the hostel including going the wrong way on a one-way street.

Hybrid rickshaw

 We got to the hostel around 5:15. Then our Chinese friend told us that we are close to the train station and we should wait at the hostel rather than at the train station. Though that statement should have ideally calmed us down, we were still nervous about being late for our train. However, the temptation of free wi-fi won us over and we stayed at the hostel. We picked up some candy for the train ride and then took a cab to the train station. To the credit of our friend, it did take us only 10-15 minutes to get there.

Picture doesn't show the people sleeping at the station

But Xi'an was a rude shock compared to Beijing. Beijing though crowded was a well designed, spread out railway station which Xi'an most definitely was not. It was crowded, your face in someone else's shoulder crowded. To get through the line, I had to climb onto one of the security guard stands so as to not get crushed by the crowd. The guard was *not happy* about that, but her incomprehensible Chinese words were drowned out as I was one with the crowd. I tried to get a picture of the train station but it came out too blurry. It took us about 15 minutes to navigate the crowds and get to the train. The people jam at Xi'an was worse than the people jam at the Great Wall. We made it to the train sweaty, smelly and somewhat in shock with 15 minutes to spare.

Hard sleeper. Courtesy: Google images

We were given different seats so had to exchange with fellow passenger. We also had this cute 3.5 yr old Chinese boy in our compartment. He kept blabbering on with a 3 yr olds vocabulary which we still failed to understand. The hyper boy took the longest to fall asleep. But this train ride was not as pleasant as the first one. The seats were not as comfortable and you could hear way too many people snoring. We did make it back in time though and Kristin apparently gave a stellar lab presentation at 11:30am :)

Train Travel in China - I

I have been on enough trains in India, and I don't particularly enjoy Indian trains.
Suffice to say, I wasn't sure what to expect on my first train ride in China - from Beijing to Xi'an overnight.

We had a Chinese friend who was going with us. He succeeded in getting us soft-sleeper tickets (these are the luxury seats) from a scalper when all the tickets were officially sold out. The tickets cost about $80 one way (ticket is $60 and scalper charge $20). Kristin, Warren and I met up with our friend and we were taking the bus to the railway station. Our train was at 8:50pm and we ended up getting off the bus at 8:00pm. In my Indian head, I was thinking, meh we have time to kill. But I was wrong. I underestimated the train system in China. We found out that we may actually be late and that we need to run (and by run I mean really, RUN) to get our train.

So we have a Chinese guy running followed by two white people and one Indian girl. It must have looked quite entertaining to the other passengers. We did have difficulty running though - 1. The place is huge 2. It is crowded 3. You may encounter people throwing up in the middle of your path as you run. So we break into a run, with all of our luggage. The security is a joke. You thrown your bags in a pile of bags which goes through an archaic scanner and then you fight with the mob as you try to retrieve your bag from the pile on the other end of the scanner. (I am sure you can carry a Samurai sword and no one would notice)

Fig 1 - When Warren punched
 someone in his way (not)

As you may know by now, spitting is pretty common in China. So we weren't too surprised that when we were running we saw a girl spitting. We thought she would move. But then she wasn't spitting anymore, she was puking in the middle of the path at the railway station. Warren and I had to rapidly change course to not get that stuff on us. In the process, I am sure I hit someone square in the shoulder with my camera bag. Thankfully, bumping and shoving is completely acceptable in China and I did not get cussed out in Mandarin (or maybe I did and I did not understand any of it). Then due to the crowd and me not being a runner, I lost my friends. However, for once my cell phone had signal and I got to the right gate. Sweaty, tired, some people bearing battle scars (Fig 1) and out of breath we got to the train with 15 minutes to spare. It was the perfect amount of time to buy some over priced Ramen and use hot water to make it in the train. Kristin also found some vegetarian ramen while Warren experimented with some spam sausage thing that officially tasted disgusting (Fig 2).

Fig 2- a. Disgusting spam b. Delicious ramen

Also, the Beijing train station was clean. No yelling hawkers or sleeping people on the platforms (that is my image of train stations from India). The train itself was NICE (not the bathrooms as much, but still pretty good). We had a 4 person compartment all to ourselves. There were TVs in there which did not work, but hey, they were there ! We also got slippers to wear inside. There was a whole area to store your bags overhead. They provided linen, bedding and also took out the trash for you. And free hot water ! At the end we were pretty impressed with our tickets and enjoyed our camp in the train (Fig 3).  They do have lights go out at 10pm and you can't do anything else. You have to go to bed, when they tell you to go to bed it seems. Not that we complained, we were exhausted. We got to Xi'an at 9 the next morning. (The train journey back from Xi'an will be another blog entry!)

Fig 3 - China soft sleeper train = Win

For anyone who plans to travel on a train in China - it is VITAL that you keep your ticket on you all the time. They check it when you board, then they take it at night and give you a plastic card , then the next morning they take the plastic card and give your ticket back and last, you have to show your ticket as you exit at your station. I think I was so shocked by the whole checking ticket situation, that I saved my ticket and also ended up washing it when I did laundry. It's now just a blob of paper.

First evening in China = Bike + Grapes

I arrived in China on August 17. One of my labmates - Li Chao picked me up and we took a cab back to the University. After dealing with Beijing traffic, getting wrong directions about where to register for the dorm and lugging around 50 lb bags we finally found Warren/the front desk.

Warren, is my Beijing expert as he has been here the longest which is a whole 2.5 weeks. That may not seem long but he has helped me set up my internet, tried to figure out what was wrong with my AC, took me to his lab where I met Kristin and then took us for dinner. I don't know what we had for dinner that night - there was some fungus, tofu and some kind of meat. It was pretty good though.

After dinner, Warren wanted to get his bike back to the dorm but since I still don't have my two wheels, Warren now assumed the role of driver. He also decided to take some grapes which I was supposed to hold while sitting on the bike and not falling off. That bike ride was very interesting, to say the least. First of all, the seat is made of metal so it ends up poking your butt, then there are speed bumps/inclines which aggravate the said poking and finally, the bike not being tall enough causes your feet to touch the ground while you try and straddle the metal framed seat. We did make it back to the dorm though, without falling. The AC was still broken in my room when we got back. They sent a repair guy but all we said to each other was - wo ting bu dong i.e I don't understand. But the conclusion was that it couldn't be fixed that night and would be done the next day. I had to haul two giant comforters up to the 5th floor to sleep in Warren's air conditioned room on the tiled floor. But I have to say, that I slept like a baby because of all the flying, the food and the bike ride.

Speaking of the bike ride, the next morning we found evidence of our epic bike ride in the form of little green grapes scattered here and there on our path.