It's not you; it's me.

So, Charlie and I hopped on our flight to come home on Saturday, only to land in Seoul and be told that there had been a misprint on our e-tickets and that our flight out of Seoul wasn't until Sunday.  Since the flight had been changed and we were never notified, they put us up for the night in a Best Western about 5 minutes from the airport, gave us a few free meal vouchers and even arranged our transportation.  Even though the flight mishap pissed me off and I will only have half a day to recover from my trip instead of a day and half, I am still loyal to Korean Air for their ability to smooth it over as well as they could for us.  Unfortunately, we arrived too late in the afternoon and woke up too late in the morning (following a late night of watching Korean TV) to do any sightseeing.  It's a shame, really.  This seems like an interesting place and I would love to check it out some time.

Anyway, since I have the time now and won't be able to blame being too busy in my real life to blog for another 24 hours, I might as well take the opportunity to sum up my experience in China the best I can. In short, I would describe my opinion of China as a love/hate type of thing.  Here are the lists of loves and hates:

Loves

1) Transportation - It's cheap and the methods are numerous.  We mostly took taxis, but there is also an extensive bus system and many car-for-hire agencies.  To give you an idea of the cost, the longest taxi ride we took (about 40 minutes) only cost $5 USD.  In the States such a trip would easily run $30 or more. We also hired a car to drive us to the Great Wall and take us wherever we wanted to go for about 7 hours.  I believe this cost less than $100.

Who needs a truck when you've got a trike?

The traffic is crazy, probably like nothing you've seen before, but the people driving in it seem to know how to navigate through the chaos.  Except for one speedy taxi ride and the one where the guy didn't know how to drive, I felt completely safe.  The only thing you really need to be careful about is crossing the street, as drivers do not stop or even slow down.  In fact, sometimes they seem to speed up to beat you through the crosswalk so that they don't have to wait for you.  It can be terrifying, but as long as you pay attention and follow the crowd you should be okay.

2) Prices - In addition to transportation, virtually everything else here seems cheap unless it caters specifically to a Western market.  Food costs pennies, especially if you buy locally at wet markets and street vendors. Clothing is cheap as long as you aren't buying "name brands" (usually rip-offs), and you can haggle for just about everything. 

3) Chinglish - This is one of the most charming aspects of China.  People say funny things, communicating as best they can, and usually much better than Charlie or me in Chinese.  But the signs and menus you see around have to be the most precious thing.  Sometimes there are just little grammatical errors, syntax problems, or slightly flawed vocabulary that obviously just came from picking the wrong definition out of a bilingual dictionary.  Much of this was cleaned up prior to the Beijing Olympics, but there is still plenty of it around.  The most bizarre thing I saw was in a public bathroom at the Ming Tombs.  The sign provided instructions on how to turn on the sink to wash your hands.  Beneath the Chinese characters, the English translation read, "Presses Water Namely". Here is an interesting article about this linguistic phenomenon in China and the people who are trying to preserve it: Shanghai is Trying to Untangle the Mangled English of Chinglish
And here are some fun examples of exactly the sort of thing I am talking about: A Sampling of Chinglish

Hates

1) Pollution - The first morning I stepped outside in Beijing, I was hit in the eyes by a burning, stinking air that tortured my respiratory system the entire time I was here.  We were very lucky and had several clear days, but the bad days were awful.  It smells like car exhaust and garbage and the air is so dense with brownness that you start to lose visibility of buildings that are a mere two blocks away from you.

But air pollution is not the only issue.  There is dust everywhere, and you must deal with the germs of the millions around you.  I found myself not wanting to touch banisters or doorknobs and washing my hands far more than I ever do.  And public bathrooms can be downright scary.  Since most of the toilets are squat toilets and people have poor aim, you have to be careful not to get piss all over yourself from the sopping wet floors.  And you have to have good balance because you DO NOT want to fall down in one of those stalls.  The worst bathroom I saw was actually at a Buddhist temple in Luoyang.  I couldn't understand it.  There was a river of dirt and piss trailing out the door, napkins and other toilet paper substitutes laying around everywhere, and when I walked in, I noticed that several women did not even close the door to pee, just squatting and baring all in front of anyone who happened to be standing around.  I realized it was only a public toilet, but I thought to myself, "This is a temple!  Where is the sanctity?  How would the Buddha pee?"

2) Rudeness - That is, what I perceive as rudeness, based on the norms of my own culture.  The staring was one thing and I started becoming less uptight about it.  I'm sure that if I spent enough time in China I could eventually tune it out the way Tony and Elena do.  Some of it was tolerable, especially if it came from children.  If I acknowledged it they would just smile shyly.  But as Tony pointed out, there are times that even if you politely acknowledge it, some people are just classless and will continue to gape at you.  Even this is not so bad.  It's the pointing and laughing that really gets to me.  It's like, what the fuck are you looking at?

Then there's the pushing.  People have no qualms about shoving in front of you in a line or pushing you out of the way, either on foot or with a car, to get to where they need to go faster than everyone around them.  A couple of times the pushers pushed the limits with Elena and she told them so, much to our delight.  It is surprising how quickly people back down when you call them out on their rudeness.

Undecided

The food - After my previous visit to Hong Kong where absolutely everything I sunk my teeth into tasted marvelous, I was expecting more of the same here.  Maybe I'm just not as keen on northern Chinese food as I was on Cantonese food.  Or maybe it was a matter of quality, Hong Kong being much more cosmopolitan and its restaurants having a more particular clientele to impress. It wasn't that I didn't like the food, but I was indifferent to a lot of it.  It was just okay.  The only Chinese meal I had that I can say was amazing was the one at DaDong Roast Duck Restaurant, but it's famous for being amazing.  I'm pretty open-minded about food and tried a lot of out-of-the-ordinary stuff.  The only thing I remember absolutely refusing to taste was sea slug.  I saw its slimy, rubbery looking skin floating in the broth, and I just could not do it.  My cats eat lots of bugs and even they won't touch the slugs that sometimes wander into the house.  Charlie tasted it and said I was not missing much.

Well, readers, that is all I have for you now.  I hope you have enjoyed this chapter of Expediccionado.  Stay tuned for more globetrotting adventures in the future!