China calling!

As a history buff and half Chinese (some of you even accused me of being more Chinese than Chinese folks), I would really like to visit China properly. Which means visit all the historically significant places, like the Great Wall, Terracotta Warriors, Imperial palaces, the Yangtze Gorges, the Peking Man site, the palaces in Chende, etc. And I would like to go with a tour that is being led by some government entourage or at least some non-profit organization. I will tell you why.

I got to visit China twice but it was to Southern China where I went to Shenzhen and Dongguan. Dongguan is a huge province where my Chinese ancestry originated but since we came from a poor family and our families have been thrown apart through war and famine, I can't really pin point exactly where they are.

Anyway, my first visit was with my family and we wanted to go to "Windows on the World" which is a great park with mini replicas of famous buildings. They had the Eiffel Tower at one-third the height but still tall enough for us to take an elevator up. There was London Bridge, Buckingham Palace, Manhattan, Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Coliseum, Petra of Jordan, Pyramid of Giza and the Sphinx and even nature sights like the Niagara Falls. It is well worth the trip.

However, we have heard so many horror stories of Chinese unscrupulousness and how they value children, either for their own to be modern slaves, that I was SUPER stressed and almost called it off. Well just to inform you that I was wrong about this perception. The Chinese are SUPER unscrupulous!!! Fortunately this trip with my kids, we didn't see much of that.

To get there, we took the MTR to where it is joint to the KCR (Kowloon-Canton Railway) line. That will take you to Lo Wu which is the last port of Hong Kong before entering China. After immigration, you can take a cab to "Windows" but it isn't far so the probability of taxi drivers taking us for a ride (literally) was very real. Luckily there was the Shenzhen Metro Line which took us from Luo Hu (border town) to "Windows". It was more expensive but I didn't want to have any interaction with these taxi drivers. So, the whole trip was pretty uneventful and I was just very nervous about meeting the Chines people without any guides and minimized our contact.

We really enjoyed the park and my kids even got to ride on a real camel, so all's well that ends well. I was beginning to think how stupid I was to be so stressed that I didn't even stop to enjoy Shenzhen. Maybe these people are not so bad. HA! HA! How stupid and naive I was.

On my next trip, I was there on business and my business partner took the pleasure of hosting some of us for a weekend of fun, food and golf in Shenzhen. We were picked up by MPV and taken to this really huge hotel in Shenzhen (don't remember the name). It had a HUGE SPA. The moment you entered, these people will take of your every need. The only thing they didn't do was carry me and clean my genitals.

I was massaged with oil and with traditional Chinese bamboo where they form suction cups on your back of which after you look like the Gremlins about to pop alien pods of other Gremlins!! It was scary but very relaxing. I then jumped into different pools of sauna which were made of different herbs and were meant to heal difference areas of your body. What a lot of crap!! They were just hot water with "something" in it but to be able to charge the idiot tourist a lot more, they make up all their crap about healing qualities.

There were manicures and pedicures and foot reflexology (I really hated this and kept kicking my masseuse). Then there were all kinds of food but everything we touched was money! No one was going to even help you poor tea without a tip. Even the receptionist wanted a tip for guiding us to our seat at the reception while we waited for the "captain". It was like without her, we foreigners were going to embarrass ourselves by standing around and maybe even peeing on the carpet. When my friend's towel was used to wipe some coffee stains in the room, they wanted to charge us for laundry!! I told them, we will pay but we want the towel. So finally they relented but before making us know how upset they were with us by means of huffing and puffing and yelling at each other.

When we were at the clubs, you wouldn't believe that they have fake Black Label whisky! We confronted the manager and he said with a straight face, absolutely believing he was right and we were just one-celled imbeciles, "I don't find anything wrong with it. It may be different from yours because it is bottled here." I may not know much but I don't think Johnny Walker bottles it in China!! So we left and they were happy about it and almost kicked us out by means of cleaning the room the moment we said we will leave.

Our driver then took us to an apple stall and offered to buy us some. I declined and he went ahead to buy. When he came back to the car to take his change, I saw the stall owner change his selection of apples in the plastic bag to another bag!!! I told the driver and when he checked, his carefully selected apples were replaced with rotten ones. There was a huge quarrel and they almost came to blows. Luckily, common sense prevailed and I heard the driver call someone and asked them to "do something". I didn't ask and I didn't want to know.

In a flea market in downtown Shenzhen, my friend and driver got into another fight with the stall owner who claims that my friend broke a souvenir by touching it and demanded recompense. It was already broken but they left it there precariously hanging on for its dear life waiting for an unsuspecting idiot like my friend. Also at another stall, a buyer was shouting to the owner that she gave him a RMB100 but the owner gave her change for a RMB10.

I left China wondering how much worse is it elsewhere, especially tourist spots. China is lucky that it doesn't need to depend on its hospitality, service quality and even product quality. They have the largest consumer base as well as largest cheap labour in the world. Coupled with their land mass, it is an ideal place to make money. But because they know they don't need to please anyone, they have become suddenly greedy and unethical people, thinking only of themselves. For a communist country, I find it very sad that no one seems to care, even the authorities.

So if I ever go back again, I would like some armed guards or at least a government official who will tell me which is normal food, and which contains dogs, cats, worms, cricket, etc.....