16 May 2002: X went out on the street today while I was running on the treadmill. He said it was exhausting—the smells, the noise, the people trying to talk to him. His description made me apprehensive, but we went out all the same, using the basement of the hotel with its overpriced fashion boutiques as a buffer. The air does feel heavy with smog, and the taxi drivers seem to see their car horns as a natural extension of their hands. They zoom around corners and through crosswalks utterly unconcerned with the pedestrians or bicyclists in their way. After seeing the fifth near-miss, I stop thinking about it. We walk past restaurants and adult ‘love-shops’ and embassy after embassy—all complete with dour suspicious-looking guards and waist-height barbed-wire fences behind which languish pink roses and lovely green trees. We come upon Ritan park, which houses the Temple of the Sun. Sacrifices were once made here. Immediately upon entering (¥1, which seems to be a tourist-only fee, because I see no one else paying) we are enveloped by greenery and quiet. A few people wander the paths. Children play. As we moved deeper into green I began to smell flowers instead of dirt and leaded gasoline. We sat on a stone bench and watched a large group of adults exercise on bright yellow and blue equipment—a playground for adults. It was near the lunch hour, so we speculated that this must be a common post-lunch activity—twisting from the waist, ‘running’ on elliptical machines, swinging the legs back-and-forth on foot rests. One man grasped a large wheel with both hands and rotated himself around in a circle, stretching his shoulders and arms. Some people laughed and chatted while they touched their toes and pushed their feet against weighted bars (like doing leg presses at the gym); others were concentrated on more balletic and gymnastic tasks. I was so delighted by the idea of exercise as a normal, fortifying part of one’s day, and as a gentle, playful event rather than the punishing obligation it is in the west. Westerners need more play—not games—and more social normalcy—not play-dates. I loved these women in their white coats and the men in ties, taking time to engage in group activity, in something that in the US might be considered foolish in appearance. Something that is so clearly beneficial but seen as utterly normal.
We came upon a mini-golf course and played a dismal game (¥25 each). People paused at the fence to watch, applauding when X made a particularly good shot. A big group of men stood nearby, outside the golf enclosure, huddled together over a game of cards. They were too noisy—the yelling, the hard snap of the cards connecting with the stone tiles—for it not to be gambling.
We tested the park toilets to see if they were as horrid as people had said they would be. I was partly disappointed and partly joyed to see a door, a sink, and a hand dryer—but I still had to squat and urinate into a shallow, keyhole-shaped trough. Had I needed to pee with more urgency, I might have splashed my shoes. As it was, the flush mechanism sprayed out enough water to get my shoes wet anyway.
The language thing is definitely a problem when, as is the case with us, we don’t even know our numbers. Wu shi=fifty. We try to get TsingTao beer (¥12) downstairs at the in-house café by ordering in Chinese, but the sweet girl has no idea what we are talking about. “Ah, pijiu? Pijiao?” I say, pointing at the beer, and finally she gets it, no thanks to my sloppy attempt at Mandarin. “Ah, beer!” she says, and serves us.
Basically we are allowed either 1) situations where no one understands us but goods are cheap or 2) situations where we pay and arm and a leg so that we might be understood. In a misguided attempt to be a polite tourist, I had gotten a Mandarin phrasebook, thinking that, as Mandarin is the official language of China, it would be very helpful. What I didn’t realize was that just because the Chinese government decides to assign an official language to the whole of this enormous country, there is no guarantee than anyone at all speaks it. Doubtless I would have done much better with a Cantonese phrasebook. Still, I learned again and again that you can at least garner some smiles with “hello” and “thank you.”