This happened to me almost 40 years ago. At the time China was still under the heavy influence of the Cultural Revolution started by Chairman Mao and although it had ended officially in 1976, the behaviour and the attitude persisted still many more years.
If you wanted to visit China it was possible, but you had to travel in a group of the same nationality, i.e. as a Mexican, I had to travel with a group of Mexicans, visa was of course compulsory and you could not travel individually, it had to be in group. The Chinese tourist service assigned you one or more guides to show you around or more exactly to sheppard you around, like sheep taken for a tour of the country. Only Mexicans of course composed my group and I have not kept in touch with any of them but upon arrival to Guangzhou or Canton, we were assigned a tour guide that spoke perfect Spanish so we did not have any problem in communicating, through him, with the few that dared to try to talk to us. At the time foreigners were still looked with certain mistrust and curiosity, since the country had been closed to the outside world for so many years, since before 1949, year of the creation of the People’s Republic of China, many of them had never seen a foreigner, not very nicely considered a “big nose” and depicted during the time of the Cultural Revolution as untrustworthy and dishonest. There were during that time some foreigners that were very well liked by the PRC government, but few and then they were considered subversive in their respective countries. A bit like “you like them, you are my enemy” sort of thing.
In Canton I introduced myself to our guide as the teacher of some of his co-nationals that were studying in Mexico. At the time, in China there were relatively few Chinese that spoke Spanish and of course they all knew each other, so when I mentioned the names of my students, he immediately became my private mentor and especially attentive guide. I had the privilege of being given choice advise, sat in preferential places or informed of certain things the rest of the group did not need to know. It was really nice and allowed me to learn a lot about the country, its traditions and people.
My group was composed of around 20 people and we were moved around in minibuses especially kept for tourists, they were quite comfortable and had two doors, one at the front and one in the middle. When we stopped at any location, it was fun to see how people would gather around our bus just to look at us. We were the attraction, not to say the circus monkeys that could be regarded and commented upon with total impunity as none of us spoke any Chinese to understand the comments. Our guide would never really translate the real comments but would sweeten them for our ears and after a few days it became a two-way circus. When we arrived anywhere two of the Mexican curious would stand the doors of the buses, just stand there and see who gathered more viewers! We also could comment freely secure that none could understand us, and if push comes to shove, even our guide would be hard placed to understand if we spoke in Mexican lingo, Spanish yes but the meanings were most probably beyond the knowledge of our guide. So we had great fun playing at being a display in the window.
There were many things that made us different, for starters the race, they were Chinese, had slanted black eyes, black straight hair and their skin was very white. Most of the ones we saw were rather short and there were no fat people to be seen while the colour of our skin was much darker, our eyes for the most part almond shape and of different colours, blown, black or blue. The hair also as you could see in our group some with black hair or dark brown, blond, some straight and some curly. As for the dresses, the difference was even greater because in China they still had not abandoned the cultural revolution garb, so most of them had this olive green military looking coats, the dresses were boringly equal in style, men and women wore what is popularly known as a Mao jacket and their shoes mostly were made with rough material, all black very much like little girls shoes that allowed them to walk long distances and in any kind of terrain.
Cleanliness was no problem because although most of them did not have running water in their homes, they all were extremely clean, their clothes were perfectly ironed and they did not smell, except some of them smelled to garlic as they consume it in great abundance, they like the flavour and also for health reasons, but otherwise they smelled clean. Sometimes in the “west” you would like some people to be like that as the smells can be overpowering.
Honesty was incredible. While in Shanghai a pair of my shoes developed a hole in the sole and so I had to throw them away. I did so in the rubbish bin of my room and that was that, or so I thought. In Beijing next stop of our tour, a couple of days later I found them in my room, with a note of my guide that they thought I had forgotten them, so here they were. Imagine they returned the shoes, used and basically unusable.
Speaking of Beijing, of course the typical dinner was Peking duck so it was in our programme of activities. We got to the restaurant where our table was set and my guide, as mentioned before gave me a preferential seat next to him, so he could explain in more detail the whole process and way to proceed. I do not know if you my readers have ever eaten Peking duck but it is usually served with fine flower tortillas and in “instalments”, that is you are served a course of some part of the duck once that is finished by the hungry and curious guests, a next instalment comes of different part of the animal, and so on, and of course the guests that do not know the rules, eat a lot of the first few courses and the more they eat the less space/hunger they have so that at the end they basically only taste the last one or two courses but… and this is where having a mentor pays, in Chinese tradition, like the wine in the biblical wedding of Canaan, the best is reserved for the end so most of the guests have pigged out and cannot eat any more and the ones with inside knowledge can really enjoy to their hart content the last and best pieces of the duck, which is really good.
These are some of the memories of my first encounter with China, strange and difficult to understand but fascinating, where people for the most part know they are the centre of the universe or at least the Kingdom of the Centre and many act accordingly but still once you made a friend, they are there forever. The first time was a great shock, the following times also a great pleasure and always I had the opportunity of learning a lot about the country and its people. Today in the big cities they are heavily Westernized, not always for the best in my opinion, but if you travel in the countryside it is still possible to see the people that have kept their traditions alive, still some mistrust of outsiders but always kind.
Mementos of my life 