The flight was uneventful, spent reading and watching films to pass the nine hours; the conversation with my neighbour consisted mostly of snorts and snores. Oh, the occasional body language was shared - an elbow as his twitch gave momentary reprieve from his nasal communication. But all-in-all the trip was fine; landing in China at five in the evening ready to see the fruits of Australian 'hole digging' over the past decade.
Landing through the hazy orange glow of sunset in the engine room of modern Chinese progress - Guangzhou, I fumbled my way through the process of acquiring the 72 hour visa and stop-over accommodation. After clearing immigration, the instruction was to go down stairs to the 'Glass Room' - very mysterious - and 'wait' - very Chinese. I entered the room under the watchful eye of three middle-aged attendants busily stocking refreshments to allay the ever-increasing anxiety of the 50 or so tourists wondering when, where, how what and any other question the initial instruction didn't address.i scanned the room as I walked in wondering where to plant my tired butt - it's amazing how you look forward to sitting down seemingly exhausted after sitting down all day in a plane.
Pressing through the emotionless gazes of the many tired faces in the room , there was one welcoming smile. 21 year old Nicole had the carefree luster to strike up conversation with anyone rather than put up with awkward silence of a room full of strangers waiting for answers to the same questions. Nicole was a Phillipino-Briton, on route from Cambridge to her native home in the Phillipines indefinately. The bubbly conversation about nothing in particular was a welcomed break at the end of a day sitting side-by-side with the non-conversationalist 'Bob' (didn't really catch his name). Three hours chatter was broken by the call of the attendant at a little after 8:00pm and we were all shuffled out of the 'Glass Room', out of the airport and onto buses headed to differing hotels depending on destinations. A quick goodbye wave and Nicole's company was replaced by the more serious and unassumingly confident Lewis as we moved towards our respective buses.
Law student at the University of Queensland, Lewis was another EurAsian companion; a Korean-Canadian from Vancouver, studying in Brisbane. Lewis and I struck up conversation on a plethora of subjects, one of which was his personal interest in refugee law and the current asylum seeker predicament in Australian in relative terms to Canada - interesting perspective. After killing the hour bus ride from the airport engrossed in conversation, we finally arrived after 9:00pm at the Dragon Lake Resort. Wow, the resort was 'European-style' and resembled a blend of the quaint antiquity expected in Tuscan towns with the planned precision, attention to symmetrical detail and permanence that is quinntessentially British in the University towns of Cambridge and Oxford. We were given our room keys and sent out into the 'town' to settle in. It was surreal; like walking through pleasantville in a dream. It's a town created to give Chinese the impression they are on the Continent without leaving China. We found our rooms and Lewis, Krishna (the third addition, a Canadian living Indian) and I decided to blow 'Pleasantville' in search of a little more of a Chinese experience.
We shared a taxi and found ourselves in the local hamlet, sitting in a restaurant being entertained by a wonderfully excitable Chinese family, each of who could not speak a word of English. We bumbled our way throug ordering and tucked into a feast that cost no more than a couple of burgers at McDonalds.
Here's Lewis giving it his best. Interestingly, they assumed Lewis could speak Chinese due to his Korean features. The food was great...
We also ate this chopped chicken dish, literally chicken fed on corn, cooked and the chopped bones and all - nice, but strange once I found myself chewing on the head! We finished up, took a few snaps and said our goodbyes. We found a guy with a van and he offered to take us the 10minute drive back to the hotel for $AUS10. Then, off to bed as it was after midnight and we had already added two hours to our day with the time difference in China. Until next time...
R
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