Nihao Beijing – lost in translation and the kindness of strangers

« You couldnt be like normal people with maps on your phones and GPS could you? No, you had to have an adventure and talk to people didnt you? » So said Shems as we sat sweating in an strange appartment block somewhere in Beijing before 7am on a Saturday morning with no idea how to find the place where we were supposed to be staying. And it’s just possible she had a point…

We arrived at Beijing central station at 5.49am, few of us left on the train, mostly non-Russians or non-Chinese by the look of things. The platforms are calm and empty, so we gathered out wits and went out of the station. Outside the station there were already plenty of people, with and without luggage of varying sizes. We knew we needed the Metro but of course, unlike Moscow, metro stations are not marked with a big M. But we keep asking and enough people speak enough english to get us to a ticket office and onto a metro, station names in english, only a few stops to go and we get to the right stop. Next challenge, find the address, with no maps on our phone and just a badly printed map from the reservation email. But Anouchka and I are old skool – paper maps and asking directions. People cant be more helpful (sometimes too helpful as if they dont know the answer they tend to invent one rather saying they dont know) – one lady walked us several hundred metres before handing us on to someone else. We find the building and knock on the door… no-one there. Now we are all sweating, hot, tired after a short night and a bit at a loss what to do next (and the kids wont admit it but maybe a little stressed!). But yet again more asking for help and more very helpful people, one lady phoned our landlady for us, and we’re in. Now the landlady of the appartment is explaining all sorts of things to us in english, kindly ignoring the fact that we stink after a week of no showers and can hardly keep our eyes open. Eventually she takes pity and tells us she will come back later. We sleep, a deep sleep and wake up at lunch time.

So, a week later what about Beijing? Well yes of course we are lost in translation – we haven’t managed more than hello and thank you yet in Chinese. We cant read a lot of signs, we cant understand what people say. And yet, is it disorientating? Not really – so much is familiar – this is a modern city with all the things we have at home and seemingly similar customs. Shops work the same, restaurants work the same, the metro works the same, roads work the same (overwhelmingly electric vehicles so noise and smoke pollution low), body language on the street seems the same (more so than Russia in fact where we found people’s body language surprisingly closed). Even the barber and I communicated ok without common language or resort to a translation app. Sometimes in fact you forget you are so far from Europe. Yes it’s crowded but not everywhere, not all the time and it’s not overwhelming. Old men smile and try to talk to us, parents with young children smile when we smile at their kids, teenagers look like teenagers, skateboaders do tricks in immense shopping centres. Warned about lack of queuing we find people queue and open doors for us and so on. We even found an english bookshop :-). So, so far, we love it: the climate at this time of year is great, the people friendly, the city alive and bustling, the food amazing, and the sights keep coming.