The Diary of a FRUSTRATED TRAVELING College Student (Part 1) - July

Last month, I spent two weeks in China with my family.  As I (and the rest of my immediate family) had never actually been to this mysterious land before, we decided to follow a tour group and travel to the major tourist locations in the Middle Kingdom.  While I was more or less satisfied with the overall experience, there were several hitches in the road that irked me.  A lot.

FIRSTLY.  Why do the outlets in China have different voltages than the ones in the US?!  In all of the (self-rated and questionable) five-star hotels the tour agency booked for us, only two out of the six hotels we stayed at had an outlet that my laptop could actually use.  Yay for missing important emails from summer programs and school!  Hooray for blowing out electric shavers!  Then again, I suppose it did help prevent me from staying up all night (and morning) playing online games. Meanwhile, at the start of the tours of each city, our tour guides would ask (in Mandarin) whether everyone in the group could understand Chinese.  All of the parents would then quickly interject before any of us ignorant youths could: "We adults can speak it perfectly, but our kids can only listen to it."  The tour guide would immediately change track, nodding sagely and saying "Aaaaaah, ooookaayyy den, I speak Engrish foh youuu!" (Please excuse my over-exaggerated imitation.)  DID YOU NOT JUST HEAR THEM WE CAN UNDERSTAND JUST NOT SPEAK.  GEHHHH.  Though all of our tour guides had fairly competent English, I felt like they would occasionally skip over complicated information, and then privately address the adults in Mandarin about them later.  

While I raged about this discrimination to my parents, I got the feeling they were also sneakily trying to persuade me into actually taking a class in the Chinese language. I probably suffered the most insults when we stayed in the city of Xi An.  As we checked into the hotel, we had to hand over our passports for the front desk to check our ID's (because of course we look like shady smugglers and illegal immigrants).  After entering us into the computer, the receptionist offered us our room cards.  "Mr. James and Ms. Mei-ling will be staying in room XXX."  She then turned and smiled at my brother and me.  "And Mr. Kevin will be staying with Mr. Stevie." 
WHAT. 
Mr. Stevie. 
MR. Stevie. 
MR. STEVIE. 
OK, FINE.  
So Stevie is a slightly manly name.  All of my substitute teachers have mistaken me for a boy.  But these people had my PASSPORT in front of them as they typed in my information!  I DO NOT LOOK LIKE A BOY.  RIGHT?  It wasn't even a mistake with her wording, since my card had MR. STEVIE CHANG printed in huge black letters. Dad to the rescue!  "Oh, no, you've made a mistake," he said. "No, actually, Kevin and I are staying in one room.  Stevie and Mei-ling are staying in another." .... DAD, THAT'S NOT THE ISSUE HERE.  I made a tactical retreat and spent the next half hour sulking. Immediately after unloading our luggage into our rooms, our tour group congregated in the lobby.  Since my family came down first, we talked to our guide as we waited.  "So this is the first time you guys have come to China, right?" he addressed me and my brother.  We bobbed our heads up and down.  "I see, and you've just graduated from middle school, right?" M-middle school?!  My parents quickly corrected that I was now a sophomore in college and Kevin was a senior in high school, while Kevin and I guffawed hysterically in a corner.  This doesn't mean that I act immature like a kid, right?  Right, guys? I did feel sorry for the tour guide afterward, though.  After all, he was in charge of buying tickets for the group.  Whenever a vendor asked him how many kids were in the group, he would start glancing back at me worriedly.  "Fo.... Ffffffff.... Three."  Poor guy.  He should have just said four.  It would have been cheaper. 

On the other hand, BOY CAN THOSE BUS DRIVERS DRIVE.  I can't count how many times they managed to back into the thinnest parking spaces possible with nothing but a rear-view mirror.  The driver in Xi An even had a police siren and a megaphone to clear the lane in front of us.  Now who says Asians are bad drivers? 

It was definitely a great trip, though, and I did learn a lot about China in those short two weeks.  However, next time, I think I would prefer to choose my own destinations rather than follow a tour group.


-- Stevie Chang

(pictures for scenic purposes...they have nothing to do this article...well only a little)