XIAMEN – Saturday

We were up Saturday morning at 9.30, an met Ms. Tao in the hotel lobby at 10. Ms. Tao was a little hard to handle. She spoke enough English to explain things to us, but refused to actually make any decisions regarding pretty much anything. If there’s one kind of person I hate, it’s someone who refuses to make decisions. Because when it comes to making decisions for a group I am one of them. Therefore if there are two of us, we end up sitting around twiddling our thumbs all day. Let me elaborate. If the decision has an impact on me and me alone, I make them easily, I just pick the road that will blow me to pieces and buckle up (not recommended). When it comes to making decisions for a group however, it’s a no win situation (most of the time). You make a decision, and 90% of the time people end up whining because “they didn’t really want to do that anyway”, or calling you egotistical (which I won’t deny I am) because you wouldn’t let anyone else decide anything. These two things become a problem if you actually want to get along with the people you’re with. Again, in the last couple of years I’ve learned that actually caring what people think is about as useful as painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge, as more often than not they will end up stabbing you in the back at some point anyway. But in some situations (ie. Sharing a hotel room for 2 nights) you just have to suck it all up and sit there for half an hour repeating the question “well what do YOU want to do?”. Okay I’m finished ranting for the moment.

We asked Ms. Tao to make several simple decisions for us, such as what sights to check out, what to order for lunch, and so on. She seemed to come back with the standard reply something to the effect of “well what kind of things would you like to see?” or “what kind of food do you like?”. Serenity now. After coming to some sort of conclusion, we headed off for a short walk around Gulang yu, neither Jen or Denice were that flash on doing a lot of walking, which was a bit of a shame. We saw a Spanish church, with quite an picturesque Virgin Mary setting out the back, and that was about it. We then jumped on one of the battery-operated-tourist-mini-bus-vans and made our way around the island. The first stop was at a South Fujian cultural center. Which turned out to be a small yet interesting selection of plaques and displays about Fujian, then a large souvenir shop. The only point of interest was an artist who was in the process of creating a picture by poking at a plaque with a long spike, was quite something to watch, however I’ve since decided a lot of the pictures I actually saw were fairly tacky (unless you’re into a picture of David Beckham created by traditional Fujian methods). Back on the scoot-mobile and on to the next stop which was the beach/private garden/piano museum.

The beach was a beach. The private garden was quite nice, it had been built in the earlier part of the 20th century by a Taiwanese man with quite a bit of money. It had been reclaimed by the Government following his disappearance (I never quite figured out what happened to him) in 1949. There was a selection of ponds, huts, and it was something. I can imagine if it hadn’t been National Day holiday it actually would have been quite relaxing. The other feature of the garden was that inside was a Piano Museum, which was absolutely fantastic. I have no photos as you weren’t allowed to use cameras inside. Some guy with a significant amount of money had decided to take up collecting pianos, and he had about 100 pianos. They ranged in date from the time pianos were invented till about the mid-century. It was really something. Highly recommended to anyone with an interest in music.

After jumping back on the tram-thing we stopped for lunch at a seafood spot, where Ms. Tao seemed to think it ridiculous that we would want her to help us order. She made some sense, it wasn’t like we were in a country where we had no idea about the language, the writing, or the food. Nevertheless we managed to get some grub, which ended up being quite tasty. The traditional tea pourer was something too. Prawn, fish, crab, oysters, all went down very well. The bill came to 120 RMB each, which was bit of a shock. Not used to paying that in China. I think Ms. Tao was rather disgusted when we suggested that dinner be somewhat less dear, we pay for her meals, so the paid day with rich foreigners and top-notch food wasn’t really turning out the way she had planned.

Once lunch was down. We jumped on the ferry and made our way to the mainland, Xiamen city. Upon arriving, into a cab and to the local temple. Which was great. It was absolutely packed, which unfortunetly resulted in it being quite dirty. There is no real litter control in China, unless you live in Shanghai! Once you could see through the garbage though it was something. It was a Buddhist temple, with statues, old buildings, towers, really something. We entered and were greeted by half of China waving flaming rolls of paper in our faces, apparently praying (another thing which is disappointing about temples is that everyone seems to treat the traditional rituals as some kind of amusement). Once we had avoided the flaming sticks and cleared our stinging eyes of smoke, it was quite a place. One point of interest was a large rock which was to give good luck should you be able to get a coin to sit on it after being thrown. There is a photo somewhere of it.

When sitting for a rest at the temple we ran into another guilao (derogatory term for foreigner). Christa, a Canadian girl from Vancouver Island came and said hello. It turned out she had a job in Beijing and figured she’d make here way up from Hong Kong by bus by herself. That is quite a trip, and I don’t think she quite knew what she was getting herself into, especially not knowing it was National Day, but she’d made it as far as Xiamen and kept her sanity so I was impressed! She joined us for the rest of the day. We next hit up a fortress in town. The Chinese army had bulked up in the 19th century to try and prevent foreign ships invading Xiamen during the Opium War. One of their purchases was a set of canons from Germany, the one which remains now being the largest on the planet. Apparently when they were fired back in the day, houses used to fall down. That’s quite a blast. Also at the fortress was a museum of weaponry and rocks, which was something to. As well as having the biggest canon around they also had one of the smallest. It was about ten inches long, and didn’t make a whole lot of sense, yet was amusing.

It was dinner time, and after two meals of seafood we hit up a local Sichuan joint. It was good food, and being next to the university for the use of students, was dirt cheap. I’m pretty sure ‘disgusted’ would be an understatement when describing Ms. Tao. The food was great, I certainly wasn’t complaining. After a walk around town, a few copy DVD’s bought, it was back to the hotel. Saw off Christa, paid Ms. Tao, had an ice-cream at McD’s and hit the sack... Quite a day.

- Sam