Fuddland
Allow me to quote from The Rough Guide to China:
This obscure town has been producing pottery since the beginning of recorded history. Primitive unglazed pots have been found here which date back … some three thousand years.
Ceramic lampposts line the road into town, pottery shards crunch under your feet on the main street and the walls of buildings are embedded with broken tiles.
Now I may have an overly-romantic imagination, but I was expecting some kind of quaint traditional little town, much like (同里), with family-run kilns and stalls politely offering their wares. Upon arriving, I was disappointed to find quite the opposite.
The main streets of (丁山) are grotty, rundown and bustling with modern restaurants and clothes shops — the pottery shops there were not prominant by any means. Walking around for half an hour or so, I was drawing stares from all angles — I even got a classic mid-chew-pause-and-boggle-eyed-gawk — which made me feel like I was the first foreigner to ever set foot in this town. I certainly didn’t see any other (老外), a slightly derogatory term for a foreigner the entire day I was in the area.
Despite my initial bad impressions — already subdued due to a hazy day preventing me from seeing any vistas on the two-hour journey to — after having a rest on a bench in a central park area, I decided to try and find a hotel so I would be free to explore the surrounding area safe in the knowledge that I wouldn’t need to rush to get the last bus home. It was at this moment that a middle-aged Chinese woman came up to me and said with a smile, “Hello young man!”
Her English was quite poor — about on par with my Chinese — but we managed a short chat and I explained I was about to find some cheap accommodation. She immediately offered to help, which I warily accepted, having heard a couple of stories from friends about overly-friendly locals attempting to rip off foreigners by taking them for vastly over-priced meals and expecting them to pay for everything. The woman called to her husband who was sitting on another bench nearby, and we started to walk back towards town. Soon the husband marched off on his own to enquire about prices in one of the larger hotels while I continued to chat with the woman. Her son is studying computing in a larger city nearby, and was delighted by my answer when she asked me what I had studied. She, if I understood correctly, is originally from , but now works in a local factory — her husband is her boss’s personal driver.
The husband came back and placated some of my earlier suspicions when he approached shaking his head and telling me it was too expensive; there were cheaper options in town, and after a couple more minutes we had arrived at a significantly less salubrious-looking establishment — exactly what I was looking for. Unfortunately we soon hit a snag. Despite the efforts of my new friends to convince the owners otherwise, it seemed I wasn’t allowed to check in to this small hotel. I couldn’t quite follow the conversation, but eventually a young boy [the owners’ son, I assumed] was summoned and explained in no uncertain terms [and in English] what the problem was: “The government forbids us from allowing foreigners to stay here. You must stay in the big hotel.”
I was a little surprised but tried to tell the owners that I understood it wasn’t their fault, and we went on our way. A second big hotel was found but this was even more expensive than the first, and I wasn’t going to fork out a chunk of money to stay in a place I wasn’t all that keen on, especially when I could catch a bus for a fraction of the price and be home in just a couple of hours. I thanked the couple for their efforts and explained my new plan: to just explore for the day then go home, so I was about to head off to begin my trek, but they insisted I came back to their flat for some lunch. Since I hadn’t eaten yet that day, it was a hard offer to refuse, and I soon found myself sitting in their very basic home, being treated to some really quite delicious home cooking, washed down with some local green tea and a sherry-like drink from a dusty bottle the husband pulled out from under the bed — I was mildly embarrassed by the efforts they were obviously going to, but they were a very modest, hospitable couple and I didn’t feel like they were doing it for any reason other than kindness.
After eating my fill [as with all Chinese meals, the plates still looked as though they hadn’t been touched, such was the quantity of food on each one] I got some information about things to see in and said my goodbyes — but not before a couple of citrus fruits were thrust into my hand for snacking later, and I thanked them once again, not least for making the first few hours of my trip to much more enjoyable than they had initial looked like they were going to be.
[I’ll need to do a little more digging into this “no foreigners in cheap hotels” stuff — I’m hoping it’s only in certain areas, or at certain times of the year, because otherwise it’ll put a bit of a dent in my finances when I come to do my main stint travelling around the country next year.]
Comments
susannah | 2006 / 10 / 04 – 21:43
When I went to Dalian last year, the small places I tried wouldn’t let me stay. It was either a hostel or a really expensive hotel. However, my chinese was considereably worse at that point and all I understood was “foreigners” and “no” I didn’t quite catch the reason.
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