June 30th, 2006
6:06 pm
How I spent My Summer Holidays In 1997
My journey to the Far East started with a bus journey from Maryhill in Glasgow, Scotland.
For my holidays in summer 1997 my dad took me to Taiwan, Hong Kong and China.
When we got to Taiwan, I went looking for my best friend but he had moved house and it took us four days to find him. First day we went to Tainan – a city in Taiwan. When we got to his house and knocked at his door someone else answered the door and I felt horrible. When he asked who we were looking for I told him we were looking for Tsai Qun Han and the man said, “I have never heard of him”. He then closed he door in our faces and his dog started barking at us. I was not frightened because the dog was tied up by a rope. We then went back to our hotel.
Next day we went to his old primary school. I remembered where his school was but when we got there, the man looking after the school told us it was summer and everyone was off on holiday. Just as we were about to leave, a woman came and asked who we were looking for. I told her we were looking for my friend Tsai Qun Han. She then took us to her office to check her files. She was a teacher in that school. She asked what age my friend was and I told her. She then checked the files three years back and found out that there were lots of people who shared his name. She found out where he lived and took us there in her car . It turned out that the place she took us to was the same place we had been to the day before. We then went back to our hotel. On the way she asked if we had travelled to Tainan just to find my friend and I said “yes” and she said, “oh my heaven”.
When we got to the hotel my dad noticed that the car we had been travelling in was a taxi my dad asked how much we owed them. The driver then answered saying he did not wish any payment. But I later told my dad that he should have given the driver something anyway but my dad said he did not know how much to give him. I said, “the driver is a friend of the teacher”. The teacher had given us a phone number to phone her back at 6 o’clock but when we phoned she had not found my friend. She suggested we went back to her school at 11 am the next day and we did. She then phoned all the high schools in Tainan and found Tsai Qun Han and was told “Yes he was at this school but moved to another school two months ago”. He had moved to Chang Hua. We thanked her and went back to our hotel and packed out things very quickly and headed for the train station.
A train comes at about twenty minute intervals. When we got off the train in Chang Hua we took a taxi to the school and the taxi driver asked for 300 yen (new Taiwanese dollars) My dad then said that was too expensive for such a trip. Then the driver said we could not get to that place any cheaper. My dad then paid the taxi driver but did not give him a tip because he was a dangerous fast driver not taking any notice of other drivers on the road. When we got to the school the driver asked if he could come back for us and my dad said, “no”. At the school we went to the office and the person there told us that the key holder was not available, could we come back the following day.
We then took the bus back to our hotel. We knew our way by then. The bus fares were 14 yen for my dad and 12 yen for me. We went to the hotel near the train station and the good thing about it was there was a vegetarian restaurant beside the hotel. The next morning we took a bus back to the school and this time, the school had found my friend and had told him to come to the school. He then came with his mum and he was very happy to see me. When he was first told I was looking for him, he jumped up and down with excitement because he did not expect to see me. I spent five hours with him because the next morning we were leaving for Hong Kong. We did not even have one game in the arcade. He took me round to see his new home and that looked even older than the one he lived in in Tainan. We then got a plane to Hong Kong.
Hong Long
We travelled to Hong Kong from Taiwan in Mandarin Airline which belongs to China Airlines. By the time we got to Hong Kong, I was quite ill and had to go straight to the guest house and lie down. The room we shared had three beds, a toilet a television and very noisy air conditioning system. It is smaller than my toilet here in Glasgow. My dad had to pay seventy pounds sterling for that wee room. That is such an expensive price. The next morning we were not sure where to get breakfast so we went to a 7-11. Its a 24 hour shop but for some reason they call it 7-11. For breakfast I had a Milo bar, bread and a fizzy drink. My dad had bread and lemon tea.
We visited New Territorys where they is a Space Exploration Museum. I did not go into the museum because we arrived there too early in the morning while the place was not open yet. Afterwards we went on the Star Ferry to the next island where we saw a lot of women. I asked my dad why there were so many women there and he told me that they came from the Philippines, and during Sundays they get their day off to visit their friends in the park. There were some ice cream vendors in the park. I also saw some fountains and some small fish, all different colours. Not far away from the park I saw the China Bank and the Hong Kong Bank, beside each other, the China Bank was so huge compared to the Hong Kong Bank. In front of the China Bank there were two very Chinese looking lions and in front of the Hong Kong Bank there were two very British looking lions – they were definitely showing off. That’s why they built these banks beside each other. Actually the Hong Kong Bank was there first.
Later we went on the underground. The Hong Kong subway was a lot older than the ones in Taiwan, though the model was similar. The subway doors are supposed to stop at a precise space but that did not always happen. My dad had led me to believe that the Hong Kong subway was technically better but I thought the one in Taipei was much better. Even the graphic logo is much better.
We then went back to our guest house for our luggage because it was nearly lunch time. Because we had very heavy bags, it was a painful walk to the underground station and we were so thirsty and could not find any shop to buy a drink from. My dad thought we had a lot of time to wander before catching a train to the border of Hong Kong and China. It took us twenty minutes before we could find a shop. The ticket machine in the subway was very sophisticated. It has a touch screen monitor which asks for your “destination” (where you want to go) and tells you the price. You then put in your money and when your change comes out, you are meant to put your hand in, palm upwards and your change will drop onto your hand. In the UK most of our slot machines drops the change out and one puts his hand in palm-down to collect it.
When we got to the train station I was surprised to see that the train had first and second class carriages. I did not expect that because it is a very short journey from Hong Kong to the border. When we got there we were looking for the bus to the airport, it took us ages and eventually we found a very tiny one, with its roof nearly falling off. The driver would not leave until the bus was full and we had to sit there for about thirty minutes. A man who sat behind me said he was a teacher at the University in Senzen and he was impressed by my English. At first he thought I was a girl, that was so annoying. I think that is because a lot of girls in China have short hair. He said he also worked for Vitech (a company which makes children’s computers). He thought that a lot of children in the UK have computers and I told him, “not that many have them”.
When the bus started to move, the driver’s mate had the door open and was still beckoning to people saying, “Anybody wants to go to the airport?” I was not sure if that was a conductor or not, there were two men helping the driver fill up the bus but they did not wear any uniforms. I don’t think they are owned by a company because they did not leave on time. When we got to the airport we tried to buy a ticket and we were told that the plane had already left. They only had one plane a day to Zhengzhou so we got tickets for the next day then we found a hotel near the airport called the Airport Hotel, it looked very expensive and when we got there we got a room for only forty something pounds sterling. This room was much bigger than the one in Hong Kong.
A Visit To My Grandmother in China
The next day we had our free breakfast in the hotel and after that we walked to the airport and back several times because our plane was not leaving until six that evening. We also saw some motor cycles with seats for two passengers in the back. The drivers would ask if we wanted a lift or if we had eaten. So they probably had a deal with some restaurants where they would take passengers to for a commission. At six o’clock we eventually got on our plane and there was not much happening there at all. The weather was also bad and we could see lightning outside, we were on the plane for three hours and when we got to our destination the place was in darkness, there were no lights at the airport. About ten or fifteen minutes after our arrival the lights eventually came on.
In China they only have one time zone and the whole country is so big. All I know is, it’s time to sleep because its evening so we had to stay in a hotel. It’s the worst hotel I have ever slept in. The hotel was about one and a half miles away from the airport. Nearly all the hotels there are rubbish, the room I was in, there was water leaking and the wallpaper was falling off the wall – like in Trainspotting. The television for instance was plugged on and the socket was hanging off the wall. Luckily there were no beasties in the room. And they did have some air conditioning system, though it was so noisy and I felt like I was in some factory.
The next morning we went out and the weather was very hot and sticky. I had a drink of Coca-Cola, It was more expensive in China to buy a can than it is in Glasgow. The cans were very old fashioned too. We then phoned my grandmother to tell her we were on our way to her home. We got a train to Handan where my grandmother (my mum`s mother) lives. The train journey took six hours – that was after twenty minutes of pushing and shoving to get our tickets. Some of the people in the queue were paid to get tickets for other people, who could not be bothered to stand in the long queue. I didn’t know we could get hard seats and soft seats. They don’t have first and second class compartments so they call the seats hard and soft. We got hard seats because we did not know about the soft ones so it made it a very uncomfortable journey. There were so many people in the waiting room and when they let the people to get onto the train, there was a big squeeze. I noticed at one of the stations that in order to get onto the train, the passengers had to walk onto the railway track before boarding their train, which I thought looked so dangerous because at one point I saw a train coming in their direction. However, I got to my grannies alive and safe.
When we got off the train at Handan my grandmother was there to meet us. There were also three other, younger, family members and I realised that my grandmothers speech was a bit impaired. She had something wrong with her lungs, she could not breathe properly but that did not stop her from talking. The last time I had seen her was when I was three or four years old and this time I was nearly a teenager.
She was living with some of the members of her family because her own house had been sold so we had to find a hotel. We got into a taxi with her and went looking for a hotel. When we were offered a room, we did not like it very much but because some members of our family had lived in China for a long time, they then told the hotel staff to get us a better room and they obliged. The room had a window facing the street. We had our own toilet and bathroom with clean water. My grandmother staying until we were settled then we had our supper together in the hotel dining room. I hardly ate anything but I am not very fond of meat dishes. My grandmother tried to persuade me to eat but I did not eat much. The meal, for six people cost about thirty pounds sterling.
One of my relatives, who works as a senior librarian only earns sixty pounds sterling a month. After the meal, I signed the bill and when we had booked into the hotel, my dad had booked us in. When we were leaving my dad paid the hotel bill and I noticed that they had not charged us for the meal because I had signed for it and my dads signature is different from mine. The hotel must have thought that it was a different persons bill. But my dad gave my gran the money for the meal in case the hotel asked for it.
The next morning my dad realised that he had not confirmed our flight back to Britain. You are supposed to confirm the booking approximately 72 hours before the plane leaves and we only had 6 hours left. We were also running out of money. We had to get to Beijin to take a plane back to Britain
We went to one of my grandmothers friends who had a telephone and the phone book only had telephone numbers for Handan and the directory enquiry only had telephone numbers for Handan. We did not have the telephone number for KLM Airlines. We went to a travel agent and they happened to be closed on that day. We then looked for other travel agents and they were all closed but would be open in two hours. We then went back after two hours and they said their computer was not linked to Beijin and I was getting really annoyed by then. We then went to the Library and asked to use the phone to phone my mum in Taiwan so that she could book a flight for us to Britain. She said, “don’t worry I can arrange every thing for you”. We then went to the hotel and waited to hear from her. Within an hour the man from the library came to our hotel to say that my mum had our tickets sorted. I was so relieved!!
Story By Joe Williamson transcribed by Jess Corrigan MCMXCIX.