Where to draw the line? Time zones: 02 (China)

 

We’d done the filming of the travelogue (motorcycle journey from Shanghai along the Silk Route/Road to Xinjiang) and were going to head for Islamabad to fly back to London.

    The Chinese driver then told us that he couldn’t take us down the Karakoram Highway to the Chinese border with Pakistan.  The road is strewn with frequent rockfalls on that last stretch, and the chassis of his minibus is too low as some of the rockfall are fairly huge boulders.

    This was a 37-day film shoot, pre-negotiated at USD250 per person per day (yes, per person per day), with the authorities that looked after sport and travel activities, so I’m not sure how we could suddenly be abandoned like that to make the rest of the journey on our own, at our own expense.  They should’ve foreseen that the last stretch entailed going down the Karakoram Highway, and made arrangements for a vehicle that could cope with the conditions.

    We didn’t want to argue with the driver, as he was not working for himself, so we didn’t want to make life difficult for him.  He was an affable chap, and we’d got on with him all the way.  Being from the West, and being a film crew, we could afford to dig into our corporate pocket for that extra stretch.

    A bit random all the same, to spring it on us like that last minute.

    Anyway, a replacement had to be found for the minibus.  

    Along came a Tajik driver of a normal size bus, a battered old rattler that was to take the five of us, our 54 boxes of filming equipment and ten personal luggage bags down the rock-strewn Karakoram Highway.

    After agreeing to a price, he then wanted to know when he should present himself at our hotel the next morning to collect us.  Here’s the conversation that ensued:

Me:  Come at 5am.

D(river):  Beijing time or Xinjiang time?

Me:  (Trying to make life easier for him)  Which one do you use?

D:  I use both.  Beijing time or Xinjiang time?

    For some reason, the driver wanted the time to be pinned down not just to 5am, but 5am Beijing time or 5am Xinjiang time.  

    Obviously, the locals carry two sets of time in their heads:  one for official/work life (e.g., 9am start for going to the office), and one for personal life (e.g., eating noodles at 3am Beijing time which is really earlier in Xinjiang).

    In the end, I thought it’d solve the problem if I suggested we compare our watches there and then, which showed the same time (6.30pm), and go by 5am on our respective watches for him to turn up the following morning.

Still he asked, “Beijing time or Xinjiang time?”

(Tashkurgan, Xinjiang, S.W.China, 1988)

Where to draw the line? Time zones: 01 (China)

 

Australia has three time zones, so has the United States of America, just to name two large countries off the top of my head.

    Yet, China, which everyone with even just primary school geography would know is a HUGE country, has one time zone.  Yes, one.

    On the 37-day film shoot in 1988, doing a travelogue documentary following an American motorcyclist across China all the way from Shanghai in the east to S.W. Xinjiang (the bit that’s just north of Pakistan), I came across two episodes that are the outcome of this one-time-zone policy.

    The first episode was us arriving at Dunhuang in Xinjiang at 2am instead of 5pm/6pm, after a very long day of motorbike incidents (don’t ask).

    I had originally been engaged to act as interpreter on the film shoot, after the film director found that the national guide who was meant to be guide and interpreter was poor in English and even poorer in her work attitude.  So, I was approached as a last minute stand-in.  Somehow, the role of interpreter then started to include being production assistant (making notes of the timings/locations of the shots, as well as names of the people involved).  Once out of the bigger cities like Shanghai and Nanjing, it also became my job to go out and get a crate of beer for the crew once I’d sorted out the hotel room registration and keys.

    Back to Dunhuang.  It was now 3am — after checking in, and further ado about offloading the motorbike from a lorry whose driver had kindly given it and its owner a lift.

    Crate of beer for the crew next.  I walked out of the hotel compound.  Street in complete darkness, which was the same as when we drove into Dunhuang.  I didn’t even know which way out of the hotel compound to go, never mind in the hope of finding a place that was open to buy a crate of beer.

    Miraculously (to me), a figure loomed out of the darkness, in the form of a young man (mid-20s?).  Never mind what he was doing there, I was just so pleased to see him.  Asked him if there was a shop nearby that might be open.  (At 3am??)

    Another miracle:  he said yes.

    Miracle 3:  he was going there, actually, so he could take me.

    About 50 or 100 yards on, we came to a shop.  He was right, it was open.  And not only open, there were a few men inside who were eating noodles!  At 3am!!

    Well, not so time-crazy as one might think.  As it is all one time zone in China, Dunhuang is officially in the same time slot as Beijing or Shanghai, but geographically, should be a few hours behind.  So, to those young men eating noodles in that shop, it was probably only about 10 or 11pm.  When I was growing in Singapore, we’d regularly go out to the noodle stall for a 宵夜 xiāo yè (midnight snack), sometimes eaten there, more usually taken home if there was a late night film showing on telly.

    They have my sympathy.  With China being so huge, with so many things to look after, perhaps the time zone issue is really not worth all the extra bureaucratic hassle.  The people just have to adapt to it:  work to an official time slot, and carry their respective equivalent local time slot in their heads for their personal life.  Why not?

• Googling has produced the fact that Dunhuang is 4,982 miles / 3,096 km from Shanghai; driving distance from Beijing is 1,368 miles / 2,201 km

(Dunhuang, Xinjiang, China, 1988)

The brain works in wondrous ways: 11 (Recognition in a split second)

 

Old friend Simon from SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) days chanced upon a copy of the coffee table book I’d worked on in the early 80s.  It was to go with The Heart of the Dragon, a 12-part Channel Four TV documentary series on China, launched in January 1984.  (Yes, 40 years ago already!!)

    I then stumbled across the series on YouTube, uploaded only a year ago by one of the three editors, Laurence Williamson.  (Thank you, Laurence!)

    The opening episode, Remembering, is a summary of the history of China pre- and post-1949.

    In the pre-1949 section, old documentary news footage of the civil war in China in the 30s and 40s was used as a backdrop to the narration.  

    Among the scenes of people fleeing, shots of wartime equipment (military trucks, e.g.) and soldiers (including non-Chinese ones), especially in Shanghai (I think), also flashed across the screen, but only for a few seconds before the narration moved on to another historical slot.

    After that episode was aired on Channel Four in late January 1984, we got a letter in the post from an old woman (white, British) who said she recognised her husband in one of those quick flash-by archive footage shots, asking if she could have a copy of that shot of him for keepsake.  

    I went through the footage and found the segment she was referring to.  It was a split second shot, and only featured him from the side, yet that lady recognised him immediately — and some 50 years back as well when he was a young man.  

    The brain is an amazing organ, indeed.

(London, 1984)

Standing out in China (China)

Student Sheila (white, British) recounted her experience in Shanghai (which she loved) when she went to China to teach English, c.2002: 

Sheila:  I went to an opera and the whole row in front stared at me until the show started. 

Me:  Hahahaha, so YOU became the star!

Sheila: It was horrible.

    At least she only got stared at.

    In 1988, when I was in China for a 37-day film shoot (following an American multi-millionaire on his motorcycle ride across China), the British film director and I were the first to walk into the hotel lift in 郑州 Zhengzhou.  Another eight locals or so followed suit, so we were jammed right into the back of the lift.

    The Chinese don’t like to trouble people, e.g., they almost never say “Please pass the salt” but will reach across the table (and the front of the other diners) for it.  

    My first interpreting assignment in 1979 looking after a delegation of four from a textile factory in 南通 Nantong (about 127.5km from Shanghai) had me feeling like a mother or nanny with quadruplets at the dinner table.  

    Rather than ask for the sugar to be passed over, they’d stand up and reach across to the other (long) end of the table, fetch a teaspoonful of sugar from the pot, then bring it back across the table (and the front of the other diners), leaving a trail of spilt sugar on the table cloth and hardly any left on the teaspoon.

    With this in mind, you can picture the scene in that packed hotel lift in Zhengzhou:  people just reaching over and across the others to push the buttons for their own respective floors, instead of asking someone to push their button for them.  

    As I was wedged into the back of the lift, furthest away, I couldn’t even begin to try to reach the buttons — it’s not my style, anyway, to shove past people.  So, I said, “五楼，谢谢 / wǔ lóu, xièxie (5th storey, thank you).“

    The change in the atmosphere within that little box of a lift was electrifying.  All the Chinese froze, then turned round to look at the face that had issued those four sounds.  After staring at me and ascertaining that it was indeed this Oriental-looking person who’d said them, they turned back to face the lift door.

    As the lift travelled upwards, one of them broke the silence, saying into the air, “五楼，谢谢,” adding, “哈哈哈哈哈 / ha ha ha ha ha.”  All the other Chinese roared with laughter.  

    Another man picked it up, “五楼，谢谢，哈哈哈哈哈,” which set all the Chinese chortling again.  

    The film director asked me, “Why are they laughing?”  I said, “Don’t know.  All I said was, ‘Fifth storey, thank you.’”  She said, “What’s so funny about that?”  No idea, I said, adding that perhaps it was the “xièxie” that had tickled them, because the Chinese don’t tend to say “please” and “thank you” as much as speakers of English (or other languages).

    Later, as I thought further about it, a second theory arose:  it might perhaps be because I didn’t use a verb in my request, that I should’ve said, “请你按五楼，谢谢 / qǐng nǐ àn wù lóu / please press Storey 5“, which was the most likely reason I could think of for them thinking the Chinese was so hilarious (because it was ungrammatical).

    I’ve since sought a second opinion — from a mainland Chinese friend who, apart from being a native-speaker of Chinese, had also taught Mandarin, and is a freelance exam paper setter for ‘O’ level Mandarin for a well-known university board.  She said my sentence was fine without a verb.  

    She thought my first theory might be the right explanation:  that someone saying “thank you” is just so alien to the Chinese in that kind of context/situation.  Which would also explain why they all turned round to look — to check my ethnicity.

    I will continue to ask my other mainland Chinese contacts.  Watch this space.

(China, 2002 / 1988)

Kafkaesque logic (China, London/New Orleans)

 

Old friend Valerio says he’d not received an email I’d copied him into on 31 October.  Searched in his spam, did a global search — no joy.  Said he’s now worried there might be other messages that’ve just got lost out there in cyberspace.

My reply to him: yes, it’s worrying indeed.  You can’t fix what you don’t know is a problem.

This calls to mind something that happened on the 1988 film shoot in China.

The film director had gone out prior to the shoot itself, to do some recce’ing (reconnaissance).

It was a travelogue, following this multi-millionaire motorcyclist throughout his ride from Shanghai to Pakistan.  

As anyone who’s worked in documentary film projects would know, especially in the earlier days, there was really no such thing as spontaneity.  You didn’t just turn up and follow the subject with your camera crew throughout his journey.  

Especially if it was China, where you’d need all sorts of things like permission — that is, after you’ve found the right people and places for him to “run into” on his long ride across China on the Silk Route.  It would’ve been a waste of time and money unless everything was already in place for the camera to roll.

The motorcyclist was originally going to just get up in the morning, have breakfast, get on his bike, stop for lunch, get on his bike, stop for the night, eat dinner, go to bed.  Repeat the next day, and the next, and the next — for 37 days all the way from Shanghai to the border with Pakistan.

With a film to be made out of it, an idea suggested by one of his PBS (America’s Public Broadcasting Service) friends, it’d have made sleep-inducing viewing in this format.  So, the film company commissioned for the travelogue decided to weave a trail of “chance encounters” into his 37-day journey across China.  All for a bird’s-eye-view of China in that era (the late 80s):  a private entrepreneur parvenu in officially-socialist China; a divorced woman — just to name two examples.

On her recce, the film director had been assigned a guide/interpreter woman, to whom the director entrusted with the task of unearthing these interesting encounters and obtaining the relevant permission.

After the first day of filming around Shanghai, the director sat down with the guide/interpreter to go through the list of people the latter should’ve rooted out for the motorcyclist to “run into” and chat with.

The guide/interpreter had displayed blatant dereliction of duty right from Day One of the recce — which was why I was taken on last minute, as her English and work ethics were so appalling.

On the drive out of Shanghai, the director decided to have a meeting on the mini-bus with the guide, asking her, “Have you tracked down the people on my list that I’d asked you to sound out? Have you found me other likely subjects of interest?”

The guide said, “No.”  (Surprise, surprise.)

The director: “Why not? The recce was a few weeks ago, you’ve had all this time to do it!  We can’t afford to lose time, having come all the way from the other side of the world!  You’re the local, you know where to find these people and how to get permission.  That’s why we’ve employed you.”  (Well, we had no choice actually, as she was assigned by the government body.)

The guide’s self-defence: “I couldn’t do it, because I don’t know how much you know about China.  You have to tell me what you know about China, and you have to tell me what you don’t know about China.”

(China, 1988; London/New Orleans, 2021)

See also blog At the Lost Property Office: https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2011/10/at-lost-and-found-office.html 

(Merriam-Webster)  Quote Kafkaesque:  of, relating to, or suggestive of Franz Kafka or his writings; especially : having a nightmarishly complex, bizarre, or illogical quality. Unquote