(Slide whistle sound)
(Yet more slide whistle sounds)
(Sound of me muttering “I’m going to kill that (expletive
deleted)er when I get back down this”)
It
would have absolutely sickened the English, this much I know; the vaguely
organised lines swept almost imperceptibly towards the ticket gates (not all of
which were open, naturally) as people kept their groins as close to the
leaders’ backsides as possible. It would
have been arousing if it wasn’t so maddeningly unnecessary. It was the most popular multi-religion
pilgrimage spot, Mt. Tai, in the middle of the National Day holidays.
The
accumulation of irk began some days earlier when the leader of the Helper
Maidens came purposefully into the staff room to inform us that there was
probably an issue with the trains they had booked on our behest… it seems that
part of my return journey was now to be a 57-minute standing journey instead of
a breezy 17-minute sit (all after climbing and descending a 5000+ foot
mountain, mind you). This was not,
however, my main concern when it came to that day’s navigation.
After
an admittedly vague request for an early train to TaiShan I had been cheerily
presented with a ticket for the 4:49AM train going south. After balking like a pitcher with Parkinson’s
disease, however, I took this in stride… sure, it meant running around at 4:05
in the morning trying to flag a taxi down off the remarkably sparse main road,
but it would mean beating the hordes – which in China is always a goal. For all the grace with which they almost kill
each other dozens of times a day on the road, the Chinese are simply terrible
at walking around on foot.
If that
seems like a generalization it’s because it is one, but it’s one that you will
notice before you leave your airport of arrival. My best guess is that due to the sheer number
of people in any one place the Chinese, as a group, are unbothered by bumping
into one another, reasoning that they will hit someone else before they make it
all the way to the ground; in this way each individual concussion spreads a
wave not unlike the decreasing ‘ripples on a pond’, and everybody can buy
groceries without paying any attention to their surroundings.
Where
the Chinese really fail is in mass attendance events. Part of the western picture of China is of a
highly-organised culture that works like some kind of nearsighted machine,
polluting the world and bullying Tibetans with all the style of a robotic
synchronised swimming team. What we
don’t tend to picture, or encounter, in the west is the physical, ‘on the
ground’ reality: being in a group of thousands of Chinese people is a bit like
going to an amazing concert’s mosh-pit fringes, but without our attendant
social mores regarding personal space or due courtesy.
All of
this makes me sound bitter, but in reality the opposite is where the truth
lies. Oh, I was certainly taken aback
when I first entered the throngs climbing the mountain after the ticket fiasco…
but when it became apparent that it was essentially a mobile climbing
free-for-all I actually fared quite well.
Chinese
people, it turns out, tend to exist at 3 heights relative to my modest frame:
knee, elbow, and shoulder. Naturally I
laid off kneeing children as much as possible, but the time came when I stopped
contorting myself like some kind of fey pretzel in order to avoid collisions
with the oblivious masses…. If they weren’t interested in avoiding contact with
any of my major joints, I certainly wasn’t going to leave them
unimpressed. In this way, I came to know
the Tao of crowd movement: if there is space then you would be crazy not to
occupy it, because some less crazy (though no less crazed) person will take it
in about a second.
While
I’m engaging in wild generalizations, it might be useful to examine the general
state of Chinese physical fitness. It is
very possible (as evinced by the muscle-bound specimens at my gym) for Chinese
people – just like real people! – to become very, very fit. As a group they simply choose not to which,
when coupled with an interesting desire to stop and rest at the
top/bottom/midpoint of any group of stairs, makes for proverbial ‘tough
sledding’ when trying to climb a narrow stone staircase with about 200,000 of
them. The religious aspect of the
mountain also made for both the very old and the very young making slow
appearances, often helped on both arms by stronger folk but doggedly walking up
nonetheless; these groups tend to stop in rather sudden, monolithic
fashion…which leads to incredible pedestrian traffic jams perched across
remarkably steep stone stairs slanted back in the direction you’ve just come.
None of
this is to take away from the impressive mountaintop vistas and thousand
year-old (or more) temples to be seen, but rather to ‘heads-up’ anyone looking
to do anything popular on a Chinese national holiday. The trip was very long but a nice one,
leaving me merely shaking my head at the piercing slide whistle-merchants as I
made my descent. They can live…for now.
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