Learing from Bad Experiences
WARNING: The following story is not for the weak of heart or mind. If you were disturbed by my mentioning the word “defication” in my last post, you might want to go ahead and not read this one.
Last week was a holiday week in China commemorating National Day and the Communist Party’s rise to power. My program took this week as an opportunity to cancel class and travel around China. A few different trips were offered, and I decide to go with a group of about 35 to tour the China’s southern coastal cities.
It was a great trip full of memorable scenes and vistas, cultural insight, and learning about local specialty crafts such as silk, tea, and a cool hat that I ended up buying.
The last town we visited was an ancient water city at the base of China’s Great Canal called Hangzhou. This city is famous for it’s West Lake, a 3Km-by-3Km body of water that is constantly covered in fog and surrounded by beautiful scenery. Visiting the lake was wonderful experience, and as you can tell by this picture, I was really happy here.
But once we ended out boat tour, I was a little hungry so I bought a cob of corn from a local street vendor. As a chewed my corn, I was enthralled by the scenery of the park around the lake. Look at this picture? Can you beat that? But because I was so caught up in the scenery, I barely even realized the corn I was eating was cold. This of course is a dead give away that the food is not freshly prepared, and the first thing I was told when I came to China was not to eat food if I thought it wasn’t fresh. But, being distracted as I was, I ate the corn anyway.
Everything was well and good for the next two or three hours, and I returned to our hotel and had a lively discussion about public education reform with a couple of friends. But we had to cut the conversation short due to my intense stomach pains. I’m sure you can guess what happened next: a little thing the Chinese call La Duza!!!
(La Duza has two literal translations; the first is “pulled stomach” and the second is “spicy stomach.” I won’t say the figurative translation here, because so many of you objected to my use of the “deification” in a previous post. But if you want to guess La Duza, feel free to do so in the comment section. I’ll let you know if you’re correct.)
Most travelers to China encounter this problem at some point on their journey. But the problems of my la duza experience were compounded by two concerns. First, I had a four bus trip and a 13 hour train ride the next day, and second, I left my Immodium in Beijing.
The moral of the story is this. Always take you’re Immodium where ever you go in China. And remember, if the street food is chilled, you’ll end up paying more than just the bill.
Me sharing this story with you also highlihgts an interesting difference in Western and Chinese cultures. It seems that by in large the Chinese don't really mind talking about or practicing they're bodily functions in public. On numerous ocassions, I have been walking along minding my own business when all of the sudden, BOOM, the young mother in front of me removes her kids pants right before he starts to urinate on the sidewalk.
Public restrooms are often only a trench in the bathroom groud. Once on this trip, I saw one man squating over the trench with no partions around him. Other men were standing right next to him. Strange indeed.