Beijing Musing

Spring 2008 (by Pat)

Certain experiences help tell you what kind of person you are, or, perhaps, help mold you into a certain type of person. What, to one person, is a really stupid idea, to another may be an interesting adventure. I’m trying to figure out where I fall.

When I heard the Crazy English people had invited us to visit them at the Olympic Volunteer Training Site, it sounded like an interesting trip. When I found out last night where the site was, 50 miles north of the central city, past the Badaling Great Wall site, I began to wonder. It seemed like an awfully long cab ride. When I heard that Sally had said the roads out of the city would be packed because of the long holiday, I basically knew it was a bad idea.

We left at 8, took a cab north where we met Sally who had somehow persuaded a cab driver to undertake the journey. The Badaling Expressway was jammed. We crawled forward for hours. Over this time we saw numerous cars stopped on the shoulder. They seemed to range from flat tires, breakdowns, drivers who had stopped to stretch or pee, or families who decided to picnic alongside the expressway. One woman got out of a car in front of us and jogged alongside it.

The problem with all these stopped cars was that the shoulder was treated as a regular lane by the drivers, so every stopped car required a merge, further slowing traffic.

After two and a half hours, it was quite clear this had been a bad idea. After three hours, it became clear that neither Sally nor the driver knew where we were going. At one point we took an exit, asked the toll taker for directions, then backed up the off ramp to get back on the expressway. There turned out to be a lot of backing up involved.

After three and a half hours we arrived, an hour and a half late. As I paid the fare, Sally asked the driver to wait for us. He wanted money in order to wait, but Sally refused. I began to wonder how we would ever get a ride back.

The volunteer training site is a university, closed for the holiday. The central square was festooned with Olympic banners and the flags of 205 Olympic nations. Volunteers must be able to recognize each flag.

We were taken around the campus and met briefly with the head guy, then had lunch at a restaurant on campus. We were then invited to attend a training session. Low and behold I was introduced to the class of about 40 and asked to make some remarks.

It appeared to be an English class put on by Crazy English. Yk had mentioned to me on a previous trip there their teaching methodology largely involves shouting and we saw it first hand. It appeared more like a Tony Robbins type motivational meeting – “I feel good. I feel great. I feel wonderful.” Much hugging and telling your neighbor to smile. Chin up, chest out, cheese. The volunteers appeared enormously enthusiastic, but I had no idea if they were learning any English.

But the highlight of the visit had occurred earlier. While walking out of a building, I noticed a young woman, apparently a student at the university, taking a picture of me. I stood up straight and posed. She then handed the camera to a friend and ran up to me. I put my arm around her and smiled for the photo.

Obviously, she could not have been attracted to my scintillating personality, so she could only have been attracted by my manly good looks.

On the way out, I expressed some concern to yk about finding a ride back to the city. She suggested that our driver would be waiting because he wouldn’t be able to find another fare back to city and he knew we were going back. Sure enough, three hours after dropping us off, there he was. I was glad to see him, but he seemed genuinely ecstatic to see us.

The ride back was only about two hours.