The Stupidity Tour in China with Bathboy

International travel can transform your life!

My brother Jim and I were young and in dire need of a new adventure. Raised in a large family in lake-adorned northern Minnesota, we had so many siblings that we rarely went anywhere. Our family station wagon resembled a small military transport vehicle. We would all pile into the front, middle and far-back bench seats with no seatbelts, zip-zero-nada, an arrangement that would trigger heartburn for today’s vehicle safety inspectors. We constantly teased and shoved one another down the ranks from oldest to youngest. No doubt, we drove our mother crazy. Every. Single. Day.

I distinctly remember the one, and only, family trip to Minneapolis for a play, a museum visit, or something. Who remembers? I only recall running up and down the aisles of the train, playing in the bathroom with my older sister and flushing the toilet to watch it spill out onto the tracks. Imagine that sanitary scene. But I digress. Back to the Stupidity Tour.

Jim and I flew into Beijing in 1985 emboldened with a dangerous level of curiosity mixed with travel-related stupidity. Although we both had traveled internationally before, China was just opening up to westerners. Beijing was a bit sleepy with few tall buildings but a sprawling mass of humanity. Bicycle riders ruled the road. They maneuvered through the city streets like a swarm of bees with part of the hive deftly turning a corner while the core continued straight. In contrast to riding bicycles in the U.S., there were no outward signs of cussing, conflict, or collisions.

The first stop on our tour? Dinner with a U.S. journalist based in Beijing to gather travel tips, cultural insights, and recent political trends. But I have to admit that we learned most of our travel lessons the hard way, usually with a funny twist. Few people in China spoke English at that time and we spoke zero Mandarin, Cantonese, or any other Chinese dialect. Thankfully, we met a few language and cultural navigators along the way. This included Dr. Lu, an older medical doctor who spoke excellent English that he learned from missionaries, and Mary, a retired teacher who learned English while working with the Flying Tigers, American pilots who worked with the Chinese during World War II.

From Beijing, we traveled to the Great Wall, an amazing historical and architectural wonder. Next we took a train to Shanghai, a markedly different, more modern city with a dense population, a growing private sector, and an atmosphere of openness and change. From there, we traveled through the countryside, an amazing panorama of rice paddies, donkey carts, and hard-working people in constant motion. We stopped near the border with Laos and wrapped up our trip in Hong Kong, which was still part the United Kingdom at that time. We met many kind and interesting people as well as curt train station clerks, police officers, and government workers who seemed puzzled as to why we’d been allowed in country. At times, their questions were warranted.

One of my most vivid memories was meeting a young opera singer who walked down the aisle of our train from Beijing to Shanghai. He took one look at us and immediately stopped and asked Dr. Lu – our cultural-language-navigator-doctor-friend – who we were and why we were in China. The singer then proceeded to entertain us – and the entire train car – with classical Chinese opera songs. Although we did not exchange any words with him directly, we made a personal connection and a memory that has lasted for decades.

Another vivid memory is a bit dicey. One could say, it justified the “stupid” in the Stupidity Tour. Jim and I needed some local currency and the exchange rate on the official market was far lower than the “unofficial” market. So Jim asked around and we met a guy on the street near our hotel who quoted a great rate. The street was busy with shopkeepers standing outside their small shops and people walking to work. Easy, peasy, no problema. The money changer motioned us to follow him down a side street, a little less busy but still populated with kiosks and people. So we followed. Halfway down that side street, the money guy ducked into an alley - a dark, empty one. Jim and I looked at one another with what became our hallmark Stupidity Tour look, shrugged our shoulders, and entered the alley. After our eyes adjusted, we saw three guys waiting for us. Jim chivalrously motioned for me to back out of the alley. My heart racing, I waited outside in the side street. About a minute later, Jim reappeared with a wad of local currency shoved in his pocket. We exchanged a Stupidity Tour look and ran back to the safety of our hotel.

We also met Mary, the retired schoolteacher, when she called out to us as we walked through her neighborhood. We stopped to chat and were surprised by her strong English language skills. Likely in her 70’s, Mary was nostalgic about the past and invited us into her simple home that included a small room and kitchen with a wooden bed and closet off to one side. She served us green tea, a staple in China, and we chatted about her childhood, experiences with the Flying Tigers, and the changes happening in China. At the end of our visit, she gifted us a round plastic toy with a childlike head sticking out of the top. We named him Bathboy and he quickly became our travel advisor and adorned many of our photos. Bathboy sat next to us on the train as we toured the country. He rode with us on rickshaws in busy streets and small towns. He helped us to navigate restaurants given our dearth of local language skills and knowledge of local cuisines.

Speaking of food, we lost weight the first couple of days because we could not read the menus nor could we ask the waiter for recommendations. So, we would order chicken and rice and receive exactly that, plain boiled chicken, and white rice. No sauce, no spices. So, we adopted a new ordering tactic. We would scan the tables around us, decide what looked good, double check with Bathboy, and order by pointing at the nearby dishes. The results were delicious meals with Bathboy joining in.

After Shanghai, we traveled to the border area between China and Laos. To our surprise, many spoke a dialect of Laotian that I could understand given its linguistic affiliation with Thai. (I was working in Thailand with Laotian, Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees prior to this adventure, which will be the topic of an Insight Story in the future.) We visited the Stone Forest with tall slender rocks arranged exactly like trees in a forest, and ancient, colorful temples where we wished for good luck (and more wisdom) in our journey and life.

We ended the trip in Hong Kong, which felt like an entirely different world although one in the midst of political and economic change. It was a bustling and noisy mix of skyscrapers, informal street vendors, and crazy-busy traffic. It was still politically connected to the United Kingdom but destined to rejoin China in 1997. We spent a couple of days in Hong Kong playing tourist, but soon parted ways. Jim and Bathboy flew back to Washington D.C. where Jim was working as a journalist. I flew back to Thailand to finish my informal version of the Peace Corps working in refugee camps.

For both of us, the Stupidity Tour in China with Bathboy served as a personal and professional spark that reshaped our life trajectory. Jim subsequently quit his journalist position in D.C. and moved to Taiwan and later Beijing where he worked as a journalist and businessperson for 30+ years. For me, the trip expanded my fascination with international development and sparked a career working in countries such as Bangladesh, Sudan, Kenya, and many others.

Jim and I both left China inspired by the beauty of the people and country, fascinated by the political and economic transitions – and a little less stupid about international travel.