Exploring Beijing, China with Chronic Illness, Disability and Pain
In 2012 I decided to visit Beijing, China. It was my first solo trip abroad. Since I was alone, unfamiliar with the language, and a little anxious about the whole prospect of flying off to Beijing without much preparation, I signed up for a group tour. I should add for those who don't know me, I'm profoundly shy. I have massive social anxiety and generally avoid interacting with strangers for fear of embarrassing myself terribly. This fear was multiplied by the fact that I was on my own in a strange land. God forbid I had to interact with anyone. I'd probably inadvertently violate all sorts of social contracts and customs.
I thought for sure I would just take a seat on the back of the bus and keep to myself while I listened to a cursory explanation of various historical sites. Each day, our guide would pick us up from the hotel and take us to the big attractions in and around Beijing. Since the government of China was subsidizing many of these group tours, it was also peppered liberally with stops to silk, pearl, jade, and other Chinese made shops where we were urged to spend our dollars and load up on souvenirs. While some on the tour complained, I found the minor imposition of sitting through a few sales pitches to be well worth it to get a trip to Beijing for only $999 with air, hotel, meals, and tours included.
How pearls, tea, and silk are made.
From the second I met my tour guide, I was mesmerized. She wasn't one of those typical guides who smiled her way by rote through the Wikipedia entries of various attractions. She had opinions, and if you asked nicely, she wasn't bashful about expressing them. She was a whip-smart young woman who grew up in a small town many miles from Beijing. Sadly, she was a victim of China’s one-child law. She told these stories in a frank, matter of fact style more befitting a driving instructor. "OK, so you're going to slow stop alongside this Volkswagen, make a three-point turn, and oh, by the way, my parents disowned me so they could keep trying for a boy, but that's the way things are in China... by the way, I'm going to take a point off your score for not using your turn signal back there."
While I learned in school about China's one-child policy and the premium placed on sons, I had never actually met someone directly affected by this. It's an entirely different thing to be able to speak to someone who wasn't even documented as a human being in their own country. Social anxiety be damned, I needed to know more about this woman. I got off a few nervous questions and she told me more about her childhood. When she was born, as soon as the doctor announced, “it’s a girl", her mother demanded she be taken away. Her own mother wouldn’t even look at her. She was sent off to be raised by her grandparents in a small home with a dirt floor. Despite several attempts by her grandparents to introduce her to her parents later in life, these parents wouldn't even speak to her. On one arranged meeting they went so far as to force her to walk silently in back of them as they walked with their son. In her years spent living with her grandparents, she would hide from government officials who would come through the villages to check for girls like her and levy large fines upon those harboring them. This meant hours spent hiding in a dark trunk while remaining motionless and silent. It also meant she had very few possessions or clothes because there could be no trace of a child when the officials came through to check.
By the time we crossed paths, she had escaped that life and was living in Beijing sharing a one-bedroom apartment with several other women while working long hours as a tour guide. I found myself in awe of her strength. Each day I looked forward to listening to her stories while our bus inched along the highways in Beijing's massive traffic jams. She told our group there had been an Australian businessman who came to town and was assigned to give him a private tour. She initially thought nothing of it, but this one private tour quickly turned into him calling to fill the rest of his time in Beijing with more of her private tours. She said he was proclaiming his love for her, but she thought, this western man is crazy! I have to admit, listening to her story, I also thought this western man was crazy. We all nodded in agreement that he must be some kind of stalker and she was lucky he was heading back to Sydney shortly.
Stranger in a strange land.
I enjoyed the rest of the week listening to her amazing stories, trying a delicious array of foods, and taking in all the sites. But after returning home to Los Angeles, I couldn't get her out of my head. I needed to know if she was doing well. Sometime later, she reached out to me via email. We chatted back and forth, though not in great depth, it seemed she was doing alright. Suddenly, one day she showed up on Facebook. This struck me as odd as social media and the internet is very closely controlled and much of it blocked in mainland China. I of course friended her, where I learned… She had married the Australian businessman and moved to Sydney!!! She now had a fabulous life traveling the globe with her husband. And thanks to her new life and great job in Australia, she was able to save enough money to buy her grandparents a nice home back in their village to thank them for raising her.
I now have two amazing, silly, and absolutely lovely friends to visit in Sydney. I made the trip to see them 2 years ago, and they, in turn, came to Los Angeles and allowed me to play tour guide. Best of all, a year ago she gave birth. The woman once forced to live in the shadows in China now has two beautiful babies of her own... twin boys!!!
If you take a risk, explore the world and open yourself up, you just may form some amazing friendships. I'm glad I finally stopped waiting for other people to hold my hand and come along with me on my travels. Don't get me wrong, I still have social anxiety. I occasionally have panic attacks. I still appreciate the comfort of traveling with my boyfriend, friends, and family. But I don't stay home sulking if they can't come. Life is too short to sit back waiting for other people to buy a ticket to your dreams. Get out there and live! The reward is worth fighting through the discomfort.
I'm not posting a picture of my friend out of respect for her privacy, but I'm sure she's somewhere in this photo taken on day 1, outside the Forbidden City.
