The Amazing Race 6, Episode 11

Shanghai (China) - Xi'an (China) - Mt. Hua (China) - Xi'an (China) - Honolulu, HI (USA) - Chicago, Il (USA)

The final double episode of this season of The Amazing Race was dominated by the racers' continued difficulties with coping and communicating in China.

Watching the racers in some of the same places I had visited on my first trip to China 15 years ago, I was struck -- as I was on my own return visit to China last month -- by how much has changed, how much of China is still different from other parts of the world in the same ways as before, and above all by the differences between visitors' reactions to the same place.

Almost the only time the racers looked happy in China was when they had nothing to do for 24 hours but relax and watch the scenery on the train from Shanghai to Xi'an. As I had done on the same train ride, most of the racers got tickets in the most luxurious class, in 2 or 4-person "soft sleeper" compartments -- comfortable, somewhat less expensive than flying, and giving an opportunity to see much more of rural China from ground level than from a plane. Rebecca and Adam, who lost all their money as a penalty for coming in last in the previous leg and had to beg for their train fare, appeared to be in berths in an open "hard sleeper" car, which is much cheaper than "soft" class and actually much more comfortable than the name suggests, despite lacking privacy.

Off the train, the racers struggled, especially with communicating, navigating, and negotiating prices. "I hate China", one said. When they got frustrated, they denounced everyone around them (word to the wise: making people in China "lose face" is one of the best ways to alienate them, and ensure that they won't try to help you), and refused to pay taxi drivers who couldn't understand their spoken English directions or demands to go faster. Imagine what would happen if someone got into a taxi in New Orleans, speaking only Chinese, insisted that the driver take them in spite of not being sure where they wanted to go, gave directions -- and increasingly vociferous complaints -- in Chinese, and then tried to abandon the taxi, and the driver, without paying, short of whatever might have been their destination?

China has long had a reputation as a difficult place in which to travel, but that's rarely been my experience. Certainly I've found it a much easier place to get around than India, the other country (perhaps the only one) with which it can really be compared. Certainly the kinds of effective communications strategies I described in my column last week -- which depend on people you encounter being able to read directions or a destination written in a local language -- wouldn't work nearly as well in India, or anywhere else with a high percentage of people who aren't literate in any language. One of the greatest accomplishments and legacies of communism in China is near-universal literacy, especially in the cities. It's standard practice for hotels in China to give guests printed cards listing some of the most common places they might want to go, in both English and Chinese -- including, of course, the hotel's own name, address, and directions -- to use in indicating directions to taxi drivers or asking directions on the street.

What China shares with India is its distinctiveness. Neither country is self-sufficient or isolationist, but with a billion people each, they are both large enough to be worlds of their own, with their own ways of doing things, that demand of visitors -- quite reasonably -- that they take them on their own terms. "When in Rome, do as the Romans", is nowhere as true as in India and China. That puts racers -- or any rushed travellers -- at a particularly severe disadvantage in such places, both because it's easier to get frustrated when you are in a hurry and, perhaps more importantly, because people who are in a new country and culture every other day don't have time to adjust their behavior to local customs and conditions, but of necessity try to find a single way of doing things that works more-or-less poorly everywhere. To a large extent, I think many travellers' frustrations with China reflect the extent to which most people try to cover too much ground (such as by trying to "do" China, a country larger in area than the USA including Alaska, in a month or less) too quickly to really adapt.

After some of my previous columns, I got questions from readers asking how I managed to travel on my own in China. I didn't find it hard, but I did travel very differently in China than I might in another country. For example, I usually avoid reserving accommodations in advance (except hostels in expensive countries), preferring to look at several hotels, and a specific room, before negotiating a price. But when you don't understand any local language, you are at a considerable disadvantage in bargaining, since the hotel-keeper knows that you will probably find it more difficult to leave and find another hotel. And if they speak or read English, they feel (not unreasonably) entitled to charge an English-speaking guest a premium for their English translation ability.

So on my most recent visit to China, I reserved a hotel room for at least the first night in each city through the English-language Web sites of hotel booking agencies eLong.com or ctrip.com . Don't panic if the home pages of these or other Web sites are almost entirely in Chinese or another language. Just look for the little tab labeled "English", or the U.S. flag or the Union Jack, somewhere in a corner of the page. You'll be amazed how many Web sites around the world have some sort of English-language version. (If not, there's always robo-translation, but it doesn't generally work for Chinese, nor is it typically sufficient to navigate an e-commerce Web site.) You'd be hard-pressed to make a reservation over the phone in English with a China-based Ctrip or eLong customer service representative -- even though they have toll-free numbers in the USA -- but the translated Web sites make that unnecessary.

Booking hotels in China in advance through Web sites like these -- even a day in advance, or earlier the same day -- has two advantages:

1. Because these sites are targeted mainly at Chinese people travelling within their own country, their prices are set for the domestic market. They probably aren't as low as the best price you could get if you showed up without reservations and bargained hard in Chinese at the front desk (although if you don't look Chinese, they might be), but they avoid anything additional that you'd be charged as a walk-in guest for being a foreigner.
   
   
2. If you make reservations before leaving your previous destination, you can print out the hotel name and address in Chinese, at the cybercafe where you make your reservations, to show people along the way to help you get there. Show it at the train or bus station , and people will send you to the right place to buy a ticket to that city. Show the ticket, and people will direct you to the right place to board the right train or bus. (Essentials like the platform number or bus stand number, and the time of departure, will probably be printed or written on the ticket -- the same numerals are used in China as in the USA and Europe.) Show it to the conductor, and they will signal you when to get off. Show it to a taxi driver or to someone on the street, and they will steer you to the hotel.

The one time I had difficulty finding my hotel was when it had opened just a week before (typical for Shenzhen, where the pace of construction makes it seem as though everything is brand new, including the efficient new subway that had also opened just the week before), there were no directions or address in Chinese yet on the hotel Web site, nobody had heard of the hotel yet, and the hotel address referred only to the "Free Trade Zone" in which it was located, rather than to a street name and number.

When I got off the bus, I first tried to find someone who could translate the address I had in English, or mark it on my map. So before trying to hail a taxi (or allowing myself to be pushed into one by the taxi touts) I walked far enough away from the bus station to get away from the hustlers, and went into a series of shops, office buildings, and other hotels until I found a desk clerk who took my (English) printout of the hotel Web site, and my (Chinese) map away to consult some other people in shouted Cantonese (Cantonese always seems to be shouted), and returned with a dot marked on the map. Bowing and smiling my thanks, I went and tried to find my way there on foot -- it didn't look to be far -- but discovered that there was an expressway forming an impassible-seeming barrier. So I gave up and flagged down a taxi.

The racers in Shanghai had trouble getting taxis to take them, but they might have been in an area where taxis weren't allowed to pick up passengers on the street, but could only wait at designated taxi stands or respond to radio calls. (Not uncommon in the USA, and in many other places.) Or the drivers might have been trying to indicate that they couldn't take them where they wanted to go because they didn't understand English. Once again, imagine the person trying to get into a cab in New Orleans, and shouting at the driver in Chinese. They would probably reply in English with, "I'm sorry, I don't speak Chinese, and I can't help you" -- or something less polite -- and kick them out of the cab.

Anyway, I smiled to the driver, and showed him the marked spot on the map. He squinted a bit at the Chinese legend on the map, nodded to me, and headed off -- in the exact opposite direction from the way I thought I wanted to go. Just as I was about to panic, we reached an underpass where we could get to the other side of the expressway, and headed back toward my hotel, which I now recognized (from the picture on the Web site) in the distance.

But before we got there, we turned off, and presently the driver stopped the cab in front of a gate from which a large crowd of laborers on bicycles were emerging into the street. He opened the door, and indicated that this was the place where I should get out.

If I hadn't paused to think about whether there was an innocent explanation, I might have decided instantly that the driver was stupid, incompetent, or malicious. But what I think had happened is that my informant had marked the "Free Trade Zone" from the hotel address on the map, and the driver had taken me -- reasonably -- to the entrance for workers in the zone.

The racers tried to deal with situations like this by giving directions verbally. They also tried to ask for speed in English: "I'm in a race. I need to go fast." This works if someone understands a little English -- "Fast", "Slow", "Left", "Right", Straight", "Yes", No", "Stop" -- but not if they speak no English at all. The one thing anyone in "The Amazing Race" should try to get written down in as many widely-spoken languages as possible, whenever they meet someone at one of the overnight "pit stops" who speaks Chinese, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, etc., is "I'm in a race. I will give you an extra tip if you go faster than the other people in this race."

Ordinary travellers may be better served by getting people to write "I want you to drive safely and slowly. I will tip you more if you go slower." Or, depending on your tastes and needs, you may want to use the first opportunity to have someone to write out a card you can carry in a local language that says, "I don't eat meat", or "I am allergic to [I can't eat] milk". For communicating a broader range of messages, no matter waht lanaguage people speak or whether they are literate, you can use a laminated pocket-sized Kwikpoint visual translator. Few stores stock them, and the racers wouldn't be likely to have a chance to pick one up along the way, but you can order one by mail before your trip.

Since my driver didn't speak any English, I didn't try to shout directions at him from the back seat. Instead, I leaned over to where he could see me, and gestured with my arms to indicate the turns to get us back to where I had seen the hotel. (Unless you are extremely familiar with the local culture of gestures, pointing with an entire open hand or arm, rather than with any single finger, is less likely to be misunderstood as obscene or insulting.) I made it to my hotel, safe and sound, and I paid the cabbie what was on the meter. All's well that ends well.

Broadcasts of the next season of The Amazing Race start on 1 March 2005 in the USA and some other places. The following season, "The Amazing Race 8" will be for teams of 4 instead of 2, but the show will probably go back to teams of 2 (depending on audience reaction) for "The Amazing Race 9". The producers are accepting applications now, and I've updated my information on how to apply for The Amazing Race 8 or future seasons.

The Amazing Race 6, Episode 10

Sigiriya (Sri Lanka) - Shanghai (China)

"We don't know how to communicate with them."

That was the key problem for the contestants, none of whom appeared to speak or read any Chinese, throughout this episode of The Amazing Race in Shanghai.

In cities, the racers have generally relied on taxis not just to get them wherever the "clues" from the producers of the race told them to go, but also to know where these destinations were located, and how to get to them. The savvier racers have sometimes even hired taxis to lead them when they were driving rented vehicles.

In a race, it's a logical tradeoff to pay more money for taxis than mass transit would cost, and give up the greater opportunities for meetings and conversations with local people on buses and trains, in order to get where they are going faster, and not to have to spend time figuring out where to go or how to get there.

Even for regular travellers on a budget, it sometimes make sense to take a taxi just as a way to find your destination. (If you suspect the distance is short, a cheaper and potentially more interesting alternative may be to offer a small tip to a child or someone else idling nearby in exchange for leading you on foot, a tactic the racers seem to have tried only intermittently.)

But many of the communication strategies travellers get accustomed to relaying on within the world of European languages that are written in the Latin alphabet and that mostly use the same phonemes (component sounds) break down when those same travellers go to China.

It's one thing not to know what a place name means when someone says it, or when you read it on a map, and quite another thing:

1. Not to be able to recognize that the characters on the sign in front of you match those in the directions you were given (is that a different character, or just a stylistic variation in the writing?);
2. Not to be able to "sound out" place names or other words you have in writing (because the writing system isn't at all phonetic); or, perhaps worst of all
3. Not to be able to repeat a name or other word you hear recognizably (since you can neither recognize as significant nor accurately replicate the changes of pitch or "tone" within each syllable that distinguish otherwise identical-sounding words with completely different meanings), or tell whether someone else is saying the same or a completely different word.

Learn from the mistakes of the contestants on "The Amazing Race", who kept trying to repeat place names aloud: if you are going to China, and don't speak or read any Chinese, you'll need a very different set of coping and navigation techniques than in other countries where you don't understand the language but can still recognize or pronounce it.

There are three basic ways to "make your way", as the race directions always say, to where you want to go, if you can't recognize or reproduce either written or spoken language:

1. Find someone who speaks or reads your language, and get them to take you or lead you where you want to go (or tell a taxi driver where to take you), or keep finding people who speak or read your language to help you along at each juncture (which direction to walk, where and in which direction to turn, where to get on the bus, which bus to get on, when to get off the bus, and so forth). This seems to be racers' main recourse, but it doesn't work well unless a high proportion of local people speak or read your language. If you rely on finding someone who speaks English each time you aren't sure which way to turn, you won't get there very quickly or efficiently, and you can get stuck if possible routes diverge at a spot where no one around speaks your language.
   
   
2. Find your destination on a map, and show people that spot on the map. No words are necessary: a foreigner pointing to a spot on a map will be presumed to be trying to get to that place, and will (in some fashion) be given directions or assistance -- by anyone who can read the map -- without needing to say a word. If you can't find a bilingual map, it helps to have both an English-language and a Chinese map: once you or your informant locates a place on one of the maps, its usually possible to correlate enough landmarks on both maps to transpose the location to the other map. You'll have much more success getting Chinese passers-by to point you in the right direction if you show them a Chinese or bilingual map with your destination marked than if you show them where you want to go on an English-only map. Even a Chinese-only map can be useful: once someone figures out where you are trying to go, and marks it on the Chinese map, you can keep showing the marked map to other people to keep steering you along the way. It isn't clear, given the way the television show is edited, whether or how often the racers attempted this, or whether they realized the value of having Chinese-langauage or bilingual maps.
   
   
3. Find someone who speaks or reads your language, and get them to write down the place name and/or address (and, if possible, directions for how to get there) in Chinese or the local language, and show this writing to other people. This is actually the most effective strategy in such a place, but it's the one the racers don't appear to have figured out. It's a lot easier and quicker to find someone before you start -- a clerk in a nearby hotel or business, for example -- who understands enough English to understand where you want to go, and write it down in Chinese for a taxi driver to read, than to find a taxi driver who speaks English. Once you've gotten one person to write down your destination in Chinese, you can get further assistance from any number of additional people along your route, even if they don't speak or read any English at all.