Day 5: Unknown Territory

After the second visit of a chinese monument (Summer Palace) I feel there’s something that needs to be said about chinese museums and signposting. Namely, the lack of them. The tickets for these tourist attractions are certainly cheap, (usually only around £3 for entry) and make living in China a realitively cash-light experience. However, due to such a low entry fee, those who run the park don’t feel the need to signpost anything, thus reinforcing the Chinese motto, “it’s cheap, what did you expect?”. Information for priceless and fascinating historical monuments of history is sparse, and sometimes (we found) not even in front of the right building. Maps are poorly made and boast an often in accurate scale, and the guidebooks must be relied on for any useful information about the building. 

Chinese road signs also leave something to be desired - even finding our way to the Summer Palace was difficult - grace à the lack of street signs. For a place that sees thousands of tourists each week, you would have thought you should put up a sign pointing in the rough direction. Instead, tourists are left to be fleeced by the pedicabs, who promise a cheap ride to the “very far away” Palace, when only a sign could show them that it was just around the corner. Determined not to give in to the pressure of the pedicab row, we marched up and down the main road, searching for an entrance. Heckles of “Taxi, taxi to the palace!” turned into laughter, until one man started yelling “Third time lucky!”  ... we decided to exit the palace out of another route. 

As if it was that easy! Five hours later, we spent an hour staggering around in the 33° heat, trying to find a subway station. (We had taken a different exit from the palace) There were no signposts to it, despite being right outside an important tourist attraction. The four people we asked all gave different directions, and thanks to the blocked access to google maps, we had to rely on BaiDu - a map entirely in chinese without pinyin! 

(For those that aren’t farmiliar with the mandarin system, to read a street name, one must have seen every single word before to be able to pronounce it. Thanks to the lack of alphabet, one must be told how each individual word is pronounced, as there’s no way to “spell out” a character. Given the number of possible street names, it’s very rare that you will have seen that one before, and therefore you can’t read or pronounce it.) 

Further day plans were cancelled and (would you believe it, after enjoying the rush hour) we melted into our flat in defeat. We’re going to give the subway a miss tonight, I think. 

(Pictures from ferry at the Summer Palace)