Steve Canavan's fascinating glimpse into a foreign culture

I’m back from a trip to China and what an interesting place it is.
Housing in the suburbs of GuangzhouHousing in the suburbs of Guangzhou
Housing in the suburbs of Guangzhou

However, for a Westerner bought up with free speech and unlimited access to tomato ketchup, it does seem a little odd at times.

For example, while I was away I was warned not to write anything anti-Chinese or certainly anti-government (China is basically a Communist dictatorship) as emails are – apparently – monitored and it’s easy to land yourself in trouble.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

While I’m not a wimp and don’t like the idea of bowing to censorship, equally I wasn’t keen on being thrown in a Chinese jail and given a nine-month sentence.

For one thing Mrs Canavan would be furious – she’s ear-marked me to fix the guttering at the back of the house next week – and I’ve a season ticket for Bury FC next year that cost of the best part of £200 (though I can say with some certainty that, after watching Bury all my life, being in a Chinese prison would offer much more entertainment).

I only saw a tiny part of China, the city of Guangzhou to be exact. It has a population of almost 20 million – a third of the entire UK – all living in one city. Most of the people seem to reside in giant high-rise blocks; I guess there’s so many people they have to build upwards to fit them all in.

The problem, clearly, is finding work for everyone. There’s so many folk it’s impossible. So in China they seem to have got round it by making up jobs.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

For instance, in one park we strolled through there were men in uniforms using hosepipes to wash trees. Now I am no arborist – I failed the final exam when I accidentally chopped down an ancient oak near Southampton - but I know for a fact that a tree, in general, does not need to be washed. It’s not like your hair, it won’t get smelly and over-run with dandruff if you don’t tend to it for a few days. However, in China people actually have this job, I can only presume, just so they are employed.

In a toilet in a shopping mall I went to there was a man in a smart white suit (who, weirdly, looked just like my dentist) whose job was to wipe away any soap suds that spill on the side of the sink after a lavatory user has washed their hands.

As I washed after having a wee, this man stood literally an inch from my side, cloth poised, business-like look on his face, like a marine ready for action. It was quite intimidating, like he was judging me on how much soap I splashed on the sink. He was in his mid to late 50s and I felt mortified that his job was to clean up my mess. I was so embarrassed that after I’d finished washing my hands I began to wipe up the small amount of soap that had splashed on the sink surface. He stopped me with a stern wave of his finger and said, ‘no, my job’, in a manner so menacing I feared that if I continued I would be taken out by a SWAT team. This poor man clearly spent his whole day in this toilet cleaning up drops of soap, though on the upside his hands must smell lovely.

All over the place there are men and women in smart uniforms with SECURITY written on the back, who stand on little pedestals and look stern. They do absolutely nothing all day long – they’re a bit like those mime artists who dress as statues in shopping malls and stand motionless for hours on end in the hope you’ll chuck a quid coin in their hat - and apparently have no training in security whatsoever; it is simply a made up job to give them something to do.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Despite having some landmark buildings - the Canton Tower for instance, and a shopping complex containing the world’s longest escalator (it was about the size of seven football pitches and, as far as I could tell, completely pointless), I wouldn’t say Guangzhou is a particularly attractive city. We drove for two hours one day to try and find some countryside but the city just went on and on, a sprawling mass of urban-ness.

There are about five old city centres because they keep building newer, bigger, better, more flashy ones. The money is rolling into the country and thus they erecting posher apartments and taller towers almost every week.

The Metro – the underground system – is as busy as you’d expect in a city with 20 million inhabitants. Every time I went on it I was squashed in like a sardine. Indeed I spent one entire half-hour trip with my head squashed into the armpit of a middle-aged man, who, it’s safe to say, hadn’t showered since at least the previous Monday. It was a long journey.

However, it is a preferable form of transport to being on the road.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

I’ve driven in various places around the globe – including Lima, the capital of Peru, where memorably there were 14 lanes of traffic without any actual road-markings (my blood pressure quadrupled during the 10-minute drive) – but never have I seen anything quite like the drivers in China. They seem to be taking part in some sort of giant dodgems convention and spend entire journeys weaving from one lane to another regardless of whether there are cars in the other lane or not. It seems completely acceptable to force another driver off the road, almost like a computer game, and just to add to the fun/carnage, in the midst of all this there are hundreds of cyclists seemingly blissfully unaware of the vehicles flying round them at 60mph . I don’t know the figure for road traffic fatalities in China but I imagine it must be around five million a day.

I will miss China in some ways – mainly as it allowed me to spend 10 days away from my wife and children – but I’m not sure I could live there permanently, the trees would be way too clean.

Related topics: