Chongqing girls in Xiamen

January 29, 2011. Written in Taipei, Taiwan.

Chongqing girls in Xiamen

I was wandering through the streets of Xiamen, near the station. I had forgotten to look up a hostel, so the first thing was to find an internet cafe somewhere. It took me quite a while to find one and with that heavy bag on my back after a sleepless night, I started to get really tired. After heaving finally found an internet cafe, I learned that there is a specific touristic area near the sea where many hostels are located. I headed there by a local bus. On the way it passed Xiamen university, which looked like a beautiful campus filled with palm trees. The area were the hostels were located also looked very tropical, but due to the fact that it was off-season, there were hardly any tourists around. A town completely designed for tourists without any tourists is around is about as sad as things can get. I headed into one of the hostels that I had found on the internet, and got a room for the night. The guy of the hostel spook good English and the place had good athmosphere, but here as well, being the only guest didn't make things look as cozy as they are supposed to be.

I went directly to the ferry port. The guy at the hostel had taught me how to get there by bus. It was a newly build huge port, but designed very awkwardly. There was no entrance for people that had come by foot, so I had to walk on the side of the high-way to get there. Also, there was no other way to get inside then to take the elevator from the underground parking lots. Inside the port though, it looked like a modern airport. Many restaurants and shops were located here, and there was a huge counter to buy tickets. But here as well, there seemed to be hardly any visitors. I guess that since the service is still very new, the popularity of visiting Taiwan by boat is to become bigger in the coming years.
None of the ladies at the ticket counter spoke English, so I had to buy a ticket using my broken Chinese and writing characters. After waiting a while, the lady called me and gave me my ticket. I looked at it closely, and found out that she had given me a flight ticket to Taiwan. Were they stupid or something? Why would someone come buy a flight ticket at a ferry port? I was almost about to break my traveling rules (I don't fly) without knowing so myself.
I explained the lady that I didn't want to fly. She looked surprised but nodded and prepared a ferry ticket for me instead. I also got half of the price of the plane ticket back.

That evening, back in the area of the hostel, I headed into a cheap eating house for dinner. While eating my dish, a foreign guy came and took place at my table.
"Hello there!" he said.
It was a German guy called Matt studying here for a year. I told him I had passed the university by bus and that it seemed like a really nice campus. He told me that this was his major reason to study in Xiamen. He gave me some tips on the city, and I had some more dumplings with him.

The next day, I decided to visit this university. It was really a beautiful campus, but a bit quiet because Chinese new year holidays were about to start. At the soccer field, there was a guy kicking the ball to the wall, so I offered to play with him for a while. Without any conversation, we started to pass each other the ball. It was fun for a while, but seemed to go on forever, so after 30 minutes I kicked the ball back to the guy and waved him goodbye.

I headed to the same eating house that evening, and found Matt there having dinner with 2 more Germans. A girl and a guy. I joined them, and Matt payed for all of us. He asked me what kind of work I had been doing in Japan. I told him that I was a Karate instructor. He was very surprised to hear this, because he was a serious Karate practitioner himself too. He invited me to have some tea at his place. Here we go again, drinking tea in China! In this case though, I wasn't very scared because my friend himself was a foreigner too. At his place, he showed me some books about his Karate style. It seemed that his teacher has lived in Okinawa to learn Karate from old masters. Matt himself has also been to Okinawa to participate in Kata tournaments.

After this, we went downtown with the other German guy called Pascal to have a drink. Two Chinese girls joined us, one being Pascals girlfriend. They were girls from Chongqing. They had left Chongqing without therir family to work in Xiamen at the age of 15. They life in a small apartment with more then 10 other girls from Chongqing and work at a factory. How old these girls are now, nobody seemed to know, but they still looked very young.

That night, on the way back in the taxi Matt and Pascal told me about a complicated love story with these girls. I told them that I would change their names and write a novel about it someday. They laughed at that and said goodbye to me. The next day I would take my boat to Taiwan. Thank you guys for making my stay in Xiamen an interesting one!