Quotes from the road

Yoni's bus observations:
"We just overtook a car that was overtaking another car."
"I figure we spend 1/5 of our time on the wrong side of the road."

On crossing the road:
M: "Shall we cross the civilised Western way when the little man turns green, or the suicidal Chinese way?"
Y: "The civilised way."
M: "Civilisation is boring."

*****

The Old Man.

The old man walked up to Yoni and began to engage in conversation with him. Unable to understand what he was talking about, Yoni smiled and repeated what little Chinese he knew: Ting bu dong, ting bu dong (I don't understand). The man was persistant, and grabbed Yoni's hand, tracing out Chinese characters with his fingers across Yoni's palm. I grabbed my pen and gave it to the old man. He scribbled over Yoni's hand. Still unable to understand each other, we parted ways. Yoni walked up to a tour guide who was leading a group of tourists and asked her to translate the scribblings on his hand. "It say 'Are you Russian?"

We found the old man later on and told him we were from Canada and Australia respectively. Still excited, he signalled for the pen, and scribbled on my hand this time. I showed him postcards of Canada and my family, and gave him one with our names on it. He did the same in return. We shook hands in farewell, and just as we were about to part ways he opened up his arms and gave us each a giant bear hug.

Still curious about what he had written on my hand, we asked some of the ticket agents at the exit of the park. They directed us to the gift shop, where a helpful lady rummaged through some CD's. "It is a song" she said as she looked at the titles of the CD. Running her fingers down the track titles she stopped at one and pointed it out to me. "It is this one."

Track 9. Think of Chairman Mao.

Needlesstosay I bought the CD.