At the end of our second day in Suzhou we headed back to the train station, bought tickets to Shanghai without much trouble (“Shanghai, liangge”) but then had to wait for almost an hour for the train. As we were waiting, we sat down on the curb near the station. As people were passing us, they stared at us (though in a friendly way). European appearance hardly attracts any attention in Shanghai, but in Nanjing and Suzhou we often felt that were were the only “Europeans” for miles around. (Mind that I was born in Russian part of Asia, and Luisa in Brazil, so neither of us is quite “European.”) In Russia they say that you need to travel the world “to see the people and to show yourself” and during our time in Nanjing and Shanghai the “show youself” part was very noticeable, and often quite entertaining. (Later in Bejing several people also asked us to take pictures with them.)

As we were sitting on the sidewalk near Suzhou people were passing by looking at us with surprise. Someone stopped, and started asking questions. I answered those that I could understand, including where we were from (“Elousi” for me, “Bashi” for Luisa). As others were passing by, those who were having the “conversation” with us started explaining to others that one of us was from Elousi and another one from Bashi. There was now a small crowd around us, all looking in amusement, asking questions. Needless to say I understood almost none of what they were saying and just shrugged my shoulders in most cases. Every now and then, however, I grasped enough of a question to answer, which caused the crowd to gasp in astonishment. At some point, someone said something to the point that I spoke good Chinese. I understood enough to recognize a compliment and replied with “Nali? Nali?” as a friend taught me (lit. “Where? Where?”). The jaws dropped, and stayed down for a while, then a cheer erupted. So, a few months of effort learning Mandarin taught me only a few basic phrases, but those few phrases caused tons of entertainment. Unlike Bolivia and Peru, where Spanish fluency seems to be expected from foreigners (at least backpackers), a few words of Mandarin spoken by a foreigner in China seem to make them an instant celebrity. (The only exception to this rule was Beijing, where most people we interacted with spoke at least some English but failed to understand my Mandarin altogether.)