Life in China The Emperor of Swindlers | The Emperor of Swindlers |
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| China | |
| Saturday, 01 March 2008 | |
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Having worked in the dongbei region for two months, this was my first opportunity to leave the foothills of the Changbaishan near the border with North Korea, a landscape of green hillsides and slow-moving rivers. I was eager to experience something of the China I had glimpsed in ‘Round China’ documentaries on TV and had read about back in London. The Manchu invaders who founded the Qing dynasty chose Shenyang as their capital; they built a palace and, in time, some tombs. According to my guidebook, the tombs and pagodas were scattered on the outskirts, so I had decided to start at the more centrally-located museum. The Qing Emperors later moved to Beijing where, not unlike our own Royal Family, they hankered after their ancestral pursuits of hunting expeditions and horseback riding. They kept up their Shenyang ‘Balmoral’ for holidays but since the Cultural Revolution the city had developed into the region’s foremost car-manufacturing centre. I had pooh-poohed the warnings of my ‘Old China Hand’ colleagues about the dangers for lone women travellers in China. I likewise ignored the raised eyebrows of my Chinese office colleagues, reluctant to leave their home city and its sheltering hills. After all, I would only be gone four days and my Chinese was not all that bad. The cab already had a female in a short red skirt in the seat beside the driver. I thought from her familiar manner she must be his daughter or girl-friend, to be dropped off en route, but she was a paying customer. I realised this when we passed a park which, according to the map on my knee, lay in the opposite direction to the museum. I should have known all was not well when he waved a cigarette at me and casually asked ‘’Keyi?’’ something which never happened in Tonghua. I was so beguiled by his jovial manner that I agreed, and the pair of them proceeded to light up. At least he opened his window. All the time he drove through the heavy traffic, in one of China’s most polluted cities, he chatted casually, one hand on the wheel, and even picked up another passenger. After twenty minutes I told him it would have been quicker to walk, and he answered with the Chinese equivalent of ‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist’ and ‘’Kuai dao le! Kuai dao le!’’ |
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I settled myself in the back seat of the taxi and asked the bulky driver to take me to the Shenyang Museum. Turning round and showing all his misshapen teeth in a wide grin, he informed me that he was an Emperor. Then he passed me a Polaroid picture of himself dressed in a dragon-embroidered yellow robe and red-tasselled conical hat, the standard court dress of a Qing Emperor. As this was 2003, and the Qing dynasty fell in 1911, I knew he must be joking. I liked this cheery ‘Emperor’ Every tourist site in northeast China has its costume rack and photographer, so visitors can pose and be photographed in front of ‘their’ palaces, but this particular taxi-driver really was an Emperor of sorts: the Emperor of swindlers. 
When we finally arrived at a place where people were milling around a gate in a red wall, I asked the price. He pointed at the meter and said ‘’Ni kan!’’ The correct charge, according to my guidebook, was 7 Yuan for the first four kilometres and the place was less than 3 kilometres from the hotel. The meter read 50 Yuan. By this time I was just anxious to get out, so I paid up and put it down to experience. Next day, I decided to go by taxi to see a tomb in the appropriately named Beiling (North Tomb) Park. This time I would ask the doorman at the hotel to get an estimate of the fare. Taxi-drivers are wary of offending hotel doormen, who can prevent them from driving up under hotel awnings and thus lose the chance of rich pickings from westerners, even though not all were as easily duped as I was.| < Prev | Next > |
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