So near yet so feared: true to form
Cecilie Gamst Berg
The other day, I saw someone had gone onto Facebook begging to know where they could buy an Octopus card in the MTR station from which they were posting. The reply, "At the service centre", came two hours later, by which time, I presume, the person had left, perhaps Octopus-less.
"Whatever happened to asking a bystander?" I thought as I read this exchange. Then it dawned on me - perhaps such reluctance to approach a stranger came from having recently visited Hunan province.
There is no way to put this delicately: the people of Hunan are not the most accurate providers of information. All right, all right, I'll say it: they're the biggest liars I have ever met.
I went there recently with friends K and E, on a mission to see Mao Zedong's birthplace, Shaoshan. We asked the receptionist at our Changsha hotel if there was a bus service that would take us there. "Oh no, no. You must join a tour." Yeah, right. There was a bus to Shaoshan every 50 minutes.
To sustain myself during the journey I went to a "supermarket" (a shack with about seven items for sale) near the bus station to buy fruit. "There isn't any." Where could I get some? "You can't get it anywhere in Changsha." I found some in the shop next door.
And so the day went on, with everything people told us being utter lies, including that we had to buy 60 yuan (HK$75) tickets to see Mao's Memorial Museum when we only wanted to see his " guju" or ancient dwelling, which was on the other side of the valley.