The guy couldn't or just wouldn't speak. He stopped us in the middle of the People's Park in Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan. Instead of asking the questions, he drew the words with his wet sponge brush on the ground. I answered him by drawing with the brush FIN. That broke him into spontaneous cheering.
"I'm from Russia", he wrote next, in Russian this time.
It turned out that the man came from Russia's eastern part, near the Chinese border but had lived in St. Petersburg - that's why he knew Finland. "Happy to see you here in China", he wrote and left as fast as he had come.
Five minutes later we saw him joining a local fashion show - on stage. Probably uninvited, although it seemed the models posing on the red carpet were as out of place as he was.
This wasn't the only strange thing happening in the park that day.
The city is supposed to be famous by its teahouses but even more interesting was what happened around the teahouses in the parks. The Chinese-Russian character was just one of them.
First we thought there was a special set of events in the park happening that Saturday afternoon because of the on-going Communist Party Meeting. After all, the shows scattered around the park were a mix of pseudo-ethnic costumes and Mao uniforms with patriotic singing and flag waving. The amount of communist flags was so impressive that we sure the party must be party-related. But no.
"This happens every Saturday, or actually everyday", Mr Lee told us in fluent English. He was just one of the Chinese who came to speak with us in the park. Especially the parents were eager to force their children to practice English with - the future generations' language skills are much more impressive than the ones of our generation.
Mr Lee explained us that the shows were organised by different neighborhoods councils in Chengdu. This also explained why the loudspeakers were competing with the volume - each group wanted to be the biggest and noisiest one. It seems, that parks are kind of common backyards of the people, which is understandable in big cities like Chengdu where people have only little or no space and small apartments.
In addition to communist hymns, people were singing karaoke, zipping tea at the cozy teahouses, playing badminton or rowing on unsteady boats in the pond of the park. And of course taking pictures together with the only tourists in the crowded park (read us).
But the most impressive thing were the ball room dancing groups scattered around the park. Middle-aged and older Chinese seem to gather to parks on their free time just to dance to the music played by some old cd-player placed in the corner. We saw these dance groups also on the streets of Beijing just enjoying the music after the traffic slowed down and the sun had set. Even some young men with no sense of rhythm were dancing solo to slow music with zero feeling of shame. This was something great for a Finn to see and for the Swiss as well.
Luckily we ran into our special Chinese-Russian friend again in the park. We were totally astonished by what we had seen and he had an explanation for what was going on in the park. He took his sponge brush once again and started drawing.
"Hullu=idiot", he wrote and pointed at communist singers and dancers around the park. This time in perfect Finnish with Russian translation!
(he must have learned some Finnish while working in St. Petersburg)
We thought he was the crazy one, but in reality, he may have been the most sane one there.
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