Walking the Wall

Xiong Xiang Juan

“Hey, don’t we know her?” Emma is waggling her head and pointing, none too subtly, at a young Chinese woman behind the travel services desk at our hotel.

“I dunno,” I reply. Emma’s stare seems to suggest I could try a bit harder. We walk past the counter and get into the lift.

Then something registers. “You’re right! It’s Lucy, or something beginning with an L, from Pingyao!”

Pingyao is in Shanxi province, 700 kilometres from Beijing. There are over 1.3 billion people in China. What are the chances?

Good enough, it turns out. Lara (not Lucy) works in the travel industry catering to independent, English-speaking travelers, an industry which is still quite small in China. Her Chinese name is Xiong Xiang Juan. We had met her before, and it was at a hostel in Pingyao, clear back in February, just two weeks after we first came to China. It was freezing, we were slightly discombobulated, and we could hardly speak a word of Chinese. Lara happened to be there for one month work experience, so with her English skills and enthusiasm she got to practice being tour operator on us.

With Lara in Pingyao, February 2006

Lara was born in Hubei Province and graduated this year from Xian International University with a degree in Foreign Trade and a major in English. She chose to go to youth hostels for her work experience, and has worked in Shanghai, Pingyao, Hangzhou and now Beijing.

With Lara in Beijing

Her goal is to work towards the 2008 Beijing Olympics, by which time she hopes to have her English Tour Guide License and possibly her own company. Who knows, maybe with a bit of luck we’ll run into her again there.