My Maiden Travel to China : Not by Air but by Sea ! A “Titanic” experience.
One of the most adventurous things I had done in my life was to travel to China, my first ever trip by sea and not by air ! You might ask, how did you do that ? Did I travel from Singapore to China by ship ? LOL, perhaps so if the trip happened in the early 1900s, when my grandparents migrated from China and ship was the only mode of transportation. Of course, I am not born in the early 1900s, as I would have been a centennial person by now. Indeed, I landed in Shanghai’s Shiliupu, the land port for sea passengers then back in 1993, while taking a 2 nights 3 days trip from Osaka of Japan in a ship aka ferry.
Shanghai, then one of the most open Chinese cities in 1993, had been hosting scheduled ferry routes that transported people between China and Japan for decades. When I took my first maiden trip to China then as a student backpacker, the ferry, which was large by the standard of a cross border sea transportation, looked almost like the Titanic to me at that time. This so-called Japanese “Titanic” ship was then known as Kanjingou (艦真号) in Japanese for the longest time. Today the name had changed to Shin-Kanjin. In today’s context, this was not a cruise ship, it was considered a huge ferry but big enough that gave me an impression like a cruise ship, minus all the luxurious part of a cruise to me then. Never had I crossed an ocean via the ship, and the experience was overwhelming as a young guy trying to see the world.
Because I was still a student then, I did not have the luxury, or rather the money, to buy the upper classes ticket at that time. Yes, for those who imagined, I felt then I was taking the Asian-version of the Titanic, bought the 3rd class cabin ticket, whereby we all slept on the floor (or takami) with 20–30 other people, both man and woman. Most of the passengers in this cabin class were students like me, and consisted mostly either Chinese students who were studying in Japan, or Japanese students who were taking a trip to China on what was known as “budget” trip.
Bearing in mind that during the early 1990s, China was not still considered very open and Shanghai was still quite undeveloped. Since it was a backpacking trip and I had never visited China before that, I had done a long of research through books and word of mouth knowledge from my friends who visited before me. (Internet had not even started and there were no mobile phones during those days !) During those days, food was not fully available in China, food coupons were still being distributed for Chinese people in China, whereby people in China were allowed to buy food according to the available quota per household ! On top of that, foreigners like me had to use the foreign Chinese currency, not the renminbi that were used by the local Chinse people. Such research were important before we made our trip to such a mysterious country.
Once we boarded the ferry, foreign passengers like us could buy food using foreign money was something special. We realized the food sold inside the ferry’s canteen was many times more than the food prices in China. Since I was using Japanese yen then, it appeared to be still reasonable.
Besides myself, I made this maiden trip with 3 other guy friends , one Chinese, one Japanese and one Singaporean. Other than just enjoying the sea breeze on the deck, meal time was the only other enjoyment we had. On the first lunch we had, after we got down to ordering our food, my friends came to know that next day was actually my birthday and someone one of them suggested we should celebrate it with a cake ! Wait a minute, cakes ? Imagine that ordering a cake inside a ferry which hardly had any food ingredients as the chef are mostly from China, I had thought it could be a joke if it can be made at all. But being young and adventurous, I decided to approach the canteen chef if they could make a cake for me to celebrate with my friends. The chef was not only surprised but he had to scratch his head because he told us they had not never baked a cake inside the ferry before ! What was even more unknown to us, he told us there were no eggs allocated for this at all. The chef could not promise us at all, and he told us he would try to give us a reply by dinner time !
To my surprise, the chef came back to us by dinner, promising a cake to be baked for us by tomorrow noon ! What an elation for a young guy who got this special request. All excited, we were ready to try out a “egg-less” cake the following day. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a Japanese girl, who was a student like us, came over and told us shyly that her friend on the other table was just discussing about celebrating her birthday and wondered if they could also ask the chef to bake one for her too. The chef told us the kitchen could only afford to have only one cake baked, and he had agreed to us earlier. She was almost disappointed, but to show a gentlemanly gesture, I told her to ask her friend, who was the same birthday as me, to join us instead for a “joint-celebration” the next day. Being Japanese, she was too shy to say yes but said they would be in the “canteen” the next day.
Came the next day, the chef fulfilled his promise and a cake with the word “Kanjin-gou”, aka, name of the ferry, was inscribed on the cake along with my birthday greetings ! Never had the chef baked a cake on such a short notice. It seemed to be a triumph for the chef and a special treat arranged by great blessing ! While I was about to start celebrating, 3 Japanese girls came to our table, one of them was the one who came to approach us the day before. She introduced her friends, especially one of them who was the same birthday as mine. What a coincidence meeting someone of your exact birthday celebrating inside a ferry without any pre-arrangement ! So for the next 2 days, making new friends with lots of sharing became a way to spend the rest of the time inside the ferry.
As a life learning conclusion on my maiden trip to China, I met a ”maiden” friend sharing my birthday and other friends, and had a “maiden” cake baked too even before I started my trip in China ! All of us continued to become friends in Japan even though we departed our ways after we arrived in Shanghai. These friends became for a long time while I was a student in Japan. Till this date, though I have lost touch with most of them, it was amazing how young friendships were made, not by any purpose, but through pure turn of events, purely platonic during those times. Years later, when the movie “Titanic” became a household name, this short episode inside “Kanjin-gou” reminded me the importance of treasuring every rendezvous and every friendship made to this date.
