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Between the lines
By Chitralekha Basu (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-08-10 17:48 Most Turkish tourists like a bit of self-indulgence when they are traveling. "We take them for a massage by blind masseurs near Huipingli or Liulichang," says Ozkan. This is a traditional form of therapy prevalent in China, based on the idea that the blind have a superior sense of touch than the sighted. Ozkan believes when in China a tourist must do as the Chinese. "When clients ask for a fork and knife in restaurants I encourage them to try chopsticks instead." Often, they do not know how to hold them and falter along the way. But, that, insists Ozkan, is where the fun of getting to know an alien culture lies. Once, during his early days here, while taking a tour group from Turkey around Forbidden City, Ozkan lost his Chinese assistant in the melee. When the clients urged him to tell the story, which Ozkan did not remember too well, he merrily filled in details from tales of the Turkish Palace in Istanbul and the Ottoman Empire to make up for his lack of knowledge of emperor Yong Le's reign in China. He, of course, is better informed now, but can't stop chuckling about the incident and how he avoided losing face. At the end of the day, empires located halfway across the world from each other, are not all that different from each other. |
