The following are 4 ‘Tales of Strangers’, shot in Gansu, China, asking people to share any story of their choice.
After some deliberation about how to go with this, I’ve decided to publish the interviews of people as we go, despite the fact that they’re not currently translated – and that I’m not always sure what the answers were (or how relevant, and interesting they are) !
In fact, I’m hoping to reach out to you, the community, to help translate them so I can add subtitles as we go. I’ll update the videos and the posts as I get feedback. For the time being, I’ve added short descriptions above the video in English based on the little I gathered from the stories (I’m not sure how accurate these may be).
If you or anybody you know can help out with this, feel free to comment here, on Facebook or on Youtube. Thanks to all! (It’s even more helpful if you can give some indication about timecodes so I know where in the video to add the subtitles, thanks!)
Lanzhou Student in the Train: when he was young, he and a friend ‘borrowed’ some apples from a neighbor’s yard. The infuriated neighbor saw them and proceeded to chase them around the garden.
Chinese Traveler Needs Money to Return Home: as she was traveling through China, she came up short and didn’t have enough money to take the bus back home. She borrowed 500 yuan from a generous family of strangers, made it back, and paid them back through the mail.
Chinese Academic Wants to Go Far: as a marine biologist, he’s interested in going to remote areas in the world to further his research.
Restaurant Manager and her Baby: about her restaurant and family
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I may be able to help translate. Going to listen to the interviews.
Kieran
Hi Kieran, thanks for your offer, which is greatly appreciated! Will be more interviews from China coming shortly, hope there are some interesting stories.
Great. I haven’t had time to translate anything yet, but I should be able to do at least one video.
I translated them all and posted the translations on the YouTube videos. About the video with the baby, it’s not her baby. In the video she says, “This is my older sister’s kid.”
Lanzou Student in the Train
Hello! My name is Fang Qi. I’m eighteen years old, and a student. When I was little, I had a lot of adventures. Like, when I was little, I was really naughty and loved to misbehave. Together with my classmates and friends, at my [paternal] grandmother’s home, we would go and steal people’s fruit—pears—fruits. And go steal their pineapples, and radishes. One time, I went with my classmates to someone’s vegetable garden to steal stuff. As a result, we were discovered and they chased us down the road, sprinting after us. Running, we looked back and they were still following, because what we’d done was really too much, because we totally messed up this guy’s radishes, pears, and random fruits. Back then I was really small, really naughty and bad, and would do some really bad stuff.
Restaurant Manager and Her [Sister’s] Baby
Our restaurant here is Huiwei Zhai. I’ve been working here six years; it’s my elder sister’s restaurant. My name is Ma Cuixia, and the baby, my sister’s kid, Yao Xinchen. Say, “Hello! Hello!” He’s two years old and really cute, in preschool. Here the food is really good; it’s all ‘homemade’ food.
Traveling Academic Wants to Go Far
If I could choose, I’d want to go to the North and South poles, to the coldest places on the planet, and go see the animals there, and experience the polar day and polar night. If I can, I’d like to do some research there, do some [keliang?] work, as that’s my specialty.
Traveler Needs Loan Money
How about I first talk about going to Hailuogou in Sichuan? Over at Hailuogou, I think everybody should go see Gongga Mountain and climb the glacier. It’s best to carry an ice pick so you can cross over the glacier and go to another one. But going there was most importantly because I wanted to go to Niubei Mountain; from there you can see the three most beautiful mountains in Sichuan Province: Gongga Mountain, Emei Mountain and Jinding Temple, and another mountain I forgot the name of. So I guess that’s my recommendation. The people there are really friendly and willing to help you solve any problems. The happiest thing that happened on the road was that I ran out of money and someone loaned me 300 yuan [~$50] so I could get home.
Hi Kieran,
Thank you so much for your efforts and very helpful contributions! I’m (we are) very grateful for your help and assure you that it will be properly credited in any subsequent works. Sorry for the brevity of this response as we’re on the road and about to head out, but I’ll be acknowledging your contributions in the next interview post which will be coming shortly, as well as in the hopefully near future in a dedicated area. Thanks again and look forward to share more travel stories from China and elsewhere!