International Ferry Terminal Xiamen
After lunch on Saturday and our amble around the waterfront gardens
in Xiamen we headed in a taxi towards the International Ferry Terminal
– a huge building a little further north – to get the ferry to take us
to the island of Gulang Yu, what was once the European enclave in Amoy.
It is called the International Ferry Terminal as this is where you can
get the ferry for the 2km ride to the nearest Taiwanese Island. It
seemed a massive building for such a simple collection of ferry
crossings. It’s not as if there are were any vehicles making this
journey as far as we could tell. I wonder how Dover manages with its
tiddly little terminal? Anyway it was busy, as we’d been told it would
be. In fact it was heaving. The whole Xiamen seemed to be wanting to
get over to the island and we’d thought that we had left it late enough
going over at 2.30pm to avoid the crowds.
Ferry for Gulang Yu
Ferry Interior
The ferry was about the size of one of Hong Kong’s Star Ferries and
in fact in layout was very similar and the lower deck smelt of engine
oil in exactly the same way. There was a surprising rush to get to the
seats, so we managed to get ourselves a good spot at the stern on the
upper deck, so I could get some good photos of the Lujiang Channel
between the two islands.
Sampan in Lujiang Channel
Sampans on the Xiamen Side
Given the amount of shipping that mulls around Hong Kong Harbour I
was surprised how little shipping there was. There was the odd Sampan –
the flat bottomed boats that ply their way around the China’s coastal
waters used for fishing, trading or just living on. Maybe the shipping
was using other parts of the coastal waters and leaving this part free
for just the island passenger ferries.
Xiamen to Mainland Bridge
Chinese coastguard vessel
We could also see one of the five bridges that connect Xiamen and its
airport to the mainland, the Park where we had been immediately after
lunch and a couple of Chinese Coastguard vessels – one of them was
armed with fire power and although its guns were covered up, it was
obvious that it was capable of using them if required.
Gulang Yu
Sun-hatted Chinaman
Looking the other way we could see the older, european-style
buildings on Gulang Yu and one of the many Chinese men who wear sun hats
that you wouldn’t catch an Englishman wearing in a month of Sundays.
Returning to the Ferry Terminal
But the real story of this ferry ride was the return journey. We
left the ride back until after 5.30pm (we bought our return tickets as
soon as we got to Gulang Yu), as after that time the ferry returns only
to the area where the lunchtime park was and not to the International
Ferry Terminal at all. Whether this is because of the number of ferries
coming back from Taiwan or the sheer number of people trying to get off
Gulang Yu I’m not sure, but I suspect the latter. After our tour of
the island we dropped back down towards forecourt of the ferry building
and the noise was unbelievable. Rozy had an expression which describes
this phenomenon of the Chinese: “they have no volume control”. Whilst
that’s not true of everybody, it does seem to be true of a significant
number and put them in a large crowd and it seems as if everybody’s
shouting at
How could they make so much noise?
everybody else. It’s quite disturbing to hear just one person on the
metro shouting into their mobile phones, but listening to it en masse,
as we had to here, was something else. Richard thought it was just the
women, but I think that’s because women talk more than men generally,
but he found that it did his head in. For me the worst and most
frightening part was the crush. We had gone towards the back of one
very long queue trying to find the end of the line before we realised
that that queue was purely for tour groups who were each following a
person with flag and an electronic megaphone. We returned to the
entrance for individual travellers and joined the mêlée. Although there
were crowd control barriers, that didn’t stop a crush trying to get to
the three separate entrances of these. Richard got swept away from me
in the surge that came as a batch of people further in front were let
through the gates to a holding pen on their way to the next ferry. I
had a three or four year old around my feet that I, her mother and
grandmother were doing our best to protect from the crush so I had an
upswell of body pressure from people behind me trying to force their way
forward. Eventually the child was lifted onto her father’s shoulders.
Ever since I got pushed over several metre-high stacks of plates on the
floor of Pratley’s Porcelain Shop in The Shambles in Worcester by a man
barging past me at around the age of four I have never been very good
in crowds, but I managed to control my rising panic and things started
to calm down a bit once we got inside the anti-crush barriers, but that
didn’t stop
Inside the Crush Barriers
the inevitable queue-jumping that goes on over here. Meanwhile
Richard’s father was calling him from England and wondering what the
noise was in the background. It was impossible for him to understand
what we were going through – it had to be experienced to be believed. I
can easily see how 35 people were crushed to death on The Bund in
Shanghai at the end of last year at the New Year’s Eve celebrations if
this is the way some of the Chinese behave in crowd. I’ve been wary
about going to see “events” in Shanghai because of this and this
experience has added to my suspicion that it is better to stay away. It
was with much relief that we made it onto the ferry – by this stage
they had separated us into ferry-sized batches – and a couple of Chinese
grannies very kindly ensured that I had a seat. I must have looked as
if I needed it. It certainly felt like it.
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