Biking through Beijing

We got to a slow start this morning. I stayed in after the race and slept yesterday, and the rest of them went out with the others from our school who are in Beijing (there are about 30 of them...)

Kristin and I agreed that we didn't want to tour with the group. I want more than the Beijing 'McExperience'. I don't want to be in a bus and have my hand held as I tour the city. She felt the same way, so after we checked into our downtown hostel Moniek, Kris, and Oliver went to find the group at the markets and Kristin and I rented bikes and explored the city.

First we went to a giant park in the middle of the city called Beihai Park. There were mostly Chinese tourists there, and there were lots of them because it is a long weekend. We had our picture taken 'secretly' a LOT - her more than me (I figure because she is tall and blonde...)

I have been told that since it is a long weekend a lot of these people have come in from the countryside and they have seen few, if any, Westerners before. This happened to all the Westerners we travelled with - especially the blondes. Probably 10 people actually asked to pose with us... and I have no idea how many pictures were taken. We just laughed about it, but after a while it was a little rude and annoying.

Anyway, the park had lakes and temples, and when you climbed up the hill in the center to the watchtower you could see the Forbidden City. That said, the pollution was TERRIBLE today and it was hard to see far anywhere.

After this we walked around the park, bought some street dim sum, chatted. There are a lot of 'secret' police cars here (they are conspicuously black and you can't see in the windows). Also, there is a very visible military presence. In all the public areas they can be seen marching. In the street they march, in the markets, in any and all tourist areas they march. I took a picture of the front gates to one of their training bases and I got throughly yelled at from afar.

We picked up our bikes from where we had locked them across the street from the Forbidden City and biked to Tian'amen Square. It was very surreal - it really is the symbolic center of what China stands for. There were rows of military personnel, there were security cameras at every angle (I heard somewhere that if you were to try and cause trouble by, say, rolling out a 'Free Tibet!' sign, you would be 'neutralized' within ten seconds in Tian'amen Square...), bag checks to enter the plaza, huge pictures of Mao and Hu Jintao, flags, Olympic countdown clocks, little children waving Chinese flags, older kids flying Chinese kites....

Across the plaza they have the Chairman Mao masoleum where his body is preserved and can be viewed by the public. The general public apparently still truly believes that he is 'sleeping'. Not sure what I think about that, but that said, it isn't really my place to have an opinion on that topic, I suppose.

We were there to witness the flag lowering ceremony and the exit of half of the troops, which was cool.

Had our picture taken a lot, again, but it was expected because we were there during a national holiday.... still weird. They would do it so close to your face that you could hear the camera click. Or they would take silent videos and then blush and pretend to be videoing something else when you looked right at them.

After this we met the others back at the hostel and went out for dinner. Linus booked a place that could accomodate two Swedes, five Norwegians, one German, five Americans, one Hollander, and four Canadians on a couple of hours' notice. It was beautiful and as we walked in most of us muttered that we wouldn't be able to afford anything there - but Beijing prevailed and it was all priced reasonably, to our suprise.

After, I got talked into going out. A girl from Western named Abby promised that we would only stay half an hour because she too was tired and the rest of them had a tour to leave for at 8 am the next day.

By 5 in the morning we had been insde six bars all over Beijing (and stood outside countless others), led by the energetic Linus, and I finally called it a night. I think that the clubbing is wa better in Hong Kong - there was a really weird mix of people here. The expats are really weird - a lot of older people contrasted with a lot of ex-pat kids who look like they are fourteen. They sat giggling in the stairways up to the bars. It was obvious that they were high on something and they were dressed like 20 something Eurotrash, sharing i-pod headphones and tracing shapes on the paint chipped walls with their fingertips.

I was in bed by 5:30, and set my alarm for 9 in order to join Kristin for some excellent shopping. I never get good sleep when I travel, but it never bothers me!

Exeunt.

---

---