Beijing, There is No Place Like Home

Hello Everyone,

So, it is amazing to me, I lived in Beijing for 4 months, and coming back to it feels a little like coming home. After seeing so many new places, Beijing feels very familiar to me. I know how the subway works, and what accent the cab drivers will speak with. I never thought I could feel comfortable this way in a city besides Chicago, but here I am, in Beijing, China, feeling like I'm back in my confort zone.

So after leaving the absolutely delightful city of Xi'an, we took an overnight train to the coal capital of China, Datong. This city, a very ancient capital, has been relegated to one of the most polluted cities in China. While much of the scenery on the train to Datong was beautiful, there were also rivers of orange slime and large smokestacks and factories. Our guidebook made the place out to be a little prettier than it turned out to be, and we were almost regretful that we had to spend even one night in town.

However, we found the locals charming, and the nearby sights some of the most impressive in all of China. First, Lizzie, myself, and a lovely Swiss couple we met on the train bargained hard for a taxi to take us out to the fabled Hanging Monastery. This monastery is a decent sized structure literally built on the side of a cliff. The building is over a thousand years old, and the physics of it hanging the way it does seem almost impossible.

From my perspective, even more impressive than this was the YunGang caves. These were an old Buddhist grotto built some 1,500 years ago with more detail than I have ever experienced in cave carvings. The largest budha, while not ranking in the biggest in the world, easily cleared 50 feet tall. Moreover, the walls were carved with over 50,000 Buddha images that seemed to fill every possible nook and crany. These were easily some of the most impressive testaments to Chinese culture I have seen in this country.

We spent a night in Datong with our new Swiss friends, and later rode a day train with them to Beijing the next morning. Once in Beijing, it was as I've already mentioned, like coming home. The Beijing accent I have in my Mandarin started to come out in force, and the sweet people of Beijing were even friendlier than I'd remembered. Watching the sea of heads in the Beijing subway was like rejoining with an old friend. I simply cannot stress enough the strange sense of wonderment that I have toward coming to a city that was totally foreign but five months ago, and feeling like I've come home.

Lizzie and I spent our first night imposing on a wonderful friend from school here in Beijing who is working in the heart of the Beijing business district. Then we moved out to reconnect with the local traveler culture (not to mention our Swiss friends) out in the same hostel I stayed at when I arrive here, so many months ago (and the girl at the desk recognized me!) Whoa! Beijing, Whoa! Since arriving, we've been cleaning up the sights that Lizzie and I missed our first time around, including Lama Temple, the finest testament to Tibetan Buddhism in Beijing. Tomorrow we'll visit the Temple of Heaven and buy a wonderfully Asian cellphone to bring back home, and the next day we'll be with my home stay family, and then we'll be on a flight to the Great US of A. This means my next letter will surely be from the comfort of my lovely home in Chicago, and will be full of the somber reflections tell me this is not the last time I'll be packing my bags for adventure.

I hope all is well folks. I bought a wonderful set of postcards from Tibet, if anyone wants any last chance postcards with Chinese postage. Otherwise, thanks for a wonderful trip. This letters provide me a wonderful way of chronicling my experiences, and your responses make it all worthwhile. I love to hear about everything you folks are up to. I personally have one more year of College left, and then, hopefully, we'll have some kind of a gathering where everyone on this list will be cordially invited to share stories at my home in person, and dream the kind of dreams that keep us on our toes, and on the run.

Thanks again,
Love,
Carl

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