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Published: July 10th 2007
Untitled July 6 - 10th
Dear avid blog readers,
I'm back! After a great week in the US, I've made it safely to Asia. It was wonderful to see all my family (fluet side at least!) in Texas and Tiffany's wedding was wonderful. Here is a picture of the beautiful bride: http://www.legacy.com/wacotrib/Celebrations.asp?Page=Announcement&PersonID=89974732. Parents, thanks for everything in Texas, it was a great trip!
I've been in Beijing since last Thursday night, this is really just a stopover on my way to SE Asia - literally my plane was changing here so I asked if i could layover for a few days for free!
The Olympics Can't start a discussion of Beijing w/o starting here. Beijing is in full swing for the 2008 Olympics! actually, as of two days ago at 8:15pm the official countdown was 397 days, 3 minutes and 40 seconds. phew. if there are any mandarin words i will have learned by the time i leave here, they are certainly "renovation" and "under construction." A lot of the cute little alleyways of the city are being destroyed for "modernization. which is a shame. These are filled with little courtyard houses where ppl still live, selling
dumplings on the sidewalks and sharing public bathrooms. I read that you can't actually own land here, so the govt decides what gets torn down for construction" OVerall, life is very modern here and it's hard to imagine the poverty in rural china being part of the same country. i found a decent hostel for $8/night that was set in one of these alleyways around a traditional coutryard. There were families, etc. staying there - not just backpackers, which was surprising. i shared a 4 person dorm room with 3 of the sweetest dutch ppl, super polite. i was up so early in th emornings and bback late that i never saw them until the 3rd night (awak anyways).
The People I"ve found the chinese in beijing to be very nice and helpful people. i'm used to ppl being offended if i don't understnad the language, in SA, and here, not at ll. to be expected i suppose! i had to pose for a lot of pictures. the first time, i was sitting in tiananmen sq and thought they wanted tme to take a picture of them. i'm sure it was all out of towners, not the beijing urbanites.
so, i think there are probably more pictures of me in china on other people's cameras then my own. really nice students would also stop me to practrice their english. chinese ppl (at least in beijing) are super polite to friends/fmaily - i saw more than one near brawl over paying the bill, etc. etc, but they are definitely impolite en masse - they dont' seem to bleive in waiting your turn in line and this drives me mad. this started before i even left the US, boarding my plane (twice - 3 hour delay so we had to unload and reload) so i knew their little tactrics ahead of time. although i clearly didn't put the knowledge to use becuase in the forbidden city ticket line i stupidly chose the side line, instead of the middle line which was virtually impossible to cut into (no side access). It was definitely 30 extra minutes out of my day, and a lesson in chinese culture. i'm sure the cutting lines, pushing in crowds to get to the front or get a seat, are really just trends grown from necessity due to masses of ppl (but why are hte japanese so orderly
then?)
The Language Barrier beijing is not totally straightforward w/o mandarin. it's really, really strange to be in a country where you don't speak a single word (i did pick up hello and thank you), and don't have english letters so you can at least luck things up. the only other time i've been in this situation is in seoul - and, even then, i had my wonderful tourguide, ju-hyun to show me around (kam-sa-ham-ni-da, J!!!) The subways are fantastic, though not extensive and simple to navigate with everything in english letters. this is more than i can say for the public bus system with only chinese charactrers. i somehow managed to find the correct bus to the summer palace, 90 min outside town, and spent the bettter part of the ride matching up the chinese letters at each stop to see where we were. the buses run totally on the honor system for paying your fare, which i thought was cool. feng, a classmate of mine from beijing, says the bsues confuse even him! i can read a few chinese characters from my japan days - entrance/exit/male/female/numbers/china - basically anything that would also be printed in english, rendering
my knowledge virtually useless.
The Food This has sadly been a disappointment to me (Jeremy would have been in heaven though!) This is probably blasphemous to all the ppl who have ranted about the food to me, but really all i have to say is that the dumplings were good. beijing actually has a wide selection of all types of chinese food - sichuan, shanghia, cantonese, northern, uyghurs. one of their big things in B is noodles (more so than rice). i'm counting on thailand and vietnam for good food now. one crazy thing i did find on the street though was almost identical to my previously mentioned "favorite snack" from peru/bolivia andes region - the really large boiled corn! i was shocked, but here it's served w/o the sweet, caramely touch
China v Japan one thing about china is that it really made me reminiscent for japan. i couldn't help but ocmpare/contrast the two. here are a couple of thoughts (w the caveat that i know japanese culture better) disagreements of additiosn from those that have been to both?
1. both camera CRAZy but only the japanese do the peace sign and "cheesu"
2. both have
squat toilets, but only the chinese (w/o the same sense of privacy as the Japanese) have shared, open squat toilets eeck!
3., both have the cutest kids in the world, but the japanese ones seem to often be spoiled little...
4. tons of great temples in both, but the chinese ones budhist, the japanese ones shinto
5. both have the coolest cellphone technology in the world! but only the chinese YELL into the phone as though they are talking w/ alum cans and string. what is up wtih this?
well i could go on but this will already be a LONG entry!
Sights beijing has come very cool historical sights (obviously). i won't write much about them because you probably know all the main ones, and some of you have even been. Besides, dows anyone read these things anyways or just look at the pictures? was mostly struck by how big so many of these complexes are, how much land was set aside for them, etc. Also, having just come fron the land of the incas, it is so fascinating to observe how different these historical cultueres were and how all these amazing yet so different things were
happeing simultaneously around the world.
Ti'an Square that's slang for tiananmen sq, or an alternative for learnng how to spell it. i headed here first thing on my first am. i've always wanted to visit t sq, so it was cool to finally be here, the history of the massacre is really so recent...and i read that even more recently, falun gong practicers were protesting or practicing here and hauled off to prison. for the nyers, you know all the falun gong grps in the city. i've never known much about it, but always felt pride in the fact that foreigners were free to come to the us and do as they please. i asked classmate feng about it, and he said that religion is wide open in china, but falun gong crossed the line becaseu they became political. hmm, is this true because in the us they try to illicit sympathies on the basis of religous persecution. i feel like i should be looking over my shoulder just for writing about it!
Forbidden City Am i the ony one in the world Not impressed?? jared? justin? to be honest, the coolest part of hte FC for
me was when i went to nearby jinshan park where you can climb to the top of this little hill (once the highest point in beijing) and get an amazing view over not only the entire FC with its cool roofs, but also the entire city of beijing. walking around between the moat/wall was also cool to get a sense of magnitude.
Great wall Now this, i foudn amazing and stunningly beautiful. its a new 7 wonder of hte world! as is machu picchu... i wanted to get off themain tourist areas (i mean, the wall is Soooo long, does everyone really need to vist the same spot?) so i chose to do a 4 hour hike along the wall. near the end and start points the wall was restored but the entire middle was not. you can tell the diff in the pix. what a human feat! and great views. i must have a hundred pics or so.
other tourist sites i'm soooo tired of "sightseeing"after beijing, and feel like a better way to experience this city is through livig here for a bit. some of the temples were nice, but i thought they paled in comaprison
to japan's peaceful and beautiful temples. maybe outside bbejiing. the heaven park was also awesome, esp for its acoustic design and thoughtful planning - they say this has the best architecture in all of beijing. and wandering around the summer palace was really fun. like a mini choose-your-own-adventurure! this is wehre all the royalty went when the FC got too humid. jared, my pics look like yours w/ the ominous sky - i t's been very hazy for most of my trip here (very polluted city). so i commented to this old, old brithis guy at how the sp felt like disneyland, - you know, you can take little boats around, visit each little site, shop along traditional roads, and he and his wife seemed so offended! they were probably professors of chinese history or soemthing.
Art i went to see both a beijing opera show (it's famous w/in china) and an acrobatic show, the latter of whcih i choked at the cost of ($24) but was so amazing and totally worth it, the former of which was sort of weird but authentic i guess. there was mime, acrobatics, fighting, and a touch of opera singing. okay, and a
ten minute nap for jaime (we'll chalk that up to jet lag)
the real beijing? on my third day, i set out to explore the city outide the tourist scnen and to get a feel for the local scene. the adventures started AFTER breakfast, as my sdesire to experience local cultures tops at fried dough and dumplings at 7am. i rented a bike which was probably the most fun i had, riding around w/ all the locals. there is a full set of traffic laws, roads, lights, etc. for bikes. like the ayahuasca ceremeony in peru, ridigin a bike in beijing is not for the faint of heart. cars are very aggresive and you must watch for the buses, since they share the lanes with bikes. on a bike, you're near the bottom of the pecking order, better off than only pedestrians, who have no rights whatsover and should expect cards to honk at them to tell them to MOVE, even if the sign does say "walk"(figuratively only of course). i road my bike for hours, stopping and locking it up with the hundreds of other wikes when i wanted to go somewhere, and explored all the little alleyways
in the city where you can get lost in a maze of nameless streets. i stopped at a local glasses shop and got a new pair of glasses made for cheap. since it was my "live like a local day"i bargained the price down to less than hlaf the quoted price. but i guess to live like a local i first had to get ripped off like a foreigner! i also got my cheapest haircut ever - $2.75, and no tipping in china. she did a great job, espectially for my only guidance being an indication of length, she spent a long time adding all these layers, etc. i wasn't sure what she'd do to it, but hair grows back i figured.
For dinner i met uip with feng, a chinese classmate of mine. he took me to a local schezuan restuarant which was pretty good - nice and spicy! eating with locals is always the way to go. after, we went to this crazy little bar which was down this tiny alley with only a red paper lantern our front. there is no way a foreigner could ever end up there. it was basically a little chill spot
at someone's house, where we sat out on the roof and did as the chinese do - drink beer! beer here is ALMOST free - but it's also ALMOST water, so there's a definite tradeoff there. china is second only to the US in consumption of beer worldwide - but divide by the number of ppl! so i asked feng about the report that was alll over the US news the day i left the US - the chinese govt released a report saying that 25% of consumer products and food produced in china are defective or contaminated. he says "yeah i think they executed the guy over that" i'm thinking something got lost in the "executed" part but that really can't be since feng's english is perfect. but, sure enough he meant it. turns out i don't think it was related to that report, but they DID exectue a minister n the govt this week for accepting bribes - can yo imagine if we exectued our govt officials? crazy. (i'm safely out of the country now so i can say these things w/o fear of retribution).
The next day i met another classmate, leo, for lunch., b school
will b his first time living outside of not only china, but beijing! he took me to a famous beijing restaurant for the bejing specialty - peking duick. Retract earlier comment about eating with locals because i had to eat duck liver, something called duck wings but all these fat globules, and then we ahd to eat the rest of the duck - like the whole duck. the skin is thick and cruncy and attached to the meat with fat, and i ad to eat it all since i was with Leo! i guess it all tasted ok except the liver which i've never really liked. oh, and leo decided to tell me (before lunch) that he feels bad that they machine feed the ducks w/ a tube so they grow quickly.
on a closing note... a busy few days in beijing, exhausted of tourist sights, but SO happy i made the stop there! keen to see more but wold want to learn more about hte language, culture, etc. sorry for the horrible spelling, typos, etc....now in cambodia and the keyboards internet connection are horrible. hope everyone is well...next entry will be about the amazing angor wat.....
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Justin
non-member comment
What about the spitting - I could never get over that, but I heard they're trying to curb it before the Olympics. Gotta disagree with you on the Forbidden City - I thought it was awesome. You're pretty brave riding around on those bikes - if you do it in Vietnam you'll be my new hero.