Getting some American Football practice

Up on the Great Wall We were pretty exhausted from Shanghai, and excitedly boarded the sleeper train for Beijing having heard that it was the nicest of the trains we would take. We were getting into Beijing at 9:30, so we'd be able to get a good nights sleep. Our hearts sunk when we found out that we'd be sharing the train car with a group of 40 Chinese 11 year olds, and only 4 teachers to watch over them. We could hear the noise level before we boarded the train.

Sure enough, the little monsters made a racket and ran around the train car past midnight, and then started up again around 5 AM. The teachers were doing nothing to calm them down, and we later found out that there have been parent slayings of teachers who have criticized the parent's child, so I guess I can see why the teachers weren't doing much.

Feeling tired, annoyed, and all-around miserable, we got off the train station and encountered a sea of people. It took 30 minutes of wading through humans to exit the station, and then our hearts sunk once again when we approached the metro: there was another sea of people trying to get into the station through a tiny metal gate that was so narrow that it would only let one (skinny) person in at a time. Smaller people were nearly getting trampled trying to go in through the bottleneck, and everyone was trying to be opportunistic and slough ahead. We got into the amorphous cloud around the metro exit, and started getting pushed back by Chinese who were trying to cut in front. I was tired, sweaty, smelly, and annoyed but that's when it dawned on me: I was a head taller than most people, several pounds heavier, and had an additional 20 kilos of baggage on me... Comparatively, I was a giant, like say, an offensive tackle. So I put my shoulder down and started making my path to the bottleneck, pancaking anyone who tried to cut in front of me. Bill Parcells would have been proud.

After we made it to the hotel and got a refreshing shower, we went off to Tiananmen squre which was simply huge. There were several military patrols, and CCTV cameras everywhere. You could tell that the place was being kept under a tight leash in case of a spontaneous demonstration, which apparently has been known to happen.

We caught a theatrical Kung Fu show, and then scoped out the Beijing nightlife, which is suprisingly robust. The impression I had had of Beijing from the classes I had taken in college was that it was the administrative head state, from which the government's policies radiated and they were felt most strongly in the capital. That doesn't sound like the most exciting place, but going out in Beijing was a lot of fun. Several bars have stages, and Phillipino musical and dance acts rotate around the bar strips, going to the stereo system, loading the MP3 file that they'll dance/sing to, and performing a song. Other bars have really good DJ's and dance floors, and nearly every place has its own unique character.

The next day would be the only free day we'd have, and we headed out to the Forbidden City. The ticket lines were huge, and it was starting to get really hot outside. As we neared the ticket counters, we saw why the lines were so slow; the Chinese in line were trying to haggle down the prices for the tickets. Naturally, the cashiers in their comfy, air-conditioned booths were fine waiting until the Chinese person ran out of breath, and ceded to paying the listed price. Meanwhile, people from the line were constantly trying to cut in front of eachother, and arguments between the cutters and cutees were getting heated. In short, it was chaos. As we neared the ticket counter, a Chinese girl tried to blatantly cut in front of us. Charlie and I were again, tired, smelly, hot, and annoyed from 45 minutes in line under the sun let out an expletive ridden stream at this girl that would have made any NFL locker room go quiet. To our surprise, she spoke perfect English and started yelling right back at us that we shouldn't curse at her, regardless of the fact that she was cutting right in front of us. It went back and forth for a few minutes as we all got tickets.

The Forbidden City was mobbed with tourists, and that's pretty impressive as it is a really, really big place. We missed out on stopping at the controversial Starbucks in the Forbidden City complex which was closed the following week. The site was quite nice, but with all of the tourists around, it was hard to imagine what it must have been like when only the emperors and their buearocrats and staff were the only inhabitants.

After melting under the city sun for a few hours, we headed to the Summer Palace, which had been the summer refuge of the Emperors. Apparently, over the Imperial years, funds had been misappropriated to further develop this palace away from the city. It was absolutely beautiful, less touristy, and much cooler as the huge lake seemed to absorb a lot of heat (or perhaps, let off cool-ness). After braving the horrid Beijing traffic, we finished the day off at a shopping bazaar, and with an awesome dinner at what looked like a totally typical restaurant.

The Great Wall
For our last full day in China, we left our hotel around 6:30 AM for the 2 hour drive north to the Great Wall. I think that this was probably my favorite thing that I saw in China, and perhaps, all of Asia. The scale is incomprehensible. The wall is on the tip top of a mountain range, and rises 2 stories higher, continuing for a distance of several thousand kilometers. As far as you look to either side, the wall continues into the horizon.

Walking the wall is a great workout. The floor copies of the topography underneath, so you have to go up and down on really steep steps throughout the whole range. I wish I had something like that close to home so I could just hike it through every day. Maybe some pro teams could use the Great Wall for spring training.

Up at one of the tallest points of the Great Wall in the section we were in, I took out my iPod and took in the stillness of the air, blue of the sky (which I hadn't seen for some days due to smog and pollution in Shanghai and Beijing), and the awesomeness of the wall. Recommended listening: anything by Muse.

That night, we sampled some Peking Duck from the source of it all, and the group went out for one last bar night. The nearly three weeks in China had passed by in a blur.
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I left Beijing wishing I'd stayed a lot longer. There is so much to see there, it's inconceivable. A tourist could be busy for weeks, the size of the city is astounding. I don't know how the Olympics are going to work out there. We had enough issues with massive crowds at the metro, tourist sights, and sitting in traffic for hours, and that was just a typical day. Add in several thousand athletes and spectators, and it just seems like overload. I know that there are more metro lines to be opened next summer (cutting it real close), but whoa, it could get really bad.

I think my biggest surprise of this whole leg of the trip was the amount of development in China. From the train, as well as walking down the street, all of China (that I personally saw) looks really, really modern. You can palpably feel that this is the up-and-comer on the world stage. I bet that if I visit again in 10 years, it will be totally different. I know that I'll miss it.

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