Big ol' Beijing

After Xi'an, I kept moving East toward Beijing. Along the way I stayed a few days in the tiny, ancient city of Pingyao, where a medieval wall still surrounds the clusters of narrow alleys and pagodas. The crumbling bricks and dusty towers make Pingyao feel like the Chinese version of the Old West, and watching the sun set on the forgotten city is way more peaceful than any of the big cities I've been to.

Then it was time to move on to the queen bee of the Chinese hivemind: Beijing! I wasn't really sure I wanted to spend any more time on the big ugly cities, but I've always wanted to meet Udo for beers in a far away place. Anybody who knows Udo can tell you that he's very well traveled, seems to really enjoy living on the road, and is generally, well... strange. He was kind of my inspiration to travel, so meeting him here in Beijing with his Chinese girlfriend was something important for me to check off my life's 'to do' list. The strange experiences began on the very first day. After a day of sightseeing and merrymaking, we came back to the hostel for the night. Moments after we stepped inside, noises from the front door got our attention. Some Chinese guy was apparently starting a brawl with the foreigners, and was dragging it inside. He didn't seem to care who it was, even the Chinese guy working the front desk got grabbed and beat up. The fighter was clearly drunk, and had a couple of friends with him who were half-heartedly helping him smash things and roam the whole building making noise and swinging fists. I, Udo, and his girlfriend all decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and locked ourselves in my dorm room until things cooled off. The police were called. A little while later, we could hear the walkie-talkies of the police walking through the building, so we decided crack open the door to have a look around. The drunk guy was walking through the hall, and the police didn't even try to stop him as he charged at our partially open door. He slammed into us, and it was all we could do to close the door against him again. A large cabinet was put in place this time.

Much later, after the police had interviewed and harassed everyone except the fighter, we learned that he was allowed to wander off unharmed down the street. The police never stopped him, only followed him around trying to look important. Udo's girlfriend pointed out that the large black tattoos on the guy looked kind of like the ones sported by the 'black society' as she said, and he either was untouchable by the police or had simply paid them off. It was a strange evening, so we gathered some of our fellow travelers and had a final beer to wind down.

Since then has been a maze of paperwork and wasted days traversing the city in search of proper accommodation and getting visas sorted out. It's all ok now, but I haven't really seen as much of Beijing as I should have by now. My time is running out for this visa; I have to be out of the country in 5 days. No worries, though. I have a train ticket booked to Hong Kong, where it technically counts as a separate country. Then I have 30 more days to make my way through Southern China to Vietnam. I think this will mean that I skip Shanghai, but to be honest I am SICK of huge cities. I'm ready for the jungles and villages again.

So, I'll be hanging out with the ever-lovin' Udo for a few more days, and trying to cram in a bunch of the sights from Beijing. More pics after I see everything.

-Tim

---

---