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great wall
me and neo Beijing
Three of us caught the fast train on Thursday morning and 5 hours later we were in Beijing. The train travels around 120mph and is extremely smooth. In china trains are the most popular forms of long distance travel. For the average Chinese person flying is too expensive and the masses don’t have cars. The one handy thing about trains is most Chinese cities’ is the train stations are in the city, sometimes the heart of the city, and airports are usually a lengthy taxi ride outside the city. A train ride also allows you to take in the scenery. Just make sure you spring for the first class tickets on any train in China or prepare to be elbow-to-elbow and sweaty for hours.
I went to Beijing with another teacher (Dave) and our Chinese friend Cao Nan, henceforth Neo, his English name. He has a childhood friend living in Beijing Zhou Zhou or JoJo. Thursday night she took us to a really nice ancient Chinese restaurant tucked away behind garden walls in the middle of downtown. It used to be the residence of a brother to one of the emperors. Old style pagoda’s surrounded by
water and a relaxing sound of moving water filled the night air. After dinner we ventured to Sanlitun, the international section of Beijing, where a lot of foreign embassies are located and where international students hang out. We joined a pub-crawl that night in lieu of the Eurocup game. If your unfamiliar with the concept, a bus takes you from bar to bar allowing about 30 minutes at each stop. It makes going out safer and less of hassle, cutting out driving and finding taxis, its also a good way to meet other people if your traveling alone or in our case traveling in a foreign city. When it was time to leave the third stop we were informed the bus had hit a car on the street while trying to park and the police would not let the bus leave so we through in the towel and called it a night.
The next day we got a late start and went to seek out our first “real” western food since Thailand seven months earlier. After dinner JoJo took us to Houhai. A lake surrounded by restaurants, bars, and souvenir shops. The crowd was mostly upper class Chinese
Tiananmen
Dave and Neo and some tourists. We sat outside for hours laughing, drinking and watching people walk buy. It became clear that JoJo’s two favorite things were spending money and staying out late. We had no problem following our tour guides example. I asked Neo if JoJo really had that much money because we didn’t want her to think she had to pay for everything. His reply was, well she’s rich enough she didn’t need to go to college. After Houhai we sought out a late night meal of boiled spicy crawfish on the street. Top shelf street food. Here we saw something I wont forget. There were several very poor looking panhandlers selling random knick-knacks on the street; flowers, balloons, toys, etc. Then an elderly couple and one middle aged women were using a young girl (all family I presume) in dirty clothes probably 3 or 4 years old to sell balloons. It made me want to cry and Neo lost his appetite. We gave the girl a small amount of money and the old man some food and didn’t take a balloon. I understand the drill of the homeless and the impoverished here but I never wanted to be fluent in
Chinese than at that moment so I could ask the adults why the hell are you using your granddaughter at 2:30am to sell these things. They were clearly too poor to be scam artists but it doesn’t take four people to sell a handful of balloons. We were planning to go to the Great Wall early the next morning and at 3am debated on staying out all night and then going, but decided against it.
After three solid hours of sleep we hit the ground running, well briskly walking. Having Neo with us (JoJo bailed as we figured) we were able to navigate the public transportation to the wall, as we are not hip on guided tours. First off we went to the Mutianyu section of the wall not the closer more famous Badaling section that most tourists go to. So if you find yourself in the neighborhood and you want to see the Great Wall the right way, follow these simple steps. Take the subway to Dongzhimen station, then hop on the 916 bus to Huairou and look for Mr. Zhao. He will either be just finishing his bus shift and get off with you or he will be across the street standing beside is 20 year old 20hp silver van. You may also recognize him by his limited English vocabulary of “The wall is closed” or “I am honest man not liar”. Neo struck up a conversation with Mr. Zhao we paid him 150rmb ($20) to drive us 20 minutes to the wall, wait for us then bring us back to the bus stop. Turns out he lives in the village at the bottom of the mountain and is a VIP at the wall. He drives right to the front of ticket line, gets us our tickets and said he was going home for lunch, call him whenever we get done. Nothing gave me greater joy than the three of us riding in his raggedy van to the very front of the line passing all the tour groups and buses as he shouted to his local friends who worked there. This is the proper way to sightsee and I thoroughly enjoy snubbing my nose at guided tourists in such situations. We spent 1/20
th the money of those people, half the time, had more fun and a way better story to tell. Afterwards he commended us on choosing Mutianyu saying Badaling is for the “foreign suckers.” Once back in the city we stopped at Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City just to take a few pictures and to say we had been there. All of that on 3 hours of sleep mind you.
Our last night in Beijing was the craziest if the three and I wont go into details because I am a gentleman with a reputation but it would make a hard man humble just as fast as Bangkok. It ended with JoJo puking on my shirt, but she had spent more on us than we had spent on us, giving us the royal treatment all throughout the city so in my book I still came out ahead. Overall the trip was great, we saw everything we had planned to see. Beijing doesn’t have the glitz and glam of Shanghai, its more industrial, more working class. I don’t even remember seeing a skyline. The only downside was we were hoping to get asked for our “papers” (preferably in a hostile manner for effect) by the police as part of the 100-day crackdown on foreigners with illegal visas in Beijing. I’m not sure how much it has been in the news at home but I had followed it on CNN and other western news outlets and honestly I think it was over hyped. Perhaps a little American Propaganda. If you think our country is above that, I got some ocean front property in WV I’ll let ya have for a bargain.
I leave Zhengzhou later this week for Shanghai then home to America. I am going to miss China but I’ll take the time here to announce…..I’m coming back next year! The middle kingdom couldn’t get rid of me that quickly. Too many; new places remain unseen; too many cuisines untried and too many beaten paths remain for me to avoid.
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