And Then it Got Racist

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And I’m back once more this week to spam 6 people’s email boxes. If you want to get in on this spam-tastic fun, feel free to sign up to follow my blog (however you do that). Last time, things got a little up close in personal on the train, gorges were hiked, and bones with words were photographed. To continue:

July 15th:
So after the temple, we went Wenfengta, which is the home to An’Yang’s famous tower and some weird statues with hilarious faces. And that was basically it (probably why it got a 2 star historic sight rating). So me, Aja (the black girl from UNC), Mark (silent guy from UNC – dad, his lack of convo skills would drive you up and down a wall. Think Eidson when we started driving him to scouts), A guy who use to work for BBC, and two Chinese roommates went out and walked around An’Yang together.
Now Beijing is a very international city, so when you walk around, people will generally give you a quick glance and move on, and if your black (as Aja has told me) they will take a bit more time to look (which to my guestimates when walking around with Aja, is about the time a guy takes to check out a girl and then turns around right as his girlfriend picks up on it. That’s totally a standardized unit of time). However, An’Yang is not a very international town, and most people who tour there are a) People who have studied some Chinese/Chinese history and are aware of the cultural significance of An’Yang and b) are far and few in between. And seeing a black person might have been a once in a lifetime experience (or they sure acted like it). As we were walking around the city, everyone would stare at the group and even longer at Aja. Shop workers would literally drop everything and hang right behind their glass doors (cause that’s the best place to not be seen in China apparently) and stare at us/Aja. Now on a normal day, this will get old after a while, and people’s tolerances will fluctuate day by day. I was in a rather spectacular mood (probably cause I got to wrestle that day, or some twisted form of it) so I decided to play my favorite game of hide and seek vs seek and wave. Basically the Chinese “hide” (and by hide I mean do the worst job of being discrete ever. Of all time) and I try to find them and wave at them, often making them blush. Which is rather funny. I’ve also noted girls react a lot better when waved at during play. So after walking around for bout an hour or so, we asked where a good restaurant was, at got pointed at a local restaurant across some street. The food was really good (the stewed eggs/tomatoes – super fantastic, and I don’t even like tomatoes ) but more importantly, racism struck like lightning. We ate at 5, which is early for the Chinese, so we were the only ones there. This meant the owner had time to come out and talk with us. And when he saw Aja, (and I wince at typing this next bit, as wrongly funny as it is) and said, “Oh, NBA!” and proceeded to talk about the NBA and how he liked it and if we liked it. Luckily as a sports fan, I was able to buffer the conversation away, and talk about how college basketball was better and that our school had Michael Jordan (and Duke has … o right. Duke sucks) After words, we talked about baseball, and how it was boring, and then we talked about tennis, where the owner look back at Aja and said something about Venus and Serena Williams. Again, we all winced. I started talking about Na Li, and then we were ok again, and then he brought up golf and looked back at Aja (can you guess where this is going?), and asked about Tiger Woods. Wow, it was a black triple treat in about 15 minutes of conversation. Amazing. Aja handled it like a pro, and later told me she’d rather people come talk to her and be racist with the intent to try to connect with her than just stare from afar (and with no hiding skills). I admire how well she’s handling all of this. Luckly the food came out, so we ate and then left.
After words we went back to the train station and took the Gao Tie (Bullet Train) back to Beijing. The bullet train had no one leaning on my shoulder for the trip, nor anyone in the isles so I was a happy camper, and I even had legroom! Although that was because I was in the front row, so that was more luck than anything. My previous complaints still hold unless I get front row every time. We got back around 11 to Beijing west (train station). As we walked through, I realized that a train station is also the sleeping ground for many homeless people, as you don’t have to have a ticket to go into a train station, just pass a security check. Then we went back to campus and slept.

July 16th:
I woke up at 10, and got ready with Ross, Dohyun, and Tommy to go to Tian’an’men. Now I had already seen Tian’an’men from afar, but this was my first time being in Tian’an’men. Spoiler alert, it’s just a square. Nothing special really, although it has 2 mega screens, so I’m sure it’s a lot better during some large national event. Then we tried to go see Mao’s body, but it closes at 12 (we tried to get in line at 12:10) and you need official ID (aka: passport). Seeing as we missed both of those things, we started to walk south towards Qianmen (to be talked about in a second), but first, a short story.
So as we were walking towards Qianmen, we were walking next to the line to see Mao, and low and behold, despite a guard every 10 feet between the line and the general public (not an exaggeration) a women with a a 2 year old or younger on top of her shoulders tries to duck the rope separator and hop in line. O, and the kid got straight clothes lined by the rope. Right at his neck level. His whole body went flailing back, and I was sure his head was going to pop off like he was a Barbie doll. Even more stunning was the mother managed to hold on to the kid and not break stride (though almost breaking the kids ankles) and hop in line. Only to be escorted out of line 2 seconds later. After getting over the shock, I couldn’t descide if this was a sign about how much the people still love Mao (especially since no one else seemed to see this and/or care that a kid was almost decapitated) or if the woman was freaking crazy. My opinion right now is somewhere in the middle, and still subject to change.
So after watching child abuse at it’s finest form (neglect), we went to Qianmen, which while wasn’t super interesting – was worth the 10 kuai (little less than 2 bucks) and while in Qianmen me and my friends did some puzzle solving. So the character men in this case means gate, so when I say Qianmen, imagine a huge, towering gate structure with Chinese architecture. While in there, we realized that that Qianmen use to be apart of a massive wall that went around what is now the heart of Beijing, and use to be all of Beijing. The wall has since been torn down for multiple reasons (Mao was one of them) but when we looked at the map of where the old wall use to be, the four of us realized that the second line of the Beijing Metro is exactly where the wall use to be. The wall also had eight gates, which explains why so many of the stops are something,something,men. For example, if I want to go anywhere in Beijing using the metro (from my campus) I almost always have to use XiZhiMen. “Problem Solver, who wants me on their corporate team?” (Daniel Tosh, True Stories I Made Up).
After we were done being a boss (or for me, continued being a boss) We went further south cause we saw a huge shopping street. The street was actually rather cool, though geared towards westerners (Starbucks was one of the first stores we saw). We wandered around and I went on a shopping spree, which consisted of (brace yourselves, it’s a lot of stuff) green tea for my best friend ever (sup V), a fan, and a shirt. Wallet breaking I know. Actually the tea was the most expensive thing I got, but I figured I could spend a little extra for my little sis. Then the fan was 10 kuai, which to compare by – the best price I could find for the same fan before was 40 kuai, and an athletic shirt from some Japanese store (UNI-QLO) for 39 kuai (about 7 bucks), where the same shirt would have been easily $20+ on sale in America. Moral of the story is that while it looks like you’ll get ripped here, the prices are actually really good. After words, we went to the street right next to it, and it was like a whole different world. The main street was old school architecture mixed with modern everything, for an awesome, modern China feel. The street next to it, looked like any backstreet in China with a bunch of small restaurants and other random stores. Just a total 180. My friends from New York decided to label the main street Suho (?) and the back street China Town, which I’m pretty sure is racist in some way, and slightly ironic.
Then Tommy and Dohyun wanted to stay a bit longer, so Ross and I headed back to the dorm, and then JiaLaFu (French Walmart in China) and then I started to believe in miracles. Before I went to China, I was told to be prepared to not have Milk, Cheese, and Bagels. Ross showed me that JiaLaFu had cheese and milk, and then nothing else mattered. I grabbed some milk (cheese will be for a special day) and was suddenly super happy. To top it off I also found tortillas (which will be eaten with peanut butter) and donuts (though they have no sugar or icing, whatever – they’re still super fluffy). But the milk really made my day. It’s the simple things in life (that come from a cow) that make the world go round.
After words, we went to a train station to buy tickets to Shanghai. (Spoiler alert, I’m going to Shanghai next weekend – sorry to kill the anticipation.) My friend Matt told us that we should either a) use the English speaking booth or b) bring a chinese friend to help. Pfffffft. We had this down cold. We ordered the Gao Tie (Bullet Train) tickets no problem without any help (and a side note, there is no English counter at Beijing North train station). To celebrate, we went to Ross’s (and now my) favorite Korean restaurant and ordered rock bowls, which basically think about those KFC bowls with everything in there, except instead of gross fast food, it’s rice, meat of choice, and a ton of fresh veggies. Freaking awesome. Oh, and it literally comes in a bowl made of rock. Stupid KFC posers, using junk food and plastic bowls, get on Korea’s level.
Then we returned home, and homework was done.

And that’s it. Things to think about:
How many racist question can you ask a black person in 15 minutes? How long until you get uppercut?
Seriously, was the woman with that child Mao crazy, or crazy crazy?
How long until you get tired of nothing but Chinese food? For me, a month.
--Robby

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