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Published: September 27th 2007
beijing, eh?
we rocked up here two days ago, got off the crazy 24-hour train ride feeling hungry (and low, in my case), a bit groggy and glad to be here.
so we thought.
ok, maybe i haven't spent long enough here to judge it (well, definitely i haven't), but beijing is not exactly doing it for me. maybe it's cos we don't have a map and therefore can't find anything. maybe it's because the two vegetarian restaurants we walked for hours to find, on separate nights, both turned out not to exist. maybe it's because everything is grey, and i'm tired, and have eaten not enough meals in the last few days. i don't know. i think maybe on a full stomach, a decent night's sleep and with the right people, beijing could be cool.
the hostel we're staying at has been ok, pretty quiet, a bit isolated, but ok. we trekked a few ks from beijing west train station to get here, heavy packs and ukeleles/siu guitars in hand, and proceeded to collapse on our beds in the room soon after. had some much-needed showers, and set out to find the first vego restaurant.
let me just say this - when it comes to beijing, lonely planet is wack. don't trust it when it comes to the map, or the eating guide. maybe the sleeping guide is ok (it found us a hostel, at a reasonable price of 30Y a night - about $5 aus), and the tourist attraction info isn't too bad, but just don't trust it for anything else. the scale of the map is weird, and so many streets are unmarked that it's really hard to find your way around. we ended up walking to the other side of the city, until our feet and legs were really sore, and then finding ourselves in some kind of shopping district. it's nowhere near as crazy as hk was in terms of shopping, and everything shuts much much earlier, but it was still intense to be there in our food-lacking state (i'd only eaten some
bat fan - plain rice - and some digestive bikkies and trail mix on the train on the way over). we finally found a restaurant that was still open (another tip - make sure you're in the restaurant by 7pm, cos some of them close as early as 8pm. people eat dinner early here), and ate some ok stir-fried veggies. actually, by that point, pretty much anything was cool. it's quite hard to find food at all, most of the time. compared to hk, the restaurants are few and far between, although every second shop is a tobacconist (i guess to accomodate the 40%!o(MISSING)f the population who smoke).
we caught a taxi home, which, in itself, is not that weird, but the taxi was a little three-wheel motorbike thing with a carriage built on the back and painted dark green. sitting in the back, you got lots of two-stroke fumes, and it's not hugely cheap, but it was fun to try it for once, and the driver was obliging enough to let us take a photo afterwards.
it's not all bad, though. that night, i also found some intensely sugary fruit stick things, which were basically any kind of fruit on a stick, dipped in melted sugar and left to set. i had some grapes (i didn't recognise any of the other fruits, except the plums), and could only eat half. needless to say, i was off my face on sugar for a while afterwards.
yesterday we went to the summer palace, which was the summer retreat of the last emperors and empresses. there was some amazing chinese architecture, as well as lots of beautiful gardens. it was quite a relaxing walk, although both kt and i were still pretty buggered from our long couple of days. i think my favourite part, apart from the buddhist incense tower, was following the sound of some weird double-reed instrument up some rocky steps up a hill, and finding this old guy up there practising. if you looked down over the hill, you could see the lake, and lots of other hills, and finally the smoggy city in the distance. we tried to talk to him about how his music was quite lovely, and showed him kt's uke, but i don't think he understood much. for once, it was ok though, and we had a conversation in two different languages at once where neither party understood, but it felt nice anyway.
speaking of languages...... i am learning how to say "i don't eat meat" and "i don't eat egg".
wo shur bu yao yo is "i don't eat meat", and
wo shur bu yao dan is "i don't eat egg". obviously, this is minus the tones, and probably you'd have to hear it to understand how the pronunciation works (and i'm still not saying it right), but i'm getting there. "steamed vegetables" and "vegetarian" are still ones that i'm working on, although
sushur (vegetarian) seems to work ok, but you still get asked if you eat fish! it's the same anywhere, i guess.
last night i started trying to work it out in uiyghr, but maybe i'll have to wait til we get there to really figure it out. although at least they don't use tones. actually, there's a whole different language base there - a lot of the words look and sound similar to indonesian. apparently it's turkic/something language base (i'll have to double-check the phrasebook).
today we went to see "pickled mao" as kt puts it. it was very solemn, and you were sposed to keep quiet. i kept nearly laughing, the whole thing was so ridiculous and full-on. the whole square (tian'amen square, which we actually walked through on our first night, and looked at all the pretty kites for the mid-autumn festival) was full of guards - there's a huge police presence here, they're everywhere you turn. it makes me feel kinda jumpy. i'm not doing anything illegal at all (no stickering or graff here, i'm just not game. actually, we haven't really seen any at all), but i still feel nervous around so many police and army people.
afterwards, we walked through the forbidden city for a bit, which was relaxing, saw some nice gardens, drank some tea in the "poetry cafe" and generally had a nice time walking around.
pickled mao, though..... it was hard to believe, seeing him, that this was the man who had the whole huge country under his thumb. it was pretty incredible. i can't imagine what it must feel like to be chinese and see him. he's in this huge glass coffin thing, surrounded by more glass, and then guarded by two army guys standing perfectly still. quite a sight. you have to file past in rows quite quickly, and you're not allowed to take bags or cameras in with you. actually, i set off the metal detector thing on my way in, but the woman quickly worked out it was my face that was doing it. haha, that's the first time my face has done it - in the airports and immigration tower in hk it was always my belt.
speaking of my face.......well, it's more the mohawk, i think, but i'm getting a
lot of stares. every second person, at least, is not an exaggeration. i know, i know, it's to be expected, and actually, they're not usually hostile. normally it's interest, and some people really like it. everyone seems to find it fascinating. it does sometimes mean they hassle you more to buy stuff, but often they actually just want to look, or comment on the fact that it's "beautiful" or "cool" (if they speak any english at all. most people here don't, which is another big difference. hk is so much more accessible!). i've just been smiling lots, and i find that most people smile back, so it's cool.
what else about beijing?
the
hutong, which are broken-down little side streets, where a huge part of the population lives, and are a really fascinating area. much more interesting than the city itself, which is sprawling and grey, and actually more like the 'burbs than anything, really.
hutong are where it's at, in my opinion. they're much more interesting and vital and you can get great street food there (i had a roast sweet potato to supplement my dodgy lunch of vaguely fishy tasting
choy sum.....ooops, i mean
zheng shucai and
bai fan today), as well as check out the way the majority of beijing lives. there are communal toilets (usually without doors, just cubicle walls, no toilet paper, and of course, they're squats), and lots of bicycles, and everyone walks all over the roads.
i really like the bicycles, actually. when we come back here, kt and i are going to hire some bikes for a day or two maybe and ride around. everyone here rides bikes. i don't know why i didn't quite expect it, but there you go. bikes. it's the way of the future.
subways are crazy. lots of pushing and shoving. you fight your way on and off the train. kt and i are quickly learning not to give a shit about personal space, and just get in there and shove if we want something. queues seem to be a fairly vague concept as well - nobody thinks twice about joining the queue wherever they feel like, which is a pain when you're waiting to buy train tickets. and there's no ban on spitting here, so a common sound to hear (above the beeping of taxis when you're crossing the road and they try to run you over) is someone hacking up a big loogie and spitting it somewhere near your feet. there's a lot of noise. everything is louder here. crossing the road is harder. maybe i'm culture-shocked - my head is spinning with tiredness and the insanity of this place.
but, we are getting on a 40-hour train to urumqi tonight! yay! we've booked ahead and got two nights in two different hostels, and then hopefully we can get a bus or train to kashghar, another day away from urumqi. so, xinjiang, here we come! we almost thought we wouldn't get there, what with it being the holiday season and all, and the national holiday from the 1st to the 8th (kt's birthday!) meaning that lots of trains and hostels are fully booked for the duration, but we've got our ticket. i really hope we can manage to get a ticket to kashghar for the 2nd or something like that. i rang some hostels there, but you can't book a dorm bed ahead, which hopefully means it shouldn't be too hard to get one once we get there. and we can't book a train or bus ticket from beijing, because the lady at the ticket place wouldn't let us.
i'm sure it'll all work out....... it's an adventure, anyway.
so that's it for now. i'm planning on sleeping lots on the train (as i did on the last one), listening to my ipod and eating lots of instant noodles. yum!
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lonelybiker
Alex
Beijing ,wow!
Those things always happen,some places on the guide book did not exist at all! You like bikes? Have you ever travelled on bike?