Archive for April 2007
Beijing, April 30th
The inscription outside our starting point
I’m a little bit disappointed this morning; it feels like my trip has peaked really early. This country has to do a lot to make anything as incredible as the Great Wall was.
We woke up to catch a bus at 7:30 yesterday, and it turns out we were one of the last hostels to be picked up so we got the overflow bus. The guidebook said it would take about one and a half hours to get to Jinshanling, the section of the wall we would be starting at. But between a 30 minute break to refuel, an even longer break at a Hard Rock Cafe for no particular reason, and a slightly crazy driver, we didn’t get off the bus until 11:30. Then we got our… tickets? That’s right, what we had paid only covered the bus trip there and back, not the admission as we had previously thought. We had to buy not just one, but two tickets just to get in!
One of the many spectacular views
Of course that was partially because of the route we were taking. The plan was for the bus to pick us up at Simatai, a 7-8 km hike over the rockier and more harrowing sections of the wall. We were told tales of crumbling paths and 70 degree inclines, but it turned out to be an absolutely incredible walk that was no more difficult than the first parts of Fuji. the weather was ideal; sunny and hot and not a cloud in the sky, save for the ever present air pollution. We met up with Adam and George, two other solo travelers staying down the street from us at a much nicer hostel, and Cat and Tara, two Canadians (yay!) teaching English in Fuzhou, and ended up going most of the way in a big group. It was a long, exhausting and awe-inspiring walk full of countless stops for photos, postcard sellers following us halfway along the wall, several death-defying leaps from towers that we shouldn’t have been in in the first place, and even a troll living under a bridge! We had to cross a small rope suspension bridge to get by a river, and some old man seemingly appeared from nowhere after we’d crossed and blocked the path until we gave him 5 yuan. Apparently he’s not there every day, so it’s not a ticket price; he’s just extorting people at a choke point in the path when he knows we can’t turn around and go back or around. Traveling in China may be cheap, but seeing the sights adds up quickly.
Engrish will never not be funny
Thankfully our trip did include a meal at the end, and we proceeded to gorge ourselves before hopping back on the bus. It was another three hour trip, but we got on the coach bus instead of the overflow van from the morning trip. For some reason, they decided that instead of taking us back to our hostel, it would be easier for them to give us cab money and drop us off on the street. But the joke was on them because we took the subway instead and used the leftover money to buy beers! Now that’s capitalism! After getting much needed showers we headed out to find the mythical fried scorpions sold at the Donghuamen night market. When we arrived they seem to be closed up, and since we were all too hungry to search for anything else specific, we ended up grabbing beer and dumplings at a “Western Bar,” complete with a Shania Twain concert on the television. If they were really Western they’d know how much we don’t like her.
Up next; ducks, dogs, drinks and downpours.
Chilling out on the Great Wall
Beijing, April 29th
Guardian statue in the Forbidden City
Yawn, chalk up another negative point for the hostel that didn’t wake us up to catch our Great Wall bus. We got it anyways, since that’s where I am as I write this. We’re off to Jinshanling for a hike to Simatai, one of the more treacherous and deserted areas of the wall. Seventy degree inclines and crumbling footpaths? Sign me up!
Right then, yesterday! After getting a surprisingly deep sleep we awoke to a small breakfast of stale Chinese baking, and then it was off to the sights (everyone else from the room had their own plans so I was solo). Step one, take the subway to the Forbidden City. The subway itself wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d heard or expected, about on par with a Toronto subway during rush hour. Of course, this was at 10:30 on a Saturday morning, so their rush hour is most likely ungodly. I got off right outside Tianenmen Square and got to check out the People’s Monument as well. It’s not much on its own; a big gray square with a stone monument in the middle, and while Mao’s mausoleum and body are on display ordinarily, it was closed when I went for renovations. Fill the square with people and it’s quite a sight. Since China has their holiday week right now also, there are tons of Chinese people from the smaller cities who are sightseeing along with the foreigners. Everywhere there were people selling books and kites and watches and postcards, taking pictures, and being noisy in that special Chinese way.
From there it was straight north to Tianenmen Square and the City. The police still patrol and do drills there under the watchful eye of a gigantic portrait of Mao Zedong over the entrance. The Forbidden City is immediately striking due to its sheer size. In a city where most living quarters are pretty tightly packed, the huge open spaces of the city seem that much more daunting. It’s not so forbidden anymore, but the Emperor and his family and other important people of the time lived here and did most of their Imperial business within its walls. As such, it was closed to the public since its building for over 500 years. It’s been meticulously maintained (the two main buildings are also under Olympic renovation), so it’s easy to get a sense of the grandeur of the place. Even in the heart of Beijing, the City courtyards seem almost deserted. Every different emperor seemed to have his own throne room built, and each one had his own little personal slogan behind their throne. My favourite was the one that said “doing nothing;” now that’s a ruler I can support!
Words to live by
Walking through the entire City from south to north took almost two hours, and I ended up at the beautiful Imperial Garden, constructed so the emperor and his court had a place to chill out and appreciate nature. Some random girls asked if they could take my picture, and in return I asked them if they knew a good place for lunch. They suggested the noodle hut in the garden, but I figured I could do better. This is Peking, after all; I want Peking Duck! My guidebook recommended one that was kind of near the City (or so I thought), so I set out on food. That’s when I started to get a very real sense of just how big Beijing is. Namely, stupid big. Walking is rarely an option since everything is so far away from everything else, and the buses don’t help unless you know enough hanzou to figure out what stop you need. So by the time I got to the restaurant I was looking for, it was closed! This led me to a conundrum; it was two o’clock, most of the Chinese restaurants were closed between lunch and dinner, but I didn’t want to eat at a western place or coffee shop. My solution was to wander the streets, hungry, lost and forlorn, looking for any sign of an open restaurant and checking my book routinely to keep my bearings. When all hope was lost, a girl walked up to me reading my book and asked if I was OK. I told her what I was doing, and she showed me to an open restaurant where I could get Chinese food! Lin Lin, you saved me, and I’m sorry I thought you were trying to hustle me into an art gallery like the other students I met.
Restocked on delicious fried rice and spicy peanut chicken and beer (although no points for service), I set course for the Temple of Heaven. I’d like to say I caught a cab, but every single one I flagged down simply waved back and kept driving. Isn’t step one of a taxi driver’s business model to pick up passengers? One guy even pulled away after stopping and waving me in! What the hell! So that didn’t work and I ended up having to walk most of the way there. I didn’t get the news until the entrance; not only was I exhausted, but the park closed in an hour. Also, some kind of diplomatic visit meant that huge areas of the temple were off limits until his party passed through. None of the employees spoke any English (do they not get foreign tourists here?) so I had to fall back on my kanji to get directions through the park. By 6:00 I was ejected into a throng of people selling “Rolox” watches and “Guchi” bags, and surprise, the subway I thought I could take back to the hostel hadn’t been built yet! Even more walking, shit!
Delicious
I managed to bump into Marin on the way back, so we found the subway and hit the hostel after what had turned out to be a very long day; she reported about the same amount of walking as I had done. We met Will from Atlanta, the 5th person in our room, who proceeded to break two of the six beds just by sitting on them. But he’s cool and I managed to convince him and the other two guys to join me on the Great Wall trip I had booked. Somehow, by being the only one with a concrete idea of what I wanted to do when, I became the planner! I’ve never been the planner on a trip before, as I’ve had the fortune of always traveling with other planners. While they went for food, I was too exhausted to do anything but lie back and watch the same news show on repeat on the only English channel in the country. What a day.
So what have we got so far? Beijing is smelly and polluted, huge, full of people, and possessing an incredibly distinct character. I don’t think you could mistake this place for any other city, even in China. The Forbidden City was impressive, and the Temple of Heaven probably would have been too if I’d gotten there earlier. The hostel isn’t as social as I’d hoped, but that just means I’ll have to find people somewhere else. And despite the long day, this city is fascinating, and I know I won’t have time to see everything. Would I come back to do that? Too early to say.
That’s it for now. On our next episode, a wall that may or may not be great!
Beijing, April 28th
Standing in Tiananmen Square outside the Forbidden City
Woof, this place is crazy! I’m in one of the few open restaurants at the moment, since everywhere else seems to close between lunch and dinner. I’m too hungry to think straight and I have no idea where to go next. But let me start at the start.
I woke up yesterday at the ungodly hour of 6:00 to head out on what would be almost a ten hour trip in total. From the island ferry to a bus to Hiroshima, then the Shinkansen to Fukuoka, then a subway to the airport, then a plane (of course) to Beijing. It didn’t seem any different when I landed; kanji and Asian people, it seemed a lot like Japan har har. That changed when I walked out of the gate and saw the massing throngs of people waiting for passengers. That’s the first difference from Japan; there are people everywhere. Seriously, everywhere. The roads are packed, the sidewalks were crawling, the buses looked like sardine cans. Hiroshima is pretty well populated, but it doesn’t even hold a candle to this place. Suddenly the real implications of a one billion plus population are more obvious.
The airport is where I met Adam and Spring, two of the friendly staff at the hostel I had booked. They took me to a car that would take me straight to the place I was staying; the ride was expensive, but certainly easier than trying to navigate the bus and subway with no knowledge of Mandarin. That pointed out the second big difference; there is no English anywhere. The Japanese have introduced it in all kinds of areas for both aesthetic (lots of Japanese people think English looks cool) and practical (they realized that eventually foreigners will visit, and they might not know how to read kanji) reasons. They can get away with it, though, because they can use katakana to pronounce English words. The Chinese, on the other hand, can’t. Since the hanzhou characters are all they have for a written language, they translate way more English into Chinese than the Japanese do because they can’t read or understand it otherwise. It seems that for this trip, my language skills will almost be back at ground zero.
I say almost because the Japanese “borrowed” their kanji from the Chinese writing system, which means a lot of the characters have the same look and meaning between both languages. Thankfully, some of the common ones are for north, south, east, west, entrance, exit, and other useful ones for navigation. I may not be able to speak Mandarin, but I know how to write the characters, and that may be enough to get taxis and the like.
The hostel itself is… small. There’s no lobby to speak of other than the front desk, an internet room with one computer, and a tiny kitchen with nothing but a sink and a hotplate. The rooms themselves are barely big enough to fit the three bunk beds crammed into them (I suspect they may have been four bed rooms once). And they’re not beds so much as metal frames, wooden slats and padding. The bathroom is that delightful toilet and shower in one room combo last seen in Laos, which drenches anything you take in there, especially your clothes. It’s probably a good place to collapse and relax after a long day of sightseeing, but no so good for meeting other travellers and hanging out. Since I’m here solo, I was hoping for more of the second, so I’m a little disappointed already. Curse you, hostelworld.com!
All is not lost, though, as those beds are taking up by Mau from Brazil, Adam from Boston and Marin from Sweden. They’re all really friendly so hopefully I’ll have a few travel buddies in the city. After meeting them I set out to explore the area around the hostel. I managed to find a few restaurants and cafes, and a beautiful bar strip bordering a series of lakes beside the Drum Tower, which it turns out is really close to the hostel. I also picked up the one thing I forgot to pack; a towel. Seriously, I brought one to Laos, how did I forget to bring one here? I’ll get the hang of this travel thing one day. Anyways, by that point I was too hungry to think straight so I dragged Adam and Mau out to find a good nearby food place. We ended up at a Yunnan restaurant and I got my first taste of real Chinese food. And here’s difference number three; the food here is delicious! Japanese food looks great but tastes kind of bland, and that’s the way they seem to like it. Chinese food, however, looks like nothing special and tastes incredible. We had pineapple fried rice, minced beef with veggies, and some kind of Chinese vegetable, and it was all such a welcome change from the consistent tastes of Japanese cuisine. And the best part was that with beers, it all came out to about $3 US. It was an exhausting day, but frankly, a great start to the trip. I was too tired to do anything but sleep afterwards.
Up next; the Forbidden City, downtown Beijing, and my cute Chinese saviour!
