The Beijing Experience

Today is Thursday, August 19^th.  I arrived back in Japan from China on Tuesday and now that I’ve let my memories sit for a bit I feel I can write an adequate letter about my experience.  Although I’m sure that the details will speak for themselves, I feel I should first say that this was an amazing trip, probably the best I’ve ever taken, for the sheer amount of sights, experiences and adventure to intake in a mere week.  My only complaint is that it was too short.

I couldn’t have asked for better people to travel with.  There were nine of us in total.  Seven travelling from Japan, everyone employees with the company I had just finished working for, and two from Korea.  We had our plane tickets and were all set to meet in Beijing.  Chris and Brent were already there and I would be meeting them at the hostel we would stay at, while my fellow travelers from Japan had opted for a hotel. 

Before I even talk about touching down, I should talk a little about the history leading up to this trip.  I had a rocky road in getting to this country.  I was one click on a keyboard away from cancelling my plane ticket after my infuriating experience at the Chinese embassy in Tokyo while trying to get my tourist visa.  In fact, if it hadn’t been for my friend encouraging me to sleep on it and see what would happen, I would have ended up dropping the whole trip before we got news from another city down the train line of a travel agent that could process a Chinese visa.  At that time I was still feeling bitter, but I wanted to see China so much that it didn’t take long to move away from that.  By the time the night before the trip came I was pretty much as excited as I’ve ever been… as excited as I was boarding the plane in Vancouver for the last leg of my journey to Japan two years ago.  This was China.  It’s the place Canadian kids think they can reach if they dig a hole in the earth deep enough.  Except even a few years ago I probably hadn’t fully imagined that I’d one day be going there.

The party (and official vacation) got started the night BEFORE our plane, when four of us who would be taking the same flight met up in a town called Numazu.  We’d be taking a three hour bus ride from there at 4:30 am to Narita airport near Tokyo.  Because we didn’t all get together in the town until about eleven, we decided that sleeping wouldn’t be entirely necessary given the time line (and because when our group is together drinks are always magically appearing anyway).  We stayed up eating, drinking, talking and singing Karaoke until we had to run for our bus, then sat through what I experienced as three agonizing hours in upright seats, sleeplessness and cruel, stabbing sunlight emanating from an admittedly beautiful sunrise over the mist-laden morning mountains of the countryside.  Much of that sleepiness evaporated upon reaching the airport though, as we were suddenly confronted, with every ticket and security check, of the reality of the situation: we were going to China.  Our plane would leave around 10:30 and by that afternoon we’d be touching down in a world that I still knew so little about—a world that I feel like I’ve had to almost always experience through the voice of Western media.  

After scarfing down some quick McDonald’s, we were on our plane.  I was in the middle seat in the center row, so I had little to do besides listen to my iPod and try to stay awake through a terrifically boring movie as I waited to touch down.  The plane had little televisions in the ceiling to show where we were on a map, so I could follow the meandering trip as we flew in a south-westerly direction, down over South Korea, to avoid the forbidden North Korean airspace, and then on over the Yellow Sea towards the enormous landmass that is China.  The most exciting part of the trip was when we encountered a typhoon and hit turbulence.  The major bump was enough to make a few people scream and reminded me of the show Lost. 

Then we were touching down and I was seeing China with my own eyes for the first time out the window.  Because we were on the massive Beijing airport runway field there wasn’t much scenery to look at, but what I noticed first was the thick, thick smog.  I’ll get this part out of the way now:  I remember athletes complaining about pollution and such during the Beijing Olympics and I’ve heard plenty about the smog in some Chinese cities.  Well, it’s real, and made worse by the natural haze that comes with the humidity at this time of year.  At times it was like a thick fog was settled over everything, no time more so than this day that we arrived.  At that time and for a couple days afterwards at least the pollution level was apparently at 300%.  That’s not a typo. 

There was no time to relax yet, maybe there would be once I got to my hostel, but first I would have to get through customs, no doubt facing strict and serious officers and get my first taxi in a country where I could speak one word of the language:  nihow (hello).  Yes, I bashed myself for most the trip for not even bringing a phrasebook, but in my defense, Chinese is so laden with intonations that I feel I would be better off using body language than trying to make myself understood with a guide.  We were greeted by the sprawling enormity of the Beijing airport.  It was mysteriously empty at the time we arrived and the people from my plane walked through an eerily silent massiveness to reach the customs gates.  It was a quick process.  There was no one standing at my side with semi-automatic rifles or anything like that.  From the ceiling a series of large banners hung down with welcome written in various languages and a train whisked us to the baggage area. 

After that it was time for me to leave my companions and make out on my own for the hostel I’d be staying at.  I have to admit I was a little bit nervous.  I’d already heard that the taxi drivers generally didn’t speak or understand any English and so I had printed off what I hoped was the address to my hostel in Chinese characters before leaving Japan.  I’d also heard that in China you have to haggle for almost everything in order not to get screwed out of your money (note:  because of the strength of the Japanese yen I had a stack of bills in my bag just under a centimeter thick), but I wasn’t sure that this would apply to taxis.  I thought haggling sounded fun as I’ve never experienced that before, but I was too tired and eager to know whether I was going to find my hostel that day or wind up homeless for the night in Beijing to want to deal with that.  Everyone else I’d flown in with was going to be taxiing together to their hotel but I had to go it alone, so I wasn’t so excited about the fact that I was to be going solo only an hour after touching down.  We walked out to the taxi area, where there was a man who appeared to be orchestrating the rides and asking people where they were going.  Here we go.  He spoke some English.  Good, good. 

“Where are you going?”

I fumbled for the papers in my bag and showed him the address.  He looked at me and said “mm hmm, 450 yuan."  Something in his eyes and voice suggested that he was testing me to see if I would call bullshit.  In fact, I had happened to get the price of the trip from the airport to the hostel quoted by the hostel owner, and it was supposed to be about 100 yuan (which rounds out to around 15 bucks).  Now, I've never haggled before in my life, and I didn’t want to be hopelessly overcharged already, so I figured right there and then that the way to go about this was to get strict.  I flipped to the next paper, where I had typed out ¥100 and jabbed my finger at it. 

“No, it’s going to be 100 to get there.”

“450.”

I raised my voice a little and let some anger seep into it.  I jabbed the hundred again. “This is from a hostel owner, he said it would be 100.”

The guy didn’t really reply, but instead looked out over the cabs and nodded towards them with his head.  Still in full jerk mode, I brushed past him, noisily dragging my luggage and strode up to one of the taxi drivers across the street.  I held my paper up again. “Can you take me here??” I asked, with what I hoped sounded like cold, fraying patience, showing him the address.  He half nodded.  “One hundred.  Can you do it for one hundred?” I showed him the number on the sheet.  The guy started to look apprehensive so I all but barked “one hundred” at him again, trying to stare him down.   He turned to another taxi driver and showed him the address.  They spoke for a minute.

“Yes?”  I asked. 

He kind of half nodded again, and opened the trunk.  I got in, and sat straight up with a tense look on my face, glaring intently at the meter.  Then the ride began.  We left the airport, our surroundings hazy, and hit the road.  The smog was so thick that day that the buildings and cranes looming out of it were almost ghostly, but still I was fascinated with these first scenes of China passing by out the window.  On the highway we drove over a series of Olympic rings on the road, the paint beginning to fade away, left over from the Beijing Olympics.  In my peripheral vision the driver kept glancing at me quickly and I finally realized that I was making him nervous and maybe I had gone a bit too far on the “haggling” for my trip.  Actually, besides that very first experience at the airport no taxi ever tried to overcharge me at all for the duration of the trip and they were actually extremely affordable.  I had just been dead set on NOT being ripped off for my first endeavor in the city.  I tried to make conversation with the driver, though of course I don’t speak any Chinese and he didn’t speak a word of English.  I asked if Beijing was his hometown. He gave me a smile at that and nodded, repeating “Beijing.”  His face was gentle and I realized at that moment that he was undoubtedly a really nice guy… he just had the misfortune of being the first taxi driver I approached in my fresh-off-the-plane-100-yuan-taxi-ride-or-bust mode.  After that the atmosphere eased in the car and by the time we reached a landmark that seemed similar to what was described in my printed out directions the meter read only 70 yuan, not 100.  I gave him a hundred anyway, and made clear I wanted him to keep the change.  I felt it was the least I could do after the way I had approached him, and especially since he must have taken the shortest possible route and made it as cheap as possible.  I thanked him and gave him a little bow, a habit from Japan.  He smiled and gave a little bow back and said “bye bye.”

And that was how my first half hour out of the airport went.

Using the directions I managed to find the Happy Dragon hostel, to my great relief.  It was located near the end of a street that looked grungy and dirty at first, but which I would come to see in a different light in less than twelve hours, and very much so by the end of the week.  When I walked in the front doors the first thing I saw was one of my best friends, Chris, who had flown in from Korea, sitting on a chair in the lobby.  He looked up and saw me come in and, maybe because it’s been so long, or maybe because we had managed to find each other in the heart of Beijing, we regarded each other as ghosts for a moment before running to embrace in a hug.  

I signed in, meeting the first of the wonderful staff at the hostel, most of whom were close to my age.  Then Chris and I went out to grab a can of Tsingtao (a popular Chinese beer) and have a major catch-up session.  I was really out on the streets for the first time and soaking up the atmosphere.  That atmosphere is somewhat one of chaos and extremely exciting and fun.  The difference from tidy, organized, relatively quiet Japan could not be greater… in fact, the two cultures are so radically different that it’s amazing to think of their geographical proximity and shared historical elements.  People were just walking across the street anywhere they wanted, seemingly assuming that the speeding cars and series of scooters, ramshackle motorbikes and bicycle-led rickshaws which share the road, free of any noticeable organization or law, wouldn’t collide with them.  Construction crews drilled and hammered at the sidewalk free of any barrier tape as people skirted them and walked through clouds of chalky dust.  Horns honked and people called to each other, all modes of transportation (some of them almost unimaginable, like metal boxes on wheels) rambled by and everywhere people sat, leaned, ran, rode, walked, laughed, scolded and chatted.  I remember when I was trying to get to the small village of Botton, England, walking through the North Yorkshire Moors alone as darkness fell, and listening to the calls of all kinds of birds and animals that I had never heard before.  It was that kind of fascination of being in a new place, as Chris and I sipped our beers and I watched the streets wide eyed, sure that I’d see someone be injured or killed at any moment, and yet somehow not. 

Amazingly (at least I thought so at the time), that evening I managed to get in touch with the rest of our companions at the hotel, via the hostel telephone.  Using the picture I snapped of their Chinese address on my cell phone we managed to have the taxi driver take us to the right place.  After reuniting, our entire crew made their way to our hostel’s area of the city, where we went out for dinner at a duck restaurant (Peking duck that is).  This was where I was hit for the first time with full comprehension at how inexpensive China was for me as a traveler.  We ate an enormous meal, with seven or eight absolutely delicious dishes and paid a total of, I believe, the equivalent of about four dollars and fifty cents each.  None of us could believe it.  It was as if we had robbed the place.

After dinner we decided to all have a few beers on the street of my hostel, but on the way we passed a shop selling some interesting food, which I had glanced at earlier but decided to put off visiting it until later.  It was serving various foods on sticks:  scorpions, cicadas, starfish, giant grubs, what appeared to be whole plucked swallows and a few things that I couldn’t identify.  I think that nothing was more imposing than the big black three inch scorpions, so after some hesitation we had to firmly ask ‘when else will we have this chance?’  We ordered the scorpions, and then they were fried a bit in a bowl of hot oil, and seasoned with chili and two other spices.  They were—ready for this?—crunchy and tasty. The claws were a bit chewy, but the body was softer and went down easier.  Yes, the poison had been removed… I guess, because none of us died or got sick.  We made such a scene, as only tourists can do, over each of us trying the scorpions that the shop owners could only look at us in bafflement and we caused a family out for a night snack to burst into laughter.  I didn’t see shops like that everywhere though and was really glad that there happened to be one near our hostel so I could have that opportunity.

I quickly came to adore that little street that I thought looked so grungy at first.  It came to life a bit at night, as each little building along it sold beer and freshly cooked food to anyone who cared to sit down at one of the tables.  It quickly became apparent that all those living in the little shops and houses on the street supported each other and were close neighbors and friends.  One of the boys who lived there, who was on summer vacation at the time, was completely endearing as he used all the English he’d learned in school to come and talk to us.  Actually for his age we all thought his English was amazing and realized that he must be talking to a lot of tourists who stay at the hostel as he grows up.  He was a really outgoing little guy and we all thought he was great.  Every night on that street, people would come from the hostel and around the neighborhood to eat, drink, and chat in the warm summer air.  The shop owners were all kind and friendly, demonstrating that smiles go a long way and bypass any language barrier.  Mornings were similar: the same neighbors would gather and make and sell breakfast together on the street.  I was quickly warmed by the closeness of the neighborhood, and felt instantly comfortable in that little micro-community.  That was my first night in China.

The next morning it was off to our first sights: Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City.  In Canada, I had had a Tiananmen Square poster on my wall for about four years and had wanted to go there very much for myself.  The area was absolutely packed with people and a portrait of Mao, hung at the entrance to the Forbidden City, stares out across it.  Regardless of the never-ending crowds snapping photos there, I was able to walk across the plaza where a man once stood his ground and stared down a tank.  It was also here that we first encountered people who wanted to take our pictures with their children.  I suppose we felt a little bit celebrity-like, but people weren’t as shy about it as they were in Japan.  It was more like them kind of half asking and at the same time setting us up for a quick photo with a family member.  It was kind of funny and happened a lot there. 

The Forbidden City was architecturally phenomenal.  The carving, paint work and sheer size of the place was incredible, a testament to the astounding amount of labor put into its many, many buildings.  Sometimes there seemed to be so many people that I wished it had still been a bit more forbidden, but at least there was a bathroom when I needed one.  Pictures will probably show just about anything I can describe of the architecture and decoration, but let’s say that it was clear why it’s a World Heritage sight.  One thing about China is that people tend to litter a lot and pretty much everywhere.  The litter in the Forbidden City’s main entrance area as we left was a bit astounding, but I had read about such things (actually, about the visitor’s litter in the Forbidden City in particular) before I came and so wasn’t completely shocked.  It seems that a lot of people don’t exactly have a history of using trashcans, but additionally there are so many people that the trash cans there fill up really fast in the first place.   I saw people picking up trash around the city quite often, so perhaps a lot of people feel assured in the fact that their trash will be collected and disposed of eventually.  I suppose it at least makes jobs in a developing country where many people do live in poverty. 
                                     
The day was viciously hot and we bought some ice cream on our way out.  Around the time that I dropped melting chocolate all over my crotch and then tried to wipe it off with a wet nap in front of about three or four hundred passing people, a family came up and asked one of my friends in Chinese if she would hold their baby for a picture.  In China many babies either don’t wear pants or have pants with  big slits or holes so the baby can do its business freely, so my friend was a bit apprehensive.  At the least we thought that a picture was what they were getting at, but then it turned out that they didn’t have a camera.  We couldn’t talk to each other because of the language barrier but they seemed happy just to be standing there with us and eventually my friend just ended up taking a picture with the family using her own camera.  It was kind of awkward and after that we nodded goodbye.  We were a bit bemused and confused at the time, and it wouldn’t be until later that we’d realize that the family hadn’t approached us because they needed a picture, they had done it just for the chance to have a western girl, for whatever reason, hold their baby for a moment.  When we thought later about how pleased they were, how full of smiles just for that, I think it really drove home for us something that we needed to travel to learn for ourselves.

After that it wasn’t long before we attempted to go to the same place, but ultimately failed because we couldn’t all get taxis at the same time.  The rest of the day involved a lot of walking and eventually the Canadians of the group, Chris, Brent and I, reached a park with the famous Temple of Heaven, though we were quite overheated by the time we arrived.  Travis and Brittany had gone on ahead in a bicycle pulled rickshaw and we said we’d go in the same direction to reach our destination.  After we saw the rickshaw driver casually pull into oncoming traffic and ride up the street in the face of a wall of oncoming cars, it finalized our decision to go on foot.  Such is traffic in Beijing, but it was completely normal for everyone but us, who were often standing there with our jaws hanging open in disbelief of what we were seeing.  We saw a few more sights (gargantuan monuments in themselves) and then went back to the hostel to get ready for a night out on the town.  

We went to a nice, random restaurant for starters, where we simultaneously ate and listened to a group consisting of two guys, a woman and a boy perform some great karaoke of a song I'd heard playing on the radio earlier.  Chinese pop music really wasn’t bad at all.  After that we went to a hookah bar (it seemed like the right thing to do) and then found a popular club.  The club turned out to be a great time, and we all survived getting back to our beds by the end of the night, without getting lost or stranded somewhere in the big smoke while intoxicated.  

If I have my chronology right, the next day was spent with our main group split up and doing different things.  Actually the three Canucks were off on our own and seeing more sights and also taking a boat ride through a huge lily pond.  The smog was really thick that day, but it was the last day it would be like that during our trip.  The next day it cleared and stayed clear.  We had to rush back to our hostel that evening (rush in Beijing at 5:00 o’clock means you get in the taxi about fifty minutes before you need to be ANYWHERE, because the traffic is glacial) or take the subways, which, no matter how many times I’ve been to Tokyo, I was not prepared for.  It has to be experienced to be believed, but it’s hard to fathom just how many people were able to squish into every train car.  Even the locals sometimes saw the funny side of it as we pulled up to the next stop with people already smushed against the doors, only to see another thirty ready to pile on.  There’d often be a few chuckles at the sheer ridiculousness of it.  Well, that’s unavoidable… there’s a lot of people in China.  

That night we saw an amazing acrobatic show, with the tickets reserved in advance and ride organized by our hostel.  I’ll at least summarize its grande finale like this: you know that trick where a guy rides a motorcycle into a round cage and works up the speed to go all the way around the inside?  Well they did that... with five motorcycles.  At once.  I have never seen anything like it and also have never been so afraid that I’m about to watch someone die a violent, mutilating death.  In fact, I can still hardly believe what I saw, but it happened. 

We went to sleep early that night because tomorrow was going to be a big day—call it the beginning of the trip’s climax—because we were finally going to the Great Wall.  This was also organized through our hostel.  We paid them a price cheaper than any deal that could be found online and for that they would drive us (the nine of us) to a secluded part of the wall, take us hiking and then sleep on it.  This was a really amazing hostel. 

So we all piled into a van and a car the next afternoon with tents, sleeping bags, beer, water, food, a portable barbecue and the drive for adventure, and were off for a terrifying ride through nightmarish highway traffic.  But an amazing thing happened when we left the city: first, we didn’t die in a horrible accident on the roads on which there seemed to be no real rules or logic.  Secondly, and more importantly, all that smog lifted and for the first time the mountains of China came into view.  I saw then what a truly beautiful country it is—the landscape breathtaking from the very moment we left the towers of the city behind.  Green, rough-hewn mountains, as far as we could see, stretched out before us and on both sides and then, almost out of the blue, we could see the wall in the distance, as if it were a giant white rope draped over a mountain that we drew closer and closer to.  Next we could see the guard towers, then even the individual bricks.  Nothing can prepare you for seeing that wall, because when you do, and when you realize that it goes on for over 3,700 km, it nearly defies the imagination.  It climbs over the mountains as if it has sprung out of them like a rocky spine.  At one point I thought we’d driven under a bridge, and then looked out the back window to see that in fact we had driven under an arch in the Wall.  It was massive.   I understand now how it can be seen from space.  We stared in wonder at it, traced across the landscape as it was, until we left the highway and turned onto a country road. 

Suddenly we were away from all the traffic and the road grew dusty.  The mountains closed in nearer on our sides and trees lines the roads.  I actually didn’t think, when I was first going to Beijing, that I would be able to get out to the countryside, but there I was.  And it was gloriously beautiful.  Our hostel had promised to take us to a place free from the crowds that swamp the busy, well located places on the wall each day.  That was what we wanted and that was what we got.  We rolled into a small village that couldn’t have more than 20-30 residents and parked the vehicles.  On the ridge of the mountain before us was the wall— a stretching, man-made line between land and sky.  

We were taken into the village and to a homestead where we were greeted by some members of a family.  We were then told by our guides, though they had made no mention of this before, that we would be treated to dinner here.   A garden sat in the middle of the little terrace where we sat with a cookhouse sat to the left of it from which good smells were emanating.  We enjoyed the scenery and simply soaked up the rustic surroundings.  After awhile we were led to a room with some circular tables and then the family began to bring in food to us… plate after plate, with a traditional chicken soup hot pot in the center.  There must have been eight plates of food for us to share, all on a Lazy Susan.  We were all so stunned by what was happening, at the amount and variety of food that was being brought to us.  We all looked at each other around the table and could only acknowledge what incredibly lucky people we were.

After the dinner (the chicken soup contained all parts of the chicken, including the legs and head, the latter which one of our guides ate…), we strapped ourselves down with all our gear and supplies for the night on the Wall and began to hike up the mountain that would lead us there.  I can say with fair certainty that this experience is different from that of the vast, vast majority of tourists that come to the Wall.  Almost anywhere a regular tour group would take you, you would end up going to the wall in a well-used spot with probably tons of other people.  But not on this hike—this was almost too good to be true.  In fact, at times it was dream like.  We climbed up that mountain and pulled ourselves onto that wall at the top, not another person in sight, and as I stood on it, feeling the crumbling surface rubble of millennia old bricks beneath my sneakers for the first time and looked out at the view, at the endless mountains, the Wall extending from beneath my feet down, up and around those mountains as far as could be seen, standing defiant against the landscape, I realized it was thus far the most epic moment of my life.

We hiked along the wall as the late afternoon faded to evening, every moment breathtaking.  I tried to absorb every second so that I can remember it for the rest of my life.  Eventually, as the sun painted the bricks orange, the old guardhouse where we would camp, sitting at the summit of the next hill, came into view.  When we had climbed about halfway up that hill towards it, we turned and saw that we were now able to look directly at the sun.  It was just reaching the mountains on the horizon.  We all stopped, wherever we were in the line, and watched it sink, a red ball, out of sight.  We watched night begin to fall over the landscape as the orange drained out of the world. 

As earth and sky fell into darkness we reached our guardhouse, and our guides began to set up the barbecue.  Chicken wings, meat ka-bobs, grilled corn on the cob.  There was a ladder someone had made of sticks, rickety looking but climbable, that led to the top level (aka, “roof”) of the guardhouse.  We clambered up and felt like we were standing at the top of the world, no point higher than us, and watched the last of the very last twilight glow leave the world in the distance.  When the stars came out that night, they were brilliant.  Beijing lay as a silent, pulsating mass on a distant plain, but above and around us was all black with a bit of the moon.  After our barbecue we stayed up almost all night, sipping beers we had hauled, sitting in amazement of where we were.

Good morning, China

In the morning we dismantled our tents and walked further along the wall (I was too sleepy to drag my body out of the sleeping bag for sunrise, though I regret that now).  Eventually it was time to leave and we left the wall and spent the first part of the morning hiking down and through the hills until we reached a road where we could be picked up.  We went back to the village and were treated to a breakfast of steamed buns, vegetables and some sort of grain soup (it looked a bit like couscous) by the same people as the day before.  When we all got home that afternoon most of us were so tired we just passed out in our beds.  That night we went out to the one of the finest duck restaurants in Beijing and ate like kings.

The next day was the last full one in China.  The Canucks stuck together again (actually, because we slept in too late and everyone from the hotel went on to some sights without us).  We went to Yonghe temple (YongHeGong), which is a major Tibetan Buddhist complex that survived the Cultural Revolution.  It’s a fairly large place with people praying and offering incense all around.  The buildings have some intricate and spectacular paintings and other artwork.  In the final temple there stands the tallest Buddha in the world, 26 meters high and carved from a single White Sandalwood tree.  It was staggering.

After that we went to the Silk Road, a famous shopping area full of clothes and bootleg everything, where the girls selling clothes practically pull you into their stores, many of them utilizing practiced flirtation with male visitors, convincing you to buy whatever they're selling and haggling furiously.  It was a fun experience and one feels quite focused upon as you walk down any given aisle and have about thirty girls try to get your attention before you reach the end.  Let’s just say that some of them are very good at what they do.  

Our last event that night was going to a Kung-Fu show.  The acrobatics were of course impressive, and there was a story worked through the entire thing, making it into a play that showcases plenty of astounding martial art feats.  After the show, believe it or not, we were interviewed by Chinese television in the lobby about our thoughts, with a reporter at translating our words at the side.

And that was pretty much it.  We had a few more drinks on the little street by our hostel and the next morning we had to say goodbye to the staff that had helped us have what I deem is the most fulfilling time possible in Beijing.  Running on a collective week of little sleep, we got back to the airport and said goodbye to the PRC.