Trip to Beijing

Less than 24 hours after getting back to Changzhou I was back in the hard sleeper car on an overnight journey to Beijing. Jocelyn Bonneau, a friend from TU had come to visit Dave and me. During his cross-country bike ride with Travis Ulrich (another friend from TU) last summer, Dave visited Jocelyn in Connecticut, and convinced her to come visit us in China. She had been wanting to visit China for some time, as her dad occasionally does business here, so our living here gave her a great chance. Bryan, one of the other teachers here (from Bartlesville, OK, an OU grad) also joined us on the trip.

We arrived in Beijing, found a nice, yet reasonable hotel very quickly and were on our way to the sites. We visited Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, and the Mao Zedong mausoleum. Yes, I have now seen the preserved bodies of two of the major communist leaders in the world. I guess I’ll have to make the trek to Russia to see Stalin, and then wait for Castro to die and the Cubans and Americans to settle some issues and I’ll have the dead communist leader tour wrapped up. Mao’s preserved body looked a lot more wax like than that of Ho Chi Minh, so I can’t say for sure whether we saw the real thing or the wax model that was made as a precaution. The number of police and security cameras around Tiananmen Square was by far the most striking thing; clearly the Chinese government isn’t looking for a repeat of what happened twenty years ago. I was pretty impressed with the magnitude of the Forbidden City and some of the palaces were pretty ornate. It seems that the emperors did a good job of being emperors and devoting all the natural resources to personal enrichment. The Summer Palace wasn’t as impressive as I had hoped, but maybe I ought to visit it in the summer, when all the flowers are in bloom and the lake isn’t frozen over. One of the more amusing things that occurred at all the tourist sites was Jocelyn’s instant transformation into a celebrity. Her blonde hair is a prized commodity in China, and she was asked more than a few times to take pictures with Chinese children and teens. We were glad to have our claims to her that being a foreigner here is quite the ego boost prove so true.

Our second day in Beijing was one of the best I have had so far in China. We headed out early and made our way to the Great Wall, which is about an hour and a half outside of the city. We chose to start out at Jinshanling one of the less visited but still very accessible points on the wall. From there we walked along the wall for about ten kilometers to Simatai, a more popular spot on the wall. The Great Wall far exceeded my expectations, and I had pretty high expectations. Its magnitude was amazing, astounding, the surrounding hills were gorgeous-very simple, but it was the wall’s continuing presence against the consistent hills that made it so amazing. I know it sounds very basic and obvious, but I was most impressed by the fact that we walked for the good portion of a day, and the wall never stopped, either way we turned at any point, its simple, tan, brick essence continued. By covering a fair amount of ground we were able to see the many different states of the wall. It was well repaired and completely intact at some points, and at others had crumble to not much more than a five or six foot high pile of rocks. The destruction is not due to Mongol warriors or the rain and wind, but rather is due to the more recent trend of local farmers taking the bricks for personal use. Luckily, as it has turned into a tourist cash cow, there are now guards every kilometer or two with radios to make sure only the weather harms it any more. One of the main reasons that it was so enjoyable was due to the fact that although it’s one of the main sites in China, we were more or less alone on the wall. During our whole walk, we saw fewer than ten other tourists, a few guards, and maybe three or four vendors. We were able to explore all the abandoned guard towers in a sometimes-eerie silence. The weather was surprisingly warm and clear, so we got the off-season lack of crowds without the winter weather.
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During my time in Beijing I was able to pretty much bridge the gap in the food category. We ate dinner one night on a street filled with street vendors. Their offerings were more expensive and less filling than those outside the school gate in Changzhou, but I guess that should be expected in a touristy area of Beijing. While there, I noticed a woman with two young girls (probably her daughter and daughter’s friend). They were looking at the various items on a stick, which included lamb strips, beef strips, chicken strips, starfish, seahorses, scorpions, squid, eels, and beetles. Yes, for 5 or 10 yuan, you can have any of this scrumptious variety put on a stick and grilled. As Bryan and I were eating our lamb strips, I commented to the lady jokingly that the scorpion was good. She somehow understood my poor attempt at Chinese and responded. I told that they really were good, and then smiled and told her I was joking. But she wasn’t. The vendor then handed her the grilled beetles that she had ordered, unbeknownst to me. Apparently she was a little more adventurous than I thought. So, I couldn’t back down, and ate one of the beetles. It actually tasted okay, it was the texture and crunching that was more upsetting as I ate it. That was the low end of the food spectrum, in case you weren’t sure. Another night, we treated our taste buds right and went to one of the well-recommended Peking duck restaurants. It was quite fancy, and the food was absolutely great. We ordered an entire roasted duck, which was the best part. They bring the whole duck right out to the table and carve it for you, which was good, because I would’ve been up a creek without a paddle trying to cut up the duck. The night we ate there was Lantern Festival (marking the end of the Spring Festival period), which was great, because it showed Jocelyn the full affinity of the Chinese people towards fireworks.

One last thing to note from our trip to Beijing was, oddly enough, manners. I think I have alluded once or twice to the general lack of manners of the Chinese people. Spitting in public is okay, as long as the person spitting makes sure to clear his throat at rock concert volume. This isn’t really that problematic, though, as I have quickly learned to heed the throat clearing warning and get out of the loogie path. Talking loudly on the cell phones and playing music out loud is something that can be tuned out. For me, the most frustrating thing associated with manners is the complete lack of lines in China. When loading the bus, train, or subway, buying tickets, getting food at restaurants, and many more things; there are no lines. It is push to the front or be pushed to the back. Even where lines are formed (by gates, fences) I can always count on a fair number of people simply going to the front of the line, hopping the barrier, and squeezing to get in front. I generally just wait around the back of lines and let all the Chinese people go in front of me. I see absolutely no value in pushing to get on a train with assigned seats. The Chinese world was turned on its axis when we waited for our first bus in Beijing. Without instruction, or barriers, everyone formed a neat, single file line. It was like I was back in the States, or even better, England, where lining up (queuing) is paramount. Later on, on the subway, we were amazed as almost everyone would allow the alighting passengers time and space before getting in the cars. It was nuts. Some of this may be due to the fact that Beijing is much better educated, developed, and cosmopolitan than most of China. But, Shanghai is much more Western, and by far the most cosmopolitan city in China (I exclude Hong Kong and Macau by colonial default). The reason for this, according to an American who has lived there for four years was the deluge of public service announcements in Beijing before the Olympics. He said the change was day and night. Leading up to the Olympics, the government ardently informed its citizens that spitting, smoking, pushing, and crying would not be tolerated during the Olympics. Basic manners instructions were also given. Now, China was a mostly closed empire for centuries, then suffered through a civil war and war with Japan, and then, from 1949 to 1978, was essentially closed off to the outside world (save a ping pong team or two). So, they care a lot about how they are perceived by foreigners, and are incredibly patriotic. Thus, the public service announcements were heeded, and getting around Beijing is much, much more comfortable than in the rest of China. Now, if only the Olympics were coming to Changzhou…