No, really, it's huge.
Of all the places I have gone, I found China to be one of the most daunting because of it's size, the sheer number of people, and the fact that not only did I have no chance in hell of understanding anyone but no chance in reading street signs or even menus. Sure, you say, but Beijing in a modern city, surely many people speak English? Actually, no. And when you do run across people who speak it, it's very limited. That being said, it's an amazing place. I went with two friends from school. We stayed with my friend and teaching partner who moved to Beijing this past summer.
Let me tell you about it.
Saturday, November 5
Today we woke up late (it was a really long trip yesterday) and after showers and a quick breakfast of pastries with red bean paste and some other unidentified but tasty filling we headed off to the art district of Beijing known as 798.
There were cute little shops selling lovely handmade ocarinas, handpainted silks, leather shadow puppets, and handcarved driftwood sculptures. 798 was once an industrial district with factories and warehouses which have been turned into gallery spaces. The old smoke stacks, sheet metal roofs, and rickety metal staircases are still there but are now surrounded by outdoor sculptures. The streets in Beijing are lined with what look like ginkgo trees. It's fabulous seeing autumn slowling becoming winter. Greens, yellows, oranges fading into browns and greys. I'm in Beijing and I'm amazed by something as simple as the changing seasons and the crispness of the air. I guess I've missed the seasons that much. Anyway, 798 is mostly modern contemporary art; I found it to be a real insight into the Chinese people through their interpretation of the world through art. The outdoor sculpture was interesting. Headless statues of Chairman Mao, big brother-esque statues of workers, a pregnant Statue of Liberty as well as a deconstructed reassembled Statue of Liberty. There was a neat kind of quirky exhibition of white dogs with huge gaping white smiles, beady black eyes, and red tipped penises. There were playing with colorful balloons. One was sitting on a balloon with its long red tongue hanging out licking its own penis. Awesome. Spud Mackenzie meets Hugh Heffner?
It was refreshingly cold, my nose was good and chilly, and I was very happy that I brought my warm jacket and hat. We had dinner at a New Zealand themed cafe called Flat White. Flat white apparently in NZ and Australia means plain coffee with milk. Food was good, but not Chinese. I'm in China; I would like to eat real Chinese at least a few times while we're here. I even brought my little card in Chinese that says "Don't put MSG, I am highly allergic". After dinner, we had a bit of hard luck getting a taxi. The Beijing taxi drivers are rude, sometimes illiterate, and unreliable apparently. We did eventually get one and headed over to Yuxiao which is four floors of miscellaneous shit made in China. Tailors, fabric, knock off clothes and handbags, fashion jewelry, knick knacks, curios, salons, etc etc. Almost bought an old opium pipe for some friends, but had a feeling that I wouldn't get that through customs in Dubai. I tried out my haggling skills. My friend's tip was to make them give me three prices and then offer half. It works. Got a lovely tea set, table runner, and little jade pendant. Seems haggling is the norm in most places. It's a cash and carry country for the most part; my friend says Chinese people don't like to be in debt so they don't use credit cards as often as we do. Seems like a good rule to me. We finished our shopping and headed over to the bar district called Sanlitun. There were hawkers out front of the bars trying to pull us in. There's a lot of competition between establishments it seems. One guy was like "Cheap beer and pole dancing!" Yeaahh, no. I've danced on poles before, but not tonight. We had some gin and tonics at some outdoor tables and one friend ordered some chicken fingers. Then my other friend reminded her that this is China and it might actually be chicken...fingers. Luckily, that was not the case. We squashed into a taxi for the ride home. The taxis are quite small, not really made for multiple westerners of good size :) We finished out the evening in my friend's living room eating Tim Tams and checking Facebook. Heading out to the Forbidden City tomorrow! Dreamed of seeing it for years and finally will get to see it for real!
Sunday, November 6
Well, today started off as a bit of a farce. Because of course my friends slept in a bit so we didn't get out the door early. We had to flag down a taxi, and when we finally got to the Forbidden City it was almost 11am. Unbeknownst to us, they no longer sell tickets at the North Gate, which is where the taxi dropped us. Where we were absolutely assailed, ambushed even, by tons of people trying to get us to take rickshaw rides, buy souvenir books, or sell us tours. So we walked all the way around the east wall. We saw some guys fishing in the moat outside. We found our way back to Tianmen Square; it took us 45 minutes. You really don't understand how big the Forbidden City is. It's several NYC blocks. I had already seen the huge crowds at the Meridien Gate when we drove by in the taxi. It was even worse. Guides with flags and umbrellas held high leading tour groups of 20-30 people. So we called it a wash and agreed to attempt again tomorrow. Early. So we meandered over to Tianmen Square where the students protested back in the 80's. There's not much special about it except for the view of the Forbidden City and Mao's mausoleum. Supposedly they put him on display for a few hours every day, but we didn't get there at one of those auspicious times. The National Museum is on one side, an impressive monolithic monument. We noticed people staring at us, especially at my friend's flip flops. Apparently as soon as it gets even a bit cold the Chinese start bundling up, and here is my friend with her cropped pants and toes hanging out. They were also staring at us because we're Westerners I think. My one friend is Puerto Rican, rather dark skinned and the other is blond, so they definitely looked different. I look like every other Westerner, brown hair and muddled eye color; we all look alike you know ;) We hadn't had breakfast, so I took a chance and bought something that looked like bread with fruit in it. Some Chinese women came up to us and gestured at us a bit and giggled. It sounded like she was commenting on the fruit bread. Who knows? No clue what she said. So I replied with a smile "I don't know what you're saying, you don't know what I'm saying, so let's meander on, shall we?"
After Tianmen, we wandered down to a street market in Wangfujing. Ever see that episode of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern when he was in Beijing? This is where he went I think. If the Chinese could put it on stick, they did. Beetles, scorpions, still alive. Starfish, seahorses, pork, chicken, beef, squid, octopus...oh my! While we were gawking at the scorpions, some Chinese guy asked to have his picture taken with me. His wife took it, and now I am in some random Chinese vacation photo album. This happened once before in Singapore. Maybe they think I'm a movie star:) There was lots of miscellaneous crap for sale in the market, most of which we'd already seen at Yuxiao. I caught sight of some tarantulas, black scorpions, and other "delicacies" (fried durian fruit anyone?) as I was walking through. I tried a street snack of candied strawberries on a stick. Tasted good, but I think my teeth were crying out for aid. I've seen tons of sticks sold all over the city with hawthorn berries on them. There happened to be one on my stick. It tasted a bit like a crabapple but the seends were unpleasantly numerous and huge. We found the site for the Night Market, home to more weird street foods, and found a kind of street food festival going on. Fried mango, fried durian fruit (stinky stinky!), and various cooked meats like whole softshell crabs fried on a stick.
We were still feeling adventurous so we went to the Pearl Market at Hongxiao. More of the same variety of mass produced crap, except there was indeed a pearl market with more pearls than came out of Venus' clam shell. The sales people were pushy, but not overly so. I think they're not used to Westerner's who will haggle persistently. They seemed so surprised that I would not pay the first outrageous price they quoted me. There always seems to be a song and dance "Oh I give you special price! This good quality!" Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. They've got tons of bridges to sell you, too. One of the best tips I read was to buy something because you like it, not because of the song and dance that they try to sell you on. The salespeople always seem to concede, because bottom line they make a profit no matter what because all of this stuff is mass produced so cheaply. Just act final, start walking away like you're serious and they will fold like a camp chair. My one friend had a moment of brilliance. She saw a tea set that she liked and was haggling back and forth with good naturedly the girl. Finally, the girl hands her the calculator and asks her to name her final price. My friend in a stroke of genuis types in a number even lower than what she had told the salesgirl before. The girl looked like she'd been hit with a board. Her jaw dropped and she said" That even lower!" My friend re-affirmed what she wanted to pay and walked away with her tea set. I'm not into pearls that much, and the ones here are manufactured in bulk so I find them even less interesting.
We met up with my friend again and went to a place called Element Fresh for dinner. Western food again. Don't get me wrong, I want Chinese food but not MSG. We will have Chinese food. I'm set on it. And I exacted a promise from my friends that we would be in bed early so that we could leave early to go see the Forbidden City.
Monday, November 7
My friend rousted us early when she got up for school. I got dressed quickly as kind of a tacit cue to not dawdle...because we were going to the Forbidden City! We got a cab fairly quickly and made sure he dropped us at the Meridien Gate. It wasn't even open yet, and there were already lots of people, large tour groups waiting to go in. Despite this, we got our tickets and audio guides rather quickly and entered the main gate. It was a good thing we had the audio tours because they don't have much info posted and when there is tons of people are crowded around it. Would have never known than an Empress hung herself in one of the palaces. Or that the son of a maid turned low level concubine became Emperor. There really was too much information to remember or relate. You're better off going to the library. What was amazing what to stroll the cobble stone streets trod by 600 years of Ming Dynasty officials, soldiers, servants, and royalty. That place really is a city all within itself. It's massive, with over a dozen palaces and temples, long halls, and narrow streets. The intricacy of intertwining gold dragons, lotus flowers carved into stone and wood is truly amazing. Whole families of artisans and apprentices over generations must have worked on this place for years. The emperor had his own gardens and rock fortress by the north gate. Maybe the rock fortress was so he could escape his Empress and all his concubines for a bit ;) All those women, talk about henpecked, the poor guy. Love the colors of the paintings on the roofs. Gold, blue, green, red. After seeing over half of the place, our feet were tired and we were palaced out. We snuck back out the front gate as opposed to to going out the east gate and having to walk all the way back around to return our headsets. Which would have been asenine. Besides, posted rules here seem more like the Pirate's Code. More like a suggestion but not particularly enforced.
We crossed over to Tianmen and went down to Lao She teahouse which supposedly sported good tea and a show. Guess we got there at a bad time because we saw maybe five minutes of a shadow puppet show. The place was empty for the most part. And here was my first bad luck with a menu. EVERYTHING had MSG in it except for the veggies and the rice. Most everything was pre-made or pre-bought and fried. Which sucked because I was hungry! The tea was expensive, but good. The fried rice was okay, though not overly exciting. We had these yams in toffee which were freaking fabulous! Sticky toffee wrapped around soft sweet potatoey goodnees. Twas wonderful. Some Chinese guy walked by our table and said something to me. Seemed like he was either hitting on me or remarking about our lunch. Could be both. No clue.
We headed out again to Mulian Dao, the Beijing tea street. Nothing but tea shops as far as the eye can see. People contined to gawk and gesture wildly at my friends flip flops. Hilarious. We bought some fruit tea, but most of the shops were very pushy and seemingly desperate to get you to sit down for a taste test. We even witnessed a bit of a street brawl. Two guys on bicycles were having a very loud argument, then they started pushing each other and yelling. Before we knew it, one guy had taken his bike lock out of the basket and hit the other guy across the face with it. They really went at it then until some people broke them up. I asked my friend about it later; she said that's actually really unusual and that Chinese people usually don't have scenes in public.
My friend works with a very nice man who recommended a restaurant to us. He wrote everything out for her in Chinese, as well as his recommendations for dinner. We had no clue what we were ordering, we just handed the paper to the waiter with my "No MSG" translation and hoped for the best. And we were not disappointed. Though I was a little wide-eyed at some of the choices on the menu.
What do you think? Crunchy or chewy?
We ordered a nice spicy salad, beef, pork ribs (aah, pork!) and eggplant. All of which was absolutely delish. And I must say that my chopstick skills are improving.
I am told that one has to remember that tastes vary. And not so long ago when the Chinese were truly struggling to feed their people, anything and everything was a food source.
And tomorrow, we're off to the Great Wall!
Tuesday, November 8
Another early day. My friend had talked to her coworker and arranged a driver to take us out to the Great Wall. We didn't go to the Badaling part which is the major touristy part. Fortuitously, that was closed so we had to venture about 80km from Beijing. The trip was enlightening in a way. If you stay in Beijing or Shanghai, I think one might get the impression that the Chinese are all doing quite well for themselves. However, journey outwards from the city and you'll find people living in houses without running water with few windows, open to the elements, with sheet metal roofs. They're out in the fields making a living with their bare hands and selling vegetables and fruit by the side of the road. The wealth of Beijing stops at the city line.
Corn is pretty popular in Beijing, and along the country roads we could see it drying in huge piles along the sides of the roads. Again, I was falling in love with autumn all over watching the trees rain multicolored leaves down into the fields and roads. But I digress..now, the Great Wall is...
Very long. We could see it as we drove up the winding road to the base of the mountains. It stretches like a snake across the mountaintops. And for a minute, I was reminded of that scene from LOTR when the watchtowers are lit all the way to Gondor...totally nerded out there, sorry :) Anyway, our driver told us where he would be waiting and directed us where to buy tickets for entry and for the cable car. No, I didn't climb the Great Wall per se. I climbed up a very steep mountainside through a gauntlet of people selling knick knacks and t-shirts to the cable car that went up to the top of the Great Wall. From the cable car, I could see trails leading up and down the mountain up to the Wall. Perhaps if I were alone I might have tried it. 800 steps...it would have taken me awhile. When we got to the top, I sucked in a huge lung full of fresh air. I hadn't noticed how bad the air in Beijing was until I was breathing clean air smelling of newly fallen leaves and had a chance to compare the two. The view is stunning, it really is. And I was struck by a bout of wishful thinking. Wishing that all of my friends were there to see what I was seeing. There are fourteen watchtowers along the great wall. The wall itself ends at the sea and is visible from space. Must have been cold and dreary to guard in the dead of winter. The wall itself isn't actually as tall as I expected. Don't get me wrong, that's a nice drop to the bottom and then you'll just roll the rest of the way down the mountain. They could see their enemies coming from miles away, and even if you got close enough they could shoot you with arrows through the murder holes lining the length of the wall. Daunting, to say the least.
I could have stayed up there all day walking the length of it and enjoying the mountain air and views, but we did eventually have to go down. I'll have to go back some day, maybe see where it ends at the sea.
We had taken a bit longer than planned at the Wall, so our driver took a winding back road through the mountains. My friends fell asleep, but I didn't want to miss a moment of it I just enjoyed the view so much. On the way back to Beijing are the Ming tombs. They felt similar to the Egyptians in their manner of burial. The Emperor and his two Empresses were eight flights of stairs below ground. People tossed money at the caskets as offerings to their ancestors, etc. The caskets themselves were a series fo 26 red lacquered nanmu boxes. The largest held the emperor, who was flanked by two smaller boxes holding his empresses. There were also three stone thrones as well as some porceleain vases. The info board said the other boxes held their possessions. Jade objects were also found in between the boxes. The place was much like the pyramids in that there was really no decoration inside. Nothing on the walls or on the floors. The two huge stone doors at either end of the tombs had some decoration but not much.
And what goes down, must come up. We climbed those stairs again to the surface into the sunlight. My feet were starting to really drag a bit, we had done so much walking. I was ready to snooze in the car on the way back.
But there was more walking to be done. My friend's son and his girlfriend were in Beijing, so we all walked to a nice Italian restaurant for dinner. I very much appreciated being able to order wine without the restaurant being attached to a hotel like they have to be in Dubai. It still seemed rather surreal to be ordering Italian in Beijing, but it was actually very good. And tomorrow, we get up early for a short flight out to Xi'An to see the terracotta warriors!
Wednesday November 9
We got up at an ungodly hour to catch a taxi to the airport. We'd managed to find the address in Chinese on my friend's IPod app, but it didn't mention terminals. Through a series of hand gestures we managed to communicate which terminal we needed to go to. The flight to Xi'an was uneventful, which is always pleasant. Our guide met us the the airport. Her English was very good, which was very helpful. We had our own guide, as well as our own transport. It's worth the money, trust me. When you're in a tour group of 20 people, you just don't get as much out of the experience. Anyway, while driving out of Xi'An, she booked us a table at a local venue for a dumpling banquet and traditional performance. It sounded like a tourist trap, but the brochure looked interesting. They did the required stop at a "factory" to show us how the terracotta warriors were made. They were actually making reproductions, using molds. The body and the head were separate molds, with all of the detail being carved by hand after the large pieces were formed. Of course, we were then led out onto the factory floor where we could buy a reproduction varying in size from a diminutive 4 inches to life size. We opted out of those and hopped back in the van.
The warriors are right where they were found by that farmer back in the 70's. They built the museum around the excavation. There were originally 7000 of them, created from molds over a period of 37 years. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Hans rebelled and smashed them all except for one which is the kneeling archer that appears in so many descriptions about the warriors.
There are actually three pits. One contains the main army, of which they've reconstructed many of the soldiers from the pieces. Each on has a different face. The details on the armour indicate what kind of soldier is represented. Behind the soldiers, you can actually see piles of pieces with a horse torso sticking out here and a wagon well laying over there. Each soldier had been holding a weapon, but the wooden handles rotted away. The bronze pieces are on display in the museum but I couldn't get really good pictures of those.
In the other two pits are officers and generals. Apparently if their shoes are really pointy and they have a lot of knots on their armour, it's a high ranking officer or general. They call the pot belly a "general's belly" because they were fed so well.
It took so many years and so much work to build them. I was struck by the resemblance to Egyptian burials where the pharoahs took representations and actual objects that they possessed in life which they wanted to take with them into the afterlife. The Emperor's burial mound lays unexcavated a few miles away. It's gigantic. There are schools of thought of what lays inside. What I had read suggests that the ceiling of the tomb is covered in gemstones representing different constellations. The Emperor himself supposedly lies in the middle in a suit of jade armour. He's surrounded by a river of mercury. Maybe one day they'lle excavate it and we'll find out.
After seeing the terracotta warriors, we drove back into Xi'An to see the Wild Goose Pagoda and Temple. Xi'An is home to a scant 8 million people, so it's rather open and spacious compared to Beijing. The temple is actually still in use by monks. Buddhists come to pray and make offerings.
This temple had just been renovated. I found it refreshing to visit a temple still in use and not located on top of a mountain up a couple hundred steps. One of the temples had wall art inlaid with different colors of jade depicting the life of Buddha. I hadn't realized jade came in so many colors. Our guide was really very helpful and informative. She asked us a lot of questions about life in Dubai, and it blew her mind that pork was hard to come by.
After oohing and ahhing over the temples beautiful walls and statues, our guide took us to our hotel to rest up a bit before dinner. We'd been on the move since early morning, so I was very glad to sit for a bit. She got us a very nice room overlooking the bell tower in downtown Xi'An. We watched a bit of TV, but since it's all in Chinese we didn't understand anything going on. So we did our own voice overs. What looked to be an early Jet Li movie became a story about a man who stole the last box of Clorox and the drug kingpin was pissed because he couldn't bleach his shirts. So there.
I was highly looking forward to dinner. I hadn't been able to have dumplings at all because they were all premade with MSG. Our lovely guide had called ahead to make sure it would not be a problem. When we got there, she double checked with the manager and the servers to be sure none of our food would have MSG. Bless her little heart. She even got us a table in the balcony. Like I figured, bus loads of tourists began to arrive, but it was still a neat thing. We were served steamer after steamer of cute little dumplings made to look like the filling inside. I loved the shape of the fish dumplings. And we were indeed treated to a show full of traditional music, song, and dance. Loved it!
Thursday November 10
We had some free time in the morning, so we visited the Muslim Quarter in Xi'An. Those alley ways seem to go on for miles. It's like a labyrinth or rabbit warren, with little shops and people selling street food off carts. It's mostly a lot of knock offs and crappy souvenirs. It's not that bad in the morning, when they're just opening. We nipped into a tea shop because my friend wanted a tea set for her mom and I wanted to get some tea. Things are certainly cheaper outside Beijing. We ran into quite a hard salesperson. She was a tough nut. We pulled the old "we're walking away" trick after offering our last price and she let us get halfway down the street before she folded. It was like playing chicken, seeing who was going to give in first. There were lots of interesting (not scary) street foods that I had no clue what they were, but our guide had told us that the food wasn't clean and not to eat any of it. That sounded like a good warning so we looked with our eyes and not with our hands. I did notice quite a few people staring at us, then I realized that we were the only Westerners around. Yeah, we looked like a couple of circus elephants I'm sure.
Our trip is drawing to an end. We felt the need for coffee. The Chinese are more of a tea culture, but coffee shops are starting to pop up, as are tons of McDonald's, KFC, Baskin RObbins, and Haagen Daaz. We stopped in at a Starbucks for a holiday coffee, because many of the holiday flavours aren't available in Dubai. My chocolate cherry mocha was fantabulous. I am all for the spread of coffee culture.
Our guide helped us check out of our hotel. Our last stop was to check out the wall that surrounds central Xi'An which is the oldest part of the city. The wall was built by the Ming Dynasty six hundred years ago. None of the buildings within the wall are allowed to be taller than the Wild Goose Pagoda. Anthing right near the wall has to maintain the look of old Xi'An. It makes for quite a moving picture, I think. Our guide helped us rent bikes so we could ride along the wall. She told us it would be about a two and a half hour ride, but those bikes were so old and rusty I didn't think we'd make it all the way around. It was cool, the air was crisp, and the views were wonderful. The bike made the experience just a little painful because it was creaky and the seat could not be adjusted, so we turned around about halfway around the wall.
After our morning ride, our guide walked with us a bit around the wall, explaining that the wall in maintained every year and renovated quite frequently. She was a nice girl. She talked about growing up in Xi'An and going to university, and how she wasn't a big fan of huge cities like Beijing. I had to agree with her there; the noise and pollution get to me after awhile.
We took a short flight back to Beijing. Funnily enough, we got a taxi right away and were back at our friend's apartment in no time. Which was a good thing because we were both exhausted. We ordered pizza from one of the few places we knew spoke English and called it a night.
Friday November 11
Our last day in Beijing, we went with our friend to her school. Of course, comparing it to our own school could not be avoided. They have a lovely campus, with traditional Chinese gardens, an Olympic size pools, and huge playgrounds. They have new computers in their rooms, and their library makes our look like a closet. The teachers are mostly British and Australian, but their student population is actually international whereas ours is more local. It's such a different atmosphere with boys in the classroom as well. They do lend a different energy to the place. We got to observe a lesson in the kindergarten and even got hands on with the first grade ESL class. I almost missed having boys in the classroom. Almost. My god, their school grounds are gorgeous, with trees and a lake. The high school is spacious, with a little stream that winds through the first floor. They give their students so much more freedom than in our school or even in our schools at home in the US. That's a lot of trust they place in their students.
In the afternoon, we went back to the art district 798 to do a little more shopping and take some pictures. That evening when our friend got home, we headed out to Ghost Street for dinner. It's a long street of tons of restaurants. It looks like a ghost town during the day because nothing opens until dinner, and when we got there it was teeming with people. We headed to one of our friend's favorite restaurants. We passed lots of hawkers trying to get us into their restaurants. There's certainly a lot of competition with so many restaurants in one place. Luckily, there was an English language person on staff who understood my issue with MSG. He was able to check with the kitchen and see what I could eat. And oh, did we eat! We had Beijing duck, which you eat wrapped up in a little wonton wrapper with some slices of guava and melon with a nice sauce. We tried toffee'd bananas, much like the toffee'd sweet potatoes we'd had earlier in the week. I braved a little lemon chicken, even though I knew it had MSG in it. While we were eating, there were a variety of acts going on a little stage at the front of the restaurant. There were a couple of little girls doing acrobatics, a man who juggled plates, and a magician doing slight of hand. I always like dinner with a show :) Still, one of the best shows was the view of the street with all of the lanterns lit for the evening.
Later on, our friend's driver came to take us to the airport for the long trip back to Dubai. We had quite a bit more luggage than when we first arrived because we'd purchased a few souvenirs. My one friend practically bought all of China. The wonderful man managed to fit all of it in the car, and even helped us make it to the check in counter at the airport. He told us to call him if we come back to China :)
It was such an amazing trip, one of those life experiences that you'll never forget. I can now say that I've seen the Forbidden City up close and personal, and walked on the Great Wall. I've seen the modern city of Beijing, and meandered where the Ming Dynasty used to live. I've seen some truly bizarre food, and tasted some of the best Chinese food that I will ever have (though you never can tell ;) For the most part, the Chinese seem pretty cool, polite, and going about their business just like everyone else. And then there are the Chinese that are still working the fields with their hands and scraping by, so though at first glance China seems like it has it all together but scratch under the surface and you'll see it's not altogether true. I think if I were to go back, I would really like to see more outside the cities, the rolling plains where the Mongols lived, the countryside, rivers, and mountains. I'm not a city girl, and would like to see more natural wonders.
Who knows? Maybe I'll go back someday.
Maybe you'll come with me :)
