Beijing, Round One (Click on pictures to expand)

This past weekend I took a last minute trip to Beijing. This is the first of two posts about the trip. I’m writing a general overview of the trip this week, and next week I will write about two interactions that I think hold some insight into China and the expat experience. ‘Tis a big one, so without further ado…

Last week I was in the midst of planning my vacation for the Spring Festival. I’m heading down to India for a few weeks, which means I need a visa. Unlike most visa applications in the US (and contrary to what I was told by the Indian passport office in Shanghai, a new addition to my list of unaware enemies), I found out last Monday that to get my tourist visa I had to physically bring my passport and application to the passport office in Beijing. Cut to me scrambling like a madman figuring out how to make all of this work. I decided that I would fly to Beijing on Friday morning, go to the passport office, take a whirlwind tour of Beijing, and catch the train back to Chongqing that evening. Because I had to leave my passport at the office, I was unable to fly back from Beijing. Because my trip was planned so last minute, the only train ride back that evening left the station at 11:00pm, and was 32 hours long. Let the odyssey begin.

I woke up at 4:30am on Friday and caught a cab to the airport shortly thereafter. The beginning of the trip was fairly uneventful. When we were descending into Beijing, I could not help but notice the distinct layer of brown smog that was hovering between the expansive blue sky and the sprawling city below. Beijing’s pollution problem has resurfaced in the news recently (see: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/a-hiccup-for-a-gauge-of-beijing-pollution/), but I seriously lucked out; it was a beautiful day with a pristine blue sky. That being said, it was also pretty chilly, but I came prepared with hat and gloves; MN taught me well. The first stop was the passport office. In and out, on to sightseeing.

From the passport office I walked to Tiananmen Square. It was a few kilometers away, but I had time to kill. Beijing is a very flat, grid-organized city, so it is easy to navigate; unlike the dizzying zigs and zags of the mountainous Chongqing. Another aspect of Beijing that was quite different to Chongqing is that it seemed very quiet and orderly. This certainly has something to do with the part of Beijing I was in (central, near the heart of government), but it still was surprising to watch people drive relatively calmly and without the constant blaring of horns to which I have become accustomed. The walk down Chang’an Street by itself is pretty impressive. The street is wide and stately, and the architecture is distinctly communist, especially the closer you get to the heart of it all, i.e., Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, People’s Hall. The buildings are broad, low, and massive. Most are not more than about eight stories in this area, which again, is very unlike what I see on a daily basis in Chongqing. And of course, all of them are adorned with a communist star up top like an authoritarian Christmas tree! Side note: I did walk buy a mall not one kilometer from the heart of communist power that was blaring Christmas tunes outside of the Burberry and Rolex boutiques. I wouldn’t begrudge anyone their right to purchase luxury items and jam out to Christian holiday-themed music, I’m just saying the juxtaposition of these two worlds gave me pause. It is a bit odd observing the seemingly contradictive nature of high-end commercialism in close proximity to such fundamental communist iconography.

Before I hit the tourist highlights, I had to stop for some duck, the one dish my students instructed me I had to eat while in Beijing. It was awesome. Fatty, crispy, sweet, and bountiful. Oh, and expensive, but I knew going in that food was more expensive there, especially at a hugely popular place near the heart of the city. This picture doesn’t do it justice, but have a gander (fowl humor!):

After stuffing myself with duck, it was onto get a picture with the Chairman and take a look around. I’ll do the next section through captions under the pictures to shorten things up a bit.

Each one of the these light posts had about a dozen security cameras on them, and there were soldiers and plain clothes officers (not the most discrete individuals ever), all over the place. As you may recall, they don’t take kindly to people messing about in this part of town.

Me, Myself, and Mao. If Mao doesn’t smile for his picture, neither do I.

Time to come clean: all my life I took the notion of the Forbidden City in a literal sense. As in, you can’t go in there, it is forbidden. Turns out for the low, low price of 40 yuan you can go where you please, forbidden or not. Seeing as I pride myself on knowing things like this, I debated on whether to share that tidbit or not; forthrightness carried the day.

Just one of several massive courtyards surrounded by 15^th century buildings. It is one of the more impressive places I’ve visited in my life.

My smiling, windswept face. Picture courtesy of another solo tourist named Amy. Very friendly Australian with whom I arranged a picture exchange. Win-win.

On and on.

Intricate detail. I’m lucky that it was such a gorgeous day, it really brought out the colors and details.

It was time to head back out to Tiananmen Square to wander around and catch the flag lowering ceremony. Here is where I bumped into two other people visiting Tiananmen; a story into which I will delve next week.

The flag lowering ceremony. Please excuse the quality of the cinematography and lack of editing; Kubrick, I am not. It gets a little long towards the end, but the first half is interesting enough.

After the ceremony and some tea, I still had several hours to kill. I wandered around the shopping and eating district near Tiananmen and saw some fun stuff.

The shopping street where I had earlier eaten the duck looked a bit different by night.

Eating street. Here’s a quick video, and then a few pics.

Dare I? Ya, right.

What do Hamid Karzai, Muammar Gaddafi, Jackie Chan, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have in common? Well, you can buy their bobble-head dolls on the cheap from this street vendor in Beijing. That’s all I can think of right now.

Time to head towards the train station. I could not believe how busy the train station was on a random Friday night at 11:00pm. It was full on ‘ren shan, ren hai’ (people mountain, people sea; one of my favorite Chinese expressions, and quite useful given the frequency of being amongst innumerable people). I dare not think of what the train station must be like during the Spring Festival, which annually sets records for human migration statistics. After queuing (lol, queuing, ya right) to board the train in this massive waiting hall, when the time came to move the scene quickly devolved into a nuts to butts surge towards the two turnstiles. For some, I could see this being an unbearably claustrophobic scene. I, however, have accepted things like this as a challenge. I have become relentless, and when I find myself in these situations, all remnants of Minnesota politeness and common courtesy slough away, and I push.

Once on board, I found my bunk, which was comfortable enough, built a little fort, and nestled in for the night. The next morning I woke up surprisingly well rested. We were in the middle of Henan province, and I sat for some time looking out the window at the hazy, frosted landscape. Occasionally, we rode by small villages that looked so much the same across the distance that we travelled, that it would be impossible for an untrained eye to differentiate between them. One of the ubiquitous aspects of these villages (and something they share with the major cities), is so often things look half finished. Shells of houses that have no inhabitants save for the piles of bricks in the yard. One gets so used to clean, organized spaces in the west, and that picture is simply not what the developing world looks like. Even in upscale neighborhoods and commercial districts in China, disorder and construction are the norm. Though it may have the second largest economy in the world, China is still (undeniably) a developing country.

Sleeping quarters.

A non-descript train stop in the middle of China.

The boss of our train car. She apparently got a huge kick out of me, but you wouldn’t be able to tell from this photo.

I felt an obligation to the US and the tall boy specials back home to crack this one.

The train ride itself was pretty uneventful. I read, ate, slept, and chatted with a couple of people. I walked up and down the train at one point, and I was the only foreigner amongst the 1,000+ travelers on the train. It made for some great interactions, one of which will be discussed in next week’s post. As I wrote to myself on the train, it smelled of “feet, soup, and cigarettes.” This may sound unacceptable to most, but I’ve survived worse; it actually enhanced the whole experience in an odd way. Maybe I’ve been away from home for too long.

I’m going to stop there. As I said earlier, next week I’ll be elaborating upon two interactions I had with people on this trip. One was a display of the hospitality and kinship rarely found amongst strangers the world over, the other brought out a side of me side of me that I rarely see. That’s called a cliffhanger, chumps!