Dear all –
This is the end of the first day! What a day it’s been. After cleaning up, in the shower that threatened to not heat up at all, I decided to get on the subway and go to the Forbidden City. The subway system here is not exactly like what I remembered, and you can only pay for your tickets with 5, 10, or 20 Yuan bills. I was trying to pay for my ticket with a 1 Yuan bill (since it was a 2 Yuan ticket) to no avail. Finally, someone took pity on me and gave me a ticket. He really saved me from a lot of trouble. Thanks!
I made it to Tian’An Men Square, and it is HUGE. Hear tell it’s the largest public square in the world. I tried to visit the Maosoleum, but it was closed by the time I got there. I really, really want to see the body of Mao. I have heard that you can see his “preserved body” in the Maosoleum, but that the body there is really a wax figurine in Mao’s likeness. The real Mao’s body was supposedly disfigured badly when they tried to inject preservatives into his body. Mao reacted by swelling up like a balloon, and when they got him deflated, his body was pretty unrecognizable. So there I was, walking towards the Forbidden City, when I strike up a conversation with Chen Long, a computer engineer from Shanghai. We start talking about sights in Shanghai and such, about jobs, and about visiting Beijing. He says that he is going to the Forbidden City too, and I didn’t mind having someone to walk with me.
This is when the bottom drops out. He asks me, “How about we stop and get a little snack?” I’m not the biggest on afternoon snacks, but whatever. We stop at this little “snack restaurant,” and he orders some tea, oranges, and crackers. I’m cool with this. We sit for about half an hour, and then we get the check. The check. Turns out this restaurant was a specialty tea shop or something because the tea itself was over $50 dollars! Its then that the pieces fall into place: This guy, Chen Long, is probably unemployed, taking a little pleasure tour around Beijing on his family’s money (he mentioned his dad’s credit card), is probably not the brightest bulb in the box, and just realized that he has a huge check to pay. Violating all Chinese customs of politeness, he says to me, “Would you like to split the check?” Poo. I say yes, and then he wants me to take more than half. I, violating Chinese niceties as well, say no way, and I brainstorm a plot to lose this guy before he costs me more $50 teapots.
We walk towards the Forbidden City, and Chen Long doesn’t want to pay the entrance fee, which is nominal for a Chinese tourist site. I vanish inside, kicking myself for my idiocy in the teahouse fiasco. With that said, the Forbidden City is amazing. It's the largest palace from this point in history, or so says Fodor’s, and if its not, I would love to see one bigger. The “Forbidden City” is a couple of “Forbidden Cities” deep, and it seems like the palace keeps on dividing and opening more. I took quite a few pictures of the City, and I hope they do justice to the buildings there.
The City is laid out running from South to North, and the father North one travels, the more “exclusive” the City becomes. The Inner City, where the emperor and his concubines lived, was only open to the emperor himself (or herself, sort of), his concubines, and the emperor’s eunuch servants. This way, the emperor could guarantee that any child born of his concubines was his. Running along the north-south axis is a raised path, upon which only the emperor and his carriers were allowed to tread; don't ask me why. If you were a concubine or a lesser servant, you had to travel along byways outside the Inner city, which were still pretty awe-inspiring. Once you get off the main path of the City, the rest if effectively abandoned, and I spent a good amount of time just looking around at the temples and lesser palaces.
While in the Forbidden City, I looked in some of the museums, which depicted various aspects of the emperor’s life in the city: his marriage ceremony, the typical dowries that were given by the empress, and how the emperor might enjoy himself and pass the time. There were quite a few exhibits about PuYi, the last emperor of China, who was expelled for the last time from the City in 1924. I surmise that the reason for the preservation of so much information about PuYi is the invention of the camera (there were a lot of pictures of him), especially considering that PuYi was a fairly weak emperor, whose reign is typically linked to the demise of the Chinese Empire. I could go on about the Forbidden City, but I’ll move on for now!
I left the City through the North Gate, and determined my next plan of attack. Directly to the north of the City was JingShan Park, but that costs 100 Yuan to enter. I pigeonholed my trip there, and walked a little west to see the famous Hu Tongs of Bejing. Hu Tongs are the traditional dwellings of Beijing, and most of them have been destroyed in the spirit of economic development. I think the primary facets of a Hu Tong are as follows: the streets must be inordinately narrow, not laid out on a grid, and there must be old pairs of shoes everywhere. I say this jokingly, but the Hu Tongs did over stimulate me a little because they were so disorderly in layout. I kept emerging onto dead-end streets or walking in circles. Despite the disorder, the Hu Tongs are very picturesque in their own right. They were the normal dwelling for Beijing-ites until about 50 years ago. I found myself near BeiHai Park after about a half-hour in the Hu Tongs. I gladly ventured into the park.
BeiHai Park surrounds a huge lake, of which I cannot determine its origin. It almost looks as if some of the lake is man-made, but I don't know for sure. The lake is frozen over completely. This very much disturbed me, since I have never seen a body of water frozen over in my entire life. The geese had wallowed themselves out a hole in the middle of BeiHai (meaning “North Lake”), and they were making a good amount of noise there. The southern end of BeiHai Park has a fairly large island, which has a beautiful temple at its summit and a Mock-Imperial Noodle Restaurant at its base (that's what the sign said). I circled the lake on its east side, as my Fodor’s guide suggested that I check out HouHai (Back Lake) before leaving this district.
I get to the end of North Lake, and really have no idea how I am to get to the next lake on my journey, Front Lake (conveniently located in front of Back Lake). So I ask a Chinese girl who is also surmising the map; after all, why not? I’d tried my luck with my half of the species and failed earlier.
“Could you tell me where Back Lake is?”
“I thought this was Back Lake.”
Groan. Thus, I began an intricate plan to extricate myself from yet another awkward encounter, in which my Chinese guide was more hopeless than I. We walked over to Front Lake, and I conveniently disappeared. This allowed me to check out the action on Front Lake, which really was interesting. The ice on the lake is about a foot thick, or so says another friend I made at Front Lake. The lake is roped off for separate areas of entertainment. In some parts, people ice skate – some quite gracefully, while in others people propel themselves by a chair with runners and two metal poles, or ride around on ice bikes. Others just walk around on the ice, or fly remote-control airplanes or helicopters from the middle of the frozen lake. But the craziest things I saw today were the swimmers. There was a worker who cleared the ice away from a small section of the lake, so that crazy old guys could jump in wearing their tighty-whities. It was insane!
I continued around Front Lake to Back Lake, where Fodor said I could find great restaurants and the “beer garden.” I did see a few restaurants, but the whole scene looked a little seedy to me. Some of that may have had something to do with the lack of tourists, given the temperature of mid-20s for the entire day. The light was starting to fail on me at this point, and I began to formulate an evacuation plan. I headed towards the nearest subway station, and my route took me to another lake, West Lake. This lake was exclusively for skating, swimming, and ice hockey (This was my first time to see an ice-hockey game on a real lake). So cool!
I had to ask for directions to West Lake, and the guy that I asked had no way what to tell me. After some looking around, I determined that the lake was about 100 yards due west of my current location, and this lead me to an observation about Chinese people. I don’t think that any Chinese person is good with directions. The subway was, according to my map, just a few hundred yards from the end of West Lake, and I headed that direction. After walking for a few minutes, I had no idea where the subway was. I walked up to a guy on the street, and asked where the subway was. (Please give me good directions!) He looked at me funny and said, right behind you. The entrance to the subway looked like the entrance to a doctor’s office, with a distinctly medical slogan adorning the doorway. I thanked my assistant, and went into the subway/medical station.
I hit the subway at about 5:30 or so, at what looked like peak capacity for the Beijing Subway. There were people everywhere. I’d like to say “thank you” to the person I bounced off of, quite literally, while trying to board the subway, and also the person who ran over my shoe with his suitcase. It is highly probable that this is the same person. I made it back to my exit, and got some noodles at a restaurant near my hotel. Then, I headed north to Carrefour, the most awesome grocery store/Wal-Martish store in China. I picked up some shampoo, soap, toilet paper and Q-tips. There were quite a few people looking for toilet paper there, and I’m glad to know that I’m not the only person who thinks that the purchase of bathroom tissue is an exact science.
Came back to the room, and got ready to check emails. That's when I realized that the temperature of my room, at a whopping 13oC (55oF) was probably abnormal. By the way, I froze my butt off last night. I had to go ask Friend He how to operate the intricate thermostat in my room, who told me that I had another good 2 hours of freezing my butt off until the heat cut on.
When I got here last night, I had the most disturbing hypothesis that everything I was seeing was a huge farce, and that I was really not in Beijing at all, or even in China. I, however, after today, have determined that I am in China. This is how I know: A lady at Carrefour who wanted to recycle my receipt accosted me. I crossed a street and was bisected by one taxi who made an illegal left turn to the front of me, while another mirrored the other taxi’s illegal maneuver behind me. I also saw a man selling strips of bamboo from a bicycle. Guards with no apparent purpose littered the street corners. I ate two dishes at for supper whose origin I cannot trace. I must be in China.
Before I end this verbose installment, please allow me to leave the western world with a few thoughts (I write these tongue-in-cheek).
Nothing is inpossible.
Don’t scramble the auto-walk. (What!?!?!)
One small step for you is a huge leap for your culture.
I’ll write soon!
Love,
Jamey
PS When Jamey sends me pictures I will post them as well! -Morgan
No comments:
Post a Comment