Exploring Beijing

Monday, June 9, 2008--Beijing (Continued)

I was so tired that I bought a bottle of water and headed to the hotel after being at the Internet Cafe. I just wanted to go to bed. When I got to the room, however, the phone rang. It was an internet friend I have been communicating with. He's a 27-year-old former athlete who learned English communicating with other competetors at the international events. Now, he is an investment banker with a Swiss firm. He is on vacation right now and wanted to meet me. He arrived an hour or so later, and we visited for a couple of hours. He was gone by 22:00, so I still got to bed and had a nice night of sleep.

Tuesday, June 9, 2008--Beijing

I am still tired from the fact that I had to fly overnight to get here from Cebu. Even though I am dragging today, I forced myself to have a full day of activities in the city.

I am very fortunate with my room. Not only is it a very nice room--wonderful comfortor, good a/c, sparkling glass bathroom, etc., but it is in a perfect location. Right across the street is the Grand Hyatt (which probably costs 6-8 times what I am paying) and the Oriental Plaza Mall (the nicest and largest mall in the city). Just half a block away is a major walking street with shops, sidewalk eateries, etc. And the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square are just about a 15-minute walk away.

My breakfast at the hotel is a Chinese one. Almost everyone staying at the hotel is Chinese. It is popular with businessmen, I think. It consisted of a boiled egg, fried sticks of bread (like churros without the cinnamon and sugar), steamed buns with bean paste inside, several choices of pickled vegetables which have a bit of a pepper bite to them, and choices of 3 kinds of porridge. The later were rather tasteless. But it was free with the room, so I ate up and then waited for the evening to eat again.

I headed to the Forbidden City to see it before the tour buses arrived. I was there when it opened at 8:30. It is larger than I expected. And it is also duller than I expected. It is like visiting temples (and very much like the temples in Korea and Taiwan), and I have visited too many of those over the years. But I pushed myself through the huge complex seeing what could be seen. I was happier when I went into the side areas where there seemed to be more character and more of a feel of a place where people would actually live. After 3 hours there, the crowds had built up, so I was ready to leave.

I walked across to Tiananmen Square. It seems smaller than I expected. The square itself is obviously huge, but there are building in the center of it which make it seem smaller than I expected. I thought it would be one, big empty square. There is a huge open space across the street from the Forbidden City, but the buildings in the rest of the square (including the one with Mao's body on display) really took up much of the area. There were many people in the square, but it didn't seem crowded at all. One problem is that there are no shady areas, so people are in the bright sunshine when they are there in the daytime. That is probably why it is popular to go there in the evenings.

From there, I headed for the Temple of Heaven where the emporers prayed. It is quite a distance, but I wanted to see everything along the way. My map showed a major street going south from Tiananmen Square to it, and showed that it had restaurants and other things to see along the way. When I got to the location of the street, however, it was gone. That seems to be the story here in Beijing. Huge parts of town are being bulldozed to rebuild. Many people were looking through holes in the construction wall, so I looked, too. What I saw was totally new construction designed to give the appearance of an idealized (think Disneyland) Chinese neighborhood from the 1930s or so. There is a street car line going down the middle of the street. My guess is that it will be open and functioning as a place to see "Old Beijing" by the time the Olympics arrive in two months.

I had to go to the side and take a major street that is totally new; it does not show on my guidebook map. It's the new traffic routing they constructed when they tore down the old neighborhood. Walking along this street is like walking along many Beijing streets today. It is green with lots of blooming flowers. Behind the greenery is a continuous wall. The city has done this on all their major streets all over the city. What they actually have done is tear down the businesses and houses along every major street going back at least 15-20 m (15-20 yards). It's possible to see the gagged walls of buildings where they were cut away just behind the new walls. They built walls to hide the neighborhoods that remain, and then planted the grass, trees, and flowers to make the streets look pretty. It's true that many of the neighborhoods behind these walls look like slums, but it is just amazing how many neighborhoods have been devastated by redevelopment and by shaving off their outer parts for these walls and gardens!

The Temple of Heaven was nice to see. Since it is one of the major symbols of the city, I wanted to see it. But it was a long way there in the hot sunshine. And it is really a rather simple building in the center of a big park. I actually enjoyed watching the people in the park more than I did seeing the temple itself. They were playing card games, dancing to music, etc. It seems to be a place where locals go to have a relaxed time. Inside the temple complex, a group of young Americans were being obnoxious and helping us live up to the old reputation of The Ugly American. They were sliding down the sides of the steps going to one of the temple buildings, making lots of noise, and in general showing that they had no respect for the place nor interest in it other than what fun they could have at it. They were a band group visiting from a U.S. school. I was so turned off that I didn't even want to pay attention to see what school it was.

Back at the hotel, I couldn't help but fall asleep even though I wanted to stay awake. After 45 minutes of catnapping, I forced myself to get up and go out again. I intended to eat at a snack street, but it wasn't what I really expected when I got there. I did buy a chicken shawarma sandwich and eat it. Then I walked down the walking street just to see what was there. On my return, I went to a side street and bought a big pancake from a vendor. It was warm, soft, and tasty with vegetables in the dough. After that, I decided that I had eaten enough and would wait for tomorrow to have a better meal.

I returned to the hotel and read for a while. I went to bed at 21:00. Sometime in the night, the phone rang. It was the usual prostitute wanting to know if she should come to my room. That happens all the time in China. I had thought about unplugging my phone before going to bed, but I had forgotten to do so yesterday, and there had been no call.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008--Beijing

Today, I made the trip out to the Great Wall of China. I remember reading about it and seeing photos of it in my geography or history textbooks from elementary school, so it was fun to finally see it myself. There are several places where one can visit the wall. I considered the possibilities and decided on the most popular one because it is also the easiest to reach via publich transport.

After breakfast, I took the metro to the station where I could catch a public bus to take me non-stop to the wall at Bedaling. The metro trip was an experience. It was rush hour. I waited in a long line to get onto the train. People pushed and shoved. When I got in (the second train to arrive after getting in line), I was pushed and shoved until I, along with everyone else, was packed in like a sardine in a tin. It was fascinating. At each stop, people pushed and shoved to get to the door and out, and others pushed and shoved to get inside and fill up every little bit of space that was available. After about 7 stops, it finally clearned out so that everyone could have his own space; but I got off at the 8th stop!

The Great Wall is really as magnificent as it seems to be on TV and in photos. I was lucky that they have a ticket for seniors (over 60). Guess they think we don't climb and, therefore, cause less maintenance. But anyone who knows me knows that I not only climbed; I climbed more than most. Badaling is the most visited portion of the wall. In fact, that part of the wall is the most visited tourist site in the world. When I got to the wall, there were two choices--turn right (as 95% of all visitors did) and go up the wall that direction which didn't seem so steep, or turn left to go up a steeper portion of the wall. I chose to go left. It put me climbing the wall with only a very few other people. In fact, most of the time it was as if I had the wall to myself. It was very steep at times, but there were rails to hold. I climbed to the highest tower. From there, I could see the wall continuing over the mountains far into the distance. Only a very few of us were up there. Unfortunately, there was a local man offering to carve my name into the wall in Chinese characters so my friends would know I had been there; I declined, of course. Wish the government would stop such activities. Anyway, I enjoyed the views, then I started down again. On the way down, I passed more people due to the fact it was later in the morning and more and more buses were arriving. Most of those I encountered were about to give up and turn back. I tried encouraging them to continue by telling them about the views from the top tower, and many did.

While waiting for the return bus, I met two women from the Czech Republic. They are both graduate students. One has been here for 5 months studying computer design. The other is a friend who is visiting for a short time before writing her thesis on international trade between China and the Czech Republic. They were nice women and interesting to get to know. They laughed when I told them that I make my own kolaches.

By the time the bus returned to Beijing, the two women and I decided to go try to see the Olympic Village. It wasn't too far from where our bus would let us off. The line to the village is not open yet, but we could see by the map that there was a metro line that had a stop not too far away. We went there and walked westward. After 20 minutes or so, we were there. We saw the new large stadium and the swimhall that looks as if it is covered in giant bubble wrap. Both are fascinating structures. We could also see some of the other event arenas, but none as spectacular as the stadium and the swimhall. There are many other buildings we could not see because they are hidden behind the ones we did see. It was nice to be there and see them, however. I wish I could see the swimhall at night when the walls look like blue bubbles.

The ladies left me to head to the train station to catch their train back to Shanghai. I went to a supermarket and bought a cola and some water. Then I took the metro here. I ran into a problem, however. They were making loud announcements on the train, and I couldn't tell what they were saying because of it being in Chinese. Then, when we got to the Beijing Railway Station Metro Station (where I needed to get off for the cyber cafe), we pulled through it. It was totally dark, and reminded of what the stations were like during communist times in Berlin when the metro passed the closed stations in the East. I wonder what had happened to cause the station to be dark and closed? Was there a protest that took place? Was there a terrorist threat? Did the construction going on in the train station and on other buildings in the area cut a cable? I probably won't know. But it added a bit more adventure to my trip.