Where
to begin? Bejing. The capitol city of CHina. The plane ride was uneventual, minus the turbulence i
mentioned previously. THe ride, the same.
I'm sitting here now, in the front lobby bar of The capitol hotel,
smoking a cigar and watching the chinese pay ping pon in the olympics. i'm nervous as hell about the cigar as
my califronia conditioning is screaming out to me, "what the hell are you
doing? there are children less than 4000 feet away!!" even though nearly
everyone else is smoking Ok,
happiness is an irish coffe. I just m9oved 10 feet backwards from the families,
so i feel a little better. I'm now swmoking my cheap cuban in peace. it's nice.
Beijing
is a city i coud like It's more
relaxed, with wide boulevards and a statele grace to it. A good metaphor would be the difference
between new york city (dowtown) and washington, d.c The bustle of a shanghai
exists, just not everywhere Our hote
was a total score. I had booked it
through Ctrip.com, a chinese travel club, and on our arrival we found ourselves
upgraded to a suite as no more single rooms were left. Angea and i open our
door on the 6th floor and enter our drawing room, pass the separate mirror
and vanity into our huge bedroom. The place comes with a separate glass-enclosed
shower, bath tub and a bidet.
Niiiice. It's perfect
acutally, as angela and I have come down with colds and this is the perfect
place to recover. As of this
writing (friday evening), i've mostly dodged thebullet while angela is still
upstairs sleeping. Poor thing, the cold has hit her hard, losing most of her
voice in the morning anbd severly limiting her energy. we're thankful it's here in bejing
though, and not in the interior.
As
bejing is the cultural center of china, with so much to see, we decide to take
a day tour sponsored by the hotel. The idea of being bussed around to get a
general sense of th eplace, plus lunch sounds like a good idea. Well, it wasn't
quite the peach we envisioned. The bus took us to a jade factory,
where we saw how you carve jade, how you polish jade and how you purchase jade
(nice gift shop, larger than the work areas). even with the exchange rate, the
pieces and prices weren't my thing, the nicest stuff was way out of my range,
and the affordable stuff looked, affordable.
Next
stop was the Ming tombs. a huge plantation flanked the tombs, filled with peach
trees. we tried the famous bejing peach and it was the largest peach i had ever
seen, and quite tasty. the tombs
were ok, really a collecttion of nice buildings, though the recovered artifacts
were quite striking. i was most
impressed with the style of chinese archeitecture that builds high 3 story buildings without
the use of one nail. that and the
whole-tree pillar approach. we do
not descend into the tombs, as krista says were are able, and i begin to
grumble silently about the tour.
next
we are taken to a cloisonne factory that houses a restaurant on the 2nd floor
(!) cloisonne is a beautiful example of chinese vase and artistry, involving
copper vases, copper shaped-designs, filled with colored enamel, then fired,
polished, and gilded. we see how
they make cloisonne, how thy polish cloisonne, and...how they buy
cloisonne! it's now 1pm, and i've
spent more time in gift shops than i would care to. we file upstairs for lunch and have ok food, safer for
foreign palates (sweet and sour sauce abounds, through they have this native
rice 'wine' that tastes like super sake, they serve it in cups the size of a
bullet). our table mates are 4
frenchmen, who very quickly discuss politics with us. Bush, keery, farenheit 9/11 (which is a very popular movie
there). Angela, having traveled to
france, knows the french discuss poiticis like we do the weather, and is ready
for the discussion. I contribute, but was unprepared for the 'heavy' talk, and
feel sullena bout it, although the french are very nice and engaging (no
american bashing at all).
Next
we go the highlight (and last stop of the trip), the Great Wall of China at
Badaling. This section has been
restored, and now caters to tourists, as the throngs around it testify. By now, we're pretty tired and
irritable due to sickness, and the masses of tourists are a bit hard to handle,
but hey, we're walking the great wall of china, damnit! getting up the wall was
a trip, passing through the now obligatory hecklers ("hallo! hallo! COld
water, tour book, hats hats!) we ride on a single car tramway, reminscint of a
roller coaster, that takes us up the side of the mountain to the wall. the view from the wallis
breathtaking. inner mongolia on
our left, china on our right. the
walls have those handy crossbow holes, ad we walk the entire length of it that
is open to us. this section is in,
sections, so we only walk about a mile.
but part of that mile includes steps, and high angle ramps. the towers are cool, though faintly
smelling of urine, thanks fellow tourists! we reach the end and rest atop a staircase that descends at
at 50 degree angle. we watch another section as we catch our breath. angela is not happy at his point, as we
realize later, we've pushed our sick bodies too far. After a good wait (the bus
gave us 2 1/2 hours), we go back down the track, enjoying the roller
coaster ride ("it's like the
bronx zoo without the animals! then it's really like the bronx zoo!) walking
the pathway, i get 6 salesman simultaneously hawing their wares at me, and i
snap. i take off my sunglasses and
start selling back.
"Sunglasses!
sunglasses! 5 dollar, 5 dollar!" I shout, gesticulating excitedly at my
cheapo plastic frames. this gets a
rousing laugh out of the salesman, and they leave me alone. My god, it works!
the
bus takes us back, and we spend the nextt hour in bejing rush hour
traffic.. overall, not pleased
with the bus tour. we'd prefer
less gift shop and more culture, but i guess the tour mainly caters to people
who haven't had the chance, or don't want the chance, to hit the antique
markets and such (no bargaining expected at the shops, though it can be done,
as my lady successfully bargained a jade tiger pendant from 200 rmb to 120.)
we
crash for a few hours and regroup at 8pm for bejing duck.
I
now know why hotels have pleasing archetecture. it's pretty to look at, but great to see when you're mildy
drunk.
ENTER
THE TAXI:
Krista
goess off on her own to meet a friend. rick and we decide to walk to the
restaurant recommended by the tour guide, an operation in business for 150 years. (take tha,
musso and franks!) At the drveway to the hote we meet two bicycle taxi drivers and decide
thqat might be cool. they say 50
yuan for the trip, which is waay to expensive. we bargain down to 20, which
they say ok. they cross the street
and take us on a trip out of a movie into the back alleys of old beijing. it's
so real,
that we're going to try and dupicate it tonight, onl this time we'l bring our
cameras. residents hanging out,
paying dominoes, majjhong, selling food, cooking food, it's as real as it gets
more than once we wonder if they're taking us on a tour we didnt' ask for, or
if they're going to mug us at the end.
we reach the dstination and hand the driver 20 yuan.
"nonono,
29 yuan per person. " what?, damnnite. after trying to negotiate, we give in, and give
the guy 40yauan. at that point,
rick's driver, seeing our money, decides to ask for 20 more. we try vainly to communicate to him
that it's 20 per person, and this is after we were unhappy with it. finaly, we just walk away, and he
stops. yep, trying to con us. so
our trip, though scenic, cost us 60 yuan, where a regular taxi is 10. oh well, scenery.
We
enter the restaurant and discover that they closed 5 minutes prior. damn again. we walk to the street and are met by an employee of the
restaurant, who, in sparkling good english, tells us that a companion
restaurant opened down the block, is still open, and is not known by many
people. he shows us the way (which
had to be done, even if we could say the name, it's through anouther alleyway
that we get to it) there's a
healthy sprinking of foreginers there, but mainly locals, and the place is
bustlling without outdoor tables on the alleyway and lots of grit on the
inside. they show us a table and
the english menu. two pages, front and back, big type. i point this out as the
chinese menu looks to be 30 pages long. :)
the
duck
bad
taxi hell
home