China Trip: Beijing

Days 1-4: Beijing

Left on the morning of the 9th at 5:30 am and landed in Beijing at 2:50 pm on the 10th. The great thing about the international date line is it turns a simple 10-hour flight into an impressive 26-hour expedition. Fortunately made it through customs and immigration and baggage claim with no problem, and easily caught a taxi from the airport to the hotel. At 6 pm I went down to the lobby for our first group meeting. Our leader was revealed to be Dylan, a blond Australian who's been living for the past four years in Taiwan - I'm so relieved to hear he does speak Mandarin (it's not a requirement for Intrepid leaders, but as you might imagine it is incredibly helpful). The other members of the group seemed interesting enough: a Scottish couple, Craig and Jennifer; Murray, an Australian; my roommate Georgina, a Kiwi; Eileen, from Ireland; Britta, from Germany; and a family of husband, wife, two girls and a boy from England. Once again I'm the only American! In fact the only North American. What luck. After listening to Dylan's welcoming spiel and receiving his gift of chopsticks (from now on we will be fined if we use disposables), we proceeded to dinner at a place not far from the hotel. I was concerned when the food seemed to be quite Western, but Dylan assured me that it's only because he wants to be gentle on the first night. How considerate, I'm sure, but I want my snake-blood drink, dammit.

Woke up the next morning at 6:10 am rather reluctantly, so I must have gotten over the jetlag early. Our group made an excursion to the "Long Wall" (as it's known in Chinese) leaving Beijing at 7 and arriving at the Jinshanling entrance at 10. We hiked roughly 10 km (6 miles) to the Simatai entrance. It took us four hours of some of the most painful step-climbing I've ever experienced in brutally intense heat, but it was absolutely magnificent and a highlight of the entire trip. The Wall is one of those rare instances when seeing all the pictures and hearing all the stories beforehand somehow does not do it justice. The views are breathtaking. Several friendly farmers and farmer's wives accompanied us for abut half the way, hoping to sell us touristy goods in turn for assisting us with the climb. The man who had attached himself to me kept grabbing my hand to stabilize me as we navigated the steep and crumbling steps, and while I certainly didn't need it I assure you there was little alternative than to go along without protest. Finally we reached Simatai and descended from the Wall with much relief. As a reward I and a few others decided to opt for the "flying fox" (zip line) path from the Wall to the parking lot. Arriving back at the hotel in Beijing at about 6:15, I organized a group of us to go out for Beijing (not Peking!) duck at a restaurant near the hotel. I wolfed it down - my appetite having finally returned after all the hiking. It was amazing. And the best part was that our group of 11 got its own private room on the second floor of the restaurant.

The next day was a free day, so Murray, Georgina, and I decided to spend it at the Summer Palace. We felt adventurous, so we decided to take a public bus (the 808) that stopped around the corner from our hotel and arrived right outside the North Palace Gate an hour and a half later. We arrived around 9:15, got a special "through pass" with admission to all areas of the palace grounds, and promptly began our exploration. Unfortunately the whole hill that included the Tower of the Fragrance of the Buddha - a visual focal point for the palace grounds - was fenced off for repairs. Damn Olympics ruined everything in Beijing. The pollution was also pretty horrible; most of the lake was obscured by a really unattractive murky brown haze. Otherwise, however, the palace grounds were lovely. The best part was when the three of us descended onto the cute little Suzhou Street, a nice array of touristy shops lined up along a canal with only a narrow walkway between the storefront and the water. We stopped at the first place we found and had tea (with fresh green leaves at the bottoms of the cups) overlooking the canal. Later that evening some of us went to see the acrobat performance, which was just jaw-dropping.

Our last day in Beijing was made up of the "Beijing highlights": Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City followed by a ride in a rickshaw past Beijing's famous hutongs (ancient neighborhoods with crooked narrow streets in the process of being bulldozed in the name of modernization - thank the Olympics again). Our guide naturally did not mention the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, which Dylan told me is one of the four forbidden "TTTF" topics in China: Tiananmen, Tibet, Taiwan, and Falun Gong. I heard later that Eileen actually had brought up the shootings in private with the guide, but that her (the guide's) response was simply that the media had made it into a bigger deal than it actually was. Good job, guide, for providing a fake-response to the meddlesome foreign tourist. Anyway, the Forbidden City was magnificent, although my chief impression was one of massive, annoying crowds. Thank goodness I had seen The Last Emperor before I came, so that I could better envision the grand plazas without the thousands of schoolchildren wearing identical shirts. After the Forbidden City tour we were treated to a delicious dumpling lunch at an Intrepid-sponsored charity for people with mental disabilities, where we also listened to a short performance by four young men there and got to try our hands (if only briefly) at Chinese calligraphy.

That's it for Beijing! That afternoon we boarded our first Chinese train for our overnight trip to Xi'an. This first trip was in a hard sleeper, which meant the train carriage was composed of bunks stacked three high. No doors. My train trips in Vietnam were all soft sleeper (four to a compartment with a door), so this was new to me. Dylan said he preferred the hard sleepers because they're more open and spacious, and I agree. They're also more social, so we had a great time chatting together until lights went out at 10 pm.