National Holiday Trip #1: Beijing

Trains, Forbidden Cities, and Great Walls

I.

Ashley, Lynn, and I were waiting somewhat patiently in my room, glancing at our watches every few minutes with just a tad bit of nervousness. Our bags were full and we were ready to go. Our overnight train to Beijing left in just over an hour, but we were still in my room, waiting.

The previous Friday the three of us had all gone into town and with the help of Chester’s (or Waiban) assistant, we had applied for our Residency Permits. The only problem was that they had to have our passports to put a new stamp in. They said it would take one week, the exact amount of time we were scheduled to leave for Beijing on our trip. So now, we sat and waited for Chester’s assistant to return from the Foreign Affairs office with our passports, and due to some delays and heavy traffic, she was running about two hours later than we thought she would. Not a great start to the trip.

Our train was set to leave at 7:30. It was just past 6:00 now. I wasn’t entirely sure how train stations worked and if it took as long to get through them as it did to get through airports, but I really hoped that wasn’t the case, otherwise we would be cutting it super close.

Just before we were about to send Ashley up to her room to call Chester for the fourth time, I walked outside and saw his assistant hurrying up the street. She handed me the passports and hurried off as quickly as she came. “Thank you!” I called out as she scurried off. Ashley and Lynn came out and I passed out the correct passports, growing excited about our trip.

We lucked out when a taxi was sitting right outside our apartment and we hopped in and speeded off. We made our way through busy Friday evening traffic and made it to the train station with nearly forty-five minutes to spare. We sat down in the busy terminal area and watched as tons of people moved this way and that with their packed luggage and potato sacks, ostensibly all heading home or on vacations themselves for the break.

When it was our time to board we made our way down to the train and found our car. We got ‘soft-sleepers’ the most luxurious and expensive of the four options you can choose when riding on a Chinese train. It consists of two bunk beds smashed into a small room. Ashley and Lynn both had top bunks in the room next to mine, and I had a top bunk in a room with three other Chinese. They were an older husband and wife with a daughter who was probably in her late-20’s or early-30’s. After a few minutes of them talking back and forth between them and stealing glances up in my direction, I decided this was as good a time as any to practice my Chinese.

“Ni qu zai na li?” I asked (where are you going?)

The daughter smiled and answered that they were headed to Beijing, just like us. Then they asked me where I was from (about three times because I didn’t catch it the first two times) and I told her that I was from the United States and was spending a year teaching here. Turns out she also knew a little English and we spoke back and forth for about 10 minutes in half-Chinese and half-English. She was patient with my broken Chinese as I was with her scattered English. It was fun to have someone sort of understand me when I spoke, even if it was the most basic of questions and conversation.

The bunks were narrow and the beds hard, but by the time 9:00pm rolled around I was drifting off to sleep. Or at least I tried. Apparently, the Chinese think it is enjoyable for all the train passengers to listen to seriously loud music throughout the whole train. Right next to my head was a scratchy speaker that played a live concert of a male and female pop duo for the whole first hour. The crowd cheered and they spoke loudly and exhaustively between each song, and it was beginning to drive me crazy. I couldn’t believe anyone was actually enjoying this music, but I guess someone, somewhere was. The ear plugs that I brought helped muffle the sound somewhat, at least enough so that I could at least read a book and concentrate for a little while. But as I was growing more and more tired, I was really wishing that the music would stop. And just when I thought they were considering playing it the whole trip and throughout the night, it cut off. Delighted, I lay my head down on my pillow to sleep, reveling in the beautiful semi-silence,

Just as I was about to slip away to the world of sleep, the sounds returned from the speakers, but in a much different form. Now, I was hearing waves lapping at the shore and seagulls crying overhead. They are playing nature sounds on a Train in China as I am trying to fall asleep on a narrow bunk in a room with three other Chinese people, is a thought that I never believed would go through my head. To make things even stranger, the tune from Elton John’s “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” from the Lion King began to play along with the sounds of nature. For some reason, you hear this song everywhere in China, and I am sure Sir Elton could come over here and sue the pants off people for using his song without permission if he wanted to.

The ocean waves, seagulls, and Elton John gave way to crickets, forest sounds, and a string rendition of “Ave Maria” and despite the fact that I really do like that song (and forest sounds!) I found this to be a strange combination and an even stranger time and place to play Christmas music. But it was nice to be the last thing I heard as I drifted off to sleep, cradling my camera bag like a teddy bear.

Light. Burning light. Music. Loud music. My eyeballs hurt. Where am I?

At 4:30am these were my most coherent thoughts. They had snapped the lights back on throughout the whole train, and like a rude and annoying wake-up call they had decided to add a few decibels to the music from the night before to wake up every slumbering passenger. I opened my eyes and saw my cabin-mates already pulling their bags our and getting ready to go. Errghhh… sleeeeep.

It didn’t take me long to recover and get excited that I was nearly in Beijing though. And I was soon fully dressed and getting excited for the trip. To aid this process the DJ manning the music choices decided to play the most overplayed song of all time. More overplayed than any previous Britney Spears hit. It was the Beijing song, which apparently features many Chinese superstars and actors (even Jackie Chan!) singing a countless number of verses about how great Beijing is for hosting the Olympics, and even though the Olympics has been over for over a month now, they continue to play it all the time. I hear it when I go to the store, when I am walking through campus, when I go into restaurants, and when I am walking through the market and hear all the vendors singing it. It is everywhere and it is annoying. But it was not as annoying here, as I was thrilled to be visiting the Olympic city myself. Well, it wasn’t annoying for the first four minutes, but it grew increasingly irritating by the time it reached the seventeenth and eighteenth verses.

I found Ashley and Lynn and we made our way out of the train station. The sun was rising over the Beijing Railway Station and I snapped some pictures. We then made our way over to the taxi’s, hoping that one of them would know where our Marriott was. A guy agreed to take us there for eighty yuan. We agreed before we knew we were agreeing and soon we were walking across the square towards his van/taxi. I thought this was a bit expensive though and I told Lynn and Ashley that I was going to try and see if I could get the price lowered. I walked up to the man, and said:

“duibuqi, tai gui le” (Excuse me, that is too expensive).

He tried to convince me otherwise but soon he had to pull out his phone and we were punching numbers in to negotiate a fairer price. This is how all bartering is done in China. They pull out a calculator or phone and you punch numbers in back and forth until an agreement is reached somewhere in the middle. It is sort of like the businessman who asks for a raise by writing his wishful salary on a piece of paper and sliding it across his boss’ desk.

After a minute of back and forth arguing and bartering, I had gotten the price down to fifty yuan and we all felt pretty good about that progress. After we piled into the van and made our way out of the train station, we realized that we shouldn’t feel all that great. The Marriott (which we could stay at thanks to the friends and family rate! Thanks dad!) was only about two blocks away. A regular cab ride would have cost about ten yuan. So, in reality, this guy overcharged us by about five times. Oh well, at least it was eight times.

Feeling sort of stupid we checked into our hotel and Ashley and Lynn took naps while I researched the Forbidden City and Tinanmen Square. Excited to get this trip going.


II.

Both Lynn and I believed, through researching and watching television, that cameras were not allowed into the Forbidden City and because we didn’t want to stick our valuable possessions in some sketchy lock-box or leave it with people at the gate, we decided to just leave our cameras in the apartment.

Blunderfest.

After about thirty seconds in the Forbidden City, it was apparent that cameras were allowed. Chinese people everywhere were toting their expensive Nikon and Canon cameras. Many tourists also had beautiful HD video cameras. One guy had a large television camera, complete with a fuzzy microphone, adjustable tripod, a handheld microphone, three different lenses, headphones, and someone to giving a stand-up report.

So, to Anthony Bourdain from “No Reservations” and everyone at Lonely Planet: bite me.

Oh well. Ashley consoled the photographer in me by telling me her favorite little proverb-like tale of the guy who is behind the camera so often that he is actually never in the picture himself. Or maybe she was paraphrasing that one line from the chick flick her and Lynn made me watch called 27 Dresses (Nolan: you would love it!) that went something like this: “You are so busy making sure everyone else has their Kodak moment that you never have time to make a moment for yourself.” – Yes, it really was that cheesy. But if anyone knows anything about me, it is that I like cheese, especially the grilled kind. Or the kind that is spread over delicious, succulent macaroni. Mmmm. I also like Parmesan cheese, which I always sprinkle over the equally delicious spaghetti sauce which is, of course, spread over mouthwateringly delightful spaghetti, which they don’t have in China. At least, not for anything less than 10% of my monthly salary.

What were we talking about?

Ah yes! So, without cameras or any other way to document our trip I decided to try and soak up as much as I possibly could, so when I sat down to write about my experience I could be as specific and provide as many vivid details as possible. So, after wandering around the many different rooms and huge courtyards of the Forbidden City, I can now say that I have been to the Forbidden City! And really not much else. The place was unbelievably large and the amount of rooms was staggering. One of my students told me that if you lived in each room for a single day, it would take you nearly two years to visit every single room. That is a lot of rooms.

While the architecture was very beautiful, and the sheer magnitude of the courtyards and city walls were something to behold, I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed about my overall experience at the Forbidden City. Maybe it was the immense crowd, or the fact that around every turn I was reminded of my monumental blunder of not bringing my camera by someone snapping a picture right in front of my face. Even worse were the people who asked me to take a picture with them!

Oh hey, look at that sad American without a camera. Lets go use our camera to take a picture of him to make him feel especially stupid!

In actuality, the most likely cause of my disappointment, however miniscule, probably laid in the city itself. Many of the rooms were barren and without much traditional furniture or décor. Most of the rooms were set up as just exhibits, showing off jade, silver, and gold pieces. While very interesting and cool to see the different jewels and treasures that the old Chinese rulers sought in the past, it still felt like walking through every other museum in the world. I guess that is what the Forbidden City is now: just a gargantuan museum, but I was definitely expecting something a little more, how should we say, medieval.

Also, it has turned into a huge tourist trap. Around every corner within the city there were shops selling Olympic gear and Chinese paintings that were incredibly overpriced. I understand that tourist attractions as large as the Forbidden City are guaranteed money in the bank, but it still felt like an exploitation of the past. But that is done everywhere, not just China, and not just in the Forbidden City, so I can’t point fingers and I can’t really complain. I just miss the true romance of history.

Note: how many synonyms of the word “big” or “large” can you find in this post? A lot, probably.

III.

Quick! When you think of China, what is the first thing you think of?

Rice? Beijing? Dragons? Olympics? Spicy Food? Diarrhea?

Yes! All of those would be correct, and in some way I have experienced all of them (TMI). But in the past, and probably now that the Olympics are over, the one thing that always comes to mind when you think about China is The Great Wall (Chang Cheng 长城).

The true symbol of China, the Great Wall stretches across Northern China like a dragon extending its rough, scaly tail. We took a whole day and decided to head towards Simitai to visit the Great Wall. We found the correct bus station and after some very helpful people gave us a hand, we found the correct bus and got dropped off in some random, sketchy town where 25 ‘drivers’ were waiting to meet us as soon as we got off the bus. One or two of them even clambered up the stairs of the bus before we even got off and started asking us in broken English if we were going to the Great Wall. We had made a conscious decision to only get real cabs from now on, for we had been royally ripped off by these private drivers twice before and we weren’t going to be ignorant lowai’s (foreigner) anymore!

We soon realized that there were no actual taxicabs around, so we decided to do a little bargaining. It didn’t go well. All 20 drivers, despite the fact that were competing for business, worked together and none of them would really let us try and drop the price to a level anywhere near what we thought was fair. After about ten minutes of deliberation, we got the price down 100 yuan to a somewhat reasonable 260 yuan.

It was about an hour ride and by the end we were growing anxious to finally catch a sight of The Great Wall. Finally, we came around a small hillside and we saw it: it ran up and down the side of a tall mountain in the distance and we were blown away by the sight. I was not expecting the wall to run over the highest peaks in the area, the tallest portion of the mountains, and the most treacherous areas, but that is exactly what it did and it was a sensational sight (see The Great Wall video for clarification).

We spent nearly four hours in The Great Wall and, unlike the Forbidden City, The Great Wall completely and totally blew away my expectations. Just like the Forbidden City, the utter power of the wall was astounding and I could have spent days sitting on its ledges or following its path through the mountainside. Originally we wanted to take a 10k hike from the city of Jinshanling to Simitai, but we did not have enough time. Hopefully, when I return here before I leave China, I will be able to complete this hike and really get an idea of what it was like to walk along the Wall’s ramparts back when it was actually used for defense against the Mongolian barbarians.

Beijing really was a very cool city, and trumped Shanghai in nearly every department. I hope I can spend more time here to truly explore many of the places I was unable to go on this short three-day trip. The Summer Palace, the Hutong district, the Temple of Heaven, and many other sights still await me. But, just like all of China, it is too huge to ever see every nook and cranny, but I hope that as I explore China in the coming months, I will be able to return to Beijing and explore a little more of this incredibly historical city.

Zai Jian.