China - Day 3 - Beijing

Tienanmen Square -The Forbidden City - The Summer Palace


(above: Tienanmen Square, notice the top of the light tower...it's the same in a photo below)

First off...5 star hotels are incredible, their beds however are not. We got our wake up call before dawn and arose from our cement mattresses to a packed day of touring.

We met Ashley, our tour guide for Beijing and got on our bus. Not being the itinerary type, I had no idea where we were headed. I had tried to make sense of where our hotel was on my little Beijing map but had no luck; which, for me, is saying something. I take pride in doing one thing well in life, figuring out my compass direction anywhere I am... There are only 2 places I have not been able to find my way north; any indoor mall with a JCPenny or Macys, and Movie Theaters. If there is a street sign or a visible sun, I can figure my way around practically any city...that was true at least until we found ourselves in China. The Chinese invented porcelain, silk, tea, and they built The Great Wall...but build cities around grid systems...forget it. To rub salt in the wound, there are so many sky scrapers in even the smallest of Chinese cities that the sun can never be found. Anyhow, we headed off in what I'm guessing was West from our hotel were immediately hit with our first culture shock.

From our seats in the back of our Air Conditioned tour buss, we passed through little slices of Chinese life. As if China were some incredible ant farm, I pointed through my window and sat awe struck for our entire ride, separated by glass from the world around me. Store fronts had no doors, just an open wall to beckon customers from the street. Traffic was well more of a parking lot than traffic, and there were more bicycles, motor bikes, scooters, motorcycles, etc. on every street than there are people in the rest of the civilized world.

You cannot possibly imagine the magnitude of the population there. It is just unreal how many people are tucked away in those cities. Perhaps the one clue as the amount of people is the pollution. The smoked filled skies of San Diego in the days prior to our departure were perhaps the only thing that comes close in comparison. Forget "smog" Beijing (and later we found the same in most every major Chinese city) has a thick blanket of soot hanging 50 feet overhead. Thankfully a brisk breeze picked up our first day in the city and much of the pollution was absent from the sky, but this we soon found, was only temporary relief.

Anyhow, we arrived to a side street and found a long line of familiar looking buses. There must have been 50 buses lined up, empty and parked on the side of the street. We filed out of the bus one by one, Jessica and I being the last to get off. Backpack and Camera strapped tight to my body, I peeked my head out of the door and took my first real breath of China (the day before didn't really count in my mind). Before my feet could hit the pavement, we were swarmed with about 9 vendors selling everything from "Rolex" watches to Beijing 2008 Olympic goods. I made the mistake of glancing at the 2 dollar Rolex watch and that poor vendor lady followed me for the next 50 minutes lowering her price with every step. I'll get back to these vendors later.

(above: tourist hell...sad part is I doubt anyone actually got a good shot inside that dark little room)
I rounded the corner from the street and found myself looking straight at Tienanmen Square. The history of the place immediately overwhelmed me. Black and white visions of the single student holding his ground in front of the tank could not be shaken from my mind for the rest of the day. Every where we went I tried to picture from what surrounding rooftop those photographers must have been filming the massacre. I then got lost in thought, wondering what current students there were taught about the massacre. Whispers in our group instructed me not to say anything to anyone about it, but my imagination was running wild. Ashley was leading our little pack through the, what had to be close to, 500,000 visitors that day. I could barely hear her brief speech on the history of the place in the distance, for I was already wondering off from the group. I was still overwhelmed with culture shock, and visions of Chinese prisons and pick pockets, so I didn't stray too far from fear. Anytime I wandered more than 40 feet away Jessica was there to guide me back. But I still managed some nice shots that day none the less.
(above: crazy big brother security in the square)
We slowly made our way through the masses of people and found ourselves in front of the gates to the Forbidden City. Pictures will never do this place justice. Mao's portrait greeted everyone as we walked under him and into the city. The amount of money, time and people spent creating every intricate detail of that place is beyond comprehension. The one and only fact that stuck in my head that day was that the Emperor had the floors built 11 layers thick with brick so that no enemies could tunnel in through the ground, talk about paranoia. Anyhow see the photos of the place for a little taste.

(above: Forbidden City)
As if that weren't enough oppulence and majesty, we turned our bus I'm guessing north, and headed to the Summer Palace. Being sure to stop by a fresh water pearl factory on the way, code for tourist trap for which to spend too much American dollar on overpriced goods. An otherwise forgetful 2 hours of my life, except for the 30 minutes when I escaped the group and discovered a little lake with fisherman and children amidst broken down tractors and empty buildings. I snapped a couple gems of photos and found Jim and Jessica to share my little discovery with.

(above: little lake near the pearl factory)
We got on the bus, rode through more city, passed the Olympic village, and found ourselves at the Summer Palace. The group was getting a little tired and cranky. A mild argument about walking a couple miles vs. riding a boat erupted and briefly died down. I really wasn't sure what we were doing, my focus was never really on anything inside that bus. Apparently some genius, probably Jim or Jessica, convinced the group that walking the couple miles around this place would be better than a boat, but I'm sure that boat ride would have been just as magnificent. So back to the point, the Summer Palace is a ...well...Palace that some crazy lady called "the Dragon Lady" made out of pure gluttony and excess. She basically had slaves dig a monstrous hole, pile all of the dirt into a gigantic mountain, fill the hole with water creating a lake, surround the place with marble carvings and pathways, build a couple palaces, and wallah...the Summer Palace was complete. But I love her for it, because I got even more great photos here as well. Jessica would be mad if I didn't tell you that this same "Dragon Lady" made her servants make her 138 meals for dinner, 3 times over. She would smell the first batch, look and the second batch, and taste the final one...freaking Chinese Royalty.

(above: the summer palace)
That about rounded out DAY 2...hahaha...just typing about the highlights and I'm exhausted. We kept this pace up for the next 10 days.


Days 1-2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6 Day 7 Day 8 Day 9 Day 10 Days 11-12 Day 13
-David

China - Days 1-2 - LAX to Beijing

After a rocky week prior to our departure, Jim, Jessica and myself found our group one member less and our home town devastated by wildfires and chaos. Unfortunately Jim's traveling buddy Able had to stay back and tend to his family and friends dealing with the fire, so our foursome was a threesome, but excited none the less. We flew out of LAX and left behind smoke and ash filled skies for an 11 hour flight across the International Date Line. Visions of awkward language barriers and Chinese prisons filled my dreams for the entire flight.

We landed at Beijing International airport early Saturday morning, before dawn.

Perhaps before I get too far into this, you should know some background as to how we arranged this trip for such a cheap price. One of Jim's co-workers found a Chinese Tour Agency as opposed to an American one working in China. Through that agency we had our own tour bus, tour guide, tour flag, tour button, tour itinerary, tour meals, tour hotels....basically we couldn't use the bathroom without some kind of tour group related permission or direction. I hate tour groups...actually I despise them, everything about them goes against my grain. I like finding my own path, spending as much time as I need and not having an itinerary. A guided tour group through China sounded as fun to me as a field trip to the DMV... Normally I would never embark on such a journey under such circumstances, however through this agency we were afforded more luxuries than I could ever manage on my own, and the total cost of the trip was probably 1/5 the cost with the group rate. We were also traveling with about 13 people in a group, 10 of which I didn't know... I figured all I had to do was out run 1 of those 10 people and I would escape the Chinese police and prolong my predestined stint in a Chinese Prison camp.

Alright, so we land in Beijing and meet our tour guide and piled into our bus and headed off to our hotel. Being the first day after such a long flight, we had the remainder of the day to settle in to our hotel and sleep off any jet lag. Our guided tour was to begin the next day. So we checked into our hotel at like 9 am, bid our tour guide and bus farewell and had nothing to do for the next 12 hours.

My formal education on China started about 10 hours prior on the flight to the wonderful communist country. I had decided I needed to learn 3 words/phrases in Chinese in order to survive on my own. They were: "hello" "beer" and "thank you"... Ni Hao, PeiCho and Xei Xei. I learned to pronounce them with such art and poise that my accent sounded as though I was raised in the southern Qin mountain regions...I was sure to blend right in. I practiced my newly acquired Chinese tongue on the English speaking Hotel Staff at the...I shit you not, Days Inn and Suites Beijing...we may have well been staying in a hotel in Fresno. The entire staff spoke better English than I, and were probably far more educated than I will ever hope to be. Any how, I managed to get a beer, and a smile within the first 10 minutes in the Hotel lobby...although I felt as though I were cheating because of the ease. To establish a precedent, I got a beer for Jessica's dad as well.

Beer in China is about 3-4% alcohol. In the states it's about 5-9% depending on the type...O'doul's non alcoholic beer is 1-2%. So needless to say, drinking beer in China is really the safest alternative to drinking water. Thus my justification for my copious consumption of the fermented beverage.

Jessica was eager to explore and sitting in our 5 star hotel for more than what we required for sleep was not an option. So we found a nearby flea market and thrust ourselves onto the Chinese economy and street scene with utter nieveity. This being our first experience with the 7.5 to 1 exchange rate and serious negotiation tactics...we failed miserably and paid far too much for what turned out to be cheap, Chinese, tourist crap. I walked out of the place with some kind of Communist poster with Mao on it, Jessica got a really cool painting for our apartment, and I think we got some trinkets and perhaps even Sars or Avian flu. We had a great time none the less.

On the way back to the hotel we stopped for dinner. We ditched our group which had the only Chinese speaking member of our entire party, and found a local restaurant. Eager to engage the non-english speaking residents, we headed into a food serving place with pictures of every dish framed in gold and mounted on the walls. Of course by "headed into" I mean we were yelled at from the streets by the restaurants owner and practically dragged into the establishment kicking and screaming. I guess we looked hungry, and or rich because that crazy lady knew we were an easy sell. Anyhow we sat down, I managed to order a couple beers, and by a crazy series of charades and pointing I got Jessica a Sprite. We were then handed a picture book menu of mysterious colored foods and dishes. Word to the wise, just because meat looks like chicken...there is NO guarantee that it actually is. We somehow managed to get a couple bowls of noodles, and by bowl I mean bottomless buckets, and a plate of what the waitress described as curry. Funny, she didn't know a lick of English, but when I asked for a curry dish, she repeated the word Curry with such excitement and accuracy that I had to agree and order it. We weren't all that hungry and practically had to walk out of the place to stop the owner from making us agree to more than the 3 plates we ordered. We pegged her as a crazy old bat who had owned that place for far too long and wanted to fatten us up so they could cook us up and serve us to the next stupid American tourists who happened to walk by her front door innocently. Only after receiving the bill however, did her motives come to fruition. We were by no means robbed on the amount of food we were served, we had enough food for 6 hungry people, enough beer for a frat house and about a liter of sprite. Nothing we saw in the menu resembled a price, so we really had no idea what to expect in terms of a total. They handed me the bill because I made the international symbol for bill by holding an imaginary pencil and writing on my open palm...which really makes no sense to me, but my 6 years of waiting tables perfected this technique and our bill was served. 60 yuan total. Long division completed and much head scratching later and we discovered that that was about 9 bucks American, for a full dinner for 3 people with drinks. We tipped far too generously and hugged the staff and waived good bye. "Can that even be true?!" we kept asking ourselves trying to figure out the bill on the way back. 9 bucks for 3 people? We figured it must have been some kind of dead rodent disguised as chicken and yesterday's noodles...but later realized it was true and that food there, away from the tourist traps, is very cheap and surprisingly good.

We ended our first day in the Hotel bar paying far too much for cheap drinks and telling stories of the battles won and lost negotiating at the flea market.

Days 1-2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6 Day 7 Day 8 Day 9 Day 10 Days 11-12 Day 13



-David

Back From China

I'm ALIVE!

some 2 billion people, 10,000 miles, 900 photos, 9 cities, 6 airplanes, 2 trains and 1 boat ferry later and I'm home.

I'll get some photos up asap and run through some of the highlights of the trip within the week.

For now, all I can say is, China has more people than imaginable, more pollution than tolerable and some of the best knock off merchandise in the world.

We saw the Great Wall of China, Tianamen Square, The Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, The Terracotta Soldiers, the Ming Tombs, the Hutomb cities, the Olympic park, most of Beijing, Xian, Shanghai, .... and that was just the first 6 days.... wow.... I need to sleep.

-David