Touched Down in the Land of the Delta Blues
I’m posting from my own computer now; I’m back at home. I got home about an hour later than my scheduled flight would have gotten me home and I’ve got a free roundtrip ticket on United Airlines to boot. Yay overbooking!
The title of the post is a line from “Walking in Memphis” by Marc Cohn. I’m using it to refer to the fact that Atlanta is the hometown of Delta Airlines, who has recently had financial “Blues”.
Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jog
I’m in Antwerp now, trying to figure out the best way to get to the Brussels airport to come back to the US. It looks like the remainder of my trip will consist of a tram to a train to a plane to another plane to a light rail to another light rail. Then I’m done with this oddesy. I’m disappointed, but if I do’n’t get back to work soon, I’ll have to start harassing tourists shouting “Hello Money!” at them. Well, I’m off to hop the pond….
Back Home for Opening Day
I’ll be back in Atlanta in time for the Braves’ home opener against
the Metropolitans. Not quite opening day, but it’s as close as I can
get. ‘Hold onto your backgammon boards, lucky bug is back’. — Buck
Rogers
Yekaterinburg, Russia
I was no longer cold and barely felt the icy wind. I been walking for a couple of hours now, unable to find a room for under $200. The prostitute I asked for directions briefly answered me before a car stopped to take her from the cold (Note that I didn’t know she was a prostitute, I just thought there must be a hot club nearby). The instructions were poorly understood and were of no real help. It was near 3am when I decided that the expense of the room no longer mattered and surrendered to the temptation of the first real hotel I’d seen in months.
When I’d first arrived in this industrial outpost, I had lots of hope for finding a nice cheap place to stay. The guidebook mentioned several places that were reasonable. The taxi driver refused to take me the 2 miles for the 250 rubles (about $10) I was willing to pay. “Do I look like a negro? Do I look like I am hungry?” The warm Russian charm. I resolved to take a tram or a bus. I wasn’t aware that they’d stopped running for the night. I approached the taxi stand again and found a driver willing to deliver me for my price, but he was not happy.
The hotel was full and the driver was gone. The receptionist was not in the mood to be friendly. But she could see that I needed her help – and that I wasn’t likely to leave without her calling to find a vacancy. Every hotel in the guidebook was full or wanted $200 a night. She refused to call more places. Frustrated, I walked out to find someplace on my own. Much later: numb, weary, and disheartened, I gave up and slept in a comfortable room under a giant neon sign that said “Park Inn.”
The next morning, I woke up early for the hot breakfast buffet included in the price of the room. Ham, bacon, sausage, eggs, cheese, pancakes, and other delicacies overflowed my plate. After I’d had my fill, I went to talk to the two beautiful Russian women working the desk. I explained that I was trying to find budget accommodations for the night and asked for their help. They were glad to and called several places to ask their rates and availability. Of course the rates at the Park Inn would drop to only $160 because it was the weekend. I decided that the best place to stay would be the Hotel Sverdlovsk located directly across from the train station. They hadn’t had rooms available the night before, but this night the basic accommodation was about $25 per room.
I also asked about getting to the Asia-Europe marker West of the city. A fellow traveler overheard and was interested in going as well (he turned out to be a really nice guy – a professional photographer from Canada who had a beat up messenger satchel with a few thousand dollars worth of new and vintage cameras inside). Since there were more than one of us, it made sense to take a taxi there and back. This was going to be fairly cheap for us, about $50 in total, arranged the trip through the tourism desk at our new hotel.
The obelisk is a fairly uninteresting stone of little real significance since the actual boundary between Asia and Europe does not run through it and the original marker was destroyed and rebuilt in the early 1900s. But it apparently serves as a good luck symbol for newlyweds to have their picture taken in front of it. We stayed a few minutes and took some photos and then headed back the 20 or so miles back to town.
During the ride back, the taxi driver talked on his radio for a few minutes, laughing and pointing his thumb at us, as if the party on the other end could see. After he set the handset down, he informed us that it would be another 800 rubles ($20) because we made him wait at the marker. This was an obvious scam, and a variation on one that we’d all heard about before. We pretended to have communication difficulties until we got to the hotel. At this point, we gave him what we owed and a bit more because we didn’t have change and went inside. He followed us and demanded more money. We went to the tourism desk where we’d arranged the taxi ride and spoke with the woman there. She explained that she must have misquoted us and only gotten the price for the ride out there and not back. This was the actual scam we’d all heard of and was different than the driver’s version. We argued and debated for a while and when the driver got very upset, he was interrupted by a woman who slipped him 1000 rubles, forcing a smile, and explained to the tourist representative that there would be no problems now. Everyone was just a bit stunned and the stranger walked off.
A few other interesting sites made Yekaterinburg worth a visit. One of these is the Church of the Blood – a monument to the Romanov family members who were executed near the spot where the church now stands. Another interesting site is the Air & Space Military Museum located in the House of Officers which contains some of the remnants of the U2 spy plane that was shot down near the city in the 1960s. But my favorite site in the city was the Afghanistan War Memorial. In it, a soldier sits with his head lowered in sadness, his helmet off and his gun loosely held. It is a powerful symbol of how Russia feels about this conflict. Behind the soldier is a more recent addition marked “Chechnya.”
The next day, I went to the train station to buy a ticket, but they were not nearly as willing to help foreigners buy tickets as were the Chinese. The woman at the counter shooed me away. So I went back to our hotel to ask for help at the tourism desk. But unfortunately, it was closed on Saturday and Sunday (because who what tourist would be here on the weekend?). Wonderful. Out of options, I returned to the Park Inn where they cheerfully arranged for tickets to be delivered to me at the Hotel Sverdlovsk. Really, the people at that hotel were great!
No other misadventures happened in Yekaterinburg. I got on the train with no problem whatsoever and was off. Next stop, Moscow.
A View to a Chill
As I went outside to take a quick walk around the ger for about the 10th time that night, I glanced at the thermometer. -30C. Cold. Cold enough to freeze the vodka we were drinking, if we hadn’t already drained all of it. Plus a few liters of beer apiece.
It was near 3 AM and the four of us had been playing some kind of modified Chinese Poker since the sun had gone down. Our quartet consisted of myself, Brian, Joe, and Dan. Joe was from England and had a thick accent. He was taking some time out from school to do a bit of traveling. He’d come through the places we’d yet to visit and was headed to China, following our trail. Dan was an American who’d come, by way of Shanghai and Beijing, from Japan. He’d been teaching there for a couple of years. He was going to ride the Trans-Siberian to St. Petersburg as we were.
The UB Guesthouse had arranged a trip for us to go to one of Mongolia’s national parks where we’d stay the night. We rode out in a Land Rover, a capable vehicle that we knew well from our previous trip to EBC. The area had recently received a covering of snow, a rarity for the desert climate. We arrived just before lunch, which was prepared for us and brought to our ger. The meal was rice, meat, potatoes, onions, carrots, and tea. It was good, but there wasn’t much of it.
With the light meal in our stomachs and the cold clean air in our lungs, we set out to walk around. There was a hill behind us and a small village a bit further to the west. We headed towards the village, but detoured to climb around behind and up the hill. The hike up was fairly gradual but we had to walk through layers of unmelted snow from the several months of winter before our arrival. Some of our steps took us across bare rock which had managed to heat up enough to stay clear. In the cool of the day, some of these gave off streaks of steam as the moisture quickly evaporated into the dry air.
At the top of the small hill, there was a cave created by the seeming random placement of huge boulders. I’m not sure what left these here in this position: erosion of softer rock, glacial motion, ocean currents? Any of these seemed likely in this cold, barren place. Climbing inside the small space, we were able to cool down a bit after our hike. We scrambled across the top of the rocks and through the snow covered and lightly wooded hill. We had some incredible views from that vantage, both of the village and of our ger and support tent. We saw one of our hosts down working with the horses, so we decided to head down and see what was going on.
Through the very limited vocabulary we had in common, we discerned that we had a choice between a two hour horseback ride around the valley or a four hour trek to an abandoned monastery. We decided that the four hour trip would be a better payoff than just wandering around on our beasts of burden. Fortunately, our horses knew better.
I use the term “horse” loosely. These were probably Mongolian Horses, a breed similar to the only wild horse left on the planet. At roughly 4ft tall, they are only a bit taller than the oft lampooned Shetland Pony. The animals we rode astride probably weighed around 500-600 lbs. In comparison, the Clydesdale typically weighs between 1,500 and 2,000 lbs and stands around 6 feet tall at the back. Joe, who had made the trip a couple of days before, told us that the animals were only fed if they were going to be ridden that day. It was apparent, as our horses looked rather thin and weak.
The animals were very slow and seemed to feel they were being paid by the hour, rather than for results. Often veering off course, our guide prodded them back to the trail. After an hour or so of meandering across the terrain, it became clear that we wouldn’t make the monastery and back by sundown. As it was, our fingers, faces, and toes were getting a bit chilly any time we faced away from the setting sun. As we went on, the horses began to wander more often and seemingly in coordination with one another. We all decided that it would be best to turn back when the horses would go no further along the path but would only walk at hard angles to it.
When the guide gave the signal to turn around, the horses sprang to life and broke into as near a gallop as the little animals could go with such huge loads on their backs. We made record time back to our little area of the world across some quite picturesque scenery. We were literally riding into the sunset as we returned home. I, being the largest and heaviest of our crew, brought up the rear, as the ride back took a long trek uphill before racing down quickly. We all rejoiced as we dismounted and headed back to the safety of our protective shelter.
Our legs and seats were relative spots of comfort compared with our toes and noses. The trip had begun when the mercury reached just above the freezing point of water. At its end, it was well below and dropping quickly as the sun became a memory. The blanketed wooden structure was warmed by the cast iron stove, bellowing smoke from the wood in its belly. This, as we learned, was to be the fifth member of our crew for the evening — and the one we all cared the most about.
As our guide became our waiter, we became warm and full. Another of our hosts, a boy of perhaps twenty, came in carrying a load of wood for fuel. It was obvious that he was the one who we had heard chopping the lumber, as he was sweating despite the low temperature and his lack of a shirt. None of us could remember seeing him in our campsite earlier, but Joe had remembered from his last trip that he was from another house a couple of hundred meters away and was paid to chop wood for visitors. This is the second time we realized how far our relative pittance had reached in this desolate land.
As I reentered the ger after my short trip to the restroom, the warmth hit me. We had just put the last of the wood on the fire that was to last us until morning. The temperature was over 30C, a swing of at least 60C in the couple of seconds it took to step inside. With the supply of wood exhausted, the temperature would quickly drop to nearly freezing. We all decided it would be best if we went to bed.
We returned to the UB Guesthouse the next morning, slightly bleary-eyed from the late night and the consumption of libations. It was an experience to be treasured and one that would not have been diminished had we stayed a few more days. But the sound of the railroad car bustling across those steel rails gets into you and you just have to keep on riding. On to Russia.
Ulan Bator and the Mongols
The post title sounds like some college radio band. I like it. We got into UB (it’s sometimes written as Ulaan Bataar, Ulan Bator, Ulaanbataar, etc so I’ll just abbreviate) yesterday at 1pm after a 30 hour train ride. Because the rails in Mongolia and Russia are not the same size as they are in China, we had to stop at the border and change “bogies” which are like trucks on a skateboard — wheels, suspension, etc all in one. This process took quite a long time, but it took even longer for the Chinese to collect and photocopy our passports. The Mongols repeated this process, but were far quicker. The Mongolian border guard was very suspicious of me, because I look nothing like my passport photo. I have short hair and no beard, whereas now I look like a vagrant. The entire border crossing lasted 4-5 hours.
Being sandwiched between China and Russia, the Mongolians appear to be a mixture of the two cultures. The people look like Chinese, but many dress like Russians. This is especially apparent in the women, who wear very stylish clothes and makeup. It’s quite nice, since most of them are more attractive than Chinese women. The Mongolian language is written in Cyrillic, as is the Russian language, but it is distinct from both Chinese and Russian. The main reason for all the Russian influence is that in the early 1900s when Mongolia declared themselves separate from China (which was involved in a bloody and ruthless civil war amongst warlords, Japanese, and the Kuo Minh Tang), the Soviets gave them quite a bit of assistance in westernizing. I don’t think that Mongolia was part of the USSR, but it was certainly very closely aligned with it.
When we arrived in UB, we were met by someone who was taking passengers to the UB Guesthouse. Since we planned on staying there, we hopped into the minibus and were off. While we rode, the woman pointed out a few of the local sites, like the Gondan monastery, the permanent circus, the post office, the Russian embassy, etc. She speaks very good English, as do many people here. I have yet to see a sign which has been butchered in English the way that they were in China. When we arrived at the hostel, we found that it was in a block of Soviet-style apartments (nearly the entire city is like that) and occupied a couple of apartments. This is how several hostels were in China.
When we entered, we were invited to take our shoes off and put on a pair of the large collection of slippers available. Then Bobbi, as she introduced herself, went over some of the basics: “Be careful when you go out at night, there are a lot of pickpockets and bagslitters here. Please remove your shoes and wear sandals around, it makes the floors much easier to keep clean without all the snow and dirt being tracked in. Dorms are $5 per night and you may pay either in US Dollars or in Mongolian Togrogs (1200 to the dollar). We offer tours to go to the National Park for an evening or two and stay in a ger (pronounced gear). The Internet is free, breakfast is included, we have lots of DVDs to watch and a kitchen that you may use at your leisure.” This has been the best hostel we’ve been in on our trip, not just for the amenities, but also for the sense of family that you have when you’re here. There are Peace Corps Volunteers constantly trooping through on their way in and out of the countryside, as well as several other visitors. The place is fairly small, so you get to be friends quickly.
We met an American who has been teaching English in Japan and an Englishman who is going the opposite way we are across Asia. The four of us headed out for a drink at around 8 and ended up having quite a good time and quite a few more than we’d intended. We began at a place called London Pop, a “Whiskey Bar and Jazz Club” the sign proclaimed. They had plenty of whiskey and jazz memorabilia, but they were playing Mongolian pop instead of the promised jazz. It was a nice place, but we decided to move on. We went to a place called the Santa Fe, which has the silhouette of an American Indian in a headdress and a different beer on tap. We ended up the night at a place calling itself an Irish Pub that in no way tried to be Irish. But there was a Mongolian band on stage playing live music, which was nice. The only other westerner in the place was a German guy who works for the Mongolian National Park Service. He was quite friendly.
We left at about 1am as they were closing the place up and walked home. On the way, I decided that I’d try and practice the few Mongolian phrases that I’d gotten out of my guidebook. I was saying “Sayn bayna uu” (Hello) to random people on the street. Some returned the greeting and smiled, others ignored me. This is as I would expect; a mixture between the Russian and Chinese attitudes. One guy was out walking his dog and we began talking. I know no Mongolian and he knew no English, so our most common language was actually Russian! I am up to lesson 9 on the Russian learning and have learned how to introduce myself, ask a woman for a drink at a restaurant and at my place, and have learned how to get rejected. Not much of this helped to talk with the dog walker. However, the vodka he was carrying inside his jacket did help out quite a bit. We fairly rolled with laughter as we spoke gibberish to each other, neither understanding and neither caring. We finished the bottle at about the time that I had to make the turnoff to go back to the hostel. We said “Bayar Tai” (Goodbye) to each other and went our separate ways.
The State of Chinese Private Practice Dentistry
While I was in Beijing, I wanted to get my tooth looked at. If you have been reading my blog regularly, you’ll remember that I chipped it in Lhasa. I asked Elyse if she knew of anyplace good. She gave me their name, but said that they were closed for the New Year and wouldn’t open until Monday — 2 days before we were hoping to leave. Monday we were going to visit the Great Wall — a trip that usually takes around 8 hours because of the horrible transportation to the part we wanted to see, so I was going to have to go to the dentist on Tuesday.
On Sunday night, the epoxy that the doctor in Lhasa had applied came out when I was eating at Pizza Hut. So I was broken for a couple of days, but I was good about brushing and rinsing so that nothing got stuck in the hole (picture). On Tuesday, I tracked down King’s Dental and caught a cab up there.
I knew immediately that I was out of my league, as this was the nicest dentist’s office I’d ever seen. The pleasant receptionist greeted me and informed me that the next day was the earliest I could have work done. I explained that I’d be headed to Mongolia and asked if there was any way it could be earlier. She said that I could get a cleaning done that day, but that wouldn’t have solved my problem. I asked to speak to a dentist to get their opinion and she motioned for me to have a seat in the waiting area, which looked more like a restaurant. She brought me some kind of rasberry flavored tea which was quite good.
In a few minutes, I was greeted by a young woman who spoke very good English. I explained my problem and showed her the affected tooth. She said that it would probably be OK until I got back from my trip if I were only going to be away from Beijing for a few days. So I had to explain that I wasn’t coming back and it’d be over a month before I’d be able to see a real dentist again. She agreed that something should be done and that she’d see if she could find someone to take care of it. Shortly she returned and said that it was alright, I could have work done. I was relieved.
The fee to see the dentist was 200 Yuan (~$25). I went back and sat in the nicest dentistry chair that I’ve ever seen, surrounded by some of the most modern technology that there is to be had. In the waiting area, I’d read a writeup about the dentist’s office that said they were trying to bring Beijing dentistry into the 21st century. They succeeded. The dentist poked and prodded and poked some more. She explained that I’d need to have it drilled out and filled in again properly. They had two options, one is a plastic like the one that I’d gotten in Lhasa, but probably better, the other option was to have them make a replica of the part I’d lost from ceramic right there on the spot. The ceramic option was 2500Y, the plastic 600Y. I figured that I might need more work on the tooth when I got back to the US, so I opted for the cheaper patch.
She began drilling with very clean and precise instruments, something that the dentist in Lhasa did not have to work with. After about 20 minutes, she was done and began the process of applying and setting the epoxy. During the entire procedure she took photographs for the records. After the epoxy had set up, she began shaping it and did an excellent job (picture). It feels nearly identical to my other tooth. She explained that I shouldn’t eat or drink anything too hot for about a week to allow the epoxy to completely set. I agreed, paid, and left.
On the whole of it, 800 RMB (just over $100) isn’t bad, considering the quality of care the I received. I’d gladly go to King’s Dental if it were in the US. In fact, if I were staying a few more days in Beijing, I would have gotten a cleaning and possibly even ceramic veneers put on. The prices were very reasonable, and the quality excellent.
I Heart Beijing — Final Days
It’s been quite a while since I wrote the original pieces on Beijing, so my memory has faded a good bit. But I’ll hit the highlights and try to give you a general feel of the city.
I went to my first clown-themed party while I was in Beijing. Some of Elyse‘s friends were throwing a party for their other friend and she invited me to tag along. I didn’t have any clowny gear, so instead I just puffed up my hair as best I could and put some lipstick on my nose. I didn’t look much like a clown, but it worked well enough. That crowd wasn’t too picky about the outfit, they just wanted to have fun.
The party is hosted at a bar so there is a lot of room. Some of this is taken up by contests and booths set up, in keeping with the carnival like atmosphere. There is an “Adult Kissing Booth” for taking some pictures of the guest of honor with his friends in compromising positions. There are also some setups for the games we’ll be playing, like “Pin the Penis on the Donkey,” “Sexual Position Balloon Pop,” and “Lipstick Kissing Contest” where you cover each others’ bodies with lipstick kisses. We are all in teams of 3-4 for this, which really helped me get to know people quickly. We all fought hard and gave it our best effort, but our team didn’t win. On some controversial calls, we came in second.
The party ended and Elyse and I went off to get some food with one of her friends. We ate at a place named for a Scandinavian Table Tennis champion, if I recall correctly. The food was pretty good. Then we headed off to this cool bar in the penthouse of a hotel down the street. It reminded me of a Western style bar and felt very trendy and European. Lots of funky colors, just a bit retro, and top notch drinks. We spent an hour or so there, and I met some really interesting people: journalists, actors, etc. All expats living in Beijing.
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The trip to the Great Wall was pretty nutty. Brian and I had heard all sorts of things about fake wall ruins close to or inside the city that tourists would get shuttled to, so we stuck to just what the LP said. We decided to go to one of the least traveled spots (Simatai) which turned out to be very complicated and hard to figure out. Getting there and back involved buses, minibuses, taxis, and walking. In the end we spent about 6 hours getting there and away and only about 3-4 hours on the wall. But it was certainly worth it.
We woke up fairly early, around 8am, and got our breakfast in the Pub connected to the hostel. It was good and filling. Then we went to the long distance bus station about a mile away. No one spoke English, so we pointed in our book at the Mandarin characters and eventually someone understood what we wanted. We located the bus, bought a ticket outside, and got on board. Only a few minutes after the scheduled departure time, we left.
As we rode out of the city, the bus made a few stops to pick up those who were standing at the side of the road and waving. There didn’t appear to be any regular bus stops, as we sometimes stopped twice in 50 yards to pick up people standing and waving, rather than running towards a spot. Just before we left Beijing, we were ushered off the bus with only a few people, and put onto one with quite a few more.
There were several seats in the middle of the aisle that folded down and we were put on those. Inevitably by the time we were full, people were riding on each others laps and on the floor by the door. It was not until no other bodies could fit into the vehicle that the driver refused to accept payment and let people board. We rode in this cramped position for about three hours and were encouraged to get off the bus in seemingly the middle of nowhere. However, thanks to the Lonely Planet, we’d expected this. A minibus was waiting for wall climbers to save them the 15km trek — for a fee, of course.
The area at the starting point of the hike to the wall looked like it would have been nice in Summer. In Winter, however, it seemed to fade into the background of gray. There was a dam across the small river there so there was a moderately sized lake alongside the switchbacking trail running up the hill to the part of the wall we were going to climb.
We collected some friends as we ascended the trail: two Chinese women who wanted to sell us some books or postcards or something. We told them “wo bu shu yao” (which means “I don’t want it” in a respectful tone), but they continued to follow us. When we reached the wall, they began to tell us things about its history when we stopped to take pictures. They were great climbers, having done this probably several times a day for many years. We ran into very few others climbing the wall, including a group of three Canadians who were traveling at roughly our speed. They were fairly critical of the Chinese women, scolding them for following us and telling us to watch out for ourselves, that we’d be hustled for money at some point. But we’d dealt with our fair share of hustles by then. At one point, one of the Canadians started speaking in Mandarin to the Chinese women and shooed them away. It was probably better for the Chinese women to not waste their time on us, but we didn’t mind them talking to us and it seemed pretty rude.
There were parts of the wall that were too dilapidated to cross or that were under construction, so there were trails heading down the side. Many of the old lookout towers, lived in by guards, were crumbling with little attempt to repair them. It was apparent which stones were old and which had been put in more recently to fill a gap. This is the way the wall had been built and maintained over the centuries since it was originally built. At first it was several separate walls guarding different cities, then it was joined to keep out the Mongols to the North. It didn’t succeed. And now the wall has become a reason to come to China, spurring tourism. This was an irony not lost on us. As a barrier to entry, the Great Wall of China has to be the most spectacular failure in mankind’s history, actually doing the opposite of its intent on a grand scale.
The farthest traversable point for the section of wall we decided to climb was high up on a hill, called Watching Beijing Tower. This spot has a tremendous viewpoint for seeing Inner Mongolia to the North and all the way to Beijing, 120km to the South. However, due to the smoggy conditions, we were only able to see a kilometer or two into the distance. It was still a gorgeous view and we rested for a while there.
We were able to head down much faster than we’d gone up, but it was also more dangerous. Some parts of the wall were nearly vertical for a few dozen yards, so traversing these sections was especially difficult. When we finally made it to the base of the wall and to the concrete trail where we’d begun, our legs felt like jelly. Brian decided that it would be easier to take a zip-line down to the base of the trail, across the dam from where we’d originated. Meanwhile, I decided that I would rather take photographs and videos in case the Chinese engineering didn’t save him.
When we both reached the parking lot, we had a couple of taxis to choose from. So they did what taxi drivers do in that situation, they fought over us. We finally negotiated a price for a ride back to the spot where the bus would pick us up. The cabbie spoke pretty good English, so we were able to speak with him a bit. We ended up making it back with only about 15 minutes to wait before the next transport back to Beijing, so the driver waited with us and we sat in his cab. When the bus finally came, he flagged it down and spoke with the bus driver — something we couldn’t have managed as well. However, the bus was obviously full. The bus driver wanted us to get on board, so he kicked someone back to a further back seat and offered something filthy for us to sit on. The cab driver, however, siezed the opportunity to offer us nearly the same price for transport to a different bus station which had traditional motor coaches instead of requisitioned minibuses. We happily paid and he delivered us with some more conversation.
It was nice to have the chance to spend a half hour or more speaking with a local and we used the time to find out about his life. He was getting ready to head back home when we’d come down the trail and had already called his wife to tell her he’d be on his way home. He lived about a half hour in the other direction, so he’d have some explaining to do when he got home. It apparently wasn’t worth the price of another phone call home. He seemed to be very happy to be doing what he was with his life, which was nice to hear, and his demeanor suggested he was telling the truth. But you can’t always tell when Chinese people say something like that because you don’t know what kind of pressure they’re under to appear happy whether they are or not. This can be both political and social pressure in their culture.
When we got to the other bus station, the driver pointed out the correct bus to us and we were overjoyed to see that it looked like something a High School might have chartered to take a long field trip! We thanked the taxi driver and wished him well on his trip home and in the future. We paid our fare to get on the bus, sat down, and napped most of the way back into the city.
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Buying a ticket to embark on the Trans-Mongolian Express was an adventure in itself. The timetables we had were not quite right and the schedules had changed a bit. That’s not a small thing in this case, as it meant we might have to wait as much as a week before heading to Mongolia or take a series of buses to the border where we’d find a fairly regular train into Ulan Bator.
I Heart Beijing — The Bad Side
The one thing that was annoying about our hostel was the fact that it was a little too close to the club and disco district. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have minded being close to the bars, but these were way too loud to be any good. The noise was low enough in our room, but out in the hall it was really bad. Plus, there were lots of little beggar kids down there that pestered us for money any time we came home past dark. Once they realized we weren’t going to give them money, they left us alone, except for the occasional kebab skewer they’d jab us with or rude comment they’d give us. Then there were the young, well dressed guys who’d run up to us and ask if we wanted to go to the “Lady Bar”, which is apparently a whore house.
But the most annoying thing was the group of guys who would walk along with us and say things like “Hey buddy, I’ve got what you want.” “Hey buddy, you want some stuff?” “Hey man, how’s it going? You looking for something?” “Didn’t you say you wanted something? I’ve got it.” There were no fewer than a dozen of these guys prowling around at night. They weren’t intimidating, but the thing that bothered me most is that the only drug solicitors I encountered in China were all black. I try hard to fight against these types of stereotypes, only to this one shoved back in my face. Out of about 20 black people I saw in all of China, over half of them tried to sell me drugs. It’s discouraging.
Another thing that is discouraging is how the city has neglected its cultural sites. While we were in Beijing, we visited a few historical sites and only the Great Wall seemed to have preserved its sense of self. The first of the other two sites was the Forbidden City. This is where the Emperor lived and was a vibrant place. Now, however, it feels dead and soulless. Some of the buildings are undergoing renovations, but the ones that are open are underwhelming. The cobblestone streets are dilapidated. A similar fate has befallen the Summer Palace, a retreat for the Emperor which is now a museum. The paint is all faded and peeling, intricate woodwork has gone unrepaired, and things feel as if nobody cares to keep it up. The Communists have let these vestiges of its history become rundown.
However, the Great Wall does not seem to have suffered from a similar fate. That is perhaps because it isn’t a regal leftover, but it may also be because the thing has been crumbling and being rebuilt for centuries. The part we hiked (Simitai) was far from the city and difficult to get to. Because of this, it was also pretty devoid of tourists and hawkers, which is what we were looking for. It was also one of the steepest parts of the wall. It seemed to be fairly well maintained most of the way, but there were a couple of parts that were broken down. Another part of the wall we could see from ours looked to have been repaired recently and made to be quite a bit easier to walk. I’ll write more about the wall in a later post.
There also quite a few areas of the city called “hutongs” which are neighborhoods built in a more traditional style. The streets are narrow and the buildings are built in a 3 sided square with a wall and a gate facing the street. These are nice little areas and give a feel much different from the modern city. A couple of these areas have been restored, however, many of them have been torn down to make way for more modern buildings.
The Smog in and around the city is also terrible. I’m not sure if this was because of the heavy fog the night we arrived or the fact that it was Spring Festival and maybe the factories were shut down. But whatever the reason, we did have one gorgeous day there. The first day we were there, the skies were exceptionally clear, but after that the smog set in. While it isn’t as bad as Xi’an, it is still far worse than any other city I’ve been in.
I don’t want to give the impression that Beijing is a bad place or that I didn’t like it. Quite the contrary, as the title of this series of posts should tell you. But things should be a lot better for the capital of the country. The problems here that I’ve talked about can nearly all be fixed in time for the 2008 Summer Olympics to which the city will play host. The Chinese government seems to be moving toward it, but it will take a whole lot of work.
meanderingwoods 