Beijing Part II

I’m back! And will try to keep this short (HA. NOT SHORT AT ALL. EPIC FAIL.) And vaguely interesting (fingers crossed).

By Wednesday, I had re-gained the trust of the group (after the somewhat disastrous Saturday forced march to Tiananmen…our Long March, but without the glory…) enough to be allowed to set an itinerary. I say this only half-jokingly. One of the issues of traveling with 7 people was that we only had two guidebooks, one of which was from 2005, which in Beijing made it very much out of date. So many of my fellow travelers either didn’t want to set the agenda or didn’t have/seek access to the information necessary to do so. This situation created a certain amount of friction, both on my and my friend Katherine’s side (we wanted to get up and out and do things from our books, and thus we became the “cruise directors”), as we resented it when people were unenthusiastic about what we wanted to do but had no suggestions of their own, and on the group’s side, because we were often less than perfect in our navigation and logistical skills (although, in my own defense, I would like to say that it was an especially difficult week to be trying to navigate Beijing, because of crowds, and random metro closures when they would shut all the stops around Tiananmen, leaving us to walk for miles through downtown Beijing searching for an open station). And who wants to be walking for miles through a city you don’t know, when you don’t know where you’re going or really why you’re going there? So my suggestion, if anyone ever follows in my footsteps, is to make sure everyone in your group has done some research and has some idea of what they want to do in the place you’re going, and knows why they’re going wherever they’re going. I hesitate to use the phrase “set goals,” but I think that a little structure within the potential madness of a gap year isn’t a bad thing. So I will say it: setting some goals (ie places you want to go, things you want to see, how intense or relaxed you want to be, etc) is not a bad idea. And I think that having lots of people with lots of ideas is probably better than having just a couple people setting the agenda. It’s healthier and more balanced. So yeah…there were a few moments when I felt like, in regards to my fellow gappers, they didn’t seem ready to make the most of Beijing. And I’m sure they found me thoroughly annoying and somewhat opaque and prone to forced marches. Let’s just say that I relish a long walk even when I don’t know where I’m going, and other people differ with me on that point. So yeah…a little glimpse for you into group politics. All that being said, I really truly do enjoy the group I’m with, and we had a great time. We just had our moments.

Back to Wednesday. Wednesday morning, we went to an ancient astronomical observatory that had operated continuously for 500 years, until 1929. It was pretty cool to see these beautiful wrought iron instruments set on top of a little tower, plopped down in the middle of modern Beijing. After that, we walked a short ways to a piece of Beijing’s old city wall, with a watch tower, that has been preserved and turned into a park. Like the observatory, it was very cool to see a piece of old Beijing in the midst of all the modernity. Since so much of old Beijing has been torn down over the decades since 1949 (and at an accelerated pace now), these rare preserved pieces, even if they are just dusty historical artifacts, feel strangely refreshing. That afternoon, after a long walk (re: the 2005 guidebook…it didn’t have a key metro line on its maps, because it hadn’t been built yet in 2005...and map scales are deceiving, that’s all I’ll say) we arrived at the Temple of Heaven, one of the top sights in Beijing and China. It’s an incredible sight…an intricately decorated and enormous three tiered round temple rising up into the sky on top of a huge tiered marble platform. Beijing is still a very low city (compared to Shanghai, at least), so looking at the Temple of Heaven, there are no buildings or signs of modernity behind it. It’s just the tower, and the sky (and hordes of tourists, but let’s forget about them for the moment). The park around it is very beautiful and very calm once you get away from the Temple (the whole complex has an admission fee, which helps with crowds I guess). Beijing has so much open space compared to Shanghai…its city center, after all, is dominated by the visual power of open space: the vast expanse of Tiananmen, mirroring the scale and spread of the Forbidden City, and then the huge openness of the Temple of Heaven park. And the hutong neighborhoods around these sights, while far from empty, are certainly low to the ground. So there is more breathing space in Beijing (even if you don’t want to breathe the air…although up until Wednesday, the sky was pure pure blue with hardly any clouds, thanks to the government).

Thursday we slept in again; that afternoon was all about exploring “normal” Beijing. Late morning I went on a short excursion to visit Beijing University (BeiDa), to see where Kenzie studied this summer (and where I will probably end up studying at some point), and to catch a glimpse of another famous Chinese university (probably the most famous) and compare it with my home university here, ECNU. It was pretty and bustling but not that interesting haha. We tried and failed to eat in the cafeteria, but you had to have these special cards, and we spent about 15 minutes trying to get up our courage to ask a random person if we could use their card to pay and pay them in cash, but we didn’t have enough gumption. Oh well. Thursday afternoon we went on a free tour of the hutong around our hostel. Some words about our hostel…it was PERFECT and AMAZING. It was in a preserved hutong house. The staff was friendly and accommodating, it felt safe, was clean, and had this beautiful little courtyard where I enjoyed sitting and drinking tea. It was cheap, convenient (right next to a new metro line that opened right before we arrived in Beijing), and interesting. One interesting part was the staff…they were almost all Chinese teenage/young 20s women, who lived in a bunk room in the back. One or the other of them was always around in the office, or in the kitchen making tea or putting out snacks, and it was they who brought us on the tour. They were all about our age, 18 or so, and they (or the two I talked to) were from Hebei, the (largely rural) province right outside Beijing. They’re not going to university, but they’ve found a place in urban China, and they seemed pretty happy. A very superficial judgment, but it’s the best I can do. The tour of the hutong was refreshing after all the touristy stuff we’d been doing…they took us to an open air market (mostly selling pets…it was at once cute and horrifying to see all these animals in their cages…animal rights means nothing in China…but all the Chinese were cooing over the kittens and bunnies in tiny tiny cages, while we were cringing at the sight of how small the cages were), and then to a covered produce market. The hutong was pretty run-down by our standards, but definitely not the slums that the Chinese government wants people to think they are so they can tear them down. And there was a surprising number of cars parked along the narrow streets. That night, we went to a night market…I had this amazing whole leg of lamb that I ate cavewoman style. One thing about being in China is that my table manners have depreciated considerably (or at least my worries about eating neatly)…now I worry more about showing my appreciation for the food and not pointing my chopsticks at people than I do about chewing with my mouth closed or about where to put my bones (and as for putting my napkin in my lap…I haven’t seen a real cloth napkin since I’ve arrived). It was fabulous.

Friday was Forbidden City (and departure) day. We saved the Forbidden City for Friday because it was technically the day when everyone had to go back to school and work, so we thought there would be fewer people. And we were right! Yay us. The Forbidden City, while crowded, was not the zoo I’m sure it was earlier in the week. I have a confession to make….I don’t really like the Forbidden City. It’s impressive and visually stunning, but beyond that I find it repetitive, unapproachable, detached, and symbolic of the destructive narcissism of the emperors. Like Versailles, actually, but without some of the fun trinkets and human touches of Versailles (I think because the emperors weren’t as into frivolous pursuits, other than having as many concubines as they could, as the French kings). I’m actually amazed that the Forbidden City made it through the Cultural Revolution, as it’s a pretty stunning reminder of China’s failures during the 18th and 19th centuries, and the attitude and outlook that brought down an ancient empire. The emperors were completely and utterly convinced that they were at the center of the world (not at all unique to China, but the attitude is uniquely clear when you’re standing in the Forbidden City), and felt utterly justified in cutting themselves off completely. It was its own little world, and I found it frustrating to think about how stultified and rigid it must have become, at exactly the wrong moment for China’s rulers to become so.

Friday night we boarded our train home…we wanted to explore the cheap and convenient option of China’s amazing train system, and we certainly got a glimpse at the convenience. Our train was comfortable and timely. It wasn’t cheap (I mean, it was cheap, but not as cheap as our cheap flight to Beijing, and not as cheap as we thought it would be). This turned out to be because we bought bullet train tickets, without knowing that the train we were taking only had one type of cabin, these relatively luxurious four person cabins. We wanted to take the second-class “hard sleeper” type of cabin (it’s not that the beds are harder than the “soft sleeper” class, it’s just a Communist thing of not wanting to have first class and second class…hard sleeper is 3 sets of bunk beds and a shared bathroom, while the soft sleep has only 2 sets of bunk beds, and each cabin has its own bathroom), which is what we thought we had (and were mystified as to why our tickets were so expensive), but when we showed up we realized that the train didn’t even have those. So basically it was a really comfortable night for me, I slept the whole way home and like a rock. BUT when I woke up, I awoke to the news that my friend Katherine was seriously ill. Cue Saturday’s drama…straight from the Shanghai train station, at 8 am, Katherine and I went to the hospital, sending our stuff home with everyone else. Katherine had been up puking since 5 AM, and she was a very sick puppy. I spent a full 12 hours at the hospital with her, as the doctors alternated between keeping us waiting and trying to figure out what was wrong (at one point they thought appendicitis and told Katherine she might have to spend a week in the hospital). Eventually, they figured out that it was a gastronomical infection, and she has been in the hospital for four days (she finally left this afternoon). Yuck. Poor Katherine. So that was my Saturday. The only upside of the whole experience was that I got to read! What did I read? I read two absolutely incredible books. One, I’m sure you’ve heard of – Three Cups of Tea. If you haven’t read it yet, read it now. It was SO GOOD. And Greg Mortensen should have won the Nobel Peace Prize, NOT President Obama. I love our President to pieces, but his winning the prize is an embarrassment and cheapens what should be one of the highest honors the world has to give. I am fuming. Hear me fume. OK. The second book I read (or finished reading) was an amazing amazing novel called Wolf Totem. It’s based on the author’s experiences in Inner Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution, where he was sent as a university student to be re-educated. It’s about the old nomadic culture there, and the relationship between the humans, the wolves, and the grassland, and how the Chinese thoroughly screwed everything up, leading to massive desertification and the destruction of an ancient and noble lifestyle. Sound familiar? All of the parallels with the American West and our efforts to “reclaim” the grassland there hit me full in the face. Plus it’s beautifully written (it’s translated from Chinese, so it’s very simple but evocative writing). And it dovetails perfectly with all the stuff I find so interesting about why people and cultures relate to nature the way they do. And you learn a lot about wolves, pretty freaking cool animals. So READ IT! Seriously. So good.

Yesterday, I went to a CIEE-organized lecture about China’s economy and what could account for how (somewhat) protected it’s been from the world recession. The speaker was basically very optimistic about China (to a point), and it gave me a lot of food for thought. He emphasized the fact that China is actually productive (as in, China isn’t all cheap factories churning out T-shirts in order to keep people happy and employed…and it’s not as export reliant as the Western media likes to say it is), and it’s a productivity that is largely based in (and will be more and more based in in the future) its greatest asset: its relatively well-educated, healthy, and numerous workforce. Human capital. It’s not going to go away, and it’s a force that is going to drive China forward basically no matter what happens, environmentally, politically, domestically, internationally…more alarmingly, he also said that he thinks all the buzz about China starting to go green is just buzz, not substance, and China will actually accelerate the amount of coal it produces during the 21st century, because it has no other options. Uhoh. Bad news for the world. I asked him about water (I was drilling him with questions and felt a little bad about it but he was really really interesting) and I was NOT satisfied with his answer. He said that the West shouldn’t underestimate the ability of the Chinese people to live on less and less water. Well, that’s true, but only true up to a certain point. And with the Chinese government encouraging Northern China (indeed, they’re subsidizing electricity to make it easier to pump the water) to pump water from its already dwindling water table, I don’t really see how that can continue indefinitely, unless the Chinese are superhuman and don’t need water.

OK. This post has become a little manic in terms of my run-on sentences, and in terms of its length. So I’m ending it. Now. The End.