Beijing--Part I

Beijing Beijing Beijing. When people think of China--us included before we actually came over here--they think of the biggies: Tiananmen, the wall, the 2008 Olympics, the people. We have had a few significant vacations allotted to us thus far at our school, and each time we have tossed out the idea of Beijing, intimidated by the prospect of going to the second largest city in China. We have heard horror stories from friends and other foreign teachers about how expensive it is and how people will try to rip you off. That kind of stuff just doesn't sound fun to us, but we also knew that we should go to Beijing sooner rather than later to avoid all of the pre-Olympics chaos. So we said "screw it"--we had a weeklong vacation and a chunk of change to burn--we were going to Beijing.

On Monday morning, we decided to head to the bus station early to get our tickets. Easier said than done. It was the first real day of the holiday, it was morning when everyone wanted to leave, and there were no taxis. Even the buses were so full that we got rejected by a few of them. That NEVER happens in China. Really. Finally, after about an hour of trying to get on buses or get in taxis, we hopped on a taxi and headed to the bus station, which is really pretty far away from us. The cabbie loved that.

When we arrived we bought our tickets to Beijing, no problem. It paid to be early. As we were getting ready to go back into town for lunch, we saw our friend, one of the bus station guards. Every time we have gone to the bus station, he has been there, ready to help us, to push us to the front of the line, to offer any and all assistance should we need it. What a friendly fellow. We take pictures with him every time we go to the station, and we need to send them to him, we just haven't gotten around to it yet. We chatted with him in broken Chinglish for a little while, and then we headed to McDonald's. We were in such a rush because we knew how hard it had been to get a taxi.

We ate McDonald's in the taxi back to Daguanghua. When we got back to the school, we ran up the stairs (all 225 of them), grabbed our bags and headed back down to catch the bus. We got there with 6 minutes to spare. We are pretty proud of our get-up-and-go abilities now. When we actually got back to the big bus station, we had three hours to kill. So we did it the best way we could think of--in the restaurant/bar attached to bus station. We parked at a table for the next 2.5 hours, nursing our beers (the waitstaff loved that), doing madlibs and killing time.

When we headed back up to the boarding/waiting area, we saw our friend again. He led us to the right bus, talked to the driver a little bit--"These are my friends. Take care of them" sort of stuff--and posed for pictures.



I was pretty excited as we got on the bus. We've slept on newspaper on the floor of a ferry, but we haven't slept on a bus full of beds. Tiny beds. Sets of bunk beds three wide and nine deep. I just liked that there wasn't any way to pretend I was going to be productive for the next 13 hours. Options included: sleeping. I had just closed my eyes and was trying to get comfortable in my bottom bunk (Rory was on top), when I felt something rustling on me. I opened my eyes, and it was the guard. He brought us a bag of rice cakes, soda and water. He wanted to make sure we had provisions on the trip. Again, what a swell guy. We want to adopt him.

The next thirteen hours weren't nearly as rough as I thought they would be. Highlights included: muddy potholes, peeing on a building in the dark with a friendly Korean lady on the bus and trying to understand a Chinese movie that had Harvey "Bad Lieutenant" Keitel in it. From what I saw, he kept his clothes on.

We rolled into Beijing around 6:00 am, hopped in a taxi, and away we went. Rory had made reservations at a youth hotel (which is really just a hotel) recommended by a friend, and we had the name card and address of the place, so there was no problem getting there. So far so good. We're always impressed when things happen like we hope they will. We don't necessarily doubt ourselves, we're just ready for adversity should it present itself. In the hotel we bought a map, and it wasn't until we were in our room that we realized just how close we were to all of the big spots (except the wall, of course).

We were hoping to just throw our bags down and hop on a bus to the wall as part of a tour. After waiting a little while, we got the call. We'd visit the wall the next day, so the first day we had on our own to kind of walk around the area and take pictures. We ate McDonald's for breakfast and took a nap for a few hours. Though the bus had beds, that didn't necessarily mean we were well-rested. After our nap we walked around the neighborhood, doing what we do best--getting lost and running into cool things. Turns out that the side street next to us was full of guitar shops and proprietors with full sleeve tattoos and long hair. Just our luck. We spent days searching for guitars in Qingdao, and in Beijing by our hotel we were surrounded by them. So now we know.

After walking around for awhile, we found ourselves walking along some side streets that revolved around a canal and a lake. It was a lot like Amsterdam--all of these little sidewalk cafes and (mostly) bars (that weren't yet open). We saw rickshaws and lilypads and all of these cool little shops selling lanterns and silk and Mao stuff. This was an area known as Houhai Park.







We took a few name cards and vowed to come back that evening for some drinks. We were actually a lot closer to our hotel than we realized. It was lunch time, so we wandered out of Houhai park, past some bleak-looking area that was under construction, to a really nice hole-in-the-wall (but really clean and upscaleish) restaurant. Our first Chinese meal in China was a) delicious and b) comparable to any prices we would pay in Weihai. Score. Plus, they were impressed with our Chinese and ability to order what we wanted. It was really good food. There was also a table with little Chinese twins next to us. These girls were climbing all over everything, opening drawers and touching anything in sight. They were so cute. Before they left, their parents were trying to pay the bill and finish their drinks. The uncle (I assume) kept giving them beer while the parents' backs were turned. It was really funny. Start em young, I guess.

Earlier, when we had been killing time in our hotel room, I made a list of some things I wanted to check out in Beijing. There was a flea market that was pointed out on the map, and I'm a sucker for things like that, so we decided to go after lunch.

This place was huge! At first we started out in an area that was specifically furniture, all of it impressive and expensive and beautiful. I think a nice way to put it is "majestic." There were entire cabinets that spanned an entire wall of a room, floor to ceiling, all carved and polished up. Gorgeous. There were also rooms full of busts and famous Chinese folks. We didn't spend too much time looking around because I was convinced I was going to knock something over.



We walked to an inside, upstairs portion of the flea market, where the vendors mostly sold old Mao paraphenalia and old Chinese things in general. It was really interesting, there weren't tons of people there, and we managed to get some good deals on Christmas presents.



Down a different stairway and out a different exit, and it was like we were in a completely different world. A world where everything I want to buy is on sale in shop after shop after shop. Earrings, scarves, paintings, silks, you name it. It was awesome. We were able to keep ourselves under control, but we spent a significant amount of time wandering around, bargaining just for the sake of bargaining. It was great.



We spent a good amount of time at the flea market, so we were hungry again. We headed back to the hotel to get cleaned up. We wanted to experience some famous Peking duck in Beijing, so we put on our good clothes and went out again. We were trying to explain to the cabbie exactly what we wanted. We wanted a duck restaurant that wasn't too expensive and wasn't super cheap. He took us to the most expensive restaurant in town. It was all lit up on the first floor of an equally impressive hotel. Generally speaking, hotel restaurants are the best and most expensive meals you can eat here in China. I mean, real hotels--hotels that most foreigners stay in. We hopped out of the taxi and walked into the restaurant on the side street next to the hotel. It also had roast duck, and I'm imagining it was significantly cheaper.

Our waiter was really funny. While we were trying to order in Chinese, he was trying to speak English, writing things down in his little English notebook he carried in his front shirt pocket. It was cute. Once we decided that we wanted Chinese broccoli--which we'd experienced for the first time at lunch and loved--he asked us how to spell broccoli. At the end of dinner we quizzed him, and he had to refer back to his notebook. It was funny. He was a good waiter. And the duck was great! They brought out this plate of sliced up duck, these little pancake/tortilla things, some sauce, cucumber and onions. You wrapped it all up and ate it like a burrito. It was really fatty, but it was so freaking good! When we (thought we) were finished eating, another waiter came over to the table with more duck. We were convinced it was someone else's order, but really they had just prepared the whole damn duck for us. We were too full to do more than pick at it.

We felt like vising Houhai park when it was at its finest--nighttime. We figured out how to get there in the taxi, and the next thing we knew, the streets were full of people and waiters trying to usher us into a particular bar. "Looky looky! Bob Marley music! Budweiser!" It was too funny. Something about a hip Chinese dude excitedly saying "Bob Marley music!" was priceless. We walked for a little while and settled on an awesome bar called "31". What is it with all these numbered bars? 7 and 2046 in Weihai and now 31 in Beijing...



We sat at an outside table across the street from the lake--it was perfect for people-watching, drinking Jameson, smoking flavored tobacco and listening to a Chinese band play really soothing music from Western China. It was great. We went to this particular bar every night we were there.