Beijing, Beijing!

It finally came. My first chance to see a China outside of Nanjing, the southern capitol (南京 literally means "southern capitol"). Where did I go, you may ask? to the northern capitol of course! Beijing (北京）

My journey, or pilgrimage, started about 3 weeks ago, when I decided to tell Steven that I would need the 21st through 24th off to go to Beijing. Being the control freak he is, he asked me if I could go another time. "How about right now?" I said, "but in that case I wouldn't be coming back." (unfortunately I didn't actually say that, however badly I wanted to.) Anyways, long story short of it, last thursday at 5PM I was packing for Beijing. Before we went though, Chessin and I decided to stop off for a quick bite at our favorite xinjiang restaurant. The owner, whom we're friends with, really wanted us to stay and have some baijiu - the hard liquor of choice all throughout china - with him and his Uyghur friends arriving from xinjiang. We had our drinks in the same time it took the owner's friend to knock back three cups of this paint-thinning fire juice, and were then on our way to the train station.

The Nanjing train station is a giant, spaceship-looking thing by the edge of the big lake in Nanjing. They check your tickets at the door, and then you wait in this giant room reminiscent of a refugee camp for your train. Finally they let the people through the gate, and you walk in a giant herd towards the platform, and onto the train. As we were walking to our car, we passed by windows of other cars - they had semi-private rooms of four bunks with a TV on the wall, and a fruit basket near the beds. Not so bad. However, we weren't in these "soft sleepers". We were in the hard sleepers, which have no rooms, only rows of bunks in a train with three bunks on top of each other. We were also on the very top, with about 15 inches of space between the tips of our noses and the ceiling of the train. Although, I have to say, it was surprisingly comfortable. The gentle rocking of the train made it relatively easy to relax, even if we were 8 feet in the air. Also, being on top made me less self-conscious about stripping down in order to sleep, because the only person that might have been able to spy me up there is Kevin Garnett, and chances were he wasn't on this train. However, before we got to sleep, we were befriended by a group of little kids (ages 8-12) that were traveling from nanjing to beijing for a dance competition. They went to a school devoted to ballroom dancing, and were absolutely hilarious. There must have been about 10 of them, all crowded around my bunk disturbing everyone around me, teaching me little games, and touching my hair telling me how beautiful it was. They also loved chessin's beard and the hair on his stomach - that was also "beautiful". I think the best part about them, though, was that they did whatever we said. So, when we were starting to get a little tired of the kids, and wanted to read a little bit, chessin told them that it's important to sleep before a competition and they booked it to their beds and went right to sleep. It was amazing.

So, we arrived in Beijing at about 9 AM, after being awoken by the hordes of small dancing children at about 5:30 wanting to play more games with us. From the train station, we walked to Tiananmen Square. We walked around the whole square, and then went into the Mao Memorial hall, where Mao's body is on display. I have now seen the bodies of Mao and Lenon... I can die a happy man. The chairman is illuminated in a glass case surrounded by a few guards, and you can then buy many Mao knick-knacks as you leave - I'm sure just what he had in mind. After Mao, we got some awesome dumplings at a little restaurant; the jiaozi and baozi are different in the North, and i think a little bit better. After that, we walked around for quite a while trying to find our hostel, because I sort of forgot to write down the adress... but eventually we found it, put our stuff down, and took some greatly needed showers. The hostel was actually really awesome. It was in a little beijing Hutong (the little alleys that used to make up beijing), and was a courtyard with pretty flowers and plants and chinese architecture, with the rooms opening up onto it.

After taking showers and such, we went back out for some more touring of the city. We went to Wangfujing - the big commercial area, walked around, saw some little markets and the likes. Then we went to quanjude beijing duck restaurant - the most famous (and overpriced) duck restaurant in beijing, and had a massive meal of the fattiest, most delicious duck EVER. Afterwards we walked around some more, and ended up at this nightmarket with all sorts of foods being sold on sticks - snake, scorpion, sea cucumber, star fish, - and other delicious looking dumplings and the like. Although, I got the feeling the snake and scorpion was targeted more at tourists than at regular people - i don't think beijing people just eat scorpions for fun, although it was pretty good. Anyways, we made our way back to the hostel, and on the way managed to not get scammed a couple of times by the people who come up to you in the street and say "hello, you speaka english. can I buy you a drink?". Eventually we just tell them we don't speak english, and walk away. Back at the hostel we had some pomello and went to sleep.

The next day we woke up at around 6:30, and headed out to the Dongzhimen long distance bus station to get out to the great wall. We took a 1.5 hour bus out north of the city, and at this little town hired a local guy to drive us to the Jinshanling section of the wall and drop us off, and then pick us up 4.5 hours later at the Simatai section. The hike along the great wall was freaking awesome. Although we did get ripped off a little bit by some locals who wanted to sell us great wall posters, there were barely any people hiking with us, and the wall itself is, at most parts (except the tourist secions) authentic and beautiful. The landscape was also amazing - just rolling mountains and hills remeniscent of what I imagined an ancient mongolian landscape to look like. The wall is ungodly steep at points as it winds and outlines the mountains in this area, and there are no "handrails" and caution signs to prevent you from suing if you fall and hurt yourself. It is just there, with gaping holes and unconnected stairs you have to jump between to get anywhere. After reaching the end of our hike, we went out for a quick bite in a small 家常菜 （"home taste dish") restaurant, and then headed back to beijing. We then relaxed a little bit, and headed out to a tibetan restaurant for dinner - which was delicious yak and cheese and yogurt - twas awesome.

The next day, sunday, we visited Panjiayuan - one of the bigger open air markets in the city. It was packed with people yelling and screaming about the prices of vegetables, and also had some really good food stalls to pick and choose from. We also went to liulichang, the antique street, although most of the antiques were fake so it was underwhelming. I did, however, purchase some genuine Mao buttons. I can't wait to show them off at work! After antiquing, we made our way to the forbidden city - the ancient palace complex in the middle of Beijing, which is really cool and beautiful, but was very touristy and crowded and unimaginably huge. after like 2 hours there we started to get bored of giant stone pots and beautiful roofs, and had to leave before they locked the gates and we were stuck there in this giant palace complex for the night. After the forbidden city we got some more 家常菜, and then headed for the Beijing opera which was actually pretty cool (minus the incredibly rude woman sitting behind us laughing through the whole thing). The BJ opera doesn't use stage scenery, and so a lot of it is portrayed through mime, which is also pretty difficult to understand when you can't really understand what they're saying. Luckily there were some translations, but they were so bad it somehow made it even harder to understand...

Anyway, the next day, monday, our last day, we made our way to the olympic sports venues, saw the birdsnest and water cube (both of which, i'm sad to say, were a little disappointing), and then made our way to the beijing trainstation to catch our train out, but not before running into our dancing friends in the subway station. Turns out we were on the same train back! one car down! YAY!!!! When we finally got to the station, we bought tons of fresh fruit so that it would not be necessary to eat train food in china (although, i did learn the lesson not to eat a lot of ruffage on a 15 hour trainride in china... If a normal toilet in china is less inviting than a train toilet in America... well you get the idea...). Anyways, the trainride home was fine, noneventful, and we got to spend some quality time with our little dancing friends, who are adorable. We got in at about 7 this morning, had some dumplings, and then went home and slept slept slept. That's about it. Beijing is awesome. I really like the attitude up north - it's some how more relaxed, a little more zen than it is down here in the south. Although, the south is cool too...

i'll post some pictures soon.

zai jian!