beijing – dh

Sunday and Monday in Beijing

On Sunday, I walked. A lot. I still have a relatively minor but annoyingly placed blister to prove it.

First I took the 20 minute walk and the subway to Tian’anmen Square where I forked over the RMB to go into the Forbidden City. It was big and impressive and all—and I liked the garden—but the KMT really did take all the good stuff for Taipei’s National Palace Museum. I really liked the garden at the northern end.

Of particular note (more than the imperial Chinese exhibits which, at this point, were starting to run together like one big wide ineffective wall snaking thousands of km across the Chinese countryside) was my visit to the Forbidden Store. It’s not as big and gaudy as I’d half-hoped: it’s just a corner of a room shared with a standard souvenir shop. If you’re a Tall or Venti (or, save us all, Short) aficionado, you’ll be disappointed: Grande only on this limited menu. Cups still have the Starbucks logo; the storefront does not. What’s truly remarkable is the willingness of people to pay standard Starbucks prices in a country where the hostel’s marked-up bottles of Tsingtao are 3 RMB/pint.

If you noticed that I didn’t mention seeing Mao’s embalmed body on my trip, it’s because I wasn’t able to: the Maosoleum is closed for repairs for a few months. Stupid Olympics.

After the Forbidden City I trucked my way down to Tiantan, the Temple of Heaven (catching a Peoples’ Armed Policeman climbing a tree to get his kite on the way). The complex was big and rather nice, actually, probably my favorite “traditional Chinese” site. This was another opportunity for the weekend’s fantastic weather to show off (maybe factories were down for Qingming): blue skies, warmer than Hong Kong, not a hint of rain. Pictures are probably better than words (working on those).

After that, I ended up walking from Qianmen to one subway stop shy of the east side of the ring along Chang’an Jie, and then back to one stop west of the west side. That’s a long way.

Sunday was a slow morning. One of my roommates dragged me along to a local market where we laughed at tourist prices set for tea and took in the delicious scene of a farmer’s market sort of arrangement. We bought food on the way back: some tasty baozi and a pineapple. Good, of course. After that it was off to the airport, on the bus to which I sat next to a 50+-year-old from Georgia who, at the suggestion of a mother in the States, had come to China to woo her Chongqing-based daughter. Hope that works out well for everybody.

Arriving at the sparkly Beijing Capital Airport, I found that it doesn’t have Shenzhen’s talent for e-ticket check-in kiosks. Shenzhen Airlines didn’t even open the physical check-in until 1h30m before departure: I kept myself busy at KFC “Select” in arrivals with a traditional Chinese “Zinger” burger, egg tart, and 7-Up “smoothie.” It was overpriced for China, but so cheap compared to the rest of the airport’s offerings (and 2/3 the price of that sacrilegious sbux latte).

Sorry if I “scare quote” “too much”—I’ve probably picked up the habit from reading too many China Daily articles about Taiwan.

SZ Air was not terrible, aside from the normal queuing culture clashes. Food was served (yes, on a budget airline flying one-class cabins domestically… such is Asia) with a drink before and after. The meal wasn’t anything special but did include a baggie of four or five longan fruit, which were tasty. ZH, like HU (a couple posts ago), is rocking the brand-new 737 models (a -900 for this flight). One interesting feature was the obsession of the cabin crew with making sure the curtain at the front of the aircraft (concealing the galley, jumpseats, and one lav.) was closed for every second permitted by regulations. There was some sort of raucous group stretch/prize drawing sort of exercise toward the end of the flight which would have been more interesting if I understood Mandarin. One nice bit: I wasn’t expecting anything after the Chinese-language newspapers were paraded past, but I was handed a copy of the China Daily just before takeoff.

Back in Shenzhen around 20:00 after a brief delay, it was easy to get to the bus for Luohu. Lo Wu crossing was more crowded than when I’d left on Thursday, but after around 15 minutes I was through and fighting to squeeze on the East Rail train. I took the minibus (44A) back from Sheung Shui for a change. The extra HK$1 was worth it to fly by trucks and buses instead of the other way around, and I finally got to see a minibus speedometer over 100.

Summer Palace and Badaling

I haven’t been keeping very good track of happenings here, so I’ll dump some to this page before I lose more. Yesterday I took a ridiculously cheap Y1.5 bus to the Summer Palace (the new one, not the burned one) which is more of an outdoor attraction. Fortunately, I’ve found myself in a spell of spectacular, clear, warm weather this week (warmer and clearer by far than Hong Kong on Tuesday-Thursday). The palace grounds are mainly a gigantic lake, surrounded by paths and pavilions and towers and temples and you name it. When I came back, I puttered around Tian’anmen Square for a while, where I saw the big flag, the Great Hall of the People, lots of guards, and acres of concrete. A bit creepy. I didn’t go into the Forbidden City because it was too late when I arrived: more on that in a bit.

Today I went to the closest, super-touristed section of the Great Wall at Badaling. It’s as overtouristed as it’s cracked up to be, but I made it through easily enough. There are two ways to walk on the wall once you get up there (Y12 bus, Y25 student admission), and taking the one less traveled by got me out of the crowds quickly (after I’d gamely suffered through the more popular section for about three hours). It’s… hard to describe. In Nixon’s words, “This is a great wall.” I’m glad I went there, even if Nixon was there first.

It’s funny how tourist price inflation works. In the US, if you’re buying an overpriced hot dog at a game, the seller is going to use his government monopoly (or collusion) and refuse to serve you if you don’t play ball. Here, even at the Great Wall, a little walking away quickly gets that Y10 drink down to a more reasonable Y5 (where I stopped: I’m sure I could have gotten it to 3 or 4, same price as the city, but I’m willing to pay a little for convenience even when the shopkeepers don’t realize they can make me do that).

In a more classically East Asian treatment of the problem, I was presented with an English menu where my beef noodles from lunch were priced at a silly Y48. Comparing characters and prices with the local menu quickly found a local rip-off price of Y15: at least twice what you’d normally pay for that sort of thing in the PRC, but a lot more sane.

Now I’m back in the hostel and caught by Beijing’s early closing times (often an hour earlier in the “winter” which ends on the 15th). Getting back from the Wall around 3 or 3:30, it’s too late to try going to the Forbidden City or Temple of Heaven (my top two remaining sights here) because they’re immense and even if you beat the ticket booth to closing time (3:30 at the Forbidden City in this winter with which I’m discontented), you won’t see nearly enough to justify the trouble of getting there. I did enjoy a few blocks of street food to console myself, and it was a great idea: the supremely important Pineapple Price Index finds a new low in Beijing with a stick of fresh pineapple going for Y1. This beats Thailand’s B10 sticks, though those are much more flavorful. I also had some sort of clamshell meat/spring onion type bagged sandwich thing and some bread that smelled better than it went down. No complaints, though.

I’ll be going to both the Temple of Heaven and the Forbidden City early tomorrow, if all goes well. Traffic is frightening me so I’m going to be concentrating on getting to the airport early on Monday.

Arrived in Beijing

A short departure from NYU (my last post) is Beijing. My flights back over were moderately delayed but otherwise passable, a sure sign that I’ve crossed the Pacific too much (three times, but once might have been enough). I got back late on Monday night, barely made it to campus before the public transport switched over to night mode, and suffered for two days stubbornly trying to get over the lag. HK is really chilly lately… not much warmer than Beijing, so far.

Had a moderate adventure yesterday flying out of Shenzhen. I was stuck in traffic on the HK side for about an hour on the bus to Sheung Shui, but the crossing itself was faster than a normal weekend crossing: probably a combination of overstaffing and crossing on the holiday instead of the day before. The Y20 airport bus (and waiting in line) were worth it… the airport’s really far from Luohu. It’s big, and pretty modern (except for the squat toilets), and the inflated prices for food don’t look too bad if you’re coming from Hong Kong. There’s a cross-airline e-ticket self-check-in (genius!)—this probably works since all the airlines are part of CAAC. Met up with Betsy there, ate, killed time, boarded. I guess we were delayed a while on the tarmac but I was too tired to care that much. The Hainan Airlines (HU) flight was on a pretty new 737-800, and since I got on quickly enough to claim overhead space I was actually fine for legroom in coach. Dinner and two beverages served: I had chicken, it was about what I’d expect from a Chinese airline meal.

Beijing’s airport is relatively free of taxi touts, etc. I caught the Y16 shuttle bus #2 to Xidan Aviation Hall and a cab (with the help of some phoning for directions) for Y16 from there to my hostel, Red Lantern House. I’m in a 4 bed dorm. It’s a little noisy but decent so far, with slightly softer beds than LN (read: hard). They’ve done amazing things with their courtyard/restaurant area: hopefully my pictures come out, but it looks really nice. There are a few other Lingnanians in Beijing right now but I think I’m the only one with fully-working texting, so it looks like I’m (at least mostly) on my own for a few days.