The next morning we woke up pretty late and packed for our 5 day trip to Beijing. I brought a duffle bag and a backpack, neither even close to full, but I wanted to have some extra space in case I needed it. We set off for the airport at about 11, but first we had to find a post office. After struggling to find one because no one speaks English, we finally ended up in a “China Post Museum” which had a random post office on the 2nd floor. I had to send a package to a group of students in New Hampshire which are my awesome pen pals for the semester. I also had a couple of magazines I bought in Japan that I sent to a couple of friends while I was there. Whereas in America we fill out one form to ship something internationally, China is not so easy. To send the package to the kids, they had to open it up and search through the items, then made me fill out I believe 7 forms with the same information. The magazines were easier, only like three forms for each, but still ridiculous. After about a half hour in there, I managed to pay my thirty dollars in postage and get out. I’m glad Eric and Jay were in patient moods! We took a cab to the airport and checked in, a really easy process actually. All you do is show them your passport and they do the rest for you. We got through security fast as well, leaving an hour to kill where we just sat in the Shanghai airport. We got on the plane, which was about 1/3 Semester at Sea people, and took off. After a short flight, which included a full hot meal that was pretty good, we began our descent into Beijing and saw one of the many differences between China and the US. As we were landing, a plane came down and landed on the runway next to us about 100 yards away. In the US you never even see a plane while you are in the sky, but here it was almost like a synchronized landing. Everyone got off, got their luggage successfully, and we headed to find a sign saying “Semester at Sea” being held up by our guides for the week.
We found our two guides easily and waited for everyone to get there. The guides names were Vincent and Linda and they were both extremely helpful and a lot of fun. I ended up on Linda’s bus, which was admittedly more boring, but we had more room on there. Vince was more popular and more fun, and I ended up following his group more often because he was interesting to listen to. We got on the busses and headed to our hotel, which was in the middle of a pretty sketchy area of Beijing but turned out alright. Because it was Chinese New Year, most businesses were closed, but had they not been closed we would have been on a street with tons of local market type shops and restaurants. Once we checked in and dropped off our luggage and passports (the hotels in China have to hold your passports while you stay with them), we set off looking for dinner and some entertainment. We found the only restaurant that appeared to be open for blocks and went in to find out that it was hot pot. First of all, before I explain, let me say that if you haven’t had hotpot you really shout try it. It is a lot of fun and the food is good. So what happens is they bring out these little boiling pots of water to each person and then you get plates full of raw vegetables, meat, and noodles to put into them. It all cooks in less than five minutes, so you take it out, cover it in some sauce, and eat. We had so much fun cooking our food, which was delicious, and we served as the entertainment of the night for the locals. At one point we had nine waitresses surrounding our table laughing at us. They ended up actually doing a lot of the work for us because we had no idea what was going on. I considered it a successful night given that the food was great, and I only burnt myself three times on the hot pot. Five days later I still have a mark from one of the burns, so I’m hoping it turns into a cool star that I can tell a story about. The whole meal ended up costing 33 yuan a person, and included a free bottle of wine for the table. For those unfamiliar with exchange rates (everyone I imagine), that comes out to five dollars a person for a meal that in America would have been well over twenty.
After dinner we wandered to a district called “Ho Hi” (I’m sure I butchered the spelling) where there were apparently some places open at night worth seeing. It was a series of restaurants and bars surrounding a pretty cool little lake, and we had a good time seeing it. Everything in China is lit up at night with basically Christmas lights, and while I’m not sure if it was only for New Years or if it is an all year thing, it was really neat. We ended up wandering around there, stopped at a couple of places and listened to some locals do Karaoke and left soon after. Eric bought some funny Communist posters which were blatantly anti-American and would surprise me if he gets them back into the US, but provided a laugh nonetheless. We decided to call it a night and headed in, ready to see some of the touristy stuff the next day.
We woke up the next morning and ate breakfast at the hotel, which included some Dim Sum (Again bad spelling I’m sure), which are these little puffy balls filled with meat and vegetables. They are pretty good and I think you can get them in the US at any Chinese restaurant easily. We got on the bus and the first thing we set off to see was the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City was the palace area used by Chinese emperors up until the 1920s and it was HUGE. It was called Forbidden because no one got in unless you were royalty or worked there. Fortunately now it is open to the public and we were going to see it. There were dozens of courtyards and huge buildings all over the place in it, basically it was set up to run the government of the whole country so you can imagine how much space there was. I believe there were actually 729 rooms in the whole thing, which is 9 cubed (lucky number). It took us about two hours to make it through the city, and while it got repetitive, I am glad I saw it. While there we were again the object of fascination for the Chinese people who constantly would paparazzi us. They loved waiting until someone got kind of separated from the group, and then asking you to pose for pictures with them. I posed for probably a dozen or so, and gave them some nice big smiles. We left the Forbidden City and another Chinese man wanted me to pose for a picture with him, only this one wanted me to shake his hand and pose, so it looks like we were engaging in some peace talks or something, it was pretty funny. We headed from there to Tiananmen Square, right across the street and saw that next. It is a huge open area, I believe Linda said 45 hectares which means little to me other than huge. In the center was a huge statue, and on either side was government buildings and a museum.
After Tiananmen Square we walked a couple of blocks to the busses, past the tomb of Chairman Mao which had a line thousands of people long waiting to see him. It’s crazy how much Mao is still almost worshipped in China, his picture is everywhere. Apparently he is resting under glass so you can still see his body, but we weren’t going to wait four hours to do so. We left and went to the Silk Market, which is basically a six story building full of vendors who sell generally fake items at a fraction of their US cost. I bought a spare battery for my camera because I lost my case and battery in Hawaii. I paid $15 US for it, which is cheaper than I could get it back home, and it works, but I think I could have gotten the lady lower. A local Chinese guy said the lowest they usually go for batteries is half of what I paid, but I didn’t know that before. Oh well! I also bought a watercolor scroll painting of a tiger for $6 and a painted carved tiki mask thing for $7. They both will look pretty awesome on the wall in my cabin. After too much time and money at the market we left on our three hour bus ride to the great wall!
0 comments:
Post a Comment