The next day was our last day in Beijing, and we woke up, ate, and caught the bus at 9 am. Our first stop for the day was an “Antique” market full of plenty of awesome looking fake things that I would buy if I had more money. They had 30 foot dragon statues to put in your yard which would be the coolest thing ever. How much fun would it be to give directions to your house if you had a dragon taller than the actual house hanging out in your front yard? Oh just take your first right and stop at the big dragon, that’s the one. I bought a little Terra Cotta warrior for like 75 cents which didn’t bother me one bit. What I really wanted there was an oil painting of the great wall, but again I’m not quite that loaded. It had a starting price of like 3000 yuan, which means I could have got it for 500-600 realistically, but that is still almost 100 dollars on artwork and I am a college student. Jay and Eric both bought these little red books filled with quotes from Mao. I believe they are the Chinese Communist bible of sorts and it was really interesting to read some of them. Honestly the guy wasn’t saying anything too revolutionary, just things like “A good leader always has his mind on the will of the masses”. I can see how people are happy living in China even without the individualism available in America. Having grown up with the latter, I couldn’t give it up, but if all I knew was Chinese Communism, it really isn’t as oppressive as it is made out to be.
Here’s a cool quick story about the market. There was a guy sleeping on his bike there, clearly a beggar, or homeless man. I was going to take his picture, when a Chinese man spoke soft English to me told me to only take pictures of the beautiful parts of his country. I thought it was admirable that he wanted foreigners to have a good opinion of his country when they left. I obliged of course.
We ate hot pot for lunch, which was very good. We got way more food than we did the first time we tried it, and by the end of it we were extremely full. I went through way more than I should have eaten, but that’s okay, I’m in China and am not about to start a diet in the middle of it. We went to the Pearl Market afterwards and shopped there for about an hour. It was similar to the silk one with different items, but equally fake and cheap. I keep trying to find a new wallet, but apparently Tri-Fold is something that they don’t do. One lady actually started beating us with a wallet which was a bit odd but comical. I told her I didn’t like her wallets and she hit me on the head with them and told me that yes I did like them. She than thumped me on the back and I bailed, afraid for my life. We got another Blizzard at a Dairy Queen nearby, because the first one was that good, and waited for the bus to leave. One guy got a remote controlled helicopter for like 12 dollars, and I am still jealous of it. If we had more time I would have bought one in a heartbeat. Owning one is on my bucket list now.
Our hunger and shopping satisfied, we left for the Temple of Heaven, what would be our last stop on our tour of Beijing with the China Guide. I was not looking forward to the temple so much after the Temple of Earth was kind of uneventful, but fortunately I was wrong. There were tons of gardens and trees which were gorgeous, but once you got into the actual area where the Temple of Heaven, or rather the Hall of Good Harvest or something sits, it was amazing. It is a huge round building sitting on top of a bunch of steps in the middle of a square courtyard. The courtyard is square because that represents earth, and the temple is circular and above the earth because it represents heaven. The temple is also smaller than the square courtyard because the Chinese believe heaven is smaller than earth. It is the site where Chinese leaders prayed or perhaps still pray once a year for good fortune and harvests for their people. We took group photos here and then walked out the other side. I thought that was all we would see there, but there was so much more to the area. There was another corridor, similar to the long one in the Summer Palace filled with more vibrant painted crossbeams. What was cooler though was that there were people singing and playing all over the place here. There were hundreds of people sitting playing cards, some playing Hacky Sack, others listening to the musicians, and it was spectacular to see Chinese people living their everyday lives. They looked like they were full of live and I loved seeing it. There was a nearby courtyard where music was playing and hundreds of people were just dancing by themselves. A bunch of us jumped in and made a conga line which many of the locals joined in on, and everyone was full of smiles. A lady came over and started dancing with us, showing us how they do it, and it honestly was just about loving life. A photographer came over and took our picture, and this morning we picked up a local newspaper to see this lady and the faces of about 6 SAS students in the paper, amazing. The last thing we did at the Temple of Heaven was stop by a “Public Gym” which was honestly a playground for adults. It was full of these things you would expect to see at a park, like monkey bars and jungle gyms, but there were adults using them to work out. Everyone was so happy to be there, enjoying the fresh air and working out. We really need to have places like that in America. The locals challenged some of the guys to a fitness thing that every SASer failed at, but it was all in good fun. After that we departed and made our final drive to the hotel.
At the hotel, half of the group packed up their stuff to catch an evening flight to Hong Kong. I was on the morning flight, so I did not. I said bye to Jay and Eric, who left that night, then met up with four other friends and went to dinner at a restaurant next door. At this point I was pretty much exhausted so I didn’t eat much or anything good, and after I just went back to the hotel and crashed. We had to be up at 6:30 the next morning, ready to get on the shuttle bus to the airport. We got to the airport, passed through customs, got our tickets, and went through immigration. The good news was that they stamped my passport here, so it is slowly accumulating stamps, visas, and all kinds of good stuff. I want to fill it up of course and get more pages. The flight to Hong Kong was or rather is a little rough, I’m actually typing this up on the flight so I suppose that means I am up to the minute on my blogging now. Because we have quite a few days at sea between Vietnam and India, 7 I think, I’m going to do Hong Kong separately and I’ll post that when I get back from Vietnam. That way it gets spaced out a bit more.
Here are a couple of random thoughts about China, some might be repeats but oh well.
· I like Japan more than China. Japan was orderly, clean, quiet, beautiful, and nice. China is full of people who look like they are more excited to be alive, but it is louder, dirtier, seems more dangerous, and is far less connected with culture than Japan. Between the two, I would visit Japan again in a heartbeat. I think my picture of China would be far different if I had seen more of the outdoors or historic parts of it though.
· If you want to go to Beijing, 5 days is about the right amount of time if you can get up and going early. I feel like we saw 90% of the “must sees” and experienced most of the culture that was accessible to us.
· The Great Wall MUST be on everyone’s bucket list. If you don’t see it you are truly missing out. It is a wonder of the world for a reason and it is truly stunning. Words can’t describe how huge and marvelous it is.
· I’m glad I slept on the wall. It will make a great story for the rest of my life, and even if I was miserable for the night and am still feeling ill from it, I slept under the stars on the Great Wall of China.
· China has a nationwide internet firewall that blocks Facebook, Wikipedia, Blogs, Youtube, and anything else that I might want to look at for fun. It’s interesting that they have gone that far, but those sites aren’t necessary to life and the promote free expression a little too much for the Chinese government.
· There are more people that I ran into in China that spoke passable English, but more that spoke none at all. There were quite a few people, mainly those working in some capacity, that I was able to get directions from, order from, and effectively have broken conversations with. That being said, in Japan, rarely was there anyone who didn’t understand ANY English, whereas in China, some of the most basic words were foreign to them. For example I had a hard time ordering water half the time because they don’t understand the word “Water” which given that it is one of the three things we need to survive, I would think it would be one worth learning.
· While China has the people, resources, and potential to overtake the US in terms of Economics, Politics, Military, or whatever, it is still decades away in terms of organization and attitude.
· I only spent $240 in spending money in China. While the trip I took was obviously way more, I think I did a good job of being a bit stingier.
So that was China. By the time I post this it will probably be the night before, or the morning that I leave for Cambodia which I am super excited for. I have a couple of days in Vietnam too, which I am going to spend having a suit made, getting a cheap massage, and perhaps seeing the Mekong Delta. Cambodia is the site of the Killing Fields and the Temples of Angkor Wat, both of which I am excited to see. I will let everyone know how those and Hong Kong went!
As always if you have any questions, comments, thoughts, or stories for me, please don’t hesitate to email me. Tmalinowsky@gmail.com or Tdmalinowsky@semesteratsea.net
Thanks for reading!
Thomas
"People travel to far away places to watch, in fascination,
the kind of people they ignore at home."
-Dagobert D. Runes
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