Beijing Redux Con Familia

Last week I had my first experience at the Hongqiao Airport. Far superior to Pudong! It's just as shiny, but has so many more food options! If I could count the number of times I've almost starved to death while hanging out at Pudong... (actually, I can - about three. Since I'm a huge cheapskate and almost always take the train or overnight bus. Actually, on that point, perhaps only the Pudong International terminal is dismal).

Anyway, the subway station still smelled new, and the whole experience was bright and shiny. Even the internet was better than Pudong. The only sad part was that I kept getting redirected from the economy class check in to the first class check in where I would be time after time rejected as I'm clearly not a first class passenger. Tedious. Do I look like I have a gold card with my keens and frame pack?

I was on my way to Beijing to meet the family. Mom, Dad and Clayton have finally made the trek to China after numerous passive-aggressive comments about my friends' parents coming over the past few years. The first day we didn't do much beyond eat noodles and then the jet lagged ones passed out while I read for a thousand years. On Thursday we first went to see wax/dead Mao. First Beijing thing that's changed: I forgot a lot of stuff. Second BJ difference: my accent is so understated and Shanghaiesque now. Third BJ difference: so much security! It was crazy. Before, anyone and their sidewalk-pooping child could just wander into Tiananmen whenever they wanted. Now we had to shove our way through a culture-shock inducing mass to be patted down and metal detected. Odd.

Welcome to China, culture-shocked family!:


On to Mao, who has no interest in seeing your handbags, cellphones and other superfluous capitalist items. He is, however, interested in you not leaving your wallet behind. After designating someone to guard your personal belongings, you go through MORE metal detectors! How many death threats does this dead guy get? Then you are given the opportunity to buy 3 kuai flowers which you drop off approximately 45 seconds later in front of a statue. Not even the dead guy. I'm 99% sure these flowers are simply returned to the shop another 45 seconds later to restart the cycle. Such is the life-cycle of mayflies and Mao flowers.

Then, of course, the main event. Mao. Is he real or wax? Will the guards smile? What will happen if I stop moving? Why is he covered in a hammer and sickle and not a Chinese flag? And the most important question of them all: which capitalist communist tsotchke should I buy at the gift shop to commemorate the event?

Next up, the Forbidden City, despite gale force winds (which, while unpleasant, did blow the smog away). Less scaffolding, more red paint than last time.



Got into a chatty jokester of a cab and took my family to the Chinese delicacy that is Hutong Pizza for lunch. Place is the same deliciousness. I impressed myself, and my cabby, by remembering how to get there. My talents are never-ending. Just down the hutong though is the lamentably empty space where Jaime's bar used to be. A moment of silence was had.

After lunch we went to the Kung Fu Show. Pretty shocking that there aren't any competing kung fu performances. It was good, although a it cheesy at times and could have easily done without the ballet bits. But, it's really hard to make kung fu not exciting. It made me miss Xiao Xie who was, (for the record), way more awesome at the majority of the tricks. Especially leopard impressions and random backflips. I was also excited to see the stuff he had taught me featured several times throughout the performance.

Friday morning we woke up nice and early for some Great Wall action. I let my dad be laowai and convince me to book a private car, but forced myself to speak Chinese with the driver the whole 2 hours to Jinshanling to prove I wasn't as laowai as he. We did the Jinshanling to Simatai hike. Still strenuous, but much better weather than last time. Of course the views are to die for. The zipline was way hao wanr again and I manned up and took a video this time. It was disappointing not to spend the night this time around.

Me on the wall. Family pics all on dad's camera:


Wall being awesome:


Pretty sure this wasn't there last time:


Clayton Ziplining:


We had lunch near Simatai. Since it was good Friday, I ordered fish for Ma and Pa. To their credit, they handled the presentation very well, and uncomplainingly picked around bones, eyes, scales etc. However, i do wish I had a photo of the perfectly wonderful toilet my parents resolutely declared to be the "worst bathroom in all of China." Excuse you, but the Flaming Staircase of Death takes that award, although I can't fathom how it didn't make it into that blog post. It was that awful I guess.

We took a short detour to the Olympic stadium on the way back, which was exciting for my pre-Olympic Beijing self.


On Saturday we slept in a but and then went to the hutongs south of Tiananmen for shopping and lunch. Mom needed silk, clearly. Switzerland has doubtless ruined my parent's perception of a good deal. Then we took the subway up to the drum tower. Parents needed coffee. Luckily the drum tower neighborhood is super posh and full of fancy places capable of getting him an espresso. After momentarily considering taking them to Bed, we went to Desserts Cafe because they have that adorable rooftop seating with bell/drum tower and coal hill views.

View from Desserts Cafe:


We probably shouldn't have stopped for coffee because we got to the tower 5 minutes before closing, not enough time to get a ticket and tour. However, like I said, it's a posh neighborhood. We walked down Gulou Dajie to Nanluo Guxiang hutong and window shopped. At one point we found a schoolyard that had forgotten to lock the gates, and Clayton and I played basketball until we got kicked out (Guard: "You two are white. And CLEARLY not students her). I took the fam to Plastered and made sure Clayton got an Obamao shirt.


Next we caught a cab to Beiwai because I wanted to have dinner at The Golden Peacock. We walked though East campus a bit, although not West (too bad!). I was pleased to see that Minzu Daxue Lu remained much the same. My favorite yogurt place was gone, but the dumpling house was still there, and the zhou place. I got nervous about Golden Peacock (I had heard sad rumours!) but it still stands! Tacky signs, long waits and all. 2 hours of potato balls, pinapple rice, deep fried bananas, Dai Jia rice wine, and gads of other deliciousness later, we headed for the hotel.

Nom nom:


I spent the remainder of the evening making awkward friends with old dudes and bar managers via phone trying to find a place for dad to watch MSU in the final four at 6 AM Easter morning. Future note college ball people: Irish Volunteers was a success.

Sunday we went to the Temple of Heaven. Beijing has a 15.5 million population. On this holiday weekend, at least 10 million of them were in the Temple of Heaven. But who should I run into? Hanna and Barbara! Madness! I didn't even know they were in Beijing. Much better pollution conditions than last time I went. Tiantan with a blue backdrop!



Sunday we also went to Wangfujing for tacky tourist shopping, Beijing duck, and scorpions and seahorses on a stick. Because that's what you do in Beijing with tourists.



We took the train Sunday night from Beijing to Shanghai. My first time in 1st class! and my parents' first time sleeping on a train. Minimal culture shock for them, massive luxuriating for me. Soft sleeper is still not worth twice the price of hard sleeper, but I was impressed by the temperature control, individual tvs, and complimentary slippers! Good job, train D313.

Posts about our Shanghai adventures are upcoming.

Simatai Sunrise

I've just realized that I never wrote anything about my trip to the Great Wall, so I figure I ought to do that now before I forget.

We left for the Great Wall on a Saturday morning. The section we went to was part of the Badaling wall (near Simatai), so it was about a 2.5 hour bus ride from school. It was raining when we started out, but as we went along the sun came out, the mists lifted, and it became absolutely beautiful.

We hiked along the wall for about (I don't remember, but I'm thinking/researching the number, I'm going to guess 6)) kilometers (about 3 hours) until we got to the town of Gubeikou. The walk itself was visually stunning, but a lot more exhausting than I would have expected. Clearly the walls were not built with transportation, or even people running back and forth between watchtowers in mind. At times it was incredibly steep, and the stairs could get quite daunting. Since a good part of the wall we were walking on was unpreserved, there would often be just crumbled rubble to scramble over, and once or twice we had to physically scale walls in order to climb through the windows of towers (there were footpaths around these towers, but we're too hardcore/into being nijnas to bother with those). We met a bunch of interesting people along the way, mostly tourists from both China and elsewhere, although the wall was not too crowded. It was littered with people who were willing to sell you anything from t-shirts to bookmarks to beer along the way. After we crossed the drawbridge into the town we walked through the village to the home of one of Ai Laoshi's friends where we ate dinner. The main source of income for these people is clearly corn: we walked through acres of cornfields, and each house had a huge stack of husked corn out front (I think the harvest has just finished, so there was literally tons at each home). This corn buisness was also reflected in the meals we had - there was always delicious cornbread available.

After dinner we hung out at the house until 9, because it's illegal to camp out on the wall, so you have to sneak up under the cover of darkness. It was absolutely freezing. Thank goodness for hot water and penguin mentality, or we never would have survived. Finally someone had the good sense to build a fire, and the penguin huddling moved into a circle. Singing happened. Our hosts went out and got fireworks, and we had a show. It was lovely! They set off the fireworks about 5 feet from where we were standing (just on the other side of the corn pile from the fire huddle), so it probably wasn't incredibly safe, but it was beautiful. There were the little wimpy poppers (which hardly sounded wimpy from that close distance) and also a few big blossoming ones .

At 9 we had to divide into two groups. One group would hike up and sleep on the wall for the night. The other half would sleep in host families houses in the village and then wake up at 4 for a sunrise hike up Simatai, the highest tower in the great wall. As much as I was tempted to actually sleep on the wall, I opted for this second choice, as it sounded like a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I had heard so much about how the Simatai sunrise is a lifechanging experience.

Myself and 4 other girls went down the road to our hosts house. They set us up in a room with a giant heated bed that we all shared. The beds have a furnace underneath them, so the freezing temperatures were absolutely no longer an issue. In fact, I woke up several times extremely hot. All of the houses in the village had pretty much the same style and layout: an L shape around a courtyardish area. The middle of the L was a living room/kitchen, and then there was a bedroom on either side. Most people ate outside in the courtyard that was formed by the building and the corn pile. Here's a picture of a typical house in the village:


Waking up at 4 was difficult. It was cold, early, and pitch black. We began our hike up the wall. It was incredibly trecherous. We had no light, and were feeling our way along a footpath littered with rocks and such. On one side was a steeply climbing slope covered in brambles and thick trees, on the other side an abyss into dark nothingness. Tripping was common. Our guide looked like he was 60-70 years old, and he bounded the whole way up, not even stopping for breath despite the extreme steepness. As we got to the harder parts of the hike, luckily, it started to get a bit lighter. This was absolutely important, as at some points we were quite literally crawling up the slope. So much for switchbacks - the rule of this illegal-to-climb mountain is to grab the tree above you and drag yourself through the mud up to the next tree, because it's a bit too steep to walk. Making it to the top was so worth it though - it was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. I ended up finishing the hike on my own, the group I was with was climbing too slow. As I started to clear the treeline, the view was incredible. I had to stop every once in a while to catch my breath, and to capture the sight of the valley below on camera. At the top we all grabbed spots on the rocks next to the watchtower to settle in and watch the sunrise. The hight and sheer drop to all sides of this tower is extreme. You would think there would be no need for a tower - or wall - there because it's practically unclimbable on the Chinese side without a rappel line. The Chinese though this too - until 8 crazy Mongolians managed to make the climb, kill a bunch of Chinese, take their cows, and get away with it. I couldn't help thinking of those guys on my way up, unassisted like I was by a path and a guide.

Anyways, the sunrise was gorgeous. You could actually see the sun moving up and over the mountains. I took a video, but it hardly does it justice. I understand now why so many people have found that place, and that moment, so inspirational.

And there were so many mountains! American mountain ranges can hardly compare to Chinese ones. I think it's because the Chinese ranges are bigger, more rugged, and, for lack of a better word, spinier. I'm really upset that not many of my pictures came out well. Because of the low light, I needed a really high exposure, but I had no tripod and my hands are not steady.



After the sunrise a handful of us hiked over to the neighboring peak in the direction of the tiger's back ridge for a view back at the watchtower. This peak was a bit lower, but provided an even more amazing view. I really cant even describe it.

The hike back down was just as extreme as going up. We had to use the trees again, literally choosing a tree, falling on it, and then repeating the process all the way down. Our guide was behind those of us in the front on the way down, but eveytime we got to an intersection we would just wait a few minutes for his dog (who made the hike up and has the amusing name of PeePee) to come find us and show us the way. PeePee is the Lassie of China.

Around 8 we settled back into our house's courtyard again for breakfast. Corn zhou, corn bread, boiled eggs. It was delicious. I'm a huge fan of corn zhou, especially with a bit of sugar.

To get down to where our bus was able to drive to, we had to either hike down a trail on the other (China) side of the wall, or take a zip line over a ravine and then a boat to the bus. Clearly I opted for the latter. The zip line was amazing amounts of fun and totally worth the 30 kuai. There really is nothing like zooming over a ravine under the great wall tied to nothing but a rusty wire.

In sum, the Great Wall was gorgeous, and if you get the opportunity to make it out to Simatai, you should absolutely not turn it down. Also, if anyone would like to make it back to the wall to camp out, let me know (because it's still on my to do list).



~L