They say you can see the Great Wall of China from space.
Whoever they is didn't observe the world from afar on a typical smog ridden day in the Red Jungle. As I landed from my bird's eye view from my rectangular airplane window, I saw another wall, the dense gray smog and finally the ground as we thudded to a skittering stop, welcome back to Beijing, the great capital of the industrial kingdom.
The plan, conquer Beijing in three days and the coastal German beer town, Qingdao, for two.
We landed just in time for dinner, and since our relative isolation of Zhengzhou deprives us of most things Western, including my favorite, cereal (which kills me, I can certainly tell you), we decided to indulge ourselves with the capital's finest offerings. Wood-fired pizza and Belgian beer. I reasoned the hefty yuan price as solace for my occasional homesickness. Zhengzhou's closet is Pizza Hut, which offers more Asian cuisine than saucy pizza. I haven't dared.
Being the usual organizer of all things travel, I spearheaded the trek. I knew the perfect place, after all, I had lived in Beijing for two and a half months two summers before. Did I remember it? Sure, I confidently reassured my companions.
I didn't though, as I walked three strides ahead trying to peer around the corner for reassurance, I realized I hadn't ever been to our destination, the TREE, which was becoming more elusive with each city stride. We walked for hours, 3 1/2 to be exact, through the dark lonely alleys and unfamiliar streets, past a drunk foreigner peeing between cars, which was foul. She wasn't a 3 year-old Chinese toddler squatting on the streets spreading her split pants, which is all too usual. By then, it was 1 a.m. and we needed that pizza, just as I needed my dignity. I pride myself on my travels, sidetracked or not, they are (almost) always accomplished.
Then it began to rain, thick cold droplets. I had promised Belgian beer, but really any liquor would do at this point, my companions prodded. No, I said stubbornly, I didn't want to give up. It seemed like the black omen that had followed all of our plans for a destination. It had been something only slightly smaller than a miracle that we had managed to escape Zhengzhou for the holiday. We were damned if that would happen.
We hadn't intended on visiting Beijing during the first week of October, also known as the Golden Week, a time when normal life ceases and the population of China does a big swap. It's been compared to the travel congestion during Thanksgiving in the U.S., if you magnify that to a country the size of 1.3 billion, give or take a few million. Chaos naturally reaches epic proportions.
We found out three days too late that our original destination of Urumqi, the wild West of China had been sold out. The province, Xinjiang, promised adventure, if not a little controversy. Google the region in the U.S. and you'll find mention of the riots between the government and its dissenting Muslim population, the Uighurs. Facebook restriction was just one result of the sparring. Yet, the land holds a gold dollar for China, beyond the religious underpinnings, there's most importantly oil fields, desserts, mountains, lakes, and for tourists, the Silk Road and even the chance to stay in a yurt. I was excited. Yet, each class of China's train system, the soft sleepers, hard sleepers, soft seats, hard seats and the no seat option of a standing ticket, bought. Though, anyone who can stand for 33 1/2 hours must be devoid of feeling pain and suffering, I swear.
Instead, I was tromping around the urban jungle of Beijing, soaking, in search of pizza. The dark angel of travel had descended. Only at 2 in the morning did we find pizza, not at the mysterious TREE, of course. To my frustration, Beijing had changed in my memory. Sanlitun, the infamous night district, still could be spotted from afar in the night neon glow with green, red, purple, yellow trees weeping in the colors of the electronic rainbow, I hadn't forgotten that, but as it was turning out, my trek back in my memory was shrouded greatly. Beijing had changed and so had I.
Then, the next morning, like a gift from the blessed Monkey King of old, powerful China, the smog parted and the clearest blue sky I've ever seen on a Beijing day arrived.
Smog? What smog? For all I knew, we were in Iowa on a perfect, crisp fall day. I could even feel the cool wind breeze.
Beijing certainly had changed.
I was giddy with the fresh air, Fall. I had missed the last season when I skipped hemispheres last summer and I was ready to seize it, though the traditional accomplices of football, vivid kaleidoscopic changing leaves, pumpkin cravings and extreme Halloween extravaganza would be missing.
We started the day with Beijing's most defining monument, Tiananmen Square and its neighbor, the Forbidden City. Staring out upon the world's largest public square, Tianamen, Mao's portrait still hangs on the blood red walls of the Palace with an unchanged stoic look, apparently the people's opinion still hadn't changed either. Ask most Chinese. He is still the beloved dictator and most likely always will be. Homework answers assure me of this. "Who is the great leader that saved China?" "Mao Zedong was the perfect leader because he was fearless and everyone liked him." The masses of the Golden Week equally loved him as they snapped their Nikons in timely fashion, peace and Mao, oh the great man. We followed the herd inside the gates, a few feet from the life size portrait and emerged into the red majesty that is the Forbidden City. Kept apart from the world for 500 years, the well preserved palace is one of the largest and most mysterious in the world. Eunuchs presided as servants and upwards of a 1,000 or more concubines kept the emperor quite busy in his off time. The emperor who marched the imperial family up north, Zhu Di, to its perch in Beijing now is known as a man that held his chopped off penis in a box next to him, at all times, in his palace and his travels at sea. He ruled a tough land, defending the Mongols to the North while simultaneously building his dream playhouse of the Forbidden City.
We moved on quickly, as a Beijinger of before, I had already had my tour of the palace anyway. Luckily my companions didn't feel the need to pay the 60 kuai ticket price to see the snaking walled interiors either. After a refueling of dumplings, we set our sights on Jingshan Park. A green space that takes advantage of a hill that overlooks the majestic gold roofed maze-like wonder of the Forbidden City. As the sun set, I couldn't believe the magic of it all. It's vistas like this that make you appreciate the moments of life abroad, even if it is broken with a phlegm hack, which is all too often here in China.
Like travel so often does to a soul after many days away, our time in Beijing seemed to blur together, but each morning was dually noted as an azul sky like no other before. We ate the famous Peking duck, a necessity in the capital, we rode the subway from one end of the city to another, we shopped for fake goods, ate meals from food served only on a stick or napkin and felt the good life of expats in China. We could live grandly or skimp frugally. Unlike so many, we had the ability to transcend. It was then that we found the evasive Tree, of course. Belgian beers, yes please, I'll have three.
I couldn't, of course, re-visit Beijing without a trip to the Olympic venues. They were high priority on any Chinese tourist's BJ destination list and especially mine. Beijing wasn't the same and either was I, but what about the Bird's Nest? I smiled with anticipation, I had timed our day's plan so that we would arrive exactly at dusk to catch the sunset (again, that wonderful blue sky?!) and the see the change in the venues as they lit up in their brilliant blue and orange twinkle.
While there, among the hoards, I noticed Mickey and Minnie roaming about in overstuffed costumes. This was not part of my Olympic experience. The five anime-like mascots, known as the Fuwas, had been replaced with American imported Disney tycoons.
But, I had to get my picture with them. At one time during my youth, I was a part of the Mouseketeers Club. Not of Brittany Spears fame, but Carol Spooner's Dance Corner, oh yeah, that big time. I had the Mickey ears, tap shoes, the red polka dot dress and a voice that could barely squeak my name for the onstage Mickey Mouse Roll Call.
If anything, this picture would merge my life from long ago past to the present, I waited in turn after the young boy of 10 and smiling big, I wedged my body between the two mice. It was fine until I realized with horror that I was expected to pay dividends of 10 kuai. Disney did not need my petty cash, I reasoned. Plus, in embarrassment, I never would have volunteered myself for that had I known there was a fee, I dashed, like the immature version of the 10 year old that went before me.
I lost my friends for a moment, getting engulfed in the sea of Chinese tourists. "Hello," I squeaked over my Chinese cell phone like my Mickey Mouseketeer voice of my youth, "yeah, I'm still here." Though, we all knew, it was time to go.
We departed as the sun dipped below the skyline and we headed to the train station, the most dreaded portion of our trip. Transport in the hot box of misery with the masses.
I've now suffered three different train rides in China, only one was the soft bunker. It was from Beijing to Inner Mongolia, my first one. Imagine a closed closet with six bunk beds, three atop, tightly fit side by side, each with a thin, but measurable pad. After a full day's ride in solace, I didn't understand what the hoopla of train pain was. I felt great, I had even drooled a little on my pillow from my day's nap. So on the ride back, I opted for the much cheaper hard seat. Over the 12 hour ride, I had maybe slept 3 hours through the night. In the open cabin of hard seats, my train companions never stopped staring, muttering or pointing. "Hallow!" This word never changes in pronunciation nor its sing-songy trance that every Chinese person uses to utter it. So when the older man beside us offered a shot of baijo, the diesel rice alcohol I mentioned before, my travel companion knocked back more than a few shots without restraint. What else could one do? It's no accident that vendors sell the potent liquor five or few steps outside the departing train doors. In the purgatory of a Chinese hard seat, one must remember Sanity and Survival.
My third voyage, solo, 20 hours, only reinforced that. For these reasons, I greatly feared what the National Holiday would bring.
Yet the fact that we had even been able to purchase train tickets from Beijing to Qingdao was a miracle in itself.
When do you want leave, our hostel helper in Beijing asked. The third, we responded, devoid of emotion, let alone anxiety, even though we knew we were gambling with the likes of the Chinese bureaucracy in trying to leave on such short notice. Despite the blue skies of Beijing, the black angel of travel had been hovering over our heads for long enough not to forget.
"TOMORROW NIGHT? Are you crazy?" he replied with perfect English.
Um, we shrugged our shoulders, yes?
His brief phone conversation which again revealed that it's so much easier to conduct travel plans through the mother tongue surprised him more than us. He exhaled a big cheer, then shook our hands in congratulations, I believe he looked more shell shocked then I've ever seen any Chinese before as he said, "WOW, I cannot believe it. 4 hard seat tickets for you tomorrow night."
Except, we only had a one-way ticket to Qingdao. Not return. Apparently as I understand, each departing station holds 90% of the tickets leaving its station. So if you were departing from Qingdao, after arriving from Beijing, you'd still have to wait until you arrived in that city and pray that not all the tickets were sold out.
Our hostel helper warned, remarking about Qingdao's drinking draw, "Remember, tickets are not like beer, this is not fun games. Tickets first, beer next."
We concocted a strategy for the hard seats. Wine and beer. Baijo still wasn't my speed, even if whiskey had crept into my preferred rack of guises.
While idly waiting in the station, I had time to think, too much time while awaiting my fate. That's when the magnitude of the masses of China truly sinks in. For some time, I had been staring at the mini wooden benches a family of four was grasping in anticipation. It was obvious, they had standing tickets. Undoubtedly, the mini benches would be used as temporary hard seats of their own in the crowded aisles of the train car, that is, if one got a spot. Sharp elbow manuring and proper body jostling was key to the success of a premium space or you would end up leaning against a hard seater and ticketers (like me) didn't like that. I knew.
On my one quest to find the w.c. as the bathroom is called here (the watering closet), I felt like I has tromping through a deserted war zone. Bodies filled every available space and arms, legs and heads seemed contorted in ways that seemed unattached to a living human. I watched as only an occasional head bobbed showing signs of life.
We arrived to Qingdao, elated. It had been a long night, but we had a full beach-beer day ahead of us.
In China, everyone drinks one beer, or a cheaper imitation of it, Tsingtao. It's known as China's first beer and Qingdao is its birthplace, thanks to the Germans that settled in the seaside village in the early 1900s, it was the Tsingtao beer factory that was their last installment before getting kicked out as a result of their devastating loss in WWI and the consequential Versailles Treaty relinquishing the port town to another owner. The Japanese soon replaced the Germans until the end of WWII, but kept the factory and its German architecture. Tsingtao, not only survived, but thrived. Over the years, the Japanese were forced to release the port and its belongings, including the German influenced cathedrals, naval bases and its golden brew, Tsingtao.
Today Qingdao is a microcosm of beers. On Beer Street, found directly out the exit of the Tsingtao factory, one can sample coffee beer (tastes like watered down powder Nescafe, not stout), stout (delicious), tang beer (as I call it, tastes similar), green tea beer (didn't try it, but can only imagine), raw beer and beer in a bag. The last being my favorite oddity. I have always been a fan of wine in a bag or even a box, but this was wildly different. The bag was a thin shopping sack and required a straw to sip its contents. Slap the bag was out, unless one wanted a shower of raw beer. We sipped our day's end with a bag, each day. I couldn't help but always repeat myself, "Ah, why couldn't I have lived by the sea in Qingdao?" as I plucked at a fresh mussel with my chopsticks.
Qingdao seemed like a weird dream filled with beer bags, ocean vistas and the best seafood you can capture in China. Like I so often do, I wished for time to stop and the National Holiday to stay put.
It passed before we could do all we wanted, arguably I had managed to escape the "real world", but I still had obligations in China, such as college English classes to teach in two days time. We boarded the express train (we had gotten so lucky again!) that ushered us back to our working life as we rode back to Beijing like a bullet and flew back to Zhengzhou.
I shut my eyes and started mentally plotting my winter holiday plans. Vietnam? Laos? Bali?
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