Ich bin ein Beijinger!

Happy Qing Ming Jie, or Grave Sweeping Festival!  This is a yearly holiday where Chinese people go to visit and clean up the graves of their ancestors.  It's a quiet thing without much heraldry, complete with Chinese people telling me "I'm going to visit my grandfather" and leaving me awkwardly wondering if they means a living or deceased one.  So I went to Beijing.

The combination of transportation got me to the capital around 2am.  My cheap flight arrived at some small military airport where long-cloaked guards escorted us across the tarmac on foot.  Combined with the walk through the deserted streets and some dark alleys to my hostel, it was a fairly atmospheric way to begin a long weekend in the old communist stronghold.

Beijing is sort of the opposite of Hong Kong.  It's this flat city that extends forever in all directions.  If Chinese cities are judged by the number of ring roads then Beijing is the grand-daddy of them all with six ring roads.  As for the people living just at ring road six, do you really say you're from Beijing?  At the centre of the city is the Forbidden City, a monstrous complex of imperial palaces that you enter from Tiannamen gate (easy to recognize since it has a giant portrait of Mao on it).  The palaces are very impressive, and reminded me that China has always been a very large and powerful place, not just recently.

I rented a bike (apparently this is all I know how to do anymore) because the city is incredibly spread out.  By the end of touring around I had found some really nice spots: the esplanade leading up to the Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium with its many kite flyers; some hipster hutongs (narrow streets that constitute "Old Beijing"); and a small lake lined with bars and what's that?  Chinese acoustic guitar?  Who knew?

I found it interesting just how many people tried to rip me off in Beijing.  I guess Sichuan is just more honest, as I usually don't have to negotiate a price for many things.  A bowl of rice costs one yuan (about 15 cents) and no one has ever tried getting more.  But in Beijing, on two ocassions I was asked to pay an amount for lunch that was higher than what I chose in the menu, so we had to open up the menu and do the little dance.  I was given the wrong change twice, the second time I heard the daughter of the lady say "you gave him the wrong change" in Chinese.  But the worst is buying any tourist item (I picked up some Mao memorabilia to decorate the apartment, of course), you are given an exorbitant price.  It's difficult to understand if Chinese people think we're stupid or if people like the "charm" of bartering.  But 45 yuan for postcards (that's about a week's worth of lunches) isn't reasonable to anyone.  I offered 5.  She took it.  I still probably paid too much.

 

Anyway, that was all before I visited the Great Wall.  Beijing was awesome but they don't call it Great Beijing.  The Wall was definitely the highlight.  I admit I probably have enough Wall pictures for one of those picture-a-day calendars.  Maybe even two (his and hers!).  But climbing up the hill and to the top of your first tower, and looking to the horizon and seeing the string of stone zigzagging across the hills, well it's pretty iconic.  The Gubeikou section that I hiked is way off the tourist radar and is neat because the Wall has been pulverized or covered in dirt but it's still there.   The towers have seen better days but look like something out of an Indiana Jones movie which is cool.  Though easy to access from the Chinese side, the "Mongol horde" side of the Wall (north side) is still usually a 10-20 foot drop, so even after 500 years without maintenance the thing is still doing its job.  Sometimes you walk beside the wall, sometimes being very careful when climbing the surprisingly steep brickwork.  Always felt a bit nervous walking on the Mongolian side.  Times change but, well, you never know.

I hiked onward to the Jinshanling section, which has been restored to the classic wall shape we all know and love.  There is a pass at Jinshanling, a low point between two mountains that would be most susceptible to an attack.  It's interesting to see how the structures are designed and fortified to hold the pass.  And they did hold it for quite some time.  But the Wall did fall, which is pretty crucial to Chinese history.  But I think it was an inside job.  It always is.  Probably for the best though, can you imagine how pissed off the builders would be when all of a sudden the enemy had planes?

Met some sort of Chinese photo club who were carrying several tens of thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment.  Why bother selling cameras in North America when you see how many you can sell in China?  It is a little shaming just how many pictures I suffered through for them, but they did give me a ride back to Beijing.  At night we "ganbei"ed a few times (when the Chinese drink their 3% beer it's expected that you down the glass every time you cheers someone - it gets very messy) and then woke up early to see the sunrise.

This short week isn't all roses since I'm making up most of the classes from Monday and Tuesday.  Classes were actually made up on the weekend.  This explains why most students weren't actually excited about a 2-day break, since it is in reality just a shifted weekend.  We're learning about loanwords in English, and it's been going surprisingly well.  They go especially bananas when we talk about words from China, like kung-fu.  Did you know that brain-wash comes to English from Chinese?  Decided not to explain that one to my students....

Is this a long post?  Sorry!