Beijing

on the wall
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I am sitting in the Beijing airport waiting to fly to Shanghai. One of the many luxuries of traveling with Mike is that he has his laptop so I can write anywhere. One of the drawbacks is that he insists on getting to the airport hours early so I now have two hours before our flight departs, plenty of time to catch up on my updates.

We spent the last week in Beijing and after seven nights here we are both very ready to leave. I have never been in a city quite like this- it is pretty mind-boggling. The first thing we noticed upon arrival was the “fog”, a layer of yellow-brown mist that hangs in the air. It almost hurts to breathe, my eyes burn, and all of the cars are covered with a layer of dust, I can’t imagine what is now covering my lungs. It hasn’t been “foggy” our entire stay though- we were lucky enough to have an afternoon of rain and the next day we wore up to clear blue skies, which lasted for two days before returning to the bleak mist.

the wall
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There is a ton to do in Beijing. Mike is a sight-seeing freak, and sight seeing is one of my least favorite things to do. He did more of the things that tourists are supposed to do and reported back to me. The number one sight to see in Beijing is the Forbidden City, an emperor’s palace in the center of the city. I saved it for the last day and it was just as I expected- beautiful, huge, but so full of Chinese tour groups, all of them wearing matching Nike hats following their leader’s flag of the same color, that as soon as I got in the place I felt the desperate need to get out. I did walk through the entire thing, though and I even went into the special exhibit of clocks that had been given to the emperor (there were way fewer tourists in there). I think that even Mike may have been over the Forbidden City sight seeing after spending a couple of hours there with me.

more of the wall
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On our second day in Beijing we went to Tiananmen Square and paid our respect to Chairman Mao. We lined up with all of the hundreds of Chinese and walked (four abreast only) into the Mausoleum. From afar I thought that his head was glowing but when I got up close I saw that it was just illuminated from above and his waxy embalmed skin just made it look like he is glowing. They rushed us through and out where we could buy all sorts of Mao kitsch, Mike got four watches that were pretty funny, I just looked.

beijing by bike
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I think the best part of that day was that we rode bikes. Beijing is huge, enormous, and traffic is absolutely atrocious, unlike anything I have ever seen. One night we were in a taxi cab going to meet friends and traffic was gridlocked so badly that our driver turned off the car. At that point we got out and walked- everyone on busses was doing the same. It is just impossible, at certain times of the day, to move from one part of the city to another in an automobile. So bikes are the way to go, a bit scary at first but as long as you just do as the locals do all is fine.

the forbidden city (this is really all i could see!)
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They have an entire lane for bikes, as wide as the car lanes. In some places the bike lane is separate from the street by a row of trees but on the bigger streets it’s all the same. The sketchiest part about riding in Beijing is the busses. The general rule in traffic, whether you are in a car, on a bike, or on foot, seems to be if someone is coming toward you get out of the way quick- it doesn’t matter who has the green light, if they want to go through the intersection and you happen to be wanting to do the same thing, get out of the way. So the problem with the busses is that the bus stop is usually to the right of the bike lane and if you are riding in the bike lane and a bus needs to stop they will pull right in front of you. Likewise, if they want to pull out of the bus stop they will just go. Somehow, though, as crazy as it is, it all works. I learned very quickly to just follow the other cyclists and use them as my protection. As much as the cars and busses want to get through the intersections sometimes they just have to wait and they do, very impatiently, honking their horns the whole time. So as ridiculously precarious as it is, because of the terrible traffic and great distances (Beijing blocks are like a kilometer long, no joke), biking Beijing is the best way to go. Oh yeah, and to rent a bike for the day? Less than 3 dollars!

the wall really was cool.
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Another very cool thing about bikes in Beijing is that there are so many of them that you barely have to lock them. My bike came equipped with a rear wheel locking device- all I had to do was insert the key and turn the lock and the wheel was locked. Brilliant, I thought. So since I am here, alive and in one piece I’d have to say that riding around Beijing was one of the highlights of my time here.

The other highlight, and one of the highlights of my trip so far, was our trip to the Great Wall. I have always wanted to see the Great Wall of China and now that I have I truly feel that a part of my life is complete. And it did not let me down. We picked the best possible day we could have to go there. We woke up to brilliant blue skies and crisp, clean air. After a three hour drive (we hired a driver, Mr. Leo who owns the everything shop right down the street from our hotel), we arrived at Jinshanling, the starting point of our 10 kilometer hike. As soon as we got on the wall I was blown away. It was incredibly steep, so steep that the stairs were almost vertical! And the views were awesome. We could see the mountains all around and the wall that seemed to never end. Our driver planned to meet us at Simatai, four hours after he left us. I was sure that we would be there much sooner- 10 kilometers isn’t very far but when I saw how steep it was I then understood why it would take so long. The great thing about walking from one part to another was that after a short while we almost had the wall to ourselves- there were just a few other hikers along the way and, of course the occasional hawker selling everything from T-shirts to puffs of opium.

and this is shanghai, im telling you, it's CRAZY
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The Simatai section of the wall, although it was full of tourists, was pretty incredible. With 70 degree inclines in some sections, it made for a great end to our already tiring walk. Of course I had to go to the top, I am just that kind of girl (they didn’t call me HILLary for nothing). I would climb a set of stairs, thinking it was the last, go through a tower only to be faced with another set of stairs. This went on for at least 45 minutes. Finally, we got to the top, where they just wouldn’t let us go any farther because the wall was in disrepair. It was an incredibly satisfying experience, legs aching, on top of the Great Wall of China looking back across the kilometers that I had walked. A day not to be forgotten.

china life.
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Coming down was quite interesting and exhilarating too. We had heard about the “flying fox”, a zip line that goes from the wall to the parking lot and of course we had to try it. So, for 5 dollars (35 Yuan) we got a big thrill. They gave us climbing harnesses and when it was our turn to go (Mike went first), they just hooked us on to the line with a caribiner and pushed us off the ledge. Immediately we were dangling in the air, zooming down the line.  Mike says it was at least 300 feet up but I don’t think it was quite that high. I don’t know if it really matters how high it was, it was pretty terrifying, but fun. Especially when, after zipping over rocks and water, I landed safely on the other side. Mike videotaped the whole thing but I was way too scared to think about taking my camera out. Sometimes, though, when you’re in China at the Great Wall you just have to do things like that. And it is always good to get home and be able to write about them.

we're pretty sure this one says "do not bring your car bomb here"?
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I spent a lot of time in Beijing just walking around and looking at things. I am fascinated with seeing how people live, I like walking through neighborhoods and peering into doorways. Beijing is full of small streets called Hutong, where people live and eat and it is easy to spend hours wandering around. One of my favorite things about the city is that many of the houses don’t have bathrooms so on every block there is at least one public toilet. Most of them are downright disgusting, holes in the floor, no doors on the partitions, urine on the floor, but some of them are pretty nice. Luckily they have a star rating system for the toilets but it’s pretty easy to tell just from the smell outside what the experience is going to be like.

I did a couple of other interesting things in Beijing- in a city where pretty much no one speaks English I got a haircut and two massages. The haircut was pretty funny- I really needed one and one day as I was walking I came across a salon that was blasting Chinese rock music. The kids out front had wild clothes and spiky 80’s style hairdos (crimped and everything!), so I took my chances and went in. I asked how much and they said fifteen (they spoke enough to tell me that). Then I pantomimed that I wanted just about 2 inches and a straight cut. They washed my hair then sat me down and he started chopping away. Not exactly straight, I almost have bangs now but I was thinking about getting them anyway. The end result wasn’t so bad, luckily I really don’t care about my hair do too much, especially while traveling in China. And the whole thing only set me back two dollars.

My massages were also very cheap, and great. After our great wall adventure I was really, really sore (I am super out of shape right now and it hurts). Right down the street from us is a massage place- the first day we were here they handed us a card with some prices we were pretty sure that it was only a certain kind of massage but upon further investigation I found out that the place was, indeed, a real Chinese massage place. I even got to have all of my clothes on for the full body massage (70 minutes, $8). It was so good that the next day I went back for a foot massage (1 ½ hours, $6), which ended up being an entire foot/leg massage that was fabulous.

So the adventures in Beijing are now over and we are flying to Shanghai. Our hotel in Beijing was adorable, very pleasant, but in Shanghai we are staying at the Peace hotel, a famous old hotel where Noel Coward wrote Private Lives (still have to read that one), and whose past guests include Charlie Chaplin and George Bernard Shaw. What a treat, all of these fancy places. I like travel Mike’s way, I’m kind of getting used to it…