The Neighbors Part 2

Checking out a Hutong in Beijing

Playing Chinese hackey-sack in the park.

Here comes the second half of the trip...

When I left you last, I was dodging communist guards at 4am at the Peking University. Well, the next day we awoke and headed to the Beijing West Train Station to catch an overnighter to Xi'an. Train stations are a total zoo in China. There are millions of people everywhere on just an average day at the station. You have to line up for the train about an hour early and it starts boarding 45 minutes early. We were booked on the "hard beds" which turned out to be pretty soft and comfortable. There are 6 beds to an open cabin. Everyone is packed together pretty tightly in there and it is a struggle to move through the cars, but everything went along just fine. My main complaint would be that the cabins are a bit smokey as people just go to the sections between cars to smoke. This would be fine except that there are no doors between cars. Also, most people seem to smoke so there are always 4 or 5 guys out there smoking.

We had kind of a wet and wild day in Xi'an. We got in about two hours late at around 9:00 in the morning. Our first task was to tour the army of terra cotta soldiers, advertised there as the "Eighth Wonder of the World". It is a remarkable discovery - an entire army of thousands of soldiers, archers, horses, chariots and more. It was discovered only recently in the 1970's by well-diggers, and is thought to be the most important archaeological find of the 20th century. The idea was that the Emperor knew he would die and go to some underworld, so he wanted to be sure he was buried with his army so he could wreak havoc in the underworld and rule it as well. Some people just never have enough power, I guess. His army was crafted using clay from the area that was poured into life-size man casts and fired. Supposedly, all the soldiers are different - different clothing, facial expressions, etc. This did actually seem to be the case, and I was impressed with the level of detail. I would have to say, though, during the whole tour I was thinking about what a huge waste of man power the whole thing was, having it buried for so many years (2,000) Well, at least, people are finally able to enjoy it today. The Emperor is buried nearby and there is a whole compound where they expect to find a lot more archaeological treasures. The latest news was that they are waiting for the technology to improve to go after digging up the Emperor in his grave.

After terra cotta land, we did a bit of walking around the city and got up on the city wall. We rented some tandem bikes and trekked all the way around the 12 km circumference. There would have been pretty nice views I imagine, except for the smog/cloud/rain that crashed our party. We spent the last half-hour in a dead sprint fighting through the pouring rain to get back to the bike drop-off location. Our clothes were totally drenched which was worrying because we had to catch the overnight train in a few hours and had no hope of drying off. We tried, unsuccessfully, to stay dry and still see some parts of the city on foot. We got a hold of some souvenir dry t-shirts and underwear and tried to find a taxi back to the train station. Morale was getting low here and we were soaking wet screaming at taxis that obviously didn't want to pick us up. We finally got into a makeshift taxi that was a motorcycle with a little shed like contraption on the back of it. We didn't really care, though, we were crammed in there and out of the rain and off our feet, finally.

We got into the "northern capital" (literal meaning of Beijing) early the next morning. Again, tons of people there, and it was off to the Great Wall for my dad and I, as the marathon tour continued. We caught the bus to Badaling from the downtown area and arrived in about an hour. I wanted to see the wall at Badaling because it is very steep here with dramatic dips and climbs as it rushes across the mountainside. It is also one of the more crowded sections of the wall, and we were not surprised to see tons of people climbing steep rock staircases to get to scenic lookouts. The vendors were absolutely cutthroat here. They greeted you at the top offering to sell you some tiny plaque saying that you made it. They were all ready to carve your name into it as well with an electric engraver. There was also a huge Beijing Olympics 2008 sign up on the hillside that looked like it had been there for some time.

That night, our cousin Jessica flew into Beijing and we met up with her and went out to eat Hot Pot. There is a pretty similar dish in Korea (which I just ate today for the first time), called "shabeu shabeu". Basically, the idea is there is a hot pot of oil and broth in the middle of the table and you throw a bunch of things into it like vegetables, mushrooms, meats, seafoods, noodles and the like. Let it cook for a little bit and then you scoop some out into your bowl. I wasn't a big fan of eating out in China because I can't read the menus like I can in Korea. Chinese seems a lot harder to read because even my sister who is an avid studier of the language could not read a lot of things on the menus (at least that was my impression). So, whenever we would go out I felt a bit like the Corfiot Italians and could not do much to help with the ordering. Of course, whenever there is an English menu, ordering is a hilarious endeavor as the dish names are so savagely translated. The dishes are named things like "the tomato touches the egg", or "the broccoli burns the rape" or "fresh bulb lilycelery west fruit in eyes".

After the dinner, which made me pretty sick, the youth went out to see one of the famous bar districts of Beijing. After taking the stage at one bar with "Wonderwall" and "American Girl", we were off to the club scene again and spent a few hours at a very trendy BananaClub. While the hot dog vendors were aplenty, we used some of our newly acquired Chinese phrases to meet some of the local girls and we wowed them with our best eurotrash moves.

I flew out the next day in the afternoon, with my parents flying out a few hours later. Swine Flu screening was in full effect and we were all careful not to sneeze or cough through the security check points. It was nice to get back to a more familiar land in Korea and I had a nice talk on the bus down to Daegu with an older woman who loves to travel. She had just been in Turkey and seen the ancient underground cities there - carved into volcanic rock. I definitely want to check that out some day.

Well, that's about all for that journey. Tonight our friends from the Northwest are coming in to Daegu to stay for an insane week. Also, I am going to Seoul tomorrow to meet my sister who is also coming in for a week. So, it's all hosting over here and it's been a busy month. Looking forward to the summer - it's starting to get hot and humid. We are sweating it up in our police uniforms at work. Thanks for reading! Take it easy on down the trail...