The Neighbors

I've returned recently from an 8-day trip through the rapidly developing metropolises of China, along with my parents and sister (who is currently living in Beijing through study abroad). The trip is only 1000 km from Seoul/Incheon International Airport, but Beijing is really a completely different world than Korea. Entering Beijing at night via taxi, we witnessed large beautiful skyscrapers and wide, straight, well-lit highways. Downtown Beijing is filled with massive, gorgeous hotels and shopping malls. That first night, Saturday, my sister Kearney met us downtown at our hotel and we went out to the touristy-market to drink coconuts and eat fresh deep-fried scorpions that you can watch squirming on sticks.

The first thing I noticed about Beijing is how many people there are, just about everywhere. I guess this is no surprise with the size of the population. It is much more common to see foreigners there, but most of the people are Chinese tourists. They cover wide pedestrian streets and huge city squares. They are in and out of all the western clothing stores as well as the Chinese clothing stores. It was funny to see all the Chinese brands that were such obvious knock-offs of western brands such as Abercrombie, Nike, etc. Also, lots of spitting in China, though it is pretty common in Korea. Kearney says that some people will spit out things on the dinner table while they are eating. I am glad not to have witnessed that. Another thing is cheap, good beer. Tsingtao and the Beijing-local Yanjing beers are superior to the Korean varieties. German-created lagers that go for about .75 cents a pint. Unfortunately, the refrigeration in most of the stores is not very cold, so you may be drinking some warm beers.

Our first hotel was the Hilton downtown which is maybe the nicest hotel I have ever stayed at. The bathroom was amazing and had sliding doors all around it so that it could be opened up into a breezeway. The room even had an iPod speaker setup. The poor and the very rich seem to exist in close contact without much friction here. As far as being a tourist here, our experience was that everyone is a scammer. Just about every price, even on restaurant menus, had to be negotiated because it was often way overpriced. People will come up to talk to you and try to get to know you - even offer you a visit at their rural village, only to end up dragging you into a tea shop for some tea ceremony scam. One day, we were getting tired of walking and wanted to try out a rickshaw to take us a few blocks (blocks in Beijing are huge, like 5 times the size of normal blocks). We got in two rickshaws and told the guy where to go, he said 3 yuan. Upon passing the desired location, we were screaming and pointing to stop there, but they reassured us that they could get closer. Now we got a bad feeling about this. We go through a hu-tong (a traditional Beijing neighborhood with tight, labryinth streets). Dodging people on tight streets at high speeds was pretty fun until they stopped short of the main road and said we had to walk the rest of the way and that we were very close. That was a complete lie, we rode way out of the way and it would take us 20 minutes to get back to where we wanted to be. We went to pay the 3 yuan, but magically the driver learned how to say "hundred" and was charging us 300 yuan. What a crock! - we thought, and started walking away, upon which they were aggressively chasing us and yelling. We handed over 10 yuan to each driver to avoid a violent mugging and were forever untrusting of the Chinese after that. My experience in Korea has been that everyone wants you to leave with a good impression of their country. Thus, people are very nice and helpful and do whatever they can to positively influence your impression. In China, there seems to be little regard for this. The people preying on tourists where we were, were boldfaced liars and connived to squeeze the last yuan out of you. Now, per person Korea is a much wealthier country, so you might argue that the Chinese are just scraping to get by with so much competition from a huge workforce. My impression of the Chinese merchants has always been untrusting though, from questionable Chinese restaurants in the states to fortifying everything in the food supply with melamine and MSG. In every interaction, they just seemed to have an air of deception and superiority that was off-putting and did not make me want to interact with them at all.

While we're in the negatives, I feel obligated to discuss the Chinese food. We had some of the most overseasoned, greasy, oily, overpriced food imagineable in China. Everything from noodle dishes to sauteed vegetables to fried rices to soups, they were all obviously overdone with MSG and contained so much oil. I rarely felt good after eating a meal and am still recovering a week later from that stuff. We brought along Red Clover Herb to block the effects of MSG and we could definitely tell the difference between when we took it before a meal and when we forgot to. There were a couple good things that we had to eat, but I'm sorry Peking Duck was not one of them. We were so excited to feast on this huge duck that they brought out after roasting for like 40 minutes and making us starve. They took it back in the kitchen to carve it and brought out to small plates of it. I thought - okay, bring it out in small portions so we can pace ourselves - but the only other duck meat brought out later was the head sliced in half. My dad took one half thinking it was a drumstick and ate out some of the brains - unknowingly. That was the highlight of the meal, not the food. It was like the scene from some comedy (maybe National Lampoon's) where they get ready to cut this huge, glorious looking bird and when he cuts into it the whole thing deflates.

The good foods that we experienced were the dumplings (which are probably better than Korea's) and the breads and street foods. The breads were all pretty good and make a good breakfast with an egg and lettuce and MSG sauce inside. As far as the street foods, there was pineapple on a stick everywhere and coconuts to drink, which is great in a country where you can't trust the water and there are no drinking fountains or water filters anywhere. There are also steamed yams, fried squids (better in Korea), steamed corn on the cob and every animal part you can imagine on a stick. Thank God there were also some Korean restaurants there too, otherwise we would have been in some real trouble.

Sunday was our first day and we rented bikes and rode around the Beihai Lake area which has lakes and parks and restaurants and many things. Traffic is wild in Beijing and we got to experience this first hand on our bikes. Some roads are huge with enormous bike lanes - like 2 car lanes wide. The smaller roads have no lanes and cars parked on the side which force you to duck out into the car traffic. Intersections are always insane too as pedestrians are always crossing, even on red lights, creating lots of congestion. We managed to survive the traffic and see a few things, so it was a nice day for us. On the next day, we got up early and went to a big park to partake in some tai chi with the locals. There were many people in the park at 6am - this is how Beijing wakes up. People were doing all types of tai chi and other synchronized dancing/movement. There was also people playing badminton and other racquet sports, ring-around-the neck toss, Chinese chess and yelling battles. My favorite was the Chinese version of hackey-sack, where you use your soccer body parts to keep a shuttlecock-like contraption with feathers up in the air as long as possible with a group. I jumped in a few of these circles and had a good time with it. Inside the park was the Temple of Heaven, a famous imperial temple, so we saw that as well. We also saw the Forbidden City that day. It's just plain big. A lot of history there, of course, so it's a must see. That evening we met up with Kearney and her boyfriend Ben and saw the symphony at the new performing arts center - an amazing glass dome building. The dome is surrounded by a huge reflection pool all the way around so that you have to walk underneath it to enter the building. It was an interesting performance to say the least, featuring composers from all different regions of China.

The next day, we moved out to Beijing University to rent a room in Kearney's dorm. We met up with her program coordinator and made nice for a while. It was interesting to hear about the many facets of her program which include a lot of far trips and homestays. They also have a karaoke/singing component in which they had to memorize a Chinese song and perform it karaoke-style. Unfortunately, we missed these performances. She set us up with some Peking Opera that evening, which is famous for the extremely high-pitched singing women. I thought it was actually a really cool vibe. My only complaint was that it was too short. The stories are a little strange and funny and the singing is really interesting. There was a lot of cool acrobatic stuff but that kind of got old for me.

At the Summer Palace, the next day, we got a family portrait taken with us all wearing traditional Chinese clothing. Also, we rented a little motorboat and went out on the lake to explore all the little canals and coves. That night I went out with Kearney's crew to one of the international clubs near the University. With all you can drink with the cover charge, the place was jumping and we were pleased to meet some of the prettiest girls in China. Just when I thought it couldn't get any better, I found out there was a Mexican restaurant upstairs and it was pretty damn good. Somehow all 5 of us ended up leaving in 5 taxis which meant that I had to figure out a way to get past the pretty tight University security. If there's one thing not lacking in China it's guards. They are everywhere, patrolling, standing, no idea what they are doing. It must be the most common job there after farming. The government definitely has a stong, silent presence everywhere. Even YouTube is blocked. When I got to the gate, the guard was there reading something intensely so I sidled past and ran for it.

Okay, there is a lot left to say, a trip to Xi'an, the Great Wall and more family comes to Beijing. I'll get you up to speed on all that in a few days. And some pictures too. Definitely need some pics.