A few days ago I returned from spending a glorious week in Beijing. What can I say, I loved it! The people were friendly, the prices absurdly cheap, the food killer and the sights superb. I left on Sunday morning, the 18^th of November 2007, and landed on Monday night, the 19^th, owing to the 16+ hour difference.

On landing, we realized our folly in not printing out directions to our hostel in Mandarin. The cabbie spoke nary a word of English, and after extensive hand signaling and stopping to ask strangers, we finally made it. The rooms were a bit smaller than anticipated and so the next day, after a good breakfast buffet, we checked out into another hostel with more spacious quarters.

Since finding the new hostel took up half the day, we decided to spend the rest of the day exploring the city and trying to find a good place for lunch. Our days followed a simple pattern, the mornings were spent sightseeing, often until the late afternoon, and the evenings were spent indoors in heated shopping malls trying to find gifts for ourselves and our friends and so on.

We saw Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City and The Great Wall on three successive days. Tiananmen Square is vast, open and filled with tourists. Nothing you wouldn’t expect, even the obligatory Red Guard marches happened right on schedule. For inexpensive yet good clothes, we checked out the Sanlitun Yashow clothing market. Be sure to go there and be prepared to bargain outrageously. When they try to sell you something for 700 Yuan, be prepared to counter with a derisive snort and say, “Whaat! 100 Yuan, that’s it”. Then they’ll counter with 600 and you can go to 150 and so on until you both meet at 180 or 200 or whatever you feel its worth. The culture of bargaining is very strong. The upside is that sometimes you pay far lesser than even the locals. Though of course, this is rare.

The Forbidden City is vast, cyclopean with all its stone and very humbling all at once. As you walk through arch after arch, over stone pathways that are now hallowed with the steps of countless tourists, you realize the grandeur of the Imperial Court. We spent 7 hours in the Forbidden City and saw less than half of it. We had to leave for lunch, roast duck awaited. By this point I needed a new memory card, since mine was full, being the compulsive shutterbug that I am.

The following day, we went to Mutianyu, one of the closest sites to tour the Great Wall. Around 2.5 hours from Beijing, we got there around 9.30 and hiked on it until 1.30. I took tons of pictures, all visible in the Pictures link below. It stretches as far as the eye can see, broken in some parts, but rearing its massive crenellations in short order after a break in the usual order of things. Wide enough to drive a jeep on, the Great Wall is very steep in some parts, as we found out soon enough. We got to the highest point we could reach and then returned for a hearty lunch. Back at the hostel by 5 P.M., we then went shopping for some electronics, a cheap laptop or digital camera would have been great.

The next day was a bit of a breather, we didn’t leave the hostel until 11 A.M., venturing to the Russian Quarter, where the storefront signs and some street signs are in Cyrillic and so on. Russian women in furs preening and arguing in Russian over the prices of consumer items such as handbags, purses, shoes etc….The Chinese shopkeepers were met were very multilingual, knowing a smattering of words in almost every language we could think of. Doubtless, this helped them secure sales. For lunch, we had some Yak steak at a Tibetan restaurant. Delicious.

People were also very taken with my sideburns. I had people of both genders come up to me and touch them and say, ‘VERY COOL’ quite forcefully. That’s it, I’m never shaving them off now.

We left on Sunday, the 25th, from Beijing at 5 P.M. and arrived home in Vancouver at 12 P.M. Flying into the sun gave us the day back that we had lost initially. A bit of jetlag ensued after distributing the loot to all my friends and here I am now, left with memories of the one crazy week in China.

Pictures

Videos

It is a smoky room in the Utels Stayokay Hostel, Beijing, China. A man with dreadlocks is playing and singing “Down in a Hole” by Alice in Chains on a guitar, while an English fellow tells him to turn off the grunge and play something more like the Beatles or Led Zeppelin. I’m glad he’s not listening. Soon it is night and everyone goes to bed.

The next day, I run into the acoustic guitarist and the following conversation ensues:

Me: “That was really good, that rendition of DIAH”
He: Thanks
Me: So, where are you from? (In a hostel, every foreigner is very friendly, usually. Strangers in a strange land bonding and all that rot)
He: Norway, you?
Me: Canada
He: Ah I see.
Me: That’s cool, I had a Norwegian girl in my class at university a year ago and she taught me some Norsk, but I forgot.
He: Ah that’s ok, just think about it, it’ll come back to you.
Me: Yeah, all I know about Norway is the fjords.
He: Yes, everyone knows the fjords. And black metal, I suppose.
Me: Yes, of course, black metal haha.
He: Yes, in fact, at the airport in Moscow, I ran into these Norwegian guys from some black metal band, they were on tour.
Me: Oh yeah, do you know their name?
He: No, I know nothing about black metal. I just saw that they were musicians because of their gear and so went and spoke to them.
Me: Ah I see, you sure you don’t know their name, was it Emperor? Immortal?
He: Nope, they said they were old, from the Eighties.
Me: Mayhem?
He: Yes, that’s it, Mayhem.
Me: Haha those guys, they’re influential and all that, but I’m not a huge fan, I do like some black metal though.
He: Yes, in Norway black metal was in the news because of the bad press some years ago.
Me: Yeah, the church burnings and murders, that Varg Vikernes guy.
He: Yeah, that guy, he’s in prison now.
Me: Yeah, he’s also a Nazi, what a fool that twit is.
He: Yes, he’s, how do you say, fucked in the head?
Me: Hahaha yes, quite. Mayhem must have been shocked that you didn’t know them or even ask for their autograph or anything, probably cried themselves to sleep in their dressing room
He: Haha they looked very tired, wearing all that heavy black armour must tire one out.
Me: Yeah, that and the constant Satan worship….gotta be exhausting.
He: Haha, indeed.

Then we talked about Bill Hicks and the US elections and creationism and the Chinese language and pot and Canada. We chatted some more and I found out he was actually a photographer, whose photographs adorned the walls of the hostel. Pretty neat ones too, from what I could see. There was also one of Mao in a urinal, which is pretty risky, considering how the Chinese still adore Mao. His name was Edgar G. Bachel and his website is http://edgar-g-bachel.com/. If you ever read this, Edgar (Kim), you’re still welcome to head over and have a good time in Vancouver, Canada.

No, not Phileas Fogg and Passepartout, but Geoff and Brittany, my good friends have begun their globe-spanning vacation. They’re posting updates on their travel blog at Geoff’s blog.

I expect certain downtimes, for example, when in the Mongolian wilderness, unless yurts now come with wifi. Keep checking that link often!