Germany
See my Germany photo album
China
Crowds at Tiananmen Square for a flag-lowering ceremony. More Beijing photos
I arrived in Beijing to find clouds, haze, and a breeze cool enough for long sleeves – all very welcome after spending a month melting in Southeast Asia. Beijing is kind of surreal – intellectually it’s hard to reconcile the ultramodern freeways, malls, and skyscrapers with a country that, on average, is quite poor. The disparity in wealth and amenities seems kind of like putting New York City in the middle of Bolivia, with all the consequent social tensions between the urbanites and traditionalists.
Although I’m getting to like Beijing more and more it has taken some time to warm up to. I started with the notorious pollution, which gave me two days of depressing gray skies, 300 meter visibility, and obvious respiratory problems. After being accustomed to walking around freely in the rest of Asia, Beijing’s sprawl, construction sites, and ideograph-only signage made exploring a little less fun. Finally I had the pleasure of trying to change my travel arrangements without speaking the language or encountering anyone especially helpful.
I originally planned to spend a week in Tibet but in April a few Americans held a protest against the Chinese (PRC) occupation of the region. The PRC responded by disallowing all tourist travel to Tibet, later relaxed to allowing travel only when chaperoned every day by an official guide. My first reaction was to blame the 4 American protesters who screwed it up for everyone else. On further reflection it’s pretty obvious that the fault here lies with the PRC’s hamhanded response to any suggestion that the optimal form of government for the people of Tibet might be something other than occupation by PRC troops, systematic transfer of Han emigrants to crowd out traditional ethnic groups, etc. At any rate I elected to nix that leg of the trip rather than jumping through all of these hoops and paying an egregious day rate to a chaperone. Removing Tibet from the travel plans cost me a couple dozen hours plus $500 and, combined with things like currency controls and crappy censored internet access (Wikipedia and most blogs are blocked) left us with a general resentment of the PRC which has taken some time to overcome.
The other beef I will mention before moving on to why I’m starting to like it here is the language issue. I’ve been spoiled with my other destinations by having either plenty of English speakers around (Europe, Cambodia, India), speaking the language (Vietnam), or being able to fudge with sign language and cognates (Latin America). China is completely different; the local words are very difficult to learn and pronounce and very few people speak any English. If someone is speaking English to you, you are mostly likely either in a place catering primarily to foreigners or are in the process of getting scammed. The first couple of days were tough – I imagine I had an experience about like a Chinese-only speaker would have if they showed up in Dallas with no English or Spanish skills. For example, taking a taxi requires finding my destination in Chinese characters on the internet and taking a picture of the name so I can show it to the driver on the camera, or alternately a hotel concierge who understands where I’m trying to go and will transcribe the directions into Chinese for the cabdriver. Dealing with airlines, train tickets, and other logistics is a nightmare without a translator since websites are not used much and reaching English speaking staff over the phone is like playing the lottery. I am only trying to set expectations for other non-Mandarin speaking travelers, not trying to imply that everyone here is “bad” for not learning English. However it is tough to imagine all of next year’s Olympic visitors getting around without similar headaches.
Once I settled in to Beijing I headed out for the country’s star attraction: counterfeit luxury goods. The Silk Street market is 7 stories of small booths selling everything from fake North Face jackets to fake Rolex watches to fake silk bedding and fake chicken sandwiches. I might be making that last one up but I might not. The vendors are absolutely hysterical – they are aggressive like nobody I’ve ever seen and any one of them could teach a negotiation class at Wharton. Walking down the aisles I got more female attention than I’ve ever imagined, with about a third of the girls actually grabbing me by the arm and physically trying to pull us into the stall. Once you’re in you may be forced into a chair with a girl basically sitting on your lap to keep you from leaving before you find something you like. If you do find something you can expect the vendor to offer a ludicrous price loosely in line with what a genuine article from an authorized seller would cost (“I make special deal for you because I want you to tell your friends to come here in 2008!! No joke – lowest price for Polo shirt is $45”). I ended up walking away with Polo T-shirts for $3 each, 2 knockoff Hermes watches for $11 together, and assorted Gucci and LV handbags for something like $20 each….but not without a lot of salespeople checking my forehead temperature because I was “sick” for making such low counteroffers. The market can be either enormously stressful or kind of a fun game depending on how you calibrate your expectations going in.
Having filled duffel bag with knockoffs for people at home I was free to check out the rest of the city. All the stories about the frenetic pace of construction here are true. The sidewalks around the hotel seem to get torn up in the evening, worked on overnight, and be freshly set with marble flagstones by dinner the next day. Every fourth block is a high rise building in progress, and many of the buildings have 3 or 4 tower cranes installed where the US would use 1 or 2. Rumors are that as many as a million people in Beijing were relocated for Olympic related construction although the government officially claims that only 6,500 households were moved. Even the 6,500 number is mind-blowing – can you imagine trying to displace this many families for the London Olympics?
Beijing’s literal and figurative centerpiece is the Forbidden City-Tiananmen Square complex. The Forbidden City is the 600 year old cloistered quarters for Chinese emperors; they lived and worked amongst 9,999 buildings surrounded by a wall and moat to keep the common folk at bay. While the size of the complex is massive there isn’t a whole lot of explanation in English, the best buildings are closed for pre-Olympic renovation, and at least half the complex is off limits to visitors. The whole experience is a visual fugue – endless repetition on the theme of red buildings, yellow roof tiles, right angles, and big open rectangular spaces. Across the street is Tiananmen Square, the largest public square in the world and most notorious meeting area in China. Again the size and history are impressive but the square itself is….just a big square, surrounded by a couple of grandiose federal buildings you can’t get into.
The Great Wall at Huanghuacheng. More Beijing photos
The highlight of the “old stuff” part of Beijing was walking along the Great Wall in the Yellow Flower area, a/k/a Huanghuacheng. You’ve probably seen the photos or heard about the wall on the history channel but there’s nothing like struggling up the steep mountain sections of the wall to really appreciate the majesty of it. This was probably the most fun I had at any of the sights in China; this section of the wall was gorgeous, combined both restored and unrestored sections, and remained completely free of hawkers and other tourists while I was there.
Towards the end of my time in the country I spent a couple of days in Xi’an, a city of 5 million people and another well worn spot on the tourist trail. Xi’an’s primary claim to fame is the Terracotta Army, a collection of 8,000+ life size model soldiers buried to protect an emperor’s tomb in 200 BC. However I really enjoyed Xi’an itself – it is much more pedestrian friendly than Beijing with a more manageable level of shopping, construction, hawkers, etc.
Terracotta Warriors in Xi’an. More Xi’an photos
I have mixed feelings about China as a tourist destination; the place is amazing with hundreds of things worth seeing but the logistical headaches of traveling here are substantial. If you have the chance to visit in the company of someone who speaks the language I would jump on it; alternately I’d consider going with a tour group that provides a translator (the horror!) or at the very least trying to maximize the planning and booking you can do stateside rather than waiting until you get here and struggling with communication.