Tue 01/07/08 04:20

I just got back from my day trip and have a few hours before I leave to see the Chinese Acrobats. I don’t know if I’ll have internet access for awhile after today, so I thought it would be a good idea to post and do more if I get the chance.

Today was a blast.

We started this morning at 6am to make it to the Great Wall at 9. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I slept for the majority of the ride. I never really got a sense of how large Beijing actually is until this morning. We drove for two hours and we were still in the city, it wasn’t until the last hour that we started to see mountains and rural China.

In some ways the part of the wall that we went to was something like an amusement park, not a lot of people but different things to do. For example, most of us took the cable car up to the last quarter of the climb. I’m not sure of the full distance but my guess is that it’s about 3 or 4 miles if you hike the full distance, the cable car shortened it to about a half mile or mile. The last part though was almost completely straight up.

After walking around and taking pics we started down. It’s hard to explain how beautiful the scenery is from the top of the mountain, some straight out of postcards… but real. As you can see from the photos it was foggy when we first got there, but cleared a little later on. In total we were on the wall for about an hour.

There are three ways to get down, you can hike, take the cable car, or take a zip line down. Four of us decided to take the zip line. I filmed on my video camera on the way down, but I won’t be able to post it until I get back to Dubai. Anyway it was fun, they put the harness on you, clip you on to the wire, and then a lady says “sit down.” The next thing I knew I was zipping along at about thirty miles per hour about 2 hundred feet over a river. What I liked about it, is that there wasn’t time to over-think the situation, it just happened in seconds.

After The Great Wall we went to the silk/pearl market. It’s basically a large building where vendor buy small spaces to sell their stuff. There’s a lot of junk, and lots of good things to look at. You really have to imagine it. First the keyword is “hello.” This is how they get your attention, and it works. Then if you stop they grab your arm. I wrote about this in the post where I went to the Oriental Plaza, to give you an idea, one of the guys in our group has a bruise where one of the girls grabbed him– They really latch on. Anyway, I really love the whole transaction process. They start at an incredibly high price, and if you play with them a little you can get it down by four-fifths… at least that’s the furthest I could get them down.

There was two girls working in this one shop that really had my number, they were cute, and they knew it. It’s almost embarassing how well they worked at getting me to buy something, if I didn’t know what they were doing and having a blast during the whole process I probably would have hung my head in shame. Here’s how it unfolded. One of the girls started with the “hello.” She was cute so I kind of started talking to her. Then she started complimenting me, and asked if I could see what I was carrying, then she wouldn’t give it back. When I held out my hand for her to hand it to me, she held my hand. So there I was bartering with one girl while holding the hand of the other one. Now you have to realize they were both cute, so I enjoyed it. When they thought that they had me (which they did) they started teasing me that they were talking so much to me that now they needed ice creams. :) Can you imagine, they asked for ice cream… so I did what any self respecting middle-aged guy would do when he’s been holding the hand of a pretty girl, I went and got them both an ice cream.

Don’t laugh… If I thought I could do it, I would have stayed there with them until the place closed. I even thought about trying to get email addresses, but I figured that they work all the older guys the same way, and then I would have really been embarrassed.

Later I got propositioned by an older woman. I couldn’t believe it, she called me over and asked where I was going. I told her and then she pointed to me, and then to herself and waited for my response. First time that has ever happened.

Sun 29/06/08 23:22

I had a little bit of a problem sleeping last night so as a result I didn’t get up until about 9. Getting up late kind of puts a rush on everything else that I had planned, but at least I didn’t wake up later. I started at the Oriental Plaza. It’s about a 30 minute walk to get there, and I was there yesterday so I didn’t get lost… which probably would have made it about an hour walk like it did yesterday. The best way to describe the Oriental Plaza is it is a mix between Piccadilly Circus and Times Square. Since I wrote that I realize that that may not be the best example… probably the best way to describe it, is that it’s a gathering place. There are shops everywhere and thousands of people just milling around. Large screens show news and advertisements, and off to one side there is what can best be described as an old style market selling food and souvenirs. When I was there yesterday I must have walked right past it because I didn’t have a clue it was there. Anyway, I walked in and just like yesterday, I hear “hello.” If you remember I got the feeling that it was something like a test word to see if you speak English. It must be the case. It was so much fun though, the vendors get really aggressive, they will grab your arm and not let you go. For the most part it wasn’t that difficult to break some of their holds, but there was this one girl that had my arm in a death grip… I was trying to break free and I looked up and there were about five people all watching. I guess since I was a non-Asian it allows them a little more leeway than they would have for others, at least the surprise on the people’s faces that were watching would suggest that. Like I said though it was a lot of fun.

After the Oriental Plaza I headed to Tiananmen Square.

The best way to explain what Tiananmen Square to anyone not familiar with it, it is probably best known as the place where the lone student defied military tanks back in the late eighties. I remember watching the events unfold and always wanted to see what it was like. First some history about why it was built, according to what I’ve read Chairman Mao wanted someplace where he could address up to 1 million people, so he had the square built.

Tomorrow I change hotels in preparation for joining the tour to Mongolia. Before we leave though we go to the Great Wall.

A little side note though. I was just walking around and ran into a guy from Norway who was lost. I kind of felt for him since just yesterday I was in the same boat… now that I’m a seasoned Beijing-ite I can take pity on people that were in the same place as I was. Anyway, he was telling me that a friend of his had basically the same thing as I did with the tea incident. I guess it’s a lure to get you into a tea house that charges over $100 per cup of tea. Don’t know if it’s true, but maybe I dodged a big one yesterday.

Sun 29/06/08 23:05

There hasn’t been any place for me to use the internet until now. So what I’ve been doing is writing at night and just saving the entries until I’ve had internet access. So everything that you are reading was written days ago in some cases.

To make matters even more difficult I have to retype my entries into a pc because I can’t hook up my computer directly to the internet. So there may be mispellings, and typos

Sun 29/06/08 23:01

It’s 8 pm right now and I’m sitting on the roof of the hostel I’m staying at… a beer in one hand and a cigarette burning to my left. All the big city sounds are around me, the horns honking, dogs barking and the hum of traffic not far away. So is this perfect or what? It looks like I spoke too soon. I was sitting here and a friend came up to work on his computer too, and as he sat down it started to rain…So now I’m sitting in my room, the beer is at the other side of the room and I’m out of cigarettes… I guess one of life’s little jokes.

The Forbidden City was impressive. The first impression that I had was how large it is. Not large in the sense of tall, but large in the shear amount of space that it takes up. If you’re into Chines movies and have seen movies like Hero where the city, or stage made up to look like the city, is used– that’s what it looks like. For some reason I thought The Forbidden City was more of a palace, but somewhere along my walk around, I realized that it was indeed a city.

One of the things that kind of surprised me is the Chinese people. I was walking around today, actually I was lost looking for The Forbidden City, stopped at an intersection and a kid comes up to me and starts a conversation. Now I’ve lived in Dubai for about a year, and no one has ever done that, anyway it turns out that he’s having an exhibition at a local art gallery in the cultural center of Beijing. So as we walk I find out that he’s graduating from the local art institute and has some of this work displayed there.

It’s been a real experience so far and although I could probably keep writing, I think I’ll end for now.

Tomorrow is Tiananmen Square.