So on Wednesday we left Hong Kong and arrived in a delightfully smoggy Beijing. I had forgotten a lot of the details of life in China, including the fact that many doorways have rows of plastic flaps hanging down to keep the air and dust from the street out. I was reminded when an escalator out of the airport took us down into a particularly flappy doorway, where our unprepared mothers were assaulted quite thoroughly by plastic flaps (not to suggest that this was humorous in any way! certainly not!). Readjusting to the thick Beijing accent was also a shock when I went to buy tickets to the train into the city. The Taiwanese accent is fairly light and easy to slip into, but Beijingers have a way of talking like their mouths are all full of marbles, or perhaps like they are all pirates. There is a lot of arrrr involved.
The first night went pretty smoothly; we only got minorly lost on the way home, and we found a delicious place to eat dinner that was full of families with hyper kids running around and taking pictures of the foreigners. The only rough patch was in the middle of the night, when we all woke up at 3:30 because the room was hot (me), too smoky to breathe (Mom), or just because of the delights of jetlag. I was up the rest of the night worrying that we would have to find a new hotel, but the situation seemed to improve the next day. Hen hao!
I thought I had misheard when they had told us that breakfast would be in the tiki bar, but it was the truth. Amidst tribal-type wall decorations, we enjoyed eggs (you have to cook them yourself though) and toast, which Gered's father spread with what he thought was peanut butter. It turned out to be thick thousand island dressing, but he ate it anyway in the spirit of adventure. Thousand island dressing: part of this complete breakfast!
Side note: speaking of things that are silly to eat, I forgot to mention: in Hong Kong there was one night that my parents and I got some noodles from a street stall for dinner. They offer a variety of things to put in the noodles, including "brine intestine." I figured my parents wouldn't want brine intestine, but before I could protest, they had added it, so I just kept my mouth shut. I didn't tell my mother that she had eaten intestine until today.
Back to Thursday: after a delicious, if island-heavy, breakfast, we made our way to Tiananmen Square. Our favorite feature of this particular location was the mausoleum of the illustrious Mao Zedong, where during the visiting hours of 8-noon, you can view the embalmed body of the late Chairman. Naturally, we had to do it.
Mao's mausoleum is a pretty high-security location, because if it were to be defiled in any kind of way, it would be a pretty giant loss of face for the Chinese government. At the security checkpoint the guard questioned my mother about her hand sanitizer gel, in the end forcing her to try some of it (on her hands, not tasting it or anything) to ensure that it wasn't dangerous. In addition, Gered had to take off his belt to get through the checkpoint, and because they are very efficient at moving people along in the ol' mausoleum, he was still buckling it when we went in to see the body. An security woman made all manner of alarmed noises at him. Perhaps they worry about streakers there?
By the way, if you were wondering how the Maoster is looking these days, the answer is surprisingly orange and kind of fake-looking. Not that we are passing any kind of judgement.
Coming out of Tiananmen Square, we started heading across the street towards the Forbidden City when we sort of accidentally acquired a friend. He was a nice young guy named Dawson, who it turned out was a student at a school of languages and tourism doing his semester of hands-on experience. His price was extra cheap, so we got a whole day's worth of Dawson telling us entertaining facts about historical locations. Here is what I got out of it:
Reasons to be glad you aren't an ancient resident of the Forbidden City:
-if you live in the FC, you are probably either a eunuch, a concubine, or the Emperor
-if you are a eunuch, well that kind of sucks in the first place
-plus they have to make sure you are extra-well eunuched (can't compete with the Emperor for the manliness!), so they cut off EVERYTHING that is at all relevant
-also, in order to be properly reincarnated, you have to have your whole body, so you must raise the funds to buy back your junk from the guy who cut it off before you die, pawn shop style
-if you are not a eunuch, you are probably a concubine (from age 13-17, selected in an American-Idol-style winnowing process), so if the signs are auspicious, you might have to sleep with the emperor, and a eunuch will carry you there naked (wrapped in a blanket) so you can't conceal weapons in your clothes
-if you don't sleep with the emperor, or if you do but you don't bear a male heir, then when the emperor dies, you have to be buried alive with him
-if you are neither a concubine or a eunuch, and you are in fact the emperor, then you have a posse of eunuchs following you around all the time bringing you naked ladies wrapped in blankets
-that doesn't sound so terrible, except the eunuchs have to write down everything that happens in your life, so they are going to stick around and take notes after the lady delivery (8:21 pm: emperor picked his nose. 8:23 pm: emperor looking a little sweaty)
fun fact: the place where the emperor goes to hang out with the concubines is called the “hall of mental cultivation.” Suuuuure.
even more fun fact: all of the doorways in the FC have a very high threshold to step over in order to keep out ghosts and vampires, who (as you all know) do not have knees. Once upon a time a European dignitary in China didn't want to bow to the emperor, so he told him that he couldn't do it because Westerners don't have knees. This is why Chinese people called Westerners “foreign devils,” apparently.
After forbidding the heck out of our city (and getting some lunch), we grooved on over to the Temple of Heaven. The Temple of Heaven is very historical and scenic and whatnot, but my favorite part was the public park outside, where a group of guys with traditional Chinese instruments were having a little impromptu performance. They played some Chinese songs, until just when we started to walk off, when they launched into that extremely traditional Chinese tune, “Jingle Bells.” I was very moved.
Later we went to a little tea shop, where we had a traditional Chinese tea ceremony in which a nice young woman told us exactly how to hold the cup in the proper traditional way, and how many sips to drink it in, etc. The dads were eying the bowls of peanuts on the table, but they held off, awaiting instructions of how to eat the peanuts in the proper ceremonial fashion. It turns out that the proper way to eat them is as follows: however you want.
We left the tea shop of expensive, non-bargainable teacups in favor of the eminently bargainable goods at Hongqiao Pearl Market. Dad made the mistake of attempting to walk through the particularly aggressive shoe section, where salesladies latched onto him like barnacles, despite all excuses. They seemed to be growing fond of him (he ended up passing through many times), calling out “hey! You're back!” and hassling him more each time they saw him coming. The Ryans had a similarly intense shoe saleslady experience, where salesladies forcibly tucked shoes under their arms, and even tried to give Gered a single shoe for free in a desperate ploy to suck him in. We finally left well-harassed, but with our wallets fairly intact. I think we'll go back later.
Post-Pearl Market, we headed off to Quan Ju De, one of the oldest and most famous Peking Duck joints in town. The chef brought our duck to the table and carved it right there, presenting us with a special card stating the identification number of our particular duck. We ate the duck in the traditional style, rolling it up in the special pancake with scallions and sweet sauce. Peking duck is by no means health food but hoo boy is it tasty! (P.S. - huge dinner at a famous and fancy restaurant in China? about US $17/person. Our most expensive meal by far.)
After dinner I had to go check on places to get a bus to the Simatai Great Wall, so Gered volunteered to accompany me. This left our four completely non-Chinese-speaking parents to get home by themselves using Beijing public transportation. It was an adventure, but we gave thorough directions, and they successfully got home without disaster. Good job Mom and Dad!
Too many things to write about now...Great Wall adventures coming later!
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