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  Beijing, China
Tuesday, November 11, 2008

We arrived at Beijing Xi, the largest train station in Asia, yesterday aruond 9 am. We slowly ambled through the streets of Beijing, in the direction of the metro and eventually our hostel, getting only mildly lost as we did so. We hit the hostel, hit the showers, and talked to our hostel roommate who ironically enough is from Minneapolis, Minnesota and he lives on University Avenue. Small world.

We headed out, eventually making our way to the Underground City. Chairman Mao, 60-70 years ago, figured he would make an underground city to protect people in case of war. Well, the underground city never was used for war and the technology of war has advanced so much that now it wouldn't do much in case of severe warfare anyhow. Nonetheless, it sounded like an interesting place to check out. We headed over that way, making it to within a few blocks of the entrance before we got lost. We couldn't figure out where the entrance to this tunnel system was. We ran into another lost foreigner clutching a map in hand, and we teamed up with her in an attempt to find it. Instead of finding an entrance, however, an entrepenurail taxi driver saw us. He told us he could take us there for 30 kuai (chinese dollars) and got pretty excited about the idea. Seeing as none of us new where we were going and we were now attracting an audience, we figured we would ask a bank security guy at the bank we were in front of. Well, the a taxi driver was so hell-bent on talking to us that we couldn't stammer out a coherent anything to the bank security guy, and we just got confused. Eventually we decided we would walk and figure it out. How hard could it be?

We got as far as the other end of the bridge before we ran into our friend the taxi driver, parked in the middle of the intersection, at the corner, waiting for us. Now he would take us for 10 Chinese dollars. Fine. We got in, and he drove through some alleys to the entrance of the tunnels. The doors were closed, locked, and chained. The thing was closed. He pointed to the thing, explained the obvious, and started laughing like a hyena. Two other people pulled up on their tricycle taxis, and also laughed. Now he wanted 20 kuai to take us back! We bickered with the guy and he finally took us back to where he picked us up. We paid the 10 we originally stated, grumbling about how we just got had since it seemed more and more apparant that the guy knew the place was closed before we got there.

We started heading for the hutongs, which are basically alleyways. Beijing was given a huge face-lift for the Olympics, but the hutongs seem to remain in their orginal status. They are basically alley ways, filled with people and produce. You can find a bunch of random oddities in the hutongs. Eric watched a few guys playing Chinese checkers for a while, but that was about the extent of that adventure. The novelty wore off quickly as the hutongs just looked like Xi'an, where we have been living for the last few months. There wasn't too much new there. We walked to the old Drum Tower, window shopped in the Old Town, and then eventually had a nice dinner date of Beijing Roast Duck before heading back to the hostel and tucking ourselves into bed.

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