Finally...Beijing!

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Trip Start Feb 07, 2007 Previous
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  Beijing, China
Thursday, April 19, 2007

Okay, so I'm trying really hard not to get too frustrated.  But, I got my hopes up that I would be able to get my cell phone to work, and it seems like it's just not written in the stars for me to be able to access my voicemails or call home from my cell phone while I'm out of the United States.  I went to an internet café to get the toll free number for T-Mobile so that I could call from the hotel and see if I would be able to get my phone to work.  However, the 1-800 number isn't working.  I'm not surprised, but I'd heard from so many people that their cell phones work in China.  And mine, I'm just having trouble with my SIM card and if at least I can talk to someone from T-Mobile and have them tell me that there's no hope, at least I will have exhausted all of my options.  Right now, though, I feel like I would be able to do what I wanted to do if I had resources available to me, like Internet in the hotel so I could email them, or make sure I had the correct number.  But, I have no Internet, no phone number, so no cell phone.  And I'm trying, really hard, not to be frustrated.  On the other hand, though, the gentleman at the front desk of our little hotel on the Remnin University campus in Beijing was incredibly kind to me, despite our language barrier.  He spoke little English, but never got frustrated with me when he did not understand.  In fact, as his forehead wrinkled in concentration when he was trying to find the English words in his head to translate to me, I felt bad for him and thus felt like I'd be a horrible person if I got frustrated with him.  But it was not him I was frustrated with, that I am trying to not be flustered by.  Everything is simply more complicated when you leave home.  Nothing is a walk in the park.  I suppose I hadn't really learned that lesson as well as I should have by this point.  I went to an Internet café and couldn't find what I wanted online so I thought, hey, I'll just get the 1-800 number and call the US using the payphone and put it on my credit card.  Silly me to think it was going to be that simple.  First of all, the pay phone in the hotel isn't working.  You insert your credit card and can dial three numbers, in my case 1-8-0, before it gives you a busy signal.  Okay, that's fine.  I can use the phone at the front desk, right?  No problem.  I go up and ask him, fighting to come up with the simplest words possible to explain what I want.  I tell him I want to call a toll free number.  He doesn't understand that.  He sees my cell phone that I'm wanting to troubleshoot, or something, when I call T-Mobile, and he says that I cannot use the house phone to call my cell phone.  I tell him no, I want to call the company in the US.  He understands this, and picks up the phone.  I pull out my credit card to ask him if I could use this to pay, he says no, because it is a national card.  His hotel only accepts Chinese credit cards.  I think I breathed out heavily, not at him but at the situation, which I knew in my head but he didn't, and yet he showed no emotion on his face except for a smile.  Katie came over to me, as she was sitting on the couch waiting for help to call Victor at another hotel in Beijing, and says she has cash.  I ask the man if this will work, and he says yes.  Finally, we're getting somewhere.  I pick up the phone and he says no, no, not yet.  He calls the operator, waits a few moments, and tells me I can now open the phone.  He explains to me that I need to dial 9-0-0-1 and then my number.  I do, and I get a busy signal.  I try again.  A male voice speaking Chinese comes on the line.  Again, a sigh, and I shut the phone.  I try once more, and when the voice comes up again, I listen through, and a woman speaking English tells me the phone number is unavailable.  Okay, it's alright.  I didn't write it down, but typed it out a few times over the keyboard at the internet café as muscle memory.  I tried a second number, hoping I'd just remembered wrong.  Nothing.  I put the phone down, a little harder than I should have, but I had my laptop.  I had more options still.  I set my laptop on the counter to see if I could set up an internet connection, but the hotel has no internet.  So, I couldn't get on and get the correct number.  Instead, I typed all of the possible numbers on my laptop, called each one, and every time arrived at the same lady who was becoming increasingly annoying to hear.  It's just not meant to be.  And here's this little man, a little taller than me and probably in his early fifties but still claiming a full head of dark hair, square glasses, a blue suit, and a smile.  It must be hard, really, dealing with impatient Americans at least twice a year when the ship ports in Hong Kong.  I'm not entirely sure that these people don't have a word in Chinese for "impatience".  Flustered I am, but frustrated I am not.  In fact, I am grateful because as I sit here, I'm watching our exchange student walk back outside after she came from wherever she was to help another girl try to figure out how to make an international phone call using a prepaid phone card.  Really, we have something to learn from these people.
 
I woke up today at 6:45am.  I hadn't set an alarm, but woke up on my own.  I didn't want to get up yet, even though I knew I had to pack, eat, and be ready to go to the Union at 9am.  I dozed off and on until 7:45 when I called Lauren to wake her up, but she'd gone to breakfast already.  I showered and went to eat with Blake and Katie before doing my final packing and meeting our group in the Union.  My resident director, Dan, is our trip leader, and he handed out Frisbees to us to give to the university students we'll meet on our program.  A group of twenty-five of us have traveled to Beijing to go on tours led by students of Remnin University and spend our nights dining with them and hanging out with them.  It's sort of a student exchange, but we all travel to them at their home university.  We left on time and got on the bus for the forty-minute drive to the airport.  (Okay, and the girl that came to help Roxanne out with the phone card situation just came down to talk to me and ask me what I was doing.  We chatted about why I wasn't going out because I should go out and see the nightlife in Beijing, and we agreed to talk tomorrow about some good places to go over the next couple of nights.  The best part was, though, when she asked me my name.  She tried to say Brianna, but I told her she could just call me Bri if it was easier for her, and she exclaims "Desperate Housewives"!  Thank you, Marcia Cross, because now Linda's never going to forget my name.)  On the way there, we crossed the longest suspension bridge in the world over a beautiful harbor, and Lauren and I decided that not only does Hong Kong remind us of Manhattan and San Francisco, but also Hawaii.  Put the three together in one city and you've got Hong Kong.  She asked me as we looked out the window at the lush tropical landscape on the mountains if I was serious about moving to Hong Kong, and I didn't get to answer before our guide came over the loudspeaker to make an announcement, but I'm considering it.  I'm not ready to make any decisions about anything while I'm on this trip, because it's easy to fall in love with absolutely everything and want to send your life in one direction or another while you're there.  I'd love to do my IHP program after I graduate.  But then, if Lauren's serious and I realize I'm serious about it, why not move to Hong Kong for a year?  But then, a lot can happen in a year, so what happens if I meet someone, or Kat and I decide we really do want to go to London?  There are so many possibilities, and when I look back to high school, all of the changes in direction I took over a period of six months or so, I feel hesitant to make any plans whatsoever.  But, it's wonderful to know that I am lucky enough to have so many possibilities.  We were eating dinner tonight at a restaurant, after we made it to Beijing, that Semester at Sea made him want to travel even more, and that he uses his summers because he's a teacher to travel all over the world, and that he met his fiancée while he was hiking Machu Pichu in Peru.  There is positively no end to the number of possible ways my life could play out.  None.  But then I arrive at the same question.  Who am I anymore?  Am I someone who never wants to remain in one place and travel all the time?  Am I someone who wants to move to my tent in Africa and work with the people there?  Do I want to get a job somewhere in the States but travel as much as I can?  Do I want to live in a major city in the US other than my home town, or do I want to live close to my family?  None of these questions do I have clear answers for at this point.  But, again, I suppose now is not the time to have answers.  I know it will all work itself out, but it never stops feeling so big and so impenetrable.  But then again, what fun would life be if I had all the answers before I got to live and find them?  After we got to the airport, another one with a setup much more like a mall than an airport, we checked in and found a Starbucks and some food before our flight.  The security checkpoint was incredibly efficient, with multiple lines being sent through multiple metal detectors, and with women dispensing containers to us to place our smaller items in and taking our bags from us to put on the scanners.  It made the process so much smoother, having someone there to do it for you and keep it all moving.  Within five minutes of getting in line our group of four, Katie, Lauren, Bryan and I, had made it through and were looking out at the huge multistory complex, trying to decide which way was going to take us to food.  We found an interactive computerized map, but it didn't work so we just started walking.  We finally found the Starbucks and the fast food area, and feasted on some Popeye's Chicken and Burger King.  "We need comfort food when we're traveling," she said, so comfort food we ate.  We bought out the entire Millie's Cookies store to hold us over on the three hour flight and made our way to the gate.  The airport, I can't get over it.  Normally they're so stressful because people are rushing around, stressed about something.  But this place is just so massive that there's room for everyone to be in whatever mood they want to be in and not bother anyone else.  And because you never really got too close to anyone else, didn't encounter higher stress levels than your own, it was an incredibly relaxed atmosphere.  Plus, the staff and security guards and attendants were cheerful and smiling constantly, so it put all of us travelers at ease.  Just as I signed onto the free wireless internet it was time to board the plane, where I sat for the next three hours writing journal entries, sipping a glass of complimentary white wine, and rocking out to music with Katie and Lauren that they had on their iPods.  Lauren and I had had a crying episode at the bar last night, after our emotional conversation with Becca, realizing that in less than a month we won't have each other there every moment of every day.  I've said it and I'll say it again, traveling around the world with people bonds you to them in a way like nothing else.  It's not better or stronger than the bonds you have with friends back home or at school, simply different.  But it's there, and it's going to hurt like hell to say good-bye until I get to see them next.  And I realized it again, as we sat together in the middle row of the eight-row plane after we'd juggled people around so we could sit together, dancing to the music in our ears.  I love these girls, and I love my life.  I was just so excited to be on this trip with them, and going to Beijing, that nothing could calm me down.  I felt giddy, and it intensified when we finally landed (and by the way, there's a camera on the plane that videos the taxi, the take-off, and the landing of the plane, so we got to watch our take-off and landing on the TV screens- pretty bizarre), made it through Customs, and got on our busses, Katie and I got even more wild.  She shared her headphones with me and we sat in our seats, dancing to club music as Lauren and Bryan in the seats next to us and Dan in front of us gave us strange looks throughout the hour-long bus ride to the restaurant from the airport.  Beijing isn't what I expected it would be, at least not yet.  It's a big city, with a lot of wide open spaces but also a lot of concentrations of tall buildings.  We couldn't see very far out because of a thick layer of something, either pollution or haze or something, but driving on the freeway certainly wasn't anything exciting.  We passed a couple of fields of trees that were planted precisely and in perfect alignment forwards, backwards, and sideways, but the rest of the time it was a view just like one you'd see in any other major city.  We arrived in a more downtown area, where the streets began to gently roll and the restaurants and bright neon Chinese characters started to appear.  The Chinese balls are everywhere on the outside of buildings, as is "Beijing 2008" as they are to host the Olympic Games next year.  We pulled up to a restaurant that looked like a Chinese pagoda from the outside, and we all shuffled in to eat a meal of Peking duck.  I never said it before because I'd never really experienced it, but I don't like duck.  If I had the way we ate it would have been delicious, in a rice crepe smothered in sweet sauce and filled with duck, cucumbers, and another crunchy vegetable I couldn't identify.  The sweetness of the sauce mixed with the crunchy and tender textures of the stuffing would have been even more of a culinary delight had I enjoyed the flavor of the duck.  Everyone else at the table loved it, but me, I'm just not a fan.  But I did try it, along with some other meats and vegetables.  Our next stop was the hotel about ten minutes away, in a more residential, local neighborhood than where our restaurant was.  Traffic was thick and people filled the sidewalks by our restaurants, and the view beyond was blocked by the neon lights outside of three and four story buildings, but our hotel's on the university campus, and I have to say it's quiet.  It's borderline creepy, like a neighborhood I probably would have avoided otherwise.  It's safe, I think, but incredibly dark.  The only light comes from the buildings, so streets are dark around the hotel.  We checked in and dropped our bags off before exploring the area for a bit.  One of the university students who will be our tour guide, Chi, walked a group of us wanting to go to an internet café out of the hotel and basically in a big square to a more commercial area, and the walk there was a little bit nerve-wracking.  Like I said, it was dark, and not a lot of activity was going on in the shops and restaurants we passed.  Instead, people were walking on the sidewalks and families were selling fruit and snacks out of carts or out of their cars.  I saw one pickup truck completely filled with watermelons and the man just hanging out in the cab, the window down and his leg propped on the door.  It just seemed so quiet, with only a few cars driving by, and absolutely no motorcycles.  After about ten minutes and two right-turns, we made it to our intended destination, or at least closer to it.  Chi told us the internet café was across the street, over the bridge and above the KFC, and a supermarket was right ahead if we wanted a snack.  The group split up at this point, and Katie, Lauren and I went into the supermarket to find a bottle of water or a soda.  It was at this point that it became incredibly apparent that we are in a local area.  People actually stopped to stare at us as we walked by, and they didn't try to hide the fact that they were talking about us.  I don't think it was necessarily bad, because it's a local grocery store and I'm sure it's not a usual occurrence for a larger group of white people to go walking in, but I feel like when I get home to the States and am not constantly being stared at I'm going to be a little offended.  The supermarket was two stories and the first floor was all meat and seafood.  And these people, they sell and eat every last part of the ocean.  Fish, shrimp, crab, all of the normal seafood you could find, along with actual seaweed soaking in water, some other sea plant I recognized because I know I've seen it floating at the surface on occasion during my time at the beach, and sea shells, just everything they had on ice to sell.  The same with the land animals.  It's all there to be bought for food.  I have to say, I'm getting pretty used to seeing the meats and the full ducks, roasted with their beaks still on, and pig's feet and legs, and cow heads.  I don't even flinch anymore.  We passed all this in search of a cold beverage and found one at the back wall opposite of where we came in, but realized the long was about two miles long so we decided to try somewhere else.  We walked out, attracting no less attention with every move we made, and crossed the bridge over the freeway.  I was terrified at one point by the man lying on a landing of the set of stairs leading us back down to the street, because he was lying face down banging his head repeatedly against the ground.  He was clearly homeless, from the dirty, shabby clothes and coat he was wearing, but I really thought something was wrong with him.  Obviously there was, but it seemed like he could have fallen and wasn't able to get up, but no one approached him.  I think us three were the only ones to even look down at him.  But even the officers standing at the foot of the stairs didn't do anything to help him and I know it wasn't really our place to do anything, but I felt horrible for him.  I felt like even if I'd bent down to ask him, to let him know someone was there, it would have helped.  To be stepped over, ignored, even if your mental state isn't quite up to par, can't make you feel very good, especially if you need help.  But along we walked, towards the KFC and the next door over to go to the Internet café.  We walked in and we might as well have been elephants because the guard sitting by the door eyed us up and down as we passed to go up the stairs.  We made it half of a flight before we ran into some girls who said all of the computers were full, so we went back outside to try to figure out a game plan.  All we really wanted to do was find a beer somewhere to relax, and it looked like there was a restaurant next door so we tried it.  The next hour was the funniest one I've had in a long time.  One girl in the whole restaurant spoke enough English to wait on us, and I suggested just being adventurous and just pointing to the menu and seeing what drink we were served.  The girl, once she realized we wanted drinks, said she had beer so we just said three, no other questions asked.  I felt bad sitting at a table in a restaurant and just drinking, so we decided to order dessert.  The pictures in the menu didn't help us much, so she came back over and we tried to ask her if the menu had desserts on it.  We tried "sweet", "after dinner", "sugar", and "dessert", but she didn't understand.  She laughed nervously, trying to figure out what to do next, and as I scoured the menu I recognized something that looked like the sticky rice I'd eaten in Cambodia, so I pointed to it.  "Sugar," she said.  Yes, yes, that's what we wanted we said, and she suggested what I'd pointed to and an item next to it, so we said fine, bring one of each.  Another woman gave us chopsticks, and I tried out the extent of my knowledge of the Mandarin language.  I tried to pronounce thank you, which evoked a chuckle from her, but at least I tried.  A few minutes later our sticky rice that looked like confetti cake cut into diamonds and that smelled like a sausage breakfast sandwich came out, along with what looked like a loaf of bread covered in sesame seeds and stuffed with custard.  The custard turned out to be beans, which apparently can taste sweet and are used in desserts.  It tasted okay, but I was more intrigued by the chopsticks.  I can use them, but I don't use them correctly so I tried to get Lauren to teach me how to use them properly, since she dated an Asian for a couple years and learned how from him and his family.  Well, for the next twenty minutes I took a class called Chopsticks 101 and attracted the attention of the entire restaurant.  She was trying to explain to me how to bend my fingers, and I swear my fingers just don't bend the way she was wanting them to, so I said something along the lines of having broken fingers, which cracked the three of us up.  And the laughing wasn't the first reason why everyone had their eyes on me.  Lauren and Katie were holding up their hands as I tried to imitate what they were doing, and I'd place the first chopstick in between my fingers and then the second, and of course I was holding it up in front of me and because we were the only Americans, actually the only foreigners in the place, we were already being watched.  And then with the free show of watching one of the said Americans learn how to use chopsticks, everyone was watching and laughing.  But of course, it was absolutely hysterical and all of us- the three of us, the wait staff, and other customers at the tables around us- enjoyed ourselves.  What a way to break the ice, because clearly we didn't know what we were doing.  We had to be given our chopsticks, personally handed our wet hand towels, all of those customary things we knew nothing about.  So why not make them laugh at our, and in this case my, ignorance.  We enjoyed our desserts and waved back at everyone who walked by.  Everyone was just so friendly, saying hi and goodbye to us as they left.  And as we left, a guy about our age said hello to us and the other three girls at his table started laughing and giggling, so we had a really great time.  It really was so much better, making fools of ourselves at the local place (but not in an intentionally disrespectful way) where very few people could say more than a greeting in English.  It just makes the experience all that much richer.  We'd originally wanted to scope out the night life, but after that ordeal we were able to consider our night complete, so we stopped by the internet café for a bit before coming back to the hotel in a cab.   Even at 10pm, some families were still hanging out in and around their vehicles and carts, selling fruit on the dark streets.  I had a good night, simple but so much fun.  I really enjoy the people, obviously, and it helps that they seem to enjoy us too.  I haven't seen much of the city yet to be impressed by it beyond the fact that it's Beijing, so I'm excited to see some of the sights tomorrow and of course the Great Wall.  The Great Wall.  Wait, as the reality of it sinks in.  So off to bed I go, because when I wake up tomorrow, it will be time to go there. 

(Okay, maybe not, considering it's now September and I'm back in Lake Forest...please forgive the tense confusion, as some of this was written soon after China, and some in the months after coming home.  Thanks!!)

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