Hanging out in Beijing

Trip Start Mar 16, 2009

Trip End Jul 22, 2009

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Flag of China Beijing, China
Monday, April 27, 2009

PHOTOS HAVE BEEN ADDED

Greetings from Beijing. Or rather greetings from the Beijing Jade International Youth Hostel, where we have stayed for 3 nights and will stay for 1 more. It is the longest we've stayed in the same hotel or hostel since we left the States over a month ago. Man, traveling can be exhausting.

So we've done a bunch in the past four days. We went to the Great Wall...twice. I guess I haven't updated the blog for a couple days because I knew this would be a long one...

So on Thursday morning we woke up and the weather was terrible. It was raining and cold. It wasn't especially hard rain, but rain is rain. Yuck. It was also about 10 degrees celsius. But we were going to the Great Wall, so I was still happy. If only the haze and clouds would lift just a bit, we might get some good pictures at least.

In the Great Wall

There are five sections of the Wall that are accessible to tourists travelling from Beijing. With Frank and our GAP tour we went to Mutianyu. There is a 3 km stretch of Wall that has 20 towers to pass through. For the less fit people, there is both a cable car and a chairlift up to two spots on the wall, otherwise it is about a 20 minute hike up to the wall from the car park. It's odd to see a chairlift in such a spot, but I think it's a good addition because it allows people who otherwise would not have made it up and onto the Wall to get up there. The Wall is very steep and quite a work out, so if a cable car allows the elderly to experience the Wall, so be it. There is also a toboggan or alpine slide down from the Wall, which looked like so much fun, but unfortunately it was too wet to come down on that day.

Cloudy

Thursday was a day for the Mongols. It was foggy beyond belief. At times you couldn't even see the tower a hundred or less meters in front of you. When the clouds lifted just a bit you would get some pretty cool views...but they didn't lift much, so oyu could never really see more than two or three towers in front of you. The Wall was very very steep as I said, and I sweated up a storm. When I shed a layer in one of the towers steam poured off my body.

The longest view of the day

We started at tower 8 and headed towards tower 20, the highest tower in that section of the Wall. It was a long steep climb up to tower 20, culminating with a high vantage point of...nothing... Oh well, it was a little dissappointing, but at the top we met Helen. Helen was 74 years old and she had slowly trucked up the entire thing. She was a native Chinese woman, but she lives now in Pleasanton, California. She was really pretty much an inspiration. She was very happy to get to the top and had me snap a few pictures of her... of course there wasn't much of a background. Oh well.

View from the top...

Because it was raining, there weren't too many people on the wall, so that was good, and the ones who were out there were for the most part pretty excited about it. I wore my hiking boots because I hadn't put them on for a few weeks and I want them to feel normal in Nepal. I also was decked out in rain gear, as was everyone in our group. Of course when Mary and I passed one guy going pretty fast he made a snide comment asking us, "So you guys planning on climbing the entire wall today?" Mary noted that in tourist situations that require any degree of fitness if you look fit and are excercising, the fat farts who just fart around for awhile and don't get anywhere always have to make snide comments...

We walked back to tower 8 and then continued on as a group to tower 6, but the weather wasn't clearing and people were soaked, so Frank, Kristen and Mary decided to go down to the bottom. I of course wanted to see as much of the Wall as possible, so Allison and I continued on to tower 1 up three very steep uphills. From tower 1 you could see.... absolutely nothing.

Clearer

On the way to the cafe to meet up with the others I tried my hand at getting a Great Wall t-shirt. I bargained a cotton t-shirt from 185 yuan down to 14. I was pretty happy because I needed a t-shirt for that very moment...I was soaked. Of course I got a large and forgot that Chinese people are generally smaller... I guess I bought Kristen a t-shirt, since when it shrinks in the wash it will fit her perfectly... The sleeves are so short, it's funny.

Allsion got stuck with some vendors, or rather, Allison couldn't say no to some vendors, so we waited awhile before heading home. We kind of lost her for about 30 minutes, it was the first time I'd seen Frank get worried. Oh well.

Back in Beijing, Frank took us to the Pearl Market to do a little souvenier shopping. Beijing doesn't allow outdoor markets, but there are a number of indoor markets with plenty of stuff and a lot of bargaining.

If I had been going home the next day I would have bought so much more! Stuff is so cheap and if you can bargain at all it is even cheaper. OF course, it probably all falls apart very fast... I went straight for electronics as usual to get something for my camera. I wanted an extra battery for Nepal. They started me at 200 and then I typed 100 into the calculator and walked away. SOLD. Pretty good for a camera battery. And the one I got is really cool because for whatever reason, unlike my other battery it gives me the number of minutes left before it runs out on my camera display screen.

Kristen is getting tired of electronics and commented "Jimmy I want to go look at Chinese stuff," I responded: this is Chinese stuff! They make it all here. We went for more souvenir type things, but there really wasn't anything good. Kristen wanted a cotton t-shirt, since all of her shirts are of the quick dry variety and stuff. So we got her a polo shirt after bargaining from 260 down to 90. I told her to go for the Burbury Polos, but she said they were too crazy. Yea, they have the polo symbol with burbury sleeves and collar prints. They are pretty hilarious.

One woman tried to sell me a Callaway driver for 420 yuan, and I probably could have gotten it for 200. Grr. I want a new driver.

The purchase of the day was a pair of terrific Bushnell Binoculars for 95. Actually I also got a head lamp thrown in because Kristen wanted one for Nepal. Bargaining can be fun.

After leaving the market we went back and changed for the big final dinner. Peking duck of course! I love when there is a place really known for a certain kind of food and you can go there and have the signature food in that location. Beijing for Peking (Beijing) duck, Maine for lobster, New England for Clam Chowder, Maryland for Crabs, Alaska for Halibut, France for Frogs legs (eww)...you get the idea.

Our dinner was delicious. Frank ordered everything like usual. He says he likes to balance out the fatty duck with some vegitables, so we also had some good broccoli and cabbage. It was really kind of sad though. Kristen and I already miss Frank who did just an outstanding job as our tour leader. It's hard going to restaurants without him, you just have to point at pictures, haha. We missing going in and having him do all the work. And he had such good taste, he always found us the best food. And he was just a great all around guy and always cheerful. After dinner we hung out a bit in Mary and Allison's room and Frank was laughing up a storm as we told him funny Mr. Deng stories. We miss Mr. Deng too. Sad.

GAP did just a terrific job with our trip. It was great to have a local guide who not only spoke the language but was very proud of his country and his heritage. Allison did a GAP trip in India that she really liked, but the guide's only job was to really arrange things with locals (and he wasn't a local) and then he just had free time. Frank stayed with us all the time and did a great job of really helping us become imersed in Chinese culture. It was also nice for this trip to have a small group, since the point of it, though it was a tourist trip, was to try to get off the beaten path and not be such tourists, at least a bit. It was so fun.

Friday was technically the last day of our "tour" but there were no planned activities and we didn't see Frank, we just got to stay in the nice hotel one more night. The group decided to stay together for the day more or less, though. Kristen and I left our bags in Mary's room. Allison's flight left around 4 that day, but Mary was staying an extra day. We split a cab up to the Olympic park so that we could see some Olympic sites. We walked around and saw the Bird's Nest, which looks really really cool from the outside. To be quite honeset, it almost looks unnecessarily complicated, but it's still amazing with all the beams and the spires on the outside. It's not a huge stadium, with a maximum capacity of 91,000, but it's still pretty nice.

The Bird's nest

We also saw the outside of the Water Cube, known as Michael Phelps's favorite place in the world. We walked around for a while, but it was kind of odd because even though there were throngs of tourists, the site wasn't very well deliniated with maps or anything, in English or Chinese. It's very interesting to think what a large tourist site it is and how proud China is of it's Olympics. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think the sites hold the same weight in other countries, though that may be true soon in China. In Atlanta, for instance, the Olympic Stadium was turned into Turner Field, the baseball park of the Braves. In Sydney, Olympic tours were not widely advertised, and I guess we'll see in Athens (we're going to 3 Olympic cities on this trip). But in Beijing, the Olympic Stadium is the NATIONAL STADIUM! It's a thing of great pride.

Water Cube

Allison had to go and caught a cab after awhile of walking around, and then Mary, Kristen and I walked over to the Bird's Nest and figured out how much it might cost to get in. For 50 Yuan you can go in and see the place and even walk down on the pitch. It is quite a money maker, because when we went it was quite busy. It's really cool to walk down on the field though and pretend you are Usain Bolt or something. Several groups of Chinese tourists stopped us and wanted to take pictures with us. This is becoming a theme: Chinese tourists love to get pictures with white people. It's really pretty funny.

Honestly, on the inside I wasn't too impressed. I mean, in the States we have countless awesome stadiums. And the undulations of the inside kind of reminded me of RFK. But I guess it's pretty cool that the seats are all covered by the "nest." The jumbotrons played clips from the Olympics and the One World, One Dream slogan was all over the place. You could also take pictures with the funny mascots...Sweet!

Floor of Bird's Nest

From there we hopped a cab to the Summer Palace and arrived around 1. Boy did we miss Frank at this point. It was just no nice to have a knowledgable guide at these historic sites...or even someone who could show us to the entrance! Luckily we met someone who spoke a little bit of English. We have found that people really really want to speak english well and want to be accomadating. The girl was very sweet and a little self concious and did a good job of leading us to the entrance.

We picked up a headset for the tour so we'd know a little about what we were looking at, but the headset was kind of crap. It didn't have a rewind and was fully automated...so yea...you weren't supposed to press a button on it, and we did, turning it off completely. Oh well, there were plenty of signs in English.

The Summer Palace was first built in 1750 by one of the Emperesses. It is on a massive plot of land with a huge lake. It is a gorgeous spot with "Longevity Hill" which allows you to look across the lake and see a lot of massive Beijing. There are beautiful gardens and walkways along the lake. As Mary would put it, it was just lovely.

Summer Palace

The Summer Palace was last improved upon in about 1890, and it's incredible to think how fast China has changed. With the Forbidden City, for instance, it's amazing to visit because it is 400 years old. But with the Summer Palace it's kind of mazing to think it's really about 120 years young. Only 120 years ago (or actually less than a hundred years ago) Emperors and Emperesses were ruling China and living in extreme opulence. (In fact the Forbidden City was inhabited that recently as well.) When you think about the contrast between the rulers in say, the US, and in China that time it's amazing, and when you think about how fast China has modernized it is also remarkable. It's interesting to think about the way in which Chinese culture has been so dramatically altered in the last hundred years.

View from Longevity Hill

At the same time, it's also interesting to think about the transition from Empire to Communism on a purely political level. China has, right now, for lack of a better way of putting it, a largely apolitical population. There is only one vehicle for political expression, if you will, the Communist party, and one could hardly even call that expression, because you don't really have free reign. The Party is the new Emperor.

But it's also interesting to think about what power is and what power and success mean in China in contrast to, say, the United States. In the US, we always sort of pride ourselves on our bootstraps capitalism. Anyone can become anything. It is a story told time and time again in a million different ways and Horation Alger stories... You can go from nothing to become a king. Just look at the presidential race, for instance. Ok, so McCain had a military background, but Obama was raised by his grandparents, had an absent father, a very middle class background, and he signified that in America anyone can become anything. Joe Biden was that scrappy kid from Scranton with working class roots raided by hardworking parents who had to save every dime. Sarah Palin, well she was just a stupid and unsophisticated as any other American, but here she was, on the footsteps of the vice presidency (and presidency since McCain's so old).

Well China too has a story about people coming from nothing and making it in the world. The Imperial Exams were given to all students in China and, in theory, regardless of background or where you were born if you did well enough on the exam you could become a government official. This is why culturally China values education so much, because education is the key to a better life.

Another good view

But this story is both similar and very different to the American style success story. The point is if you work hard enough and study hard enough you will succeed. That's more or less the same. But in the States education is valued, but probably not nearly as much as individualism, charisma or ingenuity (see Sarah Palin....). Because in the Chinese story, you never actually hit the peak. You become a government official and are paid well for it and hold power, but your power is still less than your superior. In America, everyone wants to be Barack Obama, in the Chinese story you can aspire to be Rahm Emanual... Or so it seems... It is just interesting how both societies and cultures pride themselves on the same "equality" of opportunity, but Americans ask for more results.

Now in the People's Republic, the people still can have that government role. Now there are national university entrance examinations, and the other day on CCTV 9 (the English language channel) I saw a bit about a small rural poor town in Southeast China that boasts that nearly 70% of its inhabitants pass the University examinations. The documentarian talked about how people in that down will starve if they have to to make sure that their kids go to school and work hard and learn. But in terms of ultimate aspirations, working for the government is a realistic aspiration whereas changing or shaping the government does not seem to be. Or if that is the aspiration, it involves working within a much more fixed and defined system with far less freedom for political expression. But that seems to be somewhat of a continuity between the imperial success story and the success story of Communist China.

Anyway, just a lot of musings about cultural differences and societal differences. I really need to read some books on China and see if I'm on base with any of this stuff, but who knows.

Other side of the lake

So we walked around the spectacular Summer Palace for around 3 and a half hours, stopping only for some dumplings and a diet coke. We were on our feet walking for about 5 hours plus between the Olymic Stuff and the Palace and were ready to head home around 4:45.

The Summer Palace is out by the 5th ring road of MASSSIVE Beijing. I mean this town is huge! Mary suggested we take the public bus back to the center of town for "the experience," and because it was 1 yuan apiece, and we'd spent around 100 on cabs to get up town. Now, to be fair, even 100 yuan split 3 ways is not very much, but it's 30 times more than taking the bus.

Summer Palace scenic spot

So we asked for bus directions from a woman who seemed to know what she was talking about. Key word: "seemed." We headed on the 330 out of the Summer Palace and I was pretty sure we turned in the wrong direction, but I was on the opposite side of the bus from Mary and Kristen and they were by the bus route sign, which I couldn't read from my vantage point....

Now when I saw mountains I knew we were in the wrong place. The bus conductor who sells tickets obviously was wondering what a few foreigners were doing headed in that direction, and luckily she asked a little boy to talk to Mary and figure out what the heck we were doing.... Turns out my gut feeling was right. We got off the bus after 15 minutes of the wrong way and headed back to the Summer Palace...

We were content then to take a cab... but we couldn't get one that would take us all the way to downtown after a few tries. So we figured out we actually needed the 808 and hopped the bus in the direction of Tiananmen Square.

Big mistake.

Public bus + rush hour traffic + Beijing being the most MASSIVE city I have ever been to = 2 hour bus ride!

By the time we got to Tiananmen Square it was 7:45 and dark. I was getting pretty worried since I had no idea when the reception desk at our hotel was open until...

And then we had trouble catching a cab and got a bit turned around trying to cross various streets near the square... oh and you can't go onto the square at night... it's closed...

When we finally walked to our hotel and got up to the room...Mary's key didn't work... So she went back and got another key.... which also didn't work... so they sent up a mechanic... and he said her door's automated key card thing was "out of batteries"... It was a comedy of errors.

We finally left and they called us a cab at 8:30...I was really hoping reception didn't close at 8, and worried it might close at 9. Luckily it turned out to be 24 hours... Phew. Of course, when we got into our cab, the cab driver had no idea where our hostel was. Frank had translated the name into Chinese for me, but I didn't have a map. He also put down the phone number and the bell hop called the hostel on his phone and got it all sorted... he also got a big tip from me.

So I've said that I love talking to cabbies in an earlier post. The most frustrating thing about taking cabs in Beijing is that you can't talk to cabbies. The Cabbie tried to ask me where I was from but I kept shaking my head and had no idea what he was saying... Finally he got the point across when he pointed to himself and said China. I responded, "Oh Mei Guo" (Mei Guo, which literally means "beautiful country" is how you say the US in Chinese). He nodded and added "O-Ba-Ma, O-Ba-Ma!" It was funny.

Our hostel turned out to be really really nice, which is why we immediately booked on for 3 more nights. Our room is clean and has a view out the window of the Forbidden City. It's much more hotel like with the lobby and restaurants and stuff. But of course, every hostel reminds you somehow that it is a hostel. The bathroom has a clear class door and the only lights are in the bathroom and the foyer, so in order to see anything at night you have to leave those lights on and turn ont he big screen flat screen TV (cool!). The clear glass makes using the toilet fun...

We headed out to the Night Market near our hostel and I got some great dumplings. I was starving because we hadn't eaten all day except for a few dumplings at the Summer Palace. Unfortunately some of the food choices at the night market were a bit much for Kristen. No dog, but smelly fish and snakes and stuff... So we got her some good American food: McDonalds!

Saturday was a day of rest, the first really since our trip started. Even in Bondi, we'd generally get up, go to the beach for a few hours and then walk and walk and walk. But Saturday we slept late. Then we went for lunch and took a walk around Tiananmen Square to the "tourist hub" to see if there were any reasonable Great Wall Trips, but we were back by 2:00 and Kristen, who slept until 11, took a 2 and a half hour afternoon nap...

I spent most of the day trying to get in touch with my buddy Jamel who is in Beijing on a Fullbright to study the ethnography of Hip Hop in Beijing... Yea, you read that right, American taxpayer dollars at work, haha.

So Jamel had sent me a facebook message with his phone number on Thursday, but for some reason Kristen's blackberry, which is where I'd been reading my e-mails, blocked the facebook message from my gmail inbox, but also wouldn't show that I had received a facebook message in the facebook application... yeah, weird, strange crazy, etc. So I got an e-mail from Jamel after frantically asking for his phone number early Saturday morning... Even though when I signed onto my e-mail on a real computer I could see he'd already sent it to me... Oh well.

So Jamel's Fullbright is to follow Beijing Hip Hop, become immersed in the culture, and to, as I said, create an ethnography with both written material, photos, and multimedia, studying and demonstrating the rise of hip hop in Beijing. We got lucky because Saturday night this club was having a once a month live show, that Jamel said is about as good as Beijing hip hop, which is still in it's infancy, is. So yea, we were going to accompany Jamel on one of his study trips... American taxpayer dollars at work....

We were supposed to meet Jamel at one of the subway stations at 7:00 pm... We took the Beijing subway which is beautiful... Really, it's great. There are TV screens. It's well lit... There is a glass partition so you can't fall in. Quite nice.

Anyone who knows Jamel knows where this story goes next....

So when we got to the subway stop around 6:50...we saw that we'd missed a text message from Jamel that he was running late asking if we could meet at 8:00... He was trying to get his external flash repaired on his camera...it was taking longer than expected...

So went around the corner for a drink and some fabulous dumpings... I didn't know what kind I was ordering, since the only English on that part of the menu was "Dumplings" but the descriptions were in Chinese... So I just guessed... I guessed well. We finished a little before 8:00 and walked back to the subway stop to meet Jamel.

Anyone who knows Jamel knows where this story goes next...

The camera took even longer than expected...Jamel showed around 8:45....

We walked to get some grub. Jamel was really in the mood for some food from west China, so we walked a long way to this place with West China food. It was worth the walk. We also passed through this cool little bar/backpacker/ex pat street. We even ran into a few of Jamel's friends in the restaurant.

It was really nice to be with someone from home, or at least for me, since Kristen didn't go to school with Jamel. It was cool telling him about what stuff had been like around the election and the inauguration, all stuff he'd missed. He's actually had a fair number of visitors recently. Last month his mom passed through Beijing on her first trip to China too.

So after dinner we got to experience the underground hip hop scene of Beijing... It was an expereince...

We went to a completely nondescript building...which it turns out was a club... When we ent in the doors we were very surprised by what we saw. It was actually pretty nice. The bathrooms were the nicest public bathrooms we've used in China. The club itself could have been anywhere...

Break dancers

We met a lot of Jamel's very diverse group of friends. Most of them are foreigners, and he is techincally enrolled at the University for Minorities...or something like that, I can't remember the exact name, but yea he has a very diverse group of friends. The club was about half foreigners and about half Chinese I would say. The prices were pretty Western...we paid 4 yuan for our 600 mL beers at dinner (that's the standard Chinese size)...and 12 ounce beers in the club were 25 yuan apiece! People were dressed to the nines and it definitely seemed like an upper crust crowd.

The DJ was spinning American hip hop, and really, we could have been anywhere. After our time with Frank and in South China I really didn't expect to be hearing TuPac and Wu Tang and everything. Of course I was reminded of the Dave Chappelle skit from Chappelle's Show with the "Racial Draft." In it different races get to draft someone of mixed race as their own... The Wu Tang Clan gets drafted by the Asians (they are not actually Asian...). Anyways...look it up on youtube.

Just like back home there was a big contingent of Asian break dancers in the club...

We spent a lot of time talking with Jamel's friend Josh, who's a Masters Student in Chinese at UC Santa Barbara and decided he might as well spend his time studying for his thesis in China rather than back home. He's spent about 4 years between China and Taiwan (which is considered to be China here). He really liked hearing about our trip through South China and what we had seen.

Concert

See Beijing is in many ways a very modern, well off city. The slums we saw everywhere in South China are not predominant in Beijing. It is very Middle Class and Upper Middle class (at least the huge swaths of it we've seen on the public buses). People are pretty well off and the country has been experiencing constant growth. This is a city that feels that growth. I mentioned the Slumdog Millionaire feeling to him and he recounted seeing it with a Chinese friend, who said something along the lines of "I'm glad we don't have that in China."

I remember in my last semester at Williams a class I took called Power and Inequality. There I read that if you look at China as a population and economy with 1.3 billion people it's really interesting because the top 300 million is starting to look a lot like the US. There are plenty of Rich and what we'd call "middle class" Chinese, and the standards of living are really quite high. But the bottom 1 billion is still very poor, lives on dollars a day and is not really benefiting from China's unprecedented growth. That's one of the reasons China has a very high level of inequality. But at the top and in Beijing there is a large growing society of completely apolitical well off Chinese. The result, as Josh and Jamel (and Jamel's friends Jerome and John describe) is a heavily materialistic culture... If only Chinese protectionism didn't stop American companies from getting in the game...

Concert 2

On CCTV this morning they were talking about how the American Economy is collapsing and how China is ready and poised to overtake it... Of course there are still a lot of very poor people in this country. Josh was also talking about how living in a place like this gives you more of an appreciation for the degrees of political freedom and avenues of expression in the States, although every time he goes home he finds people want to turn "American values" into narrow ideologies and it drives him nuts... Yeah, it drives me nuts too not having lived outside the country...

We also discussed how few Americans get passports and really do travel abroad and try to experience other nations and cultures...it really is pretty dissappointing.

It seemed crazy to be on the upper floor of a club in a group of 10 having all these discussions in English after what we've experienced, but it was fun.

Concert 3

We went downstairs for awhile and then the DJ stopped and a guy dressed in traditional garb with a guitar took the stage. Josh had just been telling us about "throat singing," an old Mongolian art form where you can produce two tones at once through the manipulation of your throat... That's what the guy on the guitar was doing. Only it was funny because the result sounded kind of like Grunge music and Josh asked if we were about to summon the long gone Kurt Cobain... An American girl asked me what the heck was going on... But the crowd was all there to watch, and the dance floor was busyier than it had been, though there was no dancing. The girl was apart of a group of kids studying Chinese abroad, I also met a guy from Boston... As I said, the club was about 50% foreingers... Interesting to see Beijing's underground hip hop scene...

After the throat singer the hip hop group took stage. These were all guys that Jamel knows well and hangs out with. They are all major parts of his study. The group featured two guitars, a drum set, a clarinet (which was pretty cool) and two MCs. Listening to the MCs was really funny because they would transition back and forth between addressing the crowd in Chinese and addressing the crowd with typical "hip hop phrases" if you will used to rile the crowd (you know, "Make some Noise!" "Throw your hands up!"  "What, What!" etc.). It turns out the guy with the Pasadena shirt was actually born and raised in California and moved to beijing to study Chinese, only to drop out and join a hip hop group... He rapped in both Chinese and English, wheras the other guy rapped just in Chinese.

See if this had been a group of all white guys it would have been funny, so to see a group of all Chinese guys doing hip hop, trying to sound like they were from the streets of Compton or what not was kind of comical. But the music was actually pretty good and I thought they pulled it off pretty well. But really imagine a lot of stuff in chinese followed by a loud "Make some noise!!" in English. Yeah, that's what it was like.

Of course the best song, perhaps not surprisingly, was from a black guy from the Carribean who jumped on stage and the band broke into some Reggae tones. He said "Rastafaria" a bunch and did a sort of reggae rap and then this guy Francoise from the French West Indies we'd met on the way in jumped up and rapped in French. It really was an international hip hop show.

Incidentially, I saw my first Chinese guy with dreads... pretty funny.

I thought it was a pretty good show, very interesting to see what does and doesn't work when an art form that you associate with one environment is completely adapted to another environment. Then again, Josh pointed out that the Chinese language has a lot of rhymes and is actually very well suited for rapping.

I asked Jamel if the show was typical and he said no. Hip hop, though it's been around for about 10 yewars now in Beijing, is still really in its infancy, and still hasn't quite taken off. I wonder if the NBA's wide reach may ultimately help that happen, as the NBA and hip hop culture seem to be related. And, as I've said, the NBA is huge.

But also there is an interesting thing happening with the development of hip hop not unlike what happens with a lot of art forms. So, at least in theory, historically, hip hop is associated with the streets and was born from the streets. No one knows exactly how it came about, but really all you need is a turntable and you can have hip hop, because you just need beats, you don't need a hwhole lot of expensive instruments. Turntables can be expensive, but some of the first hip hop artists were stealing power from street lamps.

Now that it has gotten big, a lot of people have beena nd continued to be priced out of hip hop. There are huge contradictions about singing about being from the streets and having six cars and making millions of dollars, but they sort of exist in almost all music, which is often about unhappiness, being broke, angst, etc...

Well in Beijing, hip hop is not a movement from the streets. The club we went to was 30 yuan to get into and beers were much much more expensive than in other places. So it doesn't quite have the bottom up trajectory that accompanied hip hop's rise in the States, and it's not a movement that comes to symbolize the plight of a class or ethinic group in the same way.

Of course, Jamel also notes that it's just about what people buy, and people aren't yet buying hip hop. He adds though that a big problem has to do with the apoliticalness of the culture. No, not all hip hop has a "political" message in the most literal description of the term, but there is a degree of protest and expression that is at least moresubdued in a country where all art has to pass through the Party. If you want to get your CDs sold and made, you are going to have to pass through the Party, which obviously limits what you can do or say. One of the biggest hip hop songs of all time and one that you could consider as really allowing it to take off is NWAS's "Fuck the Police." Can you imagine that coming out in China? No wonder hip hop is still in its infancy.

It was really cool to see what is happening though and the ways in which it's being adapted but still remains firmly tied to American culture and its American roots. It seems like yet another example where East meets West creating a somewhat facinating combination. I mean the club went from a song with the chorus of "Wu Tang Clan ain't nothing to fuck with!" to a Mongolian throat singer to an MC riling up the crowd like at any American concert to an MC rapping in Chinese... Crazy.

Anyways...I actually have to go pick up Lars who is coming to Beijing to meet up with us... So Kristen is going to take over for awhile to descrbe our second trip to the Great Wall, which we did yesterday (Sunday) before coming back into town, meeting up with Jamel...who was late ...again and going for some good Kung Pao Chicken and fried rice. Most of my musings about Chinese culture, politics and hip hop were discussed over that dinner with Jamel and his buddies John, who's from Boston, and Jerome, who's from Cinncinati but now lives in Nanjing and went to BC with Jamel. We capped the night off with some Family guy at Jamel's friend Mia's apartment... Family Guy in Beijing, funny...

Anyway, here's Kristen to describe the trip to the Great Wall, complete with two trips on a public bus... --Jimmy

Since on our first trip to the Great Wall it was raining and visibility was only about 15 meters, we decided to go back to a different section for another hike. This time we went to the Badaling sections ( I can't remember the name of the 1st section we went to) which is much more touristy and crowded, but still beautiful with lots of views of the wall.  After catching a cab to the bus station and a few tense moments when the driver got nerous because he though we wanted him to drive us all 60 kms to Badaling, we finally found the right bus and settled in. Turns out it only cost 12 yuan per person each way, which is about $2 for an hour drive, not bad.

Badaling

Along the way we passed a few other sections of the wall including one point where the wall actually turned into a bridge that crossed the highway. I'm pretty sure that wasn't in the original design plan, but wahtever. It was nowhere near as bad as what we found when we made it to Badaling. The bus dropped us off about 300m down the road from the entrance, and as we were walking along the highway to buy our tickets we glanced up to try to get a view of the wall. While the wall winding aong the ridgelines of the mountains was beautiful, the enourmous "One World. One Dream" 2008 Olympics neon sign also perched on the side of the mountains Hollywood-style, kind of ruined it a bit. In fact, we were so horrified by it, that it took a long while to be able to look past it and see the wall again. Jimmy started rambling about how it was just another example of China trying to live up to Western standards of "cool." Similar to the way so many Asian tourists hold up the peace sign in all of their pictures. I'm sure that if he hasn't already writeen about it and he will write a long diatribe soon... I tuned it out and tried to admire the wall despite all of the people hiking on it.

On the great Wall

There were people everywhere. It was insane. Fortunately, there were lots of views of parts of the wall that are not open to the public, so we could get some photos of the wall without a million tourists on top of it and a million vendors trying to sell memorabilia to them. Yes, even at the top of the wall, when you are patrying to recover from having justfought your way up the side of a mountain, there are people trying to sell you postcards and "cashmere" scarfs...it is unbelievable and I am very happy that Frank taught us how to say "no thanks" (bu xiexie).

Posing with the sign

Actually at one point on the wall, a young teacher approached me and asked if i spoke English and if I would be willing to take a picture with all of her middle school students. They do that a lot here. People just like taking picutres with white strangers I guess. I don't know. But the situation kind of epitomized the day when I was standing with random chinese tourists and Jimmy was trying to grab a picture of it, but just as he tried to get one a dozen people walked right in front on him. I can't even describe how often that happens. But it is pretty funny sometimes and just all part of the experience.

Once you get passed the sign and the crowds though, it is unbelievable. What I find most fascinating as I watch all of these people struggling so much just to walk along a small section of it carrying nothing but some water and their cameras, is that soldiers used to stand guard up there and defend the wall against attacking tribes. It is hard enough just to walk along nevermind engage in battle. Then you start to think that before soldiers stood atop of it, people actually had to build the darn thing. The wall literally winds its way along ridgelines up and down the mountains for thousands of kilometers. Where did they get all the stones? How did they get it up there? How did they manage to build a wall with any stabilility at all on such steep slopes? When you start thinking about that, suddenly just walking up all of these stairs and hills isn't so impressive after all.

Mountains

Steep

We spent about 3 hours on the wall, and a quick stop for ice cream for me because I though I was going to pass out from hunger since the only thing I had eaten all day was corm. Yes they sell corn on the cob at their concession stands, and cucumber on sticks. Not exactly what we used to sell back at the Williams Softball concession stands at all the basketball games. But that's a topic for another time... At the bottom of the wall on our way back ot the bus stop we saw a crowd of people looing down into a sort of pit with a small fence around it. We of course were curious and went to see what they were looking at. There were three giant bears just hanging out at a sort of mini zoo. It was bizarre, but cool. Now I don't exactly consider myself an expert on bears, but I'm pretty sure these guys would classify as obese. THey were enormous and there were little plates of cut up apples to throw down to them everywhere, so they are fed constantly all day. Of course Jimmy felt the need to trhow some apple pieces down to the fattest one and hit him on the head a couple times, but then a lady came over and made him pay 3 yuan for it. Everything costs money no matter where in the world you are.

Wall and Sign

Near the End

Back at the bus station, we were reminded that while cheap, the public busses weren't quite ideal. We had to wait about an hour in a ridiculously long line before we were finally able to get on a bus. Now that wouldn't have been too furstrating since we didn't really have anything that we needed to rush back for, except for the fact that just about every third bus that pulled in would fill up at the back of the line. So people who had been waiting about a half hour less than us would just pile on while we continued to stand in line. It made no sense, and since no one else around us spoke any english we couldn't figure it out. Oh well we made it home eventually through some pretty awful traffic and another adventurous cab ride.

Kristen with new friends

Our friend Lars is coming today and we need to go meet hime, so that enough for now. I'm sure Jimmy will want to wrtie a wrapup of all our China adventures and post pictures soon enough, and then we are off to Bangkok tomorrow.