Day 2 Sorry, under contruction

  Beijing, China
Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Day 2 Sorry, under contruction

Luckily, there was only a slight bit of jet lag, not even really noticible except for a couple of odd times. Like waking up in the middle of the night and some part of my brain saying "Yo Quiero Taco Bell". The room is completely dark and I think to myself "What the hell?" and I realize that it's lunch time back home. Not that I really ate at Taco Bell all _that_ much... Ok, maybe I did.

By the way there are no Taco Bells in China that I'm aware of, but man... KFC is sure popular.

So I'm not so good at the flying thing. I wanted to get up early and start adventuring, but my body felt worked. So we slept in until late morning and then Rebecca's itinerary kicked in. First thing on the list was The Frobidden City. OOO, boy I thought... This is gonna be cool. I just watched "Hero" with Jamie and couple of days ago and that movie does a pretty amazing job of capturing the grandeur of the Forbidden City.


First thing we had to do was walk to the nearest subway station. Maybe a mile? Past the McDonalds and KFC and then up a bunch of stairs. Apparently the "sub" in subway doesn't realy mean that much around here. It was elevated almost the entire way. The heat of the day was stifling, as much I like the tropical climates, it takes me a little while to get used to it. So we hopped on the subway, got stared at a little because we're foreign and then shotpast big high rises, and absolute slums, and huge areas under construction. I think we even went past the future olympic park for 2008. Then we hit a transfer station and Rebecca shuffled me past all the nuances of subway travel in Beijing. Once we were on the 2nd line, we ended up going the wrong way, but luckily it's a circle, so we just rode it around. Then the next transfer the east-west red line that goes right between Tianamen square and the forbidden city.

We go inside the city and bought tickets, checked our bags and then Rebecca is like "This doesn't seem familiar" and we found that we had bought "special" tickets that go up to the tower above the gate. It wasn't that expensive and the view was really neat. So we considered it pretty fortuitous that we got confused. Once we got inside the main gate, we walked past dozens of streen vendors selling all sorts of swag. Flags and fake swords and these little magnet thingies that I'll probably end up getting before I leave. I'll describe it more then. Great big open areas technically inside the forbidden city, but were were not actally in the pay-for-a-ticket section. I got a picture of a backetball court, and it seemed a little weird. Anyway, we got accosted by the "art student" scam of some dude trying to sell a bunch of fake knock-offs of nice artwork. Lucky for me, Rebecca knows her way around all the scams, so I don't realy do much and once she talks to them in chinese, they leave us alone. It's pretty awesome having somebody guiding you around who knows the ins and outs of this weird place. She knows the language quite well and she's absolutely beautiful on top of all that. I'm one hell of a lucky guy.


So we finally get inside the gates, and the place is pretty amazing. Walkways the courtyards everywhere. Gajillions of people too. Unfortunately a lot of it has been upgraded and westernized... For example, there is a starbucks inside one of the stalls. And a place selling overpriced olympic crap in another. But it's not just that, it's kinda the whole aire of the place. You're in this amazing structure that no westerner and very few countrymen were able to see for hundreds of years. The place should be steeped in culture, but everwhere you look you see padlocks or power lines, or poorly poured concrete slabs or any number of other things that keep reminding you that this whole place is really being treated as not much more than a glorified tourist trap. Don't get me wrong, it's still an amazing sight and I enjoyed it a lot, but I kept thinking to myself that they should section off a portion of the forbidden city and strip out all the modernization and try to reproduce the way it was for centuries. Then hire actors to come and recreate typical scenes of a live inside the forbidden city. Guys playing eunichs carrying litters around, or drawing water from wells or carving, cleaning or artisaning the multitude of walkways, wall ornaments or whatever else they can think of. I think it would go a long ways towards preserving the cultural heritage of the place. As it sits right now, the culture is nothing more than a bunch of statistics (The forbidden city has 9,999.5 rooms, the emporer had XYZ concubines, etc). It's like bejingers woke up one day and realized they had this awesome structure a lot of people wanted to come see and they said "Sweet, how can we make a bunch of cash off of this?". And that's not realy fair, it wasn't the beijingers, it was the government.
Oh well, I'd still recommend seeing it, but give yourself a full day if you are the curious type. We spent about half a day there an we only made it up the central section of the city, there are equal-sized sections on either side. One for family and one for gods. So we really only saw about 1/3rd of it. Why didn't we stay longer? Well, because everything was under construction. I was all excited to see the main throne room. The one depicted in "Hero" and we come through the doorway and all you could see across the spacious courtyard is a giant faded-green box with a picture on it.

What's the picture of? Why the outside of the throne-room of course. So you can't actually see the building because it's under construction, but you then let you see a picture of it. And that' after walking around the previous hall that was also under construction. At this point Rebecca was getting pretty frustrated, because it was open only a couple of weeks ago. So we explored around some more, found some sections where not everybody went, so was kinda quiet. Then we got towards the end and there is a big garden there with huge water-carved rocks that I'm realy curoius to know how they got there. There was a stairway built into the side of this odd spire, but it was gated off. I got a shot from inside by sticking my arm through the gate, but not much more than that.

We ended up both being hungry and tired. So we exited the rear gate and walked down to the end of the moat and shot a couple pictures of the corner towers. Before I left, a friend told me about this digital photo process called HDR, by which you shoot multiple shots of the exact same scene at multiple exposures and feed them into a computer program that generates a photo which maximizes the contrasts between the various elements of the image. The result is somewhat "dreamy", but I really like it. The photo to the left is my first successful attempt at an HDR image, taken of the corner towers of the forbidden city.


After all that, we caught a cab to this place called "snack street". Imagine 400 carvinal booth vendors all selling little food items. Meat on a stick, gelatin bowls, rice things, deep-fried breads, bubbling, frothing, "chinese tea". (Tea with dry ice at the bottom I think) And then the "scary eats" including things like snakes, scorpions, sea horses and the like. They also had something that looked like a grub on a stick, some large form of larvae, about the size of your thumb. But that one was all over the place, so it wasn't that unique.


Rebecca and I had planned on trying sea horse, but when the time came, we just couldn't justify it. It cost 30 quai (think chinese dollars) for a stick and it had 5 seahorses on the stick. And a normal meal is somwhere in the neighborhood of 5 to 20 quai for a dish. So it was realy expensive for chinese standards (never mind that 30 quai is about $3.45) and Rebecca said "30 quai just for something just so I can say I ate it once isn't worth it." I had a realy bad headache, from head and low-protein and probably caffiene-withdrawal too... So I wasn't up for trying anything crazy at the moment. So we walked away and decided against the crazy-scary eats for today. Maybe later in the trip. We had some yummy chickens on a stick and and we tried some bread-like stuff, but it wasn't so great. But the yummiest thing we tried was candied pineapple... On a stick (of course). It was actually a mix of pineapple and honeydew melon and strawberries and cherry tomatoes of all things. Then they dip the whole thing in a vat of scalding hot liquified sugar and then set it on a big surface that it doesn't stick to somehow. (I've played with liquid sugar, and I know how it sticks to everything, so this was an accomplishment) and then they splash cold water on it and it solidifies really fast. So all your fruits have a hard sugar shell to them. On the tomato it was just weird. On the strawberry and melon, it was pretty good, but on the pineapple it was fantastic.

From snack alley, we were going to make reservations to get Peking duck, a delicacy that everyone is supposed to try here. But after sitting for a hour on the steps of some hotel people watching and letting the headache fade, we decided against the duck and started walking towards the subway station. The street was immaculate and there were overpriced western-like shops all around. Then we walked into this little alleyway and there was a woman up on the 2nd floor balcony singing chinese opera. It's a nice little cultural fix, but I wouldn't want to listen to it for a long time. We saw lots more food shops and vendors of all sorts of random crap. Sometimes I can't get over just how many little shops there are. Almost all of them are selling the same kinds of things. There are the meat stalls, the tea stalls, the jewelry stalls, the olympic crap stalls, and then a couple of others. All their stuff is exactly the same. So it constantly boggles my mind that any of them stay in business.

On the way to the subway, I looked in the sky and saw a rainbow. Check the pics section for a picture. Apparently rainbows are so rare in Beijing that everybody drops what they are doing and just stare up in awe. People were running out of their shops and street vendors were parking their current orders just to stare up and gape. About half of them whipped out cameras and started taking pictures. So I did that same, of course.

From the subway, we went to the "Silk Market". I guess this is the bardering capital of Beijing. It's a 5 story structure right above a subway station (that is actually underground) and there is like everything there. Electronics, watches, travel gear, outdoor wear, a whole floor for silks and womens clothing. Custom tailored suits, hand fans, instruments, etc, etc, etc. And I'm told they are usually very aggressive. Rebecca kept warning me about it, but when it got there, it was only half hour to close, so they were all tired. And I walked through like I had a purpose. They yell things like "Hello MPsan" (san is 3 in chinese) or "Hello sir, you need watch!" or "Hello back-pack". For the most part I just wanted to walk through and get an idea of what was there and what it was all about, then go back and look longer at things I actually wanted to get. A couple of times they would grab me and try to keep me from walking past. It's quite different than in the western world. But I think I adapted pretty quickly. I only wanted a fan because of the heat, and Rebecca lead me up to one stall and started bartering, she's gotten pretty good at it, and ended up walking out with a sandlewood fan for about 8 quai, which is about $1 USD.

After the silk market, Rebecca took me to a place called "Houhai". We got off the cab and she was all excited to show me something. But then we saw a big construction wall and her spirit slumped. Apparently it is a great big square in a park where people go ballroom dancing every night of the week. But they had the whole central portion of the park under construction just a couple of the dancers went to this other section to dance. She kept saying "Imagine all this, but 20 times bigger" it was still pretty neat, but I could tell it was a blow to her excitement level. There is a litle touristy area there on a lake, so we went along the strip trying to find a place to eat. The place was realy quaint. Open eateries, lake-side tables and lots of lighting out on the lake. We wanted to get a rental boat but they were all out for the next half hour. So we sat down to get some plain chinese food at the place at the end of the strip. (The rest weren't chinese) We had a mediocre meal then got the tab and realized wwe'd been completely scammed. The 2 bottles of water were like $6.50 USD, and 2 glasses of tea were close to the same. So we ended up paying $30 USD for a really mediocre meal. That wins the scam of the day award.

But... From there it got better. We got a little electric boat and toodled off onto this little lake. Well, we went down to the other side and there were huge flashing lights and screaming bar-goers and spinning cars and all sorts of craziness. And we're seeing all this from the water. It realy reminded me of the opening of the Pirates of the Carribean ride at Disneyland. Only a little more drunk.... And a lot louder... And quite a bit warmer... And nobody was narrating... And no pirates (that I saw anyway). But it was still damn cool. Too bad the battery on my camera died as soon as we got on the boat.

Turns out there is a little bridge around the bend and we tried to go under that to see what was on the other side. It's a really narrow opening and some boat comes from the other direction and runs into me. That's right,my first time behind a wheel in china and there is a collision in the 1st 20 minutes. Of course the top speed of these boats is slghtly slower than walking speed, so it was no big deal. But I was still a little wierded out by how much they don't seem to mind collisions around here. It's funny too because I haven't seen a single accident since I've been here, and they drive like crazy people!!!!

The lake ended up being huge and it took a whole hour just to circumnavigate it. So far, it was the best part of the whole trip.

Except for maybe the Indian food. :-)