Beijing, September 29, 2008 - Monday
Trip Start
Sep 26, 2008
1
4
31
Trip End
Oct 18, 2008
Beijing,
China
Thursday, January 29, 2009
"Other than that," I told her "there is no need. I understand that you'll be probably too tired for sightseeing after work. And I can do it either by myself or with PingPing's help just fine. Don't worry."
After that she was curious, generally speaking, about what I would like to see in Beijing. I answered that I wouldn't be able to see everything, and of the things I wouldn't like to miss, I singled out the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace and the Great Wall. As for the rest, I'd do what I would have time for. But, I added, I'd most certainly like to see the zoo and the Flower And Bird Market.
"That?!" she laughed. "That's for children!"
"Is it?"
"Of course!" she replied. "That's where my daughter wants to go all the time."
"And you are not interested in it?"
"Of course not. I tell you, it's for children."
"Ah. Then you need to make sacrifice every time you go with her."
"I don't," she winked. "My husband takes her there."
However, PingPing belonged to the other end of the spectrum, like me, to the group of people who didn't consider the zoo and the Flower And Bird Market to necessarily be only for kids. So as previously agreed, we met today at the exit A of the Xizhimen underground station. I got there on time, same as PingPing. And yet, we couldn't find each other right away.
Beijing 1
As a matter of fact, Xizhimen Station, one of modern architectural landmarks of Beijing with its tall triple buildings in the shape of sliced ellipses, is much more complicated to navigate and find one's way around for an average passenger than you would possibly want. At least if it's not your base station or one that you frequently pass through. Designed by AREP, a French architectural firm, it inevitably strikes you once you're there and if that was their main goal, then the designers achieved it. But if their goal was to also to make it user's friendly, then I think it's safe to say that they fell rather short on that score. The sheer fact that the station is divided into two completely independent sections, and if you want to, say, change trains in such a way that from the exit C you go to exit A, or the other way around, you must leave the station building altogether, come out in the street and then from the street enter the other exit which nevertheless belongs to the same station. I never saw such a thing anywhere in the world before, so I lost ten or even more minutes going up and down and around the station, looking for the exit A. Instead of its being a simple task. And all the more so as there was no serious reason to get late. Today we had an appointment at ten in the morning, the station was close to me, only half an hour on foot, so first I could sleep long, and then without an error estimate how long I would need to reach it. As for the sleep, it seldom functioned properly enough for me that I could sleep in.
Beijing 2
This time it was for two reasons. First, "Red Lantern House 2" isn't necessarily the quietest hotel u Beijing and whoever books an accommodation there should count with it. Besides, when I know I need to be somewhere at an appointed time, even if it's relatively late, I simply can't stay in bed forever. I just wake up. Like a rabbit. Sleeping with one eye always open, as it were.But at least I had an opportunity for an invigorating, brisk half-an-hour walk after breakfast. And I was at the Xizhimen station on time. However, much as the main buildings are up, the transportation hub they sit on top of is still undergoing construction. So that was an additional factor which made my finding of the exit A more difficult. For even when one is out in the street, in search of exit A, for example, they couldn't move just wherever they wanted, because a lot of space immediately around the station was under the scaffolding and formwork, with makeshift passages out of hardboards and wire fences.
But those who seek, they find, as well. Certainly, when I finally located the exit A, PingPing had already been there, sitting on a low wall.
"I am sorry." I apologised. "I just couldn't find the exit A. But I was on time here."
We wasted no time and headed straight westwards, down the Xizhimenwai Dajie or Xizhimen Outer Street, which was going to lead us right to the zoo. The zoo itself wasn't too far. I would say, only ten or fifteen minutes on foot from there. Of course, it was all individual and relative, as on some Internet forums I'd seen discussions maintaining it was a "long" distance, so the people took and recommended taking a bus or taxi.
Beijing 3
But they also quoted the distance in kilometres like 1.5, or maybe 2. Which for me - and PingPing's invisible belly - was a joke.Xizhimenwai Dajie featured some food stalls and fast food eateries. As PingPing had had no breakfast, we stopped by at one of them where she bought a few sticks with grilled meat. After she had devoured them, we moved on.
On our way to the zoo, still in Xizhimenwai Dajie, we passed by the Beijing Exhibition Centre to our right. A building constructed in 1954 in that unmistakeable communist fashion, starkly reminiscent of Stalinist architecture in former European communist block, it was now a multifunctional exhibition edifice housing an exhibition hall, a theatre, restaurants, hotel and more. I must be honest and say that as someone who is not necessarily the biggest fan in the world of every modern architectural design and solution, I liked the Beijing Exhibition Centre much more than most of the things the Chinese have constructed all over Beijing over the last few years. OK, triple ellipses of the Xizhimen station were OK, but they were more an exception to the rule. Either way, Beijing Exhibition Centre was now a place to hold an exhibition in Beijing and as such it housed exhibitions in fields as diverse as international economy, trade, technology, culture, politic, military - just name it. On this particular day, when we were passing by, it proudly displayed a huge red banner announcing that "The 8th China Model Exposition" was currently held inside. Whatever it was exactly.
And then we arrived at the zoo.
Beijing 4
With an area of 90 ha, it ranks as the largest zoo in China. It is also the earliest Chinese zoo open to the public and has the largest variety of animals of all the zoos in the country. I suppose that too was one of the reasons why there was a crowd at the entrance gate already. Apart from the obvious one that in China it's always crowded, no matter where you go and what's on display.Of course, in a way every zoo is the same. Each one of them has a certain menagerie of animals which appear in all the zoos of the world and the only difference is in the appearance of the cages they are kept in. Wherever you go, you'll find an elephant and lion, bear and monkeys. There will also probably be a zebra and an antelope. Those a bit larger in size aspire to have a house for amphibians and reptiles, and maybe an aquarium. Beijing as a capital of a rapidly developing China naturally had to have all of that.
What Beijing also had, and what according to my personal standards automatically classified it higher up on the list of zoos I visited was Siberian tiger, a magnificent creature that in my eyes was an epitome of beauty in a creature from this world. But also, enclosures and cages most of the animals are held in in this zoo are not exactly a five-star accommodation, and if animals could talk, I wouldn't be surprised if they lodged a complaint or two in the Book of Complaints. However, as widely believed, animals don't talk - at least none of the known languages - so I guess Chinese caretakers conveniently assume they are happy with where they are living.
Of course, as in every other zoo in the world, the grounds of this particular one also combine cultivated flower gardens with stretches of natural scenery, including dense groves of trees, stretches of grassland, a small stream, lotus pools and small hills dotted with pavilions and halls.
Beijing 5
Only, that beauty somehow fails to creep into animals' cages. I am sure Siberian tigers, just as an example, wouldn't mind having a bit more greenery there where they were. And I don't even mention the others.Bears lived in deep, concrete round enclosures and as far as I know, they are quite happy when those places include some water and a tree or two to climb on. Or at least something to climb on. The bears in Beijing zoo had roughly as much water as the Atacama desert at its wettest.
On the concrete wall of the bear enclosure there was a table with a visible warning, both in Chinese and English, which read "don't feed the animals". Sure enough, a few Chinese were happily - feeding the bears.
"Don't they see this warning?" I asked PingPing.
"Of course they do," she laughed. "But this is China."
"It means that if in China it's written "don't feed the animals," then you do?"
"In China people do precisely what they shouldn't do," PingPing explained.
Interesting. Now, whether this was a general, literally implemented rule, I couldn't know. True, this was not my first visit to China, but I had not been paying any attention to it earlier. With an exception of those loose interpretations of traffic rules, I hadn't followed that closely what Chinese did which couldn't be done elsewhere - officially not even in China, in fact. But we would see. In any event, these Chinese who were here at the bears' cage at the same time as PingPing and me, didn't consider the warning sign binding in any way.
But, not everyone in the Beijing zoo lived in drab quarters. There were privileged some characters. Those had a fairly luxurious pad and even their own houses. Which went by the name of Panda House, of course.
In the vast majority of other zoos in the world, once you are inside, you are free to see whatever there is on display for the price of the admission ticket. In the Beijing zoo, however, for some arcane reason they charge you additionally in case you are interested in seeing pandas. I wonder if there is anyone who isn't. Anyone every wanted to skip it?
However, contrary to some doomsday hints and information, the extra charge is only 5 yuan. So the rub is basically only in the fact that they do charge you again, and not in the amount of money you are expected to dish out for it. And now, be a face and skip the Panda House for the 5 yuan if you can while in the Beijing zoo. I was not such a face. Neither was PingPing. So we duly paid and then paid a visit to the pandas.
Of course, the giant panda is one of the most famous mammals in the world. I don't know how uninformed one should be in order to have no idea what panda is. This white-and-black creature which looks a lot like a bear dressed in a clown's outfit has fundamentally grown to become one of symbols of China. So much so that even environmentally woefully insensitive Chinese authorities now recognise the need to save the endangered species and its habitat from extinction. Of course, building it a first class house in the Beijing zoo is just a token measure and it basically amounts to nothing except for the clear message that they have now heard the rest of the world. It will take much more than that, like implementing some real measures to achieve some meaningful results. Everyone knows that climate change and deforestation are now threatening panda's existence. Whereas the climate change trend is much more difficult to reverse, deforestation should prove to be an easier task. All people like me can hope for now is that Chinese authorities will come around to the full conviction that there is much more to healthy and prosperous country than just ferociously building high-rises and paving thousands of miles of motorways through nature.
After all, the most capable athletes of our age - and the Chinese had plenty of opportunities to see them first hand during the Olympics just one month earlier - had one thing in common. Healthy lungs.
By the time we had covered the whole zoo it was already afternoon. Like four o'clock. By then we were too hungry and too tired to explore the Beijing Aquarium as well. So we got back out on the street and again headed in the direction of the Xizhimen Station. We decided to have a lunch at one of those spots we had seen on the way to the zoo. Eventually we settled for a Japanese fast food outlet where I ended up ordering - spaghetti. It was the only dish I could positively ascertain as vegetarian, so I wouldn't search around any more. As PingPing was an omnivore, she just picked what she liked best on the menu.
Once done with the lunch, it was time to make arrangements for tomorrow. I suggested Tiân'ânmén.
"There seem to be many things on and around the square worth seeing," I said.
"What time?"
"Nine? Same place as on the first day?"
PingPing agreed. We went on to the Xizhimen Station. Along the way, we lingered a bit around the huge square in front of the Beijing Exhibition Centre watching youngsters run the kites and skate-roll about. And then we continued, soon finding ourselves at the station. I saw PingPing off and went back to the hotel.
Even though the afternoon was sunny - in the Beijing way, of course, with haze and unabashed air pollution - "Red Lantern House 2" courtyard was rather crowded, just as usual. I greeted the personnel who after a few days here already knew me well, and sat down to get some rest until Maggie arrived. She was working again today, so I was waiting until the end of her working time.
I saw this as a good opportunity to write my postcards. While I was doing this, Peter, the Englishman came over to me:
"Hello. Where did you find postcards?"
"A friend gave them to me as a present when I arrived."
"I was looking for them all over, but I couldn't find any," he said.
"Really? Well, I have a few spare ones. If you want, I can give them to you."
"Oh, you don't need to."
"Don't worry. She gave me plenty. I won't ever need them all."
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutely."
"OK, then..."
So that's' how it was. I didn't have as many people on my postcard list as postcards that Maggie had given me. Peter thanked me and said:
"Tomorrow I am going to the Summer Palace. They are organising the tour from the hotel. Would you be interested in joining in?"
I knew it was possible in the "Red Lantern House" to join some of the organised one-day tours which were on offer every day. In the inner courtyard there was a notice board one couldn't miss and the complete offer was there, everything you can visit through the hotel.
"I would be very glad," I tried diplomatically. "But I have already made an arrangement with a friend of mine. Besides, I was in the Summer Palace yesterday."
"Ah. What's the Palace like?"
"I liked it. It's good."
"They are very good," Peter continued about the hotel as the excursion organiser. "They pick you up by bus in the morning, get you there, give you lunch and then bring you back here in the afternoon."
"I see. It's very handy."
"Yes, it is," he agreed. "And it's not expensive at all."
And then, before I had a chance to add a comment of my own, he went on:
"Would you like to have a beer this evening?"
He was obviously looking for a company. He had arrived in China by himself, same as me, and according to what he said his girl was currently in Macao. I didn't know if she was a Chinese or a westerner, and I didn't ask. He was returning to Macao from Beijing in a day or two and until then he sought to not be on his own if possible.
"I'd be glad to," I had to say again. "But soon I've got an appointment with another friend."
"If you want, let me know."
"Sure. Just not today, I'm sorry."
He nodded, then lowered his voice and told me conspiratorially, nodding towards the reception:
"This girl loves me."
"Which one?" I didn't quite catch this sudden drift of his to another subject right away.
"This one," he nodded towards the reception again. I turned around, cast a glance and saw a girl there who in my opinion was one of the more attractive ones among those working in the hotel. Even if in my opinion more or less all of them were quite attractive.
"Ah. Is that right?" I attempted to be neutral on this score. But, Peter started elaborating how they had touched each other's hand when the day before at the reception they had been exchanging some papers or something. Maybe it was so. I couldn't know. I mean, I absolutely believe they were exchanging those papers. I also believe they touched each other's hand. Such things happen every day. It's enough to hand in money to someone in any shop and it's easier to touch them than to avoid the touch. Now, whether it's enough to draw a conclusion someone loves you, I couldn't know that. Maybe in Peter's case it was like that, indeed. Each case is a story like none other. I had not been there when it happened to have any right to claim either way. If that thing mattered to me, all I could do was take his word for it. Except it didn't matter much. If it was true, good luck to both. If it wasn't, well, a bit of wishful thinking isn't the worst thing that can happen to someone. After all, every unrequited love, even every unfulfilled desire is full of it. And world keeps spinning just the same. But Peter marched on:
"The girls here are so easy."
Never waiting to hear what I might possibly have to say on that, he produced conspiratorially two condoms out of his pocket and showed them to me. Like a man to a man. Like to a member of the same club. Something in that vein.
"If you want, we can have a beer later." he said again. At that moment it appeared to me as if he had not listened to me much before. How else to explain that he had forgotten what I had told him only a minute or two before? Maybe he just wanted a company to have a chat with. I.e., someone who'd listen to him. However, I wasn't the one.
"I told you," I repeated. "I'm waiting for a friend."
"Ah, I see," he said as if he had now heard it for the first time. Maybe he had. Either way, my plans for this evening were different.
Maggie appeared as planned, after her work had ended.
"What do you want to do tonight?" she asked.
"Whatever you want."
"Let's go for a walk?"
"Fine. Any ideas?"
"No. I don't know this district."
Now that it was so, I took over. We simply went to the Houhai Lake. It was relatively close, and it could be rather interesting now that the night had fallen. As I had already been there once, I knew the way, so Maggie, who claimed her sense of orientation was a catastrophe, had nothing to worry about. Once out in the street, I headed in the direction of Zhengjue hutong, where "Red Lantern House" was located. For that, we had to cross our Xinjiekou Beidajie. At the McDonald's intersection the traffic lights were at the red. Maggie coolly marched on.
"The light's red!" I protested. Maggie laughed.
"This is China," she said this by now almost classic sentence and added:
"In China you don't wait for the lights to turn green. Maybe in Europe you do. But not here."
And indeed, all you needed was to turn in any desired direction and there was always someone crossing the street somewhere regardless of the traffic lights. I decided that in the crowd which crossed the street any place and any time they please, it was probably in violation of the regulations to cross it at the zebra crossing while the light's green. I wouldn't risk ending up on a questioning in a police station for that. PingPing had already told me that one was regarded as suspicious if they fastened their safety belt in the car. If so, then I guess you would be suspicious in this case, as well. So I meekly followed Maggie across the street and, miraculously, reached the other side unscathed.
Houhai Lake area, which we reached rather soon, looked pretty different than when I had visited it on the first day with PingPing. This time it was awash with lights and full of places advertising themselves with bright neon in all possible colours which reflected themselves on the lake surface. Every single spot there seemed to have its own tout who tried to get the attention of numerous passers-by, particularly western tourists like me. Maggie and I decided after our stroll to have a seat at one of the roof terraces that abound in this area. The criterion for choosing which one was hot chocolate. When I suggested her that we order it somewhere, she liked the idea straight away. So we located one such place, the waiters working inside ushered us up a narrow and winding staircase and we found ourselves on the roof with the view at the lake. It was a pleasant and cool night. Maggie felt cold, so she put on her jeans jacket. I was fine in my T-shirt.
As opposed to Mei, Maggie - or Li Jun by her real name - belonged to the exactly opposite end of the Chinese society. Whereas Mei was with a lot of effort making ends meet, waiting the tables for some very lean wages, Maggie had in Chinese terms a very decently paid job and excellent position in some private company. But to top it all off, the real generator of her wealth was her husband who owned a very successful business, trading with some machine parts or something, and they had literally money to burn. Obviously much more than the likes of me are ever going to have. Maggie had recently purchased herself a four-wheel-drive Jeep, splurging on it in one down payment, without ever bothering to request a possible loan, 400000 yuan - or an equivalent of more than 266 monthly salaries earned by Mei. At the current pace, Mei would take more than twenty two years to make the money Maggie had splashed out on the Jeep in one go. Which, of course, was not the first car in the family.
Maggie was telling me they were currently looking for a new house.
"Your place is too small?" I asked.
"No, it's OK," she answered.
"So why are you bothering to look for a new house at all?"
"My husband wants it."
"And you?"
"I like the place where we are. I'd like to stay there. But he wants a bigger one."
"Wants to show off?"
"I guess so," she nodded.
They had one daughter who attended a private boarding school. Maggie told me that some friends of theirs had just had their second child.
"How's that? Isn't it in the breach of Chinese one-child policy?" I asked.
"They went to HongKong, so the woman gave the birth there."
"What's the difference?"
"You can do it legally in HongKong."
I didn't know that. So that was the way to circumvent the law and bear no consequences. But you needed money for that and for this obvious reason that loop wasn't within everyone's reach.
"But my husband wouldn't do it."
"He wouldn't?"
"No. He said it would cost him a 'Mercedes'."
Interesting. So he belonged to those for whom the possibility of having a "Mercedes" was more attractive than having another child. Even if you can afford to have ten kids if you want, without ever noticing in terms of money.
"And you? Would you like to have one more child?" I asked.
"No. I don't want any more children. Not for my husband's reasons, but still, for me one daughter is enough."
Maggie had studied English and was probably the best English speaker of all the Chinese I had ever met. She had used to work for the army for years and at one time even held a rank. But then she had quit and was now working where she was working. She found me interesting as an English-speaking friend with whom she could regularly talk in English. She loved the language very much and reading books in English all the time wasn't enough for her.
And I found in her another friend who helped me, as a local, open the door to the Chinese society and, even more important, get an insight into the mentality and mindset of the Chinese. At first she was afraid of cultural differences and possible misunderstandings between us as a consequence. But we got along very well.
When the time came for her to go home, and for me to return to the hotel, we had a bill to foot. For two hot chocolates and an ice-cream we shared. The price turned out to be exorbitant. Probably twice as much - or even more - as it would cost in my country. But that's not the problem. As a tourist you expect to spend money and you know you will. However, the hot chocolate was the worst one I had ever drunk. A pure crap, to put it bluntly. People in Europe would probably get laid off for serving such a thing to their guests. Here in Beijing they make you pay through your nose for it.
Maggie didn't react. So the only conclusion I drew was that she basically never tried a proper hot chocolate, as is drunk in Europe. So she just assumed this was the way it should be. Maybe my conclusion was far-fetched and hasty. But even if it was, something was wrong there about that particular drink.
When we returned to Xinjiekou Beidajie, she hailed a cab and went home and I returned to my hotel. Before bed time, I decided to check my e-mails if possible. This evening I was lucky. The PC was free. So I logged on and among all the messages I found a notice from Simon Cockerell, one of the guys from the Koryo Group. He sent it to everyone joining the tour into North Korea, or DPRK as they referred to it. He let us know that visas were ready and would be issued this week, so we were "all set to go", as he put it. However, there was one interesting piece of information that he had added. He had said that as we would visit the Mausoleum of Kim Il Sung on this tour, it would be very much appreciated by the Korean hosts if everyone could make an effort to wear some more formal clothes when at that place. It seemed to be the single most important place in the country. So he had asked us to "please have long trousers", jeans being OK, a collared shirt, and a tie for men. And women were kindly requested to just make an effort to look more formal than the day before and not wear open-toed sandals.
Which put me in an unexpected situation. Having had no idea such a thing would ever be asked of me, I had neither a collared shirt nor a tie on me. So I wrote Simon back telling him that with all due respect, I just couldn't possibly comply with that request. I assured him that I most certainly meant no disrespect towards either the country of North Korea or the Korean guides and people.
"I am afraid," I wrote "the best I can come up with is a T-shirt and a jacket."
So this seemed to be my first taste of what it might be like across the border to the east. By the looks of it, it held a promise of being an intriguing experience indeed.
