Beijing In a Day: Part I
Trip Start
Nov 29, 2008
1
8
16
Trip End
Jan 03, 2009
Beijing,
China
Sunday, December 14, 2008
The buildings of Beijing are solid and imposing structures, quite unlike the dizzying heights of Shanghai skyscrapers. Factories and institutions crouch on the land like hoary old dragons, watching over the people.
Outside a massive apartment complex, elderly folks bundled in winter coats stretched their limbs in an outdoor exercise park. These parks, filled with brightly painted equipment, are like jungle gyms for adults. An old man spun two round yellow wheels with his arms, as if driving two city buses at once. A woman held onto the handles of another contraption, see-sawing her arms above her head. Their breath puffed like stream trains in the winter air.
At the Beijing railway station, countless migrant workers came and went. They had dark, weather-beaten skin, high cheekbones rosy with wind and cold, and cheerful smiles that make their eyes crinkle. Some stood in the middle of the crowd like islands in a swift moving current, their blue and red plaid workers' bags piled high.
Peter's address was written in Mandarin on a post-it note. I showed it to the taxi driver. On the way, we passed the first gate to Tiananmen Square, brick red with cobalt eaves, hunching over the eight-lane highway. Peter's apartment block, The Lotus Pond, is a collection of pink buildings on the same highway, neither natural nor pond-like, further to the west. I spied his address on one of the buildings; if I hadn't seen it I would have been completely lost because nothing else that I could see was written in English, including numbers. I asked a lady which door to use, and she pointed the way for me. Another man helped me find the right floor.
The door opened; I was relieved to see Peter's smiling face, in the way that a weary traveler is happy to see the face of a friend in a wholly unfamiliar place. His apartment was cozy, with polished wood floors and central heating. This was a luxury-Shanghai has no central heating, and every day I had huddled by Ashley's space heater to warm my hands.
Peter, a Brit from Manchester, is a good friend of Al's. They worked together at the Xin Hua news agency during the Beijing Olympics. After a cup of tea, Peter gave me a compass, a handy pocket map of the city he had picked up at Starbucks, and a couple of guidebooks. Then we wasted no time in seeing Beijing.
