We flew to Xian after a solid 5 days in Beijing and were greeted at the airport by our anti-perspirant challenged local guide “Herbert.”
Herbert, while not showing the polished professionalism and charm our secret-service-grade Beijing Guide Emily demonstrated, was an adequate leader and all-around fine fellow. So in honor of our time spent together, I have composed a Haiku for my clammy new friend:
Drops of rain on head
Trickle down like magic stream
Birds bathe in delight
(Warning: In a feable attempt to remain clever far after his single ounce of creative juice was wasted on a 5 Tsing Tao beer induced post to his blog yesterday, the author has decided to stoop to the lowest common creative denominator and use stomach-churning imagery to maintain the interest of his dwindling readership (a big shout out to you two!). Please set down your corn dogs and Yoplait cups before reading further…)
Before my trip to China, I was concerned about only two things:
So in preparation, I said a few pre-trip safe travel prayers and packed enough medicine to inoculate me against SARS, Bird Flu and whatever new gastrointestinal pestilence the Chinese food industry could invent.
However, most of this paranoia was pointless once I realized that a central tenet of the Well-oiled Communist Tourism Machine is to provide uncreative, westernized Chinese food at every opportunity.
The food so far has followed this unfailing pattern:
Sure, the routine is fun, social and safe but after about 10 times, it gets a tad old. Needless to say, we were looking for a change.
So we decided to skip the group Beijing Duck and Opera evening and step out into the city naked to whatever China had to offer.
I’ve always considered myself an adventurous eater. By adventurous, I’m speaking mainly of the foreign onion and spice laden foods predominately found in the Vietnamese, Indian and Persian neighborhoods found in larger cities.
But like most people I have my limits. I’m not talking about the mystery meat dumplings found at shady dim sum restaurants or the aromatic Vietnamese Pho that uses MOST parts of the cow and stays with you for a good 12 hours. No, I’m talking about TV-grade food nastiness: the slimy, crunchy stuff found on shows like Cook’s tour, Travel Sick, Survivor and Fear Factor that elicits groans and dry heaving from its viewers.
Hoping to avoid such things, but still enjoy some local fare, we took a cab to a part of town called Wanfujin Street. It’s a large, high end shopping district with shiny name brand clothing, book and department stores.
Wanfujin street was a-bustlin' this evening with hordes of well-off locals and a few tourists. Hungry, we passed the McDonalds,KFC and Outback steak house branches making a wide berth around the hordes of bleary eyed westerners who haven’t yet acclimated to Asian eating and made our way to the Night Market.
The Night Market as described by my travel book is a small offshoot of Wanfujin street lined with vendors selling “small eats” - sort of a Beijing influenced type of dim sum.
Although arranged in an orderly line, the crowds, noise and odors pumping from the small, orange tarp roofed vendors created a bazaar-like atmosphere.
We walked over to the first booth and peered over at the selection. Their arrangement, as were most of the booths we encountered, was dominated by stacked rows of various skewered meats. Chicken, beef and pork were pretty easy to spot, but there were an equal assortment of animal food products which can best be described as “innards.”
Next booth… same thing…. Mostly. Here there were some new entries including squid, some eggs (that weren’t chicken size) and…. OH! Snake on a stick! Yikes.
We passed a few more booths similar to these two, and then stumbled upon the Night Market house of horrors.
Here we found the food distributor for Fear Factor. Rows upon rows of silkworms, crickets, centipedes, more snake (multiple varieties), something that looked like blood sausage and what appeared to be embryonic birds – all skewered and neatly arranged ready to make many happy bellies.
Pass!
We made it to the end, turned and started back along the path of gastronomic delights when I remembered: It was dinner time!
I started out with something tame, a skewer of beef that was deep fried, salted and then roasted for a few minutes over an open flame.
Then I moved on to something that looked a whole lot scarier but still acceptable to most American tastes: squid on a stick. While the thing looked like something out of the movie Aliens, it tasted no different than the calamari found at most Italian restaurants, sans the breading and tomato sauce. Nevertheless, it’s red pepper flaked tentacles flailing in the early evening breeze did slightly gross me out.
We finally reached our starting point again… but not before devouring some freshly prepared vegetable dumplings reminiscent of good Hong Kong style dim sum.
But wait! I’m missing something here. I just came halfway across the world to experience something new and cultural, and the best I can do is beef satay and calamari, both of which can be had at Disney-freakin-land??
“Not good enough” I said to myself. I need something different…something I can’t get at the Olive Garden or PF Changs. I need something crunchy…something with legs still attached…something with a stinger…something like… SCORPIONS!
I dizzily walked back toward the table with the bugs … not sure what had come over me. “I can’t even eat my eggs runny!” I thought to myself. “How was I supposed to consume a scorpion?”
No matter, I was on a mission…and needed the pictures to prove it. So with 15 Yuan in hand (about 2 bucks), I purchased my 3 scorpion skewer from the Frankenshop of food horrors.
Without hesitating I handed the camera to my mom, bought a can of YangYing beer and took a bite.
Crunch.
(10 second lapse)
Crunch
(another 5 seconds)
Crunch crunch crunch!
Hey not bad! It tastes like buttered popcorn!
Gulp. (beer now half gone)
Another bite and the critter ceased to exist.. 1 scorpion down the hatch and no heaving on the street! Success!
The other two were promptly trashed. I didn’t want to push my luck and spray my accomplishment on the street for all to see.
At this point, the green look on my mom’s face signaled the end of our cultural experience so we grabbed some more non-threatening dumplings and hopped in a cab to check out the lighted kite flying on Tiananmen Square, a popular Beijing family tradition. Previously added pics:
On the last full day of our stay in Beijing, we paid for an optional tour of a typical Beijing “Hutong.”
A Hutong is a small traditional working class neighborhood where multiple families cluster in meager, flat roofed building with common bathrooms and kitchens. Although an integral part of Beijing’s history, they are practically extinct, quickly being razed and replaced by 50+ floor skyscrapers.
In an effort to defray some of the obvious PR issues associated with the systematic destruction of these neighborhoods, they’ve identified about 50 Hutongs which will be preserved, one of which we visited during our tour.
When deciding to take the tour, we were hoping for a small piece of authentic Chinese working class life. We’ve seen plenty of restored temples, palaces and pagodas. Here was our chance to see another side of the city.
Unfortunately what we ended up getting was another coordinated, government sponsored tourist destination.
The whole tour had the stench of a finely crafted public relations campaign.
Where were the poverty-stricken that we’ve had glimpses of down other, dirtier Hutong streets?
Why were there so many new roofs and freshly painted walls?
Why was the “local resident” that we visited as part of the tour not actually answering the questions posed, instead standing quietly by as the tour guide answered for her?
I'm torn about this trip. On one hand, I enjoyed the change of scenery. It really was different from the other, more developed areas of Beijing. On the other hand, I'm disapointed that we were directed to a not-so-accurate representation of a traditional Hutong.
New Pictures from the HUTONGPreviously added pics:
Armed with my double water bottle holstered, uber-nerd fanny pack (with ergonomic upolsterd back pad), we set out on day three of our trip to become “Heroes” on the Great Wall.
As an American, I already consider myself a hero; a crusader of peace and justice, a bringer of freedom to all the world’s people (whether they want it or not), but today, I wanted to live up to Chairman Mao’s expectation for every Chinese citizen worth their soy sauce to climb the great wall at least once in their lifetime.
So what better place to accomplish this most honorable of endeavors but to participate in the swarm of humanity that is called Badaling.
Badaling is the most restored section of the Great Wall, practically rebuilt from the ground up to provide a proper location for the world’s Kodak moments and David Copperfield television specials. Likewise, it has all the telltale markings of a tourist’s wet dream (or nightmare depending on who you ask).
While a seasoned adventurer might choose a more authentic Great Wall experience by purposefully avoiding this area and opting for a half-day hike along many of the other equally beautiful and less crowded sections, Badaling has been masterfully designed to provide the most convenient point of entry for Great Wall (quarter)daytrippers.
First, and most importantly, there is a massive parking lot well-suited for the convoy of tour busses that haul their cargo to and fro each day. Secondly there are plenty of gift, snack and coffee shops to provide a comfortable retreat for weary trekkers after their harrowing 15 minute march to a point high enough on the wall to snap a good pic. And of course, there are the numerous, ever-present peddlers hocking mao wat
Day 1 of the actual Tour seemed to follow the theme: Places Where Large Numbers Of People Can Loiter
The first stop of the day was a quickie at the Temple Of Heaven. We couldn’t get into the actual temple, which was a bummer, due to renovation, but we were able to tour the gardens.
The temple was closed for renovation, but the gardens were very interesting. It’s a huge expanse with intertwining walkways amidst trees and lawns where there are scores of locals, both old and young, engaged in various activities including ballroom dancing, kung fu, tai chi, fan dancing and hackey sack. For those uninterested in the physical activities, there are long open-air hallways where we encountered groups of old men exchanging money over Mahjong, and little old ladies singing old Chinese songs to small clustered groups of onlookers. We even had the pleasure of hearing a choppy version of Yankee Doodle Dandy awkwardly honked out on an old Saxophone as we walked by (this was especially amusing since we three where the only Americans from the group of 39 who are mostly Canadian and Australian).
Our next stop was Tiananmen Square which is much grander and larger than any picture can suggest. This is when the giant nationalistic symbols: Portraits of Mao, Chinese Flags and Various Government Buildings and Statues remind you that you are in the Most Powerful Communist Nation in the world.
As we drove past it to the parking lot for the bus, we were able to see the mult-hour long line of people waiting for access in to the Mao Zedong Memorial where the actual body of Mao is encased in a glass case for all to see set in suspended animation assisted by six gallons of formaldehyde pumped into his body immediately after his death.
The grounds of Tiananmen Square were jam packed with Asian & Western tourists, most of who were surrounded by the persistent street vendors selling books of postcards, Rolex knockoffs and cheap had waving mao watches which in my opinion are the goofiest, most perfect souvenirs ever imagined.
We didn’t stand in line for the corpse-of-Mao show or for any of the museums, as we were saving our legs for the march through the Forbidden City…
The Forbidden City is probably best described through pictures (see link at bottom) or by watching The Last Emperor which was partly filmed on location. Like the Temple of Heaven, much of the Forbidden City is under renovation but luckily wasn’t closed to tourists. But just like the art museums in Europe, you can get burnt out quickly by the sheer number of wow-take-a-picture-of-that views.
Following a short lunch, we arrived at our final stop for the day, the Summer Palace. Like the Temple of the Moon, and the Forbidden City, there were plenty of good picture taking opportunities including the large man-made lake adjacent to the palace grounds, the hand painted hallways, and abundant, beautifully designed palace guest houses and servants quarters that seem to magically spring up from the sides of the mountains.
The summer palace is best know for the “world’s largest” corridor which is open air, roughly the width of two Americans, about ¼ - 1/3 of a mile long and covered in thousands of handpainted Chinese landscapes and mythological scenes.
By this time, I was totally exhausted and burnt out… and am still dog tired while I write this, so while the marble boat statue and creaky old dragon boat ride deserve at least another 1000 words of explanation, I’ll let the pictures tell the story…
We start each day in Beijing with a breakfast at the hotel. It is buffet style with an assortment of continental, American and Asian items. Nothing really interesting to report here except for the cooking utensil of choice used by the egg station cook. Apparently he has decided that a flat wooden stick approximately twice the width of a chopstick to be the most efficient tool to cook eggs with. I find it comical the amount of effort exerted in trying to manage the cooking egg, hopelessly sticking to the pan edges.
I've thought about suggesting to him the brilliant invention called the spatula, but he doesn't look like the kind of person who would bother with such ridiculous observations that early in the morning. So I've left frustrated-enough alone and thank him kindly each morning for my stabbed-to-death omelet.
Well it turns out that my Chinese secret agent friend is actually a tour guide in training. So much for my James Bondesque fantasies of Chinese secret agents hot on my trail…
But now, I’ve realized that I’ve been duped. All along it turns out, kind, sweet Emily; tour-guide extraordinaire, is ACTUALLY the spy. Well, spy-in-training in my estimation. It’s the perfect front: Have a young, non-intimidating Asian girl provide city tours for westerners so she can learn their subtle language and behavioral complexities. I mean for God’s sake, she used the phrase HERDING CATS! What Chinese person… what ANY person outside of the US would know what the flip “Herding Cats” means?
Only the hyper-aware, as I sometimes consider myself, would pick up on these tell-tale signs.
Don’t believe me? Well how about this one:
Just yesterday she mentioned that she was trying to learn an American accent.
Translation: It will be easier for me to steal American nuclear secretes while lulling my American military contact into a false sense of security with my folksy, down-home southern drawl.
Oh.. and here’s another one… just today, on our way back to the hotel in our bus, we dropped her off at the “office” so she can “prepare” for her next tour group. Surrrrre, Emily… PLAN for the next group indeed!
It just occurred to me that there is a shady looking Chinese Guy that keeps appearing and disappearing from our group. Call me crazy, or a little paranoid, but I wonder if he’s a government agent. He seems to be traveling alone, is tall and skinny and has beady little eyes.
Well the beady eyes thing I just made up, but I’m certain he’s with the Chinese secret service. Probably keeping tabs on me since my middle name, Mohamad, probably popped up on their “American Citizens Who Are Terrorists Because Their Middle Name Is Mohamad” list.
The ill-fitting white linen Polo-branded cap gave it away. No Asian in his right mind would be caught dead in a hat like that unless they were practicing: Ancient Chinese Art Of Blending Inconspicuously With Western-Looking Terrorists.
Well you can’t fool this Terrorist…Even if I actually was one.
In all honesty, I wasn’t completely convinced about the group tour concept. I’ve never traveled with a tour group in the past, usually relying on a tour book, a local, or dumb luck to guide me through a new locale. But then again I have never traveled outside the safety blanket of western or Latin American culture. My sporadic spanglish and/or the locals mastery of English has usually proven sufficient in my previous travel experiences. So joining an organized tour seemed like cheating; a lazy excuse for lazy Americans who aren’t creative or self-sufficient enough to do it on their own.
The decision to do the tour this time however was based on different criteria. Specifically:
Aside from my preconceptions, the tour so far has exceeded my expectations.
The tour guide, Emily (her English name chosen for her love of the author Emily Dickenson) is VERY good. Her English is far beyond adequate, obviously mastered from University level education. She’s well versed in the history and relevance of our tour stops. And her organization skills are extraordinary as she is able to (in her surprising use of American vernacular) “herd cats.”
The hotels and intercity/inter-regional transportation was a big unknown for me as well, but once again, my low-expectations were wrong. The hotel was surprisingly good, comparable to a Marriott or other 3 ½ to 4 star hotel with efficient service, a health club, spa, clean pool and wireless web access in the lobby. The buses are modern, clean and air-conditioned. And the food, while not what I would consider fine dining, is certainly acceptable (think slightly better and oilier than Panda Express.) with each restaurant we are brought to specializing in a different regional style of Chinese cooking.
My only complaint so far is the expected, but still annoying periodic scheduled stops at tourist trap gift shops that are prevalent in these kinds of organized tours. In Beijing, we’ve already had the privilege of visiting a freshwater pearl store disguised as a museum, an overpriced Jade store that was billed as a “rest stop” on the way to the Great Wall, and a Chinese pottery store and "educational" tour that was required in order to gain access to the on-premise banquet room where lunch was awaiting us. The last stop was particularly humourous as they provided the only meal which included unlimited alcoholic beverages. Obviously, a great marketing technique!
These annoyances aside, I think Emily (and the larger Chinese Tourism machine) should be commended for a well priced, well organized tourism system. We’ll see if the quality holds up later in the trip.
I just passed hour 25 of my let’s-see-how-long-I-can-go-without-sleeping marathon and my head is about to explode. Not due to the ozone hole hula hoops we flew through earlier today… no, that just gave me a pounding headache. I think the information overload is what’s ultimately going to do me in. I committed to not sleeping until 9pm Beijing Time so as to not extend my jet lag any longer than possible. Hopefully a little pain now will shield me from a whole lot more later.
So what have I learned during my first 8 hours in the PRC? The Chinese people are on a mission. Period. There is so much construction going on everywhere, you’d think these people are fixated on taking over the world… or prepping for the next Olympics. Construction Cranes litter the city like massive steel flamingos. The airport they’re building (most definitely in preparation for the 2008 Olympics) is freaking massive! Like 3 LAXs lined up side by side. Everyone seems like they’re laser focused on getting somewhere, although a bit more casually as compared with the average New Yorker.
And you can see how the west is infiltrating the culture here. North American chain restaurants abound. Ipod billboards brightly compete with Nestle-branded Green Tea drink ads. Toshiba and Sony Signs blast their neon radiation onto the street. And everywhere there are flat panel monitors, flashing the latest greatest autos from VW and Citroen. Yet, unlike the visuals one often sees of Tokyo thoroughfares, Times Square or Las Vegas, there is still a sense of the traditional element of Chinese culture. The makeshift fruit and vegetable markets and the overloaded bicycles scattered all over the street still seem to keep them grounded in their past.
Two other interesting observations so far include the insane level of friendliness and helpfulness by the Chinese people I’ve encountered so far and the surprising number of white, western couples with very young Chinese babies. Adoptions undoubtedly. There’s just so many! Oh, and one last thing. The Chinese drive like shit. They all need to go back to diver’s ed because frankly, they drive like a bunch of crack addicts.
5 Hours and 30 minutes into my flight to Beijing and we are directly over the North Pole. There are giant slabs of white broken up by metallic blue cracks uncovering the ocean below, like a cluster of frosty white Molokai-sized islands of ice. I was kind of hoping to see some polar bears or marching penguins but apparently I’m on the wrong side of the earth for that. Just miles and miles of frozen H20, slowly melting under the sun’s glare.
Oh! I think we just flew through a hole in the ozone layer! By God! I’m starting to glow! (is that bad?)
Continental Boeing 777 Business Class is pretty pimp although I don’t understand the purpose of stuffing us full of so much food. So far I’ve endured a 6 course lunch followed by a 2 course “snack” and am currently awaiting the 3 course pre-arrival “light meal.” It’s like a human Foi Gras farm – but with cushy seats. Either they’re preparing us for the Soylent Green factories in China or their studies show that fat, rich Americans full of food are less likely to torment the flight attendants.
Speaking of fat, rich Americans, I’m actually quite surprised to see so many people fit this unfortunate profile up here in Business Class. I was expecting to be surrounded by young Asian and American businessmen and women frantically hacking away on their notebooks, but apparently they’re all at a convention in Sydney.
Going to take a break and watch Layer Cake on my notebook… 7 hours left until we arrive.
