Our First Day In Beijing

On the last Friday in April we gathered our bags and headed off to Beijing.  Since we were sitting together for the flight we had our Kindles, our neck pillows and sleeping pills.  The flight went smoothly, we got through customs relatively quickly and then met up with Landon.  He got us to the hotel and along the way we passed the Bird’s Nest from the 2008 Summer Olympics.  It was impressive to see, lit but empty, if only from the interstate.

Mom planned our trip and was not going to stay in something she didn’t trust so she booked our week at a Holiday Inn in Beijing.  It wasn’t your average Holiday Inn due to its spacious bathroom, large room and great breakfast spread.  I was pumped to know this was our home base for the next week.

Even though we didn't get to the hotel until 2am, we were up early to meet Landon at his dorm in Tsinghua University.  We toured the university the next day, so I’ll talk it about it in my next post.  However, we did get to see Landon’s dorm room and we all commented on how clean it was until he slipped about the maid coming by.  Mom just threw her hands up and said, “She’s clearly earning her paycheck.” Hahaha. 

Turns out all dorm rooms look the same. Small, cramped and ugly.

We left and started the trek through Beijing’s transportation infrastructure.  We should have brought our gas masks because the smog was that bad.  I’m not joking, I really believe that in 20 years China will have huge numbers of deaths due to lung cancer.  After experiencing Korea, Abby and I were surprised at how dirty China’s subway system was.  It was a huge system, and had been updated because of the 2008 Olympics; so there was English on the tourist lines, but boy it was crowded. We were all expecting it but Mom was the only one that hadn’t felt it before.  

Can you spot Landon?

  

For me, everything was similar to Korea but with its own twist.  Imagine going to Germany, the language would be foreign to us but everything else would feel semi-normal.  That was my first impression of China. It felt similar to Korea but it was clearly Korea on steroids. Now, before you head to Beijing I recommend downloading the BJS subway map app.  It was great to use and really helped us get around the subway.

Next Landon took us to a massive, five story shopping center, or really fancy flea market.  It was actually both because no price was ever final.  At one point I was so sick of being hassled by the “salespeople” that I told her I didn’t want her crappy backpack because I already had one and was wearing it! She didn’t miss a beat and said, “Buy more!”  Welcome to China y’all.

Mom’s Thoughts On the Day;  First impressions:

The flight from Chicago to Beijing was brutally long but otherwise uneventful.  At first glance Beijing seems like Atlanta with funky writing and bad air.  Western buildings are everywhere, most of them high rises.  In fact in many ways, from dress to architecture to entertainment, China seems to find everything Western to be preferable to their traditional ways.

The Beijing subway (Sunday April 29th):

We traveled around Beijing today—so much for the easy time that Landon promised us on our first day.  The subway was incredibly crowded, nothing in my life or reading prepared me for being in that crowd.  I took a picture and couldn’t reach my camera bag hanging off my own shoulder to put the camera back!  Plus the subway layout is awful with many line changes.  We never traveled on the subway once without at least one line change.  Also, the pollution is unbelievable. Landon says that Beijing is the 7th most polluted city in China.  The sky is a dull gray even though the official weather report says “sunny.”  The air smells and burns the throat and eyes.  In short, you can never forget that you are breathing air that isn’t good for you.

Today I saw an old man playing some sort of wood instrument on the subway stairs.   He was the first traditional-looking Chinese person I’ve seen.  Everyone else is young and dressed in completely western garb to match the western buildings.  Slums can occasionally be seen from the trains. They are very packed, with narrow aisles and houses that are only rooms with tin roofs. I hope to get pictures before we leave because I’m sure we won’t go in one.  

Other than the subway, my I’m-in-China moment was while going to the restroom at an Italian style restaurant.  When I asked, Landon assured me that the restroom would be okay because we were in the middle of town and the restaurant was a nice one.  I did have to wind around a couple of hallways into a different building to find the ladies’ room.  The first stall was occupied by a somewhat stout middle-aged woman who was squatting so low her door was open and her head was poking into the main restroom.   I gathered my courage and went two doors down where a stall did have a door.  It didn’t have toilet paper, though, didn’t have a lock on the door and didn’t have a seat.  Instead there was a hole in the ground surrounded by porcelain. I was standing there looking at it and thinking “Am I really going to do this”? when a bunch of giggling girls entered the bathroom.  I just ran!  

After lunch we went looking for the Beijing market.  To get to it, we walked through an upscale, European-style mall with stores like Macy's and the Gap.  It was a nice counterpoint to the bathroom facilities.  China is truly a land of contradictions.  But a mall wasn’t the type of shopping we were looking for.  We went to the market where the Chinese sell to westerners. It was an immense building of five stories packed with individually owned stores, or really, stalls.  There was row after row of shirts, shoes, jewelry, suits, purses, silk, cheap toys, chopsticks, etc, etc, etc.  It was so overwhelming that none of us wanted to buy anything.  The salespeople were unbelievably pushy and would grab my arm or follow me down the hallway yelling prices. The prices were high but dropped so quickly that I knew even the much lower amount was overpriced.  We wanted to find the similarly styled market where the Chinese sell to themselves, but we couldn’t find it and Logan, Abby and especially me were worn out.  This was our first day and all this took place in what was for us the middle of the night.  Also, apparently the market moves around from location to location!