Beijing - Day 4
During my last day in Beijing I had a good little one-on-one with the place. I set out early, on the cool, crisp fall morning to run to Beihai Park. It was so nice to be alone, and so nice to be running. Beihai Park is one of China's oldest and best preserved imperial gardens. It is over 1,000 years old! It was about three quarters of an hour run to get there from where we were staying, an hour run around the entire park, and then a half hour back. Easily 20km. While I ran I remembered my mom and sister were going to be doing a marathon in the next few days. I got a pic of them after their run over the Thanksgiving holiday (The blonde on the right is my surrogate sister...not literally) . They look freaking good for having just run 42km!!! Way to go, guys! I must say I am a bit relieved to have missed that (8 years now?) family tradition....mostly I am just glad I missed the four days of intense pain post-marathon.
Ok, back to me....
More importantly, back to Beijing.
During my one-on-one with the place on this great morning, I got to do a bit of philosophizing and comparing.
It is always exciting for me to go to a new place. Challenges like figuring out the subway system, quickly adjusting to local culture, and meeting locals are all typical highlights. Beijing obviously was no exception. A few things that really stuck out for me in Beijing include:
Olympic fever. For good reason, everything, everywhere has something to do with the olympics.
The cab drivers can't read, dont speak English, and dont know the city well enough to take you anywhere that is not one of the five main sites. We got kicked out of five in total because of one of these three reasons. A far cry from cab drivers in any other city I have been in!
It was not nearly as busy as I had expected. And the people are so friendly! Everyone smiled to you on the street, didn't yell things like "lowai!" which means 'old whitey', which is so constant in Suzhou that I cant go out without my ipod now or I go crazy. And many people stopped to talk to us to help us with our Chinese or try to practice their English. I think it helped that there are a lot more foreigners in Beijing. Well, about 2% of Beijing is non-Han. I would guess that maybe 0.2% of Suzhou was non-Chinese.
The people in Beijing actually understood our Chinese. In Suzhou there is a dialect that is difficult to understand and since we are learning "real" Chinese, they aren't too good at understanding us.
They were taller on average, and darker on average than the people down South. And better looking. In fact, for the first time in China, I actually found a few guys attractive. What a relief! I thought something was wrong with me.
They spat more and there was more gross stuff like peeing in the streets and snot rockets at your feet and smoking everywhere. Also, besides dog, I saw 'rat' on a menu.
Here are some pics of my last afternoon of just exploring the back alleys that are being developed and soon wont be there anymore. They apparently represent the real, "Old Beijing". I love the neighborhood feel of them.
A Beijing business man...
It is a miracle there isn't a single person spitting, peeing, smoking, or doing something randomly disgusting in this picture....
I remember when I was a very sheltered little 17 year old and I went to New York by myself. I thought the murals down in the subway were one of the coolest things I had ever seen. Now, ten years later, I guess I wasn't wrong to think they were cool. Here are what Beijing subway murals look like.
I am not lying when I say this is an average Beijinger's home. They are essentially cement squares. No one has a bathroom so there are public washrooms for use about every 500m or so. And you often see women outside washing their hair in a bucket of water. No one has a tv or a computer, so for fun the men play this Chinese Chess sort of game. It is hilarious watching them play. They get so into it and big crowds of men gather to cheer one another on.
As you can see from these four posts on Beijing, it was a great trip! Gina was good to travel with even though she was constantly having to look at the map (I would just be like... we have to go in that direction... and I would have been completely ok with that....but she would get out the map, find out exactly where we were, find out exactly what the next four turns would be to get there, etc.) and she is fairly self-depricating which can be contagious and it seems to have taken me almost a week to feel comfortable with myself again. Also, I can completely relate to any guy who gets annoyed when his girlfriend wants to talk about everything all the time. I felt like that guy. We had to talk everything through. Why? Can't we just go do it!?! I dont have any feelings about where we eat for breakfast or what route we take where or how. I just want to go have fun and do it. Why do we need to talk it all out?
No one's perfect though and I imagine I am an absolute nightmare to travel with because of any number of faults... in particular the fact that I am so NOT detail oriented must have driven someone like her, who is so detail oriented, nuts. So all things considered, we made a good traveling team.
More importantly, back to Beijing.
During my one-on-one with the place on this great morning, I got to do a bit of philosophizing and comparing.
It is always exciting for me to go to a new place. Challenges like figuring out the subway system, quickly adjusting to local culture, and meeting locals are all typical highlights. Beijing obviously was no exception. A few things that really stuck out for me in Beijing include:
Olympic fever. For good reason, everything, everywhere has something to do with the olympics.
The cab drivers can't read, dont speak English, and dont know the city well enough to take you anywhere that is not one of the five main sites. We got kicked out of five in total because of one of these three reasons. A far cry from cab drivers in any other city I have been in!
It was not nearly as busy as I had expected. And the people are so friendly! Everyone smiled to you on the street, didn't yell things like "lowai!" which means 'old whitey', which is so constant in Suzhou that I cant go out without my ipod now or I go crazy. And many people stopped to talk to us to help us with our Chinese or try to practice their English. I think it helped that there are a lot more foreigners in Beijing. Well, about 2% of Beijing is non-Han. I would guess that maybe 0.2% of Suzhou was non-Chinese.
The people in Beijing actually understood our Chinese. In Suzhou there is a dialect that is difficult to understand and since we are learning "real" Chinese, they aren't too good at understanding us.
They were taller on average, and darker on average than the people down South. And better looking. In fact, for the first time in China, I actually found a few guys attractive. What a relief! I thought something was wrong with me.
They spat more and there was more gross stuff like peeing in the streets and snot rockets at your feet and smoking everywhere. Also, besides dog, I saw 'rat' on a menu.
Here are some pics of my last afternoon of just exploring the back alleys that are being developed and soon wont be there anymore. They apparently represent the real, "Old Beijing". I love the neighborhood feel of them.
A Beijing business man...
It is a miracle there isn't a single person spitting, peeing, smoking, or doing something randomly disgusting in this picture....I remember when I was a very sheltered little 17 year old and I went to New York by myself. I thought the murals down in the subway were one of the coolest things I had ever seen. Now, ten years later, I guess I wasn't wrong to think they were cool. Here are what Beijing subway murals look like.I am not lying when I say this is an average Beijinger's home. They are essentially cement squares. No one has a bathroom so there are public washrooms for use about every 500m or so. And you often see women outside washing their hair in a bucket of water. No one has a tv or a computer, so for fun the men play this Chinese Chess sort of game. It is hilarious watching them play. They get so into it and big crowds of men gather to cheer one another on.As you can see from these four posts on Beijing, it was a great trip! Gina was good to travel with even though she was constantly having to look at the map (I would just be like... we have to go in that direction... and I would have been completely ok with that....but she would get out the map, find out exactly where we were, find out exactly what the next four turns would be to get there, etc.) and she is fairly self-depricating which can be contagious and it seems to have taken me almost a week to feel comfortable with myself again. Also, I can completely relate to any guy who gets annoyed when his girlfriend wants to talk about everything all the time. I felt like that guy. We had to talk everything through. Why? Can't we just go do it!?! I dont have any feelings about where we eat for breakfast or what route we take where or how. I just want to go have fun and do it. Why do we need to talk it all out?
No one's perfect though and I imagine I am an absolute nightmare to travel with because of any number of faults... in particular the fact that I am so NOT detail oriented must have driven someone like her, who is so detail oriented, nuts. So all things considered, we made a good traveling team.
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Thanks, guys.
But aren't you two, like, independently wealthy and self-employed?
Come on over! I'll be your tour guide.
In all seriousness, I will more than likely be in Beijing for July and August and maybe even a bit more after that (but I can't plan any further than that in the future without giving myself a headache and a twitch).
So I say plan a trip for either in July or the end of August right after the olympics. And we'll check the Great Wall off that list of yours!
Well we are officially jealous of your adventures. The Great Wall is a place we have on our travel lists. Your pictures are fantastic and we almost feel like we are doing this adventure with you. However, you are much braver than we would be. We have friends living in Beijing and teaching English for a couple of years. They tell the same stories of the pollution etc but are also enjoying their travels. I'm with you about not eating meat though - talk about mystery meat.......
ENJOY and keep those writings coming. The time will go by so fast you'll be glad of this memoire. Happy Canadian Thanksgiving last weekend. I bet your family missed you.....
Love and thoughts
C & G