We spent 13 days in Beijing, the longest time spent in any one city on our entire trip. You’d think that would be plenty of time — I did — but it was no where near enough. When I first stepped off the train at Beijing Station, I wasn’t too impressed. We had just come from tiny Tai An, with the majestic Tai Shan mountain looming above us, and Beijing was so flat and crowded. Before that we had been in Nanjing, which charms you instantly with its canals and decorative lights; and Shanghai, with its dazzling European architecture. Beijing just seemed very bland compared what we had just come from. But the longer I spent in Beijing, the more I fell in love with it. It doesn’t have an impressive skyline or body of water. It doesn’t have lots of trees or grass. It’s hard to even cross the street; there are pedestrian bridges over all the huge boulevards throughout the city. But all of that is overshadowed by the amazing combination of history and modernity that I think defines Beijing.
We stayed in a hostel set deep into a hutong, which is the traditional Beijing housing style that used to cover the city. Now, many hutongs have been razed to make room for high-rises. A hutong is basically a collection of alleyways filled with one-story grey homes. Our hutong was also filled with lots of clothing shops, fruit stands, and the people who sell stuff on sticks (everything from hearts to scorpions to chicken wings). But our hutong also had a giant movie theater that was showing Slumdog Millionaire, which reminded me that I was not really in old Beijing. About a ten minute walk from our hutong was Wangfujing Street, one of the few walking streets in Beijing and a center of shopping, eating, and seeing massive Chinese tour groups with matching hats.
Another ten minutes walking from there, you hit the walls of the Forbidden City and the concrete of Tiananmen Square. What I will remember most about the Forbidden City is the tour groups, and the relief that I was not visiting Beijing during “tourist season,” because I cannot imagine being surrounded by MORE tour groups (all Chinese). The city was beautiful, but it was enormous, and I went in thinking I could see it all. Nope. Tiananmen Square, the largest public square in the world, was smaller than I anticipated, but I think that’s because my imagination is just too big. What I will remember most there is the number of Chinese tourists (meaning non-Beijingers) who had their pictures taken with me, Gina, and Arselie (my American friends who met us in Beijing, who have lighter hair than mine). They spoke no English, and would just approach us with their camera and a big smile, and then pose with a peace sign next to us as their friends took a few photos. At first we giggled about it, but it happened so much that it ended up feeling normal.
The most spectacular experience for me was visiting the Great Wall. We went to a section called Mutianyu, where the wall is less-touristed. There were many parts on the wall where we were the only group of people we could see! The Great Wall is absolutely the most amazing thing I have ever seen, and I want to visit more and more sections of it and hike as long as I can. There is no way to really describe how awesome it is. I mean, it looks just like the photos. But you can actually stand on it. And that just blew my mind. We also picked Mutianyu for a very silly, but really fun reason: They have a slide. Yes, a slide. We slid down the mountain from the Great Wall. Cheesy? Maybe. But I SLID DOWN the mountain from the Great Wall!
There was so much to do in Beijing, we didn’t even see all that we had planned on. We spent a lot of time at the many parks and small lakes that scatter the city. The parks are filled with pagodas, decorative gates, and willow trees that make every photo look like a painting. We also spent a lot of time EATING. I tried so many new things in Beijing, and every time I was happy. No, I didn’t eat the scorpions or the brains, but I did eat lotus root, bamboo shoots, tofu skins, Peking duck, and lots and lots of tea and pastries. After all the delicious tea I’ve had in China, I don’t think I’ll ever like tea in America quite as much. We ate hotpot often, which is when you order a bunch of raw foods and put them into a pot of boiling broth in the middle of the table, and then everybody eats out of there. The most fun food experiences were with my Chinese friends, Xiaocong, Yu, and Lili. I met Xiaocong and Yu in Copenhagen when we were all studying abroad there. I told them I would visit them in Beijing someday, and I meant it. We kept in touch for four years, and they made my time in Beijing a million times more wonderful. All three of them are journalists, so they are very vocal about the problems and changes in today’s China.
I could write forever on Beijing: Olympic Park, the Summer Palace, Chairman Mao’s pickled body, 798 art district, the markets, the Tibetan Lama temple, the cheap taxis and extensive subway, the streets lined with red lanterns, and the people just wanting to practice their English with us. What Beijing taught me the most is that I need to spend more time in China. My month in the giant country was like being in a parallel universe: So much was familiar, but everything was a bit off. Nothing was ever easy, from catching buses to ordering food, but nothing was too hard to not enjoy. Wherever we went, we were entertaining to the locals just by being in their country. The language was incredibly difficult, but by the end of the month I had picked up enough phrases and characters to feel good about myself. If you love the feeling of being in a totally different place where everything is new and confusing, go to China. And if you get too lonely, there are plenty of expats (around 300,000) to be your friends. Hey, maybe I’ll be one someday.
Now we’re in Abu Dhabi, and my laptop isn’t connecting to the Internet. That’s why this post has no photos in it. I’ll keep trying to work on it, but most likely I won’t be able to post Beijing photos for a couple weeks. They’ll eventually be on facebook, where all of my other China photos are now.