Knock off highspeed trains, and GDP buffs

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Packed our bags to say goodbye to Beijing. The subway got us to the train station, it is near the airport, so it was the reverse of our journey a few days before.

The Beijing train station is huge, easily the size of a midsize US airport. There were at least 24 tracks, and the tracks were 2-3 levels above ground.

The engineering that went into this place was pretty astounding.

We got some pastry snacks for the train ride in the station, we noticed the fresh made stuff is DRASTICALLY less expensive than pre-packaged, the pastries were between 6-12CNY, but when you went accross the way to the packaged snacks area suddenly you were paying 28CNY for the mass-market version.

When going through security we showed our ticket to the guard, asking where to go, and he pointed up. We went up, walked around, and went back down thinking we were supposed to go around a certain point. unfortunately going down meant we left the secure area, so we went back through, and the guards laughed a little.

We eventually found our train, and our seat. These high speed trains are pretty great, definately on par with the high speed trains of Japan. The train, and line was designed to handle 380km/hr, but they decided 300km/h was fast enough, and actually more efficient. It is over 750 miles, and took about 6 hours. There were attendants walking around with snacks, as well as trays of food for purchase. There were toilets, trash, and a hot water dispenser in every car.

It was pretty swanky, we got the 2nd class tickets and the seats were slightly larger than US domestic flights, and all the other passengers were normal people, some kids, but no tantrums or crying children it was an easy trip.

The views outside were pretty interesting. Much of the route looked alot like middle america, big flat areas, with farmland as far as you can see in either direction. But unlike middle america, threa are random assortments of monstrously large apartment buildings sprouting out of no where. And I mean middle of no where, its like, if Manhattan, KS or Baraboo WI had 5, Fifteen Story apartment buildings in it. These tiny towns didnt appear to have enough jobs to support the 10,000 people that would be living in these complexes. On top of that, it appeared as though many of them were empty, entire buildings with no lights on, no shades down, no laundry hangng. It was eerie.

The Shanghai station is a little out of town so we didnt really see much on the way in via subway. When we popped up out of the subway near our hotel, we saw that Shanghai is indeed a modern metropolis. We got to our hotel, and we were greeted with a cup of tea. They also saw that i left a note in the hotels.com remarks section, asking for a high floor, so they gave us a room on the top floor.

This place is pretty great, here is the view from our room.

We did some research, and found a Szechuan place. This place had a similar menu to the Grandmas place, a big book with pictures, and a checksheet you order on. We had crushed spicy cucumber again, a dish of noodles, a basket of fried mushrooms, and a pork dish on a bed of pumpkin and millet. It was all pretty good, The pork meal was very interesting, the pumpkin calmed alot of the heat that is inherent in Szechuan food.

We wandered home and I passed out very quickly, while laura watched whatever was on HBO.

Ugly Americans, and ancient splendor

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Another early morning to make the bus to the tour.

Our tour guide picked us up from the hotel lobby, and walked us to another bigger hotel, with other tourists and the bus.

Our tourguide spoke very good english, and was very knowledgable about all of the sites, and Chinese history in general.

Our first stop was the Forbidden City ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_City ). It is the old imperial palace and administrative capital of the Chinese empire. It was started in 1406 and was considered finished in 1420. It was so called the Forbidden City, because the common folk were forbidden from entering, and the royal family concubines (of which there were many) were forbidden from leaving. This was the colloquial name, it was referred to as the Imperial Palace. We saw the various courtyards and throne rooms.


the courtyards were barren because the emperors were afraid trees or flowers would afford assassins cover.


The throne room was where the emperor recieved offical guests, and administered over the various religious functions.

The building behind that is where the actual meetings with the foreign representatives and high level imperial officials. This is where the actual running of the empire took place.

Behind this are various chambers with various functions.

We then saw the actual residences of the emperor.

he had multiple entrances, the official front door, and two side doors, from which his concubines would enter, it was unclear whether he had to choose one or the other, or if the doors were a matter of convinience.

We then went to the womens area of the Palace grounds, which was behind an extra wall, as no one but the ladies and of course the emperor was allowed back there. Well, the eunuchs were allowed back there too. This area of the palace was rather large and entirely managed by the Empress.

I neglected to mention that it was freezing, literally freezing. it was unusually cold for this time of year, hovering around 20F, and then wind chill making it bone chilling. So we kinda hurried through everything, i snapped pictures, and we moved along.

(apologies the pictures might not be in order, i am uploading this late because China doesnt like google stuff, so i am throwing this up later, enjoy the pictures)

Hopping back on to the bus, we got a feel for the other people on the tour; there was a mother/daughter duo from the interior of China, a husband and wife from Korea, a quartet of 20-something girls from the Phillipines, a husband and wife with two daughters from the San Francisco area (henceforth the Bay Area) and a husband wife with a 19 yr old, 17 yr old daughter, an adopted 9 yr old chinese daughter, and a 13 yr old son.

I will comment on them after i run through the historical shit we saw.

The bus took us to a Tea house, as one of their sales pitches. We were presented with a “tea ceremony” it was really a mildly educational sales pitch. The attendant made 5 different teas for us to try, and extolled the virtues of each “this one helps with liver and eyes, and this one makes you sleepy” etc

She then released us into the shop. The one tea i was impressed with was the Black tea, which is very much like whiskey, it is aged, has a taste that needs getting used to, and gets real expensive real quick. It tastes a little smokey, and very earthy, it usually comes in these big pucks that you break pieces off of. They had 8 inch x 1 inch disks of this stuff ranging in price from 300CNY to 36,000CNY, thats a $5000 dollar brick of tea leaves…

Piled back on the bus to get to the Temple of Heaven. Again given the cold we didnt stick around long. The temple of heaven (wikilink here) is in the middle of a very large park, which we wandered around a little bit, it costs money to enter the park, and actually requires another ticket to get onto the temple grounds, given the cold we neglected to do this.

The temple was built originally by the same guy that commissioned the Forbidden City, Yongle Emperor doin work.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Heaven

The tour had arranged for golf cart-vans to take us through the park some and bring us to the lunch site. It was a restaurant in the park, and they served us another very generic, mundane chinese meal, again things obviously akin to what we can find in the US.

The carts then took us back to the bus, which took us to the second sales piitch of the trip; The Pearl Market.

This was pitched as being relevant, because the Dragon Lady (a certain queen i have yet to find the wiki page for) loved pearls, and it was she that did all the rehab on the forbidden palace and the Summer Palace.

It was a terrible sales pitch, the sales lady walked in and asked people if they were families and if they were students. We think this was to determine how much they could sell us. Laura admitted we were not students…

She told us a little about freshwater pearls vs ocean pearls, how to spot fake pearls, and then very abruptly stopped, and took us out to the sales floor. I think she may have been frustrated by the Bay Area family’s many questions (ill get to this). At the floor she told us of the deals and specials they were running, and handed us off to the actual sales people.

Laura and i very disinterestedly wandered around until we ran into our guide who said the bus was open. We immediately left for the bus, to sit in the back, and talk shit about the other Americans on the trip (this is coming up, just wait)

The last bus ride was a little longer, as the summer palace was on the outskirts of the city. Originally it was a little ways away from the city, so the royals could escape the city, but close enough that they could return within the day, and administrators could come and go with relative ease.

The summer palace was beautiful ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_Palace ), and actually is a preview of our coming time in Suzhou and Hangzhou. Apparently one of the emperors was so enthralled with the Westlake in Hangzhou that he had his architects emulate it when digging up the lake in the Summer Palace grounds. He was also enamored with a certian bridge in Suzhou, so he had his architects emulate it here as well.

We were unable to enter the actual administrative portions of the palace grounds, it was mostly a big park, with example royal residences from the 1860s.

this was about the time i started asking my own questions of the tour guide, trying to figure the timeline that this Dragon Lady was leading through, and she kept making reference to the “eight nations” which i later determined was all the gunboat diplomacy the french and british and russians and germans and americans were exercising in China at the time. By now it was warming up and we enjoyed ourselves a little more, however, this was essentially the end of the tour.

we piled back on the bus, and were taken back to our respective hotels.

The dinner we got was forgettable, we were looking for the DanDan noodles i had fallen in love with in Tokyo, and found them. Unfortunately the mall food courts here, arent as universally awesome as they are in Japan. The food was not very good, while wandering the mall we found another food court, that had examples of cuisine from all over China. We think this would have beem the place to taste a bunch of different stuff. Our mistake.

We then made our way home, and got to sleep early, making up for all the lost sleep with travel and early tours.

Those of you unwiilling to read my disparaging fellow americans should log off now…

Ho-lee shit these people on this tour is why people hate american tourists, these are Ugly Americans.

First experience with the Bay Area family, listening to the father quiz the daughter on vocabulary words. This family was Indian American, pretty clearly second gen, thuroughly americanized. I have been on vacation as an elementary student, i have done homework on vacation, but never forced, and certainly not in a manner as obstructive to those around me as a verbal quiz on vocab words. Listening to the girls responses, it was pretty clear she didnt actually have a grasp on these words, she would regurgitate an answer, that was certainly right, but it was pretty clear she didnt actually appreciate how the word was used and what it meant. Also, as she checked out the father continued to throw words at her, and remind her she had to learn these words by next year (as in next calendar year? or next school year?). It didnt seem as though these words were actually generated by a school, we got the idea that this was the parents trying to “give her an advantage” in school.

The other portion of their childrens learning upset me. The father asked a number of questions, many of which were unnecessary as the answer was given in context moments before. We got the feeling that he wasnt asking for his own benefit, but for that of his daughters, which again, is cool. but if you actually valued the knowledge, you would have been paying attention in the first place. I got the feeling that they were accumulating knowledge, or rather, forcibly pouring knowledge on their kids for the sake of knowing more, rather than understanding more.

But the real thing that got both laura and i, was their dietary choices. They are in China, they flew from the Bay Area to Beijing, China, only 3 days prior, and had already eaten at Subway, McDonalds, and hit Starbucks a number of times. They expressed excitement at going to Subway that evening. They neglected to eat just about everything on the very americanized chinese lunch.

Stay home, use google maps to visit the sites, thats all you want anyways, no one wants you here, and it seems like you dont really want to be here either. you make us (all Americans) look bad.

The big family was worse. They were from Atlanta area. And our first taste of them was discussing whether they would have Pizza Hut or McDonalds for dinner that night. It only got worse from there.

The 13 yr old son threw a tantrum at one point on the bus because his mother didnt buy him a souviner panda hat (that nearly all the gypsy ladies sell here). the 17 and 19 yr old daughters got into a pissing match about how smart they are, using reading level in 5th grade as the metric. the mother and father actively called their other kid (an older kid not present) “the bad one”. they ate almost none of the food at lunch, with the father and son commenting on how “wierd” the food was (as the phillipino girls, the korean couple, and me/laura ate it). The younger son and adopted daughter were running around the temple and generally being unruly.

they were just an all around shitty group of people.

If we had had another stop on this tour, i probably would have laid into the kid…

It was embarrasing, not only was the family embarrsing itself, and me adn laura, but embarrasing on behalf of the entire United States. These people (Chinese) do not see many Americans, when you come over here, and refuse to eat the basic food, throw tantrums over bullshit, and disrespect their fucking history, you make us ALL look bad.

If you cant handle being outside your comfort zone, dont fucking leave it. Go to Chinatown in your city, fuckit go to Panda Express, you dont deserve “exotic” food, i dont want to run into you in Chinatown when im looking for good food.

/endrant

It really is Great

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Woke up early to brave the cold and see a section of the Great Wall.

Laura found a travel agency that had NO SHOPPING tours of the Great Wal (greatwalltour.cn). The no shopping part was important because we didnt want to waste time getting walked through a market or jewelry shop.

The guide snagged us from our hotel lobby at 0720, and walked us to the bus, which we rode till the outskirts of the city, then we transferred to a much smaller 10 seat bus for the rest of the trip. From this area to the Mutianyu section of the wall was about a 90 minute drive, we slept through most of it so we dont remember what was going on.


we went to this section that is well maintained. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutianyu


I mentioned it was cold, the temperature dropped over night, and the almost freezing drizzle turned into snow. By the time we woke up it was done snowing, but there was a dusting everywhere.

When we finally got to the Great Wall our little group on the microbus met with a larger group on a tour bus and we started heading up the mountains to the Wall.

We walked up some of the way, was shown to our lunch location, and given a no-later-than time to make lunch and the bus home, walked further up the hill and shown the cable car or hike up to the Wall.

This section of the wall is on a mountain crest, a very easily defended position. Cimbing a mountain with an Army and attaking a 5m tall wall that extends forever in each direction would not be easy, I believe this portion of the wall was less about defense of the State, and more about ease of transit and communication into the western provinces to/from the capital.

Anyways the cable car takes you up the mountain, and takes you to Tower 14. Along the wall, there are guardhouses every few hundred meters, on this section they are numbered 1-20. 20 is at the top of the crest, and i dont know where 1 is, because i didnt see it.

The tour guide recommended you turn left upin getting onto the wall, and heading to 20, from 14, and that would take about an hour, and then take your pictures, and walk back, taking another hour to come back.

When we got to the wall, there was a huge gaggle of people on the stairs leading to the actual wall top. When we fought our way up we saw why; ice. The wet snowy weather led to this area being slick with ice, and given the incline at that point, everyone was afraid to move.

looking left, towards 20, was a decline of at least 20 degrees, slick with ice for at least 15 meters, to the right was an incline of about 10 degrees, slick with ice for about 5 meters.

Laura was hesitant to go either direction, i was determined to walk the Wall, we travelled many thousands of miles to see this, we were gunna make the best of it.

There is a path that parallels the wall for most of its course, this path is frequently lacking a railing, and made of paving stones that were in pretty poor shape, from our vantage I had no way of determining if that path would get us back onto the Wall, looking at that decline, there was no way we would make it back up that length on the wall. So we went right. We hugged the wall, and used the gaps in the flagstones to climb through the icy spot, and made our way.

We walked all the way to Tower 6, at some points bouldering along the wall, Laura slipped at one point, but caught herself, scrapping her wrist a little, and i fell on my ass and slid about 3 meters, but we got there and back with all our fingers and toes, and some excellent pictures.

We took the cable car back down the hill for lunch. There we met up with some of the other people on the tour, a girl from Calgary (who made a terrible clothing decision, her primary trip was to Thailand, so she packed for Thailand, took an extended layover in Beijing and decided to check out the Great Wall of China, on top of a mountain, on the first wintry day in China), a guy from New York, a probably* businessman/diplomats daughter, a couple from Caracas, and a French Businessman. Chatting was nice about travels and what we have already seen and what we plan to do here in Beijing and China at large.

The food was acceptable, again if i wasnt kkeeping my diary on a blog, it was nothing to write home about. it honestly tasted alot like the shitty chinese food we have back home. it was good, but nothing spectacularly flavored or interesting.

The microbus took us home, we slept through the ride again, this time it dropped us off at a subway stop because traffic was so bad.

We once again ran into the Calgarian and New Yorkite, helped the canuck get to the airport as she was a little turned around. The train took us home easy, but we did get almost mildly kidnapped. As we were leaving the train, some lady heard us speaking english, and said wwe speak beautiful english, asking us where we were from, telling us she was from some other province of china on holiday, and loves practicing her english, she invited us to her favorite coffee shop to talk in english. obviously this is a bad idea, stranger danger n all, but Laura read about this scam in her prep for the trip. Apparently these people invite you to their favorite teashop, that is usually someplace youv never been, and has a friendly, large doorman. And the tea is many hundreds of Yuan, and you cannot leave without paying, because the doorman is large, and doesnt speak english, but knows you didnt pay...

researching dinner led us to a Peking Duck place near our hotel (Siji Minfu), with views of the Forbidden City. Getting to it was a little harrowing, it was nearby, but we had to navigate the hutong that surrounds our hotel, and then walk down a near completely empty street. After traversing all this East Asian capitals, being on an empty street was unnerving.

The restaurant had a very small frontage on the street, but it was a long swanky looking hallway, that took us to the restaurant proper. The Hostess walked us past the big wood ovens in which the ducks get roasted, and seated us with a view of the Forbidden City moat and wall.

The menu had a full list of stuff to eat, and index of professionally photographed examples of each. We ordered sauteed greens, which turned out to be lil baby bokchoy (the size of brussel sprouts) stuffed with a clove of garlic each, tossed in chili oil.

And of course the duck, we got a half duck, with all the fixins. The condiments came out first, it was a little platter with hoisen sauce, minced garlic, onion slices, cucumber slices, pink pickled things (which we have seen all over since Japan) green pickled stuff (again familiar, but no idea what it is), a pile of sugar and a palette cleansing fruit slice. Then came the pancakes, and finally the duck, on a plate that was set on top of a catering candle.

The staff correctly identified we had no idea what we were doing, and showed us. First you peel the pancakes apart, they are paper thin, then you put it on your plate, you grab a duck slice, dip in hoisen, place on the pancakes, then put whatever condiments you want on there, fold it up, and eat it. My goodness were these pockets of duck delicious, it wasnt greasy like duck usually is, it wasnt smothered in spices, all of the flavors compliments eachother, it was great. The sugar as we learned, is for dipping the duck skin in, which is also exquisite.

but, given the well deserved fatastic reviews of the roast duck, this wasnt even the best food they served. they had duck liver paste. I initially read it as “patte” laura corrected me, and we ordered it anyways.

This duck liver paste, beats out those green beans from the day before, in fact, it beats out just about everyhthing short of those DanDan noodles in Ueno.

I have never had a patte so creamy, it was like butter, duck flavored butter. But not overpowering like liver usually is. it was just subtle, savory, scrumptious spreadable duck on little squares of toast.

Very Very satisfied with dinner, we hurried out of the cold into our bed to fall asleep watching whatever was on HBO.


*given her life story, i gathered she is the daughter of a businessman or diplomat, no one is ethnically Columbian, grew up and identifies as Dutch, lived in London for a year, and has been on an extended trip to India, now on an extended trip to China SE Asia

Soo much food, for soo few monies

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We woke up in the hotel and immediately started looking for a hotel with a good concierge. Laura found a place that was very inexpensive, close to the Forbidden Temple, and had good reviews. We booked through Agoda, which is a booking site, but without an email we never got a confirmation email, we left the website open and hoped for the best.

The place was very easy to find, and the staff were immediately very friendly, and spoke pretty good english.

But they couldnt find our confirmation, and while we tried to see which name we used (sometimes we forget Lauras last name has changed recently), we lost the confirmation number. the staff worked with us, to call their corporate management, helped us call the agoda people, but no luck.

Finally we just asked to book right there at reception. they gave us the same rate we found online, which was actually less than what we were paying for the hostel. we also immediately booked a guided tour through the Forbidden Palace, Summer Palace and Temple of Heaven.

We then wandered off for lunch, Laura found a meat pie place that had good reviews, and was very near by.

Reading the menu, we intended to orderthe duck meat pie, the pork meat pie, a plate of crushed garlic and chili cucumbers, and laura wanted the ot and sour soup.

the waiter told us the meat pies are very big, and only get two if we were very hungry. we decided on just the duck, with the pork in reserve.

the cucumber plate was delicious, i think they were pickled very lightly and then tossed with chili oil and minced garlic. It was a great starter, and a great compliment to the soon to arrive meat pie.

meat “pie” isnt accurate, the meat is ground with spices, in this case duck, and the most pronounced flavor was fennel, and the dough part was kinda like a scallion pancake. it was so very tasty, a little difficult to eat with chopsticks, but that just forced me to eat bigger parts. all this food, plus a liter of beer, came out to 12USD.

On the way home we got a little turned around and ent up in the couryard of the Forbidden City, and tried to get out the front. But the front is not an exit, so we had to walk back around to get out. At this point the drizzle picked up (did i mention it was very hazy and drizzling?), and i was getting cold (it was about 40F).

I should have gotten a jacket when laura did in Japan.

When we got back to the new hotel, we found another Uniqlo, and got me a ultra-light down vest thing to wear under my jacket. its basically wearing a woobie, and it is fucking great.

We then wandered around this shopping area to include the stereotypical asian maket. the narrow walkways with people selling cheap crap to tourists, food stalls selling all manner of food, and some things people wouldnt count as food.

this street, I think it was Wangfujin had a pervasive smell of steam pot food, and fryer grease, with the smell changing slightly based on what stall you were walking by; the pork steam buns or the squid-on-a-stick-fryer. here we also saw some of the more esoteric things for sale, whole starfishes, still wriggling scorpions, unidentifiable mammalian viscera. I didnt see many if any locals that werent working there, so i think that weird food stuff is just that; wierd food stuff to wow visitors.

after wandering around, we made our way back to the hotel to research dinner.

we warmed up and identified a very well reviewed restaurant, we ventured out again. actually, it was in the very mall we wrongly stepped into looking for the Uniqlo. The restaurant was on the top floor of the mall, and it took up easily ⅓ of the square footage up there. the place was unbelievably large. They had at least a hundred 4 person tables, and the kitchen to support it. the menu had over 100 items on it. You went through the big menu with pictures, and checked the box on the little paper the staff took. unfortunately the little paper was only in mandarin, so we had to recognize shapes and costs to ensure we were ordering the right thing.

we got soooo much food.

unfortunately the serve it to you as it comes out of the kitchen,

The first thing we got was roasted eggplant with barbecue bread crumbs on top, it was great, and a really good appetizer. Then a plate of mapau tofu appeared, it was good, but nothing to write home about (despite my actually writing home about it here).

Next was our dessert, we got a mango pudding that laura heard was good, and a peanut icecream. holy shit the peanut ice cream was great, the mango pudding was ok, not really my thing, but laura liked it, but that peanut icecream was everything that is great about Reeses “peanut butter” but without the “ “. meaning it was sweet and salty enough to bring out the sweet, but didnt taste like a series of chemicals designed to taste like the best peanut butter ever, it jut WAS the best peanut butter ever...in ice cream form.

but yeah, the desserts showed up relatively early in the meal, and melted a little bit as we ate the rest of the things i am going to list.

then was the ground pork in chili sauce on a bed of sauteed spinach, all tossed into a boat of fermented rice wine. this was ok, the fermented rice wine wsa the big flavor here.

Next was some fantastic chili and green bean stir fry. but it was not oily, like it was tossed very attentively in a dry wok. this was my favorite part of the meal. the chili had a low slow heat, but plenty of flavor, with the minced garlic it quickly rose to the top of my list of favorite vegetable dishes ever.

A dish of chow mein came out next. again not the best food ever, but there was alot of it, and it was noodles, pretty much cant go wrong there.

and the final dish that came out was a baarbecue pork dish that niether of us really liked, it was a little too smokey, and by the timeit came out we were pretty full.

To drink we got a pitcher of peach-pomegranate juice

As we were looking at the menu, particularly the prices and estimating how much food we would get. we were very wrong. each of these plates could have been a main for a single person.

so we ate alot of food, and it came out to all of $35.

Welcome to the Peoples Republic of China.

After this gastronomic adventure, we came home and rubbed our bellies until we fell asleep.

The Peoples Republic of China

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Woke up to our last morning in korea, packed up and immediately headed to the airport, we wanted ample time to deal with mass transit to the airport and to deal with customs.

the ride to the airport took us outisde the city during the daylight. the train went through the countryside, and we road through these big mud flat areas, that i think may have been flood plains, but without proper internet here in china, i cant look it up now. (ths is a later edit, somehow i am able to use google products right now, so here you are- they are indeed mudflats)

the seoul airport is HUGE, probably the biggest airport i have ever been in. ticketing was easy, security was a little long, i think i am used to getting priority with military, so maybe it wasnt that bad to a normal american traveller.

after security we still had a little over an hour before our flight and we made haste to one of the executive lounges that we have access to with the super-swanky credit card we got.

the attendant began checking us in, and then realized our gate was in the other terminal, and they had a lounge over there. cause incheon needs like 6 premium lounges. so we headed to the international terminal and checked in.

it was pretty impressive, ive never been in one, there were a bunch of big comfortable chairs, watching the kind of things businessmen watch on TV; financial news and golf. and then behind that was the whole reason we got the fancy-pants card; the buffet.

there was food, and we did our best to eat our monies worth (we didnt pay anything to get in here). they had a salad bar, and wine and liquor and a beer tap (that was unfortunately unoperable at the time), those were our favorite parts. we havent had a big leafy salad since we got to Asia, and of course free booze is awesome.

other food included some chips and crackers and pretzels and cheese, a few steam tables of fried rice and stir fry like things, some sammitches and instant noodles. we ate atleast one of everything, and a bunch of some things.

after probably embarrasing ourselves clearing 10 or so plates, we rolled to our gate, and pretty much right on the plane.

i immediately fell asleep.

woke up for the snack, and went back to sleep.

and woke up to land, unfortunately it was near dark, and between the weather and the pollution (ill get to that in a second) couldnt see anything.

Beijing airport is also really big, got through immigration without a problem, and went to change money and hop the train.

Laura checked in with what appeared to be an information desk, while i went to a currency exchange.

I wanted to turn over all my leftover korean won into chinese yuan. after trying to figure out the rates, in USD, and it turned out they were going to charge me 60USD to change 170USD worth of monies, so i walked away. and now i have like 30USD, 500JPY, 152,000KRW, and some odd few hundred CNY in my pocket.

Simultaneously, Laura was struggling with this “information” she was trying to confirm how to get to our hostel, and the lady behind the desk said “oh, that is very far away, we have a car that will take you, 500 RMB, very easy” no thanks. turns out this was not an information booth, it was a tour agency.

so welcome to the Peoples Republic of China.

We found the real, government sponsored inforation kiosk, and they were VERY helpful. They not only wrote out the directions in english and mandarin on how to get to our hostel, the agent called the hostel to see which was the easiest way of getting there. She told us the hutong (ill get to that in a second too) is closed, so we have to ask staff to get in. We took this to mean it was sort of a gated community, this was not the case.

the trains were too easy, between the english and our growing ability to recognize script completely alien to our own we got to the station within walking distance of our hostel.

emerging from the underground, deep into Beijing was quite the shock. First thing we noticed was the haze. Between the fall wet weather, and quite literally the pollution, there was a pall over accross the city. i say city, but i mean the neighborhood because we really couldnt see more than 500m away. also people, everywhere, and not all the high fashion young people of Tokyo or Seoul, the kind of people that get dirty for a living, the kind of people that live kinda dirty.

not unsafe at all, just less upscale than the Japan and Korea that we saw.

we basically made it to our hutong. hutongs are throwback neighborhoods, they were the ubiquitious housing/commercial areas of china up until the the 1950s and 1960s. they are tiny alleys and walkways, i mean tinier than the ones i have described in japan. some of what we saw could fit only 2 people shoulder to shoulder. ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutong ) unfortunately, we didnt know that we had found our hutong and walked around a little more.

we got to the entrance of what we believed to be our hutong, but the road was blocked by construction, we asked a guy that appeared very official, i think he was private security for something. he was very nice, and between gestures and smartphone translation applications he told us, that we were indeed in the right place, but we cannot go there because of the construction, and ponted accross the street at the construction.

so we attempted to get in from a different angle, walking around this neighborhood we saw all kinds of wild shit. people everywhere, eating food from the stalls, scooters and tuk-tuks speeding through the roads, and sidewalk and out of other hutongs. at one point we cought a glimpse in a room that was full of cops on break, or shamming, which was cool, until you finished the glance into the room, and saw a micky-mouse mascot head.

welcome to the Peoples Republic of China

we walked more, past a very heavly secured building with either military, or VERY well equipped private security, a myriad of restaurants and just closing shops, and hundreds of makeshift scooters and carts carrying all manner of things.

finally we resolved to just go into the construction area. trying to tell the one guy at the gate we had a hostel in there, he let us in.

the street was dirt, i dont know if it has always been dirt and is only now getting paved, or if it was paved and is being redone, but it is dirt. and it is covered, there is scaffolding built up, making a very long tunnel. The shops on either side are all closed because no one is coming down these streets, and it is impossible to see. some spots were very dark, where shadows of piles of dirt and bricks and refuse blocked the blinding light of construction lamps.

we turned off the main hutong street onto a much smaller one walking back and forth and back again, circling around and not finding the place. finally we stopped in a ricewine shop and more very friendly Beijingians helped us out, giving us the final hint to get us home.

As we tried to open the door and get INTO the lobby, i heard a clatter behind me, Laura knocked on the door while i peeked around the corner, and suddenly a shoe came flying over the wall of the hutong street, and landed on a bicycle leaning against the far huntong street wall.

What the fuck.

Welcome to the Peoples Republic of China

getting into the hostel, they expected us to pay in cash, but we didnt pull enough cash, so they let us just pay later.

we got to our room, the bed was great, and we had our own bathroom, so it was really all we needed physically, but digitally it was lacking. we couldnt do anything, no email checks, no searches, no blogs, no maps, nothing.

welcome to the Peoples Republic of China

we went to the lobby to find dinner, the internet worked a little better here, we decided on a hot pot place.

so we ventured back out, there were fewer people out and about but it wasnt a ghost town. we went to dinner, turns out it was halal, and all the meat we had was lamb. it was ok, like most hot pots, it got better the more stuff you threw in there over time

Stopped to grab some waters from a corner store on the way home, because I am not sure i trust the tap here…

When we got home it dawned on us that google, and everything therein is blocked here in china. No gmail, no google docs, no blog, no google search, no youtube, no googlemaps.

with that in mind, we started using bing, and apple maps, and contemplated leaving the hostel the next day.

We jumped into the deepend, and we didnt know how to swim. up to this point in the trip, we had been planning at most 24hrs in advance what we were doing, we had hotels and flights already booked, but what we were doing when we got there was researched and booked last minute. without our prime search source, and without email, booking was going to be near impossible.

we needed a concierge.

Despite the hostels fantastic bed, we were pretty sure we were going to move to a new hotel in the morning.