China - April 2004

Tuesday, April 13
It's that point in the semester where every possible big presentation and term paper is coming up all at the same time, so lots of work to catch up on. Last week was our spring break, during which I intended to do enormous volumes of work, but that didn't happen bcuz literally 24 hours before a small group of friends was scheduled to leave for Beijing for the week, I found out that my China visa had gone through and that I could just barely financially pull off one more trip, so I went.

We took a 26-hour train to Beijing in sleeper cars and were trying to decide what to do when we got there bcuz our friend David wasn't meeting us till Monday evening and it was only Saturday and his girlfriend wanted to avoid doing too many touristy things in Beijing without him. So as soon as we got to Beijing, we bought train tickets for that night for an overnight train to Hohhot, which is the capital of Inner Mongolia. It's still technically China, so you don't need an extra visa, but the culture and everything is still Mongolian, and they're considered like an autonomous region or something. Unfortunately, we forgot to get sleeper car tickets (probably cuz we can't speak any damn Mandarin) so we were in the insanely crowded regular car for the whole night and were thoroughly miserable. Honestly, we had the worst night! I ended up sleeping on the floor underneath the seats for 3 hours and I'm sure that is one hilarious photograph. But it was completely made up for by the fact that our day in Inner Mongolia was freaking amazing. We took a tour of the grasslands and rode the furriest horses you've ever seen on the Mongolian plain. I tell you, there is nothing there. It is the most desolate, barren place. I can't imagine it in winter, it must be a frickin wasteland.



Later on that day, we went back to Hohhot and realized that we were getting stared at absolutely everywhere we went. In fact, we realized we were the only non-Asians we'd seen all day. Even though we were the subjects of mass fascination, everyone was incredibly friendly. This fruit vendor who probably makes as much in a year as our parents make in a few weeks kept insisting on giving us free fruit. Then as we're sitting there eating the fruit, this group of young children surrounds us to practice their English. We drew an *enormous* crowd just talking to these kids, literally stopped traffic. The kids wanted us to come play with them at their apartment complex, so we spent 2 hours playing soccer and basketball and Chinese jumprope with them and they were awesome. They kept asking us to sign our names on things, almost like signing autographs, and wanted to know absolutely everything about us down to our favorite foods and colors. It was so great. The people in Mongolia were just incredible. Plus I had the best food I've had since being in Asia that night at a Szechuan place. SO GOOD.

Then we spent our third night in a row on a train, back to Beijing, in a sleeper this time thank god. We stayed at the nicest hostel I've ever stayed at, even in Europe, which really surprised me, called the Far East Youth Hostel. Me, Cathrin, August, Michelle, David, and Holden were lucky enough to get a 6-person room so we had our own room the whole time. But really, August and I spent the entire week hanging out with these 2 girls from London, Gem and Jabey, that stayed at our hostel. It was an interesting week. I'm SO glad I went, but I am definitely not a huge Beijing fan and I appreciate Hong Kong so much more now bcuz I really understand that *Hong Kong is NOT China*. I don't care what anybody says. Hong Kong is something special, and I feel sad that it could very likely someday be polluted by its own government, and I mean polluted in the physical, social, *and* ideological sense. On the day we went to Tiananmen Square, which is incredibly neat and clean, there are soldiers who march in formation all around, almost as a sign of intimidation. Cathrin watched one soldier just go up to some random guy and make him hand over his bag, then go through all of its contents before being satisfied and giving it back to him. There is a massive portrait of Mao Zedong over the entrance to the Forbidden City (which was massive itself) and when I walked though Mao's mausoleum (which we coined the Mao-soleum), I literally got goosebumps. It was just so eerie to see one man revered like that. There is a checkroom across the street since no one can bring *any*thing inside the mausoleum and we joined literal throngs of Chinese people coming just to file past his grave and cry and pay their respects in deathly silence. Plus, the info pamphlet you get when you walk in is propaganda in its purest form. It was just such an eye-opener and made me think about a lot. I definitely can say I understand the Chinese, both historically and culturally, 120% better than I did before I came here. I think that's probably going to be one of the biggest things I get out of this whole semester.

It was also really interesting to see the rampant hypocrisy that is present everywhere under a Communist government. Every single sign inside the Forbidden City, China's biggest tourist attraction, says at the bottom, "Funded by American Express." There's even a Starbucks inside the Forbidden City, for crying out loud! And after seeing some of the poverty in Mongolia and other outer regions on the long train ride, compared to Tiananmen, the whole thing made you kind of ill. Add to this the fact that foreigners are *constantly* being harassed by vendors and ripped off royally everywhere they go and the horrendous air pollution that left me feeling like I'd been smoking a pack a day for weeks, I was pretty much itching to get out of Beijing.

That was why Wednesday was probably my favorite day of the whole week besides our day in Mongolia... we got to go to the Great Wall! That was like the only thing I wanted to make sure I did while I was in China. We went to a somewhat less-touristy area 3-4 hours outside of the city by bus which has been left mostly unrenovated and so the wall is kept in its original form. We did a 6-mile hike along the wall and it was honestly one of the most strenuous and physically challenging hikes I've ever done. Some guy did it with a broken foot and I was amazed! It was hard! I didn't help by pushing myself to the point of near-heat stroke bcuz more of those damn vendors were following us along the wall begging us to buy "post-a-card", "book-a-mark", or "Mao book" and I couldn't take it anymore so I launched myself ahead of everyone else and hiked it alone at a very quick pace with very little water. The views were amazing though. Panoramic, just untouched hills and mountains, a terrace here and there, and the wall stretching on forever. That night we went back to the hostel and got drunk off the best thing Beijing had to offer: Yanjing beer, 640 mL for 1.5 yuan, which is basically 18 cents. 18 cents!! I got drunk and played cards every night for less than a dollar. Yay for Yanjing.

Anyway, Friday and Saturday we spent another 26 hours on a train back to Hong Kong. I never thought I would be so glad to see the city. Even going to dirty Mong Kok would have been a relief at that point. Until now, every place I have ever visited has been do-able -- in the sense that I could live there if I had to, I know I could do it. Even Thailand. No. I can admit my own limits, and I know that I could *never* live in Beijing. I would just be terribly unhappy living in that city. The culture alone is just so fundamentally different from our own, the idea of having to learn a tonal language, all the pollution and people, it would just be more than I can handle, I think. I really do love Hong Kong and I'm so glad that I've been shown why I should never complain about it -- it could be worse. It could be freaking China.

Gem and Jabey are supposed to come to Hong Kong tomorrow evening and I promised I'd show them a good time. I have lots of work to do, the group project kind where you can't get away with procrastinating. Still have class, of course. And stuffed into all of this, I'm still supposed to be hanging out with friends and dating someone (at least in theory anyway). I've really been a big ball of stress lately, cuz I'm realizing all of this, plus the skill it takes to budget, plus the fact that there are only 5 weeks left here and there is still so much I haven't done (like camping on a secluded beach!). I know it's always less overwhelming than it seems at the time, but I've really been letting it get to me lately, which is my own fault, but yeah.

"The cost of what we now have is knowing that soon, we must give it up." -CS Lewis