It’s Communism’s Birthday! (And No Ones Invited)

Extremely eventful week. Ultimately, it can’t be summed up in a blog entry. If you want thorough details, or if you have specific questions: we will have to hang out and talk about it. However, I am well aware that most of you (whoever is reading this) will not put forth that kind of effort. Therefore, I will enumerate the events that stick out the most powerfully from the trip.

Ben and I booked our trip with an agency that gets students discount airfare. We bought plane tickets to Beijing and a hotel reservation for 4 nights. We bought plane tickets to Xi’An and a hotel reservation for 2 nights. The agency informed us that train tickets back could not be purchased in Shanghai. They must be purchased in Xi’An, so we planned to buy train tickets when we arrived there.

October 1st is National Day. In the airport we watched (with many Chinese people) military displays and parades through Tiananmen Square. It was very communist and involved thousands of people.

We arrived in Beijing late in the afternoon. Our taxi driver had no idea where our hotel was (it was about 1 mile away from Tiananmen) so we went back and forth on the same road with the meter off for about an hour. In the process, he pulled a U-Turn in the middle of the road (a common Chinese practice involving a total disregard for any form of traffic regulations) and rear-ended some other car. He did minimal damage to the guys car, and after a bunch of bickering, he paid the guy 100 RMB (about 17 bucks) and it settled the problem.

Ben and I attempted to make it to Tiananmen for the gigantic performance (of an Olympic Opening Ceremony scale) to celebrate China’s 60th anniversary of existence. We were met with road barriers, hundreds of PRC cops and military personnel, and empty streets. Apparently, the celebration was “invitation only” and the people of Beijing were required to stay in their homes and watch the festivities on TV. Some people (like us) wandered the streets trying to get a glimpse of some fireworks, but failed. Basically, the party that the media showed internationally, that seems like it was for the people of China, was actually for the benefit of the TV cameras and the international audience. China doesn’t care about its people, it only cares about looking good. They wouldn’t want the lowly civilians to celebrate “their” government.

Apparently, the PRC made it rain on September 30th so that the haze of Beijing would be gone for National Day and the TV broadcast. Don’t believe anything China ever puts on TV. It was nice for us though, because it made the few days that we were there really clean and nice.

The next day, we toured Tiananmen. All of the floats from the parade were on display. There were huge crowds but it was fun to be there.

We spent the afternoon in the Forbidden City- the place where the Ming Emperors lived. It was a huge facility. My camera died part way through, so Ben has half of the pictures.

On the way out, we were halted in the street by the most enormous crowd I’ve ever seen. The PRC decided that it was going to close ChangAn Jie (Long Peace Street) for about a half hour for seriously NO REASON. We know it was meaningless because we asked a policeman. Anyway, it created a huge stop in pedestrian traffic, the sidewalk was overflowing, and people shoved against us and each other like sardines in a can. An hour later we were able to get moving (slowly) down the street and back to the hotel.

The hotel was ok, but everything cost something. The towels cost 5 RMB, and were hand towels- not bath towels. Nothing like the thrill of expectation one gets by wondering if the towel will be saturated in water prior to drying your entire body. The bathroom was a hall bathroom. There was a toilet, but it had no water. The shower was just a nozzle in the middle of the room. It sucked. Luckily, we spent most of our time out of the hotel.

We saw on cable a dubbed version of “Cars.” China decided to edit out two subplots: the car being friends with the pickup truck, and the car falling in love with the other car. It made no sense, and I wonder if China is against multiple plot lines for kid’s movies. Based on the TV shows on every other channel, they are definitely against good acting.

On the 3rd we took a guided tour to the Underground Palace tomb of the Wanli Emperor and the Great Wall. The Underground Palace was completely replicated except for the underground location. It was interesting to me though because I read a book this summer all about that Emperor and how the tomb was the only place he ever went that was outside of the Forbidden City.

The Great Wall was amazing. The day was awesome and we got a lot of good pictures. I posted some of them.

We decided we were going to ignore the danger signs and the restricted area signs. From these higher portions, we got some of the best pictures. Turns out the only reason it was restricted was because there was no side. One could easily fall to their death. It was worth the risk.

Sleppers- I wore the Batman shirt. Batman has officially been on the Great Wall.

Dave Chen knows that the scariest ride in existence is the ski lift from Kennywood to the parking lot. That same kind of lift takes everyone up to the portion of the Wall that I visited. I almost crapped my pants.

Awesomely, there is a way better way to get back down. There is a freaking Toboggan ride to get from the top of the mountain to the bottom! It was sweet as hell, and I have videos of it on my camera.

On the way there and back, the tour guide took us to some expensive places. The guides get commission if we buy stuff. Unfortunately, I don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend, so I bought nothing at these places. But I did see some amazing silk products at the silk factory. Among them included silk boxers with Batman on it. I also saw some jade sculptures that were crazy cool. One item is 3 times the price of my house. It is a jade wall. So I can trade everything I have for a jade lean-to to live under. Cool.

The next day we visited the Olympic Park in Beijing. It was the coolest thing ever! Check out the pictures. I have a million more too.

The track in the Bird’s Nest was restricted. This pissed me off so bad I almost found a brick in my pants. I wanted to do a time trial there soooo bad. Ben and I decided “Screw that, I’m going on the track. Take my picture while I do it.” I jumped the fence on the back stretch, hopped around a bit, pretended to line up on the 200 line, and then retreated back to the fence just as the guard came to remove me from the track. Then Ben and I made our way to the other side of the track and Ben did the same thing. Subsequently, we ran up to the upper deck so that they couldn’t find us.

After a lot of pictures in the Nest, we moved on to the slightly less impressive Water Cube. It was a lot more relaxed, and, unlike the track, we had no desire to get in the pool, so we just chilled there for a little bit.

That afternoon we headed down to the Temple of Heaven. This was a very nice place, and the pictures show that, but we were so sick of sight seeing that we stayed there only briefly. Chinese architecture gets fairly redundant after several days of examining it and taking pictures.

The next morning we flew to Xi’An. Xi’An is the dirtiest, haziest, most disgusting place I’ve ever been. We tried to find stores to get cookies for breakfast, but couldn’t really, because they only have drug stores, liquor stores, and cigarette stores. It sucks. Hard.

We paid a taxi driver a large amount of money to take us to the Terracotta Warriors for the day. We saw how they were made, taken around the overpriced souvenir shop, and then we got to tour the pits in which the warriors were found. There are hundreds and hundreds of these warriors (built for the first emperor of the Qin- of “Hero” fame). A pretty good day.

Oh, and remember how we were going to buy train tickets to Shanghai? Well turns out you have to buy overnight train tickets 10 days in advance. So with China’s system, in our situation it is physically impossible to get tickets back home. We bought expensive plane tickets and left early in the morning the next day. Xi’An sucks.

One never really gets used to having Chinese people take pictures of you and stare at you for being white. It’s really bizarre.

Sorry that I made this so long. Believe it or not, I am still leaving a lot out. This is just a shell of what happened. It was a really fun trip, and I saw a lot. I’m excited to chill now, though. I still have a lot of Chinese to learn.