News from the Boat_China

I can totally pull of another two blog posts in the next 48 hours…

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So. I’ve heard a lot of things about Hong Kong, but not necessarily a lot of good things. Honestly, I can’t say I hate it. It wasn’t thrilling, but I definitely don’t hate it. It’s like any big city. Kind of hurried, kind of bland, a lot of pretty buildings but not a whole lot else. Imagine downtown LA or downtown Frankfurt. It’s kinda cool, yeah, but when you really want to enjoy yourself, you go somewhere else.

We took an early morning tram up to Victoria Peak, where we had a very nice 360 view of… office buildings. There’s a Bank of America building, that was a little strange, but the coolest thing about the peak was definitely the fact that when you leaned over the railing, the draft sent your hair straight up. After some aimless meandering and a horribly failed attempt to find a restaurant that serves Chinese food, we ended up walking down Hollywood Road, looking at temples and through big piles of junk that street vendors will sell for a couple of dollars. The conversion rate did cause a bit of confusion, because after having $1 be around 20,000 Vietnamese Dong, going back to 1 to 8 was certainly hard to get used to. I definitely spent a lot more money than I thought I would just because I was thinking, “Oh, that’s only 140, that’s *nothing*. Heh. WRONG.

The nicest part about my one-day Hong Kong excursion was the Symphony of Lights. Imagine a city-wide laser show, complete with music and flashing skyscrapers. Strangely surreal, and definitely not something you’d expect from a city that’s all busy-business like Hong Kong. But honestly, the only thing I got out of my stay in Hong Kong was that China could not be as cold as everyone was prophesying.  At the end of the day, I was still walking around in shorts and a t-shirt, so Beijing couldn’t possibly be that bad. Right?

Right.

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Imagine my shock when we landed in Beijing and the airport workers were wrapped up in thick winter coats, scarves and gloves. At first it didn’t seem all that bad, but by the time we had all climbed into our bicycle rickshaws on the way to our traditional Chinese dinner, we were really feeling it. But the dinner was delicious. It was in a one-room family home, with the grimiest kitchen you could possibly imagine, but the food was good. And without wanting to sound arrogant, watching everybody struggle to use chopsticks in an at least semi-dignified matter was absolutely hilarious. Still, it was cold enough that I was very happy to finally make it to our cozy hotel and only braved the weather long enough that night to buy several sets of gloves at the closest minimart.

I wish I could say the misery ended there, but no such luck. The Forbidden City the next morning was impressive, but hard to believe considering that people lived there WITHOUT HEATING. The whole experience was dampened a little by the fact that my camera decided to give out before 9 AM, but still very impressive. The buildings are all very similar looking, but the architecture is very colorful and I’m not gonna lie – if that was my emperor’s residence, I would have been seriously awed. From the Forbidden City we went straight on to Tiananmen Square. Aside from the enormous Mao picture and the propaganda video showing on gigantic screens, it looks just like any square anywhere – only in HUGE. Not much to see there, and considering that particular piece of history happened before I can remember, I probably wasn’t impressed as I should have been.

We spent the afternoon at a school/orphanage for street children where we played (that is, they kicked our asses at it) tug-of-war, badminton (apparently that’s big in China), basketball and painted a wall with them. The communication wasn’t always the easiest, but pointing at colors and then pieces of the wall works surprisingly well with kids. It was even awesome enough to make us forget how miserably cold it still was. The not-so-nice part was that this school was *poor*. Their school uniforms were donated army fatigues. Their bathrooms were five squat-toilets side by side, with no division in between. I asked our guide if there was anywhere to wash my hands so I could put my gloves back on, and she said, “They don’t have water today.” …oh, okay. Those are the kinds of places I wish I could just magically fix. Just point my fingers, whisper my magic spell, and *bazui* - clean water, new clothes, and heating for everyone.

After all that misery, I felt really kind of guilty when we arrived at our restaurant and I saw an electronics store next door and immediately thought, “Oh wow, I can get a new camera.” But then again, I really didn’t want to be on the Great Wall without a camera, so I sucked up the bad aftertaste and set out on the most uncoordinated adventure of my trip so far. I grabbed a friend and we headed in, figuring that in an electronics store, somebody would speak English. Right? Well, the woman we asked did not. Did anybody else in the store? Not according to her, no. So we pointed at some cameras, got to look at a few, and then everything went horribly, horribly awry. She asked me a question that I assume meant which color I wanted. I pointed to silver. She shook her head. I pointed to blue. She shook her head. I pointed to green. She nodded, went over to a computer, started typing up the price, and then all of a sudden she asked for my name. This is when my phishing-paranoid brain ground to a halt, and I asked her why. She looked at me blankly, then gave me a piece of paper. I wrote down, “Why do you need my name?” She started to copy down “Why do you need my name?” *as* my name. I shook my head. She asked me something. I shook my head. She wrote it down for me – in Chinese characters. I shook my head. She wrote down something else for me – in Chinese characters.

So. Defeated by the language barrier, we decided to go ask out guide if she would be willing to come back with us and translate. But, as it turns out, by the time I’d scarfed down enough dinner to feel brave enough to go back, our guide had disappeared. So I thought to myself, whatever, I can do this. I’ve done worse. (That’s a lie, by the way.) So I asked our trip leader if I could go buy a camera next door, and he looks at me and says, “Can you do it in 15 minutes?” Eh… yes? “Good, because that’s when we’re leaving.”

Hookay. Buying a camera in 15 minutes is totally doable. Right?

So. I sprint back next door, ask the first guy I find if he speaks English, and, miracle upon miracles, he says yes! He takes me over to the cameras, my first lady appears, he asks me which one I want, I tell him, he asks me which color I want, I say blue. He says something to the lady. She shakes her head. Frustrated, I ask, “Well, what colors do you have?” He asks the lady. She says something. He tells me they have green. …I guess I’ll be having the green one, then. Back to the computer, back to that whole name game. At this point, I was rushed enough to say to hell with it, if they’re gonna stalk me with the information I’m giving out, they’re welcome to, I’m only going to be in China for another three days. So I give her my name, she prints out a slip of paper and leads me over to the cashier, I hand over my debit card and get told, “no.” Okay, why? The attendant lady writes down for me “no.” I frown. The cashier says, “China.” I frown even more. The attendant writes down for me, “China.” Okay. So how about an ATM. There is one downstairs, what wonder, so I run down, take out money, run back upstairs – and there’s a lady in front of me. A lady who’s taking her sweet time digging out her ID, signing papers, chatting with the cashier. At this point, I had about another two minutes before I was supposed to be back at the restaurant, so I was starting to get really, really antsy. But it’s all good, here comes another cashier. Who goes to help the other one with the lady in front of me. At this point, my attendant lady is trying her hardest to move me to the front of the line, but I’m still checking my watch every thirty seconds, thinking about the millions of hours of docktime I’m going to get if this doesn’t happen *right now*. But there’s a third cashier. She also takes her sweet time getting my receipt ready, but at least she’s getting it ready. I’m already two minutes late, but at this point, my money’s gone, and I’m really not willing to walk away without cash OR camera, so I turn to my attendant who points into the store and WALKS AWAY. Panic. Total and utter panic. I head off into the general direction she indicated, back to the camera section, and show my receipt to a couple of people standing around a computer. They don’t know what I want. So I pace up and down until my attendant comes running up with a box. My camera. I could have kissed her. And then strangled her, because she started to unpack and put the damn thing together. I shake my head. She nods, starting to get a little frazzled too, and then tells me to wait. And runs off to get me A BAG. (And a free camera cover. That was kinda cool.) Anyway. I shake my head, grab the stuff, and sprint into the next building, up five flights of (long) stairs, tell Ozzie I’m back, and get told, “That’s good – because we’re leaving *right now.*” In retrospect, I feel really bad for rushing my lady so much because she did try her damndest, and I think she felt bad, but oh my God, I never want to have to do that again.

Well, what better place to regain my Zen than at a Kung Fu school? It’s the school where they shot the new Karate Kid movie, apparently. Miserably cold, but we’ve established that. They put on a show, including breaking bamboo rods over their back and standing on top of boards with nails on top of a person on top of a board with nails on top of a person on top of a board with nails. We learned a couple of moves from the students and then just hung out and watched the school’s youngest doing their own lessons outside. Three and four-year-olds practicing high-kicks and stances – it’s pretty much the most adorable thing to ever walk the planet.

And then we got to the main part of the attraction: The Great Wall. Two hours drive out of Beijing, then a ten-minute walk and a ten minute gondola ride away, and… there it is. It stretched for miles in either direction. Sadly it doesn’t divide China from Mongolia anymore, but it was a clear enough day that we were hoping we saw it. It’s just mindblowing how long it is. You kinda see it disappear over a hillrise and think, “That’s a long wall…” and then you see it rise up again on the next hill, and the next, and the next. We were lucky enough to be pretty much the only people on the wall. Very lucky, actually. We ended up hearing several stories about how other sections of the wall were packed wall to wall with people. So it was great that we got the time to just hang out, goof off, take fake Kung Fu pictures and some with our touristy panda hats. And in the end, we got to toboggan down. It was terrifying, but so much fun. And while I was zipping down the hillside, all I could think was, “How am I getting academic credit for this?”

I was a little sad that we only ended up staying an hour and a half or so, but we had to start heading back. One more stop the next morning at the Temple of Heaven, and then we made our way to Shanghai. We only had one day there, which was a little sad, but we did see some interesting stuff. Despite getting a little screwed over (shanghaied… heh) by a taxi driver with a fast-running meter on the way, we were in fairly high spirits when we made it to Shanghai Barbie, the six-storey, bright pink Barbie store. Welcome to everything Barbie: Barbie clothes, Barbie café, Barbie bubble tea (it’s pretty gross), Design Your Own Barbie, and, of course, the three storey high exhibition of blonde Barbies wearing pink dresses – each one with a unique dress style and hairdo.

It was a little scary, come to think of it.

We shopped around for the rest of the afternoon, and made it back to the ship just in time to get to the very end of a humongous line while the new head of security unpacked every single bag coming onto the ship. I think we spent a good forty minutes just standing around in the cold. So that was a fun way to end it. But overall, I enjoyed it. The lack of English made life a little difficult, but then again, there’s no reason for them to speak English other than that it’s a convenience for us.

But overall, I enjoyed it. I didn’t even feel too queasy at the billions of flags and the whole communist propaganda thing. I will say that what ended up getting me was the internet. I didn’t have anybody following me around like some people did, but I’d forgotten about Facebook being blocked, and realizing that the one time I would consistently have internet access on this entire trip I wouldn’t be able to upload any pictures was a bit of a shock. And kind of annoying, to be honest. Then it started to get funny. We tried various tricks to make it on Facebook anyway, but only managed for a good fifteen minutes or so. Then I tried to look up Tiananmen Square on Wikipedia, and whatdayaknow? The page mysteriously won’t load. Oh Gee. I wonder why.

But I enjoyed China. It was great, it was ridiculous, it was insane. It was cold. But the people were friendly and helpful, the things I saw and did were amazing, and if nothing else, I got some interesting stories out of it.

Lots of love from 29˚ 26.8N/127˚ 0.2W.
Alexa

Pics are here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=257321&id=834707681&l=e998dfb538