After a twelve hour flight to Munich, a connection from Munich to Heathrow, and a callous hurtle into an eight-hour-behind time zone, I am now fully back in England - to stay (probably. For a few months. Or until a good deal comes along.) So now I'm all Englished up with my bad weather and my cup of milky tea, I'll recount the last few days of the whole Trans-Siberian adventure, China-style, for any of you who have retained interest and/or attention for lack of excitement/alternative nearby reading material.
On my fourth day in Beijing, I changed from the fairly upmarket Jade Hostel (well, it had a God of Wealth in a nook by reception) to the 365 Inn in the more down-at-heel but definitely trendier Xuan Wu district (the Chinese Euston versus the Chinese Hackney, or something like that.) Xuan Wu is a brilliantly labyrinthine place full of fake watch sellers and non-tourist restaurants where a bowl of noodles as high as your head costs less than 10 yuan (a pound); where you can get lost among the schoolchildren playing in alleyways next to conspicuous bunches of gamblers next to impromptu food markets and just-as-impromptu hairdressers. Ten-minute-long businesses crop up everywhere: the old man with a spare chair starts cutting kids' hair, another one offers to sell you a dog he found and put in a humorous position on a statue, another one has an 'English menu' that offers you 'green snow' for a dollar, and 'green snow' turns out to be imported Sprite. I spent two days just soaking in the atmosphere of the district, and two nights braving the notorious 'bar streets' with a varied bunch of people who had been on the TS Express from Mongolia (more on THOSE nights later...maybe.)
The best thing, however, about being in the Jade Hostel the few days before had been the night markets. Quiet streets at night transform completely at nightfall into huge food stalls of everything you can imagine (starfish, seahorses, and cockroaches on sticks a specialty.) The noise is incredible, the market sellers in their regulation communist-red hats and aprons leaning over and bartering with locals and tourists simulatenously, switching expertly from Mandarin to English and back again, trying to convince the westerners of the quality and superior taste of snake meat, handing the less curious locals sodas full of billowing dry ice that make children squeal.
I went back to the night market twice, less inclined to try snake meat than a guy in my group of Trans-Siberianers, happier to stick to fruit kebabs encased in caramel (which gave me enough mysterious stomach cramps. Lucky I didn't go for the snake.)
It took me six days, however, to gather the courage to actually use the Beijing subway alone.
'It's easy!' said the Chinese people at reception in the 365 Inn, shoving a photocopied metro map at me. 'Get on line 1 at Chian'men, change to line 2, get off six stops down the line and you'll be at the old silk market. Which westerners LOVE.'
Travelling somewhere that 'westerners love' sounds like something that would usually make a backpacker self-righteously vomit, but what the hell, I was battered by three weeks of unfamiliarity followed by a week of mock celebrity in the eyes of the Beijing residents, and off I went.
Luckily, the Beijing metro is actually really easy, since they had to clear up their Chinglish act Olympics-wise. No longer is their gastro-unit proclaimed as the 'THE CHINESE ANAL HOSPITAL' on the skyline, although the sign in the bathroom at the Jade Hostel still retained its 'Beware of Landslide' sign (after feeling extremely uneasy, I worked out this meant 'beware of slipping.') The metro is slick and announces every stop in Mandarin and English. Like Singapore, oppression makes the underground shine; and like all terrible governments, we can justify China by saying the trains run at maximum efficiency every time.
I got spat out somewhere near the other side of Beijing at the Silk Market: a load of market stalls in a building six storeys high. Electronics jostle against jewellery and Dior jackets and iPhones that 'fell off the truck' at the same place where a couple of zeroes fell off the price. Bartering is compulsory, and eventually fun; after you have your first reasonably priced item, you work off that in order to barter for other things. I bartered for a so-called Dolce and Gabbana trenchcoat using an iPod speaker I'd just bought as a prop.
When I returned to the hostel, I had to dump an unfortunate pair of shoes and a towel in order to carry my (ill-gotten?) gains back. Otherwise my spine may well have folded somewhere between leaving the hostel and hailing an airport cab.
The end of this day was my last night in Beijing, offset lovingly by the Trans-Siberian people who hadn't already left China hopping in a taxi with me and finding the 'party district.' The night went by in a blur of vodka-Redbull-mad-German-tourists-and-Lady-Gaga-sang-on-request-by-Chinese-people-who-can't-speak-English haziness. At one point I may have said 'I love you guys.'
8am, my iPod faithfully woke me, I slung my backpack on and let a Chinese girl from the hostel hail me a taxi. An hour later, I woke up to the driver chucking me out and telling me we were at Terminal 3; Starbucks greeted me like a horribly familiar mirage in a shiny metallic sea of moneyed travellers. Post-security, Beijing Airport has 'oases of peace' every few steps that include waterfalls and meditation areas for the hungover flier.
Next thing I was in Munich.
Now I'm back home.
Blog abandoned until the next travelling experience, which hopefully will never be too far around the corner.
Sunday, 15 August 2010
Saturday, 7 August 2010
Beijing, day 4
It's me, reporting to you finally from inside the Great Firewall of China!
Just kidding. I'm outside of China now...nobody breaks the wall.
This is going to be a quick one because I'm once again zipping off somewhere else again but I have to tell you that bar all the, er, obvious oppression, I absolutely fell in love with Beijing. It's what all the travellers I met coming the other way on the Trans-Siberian called 'a city of contradictions' (in a very guidebook-written-by-Louis-Theroux kind of way) and you can see why: Starbucks coffee stores are crammed inside traditional Chinese buildings with elevated lanterns outside; there are 52 McDonalds in central Beijing alone and the mascot is an anime character rather than Ronald the clown.
Arriving in China from Mongolia was an interesting experience. First of all, the Mongolian border town is a sad place, unusual for the Mongolian countryside in that it has brick housing rather than the normal ger tents. The reason for this? It used to be a massive Soviet base, and at the collapse of Soviet control over Mongolia, it was left at the edge of the Gobi Desert with a bunch of abandoned residents. When you get poked off the train during border control by the provodnitsyas, little kids try to sell you common desert stones out of biscuit tins by the sides of the rails. The crumbling brick houses around them are an obvious sign of the slow trickle of depopulation occurrent daily there; the lack of local animals suggest that these residents still rely on extremely infrequent deliveries from Ulaanbaatar. Nobody wants to buy a pebble for a dollar.
After three hours' border control on the Mongolian side, you get shunted off to China and undergo six hours of wheel changing: substantially less painful than on the Russian side because Chinese trains have AC and padded beds.
Pulling into China, I actually derived genuine joy from the presence of fluorescent lights, because I knew they meant that the toilets here would no longer be holes in the ground. Sorry, I am an uncultured swine.
Beijing is a place where Mao's Mausoleum stands overlooking Tiananmen Square, where Facebook and Blogspot are banned, where I came at the brunt end of all the bad points of celebrity. Warned by the guidebook that if you are 'blonde, blue-eyed, or fair skinned' (check, check, check) Chinese people may request photographs with you, I wasn't surprised when the first teenage girl approached and asked in broken English if she could be photographed alongside me. I was more surprised when, at the Forbidden City, hundreds of people converged upon me requesting my face for their mantelpiece. I was even more surprised by the ones making the requests, who were almost invariably families and often fathers wanting each one of their daughters in separate pictures. Interesting.
It had to be stopped when I was approached while I was eating breakfast - in a backpacker's hostel that a family actually entered when seeing me from a distance. That didn't stop school groups openly pointing at me when I took my later walks around the central city...luckily it's usually good-natured, if racially insensitive (you know how often Aryans like me have to deal with racial insensitivity.)
On my third day in Beijing, I signed up to a tour to the Great Wall along with six other confused westerners. As we gathered round a table with the Chinese guide to discuss which part we should visit, we were given a number of options that included:
1. The touristy one
2. The fake one
3. The really real one
4. The one with the slide
No contest. I took a toboggan slide down the Great Wall of China.
[[[There will be more on China soon but I'm incommunicado for another week]]
Just kidding. I'm outside of China now...nobody breaks the wall.
This is going to be a quick one because I'm once again zipping off somewhere else again but I have to tell you that bar all the, er, obvious oppression, I absolutely fell in love with Beijing. It's what all the travellers I met coming the other way on the Trans-Siberian called 'a city of contradictions' (in a very guidebook-written-by-Louis-Theroux kind of way) and you can see why: Starbucks coffee stores are crammed inside traditional Chinese buildings with elevated lanterns outside; there are 52 McDonalds in central Beijing alone and the mascot is an anime character rather than Ronald the clown.
Arriving in China from Mongolia was an interesting experience. First of all, the Mongolian border town is a sad place, unusual for the Mongolian countryside in that it has brick housing rather than the normal ger tents. The reason for this? It used to be a massive Soviet base, and at the collapse of Soviet control over Mongolia, it was left at the edge of the Gobi Desert with a bunch of abandoned residents. When you get poked off the train during border control by the provodnitsyas, little kids try to sell you common desert stones out of biscuit tins by the sides of the rails. The crumbling brick houses around them are an obvious sign of the slow trickle of depopulation occurrent daily there; the lack of local animals suggest that these residents still rely on extremely infrequent deliveries from Ulaanbaatar. Nobody wants to buy a pebble for a dollar.
After three hours' border control on the Mongolian side, you get shunted off to China and undergo six hours of wheel changing: substantially less painful than on the Russian side because Chinese trains have AC and padded beds.
Pulling into China, I actually derived genuine joy from the presence of fluorescent lights, because I knew they meant that the toilets here would no longer be holes in the ground. Sorry, I am an uncultured swine.
Beijing is a place where Mao's Mausoleum stands overlooking Tiananmen Square, where Facebook and Blogspot are banned, where I came at the brunt end of all the bad points of celebrity. Warned by the guidebook that if you are 'blonde, blue-eyed, or fair skinned' (check, check, check) Chinese people may request photographs with you, I wasn't surprised when the first teenage girl approached and asked in broken English if she could be photographed alongside me. I was more surprised when, at the Forbidden City, hundreds of people converged upon me requesting my face for their mantelpiece. I was even more surprised by the ones making the requests, who were almost invariably families and often fathers wanting each one of their daughters in separate pictures. Interesting.
It had to be stopped when I was approached while I was eating breakfast - in a backpacker's hostel that a family actually entered when seeing me from a distance. That didn't stop school groups openly pointing at me when I took my later walks around the central city...luckily it's usually good-natured, if racially insensitive (you know how often Aryans like me have to deal with racial insensitivity.)
On my third day in Beijing, I signed up to a tour to the Great Wall along with six other confused westerners. As we gathered round a table with the Chinese guide to discuss which part we should visit, we were given a number of options that included:
1. The touristy one
2. The fake one
3. The really real one
4. The one with the slide
No contest. I took a toboggan slide down the Great Wall of China.
[[[There will be more on China soon but I'm incommunicado for another week]]
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