Flying from Beijing to Xi'an (and blogging)

>>>I'll now be posting blogs that I couldn't post earlier...because the PRC blocks Blogger, Xanga and YouTube (but not the NY Times and Twitter, rawr!)


We’ve finished out three day tour of Beijing (most definitely NOT comprehensive, but it was a good shot at giving us a broad overview of the city.

So let’s roll the highlights.

1. Major cultural barrier, First Place: the fact that I don’t speak Mandarin (well).

This isn’t usually too bad in most places. I think I know enough simple phrases to take care of the most important things to me (like how to ask where the bathroom is, simple greetings). I’m also more shameless in speaking Mandarin than Cantonese (particularly because I don’t know what correct Mandarin sounds like, but I know when I’m an affront to the Cantonese dialect.) In spite of this, I’d be pretty darn hopeless if got lost in Beijing and could ask for directions, but couldn’t understand what people are saying.

Actually, I have trouble understanding the Beijing accent – it sounds like people are talking with marbles in their mouths. Except that Demosthenes just used the technique to practice.

It’s been a good experience

2. Major cultural barrier, Runner-Up: a new way of going to the bathroom.

Nearly all of China squats to go to the bathroom. This has not been a problem for me (the geology field trip in the Fall helped me prepare for squatting) for #1, but I have trouble squatting for #2.

(TMI Turkey.)

3. Funniest cultural difference between the US and China: it’s far more socially acceptable to pick your nose in public in the PRC than the U.S.

Naturally, this has led to a new sort of “I Spy”/”Where’s Waldo?” game that my mom and I play. I was trying to take a picture of the description of a certain large rock in the Summer Palace and accidentally took a picture of a little boy digging deeply into his nasal cavity. It was a cute picture, so I kept it.

The next day, we saw a man reading while sitting on a ledge of a wall – doing exactly the same thing. I snapped a picture of him too (the tourists on our trip were amused, but our tour guide said that if this man knew what I was doing, he wouldn’t be so happy). There were many others, but I didn’t have the guts to take their pictures. People here are very sensitive about it.

4. Best thing about Beijing: the beautiful, ancient historical landmarks.

We’ve visited the Temple of Heaven, the Great Wall, the Summer Palace, Tiananmen Square, and the Forbidden City, but I think I enjoyed the Summer Palace (Yi He Yuan) and Temple of Heaven (Tian Tan) the most. The extravagance of both is a clear testament to the Qing Dynasty’s wealth and nature of their rule. (During the Sino-Japanese rule, millions of yuan were taken from building up the Chinese navy and poured into rebuilding the twice-burnt-down Summer Palace.)

5. Saddest thing about Beijing, First Place: prostitutes roaming the streets.

There were a lot of young Chinese girls soliciting business from tourists around Beijing. They hang out in Wang Fu Jing (a popular tourist attraction) and around our hotel. There was (apparently, my parents saw this) a young male soliciting business from a man outside our hotel.

“You can tell [who they are]!” said my mom. “What would a young girl have to do with such old men?”

“Yeah, when I saw the motels in Beijing were ‘by the hour,’ I had a bad feeling…”

I’m rather naïve – I still don’t know what prostitutes look like. My parents (oh, and the 15-year old from Los Angeles) can spot them right away. I always guess that they may just be girls who dress like they’re from Hong Kong, talking to “westerners.”

6. Saddest thing about Beijing, Runner-Up: homeless migrant workers at the railway station.

The sleeping migrant workers cover outside of the railway station completely. There are more people who work in Beijing than who live in Beijing – many of these people taking on menial jobs to send money back to their family. (There are a plethora of documentaries on the matter – I saw one about a window washer years ago, who only sees his family during the New Year. It was really depressing because his children aren’t close to him (let alone recognize him) because they never see their dad.

You can also see that many of the homeless are young men – not too much older than me – but there are also some young children sleeping by their parents’ sides.

7. Our tour guides pop their collars (without realizing that in the U.S., "this is only done by d-bags".

8. Funniest Tour Story:

Our local tour guide Scott told us that two tour guides were killed last year on the Great Wall. By what?


Another tourist and I thought he said they were killed by the vendors who sell souvenirs along the Great Wall. (As a result, I was scared to death of the vendors while running up the Wall.)

My dad heard him say that the pandas had killed the tourists.

In actually, he said “thender” (with the “th” like the American “there,” and not like the word “thick.” What he was trying to say was “thunder,” but he really meant “lightning.”