Pant-Seats

So we're currently in Beijing (hanging out at some random internet bar with Shao Bo [who, I might add, is awesome for letting us stay with him]) watching it all go down. We left Xi'an the day after arriving (unfortunate, since I think it's my favorite city so far) and showed up here on the morning of the 8th. The attempt to get out of Xi'an was pretty hilarious, since only having one day to see the outrageous amount of preserved history and culture in the city is not anything approaching a reasonable amount of time. Waking up in the morning and storing our bags in the luggage room at the hostel we stayed in (which is a really nice place by the way; the beds are fantastic, air conditioned, and really cheap), we headed out to the center of town to see the old Qing Bell and Drum Towers, where we showed up just in time for a musical performance at each one. Inside each there was a sort of history of bell and drums exhibit, respectively, with no original bells nor drums. After that we wandered into the Muslim Quarter of the city (Xi'an's one terminus of the Silk Road and a pretty big center for Chinese Hui [who are fascintating- the whole Muslim Quarter is full of mosques and halal butchers and women in hijabs and guys in white skullcaps] people) in order to find food and the Great Mosque. We found the food (this crazy mutton and noodle soup that has flat bread [I've developed a theory- wherever Islam goes, flat bread follows] crumbled into it, which was delicious), and some tiny terra cotta warriors and some paintings, but could never quite find the mosque, which is apparently pretty subtle for something called the Great Mosque. So giving up on that, we took the wrong bus in an attempt to get to the train station and find another bus, but it gave us the opportunity to walk along the old city walls (Xi'an's one of the few Chinese cities that didn't dynamite theirs) and moat, which are separated by this neat park thing full of pomegranates that were always just out of reach. So eventually we walked to the train station and got on a bus to go see the Terra Cotta Warriors. At this point, our train was leaving in about 4 hours. Also at this point, we thought we had a pretty good handle on being able to make said train. Turns out one of those two assumptions was wrong. The warriors are pretty neat, the detail and level of preservation is spectacular, especially when you consider that they're 2200 years old. Unfortunately, they're surrounded by this outrageously large tourist trap filled with stores of every variety from restaurants and convenience stores to jade carvers and animal pelts. It took an unreasonable amount of time to actually find the entrance to the warriors in the jungle of commercialism, exacerbated by the fact that we've become used to immediately dismissing anyone trying to get our attention as trying to sell us something. After all that, we only had like half an hour to actually see the warriors (too bad since there's like 14000 of them unearthed so far) and had to rush back to catch our train. The bus back ended up taking half an hour longer than the bus there, leaving us with forty minutes to get to the other side of Xi'an from the station, pick up our bags, come back to the station, and get on the train. In rush hour traffic. Exciting. So we got on the local bus that goes past the hostel and off we went... into gridlock traffic. By the time we got there, we had about fifteen minutes until the train left, and decided to find a cab (something that we hadn't done up to this point on the trip due to pride and generally not needing them). As it turns out, all the cabs were full, except for this one guy who pulled up on this silly motor tricycle thing and offered to take us to the station for like sixty kuai. Ripoff. Unfortunately, having very little choice, with the train leaving in ten minutes at this point, we gave him forty and off we went. The ride was quite an adventure, and the guy followed through with his promise to get us there in ten minutes, by cutting between traffic, running bicyclists out of the bike lane, and even going the wrong way down a street for a while. It was worth the forty yuan. So once at the train station, with seconds to spare, we had to wait in line. Well, there goes that. We got into the station and noted that the train wasn't there. Luckily, white people in this country, especially those who speak Chinese, are treated very kindly by all and sundry. So the station attendants were very sympathetic, and found that there were free seats of the variety we'd bought on the next train out, which turned out to be the super-elite express train, which ended up being about two hours faster and for some reason, 8 yuan cheaper. Beyond that, they even let us into the first class departure lounge, which held more white people than we'd seen since leaving New York. All's well that ends well, I guess. The train ride was interesting, almost everyone on it was a foreigner. We met a couple of neat people though, including a Beijing resident who is an exchange student at a high school in Minnesota and gave us food (freaking everyone here gives us food) and the beds were the best we'd slept in except for the Xi'an hostel. The ride was too short, though, forcing us to get up at like seven in the morning (blasphemy!) and fend for ourselves in the mean streets of Beijing (since it seems I left my Lonely Planet guidebook, far and away the most useful piece of literature I've ever laid hands on, somewhere in the Xi'an station in the rush to not-make our train). The first thing one notices coming into Beijing is the smog. It's ridiculous. Everything you've heard about it can't begin to prepare you for the outrageously low air quality in Beijing. Some studies estimate a day in Beijing is the equivalent to smoking seventy cigarettes, and it looks like it too. The day we came in (which wasn't a bad day, apparently), one couldn't see to the next block for all the pollution. The moon doesn't show up at night, and staring at the sun during the day is downright comfortable. That being said, the next thing that struck me was that there are a number of very nice aspects of the city. The architecture is a neat mix of the traditional Chinese and the monumental Soviet, and everything appears to be made deliberately as large as possible. The city has purportedly cleaned up a lot for its debut this summer, and street vendors are nowhere to be found, swarms of old ladies wander the streets picking up stray pieces of trash, and the traffic is pleasant by Chinese standards. Beds of flowers and shrubberies are ubiquitous and well-maintained, the public buildings and transportation are spotless (and more often than not still under construction), and the city is just generally pretty pleasant to be in. The third and final glaringly obvious feature of Beijing was the one that gave us a bit of trouble. So the plan was to go meet Shao-Bo under Chairman Mao's picture in Tian'anmen square. Turns out the Chinese government isn't too keen on letting people wander around its most recognizable landmark on opening day of the Olympics. Probably should have seen that one coming. We got off the bus from the train station with our giant backpacks and, as we attempted to walk towards the square, were continually cut off by an ever-expanding line of police tape and Red Guard. That's the third thing I was talking about, by the way. Security. Columns of paramilitary Red Guard (these guys: http://lh6.ggpht.com/_l18DO4BvsG8/R6Z4oM9jqeI/AAAAAAAADrs/V1AvUfPpW_k/3217455.jpg) and riot police march down the streets in droves, with a couple of one or the other standing at every conceivable entrance to anything. The portable traffic barrier business must be having a field day, because vast swathes of road are restricted and sometimes blocked in what often seems a largely arbitrary manner, and every fifth vehicle on the road belongs to the police. So having neither Shao Bo's phone number nor address, we were a tad miffed to find the People's Liberation Army standing between us and our designated meeting point. Undeterred, we started off down a random street in hopes of finding the internet and thereby maybe facebook and thereby maybe Shao Bo's phone number. We eventually happened upon a Kodak print shop who let us use their internet, and after figuring out how to circumvent an apparent block on facebook, found not his phone number, but rather his Beijing address. Being clever people, we found a taxi (our first, by the way) who knew where said address was, and after stopping the car a number of times to ask directions of the Olympic volunteers who camp out on every street corner, the cabbie got us there. New problem. We've found the building, but everyone in Beijing lives in rather large, rather dingy apartment buildings. We don't have a room number. So we ask the elevator attendent (they still have those here, and apparently you're not allowed to use the elevator without her) if she knows a Mr. Li. Stupid question, in retrospect. We talked for a while, describing Shao-Bo in as specific terms as our vocabulary allows, struggling with these awful Northern accents (our teacher's Taiwanese and thus sounds very much unlike the standard Beijinger) and attracting a small crowd, until eventually, someone in charge brought me down to the apartment office, which had been converted into some sort of Olympic volunteer command center (much like the rest of the city). She looked through the list of residents and eventually did find a Mr. Li with a son named Shao-Bo, who lives on the 18th floor. Score. A couple of phone calls and a bottle of water that I tried my best to refuse later, Mr. (excuse me, Dr.) Li himself showed up and informed us that Shao Bo had gone looking for us at the train station at about five that morning (sorry about that, Shao) but would be coming back presently. Meanwhile, he would personally escort us to the station to meet Shao Bo and move into the extra apartment that some friend had temporarily donated for our purposes (first touch of bu hao yisi [embarassment at another's generosity], a theme of the week) and then we'd go to lunch at some fancy restaurant (strike two). So that having passed, the three Americans sort of just wandered around the neighborhood until it was time to go eat again (quite a shock, given that up to this point we'd been subsisting on about one and a half meals a day, and now we've eaten two gigantic meals in one day [the second was at this crazy buffet place where there's a grill in the middle of your table and you grill a bunch of largely unidentifiable pieces of animals right at your spot!]) Afterwards, we wandered off down the streets to try to go catch the excitement of the opening ceremonies with our own eyes. We eventually succeeded, finding a large group of Beijingers crowded around a similarly large TV in an electronics store window, so we sat down to watch and cheered with the crowd, just seeing the fireworks over the tops of the trees interposing between our spot and the Bird's Nest, as the main olympic stadium is called. Deciding to skip the calling out of each country (which, we correctly predicted, took forever) we set off to go find a better place to see the final fireworks of the ceremony which would ensue once they'd introduced all the teams. After a few dozen minutes looking for a good spot, we wandered into some random hospital and perched ourselves in the fourth floor windows of the maternity ward. So after an eternity of waiting and occassionally calling Chengwei (who is also in Beijing and who I have recently learned is a Bakerite, is not in fact a year above me and never in fact dated Chris Choi) to ask what was going on in the stadium, the fireworks lit up. I suppose they must have been pretty impressive fireworks, but at the distance the arrayed might of the Chinese Empire kept us at, they were nothing too special (in any case, the fireworks in wee little Amery, Wisconsin beat their pants off since Amery allows you to be about fifty yards from the launch point) and after the hubbub the Red Guard sent us home. Thus ended day one in what is currently in my opinion, the world's most exciting city.