Specials
China 2002 - Beijing
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After two years of grad school, I was finally graduating. I handed in my paper and all the work was done. I was free. I knew what I wanted to do now.
The airplane were in my hands within two weeks and I flew into Beijing on May 2nd at the peak of the May 1st Holiday. It was an unreal feeling coming off the plane. It was hard to believe that I was back in China after two years. But there I was in person in Beijing.
I must have been really out of practice or really tired because the first thing I did in Beijing got me ripped off. I took the taxi, but not the regular taxi. I just wasn't thinking totally straight. I paid 260 RMB for a 80 RMB taxi ride.
In Beijing, I found a home at the Beijing Information Technology Institute (BITI). My friend and fellow teacher, Pam, was kind enough to open up her room for me to stay in. She was off on holidays herself and was out of town. She also asked her students to guide me around Beijing. I was overwhelmed with how many of them had signed up to help be my tour guide. In the end, I only asked a few of them to help me. It's a shame that I didn't get to meet more of them.
I spent a week in Beijing seeing the major sights. I think so did another 1 million people. Everywhere I went, there were large numbers of people. I visited places like the Temple of Earth (Ditan), the Summer Palace (Yeheyuan), the Great Wall at Badaling, Beihai Park, the Temple of Heaven, Wangfujing shopping district, the Lama Temple (Yonghegong), the Confucian Temple, the Imperial Academy (Guozijian), the old Foreign Legation Quarter, Liulichang arts and crafts street, and, finally, the Forbidden City Palace Museum. Not bad for one week, eh?
The busiest place was definitely the Great Wall. I went to the Great Wall the cheapest way possible. We took a public bus to a major bus terminus area at Deshengmen, one of the old city gates. We lined up for 1 hour to get on the bus to Badaling. The ride itself was about 90 minutes or so. Near the Great Wall, there was such a long line of buses that we had to walk to the front entrance for 15 minutes. The mass of people there was intense and we literally had to shove our way through the entrance. Each tower at the Great Wall was also a struggle. The tiny passageways through each tower could only fit two people shoulder-to-shoulder. It was very tight. After about 2-3 hours of climbing up and down the Wall, we went back to the school. That took another 3 hours.
My busiest and most tiring day was when I visited the Lama Temple, the Confucian Temple, the Imperial Academy, the Foreign Legation Quarter, and Liulichang all in one day. We started at Yonghegong. The temples and academy are all within easy walking distance of each other. The Lama Temple was architecturally spectacular, odourously noticeable, and spiritually revealing. The Confucian Temple was a little disappointing except for the small Beijing City Museum in the back of the compound. Also, my student companion and I had fun observing what looked like a foreign Chinese girl. I was teaching how to see the difference between a foreign Chinese girl from the local Chinese girls. The Imperial Academy had one interesting building in the middle of the complex, but the rest of the rooms were being used by industrious university students. Then we took the metro to Chongwenmen, a major shopping district, and I treated my companion to his first KFC meal. We then proceeded to take a long 3 hour walk through the old Foreign Legation Quarter, to Qianmen, through some Hutongs, or alleys, and then through Liulichang. To put it mildly, we were exhausted after all that walking.
The last time I came to Beijing, I only stayed a day or two. This time, I got to spend a whole week. It was a much more satisfying experience and I got to see a lot more. I also got to experience the haze of Beijing; however, I did get one beautifully clear day in the middle of it all.
At the end of my week in Beijing, Pam had come home and she helped me to set up the next leg of my trip. I was off to the Qinhuangdao, a coastal city about 4-5 hours by train (depending which train) from Beijing, to visit my former teammate Bethany and see my good old roommate Brian.
Thanks to...