China

Ni hao!

Mildly out of character, I decided that instead of going on my usual sort of cheap vacation, involving public transport, youth hostels, improvised sandwiches, and 20kg+ backpacks, I'd go on an organised tour with a guide to whirl us from place to place, a 4-star hotel, three square restaurants a day, and lots of shopping...

Mon, 29 Jul 2002

Day One: After a series of incidents not worth relating but which involved several malevolent subway officials and an outright demonic taxi driver, I got to Incheon airport half an hour late; however all was well, I met my tour group, and we flew to Beijing where we met our tour guide. There, we went to the Beijing Continental Grand to leave our bags at about half past noon, though our rooms weren't ready yet, and our first stop was lunch at a nearby restaurant.

As a general rule, I'm neither a cook nor a gourmet, and thus lack the concepts and vocabulary necessary to explain that all the food we ate in China was extremely delicious.

Next we came to the Temple of Heaven. (As a brief aside, although my Korean friend told me it was very dry and hot when she visited Beijing, while we were there it was very humid and hot. The humidity was never relieved by rain, and although the heat presumably originated from the sun, this never went so far as to dispel the everpresent clouds, fog and mist.) We learnt that the three walkways in the centre of every courtyard are for the emperor on one side, the officials on the other, and god in the wide centre path; when these go up steps, the centre one is ornately carved, and now chained off to protect from tourists. I also noticed that much of the architecture is very similar to that in Korea (or vice versa, really!) though roof tiles are rather different. Still, there was a certain sameness to the buildings themselves, though the stone pavilions and carvings were much more common and ornate, and everything was much bigger in China.

After this, we went to a tea house in an effort to extract money from us and earn the tour guide a commission. They showed us a few different kinds of tea, demonstrated the basics of properly making and drinking it, and quoted prices for teas and cups alike. We then went off to dinner, and then to the Beijing Opera, where we saw three extracts from different operas. I'd have been more interested in seeing a single full opera, but the extracts were interesting too. The first (pictured right) involved mistaken identity in an inn, resulting in a sword-fight in the dark in one of the character's rooms: the pretense is that they couldn't see each other, but the audience can see every move they make trying to determine where their opponent is. The second extract seemed to a be a goddess singing about someother or other while waving pretty streamers around from time to time. The third was the Monkey King being attacked by lots of different people, and making fun of their ineffectiveness.

Finally we went back to the hotel, and to bed.

Tues, 30 Jul 2002

(at which I get bored of writing because I want to put this up on the web already and send out the URL to all interested. I'll try to update it later, but chances will be greatly improved if I receive email saying "So what's with that picture with that odd-looking girl in the weird costume?" For now, just the pictures and exceedingly quick notes.

At the jade factory. I couldn't quite afford this marvel, so satisfied myself with a smaller trinket in pale green jade, one ball inside another inside another inside another.

The Great Wall. Yes, I climbed it. Slowly and belabouredly. My mantra was "It'll sound really stupid if all I can say is 'I climbed a significant portion of the Great Wall.'" It was a hot day, which didn't help, and the steps were made for taller people than the Chinese are generally supposed to be. But when I got to the top I got a nice (if misty) view and a warm proud feeling (the warmth possibly went with the sweat) and the chance to shell out for a congratulatory bronze plaque proclaiming my success.

An odd-looking girl in a weird costume. One of my tour-mates made an odd-looking guy in a weird costume just before my turn. This was the place where the guy gave me a tiny jade turtle instead of 1 yuan change. And where a couple other of my tour-mates found some imitation swords to buy, cute in a very fake way. Back in Korean customs they found that they couldn't bring them into the country. Oops. Glad I didn't get one...

One of the lighter loads people carried on their bikes. There were cars too, but all small; biking seemed pretty common.

The Chinese Circus acrobats -- two people to a dragon. There were also lots of acrobats, including one memorable girl who twirled herself around a single rope hanging from the ceiling, whirling glitter-like and posing in unlikely positions.

Wed, 31 Jul 2002

Mao's mausoleum. Big queues in the rain, with lots of places selling flowers to take in. A cynical-minded person might think that as soon as the flowers are left behind, someone could collect them all and take them out to be resold again. Well-preserved corpse; no cameras allowed.

We went next to Tiananmen, and then into the Forbidden City. I improvised this panoramic, which doesn't show the corners very well. We continued to have stupidly annoying weather: hot, muggy, and too cloudy for decent photos.

At the Summer Palace: the Long Corridor, filled with hundreds of gorgeous paintings on the eaves and ceilings. This was my favourite part of the trip. I wandered along here gazing while everyone else got bored and went elsewhere. They found a student selling paintings; when I finally finished here I looked through a few as well but decided not. One day I want to come back and take a photo of every single painting in the whole corridor. Click, click, click, pause to load them to my laptop and start again: click, click, click. It couldn't take very many days...

Thurs, 1 Aug 2002

First in the morning we went to the "Silk Road" market and splurged our last yuan on cheap painted jade eggs and silk dressing gowns and all the like. We saved just enough for transport to the Beijing Zoo. Other than pandas, I recall zebras and snakes. Clearly I've forgotten a lot...

We got back to the hotel, where someone randomly handed me a baby to hold while she took a photo of us, and then our tour driver took us back to the airport, where one girl promptly got in problems with immigration because the name on her ticket was mis-spelt and didn't match her passport. They'd let her in without problems, but going out? However, all was finally solved, and we flew away, up above the clouds, to our finest weather of the whole trip.

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	At the jade factory. I couldn't quite afford this marvel, so satisfied myself with a smaller trinket in pale green jade, one ball inside another inside another inside another.
The Great Wall. Yes, I climbed it. Slowly and belabouredly. My mantra was "It'll sound really stupid if all I can say is 'I climbed a significant portion of the Great Wall.'" It was a hot day, which didn't help, and the steps were made for taller people than the Chinese are generally supposed to be. But when I got to the top I got a nice (if misty) view and a warm proud feeling (the warmth possibly went with the sweat) and the chance to shell out for a congratulatory bronze plaque proclaiming my success.
	An odd-looking girl in a weird costume. One of my tour-mates made an odd-looking guy in a weird costume just before my turn. This was the place where the guy gave me a tiny jade turtle instead of 1 yuan change. And where a couple other of my tour-mates found some imitation swords to buy, cute in a very fake way. Back in Korean customs they found that they couldn't bring them into the country. Oops. Glad I didn't get one...
One of the lighter loads people carried on their bikes. There were cars too, but all small; biking seemed pretty common.
	The Chinese Circus acrobats -- two people to a dragon. There were also lots of acrobats, including one memorable girl who twirled herself around a single rope hanging from the ceiling, whirling glitter-like and posing in unlikely positions.