The China Story: Part 1. Sneaky little bastards

One of the worst things for me about taking a major trip somewhere is the difficulty of writing about it when I get back. Some of you who read my old blog may remember I took a trip to a 10 day trip to Washington D.C. about 3 years ago which was amazing.(Ryan and I took my broke down car all night and stayed with a random family in Georgetown) But I never wrote about it. It was just too much to wrap my writing skills around. So, if I had trouble writing about going to Washington D.C., imagine how daunting a task writing about a week in Beijing is. But, I know there's a lot of you out there who are really interested, so I'm going to do my best. Truly though, if you want to know the WHOLE story of what I think of, and all my experiences in, China you're going to have to buy me a couple of beers when I get back stateside.I'm going to try to do this in 6 smaller parts. One each of the next 6 days, if I don't make a dead line, don't kill me, just check back the next day.

Part 1.

Anyway, once we got to Beijing we had a scary 20 minutes at the carossel waiting for Alex’s luggage, but it finally showed up and we got a move on. Our driver spoke no English, and drove a 1967 VW which had no power steering, but we managed to get to the hotel safe and sound none the less.

I had another big, needless, worry on the way to the hotel. I knew the hotel was located in a “traditional” part of Beijing, but I guess I didn’t realize what traditional meant. We turned off a main road and onto a road that was barely big enough for one car. There were naked children and chickens scattered all over the place(HI AVIAN FLU!) and most of the roofs of the buildings had large holes or were, at best, thatched over. Again, my heart sank. A week in one of these places wouldn’t be “traditional” it would be “a friggin nightmare” Luckily, between the caved in clay huts there was a nice, modern, hostel filled with Westerners and air conditioning. The place was actually quite nice. So again, I went from fear to joy. I was just really worried at first I suppose.

We settled in around 2 PM and decided to head towards Tienanmen Square. We didn’t really talk to anyone before we left or anything. Just found a map, guessed which way was which and headed for it.

Well, we went the wrong way. We could tell we weren’t going the right way because we lost all sight of Westerners, and I didn’t have a grip on the city yet, so we were fairly lost. About this time a rickshaw driver approached us, “Where you go? I take! 50 yuan.(Remember for the sake of the stories 7 yuan=1 US dollar). Well, whatever, that sounds fine. So we get in this guys rickshaw and tell him Tienanmen square. He ends up dropping us off about 2 KM from the square(we didn’t know it at the time), and Alex gives him a 100Y bill(all we had), the guy says “Yes, 50 you, 50 him, good” and takes off. Crap. Swindled. Well, its going to happen once I suppose.

We manage to walk our way towards Tienanmen, get on the square. It really is big. Lots going on there. Lots of Chinese, Lots of Westerners. On the West side of the square is Parliament which is large and ominous looking, on the East side in the Party headquarters, which is even scarier looking. To the north is the gate of the Forbidden City-with it’s giant picture of Chairman Mao. To the south-and under construction-was the Mao Mausoliem, I would have liked to go in there. The Mao propaganda in the country is really something. (Later on I’ll talk more about culture stuff like the total propaganda state-for now I’m sticking to the story)

Anyway, we’re kind of walking around the square taking pictures of everything when this nice polite Chinese girl with perfect English approaches us. She asks us where we’re from, tells us where she’s from, the usual conversation stuff. She follows us around chatting for about 20 minutes, being really helpful. Then she mentions that inside the forbidden city she has some art work set up in a gallery. How interesting! So we actually ask her if we can go see it. Sure! She says. So we go check out the artwork, it’s all very nice and interesting. Then she makes her big sales pitch. Oh, why it just happens to be for sale, and why, if you don’t want to spend 400Y on the big one, she has one at any size for you to match what you want to spend! And, while she gave us a “gift” of our names in Chinese calligraphy, if you want it done on decent paper, then she can do that for just 60Y. Swindled. So Alex and I both bought some artwork, but we didn’t feel bad about it at the time, it wasn’t THAT expensive when put in US dollar terms. (I spent $17 on it) We’d learn later how stupid of a mistake it was. But, again, at the time, we just thought she was a good salesperson, and weren’t all that upset.

So.

We leave her little art gallery and go around the square some more taking pictures of lots of random things. After maybe two hours we decide it’s time to head back to the hostel, so we’re heading back in our general direction, and another cute looking Chinese women approaches us. “Hey, where are you from? I just finished studying English in college can I practice with you?” type stuff. So she’s headed the same direction as us, so she asks if she can walk with us. No problem, I’m a little weary of the whole deal after the art thing, so I’m cautious. She seems nice enough though. She asks if we want to go have a beer real quick. Sounds harmless enough, but I’m too tired for beer at the moment, plus I want to be in control, so I say we should go for tea instead of beer. She says that’s fine, and then I pick the tea house we stop into. I’m in control here, no way I can be scammed. Well we each have 7 little taste tests of tea(like 2 ounces each) and it comes to 360Y($50) and she expects us to pay for it. Swindled. At least she wasn’t in on the swindle, it was the tea people. That’s what I tell myself, there’s no way she could have conned us, I picked the tea house. Well, as soon as we leave the tea house she quickly says goodbye and heads the other way. Alex and I are still kind of shocked. We end up just putzing around the hostel the rest of the evening(and going to bed at like 8-remember we were up at 4). We were waiting for Tazz and Erin to arrive the next day anyway.

To finish this portion of the story, Alex and I later learned that it’s ALL a scam. The girl let me pick the tea house but as soon as she left she circled around the block and got her cut of the overpriced tea money. The art gallery, there’s about 100 of them in the Forbidden City, all selling the exact same art pieces. I don’t feel too bad, because basically every Westerner falls for it on their first day if they’re not warned. Two Israeli friends I made-who you’ll hear more about in the upcoming stories-got taken far worse than us on their first day there.

It was kind of just a bad wake up call to what China is. EVERYONE. And I mean EVERYONE there is trying to cheat you. We went to a state park, and the woman behind the counter tried to charge us double for entry. When we said no, she didn’t even try to make an excuse, was just like OK.

This and negotiating-which I’ll get into in the next entry-really made China difficult sometimes. Sure, everything there is cheaper, but you’ve constantly got to be on your toes or you’ll end up broke. They’ll take you for ride after ride. It was really too bad too because later in the trip I was approached by a Chinese couple who really just wanted to meet people from far away, but the whole time I was waiting for the scam and being stand offish. Such is China though.

So that was day one. Day two consists of an even bigger lesson in Chinese economics, a zen park where I met cross dressers and a possessed cat, and then that night-well, it’s a long story…

Pictures from day 1:

The Chinese National Flag. Gaurded by Chinese military-who are everywhere in the city, and always in perfect step.

The Party headquarters. That's a countdown to the Olympics clock, it's practically all they talk about. Apparently, they've removed a few thousand homeless people in preparation for the games. Really exciting work they're doing.

Tienanmen Gate. China is a lot like America in the sense that everything there is just gigantic. Korea has gates like these, but they're about a quarter of the size. Everything in Beijing is America levels of huge.

The scene of where "Tank Man" happened after the Tienanmen Massacre, which know Chinese person knows about/will willining me admit. Odd-slightly related-fact, my blog is censored in China. Google censors their Chinese websites, apparently American blogs are all on the censor list.

Me and The Chairman.