Beijing
I’ve decided to extend my stay in Beijing. Instead of staying one night here and then two nights in Urumqi as I originally planned, I am now doing the reverse. I’d like to say that I was mesmerised by the culture and history of Beijing and was so moved that I was unable to leave. Unfortunately the truth is that my change of plan is due to me looking at my flight itinerary and discovering that my flight to Urumqi was booked for Thursday and not Wednesday as I had thought. A critical error, some would say, raising doubts about my ability to complete this expedition, but hey, no harm done.
The flight to Beijing was done in two legs. The first part, to Hong Kong, was spent in the traditional way: watching movies till the eyes bleed. I mixed this up with a bit of light reading on Zen Buddhism for some cultural background. With Zen on the brain, I couldn’t help finding hidden Zen wisdom buried in the Lord of the Rings. Gandalf’s elevation to the White Wizard and his experience of the ‘peeling back of the curtain of this life to discover an infinite, timeless and perfect universe’ was almost word perfect for the description of Buddha’s enlightenment (after starving himself for seven years). Maybe our two cultures are not so very different after all, although I admit I had more difficulty finding the hidden Zen in Starsky and Hutch.
The second leg was with Dragon Airways, Hong Kong’s airline. Squeezing into my seat, knees up to my chin, I was about to make a witty comment to my neighbour, about the seats being designed for five-foot midgets. I stopped myself when I realised that he was in fact sitting quite comfortably, as were the rest of the five-foot midgets on the plane. All thoughts of poor leg room vanished however at sight of the stewardess. A stunningly cute girl with a soft, eskimo-like face and eyes as big as a polar bear. I was beginning to like this culture.
Beijing is on the big side of big. From the air, I watched it sprawl across a flat, dark landscape, glowing yellow roads stretching out from the center, like fat veins from a pulsating heart. Despite it’s size, Beijing doesn’t have the oppressive mass of people that I was expecting. The city seems somehow filled with big, empty spaces. Though still dirty, it is cleaner than I expected. It’s free of the human refuse and rotting stench of dead animals that I remember from Bangkok, though the unavoidable smog and soot of a million cars lingers in the air.
Road rules, in the traditional Asian way, are complex and intricate, and on the whole ignored. On every corner stands a traffic cop (easily mistaken for a Special Forces operative, given the military outfit), as well as this there are traffic lights. Neither seems to have the role of actually guiding traffic. Cars hurtle through red lights, beeping and weaving through the swarm of pedestrians and cyclists who happily ignore the traffic cop’s red flag. The only time the traffic cop was of use was at a slight lull in the traffic (i.e. there was a three-meter gap between cars). He looked at me, waved his little flag and said something which I assume meant, “mate, if you leg it across now, you’ve got as good a chance as you’ll get of making the other side”. Needless to say, I legged it.
It’s hot here – a stifling heavy heat. The air is fat and lazy: more of an oozing haze than any resemblance to a breeze. Despite this I went with the full-length jeans, knowing the Asian preference for respectable clothing. This was a stab at cultural sensitivity as well as an attempt to not stand out as a target for touts and scam artists (in retrospect, this was a little futile as being a six foot one, white guy, blending in was never really an option).
It’s the little differences that stand out when you hit a new culture. After strolling across the amazingly vast Tianemen Square, I went in search of lunch. With a vocabulary limited to ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’, I decided I needed a place where ordering could involve pointing. I vetoed McDonalds and KFC (I’m in Beijing dammit) but while stopping in 7-11 for a drink I discovered something wonderful. In the place where, in our stores, the meat pies and sausage rolls are usually left to ‘mature’, stood a little man with a deep fryer. After a little pointing and a lot of gesturing, I walked away with a bounty of dim-sims and sushi rolls. I’m sure the locals were looking at me with the same disgust we would show anyone who gorged themselves on 7-11 sausage rolls (sober no less) but I was in soy sauce heaven.
Tomorrow (assuming I’ve read my itinerary correctly) I fly to Urumqi. This is a long way west, and very rural. I’ve heard this is a tough place to get around without knowing Russian (even though it is part of China). I’m banking on there being a 7-11 there though, and everything being just fine.
The flight to Beijing was done in two legs. The first part, to Hong Kong, was spent in the traditional way: watching movies till the eyes bleed. I mixed this up with a bit of light reading on Zen Buddhism for some cultural background. With Zen on the brain, I couldn’t help finding hidden Zen wisdom buried in the Lord of the Rings. Gandalf’s elevation to the White Wizard and his experience of the ‘peeling back of the curtain of this life to discover an infinite, timeless and perfect universe’ was almost word perfect for the description of Buddha’s enlightenment (after starving himself for seven years). Maybe our two cultures are not so very different after all, although I admit I had more difficulty finding the hidden Zen in Starsky and Hutch.
The second leg was with Dragon Airways, Hong Kong’s airline. Squeezing into my seat, knees up to my chin, I was about to make a witty comment to my neighbour, about the seats being designed for five-foot midgets. I stopped myself when I realised that he was in fact sitting quite comfortably, as were the rest of the five-foot midgets on the plane. All thoughts of poor leg room vanished however at sight of the stewardess. A stunningly cute girl with a soft, eskimo-like face and eyes as big as a polar bear. I was beginning to like this culture.
Beijing is on the big side of big. From the air, I watched it sprawl across a flat, dark landscape, glowing yellow roads stretching out from the center, like fat veins from a pulsating heart. Despite it’s size, Beijing doesn’t have the oppressive mass of people that I was expecting. The city seems somehow filled with big, empty spaces. Though still dirty, it is cleaner than I expected. It’s free of the human refuse and rotting stench of dead animals that I remember from Bangkok, though the unavoidable smog and soot of a million cars lingers in the air.
Road rules, in the traditional Asian way, are complex and intricate, and on the whole ignored. On every corner stands a traffic cop (easily mistaken for a Special Forces operative, given the military outfit), as well as this there are traffic lights. Neither seems to have the role of actually guiding traffic. Cars hurtle through red lights, beeping and weaving through the swarm of pedestrians and cyclists who happily ignore the traffic cop’s red flag. The only time the traffic cop was of use was at a slight lull in the traffic (i.e. there was a three-meter gap between cars). He looked at me, waved his little flag and said something which I assume meant, “mate, if you leg it across now, you’ve got as good a chance as you’ll get of making the other side”. Needless to say, I legged it.
It’s hot here – a stifling heavy heat. The air is fat and lazy: more of an oozing haze than any resemblance to a breeze. Despite this I went with the full-length jeans, knowing the Asian preference for respectable clothing. This was a stab at cultural sensitivity as well as an attempt to not stand out as a target for touts and scam artists (in retrospect, this was a little futile as being a six foot one, white guy, blending in was never really an option).
It’s the little differences that stand out when you hit a new culture. After strolling across the amazingly vast Tianemen Square, I went in search of lunch. With a vocabulary limited to ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’, I decided I needed a place where ordering could involve pointing. I vetoed McDonalds and KFC (I’m in Beijing dammit) but while stopping in 7-11 for a drink I discovered something wonderful. In the place where, in our stores, the meat pies and sausage rolls are usually left to ‘mature’, stood a little man with a deep fryer. After a little pointing and a lot of gesturing, I walked away with a bounty of dim-sims and sushi rolls. I’m sure the locals were looking at me with the same disgust we would show anyone who gorged themselves on 7-11 sausage rolls (sober no less) but I was in soy sauce heaven.
Tomorrow (assuming I’ve read my itinerary correctly) I fly to Urumqi. This is a long way west, and very rural. I’ve heard this is a tough place to get around without knowing Russian (even though it is part of China). I’m banking on there being a 7-11 there though, and everything being just fine.
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