China #1

This trip to China started Friday, January 26 and started at 4am. When that day was over, I will have spent 22 hours in airport and on airplanes, flown over Alaska on the way to Tokyo and then on to Beijing and crossed a date line which put us in Beijing at 10pm on Saturday night.

I was able to sleep through most of the travel with the help of Diphenhydramine and some Ambien. I find the flying relaxing and easy. I rarely get to sit there and do nothing and sleep and watch movies. I recommend the Airbus when flying long distance. Individual tv screens with dozens of movies makes it really easy.

Since Sunday was our first day, we didn't work. We decided we would try and go see the Forbidden City which was in downtown. We were in a hotel on the outskirts of the city (past the 5th ring road; Beijing is organized in rings as it has continuely grown over the centuries. The 5th ring road takes nearly an hour to get to from the center.)

When we arrived, we were surrounded by rikshaw bike riders. The taxi driver shook his head and indicated we shouldn't take a ride. I figured it was because it was a rip off. I had no idea. So we stepped out and I finally asked how much a ride was. "Two" was teh answer. "Two yuan?" I asked which was about 20 cents. The guy said yes. So we climbed on. I was with a colleague from work, a staff auditor who is a little younger than me and had never been to China.

The promise was a ride around the Forbidden City, but ended up being down a back alley of run down, old houses. I kept asking, "Why are we going this way?" The answer was, "Old building, good picture, you be happy!" followed by a call on the cell phone. Yep, sure enough. The alley lead finally to a friend of there's who stepped out and backed up their collection of their fee. They held out their price card, Y300 or roughly $44.... each. Not knowing if the wingman had a knife or was some kind of kung fu expert, I got a little nervous. We argued a bit, nose to nose. I ended up giving them 200 each, figuring it was worth the cost to not get hurt and be able to tell one hell of a story when I got home. I like to tell myself that they had children at home that really needed the money. But in reality, I still daydream about just punching them in the nose and running.

So, feeling really stupid and slightly poorer, we walked the rest of the way to the Forbidden City. Entrance was pretty cheap, about $5. There were a bunch of Chinese there offering a guided tour, but we weren't trusting anyone at this point and thought their Y150 price tag as a little steep. So we went in on our own. It was a cold day and we didn't want to spend 4 hours, so we didn't even rent the Y40 guided tape.

We did run into a college student who did explain some of the symbolism of the name, right before he told us about a "New" section of the City, which was open because many of the buildings were being renovated for the Olympics. We went to this area, which turned out to be pretty boring, except for a new museum and a little shop where the college student was selling art and calligraphy and stone stamps with personalized names. We ended up getting stamps and felt a little used and ripped off, and continued on poorer and a little more leery of the Chinese people.

The City was awesome. Back in my kung fu, Chinese is cool era, at age 15, it would have been amazing to be there. I was able to tap into a little of that old passion, but not much. It was basically a bunch of old buildings. A LOT of old buildings. The city is a kilometer long and about half of one wide. It has hundreds of buildings that took care of every need of the Emperor and his thousands of servants.

We ended up later in the trop eating an Emperor's 15 course meal. More on that later. We ended the day eating a bucket of Cup o'noodle and drinking Coke Light (the word "Diet" doesn't really translate well. It makes it sound like you ONLY drink Sugar Free Coke -which we basically did- and happened to be the only Chinese I learned while there: "Tiang Yi Ka Co Ka La". It became an mission, an obsession, a purpose, a way of life, the search for Coke Light. One well worth all the effort.

On our way back to where we knew taxis to be waiting, two Chinese girls approached us asking if we spoke English, asked us where we were from, etc. They started walking with us on our way from the Forbidden City to Tianamen Square. At the same time, hordes of people started selling us hats and scarfs and other crap. The temperature had just dropped, so I was actually glad for the hat, which said Beijing Olympics 2008. It cost me about $1.30. As we walked, Shirley, one of the girls talked me up, told me I looked like Tom Cruise and made me feel like I was about get robbed again. The other girl had cornered my compadre and was talking him up as well. Finally they asked us to walk with them a mile way to some old street where there was an ancient tea ceremony going on....

I just stopped and stared at them. Looked around. Not sure what to say and finally said, "I think we'll go to KFC." She saw my hesitation and quickly said, "Oh, i'm sorry, I didn't mean to impose. I just thought we could talk, I like practicing English and I thought you would want to see some interesting things in Beijing. Bye." and grabbed her friends arm and hurried off. I stood there feeling really stupid, like I had offended a nice person and missed out on an opportunity to see some cool stuff, but ultimately didn't want to chance being lead down yet ANOTHER alley where her brothers and uncles were waiting to take more money away from a dumb American.

We ate a nasty abomination of a chicken sandwhich at KFC and went back to the hotel.