Acrobatics and the Great Wall

April 10, 2012

I met my Trans-Siberian tour group Monday night. The group consists of seven travelers: two retired Aussie teachers, a semi-retired Englishman, a retired Canadian (my roommate), two Aussie sisters (18 and 24), and me; our Russian guide, Bob; and two-guides-in-training, Svetlana and Natalia. It seems like a nice group, and I think three weeks is to be a good amount of time with a group—enough time to get to know people pretty well, but not enough time to get to know each too well. At our introduction meeting we went over Intrepid rules (no drugs and no prostitution—neither buying nor rendering services as one of the Aussie sisters clarified), looked over our itinerary, and each received a pair of chopsticks (to use in order to save the Russian forests from being destroyed in the production of disposable ones). We then headed to my first Chinese dinner—one that included bok choy and Peking duck. I do like Chinese food.

Dinner with the crew: Ann, David, Natalia, Alicia, and Kathryn

Guide Bob, Svetlana, Ken, and Ann

 

Do I snack on the large or small pickled chicken feet?

The following morning was an early start to our trip to the Great Wall of China with a local guide. We learned all sorts of little tidbits of Chinese history on the way. My favorites include how during a particular Mongolian rule (there is a long history of fighting and exchanging power), the Mongolians classified the Chinese society into 10 levels: emperors followed by Buddhists at the top of the hierarchy and prostitutes, intellectuals, and beggars filling the bottom three rungs. Yes, prostitutes were regarded more highly by the Mongolians than intellectuals—at least they worked for their money. (As a side note, this classification led to intellectuals being disparagingly referred to as “smelly number nines” during the Cultural Revolution—who knew?)  I also enjoyed learning how the Mongolians attacked China even after the Great Wall was complete and at one point kidnapped the emperor. Unfortunately for this emperor, his little brother was happy to take his place on the throne and didn’t bother to negotiate for the elder’s return. Their plan of ransom foiled, eventually the Mongolians just returned the elder back for nothing in exchange. The kidnapped emperor returned to the thrown but was less than memorable in his rule. In fact, he wasn’t even allowed to be buried with the other thirteen emperors of the dynasty. He did leave a mark on ruling culture in his death, however: he requested to be buried alone instead of his having childless concubines killed and buried with him as was the tradition of the time.  Fortunately, this was the beginning of the end of this practice.

To sit...

... or squat?
Signs on the restrooms at the Wall. Love it!

 We arrived at the wall and I was told it was a good day to visit because the sky was clear enough that you could actually see the towers on the wall from the parking lot. It was also a nice temperature for traversing the steps, and I managed to cover the complete section open to the public in the few hours we had there. The Wall is amazing. Cherry blossoms were blooming and the wall goes on as far as you can see in either direction.

Great Wall, here I come!

End of the line

As far as the eye can see.

In the other direction...

Cherry blossoms!

We had a couple hours of free time in the afternoon before heading to the acrobatic show in the evening. I used the time to buy a new suitcase. I had a hard time deciding whether I should splurge to buy a high-quality bag or just hope a cheapie would hold up. I ended up deciding on a cheapie figuring it only had to last me another couple months. Update on the suitcase to come.

We took the subway to the acrobat show.
There was a bit of a traffic jam going down the stairs.

The evening acrobatic show was incredible. Acts ranged from a juggler juggling nine balls on a circular platform four feet in diameter to 10 girls riding/balancing on each other on a single bicycle. My favorite act was probably the tumbling during which the athletes summersaulted, cartwheeled, twisted, and flipped through one or two hoops the size of a hula-hoop raised three to seven feet off the ground. Less jazzy but equally impressive were the umbrella woman who managed to balance, flip, and twirl open umbrellas on her toes and the man balancing, swinging, and riding a six-foot tall unicycle on a slack tightrope. (Oxymoron? Don’t know how else to describe it.)

After the show I took advantage of being back in a land of cheap massage and decided to pamper my feet with a foot massage before heading home. The massage vacillated between pleasure and pain, but the pain was in that this-has-to-be-doing-my-body-good vein, so I grinned and bore it. Most of the massage was traditional kneading and pressing, but toward the end the masseur brought out a suction cup to use on my feet and ended the massage by drumming up and down my legs with little mallets.

I would have been completely satisfied with the massage had the masseur had not tried to pull the “five” into “fifty” trick there at the end. After soaking my feet he made a face at all of the dead skin on the soles of my feet when he began the massage. It is a fact that my feet are almost always rough, so I didn’t think I was getting played when he offered to shave off the dead skin for a price. I knew well enough to settle on a price before having a service rendered, and  after some gesturing and air-writing, he agreed with me when I asked him to confirm the price was five yuan. However, when I went downstairs to pay for my 60-yuan massage they told me it would be 110 because of the extra treatment. The skin shaving literally took an extra five minutes (which came out of my regular massage time) and in no way should have almost doubled the price of the massage. Everyone involved knew this, but I as I don’t speak Chinese, it was hard to make my point as adamantly as I would have in English. After some calculator negotiation, I ended up paying an extra 15 yuan. Really, two dollars isn’t that much in the grand scheme of things, and I would have been happy to pay $12 instead of $10 for the massage, I just didn’t like feeling like I was being taken advantage of. Alas…

Covering all the bases:
"Businessman's Budget Hotel... Backpackers Luxury Hotel"

Arriving in Beijing and Saying Goodbye to My Bag

April 9, 2012 

I’m recommitting myself to the blog. You'll notice there's a good five or six weeks missing from my chronicles. I do hope at some point to go back and fill in the blanks, but in the meantime, I figured it was better just to pick up again where I am now. So here goes. 

I arrived in Beijing from Seoul on Sunday morning. My cousin Scott and his daughter Caroline met me at the airport. It’s the first time in my around-the-world trip that that I’ve been met at the airport by a friendly face, and it was really nice to spend Easter with Scott, Jennie, and their three girls. Sunday was a rare blue-skied day in Beijing, and between the blue sky and the suburban American-style house in the American-style suburb my cousins live in, it didn’t quite seem like I was in China. If it weren’t for the tuk-tuk parked in the driveway (The family took it for a spin while I napped.) and the bottled water used for rinsing vegetables and brushing teeth (It’s not actually parasites they’re worried about in the water. Rather, there are so many metals and other chemicals found in the water that the high school chemistry teacher has to have his students use bottled water in their experiments in order to get accurate readings.)

Monday’s activities made me feel a bit more like I was in a foreign country. Jennie and I took two of the girls to a doctor’s appointment. (I have to give it to Jennie for making her away around the city by car with her girls—I would have a hard time doing it on my own in a taxi.) After safely navigating the streets and highways where drivers use the shoulder as a regular lane, constantly swerve in and out of traffic, and tailgate those they can’t pass, we arrived at the unmarked set of buildings housing the doctor’s office. Once inside the building, Jennie sacrificed her body to keep the elevator from shutting on the children and me as evidently we were taking too long to get the stroller in and there were no sensors to cause the doors to reopen when something, like a stroller or child, gets in their path. We arrived on the nineteenth floor and exited into a completely dark corridor—definitely not in Kansas anymore. Fortunately, once we ascertained which door we wanted, we were welcomed into a light-filled, child-friendly office.

At this point, I was going to attempt traveling to the sports store to get some cold-weather gear for my impending trip to Mongolia and Siberia. Jennie and I had found and marked on a map the location of the store and a lady in the doctor’s office helped me with the name and address of the store written in Chinese. All I had to do was find a taxi. I was feeling confident in my ability to do so, especially as there was a line of them parked on the road outside the building, so I was genuinely shocked when the first taxi driver looked at the address, the map, and then me and laughed and told me (gestured?) he couldn’t help me. Undeterred, I went to the next taxi where I met the same reaction, and then to the next and the next. I have no idea why no one wanted to give me a ride, but in the end I decided to face those elevator doors again and just wait for Jennie to give me a ride there after her appointment.  Which she kindly did.

I made it to the sports store and managed to find a coat and boots. However, these new purchases pushed me into the there’s-no-way-all-my-things-are-going-to-fit-in-my-carryon-sized-travelbag category. To be honest, the small bag that I was so proud of fitting all my things into on the beginning of the trip had already split several places at the seams and was getting quite challenging to pack. I found the bag perfect when staying in one place for a while (which has been rare), and it’s fantastic  to carry from place to place as it’s so small, but packing it every day when I’m on the go has turned into a bit of a hassle. I had been thinking about leaving the bag behind when I was in Korea, I’d just grown quite attached to it and wasn’t ready to part with it permanently. And as I wasn’t sure how I would get it back to the states from there, it came with me. Now, with these new purchases, I didn’t really have an option; I needed to upgrade the bag. Jennie was kind enough to offer to pack it with their family’s things to go back to the US this summer, so I didn’t have to say goodbye permanently or try to mail it home. 

But, in order to do this, I did have to leave the bag at Jennie’s place before I had the chance to buy a new one. That meant I arrived at my hotel to meet my tour group with all my traveling possession in a plastic bag. Nice.