Beijing: Day 1

As my plane landed at Beijing International Airport, I had butterflies. I had hired a tour guide for two of my days here, but he was not meeting me at the airport as Wendy had, and I was on my own to find my suitcase, hail a taxi, check into the hotel, and figure out where to eat and what to do on my first night in the city. I kept reminding myself that Beijing was really no different than New York, a place where I feel perfectly comfortable. I told myself, It’s just a lot of people who live close together and drive cars and ride busses and trains to work in offices and factories and shops. They are just people who live in apartments and raise children and watch television in the evening. The people here a no different than me; I just can’t speak their language. It turned out that I didn’t need to use any Chinese to find my way. Everything I needed was marked in English. My suitcase was the third one on the conveyor belt at the baggage claim, the taxi stand was nearby, the queue moved quickly, the driver knew where my hotel was and didn’t take me the long way there to get more money. The hotel staff spoke English well enough to check me in with no problems, and my room was very pretty. I was happy that things had worked out so well, but I still had to decide what to do with the rest of my afternoon and evening and felt a bit overwhelmed.

The concierge service at my hotel is friendly, but not fluent in English. I had difficulty explaining what I was interested in booking, and found that I was probably better off just finding tickets online myself or by going directly to the theater. Unfortunately, there are no performances at the National Theater, the Forbidden City Concert Hall, or the Beijing Concert Hall while I am in the city. My tour book recommends several places to watch Peking Opera, but nothing was playing on Monday night. I ended up going to a Las Vegas-style Chines acrobatics show that was unabashedly touristy, but it was fun. There were super-flexible, tiny contortionists, strong gymnasts, laser lights, sequined costumes, and very loud sound effects. Even though I was sitting alone, I found myself grimacing and gasping when it looked like one of the performers was going to fall and looking for someone to agree with my disbelief.

After the show came the hard part. I am not very shy, and I’m certainly not shy about eating, but I do feel very uncomfortable eating in public alone. I was too scared to compound this unease with the discomfort of trying to ask for a table for one in Chinese and pointing to pictures of food on a menu, and only being able to smile and nod when the server brings the check. I decided to eat at one of the over-priced, mediocre restaurants in my hotel, and it was OK. At least the servers could speak some English with me, and the place was pretty empty. I brought my Kindle and read, listened to the piano playing in the bar, and looked out over the traffic on East Chang’an Avenue. It was quite pleasant, but very lonely.

Tuesday was better. I met “Richard,” my tour guide, in the lobby at 9:00. He had arranged for a car to take us to see a section of Great Wall in a village called Mutianyu. To reach the top, we rode a cable car. Then we hiked along the wall for about an hour. It was incredible. The Great Wall is actually not a single wall built all at once, but a series of walls built and expanded and connected during several dynasties. Emperor Qin Sui-huang, the same guy who built the Terracotta Warriors, was the first to connect several walls together to create one long one. The section of the wall where we hiked was built by General Xu Da during the early years of the Ming Dynasty. Peasant farmers, prisoners, and soldiers, through years of painful labor, built the wall. It winds like a dragon along the top of the mountains for miles and miles. Periodically there is a guard station or a watchtower. The wall was cleverly designed with many innovations such as small holes through which the soldiers could push spears and poles, tiny windows to let archers shoot arrows, and water spouts to keep it from flooding during a heavy rain. I had an incredible time imagining what it must have been like to be a prisoner pushing a cart of heavy stone bricks up the mountainside to build the wall, or to be a soldier keeping watch from the top of a tower. When we reached the end of the tourist area, we could take a chairlift back to the parking lot, or we could slide down on a toboggan. Guess what I chose. That’s right. The toboggan sluice was banked carefully so that the little sled wouldn’t tip over or go too fast, and I coasted my way down through the beautiful mountainside. Whee! Richard took the chairlift.

When we got back to the city, it was time for lunch. Wendy had eaten her meals with me, and it was delightful. I assumed Richard would do the same. Instead, he found a restaurant he thought I’d like, helped me get seated and order, and then left. Ugh! The food was terrific – noodles in broth, but I was miserable. I felt like everyone was staring at me even though they weren’t, and I couldn’t finish fast enough.

After lunch, we visited the Beijing National Stadium, known to most as the “Bird’s Nest” from the 2002 Olympic Games, and the Water Cube. Both structures are as incredible as they looked from TV but have sadly sat empty for the most part since the games and are a bit neglected. The stadium’s grass field was dried out and brown in patches, and there were no signs of concerts or athletic competitions at all. On the jumbo screens at either end of the field play a loop of Olympic game highlights. I looked up at the screen that wraps around the inside of the stadium and tried to remember what it looked like all lit up for the opening ceremony. It was a bit sad. The Water Cube is in slightly better shape. The pools in it are now public swimming pools, and part of it has been turned into an indoor water park.

After we saw the Olympic park, we still had some time with the car and driver, but we didn’t have enough time to do anything big. That was OK with me because I was getting tired. Richard suggested that we go to a teahouse to see a tea ceremony. I was a bit wary to try this because my tour book had warned me that “tea ceremonies” are often ploys to rip off tourists. He assured me that this was the real thing and that the government regulated this teahouse. I agreed, and I’m glad I did. We were seated at a beautiful table and a lovely young woman demonstrated how to properly make tea and explained about the many different types of Chinese tea.  It is a lot like wine. There are many varieties in many price ranges. Climate changes from year to year, soil, rainfall, and region can all affect the quality and character of the teas. I tasted five kinds of tea. When the “ceremony” was over, I was of course lead through gift shop and pressured to buy lots of tea. I caved and did buy a small canister of Oolong tea; I’m a sucker tourist, I guess.

After the tea ceremony, I asked Richard to take me to a grocery store so that I could buy things for my breakfast. My hotel reservation doesn’t include a free breakfast, and the hotel breakfast buffet is lovely, but pricy. Even though we stopped at a grocery store near my hotel, driving back took nearly an hour.  According to Richard, Beijing has over eighteen million people and covers an area of about 16,800 square kilometers. That’s pretty big. But, it’s also dense. Real estate is precious, and the city is full of tall buildings and crowded streets. The traffic here is less scary than it was in Shenyang simply because it must move slowly. The taxi crawled up the avenue. When we finally arrived, I paid the driver, said good-bye to Richard, and headed up to my room. Time was up, and Richard wasn’t going to help me find a dinner restaurant. I resolved to be independent and find a fun place to eat on Wangfujing Street, a huge market street just a block from my hotel. I changed into nicer clothes, brushed my hair, smiled at myself in the mirror, and walked down… to the hotel restaurant. I just couldn’t do it. Sigh.