First Time in Qingdao and Beijing
My first visit to Beijing was in 1989 prior to starting a job teaching English in Hangzhou. I returned in 1990 and took two college-aged Chinese friends traveling to places in China they had never really thought they would get to see. In the 1990s, life for Chinese people, and especially for penniless students, was very different from the China they now experience as middle-aged adults 20 years later.
July 27, 1990
Both boys are overwhelmed at being in Beijing. Rather than running all around to glimpse everything they have ever read about and dreamed of seeing, they have slowed down to a crawl. Richard says he wants to savor everything. It may be like the way I was so saturated by the beauty of Norway, I couldn’t absorb anymore and had to rest. In their case, it is not feeling saturated by beauty, but being places they never thought they would be.
We are staying at that terrible hostel I stayed in my first time in Beijing. I don’t know whether I dislike more the Chinese clerks who literally scream at the foreigners like naughty children, or the drunken British boys who sing under my window all night.
Before I go on with Beijing, I want to back up to our time in Qingdao about ten days ago. The three of us felt an amazing atmosphere of relaxation and friendliness of the people. Unlike other parts of China, the people there were well dressed, pleasant, and didn’t push and shove their way around. This city was quite clean for China, with care taken in trees, parks and decorations. I’m a newcomer to it all, but Russell and Richard kept commenting on it. Even a moneychanger took us to his home for a pleasant exchange with tea.
One reason Russell and Richard were anxious to see Qingdao was the chance to swim in the sea. Their first encounter with sea swimming was a rough one indeed. I rented inner tubes for each of them and then swam back and forth between them trying to keep them from drowning. That experience whetted Richard’s appetite for sea swimming, but surfeited Russell’s. However, we all agreed that it was a wonderful time and a very special place.
Another pleasant encounter for me was on the train between Qingdao and Jinan. I sat across from a 13-year-old boy who was curious about me, but did not look upon me as a freak. We played the card game War and shared some food. When I put my head on the small table between us to rest, he very thoughtfully placed a clean newspaper for my head to rest on. I was touched by one so young showing such caring for a stranger. I didn’t think that would happen with an American teenager.
I’ve been writing this while under the gaze of Mao’s bigger than life portrait in Tiananmen Square. He must have seen the thief who just stole Russell’s bag!! I was so engrossed in my writing, I didn’t notice that someone must have just walked by and taken it from among the bags I have around my feet.
Why am I sitting on the ground with my back against the little bridge and our belongings all around me? I was so angry that a ticket to visit the gate behind me was so expensive for a foreigner compared to the cost to Chinese that I told the boys to go on ahead and I’d wait for them here. Fortunately, Russell took his camera with him, but I’m sure he had other things in his small bag that he’ll miss. Gone are the days in China when people didn’t steal. Mao wouldn’t approve.
We stood sweating in a long line to visit Mao in his mausoleum. What was remarkable to me is that this is the only place where I’ve seen Chinese line up in an absolutely straight line and stay completely silent.
We were almost cheated by a moneychanger near our hotel. He had a strange way of counting the money out, and Richard didn’t trust him. I trusted Richard’s intuition more than the moneychanger, so I found a more reliable “businessman.”
Tags: Beijing in 1990; Qingdao in 1990; stealing in Beijing, Travel
