China!
Gina. Beijing, China.
So far I’m completely in love with China! Yay! Granted, it’s only been one full day, but in that one full day we ate two amazingly delicious meals (and one giant bowl of ramen, which was good, but was still just ramen), walked around our area of the city successfully, went to Prince Gong’s Palace and took in the beautiful architecture, and found a new hostel that’s cheaper than the one we’re staying in now and where we’ll be able to stay in the same room (right now we’re in dorms, but they’re not mixed!). We’re thinking about staying and taking Chinese lessons, which we think we’d want to do for around two weeks. We’re going to look at our options today. So far I’ve been surprised by how much is in English here. I think it’s probably in part to do with the fact that we’re in the capital city and they’re hosting the Olympics. But a lot of public signs, street names, and subway stops are all in Chinese characters, pinyin (phonetic guide to pronouncing the characters in Roman letters) and then English. But we realize that once we get outside of Beijing and when we’re not in other major cities, we’ll probably be without the English help. So far with the help of our books and a very small recording of phrases I downloaded onto our iPod, we’ve been trying to learn the words for “hello,” “thank you,” and “no.” The big stumbling block is that since Mandarin Chinese is tonal, we’re having a hard time knowing if we’re pronouncing things right. If we’re pronouncing them with the wrong tone, we could be saying something completely different! Hello seems pretty simple and it’s the word we’ve heard the most from store owners, so that helps us practice. No has worked a few times in getting rickshaw drivers to stop following us trying to get us to go for a ride! And thank you I just don’t know about. The big problem for me with the tone thing, is that I naturally use tone when I speak to indicate a question, or excitement, or whatever. So I’m unsure of how to say thank you to someone and saw sincere and nice without changing the tone of the word! But I’m sure I’ll get it eventually!
The flight over here was surprisingly pleasant. We had a two hour flight to Vancouver, Canada where we hung out for two hours and then had an 11 1/2 hour flight to Beijing. We left at 8 a.m., but we had to get up at 4 a.m. in order to get to the airport in time. It helped that we were really tired, I think. We both slept a bit on the second plane. We flew with Air Canada, and we had our own t.v.s on the seat in front of us with a giant selection of movies and t.v. shows to watch which kept us pretty entertained. The Vancouver airport so far wins my award for the nicest airport I’ve ever been to. It was beautifully decorated with a natural theme–there was literally a river going through the middle of airport completely with a little waterfall and little statues of salmon swimming upstream. And the river ended in a gorgeous fish tank that I think was supposed to represent the ocean. It was gorgeous, and I wanted to stand in front of the fish tank forever!
The Beijing airport was very clean and shiny. We got through everything very easily, got our bags, grabbed money out of an ATM (2,000 yuan! I love different currencies. The exchange rate is around 6.7 right now, so you do the math of how much US $ that is), and headed for the new train that takes you from the airport (which is pretty far out of town) right into a subway stop. There were machines for getting tickets for the train and the subway which had an English option, so that went really smoothly. We even helped out another lady with the machine. I think living in San Francisco and using the buses and train all of the time has really made things easier while traveling with this sort of transportation. We had found a hostel in our book that was near the subway, so we walked over and easily got a room in dorms. It helped that they spoke English! We’re changing hostels today to one that’s cheaper, nicer (seemingly), and where we can stay in the dorm together. We even wandered out and found food since we were both exhausted and starving. I had a yummy bowl of noodle soup that made me feel warm and extra sleepy! We both passed out around 7:30, but considering it was very late at night the day before for us, I think we did pretty well.
Yesterday we had a delicious breakfast by pointing at pictures on the menu! We ended up with two dishes that were sort of spicy, but I suffered through and it wasn’t really that bad. The rice helped and so did the iced green tea we got. It was very cooling on my tongue. The food is so good! We’re staying just north of the center and this area is pretty calm and not very crowded. It’s surrounded by hutong (alley) neighborhoods that are more original to the city. They’ve been tearing them down to make more modern buildings, but this area has been declared a heritage site, so it’s going to stay unchanged. It’s fun (and confusing) to wander around in the alleys and see “real life.” Our new hostel is actually in one of the hutong neighborhoods, but it’s also very close to some main roads so we’ll be able to navigate (or really I’ll be able to navigate… Steve is incredibily good with directions and I’m incredibly good at following him around!).
We walked around this pretty park area that was two giant man-made lakes surounded by weeping willows and other trees. There are a lot of classic buildings in the Chinese architectural style. Sadly, China town in San Francisco and the world area at Disney World has made the architecture seem almost fake! I think I’ll get over it, though, since the buildings here are sometimes incredibly old and are constructed much better. I guess it does say something for the authenticity of the reproductions in the U.S., though.
Coming to China (almost) directly from South America has made me notice things I don’t think I would have otherwise. People here are very thin. I don’t know if it’s just because we’re in a big city (people in the capitals of Peru and Ecuador were thinner than elsewhere), but I feel like Asian people are generally more healthy than Westerners. We’ve noticed lots of people exercising around the city–either in the parks or on little metal exercise stands that look like children’s play gyms that are scattered around the city. There are also no stray dogs here. There were stray dogs everywhere in S. America but no stray cats. Here there are more cats. I don’t know if the lack of dogs is because dog is commonly seen on menus or if it’s due to the cleaning up of the city in preparation for the Olympics, but I have noticed. And it makes me wonder again why there weren’t stray cats in S. America. Do they eat them? Do the stray dogs eat them? I might never know.
I’ve also noticed that a lot of people here wear glasses, which makes me realize that I didn’t see anyone wearing glasses in S. America. Do they just have excellent eye sight? Can’t afford glasses/eye exams? Prefer contacts?
And of course the giant difference in food is the most obvious of all! There are so many vegetables and varieties of ingredients, sauces, and cooking styles! And everything is so very, very good. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to eat in a Chinese restaurant in the States again after this! I’ll have to take some cooking lessons at some point in the trip so I can maybe make some of the food at home.
It’s fun noticing the differences between S. America and China. And the U.S. and the places we’re traveling to. It’s also fun to speculate about what they are the way they are. But I wish I could get some answers! Hopefully we’ll learn some Chinese and I can ask people.
Steve and my roles are already reversing a little since we’ve come here. In S. America Steve was forced to talk to people since he knew some Spanish, and that was very unnatural for him since he’s sort of shy about approaching people. I did all of the planning, which was fun in a way but also stressful since I knew where I wanted to go but couldn’t get us there since I’m so bad at navigating. Now in China we’re both lost with the language, but I’m braver about approaching people and either pointing or acting things out and Steve is taking the lead in where we should go and what we should see. I haven’t even started reading our China travel book other than to read the parts on the places we’re visiting while we’re actually there! It’s nice. It’s much more natural and less stressful for us. I really thought China would be incredibly stressful, but so far it’s much more pleasant and relaxing, and I’m so glad for that! I’m sure we’ll have more problems once we actually try to get around other than on our own legs, but hopefully by then we’ll have some Chinese skills to aid us!
Tags: Beijing, China
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