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Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Trip Report #1 – Beijing (March 31, 2010)

Ni hao everyone,

Double Happiness Hotel
Greetings from Beijing! We had a pleasant 14-hour direct flight over here. That is, if you don’t count the NINE hour delay leaving Newark. This is by far the longest delay we have ever had. Apparently, our plane had some real servicing issues and Continental had to fly a new plane over from Belgium. But at least Continental did give us food vouchers and 10% off our next flight (guess that just means we will have to fly again soon…) Anyway, we found a way to entertain ourselves by wine tasting at Vino Volo, the air traveler’s solution for a long delay, which just happened to be located near our gate.

We are staying at the Double Happiness Hotel in an authentic hutong which is a narrow lane lined with 200-year old houses built around courtyards. Our room looks like something on a Chinese movie set with loads of red silk and carved wood. Our bed is in an elevated wooden alcove, and of course, the inside is lined with red silk. The bed is a bit hard, but the experience is hard to beat.

Every morning, we start the day with a breakfast buffet of about 50 items, most of which are unknown to us bur resemble foods in a Chinese restaurant in the U.S. Whatever it is, it’s good.

On our first day, we made the pilgrimage to infamous Forbidden City in spite of a day -long rain. A young 24-year old Chinese university student who called himself “Leo” approached us and offered to be our guide through the site. We weren’t really interested in a guide, but we agreed mainly because we both liked him immediately. He turned out to be a great guide and a pleasant young man who spoke reasonably good English.

The Forbidden City was quite impressive even in the rain, and Leo gave us all the facts and figures. Like the fact that 10,000 people once lived here and 3,000 of them were the Emperor’s concubines. Frank was thinking Emperor sounded like an okay position! One thing that was weird is how Chinese people would come up close to us and just stare. At first, we were very uncomfortable, but Leo explained that many people coming from the provinces into Beijing for the first time have never seen a white person before. In fact, Leo is the first person in his family to come to Beijing. We can highly recommend Leo -- if you ever come here, we will give you his contact info.

Next stop: Tian’anmen Square right across the road from the Forbidden City. It is a huge square but very cold compared with the colorful palaces we just saw. Frank paid his respects to Chairman Mao Tse Tung by buying a watch from a huckster. The watch has a picture of Mao pounding out the seconds with his fist. Priceless (especially for $7).

We wanted to have tea at the famous tea house called Lao Shee. It may be famous in the U.S., but no one knows where it is here. We searched for almost an hour getting conflicting info from everyone we asked. -- we even had a picture and the name printed in Chinese, but nothing helped! It was like a Keystone Cops routine -- one would direct us down the street, then someone else would tell us to go back UP. Remember all of this is taking place in the rain. Finally, a friendly Chinese man who spoke minimal English took on our cause. Even he had to ask about 4 people for directions, but eventually he delivered us right to the door. He never asked for a thing from us, and he wouldn’t even join us for tea. Just a friendly, helpful guy.

The teahouse was fun with elaborate teas -- Anne’s tea looked like a flower unfolding in her glass. And had a band playing live music on unusual old instruments. The bandleader immediately launched into an odd-sounding version of “The Star Spangled Banner” when we arrived. (I wonder how he knew?) We joined another couple, a German man with his Mongolian wife -- first time we ever met a Mongolian. She told us that winter temps in Mongolia are typically minus 40 degrees!

One thing we noticed is that security is everywhere, on the streets, in the subways, in museums, and in important buildings. A uniformed guard is on virtually every corner. This is a real military state that means business when it comes to keeping people in line. For the most part, people dress like any westerners, but we have seen several older men with uniform-like clothing mimicking the “Mao look.”

Today, we visited the Capital Museum for a better understanding of the history of Beijing. Frank especially liked this museum because it was free. Very impressive, but we did notice a lot of Communist propaganda in the exhibits here. Later, we attended a Tao religious ceremony at the White Cloud Temple. Clouds of incense, strange wind instruments, priests in brightly colored silk robes and lots of mysterious rituals. We also got to throw coins at a gong for good luck. The gong had a bell in the center, and a direct hit would bring good luck. Dead-eye Frank made sure we rang the bell and came home with plenty of good fortune.

We are enjoying the food here, but restaurants can be a real challenge since no one speaks much English. However, everyone is more than happy to help us out, and seem to really appreciate our minimal Mandarin language skills. The girls at the hotel desk have taught Frank his numbers in Mandarin and are now going to teach him the days of the week.

Tomorrow, we walk The Great Wall, so we need to call it an early night. Hope all is well back in the states. More to come…

Anne and Frank

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