Beijing Fling

It’s Friday morning at the Capitol Hotel in Beijing, China.  I have not blogged for nearly an entire week, which is due to the little amount of time that the group I am with has had to relax. We have been non-stop busy for about a week it seems.  I have experienced days were I have had to put in such a large amount of effort to stay up; to  the point that my brain seemed to be shutting down on me and there was nothing to be done about it.  All of this exhaustion has been solely because the intense amount of activities that are available here.  It’s ridiculous. Beijing has been filled with many great stories and adventures, but some things really stuck out to me while I was here.  This blog will hopefully give you a little idea of what I took away from this fast-paced city.

                The first great experience was the overnight train ride to Beijing.  I’m not sure how many people get to go on train rides like this, but I would definitely recommend it.  The ride is obviously a lot slower than a plane ride, yet I feel like if I had an option between the two, I would go with the train.  The greatest thing about the train ride was our little room that we stayed in.  The room was made up of two bunk beds, a small little table between the two bunks, a large window, and a little area to store our book bags.  It was a tight little fit, to say the least; what an amazing time it was, though.  All of us felt so cozy in our little beds, inside the little room, with great night views of rural China.  I can’t really explain how comfortable and worry free we felt in this little room, so go on a train ride with some close friends or family to experience it.  The simplicity of it, I believe, is what made it so great. 

I’m not sure if I’ve had the chance to explain the bathroom situation over here in China, so I’ll lay it out for you here.  While on the train, or anywhere in China, if someone has to drop some buddies off at the pool, there will be a nice hole in the ground for them to use.  The hole looks to be stainless steel, but that is about the best of it.  You just squat over the hole and hope that it turns out okay ha.  Waking up at 3 in the morning on the train to a hole in the ground was not what I wanted to be doing.  I’ll forever be thankful for how wealthy and spoiled we are in America.

The next thing that stuck out in Beijing was our trip to the silk market, which could also be labeled as the six story mall full of bargaining and counterfeit items. Unbelievable is what this place is!  It is like nothing I would have expected it to be.  I can almost say that most highly valued brand items across the world (that can fit in a mall) where in this mall, except for fake.  Anything from a Rolex watch and Nike shoes, to counterfeit iPods and North Face jackets.  Don’t get me wrong, some of things were not counterfeit, like the artsy items, but most of the items in this store are just for looks. 





One of the many aisles.  Notice the fake, white crocs on the right.

 This is how the silk market works.  While walking to get sized for my suit, I will hear people talking/yelling in my ear on each side of me trying to get me to buy an item in their store.  Some of the people working the little stores would even grab me and pull me in there.  These people want to sell something, bad!  While I was at the suit shop and trying to bargain for the suit, the little girl that was helping me out was getting really upset and mad at me, but in a flirty kind of way.  After I had been talking to her for about 15 minutes, I told her that I would go check out some of the other suit shops (all of the suit places were beside each other).  She would then grab my arm and BEG me to stay there.  One time before I was about to leave (I attempted to leave many times), she pushed me against the wall into a manikin! Haha this is no joke.  I was laughing of course, and she wasn’t extremely serious, but this is how they run the stores in the silk market.  They want the sale so much that they will straight up harass you to get you to stay in the store.  For the people that I don’t really care for in the stores, it is easy to just walk to the next place of interest, but for some people, it is a little hard to leave.  They genuinely made us feel bad for not buying their items.  A lot more went on in the silk market that blew my mind, like how quickly the time passed in there, but I will save all of that for a later date.  I have a lot of stories about the silk market.  We went there 4 times…



At the beginning of the 2 mile loop



The next thing that blew my mind in Beijing was our trip to The Great Wall of China.  Before I experienced The Great Wall, I didn’t really think much of the name.  I didn’t think much about it being called great.  However, when we arrived at this unbelievably steep and long wall, my breath was taken away.  This place is absolutely unbelievable.  I have always known that the wall is long, but I never had a clue that it would be so steep.  The hike up this beast showed me, and the group that I was with, just how out of shape we are.  In some parts it felt like we were walking completely vertical, with little horizontal movement.  Some steps are really tall, some are really short; some steps are wide, some are narrow.  I really can’t describe it.  I think we did about a 3 mile loop on the wall, but I’d say it felt more like 10 miles.  The view from the top was amazing, despite how smoggy the day was.  I’m struggling to describe the wall, so I’ll just post some pictures.  It’s definitely one of the wonders of the world.



Getting closer to the end of the long ascent!



Striking a pose.  Looking forward to the walk down!

An intense walk down.  A fall would have been brutal.

The next thing that surprised me about this week in Beijing is/was the amount of smog in the air.  It is seriously hard to breathe some days.  On one particular day, we had to take an hour cab ride to meet with the company Caterpillar, and then take an hour long cab ride back.  This day was ridiculously smoggy.  Visibility was about 200 yards.  The air was thick and smelt like exhaust and other kinds of pollution.  (It is not uncommon to see the Chinese wearing those masks that filter the air). I didn’t realize that I was doing this until later in the night, but I did not take a deep breath the entire day.  My body knew how bad the air quality was and so I took really small, shallow breaths.  Like I said, I didn’t really have to think about doing this, I just did it.  Kind of like blinking.  The next day, many people in the group felt sick.  Our throats and lungs took a beating.  On a happier note, the next day was beautiful!  Some wind came through and blew most of the smog away.

I’m not going to go into too much detail about this, but we went out to the bar one night, which we later found out was the gay bar district, and the group that I was with met some girls from Iceland.  One thing that I have noticed while in China is that we run into many people from around the world. Anyways,   these girls from Iceland were EASILY the most interesting people that I have ever met in my 21 year long life.  I talked to this girl for two or three hours, and it seemed like only minutes.  I was completely drawn in.  The accent is a lot of which makes it so easy to be interested, but it is also the life that they live. Iceland is a unique place.  I am very interested in going to Iceland now.  I would love to talk about all of the things that I heard about the way Iceland does life, however,  I’d rather talk about it in person.  One interesting thing that Iceland does is the way last names are given.  For instance, if I were to have a daughter, her last name would be Benjaminsdotter—Dotter for daughter.  I found that pretty interesting.  She intrigued me in many more ways than this.  One of the best conversations I’ve ever had I think.  I must love accents.  Especially Icelandic ones. 

(These girls graduated high school, which I think they call elementary school, worked for 7 or so months, and have been traveling around for five months.  They go back to Iceland today.  I feel like our run in with them was meant to happen and was a little key to how my life could go. )

The last, but definitely not least, most impressionable thing that happened in China is the arrival of the new group and the departure of the old group.  Today has been somewhat of a sad day for me.  All of the people that I flew over to China with, experienced China for the first time with, and did many things together with, left about two hours ago.  We all had a great bond and experienced some amazing things together.  I will miss all of them greatly.  I could not have asked for a better group to experience China with, and now I will be able to experience it with an entirely new group of people.  I’m excited to get to know these people for the next five weeks!

All in all, Beijing has been quite the experience.  A lot has been left out of this blog, in terms of the things that we have experienced here, but some of the main things were highlighted. So many things happen here that it is hard to get it all down.  For example, I saw a baby poop on the cement, because they don’t use diapers here, but go to the bathroom through the slit in their pants.  I also ate a scorpion.  These just popped into my head.  So much is going on in China and so many new experiences for all of us here.  Every day is full of numerous, unique experiences.

Dropping a deuce like a Champ!