Beijing

Our trip to Beijing started out like any trip taken so far that is in China, with much haste to arrive and nothing to do for a long time; the old ‘hurry up and wait.’ The Friday that we left I had so much to do before I could actually get on the train that it was a miracle that I even went to Beijing. Teaching class aside, I had to go to the police station to pick up my residence permit, making a citizen (of sorts) in China, as well as my passport. Equally, I did not have my train ticket as it was bought and entrusted to my good friends. Finally, after as successful pickup of the ol’ passport, my last class was supposed to end at 4pm, and the train station that I would have to go to for the 5pm departure was clear across town, easily a 30-40 minute bus ride with no delays... but I live in China, ergo delays. Needless to say, I made it to the train station in about 15 minutes due to the great help of my Chinese friend Mr. Liao and the train left 30 minutes after it was scheduled and there was nothing to worry about all along.

The train ride was about 20 hours long so we had booked sleeper cars hoping to pass the time. In that we were successful. We arrived in Beijing at the exact time we expected and had no trouble finding our hostel. Beijing was full of adventure and excitement. People were everywhere, as you would expect from such a large city. Strangely, however, the traffic was very quiet and it almost seemed as though there was no traffic... unless you tried to cross the road.

Upon arrival and checking in we split into two groups, thus began the great Papa John’s Pizza Conspiracy of 2008. Three of us volunteered to go to the bus station in order to procure bus tickets to Qingdao later in the week. Let me stress that had we not been able to procure bus tickets to Qingdao we would have no guaranteed way of meeting our friends and equally no guaranteed way of making it back to our home. So Angelyn, Megan and I set off on our daunting adventure with the plan to get everyone’s bus tickets and to meet up later at Tiananmen for rendezvous and dinner. On our quest, in which we were lost, hungry, stranded, tired, hungry, taxied, shoved, chinesed, bussed, and, oh yes, very hungry, we eventually arrived at the station and were told to return the next day at 6am. The rumor was that no tickets were to be sold for this particular bus until that day. So, sticking to the plan like any other good traveling friend would do, the three of us embark to Tiananmen to rendezvous with the others to find that they are not in fact at Tiananmen, they are shopping at the Silk Market and want us, who have been ravaged by exhaustion in our kind hearted attempt to get our Qingdao tickets, to continue traveling to meet them at the Silk Market. Later, it was revealed to us three kind hearted, and weary, travelers that the other three had taken it upon themselves to eat some food and keep it a secret; and not just any food, but western food. AND, not just any Western food, Papa John’s Pizza... to which there was no sympathy from them. The shame on their names and family will live on eternally, but we, we forgave them knowing that anyone can fall into temptation, despite the full understanding that the three of us who went to the bus station (without food) would have overcome the temptation and waited for our hardworking friends had the roles been reversed.

However, the Silk Market was actually a blessing in disguise and I got a lot of gift shopping done. Thanks to the help of Jessica I was able to cover most of my gift shopping in one night, though it was quite expensive to do so. Silk Market, for those who don’t know, is an amazing place were Westerner’s, and others I am sure, go to buy clothing, jewelry, leisure items, ornaments, etc. that may or may not be real and are bargained for like a dad helping his son buy his first car.

The next morning, our first full day in Beijing, we woke and went to get those bus tickets to Qingdao and were successful. As it was early we headed over to the temple of heaven, a Buddhist temple with fantastic, though repetitive, architecture and beautiful gardens. Chinese people flood in the park for morning exercises and rituals and we American’s flood in to sit and watch. The experience was quite amazing to us since we have come to China in search of tearing down some of the walls that built this temple; not literally of course. Taking the chance, we foreigners found a secluded corner of the temple and gave had some fellowship of our own. Though our ideas of heaven were different than that of those who built the temple I couldn’t help but feel a sense of welcome in our worship. I could only think of two things, first, that the Kingdom of Heaven was near, and second was a though given by C. S. Lewis about how many different people worship many powers. I do not wish to elaborate in too many details, but the fine point he made at the end of his evaluation was that the name was not as important as the intent, and by intent I mean the separation between good and evil. In other words, to love one another and to know that for those who do good can only be doing good in the name of the father, of whom no evil can be done in his name. There is a lot of doctrinal complication, but it was a consoling thought compared to the other idea that all the prayers elicited in the Temple of Heaven were for nothing.

The rest of the day was spent trying to get to the Great Wall. Our goal was to camp on the wall overnight and, well, WE DID IT AND IT WAS AWESOME!!!!! Getting to the top was some tough work, but we all managed to make it and making it to the top engaged a sense of accomplishment in all of us (if you are thinking to yourself that a lot of people do this and it is nothing special, please remember that we were carrying camping gear and we did not, I repeat, DID NOT take the lift that EVERYONE else was taking. No, the six of us in our group were absolute legends in are ascent and I am pretty sure all of us were singing ‘Eye of the Tiger’ in our souls as we rested at the top.

Once rested we began our two hour hike to make it to the end of the wall and find a camping ground (to avoid the authorities as camping on the Great Wall is not the most legal of practices). We made it and it was great. The mountain was cold at night and the sleeping bags that Finn and I got before we came were easily the worst creations of man and I actually only got about an hour of sleep the entire night. The rest of the night I was shivering so hard that I chipped my teeth (not really, but I was pretty cold). I would keep going about how awesome the Great Wall was, but I have to drop the cliché, “you had to be there.” The next morning, after everyone who was able to sleep woke up (to the sound of Finn and me singing at four in the morning to keep ourselves warm) we got camp stowed away, goofed off for a while we ate breakfast, watched the sun rise through the Beijing fog/smog, and started heading back to where we would descend. I use descend as a strategic word, because the way we went down the Great Wall was sled. That’s right, they had a toboggan that took people from the top to bottom in about 4 minutes or less. Funny enough, the sled ride down cost more than to walk up the stairs to get to the wall, but it was work the money for the excitement and experience.

Once we made it back to the city of Beijing (as the Great Wall is outside of town a ways) we all unloaded at the hostel and took the greatest post-camping showers ever. Several of us used the rest of the day to go and visit the Summer Palace while two in our group slept a bit back at the hostel. The Summer Palace was great, but I think I was still on a high after the Great Wall and tired from lack of sleep so I wasn’t overly ecstatic about the Palace. Nevertheless, the gardens and buildings were beautiful and I don’t regret going.

After the Summer Palace we got back together and met with some friends who recently moved to Beijing. The rest of the group knew them couple we met better than I did (in fact I had never met them), but I was consoled to the idea that we were meeting at a Tex-Mex restaurant. I had a burrito, it was heaven. We spent the rest of the night wandering aimlessly around trying to find the Olympic Stadium. Never finding it, we returned to the hostel as very sleepy travelers and there are rumors that I intentionally poked a Chinese man in the belly as a greeting gesture. The rumors are true.

The day of the bus trip to Qingdao arrived the next morning, but the trip was not until early afternoon and made the morning accessible to leisure. John and Megan tried to find the Olympic stadium again, Finn and Angelyn went to a park near the Forbidden City, and Jessica and I went to Starbucks and spent the rest of the morning walking around Tiananmen Square. We tried to go to the place where they store Mao’s body, but it was closed for cleaning. We just assumed the forMAOldehyde was bad (insert dad dance here).