Almost a month ago now I visited China for several days. The following is a stream of conciousness retelling of that visit and my thoughts during and after.
China is awesome. Not in the new use of the word, denoting high fives and cheers, but in the original sense, of inspiring awe. Every single historical aspect of china could only be described as epic. That said, i kinda despise China.
We got into the airport at around 9 pm. Trained our way from the airport to the city. Nothing special about that. We had taken the subway from Seoul out to the international airport. However, right off the bat something was different. That something was cleanliness. All joking aside the subway was damn dirty, dirt literally piled up in the seats and hair and dirt in the aisles. It was rather surreal actually after the cleanliness of Seoul subways. As you'll see as you continue to read, this trend toward comparisons was prevalent during the trip and also common place amongst other travelers.
Walking out of the subway at 10 pm we thought we were doing good, we had a map with chinese instructions (supposedly clear), phone numbers and cost estimates for a taxi. Immediately upon exiting the subway we ran into our first major obstacle. third world taxi predators preying on tourists. We were given clear instructions both by the hostel owner AND the guide book that he price was to be 30 yuan. Sitting outside the station was a number of taxi drivers, all looking old and shabby, who demanded 100 yuan and wouldn't go lower. Quite frankly I would have spit in their face only I was revulted by the image of them spitting back in mine (third world hygiene and all). As you can see, my initial impression (and post) was not postive. To be fair a uniformed lady was incredibly helpful in flagging down, and negotiating with a legitimate taxi. I was quite surprised by the proficiency of her english which (again will be discussed further on) was not quite as shocking as i would have thought from the guide books dire warnings.
So were in the taxi going to our hostel. The thing to remember through this story is that we went during Red China's 60th anniversary. So they had EVERYTHING locked down around the cultural sites (eg the forbidden) which was a five minute walk from our hostel and thus also locked down from traffic. The reason being the threat of terrorism from tibetans, uighurs, repressed religious minorities or just the crazies. However, our taxi driver is pretty great and takes care of us and calls our hostel lady and we meet up and walk to the hostel. I attempt to speak some chinese (while looking at the words in book) and come up short. That's after two years of taking chinese in college. ah well, blow it.
Now the hostel is sweet, real sweet, go to my facebook profile and follow along in the pictures. The hostel was just hella awesome. I'd almost call trendy except it wasn't, it was just super cool.
Day 1: Forbidden City, Tianamen Square, Temple of Heaven (are you following in the pictures?). We got up pretty early, for us, and had a nice little english breakfast and headed out to see the forbidden city. We were slightly nervous but it turned out that it was pretty easy to find the forbidden city as, again, we were five minutes north of it by foot. On our way there we watched an epic fight in broken english between a chinese hotel clerk and a portuguese bitch over 2 yuan worth of water. Semi-tragic comedy in terms of the human race that was. The forbidden city wa s just epic. I will allow you to explore the pictures. We literally spent the entire morning in there and probably only saw half of it, maybe only a quarter. I think you could fit all the palaces in all of korea into the forbidden city. it's just that big. tianamen square was a bit of a let down as it was PACKED with tourists (han version) but we did get to see the portrait of mao and snap a shot of the meridian gates which wouldn't have been allowed until recently. One thing to mention is that most of the sites in tianamen were shut down, and just getting into the square was a bit of a fight. alright, i'm going to move on the great wall.
HOLY FUCKING SHIT THE GREAT WALL OF FUCKING CHINA! we decided (by which i mean i decided) to do the Wild Tour up in the simatai jinshanling section. Its a 10 km hike up and down steep sections of the wall which is crumbling in some parts. It was AWESOME for the first 2.5 hours. But the second 2.5 hours I began to truly hate china, mongolians and the wall. Why mongolians? Well because the descendants of mongolians make their living selling cheap tshirts and water and snack along the wall. they are literally posted at every watch tower because they know that eventually we fat whities will break and pay for it. I broke. Twice. But i also got an awesome revolutionary style picture and screamed obscenities off the wall southpark style. Oh yes, there's video. To FB! Finishing the great wall was pretty amazing. I think i used half my camera's memory on it. it really is an incredible engineering feat but the entire time i was there i was thinking about what it would have been like to have actually been posted there as a soldier. Imagine being illiterate, uneducated, poor and hungry, pressed into the army at the age of 16 and shipped to this god forsaken wilderness. Daily you stare out over the mountain ranges with the real possibility that raiders on horses could come pouring through the passes. In the winter you have next to no shelter and you have to walk up and down the sections of wall in sleet and hail. Fuck...that... so yea, yay for being born american in the 20th century. wooh!
Day 3 saw me almost decide nuking china was necessary. We went to the zoo. I should have known better. You don't go to zoo's in a country wherethe people still happily butcher it's occupants for medicines and food and or the hell of it. Anyways, we saw pandas' and bought some stuff and were walking around and then we went to the big cats cages. all throughout the cages were waterbottles. what were waterbottles doing in the cages? Motherfucking ignorant ass hick chinese people decided it was a good idea to throw their waterbottles at these caged animals so that they would move and entertain them. no seriously, i wanted to throw one of them in. We left then. Fuck you china, i will always remember how god awful you are. This kinda soured the trip for me. honestly, treatment of animals isn't a HUGE issue of mine. I don't mind using animals in the laboratory for instance, i prefer it to humans. But at the same time I don't abide by unnecessary wanton animal cruelty, and quite frankly I'd be happy to put a bullet in the head of anyone that would mistreat an animal, just as i would someone who would abuse a child. I firmly believe that the way you treat an animal is the way you would treat others if you could get away with it. We'll discuss the incredibly bizarre way koreans treat animals in another post. it's not awful like the chinese, it's just...emasculating is the closest word i can think of.
well that's pretty much all i wanna talk about. We went to the summer palace but it was basically a theme park selling crap whichwas kind of a let down. Oh also we watched some kid take a crap in the woods in front of everyone. that's common in China by the way, at least he was in the trees and not in the bus or subway, which does happen. I'm leaving out a lot actually. Let me briefly mention the food. The food was literally exactly like american cheap chinese food, only the quality wasn't as good. I shit you not you could taste the same flavors. Did you know that asians' identify a 5th root taste (other than salty, sour etc)? they call it unami, which means savory. Basically in china that means the taste of MSG, which is in EVERYTHING. Compared to korean food (so bizarre to say this) it was absolute shite. the best meal we had was the 80 yuan peking duck. the second best meal we had was a 10 yuan hamburger from mcdonalds. That was the first mcdonalds i'd had in 5 years. it'll probably be another 5 years before i have another. sigh. such a disappointment in terms of food. Oh the last thing was language. Everyone seemed to speak english. I got our asses lost the first night trying to walk around the forbidden city (I wasn't actually lost, i just underestimated how colossal the city was) and some random dude came up and started speaking english. He was a middle school teacher like me and he taught himself english by listening to the radio, which is actually a fairly common way for chinese people to learn english believe it or not. Everyone we asked for help knew enough english, and spoke clearly enough, for us to easily understand. it was brilliant and unexpected and made life a lot less stressful than it could have been.
Final thoughts? the sites are definitely worth seeing (not getting into the amount of abuse of common labor and imperialism necessary to create such monuments both in china and all other such nations), and i have to say i recommend visiting if you can, but you have to remember that it's still basically a developing nation with customs and attitudes that are entirely different from our own (especially MY own). the people were average, some very friendly, some certainly not, most ignored us, just like all humans everywhere. I'm glad I visited, now I can say I saw it and never have to visit again.
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China is awesome. Not in the new use of the word, denoting high fives and cheers, but in the original sense, of inspiring awe. Every single historical aspect of china could only be described as epic. That said, i kinda despise China.
We got into the airport at around 9 pm. Trained our way from the airport to the city. Nothing special about that. We had taken the subway from Seoul out to the international airport. However, right off the bat something was different. That something was cleanliness. All joking aside the subway was damn dirty, dirt literally piled up in the seats and hair and dirt in the aisles. It was rather surreal actually after the cleanliness of Seoul subways. As you'll see as you continue to read, this trend toward comparisons was prevalent during the trip and also common place amongst other travelers.
Walking out of the subway at 10 pm we thought we were doing good, we had a map with chinese instructions (supposedly clear), phone numbers and cost estimates for a taxi. Immediately upon exiting the subway we ran into our first major obstacle. third world taxi predators preying on tourists. We were given clear instructions both by the hostel owner AND the guide book that he price was to be 30 yuan. Sitting outside the station was a number of taxi drivers, all looking old and shabby, who demanded 100 yuan and wouldn't go lower. Quite frankly I would have spit in their face only I was revulted by the image of them spitting back in mine (third world hygiene and all). As you can see, my initial impression (and post) was not postive. To be fair a uniformed lady was incredibly helpful in flagging down, and negotiating with a legitimate taxi. I was quite surprised by the proficiency of her english which (again will be discussed further on) was not quite as shocking as i would have thought from the guide books dire warnings.
So were in the taxi going to our hostel. The thing to remember through this story is that we went during Red China's 60th anniversary. So they had EVERYTHING locked down around the cultural sites (eg the forbidden) which was a five minute walk from our hostel and thus also locked down from traffic. The reason being the threat of terrorism from tibetans, uighurs, repressed religious minorities or just the crazies. However, our taxi driver is pretty great and takes care of us and calls our hostel lady and we meet up and walk to the hostel. I attempt to speak some chinese (while looking at the words in book) and come up short. That's after two years of taking chinese in college. ah well, blow it.
Now the hostel is sweet, real sweet, go to my facebook profile and follow along in the pictures. The hostel was just hella awesome. I'd almost call trendy except it wasn't, it was just super cool.
Day 1: Forbidden City, Tianamen Square, Temple of Heaven (are you following in the pictures?). We got up pretty early, for us, and had a nice little english breakfast and headed out to see the forbidden city. We were slightly nervous but it turned out that it was pretty easy to find the forbidden city as, again, we were five minutes north of it by foot. On our way there we watched an epic fight in broken english between a chinese hotel clerk and a portuguese bitch over 2 yuan worth of water. Semi-tragic comedy in terms of the human race that was. The forbidden city wa s just epic. I will allow you to explore the pictures. We literally spent the entire morning in there and probably only saw half of it, maybe only a quarter. I think you could fit all the palaces in all of korea into the forbidden city. it's just that big. tianamen square was a bit of a let down as it was PACKED with tourists (han version) but we did get to see the portrait of mao and snap a shot of the meridian gates which wouldn't have been allowed until recently. One thing to mention is that most of the sites in tianamen were shut down, and just getting into the square was a bit of a fight. alright, i'm going to move on the great wall.
HOLY FUCKING SHIT THE GREAT WALL OF FUCKING CHINA! we decided (by which i mean i decided) to do the Wild Tour up in the simatai jinshanling section. Its a 10 km hike up and down steep sections of the wall which is crumbling in some parts. It was AWESOME for the first 2.5 hours. But the second 2.5 hours I began to truly hate china, mongolians and the wall. Why mongolians? Well because the descendants of mongolians make their living selling cheap tshirts and water and snack along the wall. they are literally posted at every watch tower because they know that eventually we fat whities will break and pay for it. I broke. Twice. But i also got an awesome revolutionary style picture and screamed obscenities off the wall southpark style. Oh yes, there's video. To FB! Finishing the great wall was pretty amazing. I think i used half my camera's memory on it. it really is an incredible engineering feat but the entire time i was there i was thinking about what it would have been like to have actually been posted there as a soldier. Imagine being illiterate, uneducated, poor and hungry, pressed into the army at the age of 16 and shipped to this god forsaken wilderness. Daily you stare out over the mountain ranges with the real possibility that raiders on horses could come pouring through the passes. In the winter you have next to no shelter and you have to walk up and down the sections of wall in sleet and hail. Fuck...that... so yea, yay for being born american in the 20th century. wooh!
Day 3 saw me almost decide nuking china was necessary. We went to the zoo. I should have known better. You don't go to zoo's in a country wherethe people still happily butcher it's occupants for medicines and food and or the hell of it. Anyways, we saw pandas' and bought some stuff and were walking around and then we went to the big cats cages. all throughout the cages were waterbottles. what were waterbottles doing in the cages? Motherfucking ignorant ass hick chinese people decided it was a good idea to throw their waterbottles at these caged animals so that they would move and entertain them. no seriously, i wanted to throw one of them in. We left then. Fuck you china, i will always remember how god awful you are. This kinda soured the trip for me. honestly, treatment of animals isn't a HUGE issue of mine. I don't mind using animals in the laboratory for instance, i prefer it to humans. But at the same time I don't abide by unnecessary wanton animal cruelty, and quite frankly I'd be happy to put a bullet in the head of anyone that would mistreat an animal, just as i would someone who would abuse a child. I firmly believe that the way you treat an animal is the way you would treat others if you could get away with it. We'll discuss the incredibly bizarre way koreans treat animals in another post. it's not awful like the chinese, it's just...emasculating is the closest word i can think of.
well that's pretty much all i wanna talk about. We went to the summer palace but it was basically a theme park selling crap whichwas kind of a let down. Oh also we watched some kid take a crap in the woods in front of everyone. that's common in China by the way, at least he was in the trees and not in the bus or subway, which does happen. I'm leaving out a lot actually. Let me briefly mention the food. The food was literally exactly like american cheap chinese food, only the quality wasn't as good. I shit you not you could taste the same flavors. Did you know that asians' identify a 5th root taste (other than salty, sour etc)? they call it unami, which means savory. Basically in china that means the taste of MSG, which is in EVERYTHING. Compared to korean food (so bizarre to say this) it was absolute shite. the best meal we had was the 80 yuan peking duck. the second best meal we had was a 10 yuan hamburger from mcdonalds. That was the first mcdonalds i'd had in 5 years. it'll probably be another 5 years before i have another. sigh. such a disappointment in terms of food. Oh the last thing was language. Everyone seemed to speak english. I got our asses lost the first night trying to walk around the forbidden city (I wasn't actually lost, i just underestimated how colossal the city was) and some random dude came up and started speaking english. He was a middle school teacher like me and he taught himself english by listening to the radio, which is actually a fairly common way for chinese people to learn english believe it or not. Everyone we asked for help knew enough english, and spoke clearly enough, for us to easily understand. it was brilliant and unexpected and made life a lot less stressful than it could have been.
Final thoughts? the sites are definitely worth seeing (not getting into the amount of abuse of common labor and imperialism necessary to create such monuments both in china and all other such nations), and i have to say i recommend visiting if you can, but you have to remember that it's still basically a developing nation with customs and attitudes that are entirely different from our own (especially MY own). the people were average, some very friendly, some certainly not, most ignored us, just like all humans everywhere. I'm glad I visited, now I can say I saw it and never have to visit again.
