Someone Ate My Tofu at The Great Wall

A word of advice to future China travelers

1.     Avoid, if you can, transferring flights in non-english speaking airports between the hours of 8pm and 7am. There is no one around to help and the people that are around do not want to help and cannot help because they don’t know what you are asking.

   2. When traveling internationally, pack extra undergarments, necessary toiletries and enough clothes for 36 hours.

3.     Do not expect anyone to be helpful. You must make them want to help you for fear of the consequences if they do not. This may seem contradictory to westernized people, however in a land where yelling, pushing, talking over one another and frustration are apart of daily life, you must MAKE people want to help you.

4.     Prepare yourself months in advance to stop looking in the direction people point. Chinese people will point when you ask them a question and you will be tempted to look. Don’t. The direction they are pointing simply leads you to a place where someone else will point in another direction.  If you forget this rule then be prepared to be led into an endless labyrinth of blank stares with fingers at the end.  If you look back at the person who pointed they will either be gone, even less interested in helping you or completely ignore you.

5.     Prepare yourself to be ignored and not receive the answers you are looking for.

6.     Do not adhere to traditional manners that are deemed polite (i.e. queuing up and waiting your turn, waiting your turn to speak, using your inside voice, washing your hands, sitting upright at the dinner table, using any utensil if it is not chopsticks etc). Throw all of these out the window in China. Finishing school is useless here.

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After traveling for over 24 hours I arrive in Beijing without any trace of my luggage and a busy signal to my brother’s mobile. I put on a pleading face and China Eastern allowed me to sit in the back office of the luggage claim department until I was able to reach Andrew. When I finally did 2 hours later it was big brother to the rescue! Andrew illegally wiggled his way through the security in the landing neighboring terminal and came running up with his Superman shirt on (yes, seriously) demanding answers from the baggage department of China Eastern. He knows how to work it with the Chinese. After a sufficient amount of scaring them into helping us we left to start our adventure.  Please note we (meaning Andrew) called them every two hour for 36 hours until my luggage was found and returned to me.

 

Stop 1: Art District 789. A very alternative, industrial, artsy part of town with cafes, restaurants, over priced water bottles, art galleries, ice cream vendors, Chinese art hippies smoking cigarettes and shop after shop of trendy and useless things you would never use.  I loved this place. 

 

Stop 2: We went to the mini Silk Markets, which consist of a four story convention center sized building with nagging, demanding, smelly and semi-aggressive selling Chinese people requesting you purchase a fake Rolex, Toms, Gucci and Seven Jeans for a widely inflated price. Never buy anything you cant barter down at least 60%...this is Andrew’s rule and I like it. Andrew says always say “tai gui le”  (tie guay lu) literally meaning “too expensive” as soon as they offer a price.  Andrew walked away with a pair of Levis 501 Jeans for 100 RMB ($15 USD) and got them hemmed in three minutes for 10 RMB ($2 USD).

The next morning we were off to the Forbidden City and Great Wall with our private tour guy, Paul. He was very nice and explained all about these two amazing well-preserved historical places.

We walked the 1 K Forbidden City grounds and saw some of the 9,999,999.5 rooms that make up the palace innards. The Forbidden City is located in the center of Beijing and used to be the Imperial Palace of the Ming and Qing dynasties with a history dating back to BC. It is the grandest integral palace complex still remaining in China, so they so.

Masochistic and morbid Culture alert: We walked both the inside and the outside grounds and learned that women were not allowed outside the inner palace walls. In fact there are strategically placed boards on the walkways that act as a threshold to keep the women inside the walls because their dresses were long and tight and they were unable to move their legs high or long enough to get over these high doorsteps.  Apparently they are supposed to keep ghosts out as well because in China ghosts drag their feet and get stuck. Silly ghosts.

A quick snack, a nap and two hours North East we were at the entrance of the Great Wall at Mutianyu. We rode a cable car up the wall, which is where I got my boob grabbed by the guy trying to get me out of “harms way”, but really, there was no harm…he grabbed my boob. I told Andrew who said to me, “Oh! You got your tofu eaten!” Clearly I am not the first person this has happened to because there is a slang and culturally hysterical phrase to describe this assault. Strangers should not eat your tofu! Anways, we hiked a perpendicular uneven, stone stair case that we later danced our way down, took some great photos and then slid down on individual bobsled scooters. It was amazing!

Because we had little time in Beijing we decided to keep going and head to the Olympic Bird Nest Stadium and Swim Stadium where Michael Phelps won his Gold in 2008. Even though we couldn’t get inside the swimming stadium, we took pics outside and it was well worth it the trek it took to get there.

Later that night we met up with Andrew’s friends, ate pecking duck, lotus root soaked in picked beet root juice, some weird cold mashed potato things with raspberry jam, kale and apple pulp juice.  We ate until our bellies were full and then headed to some street near the Drum Tower. We went to a bar called The Temple, which was smokey, filled with expats and lined up was a Beatles cover band. We drank Tiger beer, danced, sang to Beatles music and socialized our way through the evening. Around one we were smoked out and ready to head home.

We walked for a bit and then realized we were more than 10 K away from our hotel and needed to hail a cab. The cabs were not interested in picking up foreigners; especially ones that didn’t want to pay an 100% inflated price for a 10 minute ride. Instead we decided to duck into Beetle Bar and have a mango smoothie to problem solve. Mango Smoothies will forever be referred to as problem solvers. 

 Without going into to too much unnecessary scary detail, we got back to our hotel that night an hour and a half after the consumption of our problem solver. It is not every paid scooter ride you get to visit the drivers humble abode, change the battery of the scooter you’re riding and wisk down the sholder of a freeway at 25 k/h (about 15miles/hour) in an unknown city.

China is a beautiful very populated place of dark headed people who seem to have never seen a blonde headed person in real life because I have never had my picture taken (both nonchalantly and obviously) so many times. Seriously, there have been a countless number of times that I have felt someone standing really close to me and then looked at the direction they were looking in to see a camera pointed at me instead of them! In an effort to be “polite” I have been asked to pose with Chinese girls…”ugh, hero, my girfriend would like picture wif you.” What can I say? No? I oblige. 

All in all China is awesome and traveling with my big brother who speaks the language is even more incredible! The food, history, architecture, mannerisms, relational interactions and norms, fashion, style, food, hygiene, customs, religion, way of life are all so different and interesting. If you haven’t been, please go. You will feel in awe once you get over feeling claustrophobic and a little dirty.