Trans - Siberian Part 2 - Beijing

Culture shock, wonderful wonderful culture shock.

Thursday the 6th of December 2012, 07:20 (GMT +8)

Beijing International Airport, China.

So I'm in China now, and its fantastic! I have no idea what is going on.  All the signs are unintelligible to me, the ticket machine for the train works along very basic lines but it is a huge thing.

The airport's terminal 3 I think is the biggest terminal in the world, and by god it feels like it.  Lots of unnecessarily large, wide, long corridors, the roof arching over a conveyor running along the middle.  Walking seemingly for an age before it wound off to passport control.  Along the way a few dour women were scattered about with no purpose but seemingly random jobs such as holding out a paper towel to passers by or some such impenetrable task 

Kinda like this, but not quite found it on the web

On the connecting train now. Very clean white walls, grey floor, fancy blue chairs with orange head cloth. Good.

At Passport control (itself a vast structure, twice the size of your regular car toll gate) the silent female passport official did her job efficiently and silently while a camera snuggled up close to my head, playing back my overtly tired expression to myself.  Right in front of me, mounted on the desk, was a little grey control panel with a digital numerical readout (approx 38865) and four buttons marked with smiley faces

 so you could instantly rate her performance. As she watched.  The number was the amount of people who had judged so far.  Peer pressure from invisible digital peers.

I had arrived in Beijing tired but excited.  My plan was to catch a train into the centre of the city, conceivably to a railway station, from where I would get a taxi to my hostel.  With this simple plan in mind I meandered off down to the train platform.  Wide platform.  Banner ads wasted on me in their beautiful curved symbols.  A train.

Dead Beijing

Beijing revealed itself to me in the grey of winter, and it was huge.  Sky scrapers stretching on and on, wired together by quiet monolithic motorways.  It was dawn, and yet there was no freshness in it.  More like Chernobyl then anything living. Maybe at other times this scrolling view presents a riot of colour: reds, pinks, blues, golden yellow but not at winter.  Chinese winter brooded at me.  Grey tower blocks, Soviet style, yet new.  Ugly yet up to date.  Motorways lined with trees with nary a leaf.  Cold and grey.  Dead.  The sky over exposed, light smearing through the dense grey infinity of smog. 

I breezed past and into the centre.  Peering out at the terrifying future.

As the train deposited me in the underground network rather then the central train station I revised my plan, scuttling off with my bag behind me on its wheels, trying to appear familiar with where I was.  Up stairs, round the corner, ticket machine.  I'd been warned queuing was not favoured by the Chinese as they prefer free for all scrums when it comes to train boarding, however, here at Dongzihmen station they had white lines painted on the floor so you knew where to queue for the approaching train.  Which was useful.  Also useful, if you felt in any way reluctant, where about 4 old ladies in uniform stationed about the platform.  Upon the arrival of the train they erupted into loud frantic Chinese cheerleading, or chicken herding possibly. Pushing and shoving at us featherless fowl, squeezing us onboard. Funny AND effective.

The train was packed.  I loomed above everyone studying the incomprehensible map above the door.  A flashing red dot marked where we were, but since I couldn't read the writing I still didn't know where we were.  Or what was going on really.  The news played on an LCD screen.  Bombastic music. A badly lit woman in uniform.  Very solemn.  Then shots of cars on a motorway driving in and out of yellow grey fog.

2 changes later, Tienanmen Dong station, up to the air of dubious quality, wrong side of the motorway from where I needed to be.  Sign language with an old man culminating in a thumbs up sent me back into the station and under the road, worrying as I scurried if a thumbs up was an offensive gesture in China. (its not)

According to my Lonely Planet guide my hostel was on the street running parallel to the Forbidden City. Beichizi street.  Peking International Youth Hostel.  I had a booking.  I was finding my way in a foreign city. I was entertained and happy despite not having slept in 2 days. Joyous really.  This state of euphoria slowly drifted away as the day wore on.

The street my hostel WASN'T on

First off, my hostel wasn't on the street anymore.  I did not know this.  So up and down along it I walked.  Trundling along.  Leaking enthusiasm like a leaky bottle of a mythical soft drink called 'enthusiasm'.  Scanning and rescanning the mysterious doorways for some sign of something.  Grey Grey Grey.

About an hour of trundling later a dark red mechanical bicycle rickshaw pulled up.  Peddled by an old man, maybe 68 or so. 

Now at this point, on top of being tired, I was cold, very very cold.  Like a sorta deadly cold. Dry Cold, the tang of the air made it feel like one was being irradiated slowly, or like your jaw is having concrete injected into it.  Of course you didn't feel any of this while you were moving, yet the moment you stop you notice that you've lost all feeling in your nose and jaw, the jaw had by this stage started to jam and so by the time rickshaw man had pulled up it seemed my voice had lost about 40 IQ points.

So via slurred speech, sign language, and emphatic words in two totally different languages we communicated, he indicated that the hostel had moved (Truth it turned out, although he definitely thought he was lying) and that he could take me to it.

I knew he was lying, I knew it was a scam.  But I was tired and cold and ready to give up, so I asked how much , he stuck up three fingers, and in I hopped, balancing my bag between my legs on the porous bench.  Off we huffed, up the street, right into a freeway, ignoring, like all traffic in Beijing, the well marked traffic systems.  Up the wrong side of the road and side swiping freight trucks and buses. Huff huff huff the old man pedaled on before me.  I felt a weary sort of annoyance with the situation.  And, after a bit of clinging onto my fedora in the freezing cold, I came to my senses.

"Stop, too far, TOO far, STOP NOW" "Hey, I said STOP" 'This is too FAR""TOO FAR" bold words indeed.  That weird dominant staccato tourists use when they want to be thought as being filled with certainty, a paternal commanding tone.  It says: I know what I'm talking about.  And is always a lie.

"Close! Close!" he said enigmatically.  "NO! STOP!"  "Five minute!" he said, pointing vaguely.

Then a right, and into a little alley.  "Five minute walk" he indicated down the alley.

This was also a lie. Which I called him on, but not before he produced a card with 300 yuan written on it.   I was incredulous.  But very entertained, which took him aback a bit.   I just refused and laughed, laughed and laughed and laughed.  Unexpectedly I'd missed people I didn't understand trying to rip me off.  It was somehow comforting I think.  He made noises to indicate how tired he was.  But he'd taken me literally nowhere, and now was trying to charge me a good 3 days spending money.  I protested that "I am not an idiot" (which I am not) that I was not giving him the money, (which I did not) he kept on miming the difficulty of cycling to this mysterious spot, and on and on until eventually I gave him the smallest note in my wallet, a 20 yuan note, and off he went, huffing and puffing and whimpering, it was really funny.

But of course I had no idea where I was.  I crossed a road and wandered south.  I said "Jesus Christ" alot, to myself.  What to do? Walk back the way I'd come to that impossibly frustrating road?  Head North?  East?  West?  I chose the first.  Maybe, despite my hour of searching, the hostel was on that street after all.

10 minutes of walking later I tried to flag down a taxi, crossed the grey bicycle lane, stuck out my hand.  Nope.  Nothing.  What to do? What to do? Quite tired.

Somewhat impossibly then, I came across a sign that seemed to indicate my hostel, pointing down a hutong, the traditional alleyways of Beijing that have been mostly destroyed by modern developments.  It turned out to be an outpost of the same hostelling chain with whom I had booked.  But still the wrong one.  I didn't get to go inside, I imagine I wouldn't have had the heart to leave again, luckily a woman giving directions to two blonde tourists did the same for me.  I'd have to get a tube for a bit then catch a bus.  Hope! Faraway Hope! Brief surge of energy!  I headed back out the Hutong, up to the corner and down into the station.

Here, like in all underground stations in Beijing, my bags were x ray scanned by bored bemused women.  I looked at the map, but, as near as I could figure, the she station I was at was as close a station I was going to get.  My hostel, and indeed its touristy street appeared to lie in a tube blind spot.  So I stood and stared confused and tired a while before going back to the street.

Crossed a road.  Bus stop.  Everyone had tickets they presented to the driver.  I didn't have one.  Didn't know where to get one.  So down the grey motorway I trekked.  Right hand side.

The pavement was clean, very very clean, I've never seen so many hi-vis vest wearing community service workers sweeping.  Not even gravel remained, no stones to throw, no sticks to whittle.  Yet, clean as it was, it wasn't pretty.  It was all pored concrete, pored, then dug into, repoured, dug into again, repoured, a kaleidoscope of re cementing jobs, pock marks, pot holes, debris piles cemented down.  Grey Grey Grey.  The buildings too, poured concrete. Grey. Most were fairly basic structures, though some appeared to be poured concrete versions of what one would imagine to be 'traditional Chinese structures'  most of these fakes were still under construction as I tiredly trundled past.  One got the sense they were there for the tourists.  Heritage makes money.  We now officially regret destroying it. A recreation is the same thing, isn't it?

No China.  Its not. 

Lots of concrete Chinese dragons too, just plopped down on the ground outside the majority of shops.  As though some higher up was told China wasn't Chinese enough and bought the bloody cheap looking colourless things in bulk. Scattered them about as if the whole country was going to fancy dress as itself. Look! We're China! See! Dragons!  Like in China!  CHINA! CHINA!! CHINA!!! 

According to my map the street I was looking for was the second on the right. 

First right; a rather wide busy road.  I found myself running across with a blonde American family, mother and three kids, holding hands, mother duck and her ducklings. 

Rather large gap, no turn offs, suspiciously large gap.  Massive construction site with what looked like freight loading cranes poking their struts over the hoarding.  On to the second right.  But it was wrong.  The angle was wrong. 

So I went back.  Maybe I missed it.  Nothing.  Back again.   Nothing.  I stopped in front of the building site.  Flummoxed.  It had been 4 hours now since I had left the underground station. 

Suffice to say I was somewhat demoralised.

Right next to me was a road bordered with red hoardings, 12 feet high, winding its way round to the right, seemingly into the building site.  As I was standing there by chance, and as I was staring into the distance, in the general direction of this road, I noticed an old woman wheeling a bicycle and carrying a plastic bag full of oranges.  She wheeled out of this 'site' past me.  Next, a mother with some children.  Then some fashionable youngsters.  Odd.

So in I went.

As you've no doubt guessed, the Chinese government had, naturally, decided to build some sort of freight loading depot right across the front of one of their major tourist streets.

The little road wound around the site, to the right, then back to the left, twisting lazily, and then emerged into a modern 'traditional' looking street. 

And then, blessedly, there was my hostel.

In the door I fell.  I couldn't talk.  So cold and clamped was my jaw.  "AI Ave a 'ooum ' bhooked'  ' Ahn ooum!' I slurred at the slightly scared looking receptionist, who, miraculously understood me and led me to a clean, white, heavenly dorm room.  Two bunks, 4 singles, 2 Germans.  I scared them with my blurred mostly incoherent though comical introductions then fell into my bunk.  Top bunk.  Don't know why.  Instant sleep,

Few days will last as many words as this one just did!

And its not even over yet!!