Beijing

In my recent imagination, Beijing means two things, pollution and the Olympics. If I dig a little further, I am reminded of the historic events of Tiananmen Square. Students, demonstrations, tanks, an insurrection put down? The historical significance of the event hasn’t been largely explored by myself, despite a cursory exploration of the life of Mao Zedong, the Gang of Four, and the open market reforms of Ding Xiaoping. Probably as China intended it.

Flying over Beijing, my initial impression is… Pollution. Beijing might be a huge metropolis, but it’s never terribly evident, as it’s shrouded in a perpetual wall of grey particulate matter, whether seen from the air or any vantage point from the ground. From the air however, Beijing also resembles an amateur, or a highly skilled zoning engineer playing Sim City. Dense commercial and residential compounds, identical in architecture, compacting a several block square zone. Urban landscaping seems to be an entirely secondary consideration to building en masse.

Beijing International is both awe inspiring and a disappointment after Inchon International. The airport complex is huge, sprawling, majestic in its scope, whereas Inchon is a spectacle from top to bottom, Beijing International’s attention to detail seems to be relatively lacking. Already moving walkways look worn, and while clean and modern, it lacks the ultra modern feel of Inchon International. The air is thick with acrid smell of sewage, diesel, and something else that I can’t place, but can only describe at this point as rubber curing?

Here again are the quarantine checkpoints, basic temperature cameras, nothing like the full color infrared cams that adorn Inchon International. An army of attendants and airport personnel swarm about the building, but unlike Inchon, they are all in some kind of police or military uniform, their rank in the system plainly adorned so all can see. Though Beijing has not made any moves to to restrict my freedom, you can already understand the label “police state”.

I emerge from customs; my tour instructions say to look for an english speaking guide that’s attached to our party, and get directed to our hotel. 20 minutes of fruitless searching reveals nothing. It becomes apparent that this leg of the journey will have to be attempted alone. Change the bills to yuan, rmb (I still don’t have a clue what rmb means.) and note with disgust that the 100 yuan notes are wider then my wallet, sticking out so any their could identify the high denominations in an instant. Suddenly the larger sized wallets I saw at REI make a bit more sense. Off to hail a cab.

And here’s where things suddenly get difficult. The airport might have been wonderfully bilingual, the cab drivers, not so much. I approach a friendly looking driver who waves me away when it the gibberish that is english reaches his ears, instead I turn to a unfriendly looking fellow, wiping down his volkswagen (rabbit? I dunno, but it’s small). When I approach, I point to my hotel address, which has some chinese characters next to it that he apparently understands. He nods curtly and off we go.

Chinese drivers seem to have relatively little concept of traffic laws. Or if they do, it is an emerging concept, like a silkworm grub, new to the world. Although I’m hardly alarmed, I am somewhat surprised at how smoothly the chaotic driving style seems to work. Lane changes without turn signals, cutting in front of cars with centimeters to spare, drifting in and out of lanes like water down a lazy brook.

From the highways, Beijing seems large, but from the pollution, it is again, hard to get a real impression of the full scope of the city. Perhaps it is because it is Sunday, but I am surprised at how little auto traffic there is in this city that is roughly the scale and scope of LA.

Modern high rises stand in stark contrast to brick and concrete slums, with hardly inches separating the two. Certainly the Chinese seem to have a largely non-existent concept of gentrification. A couple of turns, and I go through a district that is plainly touristy in nature, with english abounding amongst the chinese characters, and suddenly we’re at the hotel.

I pay the driver with little fanfare, the travel program indicated that the cab fare will run between $15 and $20. My receipt from the cabbie tells me nothing, so I hand over the RMB equivalent of $20 and he nods satisfied. Checkin is uneventful. The hotel is the Crown Plaza, a hotel that looks strikingly familiar to the hotel I stayed in in Austin almost a decade ago for the Future Business Leaders of America conference. That is to say, the hotel feels tailored to the business crowd as opposed to the tourist crowd.

The room is very nice, if a bit worn at the edges. The beds are low, the pantry stocked with… Personal gas masks to be used in case of fire? Hmm… Fascinating. A quick shower to wash off 32 hours of travel stink, and I am finally feeling decent enough to explore the unknown outside the hotel.

The Hotel is in the downtown tourist district, and I dart into a couple of shops, trying to escape the oppressive heat and pollution that bears down like an over attentive parent. Usually I’m eager to explore the outdoor venues, but the pollution ruins any picturesque landscapes, and the heat saps my enthusiasm quickly. I dart into a couple of shops where eager shop girls take advantage to hawk their wares to me, I take advantage of their poor english and my poor chinese to beg off their insistence.

I wander deeper into an indoor mall complex, hunting a food quart, looking for english characters. Rock dust chokes a section of the food quart, and I retreat to a thai restaurant that looks relatively friendly. The spring rolls have pungent herbs, but they are almost entirely vegetable in content. The pineapple fried rice has dried shrimp as its only excuse for meat, the entire meal costs nearly $20. I shake my head in disgust, the tourist trap I’m in is ridiculous, lousy quality food, exorbitant prices, even by my sticker shocked Los Angeles based palette.

I wander the mall after lunch, making my way up and towards outside, which I rather loath, but am anxious to return to to cover more ground. Somewhere in the background, someone is calling. “Excuse me! Excuse me!”

More insistently, “Excuse me! Do you speak english?”

A rather unassuming girl arrests my progress towards the exit.

“Yeessss.” I answer hesitatingly.

“Oh Good! I would love to practice my english, do you mind? Where are you from?”

And so begins a conversation that flits from topic to topic comparing and contrasting the US and China. A few minutes into the conversation, she asks if I’d perhaps like to join her for some tea while we continued such an interesting conversation. Tea sounds harmless enough, and I rapidly agree.

As we continue are conversation, she leads me out an exit I don’t recognize, down alleys and backstreets, a twist here, a turn there, deeper into the belly of the city, her conversation distracting me from recognizing any landmarks, or marking them for future reference, all too swiftly, I lose my bearings within the city. We stop in front of a somewhat seedy looking hotel, and go up to a lounge/restaurant looking establishment, there is no one inside, except for the bouncer who grins at me a little too nicely. In the empty lounge, I suddenly get the feeling that I’m a john being led somewhere by a prostitute and that bouncer knows all too well what men come here for. My spider sense comes alive, and I settle somewhat uncomfortably in the booth across from my talkative companion. She orders for us, and some tea comes out in a glass pot with two small glass cups.

“Good tea” she says as she pours the liquid into the dainty glasses. She’s sloppy however, and spills this good tea all over the table; to my unrefined pallette, the tea tastes like a whole bunch of unimpressive. We toast, and a platter of watermelon and nuts comes out for us to nibble on while she talks.

She’s 21 supposedly, teaching in an elementary school; her family lives in some smaller town to the northwest of Beijing, she works in the city and sends money back to her parents. Though the conversation is innocuous enough, I cannot shake my feeling of unease.

“Wine?” She asks. I beg off, I’m exhausted, I’m now 34 hours up with only minor naps on the plane to break my day up, and it’s starting to hit hard. The uneasiness has been growing, and I get a growing sense that I want out of this place, and that I must end this as gracefully as possible.

But she won’t take no for an answer, and makes me agree to “just one glass” She however drowns three glasses of the uninspired pap that passes for wine at this establishment. My palette knows nothing about wine, and yet it remembers boxed wine being of better quality than this drivel I’m pouring down my gullet. Finally, I insist on returning to my hotel, explaining that I am exhausted beyond belief.

She agrees, and motions for the check, which she hands to me. The waitress calculates the total, and shows me the yuan I’ve spent. $2400. My mind fuzzily tries to do the math, somewhere between $200 and $500 US??? $320 she politely informs me, my indredulous eyes flit between my conversation partner, and the waitress, and finally the the bouncer, who is suddenly regarding me with a particular new found entrance. The back of my neck flares as I realize I’ve been had.

Wordlessly I pay the tab, and the bouncer grins at me as he shows me and my companion out. Some number of blocks later, we’re back amongst major streets heading back towards my hotel, and I am desperately trying to shake my tea companion.

“It’s my day off! We should go to a bar!” She exclaims as we walk by one at 4:30 in the afternoon. Nope, I reply, I’m exhausted, and it’s straight to bed for me. Well I must give her my room number so she can buzz me later, check on me if I’m inclined to go partying later! I pass her a non existent number and flee.

In my apartment, I shake my head at how easily I got suckered into the “best tea in China!” and crash into my bed, desperate to put space between myself and the recent embarrassment.

I’m awakened a couple of hours later by my assigned roommate for our journey. He introduces himself as James, and quickly we establish each other’s careers (he’s with Doctor’s Without Borders) and backgrounds (military brat from Pittsburg).

Being a military brat myself, I quickly warm up to him and reveal my recent foibles involving girls that like to practice english. He laughs knowingly, “you’ve been had, best you forget about it.” He encourages me to get out of bed and go exploring the city with him, explaining that if I go to sleep now, the jet lag will play all sorts of havoc later in the evening. I agree, and we set out to see the downtown area at night.

Tienmen Square is a bustle of activity and noise, the Forbidden Palace lit brilliantly. Preparations for the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China are underway which will take place October 1st. The evening is a blur of lights and streets with underground crosswalks that James informs me just a few years earlier would have been packed with pirated DVD vendors. Recent crackdowns, and probably a drift towards downloadable content over physical media, means that the underground crosswalks bear witness only to the odd beggar or two.

FInally, after a large circuit of the official buildings in the immediate region, we turn back towards our hotel. A block away and then suddenly a voice that deflates my evening in an instant.

“Heeeyyy! I checked the hotel! But they said you weren’t in! You up to go partying now?” The girl from the most expensive tea in the world has somehow found me again in a city of over 17 million, and she’s brought friends.

James notices my deflation. “This her?” he murmurs.

I nod.

“Scuse me miss, I hear you sold my friend here $300 tea! Now he’s new to Beijing, but I’m not, and you and I know both know you just pulled off a nice scam.”

The girl is suddenly puzzled. “Best tea in China.”

James grins tightly, “I’m sure, however, I think we should discuss this with a policeman, see if we can figure this out.”

The girl’s face is a mask of confusion. “Excuse me?”

“Suddenly your english isn’t so good is it?” James asks pointedly.

“We come to party, it was good tea.” The girl insists looking at me for support.

James looks back at me, “I don’t think my friend is interested in partying or any more of your tea, right?”

I nod numbly.

“Right, so we could either discuss this with the policeman, or you and your friends can get lost.”

The back and forth continues a couple more rounds, with the girl lapsing into chinese with her friends, finally they back off and flee, but not before the girl calls over her shoulder “I’ll call on you tomorrow!”

“Please don’t,” I mumble at their receding backs.

“C’mon, it’s late, time to turn in. Debriefing is tomorrow.” I nod in agreement, and fall into troubled sleep, unimpressed with how thoroughly I’ve been swindled less then 3 hours into my first foray into a foreign country.