I did not feel the earthquake here, but am looking out for news regarding who will be affected by the ensuing tsunami. I will be traveling to Malaysia and Indonesia in a weeks time, so I’ll have to wait and see what ends up happening.
Jinshanling – The Great Wall of China
Jinshanling is a section of the Great Wall located in the mountains in Ruanping county, which it about 120km northeast of Beijing. This meant leaving the hostel around 6am in order to avoid the traffic while exiting the city in order to get to the wall in reasonable time. This section of the wall is connected with the Simatai section, and it is usually possible to walk from Jinshanling to Simatai; however, at the moment Simatai is closed for reconstruction. That said, we were able to walk a fair distance towards Simatai, and as we did the wall deteriorates towards its natural state and becomes less reconstructed. The Jinshanling portion of the wall was built around 1570 during the Ming Dynasty, is 10.5 km long, and has 5 passes, 67 towers and 2 beacon towers. The group definitely got its day workout by trekking along the wall.
Highlights from Beijing
The Forbidden City was the Chinese palace between the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Although it served as the home to the emperors during these periods, it seemed to lack a homeliness with its vast open spaces and elaborate structures. That said, it was still marvelously detailed and colorful.
Tiananmen Square more than anything is an historical place. Unfortunately, the large concrete field that comprises the square almost pales in comparison to everything that has happened there. From government demonstrations of power to citizen protests, this square has been a central part of Chinese political history.
Old Beijing Street is relatively new, but is meant to represent how a shopping area might look in times past. The Starbucks and Haagen-Dazs ice cream may take away a little from the authenticity, but even these modern shops are set in themed buildings.
Jingshan park, located just north of the Forbidden City offers a fun hike to the top of the city to get an appreciation of the vastness and the layout of Beijing.
The Summer Palace was probably one of my favorite spots in Beijing, and not only because I got to dress up like a king. It is set next to a beautiful lake and both the serenity of the nature it is near along with the grandeur of towering Chinese palaces. It was nice to stroll through the palace and next to the lake.
The Temple of Heaven, a place used for worship, again is comprised of awe-inspiring structures laid out in a very methodical manner. And again, similar to the Summer Palace, the Temple of Heaven is surrounded by thousands of trees.
Beijing Pharmacy Experience
When wondering through the old parts of Beijing, I came across a beautiful Chinese “pharmacy”. I placed the word pharmacy in quotes because I would have been hard pressed to find Advil, Tylenol and multi-vitamins. Instead, in this multi-storied building, I found things like flying squirrel feces, rhinoceros horns, snake oils, and turtle shells. I witnessed medicines made from insects, made from fungi, and made from plants. All these medicines, including those only made from plants, came with a high price tag either because of the age of the plant or the care the plant received. There was even a thousand dollar ginseng root. In addition, each medicine served a different purpose from aiding with kidney problems to liver problems to indigestion to sexual dysfunction.
The outside of the pharmacy:
I am not about to discuss the merits of eastern versus western medical beliefs; however, being that I am in Beijing, I wanted to learn and begin to understand some of the basic tenants of eastern medicine. Eastern medicine is based a lot on traditional religious ideas of balance and opposites—yin and yang. Stemming from this, illness then derives from an imbalance, either between competing body systems or between the body and its environment. Furthermore, these eastern medicines can help bring the various body systems into better balance.
Having studied biology at school, I am one who always wants to see evidence for any claim, but in this case, although the westernized explanation for why a specific remedy works may not be available, there is at least some empirical evidence that these medicines work. Chinese medicine has changed little since antiquity and has been improving the lives of people which it has treated throughout its tenure. Also, there are many examples of westerners finding a more scientific explanation to why certain eastern medicines function as they do. All in all, it was an eye-opening experience to walk through this eastern pharmacy in the heart of Beijing.
Beijing Qingfeng-Xisi Hutong Guest House
Located at No. 58 Xisi bei wu tiao Hutong (no.58 Xisi North 5th Alley) Xicheng District, this hostel has been an additive experience to my stay in Beijing. Although I arrived the first morning before 7am in the morning and clearly woke up the people who manage the hostel, they were still so nice and accommodating. Not only was their spoken English so welcome, but their demeanor and helpfulness made me feel so much better after having just arrived in this new place. I should probably place such a review on yelp or tripadvisor, but for now, it will remain as a memory to me of how wonderful the staff was.
The front door of the hostel:
Although the inexpensiveness of a hostel is appealing enough to make me want to stay at one, the atmosphere and the camaraderie shared at most hostels was also a strong pull being a solo traveler. In the morning before I even settled in, I met Mike from Montreal who was consulting in the Chinese space program. As a gift from them, he received a model Chinese space rocket, which was very impressive. He told me where a couple good food spots were and how to get around. After meeting Mike, I had the confidence to go check out some of the sites that Beijing had to offer.
Later that day in the evening, the guest house taught us how to make dumplings. Not only was this a valuable cooking lesson, it was also the perfect opportunity to meet the other residents.
While having my hands messy forming dumplings, I met the residents and staff members. There was a mixture of English and Chinese spoken by all, except for a few of the residents like myself who only could contribute in English. One of the residents has been staying here for about 6 months and is in an intensive Mandarin language course. He was our default translator in both directions whenever communication blocks arose. I met one pair, Laura and Alex, who traveled here from the UK by train. It sounded like quite the experience when they recapped a couple of their highlights from destinations like Berlin, St. Petersburg and Mongolia.
By the end of the evening, after playing a couple games of chess with Mike, I was able to convince Laura and Alex to join me the following day on my adventure to the Great Wall.
Ni Hao
Having had very limited exposure to China or Chinese culture, I regrettably admit that I only knew China through my Chinese friends and Chinese food. I was also aware that Chinese food in California is not what I might find in China. It was probably a highly Americanized version of Chinese food, which although still delicious, it lacks some authenticity.
Recently, the cliché that has come to surround China is that China is the future. Its economy, its language and its international influence continue to grow every year. When thinking of studying a new language, many people told me that I should consider Mandarin because it is the language of the future. With well over a billion residents, the Chinese have the first ingredient to propagating any language, a large Mandarin-speaking population.
China also has its long and storied past, which can start as far back as Homo erectus more than a million years ago if we choose to start there. Closer to 2100 BC is when the dynasties begin with the Xia, Shang, and Zhou. Coming from a country that has limited recorded history before Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1942 and really before the Plymouth Colony started in 1620, going all the way back to 2100 BC produces such significance and grandeur that I am unaccustomed to. Through its five millennia of existence, China’s history is filled with wars, emperors, invasions, rebellions, revolutions, invention, art, natural disasters, foreign rule, and modernization.
I look forward to leaning about a small piece of that throughout my visit.
My First Traveling Companions
The Passport Ice-breaker Game:
Fast forward about 10 hours and I’m sitting on the plane with 3 hours left of this marathon flight to Beijing from LAX. I’ve been able to sleep a descent amount partly because I was so sleep deprived that I was passed out before the plane even left the gate. With lighter eyelids, I now receive the immigration form from the flight attendant. I think she could tell that I wasn’t from China. I’m not sure what the biggest give-away was, but my appearance and my language barrier are both high on the list.
Now that I was relatively rested and feeling more sociable, I thought it was a good time to meet my non-English speaking row mates, and what better ice breaker than comparing passports and visas. I receive the yellow immigration form and pull out my passport, and immediately, I notice how interested the couple sitting next to me was. The wife spoke a small bit of English, which was helpful while we tried to make friends. It was also helpful when I was filling out my immigration form. When I was trying to find a couple details that I was supposed to transfer from the visa in my passport to the immigration form, a few of them were only written in Chinese. I wasn’t sure I had it in me to start busting out some Chinese characters, but luckily, my new friend was able to translate it into English and I was spared the embarrassment of what my Chinese characters would’ve looked like.
As the couple sitting next to me stares more and more intently at my passport, I hand it to them with a gesture that says, “go on, take a closer look”. I would’ve said it too, but most verbal cues were lost in our conversation. The first thing they do is settle a disagreement they had when they immediately looked at the year I was born. They show twenty-five by holding up their fingers, first 2 and then 5. I tried to ask them how old they thought I was, but that conversation path ended up being rather unsuccessful, so I moved back to passport examination. At this point, they take out their passports and we compare some of the differences. The most obvious difference was that they had Chinese passports with US visas, and I had a US passport with a Chinese visa. Another very noticeable difference was the amount of artwork that is placed throughout the US Passport. I recently renewed my passport, so I am not sure if the artwork was there to this extent before, but when comparing it to the plain pages of the Chinese Passport, the graphics and images became quite noticeable. All in all, the pictures received praise from my neighbors, and then they proceeded to show me that there were hidden images that you can see when holding up a page to the light. This hidden-image feature was also present on their passports, which showed a graphic of the Great Wall.
Now that the ice was broken, we championed the small talk that is available to people who have trouble understanding each other. I find out they went to New York and LA, they learn that I am going to Beijing and Shanghai, and they give me a recommendation of where to stay and what to eat while in Beijing.
Finding the Hostel:
In one word, the Beijing Airport is impressive! They remodeled the airport for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and that was very obvious. High ceilings, elaborate displays, clean and shiny, and streamlined. Going through customs was quick and easy, the bags were already coming out when we got to baggage claim, and I was done within about 30 minutes of landing, and that includes having to take a tram from the terminal I landed in to the baggage claim.
After going through baggage claim, I bumped into Eric from Cleveland who looked similarly lost. He was in Beijing on business, but also didn’t know a lick of Chinese and was trying to figure out how to get into the heart of the city. Since I had an address from my hostel and knew that I was heading in a similar direction, I asked if he’d be willing to share a cab. The first buses into the city wouldn’t be leaving for at least another hour or two. Eric said yes and we shared a cab to his hotel, which was about 2/3 of the way to my hostel, and then I continued on. Overall, I’m where I wanted to get to, I’m here in one piece, and I’m starting to think about how I want to start the day since it is not even 8am yet.
Although I might not get to all of them, some spots I’d love to see while here include the Forbidden City, Tianenmen Square, the Great Wall, and the Temple of Heaven to name a few. I’ll wait for some others in the hostel to stir and then I’ll see if I can meet some buddies to adventure with for the day.
The Before Picture
Ready or not, here I go. Filled with the feeling that I’m forgetting something, I end a crazy week of goodbye’s, of packing, of moving, and of wrapping up work. But now, as I sit here in Terminal 2 at LAX waiting for Air China to begin boarding, my mind is really starting to move. Usually when I’m worried about something, I can largely pinpoint what it is, and somewhat lessen that worry. Unfortunately, being worried about the unknown is a particularly hard fear to mitigate. Even when not looking that far into the future, I imagine landing in Beijing and figuring out how to get to the hostel from the airport. For this first hostel, I decided to make a reservation, get an address, and have something concrete to start my trip after landing at 5:30am in the morning, but despite all of that, it still remains unknown how I plan to get from A to B. I know that I will eventually get more comfortable with this type of task as I continue, but for now, it remains exciting.
I’ve packed one backpack that also fits the small day bag in my other hand. In preparing for the variation in temperatures I would experience from China to SE Asia to Nepal to Europe, I embraced the layers philosophy meaning that there are very few clothes that I packed that can’t be worn at the same time. In terms of numbers, I’m bringing 3 short sleeve and 3 long sleeve shirts, one pair of shorts, two jeans, and one synthetic pair of pants. I’ve brought 6 pairs of socks and underwear, a beanie, gloves, and hat. For jackets, I have a fleece, light down jacket, and wind/rain shell, all of which can be layered. I’ll find out soon how effective my packing really was.
Other than possibly having some more facial hair, I’m excited to see the differences between the before and after pictures from this trip, both superficially and psychologically.
My Worn Identity
Several times throughout my academic career, my class was asked to write words that we identified with, whether it was adult, tall, American, blue-eyed, Muslim, etc. Unfortunately, it is these “identities” that could get me in trouble as I meet new people from other cultures. And to complicate matters further, these identities are far from self-imposed. Instead, I have no choice but to wear them in plain site as I travel. I can’t hide speaking english with an american accent and having curly hair with a jewish nose. I also have little doubt that Americans and more specifically Jewish Americans might not be loved everywhere they travel. People may disagree with our politics, philosophies, and general cultural norms. It is for this reason, that if given the chance, I want extend that identity.
I am a brother. I am a son. I am a new uncle. I am a grandson. I am a friend. This is easy to say and hard to prove. I can foresee a situation where I am sitting next to someone on a train or bus and they look at me and immediately fill with preconceptions of who I am. This scenario soon devolves into a lecture about why Americans are failing in some aspect or another, and there is little pause to see if I agree with the philosophies and politics of my American people, but that doesn’t matter. I am not an individual here. I am an American. I might as well be riding a Harley Davidson wearing an American flag bandana blasting Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA through the heartland of Vietnam. I might have to wait for this anti-American lecture to start to fizzle, and then I will reach into my backpack and grab a couple photos that I’ve been traveling with. These photos start to show that I am not just an American.
I hope these photos will show that my identity starts with family. Whatever happens, I know my family will be there. Whatever I do, I know my family will support me. And whatever I blunder, I know my family will forgive me. These values I feel transcend any one culture and will hopefully allow me to connect with that lecturer sitting next to me on a much more personal and individual level. I will introduce him to my 5 month old niece. I will tell him what my sisters do and who my parents are. The stories we then begin to swap are more about who we are as individuals and less about what our politics are.
These two photos I will carry with me as I begin to travel.
Visas – “Check Everywhere You Want To Be”
As the USA has become stricter and stricter letting in foreign visitors, the reverse has also become true. This is probably due to a combination of countries being frustrated with US stricter policies as well as just taking greater security precautions. That said, as a traveler, it hasn’t always been an advantage being from the US when applying for travel visas.
To make this point very clear, China asks for a fee along with its tourist visa application. When reading the chart for how much I owed, there were three columns. The first column was to designate the number of times I wanted to enter the country and for how long. The second column was how much Americans would have to pay, and the third column was how much citizens of other countries would have to pay. As a citizen from the US, I would’ve had to pay $130 regardless of how long or how many times I entered the country. Citizens of other countries would have to pay only $30 if they wanted a single-entry visa. China is also one of those places that require you to have a travel visa before arrival. In most places, I will be able to purchase a travel visa for a minimal fee and a couple passport photos of myself while making my way through customs. Of all the places I plan to visit, only China and Vietnam required an advance visa. In the end, I don’t blame these other countries for getting frustrated at the USA’s visa policies because it ends up causing people like me who need to apply for those visas to learn how tough the US really is on foreigners and to subsequently question if that’s right.