Zaijian Beijing

Tomorrow will be our official start of our Trans-Siberian travels, although this leg until we get into Russia is officially called the Trans-Mongolian. At 8:30 in the morning, we’ll board a 7-hour train ride (hard seat) to the city of Datong, where the highlight is supposed to be, according to the Lonely Planet, “sublime” Buddhist caves outside the city. I hate when the Lonely Planet calls anything ‘sublime’ and I’ll further refrain from ever quoting that guidebook company ever again.

To prepare for the start of the trains, Scott and I made a few stops on the way to our hostel to get some provisions. At the grocery store we bought some instant coffee for Scott (I stocked up on tea bags at the Delta Lounge at JFK), some snacks, water, and ramen noodles (for the longer train legs). Closer to our hostel, we went into a little mom-and-pop shop and got a big metal bowl set (for the ramen), two sets of chopsticks, and two mugs. I’m sure there are more things that, as we travel, we’ll figure out we need.

Beijing was bittersweet on this go-around. Is that the appropriate term for it? It had its bright moments (can’t emphasize enough how amazing the subway system is) but overall, I’ll leave this city with some sadness. The food just isn’t as reliably good as it should be (for goodness sake, I’m talking about Beijing where everything should always taste good) for the prices restaurant folks are asking for. From the standpoint of a Chinese-American who can only speak a minimal amount of Chinese (which is a very biased viewpoint when one is referring to China), I found that many local people were rude. I hate writing this because there were some very helpful Chinese people who without their assistance, Scott and I might have not arrived at our intended destinations (the woman in Miyun, the man tonight with his daughter who helped us find Li Qun, the man this afternoon who stopped crossing the road to look up directions on his smart phone to a market we were in search of, the man at the post office who got us the cheapest rate for mailing something to the US, and I’m sure several others), and the goodness should outweigh the badness, but the badness was that bad. Some folks were just that rude and made me feel very small. I would rather not write about these instances. Also, you just can’t bargain like you used to here.

We spent today wandering around with no real plan, which was nice after our seemingly jam packed days of site seeing. We ate jaozi and baozi (otherwise known as dumplings) for breakfast. We ducked into the National Museum of China to escape the suffocating heat and haze and we saw impressive pieces of jade as well as hundreds of other pieces from Ancient China, played our first game of cribbage in the country, and generally enjoyed the air-conditioning. We walked through Tiananmen Square and saw Mao’s larger than life portrait through a thick blanket of haze. We searched for two markets and found one. We ducked out of the rain and drank pijiu, or two Yangjin beers. We sought out the most affordable Peking Duck and learned the obvious lesson that cheap oftentimes translates to bad. Soon after, we found a random street window selling pastries by weight and got the best deal on cream puffs and egg tarts (and I quickly forgot about the bad duck).

And now Scott is sleeping and I’m up, trying to mentally prepare myself for life on (and off) the rails.