A Brief Visit to Beijing

I arrived in Beijing on the morning of the 27th of January, after catching an overnight train in Changsha which I made with a mere two minutes to spare. The main purpose of coming here was to get on a flight to Tel Aviv on the 29th, but it was a trip to the capital nonetheless.

After finding my way to my hostel and skyping for a couple of hours with my parents (happy birthday Mom!), I hopped on a subway to Tiananmen Square. It’s a pretty enormous space, kind of like everything in China. The Square had some cool monuments, and at one point I found myself trying to visualize what it might have been like during the infamous protests, which was a sobering thought. I kept walking north and passed under the big portrait of Mao Zedong into the Forbidden City, and if it hadn’t been so cold, I could have spent the whole day there. The Forbidden City is a huge palace complex that was constructed in the 1400's by the Ming Dynasty and has since been opened to the public and made into a museum. Down the center are a line of big old temples, and on the east and west there is a geometric maze of walled walkways, smaller temples, gardens, shops. Once you get into that network, you can really feel as though you’re in a completely different city, separated from Beijing.

I left the city out of the northern gate and wandered to a place called Beihai Park. The first thing you see when you go in is a big frozen pond where tons of people were skating on bikes and little carts that were modified to more around the ice. In an adjacent section there were bumper cars sliding around, which looked totally rad and made me wish I had someone else that I could drag into them. I walked around Beihai park and saw a lot of cool architecture and buildings and such until I was just too darn cold, and then I made my way to the nearest subway station to stop back at the hostel before dinner.

For dinner I went to a place called Taste of Dadong, which is one of the most well-known chain of restaurants in Beijing. Their specialty is Peking Duck, an iconic Beijing dish. A tad pricey, but definitely worth it. It was a little funny sitting in the restaurant by myself, but I stopped caring at all once the food arrived.

There is a saying in China that goes, "He who does not reach the Great Wall is no hero." Of course, I cannot be content with anything less than full heroism in my travels, so on the morning of the 28th I woke up early and hopped on a bus with a few other tourists bound for the Mutianyu section of the Wall. It is one of the more well-known sections, but it gets a lot less tourist traffic than some and has spectacular views. With me were a few people from Colombia, a dude from Sydney, and three other people whose home country I don't remember. After roughly 80 minutes of driving we stepped out into the cold but clear air of Huairou county. I ended up walking and talking with the guy from Sydney, whose name was Vaughn. As we trekked up the steep slope following the contours of the mountains we found it pretty easy to stay warm. Our guide had recommended that we go all the way to the top of the section that was open to visitors, and when we got there we would be able to hop over a fence and see some of the older sections of the wall. This seemed ideal to me- the Wall has a two thousand year history, but of course it has been rebuilt many times since the first. The Mutianyu section was all restored in the 1980's (I think), but the older sections are remnants of the 1300's, and that's what I really wanted to get too. Unfortunately when we got there we found that the "fence" was actually a short brick wall, which we still could have jumped but there were lots of security cameras and a guy selling things who said we shouldn't. A bit of a bummer, but honestly I didn't mind too much when I turned around and checked out the view. We stayed up there for at least half an hour before turning back to meet our group.

If there's one overarching impression I got from the visit, it's that I want to go back. It was pretty incredible but I feel like I just didn't have enough time. I'm looking into ways of visiting different sections, parts mostly unknown to tourists where I can experience the Great Wall in a more raw, heroic fashion.

We regrouped at a local restaurant for lunch. It was tasty, and different from the Hunan cuisine I’ve gotten so accustomed to. I chatted a bit with the folks from Colombia- only one of them spoke English, so I got to practice my Spanish for the first time in a while! After heading back to the city I was exhausted, so I found some coffee and took it easy for the rest of the day.

Next stop is Israel, where I'll be meeting up with the lovely Katie Laurence. It's gonna be a good vacation, folks. :)

What's Happening???

As most of you probably know, I hopped on a plane in New York City at the end of August 2017 and embarked on a sixteen-hour journey to the other side of the planet. Since then, I have been living in the city of Changsha, China, where I am teaching English in Beiya Middle School.

This is kind of the craziest decision I've ever made.

However, as my parents are keen to remind me, I haven't really shared all that much about my life with folks back home. As the new year begins, I want to use this blog to change that- to share my experiences, thoughts, feelings, and stories with anyone who's interested, and also to make a record for myself, because otherwise I'll forget things for sure.

My first few days in China were kind of a blur. The jet lag was obviously a big part of this- my body was suddenly twelve hours out of sync- but the culture shock was even more disorienting. I've done a fair bit of travel in my life, but all of it was to Western countries, in cultures and languages that I was at least passingly familiar with. Here, I am an alien, come to a different planet.

Streets here are completely bonkers. Traffic "laws" seem more like suggestions, cars drive on the sidewalk when the main road becomes too clogged, and mopeds run rampant wherever they please. I learned very quickly that pedestrians do NOT have the right of way. When you aren't dodging a stream of cars and bikes you still need to be careful; the walking areas are mostly clean but they have occasional landmines. People spit on the sidewalk a lot, and it isn't uncommon to see discarded cigarettes scattered on the ground. I've also seen children pooping right on the side of the roads, casually held up by their mothers. That really caught me off guard. Weaving in between everything you can find small dogs, always on the move, seemingly oblivious to the humans surrounding them.

But even with all these hazards (and, in part, because of them), I tend to have a lot of fun just walking around near my apartment. I live on the 15th floor of just one of a large cluster of 33-story buildings, and the ground floor is a pseudo-underground grid of building gates, restaurants, clothing stores, fresh food markets, hardware shops, street food, even a few small, hidden-away sex toy booths. The markets are always interesting- walking through them is like going into some sort of exotic, smelly, morbid zoo. I see vegetables I don't recognize, chickens and ducks in cages, fish and eels flopping halfheartedly in shallow bins of water, and strange pieces of pig hanging on display- I'm talking tails, hooves, snouts.

There are also times when it feels I'm the one in the zoo. There are not many foreigners here, so people tend to stare. It doesn't bother me though- mostly it's a friendly, curious thing. The best is when it's young kids looking- sometimes they get surprised and confused, sometimes scared. But most of the time I'm greeted with smiles, so it's all right. As strange as it is, I don't think I'll ever get tired of random children excitedly shouting "Waiguoren!!" (which means "foreigner!") when they see me.

Overall, the thing about Changsha that has made the strongest impression on me is the kindness of its people. Nearly everyone I meet is friendly, curious, and helpful, and even after they realize how little Mandarin I know they try their hearts out to keep a conversation going. I've been met with more warmth and generosity than I ever expected, for that I'm grateful.

I want to share something that a friend I met here told me while we were having dinner one night. People will sometimes greet each other by saying 吃饭了吗 (chifan le ma), which literally means "Have you eaten yet?" A guy on the street said this to me during one of the early weeks of my stay here, and I was confused- I thought he was asking me to dinner. But my friend told me about how not too long ago most of China was living in serious poverty, and food was scarce. People didn't always know if they would be able to eat on a given day. This stuck with me, and I think it makes the hospitality I've felt here that much more significant. In a way it reminds me of Nicaragua- obviously China is far wealthier and more developed, but both countries have experienced some pretty serious turmoil in recent history. In spite of this, the people in these places are consistently hospitable and generous- anybody who's been to El Sauce can back me up on this.

These first five months have really flown by, but I'm super excited for the rest of my time here! I'm making a commitment to update this blog regularly, so if you want to hear about anything in particular feel free to let me know. I'll be traveling outside of China during February, so most of what I write about in the near future will probably not be Changsha-related. Anyways, stay tuned, I've got lots of adventures coming up!