Taking Beijing by Storm

A week spent with Clare and I’m energized again, and into the joys of Chinese learnings. She left on a Tuesday, and since then I’ve had a solid amount of Chinese classes in the mornings, followed by puzzled an unproductive study afterwards. There was a bit of a dilemma when I took my ‘placement test’because the lady said I had high level speaking but a very poor level reading. So she said I could choose what class I went into. I chose the harder one out of curiosity and now sit there bewildered by squiggly things on my page.

Anyhow it was uber (the Dutch student in my class has apparently revived this word) good having Clare about, and we took Beijing by storm. She arrived on a Wednesday, and we began by visiting the local bars around Beijing’s hutong areas – historic residential alleys surrounding the Forbidden City that have been around since anyone can remember (actually I think since the Yuan dynasty in the 13th century), and which have taken on new identities as upmarket touristy boutiquey alternative shopping and bar spots. As development of the city happens at a pace it’s these hutongs that are being cleared out to make way for apartment blocks – unfortunate, but I think the government does realise the value of the historic elements but is trying to balance this with demand for housing in the city.

Anyhow around these parts the bar scene is bizarre, and attempts to emulate America with neon‘Budweiser’ signs on every corner. Something’s not quite right though, and it’s as if the whole area is dedicated to catering for a taste that was observed once somewhere overseas. Upon stumbling across a delightful ‘reggae’ bar, we entered to find out what it was all about. Ironically mass‐produced red, green and yellow cushions adorned with Bob Marley’s face covered the comfortable looking couches, while Bob Marley’s ‘Legend’ played on in the background. On inspection it was found this was pretty much the only album they had, and that it was just the right length so that customers probably wouldn’t stick around long enough to hear it repeated.

That’s one thing that disappoints me I guess, as on another occasion this evidence of expression preened for the purpose of selling came in the form of ‘Pocky’. Pocky invited me and Clare to get our names written as a gift after a meal at a restaurant. Clare was reluctant as she had come across it before in her travels but I was curious so we had a look at his gallery. There we had our names written in Chinese by a calligrapher while Clare got shown piece of silk painting after piece of silk painting, with promises of a good tourist price. In the meantime I looked around the gallery and saw amazing paintings! They were what I thought were innovative and interesting modern Chinese art pieces. My impression was shattered after we left though, when I was told by Clare that she’d seen the exact same ones in Shanghai and Hong Kong, mass produced to my tastes. Anyhow apparently the 798 art district in Beijing (full of galleries that were once electronics factories) which I’m yet to visit, is something else and will not disappoint.



While sightseeing in China we hired some bikes to get around – by far the easiest way to travel if you’re in the city. You can easily get to a destination quicker by bike than by car because of the immense amounts of traffic. It’s becoming popular with locals to have a car, and a big imitation American car at that, but completely impractical as it often takes far less time by train or bike. Rode to Tiananmen, and JingShan Park overlooking the Forbidden City, and the historic but refurbished Qianmen area. Pretty much just lots of walking and cycling and eating and drinking Tsingtao beer (it’s actually cheaper to buy in restaurants than tea, and water sometimes).

Saturday was my birthday! 23 years old. It’s fairly aged. What better way to spend it than walking 8 km on the Great Wall of China? The most beautiful spot if you ever come here is to walk from JingShanLing to Simatai, crossing 30 watchtowers and going continually up and down crumbling stairs. The older part of this section has not been restored for 450 years and so the fallen bricks on the path make good stepping stones for weaving your way up and down the snow covered slopes. They warned us that it would be freezing, but after 5 minutes of the 4.5 hr hike we were sweating through our polar fleeces.



The walk passes from the Hebei province over into Beijing area. The people in the surrounding villages have no work, and the land is arid so they can only grow corn at the best of times. As a result they rely heavily on deliveries from outside the area for food, and a lot on tourists for their income. Our guide Fu An, lived about 2km from Simatai. Every morning at about 7.30 he would start to walk to Simatai, and then would make the 8km trek over the wall to meet tourist groups at about 10am (evidently it only took him 2 hours to complete a 4.5 hour hike). From then on it would take until 2.30 to walk us back to Simatai, when he’d then walk home and look after his kids and crops.

Similarly some old ladies relied on the Wall for their income. From the outset, a couple of ladies started following us on our walk out of JingShanLing. We were really confused, and didn’t know what they were doing, but soon figured out that the only way they made money was to follow us up the wall and try to sell us Great Wall souvenirs up the top. A particularly direct lady told me I looked like ‘nongming’ (a rural person in China, which I should probably take as an insult but I think was her form of complement) then proceeded to demand us to buy her souvenirs. We said no and a large bulk of sellers left us after about 10 minutes of walking. A nice old lady called Liang Bai Zhen kept following us though, and told us stories about the history in each tower and place that we passed. Where the Chinese had thrown stones at oncoming Mongolians, where the new ‘superhighways’ were being built to allow more and more tourists to come. She told us where the Hebei (her home) province ended and where she would have to leave us for fear of authorities checking her documents, and so after she’d diligently led us over 4km of wall we did buy some things from her. She was amazing though‐ I told her she should enter the next Olympics for long distance walking.



After returning home going out was a good and bad idea as we were knackered, but it was Saturday night after all. Being my birthday and with Clare looking exotically foreign, we soon made friends with the bar manager at an interesting bar in the Sanlitun area, where he provided glorious birthday beverages in a bucket with…fireworks. Only in China. An interesting night was spent mingling with local
Chinese girls who are still the most wholesome girls that I’ve seen in a bar since, and who were partial to Chivas regal mixed with green tea.

Ok so Sunday was spent with a headache while trying to appreciate ancient cultural relics with Ming Hua in the Capital Museum as well as Tiantan (the Temple of Heaven) but mainly the best sightseeing times I’ve had thus far have been in getting to places and seeing what you see along the way.

A week of class has blown my mind, and I’m in love with my Chinese teachers for all the new found knowledge they’re giving me. It’s all ridiculously hard though, and there are two very distinct groups of students. One group is people like me, who have been exposed to spoken Chinese and are sweet at listening and speaking but find reading horrifically hard. The others are Japanese and Korean students who are ace at reading because it’s in their language in some form already anyway, but who can’t listen and speak. I think I’d rather be in my situation, but it makes our class extremely diverse. Oh and I have class on Christmas day. Not cool.

Today is Saturday night and I’m recovering from a cold so hanging out by my lonesome eating leftovers and going to watch some cartoons on TV and hopefully understand.