To Beijing

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4am wake up call.  Breakfast was bad, maybe I ate the bread and had orange juice.  Sat around for a long time, got in last group – Group C.  Katie W was supposed to be on our bus but had no stamp on her passport, so had to come later and delayed another group, but made it in time thankfully.  A pretty Chinese girl lead us through the airport.  We had special gates.  Totally received the most efficient pat-down of my life, and they even let me take my peanut butter.

 

Our tour guide’s name in Beijing was Benny.  He was six-foot-three-inches and had a deep voice and an accent that sounded nearly Russian.  Sometimes he laughed like a machine gun after a subtle joke for one second, and that was enough to make us laugh.  He was a really cool guy.  Wore a long black peacoat that zipped on the side.  He took us from the airport to the first meal we had, a Lazy Susan (spinning table) meal at some Westernized Chinese food restaurant.  It was pretty good stuff, not great, but yeah.  There was a huge laughing Buddha in the lobby that some people posed with.  I took a picture of them.  We climbed five flights of stairs, which was fine.

When we got back on the bus, Oliver broke out his iPod speakers and played Benny and the Jets.  No one really knew the words at all.  We asked Benny if he knew the song, and he said no, at which we were all surprised.

 

Water in the airport was $.50.  That’s the cheapest bottled water I’ve found anywhere in my life.

 

I hung out with Edwin B, a graphic designer from Lebanon, on the bus.  We talked a good bit and talked about the game we played in the park with the Temple of Heaven and stuff like that.  We got out of the bus to take a trishaw ride to a traditional house (project/slum) for a home-cooked meal.  I thought he would sit with me, but he abandoned me to flirt with that tiny little girl named Coelie (pronounced CHALE-ee) and put his arm around her on the way.  I rode with Mrs. White, the dean’s wife.  She talked about people going out and how her daughter never got too bad.  It was an awkward spot, because I knew otherwise, but didn’t want to broach the subject.  Looking back on it makes me a little bit sad.

 

The “real” house that we ate at wasn’t much of a real house.  Tourist money definitely helped them out.  They were dressed like other poorer people we had seen (who really weren’t poorly dressed at all – maybe a function of cheap-as-hell clothing?), but the house was different.  There was carpet flooring and a big-screen TV and lots of pictures, including a huge framed photograph of the matron’s grandson, who was 1 at the time but it 3 now.  The food was good.  I don’t think I took any pictures.  Oliver took 17000 pictures or something on the trip of every god damn thing he could, so he took a bunch here too.  I feel a little weird taking pictures of people’s houses.  I feel like it’s telling them that they’re like a people-zoo to us.  Travel is weird.  Also they had tons and tons and tons of food – enough for 15 people – which I’m sure no normal slum house would have.

 

Every place we ate gave us Sprite, Coke, beer and water.  We would have been fine with tea.  Or water.  Or whatever else they drink.

 

There were fireworks seriously everywhere.  Outside of the slum/project house there were fireworks in the street.  I did take a picture of that and it came out looking like there was a fire in the middle of a road.  Apparently people even set them off on highways and just let cars pass by through the flames.  It sounded like machine guns, the little ones popping all the time.  Some people put off big ones too.