May Vacation

This post has been a long time coming. Things have been busy around here recently. The first week of May was yet another 'Golden Week' here in China in honor of International Labor Day. A week off for Labor Day means, yet again, that an estimated 120,000 million people were on the move to various vacation spots. One that is popular among Beijingers is Beidaihe. I went there with Jenny, a foreign teacher from New Zealand. We left on the Monday of that week off because I had to work Sunday. I had to administer a mid-term exam for the Korean students. Man are those kids lazy. I had a few students sleeping through the examination. I was perplexed because this would NEVER happen with the Chinese students. The Korean students are generally more 'westernized' than the Chinese so maybe their malaise and lack of motivation can be chalked up to that fact.

We headed out by bullet train on Monday morning at 6:20 a.m. This was an early start by any standards but factor in that we live over an hour from the main railway station and I had to wake up at 4:45. After an hour and a half on the train we were in Beidaihe. This is a popular location for the Communist Party elite and there are many high end stores and fancy, sprawling, and gated resorts to accommodate them. We stayed at a ramshackle joint. The weather in Beijing has been pleasant to warm recently but in Beidaihe it was cool with a stiff sea breeze ushering in colder air from the Bohai Sea. One of my main reasons for going on this excursion was to get some sun and surf time but that was quite limited due to the weather and icy cold water. At the time of our arrival there were very few people in the town but by day two the streets were humming with people.

Our second day on the coast Jenny and I took a bus north to the larger, more cosmopolitan city of Qinhuangdao. The beaches there were fantastic and the weather a bit warmer. After taking in some of the scenery we headed north again to a town whose name escapes me. It is near this town that the Great Wall ends in the ocean. This was the main impetus for heading there. The city has an old wall that incorporates itself into the Great Wall as well. This was my first trip to any part of the Great Wall and I was kind of excited to be going to such a famous destination. They call this part of the wall 'The Dragon's Head' due to the fact that the Chinese say that the Great Wall looks like the back of a dragon. Jenny was expecting an actual dragon's head at the end of the wall but she was sorely disappointed. The wall actually goes about 60 feet into the ocean. It was quite busy there that day but the other tourists could in no way take away from the experience. There was also a large stone maze within the fort that was created to man this critical post in the wall. The maze was pretty big but I dominated it. I know it seems childish to brag about such accomplishments, but damn did I dominate that maze. It made me realize that I've always been good at mazes. Ever since I was a kid I could easily handle the mazes on the kids menu. Opportunities for maze completion exercises have been few and far between as I've gotten older but it was good to see that I still have the skills. After basking in my success for some time Jenny and I headed to find a place to eat. We ended up taking a three wheeled car to a local restaurant. Three wheeled cars are somewhat common in China and until this point I had not taken one. It is really just a glorified motorcycle with a full cab over the frame. It was fun. The restaurant was good and I believe that we were the first white people to ever go there. In the evening we returned to Beidaihe.

We went out for dinner and were focused on keeping it relatively cheap. We found a small outdoor restaurant that had tanks and tanks of various edible sea creatures. We settled into a table and ordered some fish. The fish was good but about halfway through I saw a man eating small crabs. I told Jenny of my fondness for crabs and she suggested I get some. I ordered three small crabs and when they came I realized that I really only enjoy the claws. What do you eat on the inside of a crab if you can't eat the claw meat? I attempted to find an answer to that question but I'm afraid it is nothing. We lingered a bit more and enjoyed a couple of beers and then finally asked for the check. 500 kwai. 500 kwai for a fish three crabs and four beers. It was price gouging of the highest order. We complained and protested for a while but just admitted defeat, paid the bill, and left cursing the place all the way home. The truth of it is that we should have asked before we ordered but what is equally true is that they saw a couple of white faces and decided to take advantage. It happens. Hell, foreigners in the US get it a lot worse than that on a daily basis I'm sure.

The next morning we were scheduled to head back to Beijing. I was feeling awful. I'm not sure, but I believe it was the crab guts that got to me. I was sic as a dog and with no bullet train tickets available we had to take the bus. This meant that what could have been a hour and a half long trip ended up being 4 hours. I was feeling like hell the whole time. We finally made it back to Beijing and my dormitory and I just slept for the next few days. I was alright after that. Damn those guys and their over priced poisonous crabs.

Friday of last week was the final day of one of the biggest music festivals of the year in Beijing, the MIDI Festival. This year it was held in a park in the Northwest part of Beijing. They had five stages each featuring a different type of music. My favorite was the Chinese Folk stage. It wasn't folk music as in traditional Chinese music, it was American Folk-inspired Chinese music. It was actually quite good and I ended up spending most of my time there. On the other stages they had screaming metal bands, Chinese hip-hop acts, Drum and Bass, and high pitched singing metal bands. I ended up staying out there for the better part of eight hours before heading to a restaurant and bar in the university district of Wudokou. From there I went to a club cleverly called Propaganda. It is one of the better places in the area but it mainly attracts a younger crowd of Korean students who study at the major universities in the area. As I walked in with Bryne I noticed a kid staring at me. I pointed him out to Bryne and he made an awful realization that this kid was in fact a student of his. I was displeased. I spent the rest of my time there trying to avoid doing anything ridiculous which is quite the task for me. I left later confident that my image in the Korean community was still intact.

This weekend I will go to Xi'an, home to the Terra Cotta Army and the tomb of the first emperor of China. This Emperor Qin was a maniac. He drank mercury because he believed it would give him strength and creativity and he also built the Great Wall. He was the first person to unify the land of China and he did it in quite bloody fashion. This guy was a total narcissist. He had construction on his tomb begin when he was a teenager. What kind of teenager plans their tomb lay out to include and army of terracotta and rivers of mercury representing all the rivers in the kingdom? Would China have been better off if he had just been thinking about girls and beer like other teenagers? Hopefully I'll be able to answer these questions by the time I return. I will also be traveling by myself for the first time so I'm anxious to see how that goes. Hopefully my Chinese is up to snuff and I don't get sold into white slavery. My trip will only be three days long as I must return to greet Garry, DeDe, and Kevin Seltzer in Beijing. I am thrilled to see them and can't wait. They have put in a special request to go to the Golden Jaguar. It is an experience I can not deny them. Dsai Jien