Beijing!

So I know this blog is entitled, "Kelli in Japan", but for the next three entries you may as well add a subtitle that says, "Except For the Bit About China and Oh Yeah the Other Post About Korea" or perhaps something less clunky. Knowing you are mostly my relatives and friends, you are contractually obligated to enjoy my verbose description of my venture into the land of communism.  Heed the great words of Chairman Mao to his successor, relax and think to yourself, "With you in charge, I'm at ease."

My mom and I took a guided tour through three cities (Beijing, Xi'an, and Shanghai), and although it was probably not necessary we enjoyed having a sponsored, actual Chinese tour guide. She took us to only the most reputable and government sponsored tea houses and silk factories. It also helped having a native Mandarin speaker, but I am proud to say I now know how to say hello ("ni hao") and thank you.

To make this a little less long, I'll divide up the blog entries by city -- so enjoy your internet guided tour through Beijing!

Beijing is China's capital and also contains 21 million people. I also found it to be the more drab and stereotypically "communist" of the three cities -- communist being the term I use to describe flat, gray buildings with the Chinese flag everywhere, such as below: 

They also have a very dubious rating system for their toilets, as evidenced by this alleged four star toilet. The standard "squatty potty", it was probably the most disgusting thing I've seen (please see my previous post on toilets in Japan). They claim the squatty potties are more sanitary because your pristine butt doesn't touch anything (wouldn't want to get those STDs from the toilet seat), but what about the urine soaking the floor that your shoes must touch? No answer.

The first day we arrived, we made our way to the Beijing Antique Market ("Panjiayuan") to find antique treasures at a bargain. Perhaps a slight problem at first because I'm not an antique dealer and have no experience in differentiating a legitimate find from an overpriced tourist trinket, and my haggling skills are average at best. This was just the beginning of my realization that the mantra when it comes to tourists in China is "there's a sucker born every minute."

Despite utilizing every bartering trick I remembered reading online, I wasn't able to do better than 50% off the original price they offered. The process usually went as such:

1. I would start at about 20% of what they originally offered
2. They would look miffed and either stop talking to me altogether or offer a new price that was only slightly lower than the original. 
3. Eventually we'd meet halfway in the middle, but I think even 50% off was still a little too much (as in it was probably what I'd pay if I found it in Target)

Possessing basic language skills beyond "How much?" and "No, too low/high" was not required due to the magic of a calculator. Just punch in the numbers and everyone understands that the American will pay big!

Dinner that night still brings up feelings of annoyance and desire for vengeance*. Yes, vengeance. Because we were in Beijing, I felt it not only appropriate but necessary that we eat Peking Duck. Our tour guide recommended a place for us, gave us a card with the name in Chinese and made a reservation. What could go wrong?

My mom and I showed the taxi driver our card, but he dropped us off somewhere that was not the restaurant and attempted use sign language to guide us to our final destination (it culminated in "turn left then right"). Finding that hopeless, we showed our card to various shopkeepers who eventually took us to this Peking duck restaurant:

Victory! We go in, show our card with the reservation name, and were promptly dismissed with a brisk "You in wrong place. Take taxi." Odd, and we also have no idea how to get to the RIGHT place so we left to figure things out. Literally minutes after leaving, a kindly Chinese lady who spoke English asked us if we'd like to follow her to a duck restaurant. I naively thought she meant the place we were trying to go (I thought she was associated with the original restaurant), so we followed her to this place (no, not the massage parlor):

The inside was empty except for some old Chinese couple eating next to us. Ugh, I groaned... this is not the right place! However, we had no clue where the right place was, so we settled in for some Peking Duck anyway.

I still felt like I was jipped since we missed out on the guide's suggestion of the best place in town, and this restaurant obviously sucked because no one was there. We paid our bill (about 500 won, or $80) and walked outside. A waitress ran down, yelled something in Mandarin, pulled us back up, and tried to get us to pay again. I was confused -- and definitely not paying twice for this meal! We argued enough that the girl (who doesn't really speak English) let us go. A scam to make us pay double, or an innocent mistake? The world may never know, but I know that it pissed me off. We eventually did find the real Peking duck place we were supposed to go (see below, nowhere near where we were), but neither of us wanted any more duck. Though my mom thought the duck was fine, I am not convinced.

To this day, I'm still irritated that she led us to an inferior duck restaurant (and possible scam) and wish to return to give them a piece of my mind...

"Oh, God," said Monte Cristo, "your vengeance may sometimes be slow in coming, but I think that then it is all the more complete."

*My mother is not even remotely annoyed

Day 2

Day two was jammed packed! We started off with a visit to Tiananmen Square, site of the 1989 protests and near this iconic image:

No men standing in front of tanks were seen today (a good thing), but it was pretty massive. Because our visit there happened to coincide with Tomb Sweeping Day, there were a lot of Chinese farmers who wanted their picture taken with foreigners. Our tour guide told us the square is capable of holding 1 million Chinese people, or 2 million Japanese people, or 1/2 million Americans. A comedienne.

I snapped a photo of Chinese soldiers guarding their flag with the entrance into the Forbidden City in the background.

You can't really see it in the picture, but the middle entrance (below Mao's face) was reserved for the Emperor to walk through. The remainder of the gates were reserved for different people of different social standing. Our group asked the guide what happened if you accidentally walked through the wrong gate. Our bespectacled female guide giggled while responding,"A severe punishment, up to death!" 

Next up was the Forbidden City, first built in 1406 when the Emperor (Ming dynasty) decided it should be so. The capital then moved from Nanjing to Beijing. The palace complex is divided into two sections, the part where he worked and the part where he lived. Below is a part where they built a little makeshift river to use for fire protection.

You can tell the lion creature guardian is a female because she has a little baby lion creature guardian under her paws. The male has a ball. Symbolic?

This is the Hall of Supreme Harmony, where the Emperor would hold court. His throne (see below) was disappointingly NOT made of thousands of swords of the vanquished, melted together by the breath of a dragon (please see Game of Thrones reference).

On the roof is a eunich riding a rooster, followed by other little statuettes and a dragon. This symbolized the status of the building, with the Hall of Supreme Harmony being allowed ten (the greatest number of all) creatures. The yellow color of the roof also represents the Emperor.

Next we made it into the Inner Circle, which included some nice looking walls of unclear significance beyond looking pretty.

We next learned about the Empress Dowager Cixi, AKA "The Dragon Lady." She came to the court as a concubine and was able to birth the Emperor's only son (sons... so hot back then). When the Emperor died, her son became the Emperor Tongzhi at age 4. Naturally, four year olds aren't known for their intelligent, thoughtful decisions so she essentially ruled using him as her puppet. She lived on, ruling when people mysteriously died of possible poison or other political intrigue. Below is the picture of where she ruled "behind the curtain" (cue Wizard of Oz).

We were then ushered into the Imperial Garden, just in time for some spring blossoms and perilous hills.

For some perspective of how large Beijing is, check out this photograph of the Forbidden City from a different angle (unsure of the photographer).

For lunch we were treated to a rickshaw ride through the hutong (narrow streets) lined by some dilapidated (yet historic) siheyuan (traditional courtyard residences). These areas are considered culturally important since they show how the common folk lived for many generations. We enjoyed a home cooked lunch by a lady who paints inside snuff bottles.

On to the last stop of the day, the Temple of Heaven! This was a religious area where the Emperors would pray for a good harvest (he was supposed to be the mouth peace of heaven). It wasn't a good thing for the Emperor if too many bad harvests occurred.

There is also symbolism in the architecture here, with four inner and twelve middle and outer pillars that represent the seasons, number of months and number of traditional Chinese hours. The blue color represents heaven, while the green is the harvest.

If you're lucky you can even see an attractive Chinese couple taking their wedding photos. My mom made me take this.

Outside of the temple, the surrounding garden is a place for old retired people to re-tell old stories no one wants to hear anymore and play games with each other, basically "killing some time" (a phrase our tour guides loved).

Later that night, we made the trek to the famous Wangfujing Street, also known as the "snack street" because of its delicious snacks of scorpions, starfish and beetles. Good for the heart and soul.

Since this post is so long, I'll save the Great Wall of China and the Ming Tombs for a separate post.