The Micke¥ Mao Club

The Micke¥ Mao Club

One country down, many more to go.  Round two brings the group to Beijing China.  Beijing is a quick flight from Ulaanbaatar and they are in the same time zone so we make the transition fairly easily.  Unfortunately, our service project has fallen though so we only have class.  On the plus side though, this gives us plenty of time to explore the city with our free time and to see some of the more famous sites of Beijing.

Tuesday is our first full day after we land late on Monday night.  We are given the day off of class instead of our normal Wednesday off that week so we set out exploring.  We have no idea what is in the surrounding area so we look at a map. There is some body of water near us that appears to be a lake so a small group of us sets off to find it by plugging a nearby geocache into my GPS and seeing if we can find it when we get there.  We found the geocache but the water was much more difficult.  We ended out at a nice place with some benches where we were able to get some reading done.

After a little reading, we went exploring and found a street market where I was able to haggle my way into getting a lighter with Chairman Mao’s face on it for a couple dollars.  I became the haggle master of that market, getting good deals for anyone who asked me.  I was even able to recall a price I had given and offer a cheaper one after I realized that I could get it for less.  Those vendors didn’t know what hit them.  To cap off the night, I grabbed a skewer of deep fried scorpions that were living moments before.  A day well spent.

The next day, we went to the Great Wall and had class atop the wall.  The sheer length of the wall was amazing and luckily we had a little bit of time on the wall to actually explore rather than just having class the whole time,  Despite the majesty of the wall and the beautiful hike up to it, I could not help but feel like I was in Disneyland.  Maybe it was the garbage cans disguised at tree stumps, the many vendors selling cheap trinkets all the way up to the trail, the toboggan slide from the wall down to the trailhead, or the chairlift that you could take up to the wall so as to forgo any work that might be required to get up,  Whatever  it was, it made me feel like it was in Disney’s new Mulan Zone in California Adventure or something comparable.  What really pushed that over the edge was the number of people jumping into the middle of our class to get a picture with all the white people sitting on the wall.

That feeling of Disney-ness did not go away for a majority of the time we were in China.  The next day we went to Tiananmen Square to do our travel writing class.  We were required to sit and people watch for half an hour and write about what we saw.  The people I saw seemed even more touristy than our group even though many of them were local Chinese.  They walked around with MP3 players that had preloaded tours on them and they followed around guides waving little colored flags.  Some people I saw even took over half an hour arguing over some map, probably trying to decide what tourist destination to head to next.

Later that week, we went to visit the embalmed body of Mao.  This may have been the epitome of the Disney feeling while I was in China.  The visit seemed like a visit to a Disney character with more rules.  No open toed shoes and passports were required.  Vendors sold flowers outside that could be placed at the base of the statue in the foyer.  We were forced to walk silently through the many chambers of the building and all smiling or joy was highly frowned upon.  When we left, it seemed like I should be awarded a patch or pin or some other trinket that proudly proclaimed “I’ve seen a communist leaders dead body!”  Maybe they would give me a play passport that I could also get stamped at Ho Chi Minh’s, Stalin’s, and Lenin’s bodies as well.

I was finally able to escape the tourism when I went exploring with the male Alexs.  Bagheera found a place that was supposed to have great Peking duck that was a decent distance away from where we were staying.  It was perfect because we figured that not many others from our group would wander that far off so we could enjoy our meal in peace.  When we got there though, we realized that we did not want to spend that much money on dinner.  With that we went exploring for cheaper food.

We turned off the main street and found an interesting little area that was not quite and ally and not quite a parking lot.  There were a few stores and a bunch of food vendors there.  After making our way down to the end, we decided on a place that had skewers simmering in a type of hot pot.  We indicated to some noodles and filled our plastic wrapped plates with some of the skewers and veggies.

Little did we know that the skewers had been brewing in lava.  We quickly ordered a round of Yanjings to quench the fire.  The soy beans provided some relief but ultimately we left the establishment with scorched tongues.  As we passed the corner market, we stopped in to grab a round of honey milk tea which happens to be the absolute best thing to help beat the heat.

As we headed back to the main road, we noticed a couple in the middle of the intersection.  While it was odd that they were standing in the intersection in the middle of traffic, what they were doing was even more attention grabbing.  They were burning what we later found out to be fake money by the ream in small rings scratched into the pavement.  When they deemed they had burnt enough in that ring, they created another and started the process all over again.  Fascinated, we sat on the curb and unabashedly watched them along with some elderly gentlemen in undershirts who were smoking nearby.  After many pictures and an idea for a Concordia Courier article, we decided to explore some of the hutongs before heading back to our hostel (The Nine Super Happy Dragons of the New Golden Universe Hotel). 

As we wove our way through the narrow allies, we realized that this couple was not unique.  We found dozens of other people also burning piles of fake money all throughout the city.  Baffled, we did not know what was happening.  None of our speculations seemed to make much sense so we just walked around in awe of what we were seeing. 

We managed to accomplish our goal of getting lost after a few minutes so we decided to grab a Mons beer and sit and talk.  When we decide we should head back, the general consensus is that there is no better way to go home than by tuk-tuk.  Bagheera hails one for us and the three of us cram in.  About five minutes later, we find ourselves back at our hostel, elated and bewildered by the fact that we were so close yet so lost.  After walking around Beijing all day, our direction skills had not quit us!

This night alone made up for the slight disappointments we had earlier in our stay.  The lines of traveler and tourist began to blur when we realized that we could be so close to home but so lost that we might as well have been on the opposite side of the city.  The high and mighty travelers could not find their hostel and had to resort to the business card taxi trick, even for a walk that would have taken no time at all.  In the end, China left us with many great memories, great haggling skills, and a checked ego.  Two countries down and still many more to go.