Green Beer in Beijing

DATE: March 2003
LOCATION: BEIJING, CHINA

So, we went to China. It was pretty cool. We went on an organized tour. I don’t like organized tours, even if you’re the only ones on the tour (which we were). You can’t go where you want, or eat where you want, when you want. You end up spending time places you don’t want, like on “factory tours” where they show you how something is made for 5 minutes, then herd you into a showroom where high pressure sales people try to sell you things at triple the price of the stuff on the street. In 8 days, we went on 6 factory tours.

That said, I think a tour may be the only way to do China. There is so much to see, and most of us don’t have weeks on end to spend exploring. Having a private van to whisk you from place to place, not being allowed to go back to the hotel for a pre dinner nap, and a guide with a schedule to keep you moving makes for productive sightseeing. Not arguing about where to eat saved at least a full day all by itself. Our guides were all good about a little flexibility. I mean, other than the “factories” there was no shopping time in the schedule. This was unacceptable to all involved, so we made deals to pass up some cultural attractions to do our part for the Chinese economy. It was a real sacrifice. Anyway, here’s what we did, abridged version, in 2 installments. This one is Beijing, the next one will be Xi’an and Shanghai.

Days 1-4: Beijing.

Mandatory Government Factory tours: Tea, Jade, Cloisonné, Pearls.

Crap purchased: 2 full sets of pearls (holy smokes, great bargain!), fake cargo pants, Cloisonné vase, Mao watches with moving arms, 3 “little red books”, tea, tea cups, cheap silk stuff, wok (yes, a wok. Paul had to have it, and then guess who ended up carrying it). You can see my distaste for gov’t factories didn’t stop me from buying things.

China is quite the experience for westerners, and there aren’t very many of us around. Mao said every good Chinese person should make every attempt to go the Great Wall and Tiananmen Square to see his big picture hanging there. I made the very last part up, but the rest is true, and I’d know since I got all those red books. People from the countryside, who haven’t ever laid eyes on white people before, are all over the big tourist sites. They stare at you with blatant curiosity, and then want to take your picture. I don’t know how many family albums we’re now featured in as an attraction. One guy was actually still using a Polaroid. This phenomenon was strangely disturbing after 10 months in Korea, where I also stand out, but nobody seems to take much notice because they’re so used to foreigners. This, along with quite a few other things, took some real getting used to.

Our guide in Beijing was named Joe. Not really, but that is what he told us, and he answered to it, so we just left it at that. He was the wheeler dealer type, reminding me of what “shorty”, the little Chinese kid in Indiana Jones might be like all grown up and with a crew cut. Our driver was Mr Pei, a chain smoker with a good sense of humor and lead foot. We hit the ground running. One of our first stops off the plane was Tiananmen square. Joe gave us 15 minutes. Not exactly enough time to sit and ponder the history. It is the place one man faced down a column of tanks for freedom, the place Mao and Zhou reviewed massive parades and enforced their brutal revolutions, and the place just the day before the Chinese parliament met and passed a resolution recognizing human rights as a priority for the first time. The precious little time we did have was spent warding off vendors. I had to buy a little red book here in the square, and wasted a good 5 minutes getting the price down from $15 to $3. The negotiations were hard, but fair, and the vendor and I parted friends. I have a picture to prove it. Unfortunately this opened the door to all 200 other vendors to try to get us to by more red books, Chinese flags, or Mao hats. It was a blast. We were having such a great time with the vendors and getting our picture taken, and making friends with some college kids who wanted to practice their English, that we were 6 minutes late back to the van. Joe was NOT amused. It was our first outing, and we were already proving incapable of controlling ourselves. We weren’t sorry.

Joe taught us to say “no thank you”. He seemed to think it would work better if we said it in Chinese as the vendors might not think we were tourists…’cause the cameras and my dad’s fanny pack clearly wouldn’t be noticed. Anyway, it’s pronounced “Bo Shay Shay”. Paul latched right on…and it seemed to have the right affect for the wrong reasons. Paul was saying it “Boo Shi Shi” and the vendors were convulsing with laughter. Because they would repeat what he’d said, they way he said it, before laughing, we had no clue he was saying it wrong. The attention seeker that he is, Paul got into it, really pronouncing the “boo” part, like he was a ghost. More laughter. Hey, whatever it takes to get away. When our driver, Mr Pei, heard Paul say it once we were back in the car, he (after a good laugh) corrected us. Then we all had a good laugh.

The Great Wall was great, and Joe took us to a section out of town, much less crowded than sections closer to the city. We dutifully climbed the uneven stairs for 75 minutes solid to the 7th guard tower, stopping for the requisite photo at each rest point. Proud as we were we left most other fat western tourists gasping for breath at tower 3 or 4, the victory was somewhat hollow. The entire wall was rebuilt. As impressive as it was from a distance, up close all sense of history had been erased, and you could even see spots where the original wall stood…several meters from where we stood on the new wall. Oh well. Sometimes I over analyze things, so I’ve decided to recommend a trip to the Wall anyway. Who really cares if it’s real…what is real anyway? The vast majority of other tourists were Chinese, and they seemed pretty excited to be there, so who am I to judge?

We asked to skip the trip to the Ming tombs, which I read weren’t really worth the trip, and we went shopping at the silk street market instead. I love the Asian attitude towards shopping. Bartering here is a game, the goals are to win and have fun at the same time. The problem is the one-sidedness. We don’t need to buy crap, but they need to sell it to us. Literally. Some Westerners take advantage of this desperation, along with the Chinese need to “save face”. They walk away with cheap stuff, but at what price? Don’t get me wrong, I won’t pay more than what I think the going rate for an item is, but when we get down to dickering over a dollar…I just pay up. It’s nothing to me, and huge for somebody only making $150/month. Anyway, once again, Joe cut our fun short, but in this case, it was a good thing. What is it about Americans and all sanity leaving in the presence of fake coach purses and fake north face jackets? Even if you never wanted any before, it is now something you must have, and in bulk.

I won’t bore you with the rest of the tourist stops. They were cool to see--the Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven, Forbidden City, ect, but you really had to be there. They consisted of us following Joe around, listening intently (or pretending to) and nodding and grunting appropriately when Joe imparted on us a particularly interesting fact or great feat of some emperor. As good as the tourist traps were, the highlight may have been the grocery store we begged Joe to take us to. He thought we were nuts (and we are). We literally spent 40 minutes just wandering around looking at the goods, trying to read labels, and laughing about how “Froot Loops” looks written in Chinese. It was all over once we hit the bakery section. We got 5 different pastries, and passed them around. We also got every type of candy they offered. Some were good, like the green tea marshmallows. Some weren’t, like the cherry, chili pepper, and anchovy hard candies. Paul had to buy a birthday cake with a puppy dog on top because “it’s just sooooo cute, and only $1!” He promptly dropped the cake, smushing the dog’s face against the plastic cover giving him a demented, sad expression.

The first two evenings in town, we were treated to dinner and a show. The first night was acrobats, which was out of control. Did you know you can put 12 teenage girls in a standing pyramid on one moving bicycle? I didn’t, but it also never would have occurred to me to try. The next night was Chinese opera. I consider myself open-minded, and appreciative of the arts, but there just wasn’t any enjoying this. The only amusement was reading the hilariously translated subtitles. As we left Dad said, “Wow, I can’t believe I managed to stay awake”. We have a picture with evidence to the contrary.

The last night was St Patrick’s Day, and, being Irish, we ran into a wee bit o luck. From our hotel window we had a view of “Durty Nellie’s Irish Pub”. Could it have been any better? We headed out for a dinner of potato soup, Irish stew, Guinness and Kilkenny’s in a setting that really could have been in Ireland. The clientele were mostly Brits and Americans. The Irish embassy has a celebration for Irish ex-pats here in Korea. I assume the same holds true in Beijing, so there weren’t any Irish to be found. The best part was watching the Westerners who brought their Chinese associates out with them, doubtless to share a little Western culture. The Chinese were seriously excited to be there. They were drinking in the atmosphere, marveling at the food, and the looks on their faces made it obvious they were having a ball. This is not a free country. Getting a passport is all but impossible. This is the closest most of these folks will ever come to leaving the country.

Our last morning was our only free time. We decided we wanted to go to an “antiques market”. We had Joe write it down in Chinese and we took a cab. The market wasn’t really open, but we could see some serious commotion over a brick wall. It was a real market, with actual Chinese people doing everyday shopping. This is the kind of travel thing I live for, and the kind that organized tours ignore. We headed right over to the vacant lot where vendors had socks, batteries, pans, shoes, veggies, plants, excreta laid out on mats and blankets. My mom decided to buy a sweater--and bargained by writing offers on cardboard. A crowd began to gather as the vendor had her try the sweater on, and they worked on a price. By the time money and item changed hands, there were easily 20 people watching the transaction. This is also were Paul decided to buy a wok. He too had quite the audience. Come to think of it, the knowledge there would be an audience is probably why he bought it.

From there, it was off to the airport… and the ancient city of Xi’an!