Once I got back to Beijing on Thursday, I spent most of the afternoon at the Summer Palace to the northwest of the city center. The Summer Palace--hence its name--is where the emperors came to get away from life in the Forbidden City for a while. Its primary features are a big lake and a hill with a temple pagoda on top. It was really very nice to walk along the shores of Lake Kunming with the leaves of the willow trees hanging overhead and would have been quite peaceful if it weren’t for all the damn people around. Everywhere you go in Beijing, there are about a billion other people there with you. There’s really no escaping it.
I didn’t go into many of the buildings at the Summer Palace because you had to pay extra to get into most of them. However, I did enjoy a really interesting exhibit by a Chinese artist named LiYing Jie who works in the medium of stone painting. I’m not really quite sure how he does it, but all of his pieces are made entirely out of stone. There are obviously mostly abstract, but the names he has chosen for them are always amazingly appropriate. The one pictured is called “Life.” It was one of my favorites out of all the ones on display. I like how it could be interpreted as the branches of a trees or an image of neurons firing in a human brain.Late that afternoon I had to race back to my hostel to meet up with some other travelers I had met who were planning to go to an acrobatics show that night. I met Aaron from Australia because he was staying in my room and then he introduced me to Colleen and Duncan from England with whom he had just finished participating in the Mongolian Rally. The rally is charity event where participates drive all the way from London to Ulan Bator and then leave their cars and other service vehicles for the local population.
The acrobatics show itself was pretty amazing. We got the “cheap seats,” but somehow ended up sitting in the second row. One of the first acts was an acrobat who kept stacking more and more chairs on top of one another and then doing handstands and other crazy moves on top of the tower. Just when you thought he couldn’t go any higher he would have them bring out another chair. I literally was thinking to myself, “It’s okay. I’ve never seen anyone die before, but I guess there’s a first time for everything and I just have to accept that that’s going to happen.” The really scary part is that if he did fall, he would have probably landed right on top of us. The other really nerve-wracking act was the motorcyclists who rode around a hollow steel ball. First it was just one and that seemed relatively safe. Then they added another rider and you prayed they wouldn’t crash into each other. However, they didn’t stop there. Next they add a third, then a fourth and finally A FIFTH motorcycle into the mix. It was pretty crazy, but luckily no one got hurt. I guess that’s why they’re pros.
After the show, we set off to try to get some Peking Duck for dinner. We wandered from restaurant to restaurant on Ghost Street trying to find some place that served it, but the one place that did was out of our budget. We finally settled for a restaurant that had roast duck, but it wasn’t a whole one and it was so fatty and boney that it was difficult to eat. Luckily, we had ordered other dishes as well so no one went hungry.
The next morning, Aaron and I got up early to go check out Mao at his mausoleum in Tiananmen Square. The mausoleum is only open in the morning so you have to get there first thing to avoid the really long lines of Chinese tourists. After a few false starts where we had to find the lockers for my bag and Aaron had to run back to check his camera, we finally made it into the gates and filed past the coffin. The guards really keep you moving so you’ve got to check it out as quickly as you can. You first go into an entry hall where there is a big sculpture of Mao and lots of funereal flowers. Then you go into the room with the actual coffin surrounded by four wall of glass and guarded by two soldiers. Apparently there is a wax version and an incredibly well-preserved version of the former Communist leader and it is impossible to tell which one you are seeing. I, for my part, am leaning towards wax. There’s no way that was an actual 35-year dead body.
After visiting the mausoleum, Aaron and I wandered around a commercial area right outside Tiananmen Square until I had to leave to go meet my friend Kim at her hotel nearby. I had planned to get there at about 11:00am, but got a bit lost and didn’t get there until about 11:20am. However, when I arrived, the receptionists told me they didn’t have a reservation under Kim’s name or tour company. I was very confused, but decided to wait since I had no other way to contact her. I tried to get on my e-mail, but it wasn’t working at the hotel and after about an hour I finally decided to leave. On the way back to my hostel I stopped at the bank and got out some more money for Xi’an and Shanghai since I had an overnight train to Xi’an late that afternoon.
When I got to the hostel, I had an e-mail from Kim saying they had changed her hotel at the last minute. I tried to contact her, but she must have been out by that point because she wasn’t answering the phone in her room. In the meantime, I decided to look further into booking a train from Shanghai to Hong Kong. One website seemed to indicate that there was only a train every other day and it was on the opposite day that I wanted it. In the end, just to be safe I decided to book a flight. I paid a bit more than I had originally planned, but figured at least it would be fast. However, as soon as I went to pull out my credit card to pay for the flight I realized I was missing my ATM card. I had left it in the machine at the bank.
That was when I started to panic. The plane ticket sale wasn’t going through, I still hadn’t fully packed and Jeff from the hostel was telling me I needed to leave “right now” for the train station. I was going to be on a train for the next 15 hours so I didn’t want to wait to book my flight or cancel my ATM card if need be. I had Jeff try to call the number on my ATM receipt to ask about the card, but the number they gave him for the local branch didn’t work. I finally got the plane ticket booked, grabbed my bag and raced back to the bank. I literally let out a half whimper, half cry when I saw the teller pull out my familiar blue and red Bank of America card from her desk drawer. I don’t know if someone had turned it in or the machine had eaten it, but clearly an angel was watching over me at that moment. It had been an awful day between all the missed connections and missing valuables, but at least I still had a way to get money.
Despite my huge sense of relief, I still wasn’t looking forward to spending an entire night sitting upright on a hard seat all the way from Beijing to Xi’an. I ended up getting to the train station in plenty of time, though I did have to walk a ways since I took the subway instead of the bus, which would have brought me right to the entrance. I was sweaty and hot and my shoulders were hurting, but at least I didn’t miss my train. I did, however, leave the bag of food I had bought for the trip on the hook inside the bathroom stall. Luckily there were plenty of food carts to make sure all the passengers were well-fed throughout the ride. I’ll have the full rundown of the entire train trip and my stay in Xi’an when I post again tomorrow.
Till then have a great night!
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