Beijing

A capital idea? Hardly!

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For most of my life, China has been a bit of a mystery.

In primary school, I learned about European royalty, the plight of the Native Americans and the wisdom of Abraham Lincoln. In high school, I had an animated history teacher who worked himself into such a frenzy during lectures that his stories became more like theater. I could close my eyes and, with his vivid descriptions, picture a stumpy Napoleon riding horseback into the teeth of a thousand bullets.

Sadly, Asian history was boiled down to just a few major events: a country that bombed us (Japan, at Pearl Harbor) and a country we bombed the hell out of a couple of decades later to stop the spread of communism (Vietnam). In college, I bought a book about a World War II mission to rescue US and British POWs, including some survivors of the Bataan Death March, from a Japanese camp in the Philippines.

So it wasn’t until I moved to China in 2010 that I began to understand the country’s history. I didn’t even know that Beijing was not always the national capital. In April, I traveled to Nanjing, the seat of power from 1368 to 1420 during the Ming Dynasty and again in the early 20th century, before the Communists “liberated” China in 1949.

The Jinghai Temple.

A ceiling inside the Jinghai Temple.

The Linggu Pagoda was built in 1929 to honor soldiers who died in a war between the Chinese Nationalists (Kuomintang) and local warlords.

To third Ming emperor Yongle, who moved the capital to Beijing in 1420, I’ve got to ask: Dude, what were you thinking? Beijing doesn’t get much precipitation, so it can be brutally dry. It’s prone to sandstorms in spring, which leave a red film over everything unfortunate enough to be left outdoors. The winters are long and, when the winds whip down from Siberia, bone-chillingly cold. And unlike many major cities in the world, it isn’t located near any large body of water. Continue reading →

The hunt for red November

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One of the first parks I visited in Beijing was Fragrant Hills (Xiangshan). The park is best known for its smoke trees, which turn the hillside red in autumn.

I went in November, hoping to make a few nice pictures to send to family and friends back home. The climb to the top of the park took about two hours. Along the way I saw plenty of yellow and golden leaves, but no red ones. To make matters worse, when I reached the peak the view of Beijing was obstructed by pollution.

But the hike wasn’t a total loss. On the way down, I found a trail that led to a pond. The surface was covered with leaves and water lilies. I took several pictures, and then climbed to a higher spot so I could get the people walking around the water in the frame. From there I captured one of my favorite images of my first few months in China.

What, there are traffic laws here?

/ slightlyreworded / 16 Comments

When I went home to the United States last summer, I couldn’t wait to drive. I don’t own a car in Beijing, and it had been more than a year since I’d been behind the wheel.

I missed that free feeling of an open highway, stereo up and windows down, the smells of summer whipping your face on a moonlit drive through the country. I missed the ability to go anywhere I wanted, at any time of the day, without having to hail a taxi or cram into a subway full of sweaty young men with no sense of personal space. Continue reading →

Vanishing into thick air

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My biggest complaint about Beijing is the pollution. Nothing saps the energy out of me first thing in the morning quite like looking out the window and not being able to see a building that I could probably hit with a baseball. It’s depressing and bad for my health.

But I put up with it because I live near the heart of a booming metropolis. Public transportation is great. The food is cheap. And, when I need a respite from the congested streets and noisy shopping markets, there are plenty of art museums and well-maintained parks to get lost in.

I recently traveled to Tai’an, in the eastern province of Shandong, to climb one of China’s holiest Buddhist mountains with a friend from college. We left in the morning, on a high-speed train from Beijing’s South Railway Station. A light haze hung over the city. Continue reading →

There’s no space like home

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One of the things I miss most about living in a small town is the space: the ability to stretch out my arms without hitting another person or walk for miles without seeing anyone.

It’s a luxury you lose in a city like Beijing, where even the widest streets sometimes feel every bit as cramped as the smallest alleys. The crowds are difficult to avoid, whether you’re riding the subway in the middle of the day or going to the bank on a Saturday. The feeling of constantly cramming into lines and bumping elbows with strangers can become overwhelming.

When I need a break from the crowds, I often head into one of Beijing’s 300 parks. For a city hell-bent on growth and economic development, Beijing has a surprising amount of space committed to leisure and recreation.

The largest is Chaoyang Park. At 713 acres, it is is comparable in size to New York’s Central Park. It’s home to a very unsafe-looking roller coaster (the only thing holding the safety harness down was a seat belt that looked like it had been pulled from a junked car), volleyball courts that were used during the 2008 Olympic games and restrooms that resemble a giant ladybug.

It’s easy to get lost, as I managed to do last summer when I rented a tandem bike with my girlfriend and made the fatal error of letting her lead the way. When we came to the conclusion that neither of us had any idea where we were going, I picked a direction and peddled like a madman to get us back to the rental office before it closed. Despite giving it my all we arrived a few minutes late and had to forfeit the deposit for the bike. Continue reading →

Where there’s a Wall, there’s a way

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One of the first places I visited after moving to Beijing was the Great Wall at Mutianyu. It sits above a charming village that has benefited greatly from tourism. Group buses from Beijing, only 70 km away, whiz past farmers carrying wood and crops on narrow roads all day long.

The road that leads to the Wall has been taken over on both sides by vendors hawking T-shirts (I climbed the Great Wall!), Chairman Mao hats, poster prints of the Wall and dozens of other souvenirs. There’s even a Subway restaurant, but sadly no McDonald’s or Starbucks. I thought about turning around but kept going.

To get on the Wall you can either walk a steep trail or ride a ski lift. I chose the ski lift and as I waited in line, I walked past pictures of foreign dignitaries who had visited Mutianyu. One of the pictures was of a sweaty Bill Clinton boarding the lift (“Must have been sitting behind some young co-eds,” an American in front of me quipped).

It was a clear day, and the views of the mountains were spectacular. But the Wall, still intact in most places, had a sanitized feel. Many of the towers and bricks at Mutianyu have been restored. I wanted to experience the Great Wall in its natural, crumbling state.

View from a tower window.

Sunset at Mutianyu.

Several months later, I went with three friends to an unrestored section called Huanghua (Yellow Flower). We hired a cab driver named Mr. Li to take us there. Our only request was that he get us to the Wall before dawn so we could take pictures of it at sunrise. Continue reading →

iPhone 4 – China’s obsession with status

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Long lines form before dawn. Those with a spot close to the front slump against the store’s exterior to catch a few minutes of rest in the freezing cold. An announcement is made. People panic and begin pushing. There are scuffles with security.

It’s a scene all too familiar by now to Americans. A phenomenon that happens once a year the day after Thanksgiving and turns wholesome, mouse-fearing stay-at-home moms into raging, get-to-aisle-6-by-any-means-necessary bargain hunters.

Only in this case, the lines weren’t for the latest Tickle Me Elmo doll or Nintendo gaming system. They weren’t even in America. They were outside Beijing’s Apple store for the launch of the iPhone 4S. Unlike businesses on Black Friday, the Apple store wasn’t offering any bargains. A 16 GB iPhone 4S without a contract costs about $140 more in China ($790) than in the United States ($649), even though the phones are manufactured at a factory on the Chinese mainland.

A crowd gathers outside the Apple Store in Beijing on Jan. 8, a few days before the iPhone 4S was scheduled to go on sale.

The demand for Apple products in China is so high that scalpers hire migrant workers to buy iPhones and iPads, which are then sold at a markup. The scalpers often stand within a few feet of the Apple store, holding iPhone boxes in the air and shouting “iPhone Si!, iPhone Si!” hoping to catch people leaving empty-handed (Si, pronounced “suh,” is the word for 4 in Mandarin).

“Customer response to our products in China has been off the charts,” Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, said earlier this month in a press release. Continue reading →

Beijing’s indefinite particles

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The skies were brilliant blue the day I arrived in Beijing. From the street, you could see the tops of skyscrapers. And from the tops of skyscrapers, you could see the outline of jagged mountains on the horizon.

This kind of visibility wasn’t normal, and sure enough within a few days, a haze began to set over the city. The tops of tall buildings disappeared in the smog. The air became heavier, and I found it harder to breathe, especially when I exercised outside, which I like to do. Cars in my neighborhood that hadn’t been moved for days became coated in residue of some kind. If you left a window open at your home, the dust seeped in and settled on the floor.

The view from the 9th floor of my apartment building on a clear day.

The view from the 9th floor of my apartment building on a polluted day.

You get used to the pollution after a while, at least the sight of it. I treat it as a trade-off for living in a rapidly developing land of opportunity, where jobs for college-educated expats are in high demand.

Continue reading →

Land of the free and home of the buffet

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I was watching an episode of The Office on Hulu recently when in between segments of the show a commercial for Kentucky Fried Chicken came on.

It was an ad for KFC’s new Cheesy Bacon Bowl. “There’s a reason our KFC famous bowl is famous,” it began. A man leaned into the camera, as if to share a secret. “We put bacon on it.”

Bacon bits rained down into a bowl of fried chicken, cheese, potatoes and gravy. “Everything is better with bacon.”

Anyone who really believes that everything is better with bacon has an eating problem. And America, you most certainly do. Lady Liberty can no longer see her feet, and it isn’t because she’s expecting a little statue in four months.

Feed me Seymour!

Let me give you some perspective. I live in the world’s most populous country, a nation of 1.3 billion where the obesity rate is around 5 percent. You have a population of 311 million people with an obesity rate of greater than 20 percent. You haven’t always been this fat. To get an idea of how quickly you’ve let yourself go, check out an animated map on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website that shows how the obesity rate has exploded from 1985 to 2010. It’s disturbing and will make you pause the next time you think about supersizing your fries. Continue reading →

Strawberry chunks forever

/ slightlyreworded / 3 Comments

In the years following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Homeland Security officials, when asked to assess the threat of another attack, often responded: “It’s not a matter of if, but when.”

The same can be said about food poisoning in Beijing. No Western diet can prepare a man’s stomach for the taste, smell and texture of authentic Chinese cuisine. Eat here long enough, and it’s only a matter of time until you’re staggering to the nearest toilet, puking yourself into a coma.

I didn’t get sick for the first eight months I lived in Beijing. It wasn’t because I didn’t take risks. I ate food I didn’t know existed (sea cucumber), bit a bird below the ankle (chicken feet) and tried without much luck to chew through undercooked bull intestines. Any part of an animal is fair game to the Chinese. “Are you going to eat that?” a co-worker once asked me over dinner, pointing with his chopsticks to the eyeball of a fish that had been picked to the bone.

I also tried as many different kinds of restaurants as I could. There’s a huge variety in the city, and with a little research you can find nearly any kind of ethnic food in the world.  Beijing has around 60,000 restaurants, according to a local English-language magazine. Assuming you dined out three times a day, it would take about 55 years to try every restaurant in the city.

How do I know where your feet have been?

I had probably tried less than 100 by the time I sat down for dinner at a nondescript seafood restaurant for a meal of oysters and scallops. Cooked and coated in butter, they were delicious. As it has a tendency to do, the underdeveloped part of my brain that tells my hands to stop putting food into my mouth took the night off. Thirty oysters and a couple of cheap lagers later, I left and made a mental note of where the restaurant was located, hoping to come back. Continue reading →