A Little Touch of Home

All good things must come to an end, and that includes the vacation portion of my trip. Daniel headed to the Beijing airport early Sunday morning (11/28) to begin his travel back to the US. I accompanied him on the subway as far as the Airport Express train station. As I watched him disappear down the escalator, it began to sink in: I was now alone in this very foreign country. So what do I do now? I could head back to the hotel room and hide and begin preparing for the busy work week ahead, but I wasn't quite ready to do that. Then I remembered that there was a Walmart very near my hotel. It might be worth checking out. I did want to buy a new hat, the fleece cap I brought with me was just not doing the job against the cold winds here.

I could see the familiar Walmart sign from the exit of the Zhi Chun Lu subway station, so I set off to do some good old American shopping. The sign was clearly visible, but it took me three tries to get to the actual store. My first try landed me in a dead end alley, good thing it was broad daylight. My second try brought me to railroad tracks and a barb wire fence that I wasn't even going to try to cross. I headed back to the subway station, to the sidewalk along the road, and worked my way under the tracks and around, making it to the entrance of the store on my third try.

I could start to see differences immediately between this store and the ones at home. The entrance was comparatively small. No huge bank of automatic glass doors; this store had a couple of large openings that were covered with thick heavy curtains that you had to force your way through to get inside (kind of like getting on a crowded subway here). I guess this worked well as an insulator against the weather, but I was glad I would never have to try to push a shopping cart through it.

The inside did not look at all like what I was used to at home. Maybe it was a combination of the lighting and the no-frills displays, or maybe it was the armed guards carrying rifles. This place felt more like a warehouse store than a Walmart. The flooring and display cases looked, not dirty, but worn. I bet this place sees quite a bit of foot traffic.  The first floor was electronics and entertainment, lots of CDs, DVDs, TVs, appliances, etc.. I did see some familiar brands like Panasonic, Philips, Citizen, Disney, but there were also others that I'd never heard of before. I saw lots of familiar movie titles among the DVDs. In the CD section, I expected to see familiar recording artists like Michael Jackson and Lady Gaga. There were also names that surprised me, Like Kenny G and Richard Clayderman. Who knew they'd be so popular in China?

Since I was on a mission to find a new hat, I decided to head upstairs to see what was there. To get to the second floor, you had to ride a long, sloped, moving sidewalk, intended for people with grocery carts to be able to move easily from level to level. The second floor consisted of Health and Beauty Aids, Clothing, and Household Goods. The HBA area looked more familiar, there were a few brand name make-up counters and skin care displays. The clothes, however, again had that warehouse look. No large signs advertising specific brands or sale pricing, just rack after rack of shirts, pants, coats, underwear, socks, shoes. 

It took me a few minutes, but I was able to locate the winter hats. Now I just had to pick one. I wanted something to match the coat I was wearing, and finally settled on a gray knit cap. Only problem was, it had an unfamiliar brand name very visibly embroidered on it, "huakangtai". I had no idea if this was a good brand or a bad brand. What if wearing this on the street attracted attention and harassment, like the JCPenney Plain Pocket Jeans of my youth? There didn't seem to be many other options, so I decided to take my chances. I also bought a pair of knit gloves that left the fingers exposed, I figured that might come in handy for cold weather photography.

Seeing the HBA section reminded me that I also wanted to look for underarm deodorant. How many of you know exactly how long a stick of deodorant or tube of toothpaste lasts? I sure don't keep track of such things. When I packed for this 5-week trip back in Pougkeepsie, I had to guess as to what quantities to take. I had decided on taking only one brand new stick of deodorant, that surely would be enough. However, I noticed this weekend that it was already feeling a bit light, and I thought it would be a good idea to locate some more just in case I got close to running out.

I was unable to find any deodorant for sale in this Walmart at all. Honest. I looked through the HBA aisles 3 times. I saw lots of familiar products: shampoo, conditioner, lotion, band aids, OTC medications, pretty much everything you'd expect to find in the HBA section. Except deodorant. And you can thank me for perpetuating the pervy American stereotype - I spent an embarrassingly long time in front of a wall of small boxes, trying to figure out if they were what I was looking for, only to realize with horror that I had been staring at a condom display. I considered asking for help, but I don't know how to say "deodorant" in Chinese (nor any other word, for that matter). The thought of having to pantomime the application of deodorant under my armpits to a sales clerk was too much to deal with on my first solo outing. I decided to take my chances with what I had. (Note that I am not trying to poke fun at the local people with this story - I have not once detected any offensive body odor during my stay. I just do not understand why deodorant is not available. Is it possible that the vast majority do not need it? Ancient Chinese secret?)

I decided to go back to the first floor and do some more exploring there. I headed back to where I arrived on the second floor, unpurchased hat and gloves in hand. A girl there waved me away, pointing me in another direction and telling me something important that I had no chance of understanding. I decided she was telling me that I have to buy my merchandise on this floor, so I headed over to a register and payed. Y38 (about $6) for a hat and gloves, not bad. I headed back to the floor entrance, only to be waved off by the same girl again. What the...? Looking around, I realized why she was waving me away: you can only go up on this side of the moving sidewalk. But where is the down sidewalk? Since there were no signs (that I could read), I had to wander around the store for a while before I found it. It was located on the completely opposite side of the store. These people really like to walk.

This was a Walmart Supercenter, so it had groceries as well. I remember receiving an e-mail a while back with photos that were supposedly taken in a Chinese Walmart. These showed some pretty strange food items, like octopus tentacles and whole alligator. I figured that these items were too odd for Walmart, and that the photos were likely taken elsewhere as an attempt at sensationalism. After seeing this Walmart's grocery floor, I'm not so sure now. There were lots of very familiar looking sections, like the bakery, fresh fruits and vegetables, dried goods. The meat section, however, was where the most differences could be seen. Some of the meat on display would fit right in at a US Walmart. Others, like the chicken feet, pig's feet, pig's snout, you'd be more hard-pressed to find at home. There was a section of hanging cured meats that had no plastic protection over them, including some flattened smoked duck with the heads still attached. (I could not help but utter a dismayed "aw" at those poor ducks.) Raw meats such as chicken parts and pork were out on display and were self-service. Shoppers put plastic bags over their hands and used them as gloves as they picked through legs and thighs and wings and slabs of ribs. There was a live food section, which consisted mostly of turtles and fish. These were also help-yourself items. It was quite comical to watch the customers chasing an unwilling fish with a net and getting splashed in the process.

I made a mental note of some of the snacks that were available in the dried goods section for a future shopping trip, and decided to head back to my hotel room. I spent the rest of the day looking at my trip photos, catching up on US news, and reviewing my work materials so that I'd be ready for Monday. My vacation was definitely over.

The Great Wall

We tried hard to get moving earlier on Saturday, since we had a lot of ground we wanted to cover. After a quick breakfast of pastry and tea, we grabbed a taxi at the hotel, with the intention of visiting the Beijing Olympic site. After we climbed in, Daniel realized that he didn't know the Mandarin words for "Olympic site." The driver had already started moving, so Daniel had to scramble to pull out a guidebook and locate a photo of one of the distinctive buildings there. We were all laughing about that, even the driver.

 We spent about a half hour wandering around the iconic Bird's Nest and the Water Cube buildings. There were tours that went into these buildings that we really wanted to try, but we were running late and still had a lot that we wanted to do, so we were content to just take some photos. It was very cold here, especially when the wind was blowing. I was happy I packed a pair of winter underwear.

Next up was the Great Wall. Daniel had learned that there is a city bus, the 919, that goes directly to a part of the Great Wall located at Badaling, and was more convenient (and much cheaper) than other transportation options. (When I told my co-workers that we used this bus, they seemed impressed - that was what the locals used to get to there.)  We took a taxi ride to the start of the route, and were able to get on a bus right as it was about to leave. There were two seats left on the bus, but the seat configuration was 3 and 2 across, rather than 2 and 2. These seats were designed for slim Asians, not a larger Caucasian. I spent the entire hour+ ride with my butt hanging off of the edge the seat, not very comfortable at all. I shouldn't complain, though - Daniel and the third person were really crammed into their seats by the rest of me.

We arrived at our destination at 1:30pm, and got in line to purchase tickets. We were given two tickets each, and we had no idea exactly what we had bought. The tour guide that was on the bus with us seemed concerned that we did not have enough time to see everything, and pushed for us to head up the hill, recommending that we only climb as far as the 8th Watchtower, wherever that was. We crossed the street and wandered through the Dong Fang Bear park, complete with some breed of bears on display, We climbed up a hill and eventually came to a gate where one of our tickets were taken, and we were let inside.

We saw signs pointing the way to "slide cars", and realized that was likely what our second ticket was for. We handed them to an attendant, and headed through a queue to a metal track with a bunch of single-seat cars. We climbed into the cars, a shoulder harness was pulled over our heads, and the cars started moving up the hill along some sort of lift chain. I was getting a little nervous because this was starting to look like it could be a thrill ride, and with my heavy winter jacket and camera bag, I was having difficulties in locking down the shoulder harness. The ride operator had not done this; this was definitely not Walt Disney World. Thankfully the harness was not even necessary, the ride moved slowly and we stopped and got out at the top of the ride.

The cars put us at the bottom of a section of the Great Wall. We climbed up some steps and were soon walking on the Wall itself. This part of the Wall had been heavily renovated a while back, but still it was amazing thinking that someone had designed and built a version of this hundreds of years ago, imagining the amount of time and sweat that went into its construction.

We took our time walking up the Wall, stopping to take photos and to gaze over the hazy valleys. Many people were doing the same on this sunny but cold day. It took us about an hour or so, but we managed to make it up to the 8th Watchtower, the highest point of this part of the wall some 800 meters above sea level. (Many thanks to my walking partner Erin back in Poughkeepsie (hope you're still reading) for making sure I wouldn't be huffing and puffing by the time I reached the top!) There were a lot of people crowded in at this point, trying to get a photo of themselves. We managed to take a few photos ourselves, and then something strange happened - a couple of giggling Chinese girls asked me if I would mind having my photo taken with them. I've heard of this happening to other people visiting foreign lands, but never thought I'd ever look exotic enough for it to happen to me.  I gladly complied, and still smile when I think that my face may be gracing the pages of a stranger's vacation album. (Here's hoping they haven't captioned it with "Some stupid, fat, ugly American that we wanted to throw off the Wall.")

It was time for us to start heading down again - we were told the last 919 bus left Badaling at 4pm, and that we should get back to the bus stop by 3:30pm in order to be guaranteed a seat. The last part of the trip down involved another ride on the slide cars. I thought maybe they'd let us slide down individually, adding a thrilling end to the visit, but no such luck. The cars slid down the mountain in batches, led by a brake car that kept us from going too fast.

After the ride, we spent some time wandering through the tourist traps at the bottom of the Wall, looking for some souvenirs. We took more time than we should have, arriving at the bus stop about 3:45pm to a bit of chaos. There was one bus parked there, completely full, and a bunch of mostly Chinese tourists crowded around the doors. Daniel did his best to try to understand what was going on. Nearest he could tell, there was one more bus on its way, arriving at 4:30pm, but it was not clear whether there would be room for all of us. We ran into another Caucasian, a guy from Toronto who had been traveling Asia solo. We told him what we knew, talked a bit about what other transportation alternatives we had (Train? Taxi? We didn't know where to find them) and then waited to see what would happen. A representative for the bus system came out and made a statement, all in Mandarin. The only thing that Daniel got out of it was "get in a line," so we did that. As luck would have it, we were near some college students who spoke English, and one of them was able to explain to us and our new Canadian friend what the representative had said. There was an empty bus arriving before 4:30pm, so it sounded like we had seats after all. The bus arrived shortly after, we all piled on (this time we had seats that fit my entire butt), and took off for Beijing.

We got back to Beijing about 5:30pm. There were still two items on our agenda: food and an acrobat show. Daniel had a restaurant in mind, but we didn't have reservations, so we took a taxi there to see if we could quickly get a table and eat. The taxi dropped us off at the right address (near a pair of buildings referred to as the Gemini or Twin Towers),  but it took us a bit of wandering to locate the actual restaurant. We would have to wait for a table there, and we wouldn't have enough time to eat before the acrobat show. We decided to see the show and then come back to the restaurant to eat. Back in a cab, this time headed to the show. We arrived at the show theater, bought tickets, grabbed a couple of sausages at the snack bar and then found some seats. We spent the time waiting for the show to start by listening to the adventures of a very funny couple from New Zealand that we had sat next to. One of the things they described was their difficulties getting a taxi in Beijing - when they tried to wave one down, the driver would slow, see that they were not Chinese, and speed up and drive past them. Any time they needed a taxi, they had to find the nearest hotel and have the doorman tell the driver where they were headed.

The show we watched was called "Legend of Jinsha." There seemed to be some sort of loose plot, but I wasn't able to figure out what it was. The show consisted of a variety Chinese acrobatic and juggling acts, but instead of traditional music, it was set to a more modern jazzy soundtrack. The acts were good but not quite polished, and weren't anything I hadn't seen before. There were a couple of neat twists, like the pin jugglers - the pins they used were lighted, and the lights changed color in patterns. It looked to me like the lighting may have been controlled wirelessly. The finale involved motorcycles riding in a giant steel ball. I've seen this before on TV, but it was definitely more thrilling to see this live.

After the show, we got in a taxi and headed back to the restaurant we'd tried to eat at earlier. This time we were seated immediately. The menu looked so good that we ordered way too much food again, but managed to plow through most of it. We were the last customers there eating; the workers there started cleaning up around us as we were eating.

Since it was so late when we were done eating, we had to walk a bit to find a taxi. We managed to get back to the hotel just before 11pm. I reminded Daniel that I had wanted to get my hair cut. He remembered seeing a salon just a short walk from the hotel, so we headed over there to see if they could take me. They said they'd stay open as long as they had customers, so we ran back to the hotel, dumped our stuff off in our room, and headed back to the salon.

Each time we entered the salon, we were loudly greeted in Mandarin by all of the idle salon workers. It was a bit embarrassing, but funny. Daniel tried to explain what I wanted - my already short hair trimmed, not too short, but cleaned up. In addition to the cut, I also had my hair washed, and they gave me an upper-body massage - head, neck shoulders, and arms. Daniel had a wash and massage as well. The workers here were young and enthusiastic, definitely a fun place to get a haircut!  We got back to the hotel room about midnight, a late end to a very busy but enjoyable vacation day.