Summer Palace

Stories from China

Howdy folks! I feel miserly about not getting out any travel narratives from China (some people knowing full well I would be writing, even from a squat toilet). Now that I’ve transcribed everything off the recycled toilet paper I saved, I’m ready to hit Flush, I mean, SEND. Actually, toilet paper doesn’t exist in China (it’s BYOT), so I’m really writing this on the fly.

Traveling to China was a spontaneous opportunity. My friend Jackie’s relatives, working in Beijing, opened their apartment to visitors and would help orient us, really. I prepared for the trip by studying a giant-sized coffee-table Chinese cookbook, a nice gift from Jean many years ago.

In case you’re burning to know, Szechuan cooking (spicy!) comes from midwestern parts of China, the best seafood from middle coast, noodles from the north (where it’s cold and only grains can grow), rice from the south (warmer, tropical).

Most important, I read that Tsingdao beer is brewed in coastal Shandong Province north of Shanghai in a town spelled "Qingdao"–this is how I figured out "q" sounds like "ch" in transcribed Chinese–my eternal quest for beer always the great portal into linguistic worlds.

So that was my knowledge of "Chinese" in a nutshell. I was ready to order Peking Duck in Beijing, compressing whole cycles of wars, marauding overthrows, dynastic slams, occupations, military coups, and city name switches, just in the verbal act of ordering this delicious Northern specialty. (Good thing the duck survived.)

A travel agent in China helped me arrange the local train, plane, river trips, and guides or we would never have found our way off the plane. Funny thing, I was able to call Charlie on my cell phone upon landing in Beijing–now that was freaky. Ah, how many times have I called poor Chas in need of more directions. Eventually, tho, the Chinese power grid fried my phone, battery, and charger, leaving me to my own devices.

People have asked commiseratingly about the long flight over: Upon landing, I’d’ve been happy to turn right back around and do it again. Fifteen hours of pure bliss it was, worth the whole trip alone. Here’s why: I was trapped in a small space (nowhere to go, nothing to have to do, no distractions, no needy little people asking me to pick up their crayons rolling under the seats behind me at 700 mph). I WAS SO HAPPY! I got to READ for 15 hours straight. People served me and took my things away. Wine and beer were free. I could just stop right here and call it a good time.

For the first couple days in Beijing our host, Roxanne, arranged a driver for us, one ultracool and savvy Mr. Ma. who drove a mint Toyota minivan. Roxanne and her two young boys took the opportunity to do their errands, but also led us to a colorful local market and a killer international market. They showed us the ropes for bartering ("bu-yao" means too much) and for safely or unsafely ordering food from local vendors.

One evening the inestimable Mr. Ma had to go home, and Jackie and I discovered the world of the Chinese taxi–an adventure recommended only for hardened thrill seekers. A taxi ride across town was only 10 bucks, even for us clear out in the Beijing boonies, so we reluctantly dropped the pretense of affording a costly personal chauffeur.

All we had to do was flash a business card from the nearby Hotel Lido to get us back to the ‘hood. This should have been fool-proof. A problem with Jackie’s and my equally bad sense of direction was that, once at the Hotel Lido, we’d have to endlessly circumnavigate our harried taxi driver, vaguely recognizing landmarks (like the massage place called "Hoping Keep Fit") but not being able to remember exactly where our apartment tower, one among many of the same, was in relation to the hotel. It’s especially hard to recognize landmarks at night, without color cues, everything bleached out by the same baleful semipostcommunist streetlights. I directed with hand signals like those used on an airway strip–straight ahead, no–right! Now! Left. In the two weeks we were in China we managed to not get killed by any taxi drivers.

Coming into Beijing, we had flown long and low over these endless suburbs. From above I thought they were electrical grids from some massive power conduit to supply the billion plus Chinese. I was stunned to discover these endless bland blocks of concrete actually housed a good portion of these billion people. Our neighborhood hosted shantytown alleys, however, dwarfed by the concrete skyscraper housing units, where we could see more authentic China in action. We could order yummy meat dumplings from a wizened local vendor, or fresh folded crepes from a small market next door. Even these tiny neighborhoods of local China were being razed for modernization. Roxanne watched whole neighborhoods go under the bulldozer from her 16th floor just in the last year.

It took taxiing out of residential gridlock and into downtown Beijing for us to get more of the flavor of kitsch China, the China of the roundy red hanging tassled lamps, fun Kanji characters in neon, the tip-curled red-tiled roofs, the goateed China of lore.

Now Megan had requested pictures of "eye-brow people" and strange-looking houses, so coming soon are pics from the Forbidden City, for 500 years the seat of imperial power, home to Ming and Qing Dynasty emperors. To get inside there before 1911, when the last dynasty was busy being overthrown, you’d have to be the emperor, one of his 9000 eunuchs or 10,000 concubines; or, better yet, a sacking, pillaging marauder like Kublai Kahn, who came thru in 1279, when Beijing was called "Dad"--causing things like forbidden cities to be built in the first place.

Stay Tuned for Forbidden City pics and the next installment, "Frolicking with the Military in the Summer Palace"