Every travel blog is so cliche. Tales of infectious excitement that attempt to inspire readers to also strike out into the world...c'mon. I'm happy so far to focus on transit and eating. Inspire this!
First to mind is what I've come to refer as the Great Fiasco of China, the first full day there where we missed everything. After Lonely Planet was simply wrong about how long it would take to get to Simatai, a beautiful, crumbling, and more isolated area of the Great Wall, 2 hours from Beijing and 2 hours from the Wall, we had to backtrack to return in time for our train to Luoyang. We were in a pretty desolate area,
which this photo does not much capture the spirit of. It was an area of 4 lane highways and hotels that all seemed closed. Pretty quiet and it was only 3:30pm. Some people were hungry, and we went into the only thing that seemed open, a hotel restaurant. The staff were sitting around killing time, and it was obvious (confirmed after many hand actions and guide book flipping) that they were closed till 5.
However, after a long time trying to figure out where to go next (and quite embarrassingly for us, a waitress busted out a cellphone and called her English speaking friend to help us), a manager came down and forced the restaurant open an hour and a half early, just for us. I was red-faced, but the others refused my suggestion that we don't do this to the staff... "If they didn't wanna be open for us, they wouldn't", an argument that won the day, despite ignoring the simple fact that the staff had no choice. Without much of a moral backbone (just a general quesy feeling near all the time) I ate anyway. Using the guidebook I tried to tell the waitress that the food was delicious, but I think I just insulted her somehow. To assuage my guilt I thought we could leave a massive tip. I gave our 50% tip or so to the helpful waitress who outright refused. Thinking that she wasn't allowed but would appreciate it nonetheless, I slipped it among the dishes. We were halfway across the parking lot when another waitress came running out, money in hand, leading to a communication tug of war until we just walked away, winning the game of who gives away the money.
That was the same day we tried to get to Tianneman Square, but arrived right around its closing time. I didnt really know public squares could close, but there we were. Here's a shot at Tianneman Square, with the flash exposing the huge particles of pollution we were swallowing every second.
On my last day in China, I did get to Tianneman Square, the Forbidden City, and The Great Wall, which I will get into in a later post. But here is a happy faced and filthy man on that very same epic and victorious day, showing all signs of eight days of hard travel. He's about to enjoy some Peking Duck in a damn fancy restaurant (which would prefer not to be called 'damn fancy').
And here is a photo of me, defeated by the heaping quantities of Peking Duck I ate:
Which, as a vegetarian (a piscebyterian really) might show I'm really none at all. However, I feel no vague quesy guilt about it at all. Because I know I'll never eat Peking Duck again or have any plans to eat any other fowl for that matter. It wasn't a gateway drug back into the realm of morally depraved flesh eating, but just a radical choice. I dated a woman once, a vegetarian, who told me one time when no one was around, she ate a whole pepperoni tube (?), and I always considered that one peak of freedom. Anyway, the duck and duck soup was amazing.
After that, we went for a Lonely Planet bar called "C'est What?" that we couldnt find (whether that was our fault or Lonely Planet's I cant say), but found this guard outside the Forbidden City
looking like all the guards I saw. Except this one below, a guard off duty, just steps away from the upright specimen above.
A couple asked him to take photos of them in front of the Forbidden City south gates, and he got right into it, even getting them to pose in goofy ways, she on his back etc etc. If you enlarge the image, you can see a big tooth grin on his face. This little anecdote may not seem like much, but it was really striking around the intimidating Forbidden City/Tianneman Square section at night, with big police vans, cameras and serious and perfectly pressed guards keeping it all empty and controlled.
II. Xi'an
Soon after these coconuts, Ed and I, slowly and surely
found our way to one of Xi'an's Muslim Quarters for a street table dinner that was cooked by these guys
and had some exquisite and painful spice that made me chug down 4 orange sodas until I felt sick (and the beginning of the 4th I knew it was a mistake). Sated, we wandered around, Ed buying some Mao t-shirts that were much loved by some of the people we met climbing Mount Hua Shan.
We left the busier market area for quieter neighbourhood streets, a Jane Jacob dream of shops and residences, many in the same room.
Everything was great, and even felt a lot like Toronto, until, a left from the child pooing at the sidewalk (didnt see any diapers anywhere, just slits in the seat of pants so kids can just go where need be), it became darker, quieter, and thus more scary. So we went back to that best hostel in the world, exhausted but not sleepy, and got some Tiger beers at its Terracotta themed bar, thinking of how to make conversation with the two beautiful women at the table beside us, but some men swooped in and took them away. A Chinese guy played Elliott Smith songs over a beatboxing young whitey with a ponytail...we were in a hostel alright. Soon we were accosted by some friendly Australian English teachers and their dates, Steve and Nick and Cindy and Michael and someone else. The teachers were really fun, but prone to bragging not only of their 'incredible' jobs and their 'incredible' apartments, but also the 'incredible sluts' of Xi'an. This may make them out to be grotesque, but some 20 minutes later Steve got a call from his girlfriend and had to leave pronto. I liked that he was trying to impress us but he actually has a girlfriend he cares enough about to leave straight away from a night out. The beatboxing whitey named Andrew was one of their friends and and came over to chat. I'm now seriously considering going to work in China for a month after I finish in Japan, so I asked Andrew if I could find another job outside of teaching if I wanted to work and live in China.
"You can do anything you want man".
Thanks for the help Andrew.
Soon after these coconuts, Ed and I, slowly and surely
found our way to one of Xi'an's Muslim Quarters for a street table dinner that was cooked by these guys
and had some exquisite and painful spice that made me chug down 4 orange sodas until I felt sick (and the beginning of the 4th I knew it was a mistake). Sated, we wandered around, Ed buying some Mao t-shirts that were much loved by some of the people we met climbing Mount Hua Shan.
We left the busier market area for quieter neighbourhood streets, a Jane Jacob dream of shops and residences, many in the same room.
Everything was great, and even felt a lot like Toronto, until, a left from the child pooing at the sidewalk (didnt see any diapers anywhere, just slits in the seat of pants so kids can just go where need be), it became darker, quieter, and thus more scary. So we went back to that best hostel in the world, exhausted but not sleepy, and got some Tiger beers at its Terracotta themed bar, thinking of how to make conversation with the two beautiful women at the table beside us, but some men swooped in and took them away. A Chinese guy played Elliott Smith songs over a beatboxing young whitey with a ponytail...we were in a hostel alright. Soon we were accosted by some friendly Australian English teachers and their dates, Steve and Nick and Cindy and Michael and someone else. The teachers were really fun, but prone to bragging not only of their 'incredible' jobs and their 'incredible' apartments, but also the 'incredible sluts' of Xi'an. This may make them out to be grotesque, but some 20 minutes later Steve got a call from his girlfriend and had to leave pronto. I liked that he was trying to impress us but he actually has a girlfriend he cares enough about to leave straight away from a night out. The beatboxing whitey named Andrew was one of their friends and and came over to chat. I'm now seriously considering going to work in China for a month after I finish in Japan, so I asked Andrew if I could find another job outside of teaching if I wanted to work and live in China.
"You can do anything you want man".
Thanks for the help Andrew.
III. The Best Restaurant in the World
This is in the best restaurant in the world. Its in Mengyuan.
This is in the best restaurant in the world. Its in Mengyuan.The End...Part 3 Later.
No comments:
Post a Comment