1/28/09 - 1/29/09, Flight/First Day In Beijing

So I have arrived, safely and soundly, at the hostel, and while slightly shell shocked, I've at least got a place to sleep tonight and am not just totally stranded. Which is good and almost didn't happen.

Flight was ok, although with some turbulence. My Uncle Babe, who has braved the flight to China a couple of times has hit the experience on the head. When you're there for 13 hours, it becomes a question of, ok, now what? Sleep? I slept for five hours, and I still had 8 long hours to go. I guess I went super American on this flight, in that I managed to watch High Noon (which I've never seen, incidentally) and an episode of Mad Men. Continental treated me pretty well, had a few good meals. I wonder if jet lag is less a biological clock thing than a psychological reaction to the sheer strangeness of spending pretty much a whole day in a small confined area.

When I landed, I was struck immediately by what a shock it is to have a language other than English, especially one I study, be the dominant language. China is not like Italy or Greece in that, most of the time, you can't fall back on English. This makes the experience pretty nerve racking. Case in point, I decided to take a taxi to the hostel, figuring it'd be easier since I had a lot of bags. The woman, as soon as I loaded my bags in her trunk, accused me of scratching her car and yelled a lot of things at me in rapid Mandarin, which I could half understand (the gist, I took it, was that she was not fond of Americans in general and clumsy me in particular). That pretty much shellshocked me from the get go. Then she gave me the opportunity to learn a new word: miaohui. Miaohui, I found out the hard way, means "temple fair", a traditional street fair type thing with food on sticks and parades and what have you. Anywho, it was blocking our approach to the hostel, so she just dumped me off as close as we could get and overcharged me for the taxi ride (I just wanted to get out of there, so while I understood enough to know I was getting ripped off, I let it happen). At that point, I was in the middle of a crowded street fair with all my luggage and no clear bearings to the hotel. Oh, and the fireworks. There's been a constant barrage of fireworks since I got here, all kinds, firecrackers, M80s, most of them set off by kids in the street. When you're lost as is, it doesn't help to be jumping for cover every few minutes. Mortal terror would probably best have described my mood. Somehow, I got to the hotel; I don't know how, I decided to walk in one arbitrary direction.

The hotel is alright, rather spartan, but has everything I need, so it's fine. It's in an old hutong neighborhood of Beijing. The hutong are the famous architectural pattern of old Beijing, narrow east-west alleyways and courtyard houses. The hutong are famous and supposed to be charming, but after walking in them for a little bit, I'm not quite sold. They're kinda dank and vomity smelling. But I'll try to give i time.

Obviously haven't quite gotten a read on Beijing yet, but a few things do strike me. The sprawl of this city is astounding, miles and miles of metropolis. Also, they are not joking about the air pollution; sometimes it feels like I'm stuck behind a bus for the whole day. I haven't seen any really attractive parts of the city yet, but eh, I just got here.

I'm going to try and scrounge around for something to eat and get to bed early. Right now, I'm kinda feeling like, what the hell did I get myself into, but maybe a good night's sleep and walking around time will help me with that. I realize this post is a little scattershot and not necessarily very compelling, but that's my state of mind right now. Tomorrow, I'm going to Tiananmen Square/The Forbidden City, so hopefully that'll pick me up. I'll let you know how it goes...