We arrived quite early in Beijing, and found a hostel to drop off our stuff. The hostel was decent. I hadn't been to one yet, but the prices alone made it worthwhile. Only 50 yuan to stay a night. The rooms had 4 people in them, but they're all foreigners travelling, so it's just a chance to meet other people. It was cool. One unfortunate problem I saw with them is that some tourists were travelling from one city to another, staying only at hostels. They weren't getting any real exposure to China. Getting a hotel room in some shady building you know is crawling with cockroaches, or haggling with the Chinese, it's all part of the experience. These people only spoke to other foreigners, learned zero Chinese, learned nothing of the culture... I was saddened to know they were only going to see fake China. They'd only see the tourist traps, go to places that were decorated and shiny, and leave China thinking they knew what China was like. It's easy to tell who has seen "real China" based on how much Chinese they know.
Anyway, Chris and I moved on and walked down to the centre of the city, where most of the attractions are. We started at the back of the Forbidden City, and saw a nice overview of the Forbidden City from a park behind it. If air pollution wasn't so bad in China, the view would have been quite beautiful. After the park, we went into the Forbidden City. This place was huge, and it was quite nice. There were English signs for just about everything, so I didn't feel like I missed any of the history, as I often do in smaller cities.
One funny point was just purely by coincidence. We happened to approach a group being led by an English speaking tour guide, and he commented on the giant rocks that were displayed artistically in Forbidden City. They were all filled with holes, and I didn't really understand their significance. It turns out that the rocks were dug up from Tai Hu, the lake my home city Wuxi sits next to. By complete coincidence, it turns out that the rocks were donated to Forbidden City by Wuxi instead of paying taxes. Those rocks could only be found in Tai Hu, and were apparently a big attraction for the Chinese to come look at. I had seen them so often in Wuxi that I wouldn't have appreciated their presence at all. Chris and I heard that it came from Tai Hu, and we looked at each other and burst out laughing.
After several hours in Forbidden City, we came out the front (South) entrance and beheld two great views. The first was right in front of us. We beheld Tiananmen Square. It really is huge, and it's completely fenced off. You have to take underground walkways to get onto the Square. The second was behind us, on the south gate entrance. It was a giant portrait of Chairman Mao, with Chinese writing on both sides. The left had a meaning something along the lines of "Long Live the People of the Republic of China" and the right meant something like "Long Live the Unity of the People of the World". Chairman Mao has all the cool soundbites.
We went out onto the Square, and walked around. The Square loses its appeal very quickly. It's great at first, but then you realize it's just a giant paved lot with a ton of people trying to sell you jacked up prices for crap. One thing I knew I wanted before I got there was a Chairman Mao book. It's referred to as "The little red book", and it's filled with Chairman Mao quotes (I said he got all the cool soundbites, didn't I?). In his day, people would have to carry these books around and "discuss" the meanings and the values of the quotes. It's a great piece of Chinese propaganda.
Like I said, the Square is filled with people trying to sell you crap. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE has Mao watches, and they must be a hot commodity, because I hear people yelling it out everywhere. It's a watch with Mao on it, and he's constantly waving. It's a piece of shit. I asked one guy if he had "the book" and he got excited and pulled one out. I asked how much, and he said 200 yuan. Now, here's the part I love: Chris got one in Hangzhou on the night market. It cost him 5 to 10 yuan. I told the vendor this, and he got angry at me!
A recurring feature of vendors in Beijing: They all give you enormously jacked up prices, and instead of making the prices fair if you know what the item's actually worth, they get mad at you and tell you off. I believe this is because they know they can hold onto the item and make more money off of it from the next naive tourist who comes by. I laughed the vendor off, and he followed me and shouted lower prices until he hit 100, then gave up. He honestly wasn't willing to sell me a book for under 100 yuan. I later bought two of them (Alex wanted me to bring her back one) for 20 yuan.
I had noticed that many of the vendors were treating their sales much like drug deals. The merchandise was largely hidden, and only visible within a metre or two somewhere in their pockets or bags. I didn't think much about the shadiness of it for quite some time, but the reason quickly became obvious upon the following fun experience:
Chris and I were sitting by a small garden by the People's Monument (in the middle of the Square) to rest and contemplate what we were going to do next. I had left the two Mao books sitting on the ledge of the garden between Chris and I where we were sitting. A vendor saw the two books, and came over to see if he could sell us more.
A bizarre sales approach in China is when someone sees you buy something from someone else, they assume you will buy more of the same from them as well. This guy wanted to sell me more Mao books, taxis see you get out of a taxi, so they honk at you because clearly, you must want another taxi, if I'm holding a poster, clearly a vendor should know I want more of the same poster, etc.
Anyway, the vendor came up and told me he had Mao books. I told him in Chinese that I know, but I already have two. Still thinking he can make a sale, he asks what I paid for them. I told him (20 yuan for both), and he scoffed, saying I paid too much. Then he offers to sell me one for 100 yuan. I laughed and asked him why I would buy yet another Mao book, for 10 times the price. Then suddenly, before he could answer, a van pulls up, some random guy gets out, shoves the vendor into the van, closes the door and the van speeds away!
As it drove away, Chris and I were in shock. My first thought was "This guy just got kidnapped in front of us!", but once the van drove away, we could see it was a police vehicle, and we became even more excited. I quickly realized that like many other things (protesting, large gatherings, etc), it must be illegal to sell stuff on the Square. It explained why the police vans were always patrolling the perimeter of the Square, and always driving very quickly. Our not-so-clever vendor took a risk of approaching us, instead of hugging the fence so they could hop over before the cops grabbed them. Since approaching us put him smack in the middle of the Square, he had no escape, as they were able to drive up behind him. He didn't even see the cops coming. Now, I don't know what became of him (likely, they confiscated his stuff and made him pay a fine/bribe), but I'm left with an awesome story of how I got a guy arrested in Tiananmen Square.
Another later Tiananmen Square experience seemed to confirm my theory that vendors aren't allowed on the Square. It's a common pasttime to fly kites on the Square, so naturally, there's a ton of vendors trying to sell kites there. One vendor kept following me down the Square, and wouldn't stop hassling me to buy a kite, so I got quite irritated. I told him time and time again I didn't want one, but he kept persisting. Finally, he said "Just hold the kite" and held out the string of a flying kite he was holding onto. My scam instinct starting alerting me very quickly, so I refused to hold the string. He tried a guilt trip, saying "Oh no, you don't like my kite?" and put on a very sad face. I answered him in Chinese, saying "Oh... poor baby, you're crying now?". He didn't seem to like that, but the police came by, speeding around the corner of the Mao Mausoleum, and he ran for the fence and hopped it, crossing the street before the cops could grab him and throw him in the van. The fact that he wasn't doing anything but selling, but chose to run from the cops seems to agree with my theory.
After the original "kidnapping", we didn't know what to do with the rest of the day (how do you top seeing the Chinese police shove a guy into a van?), especially since the Mao Mausoleum was closed. I was quite upset I wouldn't get to see Mao, but the Mausoleum was closed for the summer. To be fair, Mao's been dead for 30+ years now. I can see them closing down for a summer in order to fix him up a bit. Maybe his face caved in, who knows? I'm just upset I didn't get to see one of the greatest dictators of the century lying in a glass box.
Eventually, Chris and I made it to the Summer Palace, despite rickshaws and taxis all wanting to rip us off. We had to take a public bus, and it took over an hour to get there! Honestly, rickshaws are supposed to be cheaper than a taxi. Why they thought they could convince us to take a rickshaw to the summer palace for 4 times as much money is beyond me. Another irritating thing is none of the taxis want to use the meter. They try every time to negotiate a price before hand, and the price is always WAY more than what the meter will actually end in. Stupid Beijing.
Once we finally arrived, Chris and I quickly split up (not intentionally, it just happened that way). The Summer Palace was quite pretty, and the lake was nice. The various decorated decks and pavilions were nice, but clearly redone. Everything is just a recreation of what it used to be, you'll never find real old stuff in China, despite their 5000 year history. That's what happens in a country that's been at war as long as it's been in peace. My favourite part of the Summer Palace was easily the corridor. The palace has a long corridor you can walk along and see the lake and the islands very nicely from. The corridor goes along for over 700 metres (yes, I walked all of it) and is apparently the longest of its kind.
Once the sun went down, we took the long ass bus ride back to Tiananmen, cabbed it to the West Train Station to buy tickets to Xi'an for later on. Afterwards, we headed back to the hostel, walking past the "Beijing Night Market", which was horribly disappointing. It was just a long collection of barbeques. I wasn't hungry, and I was hoping to find some cheap Mao propaganda, but there was nothing but the same food at each stall, the whole way down the street.
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