Beijing: The Land of Liars and Cheats - Day 2

Who wants to guess if I made it up early enough to go to the Great Wall? Getting to the hostel at 5:30 AM, falling fast asleep with nothing more than a cell phone alarm to wake me was... unwise, to say the least. I woke up at 8:15 AM, 45 minutes too late to catch the bus. I got very angry, and ran upstairs to the lounge, where everyone getting on the bus would have met. The bus was long gone, and I took out my frustration on the receptionist, which I later felt bad about. I yelled at her for a bit, mainly because she lied to me by saying they tried to find me, but couldn't. Since Chris was also still sleeping, I knew that they didn't check the rooms or try and wake me, so I was just angry she tried to tell me otherwise.

At this point, I was only concerned about two things: Getting my money back, and finding a way to the Great Wall. The anger I was taking out on the poor receptionist did accomplish some of that. In my ranting and raving, I blamed them, and said they couldn't find me because they kept changing what room I was in (their records still said I was in the original room), and that they were liars for telling me they tried to find me to wake me. I ended up getting my money back, and Chris and I headed out to Tiananmen Square, since nearby were a few travel agencies that offered tours to the Wall.

Hungover, angry, frustrated, and very thirsty, I set out to find someone advertising a bus. I found one lady, and asked her if she went to Simatai. There are four sections of wall, and the closer they are to Beijing, the more touristy and restored they are. Badaling is the closest and very fake, and Simatai is the furthest out, and supposed to be very much original, and very hard to scale. We wanted to go to Simatai. The lady lead us way out into some backroads, and showed us a bus. I thought this was good, and we were making progress, but as she tried to sell me the tickets, I asked again, does it go to Simatai? The answer was no. She laughed and said we wouldn't be able to go to Simatai. I told her fine, I wanted to go to Jinshanling, the second furthest out, and she said ok.

They charged us the same price the hostel would have, so I felt ok about it, but I had that feeling something was up. I didn't trust them, and I've found that my instinct is often correct about people trying to scam me. I was right. They took us to Badaling, and a bunch of other places we didn't want to go to. All in all, I spent an hour and a half at the Great Wall, when we had dedicated an entire day for it. The bus left the Wall and took us to all sorts of crappy places, including a very run down amusement park. I had already been to Suzhou's park, so I didn't care to blow any money there. Instead, I bought a pack of cards outside the park for 3 yuan and chatted/played with the guy who sold me the cards. It was probably the highlight of my day.

All in all, the Great Wall was not impressive. I had built it up in my mind to be a great sight, but the experience was quite ruined by finding out I had been scammed, seeing how touristy it had become, and being hassled by the bitch who sold me the tickets. I discovered through the day that she basically hated me, because I was being visibly miserable, and I couldn't understand her accent. She was just angry because I didn't speak fluent Chinese.

Once the tour (from 10 AM to 7 PM!!!) ended, Chris and I went out to the Square again, as it seems to be the place to go to get anywhere. While in the Square, another vendor ran up to us, and for what felt like the millionth time, offered us Mao watches for "friend price". I was tired of being hassled to buy utter crap, so I decided to fuck with the guy. When he ran up and yelled "Mao watch! Look! Mao Watch!", I yelled excitedly "Really?! A Mao watch?!" and the guy became visibly excited, and clearly thought he had found a sucker to pay too much for his junk. He answered just as excitedly as I did, saying "Yes! Yes! I have Mao Watches!" and so I crushed all his hopes with an answer of "That's great! Because no one else has them!" then quickly changing my face from super-excited to clearly not caring and walked away from him. The disappointment on his face was priceless. It was mean, but a necessary evil to relieve some of the anger brewing inside of me.

At this point, we were quite hungry, and we were in the mood for pizza, as neither of us had had Western food in a long time. While walking around, looking for a pizza place, we were approached by two girls about our age who spoke fairly good English. My instinct went off again, thinking "Oh great, another person's going to try to sell to us". Beijing is full of two types of people: Those who talk to you in order to directly sell you something and rip you off with ultra-inflated prices, and those who talk to you to gain your trust, then ten minutes into the conversation, they drop that they're a tour guide for something, and for "only" 200 yuan, they'll take you to it.

However, these girls seemed nice, and they told us they were students, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt. After the day I had, I wanted so desperately for something to cheer me up and redeem Beijing. Up until that point, Beijing had been nothing but anger for me. We chatted, and they said they knew of a nice pizza place, and that they'd show us to it. It turned out to be a long distance away, but it was quite good. It was a pizza/Western food buffet, so it had all sorts of meals we'd eat back in Canada. Watching the Chinese eat it is beyond comical. They don't like pasta because they don't put sauce on it (sauce was available, they just don't know enough about pasta to serve themselves properly). They eat pizza with a fork and knife, and stare at US when we eat it with our hands like the barbarians we are.

There was a catch, though. In the cab on the way there, our new student friends turned out to be... tour guides. Go fucking figure. Still, they were nice enough, and they only brought it up when I mentioned I wanted to see the hutong area (old, real China - hutong means old alleys). So at least they only brought it up after finding out I wanted to go there anyway, rather than just telling me I should go with them to something I have no interest in (or have already seen). They also got us a "friend discount", which was nice, but I knew I could have haggled the same (or a better) price on the street. The normal charge is 180 yuan, we got a price of 120 yuan.

Once we got back to the hostel, Chris went out drinking again, whereas I couldn't drink more than half a beer, and I went to bed somewhat early. Chris seemed to be less interested in seeing the sights of Beijing, and more interested in finding a girl and getting drunk. Seeing as how I can do that in Canada, and I have a girlfriend (and in China), I had no interest in repeating the night before. I can now say I've seen Beijing and Shanghai night life, they're the two biggest cities in China, and the two with the most night life available in China, and I'm more than satisfied.