"He who does not reach the Great Wall is not a true man" - Mao (Bejing part 2)

Last Friday my friend Hiraa and I took the high speed rail up to Beijing. In December, on my first trip to Beijing,  I didn't get a chance to see several sights including the great wall.


I planned to go back at some point and see the wall. Since Danny had a conference there and already had an expenses paid trip it was a good time to join him.

We got to Beijing late Friday night and tried to find a restaurant that was still open for dinner. Our hotel wasn't in as nice of an area this time since it was picked to be near the conference by the Olympic village. The only place opened nearby was McDonald's and since there aren't many veggie options I gave up and skipped dinner. McDonald's in China doesn't seem to think it is worth selling salad. Their salad's are awful anyway so it isn't a huge loss.

In the morning, while our husbands were at the conference Hiraa and I explored the Temple of Heaven.



I didn't do a ton of research beforehand and it probably would have been useful if I had. I figured it was just another temple and briefly read that it was the temple where all the Ming emperors would go to pray. I think they also went there to meditate and make big decisions about the country. Hiraa said the Temple of Heaven was actually bigger than the Forbidden City which surprised me a bit. It actually was a giant park which contained several temples and halls. The round one with the pointed top is the famous part that you see in all the pictures of the area. Since the area was all built by the Ming dynasty it all had the same ornate style as the forbidden city and the summer palace.

There were so many details to look at as we walked around that had been painstakingly made by hand. I think living in the states and buying all kinds of consumer goods you start to feel like nothing is made by hand. When you actually see how people do things in China (the world's factory) you realize that most things actually are made by hand, if for no other reason - it is cheaper than using a machine.

While I was at Temple of Heaven I bought a cheap purse in the park. The woman selling it was crocheting it on the spot. Hiraa, who is much better at bargaining than I am negotiated it down from 65 RMB to 50 RMB or $8.00. She said the woman would have sold it for 35 or 40 (about $6.00)  if she kept going but I felt bad and just offered 50 RMB because I figured she could use the money more than I could. I really am bad at bargaining... oh well.










We wandered around the temples for a few hours until we both were really tired and hungry. Then we tried to find somewhere to eat. There really is nothing around the park. There is one fancy Chinese restaurant in the park that does banquet meals but it was closed when we got there. We ended up looking up a chain restaurant I like in Shanghai called Blue Frog on Hiraa's ipad and we took a cab there. I figured wherever it was located there would be plenty of western restaurants. I have gotten really bad about making an effort to try the local foods...


The restaurant was in an area called San Li Tun which was pretty modern and full of stores and western restaurants. It pretty much felt like any big generic shopping mall. We didn't end up finding Blue Frog. Instead we had a snack at a crepe place. Then we walked into a few shops while we waited for the conference to end so everyone could meet us for dinner.



Danny, Aquib and Joe all went to Beijing for the conference. We also got to meet Joe's girlfriend Wen Wen who is a grad student in Beijing at Peking University. After searching for an Indian restaurant for a long time, we eventually gave up and got dinner in a middle eastern restaurant called 1001 Nights. It had really fun decor and they even had a Belly Dancer. The food was pretty good, I had stuffed grape leaves and hummus and a salad.















After dinner we decided to check out the night market at Wang Fu Jing. They mostly have a bunch of food booths along the street. I got candy covered fruit called bing tang hu lu. I skipped the fried scorpions, snakes and seahorses. It started raining so we didn't stay at the market for long. Danny said the main part was a bit farther from the subway but we all got soaked so we decided not to venture into the main area in the rain.



































The next day we planned to finally check out the great wall. We had a surprise, a rare March snowstorm. It was Hiraa's first time seeing snow ever, which led to me and Danny encouraging her to make snowballs and other silly activities.

We decided to go to an area of the wall called Ju yong guan. The most common areas of the wall tourists visit are Ba da ling and Mu tian yu but from what I heard they are insanely crowded. I had to be back to the city by 5:40 to catch the last high speed rail train for Shanghai so we decided to get a taxi rather than a bus tour. Since there were four of us it was only slightly more than the tourist bus.

Danny negotiated with the first taxi we flagged down outside our hotel and he took the four of us to the wall and the Ming tombs and back to our hotel for 600 RMB (just under $100). If we were better at bargaining we could have probably done it for 500 RMB. I think the tourist buses that take you there cost about 100 RMB a person so it was only about $30 more than if we had all taken the bus and we got to set our own schedule.

Ju yong guan is about 40 minutes to an hour outside Beijing, depending on traffic. I was pretty excited when we got to the wall. It really is quite a beautiful sight, especially in the snow. Mao said "He who does not reach the Great Wall is not a true man." From what I read previous to Mao's statement, it wasn't looked on all that fondly. Mostly it sounds like it was a bit of a disaster building, maintaining and guarding the incredibly long wall. Lots of people died in the process. The wall's success in actually protecting China's border from the Mongolians was pretty minimal. I can't imagine many countries have the resources to build something on this scale though, the fact that it is there is pretty amazing. It is one of the most impressive man made constructions on earth... you can't see it from space though.































































 We hiked the wall for about two hours. The walk up wasn't too bad but it was slightly slippery with the snow. I was really nervous it was going to get icy by the time we headed down. It ended up being alright but a bit slippery. Most people, including us went single file and held on tight to the rail. My feet slipped once or twice. I saw a few Chinese women walking in heels though and if they managed it couldn't be that bad. They had a bunch of heart shaped locks  that people attached to a chain when they get engaged at the wall.















The wall was pretty amazing. In the summer, when Danny has another conference in Beijing, I'd really like to do one of those wild wall hikes where you camp out overnight.

After we left the wall we stopped at one of the Ming tombs. The tombs of 13 out of the 17 Ming emperors are in the area outside of Beijing. Only three of them are open to the public though. We went to one called Ding ling. I have to say, I wasn't terribly impressed with the Ming tombs. We also already saw a Ming tomb in Nanjing and Ding ling wasn't all that different. There was a gate and an underground palace that we walked into that looked like it used to store treasures. There were no longer treasures but there was a museum area with a crown and some other royal items.

Cao Mei and Zhu Jia Jiao

Since Danny ditched me to go to Taiwan, I had to fend for myself this weekend. Ok, to be slightly more accurate, we tried to find me a flight but it was really expensive to fly on the weekend and I didn't want to take off work. In the end I stayed here while he attended his cousin's wedding. I made him promise to write a post about it but I don't have exceedingly high hopes since he has currently posted a whopping total of two posts.

 Anyway, I had a really relaxing Saturday sitting around the house and catching up with various friends in the states via skype and google voice. The only productive things I did all day were clean up a bit and make a bowl of spaghetti. I had wanted to go for a walk in the park but it is still cold here and I got lazy.

Sunday I tagged along with some of the grad students from the observatory on a trip they planned to pick strawberries (cao mei) and visit an ancient water town (Zhu Jia Jiao).



Picking strawberries was really messy. The spaces between the rows of plants were super narrow and covered in thick gooey mud. It was sort of like walking on an incredibly muddy balance beam. They told me to bring plastic bags to put over my shoes which I did. Unfortunately the bags kept getting stuck in the mud so I gave up and just got my shoes really muddy. By the time I finished collecting berries I was really muddy and tired but I had a box full of berries.

Next we took the bus for about a half hour to the water town. I may have mentioned in the post about Xitang that I was trying to go to all 6 ancient water towns. This was the second one I saw.

Zhu Jia Jiao was smaller than Xitang but pretty similar in the architecture. There weren't any little museums to wander through - just restaurants, snack booths and shops with touristy knick knacks. Unlike Xitang we didn't pay a cover fee to enter. I think it was actually sort of a shame because it meant it was not quite as nicely maintained and didn't offer as much to do or see. It was still a really pleasant day and I enjoyed the company at lot. We got lunch and walked around the shops. I bought a musical instrument and a photo album.

While I looked around Zhu Jia Jiao my strawberries sat in a cardboard box on the bus for a few hours and started going bad. Oh well. All in all it was a pretty nice trip.

Seeing Red

I always thought red was good luck in China. It is the wedding color and you give people gifts in red envelopes all the time. I think I heard something about it being considered bad luck to write someone's name in red once before. I forgot about it until my co-worker told me I had to rewrite a student's certificate because I wrote in red. I thought it was really silly and unnecessary and I saw no reason to rewrite it. I grade their papers in a red pen all the time and write notes to them with their names written in red. My students don't say anything about it...

One of my other co-workers said writing someone's name in red means you want to cut all ties with the person. Google said it had something to do with the color red being reserved for the dead in ancient times, I'm not sure if that is correct though. It also said that prisoners had to sign their name in red before being executed and that only the emperor was allowed to write with red ink. The color red has very different meanings in China than at home.

At our wedding we followed some Chinese customs and received red envelopes. I picked Tiffany blue and chocolate as our colors and didn't decorate anything in red. I wonder if many locals here would say it was bad luck. Nobody at our wedding minded as far as I know.

Anyway, I rewrote the certificate. It probably would have been less frustrating if my co-worker gave a reason rather than just telling me I needed to redo it because that is how we do things in China. Maybe it is just because I'm American and we are always taught to question things and speak up about our opinions. The Chinese in contrast have more of a do what you are told mentality.

I was trying to think of what customs I follow that are comparable. Specifically, are there American customs that I would correct someone of a different culture for not adhering to it? The best example I could think of was a Jewish custom. When I was little I was taught never to write god's full name unless it was in a prayerbook because it was disrespectful. Instead you have to write G-d. When I was a kid, before I gave much thought to the custom I may have corrected people for writing it. Once I grew up and thought about it, I realized not everyone has that custom and decided I didn't care if people follow it or not. I don't actually follow that custom myself anyway so it isn't really relevant.

I'd love to think that I personally wouldn't force my customs on anyone but maybe I have and didn't even realize it. I'm curious what things people who moved to the states from China or elsewhere think are silly and frustrating about Americans. To me it just seemed pushy and sort of rude to insist I rewrite the certificate, but maybe I am being culturally insensitive. It is really frustrating when little culture clashes like this come up. I still am baffled by the locals' insistence that windows be kept wide open all winter long. I don't understand why they only give out one menu per party at restaurants here. I know Chinese restaurants serve things family style and traditionally one person orders but western restaurants in China where you order individually still only give one menu per table. I try to keep in mind that I am a guest in this country and sometimes you have to sort of go along with things but it can feel frustrating when someone pushes their custom at you without explanation. Good communication usually makes this better but then there is the language barrier...