The sky was blue today.  Of course, yesterday it looked like this:

After seeing what Shanghai was like, I really didn’t expect to see a blue sky in Beijing.  Traffic restrictions have recently come into effect in an effort to reduce pollution for the Olympics.  I was skeptical as to whether or not this would make a positive impact, but Paul, who has been here for the last month and a half said that he can see a difference in the air from before (what must that have been like?!).  So fewer cars, coupled with yesterday’s heavy rains seem to have rendered the sky blue, at least for today.

For the record, Carrefour is not my favorite store, but it is a convenient place because you can find pretty much anything you need there.  Number two, at our breakfast place we do not order chicken dumplings and pork buns.  I believe that they are filled with lamb, although I could be wrong, but i know for a fact that they were not chicken or pork.

On the grand occasion of our trip’s one year birthday, we didn’t do too much. After a late night eating hotpot, we slept in before heading out to what’s become our usual breakfast joint (see above photo). The past four days, we’ve had the same breakfast- Joylani gets a bowl of rice porridge and we split a serving of chicken dumplings and a serving of pork buns. Its pretty good and I’m glad that after just a few days here, we’ve found some good “spots” (i.e. the drink shop, the ice-cream lady, the breakfast place, the pork sandwich place, etc). Between our nice hotel and Beijing’s hidden charms, we’re really enjoying ourselves here. Originally, we were going to do a multi-day sidetrip, to Inner Mongolia or up to Manchuria, to break up the monotony of nearly two weeks in Beijing. While I think we would’ve had a great time wherever we went and we would’ve had plenty of time and energy to do it, we’ve decided to just stay in Beijing until we fly out. One, and to me quite surprising, Beijing is both pleasant and interesting. There’s more than enough stuff to keep us occupied indefinitely, whether we focus on the big sights or just the small stuff. And two, with this portion of our trip winding down and our visit home fast approaching, I think we both do and will appreciate having some time to process and reflect on it all. Its gonna get crazy once we get home, so it’ll be nice to focus on savoring this last week abroad.

More time in Beijing has its other advantages. For one, we don’t have to rush. We can really delve into the place. Hanging out with friends the past few weeks, I’ve realized that although we’ve visited a lot of places and learned a ton, we haven’t gotten to know individual cities and countries very well. And although nobody can really grasp Beijing in two weeks, we’ll get a better feel for it than if we stayed less. After breakfast today, I headed to Tiananmen Square to visit Mao’s Mausoleum. I don’t know why, but I was just really curious to see his body. Visitors are kind of rushed through and the corpse probably has an inch-thick layer of makeup, but it was interesting nonetheless. Then after a midday nap, Joylani and I went out to explore the city a bit. We wandered around a market for awhile, before visiting Joylani’s favorite store: Carrefour. Then we ate one of my favorite meals: sidewalk BBQ. It wasn’t an incredibly exciting day, but it was no doubt enjoyable.

Since I’ve already touched on it a bit, I’ll write a bit more on my current thoughts of this trip and out upcoming visit home. While Joylani’s really excited, I’m not really. I know that I’ll have a good time at home and it’ll be nice to see people, but I’m sad, I guess. Not sad about going home, but sad that this part is over. The past year has been amazing and I’d do it all over if I could. I’d go back to India, do the Annapurna Circuit again, and dive Komodo in an instant if I could. I already have a yearning to go back to places we’ve been to experience and relive some of the past year. After such an incredible year, how can I not? Yes, after our visit home, we’ll spend some time in Korea and Japan before traveling for a few more months, but our planning has shifted from strictly “where next?” to discussing our reentry to America. Now we talk about where go we want to go before we head home, how will we get home, when will we get home, in addition to job stuff and other everyday life practicalities. The light (darkness ) is at the end of the tunnel and this fast-approaching visit home us shaping up to be an emotion preview of sorts.

The sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his own room.

-Blaise Pascal, Pensees

Matt swears the toilets in China are the worst of our trip.  I say, at least there are toilets!  Sometimes in India it was so hard to find a public restroom, and if there was one, it was often far worse than the ones in China.  It’s just not as easy to use an “open toilet” if you’re a female, particularly if you are in a populated area.  I would much rather go over a trough that sits a couple feet below me with no door than be boxed in a filthy stall stained in urine, or, worse, caked in excrement, nervously hovering (much too close) over what should have been flushed (but wasn’t) by the 10 or 15 people who went before me.  I think one of Matt’s main issues with the toilets in China is the lack of doors.  But for me, if the toilet is going to be dirty, I would much rather have more airflow than pangs of claustrophobic panic from being surrounded by dirty walls and putrid smells.

Let it be known, however, that while I do prefer a Chinese toilet to an Indian one (or lack thereof), I don’t think they are that great or anything.  And I do find the no door/no flush thing kind of strange, particularly in a big, modern city like Shanghai (at the long distance bus station).  It’s not quite so out of place in the more rural areas though.  Anyways, my final comment for this toilet post is regarding this statement: “China is modernizing incredibly quickly. But it takes the people some time to catch up,” and the context it was used in, because I saw SOMEBODY take a leak outside tonight after hotpot….  Let’s face it, sometimes you just have to pee in public.  And if anyone should be allowed to, toddlers should.  (Adults have more mental capacity to “plan ahead.”)  I don’t really mind, as long as it doesn’t happen too much or all in the same spot or in a place where I might stand or walk.  It doesn’t bother me that little kids are allowed (encouraged) to pee in public.  I mean, it cuts down on diapers, so that’s good.  But it would be nice if they could stick their kid in a planter box (fertilizer?) or on the side of a curb to go so that I don’t have to be cautious of every single puddle on the ground.

One of the best things about hanging with locals is that they know where to eat. Paul, one of Joylani’s old high school pals, has generously treated us to delicious dinners the past two nights. Last night, it was Peking/Beijing duck. We ordered a bunch of dishes, but the Peking duck dish definitely lived up to the hype. Satisfied, I was able to cross the meal off my list of things to do in Beijing, although it was so good I might have to have another go at it. Then tonight, we met up with Paul again, who also invited a few other friends, for some hotpot. There was six of us to split the countless plates of meat and vegetables. The boiling pot in the center of our table was split into two parts, one hot and one not. Needless to say, I only pulled stuff out of the non-spicy side. Besides plates piled high with pork and lamb, the most unique dish ordered was chicken heart. It was a dark, almost purple-y color raw, although after being cooked, it looked and tasted a lot like a dark cut of beef (like what you get in pho sometimes). And of course, beer. In a year of traveling, I’ve learned that people around the world like to drink. But in China its almost always beer and its socially acceptable to drink in public. Beer seems to be drunk with every meal and its usually cheaper than Coke or tea. Although Joylani is clearly the foody one of us, I’ve really been enjoying eating and drinking the past couple weeks.

Ever since our bus ride from Shangri-la to Kunming, I’ve been having eye problems. On that bus ride, my eye got all irritated and I took out my contacts in favor of my glasses. Although I was sure something was in my eye, the irritation eventually subsided. For the three weeks since then, I’ve been going half and half with glasses versus contacts, due to the sporadic but continual irritation. The past couple days have been really bad: my right eye waters, the contact won’t stay in, and my right-eye vision is out of focus. So I decided to go to the hospital today and get it checked out. Good thing too, as turns out that I have conjunctivitis, which is a complicated way of saying the interior of my eyelid is inflamed. Apparently, pink eye is a form of conjunctivitis, although my type shouldn’t be contagious. Anyways, the bottom line is that I have to take eyedrops four times a day and cannot wear my contacts for 2-3 weeks. The last time I’ve worn glasses more than two days in a row was when I was in fifth grade.

In other medical news…Towards the end of Thailand, I ate some bad food and had diarrhea for a week or two. Then I was good throughout Malaysia. Then Indonesia was bad, no doubt due to the poor sanitation. The d-train kept rolling throughout Vietnam. At the very end of Vietnam, Joylani convinced me to take some Cipro. I had resisted for a long time, because I figured there was no point to taking medicine- I was just going to get sick again. Well, I was solid for about two weeks, but then sure enough I was having diarrhea again (even developed China cannot match Thailand or Malaysia hygienically). So now, like much of this trip, I’m sick in the stomach. Looking back, it’s been a long year bathrooms wise. Both of us have had stomach conditions to some degree in all but a handful of countries. I’ll start taking Cipro in a week, hopefully ensuring a healthy time at home.

I was gonna write this in another post, but since I’m on the topic of bathroom related stuff, I’ll spill it here. Two very unique things about China: its bathrooms and potty-training. To start, I’ll go ahead and say it: China has the nastiest public bathrooms in Asia. For one of the most developed places we’ve gone, its unbelievable how nasty bathrooms are. Firstly, most Chinese toilet stalls don’t have doors. If you’re going to build a bathroom and divide it into stalls, how much harder is it to attach doors to the stalls? It really discourages me from going when I have to a lot of times and walking through a bathroom where people are openly relieving themselves is pretty nasty as well. Secondly, while Asian squat toilets are most common, many toilets are much simpler and dirtier. Many bathrooms consist of a long trough running the length of the bathroom with dividers (but no doors) built over it. So rows of people (divided by short walls w/o doors) are squatting over a channel, relieving themselves. While in principle, I think water is supposed to be flowing through these channels, I have never seen water running. So what you’re left with is a nasty, open, smelly latrine. The dirty bathroom thing starts young though. Most toddlers in China wear pants with holes cut in them. Childrens pants seem to universally cut from the butt to the abdomen. Babies butts are visible all over China. Anyways, boys are always pissing all over the place to the entertainment of family members who think its cute or something. Nastier still, boys are girls squat on sidewalks and curbs to take dumps. Fortunately some parents carry bags around to pick up after their children, much as American dog-walkers carry plastic bags. As Paul said yesterday, “China is modernizing incredibly quickly. But it takes the people some time to catch up.”

One last thing, as my bathroom tangent has taken this post in the direction of public health. You’ve probably read or seen photographs of how polluted Beijing is. While its been pretty noticeable, the past few days have not seemed that much worse than some other Asian cities we’ve visited. I mean, we haven’t seen blue (although Joylani claims she can see a very faint light blue hue in the sky) and everything is hazy, but you can’t taste it and it doesn’t mess up your throat or eyes like some places. But then there was today. A thick layer of smog hung over the city, much worse than the past couple days. The sky was brown or yellow, I’m not sure. Thick haze obscured buildings just across the street. I would’ve thought a dust storm had swept through the city except that I new that one hadn’t. It was truly unbelievable. If I had not witnessed the conditions today, I really doubt I could conceive such bad pollution.

Postnote: Between the time that this was written and the time it was posted, Joylani contracted bronchitis, no doubt from the Beijing air.

We kicked off our Beijing sightseeing today with the mother of all sights: The Forbidden City. We woke up early, ate a quick breakfast, and took the subway a few stops, which got us to the Forbidden City just minutes after its 8:30 opening. From the metro station, we headed to the entrance at Tiananmen Gate, the iconic red-walled gate with Mao’s oversized portrait. Due to the media, many of the sights we’ve seen on this trip are instantly recognizable to us, despite the fact that we had never seen them in real life. From the Parthenon to Angkor Wat to Chinese sights now, first setting eyes on the sights doesn’t evoke the same sense of discovery as it once must have for travelers of previous eras. And while the dissemination of information, and in this case photography, is excellent for learning about the world, there is still no substitute for visiting these places. It reminds me of the conversation between Sean and Will in the great movie, Good Will Hunting:

So if I asked you about art, you’d probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life’s work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I’ll bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You’ve never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that. If I ask you about women, you’d probably give me a syllabus about your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can’t tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You’re a tough kid. And I’d ask you about war, you’d probably throw Shakespeare at me, right, “once more unto the breach dear friends.” But you’ve never been near one. You’ve never held your best friend’s head in your lap, watch him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. I’d ask you about love, you’d probably quote me a sonnet. But you’ve never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you.

I’m not trying to be one of those travel snobs and I know we’ve only seen small glimpses of the world, but I feel lucky to have had so many experiences in the past year. Tiananmen Gate is the default photo for countless magazine articles and commentaries on China, but photos cannot capture the atmosphere compared to standing there between Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City in the midst of thousands of reverent Beijingers, Chinese tourists, and patriotic pilgrims. Seeing the scale and size of it, the atmosphere around it, and experiencing it in the center of Beijing was still rewarding despite its familiar feel.

So I digressed quite a bit…you’ll have to forgive me, as I’m getting pretty reflective this week as we prepare to head home soon. Inside Tiananmen Gate, we walked across huge square with another imposing gate at the other end. There were some trees and souvenir/snack stands, which filled the space and made it feel a bit smaller, but it was still a long walk across. Just outside the massive wall, we bought our tickets and passed through the meters-thick wall and gate. Then another huge square. I started thinking about how it’d probably been over ten minutes since we entered Tiananmen Gate and yet it was just now that we got to “entrance” of the Forbidden City. The square had unbelievably huge buildings on each side, with large and ornately decorated gates near the corners. Massive marble staircases and ramps carved with dragons connected all to the central cobblestone square.

Besides the sheer scale of it all, one of the first things I noticed were the names of everything. Now I see why Chinese movies have all these crazy names for their nouns. Consulting my map, I saw that we’d already passed the Meridian Gate, Inner Golden River Bridges, and the Gate of Loyal Conduct. I was standing near the Pavilion of Spreading Righteousness, with the Gate of Supreme Harmony to my right, the Pavilion of Embodying Benevolence straight ahead and Hall of Supreme Harmony to my left. The next four hours were spent in various halls and palaces with the words eternal, supreme, harmony, heavenly and other ethereal words in their names.

a smart group of tourists

It took us a total of four hours to see all the open parts of the Forbidden City, which is not even half of the whole thing. It got really hot and all the open squares and courtyards didn’t provide much shade. Where there was no shade, Joylani and I scurried across open courtyards and walled alleyways from exhibit to exhibit. After the eviction of the monarchy, the Forbidden City was opened up to the public as both a source of national pride and to show people the opulence that the monarchy indulged and lived in. We saw plenty of imperial artifacts, from porcelain pottery to impressive and priceless gem-studded crowns. Two exhibits that were especially interesting were the ones on the royal concubines and Empress Cixi. Both were pretty skewed in their portrayals of imperial life, with the concubine exhibit focusing on the lavishness and pointlessness of royal life, while Cixi’s exhibit was pretty vilifying. Both, however, reinforced the impression that I got from the massive “city.” That is, the Imperial clan was incredibly powerful. How else could such a massive structure be built. We’ve seen a lot of imperial palaces and stuff on this trip, from Versailles in Paris to the Royal Palace in Bangkok, but the Forbidden City is the most impressive. Sure its super restored, but all these urban symbols of national pride are restored. And while its not the most impressive architecturally or architecturally, the sheer scale is mind-boggling.

This is not to say that its ugly place by any means, as intricate carving, paintings, ponds, and garden litter the place. But its huge thick walls, giant gates, massive statues, and oversized architecture is most impressive and unique. Like I mentioned, it got really hot though too. By the time we finished up, a bit after noon, people were huddled in any shade they could find, with many propped up against shady walls and trees. Getting back out was no easy feat though. From the time we finished seeing all the open courtyards and exhibits, it took us another half hour to walk back to the front entrance. My first and last impressions of the Forbidden City were the same: this place is huge! We had originally planned to see more today, but four hours exploring the Forbidden City in the 100 F heat did us in for the day. It was definitely worth it though.

…a lot different from eating a Hot Pocket.  And, unlike dropping your contact into a Hot Pocket (Katie…), if one were to drop his or her contact into a hot pot, I doubt you would want to put it back into your eye.  Hot Pot is kind of like Fondue, but not exactly.  First of all, unlike those little “fondue for two” kits they sell at Borders around Valentine’s Day, hot pot is said to be best with lots of people.  Paul Joy took care of that and got together a group for dinner.  It also happened to be Fourth of July, but the real reason to gather was for the hot pot.  So the hot pot itself is a large bowl of oily broth place over a stove in the middle of the table.  For us, our bowl was split into two sections—one with fiery red broth, and one clear broth for wimps like Matt and me who can’t handle the heat.  Paul [Joy] did a good job of ordering for our table from a list of at least a hundred items, and we had a tasty array of lamb, chicken hearts, meat balls, leafy veggies, mushrooms, pumpkin and potatoes which we tossed in the boiling hot pot to cook throughout the meal.  The hot side was really, really hot and spicy.  I dunked one piece of lamb into the broth to test it out, but after that I could only dip.  It was pouring rain outside, which made the meal all the more enjoyable as we sat around our steaming table, sweating, and eating the endless supply of good food.

also, another entry was posted out of order.  if you want to hear the story on paul, go to the post just before the forbidden city ones. mmmk.

Tonight we met up with an old classmate of mine, Paul Joy. [Some people can be known on a first-name basis, but for those who have such a great last name, it cannot be left out. “Paul Joy” is in the ranks with Sherrie Oteri, Julius Caesar, Julia Gulia, or Bruce Lee. The last name cannot be left out because it is important in clarifying the first (without “Lee” Bruce would mean something horrible like Bruce Willis) and because it is too great of a name to be left out (like Oteri)]. So we met up with Paul Joy. Similar to seeing Kyla, I never imagined I’d ever be eating Peking Duck with Paul Joy in Beijing, but why not? If I’m going to eat Peking Duck with Paul Joy, it might as well be in Beijing. Anyways, we had a good time hanging out and hearing/learning about China from his perspective (he lived in China two years before and is now here again working here for the summer) and catching up from the last time we saw each other back in college when he gave me a ride home for Spring break and we spent the night at some crazy commune in Berkeley…but that’s another story…

Paul Joy and us

Today we went to the Forbidden City. This place is HUGE. It covers over 1 million square meters; we walked through two or three gates before even getting to the place where they sell tickets for the main entrance. Tall and thick red walls surround various sections within the compound, and setting an intimidating (and detached) tone to this former home of the emperors.

On the other hand, practicing precision and intimidation (but really just provoking giggles from Matt and I) were these soldier perfecting their moves in front of this big mirror.

Being silly ourselves