Week 30 (Sept 18th to Sept 24th)
Sunday Sept 18th, At stupid o'clock in the morning, we pulled out of our hotel en route for Tiannamen Square. Of course, several people were late, thus putting us 30 minutes behind schedule already. I was excited to see the square because of all of the history there. When we got there, it was pretty packed, but John said that we only had half an hour to stay! I had wanted to see Mao's remains, which are preserved in a special coffin there, but the line was too long, so Rob and I walked around the square and looked at the monuments. There were so many hawkers selling post cards, books, flags, whatever. They would just surround us, yelling "Lady, look here, only so and so price for so and so". Some of our group discovered that a lot of hawkers give counterfeit money, or Thai money as change. Some of the hawkers were very young children, and these kids had way more street savvy than I can ever imagine having myself. It's funny, because Beijing wants to look like a wealthy well-put together city, and yet there is so much poverty here. Our guide kept on pointing out places where slums had been torn down to make luxury apartments, but nobody ever says what happens to all the people who have been displaced. Plus, it's absolutely heart-breaking to see such young children practically begging for money in the street. Evan and Ali managed to be 30 minutes late to our meeting spot, thus putting us even more behind schedule, so once we had collected them, we walked over to the entrance of the Forbidden City, which is right next to the square. There is a huge picture of Mao on the front gate. It was so crowded and John with the blue umbrella was going so fast that we had lost sight of him within about 2 minutes. Finally everyone managed to catch up just outside the spot where tourists have to pay to get in. This took about 45 minutes. Because of all the delays, John informed us that we only had half and hour in the Forbidden City! (It's massive, it takes half an hour just to walk straight through it without stopping). So we really had to race through, not taking time to explore the buildings, or the park grounds, so I was pretty upset that we didn't really get to see anything. Oh well, another time. Of course, a bunch of people were late anyway, so we still had to waste a lot of time waiting for everyone to catch up. Our next stop was lunch, providing a much-needed break from a busy morning. It was kind of more of the same stuff that we had at dinner, a multiple dish on a lazy susan kind of affair. After lunch we drove an hour outside of Beijing to the summer palace. The palace is a lavish playground that was built for the empress using misappropriated funds. She commemorated the money that she stole from the navy by building a big white marble boat to sit as decoration in her man-made lake! (The boat is actually quite stunning.) The summer palace has a huge man-made lake that you can take boat rides in, and along the lake, there is a very long and beautiful corrider that is hand-painted. It's gorgeous! Once again, John was barreling along with his blue umbrella and half our crew was lost after a couple minutes. So again we had to play catch-up. I was also disappointed, because the actual palace is closed for restoration, again because everything has to be perfect for the Olympics. So we only got to see the outside of the stunningly huge palace. We did get to take a ride on one of the dragon boats, which was kind of nice, and allowed for some better pictures of the palace. Then came the part that eveyone seemed to be looking forward to the most (with the exception of Rob, who absolutely detests shopping): the Silk Market! The Silk Market is a massive market where you can get anything from jade necklaces to fake Puma sneakers, all for very low prices. Of course, the trick is that you have to bargain. I absolutely hated this, because I didn't know how low I should go, or when to give in, or what. I ended up paying more than I should have on several occasions, but I guess that I have to keep in mind that whatever I paid is still cheaper than I would have paid anywhere else. Here's what I got: a little jade tiger, two watercolour prints, some gorgeous marble massage balls, little hand-made Christmas ornaments, a carved wooden stamp that was engraved with my name in English and Chinese, a small fold-out screen, a hand-painted blue wooden box and a pair of Puma sneakers. I realized that I was kind of low on money, so I cut myself off there, even though I still had to find a present for Dad, and I wanted to get some Chairman Mao memorabilia (I thought it would be a quirky souvenir). So I met back up with Rob, and helped him bargain for some clothes, and then we were ready to get out of there. After this, it was so late that it was already time for dinner, so the bus drove us to a different part of the city, and we had a special roast duck dinner. This was a really cool meal. Just like the other ones, there are about 10 dishes that are all served on a lazy susan. But the kicker this time was that these were just the appetizers for the duck we were about to consume! I had never had duck before, so I had to learn how to eat it: you get all these very thin pancakes that you wrap the duck, soy sauce and some vegetables in. It was delicious, very rich, but I definitly want to eat it again! My Brit friends were over the moon, because in England, Chinese food is all about the Beijing duck. As a side note: all of the restaurants that we've been to so far have seemed rather touristy. I wonder if the food and atmosphere is different in a more local setting. While I'm happy to be on a tour that allows me to see so much, I wish that I wasn't getting such a sugar-coated view of Beijing. I would much rather have the real thing, as opposed to the sanitized, watered down for the tourists perspective. After dinner, we were all so tired that we didn't feel like going out, so I didn't call Kemin again, and while everyone else went to the hotel bar, Rob and I watched a really bad kung-fu movie, and then crashed for the night.
Monday Sept 19th, Another ridiculously early morning! Today was a lot colder, so we were all bundled up in our hoodies and sweaters, getting psyched to climb the Great Wall! The drive to the Wall takes about an hour and a half, depending on traffic (which was supposed to be horrendous on Mondays, but we somehow managed to avoid it). I was asleep for most of the drive, but at one point, I looked out the window and saw a camel on the side of the road! Very unexpected! The mountains along the way got progressively sharper and steeper, much higher and rockier than anything in Korea. Finally we could see the Great Wall. It is truly one of the most impressive things I have ever seen in my entire life. I just couldn't believe the magnitude of a project like that. It was never-ending. Because the wall is built over very mountainous terrain, you pretty much have to climb the wall, meaning walk on the wall to as high as you can get before your legs fall off! Before we were set loose on the wall (for two pure hours this time!), we posed for a group photo, which was put in the front of a book and sold to us (I have a copy). And then we were free to climb. You could choose either the left or the right. Most of our tour group went to the right, so we went left. Turns out that the left is the more challenging climb, and god do I believe it! It was so steep I felt like I was walking vertically at times. There are only steps in some spots, and even then, they are so uneven that it's scarier when there are stairs. We had to keep on stopping to catch our breath and take pictures, and my ears were popping like crazy because of the altitude. Still, it was incredible, definitly the highlight of the whole trip for me. I got some gorgeous pictures. It was somewhat overcast, but it adds to the etherealness of the Wall itself. Interestingly enough, there are hawkers even on the Wall. The cool thing about them is that they do their work while they are waiting for the tourists, so you can actually see them carving or painting. Ali bought some beautiful scrolls, and I bought a wooden laughing Buddha. I am proud to say that I've climbed the Great Wall of China! After the wall, we went for lunch at the Friendship Store, which is a store that sells original cloisonn� pottery and jade and pearls and so on. We got to go through the cloisonne factory and see how it's actually made, which was really interesting. Lunch was more of the same, except this time there were peanuts in some of the dishes. As I had been doing before every meal, I had asked John to make sure that there weren't any peanuts in the meal, to which he responded quite irritably, "Yes, I know, you don't like peanuts". I tried to explain for the 5th time that peanuts kind of make me die, but Asians just can't seem to understand that concept. Fortunately I caught the dishes with the nuts, and I had everyone else do taste tests for me before I ate anything, so I managed to come out unscathed. After lunch, we went to the Ming Tombs, which is where the bodies of the Emperor Ming and his wives were excavated. The grounds were nice, but the tomb itself was quite dull, and it kind of felt like a waste of time. We didn't spend too long here, and we didn't need too long here either. After this, we drove back into the city for our foot massages! I have never had a professional massage of any kind before, and I'm kind of squeamish about people touching my feet, so I was kind of hesitant about the whole thing (Rob took one look at the room and said that he would wait outside for us!). But I saddle up anyway. We entered a big room with tons of reclining chairs waiting for us. When we were all seated, what seemed like an army of massage therapists entered the room to stand in front of us. Someone yelled a call, and they all started working on us in synchronicity. To be honest, I will never get a foot massage again, because it really hurt and for most of the time, I was wishing that it would hurry up and be over! At one point, my masseur asked if I wanted the manicurist to come over and do some work on me, for 15 dollars. I asked if he meant 15 yuen (Chinese currency), cause dollars and yuen are very different things, and I only had 130 yuen left. He said, yes yuen, so I agreed. After the manicurist did his work, I took out 20 yuen to give him, and he said no, not enough. It turned out that he really did mean dollars, so I had to fork over my last 120 yuen to pay the stupid manicurist, because he was screwing around with the prices. I was kind of bitter about that, although I did get free massage lotion with it. After this, we were given a choice-- we could skip dinner and go back to the Silk Market, or we could have our last free dinner with the tour group. Since I had no more money, and Rob despises shopping, we stuck to dinner while the rest of our friends went back for more shopping. By this point, I was getting really sick of Chinese food, cause all the meals were pretty much the same. Plus the amount of grease and oil was starting to make me feel ill. So I managed some dinner, but I was definitly ready to NOT have Chinese food anymore! I like Asian food, but I hate that there's never any variety in the meals. After dinner, we attended an acrobatic show. It was really impressive to see how flexible and strong the acrobats were, but the music and the costumes were really cheesy, and the show was way too long for my tired mind. It certainly didn't live up to the kung-fu show. We decided that since it was our last night in Beijing, we most certainly had to go out for a night on the town, despite our 5am wake-up call. Evan and I were the only ones who didn't have to work the next day, but we were all up for a good night out (except for Rob who had to work ALL of Tuesday, so he settled in for a night of rest). Because I was out of money, I went to the 'bank of Rob', who had lots of extra yuen, so I exchanged some won for his yuen. Unfortunately, when I called my friend of a friend Kemin, I found out that he had flown to a coastal city for a gig that he had. He was really disappointed that we didn't get to meet up, but he gave us the number of his best friend, and gave us some neighbourhoods to go to. I was so surprised at how incredibly nice he was to someone he didn't even know! I called his friend Zizi with some hesitation (can you imagine calling someone that you don't know at all and saying "Hey, I'm a friend of a friend of a friend of yours, take me out for the night"?), but he was incredibly nice too, and did offer to take us out too! It didn't end up working out, cause of the timing, but the neighbourhood that Kemin told us to go to ended up being really nice. It was a bunch of bars and restaurants around a man-made lake that had little boats that you could take out and have dinner on. We had our drinks, and some great food (fusion style) out by the lakeside. If you've been to Toronto, it had a real Yorkville feel, which was kind of a nice reminder of home. By 2:30, I was practically falling asleep on the table, so Kathryn and I grabbed a cab back to the hotel, and Evan, Ali and Karen stayed out to explore more. I guess I must have crashed pretty hard, because I didn't even hear Karen knocking on the door, and she had to get the front desk people to let her in. She was not a happy camper. I had to deal with her yelling at me in my half-asleepness and then storming out in a somewhat over-reactive fashion. So unfortunately, kind of a crappy end to the weekend.
Tuesday Sept 20th, The 5am wake-up call was painful! Our flight was leaving at 8am, and we had to prepare for morning traffic, so it was imperative that our bus left at 5:30am. It didn't. But somehow we still made it to the airport by 6am. This didn't seem to matter. I have never been in such a long airport line in my entire life. It took us an hour and a half just to check our luggage. Then we had to get through immigration and customs and security. By this time, we were running through the airport to catch our flight. I was kind of upset, because I had planned on picking up some more souvenirs in the airport, but there was no time to even consider it. The stupid thing is that when we got on the plane, it ended up being delayed 1 hour anyway, so we were all just sitting on the plane not going anywhere. Most of us were asleep when the plane took off, and didn't even notice. The flight was passed in unconsciousness for me, and we breezed through immigration at the Daegu airport, and before I knew it, I was fast asleep in my own bed. Just like Japan, I'm kind of going through withdrawal. I miss having a nice hotel room and a bathtub and a minibar. I miss having Rob right next door. I miss sight-seeing and having a "school trip" kind of feel. I miss not having to cook! I really want to go back to Beijing, and see what it's really like. I feel like we got the real sugar-coated version, and I think that there's so much more going on there that I can't even imagine from the little that I saw. I also would really like to meet Kemin, and hear him play, and so on. So I'm thinking that maybe after my contract is done, I'll work my way south through Beijing to Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand, then finish off in the Philipines. I've got people to stay with in 3 of these 4 places, so why not while I'm actually here?
Wednesday Sept 21st, Coming back to work sucks so much! I'm so tired from our trip that I feel like I need a vacation from my vacation. And again, it's the travelling bug. It was the same when I came back from Japan. You just want to pick up and go see more of the world instead of doing normal things like go to work. I can't wait until my contract ends and I can spend a solid month travelling.
Thursday Sept 22nd, Drums Is No is supposed to have another gig in Pohang on Saturday. We turned down a gig at Commune for this, or so we thought. As it turns out, Mike forgot to call the owner of Commune back to tell him that we couldn't play, so we got an angry phone call from Hyun-Shik wondering why he hadn't heard from us. I can't believe that we can't even trust Mike to make a simple phone call! As for me, I'm so beyond exhausted that I feel like a zombie woman. I seem to be having a really hard time sleeping lately, and keeping up my energy levels.
Saturday Sept 24th, We had the weirdest gig tonight. Last time we went to Pohang, there was this guy Randy who asked if he could play with us. Or rather, he didn't ask, he was really pushy about it, and wouldn't leave us alone. I was really put off by this, because at home, you just would never invite yourself onto someone else's gig. It's really unprofessional. Anyway, we didn't let him play with us last time around. This time, Randy was there again. When we walked in, he was onstage playing, which I thought was kind of weird, since it was OUR GIG! We had to wait for him to get off the stage so we could soundcheck. And then he insisted on doing our sound, but he had no idea what he was doing. At one point, I asked him to turn up the bass on my voice, which is a very simple request, and he went off on this huge tangent about monitors and EQs and what not, and I was really irritated because he was acting as if I was an amateur. So we played our first set with a crappy sound set up. At the end of our set, Jason told the audience that we would be back to play our second set in 10 minutes. So what did Randy do? He brought his band back onstage and played for 1 HOUR! I could not believe what was happening1! Plus, we had to re-soundcheck everything because he had changed around everything on the stage. Mike had brought his girlfriend Jae-Min with us to Pohang, and it was really funny, because some stupid guy was completely hitting on her while we were onstage, even though he knew that she was Mike's girlfriend. So Mike spent the whole set glaring at the guy and making mistakes left right and centre. Plus, Jason and I were so bitter about Randy that we were just pissy. So we didn't have a very fun gig, nothing like the last time, and I don't think that we'll ever play in Pohang again. Nadia, on the other hand, is as great as ever, and once again, she was the best hostess I've ever had. She recently broke up with her fiance, who she met here, and who still teaches at the same school as her, so she's got this massive apartment all to herself now. So, even if we don't want to play at the Giant Step anymore, we're definitly still coming to see Nadia every once in awhile!
Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

1