Beijing

As has been our practice since Mongolia, as soon as we arrived, we arranged to leave. Train tickets out of Beijing are hard to get, so says the guide book. They are best purchased in advance. But this time the trouble wasn't in getting the tickets, it was in deciding when to leave. Beijing is a lively, fun city, choke full of things to keep us busy for days.

Our first glimpses of China though, from the train window, were not as impressive. "Where's China?" I asked. The pollution hung just above the tree line. There was no sky, only a thick greyish mass that spread across everything. It gave a dull, hazy, muted-green appearance to the land that ended abut a half mile into the hills. Beyond that, nothing was visible.

Luckily the air cleared a bit as we got closer to Beijing. John pointed out the open window in the train cooridor. "Janet, come here quick!".

You can see it from outer-space, so why was he so surprised to see it from our train. "It's the Great Wall!" John called. "It's amazing!" The train tracks seemed to have been laid to afford us the best views. We dashed between windows, pointing. It was very impressive.

In Beijing, the sights just kept coming at us. There are parks, markets, Tienenman Square, The Forbidden City, side streets full of everyday Chinese life that to us was fascinating. One of the best places for color and excitement are the markets, and it's hard to keep me away - John doesn't even try anymore.

If you want silk, there is the silk market. If you want antiques there is the antique streets. For pearls head to the pearl market. There are more things to shop for in Beijing than even I had stamina for.

The antique street of Liulichang was my favorite. The stores are old traditional Chinese architecture. I felt like I had stepped back in time. At one of the shops (musty smelling and dimly lit) we had a guided tour through the Ming and Qing Dynasties (intricately carved icory, painted vases, carved wooden soldiers, detailed paintings made inside of glass bottles). I felt like I was walking through a museum without the glass and roped off cooridors and with a curator that kept prompting us to touch. "Please, it is ok to pick it up. If you like, I give you good price."

If I'd had time and energy I would have walked in every shop and answered every call of "Hello. Just come look." But by late afternoon we were zonked and in the middle of a small, tightly packed street I hailed a taxi. I presented the driver with the business card of our hotel; and as the AC hit my face, I zoned out in a state of near nervana.

I would classify Beijing as hot but that would be a less than adequate adjective to describe the veil of humidity that wraps around you the instant you step outside. My upper lip crawled with a constant froth of persperation and my clothes were suction-cupped to my skin. The brief stops in air-conditioned restaurants and tea houses helped but there was always that eventual submergence just beyond the door. The ice-cream and ice-water vendors did a brisk business on just us alone.

But the largest business in Beijing is food. From our observations the Chinese love to eat - a lot. There are restaurants everywhere, and food stalls, and small vendors; and there are night markets - stall after stall lining a street selling every delicacy China has to offer. There are skewers of seafood, beef, chicken and vegetables. A fried banana is a great desert or rice cooked in a pineapple. Maybe blackened tofu is your thing, or dumplings or mashed gruel. Or, if you're feeling adventurous, try a skewer of deep fried scorpions. After coming from a country where we couldn't find enough to eat, we were overwhelmed.

While eating at the night market, it struck me that China must be the biggest disposable society on earth - that's if you count just the chopsticks alone. With everything you buy you receive a small styrofoam or plastic dish and a set of wooden chopsticks. No one keeps them. They are all thrown away with the plate and at the next stall another is offered up. John and I bought our own chopsticks at a market. "We've got our own," we say holding them up. No point is adding to the waste and the destruction of another tree for a five minute feast.

Each day by late afternoon we would collapse in our hotel room. We needed to regenerated for the next wave of excitment. We were staying just off the Wangfujing walking market street and for as lively as it was during the day, it was amazing at night. There were jazz bands, pop bands, and polka bands wailing through mikes. There were beer garens set up and a movie projected on the side of a building. There was a bungy carriage and more neon and activity filtering through my retinas that I could process. There were food stalls and shops and malls whose doors spilled people into the maelstrome of activity on the street. And there were people. There were throngs of them - everywhere.

"We better get back to the hotel," I said to John after watching four brave souls under go what looked like a heart-stopping flip 120 feet in the air on the bungy carriage. With all the walking we had done, my feet needed their rest. "We have another day to attack in the morning."