Beijing Part 3: A Day With One Shoe

Wednesday May 19

Today the plan was to do the last major points of interest all day, then meet up with the American friend Logan I had made in Yangshou for a happy hour, and then hit the train to Shanghai at night.

My first stop was the Summer Palace, in the northwest part of the city, and home to another enormous park where the Emperors used to escape to from the sauna that is the Forbidden City during the summer.  It was built in the 18th century, and went through a few renovations after multiple destructions during the Opium Wars and Boxer Rebellions during the 19th century.

The weather today was beautiful and the only thing that held me back from having an extraordinary day was my flip-flops.  For the past few weeks, they have become a bit looser, and every time someone accidentally (or not) steps on the back of them, my foot flies through the front, making the next instance even more likely, a positive feedback loop, if you will. This became almost unbearable after Sunday night, when the combination of broken sandals and rain must have made the hole for the strap even bigger.  Now, every 20 steps or so, I was forced to bend down and fix it, while many Chinese stop and stare in amazement, often taking pictures and laughing.  So this morning I took the precaution of getting some tape from reception and making some makeshift adjustments, foolishly thinking that it would last me an entire day of walking around Beijing.

(A re-creation of 18th century Beijing market)

(View up Longevity Hill)

(Tibetan temple)

(Some beautiful views of the city)

(Kunming Lake)

(On the wall of the Tibetan temple - you can see what's left, destroyed and restored)

(Brought several hundred miles by two different emperors to get here)

(More Kunming Lake)

(Two-handed, impressive)

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(17-arch bridge, some numerology involved which I forget)

Only about 30 minutes after entering the Summer Palace, the tape broke through, and I was stranded on an island of 20-step-misery and dirty feet for the rest of the day.  The Palace itself is quite beautiful, surrounding an enormous, yet man-made, Kunming Lake.  Apparently, over 100,000 laborers were used to dig out this lake over many years in the 1700’s to the delight of Empress Dowager Cixi, the main proponent and most influential resident of the Palace.

There was a beautiful Tibetan temple atop “Longevity Hill” overlooking the lake, which was surprisingly crowded considering how many steps you had to climb to get there. Once again, going to China leaves you with many more questions than answers.  After the temple, the trail leads you down around the lake and some other rooms. Unfortunately, I struggled yet again with the GPS-based audioguide.  It seems incapable of providing a good route to do things in, and starts speaking about information pretty far away from the actual sight, leading to more confusion.  This, on top of the fact that I was stopping every few seconds to fix my sandals, didn’t help in my experience there.

After the Palace, I made a long and arduous trek along the outside ring of the Palace to get back to the Metro.  Struggling with my sandals, I caved in and took an overpriced bike-taxi for about 30 seconds to get me there. Oh well, this is why I’m working this summer I guess! The Beijing subway is really great, and probably just one step down from the HK MTR. It costs 2Y to get anywhere, which is fantastic, because that’s only about a quarter! The subway is mostly brand new, and clean, except for the occasional Chinese person who hocks up a nice one and leaves it on the floor.  The spitting is something I will never get used to.  Just the sound makes me cringe every time.

I took the subway a few stops to make my obligatory checkpoint at the Olympic Park.  It was really awesome to see the Bird’s Nest and Blue Cube (swimming), and I felt a sense of patriotism passing by the Cube, where Michael Phelps absolutely bitch-slapped the entire world for two weeks, winning his record eight gold medals. USA! USA! USA!

(The Bird's Nest)

(Remember when all those little kids jumped out from under those blocks, yeah, that's them)

(The Cube)

(While crossing the street they asked me for a picture. Of course, my sandal broke and I almost got hit by a car before this)

Otherwise, there was really nothing else there. It was surprisingly crowded, though also empty. It was a bit strange.  The location is based around one 2-km long, 100m wide walkway with nothing on it, that stretches the length of the Olympic Park.  There was basically nobody on the walkway, probably because it was sunny, which scares the vampire-ish Chinese tourists.  They were all sitting along the side under some shaded seating areas eating lunch.  The weird part was that there were even that many people there, considering that you could only walk around the outside of these ghost buildings.  And even stranger, though I guess normal in the Chinese context, was that there was still tons of security and vendors who worked there every day.  Again, more questions than answers.

I stopped for some lunch on the street, and then headed back on the Subway to get to the Lama Temple, supposedly the most famous and best preserved temple in Beijing, according to my faithful friend Lonely Planet.  Maybe I’m a bit temple-d out at this point, but it really just seemed to blend in with the many other temples I have seen to this point.  There was a massive Buddha statue in one of the latter temples, but other than that, it served to be a miniature park where I could take a power-nap, and give my back a rest after bending down so often today.

(Love the Chinglish. I feel like the explanation is yelling at me)

(Not sure what the money is doing in there)

(I think that is Hindi, crazy stuff)

(Really tall Buddha)

Finished with the temple, I took a stroll on the parallel street, quite charming in fact for a Beijing street, and picked up some treats at the bakery and a couple steamed buns as an afternoon snack.  Steamed buns – number two food that I will miss a lot from China (only trumped by bubble tea).  I walked around, coyly taking pictures of old men playing Chinese checkers (which I’d love to learn, but don’t understand the characters on the pieces) and enjoying the late afternoon sun.  Around 5, I met up with Logan on this street at a rooftop café/bar for a beer and we chatted the afternoon away, talking about things from grad school to the Chinese asset bubble and the currency revaluation (his specialty).  I’m really glad that I got to reconnect with him after just a week, and someone I feel like it is a connection which I will use in the future.

I rushed back to my hostel, grabbed two dinners (to hold me over on the train of course), washed my disgusting feet and threw out my flip-flops.  Then I jumped on the subway one last time and arrived at the Beijing South Train Station.  As I was walking down the platform to get to car #16 (the last one) I noticed that all of the cars were sleepers.  I stupidly allowed some hope to grow that maybe, maybe, I had misunderstood the ticketing woman on Sunday and that I had been put on a sleeper.  But then, as soon as I had hoped it, I was shattered to see that the last car was the only car on the train to have seats instead of beds.  On the bright side, these seats were about 73x more comfortable than the ones from Xi’an, I was sat next to some cute Norwegian girls, and I had my iPod charged, so I could actually enjoy some music this time.  Of course, little sleep was had, but I was glad to see that we arrived in Shanghai on time, just over ten hours after we left Beijing.