Tmo Travel writer Abigail Schteinmantakes us on an intimate journey to Beijing in China.
S e s s i o n 1: The Preliminaries
Scene 1: Bless Thee, O Travel Muse!
Warm September early evening. Abigail rambling through Chinatown. Passes by that travel agency near Shaftesbury Avenue that friend Michelle time and again has mentioned. Ads displayed on window pane, all invitingly winking to Abigail. Tokyo. Beijing. Seoul. Shanghai. Beijing. Hong Kong. Singapore. The toes feel warm. An inner itch to see how ‘others’ live. The need to see the self inserted in the foreign environment. A burning desire to learn new things. Guess not so many of the friends have been there yet. Buzz in the ears, heart pounding, sweaty palms, shaky knees, oh dammit, a shy, hesitant step forward and… the credit card is dead (long live the credit card).
Scene 2: Vaccination Session at the GP Surgery
Youch.
S e s s i o n 2: Getting there and back
High There
What pictures does “Beijing” spring to mind? Overcrowded city? Chinese food? Communism? Historic monuments? Still unsure, then let me share some of my Beijing impressions with you. Surprising or not, most places turn out to be completely different to what we had in mind, regardless of how much literature and advice we may have ingested prior to the venture.
My journey actually began on board of a Chinese airliner on the eve of a 24th December. The actors and the scenery of the undubbed Chinese film which was being shown were delightful to look at, but after a while I got tired of it so I turned to savouring the all-Chinese onboard mag. Somewhere in China luxury villas are being built, Chinese ladies grace Dior and Gucci garnments, state-of-the-art meals are being crafted, and communication technology has reached the highest waves. Fantastic! So what is this ration of Western misery doing on my tray? Haute cuisine?
Arriving
Arriving at Beijing International Airport was shocking: the modern, beautiful premises make London Heathrow look like an anachronism. If it was not for all that information written in Chinese, this could be anywhere else. The crowds of Chinese throughout confirmed I was in the People’s Republic of China.
“When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” Oh yeah. I decided to go local and get to the city centre by shuttle bus. 16 Yuen, as opposed to the taxi which would have cost me over 100 Yuen. So, out of Customs and into the real world. The shuttle service to Beijing is just outside the arrivals terminal. What I wasn’t aware of is that there were several itineraries to Beijing, and I just knew that my hotel was close by the Railway Station. But what do you do when no-one seems to speak English, and you cannot converse in Mandarin. Yes, well guessed: you keep on trying. Out loud. Loud and clear. Louder. Somewhere, sometime, the coin will drop. And it did. Someone showed me a cardboard with the itineraries so that I could indicate which one was the one I wanted. Only problem, I cannot read Chinese. I looked in dismay but not in despair. The cardboard was turned over apologetically and –hey! Here were the itineraries, in Latin characters. Seven stops to the Railway station. Must strive to stay awake and count the stops, then.
On the map it all looked so small and simple. I should have known better: Beijing must have been originally designed for giants.
Painfully enough, the first things I learnt in Beijing are:
I got off the shuttle bus at the Railway Station and enquired for my hotel, and for the street where my hotel is at. Always got one or the other variant for an answer: people encouraging me to keep going, either straight on or straight back. After two hours of walking, and after having passed in front of Tiananmen Square at least three times, I started to feel frustrated.
Ah, Dongchang’an Jie, or however you write it, I will remember you forever, and ever! Thou art the longest winter stroll, and the most unpleasant, too, I have ever undertaken!
It was getting dark already and I could not feel my toes any longer, for –7C is –7C and that is no temperature to sneer at. I was dressed for London winter but not for polar weather. I tried to call a cab’s attention. Little I knew that taxis will only stop at designated taxi stands. Fair enough. So eventually I found my taxi stand. I had passed by it several times already. Next thing to learn was that the concept of queueing for a taxi has not quite caught on in China yet. It is a matter of survival of the fittest, really. So after half an hour of trying and pushing and being pushed, and feeling the tears almost running down my cheeks, I practically kicked two gentlemen aside and won my way into a cab. Good. It felt more or less like winning the Olympics. Once inside the taxi, I confidently said,
“Xianmen Road, Capitol Hotel, please.”
(I pronounced the first word “Tsianmen,” which sounds a bit like “Tiananmen.” This may explain why I kept being directed to and fro Tiananmen Square). The taxi driver turned round and shrugged. After a long moment of almost losing all faith in myself, I struggled to open my backpack with the frozen sticks I had in place of fingers, and with trembling hands produced the hotel voucher the travel agency had given me in London. With a bit of luck, I thought, the name of the hotel may be printed out in Chinese. Bingo. Why didn’t I think about this before. The taxi driver nodded. He nodded! Bloody hell, he understood. He knew! My heart thumped in exctasy. As the car drove along the block, I sat back and relaxed. At the corner, we turned right. Capitol Hotel.