China Vacation 03

We arrived in Pingyao early in the morning after a comfortable night train ride from Xian. The walk from the train station to our hostel was memorable, in that the shops were not open yet, hawkers were out in force, and we were the only tourists on the street. We were bleeding cows trying to cross the piranha-laden Amazon, or the Beatles in Help! It was a strange experience.

Pingyao is a little walled village in a dusty coal mining region. It used to be a banking center for China, kind of along the lines of Greenwich CT. Now, the town’s economy appears to be largely directed at domestic tourism. The flag-led tour groups were even more omnipresent within the confined space of the old walled city than they were anywhere else we saw.

Every nook and cranny is coated with chokingly thick soot from the neighboring coal mines and industry. The little town is so smoggy that you can stare directly at the sun unaffected, like you are wearing dark shades. You want to shower after every time you go outside, just from the pollution.

Although, to be fair, that could be because I was bedridden much of the time we were in Pingyao. To speak discreetly, my stomach had a party and nothing was invited. Not sure what I ate that caused it. Luckily, the hostel was pretty nice and the Houston-Portland playoffs were on TV, albeit a couple hours delayed (Yao is just as big in China as one might think, but so is Kobe and Lebron). I can think of worse situations to be indisposed at length.


One thing that was easy to notice in Pingyao was how much smaller people there were than in the bigger cities. This is especially true with older people, who are dwarfed by the younger generations. However, even the younger crowd is smaller in Pingyao than a similar group of people from Xian or Beijing. One could quickly differentiate local residents and domestic tourists in Pingyao by height alone. Telltale signs of how hard life in the country in China still is.

From Pingyao, we took a “hard sleeper” to Beijing. My parents were worried about the prospect of a night in a hard sleeper train, but it turns out that a soft sleeper only affords you more luggage space and a door. The hard sleeper, by contrast, is only mildly smaller and less comfortable than the more expensive option. I slept rather well.

It was hard to tell where we were as we approached Beijing. The city is similar in size and population to the Greater Los Angeles metro area. There are no high-rises to be seen near the center of the city, and the massive blocks dismay pedestrians attempting to hike between the historical sights near the Forbidden City. Instead of apartment buildings, people appear to live in small Hutongs. Hutongs are little grey-brick neighborhoods, accessible via claustrophobic, winding, and often dirt-paved alleyways. The Hutongs are cool to walk around and have character out-the-wazoo, but they do make life difficult when trying to explain to your cabbie how to get back to your hotel.

Of course, the Beijing accent does not help things in this regard. In general, I feel that I was reasonably successful at communicating throughout the trip. While I am certainly not ready to discuss the nuances of eastern philosophy quite yet, I am quite capable of haggling and dealing with basic transportation issues. The one exception to this was in Beijing. Beijing’s accent is unusual. At best, it sounds like the speaker is pretending to be a pirate by throwing hard “Arrrrr”s into their conversation. At worst it sounds like they are dipping with their left lip and clenching a fat cigar with their right. Needless to say, confusion occurred.

The first place we decided to explore was the Forbidden City and the surrounding parks. There appears to be few traditional public parks in Beijing. Instead, the city has converted the gardens of the imperial court and the larger temples. These gardens have many of the things one might find in a large park in a western city; gazebos, lawns, public work out spaces, etc… We even saw a bumper car ride, with American flag bumper cars, a block from Tiananmen Square. But the most common sight to be seen in the parks of Beijing is the hackey-sackers.

When Americans hear the phrase “hackey sack”, they usually think of college-age hippie assholes, flicking vaguely tribal looking beanbags around with the sides of their Birkenstocks. Yeah, the Chinese don’t truck with that nonsense. They kick stacks of metal washers, “artfully decorated” with a handful of day glow feathers to keep the bottom always pointing down. Rather than hippies, Beijing has middle aged men and women kicking around their washer stacks and acting like shills for the ever-present hawkers that lurk at the edges of the crowd and wait for someone showing interest. Oh, and for the record, those shills are sick-nasty at hacking. They put to shame every sandal-wearing degenerate one trips over on American campuses (you know who you are!).

People say you go to Shanghai for ten years of history, Xian for a thousand years, and Beijing for a hundred. Having learned a bit about the last decades of the Ming dynasty, I cannot help but feel like Beijing got the short end of the stick. All the major historical sights in Beijing are clear demonstrations of how far removed from reality the Chinese political leadership was for hundreds of years until Sun Yat-sen helped organize their ouster.

The Forbidden City is a good place to start. When talking about the Forbidden City, it is only fair to compare it to other buildings of similarly tremendous scale. Unfortunately, the Forbidden City in many ways comes up lacking. The problem is that there are no arches in Chinese architecture. That put a limit on how complex the buildings could be. What is left is a very big network of triple-scaled, bland buildings, with cobblestone parking lots in between them. Compared to St. Peter’s Basilica or even the Summer Palace, and the whole thing comes off less awe-inspiring than just… meh. It reminded me of nothing so much an artfully decorated prison.

But in a way, that’s what it was. The Forbidden City was only accessible by the Emperor’s female family, harem, and eunuchs that served as administrators to the empire. I don’t get the impression that the Emperor got out very much. Having an exclusive city dedicated to yourself is great if you want to be a deity-figurehead, but it also puts a lot of power in the hands of those who interpret your decrees from on high. The Forbidden City was a tool to empower Middle Kingdom middle management.
The Summer Palace was much nicer. While the Forbidden City felt sterile and empty even when filled with crowds of people, the gardens and temples of the Summer Palace were warm and inviting (and also filled with crowds of people). One of my favorite aspects of the Summer Palace is the adjective-heavy names that every room or pagoda has. “The Hall of Benevolence and Longevity”. “The Gardens of Nurtured Harmony”. “The Outhouse of Splendiferous Tranquility”. “The Bedchamber of Pimptastic Crunknasticance”. Ok, so I made up the last two, but you can see what I mean.

The Summer Palace has some hilarious and interesting (read: absurd and terrible) history. It was repeatedly burned down by British and French marines throughout the late 19th century. The Dowager Empress then took funds out of the Chinese navy to rebuild her vacation home. Just another sign of how much the Royals had checked out by the end of the Qing dynasty.

However, it must be noted that my knowledge of this period comes largely from reading the placards in the museums. The current Chinese leadership has found itself in an awkward position when discussing Chinese history. They are clearly proud of China’s culture and accomplishments. Every description of any building or shard of pottery is laden with superlatives. The Most important incense holder. The Greatest south-facing, two floor teahouse. Yadayadaya. But on the other hand, the Communists want to demonstrate why all the painful aspects of the Communist takeover were vitally necessary. So everything is described as graceful and magnificent on the one hand and inept or oppressive on the other.

The next day, we woke early to take a tour van out for a hike on the Great Wall. While the oft-cited claim that it is visible from space is false (indeed, due to it being built out of the same rocks as the mountains it passes through, it is often barely visible just a couple miles away), the Great Wall is still really cool. Totally pointless, of course, but really cool.

I mean, look at those mountains. Would you take an army through that? Of course not. You would do what the Mongols did when they invaded; go to a nice, accessible spot of the Wall, and buy off the guards. In fact, the Wall does not look like a wall so much as a big highway. Those mountains would be much harder to traverse if not for the nice paved walking path running through them.

The Wall is not in particularly good shape, and indeed, more accessible regions of it have disappeared completely. While I am sure the elements have done a number on it through erosion, the biggest factor in the Wall’s decomposition has been theft. Whenever a nearby peasant wanted to build a house, they probably just knocked some bricks out of the wall for it. The section I was at was in such good shape specifically because it was not running through a populated area.

One last thing worth noting about the Wall is the hawkers. Yes, there were people trying to sell things up in the mountains, too. The “Mongolians” that followed us around on the Wall spoke as good English as any group of salesmen we encountered. They were selling postcards, t-shirts, and warm beer. They were even helping people who looked like they were having trouble with the steep staircases or might be in danger of falling. I couldn’t imagine buying things that I would have to carry back into Beijing from them, but all in all the hawkers on the wall were a great bunch.

The strangest thing about going home to Taipei was how nice the air felt upon exiting the plane in Taiyuan International. Taiwan is not known for its superior air quality, but the improvement over Beijing was refreshing. Likewise, while China is by no means a “Third World” country, Taipei has all the middle class affluence of an American city. Really, the two places feel totally different

What I had heard from people in Taiwan was that people in China are very rude. I did not find this to be the case at all. With the notable exception of the cabbie in Hangzhou, everyone we met was impeccably polite and helpful. More recently, I have heard that this is because we are foreigners, and they are less polite to other Chinese. For their part, Taiwanese have a reputation in China of being spoiled and pretentious. This disparity in views is revealing.

When Taiwanese go to China and leave the more affluent cities of Shanghai or Hong Kong, they are really going to a totally different country. Taiwanese have not had the same cultural experience as the Chinese have had, because by and large Taiwan is a middle class country. They must go to China and act like foreigners. But the Chinese treat Taiwan as just another province. In the same way that a big of gawking and discussion on “how people live here” would go over worse in Oklahoma if it came from a New Yorker than if it came from a Malaysian, the Chinese must bristle over their “compatriots” acting like rich Waiguoren (foreigners) rather than Chinese.

Or anyway, that’s my pop-psychology explanation. But what the hell do I know?

Anywhoo, I flew back home to Taipei the day after my Parents left for New York. I spent my last day wandering around Beijing, but nothing noteworthy happened. The trip on the whole was great, but it was nice to be back in Taipei. Coming back to work was rough, but isn’t it always after a vacation? I have some new stories of my Taiwan exploration in May (and by the time I write about them, June), so there should be another post coming soon for that. Hope you enjoyed reading about the trip.

China Vacation 02

After a day of exploring the metropolitan streets of Shanghai, we hopped on a train to the lakeside city of Hangzhou. Hangzhou is a beautiful, old man-made lake and park area surrounded by an otherwise incredibly ugly industrial city. Our first experience of the city was a bad one. We exited the train station and hopped into the first cab that offered his services. Given that the first cab was an unlicensed cab, we would have been better off walking. This particular gentleman responded to my inquiry about how much to take us to the lake with an English “fourteen”.


Or, anyway, I thought he said fourteen. I tried to confirm the fourteeness of the price while the driver was weaving on and off the road and more than occasionally driving against traffic in the wrong lane. Our esteemed chauffeur responded to me with grunts. He did however quickly clarify his position on the price of the trip after dropping us off, explaining that the price was actually forty, not fourteen. He was rather insistent on this matter, and our dialogue boiled down to this.

(Note, that this conversation happened in Chinese, which means that, in the absence of a better translator I have opted for a little flexible interpretation of the major points.)
Cabbie: “You Pay Me 40 Yuan Now, you Dumb white Foreign schmuck!”

Me: “While I hear and understand your proposal, I must respectfully disagree. You initially stated that the cost of your services was only fourteen yuan.

Cabbie: “I am going pretend like I am calling someone to get you in trouble, all while speaking so fast that there is no way you will be able to understand me! Meanwhile, I will shout and grab your arm in the hope that you are intimidated into paying me to go away.”

Me: “I am unfortunately unable to understand the finer points of your arguments due to the velocity of your verbiage. Regardless, you have no hope of receiving the sum you feel is deserved. My parents and I are going into this yonder Starbucks, to drink lattes that each cost more than the difference between our two proposed fees for your services. I recommend you call the police to mediate our predicament, or, barring that, kindly go fornicate yourself.”

Shockingly, the cab driver followed us into the Starbucks. The baristas confirmed that yes, the man was trying to rip us off (a fair price from the train station was apparently 11 or 12 yuan). They then proceeded to mock the cab driver until he left in embarrassment. He did not go far though, but instead sat in his car giving us the finger for, I kid you not, almost twenty minutes while we idly drank our coffee. Some people just cannot let go.

The rest of our time was spent wandering around the lake in Hangzhou. We visited the White Snake Pagoda (There we went again by ourselves. Wait, that’s not how it goes? Never mind). Not too much else happened. We ate beggar’s chicken, and later some great curry, then headed back to the train station via an 11 yuan taxi ride.


The next day we went to Suzhou. Suzhou is known as the “Venice of China”, and whoever dubbed it this clearly had never been to Venice. The canals and gardens were still rather beautiful though, as was the pagoda complex with the two year old Hyatt hotel tastefully integrated with the 500 year old temples. Suzhou was scenic, relaxing, and rather uneventful. So, I will talk about a phenomena we witnessed throughout the trip; the hawkers.
In most tourist locations around the globe, one can find the product that the region is most noted for producing. Predictably, China’s hawkers most often sell cheap plastic crap. I don’t want to seem like I am disparaging it, however; it is really nice cheap plastic crap. Singing peanuts! Surprisingly bright green laser pointers! A gelatinous pig that reforms after you smash it to the ground! All and all, great stuff.

Many cities have hawkers selling things by the street side, but China’s are pretty impressive. By and large, they do not speak any English. They do, however, see foreigners as wallets with legs. So, in an attempt to overcome their communication difficulties, they use the tool most easily available to them; the word “Hello”.


Or, rather, “HelloHelloHello! Helllllloooooo! Hellllloooo? Hellololo!!! Hello!” They seemed to be trying to fit every aspect of their sales pitch into a single, oft-repeated word. The hawkers will follow you wherever you go, saying “Hello?”. When I threw them a little “Wo Bu Yao” (I don’t want), they just laughed and continued saying “Helloo? Hello? Hello!”
After Suzhou, we took a night train to the ancient city of Xian. Xian was one of the first capitals of China, and it looks the part, but other than the old black-brick walls that surround the city center, it hardly looks the part. Much of the city looks quite modern, with tree-shaded wide roads flowing between five or six story buildings on either side (it even has a Walmart!).
This impression did not last once we reached the quite-old Muslim Quarter, however. There, one can see lams and pigs being butchered on the sidewalk, along with cricket shops, little old ladies making dumplings, and, of course, legions of hawkers. The Great Mosque, a mix of Chinese architecture and Islamic calligraphy, is quite beautiful. The thick coat of dust that covers every inch of the place reminds visitors of its rather impressive age (700AD). I thought this was one of the more interesting parts of the trip.


The same cannot be said for the Terracotta Warriors. We took an hour long bus ride out into what one might call the suburbs of Xian to see the “World Wonder”. I was not impressed. That’s a bit strong. I just feel like I got little out of it that I could not have by reading National Geographic. It is big. The tour guide was friendly but largely unhelpful, and mostly just repeated what was on the signs. There are lots of statues, most of which are in broken piles. I don’t know. It just did not do it for me.


After about two hours of looking around, we headed back towards the bus and back to Xian. Later that night, we boarded a night train to Pingyao, which I will write about, along with Beijing, in the next post.