benlehman

I'm posting some edited letters to Alexis, to give an idea of my trip so far, since apparently I'm too lazy to go out today. These are addressed to Alexis, so there may be stuff that only makes sense to her. Also, this is spread out over several days.


Beijing is, in many ways, unchanged since our last visit. It's dirty and has already given me a rasping cough. There are more foreigners than I remember, which may be on account of the olympics. A fourth subway line has opened (it's been a year since I rode a subway!) at long last, but no sign of any others. The subways are less grungy than before, and they've instituted a tapcard system, not that it actually is ever used (in favor of the old fashioned tickets and ticket-takers.) Now the ticket takers just stand next to the unworkable tap machines, instead of inside booths.

More observations: Everything in Beijing has a fresh coat of paint. However, the fundamentals are unchanged. I remember someone (you? sushu?) telling me that they're more rigorously enforcing the spitting ordinances now. I walked, last night, by the local police station, with a bunch of policeman hanging out outside it. Another guy walking by does a first class beijing spitwad right on the street. The police's answer? They all spit, too.

The hutongs are much nicer these days. I bought a chinese copy of Astro Boy on the recommendation of a pack of
middle schoolers. There are new Shanghai style supermarkets springing up like mushrooms. My bag got located. Every hutong contains a school, a police station, a doctor: all the things necessary for life. You could live your whole life and not ever see the outside streets. There are a surprising number of coffee shops. A father making baby talk at his baby in Chinese.

I had my first really good meal today: a plate of baozi and some bean porridge for breakfast. Coincidentally, also my first conversation in Chinese with someone who wasn't just humoring me.

More wandering around hutongs. The houses are the opposite of American houses: ours face out, towards the street. The houses in the hutongs are inward facing, presenting huge gray walls to the outside. The glimpses that you catch through the gateways present some sort of strange magical world with different rules, or so says my fantasy brain. My realist brain goes "how horrible that, even this close to the nation's capitol, people are living in such squalor" because the conditions are, honestly very bad.

I bought some highlighters at a store that used L, from death note, in its advertising poster. I checked out a geeky model store but didn't find anything worthwhile in it. I bought a notebook and some pens. I may buy more notebooks to use for my classes, when I get back. I went to Hongqiao (the subway goes there now!) and bought a camera with some money my mother gave me for my birthday. I got an okay deal on it: basically market price but they threw in a memory card and such.

Unless it's a fake, in which case I got ripped off. Time will tell. I'm keeping the receipt.

My baggage came.

I have a train ticket tomorrow for Urumqi, which is as far west as you can get from Beijing. I wimped out and asked for a sleeper but then they only had hard seat left open, so it's going to be 40 hours in hard seat. Wish me luck! I'm hoping to avoid pooping on the train, which is always a messy affair for us non-skirt wearers, so I won't be eating much and I'll be drinking a lot of water. From Urumqi, I'm hoping to get straight on a train to Kashgar. Must buy some water, make sure I have the proper reading material prepped.

There's little to add after yesterday. I'm leaving this evening. It's raining in Beijing. I went to a nicer place for breakfast and it was not as good :( My waitress at dinner last night was a beautiful girl with a huge, hooklike scar running from her mouth to her ear. I wanted to ask her about it, but the restaurant was crowded and noisy.