December 18, 2008

The time came and the program ended and now I’ve been on the long road of China since last week. Lisa (my friend who arrived on the 8^th) and I spent the 2^nd week of December in Nanjing wrapping up the program, eating good food and shopping as much as was possible in-between. We visited the typical Nanjing sites: Sun Yat Sen Memorial, Nanjing Massacre Memorial, walking around the neighborhood, etc. It’s a lot of fun to have her here as all that has become normalized to me is new for her. We went into a grocery store to pick up food for our train trip to Xi’an. She wanted a drink so I led her over to the drink section of the store to choose something, “WOW!” she exclaimed upon seeing row after row of bottles full of everything from milk fruit juice to cans full of soupy peanut beverage.

Getting out the door was as crazy as ever. Down to the last minute I was packing and stuffing and throwing un-necessaries away. While cleaning out my locked drawer that had held all my important documents I pulled out some plane tickets that for some reason in my mind were receipt tickets from my flight over here. After a glance I put them in the discard pile and shoved them into the kitchen garbage. It wasn’t until 8pm that night, after barely making our train out of town because a taxi wouldn’t stop to get us and getting finally settled on the sleeper bunk for the night that the voice of my travel agent came into my head with the strong reminder that there were “paper tickets” and DO NOT LOSE them. In a split second my brain searched all over remembering that moment, that one moment when everything could have gone a different route. Instead I was stuck on a train between Nanjing and Xi’an with no way to figure out how I was going to get home.

Hoping my maid had put off doing the final cleaning I called her in a frantic. No, she is responsible and reliable to the core – the trash had been emptied already. She jumped on her bike at 8:30pm and rushed over to see if the garbage cans had been taken out for the truck. Somehow one of my students got involved given that my maid didn’t know what she was looking for. After 3-4 calls back and forth by 9:45pm my destiny had been decided – of all the inefficiencies of China apparently the trash pick up is not one of them. They must come once or twice a day! The tickets were gone to some Chinese trash dump and I tossed and turned all night on a sleeper train running the scenario over and over in my head – very helpful for a good night’s rest. Once we arrived in Xi’an I called my BYU travel agent and after working her magic I now have an electronic .jpg of my tickets and only have to pay $100 US to have them re-printed in Hong Kong. I figured it was better than a whole new tickets home.

We did the whirlwind tour of Xi’an given we only had 2 days to see the place. Somehow in a 36 hr period we managed to – see the Terracotta Soliders, roam the Muslim Market, walk around on top of the Xi’an wall, attend church at the Xi’an branch, visit the adoption center and eat as much Xi’an food as possible. Again, it is fun to show Lisa these places as it’s all new to her.

After Xi’an we boarded our next sleeper train for Beijing. Arriving at 7:30am was about the time everyone else in China was arriving in Beijing so the line for the taxi’s was backed up far enough to be quite annoying. Dragging 3 suitcases, 2 backpacks, a camera bag and a few bags full of food and misc we made our way to a public bus that took us to our hostel, The Red Lantern Hostel for Backpackers located in the back HuTongs of Beijing. A Hu Tong are the old neighborhoods of Beijing consisting of courtyard style homes built out of grey brick and decorated with all kinds of traditional Chinese home decore. A lot of the Hu Tongs have been effectively razed over the last 10 years due to push to re-build/develop Beijing, and also due to the fact that many are dilapidated beyond repair. In all the times I’ve visited Beijing I haven’t roamed what is left of these remnants of Beijing traditional life. The hostel we stayed in I specifically picked because it was in a Hu Tong and it provided the experience we were looking for.

After checking in we walked through these narrow bustling streets of pedestrians and bicyclists peering into local shops and ordering up some Beijing breakfast. We turned several heads of course as this area isn’t typically visited by foreigners (except the hostel visitors). Mr. Li, the hostel’s cabbie, loaded up our suitcases on a 3 wheeled cart and pedaled us over to another building where we would be staying. He told me that the area were staying in (Xin Jie Kou Nan Da Jie) had been designated for Hu Tong preservation. I was glad to hear that. Our hostel was great, comfortable and one of the Hu Tong houses. It’s was a true Beijing experience. Check out photos for my adventures thus far. And stay tuned for the drama of the “face off” we had with our taxi driver to the Great Wall.