Year of the Dragon

This is the beginning of Day Three in Beijing, and I feel like I have lived at least two or three months in the past 60 hours. Trying to decide what to write about is hard, since arriving in a new place means noticing and remembering details that go usually ignored in a world of routine and familiarity. From the sticker on your shampoo to the shape of light switches in every room, everything is noticed, wondered about, somehow stored as vital information that must not be forgotten. Having a million things to say, combined with the twilight sleeplessness of jetlag have resulted in a monster of a post. Deal with it. 

The trek was long. I left Boston at 6am on Thursday, and after a nicely layovered three-legged trip that took me to Minneapolis and Seattle on the way, finally made it to Beijing on Friday at 10 pm, Chinese time. The flight was as good as I could have asked for, the plane was practically empty and I got my whole row of seats to stretch and endlessly change positions, which is a big luxury in such a long flight. It was night for the entire 12 hours, which was disappointing, since I had specifically chosen the window seat hoping to get a glimpse of the Pole and my first look at Beijing from the air.

I had envisioned the plane ride as a sort of final prep-time, a long time to think deeply about the year to come and practice some more last minute survival phrases in Chinese. Instead, I spent my time watching terrible chick flicks and getting teary-eyed every time the actors so much as hugged, always thinking back the latest of my long row of sad airport farewells with my boyfriend Robb. 

Paul, an old tutor and good friend form my college dorm, was waiting for me at the airport. I will be staying at his place for a few days, until I find my bearings and a more permanent place to stay. Having that kind of a stepping stone is the luckiest kind of luck, and the kind of thing that makes my parents sleep a little better at night. He and his girlfriend have spent the entire weekend showing me around, feeding me, handing me books and maps to read, and coddling me in every way a newcomer can hope for. 

The first night I immediately collapsed, but early on Saturday morning I met Paul for breakfast. It’s funny, back home, every time I said I was headed for China the first comment I’d get was about how terrible and scary the food would be. I don’t know how many times I heard the same lame jokes about having to eat dog and cockroaches, and even a Chinese high school student I had been emailing for a few weeks had warned me not to eat from unauthorized places because I “don’t have a Chinese stomach that can convert the poisons to nutrients.”

Yet, despite all that, my first meal was straight from a cart of street food. If this food is any indication, China and I will very much fall in love. I had Jian Bing,a sort of batter pancake that is then stuffed with an egg, deep fried, and then folded with a thin layer of a red spicy chilli sauce and a piece of lettuce into a little bundle of heaven. I am a fan of deep frying, of eggs, and of breakfast foods in general, but even I couldn’t have predicted the higher elevation of perfection that this ~ US $.70 breakfast could achieve. It has now become one of my quests in my time here to learn how to make these guys, and post a recipe for the curious to try back home. 

After breakfast, Paul and I wandered around some parts of Chaoyang district, a pretty Western part of town, home to most foreign embassies, and a great deal of the city’s expats. The area is mostly made up of very modern high rise buildings, some spectacularly designed such as the famous CCTV tower, which is just across the street from the building where I am staying. I was surprised by the number of cafes, which included quite a few Starbucks. The streets are full of a combination of luxury cars (a whole of Audis) and a bunch of little funky moto-taxis that seem united in a quest to terminate any pedestrian that dares try to cross a street. 

After quite some time walking by Louis Vuittons and through the lobbies of five star hotels that clearly hire their employees based on looks, it was a big surprise to suddenly walk through a narrow alleyway in the middle of all these skyscrapers that was host to a full blown open air market. It certainly had more choices than any market I’d ever been to, from live chickens and ducks (technically forbidden due to concerns over bird flu) to live fish and your pick of fat, black, absolutely terrifying live frogs. The locals seem to be getting a kick of my staring, laughing out loud when I just couldn’t resist taking a picture. 

At night, we go out with another couple of Americans, friends of a common friend (hey Gabe!) that recently moved to Beijing to work at the US Consulate’s visa division. The Chinese, I have been told over the weekend, seem to be endlessly fascinated by regional differences in culture and food. Each province actually has an official sort of “embassy” in the capital, complete with a restaurant that features their local food. We headed for the Sechuanese one, and I was introduced to more of the joys of Chinese food, the woes of Chinese service, and the common practice of private dining rooms.

The next day I wake up and venture out to grab food by myself for the first time. I don’t go to the same street cart that Paul took me to on Saturday, instead heading for a small restaurant where I just put in place my new food ordering strategy, which I have decided to name “point and pray.” I choose some sort of meat-like substance, imagine that the lady wants to know if I want it to go when she asks me something, so I point out of the store in exaggerated gestures. Yes. I want it to go. This meat is then cut up, and folded into a savory pancake with some sort of tuber cut into thin, noodle-like strips and something else I can’t even begin to decipher. I hand her money, let her give me back the right amount. “Xiexie,” I say. There goes the second half of my Chinese vocabulary. This time, I really may have eaten dog, but it was delicious enough to be perfectly worth it.

I spend some time in a café, attempting to climb the great firewall and failing. No Facebook allowed quite yet, it seems. I can deal. What’s really driving me crazy is that my Google search results are in Chinese and I can’t seem to find a way to fix it. A Chinese customer comes in and asks to turn the TV to the Knicks game. I chuckle. It’s obviously not just Harvard that is obsessed with Jeremy Lin. I sit there wishing that I had met him at least once in college, because I anticipate that’s a question that I’ll be asked a lot over the next year, if things keep going this way for him. I notice a couple speaking Spanish, Colombian Spanish. Having lost my shame somewhere in the 8000 miles separating me from home, I just go up and introduce myself. They are beyond nice. He works at the Colombian Embassy. She’s taking me to her Chinese class this week. Things just seem to go. This is good.

After lunch at his girlfriend’s, Paul takes me to one of the most exciting places I’ve visited so far. A huge antiques market, or maybe just an “antiques” market, Panjiayuan. In endless neat rows, men and women hawk every imaginable trinket. Jade necklaces; huge crystals; delicately hand carved pipes; real antique telephones; fake antique Qing dynasty coins; fossils; old watches; communist posters and a thousand copies of the little red book; vases indistinctly painted in intricate cherry blossoms or Mao’s stern portrait, fist in the air; large scrolls of Chinese calligraphy; traditional embroidered robes; People Liberation Army hats; and on and on and on. On an especially fascinating stretch, enormous statues that could only fit in a temple, several times life size. Lions, fat pigs and Budhas, and, hilariously, two or three Roman statues in the middle of the whole mess. I want to buy half the things I see, and the other half make me laugh out loud. I didn’t buy anything that day, but I was instructed to offer ten percent of the asking price, and agree to settle at around thirty. And never to show too much interest.

I have a hard time with the not showing too much interest part. Everything around seems fascinating. Some of the things I had been repeatedly warned about don’t seem so bad after I’d braced for them. The smog makes for terrible visibility, which is a shame given my location on a 37^th floor, but the air so far has not seemed hard to breathe or particularly unpleasant. People don’t spit in the street as much as I had expected given the warnings, but when they do, they do it with such theatricality and enthusiasm (and to my horror, poor aim) that they certainly make up for any lack of volume. The air is very dry, my lips are chapping and the skin around my mouth and nose is getting flaky. I have to buy some moisturizer, but I’ve been warned to be careful to not buy the whitening kind. Yes. Because that actually exists, and is a big thing here. Whitening body lotion.

Anyway, today is Monday and I’m on my own in Beijing for the first time. I’m going to attempt to buy a SIM card for my phone, and to try to wander in Beijing without failing to find my way back.