China, we have some things to talk about.
First of all, China, let me reassure you that I do indeed hear you. So you can stop with the firecrackers and the honking and the trance music.
Yes, China. It's true. I am a foreigner.
Indeed. My native tongue does sound hilarious. Yes, my appearance and attributes are comical.
China, I am not interested in the shiny array of of useless trinkets on your blanket.
Your use pulsating techno does nothing to lure me into your clothes boutique, China. Neither your shouting DJ, relentlessly clapping clerks nor your terrifying Russian manequins shall make any progress on that front.
No, China. I do not wish to buy a flower.
Why, yes China I have heard of AMWAY. No. No, I don't know who AMWAY's CEO is. No, I also didn't know that it is the 17th largest cojmpany in the US.
No. I do not wish to purchase some soap.
Sure, China. I would like to purchase a coke. Actually I would like it to be cold. Yes, that is quite funny isn't it?
Alright, and let's get it over with.
Yes, hello China.
I'm carrying things back to our apartment. I find Nick playing guitar in the square next to our house. I ask him how it was going.
He says that families are having their picture taken in front of him as if he's some sort of monument. He's drawing a crow but not holding their attention.
I congratulate him on being Dongying's new novelty act.
Later a small persistant flower seller (we all call him the flower child) will see Nick ($$$$$$!) and begins to harass him. He will start to grab Nick and Nick's guitar. Nick will flee, leaving behind his dream of conquering Dongying's music scene.
I continue back to our apartment through the dirt mall. There is a child, crapping through split pants on the grass. There's a dead colorful bird on the ground next to the birdseller. The ice cream seller tries to talk to me again, but the only thing I understand is when she asks me if I understand and tell her I do not.
Dongying is a nice place. It's slightly rustic, it has small town friendliness. But it ain't Beijing.
In Beijing you should not worry about the authentic Chineseness of your experience. Beijing is one of the great international cities and it has made it's own culture which is part Chinese part import and part something else again.
It has plenty of highminded culture for touristing about. Shrines, edifices, palaces, events and temples. These places give you a texture to feel history. Have a mind though. History is slightly gross and in the north capital it is gratuitously so. All of these wonders were built by despotic emperors, uncaring colonials and power mad dicatators. Too much Chinese history can be overwhelming.
I feel no remorse over my preferences of shopping eating and drinking over the highminded stuff. Nothing against the high minded stuff, really. China has an awful lot of history. But if you want to know about Beijing today, you should haggle with it, dine with it and get a bit toshed with it.
That's why my favorite trips in Beijing are to the silk market and to sanlitun. The silk market is just a crowded little alley filled with (pretty good) designer knock-offs. Things can be very cheap but you have to work for it. In fact, battle for it. Cheap clothes come with a satisfaction of having haggled someone down from eight times the price they first offered. The first offer they make is usually totally absurd, basically an attempt to get you to reveal exactly how much you are willing to pay. Meeting them halfway is not victory. My advice is figure out however much you are willing to pay beforehand and do not budge from it. Be rude, walk away and be fierce. Remember: you haven't really done well unless they accuse you of cheating them.
Buying little knickknacks is pretty easy. Just walk near an obvious tourist location and take home what you want. Black market DVDs are absurdly cheap (10 quay per). Buying recent releases pretty much guarantees an ugly camcorder version.
Sanlitun is the literally the bar street. The main bit on the south side is overpriced, middle class and filled with prostitutes. Blah, blah and ick. The real fun is to be had on the side alleys and the dirty area around Durty Nellies. Cheap whiskey(15 quay), cheaper chinese beer (5-10 quay), an interesting assortment of exiles and expats. We had a great time at Poacher's, whihc was refreshingly free of trance and saccharine mandopop. I'm not sure when the place closes, but I left at 3:30 a.m.
Eating is what I'm all about. It's also what Beijing is also all about. Any type of cuisine, international or regional, is available. The Thai and Japanese food are excellant.
The Chinese food is what your there for. It's cheap and plentiful and fantastic. There's the familiar Cantonese and Sichuan style, the mouth abusing Hunan style. My favorite is Xinjiang. It's got some heavy Indian and Middle Eastern influences and it's tough to find in Dongying. It's got naan and spicy lamb and saucy, noodle filled stews. The lamb kabobs are the rage everywhere but the rest of it is a rare treat.
It's touristy and absolutely choked with laowei but food court at the bottom of Wangfujing is pretty good food and a pretty fun experience. For thirty quay you can load up on a variety of styles, all cooked fresh.
Of the highminded stuff, the best I've done was visit the Yonghe Lama Temple, despite the strange feelings stirred up by the intermingling of gawking tourists and praying pilgrimsSometimes the distinction between pilgrim and tourist is a bit muddy, I saw a nun pray before a shrine and the have her picture taken in front of it). I am ardently irreligious, but watching someone's beliefs turned into a tourist's curio feels a bit depraved.
The Lama Temple is Tibetan and that makes it as beautiful and byzantine as you've heard. The rough bit is that I'm just as bad as the Chinese tourists who scoff while others pray. All religions have a kind of cognitive dissonance between creed and history but the horse warrior buddhists should win some sort of prize for it.
Tiananmen square is a big, goddamn square with a big, goddamn picture of Mao above it. It also has Mao's mauseleum in it (the Maoseleum, as I like to call it) but you can't go in there. Not that I was really interested in paying my respects to any crazy dead dictators any way. The only thing that I came away from Tiananmen with was an intensified horror at the thought of tanks driving through the area with hostile intent.
The Forbidden Palace is the only thing in China other than Baiju that gets universally hostile reviews. People do seem to like the Great Wall tour, but I'm told that the tour intended for Chinese tourists is a real horror shoe where you are taken in a ski lift above a remodeled section of wall while easy listening is piped in.
The nice thing is that even with the stuff that you hate, and the stuff that disappoints you, there's still a ton left after that.