To us, at least.
Blogging here has proved challenging...I have to borrow Sophie's chromebook, get online, try to vpn...so my posts here may be sparse and out of order. I say that, because I'm about to skip yesterday's trip to the Great Wall and jump ahead to today.
Today was our first day truly on our own. Friday was our arrival day, and yesterday we had a guide, so today was the first time we could really have the experience of being foreign tourists in China.
If I had to grade us, I'd give us about a C-.
I think of myself as a pretty savvy traveler. I've been all over the US and Western Europe, been to India twice, and Central America. Not bad for 40, I think. But China has been an entirely different challenge. And it's completely due to the language barrier. I've always kind of taken it for granted that no matter where you go, people will have some modicum of English. And that I can get by with a couple of trite words in the local language (hello, thank you, where's the bathroom). But in China? Uh-uh. Nobody....nobody speaks English. Very, very few people seem to have even a couple of words. At our hotel? No. At the restaurants? No. At Starbucks? No. Even our guide yesterday only had very limited English. I've never had my ethnocentricity thrown back in my face with such force!
Here are some examples.
We have a washer and dryer in our hotel room, which is one reason I chose it. How great to be able to do some laundry! Only...the washer is all in Chinese, as is the laundry detergent. It's sheer luck if I don't ruin all of our clothes:
More evidence, seen on the street this morning:
Who knew that Marco Polo was here in 2010??
So needless to say, we've got a major handicap when it comes to figuring out how things work and getting around. And today, it resulted in a major fail: we had to skip seeing the 2 major landmarks in Beijing: Tiananmen Square (site of the student protests and massacre of 1989) and the Forbidden City.
(Sidenote: I realize that I sound like a major ass here. I am in another country, and it's not their fault that I don't speak Chinese, and I ought to have no expectation of their speaking my language. I'm making observances for illustrative purposes only!!)
The day started auspiciously. After being fleeced by the hotel yesterday for breakfast, Marco and I thought we'd head out early this morning and find some pastries and coffee to bring back to the hotel. So down we are at 7:30 am, scouring the streets for a place that might be open that early on a Sunday. We find an open Starbucks, and knowing that the kids will go nuts for some frappucinos, we head in to order. And since it's Starbucks, we could generally get the point across regarding the drinks we wanted, although there was some confusion which resulted in the acquisition of a green tea latte. Either way. Pumped up by our success, we headed back to the hotel, even stopping in a Chinese pastry shop for some local delicacies--which we were able to order by pointing at the items and holding up the relevant number of fingers.
We arrived back at the hotel, fed the kids, regrouped, and were ready to tackle our day--seeing 2 of China's most famous sites. They were both walking distance from our hotel, so no problem! The sun was shining, and there was an unusually high air quality in the city. Nothing could stop us.
Until we tried to cross the street.
When we arrived at the general area of Tiananmen Square (which lies directly south of the entrance to the Forbidden City), we were walking along a pretty large boulevard with several lanes of fast-moving traffic. There didn't seem to be a good way to cross the street aboveground, but there were several openings along the sidewalk to underground walkways that would take you across to the square. At least, it appeared that way. When we came to the first of these walkways, and started to head down, a couple of people stopped us, shaking their heads no. "Tiananmen Square?" we said hopefully, indicating why we wanted to cross. A guard indicated roughly with his arm that we should continue down the street. OK. So we walked back up to the sidewalk and continued to walk. And walk. And looked for signs or any indication as to where we could cross for the Square. Eventually, we just decided that we should cross through the underground passage anyway, and did so, arriving right outside the square. Now why the guard hadn't wanted us to cross before we'll never know, but it was clearly the right thing to do.
So we emerged outside the square, but it was sheer pandemonium. People everywhere, milling about. We couldn't see what was happening, there were no signs that had anything other than Chinese characters, and no one we could ask. To me, Tiananmen Square was a public piazza, something you'd just walk through, but apparently not. There were long lines of people waiting to get into the square, passing through metal detectors and apparently buying tickets. The line seemed to go for a mile, and without being able to ask questions to anyone, it didn't look like we were going to be able to get in. Well, that's a bummer, but very well--we'd skip Tiananmen. It would save us time, anyway, to just visit the Forbidden City.
The entrance to the Forbidden City would be back across the other side of the street we'd come from, so we glanced across the way. Lines. Everywhere. Even worse. This did not look to be happening either. But we made our way back across the street, to see if there was a better way in.
The Forbidden City is a large complex, comprising many, many city blocks--after all, it was the Emperor's palace. From our trusty DK guidebook, it appeared that there may be many gates into the palace. So forgoing the hours-long line out front, we decided to head up the east side of the Forbidden City, to try to gain access through a side entrance.
But we had to fight this crowd of people:
But we did it, mostly by Niccolo grabbing my hand, pushing through the crowd ("mom--I have to use my skinniness for something"), and dragging us behind him. And we did eventually arrive to a side entrance of the Forbidden City. It was a lot less crowded, and I started to silently congratulate myself on the tricky way we side-stepped the huge lines at the front. There was an open gate, and we started to walk through it. Mumble-mumble. A guard is talking at us in Chinese. He has a stern expression and is shaking his head. I'm guessing we can't get in this way. Maybe we need a ticket. We look around. There are people everywhere, but no one looks like they might be able to help us. We try to understand. There's a line of people queuing up to our left, and we head over there, thinking maybe they are getting tickets. Nope--they're waiting for a bus. At least I think they are. We wander back. A couple of Chinese girls ask for a picture with me. I oblige. (Sidenote 2: this happens to me in Asia, where my bottle-blonde hair stands out like a sore thumb and turns me into a circus freak) We must look frustrated, because finally a couple of girls head over to us, asking if they can help us. In English. In English! We explain that we want to get in, and they tell us that we have to walk back 20 minutes to where we were originally. At this news, we all look at each other, take a final picture of the outside of the Forbidden City, and walk away. Time to admit defeat.
So no Tiananmen Square, and no Forbidden City.
In fairness, I've also never seen the Uffizi in Florence, or the actual David, and it took me more than one visit to Paris to go up the Eiffel Tower. I am destined to enjoy things from the outside. At surface-level. Sigh.
Here's a picture of one of the main gates to the Forbidden City (from the outside), where Chairman Mao in 1949 declared the advent of the People's Republic of China:
So, a traveler's fail today.
On the upside, we were able to see the Hutongs--which is the last part of Beijing where you can still see traditional courtyard houses. It was absolutely packed with people, but we did have lunch in an amazing restaurant called the Dali Courtyard. Meals in China have been a super pleasant surprise! The food has been wonderful, and luckily, most restaurants have a sort of fixed-price menu (at least I think they do, we've never been able to communicate), where we just go in, sit down, they ask us something in Chinese, we shrug and answer "all good" in English, they go away, they bring us plate after plate of food, and then we pay. It works!
So we ate a fat meal, which included no fewer than 15 different items, including a whole fried flounder and mushrooms cooked in banana leaves.
Yum. But as always, there were only chopsticks to eat with (I'd read really good advice about bringing plastic forks with you, but sadly, didn't follow that advice). However, through a lucky accident, I found that there is a way to get a knife and fork: break your chopsticks. I tried so hard to spear a piece of cheese with my chopsticks that this happened:
And then they gave me these:
I guess the day wasn't a total fail.
Blogging here has proved challenging...I have to borrow Sophie's chromebook, get online, try to vpn...so my posts here may be sparse and out of order. I say that, because I'm about to skip yesterday's trip to the Great Wall and jump ahead to today.
Today was our first day truly on our own. Friday was our arrival day, and yesterday we had a guide, so today was the first time we could really have the experience of being foreign tourists in China.
If I had to grade us, I'd give us about a C-.
I think of myself as a pretty savvy traveler. I've been all over the US and Western Europe, been to India twice, and Central America. Not bad for 40, I think. But China has been an entirely different challenge. And it's completely due to the language barrier. I've always kind of taken it for granted that no matter where you go, people will have some modicum of English. And that I can get by with a couple of trite words in the local language (hello, thank you, where's the bathroom). But in China? Uh-uh. Nobody....nobody speaks English. Very, very few people seem to have even a couple of words. At our hotel? No. At the restaurants? No. At Starbucks? No. Even our guide yesterday only had very limited English. I've never had my ethnocentricity thrown back in my face with such force!
Here are some examples.
We have a washer and dryer in our hotel room, which is one reason I chose it. How great to be able to do some laundry! Only...the washer is all in Chinese, as is the laundry detergent. It's sheer luck if I don't ruin all of our clothes:
More evidence, seen on the street this morning:
Who knew that Marco Polo was here in 2010??
So needless to say, we've got a major handicap when it comes to figuring out how things work and getting around. And today, it resulted in a major fail: we had to skip seeing the 2 major landmarks in Beijing: Tiananmen Square (site of the student protests and massacre of 1989) and the Forbidden City.
(Sidenote: I realize that I sound like a major ass here. I am in another country, and it's not their fault that I don't speak Chinese, and I ought to have no expectation of their speaking my language. I'm making observances for illustrative purposes only!!)
The day started auspiciously. After being fleeced by the hotel yesterday for breakfast, Marco and I thought we'd head out early this morning and find some pastries and coffee to bring back to the hotel. So down we are at 7:30 am, scouring the streets for a place that might be open that early on a Sunday. We find an open Starbucks, and knowing that the kids will go nuts for some frappucinos, we head in to order. And since it's Starbucks, we could generally get the point across regarding the drinks we wanted, although there was some confusion which resulted in the acquisition of a green tea latte. Either way. Pumped up by our success, we headed back to the hotel, even stopping in a Chinese pastry shop for some local delicacies--which we were able to order by pointing at the items and holding up the relevant number of fingers.
We arrived back at the hotel, fed the kids, regrouped, and were ready to tackle our day--seeing 2 of China's most famous sites. They were both walking distance from our hotel, so no problem! The sun was shining, and there was an unusually high air quality in the city. Nothing could stop us.
Until we tried to cross the street.
When we arrived at the general area of Tiananmen Square (which lies directly south of the entrance to the Forbidden City), we were walking along a pretty large boulevard with several lanes of fast-moving traffic. There didn't seem to be a good way to cross the street aboveground, but there were several openings along the sidewalk to underground walkways that would take you across to the square. At least, it appeared that way. When we came to the first of these walkways, and started to head down, a couple of people stopped us, shaking their heads no. "Tiananmen Square?" we said hopefully, indicating why we wanted to cross. A guard indicated roughly with his arm that we should continue down the street. OK. So we walked back up to the sidewalk and continued to walk. And walk. And looked for signs or any indication as to where we could cross for the Square. Eventually, we just decided that we should cross through the underground passage anyway, and did so, arriving right outside the square. Now why the guard hadn't wanted us to cross before we'll never know, but it was clearly the right thing to do.
So we emerged outside the square, but it was sheer pandemonium. People everywhere, milling about. We couldn't see what was happening, there were no signs that had anything other than Chinese characters, and no one we could ask. To me, Tiananmen Square was a public piazza, something you'd just walk through, but apparently not. There were long lines of people waiting to get into the square, passing through metal detectors and apparently buying tickets. The line seemed to go for a mile, and without being able to ask questions to anyone, it didn't look like we were going to be able to get in. Well, that's a bummer, but very well--we'd skip Tiananmen. It would save us time, anyway, to just visit the Forbidden City.
The entrance to the Forbidden City would be back across the other side of the street we'd come from, so we glanced across the way. Lines. Everywhere. Even worse. This did not look to be happening either. But we made our way back across the street, to see if there was a better way in.
The Forbidden City is a large complex, comprising many, many city blocks--after all, it was the Emperor's palace. From our trusty DK guidebook, it appeared that there may be many gates into the palace. So forgoing the hours-long line out front, we decided to head up the east side of the Forbidden City, to try to gain access through a side entrance.
But we had to fight this crowd of people:
But we did it, mostly by Niccolo grabbing my hand, pushing through the crowd ("mom--I have to use my skinniness for something"), and dragging us behind him. And we did eventually arrive to a side entrance of the Forbidden City. It was a lot less crowded, and I started to silently congratulate myself on the tricky way we side-stepped the huge lines at the front. There was an open gate, and we started to walk through it. Mumble-mumble. A guard is talking at us in Chinese. He has a stern expression and is shaking his head. I'm guessing we can't get in this way. Maybe we need a ticket. We look around. There are people everywhere, but no one looks like they might be able to help us. We try to understand. There's a line of people queuing up to our left, and we head over there, thinking maybe they are getting tickets. Nope--they're waiting for a bus. At least I think they are. We wander back. A couple of Chinese girls ask for a picture with me. I oblige. (Sidenote 2: this happens to me in Asia, where my bottle-blonde hair stands out like a sore thumb and turns me into a circus freak) We must look frustrated, because finally a couple of girls head over to us, asking if they can help us. In English. In English! We explain that we want to get in, and they tell us that we have to walk back 20 minutes to where we were originally. At this news, we all look at each other, take a final picture of the outside of the Forbidden City, and walk away. Time to admit defeat.
So no Tiananmen Square, and no Forbidden City.
In fairness, I've also never seen the Uffizi in Florence, or the actual David, and it took me more than one visit to Paris to go up the Eiffel Tower. I am destined to enjoy things from the outside. At surface-level. Sigh.
Here's a picture of one of the main gates to the Forbidden City (from the outside), where Chairman Mao in 1949 declared the advent of the People's Republic of China:
So, a traveler's fail today.
On the upside, we were able to see the Hutongs--which is the last part of Beijing where you can still see traditional courtyard houses. It was absolutely packed with people, but we did have lunch in an amazing restaurant called the Dali Courtyard. Meals in China have been a super pleasant surprise! The food has been wonderful, and luckily, most restaurants have a sort of fixed-price menu (at least I think they do, we've never been able to communicate), where we just go in, sit down, they ask us something in Chinese, we shrug and answer "all good" in English, they go away, they bring us plate after plate of food, and then we pay. It works!
So we ate a fat meal, which included no fewer than 15 different items, including a whole fried flounder and mushrooms cooked in banana leaves.
Yum. But as always, there were only chopsticks to eat with (I'd read really good advice about bringing plastic forks with you, but sadly, didn't follow that advice). However, through a lucky accident, I found that there is a way to get a knife and fork: break your chopsticks. I tried so hard to spear a piece of cheese with my chopsticks that this happened:
And then they gave me these:
I guess the day wasn't a total fail.
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