3-9-09

 

We leave the hotel in Beijing and unfortunately didn’t get to see the sweet man that ran the place. The bus ride to the train station was really uncomfortable. One lady seemed to be pissed off that we had brought our bags on the bus. I struck up a conversation with a student who was also going to be taking the 12:20 train to Chengde. We got to the train station with his help, parted ways, went through security, restroom, found our seats and settled in for a smoky (cigarettes) five hours through the mountains to Chengde.

 

From the train tracks, Chengde looked like a pretty rough place. People were huddled together around run-down cars and barrel fires next to gullies that ran with bottles and trash. The buildings were falling apart and stained with coal. Rachel gave me the look like, “Here we go again.” The city started looking more inviting as we moved more toward the center. It was still light outside when we left the train station. I got a GPS waypoint and we set off to meet our new host, Zach, at the McDonalds 10 minutes down the street. The city reminded me of Tai-An with a little less money. Zach met us on the street and we easily struck up a conversation back to his “sketchy” (by his own admission) apartment.

 

Zach graciously offered us his queen size bed and took the futon in the other room. He showed us how to operate the lights and front door and soon after, we got to meet one of his college alumni, Megan. Later, one of his students, Eric, arrived. He was a skinny, tall, well-spoken high schooler that wanted to get some last minute English exposure before the college admission test that he’ll take on the weekend.

 

Eric showed us to a popular hot-pot meal and we lucked into a private room upstairs. Eric took his responsibility as “food orderer” very seriously and soon two broths, and a variety of meats and vegetables hit the table. Rachel and I paid about $11 for the entire feast and a couple beers. After some persuasion, Eric reluctantly allowed us to pay for our food.

 

After the walk home and goodbyes to Megan and Eric, Zach showed us where to buy water and went to a Jewish prayer session. Rachel and I went back to his apartment, relaxed and when he returned we had a short talk about Judaism and got a good night’s rest.

 

3-10-09

 

We slept well and made our way into the city in search of food and the Mountain Summer Resort. We stopped in at McDonalds for excellent coffees and took them along with us on a pleasant walk along their river. We tracked down a restaurant that was recommended in Lonely Planet. The order got messed up and we got more fried rice than expected, but the oily vegetable noodles and beef pastry/burritos were good. Everybody here is very curious about us. After eating we stood in one of two long lines waiting to get tickets. Everybody in the line were watching our reaction to the old woman who was hitting our arms and bags, yelling, and intent on selling us some maps. We eventually figured out we were in the wrong place and made our way in through another entrance. The resort was pleasant because there were hardly any people sharing it with us. We walked around a large lake taking pictures, had some trouble finding a decent restroom and walked to the north until we found a tall pagoda. Rachel was heart broken when “Emily’s Egg” fell off one of the pagodas pillars onto the roof. She poured our bottled water on the roof to dislodge it, but had no success. Goodbye egg, safe travels. We took the bus back to Zach’s, hung out in our room for awhile, drank some beers and were off to “tree restaurant” to celebrate Zach’s birthday. We were accompanied by about 60% of the foreigner population of the town of 1.3 million, 5 teachers, and a Chinese girl, Cecilia. The meal was good, fried rice, oily eggplant, lamb, spicy chicken wings, and some doughnut like things. Afterward they took us to one of the four bars in the city. It was pretty nice, there was singing and a lot of Chinese practice on their part with the locals. We walked home afterward.

 

3-11-09

 

The next day Rachel and I got another slow start, enjoying the bed and loose schedule. We ate a fish/egg mixture with Zach and coffee afterward. Then we split ways and went to Puning Temple to be struck by the magnitude of a huge 22-meter high wooden statue inside. We then took a taxi over to two Tibetan style complexes that were made to replicate Lhasa and impress the northern tribes of China. We got some great pictures and aside from the workers, practically had both of them to ourselves.

 

We had a conversation about the trash layered in the dried up ravine we walked along, caught a bus home and spent another late afternoon relaxing. Around 7pm we went to dinner at tree restaurant with Eric and Zach. Zach was too generous and paid for everyone because he had gotten a bonus that day.

 

3-12-09

 

The next morning Zach took us to eat donkey soup which I ate the majority of. We got to meet a New Yorker who had lived in Chengde for five years and had decided that it was the perfect place for him. Zach and Dee (I think) had a blast telling Jewish-jokes (they both are) and showed us where to buy snacks and toilet paper for our long train ride to Xi’an. Rachel and I returned to Zach’s, got our bags, said goodbye and boarded the train.

 

The ride to Beijing was uneventful. I caught up on current news with my podcasts. Getting to the West Beijing Train Station from the central one was a chore. Rachel is breaking under the weight of her bag and the people in the subway unabashedly stared at us the entire way. We crossed paths with a lot of weirdo’s going across the city, finally made it to the other station after an hour and were both feeling pretty negative.

 

Cleanliness is not an aspiration of the Chinese and the spitting and smoking (inside and out), yelling, litter, and other crude behavior (by our standards) can become irritating once frustration sets in. Rachel had a lot of difficulty finding a bathroom in the train station and was disgusted by the condition it was in once she did.

We stood inside a river of people waiting to get on our train; they selfishly pushed us aside and weaseled their way in front of us at every opportunity. Rachel had to position me in between her an old man who was staring at her and making her uncomfortable. I had to keep turning around and checking my bag because the people behind me were pulling and clawing at it. We got our way to the “hard-sleeper” train and (I at least) was happy to see that it was reasonably clean and new. We were the first into our room of 6 bunks. We took the bottom two on Zach’s suggestion and were happy that we’d gotten more space than the unlucky folks who would be sleeping above us. Then our bunkmates arrived and gave us a short Chinese lesson explaining that the characters on our tickets mean we would be sleeping at the top. We had about a foot and a half between our bodies and the ceiling, Rachel is unnerved by heights and confined spaces, we were stuck in both, so she cried for awhile. I was close enough to reach over and comfort her. I totally understood why she was down. It had been a tough day.  After some time she grew accustomed to our situation. I was much more comfortable because there was a storage space at the top where we could have access and an eye on our bags, plus, nobody could easily climb the 9 feet to bother us in any way. We both slept pretty well.