Final Thoughts on China> Travels

I am back now in Beijing after a few days in Shanhaiguan. Some updates:

While playing cards on the train to Shanhaiguen I realized that I only had about 300 yuan, about 30 euro, on me. Even in cheap China that isn't enough for two days. Long story short, I got a cab to the two hotels in town that accept foreigners. Unfortunately Visa wasn't everywhere I wanted them to be as they did not accept plastic at either. I then asked the taxi driver to take me to the bank of china. He did, but sadly they, nor any other bank in this town had an ATM. They informed me at the bank that I would have to go to the closest city, Qinhuangdao, to get some. Just another travel headache. The funny thing is last night I dug out my Japan and Korea guides, that I was going to give to some other travelers I met who will be going that way. When flipping through the book I found 1100 Yuan, or about 130 dollars, which had been stuffed there for two weeks now. I actually came back to Beijing early because i was running out of money. Anyway, just further proof that I am not all that bright. (You were wrong Mom.)

After checking into a hotel I rented a bicycle and cycled around town. (Of course with no bicycle helmet. I have yet to see one and with the regular occurrence of failing brakes I reckon one might come in handy at some point.) This was the smallest town I went to while in China and I was once again the only white guy around. When I wrote that blog entry about playing cards there were 7 locals stareing over my shoulder at every word. It was weird.

The reason I had come to Shanhaiguan was to see the start of the great wall and do some hiking. The next morning when I woke up I went to asection called, Jiaoshan. The first bit, a steep ascent, had been thoroughly restored and was swarmed by Chinese tourists. Still no white people to be seen. Quickly though the wall petered out to ruins and then to breadcrumb trails of rocks. I spent two hours following this trail, which had lots of rock climbing sections that scared the crap out of me. I was alone and there wasn't any set trail so i think it would have been a while before someone stumbled upon my rotting broken carcass. When I got to the top of a mountain that the crumbled wall had snaked up, I gave a shout of "New Jersey!" (Can you tell I have no love in my life?) I found that my voice echoed pretty loudly across the valleys. I figured if I broke a leg I could shout for help, but nobody would understand that. I had my Chinese phrasebook on hand so I guess I could have said "help", "Jiuming A!", but it is so hard to pronounce Chinese words correctly that this would probably come out as meaning "wheel burrow", "Leprechaun" or "I want postcards," which would have certainly brought some help come to think of it. Anyway, I made it back alive, although very sweaty.

The next day I went to the section of the wall called the old dragonhead. This is where the Great Wall starts, rising from the Bohai Gulf. This picture actually shows a view from the start of the wall.
Again, lots of Chinese tourists, all of whom wanted to take a picture with me. Chinese tourists travel in packs with matching hats. The matchinghats can be very useful in sorting out your friends and foes in aknife fight or bilingual bloodfest. In this picture I got them to all yell "SpringBreak" instead of cheese. This of course sounded more like "Spling Bleak" which I imagine would be a lot of fun. It started raining while I was there and then it started pouring. Blah blah blah, my clothes got wet. I saved you about 5 minutes of your life there.

On my train back to Beijing I met a Chinese girl in her 20's who wasreading a magazine meant to practice one's English. The articles were all about Madonna and Huey Lewis and the News. I showed her my guidebook and phrase book and she spent the next 5 hours copying down all of the vocabulary she could. The only word she asked me about was Chrysanthemum. She tried to pronounce it about 20 times, but to no avail. I told her that it doesn't come up much in conversation unless you work in the flower or tea business. I was so impressed with the energy she put into studying my books that I offered to give her my Chinese phrasebook, which I had received earlier from a friendly Canadian leaving China. She happily accepted the book and explained that they do not sell them in China. This could be the public relations revelation that that US so badly needed.

So now I am back in Beijing. I actually was not allowed to stay in my previous hotel because my passport was at the police office for the visa extension and the temp paper they gave me had apparently expired. Thanks again Prague Chinese Embassy for the 23 day visa that started all these problems. I hate you so very much. I picked it up this morning after a long wait in line and fortunately had no problems.

In China one thing you will notice is there are no large dogs. At first I thought that this was because they ate the larger ones because they were meaty, but apparently this country has a small dog policy to go along with the one child policy. Kids actually go the zoo to see larger dogs. On a side note I believe there is an ugly dog policy too.

Yesterday I stumbled upon a eyeglass's store and thought I could pickup a new pair to replace my old beat up, out of prescription ones. I found a great looking pair that at first I thought were "Silhouettes", a luxury brand that costs a bundle in the US. Upon closer inspection I realized they were knock-off "Sandwich" brand glasses. It is written in the same exact script that Silhouette uses so it was hard to tell the difference. Why they thought Sandwich was a sexy substitute beats me. A woman took my prescription the old fashioned way by puttingd ifferent pieces of glass in front of my eyes and asking me better or worse. Two hours later my glasses were ready. I put them on and things looked a bit funny, but I just figured my eyes needed to adjust. It took me about 20 minutes to put my finger on just what was funny about them. Everything I looked at was curved. It was like looking through a wide angle lens. I walked back and tried to explain the problem. The glass on glasses was thin on the nose sides and very thick where the frame met the glass, which I believe was the cause of the curving. After a protracted negotiation they took my prescription again and an hour later they had a new pair of glasses, which still had the same thin/thick problem and when I put them on had the same distortion. They ended up giving me a discount. Advice: Do not buy anything China that costs more than 50 dollars.

I wore them a bit more and I have a theory that they are in fact allowing me to see the curve of space/time. If this is the case I suppose I have gotten a great deal. While this is kind of cool, the novelty wears off pretty quickly. I am going to have an optometrist friend back home take a look at them for me and see what she thinks. I guess I will also drop them by a physicist friend too.

So that's it for China. Tomorrow morning I will get on an overnighttrain to Ulan Batur, the Capital of Mongolia. Once there I should beable to access blogspot again and will post up my own stuff instead ofrelying on the pink wizard. I haven't been able to check what's onthere since I left Korea. I hope he didn't post anything dealing withbathroom humor. He has a tendency towards that.