China Travel 2.0

I leave the room, get down to the lobby, and put my hand in my right hand pocket – no passport.  I have been carrying my passport all day so – where did it go?  I must have left it in our room.  Back to the room.  Open my wallet – no room key card.  All of a sudden all of the paranoia of a lifetime spent in the cold war comes rushing back.  Here I am, in Red China no less, without any way of proving to authorities that I have any right to be there.  C’mon, calm down, the passport must be in the room.  Actually I’m not so worried about the passport itself as the Chinese visa that’s in it.  Forget getting back to the United States right now, how am I going to get out of China?  Let’s find Cindy and get her room card.  Let’s get the hotel to let me in the room. — No.  The situation won’t change in a couple of hours – no reason to panic.

I decide to stick with my original plan and go find Grace.  By the time I come back Cindy will be back.   I walk outside the hotel down to East Chang An Avenue. Two men who want to practice their English hail me.  I talk with them for about ten minutes during which the subject of the students comes up.  They promptly tell me that these students are all frauds and I should trust none of them.  I don’t really believe that but in my frame of mind I credit just enough of that to decide not go on with my plan to find Grace.  They suggest going for a drink.  Well, not only do I not trust Grace, I don’t trust them either so I make a polite excuse and return to the hotel.  Cindy’s not back.  I go down to the swimming pool thinking that she must have finished the massage by now and gone to the pool.  No Cindy.  I wait for fifteen minutes.  No Cindy.  I decide to look for where the massage is but before I go there I go back to our room for one more time.  Cindy’s there.  Hallelujah!  I go over to the desk and there are my passport and room key, safe and sound.

It still took about two hours for the shaking to entirely go away.  As it did, I got to thinking about what had just happened and the improbable convergence of events.  I am not a religious person but it felt to me like God didn’t want me to find Grace.

 The next day, Tuesday, September 5, 2006 we went on another tour, this time a group tour, to the tombs of the Ming Emperors who ruled China from 1368 to1644 and to the Badaling section of The Great Wall.   I was frankly not all that interested in the Ming tombs but they were part of the tour package.  The tour bus went out there on the Badaling Expressway, an excellent four lane divided, limited access toll road.  I didn’t notice this until we were on our way back, but the road had markers, along the center divider strip that every 500 meters marked the distance from the beginning of the road in Beijing.  Going by that the Ming tombs and The Great Wall were between 40 and 45 kilometers (25 and 28 miles) from Beijing. 

For me the most impressive part of the Ming Tombs was the setting.  By the time you get to them you are in the mountains north and west of Beijing.  The Ming Emperors picked a roughly horseshoe shaped section of the mountains as an auspicious burial place with the tombs at the apex of the horseshoe.  It was a beautiful and peaceful setting, or at least it would have been had it not been for all of us tourists.  The burial place itself was a mound of earth in which the bodies of the Emperor and his wife were buried.  We weren’t allowed up there.  Before that were ornate buildings which were, in effect, museums of the Emperor in question.

We stopped for lunch, which was part of the tour package.  There, while we duly ate some good Chinese food with our chopsticks, we had a chance to get acquainted with our fellow tourists.  To Cindy’s right was another American who was working for Honeywell in the Middle East.  Then came a couple from Singapore, another from Marseille, France, and to my immediate left, newlyweds from Israel.  I briefly brought up the subject of the recent war in southern Lebanon with the Israeli husband.  His comment, “We lost.”

I expressed surprise that Israel had agreed to a cease fire.  He said he also didn’t understand it.  The American had spent some extensive time in Dubai but managed to cross into Saudi Arabia which he described as a whole different world than Dubai.  He mentioned how strict Saudi Arabia was, expressly bringing up the fact that women were forbidden to drive in Saudi Arabia.

The Israeli exclaimed “Oh, that’s a good law!” at which point his bride hit him on the shoulder.

We also stopped at a shop where artisans worked with jade and the inevitable gift shop that went with it.  The tour guide had spent some time in talking about jade on the way out.  If we hadn’t guessed why before we knew now.  One impressive item in the gift shop was a model of a ship, itself the size of a small sailboat, made entirely out of jade.  I thought I wasn’t going to buy anything there when I discovered that they also sold batteries.  Of course I had left my non-functioning GPS receiver back in the room so only after the tour was over did I manage to get GPS and power source together.

Now we went on to The Great Wall.  It helps to keep in mind that the purpose of The Great Wall was defense against Mongolian and other tribes coming down from north of China.  For that reason the wall is built at or near the crests of the mountains it occupies on the north side of each mountain.  That way the enemy is forced to attack the wall up a steep hill, a decided advantage for the defense.  For the tourist it means that walking along the top of the wall is mostly walking up or down a paved, but steep walkway.  I was in no shape to do this so I contented myself with walking slowly, and with many stops, about a third of the way up the hill along the top of the wall.  There I bought a T shirt for Frank which said “I climbed The Great Wall”.  He didn’t because he wasn’t with us but the shirt was in fact bought atop the wall.  After that I stood enjoying the mountain scenery, very like the Appalachians at home.  I talked a little with the people hawking the T shirts and other souvenirs but lack of a common language kept our conversation limited.

Next to the Great Wall there was what appeared to be a movie or stage set.  There was a rehearsal going on there.  I never did find out what was going on but it involved choral music so the valley where we entered the wall was filled with beautiful music for most of the time we were there.

Cindy returned from the top of the mountain and we left the wall, ambling down toward where the tour bus was parked.  Of course there were gift shops along the side of the road but I was a little startled to be in China and find half of the gift shops flying the Norwegian flag.  Of course that simply meant that among our fellow tourists was a large group from Norway.  I had no inclination to buy any further gifts but then I found that some of the gift shops were also selling ice cold beer.  Sold!!!  While drinking it I sat in the shop and talked a little to the proprietress.  Her English was quite good.  In the course of the conversation I mentioned the rising value of the Yuan.  She shook her head sadly and said that it was not good for her or her business.  As little as we think the Yuan has moved, the Chinese have already felt its impact.

We boarded the tour bus and headed back to Beijing.  On the way back but still 30 kilometers out at a guess we saw an amusement park under construction.  It looked sort of Disney-ish to me but the tour guide was unable to confirm that.

Tags: China Beijing travel, China travel, great wall, Ming tombs, Roy's Trip