Day 7: Back in Beijing

Enjoying the peace and quiet ($%!@!)

It was inevitable. After a week of eating mostly meat (albeit delicious meat), and dim-sum, wandering around northern China with the sandy winds coming off the plains, jostling with the funk of 14 million people (half of whom smoke) and the stress of travelling with little more than a few key phrases under our belt, I got meself a little ol' throat infection.

The sleeper train back to Beijing didn't help. I slept only a few frightful hours, the (apprentice?) train driver jerking the train every 100 metres or so. The sleep I did get was shattered by the 6.30 a.m "Ni Hao! It's Kenny G o'clock!" music piercing my brain.

Even worse was the infernally long and disturbing whistled version of "Auld Lang Syne" and a medley of classic favourites, played at top pitch throughout the compartments before "lights out" at 11 p.m. I've never been so grateful to have a deaf ear.

A riddle - if it's a sleeper train, and it doesn't arrive in Beijing until 11 a.m (2 hours after it was supposed to), why play "piped' (read "drilled") music through all the compartments from 6.30 a.m? Some of the C-pop was OK, rather tuneful in fact, but then they started with hacked versions of English classics (if I never hear "The Power of Love" again it won't be too soon), Chinese opera (oh god, shoot me) and shrill whistled elevator music. When I book a sleeper berth, it means I want to sleep, not listen to crap music.

Getting accommodation in Beijing straight off the train was not so easy. We called around a slew of places until we got a room at the Far East Hotel, located in central Beijing amongst the hutongs.

The Far East was built in the 1940's as a traditional courtyard hotel. It's not flash, but it's comfy and one section of it has been turned into a hostel, meaning plenty of traveller's services, including cheap internet, a luxury in Beijing. Actually staying in the hutongs was an experience. I loved wandering around the narrow streets at night (the evening sky was always ablaze like a late sunset) where people congregated to chat, knit, play pool, play cards, eat kebabs. It felt like a summer Sunday evening every night we were there.

I met with my first hole-in-the-floor Ni-Hao toilet in the hutongs this evening. As I mentioned before, each hutong shares a common toilet. In this one, there were 4 narrow stalls separated by a short concrete wall, no doors and no lighting, almost certainly a blessing, although I pity the poor bitch who loses her footing and slips into the fiery pit of faecal hell. There was another lovely filly using the amenities, her head poking out. I couldn't resist. I mumbled "Ni hao" because, well, it seemed like the polite thing to do. You know, you're sharing an intimate bodily function and you can see their head - doesn't seem right to be rude about it. She returned the greeting. I finished my business and got the fuck outta there.

"I'm not sure, but I think I'm supposed to wave..."

Kinki's Daily Dose - People

While tramping the tourist trail is fine and dandy, it was the everyday street-life and people watching that fascinated us the most.

China is a massive country and it's impossible to generalise, but we found that the people were, for the most part, cheerful campers, particularly the taxi-drivers. We had some classic taxi-drivers. I'd like to say they couldn't drive for shit, but in fact, we're still alive so they must have been doing something right. We had a cabbie ask Matt (through gesture) whether I was a "hot chilli"; we had a cabbie spurt out every single english phrase he knew (took about 10 seconds) consecutively, as if it were a meaningful sentence and when we started to laugh, he started to laugh and the three of us were in fits for a good 5 minutes. Stuff like that made me feel good about China.

One morning we needed to go to the train station but we couldn't remember the word for "station" so we mimed "choo-choo train" complete with steam whistle (OK, so we were desperate). The cabbie liked it so much he started doing it. In fact, a flock of the cabbie's mates chewing the fat around their own taxis liked it so much they started doing it, too. We had 6 grown-men (+me) doing the "choo-choo train" dance on the street. No surprises that the cabbie took us exactly where we needed to go.

The service industry is not a finely-tuned machine, like that of Japan. There is no "irrashaimase!" when you enter a shop. People are more likely to bark at you in China, not pussyfoot around you because you are a paying customer, like in Japan. I both enjoyed the earthy candour (almost vulgarity) of the Chinese and missed the deferential politeness of the Japanese.

At least you knew (mostly) what the score was in China. They want your money. Clear and simple. It seems that although money is the oil that greases everyone's rickshaws in China, the attitude is out and proud, baby. In Japan, money is a covert means to an end. Not so explicit.

Although there is undoubtedly a rigid set of laws that the people have to adhere to, as an outsider I found Beijing to be an anarchic city where anything and everything goes. There are few airs and graces in Beijing. People are wandering about in there pajamas eating dinner in their local restaurant. One man we saw was burning a fire in the middle of the road (politely drawing a wide circle around his campfire so the cars could go around him), people are blowing their nose in public, everyone jaywalks (traffic light? did anyone see a traffic light?), no-one seems to give a shit about manners. There are bucketloads of police around, making sure everyone "behaves" I guess, but there was still low-level anarchy abounding.

I wore my shoes inside the hotel room, just because I could. My god. It was awesome.

Kinki's China Tip for the Day

Drink lots of Tsingtao Beer. It's good shit.