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- last entry / next entry - 2005-10-14 | 6:22 p.m.
China 2005-Part 2 of many I spent Sunday as a tourist and hired a driver for the day without knowing it, apparently. The route to the Summer Palace wended thru the city center, and I saw the facelift from all sides. Beijing�s hosting the Summer Olympics in 2008, and they�re getting ready by tearing down smaller older buildings and creating modern highrises in their place. It�s not pretty, but it�s progress and the cranes have migrated from Shanghai to Beijing to look like startled storks when they�re at rest. The Summer Palace was doing brisk business when I arrived, and entered to find it more like Central Park. The air was already sultry, and edging towards clingy. I wandered around with the audio guide and realized that I had become a one-woman attraction. I�m not sure if it was the fact I was alone, a redhead, or so flushed I looked like a tomato, but people strolled by and took pictures of me. This wasn�t a lone occurrence�I was an absolute fascination to everyone in Beijing. (Shanghai, not so much. Whew.) It�s beautiful there, it�s full of history and artifacts and whatnot, but it�s really really big. And vertical. Both the Summer Palace and the Forbidden City were made for people who were carried everywhere, because they would have done a lot more landscaping if they had to climb those hills or walk those courtyards themselves.
I enjoyed myself, headed back to my driver, and sucked down appx 40 gallons of water. No hunger, just intense dehydration. We drove back to the Forbidden City, passing major weekending spots for locals and hutongs where tour groups traveled in individual rickshaws that crumpled traffic. At the side parking lot, I had my first experience haggling, and promptly hated it. I had to haggle with my driver for his fee (oh my gosh, just take the fair price and get over it and don't think that waving your sweaty arms all around me will help your cause), and then fend off an overly-persistent woman selling all sorts of tchotchkes. I walked at least half a mile to get into the City, and then stood in line with the rest of a sweaty and fractious humanity. My experience was probably very normal�I was wandering a museum, not a working palace, and restoration was subordinate to maintenance. I was mildly disappointed that Bertolucci lied to me about the beauty and opulence, but I got over it and kept walking. I think the underlying theme for the day was �walk and hydrate�. The Forbidden City covers 250 acres, and I�m sure I did a few miles at the Summer Palace, so my legs were giving out about 6 hours in. I toddled home thru the sunlight, using my umbrella for a measure of shade. Umbrellas would float along the ground as toddlers carried them proudly, and made me want to trade in my serviceable old umbrella for a fantastically-decorated sunshade. Once I converted their price to USD, however, I stuck with Ole Blue and saved my money. When it came down to it, I�d rather have 40,000 icey treats (wow, do they love their frozen goods) than another sunbrella. Tho I did flirt with the idea of starting the trend here next summer�just imagine the Magnificent Mile swathed in parasols! Back to blessed air conditioning and I stepped into the shower fully-clothed. There was no way I was letting anything touch any part of me without being a lot cleaner first. Dinner was another disappointment�while tasty, I had no idea why everything needed to be so damn salty. Another early night, another early early early morning full of bad movies. - last entry / next entry - |
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