7 Days of Solitude (nearly), and Beijing

Three two one go: Hi everyone from sunny (for now) Beijing! Most of you know that I got here via the trans-Siberian railway and so I'll tell you a bit about that.

I departed from Moscow at midnight two fridays ago boarding a long red blue and white train and nervously noting that not only did I not hear any languages that weren't Russian or Mandarin, but also that my Russian had not proven to be exactly conversational. It can better be described as functional at the most basic level. Anyway. In a broad stroke the trip was a solid week and until day 5 I was in fact the only non-Russian or Chinese person in the train. This was kind of cool actually partially because I would be forced to practice my Russian a bit, but also because I had been craving a bit of solitary confinement to do some reading/reflecting. 7 Days is a long time though. By day 5 I was pretty much having outright conversations with myself and jumping up and down on the bunks in my cabin (I got a cabin to myself after the first night and until day 4 at which point a middle aged Chinese man who snored more loudly than anyone I've ever met but who was very generous with his food joined me). I did do a lot of reading though. I polished off Crime and Punishment, Breakfast of Champions, Midnight's Children (which I realized that I had read the first half of before) and the first third of Lolita - take that lexicon of classics! - (which was freaking me out so much that I've put it aside to reread The Half Blood Prince in preparation for Deathly Hallows). Other than that I mostly just stared out the window and slept (although that became progressively more difficult as the consistent time changes of one hour per day began to add up... by day 6 I was completely nocturnal). On day 5 a bunch of British people boarded from the station at Irkutsk near lake Baikal. I made buddies with this middle aged Scottish couple who I'm pretty convinced were both alcoholics and just wanted someone to drink with... but they insisted on buying all of my food and drink so that was cool and Chinese beer is pathetically weak, typically in the 3% range so it didn't get too rowdy). The border was hell, it took at least 4 hours each on both the Russian and Chinese side, but that's just the norm. We didn't have any problems per se. From there it was a day an a half across the Inner Mongolia region of China and then Manchuria both of which were vaguely interesting but lost their novelty very quickly. What was the most shocking was the sheer number of huge multi-million populated mega-cities that we passed through that I had never even heard of before, and all of them looked like they had come off of the cover of a Sim-City box.

Landed in Beijing at 5 a.m. last Friday morning. In hindsight 7 days solid was wayyyy too long. To do it again I would have stopped probably in Tomsk, Irkutsk, and Harbin just to get off of the damned train for a few hours. I was happy that I did the trans-Manchurian route though as the trans-mongolian is a million times more touristy and non-westerners would likely have been in the minority.

Beijing: It seemed like I had stepped off the train and into Lars von Trier's 'The Element of Crime'. The air was pregnant and everything was dripping, and it might just have been the fatigue or more alarmingly the pollution but everything seemed to have a tint of sepia. People were barraging me from the getgo with proferred hotel rooms and taxi cabs and tours etc.. It was stressful at 5 a.m., especially when you're soaked from the humidity. Anyway, I finally found my way to the Beijing Lotus Hostel at about 11 after waiting at the Bank of China to change some money and grabbing a quick bite to eat. The hostel significantly improved my day. It's the coolest complex surrounding a traditional chinese courtyard, and best of all, only 7 dollars or so per night. Plus! I was meeting up with Julie Anne MacDonald (a friend from Parliament who's studying Mandarin in a city a couple of hours away by train) later that afternoon and finally being able to stow away my bags I was able to allow myself to get excited about it. I had a short nap, a 25 cent/half litre beer and read for a bit feelign the anticipation build. J.A.M. landed at about 6. It was beyond awesome to see a familiar face after so long (pretty much a full month since leaving Brent and Karin) and we spent the whole night excitedly tripping over each other trying to tell as many stories about recent experiences as was possible.

Day 2 was a thunderstorm from the moment we woke up to the moment we crashed at about 3:30 am. I actually kindof liked walking around in that because it kept the air cool and gave me an excuse to buy an umbrella for a dollar fifty or so. Plus, wet streets and colourful umbrellas make for good pictures. We wandered over to the People's Congress building and checked that out. The scale of everything was totally overwhelming but the information available was decidedly the opposite. Apparently no one not on the inside really understand how Chinese government works. That's all I'll say about that for now though. That afternoon we spent probably 4 or 5 hours sitting around in various restaurants and tea shops just eating... warm food was still a novelty for me after subsisting for a week on non-parishables (the restaurant on the train was obscenely expensive). We taught ourselves Chinese chess and played a few games. I'm going to try to find a nice set this afternoon. It's similar to western chess but with just enough differences to totally change the way you have to strategize. So we played that and shot the shit about Quebec separatism until we were both ready to collapse in the wee hours.

Day 3 we slept in far too late and only set off to Simatai (the most dramatic of the nearby stretches of the Great Wall) at eleven. We had decided to find our own transportation which proved to be an adventure. At one point we had two taxi's driving beside us and yelling at each other as we walked towards the tourist information center at the halfway point trying to figure out if there was a bus. Our reticense to board gave us a good haggling position and we ended up in the end hiring one of the cars for about a third of what they were all asking initially. Simatai blew my mind out of my head through my ears. I can't really describe it though, so you'll have to wait for pictures. It's one of those great wonders that totally lives up to the billing and we had the whole place to ourselves (we saw I think 5 other tourists the whole time). The climb was a bit extreme though considering the heat, but the air was crystal clear courtesy of the rain the previous day and the views were spectacular. On our way down we took a 300 m zip line over a lake a la treetop obstacle course near Ottawa. A great way to end the day at the wall. The trip home though was not quite so much fun. We were both desperately hungry and I was consistently horrified at how people drive in this country. THere was passing going on on the inside, outside, in the shoulder, stradling the middle line and squeezing between oncoming and other traffic and an overturned truck that served just to remind us of our own vulnerability. We got back into Beijing at about 9 and ran to the nearest restaurant. The most interesting thing about that experience was observing two Chinese men physically fighting (though with smiles on their faces) over who would pay the bill. They woudl each take turns throwing money towards the waitress, then the other would run and snatch it back and leave their own money and then the other guy would make a big fuss and push the waitress back to retrieve the money and put back the original bill, etc. etc.. Apparently this is a pretty common occurance. Julie-Anne and I split our bill.

I had been thinking a lot about Laurent coming to Beijing and I was very happy when Julie Anne suggested that we go to visit the site where he was killed and leave flower and yell at the cars a bit. So we did that on Monday but we forgot the flowers in the rush (Julie-Anne had a train to catch back to school early that afternoon). What we did instead was just talk for a little while about him and then we each wrote him a letter and just left it at the side of the street. It was pretty cathartic, especially since we were doing it together Julie-Anne having been one of the people with whom he was closest from the summer we spent as guides. I don't really remember what it is that I wrote in my letter but I think it was the best thing we could have done.

WE rushed to the train station from there and after a quick bite at California Beef Noodle King U.S.A. we sadly parted. It was a fantastic weekend.

Yesterday I was a bum and have absolutely nothing to report. Today I go to the forbidden city.

Missing everyone and everything, but not in a bad "take me home!" kindof way... in a good "it's going to be nice when it happens" kind of way.