Water Great Wall Panorama
Last weekend was pretty fantastic. I spent a lot of time with great friends doing some really unique things that I’ve never had the chance to since I started coming to China in 2008. Not least of which was driving a car on the lawless streets of Beijing. Quite a few people gave me recommendations of things to do—some feasible and some not so much without taking a long vacation. The big event of the weekend was visiting the Water Great Wall (direct translation) which came from the recommendation of a coworker. But I’ll get to that later.
One of my friends, Merlin, back from 2013 when I was working part time at the Apple store is visiting China to study Chinese medicine. I felt like it was a great opportunity for him to really experience Chinese culture the right way. Too many people come to Beijing and visit the obligatory sightseeing locales and miss the REAL China which is hiding right under their noses, and I feel like its a disservice to the incredible culture that this country possesses. Yes, Tiananmen Square is fascinating, as is The Forbidden City and the Great Wall, but these are just the surface—the part of China that the government here wants you to see. There’s so much more.
This is Merlin and me at our awesome lunch spot
Friday night I decided to take Merlin out to a traditional Chinese dinner of Beijing Duck and baijiu. For those of you blessed enough to have never tried baijiu, the only way to describe it is to say that it’s a Chinese form of clear liquor that tastes like a combination of gasoline and acid with a few sparks to ignite. I don’t think I’ve met a single person who has ever actually claimed to enjoy the taste of it, nor will I hold my breath waiting for said person, because I don’t think they exist. Baijiu is awful. Beijing duck is delicious, albeit about as healthy as deep-friend marshmallows dipped in gravy.
My dear friend Wen Wen (seen below) helped set the whole evening up at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant beside the Forbidden City. We had a great meal and even better company mixed with a few miserable shots of baijiu (9 of us barely made it through the 500 mL bottle).
Wen Wen broke out the Macallan 12
The next day required that we call it a night relatively early so we could embark on the adventure I had planned out. Which brings me to my next point. Until this weekend I had never driven a car in China, nor had I ever really wanted to given the utter disregard for rules on the road in this country. I kind of just assumed I would always use a taxi or the subway because that would minimize the chances of me killing someone behind the wheel. There’s no simple way to describe the roads in China, you truly have to experience them. I’ve driven in worse (Ghana) but it’s not really the same because there are a billion people cars on the road on any given day combined with another 3 billion bikes and electric scooters. The driver is constantly on the look-out for stray pedestrians, dogs, bikes, police, and an occasional vehicle driving on the wrong side of the road.
My terrified driving face
I used to think that every driver was just terrible, but after driving I have come to have a profound respect for the skill required not to kill somebody while driving here. It really is a vicious cycle that self-fulfills. Yes everyone is terrible at driving and following the rules of the road, but if you aren’t you won’t move because everyone around you is doing the same thing. Nobody will politely let you change lanes, you have to push them off the road to get over. There’s almost always a car parked in the middle of a road waiting for someone or just taking a cigarette break which requires you to enter oncoming traffic to go around. It’s quite literally anarchy and perhaps that’s because it’s the only place in China where any sort of anarchy is allowed, who knows… California thought we had “Carmageddon” when part of the 405 was shut down, Beijing is in a state of perpetual Carmageddon.
So why on earth would I want to drive here?
Well, mostly because I like doing stupid things sometimes because they keep life interesting—and the stars kind of aligned. My friend Susie was flying to Hong Kong on Saturday morning to attend Art Basel for the day. Yes, I literally mean she flew 6 hours for an 8 hour art exposition in Hong Kong. And Susie happens to own an Audi and also happens to be one of my best friends in China and one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. She’s also the person who told me that she never took the driver’s test in China and never was trained how to drive because she didn’t have time, so she just paid an extra “fee” to get that waived and learned on her own. Perhaps that explains the driving situation in Beijing. I, on the other hand, don’t have a Chinese drivers license, so I couldn’t pull out that card to get away with anything if I got pulled over—but I have a much more valuable card. It’s called the “I’m a foreigner and don’t speak Chinese but I thought my California Driver’s License would be fine” card. Luckily, I didn’t have to use it.
I picked Merlin up from his hostel which is located in the smallest alley in all of Beijing, at least it felt that way when I was driving someone else’s Audi. But once we got outside of Beijing proper, it was a lot easier to not follow the road signs and the rules of the road because there are significantly fewer cars around. We made it safely to the Ming Dynasty Tombs where we stopped for a quick lunch at a local restaurant. The two sisters that work there were so excited to serve foreigners and even asked for my WeChat (which is their version of Facebook for mobile devices here in China). I am pretty certain it was the first and maybe only time in their life they have served foreigners at their restaurant.
Here's the alley I had to drive through
Ming Tombs
After the Ming Tombs we set off for the Water Great Wall. Every time someone visits, they always want to see the Great Wall, so I make it a point to try and visit a different location of the Great Wall to keep it interesting for myself too. This time didn’t disappoint. It’s a relatively lesser-known part of the Great Wall that is absolutely gorgeous. Instead of visiting BaDaLing, where every tour group goes, and standing in a 4 kilometer line as you try and climb the Wall, I think there were at most 150 people at this location. The pictures don’t really do it justice since the pollution was pretty bad that day, but it was stunning.
I mean, everything except for this AWFUL toilet that they provided the public. Because things like bathrooms are only installed at the three main Great Wall locations. Sacrifices.
I probably shouldn't have posted this picture...
But these pictures are much better. Be sure to click and enlarge them.
The highlight of my walk around the Great Wall was meeting this group of High School students with their mother. We kind of caught them listening to some Hip Hop music dancing on the Great Wall and they were pretty embarrassed. I proceeded to tell them that it was my dream to dance on the Great Wall and I was wondering if they would be able to play the music and possibly dance with me. The video that follows could be described more like flailing. I definitely wasn’t impressing anyone with my moves, but maybe I would have if they knew how to two-step and they played some country music instead of that poor excuse for music they call Hip Hop.
Please reserve all judgment, I'm really going out on a limb here posting this. The music was playing on the girl's phone, so it literally looks like I'm dancing to nothing at all. I'm not sure if that makes this any better. Actually, I'm pretty certain it doesn't.
After the dancing, we continued our hike and saw some awesome parts of the wall where the water from the lake has destroyed parts of it and it kind of looks like the Wall fell into the lake.
As we drove back in to the city it was pretty awesome seeing the sun set and seeing the life of the people who live way in the outskirts of Beijing. I almost wanted to stop and join some of them for the BBQ they were having over their burnt out metal trash cans. I can’t imagine what kind of fascinating stories these people must have.
We arrived safely back in Beijing just in time for a foot massage and dinner with some friends. I can’t say I love driving in Beijing, but it definitely provides a perspective that I’ve never had before and really forces you to pay attention to things you normally don’t notice sitting in the passenger seat of a taxi or taking the subway.
(Mom this is the part of the blog you should skip)
And since I can’t really afford to get a car in a city where a license plate costs $10,000 and a car usually runs around 30%-50% more than in the US, I decided to do the next best thing and buy myself an electric scooter. It’s not the safest means of transportation, but so far I haven’t had any close calls and I’ve gotten an entirely new perspective of this massive city. I had the chance to drive through Tiananmen Square around 11 pm when all the lights are on and nobody was on the road and it was something like an out-of-body experience. It was surreal being one of the only people on the road in the vicinity of such a massive square with so much history (good: Forbidden Kingdom, dynasties, etc. and bad: self-explanatory).
(Mom you can start reading again).
Everything else has been going great so far. Work is fun, I’m learning a lot. I was asked to host the Annual Party for the Beijing office since they heard I also hosted the Annual Party for the Shanghai office as most of you saw on my Facebook page and that went pretty well. I’ve met a pretty good group of people and started to attend a weekly Bible Study with Chinese young adults which has been enlightening and is a great way to meet new friends. I’m looking forward to my few months in Hong Kong starting in April, but I really can’t wait to get back to Beijing and find my own apartment and truly LIVE here.
Thanks for reading, I know I really need to work on my brevity. Just so much to say and I haven’t written in so long so it’s pretty tough for me to make it concise when I don’t have a page limit for school! I’m hoping next week I’ll be able to write a blog about my trip to visit Wen Wen’s family in Shandong. That should be an experience I won’t forget. It’ll be the longest I’ve ever spent in a very small farming village in China and I honestly have no idea what living there is like. Can’t wait to share.
Until next time.
Merlin and his friend joining me for a toast on the ULTIMATE PI DAY
"Our Lady of China"
This is my favorite Chinese painting of Jesus and the Blessed Mother
