I’ll probably never understand why some places are so blah to me. This probably sounds very callous sitting in a fancy hotel in china, but the reality is that it always seems to happen to me. Last year it was Granada, and this year it was Beijing. I never had any real interest in going there. I went because that’s where all the trips start, and because, unlike me, Carol definitely was looking forward to it. I just found it to be a sterile, cold city in spite of the things I mentioned in my last letter. Today, however, was completely different. We got here following the overnight train trip, and as we departed the Station, Saci and I just looked at each other and said: “This is cool.” It just felt totally different, and more about that in a moment.
We spent our last day in Beijing nursing our sore calf muscles from our wall climb. Found out everybody was suffering. Saci and Lise climbed to the very top while Carol and I looked and said: “Looks like what we’ve aleady done and came on back down. Typically, Saci said that he went to the top because he paid for it and he’s was going to do it. “Now,” he said, “I’m paying for it all over again.” We walked around the zoo but that was a total waste of time and we left after a couple of hours. It’s hard for us to see animals in a zoo after seeing them in the wilds of Africa. At the Beijing zoo they’re all behind glass in small enclosures where the animals pace back and forth. The glass is totally smudged from all the grubby little hands smearing it. Speaking of grubby little hands, it was a Sunday so the zoo was full of families, which was the good news and the bad news. We sat and watched mom, dad, and their one child go from place to place and that was interesting, but it was an absolutely chaotic mess where you had to fight your way to the glass only to find the dirty glass.
Leaving Beijing on the night train was an adventure. We got to the station for our 8 pm train and it was unlike any train station I’ve ever seen. It is the largest station in Asia and serves an average of 175,000 passengers a day. It’s just massive in size with an entryway main aisle as large as a football field and multiple waiting rooms as large as a baseball infield, each of them filled with hundreds of people waiting for trains. When we walked to the train, there were 9 different platforms each with tracks on either side. People scurried to trains heading where I know not, but it was certainly the largest and busiest station I’ve ever seen anywhere in the world, and it’s just one of five major stations in Beijing.
There were four of us to a cabin and Saci said that we should share a compartment. I was happy he suggested it, because it was my choice as well. The group mixes very well and it is probably the most congenial group we’ve been on, but Saci and I seem to have a special connection. He has a great sense of humor and finds things to laugh at no matter the situation. Our compartment was tiny, with the requisite two upper bunks and two lower. I was the last in the room, so he said there was no room and me I’d have to make other arrangements. Lise is very congenial and always finds the sunny side of life, as Mother Maybelle Carter would sing. I can’t give you the link for that since I can’t access Youtube. The 1200 km ride took 12 hours and was remarkable smooth. The beds were hard and narrow but we managed. About 5 in the morning I was awake and tired of lying on the hard bed, so I sat up. Saci awoke shortly after that and did the same on his side of the narrow aisle between the two bunks. So here were two grown men sitting in the dark across from each other just a couple of feet apart, neither one talking so that we wouldn’t disturb the wives in the upper bunks (their choice) and it just seemed so bizarre as we both sat there and laughed as quietly as possible at the ridiculousness of it all.
There’s no food on the train so we had each brought snacks. I had some lemon bars which were so dry that Minh (a dentist) could use them as a sponge to absorb all liquid in a patient’s mouth as he worked. Saci had some Oreos and something else we couldn’t identify. The ladies woke up and we talked about our various muscles which didn’t get restored over night, and the newly sore ones which now needed attention. We have three more overnights and we’re hopeful we’ll get used to it. But overall, the ride was very smooth. There was some confusion since the train started out in one direction and somewhere during the night switched and we headed the opposite way.
Arriving in Xi’an, which means “West people,” just had an immediately pleasant effect on my spirits, the brown pall in the air notwithstanding. Saci asked me if I had seen the moon, and we finally realized it was the sun trying to work its way through the gunk. Certainly it is smaller than Beijing, but at 7 million, we’re still not talking Podunk city. The weather is much better. In Beijing it was like Washington and we went back and forth being cold and warm depending upon the moment. Did we dress for warmth and then have to carry our jackets around with us as we explored the city, or did we minimize the clothing and then get cold when the wind blew and it rained or hailed on us, which it did. We got off the train at 8 a.m. and it was 75 degrees and hit 80 in the afternoon so that problem was solved. Lots of trees and green areas as we bused to our hotel. Parks seemed to appear on all sides, and everything seemed to be ramped down a considerable notch. People on the street seemed to dress smartly and it was obvious that Xi’an certainly has its share of the new capitalism or “planned market economy” as the authorities euphemistically refer to it.
We did the requisite tourist stop here which is the terra cotta warrior pit. You can see images at:
The farmer who discovered them while digging a well sits at the book shop and will autograph the book if you buy it. Not a bad schtick. Certainly beats digging 20 foot holes in the ground to find water. Now with that done, we can really start on the silk road. The silk trade started here and we’re all looking forward to that aspect. Since the trip is mostly Aussies, and well-traveled ones at that, most of them have a “Been here, done this” take on everything. Not calloused, just “Let’s get on with it.” They do talk about the changes they’ve seen since they were last here and that has been informative.
Most of the group went out for a special dumpling dinner last night, but it’s like those specialty dining options of cruises where you pay an extra $30 to eat in a different restaurant when you’ve already paid for all your meals. Saci, Lise, Carol and I decided we didn’t need that and ventured out to a restaurant on our own. It was a hilarious evening. Saci and I decided to let the women order the food. The menu had English below the Chinese characters and pictures of the dishes, which you would think made things easier. Silly us. The fish description referred to a photo four pages later on the menu. I ordered a beer, which was easy. I just said Tsingtao and the unsmiling, very businesslike woman taking the order wrote it down. Saci being Muslim doesn’t drink alcohol, and we spent five minutes trying to get him a sprite. They showed up with a Budweiser, and eventually he settled for a Coke. Coca Cola seems to translate into any language.
The ladies ordered four dishes or so they thought. First of all it is very intimidating since they bring you the menu and hover over you while you’re trying to decide what to order. Since Saci doesn’t do pork either we had to be careful of that since it didn’t always say what the meat was. Saci drew a picture of three concentric circles with a snout and pointy ears and showed it to the waitress. He drew a large “x” through it and that seemed to work as we said firmly “NO” and pointed to the picture. We actually got a smile out of her at that. The first dish arrived and we just looked at the dish, then at each other and then back at the dish and broke out into hysterical laughter. We still have no idea of what it was. Carol being the adventurous one tried it and began to pick small bones out of her mouth. It looked like some centipede to me, but tasted fishy Carol said. She said it wasn’t bad, so Saci took a photo of the dish and in the back of the photo is Carol eating one of them. It’s one of those moments when you can catch someone with their mouth in a position that indicates the total opposite of what the reality is, and this was such a moment. She had this awful look on her face and when Saci showed the picture to us, we all lost it. Again! Nellie the Vietnamese stopped by the table and looked at the photo and got a really horrible look on her face. It was then that we knew we were in way over our heads.
Ben, our guide, had earlier suggested we go to Pizza Hut across the street from the hotel. Hey, we’re in China, we’re not going to Pizza Hut. There was an eggplant dish on the menu and Saci said he had never tried eggplant and still didn’t like it. But with this unidentifiable dish on the table the comments like: “We should have gone to Pizza Hut,” “The eggplant is looking better,” the other patrons in the restaurants must have thought there we were really nuts. Thankfully, it wasn’t very busy even though it was a classy place. We thought the ladies had ordered four things, but we only got three. It seems that is was one of those situations like when you hit the delete key in an email and it comes back and asks you if you really want to delete it and you have to confirm that action. At one point Lise said thank you to the waitress, and she returned with “No, thank you.” She just left it at that feeling that it was just a language thing. Well, it was just a language thing, because she didn’t confirm the action and we didn’t get the other item supposedly ordered.
In the end, it was one of those traveling moments that we wouldn’t trade for anything. Whatever we paid was less than the humor value of the evening. We’re way over fed anyway, and we did go out for an ice cream on the street as we strolled back to the hotel. This morning Lise and Saci came down for breakfast after we were already there. Saci and I just looked at each other and broke out into laughter. It’s turning out to be one of those kinds of trips and everything is looking wonderful.
Let the trip begin,
Jim and Carol
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