i didn’t actually know what to expect from my trip to beijing. for one, china’s been on the ascendant for the last decade, and this was also my first solo trip (though i did have friends there). but i’ll be honest, there weren’t terribly high expectations. my opinion and the opinions offered by my family were, to say the least, colored by our nationality (taiwanese) and the fact that china was (and still is) looked down upon as, well…hicks. yea.

first, the family history lesson. unlike a number of modern taiwanese who came in the 50’s to flee the civil war, my family has resided on the island since by my estimation, the early 1900’s (at the latest). we are fifth generation taiwanese, possibly older since my parents readily admit that anything before that is unknown since their ancestors then were pretty much illiterate. both sides of my family are thoroughly taiwanese, and have no familial ties to china whatsoever. it’s easy to see and feel the vast difference, socially and culturally, between someone from taiwan and someone from china. but nevermind all that…it sounds way too serious for the purposes of this post. the point was to establish that china was just like any other country i wanted to visit, and that i wanted to visit and see for myself what all the fuss was about.

BEIJING
THURSDAY | i landed at beijing airport mid-afternoon. i’m still deaf in one ear for half the day as they still hadn’t popped from the flight…ow. beijing airport is massive. like…stupidly huge. there isn’t nearly as many people as where i came from (newark liberty), but the terminal is twice the size…wow.

i drop my things off at my hotel in dongzhimen and head out to wander around. people can’t seem to drive for dick…i spent the day dodging traffic. not just cars…pedicabs, bikers, even other pedestrians. seriously, fuck you. when cars have the right of way, it sucks donkey dick being a pedestrian.

what’s up with all the hairballs floating in the air?

i met my friends dora and erick later in the day at their architecture studio (dora’s a college friend and erick’s her bf who together run their own studio), but headed back out to let them finish up their work. i roamed the central business district, scoping out the cctv building and the burned out shell of the adjacent hotel (which a friend’s roommate had worked on…then cried about when it went up in flames).

the skies are perpetually gray…weird.

we hit up yunnan food for dinner (yum yum) with their friend, then went to a live concert at the austrian culture thingy (?).

FRIDAY | you know how to spot foreigners in the city? when it’s mid 70’s and they’re wearing shorts. seriously…beijingers dont seem to fancy wearing shorts the minute it hits the 70’s. i wait anxiously all year to break out my shorts. i first headed to the train station to grab tickets to shanghai. beijing main station…what the fuck is that place? it took me 15 minutes after wandering aimlessly to figure out that the ticket hall was a separate building. the main station itself feels like a halfway house.

i walked towards the forbidden city down the fancy-pants avenue leading towards tianamen. now i know where all their civic improvement money goes. i head into the forbidden city, and it’s immediately apparent that they don’t take care of it as well as i wish they did. it’s a fucking shame. i get the impression they’re not much for cultural preservation yet…everything just seems like a potential commodity. seriously…the forbidden city! hundreds of years of heritage? hello?

i headed out the north entrance of the forbidden city towards the hill to the north to get some pretty landscape photos of beijing and the forbidden city. after coming back down the hill, i walked thru some of the local hutongs, then up wangfujie (a main shopping avenue), then along whatever that road is called adjacent to it. my feet are destroyed…oochies. i meet up with my friends again at their studio and we headed to dinner at 1488? 1467? some year-sounding number. whatever…beef noodle soup place near sanlitun in a modern renovated hutong-ish area…that was yum. we then hit up sanlitun for drinkies at miga, then kokomo til god knows when. both were rooftop bars, and if you ignore the buildings beyond, the english being spoken and the nyc drink prices could’ve led you to believe you were back in manhattan. kek.

SATURDAY | i slept in late, because i don’t even know what time i got back to my hotel. we met for brunch at vineyard in…some new-ish hutong area. i wandered around afterwards on my own, then met up with alice who’d just gotten in from tianjin…woot! den mother’s here to lead the way! we drove to the 798 art district and roamed for a good while, checking out the art galleries and still-derelict factory spaces. even if they say it’s undergoing gentrification, i still think it’s a cool area to wander about.

we headed back into beijing proper to the area just south of tianamen (as you’re noticing, i don’t have the slightest clue what any of the areas are called). alice dragged me through the alleyways to a small shop that serves the best donkey sandwich. donkey! yea i was a bit apprehensive about eating a donkey…but it tasted pretty good! we didn’t nosh too much as alice had another place in mind…beijing pot stickers! (all counted as ‘appetizers’ before dinner proper). yea those were yum also. we headed out of the hutong back to the newly demo’d and rebuilt area that looked like a chinkified disney main street. there was even a ‘taiwanland’ nearby that i’m told is not associated with taiwan at all (in a cultural-exchange thingy way that is). so weird. we took in some fancy drinkies at the capital m with sweet views northward toward the qian men gates. swanky.

we met up with dora and erick later for dinner…chuan’r? i think that’s what they’re called. lotsa yum skewers and a big spicy fish that wasn’t meant to be big and spicy, so they had to take it back, scrape off all the hot shit, and reapply with normal non-spicy shit. still delicious though.

SUNDAY | dora, erick, and the third partner effi had meetings on sunday, so i strolled thru sanlitun a bit on my own before having to duck out of the pouring rain. i headed back to the hotel when the rain didn’t let up and just spent the rest of the afternoon vegging in front of the television.

worth mentioning…hearing english names ‘translated’ into mandarin…funny. hearing danny devito ‘translated’ to beijing mandarin…disturbing.

i headed to the southern train station in the evening to catch my night train to shanghai. shanghai…woot!

SHANGHAI
MONDAY | so it’s not just beijing people…it seems like a significant portion of the population are seriously deficient when it comes to social etiquette. cripes. i walked from the french concession to the bund looking for some place to cool off, because my ability to determine scale on a map seems to be deficient. that was a long fucking walk. i hit up everything i could inbetween though…the parks, taikang lu, and whatever else my little guide book could offer up. pretty.

hmm, this place is humid as balls.

i gave terence a call once i hit the bund, who actually offered up lunch…woot! i taxi’d over to meet terence for lunch at jing tai fung. shao long bao…yum yum, that place rocks. afterwards i dropped my things off at his apartment and took a bit of a nap as terence headed back to work.

after composing myself, i headed back out to check out xintiandi. when that place lost my interest, i subwayed over to pudong, since i didn’t really care for the alternative…the super duper sightseeing tunnel pink floyd laser light show. pudong…wow, what is this place? it’s just full of lights, gleaming new skyscrapers, and wide avenues. having a plethora of towers to scale, i chose the jin mao tower since it had the clearest view out towards shanghai proper, with the oriental pearl dildo tower in view also. the newer bottle opener tower was right behind the jin mao. up on the observation deck, you could look out to the humidity hovering over the city like a yellow blanket…frightening. you could also peer down to the lobby of the grand hyatt 25 floors below. fucking scary…

i spent the rest of the evening strolling about the waterside, watching the lit boats make their way up and down the huangpu river like a parade. later at night, terence took me out for yunnan food at lost heaven, then drinks at a bar where you had to find the secret switch to open the door. cheeky fucks.

ps: chatting briefly with our waitress at dinner, i learned the following: if you look chinese, but you tell them (in chinese) that your chinese isn’t so super, they probably think you’re mildly retarded.

TUESDAY | i spend the majority of my train ride back to beijing reading the engrish on the broadcast screen. i’m having a “delighted voyage“, making sure to “watch my belongs“. lulz. the station announcements are also all preceded by kung-fu music.

of note too…those annoying people you usually encounter on trains talking obnoxiously loud on their cells? that’s everybody on this train. fuck you all.

i got back to beijing in time for dinner, and proceeded to get a call from dora asking if i could swing by their studio to help a bit on their competition (due the next day). suffice to say…i spent the rest of the night cranking out a rendering. i can’t seem to escape renders…lulz! i didn’t mind though. it’s the least i could do for them showing me around beijing.

WEDNESDAY | we met up for lunch near chaowei soho, then i wandered south past the second ring towards fancy-pants department stores. a dust storm kicked up that day though…i hate eating sand. not cool. hmm, my journal entries ended here. ah right…we had peking duck later for dinner, then headed out for drinks at…some hidden pub at the workers stadium. dora and erick retired early since they were pooped, so effi, mitsu (effi’s friend) and i continued on to go clubbing til some ungodly hour. it sounded like a good idea until i found myself crawling home at 4am. it’s worth mentioning i had to catch my flight home thursday. derp!

CONCLUSION
beijing is a weird city. it took me a week to process all of this, and i came to the conclusion that it’s not a fun city if you’re on your own and if you like to wander around aimlessly. because a car will hit you. all my fun derived from my friends taking me around (this is expected of course). but various cities are wandering aimless-friendly. london, tokyo, barcelona, etc are all fun to stroll thru and take in the sights. beijing…not so much. shanghai was though, if not for the face-melting heat and humidity.

would i go back to beijing? meh, maybe in another 10 years. shanghai though may need it’s own proper vacation.