Notes from Beijing

Mostly out of order, and in a virtually unreadable format, because I love you all that much.

The smog here really is overwhelming.  You step outside and it just assaults your senses.  Everything blurs 100 metres away (far more than usual, anyway), and it can be kind of hard to breathe properly at times.

Additionally to the above, after the time in Tokyo where everything was so well maintained and super duper clean, it’s a bit of a shock here.  While nowhere near as bad as say, Naples, there’s cigarette butts, litter, and a shocking amount of people’s spit on the sidewalks, all of which are cracked and broken.

Speaking of sidewalks, the difference between a car park and a footpath really just depends on what is occupying that point in space at that point in time.  Also, what I’m assuming are electric bikes go down the sidewalk bit all the time, and scooters and motorbikes go through the bike lanes.

In The Forbidden City they have a really big piece of stone, with dragons and stuff carved on it.  From memory it was something to do with the emperor being descended from gods and yadda yadda.  Anyway, the name for this glorious piece of work?  The Large Sculpture.  Brilliant.

It also had what the voice in my head proclaimed was the largest wooden building in Beijing.  Now, don’t get me wrong, it was a nice piece of timber, but is that really something worth mentioning?  I’m not sure I’ve actually seen any wooden buildings outside of the Forbidden City, so I can only assume that it’s competing with some shack on the outskirts, which is hardly a worthwhile opponent.

Some guys fleeced me on the way to The Forbidden City! This guy rides up on his tricycle thing, offering me a lift, so on and so forth, of course I ignore him, but he was insistent so being the idiot I am I gave in, thinking at least it would be a bit of fun.  Got a fun little ride, which was followed by being led into an alley where another guy appears and they start saying that I owe them 300 of whatever the money here is (around 50-60 bucks, I think).  Not wanting to get into anything while in some alley in Beijing I fork it over, swearing at them the whole time.  This is followed by them demanding that I pay them again.  Now I’ll admit, I’m hardly fit, I’m not at all tall, but I do have some weight to throw around, so my solution is to walk out of the alley, all the while one of them tries pitifully to stop me (this guy was a decent amount taller than me, but I got the distinct feeling that they weren’t really ready to try anything when I was all of 100 metres from some sort of police/guard people).  Fun, if very expensive times.

While I’m still on The Forbidden City, they totally had a Lionturtle statue thing.

What is it actually? I don’t know.  Probably just a horrifying turtle/tortoise thing. But they had the Lionturtle’s face (which, in case you’re wondering is just a Lion’s face, but shh) on another thing as well (this urny thing was essentially a fire extinguisher.  Supposedly they all had a kilo of gold covering them, but I’m happy to claim to be a sceptic to that).

What’s that, you say?  “It’s almost like Avatar (the tv show) took inspiration from real things!” Unbelievable.

I found a place that had a salad sandwich. After days and days of fried street food and hot pot and whatever else, it was such a relief to find a sandwich with way too much sauce, and oversweetened bread.

Now that I’m on food, they have hot pot flavoured chips here, and they’re pretty amazing. They’re probably just rebranded hot and spicy or whatever the Lays equivalent is, but I don’t really care.

I bought a coke at a convenience store today, grabbed it from the fridge, and brought it outside to cool it down. I’m not sure if this says a lot about fridges here, or the weather.  Actually, no, it’s criticism of the fridges, pretty sure this drink is above room temperature.  Is warm coke a thing now? I should hope not given the temperature seems to bring out an additional taste of… I’m too tired to think of anything here, so let’s just say that it brings out an additional taste of bad, and leave it there.

Heard what sounded like an  unenthusiastic ghost in the midst of haunting a candy store.  It appears to be birds flying in a big circle.  I’m going to assume that they’re homing pigeons or something until proven otherwise.

This city is vastly improved by the presence of wind. The wind came in and swept away a decent chunk of the smog, and all of a sudden the air is slightly less intolerable, I can see things in the distance with a tiny bit more clarity (until my need for new glasses kicks in), and I’m reminded of how bad exhaust fumes are with every passing car, as opposed to all the time.

I have a ten Chinese-Money cent note.  What the frack am I supposed to do with a ten cent note?  Aside from the obvious answer of questioning its existence, I mean.

I’d like to clarify to all 0 readers that have made it this far that I’m aware that this money is colloquially referred to as the Yuan, and I’m pretty sure the proper notation for the money is RMB.  But I’m going to stick with my system of questioning its name at every opportunity.

The escalators here have a very important safety message.

You’re right escalators, we should stand firm against all the adversity that life throws at us.  Be strong my moving staircase friends.

Went to the Kung Fu show.  It was very goofy, but a lot of fun.  They had a prerecorded English voice over, and the actors were just mouthing along to it.  At one point they went a little overboard with fog, and it started cascading over into the aisles.  Held at the red theatre, which was pretty cool looking.

A terrible train

Blame Hannah for this one, since she requested details at the start.

The train out of Mongolia was not a pleasant ride.  It was overheated, my cabin was filled with Mongolians, which while not an issue in itself, did make conversation difficult. Oh yes, and I was sick.  A decent number of the combined group had picked up something, and it was not the most fun. My muscles were sore, I spent a lot of time sweating up a storm, and I had a very large internal debate over whether or not to actually eat.

For breakfast on the second day, after barely surviving the night, and having crossed into Russia, I decided to try some pot noodles for food, running on the theory that since Chicken Noodle Soup is rad for a cold, it couldn’t hurt. I will happily admit that I was wrong.

Hours passed and I was fine, but as the train began to shunt around, picking up more carriages, I felt worse and worse. It’s a rather unfortunate side effect of the waste  management system of trains, but the toilets aren’t open when you’re near a station.  As such, when my breakfast decided to rejoin the world of the living, it was not able to do so in optimum conditions.  Hardly the worst possible, but certainly not the best.

As such, I consider the fact that I didn’t eat anything for the next two days to be totally reasonable.

Mongolia, part 2

You didn’t think that acting like a child once would be enough for us, did you?  If so, you may need to adjust your expectations.

Following our first night in the Ger camp I managed to actually be up in time to get the sunrise.

I’m going to claim that that makes up for my failure the previous night.

Following breakfast we decided to engage in the extremely mature, safe, and dignified sport of sledding down a barely snow covered hill, past precariously placed trees, and into a rather nasty dip at the bottom.

I think it should go without saying that minor accidents were prevalent, but they were mostly irrelevant considering how much fun it was.

Our fun morning was followed by something far more culturally interesting.  For while we had left China just before its new year, we had entered Mongolia in time for its equivalent. Think of it as a three day holiday that combined New Year with Christmas. With plenty of gift giving, being with family, and dumplings. So very many dumplings.

We started by visiting one of the nomadic families at their winter house, meeting up with the accompanying group when we got there. We were fed food, alcohol, dumplings, and may have been tempted to run off with their dog.  Seeing the old woman of the house fuss around over guests in a similar way to certain relatives I can think of was an amusing experience.

After all this, we said our goodbyes, and mooved on to a more normal house. Though we stopped off to take some pictures of the family’s Yak.

They were very placid creatures, and I feel a little silly since I took more photos of them than I can cownt.

At the house we meet a 70 year old man who has once been a wrestler.  Despite the vast gulf of the language barrier out was easy to tell that he was a bit of a character.

Also drunk. He was well wasted by the time we got there. Not wanting to be left out, a couple of us decided to get black eyes.

Which are a wonderful concoction made of fermented Yak milk, Russian Vodka, and Mongolian Vodka (which from memory is wheat based). While hardly the tastiest drink on planet Earth, it was surprisingly palatable.  This was of course followed by food, other drinks, and dumplings.

After some time, when his family showed up, we took our leave, accompanied by words of thanks from the old man that people such as us would visit him on such an important day.

Following such a remarkable day we finished it in the most respectful way we could.  By dressing in  traditional garb,

shooting arrows in the vague direction of a piece of hide, and making dumplings.

Our final day in Mongolia was a far more sedate affair. With a drive back to UB followed by time spent wandering the streets, marvelling at how closed everything was for the holiday, and how much prettier the new snowfall made everything look.

Then in the evening it was off to Russia!

Chenggis

It’s worth noting that Chenggis is everywhere in Mongolia.  They seem to name everything after him.  There’s something like 5 vodkas with his name.

And it’s also a little odd hearing Chenggis all the time. Years of hearing him called Genghis make it strange to hear him addressed in a way that is probably accurate.

Mongolia, and acting like a child

It’s kind of refreshing, letting go of your normal inhibitions and acting like a child for a bit.  Particularly when that involves potentially injuring yourself, and watching things smash apart.  But I’m probably getting ahead of myself.

We arrived in Ulaanbaatar in the early afternoon after an uneventful train journey. After dumping all our stuff we went for a walk through UB, through the downtown area (“over there you can see the circus”), past a square that used to be named for someone else, but is now named after Chenggis, and over to the National Museum.  If nothing else, it’s fascinating to see the history of a culture that is so ancient, but in a country that has existed in its current form for less than 25 years.

The museum visit was followed by a cultural show, which involved a whole bunch of singing, dancing, and a very impressive contortionist.  Unfortunately, a lot of places enforce an additional fee if you want to take photos, and being the cheapskate I am this means I have nothing to show you of this time, but you’ll just have to trust me that it was quite impressive.

The following morning we traveled to the Ger camp, though there were two highlights to the journey there. The first was the Ovoo.

It’s a pile of rocks.  Although, they can actually be a pile of anything. Traditionally they were used to mark borders and things, though today they’re mostly ornamental. That said, at the start of a trip it’s normal to go to one, circle it 3 times clockwise, and throw things on it while you walk, to give yourself good fortune, and ask that jazz.  This one was also great because there were a bunch of dogs on it.

Not far down from there we stopped at a river, a very frozen river.

At said river we were joined by an adorable little dog, that was a massive sook, and our time was divided between petting the dog

and playing a game where you slide pieces of ice at one another, with the goal of smashing apart your opponent’s ice chunk (our honcho said that when he was a child they played this, but using their ink pots,  surprisingly, their parents were not such fans of the game). Of course, this was followed by the age old game of picking up chunks of ice and throwing them at the ground.

When our violent urges had finally been sated, we headed on over to the Ger camp where we’d spend the next few nights.  A Ger, as should clearly be obvious without explanation -so it’s a mystery as to why I’m even explaining this-, is a traditional Mongolian house.  Found both inside the city, and all throughout the not-city, they come in both mobile form, and the seemingly more common static form. But that doesn’t make much of a difference, because a Ger is really just a circular room with a stove in the middle.

As a fun little note, Coal is the weapon of choice against coldness in Mongolia, with a fairly minimal amount of wood and paper used to get the fire burning before you engulf yourself in the warm embrace of coal.  This also seems rather inefficient, as during the night we would be woken multiple times to the sound of an old lady entering our Ger to top up the fire.

We ate lunch.  Now, normally this wouldn’t be worth a mention, but there was some sort of carrot salad that was just amazing and deserves mention purely for the surprise of how it was.

Our afternoon was spent at some of the sights. We started by visiting Donatello.

…

By which I mean turtle rock.

Turtles are very important as part of Mongolian culture.  Something to do with long life, and that sort of thing. Bit odd really, given they don’t actually have friggen turtles.  Still, to me it just sort of a big rock that looks a little like a dog if you view it from the wrong side.  From there we headed over to a nearby Monastery, Buddhist of course.

The walk up to the Monastery was lined with what I can only assume were wise words.  At the halfway point we reached a small pagoda like thing, spun a wheel, and received a number between 1 and 150, each corresponding to a board.  Mine (21) was certainly a wise and interesting comment, that will always stick with me, and certainly wasn’t immediately forgotten.

Far more importantly though, on our walk up (where we had to cross a rickety bridge), we were joined by yet another friendly Mongolian dog, and at the top of the stairs there was yet another dog that I wanted to steal.

I feel like there may be a recurring theme with Mongolian dogs.

Back at camp we decided it would be a brilliant idea to climb one of the hills nearby, and watch the setting sun. There were two rather crucial mistakes made here. Firstly, we thought the sun would set a whole lot faster than it really did. Secondly, we underestimated just how freezing cold it would be on top of that hill.  And when I say freezing, I mean that two bottles of beer that were brought up literally froze in front of our eyes after being opened, and the can I had became difficult to drink thanks to the freezing around the top.

That said, the view from the top was pretty damn great.

Unfortunately, due to reasons that I can only assume relate to “softness”as opposed to lack of preparation, I decided that it was way too cold up there, and left before the sun actually got around to setting (a procedure I was later told that while pretty, also seemed to take all of 4 seconds once it actually started).

From the Frozen Wastelands

There are many words that could be used to describe Ulaanbaatar.  I imagine most of them are synonyms for cold, and antonyms of pretty.  Apartment blocks tower over adjacent gers, colours seem to have been thrown haphazardly over roofs and walls, and pockets of ice hang around from snow 15 days ago, their sheen helping to accentuate the dirt and rubbish around them.

That said, I’m in motherflippin’ Mongolia, which is rad!

And yes, as a note there’s a bunch of stuff I haven’t posted yet about China, but I’ll get to them hopefully when I return to places with internet.

Historical Beijing: Mutianyu

Located 80kms or so from the city centre, the Mutianyu area is a picturesque example of rural Beijing.

More than just a pretty village, though, the area has gained fame for the presence of a longstanding piece of architecture, thought to have been designed for the purpose of improving village fitness through the liberal application of stairs.

Additionally, there is a classic piece of Qing dynasty design found in the traditional toboggan ride that can be taken from this “wall” to the village below.

Thankfully the area is not all old buildings. Along the way can be found some little kitty cats, mewling for attention, as well as some fantastic views of the surrounding area, only occasionally interrupted by the aforementioned wall.

We also managed to see some glorious Chinese FREEDOM!

An awful first night

So my last part was written on the taxi ride out of the airport, so I feel like I should follow it up with a description of my woeful first night in Beijing.

After there was a change in itinerary I was not 100% sure over where exactly I was supposed to stay.  Going with my gut, I directed the taxi to the first hotel, where I was informed that no, I was not staying there. Being the foolish man I am, I decided to walk to the other hotel.  With less than 20% power on my phone.  A non functioning GPS.  A really dodgy map.  Oh, and it was probably 4 and a half klicks, dragging my luggage along.

Defying all logic I managed to make it to the second hotel without getting lost, only to be told that, no, I in fact didn’t have a ton there either.

At this point I simply decided to use the age old system of throwing money at the problem until it went away, and I booked myself in because I could not be bothered dealing with that right now.

The wanky welcome to Beijing

The neon lights pierce the smog.  Bright and garish they vie for attention, attempts to distract from the surrounding reality, when all they do is highlight it.

I feel my breaths grow shorter, sharper, though all I do is sit and wait.  I feel a throbbing in my skull, from dehydration or the foul air, I don’t quite know.

The cars weave left and right, a fluid dance with indicators as a last resort.

I adjust my beret, take a whiff of tobacco, and smile at how pretentious I am.

This is Beijing.

The Dark Souls Café!

It’s actually remarkable, really. You’d expect a Dark Souls café to be fraught with danger, but at worst I singed my tongue a little.  You’d expect it to be a mental challenge, but one of the staff members spoke English.  You’d also expect to be stabbed at least seven times, but it only happened once, and that’s because I slipped with my fork.

Despite this, though, the Dark Souls Café still managed to feel relatively Dark Soulsy.  Of course, that could be down to the Dark Souls music playing through the venue, or the bonfire sitting in the corner.

Or possibly the really-quite-impressive-looking menu.

Or maybe it was the looping of trailers up on the screen, or the fact that it had the words Dark Souls plastered over everything.  Who can really tell?  Certainly not I.

Nevertheless, I managed to successfully order a drink.

Dark Souls name: Who knows?  Actual name: Tequila sunrise.

And some food.

I have no idea what this was, but it had avocado, and tasted pretty good.

Since I felt like this was a pretty pathetic attempt at being Dark Soulsy, it was followed by something else chosen at random.

(Finally something black enough to match my soul). Which turned out to be a meat patty of some kind and onion rings, all covered in some sort of sauce so that they look as dark and brutal as possible.

Knowing that I’d have to brave the train system to try and get home, I figured I should restore my health with an Estus flask (or two).

Turns out it tastes rather like beer with lemon in it.

So, a fun if rather expensive night, and they rewarded me with a poster and some plastic sheet thing for spending as much money as I did.  And I stole a coaster, because you kind of have to, right?

I now leave you with a chair that knew to praise the sun.