From Beijing’s airport, a clean and pristine subway sped us downtown. The subway stations were immaculate, even the floors. I’ve eaten off dirtier dinner plates.
The cleanliness ended as soon as we walked outside, where we hit China’s great wall of pollution, smog and thick car exhaust. Though we were just a half-mile from the ancient Forbidden City, the luxurious home of past Chinese emperors, the air felt suffocating.
A short walk from the subway station, we found our hostel, which was actually a former bomb shelter four levels underground. It was recommended in the Lonely Planet guidebook because of its central location and, at $15 a night, it was the cheapest place to stay in the capital of China. But the place is a literal dungeon: windowless, humid, and smelling strongly of must, it’s very gritty. Seems like at least a few homeless Chinese workers and families are also staying here.
The air immediately improved outside the city, when we traveled two hours to see the Great Wall of China.
The ancient stone pathway was surprisingly beautiful, snakeline and extending into the horizon… I just hadn’t expected it to look to castle-like and endless. We even saw a few faint streaks of blue in the sky (which is almost unheard of in Beijing due to pollution).
We walked miles and miles on the Great Wall one day, and then another day miles and miles through the Forbidden City, and then another day for miles and miles all around the park for the 2008 Summer Olympics. At said park, we were permitted to enter the iconic Bird’s Nest stadium — a red building with a kaleidoscope of red bars weaving together like a big nest of twigs — for $15 apiece.
(To my irritation, that $15 was a waste of money. For $15, I had expected some basic educational programming, such as a tour of the stadium or simply a sit-down movie documentary about its construction for China’s first-ever Olympics. But for $15, all we got was to walk inside an empty stadium and then walk back outside.)
Dead from walking, we took refuge in a movie theater. The air-conditioning felt wonderful, especially compared to the stagnant air back inside our hostel/bombshelter. And the injection of Hollywood from “State of Play” — starring Leo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe — was exactly what I needed to ease my weekly homesickness.
Also to avoid time back in the dungeon, we’ve been hanging out at the nearby Starbucks and McDonalds, where the ice cream cones are only about 5 cents… though they have come with surprises. I was at the take-out window ordering a vanilla cone and the Chinese server offered me an old, melting, tilting-sideways mound of white nastiness. I refused to take it. The McDonalds worker yelled at me (!) and shoved the cone in my direction. I shook my head still refused to take it. She then tossed it at my feet on the ground (!) and walked away inside the building. I looked incredulously around me, then peered back inside the window. Another server came out, shrugged, and gave me a fresh ice cream.
It tasted so refreshing — especially for my still-tender mouth, a week after having three wisdom teeth pulled back in Phnom Penh. Ice cream is also nice because it, unlike rice kernels, doesn’t get stuck in the holes in my gums where my teeth used to be.
