China Doll

I touch down in Beijing mid-afternoon. It takes a little while to find my hostel because it is burried among all of these gray cement cubbies that the locals call home. This is nothing like Japan. The air quality is horrible, and the city is so much dirtier than Tokyo. People are riding bikes and pulling wagon platforms that are stacked with various items. The hostel is clean enough, and has been created from an old shrine. There are six beds in my room.
Day one I head out to see the sites. I approach the gate to what looks like an enclosed park. As I'm standing there trying to figure out what it is, a young English guy approaches me to ask if I know anything about it. I don't, so we decide to blow the place off and go to the forbidden city together. We talk about our travels, and where we're from. Have lengthy discussion about various subjects, and two hours into our friendship realize that we don't know each others' name. We have a formal introduction and then laugh about how common it is to travel with somebody and not have a clue what their name is. In the normal world names come first. In the travel world, where you've been and where you're going are often the first things you learn about a person.
So Mike and I head off to the Silk and Pearl market only to be stopped in the middle of the street by two Chinese students. The guy speaks english very well and the girl speaks hardly any english. They invite themselves to join us on our little tour around Beijing. At first I'm skeptical. I've heard of students approaching toursits and trying to get them to go see different exhibitions against the government. This would be fine in the America, but here the people aren't free to speak out against their government. In fact they don't even allow facebook.
We walk around a bit as the students show us some little sites here and there along the road we met on. They want to go have tea or a beer with us, so we choose tea. We are ushered into a traditional tea house where they seat us in a room only a bit bigger than the table at which we all sit. A chinese girl with short hair and a traditional silk chinese top gives us an entire tea ceremony. Ten different teas all from different flowers, roots and fruits are passed in front of our noses before she make us the next mixture to be poured into our tiny tea cups. We are taught that the women hold the cups a certain way, and the men another.
We have a wonderful time drinking and tasting tea, and learning a bit of Mandarin Chinese to the aroma of jasmine, rose, orange and lavender. When we finish up, the bill comes...and it's a whopping THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS!!!! Mike and I are pissed. We can't believe the price of these tiny samples of tea plus a pot of tea of our choice at the end. We settle on paying what we can, and the chinese guy ends up paying most of it. By the end of this horribly awkward situation, we're just glad to leave the students. We couldn't help but wonder if it was some kind of tea house scandal. Were the students in on this? Who knows, but we say our awkeard goodbyes and head to the Beijing Olympic Stadium.
Outside of the stadium is where I get my first taste of Chinese tourists wanting their photo taken with a westerner. Multiple people come up and ask to have their photo taken with Mike and me. They say "You're so beautiful" over and over. I could get used to this, but something about it makes me feel like they are taught that only western is beautiful and therefore have a skewed perception of beauty. One boy even gives me a lollypop after I take a photo with him. Some lady hands me her child for a photo. I feel like the Pope.
Mike and I finish up with our new found fame, and head off for dinner. He just wants some duck before he heads off to England again, so I'm more than willing to go on the search with him. After searching long after the restaurants have closed, we end the day under the golden arches of McDonald's.
At 1:00am after searching for my hostel for an hour, Mike and I say goodbye and agree to meet up in London when I'm next in town.