Well, here it is, my last China blog. I'm on the plane, considering trying the Bahamian burka blanket technique to stay warm, and looking back over my time in Beijing with some definite regrets. I think I could have made a braver effort to get tickets to the Games. Probably, had I stayed another day or two, I would have figured out how to get in. At the airport, I met two men who had simply shown up at venues and bought tickets, at face value, from people standing outside.

Even more galling, I had lunch with a college friend, Steve, before I got on the plane today (he had just returned to Beijing the night before), and in the lobby of the hotel, he managed to buy soccer tickets for later in the week as I stood there, admittedly green with envy. (He met a fellow who had accidentally bought tickets for two events that ran at the same time.) As a travel writer, dagnabit, I should have known: the key element is just to go, to put yourself in the right place. (To heck with connections and trolling the Internet!) Lesson learned for the 110th time.

I don't, however, regret coming to China at this time or the adventures I had not getting into the Games. Yesterday, as a farewell gesture, I returned to the Forbidden City, which I had visited last August on a group tour. The first visit had been a fractured experience, partially because we lost a member of our group (and had to waste time looking for her in the labyrinthine Palace); and partially because I was traveling with my eight-year-old daughter Veronica, who unwittingly became a tourist attraction in her own right. Blonde, wearing a cowboy hat and mirrored shades and absolutely adorable (and that last comment is, of course, totally objective), she was constantly being stopped by Chinese tourists who wanted to take a picture with her.

It was fascinating from a sociological standpoint, but I pretty much missed the palace. This time, with the help of Roger Moore (the plummy narrator on the audio guide), I was able to explore it at leisure, loitering in front of the concubine's jeweled flower sculptures, peering at the yellow silk thrones of the Emperor (different Emperors used different parts of the palace so there are multiple thrones), dawdling in front of the dioramas of official gatherings in the "City." I hope to come back sometime; even with two visits, I still have much left to see here.

And as some of you know, I appeared on the Today Show from Beijing as a spokesperson for Frommer's Day by Day guide, which (we're all proud to say) was the official guidebook of the 2008 Olympics. On the show, I talked about saving money on your Chinese vacation, which is kind of like shooting ducks in a barrel, thanks to the exchange rate. (You can see my full article on the topic here.) It's always exciting to be on the Today Show (this was my fourth appearance), but doing it in Beijing was... I hate to sound hyperbolic, but kind of mind-blowing.

Let me set the scene: I arrived at my official pick up spot (the lobby of the Grand Hyatt hotel), and rendezvoused with a "runner" for the show, who was carrying a Today Show sign. NBC has hired 20 such runners for the games. They all seem to be recent college grads; many are bunking together in a one-bathroom apartment, working 12-hour days and (from what I saw), loving every minute of it. We headed towards a van, which then zipped through the crowded Beijing highways in a special "Olympics Lane" (for press and athletes) as other traffic-bound motorists shot us evil glares.

At the gate to the Olympic green, my runner passed me off to another runner, who walked me to security where a third runner was waiting with a guest pass. She stayed on one side of the metal detector, but on the other side was a fourth runner, who passed me off to a fifth runner in a golf cart. After a short drive to the Today Show compound of trailers (catering, green room, bathroom, makeup and control room) my relay race was finished (phew!) and I had three hours to stroll around the Olympic green (where I saw the Birds Nest, WaterCube and wandering Olympic mascots up close), meet the winner of Nashville Star and the men's gymnastics team (pictured above) and get nervous for my appearance. As I said earlier, it was extremely exciting.

And with that, I'm turning this blog back over to my brilliant father, who has greater stamina than I (he's been blogging for over a year; I'm exhausted with doing it for just a week). Thanks for reading and Happy Trails to all.

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Labels: beijing, pauline olympics

Today was a more "free form" day, as I wasn't really able to base it around classic sightseeing. Instead, I ended up exploring the topic of Chinese foods; and trying my darndest to get tickets. I finally heard from my US Olympic Committee contact and no surprises there: She came up short. So I ended up at The Bookworm, a clubby bookstore and café for English speaking expats where I used their free WiFi (and advice) to troll Olympics-selling websites for about two hours. I sent text messages, e-mails, weighed prices ($770 for diving was way too rich for my blood, but $175 for Judo was a consideration) and then, after all this effort, never heard from anyone. I have a feeling all of those empty seats we're seeing on TV went to scalpers, and large Olympic delegations who simply didn't show up.

Since I leave at 4pm Wednesday, it's now clear that you won't be seeing my face in the stands. Ah well. But I will be getting onto the Olympic Green (more on that tomorrow), so I'll report on how that was. And I managed to spend a complete hour in a jam-packed Olympic merchandise shop, sifting through Olympic plates, dolls, t-shirts, pencil sharpeners, key chains, you name it, among a huge crush of people (the frantic buying reminded me of those news reports you see annually regarding Filene's Basement's bridal gown sales).

On the food side, I had a couple of adventures. I visited a local supermarket which was notable both for how similar it was to a US one, in the abundance of products on the shelves, and fresh produce in the stands; and how dissimilar, in how different some (but not all of the foods) were. I was in the fish and meats department, for example, and I looked down at one of those saran wrapped small trays only to see it was full of grubs. And they were still wriggling around. (It looked like something that might be featured in the dream scene of a horror film.) I later saw those same types of grubs skewered on shishkabob sticks in the night market, along with other foods that we usually put in aquariums or squish under our feet in the US: scorpions, sea horses, star fish and lizards.

For lunch, I met up with Jen Lin Liu, author of Frommer's Beijing; and a fascinating new food memoir, Serve the People: A Stirred Fried Journey Through China. She took me to her favorite new Peking Duck restaurant called "Duck de Chine" (a chi chi place), where a waiter comes over, stares intently at you and then rings a gong before a masked server starts carving up the duck. "Look how the duck moves as it's being cut," she remarked to me. "That shows it's moist and has sufficient meat." She went on to explain how air is pumped into the duck to give the skin its thick, crispy texture; and how new-style Peking duck restaurants, like this one, go one step beyond more traditional places, offering their guests special sauces to dip the duck pancakes, in addition to the traditional plum sauce (we were given a sesame sauce, a scrumptious peanut sauce and roasted garlic in addition to the usual accoutrements).

Here's a bit of our conversation over lunch, as close to verbatim as this slow writer could get it. If you want to see more of what Jen has written, see her recent op-ed piece she penned for the New York Times.

Pauline: I've noticed many, many changes in Beijing from my visit to Beijing a year ago.

Jen: A year ago? (Jen laughs) There have been huge changes in just the last month. The flowers you see everywhere? Those just went in. The touts were just moved out, there are no pirated DVD's on the streets, the cities been cleaned up considerably and it's raining a lot, which doesn't usually happen in August.

Pauline: Well, the government didn't have anything to do with the weather, of course.

Jen: Actually they do. They've been shooting up rockets to try and make it rain. It's well documented.

Pauline: I notice a lot of people around town with red arm bands, saying that they're "Volunteer Security." None of them seem to be doing much of anything. Some are very old, some were teenagers, who just seemed to be hanging out on the street corners together. What's that all about?

Jen: They're supposed to be watching for anything suspicious.

Pauline: And what do they do if they see something suspicious?

Jen: That's the mystery. No one seems to know. It's very Chinese.

Pauline: How has it been living in Beijing on the eve of the Olympics?

Jen: It's been disturbing. A lot of us feel it's become a police state once again (more like it was when I moved here eight years ago). Police have come knocking on our door to see who's living in our apartment and if they're all registered. And they've been cracking down on people who have "F Visas" [Pauline's note: basically a form of renewable visa for long-term residents], and forcing many people on these visas to leave the country. Since I'm a freelance journalist, I have one of those. My fiancée, who works for a media organization, has a more permanent visa. So I had to marry him to get a Chinese visa! (Jen laughs). We're planning a later wedding, but are legally married in China now.

All our mail is being opened up, now. This wasn't uncommon eight years ago, but recently... Not everyone does their jobs, but with the Olympics coming, everyone started doing their jobs again. So we've been having trouble with mail, they've sent some boxes of my memoirs back to the States as unapproved, and even opened up our wedding invitations. We know my fiancée's phone is being tapped. It all feels like a big step backwards.

Pauline: I've noticed that the traffic is much better.

Jen: Yes, they're enforcing regulations only allowing odd or even numbered cars on the roads every other day. But the truth is, if you're rich enough in Beijing to have a car, you probably have two, and you'd have made sure that you have one with even license plates and one with odd. But many more people are using the subways, which are now much more extensive, thanks to the Olympics. A problem with the road regulations is not as many trucks are being allowed into the city. So the prices for food has shot up, which many people are grumbling about.

Pauline: Tell me about your book, Serve the People.

Jen: Well, though it's about my time learning to cook in China, it's not so much about me as about the people I met along the way and about the ways China has changed. It's very much a guide to the culture, as I've been able to infiltrate the kitchens around China. I first lived here in 2000 when I had a Fullbright scholarship [Pauline's note: Jen has Chinese parents, but grew up in San Diego]. After working at Newsweek for a few years, I decided to choose food as a topic to study as it's accessible to me. So much of Chinese culture -- Peking Opera, Soap Operas -- really isn't for me. But food I could talk about with anyone, and it was a way for me to look at many aspects of the culture.

Pauline: Can you give me an example of what you mean by that?

Jen: Sure. After I graduated from cooking school, I had to take a National Cooking exam, which was half cooking and half writing. I was not nervous about the cooking, but though I speak Chinese, I hadn't yet mastered the writing [Pauline's note: Learning all of the Chinese characters that go into simply reading a newspaper can be a monumental task]. Basically, in a short period of time I had to learn how to read and write Mandarin in order to take the test.

I was working with a tutor every day, to prepare for the exam and one day, she simply said to me "Why don't you take the textbook into the exam with you. Nine out of ten of the proctors will allow you to cheat." I told her I wasn't comfortable with that and she thought for a moment and said "Okay, why don't you hire someone then to take it for you?" I ended up taking the exam without cheating, as I wanted to see if I could do it, but it opened my eyes.

Pauline: What did that experience show you?

Jen: That corruption is endemic here. It's expected. I don't think the Chinese are an immoral people, just amoral. Every day it's fascinating to live here, and see how the people here think.

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Labels: beijing, culture, food, jen liu liu, olympics, pauline olympics

No tickets yet. And Laura from the Olympics committee is no longer answering my e-mail (and I sent her just one yesterday at 4pm). Very frustrating. I ran into a group of people from New Balance, the sports gear company on the street, and they told me that at the two events they had attended that there had been dozens of empty seats. I'm considering trying to buy a scalped ticket (though I don't quite know how). If my next post is from a Chinese jail, you'll know why.

Despite my ticketless state, I've been seeing the Olympics everywhere. It plays on public buses (yes, I've now branched out to buses!), on some subway lines, in the lobby of my hotel on two separate screens and stations, on gigantic screens in public markets. The coverage here makes it look like the Games have been one unending victory sweep for the Chinese. I know the networks do the same in the U.S,. concentrating the footage on American athletes, but being on the outside here, seeing over and over the insistent parade of red leotards, swimsuits and track suits has been oddly unnerving. I never knew my patriotism (or is it tribal loyalties?) was so deeply rooted.

Onto the day's activities: Since I'd hit a bit of a wall with all the temples the day before, I decided to the head to Panjiayuan Jiuhuo Shichang, the outdoor weekend market, a mesmerizing sprawl of stuff. Here you'll find everything from a jade beads to ethnic clothing to teapots to Mao watches to furniture based on designs from the Ming and Qing eras and more. Some of the surprises: waterpipes meant for holding cigarettes. Painted re-creations of the art I had seen two days earlier at the galleries of Factory 798 (as I'm sure you've read, copyrights are not respected in China; it looks like as soon as one of the great artists comes up with something original, dozens of fakes start circulating at markets like these).

Elaborately embroidered ethnic (read: non-Han Chinese) clothing, sold by women wearing these garments, their hair piled in a large, dumpling-like bun on the top of their heads (a very different look than the modern one sported by most Beijingers). According to a brochure, that a fellow was giving out, asking us to give it to "our friends" (boy did he give it to the right person)the market has more than four thousand shop owners (not surprising, the stands are tiny and the place is huge), and 10,000 shop assistants, 60% of whom came from outside Beijing. Workers are from the Hui, Man, Dong, Uigur, Mongolian and other ethnic groups. So coming here, you truly do get a microcosm of the whole of China.



Of course, you can't just buy. Haggling is expected and if you're a Westerner, you know going in that the price you're first quoted will be a good 80 to 100 percent too high. So, you get an initial price from the vendor on a calculator (or as common, keyed onto a cellphone) and then you type in a lower number back. The seller, and often his nearby friends, then start gesturing like over-excited umpires: higher, higher, higher their hands urge. And you go back and forth until you arrive on a mutually agreeable price. (Though after one of these negotiations for two ancient-looking coins I wanted to give to my coin-collecting daughters, a bystander nearby broke into giggles when he caught a glimpse of the price I'd agreed to. I walked away on that negotiation, and got a better deal a couple of stalls down).

It was all great fun, and as I finished one negotiation I turned around to find a microphone pointed in my face. In a case of the snake swallowing its own tail, here was a reporter from the Associated Press, wanting to interview me about why I'd come to the market and what I thought of Beijing. Eventually, I fessed up that I was a writer, too, and off-mic we gushed to each other about what a great subject Beijing was. (And then, has become my nasty habit, I tried to hit him up for tickets. No go).

As I left the market, I happened upon two other women searching for the subway: Marcia Rauch an American who had just spent the previous two months teaching English in southern China; and Crystal Jing, a friend of one of her students and a freshman economics major at a university in Beijing.

We got to chatting, and decided to go out to dinner together, first touring a hip hutong (filled with boutiques selling t-shirts with wise-cracks in Chinese, cozy cafes and dozens of bars including one claiming to be the smallest in the city) that Crystal likes. It was fascinating to hear about Marcia's time in China. Along with teaching English, a fellow teacher (an engineer back in the US) ended up teaching his students some of the fundamental precepts of environmentalism, a concept that hadn't come up much in their small city, noted Marcia, who also noted that wherever you went there, the streets were festooned with trash. Beijing was somewhat that way the last time I visited, though its been spiffed up tremendously for the Olympics.

In Crystal, I found a kindred soul who longs to get out and see the world (her English is excellent) and though she's majoring in economics right now (though she's just a freshman she can't switch out of that major), she's hoping to get another degree in either media or languages so that she can have a springboard for her explorations. We spent a lovely evening together, getting drenched in the rains, and missing our stops both on the subways and buses (four times!) because we were talking so intently. A lovely evening (and a very nice change from dining alone).

I've included some quotes off the menu from dinner:

• Sour sauce spare-ribs: Make spleen strong (I ordered this one, and I have to say, my spleen is feeling quite invigorated)
  
• Colorectal processed in nine procedures: It has fine appearance. It has red color. It has sweetness and sour. (Okay, I thought, but what the heck is it actually?)
  
• Mia Family Spare Rib: It will have endless feeling
  
• Ear end dish: It has the function to raise the appetite and the affects of reducing the urgent diseases

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Labels: beijing, olympics, pauline olympics

This morning I woke up with Carl Lewis. And that's not something I need to keep from my husband, either. I was groggily sitting at the café at USA House (see my earlier post for an explanation of what that is), leaching off the free WiFi that AT&T was providing for everyone who visiting the house (thank you AT&T), drinking a free smoothie (from sponsor Splenda. Are you seeing a pattern here?) when a ceremony started in the open space to the side and below where I was sitting. McDonalds was sponsoring a breakfast for award winning young athletes from the Philippines (they looked to be under 12 for the most part), and the announcer was saying: "And now to give you your own gold medals, we have a man who won 9 Olympic medals." At this the kids let out a communal "ooh." "And eight of them were gold" she finished, at which point a couple of the kids actually shrieked. And then Carl Lewis strode out, his smile a beam of light, his height and physique literally of super hero quality. (On second thought, perhaps my husband shouldn't be reading this after all). He was followed by Olympic swimmer Janet Evans, and together they put on a cute awards ceremony for the pipsqueaks, and I'm not sure what happened next because I was hurriedly putting away my computer and rushing down the stairs so I could meet them as well. Another thrill.

And I'm worried that that may be the closest I get to Olympic athletes in Beijing, as I came here at the very last minute without tickets, and this is probably the first Olympics ever to sell out (I say "probably" because the archeological record is unclear as to whether there were scalpers in Athens in about, oh, 500 B.C.). I had made it my goal, at the first USA House party, to try and work the crowd and see if anyone had spare tickets I could purchase (this was, after all, a crowd of insiders-Olympic sponsors mostly). But because the first person I approached, my contact and a very lovely lady from the US Olympic Committee (she had worked closely with our editors at Frommer's to turn out the official Olympics guidebook, plus a special book just for the families of the athletes) said it would be no problem to get me a ticket, I let the opportunity pass. She asked what I'd like to see, and I said "gymnastics" (which in Beijing is actually not the hottest ticket. That would be . . . can you guess? Ping pong, which is as much a religion as a sport here). She breezily replied "Oh that should be doable." Now here it is a good 24 hours later and though I saw her again this morning and just obnoxiously peppered her with a follow-up email, she's now saying she needs to follow up and can't confirm. Oh darn.

Not that it's bad being here on the fringes of the Olympics. That in itself has been fascinating. Because I'm all alone here, and most people are traveling in groups, I've been talking primarily with the people who are working these events. How they got here and how their backgrounds played in has been actually quite fascinating. For example, the senior citizen who was manning the WiFi connection counter at USA House worked in China in 1977, setting up the first high fructose corn factory, so that Coca Cola could start manufacturing here. "Of course, Coke is now half corn syrup and half sucrose here" he told me. "And we all know how much the Chinese love their sucrose," he finished, with a knowing glance. I gave a knowing glance back, though I'll confess I have no idea what he was talking about. (He also told me, interestingly, that he has a blog he keeps at home and that it's been blocked from China. He can't post. Luckily, I'm e-mailing these posts to David Lytle, the Frommers.com editorial director, and he's posting for me. Ha ha!). I also met a young volunteer from Southern China on the subway, who talked to me about the "enjoyable sacrifice" (her words) of working on the Games, rather than getting to see them. We bonded on that one.

More encounters: At my hotel, I met four fellows who are here from Georgia to service the private jets that millionaires are apparently bringing in for the games. They didn't have tickets either, but they'd been hearing rumors about scalpers in front of some venues and were thinking of giving that a try. I told that to a couple from New York I met at a temple later in the afternoon and she told me that they'd heard the opposite (she also took that picture of me in the temple), that the police were out in force and there wasn't a ticket to be had in town. This was their fifth Olympics and they'd never bought advance seats to any (and always got in). They, too, were hoping to play their connections, but were coming up short so far.

Oh and you know how proud I was to have conquered the subway yesterday? Well, it conquered me today. Because of the Olympics, certain stations near sports venues are closed, even for folks simply trying to transfer trains. I was on my way to lunch, changing from the #10 train to the #8, when I came to the end of the hallway where the train was supposed to be and there was a temporary wall instead. Emerging from the subway, I asked help of the ubiquitous Olympics volunteers and they told me I could only use that subway if I had a ticket to the event that was happening there (I believe it was tennis). Which, of course, I didn't (drat, foiled again! My life is becoming about getting those tickets.)

But taxis are plentiful and cheap, so I splurged $3 and zipped over to Xian'r Lao Men for an absolutely spectacular dumpling lunch. I got greedy and ordered three different kinds, thinking I was going to get 6 dumplings total. But my pidgin Chinese was off (even with the help of the phrasebook) and I ended up with 30! They were so good (pork with lotus root, lamb with zuccinni and carrots with tofu and green bean) that I ended up downing 18, dipped in a scrumptious vinegary soy sauce that had pickled raw garlic in it (I ate the garlic too. Heck, I'm alone, who's going to be bothered by my breath?). The meal was definitely not a splurge: even though I wildly over-ordered, my bill came to just about $3.50 total.

After lunch, I wandered a bit in the very local neighborhood I was in and then decided to go temple hopping. I headed to Guo Zi Jian, Kong Miao and the Yonghe Gong, or in English: the former Imperial College, Confucius Temple and Lama Temple, where Tibetan Buddhism is practiced. Though all were impressive, and the Imperial College was a powerful testament to the power of education (according to the signs, the Chinese started their Imperial Education system in 500 B.C.; a later sign quoted famed British historian Toynbee as saying that it was this system of education that kept Chinese culture intact far longer than any one Western cultures -- 5,000 years), my favorite was Lama Temple.

Unlike the others, it wasn't simply a monument, but a vibrant working temple, with dozens of people engaged in standing to kneeling prayers (brutally difficult in this humidity, I thought), lighting incense and turning prayer wheels. I thought it amusing that in the midst of all this spirituality, the guardians of the temple felt the need to cite another "higher power:" outside the temple with the statue of Maitreya was a plaque from the Guinness Book of World Records, confirming that the statue within was the largest statue (59 feet) to be ever carved of a single piece of white sandalwood.

Being at the Lama Temple, built in 1694 and obviously well used today, started me thinking about the repression of Tibet today by the Chinese government . . . and a dinner I had last year when I was last in Beijing (a much more planned and guided trip) with government tourist officials. Over a lengthy meal (many courses and we each had two sets of chopsticks: one to eat with and one to take food from off the communal plates), the conversation turned to politics. And the men I was dining with, genial hosts, started discussing the Tianamen Square protests and how they were "the best thing that ever happened to Chinese tourism" (as it gave them time to "regroup" and properly train service staff at the hotels; no mention at all of lives lost and careers destroyed). And how most of the Tibetans, they felt, really wanted to stay with China and the problems in Tibet were the result of a few bad eggs.

It was a shocking conversation for me, and yet knowing what I do about Chinese censorship of the media and now seeing the long, long history of Tibetan Buddhism in Beijing, I'm able to see why they might think the way they do. Most Chinese do not support the Tibetan's bid for autonomy. And I'm not saying the Chinese are right in their sentiments -- far from it. But being here again, I'm starting to see how those sentiments might have formed. And to be frank, I worry about being misunderstood in posting these thoughts online. I don't condone China's actions on these matters. But when you look more closely at any topic, you begin to understand why the other side thinks as they do (even if they're wrong to do so).

And on that note, I'm going to sign off for today. I've had limited time on the Internet (I tend to write these posts in my hotel room and then have to dash to USA House to send them off as I don't have Wifi where I am). But I want to thank everyone for their tremendously kind words on this blog. To answer a few questions:

1) I survived the 13 hour flight by editing. I took pages of Pauline Frommer's Spain with me and edited those for about 4 hours until my computer died. Then read the second edition of PF's Paris on paper pages, editing, until my brain died. Then I watched a terrible movie (20,000 B.C.) and finally I slept a bit

2) My hotel is in the Chaoyang District, a business district though oddly, the hotel is on the grounds of a University. It looks like it was built in the last ten years. I can't walk to the events (thought I'd be able to which is why we chose this hotel . . . Grrr), but it's close to the subway station. Food's been quite good. Much better than when I came last year and had to eat at the tourist places. And yes, the event venues are as impressive as they look on TV. Really tremendous.

3) Thanks for the insight on the box-spring mattress! You're absolutely right!

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Labels: beijing, olympics, pauline olympics

Yup, it's still exciting to be here. Even though I didn't get near a stadium all day. There wouldn't have been any point in doing so: the opening ceremonies are tonight, and it seems like everyone's who's in town for the games -- athletes, coaches, friends, fans -- were at the Temple of Heaven this morning. And happily so was I. And so, it seemed, were all the city's hacky sack players, ballroom dancers, tai chi practitioners, poker players and accordionists (yes, there was a coven of them about 200 yards from the East Gate, all playing different tunes at the same time and grinning at one another).

For those who've never been to Beijing, the Temple of Heaven is one of the largest temple complexes in China, created during the Ming Dynasty at the same time as the Forbidden City. And though it's one of the most important historic sights in Beijing, that fact is ignored by most Beijingers, who come here solely for the beautiful park in which it's set. They use the park for every recreational activity imaginable, including many that we in America would only do at our home or in a friend's home or gym, wanting a bit more privacy. So though you'll see exquisitely painted temples (the largest, the Temple of Good Harvest, was built without a single nail!), the real delight here is wandering through the Fellini-esque landscape of people amusing themselves (often in what seems like cinematic slow motion, doing tai chi or a dance that's done with a curved paddle and a ball, which practitioners deftly flip as they slowly carve the space with their arms).



Though I've been to Beijing before, I hadn't made it to the Temple of Heaven, so I can't say for sure, but it felt like some of this action was heightened for the Games. You literally couldn't walk ten feet without seeing a septuagenarian acting like a circus performer and flipping the disc with feathers they use for hacky sack from behind her back and over her head to the next player (often with a crowd of Westerners standing around and applauding); or an oompa band (tuba, other horns, drum) leading a huge crowd of people, each carrying a book of lyrics, in song on a lawn.

I got to the Temple on the subway and learned a universal truth about public transportation: if your look of confusion is extreme enough, someone will stop to help you. (I've been on the other side of this equation in my hometown of New York City, where the subways today are peopled with baffled-looking Europeans, thanks to the weakness of the dollar). Although there's pin ying (basically Chinese words written out not in characters, but in western lettering) on all the platforms and maps down below, the vending machine for tickets was all in characters and stopped me dead in my tracks.

Luckily, a sharp-eyed guard noticed my distress and ran over to grunt me through the process, pointing here, counting the number of stations on the electronic map and finally grabbing the money out of my hand, counting it for me and heading over to a ticket counter to pay (with me padding along behind; I soon learned that all rides are just 2 yuan -- about 25¢). Down on the platform, I found that the pin ying characters the desk clerk at my hotel had written out for me didn't match anything on the map (a common problem with pin ying, which everyone writes differently) and a helpful passerby was able to set me right. I'm proud to say (beaming with pride in fact), that I was able to ride the subway later in the day without one person having to ease me through the process.

I grabbed lunch at a mall in Central Beijing. The restaurant that I'd read about being there was gone (a problem in Beijing, a city changing so rapidly that restaurants often go out of business before the first reviews on them are even printed). So I looked at my options on the food floor (half stands, half sit-down restaurants) and was surprised to see that I had almost no Chinese choices. The Japanese may have lost World War II and their physical hold on (areas of) China, but their culinary influence here is staggering. Of my six options, four were Japanese (including one of those conveyor belt sushi places) and the place I finally picked for its "Chinese-ness" turned out to have devoted half of its menu to Ramen and sushi. Amazing. The rest of the mall, which I toured briefly, seemed to have been airlifted from Beverly Hills -- all marble with massive sculptures hanging between floors, the goods from Max Mara, Armani and their brethren.

For the remaining afternoon hours, I decided to explore the Beijing arts scene and so headed over to the former weapons factory that's been transformed (along with the surrounding area) into an enclave of hip galleries. Full disclosure: I get a bit bored by most (but not all) non-representational art. I tend to find abstract art yawn inducing, and art that comments on what art's supposed to be about just plain annoying (okay, you've created a huge ball of twine and placed it in a gallery, bully for you!). There was little of that tripe in the art galleries here, in fact, I can't remember when the last time was I laughed out loud this often in an arts setting. With the fodder of the not-so-distant Cultural Revolution (along with the contradictions of modern Chinese life), Chinese artists have created pieces that are surreal, sardonic, beautifully executed (and often drenched in red), and sometimes, moving.

Mao's face appears often, usually fractured or looming, almost like the sun over a landscape. In a series of sculptures were female Chinese soldiers in ballet shoes dancing with Marilyn-Monroe-esque Statues of Liberty. There were also paintings of babies in Mao-era military uniforms stomping one another and planets entirely made up of laughing Chinese faces. Nothing was spared from skewering, not even the Olympics. Two of my favorite paintings were inspired by Mattisse, with his dancers wildly gyrating around the Olympic rings; and a scene of sumo-sized Olympic athletes, naked and somewhat porcine in their features, getting ready to start the games. Perhaps I'm being obtuse, but what was most interesting is that the Chinese government seems to be exercising little to no censorship over these works of art. They turned on its head all of my preconceptions about what modern art in China would be like.

As I was leaving the galleries, I passed a little coffee shop with the cheerful sign posted in the window in English: The Opening Ceremonies are Tonight -- Let's Expect Them!! It was one of many examples of Chinglish (poorly or oddly used English) that I've seen -- I've included a few more at the bottom of this post. But because this has gotten long-winded, I'll finish for today, by talking about the Opening Ceremonies, which I saw on a large screened TV in USA House, the merchandising center for the US Olympic Committee and a place where Olympic families and sponsors gather. It was the capper to my day of discovering the ebullient if highly commercialized side of "Communist" China. For a society that's destroyed so many of its historic buildings (and continued to destroy the traditional neighborhoods of Beijing, called the "hutongs," to make way for Olympic stadiums and office buildings) I found it odd that the ceremonies seemed to harken back to images of Imperial China -- almost exclusively. All of those scrolls, and traditional musicians, and Chinese opera singers! It was a long-winded, but fascinating look at China's mixed up soul, don't you think?

Chinglish Sightings:

• In the subway: door is at fault when red light lighting ("Off with its hinges," I thought)
  
• These words formed the design for a pair of pants I saw a teen wearing in the subway: "16 centuries the France King decides to be at Saint Saveur De"
  
• On a large building: The Cat Lifestyle Mall
  
• On a small building: Sexual Appliances Store (which was right near the "Blue Zoo Beijing")

That's it for today!

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Labels: arts, beijing, chinglish, pauline olympics

Though scorned lovers and fired workers would disagree, I find starting anything harder than finishing it. And that includes my presence here as guest blogger, created to capture some impressions of this Goliath will o' the wisp, this massive but ephemeral moment that I'm currently part of: The Beijing Olympics.

So where to start, where to start? It's been a bucking bronco ride already, thrilling at times, panic inducing at others. The thrill came early, at the check in line for the flight actually (and I believe that's the first and last time anything thrilling will ever happen when I'm in line for a flight). I looked up from the documents I was trying to get in order and suddenly realized that everyone around me was tremendously buff. And not only that, they were wearing coordinated track suits.

For some reason, I had assumed that one day before the opening ceremonies the athletes would already be in Beijing. But here I was, in the midst of the Bahamas track and field team (their Olympic delegation numbers 24 total). And right behind them, was the Dominican Republic's Tae Kwon Do hopeful (a nice guy, I sat near him on the plane). Members of the Jamaica and Grenada team had also jetted in from the Caribbean to join my flight from NYC.

Did this make the flight a party? Not really. People were sparking up more spontaneous conversations than usual (I got to hear about all the ins and outs of having three teenage daughters from a sports promoter opposite me), but the athletes were doing their best to conserve their energy. Early into the flight I noticed that some of the Bahamas team had doubled up on the airline blankets, using one as a blanket and wearing the other, burka-like, over their heads. Actually that may have been a strategy to stay warm on the cold plane (which must have felt even chillier to folks from the warm Caribbean). The fellow opposite me didn't emerge from under that blanket for a good seven hours of the 13 hour flight.

We arrived at Beijing's newly opened airport, a place so huge (its the largest airport in the world) that it swallowed up our voices, and felt hushed and serene, almost cathedral-like in its debarkation areas. An odd sensation for crowded Beijing. Everywhere were Olympic volunteers, wearing matching shirts, badges and smiles, sitting behind tables piled high with maps and tourist literature. And in the area where arriving visitors are greeted, about half the signs didn't have anyone's name on them, they simply announced a brand: Coca Cola, UPS, Visa. I can only guess that the athletes were told to head to their corporate sponsor for transportation to the Village (though that's only a guess: perhaps the folks with signs were simply 'living billboards', something I've seen in Brazil.)

After a quick trip to the ATM, I headed towards a volunteer information table to ask for help translating the name and address of my hotel into Chinese characters. Soon I was surrounded by six college students, all helping with the task...which may have been why my taxi driver got hopelessly lost (cue the panic moment). Finally he called into what I can only imagine is the English language help line that's been set up for the Games and handed the phone over to me. The fellow at the other end hadn't heard of my hotel and kept insisting I should go to another one with a similar sounding name, but he was finally able to locate it and we were off again, zipping past the "Bird's Nest" (the massive stadium that's home to the Opening Ceremonies, lit up in red and aqua and fronted by huge crowds of people, all holding up cameras to catch the image) along the way.

My hotel, booked at the last minute is...well, it ain't the Forbidden City.

Right next to the bed, the carpet bears a permanent tattoo of either a work boot or an iron (whoever did it was also a smoker, as there's a cigarette burn next to that). I was camping at Lake George two weeks ago and the ground under my sleeping pad felt a good sight softer than the bed in this Inn. Suffice it to say: this isn't a property that the Frommer's guidebook recommends! But I wanted to be as close to the event venues as possible without paying a fortune (and we booked last Friday!) so I'll make the best of it. (And, to be fair, the staff has been very sweet, the a/c works, the bathroom's spotless and I haven't heard a sound since I got in the room).

And on that note, I'm going to collapse into bed...hopefully without bruising myself.

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Labels: beijing, olympics, pauline olympics

A San Francisco tour operator called China Focus (tel. 800/868-7244; www.chinafocustravel.com) has gained a bit of fame among avid travelers, and grown to fairly large size, because of its near-miraculous price of $999 for an 11-day air-and-land package ("Historic China") to China. I've spoken with a great many of its previous clients (including relatives of mine) and all of them have been uniformly positive about the firm and its product.

But in the face of an ever-more-expensive Chinese currency (the Yuan), and the skyrocketing price of aviation fuel, how long can China Focus maintain its $999 miracle? Turns out: no longer. That catchy figure is now offered for exactly one isolated date of departure in early December, and all other prices of China Focus have risen quite a bit.

But what they continue to offer (prices increased by about $50 to $200, and now bearing a fuel surcharge) remains a travel miracle. And it is produced by people so cordial, responsible and hard-working, that you really should consider it for your own next trip. China's prices are going up and up, and it is only if you book right away that you'll get there at a cost that anyone can handle.

On the firm's website mainpage you'll find a moving billboard on the right-hand side; from there click for further details about the "Historic China Promotion." You'll see a specially-priced version of their 11-day tour to China in January and February, 2009, spending 9 nights in five Chinese cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Ji'nan, Qu'fu, and Tai-an. It includes round-trip air to China from either San Francisco or New York, all transportation within China, all transfers, accommodations for 9 nights in those five Chinese cities (quite decent hotels), all meals, and all escorted sightseeing on every day of your stay -- a particularly comprehensive, all-inclusive tour called "Historic China" that has delighted many thousands of Americans to date.

The price: $1,049 from San Francisco, $1,249 from New York City, provided only that you pay by check or money order and thus save them the commission they'd otherwise need to give a credit card firm. The departure dates at these rates: January 6 and 13, February 3, 10 and 17, 2009. Prices go up on later dates.

But what about taxes and fuel surcharge? Those add $415 and $455 from San Francisco and New York respectively, bringing your total cost to $1,464 from San Francisco and $1,699 from New York. You can reduce the price by $100 -- if I am reading their literature correctly -- by booking prior to September 1.

It will never again be cheaper. And those prices, as best I know, aren't matched by any other tour company dealing with China.

It's important that you see China. It's an essential trip for any thoughtful person. And it can be visited in January and February as well as in any other month. Your hotels, buses, museums, temples, palaces, shops and restaurants are as well-heated as anywhere else on earth, and you will enjoy a trip that's largely free of other tourist crowds.

Turn right now to your spouse, partner or friend, and ask them to consider making the time available and going with you on an important and inexpensive trip to five Chinese cities in nine days, this coming January or February.

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Labels: beijing, china, packages, shanghai

The world's most certain travel prediction is that the hotels of Beijing will be full of vacancies by August 29 of this year. The summer Olympics will have run from August 8 to 24. Giving the athletes, coaches, spectators, journalists and television people five days to leave the city and board planes home, you'll then discover empty hotels and restaurants. So many new properties are opening just prior to the Olympics, and so much single-minded attention will have been devoted to the period of the Olympics, that these new lodgings can't possibly have secured a continuing clientele for the period immediately following the Olympics.

Why not plan an independent trip simply to Beijing, which has more than enough attractions to interest you for at least a full week? The deluxe hotels will be charging no more than $175 a room. The first class hotels will be down to their usual $120-or-so per room, tourist class hotels to $75 a room. And the new budget hotels -- the Home Inns, the 7 Days Inns, the Jinjiang Inns, the Motel 168s (yes, that's their name!), and the Hanting Hotels -- will be down to charging under $50 a night for a double room, including breakfast for two. In fact, if you'll go to Google and insert any of those names, you'll immediately see that some of new Chinese economy hotels are featuring promotions of 99 Yuan ($14) per room per night! Dozens of these economy hotels are now operating in and around Beijing, including properties in the centrally-located Wangfujing area within walking distance of the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square.

It's important to make the trip soon. The Chinese Yuan, which traded at a rate of about 8 to the dollar some 18 months ago, has now gradually been strengthened to a rate of 7.24 to the dollar. And the Chinese seem committed to a policy of continuing slow depreciation of the Yuan (although it is still vastly overpriced, even at the 7.24 level).

There will never again be a time when you enjoy such values as now, and you should also know that it is perfectly possible to undertake independent travels of China, without joining a group.

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Labels: beijing

The China National Travel Service has just revealed its one-week packaged tours to Beijing for the Summer Olympics, and they confirm our worst fears. For airfare from the U.S. west coast and a six-night stay in the Chinese capital at the time of the Olympics in August, the minimum price will be $3,679 per person, based on two persons traveling together, not including Olympics tickets, and not including meals other than breakfast. For travelers wishing to attend an Olympics event, the CNTS will provide "assistance" in making inquiries about them.

Nearly every observer had predicted that the cost of attending the Olympics would be sky-high because of the competition for beds and seats from the many millions of Chinese sports fans located within a half-hour of Beijing. The announcement of a $3,679 price for a limited six-night stay (and that's only if you're traveling with another person) confirms that sense of dread. In China, you find superb merchants, and they will be squeezing every penny of potential profit from this world event. Stay at home and watch it on television.

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Labels: beijing, olympics

I've heard several versions of that prediction this week, and tried hard to trace down the origin of them. Turns out that in August, the president of the International Olympics Committee, Jacques Rogge, said in Beijing that one or two high-endurance contests -- like cycling or marathon running -- might be postponed to a time of year when the city's pollution problem is less pronounced. He obviously issued that threat as a means of prodding the Beijing civic authorities to do something about the notorious emissions that so poison the air there.

Since that time, nothing further has been heard from Rogge on the subject. But last month, another IOC official expressed the same concern about the impact of the air on certain high-endurance events. Nobody at any time has suggested postponing the entire Olympics, and that really isn't a realistic step at this time, less than 10 months before the start of the Games. Yet some rumor-mongers have blown up those two statements to encompass the dramatic postponement of the entire Olympics.

It's not going to happen.

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Labels: beijing, olympics

Here's an interesting travel opportunity from DFW Tours (tel. 800/780-5733; www.dfwtours.com), a 29-year-old airfare consolidator (discounter) that seems, from all indications, to be utterly reliable and well-financed (it's the subsidiary of a major British firm). Throughout the entire month of November, DFW will fly you round-trip to Beijing for $529 per person, midweek, from Newark, Boston, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa, Raleigh-Durham, and for about $100-or-so more from Dallas, Tulsa, Atlanta, Oklahoma City, and elsewhere. Since most of these cities lack direct service to Beijing, it's obvious that you'll making a stop in an intermediate U.S. city on the way. DFW does not reveal the airlines it will be using. Bookings must be made by October 30.

Once in Beijing, you'll find that hotel and meal costs are so cheap, especially in November, that another $400 or so is sufficient for a week's worth of your local costs. And so, if you have up to $1,000 in the bank, you can enjoy a week in Beijing viewing the rather unusual life and commerce in China's capital. And you should give that prospect serious consideration.

I'd suggest a totally independent stay, wandering on your own, eating where you choose, paying admission to various attractions on the spot. Take a look at the various internet services for booking hotels in Asia, and you'll find that a stay in Beijing can today be approached as you would a visit to Europe. But, of course, you'll want to start the application process for a Chinese visa right away.

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Labels: beijing, china, deals