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Beijing, Beijing, China
It’s funny how no matter where you are in Asia, there’s always a rooster nearby to wake you up at 5am. I heard one crow once, twice, then three times. In my half-awake daze, I think back to a Bible lesson where Jesus says that John will betray him 3 times before a rooster crows. It’s funny the wack things that float into your head when you’re not fully awake. Anyways, last night, a French guy showed me an 8gig USB stick he bought for Y75 that day. He had me test it in my laptop and it seemed to work fine. I even copied some data to it to make sure it worked. He told me where he bought it and so my first stop today was in the direction of that shady area. Of course, things never seem to go so well, and my cheap Thai watchband broke and I sat on my glasses, destroying the clear pieces that hold the lenses in. I’m suddenly glad I didn’t send my spare pare of glasses home when I had the chance in Hong Kong. I put my broken glasses and broken watch into my pocket and mentally add them to the list of things to do today.
I am trying to do three things at once here in Beijing. 1) make preliminary inquiries into a potential job next year. 2) Get a feel for the city 3) avoid anything that has an entry fee. Number 3 is closely related to number 2. If I am living here, I won’t be going to tourist sites every day, but I’ll have plenty of time to do those things. There’s no reason to do them in my short 4 days here. So most of the time outside of the internet cafe, I walk the streets looking at what the city has to offer. I try not to walk the same street twice. I check my map, and start walking east today. As I walk through some hutongs, I notice that the left side of the street still has the typical hutong wall, but behind it is a large office building under construction. Perhaps the epitome of Beijing and China, a centuries old hutong across the street from a brand new office building built on the ruins of the neighboring hutong.
Eventually I come out on a main street and continue walking towards my target area. I’ve planned my route such that it will take me past the influential embassy neighborhoods. After crossing a rather large street, I suddenly notice that all of the billboards, signs, advertisements have all changed from Chinese to Russian. This totally blows my mind as I’ve rarely seen anything anywhere in a third language. This goes one for a few blocks, and then I come to Rita park. I turn right and see what appears to be an embassy on the right protected by a an inner fence as well as an outer green fence right along the sidewalk. When I get to the next corner, I check my book to see which embassy this is, but before I can, I get a glimpse of the old glory flying near the entrance. Ah, it seems my map was incorrect (or there are multiple buildings, which is more likely) as to where the US Embassy is. If there’s one place on Earth that is guaranteed to give you prompt service if you walk near the main door, its the US Embassy. Other than people trying to sell me something, I can hardly think of a time someone came up and spoke to me until now, the guard gives me an immediate ni-hao. I tell him I am American and that I’m just looking around. I’m not sure if he understood the second sentence, but I walk off to make my intentions clear. I don’t bother with photographs as there’s really nothing to see and I’m sure I know what his reaction would be.
Continuing on, I find a concentrated area of western companies, the likes of which I have yet to see at all in China. Subway, TGI Friday’s, Baskin Robbins, 7-eleven. I jump at the chance to buy a chocolate chip cookie at subway. I bought a 6inch sub as well just to get a Chinese sub-club stamp (oh, and beacuse I was starving). Finally, I make my way to the subway station given to me. Down near the subway is an underground market where I buy a watch for $3 to replace my Thai piece of crap. I really like my Thai piece of crap, and I’m sad that the band broke. Outside, I find a building labeled “Silk Market” and head inside. The sign says “Sunglasses and cameras, 4th floor” so I head there hoping to fix my glasses. There I find the 8g usb in question. Of course, the woman wants to sell it to me starting at Y400. I tell plenty of times that I will buy it for Y75 only, and after walking off about 5 times she comes down to that price. I also buy a 2g mp3 player for Y150 to see how I like the whole neck mp3 player concept. I’m skeptical as to whether it really works so I plug it into my laptop and run some tests on it and listen to it with my headphones. I test the 8g card as well and everything seems in order. I am amazed. I think these goods are stolen, or perhaps the factory is in this city and they make extra after hours. I baragain a guy down to $3 to fix my glasses (it’s hard to baragain well below $3, at that point I feel like ‘what is the point’). Wow, I feel good. Not only did I get my items fixed for $3 each, but I got an mp3 player and 8g stick as well.
On my way to the Internet cafe, the “brand new from the plastic” battery dies in my mp3 player. I look a little closer at the battery and realize why: it looks like a science experiment from the 6th grade. I think maybe the bottom of it is tinfoil or something. Oh well, I’ll find some energizers somewhere. At the internet cafe, I am horrified to find out that my 8g memory stick is no longer working. In about 3 seconds, google helps me find out that I’ve fallen for an elaborate scam. It seems that the “8g stick” is designed in every way to fool Windows into thinking it has 8g. Despite my tests, I needed to unplug and plug it back in at the store to have realized it was a fake. Shit. Well, I would say “Thats Y75 down the drain”, except I had bought a second one for my companion. So, thats Y150 down the drain. At least I have a nifty trinket now. My mp3 player turned out about the same, but using a different scam strategy. It actually was formatted wrong, so I had to reformat it to 128meg, but it still works fine. It was only $18, which I guess is still an ok investment to see if I like the technology. I can always wake my laptop up every few hours to put new songs on if I want. If nothing else, I can leave Dark Side of the Moon on it and carry it in my pocket wherever I go. At least the earbuds it came with are nice (I broke my cheap pair of those too…do you see the trend?).
After mentally kicking my own ass for about an hour, I get back to seriously checking around for jobs and such. After exchanging a few e-mails with the Beijing group interested in having me teach computer science classes, they drop the idea. I think I came across as too demanding when I said “I require contact information for a current foreign teacher”. I used that tone because I felt it was an obvious request that shouldn’t really need to be said, but I probably should have asked a little more politely. Asians don’t like confrontational language. Oh well, their package plan seemed quite shaky compared to the majority of the offerings I’ve read about anyways. One person e-mailed me back saying they would interview me on Saturday. The place seems decent and I can find nothing negative about it on the Internet. After 4 hours, I head out.
I walk west this time towards the north side of the Forbidden City. My plan is to walk through it and then Tiananmen Square. As it turns out, its not a thru street and visitors can only enter an exit through the south gate. So, I walk all the way around the area and back under Mao’s portrait. This time, I’m hoping that the square will be open, as its only 6:20pm. Sure enough, it is, and I walk under the street and up into the largest public square in the world. It actually does seem a lot bigger when you’re standing out in the wide open space, even at night. The police presence around Beijing is rather intense, but near these central areas it is rediculous. I’d say half the people in the square are military or police, not counting plainclothes officers.
After the square, I grab a bite to eat in a huge underground mall. I stop by DQ again to grab an oreo blizzard, but the girl at the counter struggles to understand oreo. Some caucasian behind me offers to translate and solves the problem in native-sounding Mandarin. I am amazed, I want to be able to do that someday. I thank him and head back to the Internet cafe.
Here at the cafe, someone has just e-mailed me wanting to do an interview tomorrow at the Chemical Engineering University. It’s supposedly about 14km from my present position, so it should prove interesting trying to get there. It should be difficult to fail in getting there by 11am. With enough money, a taxi will take you anywhere.
from: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ditchthecube/5/1265664217/tpod.html
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