Or was
it? Throughout the day we heard a
variety of rumors about the fireworks display: it was only happening in
Tiananmen Square and there was no way we could see it . . . it was going to
happen in 17 locations around the city and be the greatest thing we’d ever
seen. Anytime we tried to ask a police
officer, or somebody who should have known something about what was going on,
we continuously got the same answer: “It’s unclear”. Nobody really had any information about this
fireworks display, and because of this we were a group of 40 western travelers
(whose only connection was the hostel at which we were staying) following
somebody just because he acted like he knew what was going on.
“Are there
open container laws in Beijing?” I asked him as we walked off from the hostel
freely swigging from our Tsingtao down the middle of the sidewalk.
“I haven’t
been stopped yet,” he said in his Australian accent as we made our way to the
bus. In America, that response would not
have been sufficient, but being in such a large group of white people I decided
that they couldn’t possibly arrest all of us.
We boarded the bus paying our fares with one hand and clutching our
bottles with the other. It was 7:00 and
I was well on my way to making it a great night.
We stayed on
the bus long enough where I was a) unsure of how exactly to get back to the
hostel and b) certain that I could not safely get back to the hostel if I went
off by myself. These would turn out to
be very good things as we picked up a couple more beers at a convenience store
and walked a little bit further to the coolest bar district I have ever seen. It was a small lake that was large enough to
have some boat traffic in it and was illuminated on all sides by bars, clubs,
and restaurants.
It was our
understanding that we would be able to see the fireworks if we stood on one
side of the lake, and looked above a tree line across the lake. While we only saw intermittent fireworks
above the trees, we were close enough to a store that we never ran out of beer as
we stood in the middle of the street beside this lake trying to watch the
‘greatest fireworks display ever.’
Nobody ever
seemed to care about our open containers.
***
Because of the
National Day celebration in Beijing there were more domestic tourists than I
could have possibly imagined. Many of
these tourists came from very rural areas (far more remote than Yanji which
actually has an airport and a KFC) where white people would never go. To these people, we were a pretty big
deal—such a big deal that they wanted to take pictures with us.
About four
hours after we started drinking on National Day, most of our group of 40
settled into a bar on the lake where we were able to drink at tables outside
and some among our group were able to smoke (because I’m convinced Americans
are the only people that have come to their senses on the cigarette
issue). I had settled into a seat at the
end of the table where I was talking to a couple guys from England when I
noticed a Chinese girl staring at me.
Because my inebriation level at the time was near Around-the-World Party
drunk and well on my way to Kentucky Derby level drunk I got up and said hi to
the girl and her parents (who asked me to take a picture with their daughter).
After a late
start the next day, in part because of my Junior Parent’s Weekendesque
hangover, Gavin and I set out for a long day of sightseeing. As we made our way to Tiananmen Square to
begin our day, we soon realized that the number of people in Beijing was far
more than we ever could have anticipated.
Just on the walk from the subway exit to Tiananmen (the Tiananmen exits
were both closed) I saw crowds bigger than I had EVER seen. It was like when the 3rd of July
fireworks end in Grant Park (when millions of people walk in the same direction
at the same time), except that these Chinese people weren’t going to or from
any set event and were coming and going in EVERY direction. If there was ever a time and place to
experience how China is the largest country in the world, this was it.
The main
difference between walking with millions in China and walking with millions in
the United States is the way in which people walk through crowded areas. In the states, I could walk through that
crowd on the 3rd of July and never really touch anybody. In China, especially the crowded streets of Beijing,
there is no such thing as personal space.
People push and shove to get on the subway, they bump into people
without apologies left and right, and they get as close as possible in lines
and cut in front of you if you aren’t close.
So we walked in
the most uncomfortable manner possible amongst the (probably) millions of
people to Tiananmen Square, the largest (and most infamous) city square in the
world. As Gavin and I took pictures from
the middle of the square a Chinese man came up to us and had us snap a few
pictures of him. Because he appeared to
be alone this seemed normal, but then he wanted to take pictures with Gavin,
which seemed weird.
A little while
later, when we were wandering through the Forbidden City, I took a picture with
an entire Chinese family. I guess these
people just wanted to take pictures with westerners, but next time I see a
Chinese tourist snapping pictures in America, you better believe I am will ask
for a picture with them.
***
Later that day
our encounters with Chinese people became a bit more bothersome. After going through the Forbidden City and a
nearby park, Gavin and I walked towards a main shopping district on our way
back to Tiananmen Square (walking towards millions of people; that’s just what
I do). While walking down a sidewalk
that was thankfully not crowded a Chinese man around our age came up to us and
introduced himself as a student at a nearby university. His English was pretty good and since he
seemed like he just wanted to talk we shot the breeze with him for a little as
he asked questions about what we had done that day.
After ten
minutes of talking to the man, I was ready to get on our way when he began to
tell us about an art show at his nearby school.
At this point I was ready to leave when Gavin turned to me and said,
“Quiere nos dinero” as we had agreed to start using Spanish when we didn’t want
other people to know what we were saying (because NOBODY in China speaks
Spanish). This guy was trying to con us
westerners out of the money he thought we had and we weren’t buying it. Adios amigo, and we were on our way.
A couple hours
later, things got stranger while we were walking back down Tiananmen towards
some sights on the other end. No sooner
had we entered the square when a Chinese girl came up and started talking to
us. I largely ignored her as she talked
to Gavin in half-Chinese and half-English.
While this girl appeared to be 12-years old, she claimed she was 19 and
really could have been any age between 12 and 23.
After a while
we decided that she couldn’t be that young because she had followed us for a
really, really long time. She followed
us for so long that I started to wonder what her agenda was. Was she a con-artist? Was she a prostitute? Was she a distraction for somebody else to
pickpocket us? Was she merely a street
urchin? All of these questions raced
through my mind as Gavin continued to talk to her in a manner that quickly
moved from novelty to unease.
About 30
minutes after she started following us (after we had walked under two major
streets and a mile through a crowd of millions) her questions began to become
more personal. While she had started by
asking us the simple questions about where we came from and what we were doing
in China, by the time we had left Tiananmen Square she was asking Gavin if he
had a girlfriend and if he wanted to go and ‘play’ with her. Once we got to our destination, she was still
there blabbering away to Gavin as we snapped some photos and he asked me what
he should do to get rid of her.
“Dude, we just
gotta ignore her at this point. We
already said goodbye to her, we waved, we walked away from here. There’s nothing else we can do.” After another fifteen minutes of us just
talking to each other and pretending that this girl was not there, she finally
walked away (or lingered about fifteen feet away from us for an uncomfortably
long period of time). We don’t know if
she wanted anything from us, but she definitely walked away empty-handed.
***
One of the
coolest things about our brief period of travelling, however, was meeting other
westerners that were on their own adventures.
While hostel travelling allows you to meet a lot of interesting people,
hostelling in China heightens the experience because of how difficult it is for
young westerners to end up here. While
most hostels in Europe could be filled on any given weekend with Americans
studying abroad for a semester or Europeans on a brief getaway, most of the
people we met in China were long-term travelers that had been on the road for
several months, and were going to be travelling for several more months.
We met a
person who quit his job to drive from London to Ulaanbaatar (that’s Mongolia,
Julie) via Iran and Kazakhstan. We met
two guys that had been through South America, the Western US, Australia, Japan,
and Korea in the past six months, and still were heading towards Southeast Asia
and India in the next six months. We met
a student who was couchsurfing across the continent. We met some students that were studying abroad
and other English teachers; and everybody was friendly and wanted to talk to each
other because we were all westerners in a far away land.
Whether we
encountered them just walking across the Great Wall or in line at a Starbucks,
westerners were overly friendly at each stop we made and we always had people
to talk to about topics that ranged from why Bono is a douchebag to why
conspiracy theories are foolish (particularly the 9/11 ones). However, the thing we talked about most was
the one thing we had in common with all of these people, that is the sheer
ecstasy knowing that the tall bottles of Tsingtao we were drinking only cost us
about $0.30.
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