China - Day 1 - Wednesday

We arrived at the Beijing Airport around 9pm. The facility was very modern and clean. There was hardly anyone else there so we quickly cleared customs. We exited the nice clean airport to the chaos of jackhammers, smog everywhere and the queued at the Taxi stand.

Our Taxi driver was a bit pokey and I was surprised that I could carry on a very simple conversation with him. I graduated in Chinese history and lived in Taiwan twice and so I have a basic understanding of Chinese, but its been over 10 years since I spoke it at all. I had meant to buy a phrase book and listen to some language mp3's prior to heading over, but never got around to it. The ride in took 35 minutes or so and the highway's were large and wide, you can tell they are preparing for the Olympics. Huge swaths of old Beijing were leveled. We checked in at our hotel : Swissôtel Beijing, and were all upgraded to an apartment for the same rate. Tom and I had a drink in the bar to close out the day (my fresh OJ to his Chinese beer) and fell into bed exhausted.

China - Day 2 - Thursday

I woke up at 5:15 am and got online for a bit before showering and heading downstairs to grab a taxi to head to Tiananmen Square. My Taxi dropped me off at QianMen Station, I wandered around trying to figure out how to cross the street (they streets around Tiananmen are huge, everything is on a scale that is hard to imagine and there are no crosswalks) till I found underground street crossing. Unfortunately the square was closed, everything was blocked off and there were policemen everywhere. I tried to figure out why from one policeman but couldn't understand what he was saying. So I thought I would walk along the edge of the square on the outside of the fence, a policeman told me that wasn't allowed and so I crossed the street and walked along the square on the opposite side of the street. I ran into a bunch of street hawkers and they were annoying, really really really pushing me to buy kites, or Mao watches or a Mao phrases book. I kept telling him no, but he wasn't getting it. Finally in Chinese, I said "What did I just say, I don't want it!" and he left me alone. A little further on and the had even the sidewalk and road blocked off. So I turned around and flagged another Taxi down.

A year ago or so I purchased the book Wild Grass: Three Stories of Change in Modern China. I graduated in modern Chinese history and hadn't done a lot to keep up on developments in the late 90's and early 2000s. This was a great book that opened a window on some of the struggles in China by individuals attempting to assert rights and the rule of law against the government and the courts. One of the tales centers on the destruction of entire neighborhoods in old Beijing, condemned as dilapidated these 200-400 year old homes were destroyed, individuals given meagerly compensation and forced to relocate to high rises on the outskirts of the city. Local governments in turn re-sold the land to developers at huge profits. I had my Taxi driver drop me off at one of the sections described in the book near QianHai Lake. I wandered down the old hutongs, sometimes coming across sections that were torn down. Entrances to courtyards were all closed, and I could only glimpse the trees growing out of the interior. Narrow walkways without doors led to interior sections that had been carved out of the traditional homes over the years, stacks of tiles, and detritus and bicycles lay everywhere. Many of the hutongs prohibited cars and most of the traffic was by bicycle. I was out early and I passed an elementary school, just like in the states, there were teachers outside greeting students, many who were dropped off by parents carrying them on the backs of their bicycles. I wandered in and out of the hutongs for about an hour crossing over a couple of major boulevards before catching a Taxi back to the hotel.

We spent Thursday meeting with the retail and transportation teams at the Joyo office explaining Fulfillment By Amazon. After work before dinner Ron Knapp (on an extended visit in Beijing) took Joe, Tom and myself to the nearby Silk Market, a 7 story building crammed with shops of every variety, selling goods to hundreds of foreigners. Many of the items were clearly knock off replicas, Jomn Deere instead of John Deere. I examined a Mountain Hardware light weight shell that was pretty good quality except for the velcro straps at the sleeves that were way too large, thick and clumsy. The vendors were either annoying or hilarious depending on your attitude and their persistence. Many of them would insistently tug at your sleeves to have a look at their products as you walked by. When you showed interest, they swarmed on you with immediate friendliness. I had a lot of fun bartering and spent a lot of time laughing at them, the one time they were annoying was in a shop where I had three girls try to hold on to me when I tried to leave their store. I had one grab either arm and one grabbed my camera strap, they wanted me to look more at their shirts. They knew all the tricks, they would compliment ("Your Chinese is so good", or "How old are you, 39 no, you look 30, your very handsome" and fawn over you. As you bartered with them they pulled incredulous or hurt faces when you offered low prices. "Your from America, I know you can pay more" or "Just a little bit higher" as you would walk away they would say "Ok whats your bottom lowest price" or "Whats your final price". The tactic suggested by Ron Knapp was to counter their offer with 10% and he said he usually ended up paying 30% of the asking price. I even had several want me to give them 10 RMB more after the sale so they could "buy coffee or get some food". I made the mistake of saying dollar to one girl vs. the Chinese word for money (qian) and she was very upset when we couldn't come to an agreed upon price because she was expecting 7 times what I was offering her. I eventually bought 4 pairs of shoes, two for Miles and two for Sofi. And from another vendor I bought 5 shirts for Kiah. They all spoke pretty good selling English, and it was amazing to see them do the same routine in Spanish or Russian to the other foreign nationals.

We all went to dinner with several Joyo employees to a restaurant famous for its dumplings and Peking Duck. The dumplings were delicious, very fresh and tasty. The duck was so so, I thought I had tasted better in China Town in San Francisco. I was very tired at dinner, from my early start and I shut down pretty quickly. Finally we made our way home where I was exhausted, but I forgot I didn't have any clean clothes. They had upgraded me to an apartment, that had a washer but the first night when I called housekeeping to ask for laundry soap, at first they thought I wanted laundry service and eventually they brought me two bars of hand soap. I had forgot to buy laundry detergent when I was out and so now I was stuck with no clean pants and no soap. I called the front desk and explained to them how I didn't want laundry service but laundry soap, they transfered me to housekeeping where I went through the same routine insisting on laundry soap and the housekeeping lady delivered me another two bars of soap. I had her come into the apartment and I showed here the washer and explained how I wanted laundry soap, she said they didn't have any and said she could take my clothes and I could get them tomorrow. That wasn't going to work, so I asked here again if she had any laundry soap, no she said, but maybe you could use shampoo. So... thats what I did, I went and got some shampoo and poured it in the washer and after reading the English descriptions of the buttons which were labeled in Chinese I started a load of laundry. It was supposed take an hour, and while I was exhausted I had to wait so I could try to get something dry for in the morning. I feel asleep on the couch waiting and when it was finally done, I sped up the spinning (the manual called it the "drawing out water" cycle) and the door wouldn't open. Arrgghhh, I had to consult the manual again to see I had to wait 2 minutes. I spread the clothes on chairs and tables knowing they would eventually dry, but the thing I really needed was a pair of dry jeans. I set about making myself a make shift dryer. I went to the bathroom and took the shower head, which had a flexible metal tube that I was able to stretch over the far side of the shower, I draped the jeans across them, got out the hair dryer and turned it on and propped it inside the shower and closed the door, hoping I would have a dry pair of pants in the morning.

China - Day 3 - Friday

I slept in a bit this morning, I woke around 6:45 am and my pants were dry! I quickly showered and met Tom, Joe and Kevin for breakfast downstairs after which we went outside to meet our driver who would take us to visit Joyo's Fulfillment Center for Beijing. It was located around 30 minutes away, on the outskirts of Beijing. Seemed like it was in the middle of nowhere. We turned down a dirty street with row after row of warehouses, some stocking rice and others just washing machines. Joyo's had 50 bikes or so outside and we toured the facility. The security at the door was rather amusing. They were very young. All wore "official" looking coats and a hat, which seems to be all that is required to give an aura of authority in China, you see the same pattern at each gate or guarded entrance. They handed all of us laminated security guidelines written in Chinese for us to read. They made us take off our watches and leave them at the front to ensure that they were ours, versus something we would steal in the fulfillment center (FC). They also wanted to take our wedding rings, but Kevin refused them, as well as our phones and blackberries since they didn't carry them in the FC. While we were standing there, they had several pickers who left the building and a security guard patted them down and wanded them as they left to ensure they weren't stealing. After touring the site we returned to the Joyo offices for more meetings in the afternoon. In the evening we caught a cab back to the hotel to drop off our bags and we decided to take the subway to Tiananmen Square to walk around for a bit before dinner. The subway was extremely crowded, we crammed onto one train and when we didn't think we could fit any more 6 more people crowded in. Tom towered over everyone and many people commented on how tall he was. We arrived just in time to witness the retiring of the national flag by the military, even though we were on the Forbidden City side of Tiananmen and had a very large street between us and the ceremony. Afterwards we decided to wander through the Forbidden City, even though it was dusk. Entrance tickets cost us 2 RMB, or about .28 cents. We wandered through the cyprus forest in the Working People's Cultural Palace to the interior were the main entrance or the Gate of Supreme Harmony stood, we couldn't go further in the Forbidden city because it was closed and we couldn't walk back out through the central corridor and the main gate. We took a few photos and watched the military march off to the barracks I suppose, chanting while they went. We wandered back out to try to go onto Tiananmen Square itself and they had closed it for the evening, I was foiled again a second time so we walked adjacent to the square to the opposite end of the square where we caught a cab to meet Long Wong and his wife for dinner at Tian Di Yi Jia. The setting was beautiful, tastefully decorated with simple and elegant design. The food was delicious and savory. I ordered the beef rolls, which was a fancy version of a dish I used to buy from street vendors in Taiwan many years ago. Long's wife works for Caijing magazine, it was interesting to hear her perspective on recent events in China. Around 10pm we said good night, caught a cab and made our way home.

China - Day 4 - Saturday

I was able to sleep in a bit on Saturday, I woke up and got on line a bit chatting with Stac and working on email, pictures and this blog. I met Tom and Joe for breakfast downstairs at 7:30 and we met our driver outside at 8, we were off for Simatai by around 8:30 am. Its about 120 km north east of Beijing. We drove on a new expressway that was 4 lanes wide in each direction, it was amazing how empty it was, our driver said it was because it was a new road. Around 70 km to go we exited the freeway and began heading north on a two lane highway that would depending on the traffic often balloon to 4 lanes as cars passed on the right or left. Targets to be passed were tiny mini vans, small 3 wheeled tractors or hug slow lorries that hauled enormous covered piles of goods. We arrived at Simatai and drove on past to the Jin Shan Ling section of the wall. Our driver dropped us off and told us he would wait for us in Simatai. We paid 30 RMB to enter and walked up a 1km road to the wall, we passed a cable car that went to the highest point on the way, we opted to walk to a spot further along the wall. Along the way we passed a sign for toilets and each used the "facilities" in what was clearly a traditional Chinese toilet. A series of very shallow pit toilets with very low 3ft divider walls separating them. Turning the corner and seeing a Chinese man squatting taking care of business was a bit of a shock. :) After continuing up the road, we were joined by three friendly smiling women. Having read others reports of the wall I knew that in the bags they were carrying was merchandise they hoped to sell us. I told them in Chinese that we weren't interested in buying anything, they continued to insist until I firmly told them no. We must have been earlier than most tourists as these ladies were still down near the entrance, we saw them later up on the wall.

We finally arrived at our entrance to the wall, which snaked out along the mountain tops in either direction. There are a great many myths regarding the Great Wall. The first is that this wall was built by Qin, the first emperor to unite all of China. The Qin wall was actually built in a completely different location from tamped earth, which tends to be hard to maintain and deteriorate rapidly. The second is that the wall is the only man made structure that can be seen from outer space by the naked eye. Reports vary on this fact, China's own astronaut, Yang Liwei, said he couldn’t see the historic structure, later in 2004 photos taken by Leroy Chiao from the International Space Station were determined to show small sections of the wall in Inner Mongolia about 200 miles north of Beijing. The photo was taken with a 180mm lens and a digital camera last Nov. 24, it was the first confirmed photo of the wall. Chaio himself said he didn't see the wall and wasn't sure if the photo showed it. Kamlesh P. Lulla, NASA's chief scientist for Earth observation at Johnson Space Center in Houston said : "In fact, it is very, very difficult to distinguish the Great Wall of China in astronaut photography, because the materials that were used in the wall are similar in color and texture to the materials of the land surrounding the wall -- the dirt." The third and final myth about the wall is that it is a single contiguous wall that runs for 4000 miles, there are many places where the wall disappears, and its not all part of the same wall built at the same time. Construction of various sections were carried out at various times. However, the wall was largely built during the Ming Dynasty (1300 - 1650s), and was never really an effective defense deterrent. When the Qing dynasty toppled the Ming they just bribed the disenchanted border guards to let them pass.

Our journey along the wall began in on the Jin Shang Ling section, which was rebuilt in 1567 and has had a lot of recent attention. Where we began from the entire wall, fortifications and towers were all complete. We walked a 10.5 km section of the wall that traveled over 5 passes and 67 towers. Along the way the wall went from great condition to very deteriorated. There were long easy stretches and many steep steep sections as well. We were lucky enough to have blue sky and the weather was warm. It felt good to breath clean air after the smog of Beijing, I think all the huffing and puffing cleaned out my lungs and got rid of a persistent cough and tickle in my throat I had since we arrived in the grey smog of Beijing. We had several hawkers follow us for a couple of kilometers, even though when we first met them I told them we weren't interested in buying anything. They assured me that they were just up here hiking and that 3 of their friends had hurried up ahead and she was just going a little slower. At many of the towers they sat with their display of water, Coke and beer the three universal drinks. I was amazed by the beauty of the wall and awed when we reached an obvious old section of the wall where the bricks that were stamped with characters showing which brick factory they had been produced from. They were stamped from the time of 6 years after Emperor Wan Li the last of the Ming Dynasty, not something ever get to see in the states.

When we finally reached the point were we could see a juncture in wall where a small river ran, we wondered if we had reached our destination. We had to pay another 40 RMB as we entered the Simatai section and then another 5 RMB to cross a suspension bridge. we climbed the steep stairs up to the road and found that we were at the road to Simatai. We were a bit worried because the very steep section of Simatai wall snaked up to a razors ridge edge above us. It probably took us around 3 1/2 hours to make the trek with a 20 minute lunch break. We now had to walk down the road to Simatai, when we saw a sign saying we could take the Flying Fox down. We turned the corner and saw the zip line, it was 35 RMB (around $5), Joe said he'd do it if I would, I agreed and I think Tom went along cause he had no choice. I had Joe go first, just to make sure it was safe and all. After fixing each of us to our harness, one at a time the ladies clipped us into the line and we zoomed down across the small reservoir to the other side at the bottom of the line. Joe went and survived, Tom went next and when he "sat down" as the women instructed he hit his but against the platform, probably didn't account for the weight of his 6 ft 4 frame. I went last and zipped down to the bottom. We walked along a ditch till we came out near a small restaurant. We went in and Joe and Tom ordered a beer and I ordered a lemon juice, Tom got one as well. Their beer came quickly and I waited, a bit later the waitress brought out a tall glass of steaming hot lemonade. Not what I was hoping for, since I was hot, sweaty and thirsty, but it was probably good for my voice which was a bit hoarse. I convinced the waitress to call our driver's cell phone and tell him where we were, he drove up and we hoped in and made the trip back to Beijing where everyone caught a little shut eye.

Back at the hotel we showered and met in the lobby at 6:30 to head out for dinner. Joe had asked the concierge for a recommendation, and had a Hot Pot suggestion, I asked for some place that served good Chinese food. Each of us had a small map on a card with basic direction to walk, we decided on just Chinese and set off down the road. The scale is very hard to visualize, there are notations of "blocks", but the streets are so huge without many traditional intersections, with few true left turns, but merging side lanes that its easy to loose the sense of scale. We wandered down the road for 15 minutes past endless buildings in various states of construction till we had passed what we thought should have been the location. Finding nothing we turned left and walked another block, nothing was looking promising. We went into one place that had swings, but it had pretty cheap and kind of nasty looking dishes, so we wandered back to another place that had people in it. We got off the elevator on the 2nd floor to a crowded room of people waiting, the name was Hans Beer Garden and Southern BBQ, we decided to pass. Finally we resigned ourselves to returning to eat in the hotel and made our way back. Along the way we decided to check out a coffee shop we had passed before, we went inside the restaurant where many people were having hot pots of sorts but the smell was a bit over powering and so we exited and kept going in the direction of the hotel. I think I finally figured out that he had given us the name of a street not a restaurant and so we decided to give it one more shot and turned down an alley to a building with a large plaza advertising a restaurant names Southern Beauty. We entered the lobby and made our way to the second floor upon examining the menu we finally had found a place to eat after wandering around for 45 minutes, which would have been fine had we not already walked for 4 hours earlier in the day. The place had a huge menu with over a hundred items of every variety, from simmer duck tongue to roast pig intestines and boiled duck blood. I ordered some sweet corn fritters and some spicy chicken with peanuts. Joe ordered some rice in lettuce cups and some fried rice wrapped in banana leaf and Tom ordered some scallops. It was very tasty and cheap, the entire meal with drinks came to around $32 US. We chatted for a while and went back to the hotel to go to bed. I decided to stay up as long as I could in hopes I could sleep on the flight home. I downloaded all the photos from our trip to the Great wall, posted a bunch of pictures, did some email, chatted with Stac and packed. I laid everything out for in the morning and planned on getting up at 5:45 to head out, I feel asleep at around 2 am.

China - Day 5 - Sunday

Sunday I slept through both alarms on my watch at 5:45 and woke up at around 7:15. I hoped up showered, posted a few more of the Great wall photos and hopped in a taxi and headed for Pan Jia Yuan, the dirt market in Beijing that was open on the weekends and chock full of shops and stalls of endless variety. Well actually there was variety, but also a lot of similarities as well. I was impressed with the huge section of Chinese statues. I had a fun time bartering again, this time avoiding the mistakes from before. I ended up purchasing enough that I had to buy a cheap bag to stuff everything in. I left the market at around 10:45 and grabbed an unofficial gray market taxi driver. I told him I need to get quickly to the airport, he said it would be around 150 RMB, I didn't feel like bargaining any more and said ok. He seemed pretty excited to have gotten an airport fare, he rolled down the window and excitedly told a couple of other drivers he was going to the airport. Along the way I told him I was tired cause I had gone hiking on the great wall the day before, he enterprisingly asked how many people went and what it cost, he told me next time I came to Beijing to look him up cause he would be cheaper. I got to the airport around 11:15 and had to wait in line to clear customs, that didn't take too long and was uneventful. Then a longer line at United to check my bag, since I now had a new carry on full of clothes. Then an even longer line to go through immigration. While in line about 10 people before passing through immigration and leaving China I finished Wild Grass: Three Stories of Change in Modern China. After immigration I had to get in another line to clear security. Because I was an American and due to the USA's more stringent security policies I got to go to a shorter security line. Finally I was in the airport and I hurried to the gate where I stood in my last line before boarding the plan. Whew, I made it with 20 minutes to spare. I can't wait to get home and see my wife and kids, I have missed them so.