I stepped back outside trying to look like I knew where I was going. I saw a number of white college students getting into a van and decided to see where they were going.
“Hey, you guys part of a tour?” I could feel how pale my face was and sense my own quivering voice.
“We’re studying at the University.” It was a skinny blond American kid who replied . The rest were loading their bags in the van. “What about you?”
“Well, I’m not real sure. I just sort of got on the plane and am not sure what to do now. How far is Beijing from here?”
“I don’t know, let me ask the teacher…hey, what do you mean you just got on the plane…didn’t you know what you’d be doing here?” The kid had a weird expression on his face. I swallowed and shifted my fedora to the back of my head.
“It was sort of a sudden decision and now I feel…well, I feel sort of lost. It’s a real weird feeling. I guess this is what they call culture shock.” I swallowed and tried to look carefree.
Several of the other students were gathered around now. They listened and one pretty hippie girl turned to a Chinese man who was helping them load their bags.
“This is our teacher,” she told me “Maybe he can help you.”
I began to feel very uncomfortable, too much attention. “All I really need to know is where to catch the bus that takes me to Beijing, I mean Peking.”
The girl laughed “Everybody calls it Beijing now. You catch the bus right over there. It should be about 15 yuan.”
“Uh, thanks,” I said. I started to walk away but the boy stopped me.
“Hey, you can take this guidebook and map I brought with me, I don’t think I’ll need it as much as you.” He held out one of the fancy Berlitz City packs. I took it and said thanks and then attempted a halfheartedly brave “See you in the city sometime,” and walked back inside the airport to look at the map.
It looked like the airport was a good distance from the city. I waited hoping the strange tight feeling in my guts would disappear, but when it didn’t I grabbed my pack, walked outside, and got on the bus handing the 15 yuan to the Chinese girl who was taking fares.
I was still lost but it felt better to be heading somewhere, anywhere. I didn’t know where to stop and look for a hotel, I didn’t want to pull out the map and announce how lost I was to everyone, so I looked out the window at the ox pulled carts and giant fields of rice. It was like I’d stepped into some movie, except I was here.
I decided to get off at the third stop once the bus reached the city. Beijing has more than 15 million people and there was just as much chance I’d find a hotel at the third stop as the first or the thirtieth.
The third stop came and I stepped off. The light was bright to my eyes. The buildings were so tall. It was bright, but the February day was cold. I bought a pair of sunglasses for 10 yuan and looked at myself in giant windowpane reflections for nearly a quarter hour before I realized I’d bought bright purple glasses with huge rims.
I took them off and braved the light. Fancy hotels loomed several blocks ahead and I made my way towards them trying to figure out where Tienanmen Square was. I stopped in a small public space and pulled out a map.
Two of the millions of Chinese men in suits noticed me and came to assist. They spoke no English and my Chinese was limited to “Ni hao” so not much was accomplished except I had my first encounter with the typically messy haired, dark suited, cigarette smoking, Chinese worker and lost some of my fear of being mugged or kidnapped.
The two guys were great. They looked at the map, they pointed, they laughed, but finally I had to just pretend I got it and walk away towards the big hotels.
I checked the price on the first two and they were about $100 US per night. Way beyond my budget. I figured I would spend $50 the first night. I finally found a room at the Jinghua Gardens Hotel for 400 yuan (exchange at the time was about eight yuan for one US dollar), exactly my price. It was a plush place. I quickly locked myself in my room and dug out the Lonely Planet and the Berlitz City pack to determine where I was and what I would do next.
I looked out the window for landmarks but only saw tarp covered ruins right below my room. A moment’s looking showed that the ruins were fully inhabited. I took off my coat and then searched the desk drawers for stationary with the address on it. Having found that I used the Berlitz map to determine that I’d found a hotel just a half mile east of Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City.
Climbing the Great Wall
The sun had yet to rise, but the pre dawn light was bright enough to show thousands of people doing Tai Chi exercises in an eerie slow motion. I wanted to join them, to practice the Tai Chi with them.
Instead I watched while a small fear inside me told me again and again that I needed a private space to concentrate. I recognized the fear for what it was. I just didn’t do anything about it. And so, more and more days went by without me doing my exercises because I couldn’t find a place where no one was watching me. After all, this was China, and I was a white foreigner. Everyone watched me.
The line of reasoning made me laugh as I looked out at people of all ages moving slowly. Some had swords, some had brooms, and some simply walked backwards with careful precision in an attempt to shed some of the negative karma they had gathered by walking forward in life each day. This was the last place that I should feel shy about doing Tai Chi, but I didn’t want to be a spectacle. The Chinese stared at me enough without giving them any special reason.
It was disconcerting those first few days. The way people had simply stared at me as if I were some sort of ghost. After the first score of encounters I recognized a word that seemed to indicate me “Lao-wai.” The Chinese would stare, one in the group would sing song “Lao-wai” and the rest would laugh, while continuing to stare at me. The word seemed to hold a certain contempt. Most of the actions of the Chinese towards me, in fact, seemed to hold that same contempt.
As the sky lightened, the benevolent face of Chairman Mao looked down upon the people from where it was painted on the outer wall of the Forbidden City. A soldier appeared next to me and indicated that I should move to an area a good distance away. I didn’t ask any questions, taking the order from the tall youth in a perfect uniform.
I had heard that the soldiers in Beijing had to be six foot or taller. I’d wondered where they found so many tall Chinese, but it seemed they grew em big in the north. The regulation seemed to accomplish its purpose, because as a visitor, I was impressed and intimidated by the physical size of the military. I’d thought I might be tall in China, or at least average height. Not in Beijing.
A flag platoon marched out with perfect timing and precision. Other soldiers pushed and prodded a select group of lucky civilians into a platoon position of their own. The civilians squirmed and wiggled in undisciplined contrast to the soldiers as the Chinese national anthem began and the flag was slowly raised. It was easy to believe that China was the master of the world as the ceremony unfolded in the city of giants.
A giant flag, on a giant pole, raised by giant soldiers in a square of nearly a mile, surrounded by giant gates, temples, buildings, and more than 15 million people. The thousands of people doing their exercises stood at attention while the flag was raised. A final burst of martial majesty ended the daily proclamation of Chinese greatness and the daily business of making money began.