where's wolmut?: busted beijing

sorry mother nature

the forbidden city

laurel actually smiling while in beijing

sharp elbows lead to a solo shot at the forbidden city

emil says:
the forbidden city in beijing is dynamite. hiking along the great wall of china is extremely memorable. tiananmen square is historically relevant. there are numerous other culturally significant and super unique places to visit, particularly in comparison to industrial shanghai. still you can find a few decent spots in just about any city, but there just arent enough of them in beijing to make me want to stay another moment. its bleak, its nasty, miles and miles of concrete and an air so foul one cant actually see what the weather is like outside. the word smog probably comes from the words 'smoke and fog' but i think this is more like 'groke' a light grey omnipresent smoke. if you want to pollute back home just go for it, there is nothing that recycling one can or placing the right food scraps in the appropriately colored bin is going to do. It won't make one iota of difference in comparison to what is happening here in china. this is an environmental nightmare of a city and i cant even imagine what it looks like in the larger manufacturing areas in southern china. god help us. its just a tough place. folks are trying to survive. there is no sense of customer care or service because most of these people have never been in a position to be waited upon themselves, so how can you blame them (though laurel found a way). there is just nothing architecturally worth looking at. its pure grey high rises spotted by numerous malls. i don't know what they mean by middle class in china. we saw a few ferraris and a few mercedes and there was noticeably more wealth in beijing than in shanghai but i could see nothing of what we call 'middle class'. the best part of china was to my surprise how cool people were to us. i really was expecting something out of rocky 4 when at the end in the ring stallone says to the crowd of russians "you didnt like me much, and i didnt know what to feels about you so i didnt like you all much none either". the problem here lies in my ignorance as well as media coverage in the states when it comes to china. there are too many contradictory images. on one hand the economy is on fire, a capitalist machine that will likely be the worlds leading economy, and on the other hand a hard-lined closed communist run dictatorship state. one doesn't know whether to picutre pandas and pagodas or a totalitarian wasteland of environmental decay. its really hard to come up with a summation for our time in beijing. it really sucks to be in beijing and you really want to get out with only a portion of your lungs blackened, but there is something phenomenally arresting about the growth thats happening here so its just an incredibly intriguing place to me. whether you think the billions of poor can rise and one day find a decent life, or whether you think massive social unrest will unfold at the hands of incredible income disparity, or whether you think the environment will just implode in the face of the world's greatest industrial revolution or whether you think its a low-cost manufacturing powerhouse that cannot be stopped. china may be the land of opportunity right now, but if i had to live in this land you can keep your opportunity.

tiananmen square

laurel and mao

there will be no unrest at the square

a great day at the great wall

great wall meets wolmut

on the lookout for mongolian rivals

epically alone on the wall

still walking on the great wall

emil couldn't resist doing the running man

the perfect way to come down from the great wall...luge!!!

laurel says:

all the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey. and the streets are grey. and the air is grey. and life in beijing is just grey. it's big. it's dirty. and it ain't pretty. i found simply surviving beijing to be exhausting. at one point i laid my head down and when emil asked what i was doing i replied "i am pretending i am not in beijing anymore." just getting from point 'a' to point 'b' in this mega-city is a daunting and frustrating task. the city blocks are vegas sized and everything looks same same, making walking the streets feel like a forced death march. you can also forget taxis, even if you have your destination address written down in chinese the cab drivers are still baffled. in a city that's the size of belgium and growing at the speed of sound, i guess you can't really blame them for getting lost all the time. we quickly learned that the subway was bizarrely the most enjoyable way to navigate the city. and you better have a restaurant in mind for dinner. there is no strolling thru a neighborhood and popping in to a cute place in this town. acceptable dining options are very few and far between, but these are the prices one must pay to take in the magical historic sights beijing has to offer. and in fact our trip to the great wall was one of the highlights of our entire trip thus far. we took a car out to one of the distant and less visited sections, about 110 kilometers from the city, and had the wall nearly all to ourselves on a stunningly bright winter day. we walked for hours in the crisp mountain air, mesmerized by the scale and beauty of the wall. as mao said, it truly is a sight that everyone should see once in their lifetime...errr in his words, "he who does not reach the great wall is not a true man." and of course the forbidden city, tiananmen square, summer palace and temple of heaven are all tremendous. i am happy to have seen them, but i think i can safely say that china was a once in a lifetime experience for me.