Lost In Translation

Yesterday we arrived in Beijing, China! With every country we go to, the weather gets worse. Thailand: 30 degrees. Korea: 16 degrees. Beijing: subzero. Yes, Beijing is colder than Hilter’s heart, but we still love it and the weather will only create fun memories. We will just have to bundle up, grab a green tea to go, and walk fast.

We are staying in a ritzy Holiday Inn in downtown Beijing. Before you call us high maintenance, know that we’re part of an English tour here which was booked through a Korean travel agency. It’s a nice change from the hostels and “winging it” mentality in Thailand. And since Lynae and I have our own hotel room, and therefore beds, it’s a great respite from sleeping on the floor of Meaghan and Kevin’s cramped studio apartment. No kidding, the hotel rooms are probably bigger than their apartment, and they are just an average size. Since English here is about as common as ethnic food in Sarnia, we haven’t regretted our decision to join a tour. We are here for 2 days until the tour starts to have some fun on our own.

Last night we had the laugh of the trip, and I must share because I have a hunch my fellow English speaking Canadian friends will find it just as humorous as we did. However, I'll have to try to post it tomorrow because of our sketchy hotel Internet connection. I need to do some HTML jigging to deliver the punchline and am having a hard time uploading files. (I told the hotel the Internet was barely usable and they blamed it on an earthquake in Taiwan. Hmmm...)

Today we explored the city as we froze our asses off. Highlights included a ride in a pedicab (see picture above) through the hutangs (old alleys) of Beijing where the locals live. They cram 35 people into a little shack. It's sad, really. There is no heat to be found from what we could see; going into shops required the full winter gear. Even the tea shop we visited to warm up also lacked heat, ironically enough. The language barrier is exceptionally tough here. We said, "tea", made sipping motions with our hands, and she nodded with a smile. She brought back a substance that looked like murkey, watery milk and said in very broken English: "Butter tea with salt." We almost spewed it everywhere. Rancid milk would have probably tasted better. It was awful and we practically shot it just to get some warmth to our bones.

We visited a park which had old Chinese buildings surrounding a frozen lake. We were the only white people there, and it seemed like a local hangout where the middle aged Chinese could express themselves. They were all around taking ballroom dancing lessons, dancing to poor quality stereos, and singing into cheap microphones attached to blown amps (the dancing was cute, but the singing was on par with the butter tea with salt). Why they do this in such cold weather is a mystery to us, but they seemed to be having fun. Meaghan and Lynae and I decided to join in on some dancers and within minutes there were a swarm of spectators around, laughing, pointing, and taking pictures of us. They thought it was quited funny and we had a good laugh as well. We got a video- I'm going to try to post some videos when we get back to Korea.

We enjoyed our day immensely. Kevin played hockey with the locals on a frozen pond. We ate green bean turnovers at McDonalds (apple was not available, but the green bean filling was delicious). Kevin dressed up as a real Chinaman. We saw the old Beijing (poor and run down) and the new (like a mini Times Square). We admired the culture and neat buildings everywhere and marvelled at the complicated Chinese writing everywhere. How on earth can that be a language?!

China a different place again, and just as cool as the others. We're glad to be here and are looking forward to more adventures.