Big Brother

If I was to make a map of the relative strength of government influence on daily life in different areas of China, if would probably consist of concentric circles, radiating out from Beijing. There would also be a lot over Tibet, but that is a different story.  Bottom line, Beijing has a very, very different than Shanghai.

The first hint that we weren’t in Kansas came when we got to the hotel.  Up until this point, our first order of business when we get to a new place is to get on the internet and check facebook.  In Shanghai, this meant using a VPN, a virtual private network, which allows my computer to believe it is in Minnesota.  This is how most international students get around Chinese Internet censorship.  In Beijing, the government blocked our VPN.  No getting around censorship in Beijing.

We have been going through the same tour company for over 20 years.  20 years ago, there were only government owned tour companies.  So by extension, we are still working with a government tour company.  The old tour companies serve two purposes: show tourists the major sites, and make sure they don’t go anywhere else.  Although security has lightened up a great deal, there are still remnants of this mindset in the approach of our tour guide.

Bruce, our tour guide, acted more like our nanny.  Despite the fact that we told him that we did not want a wake up call (he asked), we got a wake up call two mornings in a row.  I am pretty sure that Marty got made at him for that, and after the second day we did not get a wake up call anymore.  Either out of concern for our weak western stomachs, or with the knowledge that he got some profit if we went to a restaurant that he organized, we were discouraged from eating street food, a suggestion we quickly ignored.  And none of us got sick, thank you very much. We were also actively kept away from the area of town with the universities, and kept us busy almost constantly.  By the time we had a free day at the end of our trip, we were all absolutely exhausted.

We were taken to a lot of government cultural shops, were the goods were three times the price as at a market and comparable quality.  They gave us presentation on how (insert product here) was made in a very, happy, quaint way.  Then they assured us about the quality of their products and took us into a large showroom.  Again, though he never said it, it was obvious that Bruce got a bonus if we bought something, and because of that encouraged us to buy. 

This is nothing new.  We went to a carpet factory in Turkey and a marble factory in India.  But before going to these places, we were assured by our tour guides that there was no pressure to buy, and that we were visiting mainly to see how these products were made.  It was also interesting, that the silk production we saw in Turkey and in India was much more gritty and in not as nice buildings as in China.  I am not suggesting that India and Turkey was worse.  On the contrary, it felt a lot less artificial.

Ill let you make your own judgments.  But to me, it all felt very artificial.  I am going to echo what Andrew said once we got to Korea.  If the most important when visiting a place, the thing that we will remember for years and tell our grandchildren about is the crazy things that we did, the culture that we experience and the people we meet, then most of Beijing was a complete waste of time.

I guess this is the point that I actually talk about what we did.  We started with Tiananmen Square.  We went to the Forbidden City, and after a fair bit of begging on my part, Bruce let me, Chaia and Heather walk around on our own (we had seen everything before, plus we talked about it in Art history class).  We saw the National Treasure briefly, and looked at some very ornate clocks.  Then we went to Temple of Heaven.  That evening we went to the Kung fu show, which had some very impressive martial arts, and a very cheesy plot. We spent a day at the Great Wall, which was super cold and windy, but really fun. Then we were at the Bird’s Nest where they were building a mini ski hill, and Water Cube, where we lost Marty for an hour.   The next day we spent at the Summer Palace, where Bruce got us out of paying 10 yuan to see a Buddhist temple.  We went to a Beijing Opera, but the main singer was only marking her part, not singing it properly.  Which was very disappointing.  We went to a government pearl store, a jade store, a silk store and a tea store.  On New Years, we had Peking Duck and went to an acrobatics show because we were uninvited to a fancy government party at the Great Wall.  We celebrated New Years in the Hodel’s room.  The next day we had free, and a few of us checked out a church nearby, then relaxed.  The next day we headed out.

I really don’t want to write more about Beijing.  I think it was my least favorite part of this trip, in part because I have done everything before, because it felt so fake, and because I never saw any part of the city that was not a tourist trap.

Good Night

Andrea