Part I.

Part II.

April 10 – Another beautiful day. Glenn and I bike to a Great Wall tour office across the street from a Kentucky Fried Chicken. No luck on tour information, and I succumb to the allure of the first fast-food restaurant I’ve seen in eight months. Y10 FEC for an Original Recipe feast. Sitting in a booth under the watchful eye of a Colonel Sanders portrait, I am struck by how Asian he looks. Is it my imagination, or has his bolo tie been replaced with a Mao jacket? Glenn the purist abstains from a fried chicken binge in favor of another back-alley Chinese place later on.

At the main railway station we buy our tickets to Guangzhou for Friday – Y120 each for a hard sleeper. The trip takes 36 hours. I can’t believe I’ll see Kathy in less than a week! If only we can find her institute…

Next stop: the CITS office to see about air fares to Urumqi and Kashgar. The cost from Xi’an all the way to Kashgar is about Y900 FEC – about $250.  But from there the bus to Pakistan shouldn’t be too much. If the border is open. But we’ll never find out unless we go!  The border is supposed to open on May l, but may be arbitrarily opened later, according to the guidebook.

Next stop, Pakistani embassy. We get visa applications and instructions to come back at 8 a.m. tomorrow. Then to the Indian embassy, where they suggest we apply in Hong Kong. Neither embassy gives any indication that getting a visa will take more than 2 or 3 days.

We bike to the Temple of Heaven. The sun is beginning to set behind the temple, a group of Chinese are doing Tai Chi. Old men sit together and talk, a father photographs his young son in a Red army uniform. The temple is looming and quiet, standing on what is surely the only hill in Beijing. Glenn and I sit on a bench, resting our bike-weary legs.

Dinner is at a small restaurant on our hotel street. We point at Chinese characters on the chalkboard menu, and hope we get something edible. Two of the three dishes are familiar, and we eat until we are full.

We meet a Brit who has been through India and Thailand and is now about to take the Trans-Siberian. We exchange information. He says we can get a flight from Calcutta to Bangkok for $120. Encouraging. He also says India is much cheaper than China.

Finally today I am able to buy travelers’ checks. I have been wearing $3200 in a pouch around my neck since we left Moscow, where at 2 p.m. on Friday I had been told I couldn’t get checks until Monday. My train left on the Saturday.

Back at the hotel, we have managed to get a triple – for Y20 less per night. I take the first hot shower I’ve had since Moscow. The communal bathrooms are horrible – slimy floors, clogged sinks. Squatter toilets also will take some getting used to.

April 11 – We set off on our bikes for the Pakistani embassy at 7:30 a.m., arrive at about 8:15, and wait until 9 for the consular officer to arrive. He is abrupt and clearly relishes the opportunity to exercise authority, but says the visas will be ready on Friday, free of charge.

After more morning errand-running, we have lunch in a small place with a big hole in the floor and bottles of Beijing Light Beer. Finally we start making our way to the Forbidden City. We’re sidetracked on the way by Jing Shan Park, overlooking the Forbidden City. Overlooking all of Beijing, actually. It’s basically a steep hill with pavilions on the top. The hill was made with the dirt dug from what is now the moat around the Forbidden City.

Okay. Now we finally make our way to the Forbidden City. We enter under the huge portrait of Mao to find vendors lining the courtyards. Soft drinks, teeshirts, ice cream, shoes, postcards, film – a plethora of modern conveniences. On the advice of a fellow traveler, we head for the Chinese line, where we pay Y12 RMB to get in, substantially less money than the foreigners’ entrance fee. A tape of Peter Ustinov describing everything is Y15, and we get one. The narrative is pompous but informative.

We make our way through about half of the city, and arrive at the gate to the other half in time to see the guards put up a sign: “No more visitors.” The entire section is closed from 3:30 onward, and our efforts at convincing them to let us in are futile. Disappointed and tired, we relax in the sun for a while before leaving.

We bike to the bakery across from the Chongwenmen Hotel and get some buns and ice cream cones. Then across to the hotel to ask about Great Wall tours. Y90 FEC (about $12) for a fully guided tour, or Y36 from a different hotel, the doorman discloses. But where, we persist, do Chinese go for their tours? Surely there’s a cheaper tour? He points to a small green shack on the corner. We go there with a note from him in Chinese that says: “We would like to buy 2 tickets to go to the Great Wall. What time should we be here tomorrow?” The woman at the window smiles and sells us 2 tickets for Y12 RMB each – a fraction of the price foreigners pay. She writes the number 8 on a slip of paper and we smile at her, meanwhile patting ourselves on the back.

We bike back to the hotel where I cut Glenn’s hair with Swiss Army knife scissors. He then treats himself to a session with the hotel masseur.

My clothes are pretty dirty. Glenn did his laundry 2 nights ago with lemon-scented dishwashing detergent, but I can’t decide whether it’s just preferable to be dirty. So far dirtiness/laziness is winning.

Today in the Jing Shan Park, I saw an inscription with an interesting phrase that can only be the Chinese euphemism for the Cultural Revolution: “the 10 year upheaval period.” And news from the USSR: l6 killed in rioting in Soviet Georgia when the army stormed into a demonstration with clubs.

April 12 – We leave on the Chinese tourbus at 8 a.m. for the Great Wall tour plus extra added attractions. We ride for about 90 minutes, then unload excitedly at destination #1: Great Wall souvenir stands. Rows of souvenirs hawked by Chinese shouting “Hallo, hallo!  Panda?  Teeshirt?” I succumb to the allure of a Y5 teeshirt and a Y7 pair of chopsticks. “Look, ivory! Hallo!  10 yuan, cheap!  Hallo!  Ivory!  Hallo!” We are accosted from all sides by Chinese who know all the basic English vocabulary except “No.”

Next stop: a small cafe, where everyone piles out, gets platefuls of rice and chicken livers, downs a bowl of eggdrop soup, spits a couple of times, and reboards.

We bus to the Ming Tombs, where the bus driver sells us tickets for twice the face price. We protest in the simplest English possible, to make sure he understands, but he gestures wildly and strings together nonsensical English phrases, finally ending up with “You lucky.” This he says over and over, until we start to feel oddly grateful for having been ripped off. We give up.

We wander a bit around the park area and look at the mountains on all sides. Everything is blooming, the noise of Beijing is far away, and the sun is beaming. Nature is infinitely more appealing than a museum with everything written in Chinese…

Finally the bus makes the 45-minute trek to the Wall. Even after seeing so many pictures, I am still struck by its size. It seems to lazily follow the contour of the mountains; a serene wall, there for aesthetics. But the thought of the slave labor that built it is sobering. The surroundings are beautiful. We wander a good ways up with Rick, an American on our tour bus who has been living in Thailand for a year and a half. We spend 2 hours walking, sitting, photographing, playing hackeysack on the wall.

I buy some quick souvenirs and some Chinese beer for the drive back. Glenn and I have a nice talk on the way. I am enjoying his company and getting to know him better as the days go by…

April 13 – Glenn and I sleep in for the first time in quite a while. We putter around, enjoying the morning, then head for the Friendship Store, where we buy a Herald Tribune and wait for Rick. The three of us set off for the Lama temple, said to be the most beautiful temple in Beijing. The architecture is actually much the same as in the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven, but many of the Buddhas inside are Mongolian. Most of the workers in the park wear traditional Mongolian dress.

In the first few halls, there are lots of Buddhas and tapestries and paintings of Buddhas. Many Chinese bow and pray, and light incense sticks as offering. Photographing inside the halls is forbidden, and the halls themselves are dimly lit, filled with incense smoke, very relaxing – almost meditative – until the tour groups come through with their guides carrying bullhorns and everybody discussing the BEAUTY of it all at about DOUBLE the necessary DECIBEL rate.

The last two halls contain towering Buddhas, the first a contented-looking gold-colored statue with strands of colored cloth draped across the arms, the second an even larger, standing Buddha, certainly the largest Buddha I’ve ever seen, extending up to the 3-story-high ceiling so that one can’t look at it too long before one’s neck is cramped. The statue is a huge wood carving and dust has settled majestically in the crook of its arm, in its extended palm, giving its contours a 3-dimensional look. The tour group makes its assault on the final temple, and we head for our bikes…

After the temple, we part ways with Rick, who gives us his address in Bangkok. We head for the long distance telephone building. I call Mom and Dad and wake them up at 4 am, but it’s a great conversation, once they’re relatively awake. I do most of the talking, telling them about Mongolia, Beijing, our plans for going through Pakistan, Glenn’s picture in the magazine. I tell them I’m happy and well, they tell me everyone at home is happy and well, and I hang up feeling happier and weller.

Glenn and I have another of our point-and-pray dinners. With menus entirely in Chinese, we point to something in the mid to lower price range and hope that the unreadable Chinese characters translate in something edible. So far we’ve been lucky. We now know how to say rice: “mee fan,” and beer: “peetyo” – two staples of our Beijing diet. We’re eating lots of pork, green peppers, garlic sprouts and onions, and so far everything has digested well.

We return to the Jing Tai, shower and are preparing to pack for our train to Guangzhou tomorrow when a blackout thwarts our plans. I relax in the darkness to the sounds of hotel workers sharing the latest gossip or discussing the situation in Namibia or quoting Keats; it’s impossible to tell which.