where is she now?

A rollicking adventure in China would not be complete without a jouney through the country in sleeper class.

From the outside, 1.3 billion people is simply a statistic but from the inside, the enormity of chinas population colors everything. I think most of these people were at the west Beijing train station. Not before the station mind you when I needed to get there and all a taxi driver would do is point in a direction and motion for me to walk. Whether by skill or luck the couple I decided to follow from the metro station were going to the train station as well. At first I followed them because they were heading in the straight line the taxi driver indicated I should walk. Then I followed them because the neighborhood got sketchier and that helpful straight line logic was confounded by intersections and giant buildings in the way.
The train station was massive with dozens of arteries clogged by solid moving masses of people from every walk of life. I became one of these and moved with the flow, elbowing people back or holding my ground when congestion inevitably occurred.

Never have I been so greatful for squat toilets: I had the sneaking suspicion that the water sloshing noise from the otherside of the wall from my top tier bunk was a full waste tank. When finally I could hold back no longer from both curiosity and releasing my bladder, I found out that the water sloshy noise was the sink. The toilet is a squat across the cabin hall. Perhaps squat toilets or toilets in general while I travel do not phase me anymore because it was not the toilet arrangement that made me quessy. The squat at least had a running water dial to flood the compartment with water thereby flushing the unit. No, it was not the toilet that got to me. It was the contents of the clogged sink. I had found the place where commuting Chinese went to spit up China in gigantic, loud loegies. If I lived in a place so horrifically polluted, I would probably need to cough up and spit out china too. At least it’s centralized here because once outside, it’s anyones guess. The ground is spotted by spit and the noise of traffic interrupted by drivers and pedestrians hurling big ones en route.

My bed is 2.5 feet from the rounded top of a compartment of 6 beds. The compartment is open to a hall of little seats that fold out of the wall for passangers of a fare class below mine. The carriage is full and almost all are asleep. Luckily there are no snoorers yet. My bed is below the air vent that blows cold air which smells of earth and soil, and the intercom speaker that went off every 5 minutes for the first three hours. That toilet is beside me so the occasional stench greets me. The smoking section is also in this area beside the toilet but on the other side. So far there haven’t been any smokers which shocks me. This is China! everyone smokes by the packs every day!
The combination of train air and China air in general is leading me to make it a priority to buy and wear a surgeons mask. It may make locals laugh but the ones who wear them will understand me completely.

There are four classes of seats on Chinese trains: hard seat, soft seat, hard sleeper and soft sleeper. After hearing of peoples misadventures when they misordered or musunserstood the train system and ended up in hardcseat class – which is not a seat but an open compartment crowded with Chinese from all walks of life, all squished together standing – I opted for the hard sleeper class. The only real difference between a soft and hard sleeper is the half cost of the hard and the lack of reading lamp. Worth it just to lay horizontal.

My bed is up and away from my neighbors and directly across from the open storage rack where my bags sit. They seem secure if only because 12kilos of tied together bags would be incredibly painful to have land on you in a jolting train, not to mention loud. My bed has a sheet, a pillow and a duvet. All are unwashed with candy wrappers on the bed sides from a previous occupant or two ago. Rather than dirty my sleep sack I have opted to wash my already dirty clothes in Xian.
My neighbor across a bed and one down is a motherly lady who just nods and smiles to my “I’m sorry I don’t understand”. I made a friend of sorts with her and we shared my stash of ear plugs.

Early morning greeted me with a harsh pull of my blankets by the fare inspector. They come by twice to check that you have been cleared for your bed/seat. From my bunk I sat serenely watching the chaos unfold below me as people rushed and pushed to get off the train. From my perch with my legs crossed, hunched by the low ceiling clearance I must have looked funny because those Chinese who looked up either laughed or smiled at me. I made it a game where I was as much the spectacle as they were.

From the train depot I walked into predawn Xian. It was too early to tell and the recent rain might be affecting my senses but, if possible Xian is more polluted then Beijing. There is no sky, only predawn purple-brown haze settled into the streets like a low fog.

Traveling! Sent from my iPod

In every travellors trek there comes a point when they realize that they really need to start paying attention. It has occurred to me that I need to pay attention to China, because there are consequences for not paying attention.
China is massive in every way you can imagine: geographically, in population and in cultural differences from the West. It is a country of contridictions: progression and regression, order and control, tradition and abandonment.
I didn’t know what to expect when I arrived into Beijing. I had probably spent the most amount of time out of all I my months of travel planning, planning for China. This was necessary to apply for the expensive visa and to ease my mind for a culture I could not begin to understand from the comfort of my house in the States.
3785 miles from Abu Dhabi I arrived into an early morning Beijing. Passing through customs was easier than I had imagined after reading my Lonely Planets entry advice that went a little like this: be prepared to have this book confiscted upon entry. Guide books like lonely planet are not popular with the Chinese government for their awknoledgement of Taiwan as a soveriegn nation. I was therefore pleasantly surprised to enter China with no hassel and in under a third of the time it took to enter the UK (thank you London!).
Because I am a public transportation genius and a yuan-pincher, I opted out of the 100¥ taxi and hopped aboard the fancy airport train into Beijing proper. Part of me did this to shock the two Americans (16 year old and his mother I met in line for customs) and partly because after navigating the metros, trains and buses in the UK to Morocco to Turkey, I felt confident I could make it on my own. And I did. From the airport train I transferred to two local metro lines to get to the red walls of Tianamen Square. Like the gigantic awestriking appearance of the Roman Coloseum coming into view, so to did the sudden appearance of Tianaman Square shock me. There as I rose up from the underground and I could see the red walls of the square slowly come into view, I laughed out loud. Here I was in China. After trekking across four continents my feet had finally landed me in the iconic epicenter of thousands of years of a civiilization that probably ate on gold plates before my ancesters realized they could cook meat with fire. My feeling of awe did not last long when I remembered that I hadn’t slept in 32 hours. And that I was lost with a map in English, sign posts in Chinese and hundreds of people pushing me from all sides as I stood on the sidewalk with my mouth open.
The Chinese have no concept of personal space: on the trains into the city center people maxed out the capacity of the cars. People cut ahead of each other and pushed others in order to stand their nose to the sliding door and their back to the avalanche waiting to happen of coughing, spitting and sighing bodies. As I watched I was amazed by the lack of awareness people have for one another. My fellow train comrades were pushing through a sea of people as if there were no one around them. At first I was shy to this behavior but once I realized that I would be pushed out of the train I quickly became aggressive and barrelled (i was afterall wearing my backpack and a dayback so when I pushed, I barreled) my way to stand back to back with complete strangers.
Back at Tianaman Square this girl from Oregon was lost. The only directions to my hostel were get off at the 2b exit for Tian’man East and walk. “walk” as in propel yourself forward but not which direction or for how far. I had a map but this did not have my destination on it (a reoccuring issue as I will describe). So I started walking. On my mental map I knew I was staying on the eastern side of the Forbidden City. So I walked and I walked…and walked in a giant circle for 1.5 hours. When I stopped to ask directions no one could help me because no one spoke English or could read the romanized Chinese street name or even cared that an exhausted, stressed out, smelly foreign girl was passing by them twice to four times. In Turkey, if I was lost I would immediatly have a kind old Turkish man not only read my map but probably lead me to where I needed to go himself. In Morocco, I would have been surrounded (lost or not) by 10 boys all trying to lead me for a fee of course. But the Chinese? No one cares. Perhaps if I lived in a society with over 1 billion people I wouldn’t care about one more – and a foriegn one at that.
After this 1.5 hours of wandering I found a street on the map that I recognized. Aha! I thought! Maybe I won’t have to regret not paying for a taxi afterall!
30 minutes later I am still walking. Exhaustion was numbing my sensability because I did just what I intended not to do in China: not pay attention. I allowed a motor bike taxi man to lead me to his bike and take my only map into his hands which he smudged with his enthusiastic pointing. I had enough sense to ask how much the fare would be before we started (¥3) and relaxed as much as one could who is nearly hysterical with exhaustion. The ride was through the grey-
blue maze of hutongs encircling the Forbidden City at a pace that left me remeniscent to the jeep ride I had in Selcuk Turkey that left me gripping on or falling out onto the highway.
Within no time the driver had found the hostel. We park diagonal in the alley and he turns around and asks for money. I gave him 3¥ and he shouts what the hell to me in Chinese. I was tired yes but I am no stranger to haggling or even people shouting at me in languages I cannot understand. I pushed the money at him and he pushes a placard at me. The placard clearly states 300¥ for hotel transportation. So he demanded 300¥. I told him no in rapid English because not only did he mislead me but the ride was only 5 minutes long to a budget hostel that I probably could have still found on my own. My denial, exhaustion and lack of patiance combined with this man’s insistance and shouts was leafing to a situation that was quickly escalating out of control. When I tried to open the door to get out, the man puts his hand on my daypack trying to hold me there. I busted the door, threw the contents of my purse at him, removed his hand from my bag and nearly fell out of the bike cab onto the hutong stones. I shouted sorry without feeling and entered the hostel hoping he wouldn’t follow me inside. He didn’t.
A couple things about paying attention in China: final price negotiation is subjective and money is business and China is all business.
In my exhausted state I had the surprising forsight to wear my money belt for the first time in my world trek so what I emptied from my purse was 20¥ give or take, not all of the money from the last of my travellors checks.
As my last post details, I had to cash my checks giving me just enough money to eat and sleep for the three days it took to sort out my bank issues.
By the time I was able to sleep that night I had been up 46 hours. In that time I passed a state of exhaustion unknown to me before and this, combined with several cups of coffee and a long hot shower, propelled me for those 46 hours.
In my time at the hostel before I slept I met some cool travelors from the States and the Netherlands. Together we gorged ourselves on Chinese hot pot, beer, street candy and stories. Ending my first day in China on a good note and a new healthy awareness for the importance of paying attention in China.

Traveling! Sent from my iPod

When you travel anything can happen! I’ve guarded my passport, travellors checks and cards with my life yet I have managed to fall into my spacey habits of home by losing my debit card in an ATM in Canakkale, Turkey. Definitely a low point. High point? Sitting on the porch of the Pamukkale bus station with a empathizing Jodi and an old Turkish man who hummed in the twilight haze while I devoured an entire chocolate pistaccio bar as a hysterical numbness set in.

I am trying to envision myself in China without my debit card and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. It’s a thin line that seperates tragedy from farce.

I am in China now, Beijing to be exact. I will double back to illustrate my adventures getting to, arriving in and around Beijing shortly. Right now let’s talk about my fiasco número dos (getting stuck in Morocco being the first).

I arrived in Beijing on the 25th. I have been here three days and haven’t seen anything. One of these days was spent in the American Embassy, another was spent emailing every one I could in a panic to reach my mother and my bank without access to a phone or skype.
From the embassy, things were starting to come together. I was able to get a power of attorney notarized for my mother to sort this out on my behalf. Then I was able to reach my friend in Hawaii at 5am her time to call my mother and tell her to check her email.
I cashed all of my travellors checks in Istanbul, bought USD and then exchanged that to RMB to pay for my hostel and food in Beijing for three days. So I had three days only to sort out my accounts. Things went so well with the embassy on the 26th that I was optimistic about this whole affair.
(I would like to note that the American Embassy in Beijing is not where Google Maps indicates. It is in fact in the new city about 6 miles or a 20rmb ride away. I only went to 7 embassies before I found the UK one who was then able to explain this to me).
With my mothers attention then on my emails we were able to email message each other back and forth. From the States she was able to call my bank – local, national and credit subcompany and describe the experience to me. While she did her best and found out a lot, she couldn’t resolve this situation. What information she could gather was hypothtical (“if your daughter is in china with this issue…”). The main reason why she couldn’t do much was because the bank would now not accept a power of attorney issued by the Beijing Embassy. The bank also concluded from my mother that I am a financial risk so they would not release my account to me in China. This meant I could not transfer money in or out of my account. I also could not withdraw unless I wanted to withdraw from my credit card which would compound crippling interest daily. The credit card subcompany was less helpful and refused to waive the interest fees in this emergency. This was great to hear considering the bank proper refused to waive the foreign withdrawl fee too. My only option was max out my credit card or return to the States two months early to go in person to my bank.

Today is the 27th and I had the equivalent of 4 USD in my possesion and one more nights accomedation paid for. As china is strictly a cash economy, I was in deep shiznit. Today I gritted my teeth and took my credit card to the bank.
The bank wouldn’t take it. I was then referred to the national Bank of China who I was told would. This bank is the only one I have seen that operates the ATM machines attached to their offices (others don’t which makes the installation of such machines completely ridiculous). So I used the AtM at the Bank of China. It wouldn’t accept my card. In badly translated English it informed me that my access codes were wrong. The bank proper was closed.
At this point this morning I wanted to lay in the middle of congested Beijing traffic and die. Dramatic I know but I was desperate and distraught by the constant wave of incoming obstacles.
On my way back to the hostel I tried every pay phone that I could find and only one would make the international collect call to the credit card company. This one gave me a busy signal. I was infuriated. Needless to say when I got to the hostel and was told again that they wouldn’t let me use their phone or download iTunes onto their computer so I can use that to download skype onto my iPod, I yelled. I yelled and nearly cried to the shocked hostel staff. But I got the phone. And then I called the number and yelled at the operator until she got her manager. I later apologized but it was necessary – being nice only gets you so far and in china and in business, it gets you nowhere.

To conclude this message that makes me angry all over again to type out, I was able to sort out the access on my credit card to withdraw the value of all of my money at the bank of china. I am now the relieved owner of thousands of Chinese yuan strapped around my stomach which will not leave me even to sleep. I am also the delighted patron of the US credit companies compounding daily interest policies. Sense my dark sarcasm because this message and my mood is dripping with it.

So here’s to my first afternoon in Beijing. I am finally off to see the Forbidden Palace that’s 3 or 4 hutungs away from me.

Special note to my real life facebook friends: Facebook is tagged in the Chinese firewall. This means that I cannot access my facebook until May when I get to Japan. Please stop sending me messages.

Traveling! Sent from my iPod