Getting Lost

Around the neighborhood.

If you thought they weren't counting down...

Two kids I saw in Tian An Men pushing their grandfather around.

The fact that anyone would sell these blew my mind...

A square about three blocks from school, where people go to fly kites.

Today was pretty sunny, and the forecast looked good. So I decided to lose myself in Beijing and see if I could find my way home. Immediately after lunch I put 200 yuan worth of just-in-case money into my coat pocket and took off to see the city. I also packed a camera for good measure (see pictures above).

I zig zagged around the neighborhood and wandered into uncharted territory. I got a lot of weird looks, I have a feeling the end of town I was walking through doesn't see too many foreigners, let alone one walking about alone. I finally came upon a subway station and decided that I wanted to go poke around Tian An Men and see if I could find my way back to where I had stayed the first time I came to China. How hard could it be?

Well, first of all I got on a subway going the wrong direction. Luckily, the blue line just makes a loop, so instead of waiting two stops I got an extended tour of the Beijing underground. The subway was fun anyways. I asked a lady for the time, and she seemed really tickled that I spoke a proper question in Chinese.

After I had plenty of time to study the subway map, I found my way to Tian An Men. It looked pretty much the same, except I saw NO foreigners. My roommate explained to me the other day that during winter seeing foreign tourists is pretty rare. So I guess a big white girl walking around by herself taking all sorts of pictures seemed a little strange to some. But Tian An Men was crowded as always, so I pretended like I just blended in with everyone else.

The long and short of the rest of my trip is that I did find my way back into the happy little foreign tourist district, though I did not get as far as the first hotel I stayed at. I did find the kitschy market where Katherine, Eslynne and I bought all sorts of ridiculous souvenirs four years ago. Big mistake going in there, I got swarmed with people trying to sell me things in broken English. I told them in Chinese that I was actually Mexican, and then I made tracks. I did leave with one interesting piece of absolute junk however (see Saddam Hussein playing cards pictured above).

I made it home in one piece. There were moments today when I felt completely lost, but never completely scared. Walking around in one of the world's biggest cities with limited language skills and limited knowledge of my location was somewhat empowering. If I can get around Beijing after only a week, I'm not doing too badly.

In this way, and many others, being in China a second time has proved so incredibly different. But in my experience realizing that this is not a wonderland of red knots, firecrackers and kung pao chicken is pretty important. Knowing the language and what is really going on, makes me think about my interactions on a somewhat different level.