Haggle Like a Fiend: Christmas in China

"Haggle like a fiend," some very good advice I received from the Lonely Planet Book:China. From December 23nd to December 30th, Andrew and I spent our first Christmas away from home in Beijing, China.

December 23rd: We arrived in China and the first thing we noticed was the amount of smog. I have read about pollution issues in China but even the airport was foggy! Very quickly the pollution issue took a backseat to the unbelievable cold winds that hit us the second we got into the taxi that would take us to our hotel. We arrived in the evening so we didn't get a chance to see very much on the ride in...but we were very excited none-the-less. When we arrived at the hotel the taxi meter said 52 Yuan, so that's what I paid him as Andrew was getting the bags out of the trunk. He kept pointing to a 10 Yuan all while speaking really fast Chinese (like I could even understand slow Chinese) and wanted me to pay more. Being stubborn...especially when it comes to spending money, I said 'NO' and pointed to the meter. Andrew just stood outside, he didn't bother to get back in and help me, so I was sitting in the stupid cab arguing in English while he spoke Chinese. Going nowhere...I began to get flustered and a woman from the hotel came over and said sometimes they make you pay 10 Yuan more for gas...I was like that's crap but whatever...here is your undeserving 62 Yuan and we walked into the hotel to check it. Needless to say...I wasn't speaking to Andrew and made him carry the bags.

December 24th: Being that we were in China for the first time, Andrew and I were very excited to begin our explorations. Before we left, like a big dork, I tabbed all the places I wanted to see in the Lonely Planet book that Andrew's dad had sent us (thanks again) so that we didn't have to research so much while in Beijing.

We began at the Forbidden City. Built in 1406-1420, the Imperial Palace was the permanent residence of the emperors of the Ming and Qing Dynasties and it wasn't until recently that the public has been allowed to tour it. The Imperial Palace is the largest and most complete group of ancient buildings that China has managed to preserve, and the word 'huge' doesn't even begin to describe it. It is made up of 980 buildings and covers more than 7,800,000 sq. feet! Andrew and I didn't get the chance to see all the buildings because we only spent two hours there and not several days but it was very cool. The buildings were beautiful and everything was so open. The only down fall was that it was so freakin cold we had to cut our trip to this beautiful landmark shorter than we want to.

Another interesting thing that I had read in the Lonely Planet book was about tourist scams. The book said where, when, and to whom it would happen to. Like clock work, as soon as we stepped off the subway to the Forbidden City we must have had "dumb tourists" stamped across our foreheads. Word-for-word what the book said was going to happen, did. A very nice Chinese girl approached Andrew and I and began striking up a conversation about how she was an art student and they were having a free exhibit right outside the city and wanted us to take a look. I politely said no and Andrew and I kept walking. It's important to take notice to who these scammers are talking to. They NEVER approach Chinese people....it's ALWAYS westerners...that's how you know something is up. The book said that people will come up to you claiming to be art students and will invite you to a free exhibit and then pressure you into buying really expensive knock-off paintings. They didn't realize they were messing with someone who A: is very stingy with money, and B: has done their research on scams in Beijing. Andrew and I were hit up by at least 6 'art students' that day...each conversation I got just a little more pissed off and annoyed.

Another annoyance in the Forbidden City dealt with the people handing out little Chinese flags to people as they were walking in. As soon as I was handed one they demanded money. They didn't make anyone else in front of me pay so I said "No way!" and tried to hand it back. Since I took it they were trying to make me pay. I was already annoyed with the fake art student scam that I was like whatever and just plopped the stupid little flag at their feet and kept walking. I was just annoyed about the whole thing because they were going to make me pay while they gave out 'free flags' to everyone else. The lesson learned on this Christmas Eve: Do your scamming homework!

After our two hour, freezing our butts off Forbidden City excursion, we decided to do something indoors. We checked out my tab marked "Shopping" and decided to experience the Silk Market. Now don't be fooled by the name, they did not just sell Silk here, they sell EVERYTHING here! There were 6 floors worth of knockoff watches, clothes, shoes, jewelry, electronics and pretty much anything else you can think of. Andrew and I walked in totally unprepared and overwhelmed by the whole thing. Chinese sales people shouting and literally pulling you into their booths to sell you stuff...I really wasn't quite sure what to do. But I remembered what the Lonely Planet book said, "Haggle like a fiend," and boy was that the best advice I have ever received about China. The Silk Market is a free market so you basically offer your best price and negotiate EVERYTHING! I was scared at first because this was nothing like bartering in Mexico, these people were literally crazy. But the more I did it, the more it became like a game and it was probably one of my favorite things to do while we were in China. To cap off the night, Andrew and I sat in the hotel lounge listening to Christmas Carols sung live by a Chinese Trio...overall, it was a very successful Christmas Eve in China.

December 25th: Merry Christmas! We wanted this to be a Christmas to remember so we had hoped to go to the Great Wall, but it was supposed to be really cold, so we set up our Great Wall tour for the 28th instead. So for Christmas, we thought we would go to a really cool science museum that I had tabbed. I know it sounds so strange...a science museum on Christmas...but whatever...being in China for Christmas was strange anyways. We bundled up and braved the subway. Once we got to our destination, our guide book did not tell us which direction to go to get to the museum. So we just decided to walk. Well...BIG mistake! I have never been in wind so cold in my entire life...we were lost...far away from the subway and absolutely no idea where this museum was. Andrew walked across the street to ask the man directing traffic. He spoke no English, he just pointed down the street, gestured right, gestured straight, and then right again. I looked and Andrew like, "What?" We thanked him and began walking straight. It was almost comical how cold it was. There was a mop proped up next to a tree, frozen to the trunk, and the water dripping off the mop was frozen into icicles! I told Andrew that mans directions mean nothing to us so we went inside the closest bank to ask the guard for directions. He didn't speak English so he went to get another man that couldn't understand us, and then finally a bank customer came over. She told us we needed to get on bus number 104 and then get off at the stop that sounded like, (enter Chinese name here). We thanked them and left. Knowing our past experience with buses in Ulsan, we were not about to get on a bus and not know when to get off.

It was so freaking cold that I was literally speaking with the kind of lisp you get when you suck on ice and I thought my cheeks were going to fall off. We decided that our first indication that we're going to get lost was when I asked the concierge about the museum and she had never heard of it...then stupid us, we thought we could find it. Well...we never did make it so again we turned to an indoor activity...the Pearl Market. Much like the Silk Market but a little calmer. With a little more confidence, we let the haggling games begin and we had ourselves a very Merry Christmas!

December 26th: Of course, it was freezing cold again but we had to see the sites. So once again, we bundled ourselves up and took off for the Temple of Heaven and the Temple of Heaven Park. Built in 1420, it was the place where the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties went to worship Heaven, offer sacrifices and pray. It was a very large and beautiful park. I wish we were able to see it in the spring when I'm sure it's gorgeous. When we walked in, there was music playing and local Chinese dancing away. It was a hilarious sight to see because everyone was just doing their own thing. Some were gypsy dancing, others were ballroom dancing, and there were a few that Andrew and I were not sure what they were doing.

As we got closer to the monuments, the painting detail of these structures were unbelievable. I can't imagine how long it takes to repaint them to keep the colors so vibrant but it was absolutely beautiful to look at. One of the coolest things we saw/read about was the 70-year-old door. In 1779 Emperor Qianlong was 70 years old and his health was failing. So in order to make the walk to the ceremonies a shorter distance, the Ministry of Rituals made a small door in the wall west of the Imperial Hall of Heaven. However the Emperor was scared that his offspring would abuse the convenience of the door he issued a decree saying, "From now on only he among my offspring can enter and exit by this door who has reached the age of 70." None of the following emperors reached this age so he was the only one to ever use this door.

Another cool thing in this park was the Circular Mound. Built in 1530, this alter served as a place for holding the ceremony of worshipping Heaven at the Winter Solstice every year. The steps of each flight of stairs contains 9 steps, symbolizing the 9 layers of Heaven. Everything thing about this structure was made up of multiples of 9. In the center is the Heavenly Center Stone. It is said that the voice of a person standing on this center stone sounds perfectly resonant and sonorous.

Again freezing our butts off, Andrew and I went into this little souvenir shop to warm up. When we walked in we noticed all of these fancy Chinese dress up clothes. Well turns out, you could get your picture taken dressed up as an Emperor and Empress. Naturally we asked how much. The price was perfect, so being the good sport that Andrew is, we got to play dress up and had our picture taken! It was hilarious and even other tourists walking by us were laughing and taking pictures of us on their cameras!

December 27th: One of the other most recognizable tourist attractions in Beijing is Tian'anmen Square. Set right across the street from the Forbidden City. Its claim to fame is the largest city square in the world but it is also home to several events since it's building during the Ming Dynasty. Sorry there is not a whole lot to report about it. It's literally a giant, flat meeting square. There is one very cool monument that is guarded 24 hours a day and dedicated to The People's Heroes. I'm not really sure why we didn't just go when we were down there at the Forbidden City, but I guess we just thought there was more to it.

After we left Tian'anmen Square we decided to take the day easy. We once again opted for an the indoor activity of shopping and returned with confidence to the Silk Market...just to see what unnecessary things we could haggle for (and when I say 'we,' I really mean me. Andrew is to nice of a negotiator).

December 28th: The day has arrived that we have finally been waiting for! When you think about things to see in China what's the first thing that comes to your mind? ...The Great Wall of China or course! Our tour was to begin at 9am and continue until 5pm. 9am rolls around and we seem to be the only one's waiting in the lobby. A nice, young Chinese woman appears and Andrew asks her about the tour. Apparently, we were the only ones crazy enough to want to climb the Great Wall in the winter time so we had a private tour! We rode the bus about an hour and our first stop was the famous Ming Tombs. There are 13 emperors of the Ming dynasty buried at different parts of the foot of this massive mountain. Each tomb significantly smaller than the previous Emperor because they could not have a tomb bigger than their ancestors which I thought was interesting. You can only tour the first and the biggest one. It was the tomb of Emperor Chengzu. He was the third Emperor of the Ming Dynasty and he was also responsible for the construction of the Forbidden City. The previous two emperors had gone 'missing' so their tombs were not part of the 13.

Basically what I understood was that they build their own tombs while they are still alive. There is such a strong belief in the afterlife in China, that the emperor in a sense builds himself a palace similar to the one he rules in underground as his tomb. When he passes, he is buried with all of his belongings...jewels, crowns, clothing, dinnerware....everything. However, his tomb just looks like a giant hill because the Chinese government will not allow it to be opened. So all they know that somewhere in this 'hill' lies the emperor, his empress and their underground palace that no one has ever seen. In the early 1950s, the government sponsored an excavation of the 13th and smallest tomb to see what they could find. As soon as the oxygen hit the treasures, everything was completely ruined except the actual casket tomb of the emperor. However, that was later burned in a protest during their cultural revolution. Since everything is destroyed, the Chinese government will allow no one to open any of the other tombs. So, we were kind of bummed that we were unable to see anything besides huge mounds of dirt...but it was still pretty neat.

Another cool/scary fact our tour guide told us about was the ancient Chinese version of quality control. All of the bricks used in the Ming Tombs, the Great Wall and many other ancient buildings are stamped with the name is the man who built the bricks. If the bricks were to crumble or fall apart, they would look for the bricks stamp and kill not only the man who made it, but also his entire family! Talk about quality control! After the Ming Tombs we visited a Jade factory where we learned about the history of China Jade as well as how to tell if it's real or fake...it was very beautiful and very interesting.

The Forbidden City, The Great Wall, The Ming Tombs, and even Olympic Park are all built on the same line. If you were to take a birds eye view of these places, they are built in a perfect line the Chinese call the Dragon Line...just a cool fact I thought I'd share.

After a delicious Chinese lunch we drove another 20 minutes to the Great Wall of China! It is more than 5,500 miles long in total and I think Beijing has over 1,000 miles of it. When we arrived at the base, our tour guide said that it's about 1,600 steps to the 7th tower. Ok...now let me set the scene. Anytime I have seen pictures of the Great Wall, people are smiling and it seems to go on forever in the background of their pictures. But it looks fairly flat...more on the horizontal side. Well...the part of the wall we went to in Beijing was built completely vertical on the side of a mountain. I was beginning to have chest pains just looking at it. We are so bundled up we look like we are going skiing and it's not quite the loose movement attire you would wear mountain climbing, which was exactly what we were about to do. Andrew and I snap a couple of pictures and excitedly started our assent to the top. This excitement fades fast and turns to pure exhaustion and we hadn't made it to tower one yet! Tower two seemed already out of the question if I didn't pass out making it to tower one. We were never told this was such a physically demanding adventure and we now knew why our tour guide told us to meet her back at the bottom in an hour and half...she was not about to climb it with us. Andrew had momentum from the get go and quickly surpassed me. Embarrassed as I am to say it, I took my camera out and 'pretended' to take photos of the scenery so that I could catch my breath. It's so pathetic I know...but my heart has never beaten that fast and I honest to god though it was going to leap of my chest...or go into cardiac arrest...which ever came first. Here is the reason it was so hard, despite the fact that it seemed to be at about an 80degree angle, the steps were really uneven. Some little, some were normal sized and then the killer ones were knee level. You are already exhausted and then you have to lift your leg knee height and push off like some ridiculous stair stepping class.

By the time we made it to tower one I wanted to die. We 'rested' there for about 10 minutes taking pictures and trying to get our breathing back to normal. Now at this point, the scenery would have been breathtaking had the stairs not gotten to us first. It's even colder since you are on a mountain but you begin to sweat from the grueling physical activity that now you're even colder because your sweat is drying. So let's recap my state at this point...tower one, sweating but freezing, thighs/calves burning like hell, heart pounding so hard it's beginning to hurt and be a little scary, and the worst part is that we still have to go back down! They do have a railing but it's at knee level and more awkward to use that not use.

After some much needed resting, Andrew and I know this might be the only time in our lives to see the Great Wall, so we can't wimp out now. So we decided to climb to tower two and then decide from there. This climb was significantly easier...I didn't even have to "take pictures" on my way up. My heart was still pounding and my calves were still burning but we took a minute rest and decided to suck it up to tower three. Well tower three was worth the view. It was stunning and we were proud to have made it that far. We snapped some pictures and looked at tower four. "Ya, right" we thought. Tower four seemed even more horrendous than the others, we decided that three was enough because we wanted to live to tell about it and walking to tower four would have probably killed us. To help with our bruised egos, we decided that if we weren't on a time crunch and had as much time as we wanted...we could have gone higher...but I guess we'll never know.

Now the way down...there is only one word to decribe it.....SCARY! You are walking down uneven stairs at an 80 degree slant with a railing that hits at your knees. Your body is exhausted and your legs are shaking...the perfect mixture for a disasterous fall. Luckily for us, we managed. I couldn't imagine what would happen if you did fall...there is nothing to stop you from rolling or break your fall except for some uneven concrete. My heart goes out to the poor souls who had to build it...I don't know how they got those bricks up there. The tour guide said they also call the wall the 'Longest Cemetary in the World' because when men died building it, they just buried them on the side of the wall.

To congratulate myself on making it to tower three, Andrew bought me some ice cream in the souvinere shop at the bottom of the wall. I was probably the only ice cream consumer that cold day, but I deserved it! It was one of the coolest things I have ever seen....but seriously the most exhausting!

December 29th: Surprisingly we didn't wake up sore as heck. We decided to take an easy day so we took the subway to the Lama Temple. It's the largest Buddist Temple in all of China so being the temple goers we are in Korea, our trip wouldn't have been completed without visiting the largest one. Sadly there isn't much to share other than it was comprised of beautiful buildings and architecture. People were burning incents to honor Budda so we didn't take a lot of pictures since it's still an active temple and we didn't want to offend anyone. But it was cool to see and a very beautiful place.

That evening was our last in China so we only had one thing left to do, eat Peking Duck. Beijing is famous for it so we couldn't have returned to Korea without filling our stomachs with delicious duck. Andrew and I met a friend from high school who lives in Beijing now, Kyle, so we all decided to meet up for some duck. I was really nervous at first becuase all of the pictures I have seen show the cooked duck with its neck and beak still attached...it completly grossed me out. Well, having Kyle there was very helpful when it came to ordering because he speaks fluent Chinese so we were able to order a traditional Peking Duck meal. Well, when the order came out, the chef rolled the duck out on a little cart and proceeded to slice it like a turkey after cutting off its neck. I was happy because now I could tell myself it was turkey. Then, he cut off the head and sliced it in half, put it on a little plate, and set in in the middle of the table like we were supposed to eat it's brains out. It was totally disgusting and I had to move it out of my sight. You could not pay me to eat the brains. It had it's beak on for gosh sakes! Anyways...the duck was actually really good and kind of tasted like a greasier, fattier turkey,

December 30th: At 9am we left Beijing with frost-bite, a lot of unneseaasry haggeling purchases and great memories and headed to Seoul, South Korea for New Years. The 3 1/2 hour flight took us a total of 14 hours travel times due to delays for things we aren't sure of because no one spoke English. So after an exhausitng 14 hours travel time, one taxi scam, and a wrong hotel number, we finally made it to Seoul.


December 31st: We took the day easy and lazy. We finally left the hotel about 2pm and headed out for something to eat. Excited about Quizno's, but after an ad for Mexican food in the subway, our appetites changed and we found a whole in the wall, Korean version of Mexican food that was delicious. We went back to the hotel to relax until the New Year's Eve festivites began. We heard about a "Times Square type" celebration in downtown Seoul and we wanted to take part. We got there about 10:30pm and there weren't that many people there so we thought maybe we had the wrong place. The number of police officers outnumbered spectators at leaset 2 to 1 at this point. Well, 11pm rolls around and the people start flooding in. The police closed off the street and the crowd flooded in so naturally we followed. Since we were there early, we weren't too far from the stage. Some Korean pop groups performed and then after the countdown from 10-1 in Korean, Roman candels went off everywhere, and they rang this huge gong.

Well, the stroke of midnight was not as climatical as I had hoped. This jackass (excuse my language) next to us thought it would be a great idea to trow an egg in the air as the gong was rung. I don't know what he thought would happen when he threw an egg in the air with tens of thousands of people packed like sardines. Well...what goes up must come down. That darn egg hit the head of the girl next to me, splattering my camera, my coat, Andrew's camera and jacket and the guy behind Andrew. The idiot man kept saying, "I sorry, I sorry," and something to the effect of, "I friends of Korean President...blah...blah...blah." I was so mad I just looked at him in awe like, "You are the biggest dumbass!" Well...the egg incident ruined the evening but I guess it made for a good story!

Sorry this is so unbelievably long...if you made it to the end, congratulations! I'll make the next entry shorter!

Happy New Year everyone!