I went exploring a bit today. In fact way more than I intended to. I went out intending to find something to eat, and I got lost. I had sort of a guess of where I was, but I couldn’t find any of the streets on my map.
While I was out wondering around the north and part of Chaoyang (unbeknownst to me at the time, I basically followed Beisihuan lu (”4th Ring Road”) from the north (beisihuan zhonglu) to east (beisihuan donglu)), I noticed a few things.
Beijing is not what I expected. I don’t know what I expected, but this wasn’t it. However, part of my experience so far is exactly what I expected.
The part of Beijing I’m in, is not a walking city. It’s designed all around driving. The city blocks are large, and instead of alleys, there are essentially access roads with guard houses on them. As far as I can tell, the interior of the blocks are apartments, and perhaps a few hotels and businesses located on the first floor of apartment buildings. These blocks are at the same time very dense, since everything is like 15 stories, but the roads force space around each building. It’s kind of like walking in an office park, only with taller buildings and more disorienting.
There aren’t sidewalks. There are bike lanes, access roads. The few sidewalks that do exist are blocked with either piles of brick and sand to finish the sidewalk, or cars. Cars just drive up on the sidewalk and park.
There is construction EVERYWHERE. Every street is having work done to it. Buildings are being erected. I even found some really old single story houses being demolished for a high rise. (I didn’t take a photo of it, because I didn’t bother to bring my camera. I honestly thought I would be gone only a couple of hours. Instead I was gone like five.)
Crosswalks are few and far between. People just wait for a bit of a pause in the traffic and cross the street. It’s jaywalking, but more intense since none of the cars slow down. If you’re lucky, they just wail on the horn.
Everyone wails on the horn. Out my window is a constant cacophony of automobile horns. Its so common, that the access roads have “no horn honking” signs. I haven’t seen any accidents yet, but it’s surprising since no one slows down for anything.
The air is most foul I’ve ever breathed. You can taste it. You can see it. You can see like maybe one and a half city blocks. There’s just a constant grey-yellow haze in the air. You can’t see the sky at all. Cars that have been left on the street a while are covered with a fine yellow dust. My mucus is tinged with black, and I can feel it on my skin and in my hair.
This trip is going to take five years off my life. I can’t imagine running a marathon in this environment. With respect to air quality, Beijing was clearly the worst place to hold the Olympics.
While walking down the street today, two college aged guys came up at random and started to chit chat with me in English as I walked down the street. “Hello.” “Where are you from?” “Are you staying in Beijing?” “How long are you here?” “May I take a picture with you?” I certainly hope they go home and blog about it saying, “Today, I met whitey.”
Andrew would describe Beijing as “very Asian.” There’s really modern building being put up everywhere, and then at the same time some things just seem a bit off. I can’t really describe it.
When I got lost, I ended up stopping and eating at a “P.C. Lee California Beef Noddles King.” Funny. I’ve never heard of him before. Mr Lee’s, is sort of like a KFC, but with noodle bowls. You go in, a girl, maybe high school age, directs you to a table and you order off a picture menu (score!) She places your order by texting the kitchen, and then you pay her. She comes back with your food, and then you leave.
I went into Li Xiansheng, because I was hungry and it was at the intersection of Beisihuan donglu, and some other street that looked major, but I couldn’t identify. (Which brings up another thing. Finding street signs is very difficult. I found one sign in the middle of the block that identified Beisihaun donglu, but nothing at the corners to identify the cross street. Even the subway and bus stations simply have timetables, no maps. I guess you just have to know which street is which.) I asked the waitress if she could point on the map where I was, but she couldn’t. She pawned me off on to some other girl, who also had no idea where she was.
Damn.
Eventually I asked a security guard at one of the nearby access roads for help. He couldn’t/wouldn’t point at the map, but left me with an impression of where I was. He did confirm roughly which part of Beisihuan lu I was on, and which way north was, so it wasn’t a total loss. In all honesty, he was helpful. Thanks to the impression he left me with, I was able to navigate back to my hotel.
The whole experience this afternoon left me realizing just how helpless I am here. In Europe, I could at least order off a menu. Here, I can’t even do that. I have to resort to random guessing. I figure there’s enough common structure to a menu that I can at least avoid ordering, “A 15% gratuity will be added to all parties of 6 or more.” Actually, it’s worse than that. I can only order off of menus I can point to. If the menu is over their heads, I’m screwed. I might be able to mangle a pronunciation of like 1/5 of the characters I need.
It’s bad, and pretty scary.
