Easter holiday in Beijing

For Easter, students at HKBU get a full week off. This Easter break is the equivalent of a spring break in the US and is when a lot of students take time to travel. For this break, a few of us from BGSU went to Beijing.

Three of the students who went took a plane (about a three hour trip) and the other three of us took the train. The train was cheaper than the flight which was why some of us decided on that route, but it was about 25 hours from Hung Hom station in Hong Kong to Beijing West Station in China…yikes. It wasn’t too bad though, really. We got a sleeper cabin that we shared with three other people (for a total of six) and slept most of the time on the way there and back. (Of course the time we were awake we were studying our notes from Hong Kong… preparing for those exams!) On the train ride there, I talked with a woman who is half Chinese who lives in Florida and was visiting family in Beijing for a week. She works as a teacher at a jewelry making school in Florida. Really interesting lady. We exchanged information and I got her business card and the website for her school. You never know, maybe some day I will learn to make some gold and silver rings from her. She wanted to meet up with us in Beijing but it never worked out, as we didn’t have phones that worked and already had tours planned with our group.

Since there are a few other people who I am sure will write about the tours we did in Beijing, I will write about another experience that only a few of us had. On Friday night, two days before we were to leave Beijing, Andrew and I went out to explore more of Beijing at night. We decided to go to an area of Beijing called Bar Street. It was exactly as the name sounds; bars and restaurants all around a lake. It was a pretty large area and there were also shops to buy handicrafts and stands selling candied fruit and cotton candy. You could have even rented a paddle boat and taken it around the lake. There were a lot of local people as well as tourists in this area and we took time to just explore what the area had to offer.

While walking around the lake, we stumbled upon a large crowd of people in an open area. When we first walked up, we heard music playing and saw people playing with hacky sacks and whole groups of people, children and adults alike, jumping rope. However, most of the space was taken up by people dancing. Of course I had to join in jump roping and then tried to learn some of the dances. We met a really nice older local guy who spoke very fluent English and he became our dance teacher. He told us we made the local “Chinese people very very happy because you dance with us!” and that we should come back at the same time the next night to dance again. It was so much fun and so random!

We woke up early the nest morning (Saturday) to see the Summer Palace. It was an hour bus ride to the palace and when we got there there was already a ton of tourists. But we walked up to the top of the area and there weren’t as many people and we got some good shots of the temples.

Glad to have another really touristy place out of the way early, later that afternoon Erica, Andrew and I went to a local restaurant in the Hutongs and had dumplings, hot pot, and fried noodles. So much food! And so cheap, I think we paid about $15 for three of us to eat!

We walked through the Hutongs that afternoon and went into some shops and looked around. Hutong means “old lane” and are alley ways where local people live. The streets are really small, usually just big enough for a car to drive through (why cars would cut through I don’t know, they usually end up stuck behind pedestrians, bicyclists, animals, children, nosy tourists who want to see what local life is like…etc.) It was really cool seeing the way local Chinese people live. The touristy parts make it seem like everyone has a really nice house and lots of extra money and really cover up the real life that is all around in Beijing. I really enjoyed seeing these areas the best, it really opens your eyes and makes you appreciate the things you might take for granted. For example, most of the houses in the Hutongs don’t have private toilets, you have to share with around ten other houses. Also, it can cost up to 8 RMB to take a shower in some places (that’s a little over 1 dollar). Really interesting.

Later that night we went back to dance again and our teacher was there, just like he said he would be. (He told us this was a nightly ritual). He was thrilled to see us and told us he didn’t think we would really stick to our word and come back. We learned some more dances and got to talk to him more. I said something about how we had walked through the Hutongs earlier that day and was really interested in seeing the inside of one. He was delighted we had taken so much interest in local Chinese culture and life and said his friend lived across from the square where we were and that they would love for us to be their guests. He pointed to his house and we walked with them to the house. It was amazing! The house was so small but there was only two people living there. Our dance teacher had to be our translator because his friend and his wife and brother and niece didn’t speak much English but it was really an amazing experience. The wife was so happy to have guests that she even cooked for us! The friend bought noodles from a stand and a leg of lamb for each of us and offered us so much food. We all ate together and drank the local beer that is brewed in Beijing, Yanjing. We visited with them for about 2 hours and just talked. The wife even painted our fingernails! (the girls’, not Andrew) She said she would like to open her own shop in Beijing so she did our nails for free to practice. The couple said they have lived there in that house in the Hutongs for two years and that we were their first foreign guests. What an honor. We were all so shocked about how nice and friendly and welcoming they were. We took lots of pictures with them and the wife even let me take a picture of her kitchen. She didn’t want me to at first, because, being a woman, thought it was too messy for company to see. It was such a small area! It was definitely smaller than anything anyone in the US is used to, but it was a nice little house. Just big enough to live in and have some space, but nothing extra or extravagant.

Our dance teacher kept saying “see, we Chinese are poor, but we are happy. We dance and we eat together and we don’t have much, but look how happy we are.” It was really cool getting to be with a local family and sharing in something that few tourists get to experience. This part of the trip was definitely my favorite; it was more interesting than going to the temples that didn’t really have that much meaning to me being that I have no physical or emotional connection with them. The guy also kept trying to convince us to stay in Beijing. “why do you need to go back? To learn in a classroom? Look at how much you are learning here, interacting with people. You are learning here. You can’t learn this in a classroom. Stay here and learn Chinese and Chinese culture and teach Chinese people good English. I will show you dancing”. It was amazing!! This really made me realize how much I would like to travel to other places and get to know how other people around the world live. Such an experience, once in a lifetime!!

So, that was just a small part of our trip to Beijing. The time flew by but I think we made the most of it. I would love to go back some day. Beijing is so full of life and its such a great city. If you ever get a chance to go there, I hope you see the tourist spots, you know, the Great Wall, Forbidden City, etc. but I think where I had the most memorable and best experiences was off the beaten tourist track. There’s no way for a travel company to be able to organize real life into a neat little group tour package.

Here is a picture of the family that invited us to their house. They were so friendly and we were so honored to be their guests!

This guy was in the square painted calligraphy in the street with a rag and a bucket of water. It looked really good, I've seen a few people using water to do calligraphy on streets and sidewalks.

This group of people was singing and playing instruments around the lake.

This is a picture of one of the Hutongs we walked through.