Mao and Friends

I hit the snooze button 10 times this morning. I think traveling outside the States is finally getting to my body. I got dressed quickly to meet my research buddy for our final observation on the subway at 7. It's amazing that people are still traveling, even this early in the day. Granted a majority were commuters, but a good chunk was made up of Spring Festival travelers.

I made plans on the subway to meet Adam again. We met at Wangfujing station and walked over to Tiananmen Square. We took pics here and there, doing the touristy thing. Compared to the first time I was there, the weather was much worse. And just as bad as yesterday. I was spoiled over the course of the past two weeks with the unusually nice weather. Visibility must have been 1/3 of a mile. Once we got done in the Square, we went to see Mao.

When we first attempted to get in line, they pointed us toward the bag checkin. Apparently we can't take our bags in to see a dead guy. What a difficult process. Once we checked my backpack We walked over to get through all the checkpoints outside his tomb. With the bag drop off, there was another screening for anyone getting into the Square, another sifting people who didn't have bags, then an ID check (I used a photocopy of my passport), then finally a metal detector and body scanner. At this last checkpoint, they found our cameras... A guard pulled us aside then in broken English told us that we had to bring our cameras to the bag checkin. I walked all the way back to where I purchased a slot for my backpack and had to pay another fee for the cameras.

They say that seeing Mao is free with ID, but they get you with the unforeseen charges. I walked back through all the security checkpoints and found Adam. As we walked toward the tomb entrance, we saw someone selling white flowers to lay at Mao's statue. I asked a guard if we ought to buy flowers. He got this really funny look on his face like I shouldn't seriously be asking that question and responded, "only you can decide. (in Chinese)" We each bought a flower for 3元 and walked inside. I saw a lady pushing a cart of white flowers out of the building and thought, they're just cycling the flowers back to being sold again, what a way to make money. Adam still had his iPhone on him, meaning that the metal detectors did not work. We totally could have brought in our cameras.

As we entered the building, we placed our flowers on a stand in front of a big white statue of Mao. There stood two secret service members on each side. Adam crossed himself as he laid his flower and elicited puzzled looks from these secret service guys. Next, we walked around a wall to see Mao lying in a glass coffin, in a bigger glass box. A communist flag lay over the lower half of his body and fresh flowers encircled his coffin. Two highly decorated soldiers stood on either side of Mao's body, standing perfectly still and looking straight ahead. Mao himself was an odd sight to see: not too great in stature and looked a little like a wax figure. I keep wondering to myself how long he will last and how much money the government spends on him each year.

Once we exited, Adam and I made our way over to the other side of Tiananmen to get some pictures of Mao's portrait. We then headed down to the nearest station and rode to the silk market. I bought a small tripod for my camera and Adam bought a 12 sided rubik's 'cube' for his brother (who I'd be visiting in two weeks). I accidentally dropped the cube and the guy guilt tripped me into buying it. I fixed it up eventually to give to Lukas. Adam and I said good bye on the subway and I made my way back for class lunch. We convinced our teacher to hold class over lunch in a restaurant but she backed out last minute. Instead, most of us ate together at the Sichuan restaurant. We ended up still having class right after that, which turned out to be non substantial.


A select few of us decided to go to the hutongs today. If you remember, these are the back alley markets of Beijing. In fact, the one we went to is the last open air markets in the city. We got off at what we guessed to be the correct exit. After realizing we walked a few blocks in the wrong direction, I finally turned us around to ask a traffic police. Our biggest landmark was Gulou, the drum tower, and from there I could get us back to the hutong by memory. We got to Gulou and got to Houhai, one of the lakes East of the Forbidden City. Rather than walking all the way around it, one of the guys suggested going across it. Since we saw others walking around on it we figured it would be safe enough. It saved us a lot of time. 

The guys with me were really slow walkers and at times I felt I was dragging them along. They didn't seem to have too much confidence in my directional skills but I got us there in surprisingly quick time. The first thing I bought were apples and oranges. I ended up eating one of each later and found them to be some of the sweetest I'd ever had. We also stumbled upon a tea stand that was selling mugs for 8元 each. I ended up getting 3 of them. The guy selling the mugs was super fun and enjoyed that we spoke Chinese. He tried to get us to buy some tea as well but the mugs were good enough for me.

The others wanted to stick around but I decided to make my way back to the subway and do some work at base camp. It didn't take me too long to find the subway, however we did originally get off on a more distant station. I walked down music street past a ton of guitar stores and down to the subway station in fast time. Back at BeiWai I got some writing done and skyped the family. It's so amazing what technology allows us to do.