Free Services at the Great Wall

Some South African friends I've made here are going to China in June.  I was looking through my photos, and realized there were so many that I took and I didn't blog about.  So, I'm going to begin an occasional series where I post a pic or two.

First up is one that really made me chuckle.  Coming after my encounter with the heavy-handed Beijing Police, I was very aware of the presence of the government.

The sign starts out by saying "Your Welcome" in advance of actually helping you at all. 

And then if you look closely at the bottom you'll see one of the most valuable services of all:  free propaganda.

I love you China!

Beijing Opera

I went to Beijing (Peking) Opera. Beijing style opera is different than Western style opera. I'd link to a Wikipedia article about it, but Mao's 30,000 Internet censors have blocked Wikipedia from the Chinese Internet.

The opera uses an archaic theatre dialect (think Shakespeare does Beowulf in Middle English). So, there are subtitles in both standard Mandarin Chinese and English.

My favorite line tonight came from the Goddess of Heaven speaking in a shrilly tone:

I left the kingdom of Fragrance and traveled around the world.

This is "communist" China

The Man Gets Josh Down...

Within 45 minutes of venturing out into the city today, I was detained by police.

I started the morning with a nice breakfast of french toast at my hostel after which, I left for a day of sight-seeing at the Forbidden City. I hopped on a bus, got off a couple stops early so I could walk and take some pictures.

I came to a big red gate. I can't find its name on the map, but it was guarded by seven men. Many people were taking pictures--Chinese and foreigner alike. In front of the gate was a small plaza, but people weren't allowed to cross off the sidewalk onto the plaza. Uniformed guards were at the entrance of the gate, and three men in less-official looking blue coats stood evenly paced at the edge of the sidewalk and the little plaza.

With that much police presence I carefully observed what other people were doing so I couldn't break any norms. I used my Canon to take some pictures of the gate and the flag flying in front. Then, over to the far side of the plaza, I heard an old man shouting at a old police officer. I put away my Canon and pulled out my point and shoot Fuji camera. I took a picture in the direction of the argument.

However, the zoom on the camera isn't anywhere near powerful enough to catch the police officer. Nonetheless, one of the blue-coat uniformed men stomps up and grabs my camera. I say, "What?"

He stomps away toward the police officer. I tell him to give my camera back and he says, "Sorry."

He hands the camera to the police officer, who is still in a shouting match with the old man. The police officer looks at me with anger and pulls out his radio and says a few words. He then begins fumbling with my camera--trying to see what was on it I guess.

As he looked over my camera, a few people who had been standing near me when the guard had grabbed my camera, came up and said something to the officer. I could tell they were trying to intervene on my behalf, but he shooed them away. A couple minutes passed and I heard a police van pull up behind me. Three police officers jumped out.

The old man continued to shout at the cop. The police officer handed my camera off to a young female police officer and then grabed the old man violently by the arm and shoved him to the two officers who had just come on scene. They grabbed him tightly by both arms and threw him in the back of the van.

Crap, I thought, that's going to me in a minute. The female officer talked briefly with the middle-aged one and turned to me, "You one way picture?"

I had no idea what she meant by that. "I don't know."

"May I have your passport," she asked. I reached in for my passport and handed it to her. I was suddenly glad that I had carried it--I got so used to not needing it as I travel around Korea. She handed my passport to the middle aged guy as she started looking through my pictures.

He started thumbing through my passport. I could tell he had no idea what the hell he was looking for. He didn't call my number in or anything. And its not like there's going to be a stamp in the passport that says, "This guy is dangerous." I thought briefly about being deported suddenly--not even given a chance to go back to my room and grab my things.

The middle-aged man and the woman exchanged a few more words. I didn't understand a word mind you, but based on their body language, I guessed something like the following was behind said:

Woman Officer: Why did you stop this guy?
Middle-Aged Officer: He took a picture of me arguing with the old
man.
Woman Officer: There's nothing on this camera.
Middle-Aged Officer: Well, he looked like he was.
Woman officer looks at the male officer with a look of
frustration. She seems to be thinking that the middle-aged cop is ignorant
and wasting everybody's time with petty nonsense.

Then the officer turns to me and keeps saying slight variations of what she had told me previously, "You one-way picture stop."

Realizing that this was going nowhere and that I was in no real trouble I reached out my hand and said, "Can I have my things back."

She nodded and took my passport from the guy officer and gave me my camera and passport back. The whole experience was more annoying than it was scary. These Beijing cops better lighten up with the Olympics coming up in a few months.

I'm just glad they didn't find the anti-Mao literature I had hidden in my back pocket :)

Pictures coming tomorrow...

Trip to Beijing

So I got an interesting start on my trip to China. After my previous post, I went to sleep, and woke up six hours later--which is about three hours too late. I planned on leaving my room around 6:30, but instead barely got out of there by 9:15am.

I had awoken several times during the night with fever and chills. The kind of fever where you can feel the radiate off every part of you. I woke up at 9 covered in sweat and in a panic. So, I quickly had to accept that I wouldn't make my 9:25am flight.

So, I went to the City Air Terminal at COEX. Let me say right now, I will never check in at Incheon again! There are so many beneifts of being able to check in at the City Air Terminal, especially for us out-of-town folks. Its a cheap taxi ride away from the southern bus terminals and isn't that crowded.

I walked right up to the Korean Air desk and told her I needed to change my flight. Five minutes later, I walked away with a boarding pass for a flight that left later that evening. Then, I walked over to the immigration room, where they lady looked at my passport, gave it a couples steps and I was done. Then, I walked upsatirs to buy a bus ticket to th airport. All of these steps were easy. I walked right up to the waiting clerk.

Then, I had a few hours to kill, so I wandered around COEX mall, enjoyed some American fast food (which Geoje is seriously lacking), and watched American Gangster at the theatre.

Around 3:30, I got on a bus for the airport. There, I went through a special door through security that is reserved for City Air Terminal Customers, Diplomats, and Airline Crew. Again, no wait. Then, I walked over to the special immigration line where the guy scanned my passport again and ushered me a long.

I highly recomend using the City Air Terminal for anyone who is flying out of Incheon. I only noticed Korean and Asiana Airline desks there, but you might be able to check in through them for their partner airlines.

The plane ride was uneventful--except for the excessive heat. Koreans have this awful habit (especially for someone who tends to be warm) of cranking the heat up to the max at the first sign of chilliness. Yes there were flurries at the airport, but that doesn't mean that the airplane cabin needs to be warmed to 90 degrees!

In Beijing, I took a bus and then a taxi to my hostel. I went to the main branch but was informed that my room was over at their other location a few blocks away. Instead of just giving me a map and pointing me on my way, a middle aged man pulled up in his bicycle-trailer deal (I'm not sure what to call it). It was a utility trailer and wasn't meant for people, but he motioned me in nonetheless.

So, I rode through the freezing Beijing air sitting on the side of this trailer being pulled by a old man on a bicycle. That happened in my first thirty minutes in the city. I can't wait to see what the rest of the week holds in store.

Beijing Bound

I'm at a cheap motel near the Nambu Bus Terminal. The plan is to wake early, take a taxi to the City Air Terminal at COEX, check in there and go to Beijing.

Then, I look at the news, and see that Beijing is under a pollution warning. Boy, I picked a good time to visit.

The following picture and paragraph are from an AP story at Breitbart. Note the haze is pollution not fog.

Beijingers were warned to stay indoors on Thursday as pollution levels across the capital hit the top of the scale, despite repeated assurances by the government that air quality was improving.

"This is as bad as it can get," a spokeswoman for the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau told AFP.

"Level five is the worst level of air pollution. This is as bad as it has been all year."

According to the bureau's website, 15 out of the 16 pollution monitoring stations in urban Beijing registered a "five" for air quality rating.