Dateline: 5am in the Sino Swiss Airport Hotel, Beijing China, 14 August 2004
After a good sleep of eight hours, I have an hour here to finally put down a more comprehensive collection of my thoughts and memories from this trip so far. I have been unable to do this up to now because of the combination of the crushing schedule, the desire not to turn any opportunity down, and the amazingly debilitating jet lag sense of brain fatigue that hits us at the end of the day. As I have learned, the best, most coherent thinking time is found at around 5 am local time after a good sleep, which can only be achieved with the aid of the sleeping pills we brought alone (Ambien)—yet another brilliant Vonne planning achievement (one of the countless which are now too many to list).
Recalling the trip in order:
The flights over on Northwest were okay, although the cramped nature of the seating is really painful for such a long period of flying (basically 24 hours in planes), so here again Vonne’s planning proved out: she had us fitted for special Jobst support stockings that were custom-sized for our ankles and calves. All that extra pressure on our lower legs really helped to forestall the usual sort of swelling that occurs in there on such long, cramped flights.
Our saving grace on the flight were magazines: we bought a slew of popular if idiotic magazines and then simply read them cover to cover. The dumber the magazine (Us, People, etc.) the better, because you want something interesting and entertaining but nothing that requires much in the way of thinking as you fly through the night. Vonne achieved bits and pieces of sleep, but I—as always—could not simply because of the cramped conditions. Hence I now know everything I need to know about Kirsten Dunst, Chevy Chase, Sharon Stone, and a host of other people I don’t typically study or keep up with.
The movies on the plane were okay (Hildalgo, Shrek 2, and a great one about the U.S. Olympic hockey team in 1980 (Miracle, or something like that), but I was disappointed not to see the individual screens on the backs of every chair in economy like I did on American going to London last fall. On that flight you had many channels to choose from for your individual flight instead of the sole collection of movies. Apparently, that sort of technology and freedom is still restricted to business-class only on Northwest. But have no fear, we have seats in business class for ourselves and one for baby for the return flights.
Our main leg of the journey was from Minnesota to Tokyo (newer airport Narita) Japan, but our stop in Tokyo was quite brief—just about two hours. It involved great travel from one part of the airport to another and another run through on security, which—as everywhere I’ve ever been—is much more lax than what we now do in the United States. Vonne bought some trinkets in a store there using a credit care, but that—and a head call—was about all we have to show for our cultural experiences in Japan. Still, since we weren’t too zombie-like, it was an interesting enough time to see so many Japanese everywhere and to have to negotiate the signs.
The flight from Tokyo to Beijing was relatively easy. Instead of being in the middle part of the row (at least I was on the aisle), this time we had two seats to ourselves in the row against one window. Alas, nothing to see because it was an 1800 flight that arrived at 2100 (losing an hour) and it was dark all the way. I will have to tell you though that as we landed in Beijing, the first thing I noticed was how smoggy and thick the air appeared. Apparently, it was one of the worst sort of bad air quality days they have hear with their growing pollution, so the minute we stepped outside it really hit you how bad the air felt going down in your lungs.
That air quality and extreme mugginess (making you sweat through your clothes frequently throughout the day) lasted through our first day here in Beijing (Wed), then it was cooler and rained all day on Thursday (fairly infrequent event here in otherwise dry Beijing), whereas Friday was a brilliantly clear day with a tortuous sun and stifling heat that left several of our compatriots looking frighteningly red in the face (hydration was the order of the day, and since you can buy a bottle of water or Sprint for about 5 yuan, or about 50 cents, from small shops all over the place at the big tourist sites, this was not hard to achieve).
Going through customs and border control was pretty simple. First a big line at border control for an official to read through your statement of why you have come to China (a fairly easy form to fill out) and to check your passport, and then you get your bags, grab a free cart, and you waltz right through customs with no one making any attempt to process you. Not sure if it was the late hour (11pm) or if that was normal, but we appreciated the loose rule set there because we had brought with us a bunch of nuts and dried fruits that we had repackaged for weight and that could have been a long conversation. Then there was all the meds and pharmacy stuff we had crammed into one of our large carry-ons.
Because we had agreed to stay in the same hotel as planned by our adoption agency, even though we came early, we got the same door-to-door treatment. So our guide David, whom we are yet to meet in person until this morning as our tour officially gets underway (the standard trip would have seen us arriving Friday and having a one-day tour of Beijing today, before departing to Nanchang, Jiangxi province Sunday morning), arranged for the Sino Swiss hotel to send a car and driver to pick us up, plus have an official greeter waiting for us with a “Barnett” sign. So despite our fatigue and inability to speak the language, plus the lateness of the evening, we were quickly whisked off to a sedan for the short ride to the hotel.
It was a little intimidating, this short ride at around midnight, because it was through a poorer section of town plus there was that gloomy, almost fog-like haze of bad air. Not surprisingly, the airport is located in a tougher part of town. But the hotel itself is quite attractive and upscale, full of many shops and restaurants—one of those cities within a city sort of place.
Our room is also very nice, about twice the size of the usual hotel room with a nice desk area, a nice seating area, lots of closet space and a bifurcated head that sees the toilet in one room with sink, then a double-sink and shower arrangement in another. Only complaint is that the air conditioner is weak and the lights never seem to brighten the room enough for us during our frequent searches for things in our luggage. You have to stick you one and only room key in a slot for the electricity to come on in your room, so the AC is always behind the curve, making the room seem somewhat nice only around dawn, otherwise it’s fairly warm and stuffy. We could open windows but never would given the air quality. Suffice it to say, I keep on my congestion and allergy pills and my nasal passages are more stuffed than normal, yet none of that is uncomfortable or really noticeable compared to the feelings of jet lag.
We went to bed that first night (Tuesday, 10 Aug) at around 1am and even with our sleeping pill were up at 5am, which didn’t exactly catch us up on our sleep. Yet, we felt okay.
The first full day in Beijing (11 Aug, Wed) was the whirlwind I tried to describe earlier. Up early, we worked our way through our intense packing to get all our gear read for our first day around town, packing a fairly heavy load in our of our big black backpacks Vonne had purchased specifically for the trip. We didn’t get our heads together fast enough to make the included buffet breakfast downstairs that is especially Westernized for guests, but we both felt we had eaten plenty on the various plane rides, so did not care. By the time we finally got our stuff together and were ready to walk out the door, we got the call from Zhang Yu, the admin assistant to Prof. Yu Keping, our host and director of two centers at Beijing U (Center for Chinese Government Innovations and the Center for Comparative Politics and International Economics; he is also the head of the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau that wanted to publish my book but lost out to Beijing U Press). Zhang called to say she and her translator Jennifer (“my American name”) were arriving in the car contracted for our two days together (a late-model Mercedes driven by the tough-looking but quite friendly Mr. Liu, who spoke no English). As Zhang Yu could only speak English very haltingly, Jennifer did most of the translating between us, creating that back and forth sort of conversation that you end up having (ex: they talk amongst themselves for a while in Chinese, then Jennifer sums up for Vonne and I and asks a question or makes a declaration of where we’re going next, then Vonne and I talk with Jennifer for a few minutes in English as Zhang and Mr. Liu listen intently for facial expressions, tone, etc., and then Jennifer gives the Chinese version to them and the process is repeated—actually a sort of relaxed form of give and take).
Jennifer is young and very pretty in a girl-from-the-provinces sort of way. She has the big bones I associate with a classic German/Dutch farm girl from my youth. Her voice in English has such a beautifully soft quality to it, that Vonne and I inherently started imitating it in our speech, which I find always happens with hosts when I go overseas. Like Zhang, she smiles a lot and laughs very easily in a very young, school-girlish sort of way.
Zhang Yu is in her late thirties, and is also very pretty but in a more Beijing, urban sort of way. It’s interesting, but after a few days here you begin to really distinguish faces and a wide variety of beauty, making me realize that China is more the collection of nations than simply a monotone race per se. It helps me to compare it to all the variety and shades that one finds in the entire Slavic swatch running from Poland through Russia—including the great differences in languages and cuisines.
Zhang has a business-man husband (international trade) and children. She is a Beijing native, and is in her own right an academic in addition to being Prof. Yu’s admin assistant.
Mr. Liu, is a very handsome man (in a rugged sort of way) in his early fifties (though you might guess early 40s looking at him) who drives the Mercedes with an expertise that belies his 30 years behind the wheel as a professional driver.
Vonne always sits in the back with Zhang Yu and Jennifer and I always sit up front as the honored guest, and this is how we zip from location to location.
First we drive into town and I am deposited at the China Reform Center in a back alley location. It’s in one of those older, traditional walled-compound areas of Beijing, which is really neat. I take a lot of photos of the traditional architecture (walled compound inhabited by collection of small, virtually one-room buildings sprinkled throughout a courtyard). I am met by a young CRF program officer who escorts me into a conference room-building, where I begin to set up my laptop. Meanwhile, Vonne and her two new friends head out with Mr. Liu.
The projector arrives (nice new Sony) and then seven senior academics/officials show up, all either from CRF or the university. All seem, in that Chinese sort of way, at once younger and older than I. Fortunately all speak English quite well, so this presentation is fairly easy for me. I do speak more slowly and avoid jargon, looking for recognition in people’s eyes (and I must say that, on average, most of my Chinese colleagues will tend to appear extremely bored when listening only to say at the end how fascinating your talk was—I didn’t doubt the compliment because it was given with such passion, so I guess I simply learned that Chinese in general aren’t expressive audience members at talks, whereas Americans tend to smile at you a lot more and nod their heads in agreement).
I started talking at 0945 and went to 1115. The official host was the secretary general of CRF, a very charming man whose name escapes me now as I cannot figure out where I put all those business cards I’ve collected—such is the state of our luggage organization right now. He started off the Q&A that went on for another hour, focusing on questions of nationalism, development, Taiwan, etc. All good and solid questions and all very China-centric vice America-centric, meaning we did not really talk much at all about the war on terrorism but rather on how America was handling and interpreting China’s rising power. CRF is a small but very well connected think tank that is trying to engender embryonic public policy debates among the political leadership and academic community in Beijing. Their man guy is a real mover and shaker, as indicated by all the top Bush officials who have visited with him and hard their pictures taken together (to include Condi Rice and the President himself). Their pet idea is the Theory of Peacefully Rising China, so you can see why they latched onto my worldview that places China in the Core vice the Gap, or makes them one of “us” versus one of “them.”
Also in the audience was Prof. Niu Ke, a well-known academic in his mid-40s who is off to Harvard in a couple of weeks as a Yenching Scholar in the history department. It was he who originally sent me the article written about my book in the major Chinese newspaper many weeks ago, and that email was what triggered these two whole days together, in part because I though it would be fascinating and in part because I knew that if I did, I’d get a driver and personal tour guides in the process for Vonne who wanted to shop the town red).
After my talk I was driven in another car with the secretary general to a very upscale restaurant. We were led into a huge private room upstairs with a living room-like arrangement of sofas and chairs on one side and a very big circular dinning table on the other. There the secretary general presented me with my gift of a very spectacular stamp collection book issued on the 100th anniversary of Deng Xiaoping’s birth, inside a nice leather briefcase. I presented the center with a signed copy of my book in return. All seven academics from the talk showed up, as did Vonne and her two best new friends (Jennifer and Zhang pretty much took turns walking arm in arm with Vonne from that point onward). I could tell Vonne’s morning must have been pretty special, because Zhang spontaneously declared to everyone, “I just love your wife very much!”
Turns out they went to a special dress shop to have Vonne fitted for a gorgeous black silk-embroidered suit, done in a very traditional style with long black skirt. The dress would be made in one-day, allowing for alterations on Thursday for a Friday delivery to the hotel. After that they went to the famous pearl shop that everyone talks about in the China adoption circles (name escapes me right now and I won’t wake Vonne up to ask her). It is run by the owner herself. Here our delicate Zhang, who could seem quite girlish and giggling in her affection for us both, would reveal her professional side, turning into the toughest bargainer that either of us had even seen. Man, that woman works every single obstacle in our way like she’s Jimmy Hoffa or something. Everything is negotiated and Zhang argues very vehemently for the lowest price, best seat, nicest this or that. She complains about everything and constantly demands better, and yet the toughness of her demeanor never upsets or offends anyone, as this style of bargaining is quite accepted and expected, so once over, that Chinese sort of harmony immediately returns and Zhang instantly transforms into her giggly and utterly charming self. We watched this back and forth with her so many times it became somewhat routine, but it sill amazed me how she could alternate at such high speeds. Suffice it to say, we were extremely glad to have her around for every situation, and immediately fell equally in love with her as our companion.
The lunch went on for three hours and was course after course after course . . . Unfortunately, it was Cantonese, which is famous for using all sort of weird and exotic food substances. I ate about 50 things I have never tasted before and probably 35 I never want to taste again. Coming off the long flights, this was a test of courage and fortitude that I survived, although it did hit Vonne almost immediately afterwards.
Around 3:30 we headed out with Jennifer, Zhang and Mr. Liu in our car to Tiananmen. When we got there, Vonne was looking pretty bad and almost asked to go to the hotel. But Zhang, ever resourceful, pulled out this small green bottle of some extract, had Vonne snort a bunch of it and then puts drops around her face and neck and voila! She immediately perked up and the difficulty cleared up. Vonne then thought she might go on, only to feel another wave of nausea. More of the extract was applied, then Vonne quickly surrendered her lunch into a bag adroitly supplied by Mr. Liu from his trunk and her entire discomfort seemed to pass.
Getting out of the car, we spotted two tough looking guys who rent rides on this big trikes where they peddle up front and two people ride in the back—like a rickshaw on wheels. At first I thought, there’s no way Vonne will agree to ride in something like that, weaving in and out of traffic that’s as aggressive as anything you see in Manhattan, but Vonne was already so close to both Jennifer and Zhang that she could refuse them no wish—especially after Zhang’s little trick with the extract. So bam! Minutes later we’re speeding around Tinanamen’s big streets weaving in and out of traffic. I shot film like crazy and tried not to think about the likelihood we’d get crushed by a bus zooming by.
After our ride, the two drivers made the terrible mistake of trying to tap Zhang for foreigner fares instead of the fares normally paid by Chinese tourists for such rides, even going to the extent of trying to explain to me how brutal she was being in her negotiations, but they got nowhere with Zhang and I did not dare come between her and her hapless opponents in this tussle of wills.
Next we toured the Great Hall of the Peoples, which is a sort of Congress building for the great meetings of the Communist Party that are held every five years. It’s the famous building where a lot of the most historic meetings occurred between Mao, Zhou Enlai, Nixon and Kissinger in the 70s, so it was really cool to wander around on a guided tour and shoot lotsa photos.
After the hall, we toured the Museum of the Revolution and saw a big current exhibit on Deng, then it was off to another spectacular meal in another private room up inside a great restaurant. This place is known as Beijing’s best traditional restaurant, so we had the most traditional sort of dishes, my favorite being warm noodles with bean sauce (which I still crave days later).
After the dinner we went to a well-known tea house for an Ed Sullivan Show-like review of magicians, opera singers, acrobats, etc. We drank more tea, had a slew of fabulous desserts, and enjoyed the show from our front-row table. By the time we got back to the hotel, we were exhausted and collapsed.
Up again for Thursday at 5 am, we drove in the Mercedes for about 90 minutes to Dr. Yu’s office at the headquarters of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, where his publishing bureau’s headquarters are collocated. After a brief office visit with Dr. Yu (Vonne attending), where I met the scholar who would translate my talk and we exchanged books, I was taken to a very large conference room on the top floor where an audience of about 50 awaited.
It was the first time I have ever been translated live, and it was a challenge since I tend to talk very fast and employ a large oral text per slide. So I had to turn every statement into almost an axiom to keep the whole thing moving at a decent pace. I would say a sentence or two, and my translator would talk for 1 to 2 minutes. Yet, somehow I got through 24 slides in 70 minutes, to be followed by questions and answers that went another 30 minutes.
Then Dr.Yu hosted us for another long and spectacular meal, with Vonne returning to join us from shopping with Zhang and Jennifer. This one was Hunan, and if Cantonese was a challenge, Hunan was just what we needed. It was probably one of the finest meals I have ever had, although having people light up cigarettes throughout was a bit unusual. Trying to be nice, I tried everyone’s brand by the end of the meal, pretty much hitting my cigarette quota for the year.
Following lunch it was shopping at various stores in the afternoon, where Vonne bought traditional outfits for Vonne Mei and Jerry for their Christmas photos, and we scored some traditional “shard boxes” in which fragments of antique vases are used at tops to intricately hand-painted black lacquer boxes. It rained all day so we were dodging in and out of stores from the Mercedes. It was a nice and relaxed afternoon, with no sightseeing, although earlier that morning Vonne and Zhang did get into to see Chairman Mao’s body in Tiananmen, thanks to Zhang flashing some official ID and simply have Vonne and she bypass a line of roughly a thousand.
We were wearing down at his point, so we had a quiet dinner in a dumpling restaurant, again sitting in a private room in the back. Here we cracked out our Polaroid camera that Vonne bought especially for this trip and took many group photos, giving the instant prints to Jennifer, Zhang and Mr. Liu as gifts, along with wrapped presents of very nice Fuller hair brushes and Cross pens. They were very touched and we ended the meal again with many hugs and kisses—save for Mr. Liu.
Then we saw a Chinese acrobats show in a local theater, and frankly both Vonne and I struggled mightily to stay awake throughout. Amazingly, people shot flash photos throughout, so I took many pictures myself (no flash) and so have a great record of the entire event. My favorite moment was easy: the trick where about 15 girls ride one bike in this huge fan of humanity.
When we broke up that night Zhang and Jennifer were so unhappy at the thought of their not seeing us again that they decided to bring the completed silk suit over to our hotel room Friday night following our first day of touring with the rest of our adoption group. So we got to see them last night too.
Well, I’ve run out of time. Need to take a shower, get our gear packed for our second day of official group tours (Great Wall, Forbidden City), and catch the buffet—all in an hour. I will give a longer version blog that covers our two days of group tours (Friday and Saturday) either tonight or it will have to wait for the plane ride to Nanchang.
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