Face The Sun: Let There Be Light!

To Stand on Jericho's Walls and Face the Sun.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

My interest in Qinghai (and later Gansu) was largely logistical: I had some serious questions regarding the day-to-day lives of Tibetan monks.

(I recognize that going to Qinghai and Gansu rather than Tibet seems illogical, but it was necessary. Moreover, only three of the six major monasteries of Yellow Hat Tibetan Buddhism are located in Tibet. One's in Gansu, one's in Qinghai, and a third is across the border in Himalayan India).

It took me about 15 minutes at the Ta'Er monastery, on the outskirts of Tibet, to get a monk to invite me home. This was all the invitation I needed to grill him on everything I wanted to know.

So then, monk logistics:

If you're a monk, the monastery will give you an annual income based on how long you've been at the monastery and rolling under the assumption that the temple has been pulling in donations. This ranges from about 2000 kuai ($250) a year to about 4000 kuai ($500) a year. This allows you to pay for your monk cell phone, which you are not forbidden to have since Tibetan Buddhism is, shall we say, unique.

The monk I was talking to, a respectable old-timer with 14 years at the monastery, was pulling in 3500 kuai (about $430) a year. You get paid in cash, in a single lump payment once a year, every November.

If you're an irresponsible monk who isn't good at budgeting and you blow through all your monkmoney by oh-let's-say mid to late August, you aren't going to go hungry: you can always get yak butter and millet flour* -- the staples of the Tibetan diet -- from the monastery.

The monk who invited me home was 36, and had been at the monastery for 14 years, meaning that he entered when he was 12. This is not uncommon. He claimed it was his own choice, but despite that, when his head was shaved and he was given his robes, he was near tears. His parents live about 5 hours away from the monastery, in eastern Qinghai. He usually gets to see them every year or two.

Being at a monastery for 14 years will get you a pretty sweet pad. His was a multi-bedroom complex (he had 6 roommates), with a backyard where he was raising a vicious Sharpe puppy who was out for blood.

Following my in-depth interview on monk logistics, he pulled out a bag of pears, sent a younger monk to go wash a few, and then asked me some questions of his own: since you're an American, can you help me get a US visa? (No). Will knowing you make it easier to get a US visa? (No). How can I apply for a US visa? (See the website -- it's in both Chinese and English). Do monks have a better chance of getting US visas than other Chinese people? (See the website). But really, what's it going to take to get a US visa? (I'm not kidding, Mr. Monk: the best thing for you to do is see the website). Can you give me a letter to give to the Embassy for when I apply for a US visa? (Dude. No.).

*Coda: I am a person who is embarrassed by foods I dislike. I have been systematically identifying foods that I don't like and forcing myself to eat them until I do like them, so that at this point there are very few things I sincerely won't eat. I recently got over my phobia of wasabi and other horseradishes. Mustard has long since been conquered. Onions are old hat. Hard boiled eggs remain a stumbling block.

Despite embarrassment and systematic eradication, I'm going to come right out and say this: Yak butter is perhaps the single most god awful "food product" on the planet. It retains it's gamey, full-on animal flavor while having none of the pleasant properties of butter. It's full-flavor comes on top of a crumbly and waxy texture that wouldn't be good on bread if there were bread to be had, and the smell, the overpowering room-filling reek of it makes everyone and everything in Tibetan areas smell vaguely Yak-y. In addition to being a food product, it's also a medium for sculpture (monasteries keep elaborate butter sculptures of Buddhist icons for a year before cutting them up and giving them to the poor), and is burned on alters in large candles.

The Tibetans love it as "yak butter tea," which is a hunk of yak butter in a teacup with hot water poured over it so the butter melts and forms an oily skein on the top. This puddle of oil is then blown away by the person consuming it, allowing them to drink the now Yak-flavored water underneath it while lightly painting their upper lip with liquefied yak fat. When the teacup is half full, a handful of millet flour is tossed in, and is combined by hand with the liquid in the cup to form a dry, crumbly dough with little nutritional value, an intensely chalky texture, and an overwhelming flavor. This dough, called tsampa in Tibetan, is the primary staple of Tibetan cuisine, and goes a long way to explain why there are few if any Tibetan restaurants in the US.
Labels: Buddhism, China, Qinghai, Tibet, Tibetans, travel

Posted by Dakota on 6:16 AM link |

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Note: is seems upon reading that this post, more so than any other, is CRAZY reminisce heavy. For that, I apologize.

Enough pontificating: Qinghaiward! Train departs from Xizhan on Saturday at 2, and I in standard fashion get to the station exactly 8 minutes before departure. I'm off to the frozen northwest, and having left myself exactly 9 minutes to pack, have forgotten hat, scarf, gloves, deodorant, notepad, and camera. Killing me.

When I was a student, I rolled into Beijing a month early to roam around China for a month before I started studying. I arrived at night, stayed at a buddy's place, and then went to the train station the next morning. My first train experience was a hard-seat 30-some hour train to Guangzhou, a grueling ride that to this day people -- self included, really -- find hard to believe I've done. (My teachers have made it clear that they would never have taken a 33 or so hour train ride in hard seat).

I didn't know how to read the tickets at that time, and so when the gate opened, all the people in the waiting area started SPRINTING for the train. I assumed they were running for seats, and that if I took my time, I'd be standing for the next 30 some hours. It turns out even in hard-seat, the seats are assigned and listed on the ticket, and that people sprint to lockdown scarce overhead rack space. Despite having assigned seats, I now find that every time I'm on a Chinese train platform, I can't help myself: I sprint.

And this time is no exception: I'm late, as usual. I sprint through the station, hit the waiting all area, figure out where I'm headed, and make a break for it.

The waiting hall: as a student, I switched from Beijing Normal University (Beijing Shifan Daxue) to Nanjing University (Nanjing Daxue) about half way through my time. I had to renew my visa, and doing so required leaving China, either to Mongolia or Hong Kong. I ended up going to Hong Kong, carrying everything with me. The train to southern China (for an onward bus connection to Hong Kong) left from Xizhan.

By that point in my life, I hadn't figured out that I'd there's nothing I'd rather have more than an almost non-existantly light backpack. I was carrying enough junk -- textbooks, clothing, and a ridiculous amount of trinkets (a mahjongg set, chinese chess set, go board and the requisite dozens of black and white stones, a beer mug from a bar we used to go to, what have you) -- to fill two huge backpacks, and was wearing one on the front and one on the back. It was heavy enough that breathing became a bit of a struggle. I remember standing in line for the ticket takers and having a guy across from me sneer out -- that foreigner has so much STUFF! And I, mortified but thinking fast, responded that a fellow student's father had just passed away, so I had his stuff too, was taking it to him in Hong Kong, don't judge, it's not all mine.

I'm not sure if that flew or not. I just remember my shoulders aching for days from those two stupid backpacks and all that stuff I neither wanted not needed.

Right o. 8 minutes to go, I fly through the waiting room, hit the platform, and fly towards car number 8. I've got a sack full of ramen noodles (Chinese ramen comes in a remarkable variety of flavors and is considerably better than US ramen) as well as some other snacks to entice my fellow travellers to chat with me. I'm in hard sleeper, my preferred class of train in China (the beds are longer than soft sleeper, and it's easier to talk to people). I make it on board just before departure, rip open a can of Thai Curry Crab flavored potato chips, and try to fire up a conversation with the woman across from me.

She doesn't speak Chinese. She's a Korean tourist, 67 years old and on her way to Lanzhou in Gansu province. Blast.

Throughout the trip, due to her inability to speak Chinese and my white skin, everyone will assume that we are together, and that I can translate for her. Neither of these things are true.

I try to entice some of the actual Chinese people to talk to me by opening up a bucket-apparatus that's full of mini-snickers bars. Everyone likes snickers. Find me someone who doesn't like snickers bars, and I'll either show you a near-death diabetic or a liar. And yet: No one wants the Snickers. Everyone wants to help the Korean lady learn very basic Chinese characters. No one cares that I'm reading the newspaper! A Chinese newspaper, no less! No one wants to discuss events of the day! This is all a complete disaster! I console myself by eating approximately 26 mini snickers, which, on top of a complete can of Thai Curry Crab potato chips (my favorite flavor!) leave me feeling really ill.

In 2000, I and my roommate to be, Mark Christopher (Ma Guifu in Chinese, a name which Chinese people found to be very turn of the century; all of them wanted to correct it to Ma Fugui, but he was having none of that) took the train from Shanghai to Urumqi in the northwestern-most province of Xinjiang. It was a 72 hour train, and it was awesome. Everyone was bored by day 2, so everyone was sharing snacks and chatting and playing cards and chess and whatnot, and it was GREAT. I was expecting that my 25 hour train to Qinghai would be similar, but the distance it seems just isn't quite far enough to cross that friendliness threshold. And not for lack of trying: there isn't anyone on that damn train who didn't get offered a snickers.
Labels: China, reminiscing, trains, travel

Posted by Dakota on 4:25 AM link |

Further updates on India will have to wait: the notebook containing my notes on India is in myat-home-office. I, in the mean time, have been given a week off by my language training program to head off to anywhere-I-want China, to stay in Chinese hotels and chat up real-live Chinese people and in general put the ol' Chinese into action.

And so I'm in Qinghai, on the outskirts of Tibet, surrounded by Tibetans and other people who don't so much speak great Mandarin. It seemed to make sense: I've got questions. The monks have answers.

I bought my ticket on Saturday morning from the Beijing West Train station (Beijing Xizhan). Xizhan is, I believe, the largest train station in Beijing and serves pretty much any place that's west of Beijing, including my destination. I could've gone to any number of places more convenient than the train station itself to get the ticket, but when I was student I came into and out of Xizhan an awful lot, and I wanted to see if it was as I remember it.

It is, and it isn't. It's still huge, but it's now well signposted in both English and Chinese (the Chinese signs are bracingly specific -- "Ticket Sales, 138 meters -->"). There's an information booth that's clearly signposted as "FREE INFORMATION" to cut down on hucksters charging to tell you where the bathroom is or when the next train to Xi'an is or what have you. The information booth is even broken down into logical subsections -- train timetables, lodging in Beijing, tourist information, restaurants and nightlife. I have no recollection of any of that being there in 2000.

And then tickets sales. In 2000, I remember there being a single huge room with dozens of windows, each with a cluster of about 20 people surrounding it. There was no semblence of a line, and when you finally pushed your way to the front, people would still jam their money into the window ahead of you to break queue.

It was like the Seinfeld Soup Nazi: you had one single chance to ask for what you wanted, and if they didn't have it or you didn't understand, you'd be muscled aside and the next person would already be barking out their ticket order. More likely than not, even as you're asking for your ticket, the people on either side of you would also be shrieking out what they want, so understanding the ticket seller's response to anything you might say -- muffled through barely functioning microphones -- was pretty much impossible. You'd spend your time in line rehearsing: tomorrow night, Xi'an, hard sleeper. Tomorrow night, hard sleeper, Xi'an, and if you screwed it up, it would take you at least 10 minutes to get the ticket seller's attention again. All in all, there was only about a 50 percent chance you'd end up with what you wanted, and there sure as hell wasn't anything fast about the process.

I remember thinking that the lack of lines and general chaos when trying to purchase tickets was my least favorite thing about China, and how everything -- EVERYTHING -- would be better if they would just LINE UP.

The ticket hall is still big, but they've got metal bars in place that force people to line up. I was there at an odd hour -- about noon on a Saturday -- but there was almost no one there. There were two people in line in front of me, and while I waited, 2 people came up behind me. They waited patiently and didn't break queue. They ticket vendor was perfectly polite, and repeated the train departure time without complaint. She smiled when she gave me my change. No one pushed me, even once. No one shouted anything.

It was all a little disappointing.

This is, I suppose, the fundamental dilemma of the expat: when there are no lines and the hall is nothing but jostling and shouting, we complain about a lack of civilization. When they put in bars and people learn to line up and it all becomes so easy, we say that it's become sterile.

So then, Xizhan: in the run up to the olympics, the Chinese government is running a series of campaigns to teach people western-style politesse. They include large-character posters that say things like "I line up, because I am civilized," and "my behavior reflects on China". Rumor runs that they've made 11th of each month "Line up, Beijing! day" to emphasize standing in line instead of jostling for position. Everyone I know -- expats and Chinese folks alike -- supports this plan.

Xizhan has, I would say, undergone exactly the sort of transformation that the Chinese government is hoping for. But it made me a little nostalgic for the way the place used to be. The fact that the way the place used to be drove me absolutely batshit insane doesn't bear mentioning at all.
Labels: China, reminiscing, trains, travel

Posted by Dakota on 3:48 AM link |

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Friday, 8:30 in the evening: flight from Beijing International to New Dehli, direct, on the Chinese national carrier. I'm seated next to the reincarnation of a bobblehead doll, who throughout the flight swings his head from left to right in a long sweeping motion, until he notices me looking at him, at which point he sheepishly stops until he thinks I can no longer see. But the seats in economy don't exactly have an ocean of distance between them, so I pretend I can't see him to allow him to get his head swing on.

At 3 in the morning, a scant hour and half behind schedule, we begin our descent into New Dehli. The stewardess, struggling a bit with the English, makes the following announcement: Indian Regulations require that we spray down the cabin for… dysfunction , and with that precaution, they air-freshener the entire cabin. Suitably refreshed, we deplane in Dehli.

I've declared this trip to be No Sleep Till Varanasi, which is like the song No Sleep Till Brooklyn, only with an Indian flair. So while my boss and his wife, on the same flight as I was, head off to bed, I head to the train station to hop the first Taj Mahal-bound train to Agra, 2 or so hours away.

Dehli Railway Station, four in the morning: the first immutable law of solo travel in India comes to light: you cannot attempt to do anything without someone "helping" you along. So, while I'm trying to wrestle a ticket out of the ticket venders ("come back in… 13 minutes," they tell me), someone else is trying to convince me that the easiest way – nay, the only way -- is to go to his friend's travel agency, just across the street, and there's no need to even stand in this line, get out of this line immediately, come with me, why aren't you moving, are you not listening? And so on.

I shake him. The process of getting a ticket requires an application form, printed on ancient paper and re-xeroxed (or mimeographed, it's hard to tell) so many times that the words are illegible. The guy behind me, smartly dressed in a purple tie and looking far too well put-together for 4 a.m. in the train station, helps me out in return for the use of my pen.

I get my ticket for the 6:15 express to Agra, and then wander across the street to find a bottle of water. There's a fistful of small open-air restaurants the street, and one guy, frying paratha and chapati -- two different Indian flatbreads -- asks in polite Hindi if I want breakfast. I'm thinking that I'll just get a chapati or a paratha and move on -- surely bread can't make me sick -- but when the bread (steaming hot, still frying in it's own oil) arrives, it's coupled with a side of chickpeas (chole, my favorite), and even though I'm at the train station at 4 a.m. and this place has violent illness written all over it, how can I not eat? So I do; there's a layer of spice baked into the paratha, and the chickpeas are swimming in an oily cumin, tomato and hot pepper sauce that's ridiculously good, and I decide that if I have to get sick, it'll be worth it for food like this.

On the train to Agra I'm surrounded by shriekingly giggly Japanese schoolgirls. A stereotype, shattered in my mind: I had no idea that Japanese people were capable of being loud, much less obnoxious.

Agra, 8 a.m.: just outside the train station I see my first sacred cow, grazing in the dumpster. This is exceedingly exciting to me and I take pictures, but in retrospect (perhaps because I was alone), I realize that despite my well intentioned plans (which mirror every other pun-loving India-bound traveler's plans), I forgot entirely to say "holy cow!" upon seeing it.

No Sleep Till Varanasi: I head to the ticket counter to get my overnight train ticket to Lucknow. The window, labeled in English, reads: Foreign Tourists. Ladies. Freedom Fighters. I (who blur the line between foreign tourist and freedom fighter), am informed that the overnight to Lucknow is sold out.

Agra Fort Bus Station: the entire length of the outer wall doubles as an open-air men's room, and multiple people are going about their business. The smell is overpowering; it's unclear where women go for such things. I'm told that there's a "sleeper bus" to Lucknow, leaving at 8 p.m., no reservations available.

I wander around the outside of Agra Fort (British Era, imposing and impressive, still an active Indian army base). A sign reads Wearing of Crash Helmets Is Compulsory. I packed light -- too light, it seems, since I don't have a crash helmet on me. I decide it's time for the Taj.

The Taj: as impressive in real life as it is in the pictures. And it makes me pause a bit: I feel like I'm checking off a Major Life Box, a box labeled Things You Must See Before You Die. And by checking it off, it's like I'm one step closer to death. If a formal list of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World existed, the Taj would assuredly be on it. What's left to see? (The answer: the Pyramids, of course). Further introspection on this topic can now be abandoned until I see the pyramids.

The Taj Mahal ("Crown Palace") deserves more than a single paragraph, I feel, but what can I say that hasn't already been said? I can mention that Islamic calligraphy that runs the length of each side of the Taj, and that I, after having examined such calligraphy relatively extensively in Pakistan, was captivated by it. Or that the entranceway to the Taj is flanked by professional photographers who snap portraits of tourists for small amounts of money, and who bully casual tourists from taking that perfect entranceway shot with the long reflecting pool just as you enter so they can monopolize it.

Also, since the perfect tripartite symmetry of this trip was carefully planned, I'll go ahead and mention that the Taj, the mausoleum and mosque of the Taj Mahal, represent one side of the symbolic triangle of this trip. That triangle side can be labeled: ISLAM.

45 minutes outside of Agra: the village of Fatehpur Sikri, home to a World-Heritage mosque and mausoleum. In Pakistan, one of our officers had to go out to a village on field assignment, and upon returning would only comment on the state of the village by exclaiming: The flies, my god the FLIES! This leaps to mind as I walk from the bus station to the mosque, passing by butchers and samosa venders, merchants selling sweets and chickens and tobacco, all covered in thick clouds of flies, and I can't help smiling.

The inside of the mosque is full of kids asking for pens, and a stonecutter who claims to work in the mosque. (His story falls apart under questioning -- he's a local stonecutter who's in the mosque to drum up business). You've got to take your shoes off in the Mosque, but the buildings are covered in beehives, and there are dead bees everywhere inside the courtyard. I, like all massive cowards, live in dread terror of bees and have to concentrate all of my energy on not stepping on their corpses.

I'm sitting writing down all of these things when I little girl next to me -- maybe 7, 8 years old -- says hello. I finish my sentence and then look up and reply, in Hindi, hey, how's it going? She leaps backwards, and stutters -- Y-you speak Hindi?! A little, I tell her, and she spins around to her parents and relatives and shrieks, my GOD, he speaks Hindi! And they all cluster around, and they're friendly and not trying to sell me anything and it's fantastic. And so, with their entire family in tow (they've brought along everyone, maybe a dozen people) I brush out of the mosque, past the stonecutter who's still hoping to take me to his shop, to the ice cream cart, where we all have cream-filled mango-popsicles on a stick (the Indian equivalent of the Orange Dreamsicle), and it's a glorious day to be alive.

Back to Agra, for sunset at a small restaurant on the roof of a hotel overlooking the Taj. The sunset is lovely and the Taj is magnificent in fading from white to orange to pink to gray. But the restaurant is built over a sewer and the night air smells overpoweringly of human waste, and this sort of blunts my enjoyment of the lentils and bread that I eat for dinner.

Overnight bus to Lucknow: I'm on board at least an hour early, maybe the sixth person on the bus, but someone has already taken up every inch of overhead space with dozens and dozens of shoeboxes, bound together in packs of 8. I had been lulled into a false sense of security by the word "sleeper bus," thinking that it might be slung with hammocks like Chinese sleeper buses. But it's full of seats, and resembles the ones in Sri Lanka -- too small for my legs, bracingly uncomfortable.

The bus, subsidized by the government and extremely inexpensive (well under 100 rupees, much less than $2.50 for an overnight ride) is clearly a means of transportation for those who can't afford the train. The gentleman across the aisle from me only has one arm; the woman behind me is trying to keep her four children in line. I'm pinned into the corner by the guy next to me, who dozes off on my shoulder. Someone hops on the bus and tries to sell a used pair of tennis shoes. He's aggressive, waving them under the noses of passengers to show their freshness. The price, at 90 rupees ($2.25) is right, but I decide to pass.

None of the windows on the bus close, and it's freezing cold. By one in the morning I'm still wide awake, shivering, exhausted and wearing every piece of clothing I own -- two fleeces on my torso, one tied around my neck like a scarf, and two t-shirts wrapped around my face in an effort to keep warm.

I'll be honest: I can't remember the last time I was as miserable as on the overnight bus to Lucknow. Tired I can handle. Uncomfortable I can handle. But my god, being cold makes me absolutely miserable. When I came to this conclusion, I still had 6 hours to go on the bus. But I pull through in the end, since there aren't exactly a lot of accommodation options at 3 in the morning in the middle of nowhere, Uttar Pradesh.

Lucknow: Famous for the purity of its Urdu. One of my old Urdu teachers told me that when Urdu speakers from Lucknow use their full formal dialect, the result is poetic, but (to him) rather annoying.

And perhaps that's enough for now. It's almost time to head to the next city over, to hop the overnight train back to Dehli.

There is a bus. I'm just not that hardcore.
Labels: Agra, buses, India, Lucknow, travel

Posted by Dakota on 5:09 AM link |

Monday, February 19, 2007

Everyone who has ever come to India -- every single person in the long history of India who's paid a visit here -- has described it as "overwhelming" and "sensory-overload." They usually fail to adequately describe exactly what it is that makes the place so sensorily overwhelming. They don't mention:

Every waking second of every day is spent slogging through excrement-laced mud that's flecked with ancient garbage and the shiny packaging from betel-nut wrappers, and long open sewers are everywhere and almost unavoidable. As you walk, you're invariably dodging oncoming traffic (cars, three-wheel tuk-tuk rickshaws, bicycles, trucks and donkey carts), all of whom are honking at you with horns of different pitch but unvarying loudness, and in addition to vehicles of all sorts, you've got to dodge street dogs, street goats, and sacred cows that thoughtfully munch on garbage and don't move for anyone. Meanwhile, you're being tailed by minimum three hucksters who are looking to sell you something, take you to a guesthouse to snag a commission, or rip you off in some other way; those three people will, over the bleating of the goats and the honking of the horns and the crunchy-wet slorp of your boot crushing garbage while skidding through frothy mud, will be continuously shouting at you Hello! Where are you going? Friend, hello, where are you going? As background to the shouting and the bleating and the whatnot is religious music of some sort being blared from a massive speaker outside of a tiny booth selling 5-rupee cassettes, while simultaneously the stench from the open sewers is punctuated by massive clouds of incense smoke that billows from half-burnt sticks attached to every stand, stall and samosa cart in the city. In the mean time, at least two women holding children have seen you and are now begging for coins by waving their babies at you and there's also probably a dust-streaked crippled person, lovingly maimed by well-intentioned parents decades ago to ensure him a lifetime of income from begging, now dragging himself around on a cart of some sort and also begging for coins, and meanwhile you've got your hands stuffed in your pockets and clutching your wallet, because there's plenty of pickpockets and monkeys -- MONKEYS! -- both of whom have been known to steal things, albeit not usually for the same reasons.

If all of this sounds miserable, please let me assure you: it's fantastic beyond any speaking of it. This chaos --this absolutely out-of-control berserkness that accompanies every-day life -- is the fundamental reason that one comes to India.

I'm in Varanasi, which ranks amongst the coolest cities I've ever been to. Internet and electricity are unstable, so more likely than not, nothing will get said about any of this until I'm back to China. In the mean time, the best of days!

In full disclosure: I've only seen a couple of monkeys thus far, and none of them have tried to steal anything from me.
Labels: chaos, India, travel

Posted by Dakota on 7:36 AM link |

Friday, February 16, 2007

Minimum fare in Beijing Taxi is ten kuai, a buck twenty-five even. Maximum fare on a Beijing bus for those wielding a transportation card: eight mao, or one thin dime. This is the explanation I use when people ask why it is that I've become engrossed with the Beijing Public Transportation system, but it fails to fully explain the reasons behind my obsession.

In short: the Beijing bus system is the best I've ever seen, ever. The vast majority of the city's 16 million people rely on the bus and subway system to get around, which means the demand for buses is astronomical. As such, the number of buses plying any given route is through the roof, and the wait for a bus is never more than 4 minutes. The buses themselves take only about 25 percent longer than cars, except during rush hour when Beijing traffic grinds to a gridlocked halt but the buses ride designated bus-only lanes at twice the speed of regular cars.

I've always been impressed by people who are good at transportation. Quixote, in DC, could hear someone's address and name the bus route. 16th street heights? Ah, the S2. Here, a girl from Frisbee heard my address and where I study, and responded: so, you take the 117 and then transfer to… and I was immediately jealous. The jealously turned into light-hearted research, which then turned in to a full-on obsession.

My new favorite pastime is the game of Whatever Bus Comes Next, Take It To The End. Thus I can tell you that the 729 southbound will get you from my house to the Embassy for a nickel, whereas a cab will run you $2.50. (The 729 northbound, by contrast, will zip you out to a god-forsaken industrial area in the Northeast part of town, rife with large piles of rusty rebar. If you, for any reason, need to purchase rusty rebar, the 729 northbound is your bus). The 815 winds its way through old neighborhoods, past a temple to the ancient bell tower. The 117 will take you to a shopping district, and then on to a 24-hour Taiwanese noodle joint.

And then some buses just don't seem to go anywhere at all, and you get off and think: my god, why does this line exist? But within 4 minutes, another bus will show up and take you back to where you came from.

In DC, SmartCards make the trip smoother, but aside from the convenience for the user, there's no real incentive to get one. Passengers are still allowed to feed their rumpled bills into the machine and clog up the entranceway, slowing down transportation. In Beijing, the ticket taker is in the center of the bus, rather than at the door, so everyone gets on at the same speed. Moreover, unlike DC, Beijing encourages users to get a smart card by means of market forces: it's a kuai -- 12.5 cents -- to ride without a card, but 4 mao -- a nickel -- with one. Things are smoother, the ride faster and the fare lower, and everyone wins.

I am strangely proud of my Beijing smartcard. I feel that it somehow makes me legitimate as a resident of Beijing.

Aside from the odd person riding with me, I've only ever seen one other foreigner on the bus. When he got on, several minutes after me, a passenger turned to her friend and commented -- so many foreigners! Her friend responded -- they must be friends.

I spend inordinate amounts of time on bjbus.com; the English version is scaled down and rarely works, but the Chinese version is top notch, rivaling anything WMATA has to offer. A few weeks ago I hacked apart the 50 pages of a Beijing bus route book, and then pasted them together to make a single enormous map. And then I started copying bus lines from the route book onto a map of Beijing, marking out each route in pen to see where they go.

I crane my neck to see the numbers on buses when they roll by. I actively memorize the names of bridges, which often correspond to bus stop names, so as to make route planning easier. I chat with ticket takers, just for the sheer joy of it. My cocktail party chat has become intensely boring, and people actively seek to get away from me when they hear my dedication to public transportation. This is a price I'm willing to pay.
Labels: Beijing, buses, China, travel

Posted by Dakota on 2:32 AM link |

Face The Sun: Let There Be Light.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Monday, February 19, 2007

Friday, February 16, 2007