It's cold outside, but warm inside.

It's something like minus 10 in Beijing right now. In the Hutongs that's alright. There's no wind to speak of in these little warrens, but out on the main avenues, boy it gets chilly. I've been seeking out the warm sunny walls and leaning against them as breif respite from the bone-chilling wind. I'm not one to usually complain about the cold. Heck, I love the cold. I'd far rather be cold than hot; the idea of a tropical vacation makes me mildly ill. However, this cold is somehow different. It gets me in the bones. My toes are always cold, the back of my neck is always cold and my fingers are always cold. It's almost embarrasing that I find myself so affected by the cold. People find that I'm Canadian and automatically assume that I'm a polar bear and are enormously shocked when they discover that I'm cold all the time. I'm cold when I'm drinking tea as well as when I'm drinking beer. The only time I'm not cold is when I wake up in the morning in this hostel with the sun beaming in, adding it's unmeasured energy to the 30 degrees the heater is struggling bravely to achieve. I'm not sure what all that means, but I find myself eating less, thinking more and mustering less ambition to sight-see.

What I seem primarily interested in is architecture and people watching. I'm getting a huge kick out of watching the locals amble along, occasionally and loudly doing the gratuitous suck-back-and-spit. It's disgusting, but amusing. I'm not sure when it was that I left my Western disapproval by the wayside and just started enjoying the spectacle, but it's happened. I now just smile and chortle to myself whenever I see it or hear it. It may be seeing other Western faces' reactions to the sights and sounds, but I think it's mostly the absurdity of the affair. There's a widespread and deep-seated folk belief that hauking lougies is promotes health and longevity. While this may well be true as far as the interests of the individual go, it is entirely at odds with everything I know about pulmonary infections, disease vectors and general hygeine. Spitting is not a good idea from a proactive public health perspective. I would have thought that in a 'communist' country, the workers might be concerned about burdening their fellow workers with the financial woes that the West has discovered spitting imposes. This isn't even going to touch the smoking as that's a whole other kettle of fish that I'm not, this evening at least, interested in mulling over. Matter of fact, I'm done with spitting too, because as much as I find it hilarious, I also find it deeply repugnant. Moving swiftly on...

I've taken to haggling. Haggling, for those of you who have yet to be introduced is basically the way the world works outside of market commercial arrangements. Prices are always debatable. People ask way more for things than they actually expect to get. I was offered a set of postcards by a haulker at Tiannamen Square the morning I got off the train from Shanghai for 30 yuan, which is about 4 Canadian dollars. I initially tried to ignore them, but I was trying to orient myself (no pun intended) and I just couldn't leave them behind. I offered 1 yuan. They looked shocked. No, no, no, is good, friend. You friend, you buy, 30 yuan. Yes, yes. I'm shaking my head the whole time, while I'm trying to look through my LP guide to figure out where I am in relation to where all the things, like the hostel are, but they're not taking the hint. I offer 2 yuan. They look hurt. They drop it to 25. I shake my head and start to walk away. Ok friend, is 20. Yes, you buy. No, 3 is all this is worth. I can buy this anywhere for 3 yuan. We argue about the prices of postcards in stores we've never been to, me in my language, they in theirs. I offer 3 again. They drop to 15. I walk away. They follow pulling my sleeve. Ok, 10 yuan, you buy! They start looking a little pained, so I offer 5 as a final offer. Done. I get a dirty look and start to move off quickly as a half dozen other haulkers selling the same things descend on me, hoping to sell me more postcards of Tiannamen Square. I quicken my pace and tell them that The Lord of the Rings was a great movie trilogy but that Tom Bombadil shouldn't have been removed in the screenplay. I've tried saying I don't understand in French and German, and sometimes it makes them leave me alone, but sometimes they speak better French or German than they do English and I'm in for a difficult time getting rid of them. Of course, haggling isn't always applied just to haulkers. This morning as Caley, Anna, Kevin and I were heading out to the Summer Palace, I bought a couple of one use cameras as I was expecting my digital battery to die shortly into the day. It's really important to price the item well before you make your offer because you can't go down from where you start. That's their job, you have to go up. Having worked the sales person down 20 yuan from where he started, he starts looking at another sales person and talking about what they can offer. I talked with Anna a bit about how much the yuan price would be in euros and decided to leave, telling him we couldn't go any further. So, he threw in another camera. We paused a bit, but then told him sorry, we wouldn't pay that much. So, he threw in another camera and jumped the price to 140 from 80. I offered him 90, he stopped looking happy and told me 140. I went to 100, he sighed and dropped it to 110 as a final offer. So, we walked away with three cameras for just over what two would have cost. I guess the idea is that they will never sell you something that they won't make any money on. Walking away usually drops the price significantly if it's prefaced with a bit of haggling and then an 'I'm sorry'. The other evening, I was buying some oranges from a few guys hanging out with their fruit cart, smoking in the cold and they seemed really pleased with my bargaining, laughing, offering me a cigarette and asking me where I was from. The whole exercise is absolutely super. I think it's one of the most enjoyable things I've done here.

Anyway, yesterday, after Caley and Anna arrived, we hit a hot-pot restaurant for some of the most stupid hot food I've had in ages. It may as well have been lava. It was brutally hot, but super tasty. Hotpot is a sloppy mess, but the lotus root, tofu and mushroom combination was pretty super. After that, we wandered about in Tiannamen square, watching all the plainclothes officers standing around looking like police officers. There were at least three paddy-waggons on hand to deal with any peeps who thought they might put a political bent on their tantric-hockey-yoga spiritual practice. Bizzare. The whole idea of a communist state is bizzare. 'we keep spendin' most our lives livin' on in a worker's paradise...' (sung to a very familiar Coolio tune)

China is no workers paradise though. People just do what they do, ekking out a living in whatever way they can. Although one might claim that communism has done a fair job of elevating the status of women, it can only properly be said that men and women seem to be equally oppressed. I'm getting a wee bit tired, so I'll leave this thought alone for a while...

Last night we went out for the obligitory Peking duck. We, not knowing any better, ordered the set as it was a tad pricey, but not too steap. We tasted duck liver pate, red preserved duck meat, spicy duck entrails, bamboo shoots with duck feet and a bunch of other things that just didn't work so well... the actual Peking duck was ok, but only ok. Oddly enough, my favourite dish was the spicy duck entrails. Live and learn.

Today we trapsed out to the Summer Palace via the metro and a crazy cab ride that was double what the LP said it should have been. I guess prices have gone up. It's like that pretty much everywhere here. Things are just a lot more expensive these days. It was relatively uneventful though, and we got some nice views of the hills surrounding Beijing as well as a look at some super architecture (new, of course) that we might not have seen otherwise.

Nice view across the frozen lake.


The Summer Palace itself was quite beautiful. I certainly wouldn't have complained about having to stay there. There's a huge lake circumnavigated by a paved path. (probably done by hand). The lake was frozen and people were milling about on it, but when I started out on it, I create a crack in the ice that I was able to watch run off to the limit of my vision. This, perhaps understandably, disturbed me and I removed myself in a slow and deliberate fashion from the ice. Maybe all those Chinese have hollow bones... ANyway, as I've been largely innundated with temples and stuff in Japan, although I found the palace quite beautiful and it captured my imagination quite a bit, there was little to amaze me besides the absolute audacity of the circumstances of the construction. For one, I have a hard time seeing how this largish structure was able to bankrupt an entire state, let alone one as freaking huge as China. Secondly, if indeed that was going to be the case, I kind of feel Cixi was behaving reprehensibly given the circumstances. It's my understanding that most Chinese agree with me and view her in somewhat of a bad light. Anyway, that's dictators for you. Solomon was a bit of a spend thrift too.

So after walking around the palace for the afternoon, we haggled ourselves a minivan ride back to Tiannamen Square. This was a ride from hell. The driver was driving exactly like those sporty cars you see driven by careless youth on the 401, zipping in and out of traffic by margins too close for comfort, honking all the while. None of our Chinese was good enough to ask him to slow down and a miming effort would have probably further endangered us. It's funny how once you commit to something like that you just have to trust the person. I got a haircut after I got back to the hostel and they buzzed my hair as I'd asked and then pulled out a straight razor and before I knew what was happening they were shaving the back of my neck. Shouting bao shir would probably have ended me up with a big gash in my neck, so I just had to make a fast decision to trust her. Scarry though. Why couldn't she just have buzzed my neck hairs. I'm alright with having my hair moving down my back... At least it's going somewhere rather than just making a full exodus.

So trusting people you don't know you can trust seems to be a very strong part of travelling. Maybe it's just more apparent when you can't talk to anyone in an indepth fashion, but it seems like when you're in a society where you are functional, you don't have to be as trusting to get by. It may be just that you know the conventions though. I couldn't say for sure. Something for a lengthly tangent I think... another time, when it doesn't cost me money and I'm not in a computer room open to the elements.

Anyway, I finished today off with a good meal at a restaurant serving dishes from all four schools of Chinese cuisine. It was pretty damned tasty and a whole lot cheaper than the duck and all it's bits. Man, it still makes me cring a bit. If you go for duck, just get the duck. After the meal, back at the hostel, I settled in for a conversation with a bunch of the German guys staying here. They all switched their conversations into English so I could be part of it and their English was pretty much as versitile as their German. I must resolve to aquire fluency in these languages I have studied. I got to use my francais a bit, as the Israeli guy in the conversation, who was fluent in German, English, Hebrew and French, (and probably another few just thrown in for good measure) was trying to work on his French a bit. It turned out that my French has not fallen quite as far as I'd feared. Maybe it's just that most of the French folks I've run into so far have just been irritated by my attempt and subsequent butchering of their fair tongue. Dunno. Regardless, I think I'm going to sign up for a distance ed French course and one for German too. I may stop drinking a fair bit to accomodate these goals... I wonder how that will work if I'm learning Japanese too... and then what about Chinese? I have another entry visa that I have to use by June 23rd of 2005... Ah the possibilities... I think I'll go to Kunming next time.
Ok, I'm going to sign off. My fingers are not responding quite as quickly as they should and I think it's because they're naked in sub-zero temperatures and have been for the past hour... Right, off to bed.