Chinanagains

“I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.”

-Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes

A Chinese visa is not an easy thing to procure.  Have I mentioned that?  Aside from the temporal and financial sacrifices one must make on their journey to the Chinese embassy on theupper west side, one must also present a number of properly ordered identification papers, application, and proofs of things like airline tickets and hotel reservations (I don’t even know what that is!) The consulate provides an online list of all necessities, but unfortunately they left something out.  The woman at the window took all of 10 seconds to look over my application and tell me it was insufficient.  So, after taking the day off work to make the trip, and waiting nearly an hour in line to present my paperwork, I had absolutely no choice but to turn around and walk out empty handed, about a week before I planned to head to Shanghai.  Wasted resources aside, there was added stress in the fact that the wait time for a Chinese visa is also about a week.

Feeling powerless is not one of my favorite pastimes, in case you hadn’t noticed.  In fact, I make a good deal of effort to avoid feeling so, even though it is largely a universal law and I am actually quite powerless most of the time.  But rarely do I feel the force of complete powerlessness, usually I feel like there is a little room for negotiation or at least the mirage of free will.  Upon hearing the resounding finality of “you can’t”, (for me at least), there is a moment of abject disappointment, followed by resignation to the situation, followed immediately by what I can only describe as the liberation of, “well…what’s next then?”

That situation actually worked out, I got the visa in time.  But if it hadn’t something else would have.  And that day actually turned out to be quite nice.  It was one of the first warmer, sunny days of spring, and I rode my bike down the waterfront from the consulate into Brooklyn, finding a delicious place for breakfast there, followed by a spiritually infused evening in a sweat lodge, if memory serves.  HOWEVER, this day did not make the process of getting a visa something I’d like to repeat.  Luckily I requested and was granted a one year multiple entry visa, which means I have exactly a year to see all the China I’m probably ever going to see.  The first trip was in May, but as you may remember, it was pretty specific in its purpose and not much sight seeing was had.  I had to go back!  I can’t say, “I’ve been to China, but never I never saw the Great Wall”…that’s ridiculous!  So back I went.

Aside from the fact that I do not care for Chinese food very much, this was in many ways the perfect trip.  Importantly, I caught all my flights on the first try.  AND, I was bumped up to Business class- on all of them.  That right there is a big win, especially in the summer when flights are usually packed.  But also, the pacing was good.  I was gone less than a week- two days of travel to get there, three full days of freedom, and one day of travel back (time change).  Now, some of you may note that the travel time was equal to traveling time and that might just sound awful to you.  But personally, I count travel time as part of the whole experience, and if I’m just doing one city, 3 days is pretty much all I need before I start to get fidgety.

Sleep:  The time change is the only thing that makes quick trans-oceanic flights a little tricky.  Beijing is exactly 12 hours ahead.  But if the trip is kept short, you can minimize the impact as your body never really gets used to the shift in time, so all you have is one sleepy week.  During that week, I usually try to sleep whenever I can- on trains, in airports, and at odd hours at my hostel without abandon.

Lastly, my three days in Beijing were pretty well-rounded, activity wise.  The first day I walked around a beautiful garden, the Forbidden City, and the unforbidden city.  The only thing that irked me was the Forbidden City.  It was packed.  I guess it’s all a part of the process of getting to know what I really like, but I spent the entire time there cursing myself for buying a ticket to a place that everyone is supposed to see, when I could have predicted not enjoying it simply because I hate crowds.  Ah well.  Lesson learned. (Hopefully.)

There are several sections of the Great Wall open to tourists and accessible from Beijing.  The closest, Badaling, is the most popular and best kept up.  There are also a couple of sections farther out, followed by a stretch called Jinshanling, about a 3 hour drive out of Beijing, but with far fewer crowds and pieces of unrestored wall.  With the mob of the Forbidden City fresh in my mind, I decided pretty easily upon Jinshanling, even though it was more of a trek.  I signed up with a bus that makes the drive, drops you off for three hours of climbing, and then returns to the city.  For whatever reason, I found myself surrounded by Frenchmen.  The friendly fellow who sat next to me on the ride up invited me to walk with him and his friends, but I already knew I wanted to hoof it without waiting for anyone, so I politely declined.  I passed them pretty quickly despite it being a hot day, full of sun and not a lot of shade along the wall.  After a bit, I came to a fork in the wall and stopped to consult a map.  There were heavy footsteps and labored breathing behind me.

(In a panting French accent)  “My god, you are fast.  Are you in the army?”

I said that I was not, I just wanted to get as far as I could in the three hours.  I think I also mumbled something about yoga.  Honesty, I don’t really have a good reason for wanting to go so quickly.  I just wanted to, and I was really serious about it.  He offered to take my picture.  Then some other people came along and thought we were together and offered to take our picture.  This is a slightly awkward situation for which there is no good answer.  To scoff and respond, “What!?  You think I’m with him?!” would be insulting, so I went with “Sure!  Thanks!” and stepped in for a digital capture of the shortest relationship of my life.  Then I ran away because I had an self-assigned, undefined mission to fall short of.  Typical, right?  I didn’t get quite as far on the wall as I’d wanted; I would have liked another hour at least—but I’d lost approximately a bucket of sweat and my legs were starting to shake from all the stairs.  I can’t be certain, but I think I made it farther than anyone else in my group.  (‘Merica!)

So Day One was city-touristy, Day Two was in nature and physically taxing and for a trifecta of Blair’s Idea of a Quality Getaway, Day Three was spent with a little modern art and a lot of writing.  Actually, all I’d requested of myself that day was to write, but then I got lost in search of a café and, whoops, ended up in a museum.  Anyway, the day felt productive.  Oftentimes, my favorite thing about traveling is doing the same things I’d do in New York somewhere else, especially when we’re talking creative pursuits.  It opens up my mind to have that mind constantly attacked by unfamiliarity, and in a masochistic way I relish the discomfort.  There is probably an easy analogy to the Wall in there somewhere, but this is getting rather long.  I doubt sitting in a café alone for 7 hours is many peoples’ idea of a perfect vacation, but for me, it is near vital.  Here’s to more of that.  Here’s to getting my sh*t together.