火车票，护照， 和买东西

It's 5:45am!  Why are my eyes open?  Why did my dreams of cream-topped coffee and buttery cookies vanish?  These are the questions I cast at the fluffy white cat stalking around the living room.  He turned his baleful eyes on me and meowed his indifference.  The retort his wordless expression directed at me was less than helpful so I searched for a new interviewee.  The room was void of all other life forms so I consulted a cup of water but a few seconds later Jessica surprised me by emerging from her tent and joining me on the couch.  Both of us wondered aloud why we were awake so early.

We shrugged in perplexity and decided we might as well make the most of our day, so we started packing up our belongings and wondering how to get to the train station.  Right when we were standing by the door our couch-surfing host came out and offered to take us to breakfast.  Northern wind met the three of us at the door with ferocity and we retreated as quickly as we could to a steaming baozi shop.  It was the most creative batch of steamed bread wrapped around various assortments of meat, vegetables, or combinations thereof I'd ever seen.  Each one contained a delicious surprise.

Feeling satisfied by the last shrimp baozi I'd managed to stuff in my mouth I got up from the table and aimed myself in the direction of the bus stop to try to find the train station.  We jammed ourselves onto another bus, and then a subway where I found myself smashed against a pole.  The guy squished on the other side of the pole started making small talk in perfect English.  "It must be my lucky day to be standing next to two lovely girls."  I looked around trying to figure out who he was talking about.  I asked him if it was like this every day.  I couldn't imagine people willfully subjecting themselves to such crowds on purpose unless they thought all the cramming might somehow make them thinner.  His answer made me laugh out loud, "This is nothing.  Mondays are like hell."

When we crawled off the subway into daylight I squinted at the lines of hopeful ticket buyers in front of the train station.  They were intimidating but I was distracted by the beauty of the architecture.  Waiting in line for such a long time has inherent unpleasantness but this time it came loaded with a reward as well.  We were overjoyed to discover that we were going to make it home after all.  When we first bought two standing tickets and one sleeping ticket (for me, Jessica, and our friend James) we were jumping up and down with excitement.  We didn't know how we were going to divide the spoils but it didn't matter.  What mattered was that miserable as it would be, at least we would be able to go back to Yichang before we left for India.

From the train station our next stop was our friend Eva's workplace.  We were going to pick up our passports so we could check into a real hostel instead of bumming off complete strangers.  It was a moment of pure joy.  I opened my passport and there was a beautiful page dedicated to telling me that I was going to legally be allowed in India.  Jessica and I hugged each other, hugged Eva, thought about hugging complete strangers, then decided we'd better not.

Finally the rejoicing slowed and our stomachs started letting us know that they'd like us to remember them with gifts of food.  For that reason we went to our hostel to check in, meet Zack and Elizabeth, and find some sustenance.  Our hostel was tucked in a side street not far from the heart of Beijing and in a sense the heart of China.  The winding roads that lead there charms you as you walk.  Songs of varying nature and varying volume levels greet you at each new shop.  They all blend together to form the cacophony that China would be so lonely without.  At one point I listened to myself in disgust, I'd started singing along to a song I hate just because I recognized the words.  The amount of English songs that join the mix are few, and when I hear one I recognize I automatically feel a sense of belonging no matter how much I detest the song in normal circumstances. 

My first impression of the hostel was a good one.  The dimly lit lobby had a TV on the wall and the particular music video playing was "Power to the People" and the scene in the background had to do with a certain person standing up for themselves in front of a much larger machine in a very large square I would later walk across.  We checked in and decided to eat lunch there.  It took a while for all of us to be ready to go explore the city we'd tried so desperately to get to, but we finally managed to all make it downstairs eventually.  Our target was the forbidden city, after I bullied the others into agreeing that we needed to see it immediately.

As we sauntered down the ancient pathway leading up to the forbidden city, gaping at the walls around us, two guards crossed their arms in front of me.  They had just admitted their last visitors for the day and were closing the gate in front of us.  So we sighed, turned around, and weighed our options.  Eventually we agreed to go to the Pearl Market and shop, much to the guys' disgust.  At the Pearl Market I had my first experience with Beijing-style bargaining.

I've done my fair share of bargaining with salesmen, but the Beijing-ren are a new breed.  They are actors in the finest sense of the word.  They use flattery, guilt, cajoling and a hilarious amount of slapping to try to win your money.  It's entertaining to watch, a rush to participate in, and an art form in itself.  This is how a conversation goes:
"Come here friend.  Take a look at my (insert name of random junk).  Special price for you.  300 yuan."
     "Wo bu yao.  Wo juede na tai gui le." [No thanks, that's too expensive]
"Oh you speak Chinese!  You are very clever.  Okay okay I give you deal because you speak Chinese.  Only 180." *wink*
     "Ai you!  Bu xing!  Gei ni shi kuai qian." [Yikes!  There's no way.  I'll give you ten.]
*slap on the arm* "How can you say like this?  I will lose money if I give to you for that price.  Come on, be reasonable.  Okay okay only 120."
     "Zhende bu yao.  Xie xie." [I really don't want it.  Thanks.]  I start to walk away.
"Okay okay you are so smart.  I can give it to you for 50 kuai." *grabs my arm and hangs on to me for dear life.*
     I'm trying to walk away and I shake my head, "Bu yao, bu yao. Nide dongxi tai gui le.  Shi kuai qian." [Don't want it, don't want it.  Your stuff is to expensive.  Ten kuai.]
*yanks my arm out of socket* "You are too mean.  Come on only 15 kuai."
     I walk away leaving my arm behind.
*shouting after me* "Okay okay ten kuai.  You want how many?  I give you this one for only 5 more?  Okay?  How about a _______?"

I may have an argumentative streak.  Or a stubborn streak.  Or both.  Just slightly.  And that may be why I love bartering so much.  I think I enjoyed the experience so much I bought things I didn't even want just for the fun of getting my price.  But who doesn't love a few extra souvenirs?  Filled with adrenaline I decided to tackle the next obstacle of our trip:  Great Wall planning.  I had arbitrarily decided we were going to go to the Great Wall on Friday but no amount of compromise could get us all five to agree on a specific plan.  So our group of five tourists decided on three different Great Wall experiences.  Jessica and I wanted to avoid other tourists; rebuilt, fake, and therefore boring sections of the wall; and conformity (namely seeing the part everyone else sees).  My opinions on the subject might have been slightly stronger than Jessica's but none of us were prepared to give up what we wanted in our only chance to see the Great Wall of China.

We poured over our Lonely Planet, and websites detailing how to get to the (relatively) untainted parts of the wall and that's when I discovered that I'd left my tennis shoes in the home of our couch-surfer host.  It was 9pm and I ran out the door in the hopes that someone, somewhere would still be selling shoes.  In a rare streak of luck a shoe store down the street was just about to close their doors when they spotted a potential customer running at them in desperation.  I asked them for their cheapest pair of tennis shoes.  I asked them for the enormous size of 40.  Instead of laughing at me the lady pulled them of the shelf.  And they fit!  And I paused for a moment to reflect on the first thing that's ever been easy in China.  Then I complimented myself for understanding and communicating my dire needs in Chinese, brushing aside the fact that it's a lot easier to do that in Beijing where the Mandarin is crystal clear and beautiful.

I went to bed almost immediately upon returning to the hostel, because the plan was to leave at 6am the next day.  We wanted a bright and early start on the Wall.  I use the term "we" rather loosely since in reality I'm the only one in the group who had any desire to see 6am but I can be persuasive when I want to be.  Would we later regret losing sleep on this adventure?  Stay tuned to find out.

"It hurts me to say this about democracy (and I know because my band is one), but rarely does majority rule produce something of beauty."

-Bono