- The train is arriving to Dengshikou station. Doors will open on the right side. Please mind the gap with the platform. The recorded voice of a nice Chinese girl -who knows if she is really nice- repeats with a perfect English accent what, I assume, she said before in perfect unintelligible Chinese.
After thirteen hours flying and an eternity, minus X hours multiplied by the factor of exaggeration, waiting at the airport of Beijing to go through the police immigration control, there we are, my traveling team, my bags, my tennis racket and myself,surrounded squeezed in a train full of Chinese people. My face stands out in the crowd with a developing-brown-burnt skin color and my sixth sense, or seventh (I lost count), suddenly perceives some eyes on me.
- “If someone really thinks that I am from here, that one is completely wrong”. I pretend to be ignoring the curious eyes and I just stay next to the doors, on the right side, studying the metro map of Beijing. “I look so much forward to laying on the bed of whatever my new hotel is”.
The doors of the train open and suddenly an avalanche of people sends me back to the wagon from where I actually wanted to get off. I understand immediately the rules of the game, so I decide to use the world-wide known rugby technique: to push forward.
- “Oh my God! What was that? Welcome to Beijing... and now?
The web page of my hotel was theoretically quite clear: take exit C at Dengshikou station, turn left and then left again, and after five minutes walking you will see our hotel.
- “I have been walking already fifteen minutes in the darkness of unknown streets in Beijing and this humidity is making me sweat like an Iberico pork, so maybe you better ask someone”. Google map and other American web pages do not work in China, because it seems that the owners of those pages do not want to provide the information of their users, and this is something the Chinese government does not accept at all if you want to do business in their territory. At a later point of time, I would learn what the Chinese people use instead of google map: bing dot com (bingo!)
After some good advices from, this time yes, for certain nice Chinese people, I finally get to my hotel and I jump onto my bed with an overwhelming mix of feelings: relief, happiness, tiredness, excitement... “Get some sleep and tomorrow you can discover the city”.
Dionysus is not being particularly friendly with me lately and keeps kicking me out of his paradise before scheduled. “Anyway, let us use this extra time given unilaterally by him to plan the day”:
- Forbidden City. I think, there was a sort of demonstration that day at the former Chinese imperial residential palace, because tens of thousands of people decided to get together at the same place and at the same time, talking to each other very loudly.
The Forbidden City is really impressive, once you manage to get in there after unlimited number of police controls, and it is full of history: the Ming and the Qing dynasties lived there from 1420 to 1912. First was the Ming dynasty who moved into this celestial complex, and two hundred and something years later, the Qing family redecorated the house by force; well, the almost thousand houses with 9999 rooms -according to the legend- that there are inside this little palace. Mao Zedong won the revolution and founded the current People’s Republic of China in 1949. In between those years, some battles took place. Unfortunately, like anywhere else in the world, it is all about money...
- Tiananmen square: like “plaza España” but hundred times bigger and hotter.
- Temple of heaven: place where the emperors did the offerings to their Gods for good harvests: wheat and... wheat.
- Summer palace: place where the emperors, empresses, concubines and the rest of the olympic team spent their weekends and summers. Here some clouds and blue sky reminded me that we were out of Beijing city; they have a serious pollution problem.
All this in one day: Day 10. I am sure that my dearest surreal readers, clever by nature, have realized the existing date mismatch of the blog... but we are catching up. Tomorrow we will visit one the seven wonders of the world: The Great Wall.
To be continued
After thirteen hours flying and an eternity, minus X hours multiplied by the factor of exaggeration, waiting at the airport of Beijing to go through the police immigration control, there we are, my traveling team, my bags, my tennis racket and myself,
- “If someone really thinks that I am from here, that one is completely wrong”. I pretend to be ignoring the curious eyes and I just stay next to the doors, on the right side, studying the metro map of Beijing. “I look so much forward to laying on the bed of whatever my new hotel is”.
The doors of the train open and suddenly an avalanche of people sends me back to the wagon from where I actually wanted to get off. I understand immediately the rules of the game, so I decide to use the world-wide known rugby technique: to push forward.
- “Oh my God! What was that? Welcome to Beijing... and now?
The web page of my hotel was theoretically quite clear: take exit C at Dengshikou station, turn left and then left again, and after five minutes walking you will see our hotel.
- “I have been walking already fifteen minutes in the darkness of unknown streets in Beijing and this humidity is making me sweat like an Iberico pork, so maybe you better ask someone”. Google map and other American web pages do not work in China, because it seems that the owners of those pages do not want to provide the information of their users, and this is something the Chinese government does not accept at all if you want to do business in their territory. At a later point of time, I would learn what the Chinese people use instead of google map: bing dot com (bingo!)
After some good advices from, this time yes, for certain nice Chinese people, I finally get to my hotel and I jump onto my bed with an overwhelming mix of feelings: relief, happiness, tiredness, excitement... “Get some sleep and tomorrow you can discover the city”.
Dionysus is not being particularly friendly with me lately and keeps kicking me out of his paradise before scheduled. “Anyway, let us use this extra time given unilaterally by him to plan the day”:
- Forbidden City. I think, there was a sort of demonstration that day at the former Chinese imperial residential palace, because tens of thousands of people decided to get together at the same place and at the same time, talking to each other very loudly.
The Forbidden City is really impressive, once you manage to get in there after unlimited number of police controls, and it is full of history: the Ming and the Qing dynasties lived there from 1420 to 1912. First was the Ming dynasty who moved into this celestial complex, and two hundred and something years later, the Qing family redecorated the house by force; well, the almost thousand houses with 9999 rooms -according to the legend- that there are inside this little palace. Mao Zedong won the revolution and founded the current People’s Republic of China in 1949. In between those years, some battles took place. Unfortunately, like anywhere else in the world, it is all about money...
All this in one day: Day 10. I am sure that my dearest surreal readers, clever by nature, have realized the existing date mismatch of the blog... but we are catching up. Tomorrow we will visit one the seven wonders of the world: The Great Wall.
To be continued
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario