China: Part 2

Welcome back. Please, take off your shoes, grab a cup of tea, and relax for a little while. Take any seat you like; they're all there for you, baby.

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When I got off the plane, I had to suppress a wave of disgust threatening to rise from deep inside me. Apparently, the Chinese had taken a 'throw them in the deep end' position on tourists. Rather than connect the plane directly to the inside of the airport via walkway, we new arrivals exited from the plane into the smog-filled landscape that is Beijing. Our goal: a grey bus lined extensively on either side with windows.

Awareness of a previously unknown stench crept in like a family of cockroaches climbing through the kitchen pipes. Even when I reached the bus, I couldn't escape it; the doors had been thrown open to the world. It was all I could to to stand, gloved hand gripping a pole to steady myself, and wonder what sort of place I had brought myself to.

The smog never lifted. As I waited for a taxi to take me to my hostel, it was there. As we drove down the third ring road, winding our way through desiccated forests and looming high-rise buildings, it was there. When, a couple hours later, I found myself wandering through one of Beijing's aged hutong districts, still it was there.

In fact, it only got worse.

After a deliciously massive lunch of unknown meat, noodles of equally unknown size, and various tiny, red hot peppers, after walking the grey streets of Beijing for two hours in an attempt to gain some sort of rudimentary understanding of this incredible city, I returned, exhausted, to my hostel. It was approximately four in the afternoon. Maybe four thirty.

Sixteen hours later, I woke up. Usually, when traveling alone, I stay in a hostel's dorm style rooms. This is for a very simple reason: it's a damn good way to meet people. To this day, I've only had one item go missing and that was because I left it out in a communal area as if anyone could use it. My guess? Someone thought it belonged to the hostel and, you know, used it.

This time I decided to spring the cash for a personal room. And thank god I did, because I never would have rested so well in a dorm-style room.

The room itself was on the second floor, yet most of the surrounding buildings were only one story, so its two south-facing windows presented a view of the entire city. Or it should have.

When I woke the next morning, even the building next door, a place all of five feet from my window, was obscured by smog. Just the idea that I would be able to view the entire city from my window was so ridiculous at that moment that I wondered if I shouldn't have my head examined. After all, who was I to expect to be able to see the city I had come to sight-see in? Obviously I was going about this all wrong.

The smog stayed all day. Around noon I called an acquaintance of mine in the city to meet up for lunch. During the call, he quietly informed me that the air quality monitor on the US embassy in Beijing was reporting Beijing to currently be "very unhealthy."

You know what that is? That's one step below "hazardous." And children were playing in the streets. They may as well have been playing in a smoker's lounge. Hell, they may as well have been smokers.

"There should be a ban on anyone under the age of 18 entering the city," I thought. My eye fell on five children in their school uniforms, each child no more than ten years old, kicking around a soccer ball. I wanted to shake them, tell them to go home as quick as they can and stay indoors. Instead I averted my eyes and tried to think happy thoughts.

Nonetheless, I was determined to see Beijing.

I'll continue in my next blog post.