China Moments

November 17, 2008 | Uncategorized

China is a country of great, if not extreme, contrasts, a place that mesmerizes most western travelers with its daily parade of incongruities.

The first thing that you notice flying into Beijing (which, by the way, on all airlines tickets still has the old PEK designation for Peking) is the incredible amount of air pollution. This changed two days after our arrival as a brief rain and windy morning cleansed the city, but still, after traveling the world for nearly 40 years I have never seen such pollution. Years back some said it was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Today bring a chain saw.

The people, for the most part, are fascinating and gentle. On the other hand, as a traveler you still feel the heavy hand of the state despite all the hoopla surrounding the Olympics…the bureaucracy at the airport, the huge police presence in Tiananmen Square, the censorship of the Internet.

For a while the Internet and my laptop drove me crazy The entire time I was there I couldn’t post any blogs despite trying numerous times. Nothing would work. Everything on-screen looked the same and seemed to work the same, but in the end China’s internet would never allow you to upload any materials or photos and video.

The second thing that struck me, in addition to being warned three times a day that everything is counterfeit, is that every time you want to buy anything you have to go through the hassle of haggling. Guys hate having to bargain — just give me a fair price and we’ll do business. But here everything is negotiated, with you finally paying about 20-25% of the asking price. Stop in any market and you must run a gauntlet of half the population of Beijing, which in itself is a sideshow. Shop for an hour and you need three to recuperate.

But the real sideshow for me took place whenever I changed money at our hotel, the Regent Beijing. Four times I handed over dollars to the desk clerk and then stood back and watched the show unfold. First, of course, would come the request for my passport. Step two, my money would be very carefully counted twice, even if it’s only five 20-dollar bills. Then I would watch as it is put through a machine — not once, but twice, which seems to be the magic number here — that quickly flipped it through, counting it, scanning it or doing God-only-knows what to it.

Now the desk clerk would count it still again, probably just to ensure the machine wasn’t skimming anything, and would then type the serial number of each bill into a computer. FINALLY, she would hand me a receipt to sign before starting the process of counting out the Chinese Yuan.

Once I made the half-day trip out to and back from the Great Wall in less time than it took to change a couple of bucks for taxi fare.

Jim Ferri