Chapter 4: Red Lanterns and Incense

Hello everyone! It has previously been suggested to me that I write shorter, more frequent posts. I certainly don’t blame them for thinking that way would be better, so hopefully you’ll be able to hear from me more often moving on.

Chapter 4: Red Lanterns and Incense

This city is truly amazing. It was simultaneously both everything I expected it to be, and nothing I expected it to be. Here’s to the place that allowed me to discover China: 北京 Běijīng.

A while back, I had the amazing opportunity to visit Beijing. For the first week of October, I had an eight-day-long break off from school, as that was the week following 国庆节 guó qìng jié, or “National Day,” which is kind of like the Chinese version of “Independence Day.” National Day, which is every year on the first of October, doesn’t actually celebrate China’s independence (I mean, independence from who exactly?). Instead it marks the anniversary of the founding of 中华人民共和国 zhōng huá rén mín gòng hé guó, The People’s Republic of China, in 1949. Because this is one of the few breaks off from school in the entire year, my host mother felt it almost necessary to take us travelling somewhere, and since I had never been to Beijing, she felt it was necessary to take us there.

I’ve stated in a previous blog post that being in Haikou didn’t feel like what I thought China would feel like. For awhile, I really started to believe that none of China would be exactly how I imagined, and that was simply the cost of harboring such long-term high expectations. 

Well, that was until I went to Beijing.

Not going to lie, before going to Beijing I had some fairly low expectations, as I didn’t want to be crushed by the reality of it not being nearly as great as I, or anyone else, had made it out to be. But as a matter of fact, as soon as I walked out of the airport, I knew I was in the “China” I had always imagined. There was something about the air (pollution, perhaps) and the way that the early-evening sky felt fuzzy but also high and grand. As we drew nearer and nearer to the hotel, the feeling became stronger. The air was brisk, but it felt refreshing after spending the past month or so in above-80°F weather. There were also pine trees, and maples, and all kinds of vegetation that I wasn’t sure if I’d see again until I returned to Minnesota in June; but here they all were, right in the advent of fall. As we drove deeper towards the heart of the city, I became less and less convinced we were in Beijing. Instead, it almost felt like the whole drive we were trudging through the countryside, with tall trees lining both sides of wide roads, a few skyscrapers popping out here and there but nothing that would really make up a skyline. I kept waiting for us to reach the “city,” only to find out that we were already turning onto the street of our hotel. It was obviously a city street, but it was very wide, and very quiet. Many of the buildings were large and dark, and everything felt like it was asleep. 

After checking into the hotel (a Hainan-themed hotel, funnily enough) we decided to go out for dinner. As we walked, we passed by a little restaurant that was hanging four small deeply red lanterns outside of its entrance, and that’s when I realized: Beijing is the “China” I had always dreamed of. It’s something that I don’t know how to describe; if I do it might sound a little dreary, like how it felt “dark,” or “quiet,” or “mysterious,” but it truly was beautiful in my mind. While we didn’t walk far that night, I went to bed with very high expectations, hoping that maybe Beijing at day would feel the same. This city did not at one point disappoint me...

The very first day, the very first thing in the morning, we set off for arguably the most vital sight in all of China: 长城 cháng chéng, The Great Wall. This was another thing, which I’m sorry to admit, I had low expectations for; after all, I had heard that it has all been rebuilt, and is absolutely overrun with tourists. However, my host mother had been to the Wall a number of times, so she knew exactly which section of the Wall she would take us to: 慕田峪 mù tián yù, the wall furthest away from the city, and therefore the least crowded. 

Even just the drive there was very beautiful. In the ten minutes it took for us to get onto the freeway, it already felt like we were back in the country. Since it was fall, all of the leaves were starting to change color, and for my host brother, it was his first time ever witnessing the colors of fall in person. After some traffic, and a little bit longer on the highway, we turned off onto a road that took us straight through a number of little farm villages. They were all cottages and simple; along the side of the streets fresh squash and pumpkins were being sold. We even had the fortune of being stopped by a wedding procession, and watched as they launched a few modest yet celebratory fireworks into the air.

Once we arrived, we rode the cable car up to the Wall, and all I can say about the view is that it was breathtaking. We chose a direction to walk in, deciding to walk further up the mountain rather than down. As we approached the top, the restored wall was gradually replaced by original stones, and eventually led to the “wild” part of the wall: the original, untouched Great Wall most likely built during the 明 Míng or 清 Qíng dynasties (1300s-1800s). It was moving, to say the least. In short, The Great Wall is so incredible due to its seamless combination of engineering history and nature, and thus I consider it to be the most fantastic thing I have ever seen.

To keep it short, I’ll just mention some of the other things I did on this trip.

• The Olympic Park
• The China Aviation Museum
• A few 胡同 (hú tòng)
• 北京烤鸭 (běi jīng kǎo yā) BEIJING (PEKING) DUCK!! 4x
• The Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution
• The Beijing Planetarium
• 涮羊肉 (shuàn yáng ròu) Mongolian Hot Pot! 2x
• 天坛 (tiān tǎn) The Temple of Heaven
• 天安门广场 (tiān ān mén guǎng chǎng) Tiananmen Square
• 故宫 (gù gōng) The Forbidden City
• 雍和宫 yōng hé gōng The Lama Temple

• And I almost went to 颐和园 yí hé yuán (the Summer Palace) but when I got there I thought I didn’t have money so then I left but it turns out I did and it’s just... let’s not dwell on that one.

• • •

When I returned from Beijing, I still felt like Haikou wasn’t really China, or at least not how I had always imagined it to be. In fact, this feeling was fortified by Beijing, which was just about everything I imagined China to be, and therefore it became the model for “real China.” Although Haikou was not that, I figured, at least it exists in Beijing.

My unfortunate impression of Haikou then persisted for just over a month until one night in November, I simply took a walk through part of the city. First I was on a main road that I had seen many times before: it was wide, lined with malls and stores, relatively new and clean, but just like everywhere else I had seen in Haikou. I came up to a large intersection, and decided to walk down one of the streets that to where I didn’t know it would lead, and suddenly I felt like I traveled back 30 years in time (which in Chinese city years is about 100 years). The buildings I saw were old, crumbling, blackened: typical of Chinese buildings from the ‘80s/‘90s. I turned down an unpaved street because a traditional low-rise building with dragons on top caught my eye. It was a small temple, and the entrance was in an empty lot that was overgrown with weeds and filled with trash. I moved on. Down the street were more old buildings, slowly being overtaken by vines and crowded with large trees. Everything was closed, and the street was empty. I saw incense burning and posted notifications hand-written with a brush and ink. I continued on. I walked into a construction zone, and became surrounded by a complex of new high-rise apartment buildings. I went on. The road I was on winded a little, and then I noticed a small gateway to an alley lined with houses and vegetation. I walked in, and felt a surge of peacefulness. The alley was too narrow for cars, and the houses were tightly packed and dressed with different types of foliage. It was also quiet and tucked away from the busy streets, so all I could hear were the sounds of people in their homes making dinner and kids playing on the street. I turned a corner onto a connecting street for a series of similar alleyways, and it fed into a larger street of low-rises canopied by low-hanging trees. I was suddenly reminded of old Beijing, and the simple coziness of the 胡同 hú tong. I crossed to the other side and propelled on. The street I was on opened up into a triangular neighborhood square. There was so much life there. There were kids running around, people eating dinner, people enjoying the weather; there were people inside playing 麻将 má jiàng, people outside playing Chinese chess; there were people praying at a small temple that incensed the entire square... just so much life in such a small area, and yet it was perhaps the most peaceful place I had been in all of Haikou.

And that’s when I knew Haikou had it all this whole time. Haikou is “real” China, and now I see it everywhere I go here. All I had to do was dig a little deeper, and it unlocked everything. I realized then that I love it here, and while Beijing allowed me to discover China, Haikou has allowed me to unearth what China really is: always unprecedented.

This city truly is amazing.