On foot, I made my way to the quaint Beijing art and antiques shopping street and of course got pulled into an antique store by a charmingly persuasive, youngish shop-girl, who came out of her store to “admire” the necklace I had on. Good ploy! I was treated to tea, which is a lengthy and ritualized affair and met her assistant, who kept bringing objects for me to look at while I was savoring the tea.  It was actually quite lovely, and the shop had some nice things. In fact, several of the objects I purchased there remain my favorite mementos of that whole trip.

“Joan” spoke very good English and Mai spoke a little.  We got into a lengthy chat about San Francisco, California, and America. Upon taking my leave they asked if I would like to join them for dinner, to experience hot pot in the non-tourist part of Beijing where they live.  Yes indeedy, say I.  Well not really.  I probably said, “Yes, thank you very much.  I would enjoy that immensely.” And off  I went.

The July evening was not too hot, tempered by a slight breeze, as I retraced my steps to the shopping street, wondering if they would really be there. They were waiting for me and I was greeted by genuine smiles. I reflected that they were lovely young people.  Curious, ambitious, well-mannered, and fun. We got along well, and I fantasized that we could put a great Beijing tour together.

The hot pot place was teaming with Chinese people. Not another Caucasian in sight.  We sat outside midst the throngs, grabbing an open table with the peculiar hot pot cooker in the center.  Excellent guides to hotpot etiquette, they revealed the magic of this tasty Chinese cuisine. In due course, they asked about my travels.  When I told them I was headed to visit some Tibetans in the West, they were both taken aback.  Why would anyone want to visit Tibetans?  Then Joan cautioned me, “Tibetans are filthy and disease ridden.  You must have your shots up to date if you are intent on visiting with them.  But,  really, they are deplorable, and you shouldn’t go.”

I thought of the words from the song from South Pacific, “You have got to be carefully taught.”  And I thought about my own biases, not the least of which were the negative notions I had about mainland Chinese in general.  Different, but much the same as Joan’s in terms of disparaging prejudice.  Remember, China was the country I loved to hate during the Olympics.

The footnote to this experience is that two years later, in a different part of Beijing, I actually recognized Joan on the street!  Amazing as that is, her story was even more wondrous.  She had taken the new fast train to Lhasa, and loved it — both the train and Lhasa.  She now has Tibetan friends, with whom she stays in touch via the internet…and “yes” she plans on returning. She also proudly sells Tibetan trinkets in her store.  I spent quite sometime looking at pictures of her sojourn and it was clear that the trip was special and she had a wonderful time.

While there are plainly conflicting feelings about and probably motives for the train, it certainly opened the heart of one young Han Chinese woman.

I arrived in China in 2005 in a drugged stupor.  This was due to the fact that I, who rarely takes sleeping pills, was advised by a friend to take two of the little pills she handed me. Whatever they were, I think a half of one would have sufficed.  Fortunately the flight had been overbooked and I was upgraded to business.  That was cool, as I actually slept well in my narcotized state.  Truly before I knew it, we had landed… I was baffled, to put it mildly.  In the airport, I was so groggy that I just floated from one arrival task to the next, including getting in a cab, well NOT a cab, a car to take me to the hotel.  JUST what Michelle had advised against.  There are poachers at the Beijing airport who come and “grab” you before you get to the official cab line. They usually charge exorbitant rates.  The hotel I booked was way downtown in the Hutong, the old district of Beijing…a long ways from the airport and hard to find even by Beijing natives.  The ride was both terrifying in my drugged state (where was he taking me, really?) and magnificent (the lights and sounds).  Can you imagine!  I had no idea where I was going, spoke not a single word of Chinese, and was seriously stoned.  But guess what!  The driver got me to the obscure little hotel, and the charge was same as a cab.  Whew!

The Far East Hotel is a great little place, and was perfect for my first stay in China. Smack in the warren world of old Beijing, it caters to students and budget-minded tourists.  I think the rate was $25/night.  Certainly comfortable enough, I would stay there again.  In fact I might!  The lobby was vibrant with many languages, and the reception people were trying hard to accommodate. In the bowels of the hotel, vast cauldrons of boiling water provided guests with, amongst other things, safe water. Decanted into delightfully decorated thermos bottles and delivered to our rooms, brushing teeth and making tea were not health threats. When I stayed in the hotel again in 2007, the thermoses were replaced by those instant boil tea pots in each room.  It didn’t feel nearly as safe as the water that had been boiled for a long time.  Also, by then much of the Hutong was slated for major destruction, Massive highrises were going up in their stead.  It will be interesting to revisit.

I awoke early (3:30) that first morning and went for a walk after my ritual ablutions.  Most of the town was still asleep, but not all. The Hutong is very old, and it has much character.  One knows where the communal toilets facilities are with no problem (sniff, sniff). I also explored out of the Hutong in a modern neighborhood with concrete apartments.  As the sun rose, I watched people doing their morning exercises.  Public exercise is de rigueur whether in groups or solo. And I saw men, always men, carrying bird cages, walking determinedly.  So I followed one. They meet their friends, who also have birds, and set the cages up fairly near to each other so the birds can have social time, like they are all on a tree.

One unexpected sight, and one that I was to see if in one form or another over and over again, was that of people sleeping in public.   My morning meanderings that first day bore witness to workers crawling out from under plastic tarps on building sites and people camouflaged for the night in trash heaps.  I don’t know how to process this visual information and find myself haunted by the apparent discomfort as well as the underlying social context.

On the other hand, I was delightfully surprised to see how people in Beijing dote on their dogs.  Seriously…  What did I think?  Hmm.  Yup.  I had heard the Chinese eat their dogs.  Well, maybe some of them find their way to a plate…but not these urban canines.  

In 2005, I went to China for the first time.  I did not really want to go. The Chinese were the competitors I LOVED TO HATE in the Olympics.  I had embraced popular notions about the arrogance and cruelty of the Chinese in regards to Tibet, and I was scared of the pollution.  But my beloved niece had gone to teach at the university in Xining, a large town in the far western reaches of China.  At an altitude of 7200 ft, it is on the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. My niece’s students were Tibetan, studying English.  That these kids made it into a Chinese University is quite extraordinary.  They were the brightest of the bright, and came from families supporting their studies. Most remarkable is the inclusion of young women students, as in the traditional Tibetan culture it was not thought that they had the ability to be anything but the labor force for their villages.

Working the fields for her entire life, this woman from a remote Tibetan village wanted me to make images that would highlight the plight of women’s toils. Gansu Province, PRC 2005

Tibetan woman in Agricultural Tibetan village. Sichuan, PRC 2007