Into the Northern Capital (dernier paragraphe en francais!)


Posted by Patrick Okens

Nov. 21 – Beijing (Bei=north Jing=capital)

“First I went here. And then I did this. And so-and-so happened after that.” I really wanted to avoid having my blog turn into a straight-up diary of events. Picking a theme-of-the day was more what I had in mind for this journey.

But how to choose among the following experiences in my first 24 hours here? Where I’m staying, and with who; a night-time grocery shopping trip; Beijing’s air quality; the 12km of walking through the city centre; bus and metro commuting; or two hours auditing a Chinese-French interpretation class? “Quit whining and do all of them”, you say? To which I retort: “I’ll save the groceries and commuting for later posts. Deal?” I guess I’m learning to bargain, after all.

My Beijing base is an apartment complex about 20km north west of Tiananmen Square, in a two-bedroom furnished flat rented by a former colleague. It’s on the 12th floor (really the 11th, since the superstitious Chinese don’t use the number 4 for floors), from which there’s a view of the commuter rail station and another endless array of apartment buildings. The place is modest-to-decent by Canadian standards, though it could use a coat of paint and vigorous scrubbing of the kitchen and bathroom utilities (not the current tenant’s fault, I’m quick to add).

Daniel is the name of my generous host. He’s the first of a list of friends I hope to visit as I make my way west. In fact, as he’s my only contact in China, I likely would not be doing the “360” without him putting me up. We worked on the 2010 Games together. He’s a superbly proficient translator/interpreter, an avid cyclist, and has a quiet, wry sense of humour. While we pored over a map of Beijing yesterday, I also discovered that he has ambitious plans for my stay here. You’ll find out about those in due course.

This morning dawned cold, clear, and toxic. According to the U.S. Embassy website, Beijing’s air today rated a 215. Can’t tell you what that means other than it’s deemed “very unhealthy”. I had thought the heavier the smog, the worse the air. But I guess smaller particles cause more damage because they can bury themselves deeper in the lungs. Chemists or Wikipedists will know the science behind this, but certainly I was huffing a bit trying to keep up with Daniel on today’s excursion. After picking up my Beijing-Irkutsk rail ticket downtown, we made our way along the outer moat of the Forbidden City, where Chinese tourists in matching hats clustered before entering. We climbed up the steep mound of Jingshan Park, where seniors gather to sing patriotic songs, ballroom or line dance, and even play hacky-sack (they’re good at it!). The view from the dead centre of Beijing’s bullseye is as good as it gets – hazy and incomplete. We skirted the pretty, placid Qianhai and Houhai lakes, then ambled through the quaint Hutongs and a great outdoor market offering the full culinary spectrum from revolting to mouth-watering.

[Ma version en langue francaise de ce paragraphe se trouve ci-dessous, mais sans corrections par le prof. Clavier anglo, donc pas d’accents!]

A long northward bus ride took us to the leafy campus of Beijing Language and Cultural University, where twice weekly Daniel teaches a course on Chinese-French interpretation. Nine young women take the course, and all speak very good French for having learned from scratch in four years, with at most 3 weeks in France. I gave a five-minute presentation in French about my journey, while two of the students left the classroom, then returned when I was done. Two other students presented their French-Chinese translation to the first two, who then translated all back into French. The results were more-or-less accurate, but there were a few surprising results: Apparently, I sailed to China from Canada’s capital; the ship had a crew of Filipinas; I’m going to visit my girlfriend in Moscow!

Un long trajet d’autobus nous porta vers le nord au campus de l’universite de langue et de culture de Pekin ou, deux fois par semaine, Daniel y enseigne un cours d’interpretation chinois-francais. Neuf jeunes femmes prennent ce cours, et maitrisent tres bien le francais pour n’avoir eu que quatre annees d’apprentissage, y compris trois semaines en France. J’ai fait un discours de cinq minutes en francais au sujet de mon voyage, durant lequel deux etudiantes se sont absentees. Deux autres etudiantes ont presente leur traduction francaise-chinoise de mon discours, et les deux premieres on par la suite traduit le tout en francais. Les resultats etaient plus ou moins corrects, mais avec quelques resultats etonnants. Figurez-vous que j’ai navigue vers la Chine depuis la capitale du Canada; que l’equipage du navire se compose de Philippines; et que j’irai a Moscou visiter ma blonde!


Anaesthetized by speed


Posted by Patrick Okens

Nov. 20 – The 0900 from Shanghai to Beijing

Good, fast, cheap. Choose two. For the first land stage of my journey, I chose good and fast. At 1750 Yuan (about $250), my first class ticket on the brand-new high-speed rail line was definitely not cheap, and a small fortune by Chinese standards. On that frustrating first day in Shanghai, when I bought my Beijing ticket, I had opted for the maximum contrast in convenience. So as I strode through the large, new Shanghai Hongqiao station, the reflection of shop signs projecting onto the spotless, polished corridors, my expectations were high. And they were met.

Waiting on platform 2 was a long, white, dolphin-nosed magnetic-levitating land rocket. Since this summer, a fleet of these trains have sped the 1300km between Beijing and Shanghai, one per hour. The first class compartment had 24 wide, fully reclining leather seats, in rows of three. Purple uniformed attendants did their attending – serving a meal and drinks unobtrusively, while us rich folk sat there playing around with power adjust buttons; forward, back, leg rest up, leg rest down, back rest up, back rest down.

The train wasted no time getting up to speed. The acceleration was smooth, but within perhaps five minutes we were over 200km/h, and it only took a further two minutes to get up to 300km/h, where we remained on cruise control most of the way (the LED sign over the door topped out at 310km/h). One of the first high-speed trains had crashed at 340km/h, I was told, so the throttle had been dialed back a bit since then.

As a mode of transportation, riding first class for five hours at high speed (we made one stop in Nanjing) is unsurpassed in comfort. You put your feet up, settle back in the leather, and watch China pass by. There’s actually no real sense of velocity, no blur. Brown and green fields, overpasses, power lines, construction cranes, new apartment blocks, factories, and crumbling brick hovels simply enter, then exit from view. You hear a dull, constant rumble – no Duke Ellington clack-a-clack – and feel gentle swaying as the train banks slightly through the turns. I read some, chatted with the fellow rich folk from Hong Kong and Hamburg, then tested the full recline mode and quickly fell into one of those states from which you arise not sure if you were asleep or not. We glided into Beijing South station just before 1400, no long, protracted arrival. In and done.

So it’s awesome transportation, fine. But it’s not travel. Travel is where you’re bored, you’re uncomfortable, you can’t wait for it to be over, you don’t know when it will be over. But travel is where you’ve got stories to tell. This was quick and painless, and I’ve got nothing more for you than the rail equivalent of Car & Driver. The Trans Mongolian will be different.