In order to get from Shanghai to Beijing, we took a bullet train. It would regularly take us about 13 hours to get to Beijing; however, with the bullet train, we were able to get to Beijing in about 5 hours, which really surprised me. After getting to Beijing, we arrived at our hotel. We were staying at Penta Hotel, a German chain, so our experience was very “western” to say the least. Most of the other people staying at the hotel were Europeans or Americans, and everyone spoke English.
Beijing, as a city itself, was in stark contrast to Shanghai. Beijing is a very sprawling city, with building drastically spread apart, high rises hard to find, and traffic at its worst. Shanghai is extremely urbanized, so it was surprising for me to see a city like Beijing. I personally prefer the urban and busy life, so Beijing was seemingly “dry” to me. Regardless, Beijing had its perks, and I got to visit some incredible places. In Beijing, we visited the Tiananmen Square where we had to go through a thorough security check about 3-4 times, which seemed a bit excessive to me. It was a bit staggering to me that the tourists, who were from other parts of China for the most part, had absolutely no idea about the Tiananmen Massacre and were visiting Tiananmen as a “national monumental” place. It was simply surprising to me that no one there knew about the politically relevant protests and incidents that occurred in the very place they were visiting as a place of national pride. After Tiananmen Square, we passed by Chairman Mao’s Mausoleum and went inside the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City Palace was absolutely beautiful and being able to visit the place where previous emperors used to live was fascinating. I got the opportunity to wear what seemed to be traditional Chinese clothing along with Anya and Lanie, and we had a great time. We also visited the Great Wall of China, which I unfortunately had to climb while I was pretty sick, but the hike was completely worth it. We also visited the Temple of Heavenly Peace, Summer Palace, and Drum Towers.
In relation to my research, our visits in Beijing were not particularly relevant. Pollution levels in Beijing were in the 300s, and it was interesting to see that many Beijing residents still were not wearing masks. Even we went and purchased masks for the three days that we were in Beijing, so it was surprising to see that the Beijing residents were not. Perhaps the residents weren’t wearing masks because they weren’t educated about the pollution levels, and thus, they did not have stark opposition to Beijing’s lack of substantial pollution policy. However, I will need to do more research and literature review before making an assumption about that. Our meeting with Jin Lu, a minority resident, was interesting because we were able to talk about the Tiananmen Massacre with her. Her opinion was that although many people do not know about it, the older people that do don’t find it necessary to pass down to future generations. The Massacre, to those that know, isn’t particularly relevant anymore. I was surprised to hear about this.
