We spent the front part of our trip in Shanghai, and the back half in Beijing. There was a bullet train that brought us there in five hours. This was definitely not there last time I went to Beijing. Last time I visited Beijing, I was only ten, and you had to take an overnight with super-nasty bathrooms. We got these big buckets of instant ramen, though, and we played some checkers or something. I think I might have had comic books, too.
Once in Beijing, I got some of that sweet, sweet KFC, except the stupid little train station KFC ran out of their flagship dish, the fried chicken sandwich. I think if KFC still sold this in America, Chik-Fil-A wouldn’t dare open their idiot mouths about political issues they don’t know anything about. Chinese KFC blows that Atlantean octogenarian’s soylent-sandwiches straight out of the water. American KFC still sucks, though.
Now that my irrational hatred for S. Truett Cathy and my strange obsession with Chinese KFC are out of the way, I have to say that Beijing is a very different city from Shanghai. It has been almost ten years since I was here. In 2008, my mother kept us away from Beijing because it would be crowded in anticipation of the Olympics. In 2012, we kept away from Beijing because it was apparently “not worth it”, and we had other places to see, like the Terracotta Soldiers in Xi’an. In 2015, I finally visited Beijing.
I now know why my mother kept me away.
I’d had a cough for a few weeks by then, starting the week before we left. It got worse here. The smog sort of sits around the buildings, looking like fog. “It almost looks pretty,” said Steven. Yeah, it does. It looks like early morning, eternally, in this city, but that’s not fog. It’s smog, the stuff that kills you.
WHERE THE HOOD, WHERE THE HOOD, WHERE THE HOOD AT!?
You see, there’s a reason I’m wearing a mask in this picture, and it has nothing to do with my inherent badassery or my overflowing levels of street cred. I was avant-garde, because I bought mine first in Shanghai. Everyone else bought theirs later on in Beijing. So avant garde.
Beijing is a lot more spread out than Shanghai. It’s also much harder to get a cab in Beijing. That said, there were a lot of things we liked about Beijing. I think everyone’s favorite was the lake. We also visited a hutong, an old-style complex of houses from the Qing dynasty. A lot of the ones remaining in Beijing have been turned into shops. The one we went was actually crowded, and it had a lot of trendy shops. I bought some postcards, and just outside of it, I got myself a bag with this on it:
And then everybody started making fun of me. Damn, I did not realize this class was filled with a bunch of close-minded tools. Actually, now that I think of it, I also got a bag with Shimakaze on it.
Yeah, it might be because of Shimakaze. OK, yes, they definitely made fun of me because of Shimakaze.
We also went on the Great Wall, or a chunk of it, anyway. It was filled with labor, sweat, drudgery, and pent-up anger. But, you know, it was still fun, and I even got to take a cute cat photo. The people on this trip love cute cat photos. I reckon Lanie and Anya have at least a hundred between the two of them. I can see why. Look at them, aren’t they so cute!?
Look, there were, like five other people and a little kid who were laughing and taking pictures, too, OK!? It wasn't just me! Don't blame me! I'm not the only one!
Beijing was naturally a little sadder than Shanghai, since we arrived through Shanghai, but left from Beijing. Even that aside, though, I think I liked Shanghai better. I have more experience with it, but overall, the city environment in Shanghai is far more…liveable than it is in Beijing. I do like the hutongs, though, and I wonder if we just didn’t get to go to the equivalent in Shanghai.