We arrived in Beijing after a comfortable train ride, several hours long. I was surprised by how comfortable and clean the economy class was – it was just as nice as the trains I rode in Japan, and a fair bit nicer than the trains I used to ride in Connecticut. After arriving at our hotel (a foreign brand with nice, Western-style bathrooms) we went to a touristy shopping area in the center of town that sold, among other things, scorpions, starfish, and candied strawberries. I also located a bookstore, which was great because I hadn’t managed to find any in Shanghai. I was thwarted in my goal of checking out the Chinese popular fiction scene, though, since the first few floors were devoted to historical works, foreign books, nonfiction, and textbooks. Later I learned that there were several floors of the bookstore I missed, so the modern-day fiction I was looking for might have been found in those floors.
We then went to a famous Peking Duck restaurant and went to bed.
On the second day, after an ample breakfast, we explored Tiennanmen Square and the Forbidden City. The air quality was terrifyingly bad, so most of us purchased and used breath masks. We had trouble finding a taxi, and learned that because of the spread of more expensive services like Uber, taxis were harder to find.
On the third day, we visited another temple, located in a park with lots of people dancing and playing sports. It was a lot of fun, and I was impressed by how active people were! A similar park in the US might still have people exercising, but they would not be doing it as communally, and it probably would not be nearly as fun!
After walking around a shopping center frequented by expats, we had dinner with a friend of Shelby’s who lived in Beijing. As a Manchu, she was officially a minority in China, and she gave us plenty of useful information, much of which was relevant to my research topic. It seems that migrants have an easier time moving into Shanghai than Beijing, because after living in Shanghai for about 5 years they could be given a “green card” of sorts that allowed them to live and work in the city, although they did not get an official hukou. Thus Shanghai is at least friendlier for domestic migrants than Beijing, although I believe smaller cities would be friendlier still, since they give away urban hukous more readily.
On the last day, we mainly did touristy things, visiting the Great Wall and the Summer palace. The pollution finally cleared up today, and I say blue sky for the first time all week! Maybe it was because of the clearer air, but I was quite impressed with the beauty of both the mountains surrounding the Great Wall and the many structures of the Summer Palace. I regretted having to leave China so soon.