We took the bullet train from Shanghai to Beijing, and thank god, because it only took 5 hours. Upon arrival in Beijing, we were all starving. A few of us stopped at the McDonald’s in the Beijing train station,. This was my first time eating at McDonald’s since June 2014 – but I let it happen because it’s Beijing. The lady at the cash register was ready for us tourists, giving us a picture menu to point to, and she quickly understood my plea for ‘no cheese’ on my Big Mac. Also, High School Musical started to play while we were in McDonald’s #flashback. We then took the Beijing subway/metro to our hotel. The system was definitely not as great as the Shanghai system – Beijing could really invest in some escalators – carrying your luggage up and down various flights of stairs is not a fun past time.

For dinner, we walked around a food market, and tried some very interesting things. If you’ve ever wondered what starfish taste like…just don’t. But if you really need to know – it tastes like what you would imagine fried ocean to taste like – but not like Hawaii ocean, like Gulf of Mexico Galveston ocean. Thankfully afterwards, we got real food – actually the best Peking Duck in Beijing.

On the way back to out hotel, we thought we had walked into a war zone. Or maybe just – fireworks? It turns out it was the Lantern Festival which marks the end of the Lunar New Year Celebration, and everyone was using up their fireworks. It was a great welcome to Beijing.

In the morning we headed to Tiananmen Square. Watching a woman try to commit suicide in front of Tiananmen Square and subsequently being taken away by 30 policemen all in less than a minute was the most surreal experience of this whole trip. While walking around, we were under the impression that no one knew what had happened on the square. However, later on we met with Jin Lu, who said that people do know what happened. However, they view the event much like we sometimes view the Civil War and the Civil Rights era, a part of our past, and just that – a part of the past. The Chinese people don’t find it as big a deal as Americans who hark back to it non-stop, or at least that was her impression. Afterwards we headed to the Forbidden City, which was crazy big and we did actually end up losing Brandon. Once again, people were always trying to take photos with us, or with their kids and us.

In China, I finally got cupped! Don’t ask – but it’s totally a thing! Beijing also oddly reminded me of Moscow – the Soviet grey style buildings, the pollution. I don’t know, maybe I’m crazy.

On the last day, we visited the Great Wall (or in Chinese, the Long Wall). If you ever want to realize how utterly nonathletic you are, try climbing the wall. It was beautiful, quite stressful  I’m pretty sure a few people were ready to throw my Taylor Swift loving ass off the wall, but it was a great way to end our stint in Beijing.

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.

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.