Beijing

Monday, February 15, 2010

I'm sitting at the gate waiting to board out flight to Beijing. I've just read, in the book I selected from Damon and Shannon's library (Lost On Planet China by Maarten Troost, author of Sex Among the Cannibals), that there is a shortage of pilots in China and therefore many pilots are young, and thus inexperienced.

Funny how fatalistic you become after even a short time in China. Polluted air, polluted water, maniacial drivers-all are greeted with a mental shrug and an "Oh, well, I'm here now and I can't do anything about it."

So I don't even peek into the cockpit as we board.

Just as we are about to land in Beijing Bernie calls my attention to something he sees through the window on the other side of the plane. I hold my place with my index finger. When I look back at my book I see the young man sitting beside me looking at the page.

The author is relating an incident that happened to him somewhere in China when he was mistaken for a German and a psychotic man began hitting him repeatedly. He's giving his reaction.

"WTF" (spelled out of course) is what I'm pointing to on the page.

I look at the page, then up at the face of my seatmate.

Yeah, he can read English.

Our hotel is nice, very nice. The concierge informs us that it's too late in the day to go to the Forbidden City, but that we might want to visit the Olympic Green, where the games were held two years ago.

We decide to try the subway. Signs are in English as well as Chinese, and on the trains a lighted display shows where the train is now, what stops it's already made and the rest of the stops on the line.

Olympic Green is crowded with tourists, 99.5% of them Chinese. This is the Spring Festival holiday week, one of the few workers have off, and there lots of families here.

Coming out of the subway we see a couple taking pictures of one another, so Bernie volunteers to take a picture of the two of them. Then they take a picture of us. They're funny, making faces and having a good time.

We run across them several times while we're at the Olympic site. We take more pictures, at the famous stadium and in front of a large tower.

We want to squeeze in a look at Tian'an Men Square at night, so we take the subway there. This is the world's largest square (99 acres), where 300,000 people can stand. The Forbidden City, the Great Hall of the People, and the museums of Chinese History and Chinese Revolution border the square. The Monument to the People's Heroes stands in the center of the square. Chairman Mao's portrait looks out across the square from his mausoleum.

It's dark now, and cold. Lights decorate the trees. The impressive glass-dome Performing Arts Center stands in the middle of an artificial lake.

But we're not thinking of the architecture or the museums. We, like most of the world, think something else entirely as we stand in front of the steps and look at the brightly lit Monument to the People's Heroes.