April 3, 2001 (Day 27)

Health: OK. The changing diet and some much-needed exercise are taking my body some getting used to. A week in close quarters has taken its toll. My body is just trying to adjust. The amount of dust I have been ingesting is probably not helping matters. While sunny and warm (about 15C) – we have escaped the Siberian chill at last – there is a haze over the city caused by the winds off the desert, helped in no small part by the pollution generated by a city of this size.

Morale: good.

All in all, it was a pretty good day. We emailed CITS (China International Travel Service) yesterday to let them know we arrived earlier than expected. They saved us the trouble of hunting them down and rang us in our room today. Things seem to be squared away for tomorrow. I just am glad no one was waiting for us at the station.

A bit of a setback today when trying to exchange rubles. After taking a very intense and interested gaze at the currency, the bank clerk asked us which country it was from. Not a particularly good sign. Other hunting around seems to indicate that no banks here are interested in taking it. Vladivostok remains our best hope.

Moving kind of slow today. Health-wise, we each have our up and down days. Today was a down day for Anna. But we had the day to ourselves and tried to make the most of it. Armed with the primer from the students about taxi etiquette, we wandered Jianguomennei Dajie – a wealthy international strip in Beijing. All the trappings of a well-to-do consumer culture are visible: shopping malls, fast food restaurants, big hotels. There was even an A&W. I don’t think I have seen an A&W in the US in decades.

Began the morning’s adventures with a Starbucks coffee. It is comforting to know that the price at Starbucks, converted to dollars, is the same as one would pay in the US. To put it in perspective, our coffees were three-times the cost of the cab ride there. Some languages are universal.

Me: Two medium coffees, please.
Beijing Starbucks barista: ???
Me: Two grande lattes.
Beijing Starbucks barista: [Chinese equivalent of “coming right up”]

Scary tourist experiences. Some of the shops along Jianguomennei Dajie placed us firmly in tourist central. Still the sight of tour groups made me break out in a sweat. There they were: overweight, fanny packs filled past capacity, face scrunched up as if they were about to sneeze, and the “My Name Is…” stickers prominently displayed like some lost conventioneer. Their loud voices demonstrate that they are clouded by false anonymity: just because you do not understand the local language does not necessarily mean people do not know what you are saying. I sense the horror since I feel we may be on a slippery slope towards that destiny. CITS guided tours may be the first step. Then the cruise ship excursions. What then? I shudder to think.

The major site for today was the Ancient Observatory – a small oasis along a busy street. The displays, many in English, talked about how long astronomical records had been kept in China and how the Chinese had been the first to record phenomena like sunspots. The season of the year was determined by where the handle of the Big Dipper was pointing. The roof was full of large tools used by the astronomers. While the use of these pieces was beyond me, they were wonderfully decorated with very stylized dragons and the like. The site provided a great viewing platform for the many kites flown by others taking advantage of the good weather.

The method of pest control at the Observatory is quite clever. A number of small buildings and large pieces of astronomical equipment encircle the courtyard. These items are very alluring to birds that tend to alight on them, as well as other less pleasant things. When too many birds gather in the area, the custodian wanders out and whistles a high-pitch note. Having received the attention of the unwelcome avian guests, he makes a great sweeping gesture with his arms, as if throwing a large item underhanded, and all the birds fly away. Ingenious.

Nearest we can tell, China and the US are involved in some disagreement about a US military aircraft that collided with a Chinese fighter plane. The American plane made an emergency landing in China and now it and its crew are being detained.

Tomorrow: the Great Wall!

Excerpts from Anna’s journal included