Hello America!

For anyone who didn't know already, I am back in the USA. I actually lucked out from Beijing > Seattle, as the plane was only about half full. Consequently I got a whole row of seats to stretch out in. In addition, I watched three movies:

The Dark Knight
Safety Not Guaranteed
Goldeneye (because shut up, it's awesome)

Upon landing in Seattle, I had biscuits and gravy, and it was amazing. Also, props to Seattle for covering their whole airport with free wifi. I shouldn't have to thank anyone for that. Its fucking 2012, every airport and hotel should have that complimentary. If you charge me $3 for a coffee, I think the least you can do is spring for a $20 router. Anyway after connecting to Cincinnati, I had been awake for about 34 hours. But of course, I had to immediately to get some chili. So after 36 hours I got a long deserved sleep, even though I'm still having trouble adjusting to the time difference.

I don't have too much more to say, other that I hope I can meet all of you sexy people soon if I haven't already - you should hit me up on Facebook. I'll close with a list of "Lessons from China" I wrote while I was there. Maybe you'll find them as interesting as I did.

1. Never lose your curiosity to explore new places
2. Respect only those who deserve respect.
3. Maintain a strictly professional relationship with your boss
4. Maintain a strictly friendly relationship with your coworkers
5. Be a strict asshole for the first class
6. The Chinese are overly obsessed with money
7. The Chinese are your best friends if you know them personally. If you're another stranger, fuck you
8. According to several of your adult classes, 70% of Chinese men cheat on their wives/girlfriends at some point. Please refuse to believe this
9. Chinese kids are put under an insane amount of stress to succeed. However they are remarkably inept at basic life tasks

My thoughts on Beijing fluctuate constantly.

The first night I was back, I was in love with the place. The entire city is very easy to navigate, there are restaurants and shops everywhere, and being one the capitals of the world, you can find anything you need. Then I started looking a bit deeper. The place is like 25% foreigners, so I don't really feel unique here. It's also impossible to get a cab, and the city is just filthy. One day it will be pretty nice, the next it looks like a foggy swamp. Except the fog is pollution. Yuck. And then after I went around seeing all the touristy things, I concluded this city is really really boring. The hostel had cheap beer, though.

I'm glad I went and got to see the sights, but I don't see myself ever going back there. The first day was the Forbidden City, which not true to its namesake, is pretty easy to get into. The thing is though, its kind of a boring place. Its a grand sprawling complex, more like a parking lot with some old buildings in it. Except the old buildings are mostly empty. Also it took about an hour to walk from one side to the other. Of special note was the park at the end. You got to climb up a hill that offered some really great views of the city. There's not really too much to say about it though. There are plenty of pictures on Facebook, and aside from the sights I didn't really see or do anything too interesting. I know, lame, right?

The 2nd day was a little better because I went to the National Museum, and there was some cool stuff. I really liked the section of gifts to China, because they had some pretty crazy stuff in there. Pieces of moon dust from America, a literal olive branch from Obama, some fish things - it was kind of a big deal. I also managed to make it out to Olympic Park, which is cool but REALLY FRAKIN' FAR. It involved changing subway lines 4 times, and I got there just as it was getting dark. At least I got to see when they turned the lights on, which was cool. Very impressive buildings, but seriously - way too far. I didn't get back to the hostel until pretty late, which meant I got to drink beer while looking out the window at people freezing their ass off.

Speaking of freezing my ass off, I met up with two guys I went to North Korea with for my final day there to see some joint sightseeing. We went to see the Temple of Heaven and the Emperor's Summer Palace on what may be one of the coldest days ever. It was -8 in Beijing that day, (Centigrade, but ffs thats still in the teens). and we are outside almost all day. Honestly the temple and palace were both pretty boring as well! Some overly impressive buildings that were pretty much empty once you got down to it. The lake at the summer palace was frozen completely solid, so my travel companions and I tried our hardest to find something big and heavy we could throw in to break the ice. It became our mission for the day, and after spending all day finding only pebbles and branches, we finally found a big rock that weighed about 20 pounds. Excited, we rushed back to the lake, and threw it as hard we could.




Thud.

Seriously, it was godamn cold.

Hey, it's Dandong! (snicker)

On the way back from the DPRK, we had a stop off in the border town of Dandong. Due to a series of very strange circumstances (too long of a story to write - ask me about it), myself and one other American arrived in Dandong about 6 hours before everyone else. We were taken to our hotel, which after being in the DPRK looked like the most decadent testament to capitalism I could ever imagine. My bathroom had a hot tub. And marble floors. Marble floors, ya'll. Seriously, that room was nice.

No dabbling! Go big or go home!

While we were waiting for everyone to come back, my American friend Tom went down to the spa. I took a bath and decided to stroll about town. Dandong isn't really an exciting city. Pretty small by Chinese standards, only 2 million people. Nothing really western or modern about it, with little appeal for tourists. But I had time to kill, so be it.

That evening we still had not heard from our friends, which we later learned got delayed at the border for 3 hours. Tom and I went out to a club that we thought was pretty mundane. It started out with a very talented singer, a few other acts, but then things changed when the clown came out.

I thought "Oh great, a clown". He did a few magic tricks, made some impressive balloon animals. But then, the music changed. The clown turned angry. And things got dirty. Really dirty. The nice clown making the balloon animals started making all sort of balloon genitalia and putting it on everyone. There was also a lot of fire. It was a strange day.

That evening, the others finally arrived and we went back to the club. They had a Gangnam style dance off I was all too eager to join in on. The MC said "I want to ask his name but I don't think he would understand." I responded I do understand, and told him my name. He had quite the wtf face, and it drew some applause. We chatted for a bit until he said something I truly didn't understand. Myself and one other travel companion Gangnam styled, and we got several buckets of free beer.

North Korea is past the river on the right

Anyway the next day we meet our tour guide who is one of my favorite people in the world. We headed off to the Great Wall, and along the way he talked and talked and talked and talked in broken English about China and Dandong, stuff I honestly didn't care about. We climbed up the wall and the very final tower, overlooking North Korea. Coming back to the bus the guide talked more and more, until suddenly he turned funny. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but he suddenly turned into Chinese Leslie Nielsen. He started speaking in lofty terms about this mountain, and asked "Do you know-how ancient-Chinese say-if-a mountain is beau-tiful? If tour guide says it is beautiful, it is beautiful."

Take a look at this, Kim!

It took me a second to process this. He didn't crack a smile or laugh, he was completely deadpan. I looked around and everyone else was the same. We all realized we heard the same and began laughing. He continued this deadpan style, and I still don't know if he was serious or not. When we went to the Duck River (so called because the water is green), he said "The North Koreans keepa-polluting it, I think it-is more yellow. We should call it Chicken River." Completely, 100% serious face the whole time.

We got to go to the Chinese Korean War museum, which was interesting to see their take on it. There was also a boat ride right up along the coast, consequently the same place those American journalists were snagged a few years ago. (exciting!). Bill Clinton did not have to come save us this time.

As one of the last stops on the tour, we went out on the broken bridge, a bridge we bombed during the Korean War. The story goes not one bomb was allowed to be dropped in China, so we left the Chinese half of the bridge intact while we blew the living crap out of the NK half. So now you can go out to the middle of the river and see it. There were lots of people there selling all sorts of NK souveniers.

And thats it for Dandong. We caught a train back in the evening that went to Beijing. It was a slow, overnight train, and sleeping was quite easy after drinking a few bottles of wine in one of the cabins. But Beijing will be something for next time. Seeya, Dandong.

Well after 4 days of updates, I'm quite tired of writing about the DPRK. But I figured one more would be good to summarize my thoughts on the country.

First of all, I didn't realize so many people were as interested in North Korea as I was. To me it was a mysterious place lost in time, and labled an axis of evil that nobody had ever visited. In fact, for Americans it's pretty damn difficult to visit. The NK government changes their mind on American visas on a near whim, and according to our guides, less than 2500 Americans have visited North Korea. Ever.

I think that's pretty messed up.

Not because it's some super hot tourist destination. Truthfully its not. Its a shithole. At very few points during the trip did I think "I am having lots of fun now." More it was "Hollllly shit, I can't believe things are like this." If you are going to have a fun time, you will not find it. Which is why I'm in a weird position if I would recommend people do what I do.

My gut instinct is to say no. You will not have fun on a trip there. It will be boring. It will be one sight after another on rails, you will not be able to interact with locals, the food is beyond terrible, there is rarely hot water, toilet paper, internet, and the entire gray and brown country is covered with desperate people

In a way I want to say yes, because the country is bizzaro world. There is nothing like it I have ever seen, and I have never in my life been so cautious of my actions. I was never in fear for my life or anything, but I was a bit cautious about being deported. Not to mention given there have been so few Americans, I felt responsible to not embarrass myself or my country. It turns out these fears were not entirely unfounded. We heard about another group that toasted "To Kim Il Sung" in a restaurant. They received an official visit and warning from the police. Apparently they do understand sarcasm, and they don't appreciate it. But going to a place like that makes you appreciate what you have. I don't want to get overly preachy and say things like "freedom", because that's pretty broad and stupidly generic. But if it allows you to not travel 10 miles each day just to get sticks to burn so you don't freeze at night, sure whatever, yay freedom.

Speaking of sticks, I'm glad I got to hang out with the people in my group in Beijing because we all noticed different things that on the surface you don't pay mind, but when you think about it are pretty interesting. The roads were full of people carrying sticks, walking in the middle of nowhere. One of my companions observed "You know how there are no trees anywhere? The entire country has been picked clean looking for something to burn. That's why they have to walk so far to find trees."

"And another thing – with all that countryside, do you remember seeing any animals? During the famine, they probably ate everything they could."

I have no way to back any of that up, but it may be true. I didn't see a single animal during my time there. These are the types of questions if I had noticed I would ask our guides, because they were very honest people. They never tried to avoid questions, though perhaps out of respect we didn't ask really controversial ones. Or at least I didn't. The thing with the guides though, after the first day or two I realized how utterly worthless they were for a conduit into daily life. These people were the 0.0001%. One had lived overseas in several countries, as her father is a diplomat. They interacted with foreigners as part of their job, and traveled to China frequently. They knew what life is like outside. But inside, life is okay for them. They live in the capital, they get hard currency from foreigners to buy luxury goods. And honestly, if the tips we were suggested to give are just spending cash for them, they are doing just fine.

So finally, so summarize NK as best I can. I have a face on the so called "axis of evil" now. And I see more "pity" than "faceless government of assholes". But it's still not a nice place. The people are living in absolute poverty minus a few elites. The elites have no motivation to change that. The countries will never be unified. The propaganda the north relies on to keep the populace content will shatter as soon as outside media comes in en masse. The south will never be able to absorb the destitute economy. But in the end, people are people. The kids are great, as all of encounters were one of complete wonder. They would laugh at our silly faces, dances, and none were scared of us, though sometimes their parents quickly brought them back into line. I guess it's a good thing to remember that we aren't born to hate anyone, it can only be taught by stupid adults.

But I'm glad I went. There's no voice there arguing the case for the west, so it's a pretty one sided argument. I really hope one day they learn how to run their country without fear. Cause ya know, the Imperials tried that with the Death Star. Then some dirt farming kid with a talking trashcan blew it up. And they've got a lot of dirt farmers.

Hello last day in the DPRK.

The final day was by far the most impressive, even though I was ill for most of it. We started off by seeing the International Friendship Exhibition in the mountains. This was... not what I expected. There were tons of guards, all with chrome plated AK-74s. In the side of the mountain was this massive, and I repeat, MASSIVE complex absolutely full of stuff given to Kim Fill-in-the-blank-here from whomever the hell wants to give him something. Private citizens, organizations, you name it. This complex was astounding. The guide said if you wanted to see every room, it would take 1.5 years. I think that is a gross overstatement, but I could believe a month. We went down labyrinth after labyrinth, corridor after corridor of numbered rooms, only stopping at the ones relevant to the nationalities of our group members. Unfortunately, there are no photos allowed, and they're pretty strict on security. So, there's that. I did get some photos when we were outside though. Future Weg should put them here. Quite pretty.

After a lengthy drive back, we got to see the Grand People's Study Hall (meh), and the Children's Palace. The Children's Palace was far more impressive, but it felt like charade after charade. "Oh let's just duck in this room to see what the children are studying!" Meanwhile, there is an orchestra of students waiting for all of us to sit down to play their song. "Oh we're so lucky, they're going to do a show soon!" We were the only audience members. If felt like 100% bullshit, but I will admit the performances were very impressive. These kids have practiced untold hours to perfect their craft, and I have to have a certain respect for them. But also a certain amount of pity. They're practicing so much just to put on a show for the few tourists that come through. I really wish they had spent that time playing, or just being a kid.

My illness finally just about gone, we stopped at the largest hotel in the city. We were given an hour to have a drink, post mail back home, or go up to the top floor. The bottom had a casino oddly enough run by the Chinese. I shot the shit with them, and made friends when I told them I was from Hangzhou. I decided to change in 100 RMB for casino tokens and play some blackjack. Turns out luck was definitely on my side, because I walked out with my original 100 RMB plus $40. I thought it was funny they gave dollars as change, but whatever. I'll need them soon. I don't have a way to caclulate it at the moment, but thats about 100 RMB to 320 RMB. Not a bad 30 minutes of playing at all. Also it'll be fun to put the long estranged dollars back into circulation.

And now here we are, back at the hotel. My days here in the DPRK have been pretty hit and miss, and overall it has changed my mind as to what I thought of the country. Some good, some bad. Maybe next post I'll rundown a summary of thoughts, because this country is more than what it seems.

Ugh, those three photos took almost 30 minutes to upload. I'm looking forward to reliable internet again.