Beijing on the eve of the Olympics...

The only thing I can say about my vacation is that it was probably two
of the best weeks of my entire life. They were certainly an
interesting two weeks and every day brought a new experience that I
never saw coming. Politicians can skip to the end for a summary on
China...but you'll miss the fun:)

And while I enjoyed Hong Kong and Singapore the most, Beijing was
certainly the most fascinating.

I started my trip to Beijing from the Manila airport. I was leaving
the Philippines after 5 days hanging out down in terrorist-infested
Mindanao(there is a story about that), and I was looking forward to my
trip out to Beijing. At the Manila airport I even got excited when I
saw a sign for Guangzhou (Under Siege 2: Dark Territory "The
fertilizer plant in Guangzhou is a Chemical weapons facility
masquerading as a fertilizer plant. We know this. The Chinese know
that we know. But we make believe that we don't know, so the Chinese
make believe that they believe that we don't know...but know that we
know...Everybody knows."...never mind.

Anyway when I finally got to the head of the line to check into my
flight I discovered that I needed a visa to get into Beijing. Now,
despite feeling stupid that I didn't check on the visa situation I
thought it was curious that for the Olympics the Chinese decided to
crack down as opposed to opening up. Then again, as with everything
in China, they're Communists, so it shouldn't have surprised me.

At this point I was in panic mode, but because I was on vacation it
really didnt matter! I left the airport and headed straight for the
Chinese Embassy in Manila. Unfortunately it was Saturday so it was
closed. So I did the next obvious thing: looked for a travel agent.

Since this was a Sam vacation I walked down the street and there was a
travel agent. See, I figured that if I had to get to China, I would
have to go to Hong Kong first to get a visa. I figured that Hong
Kong, since it enjoyed acting like its own country, would have a
different visa system. My hunch was confirmed by the travel agent who
said that I could get into Hong Kong for free. All I had to do was
buy a plane ticket to Hong Kong for the flight in 4 hours.

So after confirming my favorite theory (lots of money can get you just
about everything) I took the next 4 hours to look for a Philippine
Soccer Jersey. Unfortunately the Filipinos are totally unimpressed
with their national team so none of the 8 sports stores I went to had
a soccer jersey (however, one did have an ad for Rudy Giuliani giving
a speech about leadership in times of crisis).

At the Manila Airport, (the terminal Philippine Airlines flies out of
is very nice), I grabbed some magazines and waited for my flight. The
best article I read turned out to be about me. It was in the recent
Time Magazine and it spoke about the Beijing Olympics. Besides
mentioning that half the cars in Beijing are banned from the roads
(more on that), it also pointed out that lots of hapless tourists got
stuck outside China without visas they didn't know they needed (there
was a guy in front of me at the airport who found out the hard way,
just like I did).

See, the best thing about Communists is their penchant for shooting
themselves in the foot. Instead of actually opening up their country
to foreign journalists' and tourists' scrutiny, the Commies in China
have decided that it would be better to totally crackdown and ban tons
of tourists from entering Beijing. This means that instead of hotels
overflowing with tourists, the hotels are half empty in Beijing.
Chinese nationalists will scream that media coverage of their country
is unfair (which should make any American roll on the floor laughing).
But they should be totally ashamed that their country is so
embarrassing it can't handle intense, honest media scrutiny.

As much as Americans hate Guantanamo, there was at least the argument
made that the methods used there (waterboarding, a form of torture
outlawed by the Geneva Conventions) garnered information which
protected American lives. Now, Americans can agree or disagree on
that point (the two Presidential candidates have agreed it was
ineffective) but the Chinese can't even discuss the wicked acts their
government commits. Protecting international war criminals like Omar
Al-Bashir of Sudan, supporting the Genocide in Darfur by giving Sudan
political cover, furthering the suffering of the Zimbabweans by
selling guns and also giving political cover to Robert Mugabe are just
a couple of the crimes the Chinese People's government commits in
their name. The Communists also commit mass expulsion of their own
citizens out of areas of Beijing in order to build stadiums and make
the place "look nicer" (they are supposedly buying new houses for all
those people...because projects always work...more on that). They
also expelled thousands of people from the bank of the Yangtze river
to build a damn of dubious value.

Then there is the oppression of the Tibetans, the arrest and torture
of political dissidents, the massive corruption of local Communist
officials throughout the country side and the cover up of the
increasing unrest of the average Chinese farmer (who were responsible
for the original People's Revolution, in case the Communists in China
forgot that). Add all that up and China looks set to implode on the
foundation of lies the country has allowed itself to believe (like,
that they're still Communists. Really their just Capitalists living
under a terrible cabal of dictators).

Of course, there is always the argument that the China is too big and
unwieldy for political freedom and that the Communist party has lots
of dissenting voices within it that give it some ability to
self-critique. But the first point implies that China is held
together only by military might and that it is egging for a Civil war
and the second point is washed away by the fact that China can't
handle any criticism at all, lest the people catch on to the "1984"
lifestyle they're living.

But beating up on China is pointless. The Chinese people have no
control over their actions and the government is comfortable to fund
it's economic expansion on the back of Darfurian genocide. Heck, they
can always point out that we killed most of the Native
Americans...like boys who grow up to beat their wives just like their
dad did. Why learn from mistakes if we can remake them for twice the
cost!

Cutting to the chase, I eventually got on my plane to Hong Kong. Hong
Kong itself was awesome (I was there for three days). I met tons of
cool kids who I ended up hanging out with when I got back from
Beijing, but that's another story. In Hong Kong I applied for my visa
on Monday and got it Tuesday morning (again, with lots of money...I
also had to buy a plane ticket and reserve a hotel room and give a
phone number of a friend in China in order to get a visa).

Beijing: Day 1

Beijing was something else. The airport was massive. The air
conditioning at the airport was also broken...brilliant. Just in time
for the Olympics.

On a more Capitalist note, I met a very cute Chinese girl at the
airport who helped me by pointing me to the baggage claim, letting me
use her cell phone to call my friends and driving me into the city.
She owned a Porsche and she was very nervous about things like losing
her parking ticket. She gave her ex-boyfriend (broke up with him that
morning) 200,000 yuan to gamble in Macau, and she was scared she'd
have to pay a little extra for parking. Capitalism everywhere.

Anyway, she found the ticket and we met her friend outside the airport
and we drove on to Beijing. She explained also that she was nervous
about the cops.

See, the commies, in all their wisdom, decided that instead of solving
the pollution problem in Beijing, they would simply state that all
cars with license plates ending in Even numbers could drive on the
road on Even days of the month. On Odd days of the month, only cars
with Odd last numbers on their license plates. Not exactly a green
solution...but certainly a commie one:) Why let the market invent
cleaner cars when you have enough authority to demand that people
don't drive on certain days.

On the way into the city we saw a huge pillar of lights surrounded by
spot lights which shined brightly through the polluted foggy
night...my friend said it was a factory smoke stack...they lit it up
like a Christmas tree to beautify it...I must say it worked...I just
wondered how many green house gas emissions the lights generated...and
since most power in China is coal power, it probably generated tons of
pollution too, but perhaps outside the city.

The next phase of the trip out of the airport was meeting my friends
in Beijing. The girl I was driving with talked with my buddies on the
phone until we finally found the place (which involved the girl
backing up in the middle of a small four-way intersection to get down
the right street. FRIGGEN' AWESOME!)

The bar we ended up at was quite hilarious. The entire street was
actually bars and the cars were parked on the sidewalk. Americans
made up the majority of the patrons at all the bars. The one we went
to was on the roof and had two swings in it...So we had some drinks,
danced some salsa, swung on the swings, yelled about not wasting
money on Ex-es; ya know, capitalist stuff.

Eventually I caught a relatively cheap cab to my hotel (which was nice
and empty) and crashed out.

Great Wall: Day 2

The next morning I woke up to discover that I had ordered fried rice
and left the tub running. Luckily the tub had an overflow valve which
turned the water off and the room service staff was perfectly happy to
send me up new fried rice for breakfast without charging me double!
Great service for those wasteful capitalist pigs!!

So after a fried rice breakfast and a bath I decided to make a mad
dash for the Great Wall of China. This was of course a totally poorly
planned mistake, but being a Sam Vacation, it really didn't matter! I
can't really do anything wrong on my own vacation!

So I went to the telephone store and bought a sim card (in Hong Kong I
got one at a 7-11; in Syria I had to give a thumb print; in China and
Singapore I had to scan my passport...it is interesting the various
degrees of paranoia each country has...in the US we have to sign up
for entire plans, although you can buy pre-paid phones. Anyway, my
rant about how much American telecoms suck is for another time). Then
I caught the Subway to the main bus terminal. Subway was cool, but
very much in Chinese

At the bus terminal I ran around pointing at my Lonely Planet guide
until someone told me the right direction. Eventually I found a bus
bound for the right city. The bus itself was as efficient as any
Chinatown Bus in the US. It even had a list of all the stops posted
on the back of the bus.

When I woke up I was in Miyun. When I got off the bus I was
immediately surround by cab drivers. For the next 15 minutes I spent
my time writing numbers and places and times on a piece of paper
attempting to negotiate payment and hours with the cabbies. Thank god
they used arabic numerals. At one point a nice Chinese girl who spoke
some English showed up. She helped smooth out the communications.
When I finally settled on a place and time, I thanked her and she
responded, "Welcome to China!"

That, I think, speaks to something I did love about China. Despite
the government being an abhorrent dictatorship, the people were
extremely kind. And they very much wanted me to like them and their
country. The significance of that struck home for me.

See, governments, even dictatorships, are made of people gathered from
the societies they govern. Even countries under occupation, such as
Palestine (yes I understand it may or may not be a country) or Iraq
(occupation may be a little strong), still have administrators that
are from the population. Despite a few obscure exceptions,
governments are made up of the people they govern. The bureaucrats
still have to go home and get an earful from their mother. Their
friends are still the people they make traffic laws for.

Chinese bureaucrats go home to a people who understand that governing
them is hard, and they allow them a certain leeway. The problem with
China is not that it's a dictatorship. The problem is that the
Chinese people are ok with that for now. They have come to terms with
the fact that, in order for them to rise, they will have to suck
resources out of countries run by even more abhorrent dictators. They
are a people of history, and one of the oldest historic activities is
war. I have read in many places that Confucianism supports strong
government, or something like that. That may be one explanation for
China.

For me, I think the people have just accepted it. As long as they
don't see it (which the Chinese government takes care of by blocking
the Internet with the Great Firewall of China) they don't care (heck,
"All these years and the Chinese are still building walls," as my
brother says. Don't they remember how poorly the last one worked?).
They have economic prosperity for now, so they are comfortable. The
Olympics are coming, so they know they are going to be under
additional scrutiny. They just have to wait for it to blow over.

After my cultural experience, I continued to the Great Wall at
Simatai. The area leading up to the wall was all brand new. It had
brand new signs in English and maps and pretty tourist things.

And then there was the ski lift with no locks. Now, a normal ski lift
is pretty dangerous, but you are usually over snow. This lift, while
it did have a door, chairs and railings, was over sharp mountain edges
and hard rocks. If I had fallen out I would have died. And falling
out would have been easy. If a tourist dies in that lift during the
Olympics, it will make international news. The Chinese appear to be
betting it won't happen.

At the top of the lift I had to walk. "The Wall can be intense," my
friend had warned me, with a certain reverence reserved for one of the
biggest man-made structures on Earth, if not the biggest. He wasn't
kidding. With my plastic bag full of water bottles ripping and my
papers, Lonely Planet and Economist falling all over the place, I had
to do a drastic rearranging of my pockets. Along the way I got
laughed at by the tens of Chinese people working on the wall (there
are Chinese people everywhere in China). "Three bottles of water!
AHAHAHAH," was one of my favorites.

When I got to the top there were still hawkers selling plaques saying
"I climbed the Great Wall." There was even a guy selling ice cream,
but he didnt want his picture taken.

Eventually I got to the end of the accessible part of the wall. And
that's where the fun started. Sitting by the sign that said "500 Yuan
fine for crossing" was a Canadian backpacker with a big yellow pot
plant printed on a green shirt. He was arguing a bribe with the
Chinese guard that would allow him to hike to the top of the next
peek. I was obviously interested so I jumped right into the
bargaining (all the while the guard's kid was running around, hanging
out with Dad). The negotiations ended up failing as the sun started
to set, but it was good to meet a fellow backpacker at least. After
an email exchange I continued on my marry way. My Canadian friend
ended up trying to stay the night on the wall but told me later that
he got kicked off at 8pm.

So I ran back down the mountain minus two bottles of water and caught
the insane lift back down to the bottom of the mountain. I met up
with my cabbie, who was very pleased that I had kept my word and
returned on time, and I headed back to Miyun. From Miyun I caught a
bus to Beijing. Since I was totally exhausted from my Great Wall run,
I ended up meeting one of my friends (who happened to have founded the
first Apple store in China) and we sat down for some McDonald's and a
chat. After that I went home and totally collapsed.

Tiananmen Sq: Day 3

I have never felt more Communist in my life than in Tiananmen Sq. In
fact, I'm still diggin' the Proletariat. I really want to buy the
shirt my cousin has which shows all the Commie big wigs wearing funny
hats and holding red plastic cups under the caption: "The Communist
Party." Then I want to wear that shirt around Beijing...I'd probably
be arrested.

As it was, I did one better. I took the Beijing metro to the heart of
Communism on Earth and I took a picture in front of the Forbidden City
with a big poster of Mao behind me while wearing a bright red shirt.
The shirt had a beer cap on it which had "The Economist" printed on
it. Below the beer cap there was a caption: "Think Responsibly."
Even now this marvelous picture can be seen on my facebook profile.

After some priceless picture taking, I continued on a walking tour of
TS. The next best thing after the big picture of Mao is the endless
amount of young Chinese army recruits who march around TS continually.
I mean, they just make you feel so commie. Most of the soldiers are
young and probably don't even know why they are forced to march around
TS. In the tunnels under the roads connecting TS to the Forbidden
City, there were metal detectors as well. I'm not sure who the
Chinese are afraid of. The Tibetans are non-violent and the Taiwanese
have a country to retaliate against. Is Al-Qaeda gonna bomb China
during the Olympics?

Anyway, in TS I got my picture taken with some random Chinese people
who wanted to take a picture of me. I also got to wander around the
Forbidden City and get ripped off by all the merchants selling junk in
TS.

Commie Visit to Tiananmen Sq - Check
Hilariously ironic picture taken at the Forbidden City in front of Mao - Check

I moved on.

The next stop was to find lunch. Along the way I ran into the
"Beijing Book store." At least that is what the Lonely Planet called
it. What the Chinese called it was the "Book BUILDING!!!"

In Commiestan, everything must be massive and centralized! The Book
Building had about 5 floors. When I walked in the door someone
immediately greeted me in English and asked if I needed help. Instead
of going upstairs, I figured I'd check out the basement first. It was
down here that I found mostly American books on New Age philosophy and
Harry Potter, oddly enough.

I didn't check the upper floors cause I was hungry.

Lucky for me there was a massive underground mall across the street
from the book store. In there I found a soccer jersey. I had to have
my friend translate over the phone for me. It was at that moment that
I thought over-the-phone international translations would be pretty
clever. The business model is tough though, so more thought is
required.

I also discovered Beijing cuisine, which is apparently legendary. I
found it in a mass eatery where I had to take pictures of the food
that I wanted to try and explain it to the cashier. To the store's
credit they understood exactly what I was trying to do and one of the
guys walked me through the whole process. I ordered my food and
drinks, sat down and they brought me my food.

It was amazing. It was also fun because there were two Chinese kids
driving their parents nuts right next to me and one of the kids had
"2008" carved into his hair. I assume it was because of the Olympics,
but who knows? The point is that the Chinese have lots of children,
despite the one child policy, and their population is extremely young,
at least in Beijing.

It was just about this time that I started worrying about the US's
role in the face of a rising China. The reason I worried about it was
because I realized that China's population was not only HUGE, like
everything in the country, it was also young. That means that their
labor pool will remain massive and get larger for a long time to come.
After finishing my meal and leaving, followed by 100 staring eyes (I
also noticed that right after lunch time all the restaurant staff
grabbed naps at various tables or took breaks playing cards...very
odd), I started to ponder the advantages and disadvantages America and
Asia had on one another.

I created a list:

Asian Advantages:

Huge skilled and unskilled labor force
Massive education systems producing tons of engineers and scientists
(this includes Hong Kong, Singapore, India and China)
Great Airlines (at least Singapore and Hong Kong...the rest may be struggling)
Fantastic cellular networks. And this is true. American cell
networks are totally useless. We need to get into GSM or whatever
those little SIM cards are.
Momentum - No matter what, every city I visited (Beijing, Hong Kong,
Singapore, Kuala Lumpor) they all had an undeniable energy about
them. I'm worried they will simply over take us with their work
ethic. They also love to integrate technology into their personal
lives far quicker than we do, although they still struggle with
computers in businesses. The sports store in the huge underground
mall had 7 stores and only two cashiers with two computers for the
whole store. It worked, but seemed outdated.

American Advantages:
Excellent Infrastructure such as hardline phones, internet, well managed cities
My fear with this one is that our infrastructure is old, like the
bridge problem we now have to fix
Highly efficient financial systems
This advantage is suffering big time under the mortgage crisis,
so I'm worried about this guy
Skilled Labor
We have an excellent labor force, but our education system is
struggling to produce the best in the world. Many of our skilled
workers are immigrants and we are starting to make immigration laws to
keep them out, which is bad.
Political Freedom and stability - this we got in spades. Even with
The Patriot Act, we are centuries ahead of everyone else in the world
on political freedom, and I do mean centuries
Dynamic economy - no matter what, if we stick to the principles of the
Constitution and open our economy to new cultural influences (read
immigrants) and to Foreign Direct Investment, like people buying
Budweiser, we will be fine.
Growing population - unlike Eurpoe, Americans are breeding like crazy.
We just need to make sure we have an educated, outgoing population,
instead of an insulated terrified one that doesn't want to learn
Spanish. OH NO, OTHER LANGUAGES!!!! HOW DO THOSE CRAZIES EVEN KNOW
WHAT EACH OTHER ARE SAYING!!!
Free Media - I rage against what I see as a ridiculous liberal bias
in CNN and conservative bias of FOX as much as anyone, but in the end
our Media really does love digging up crap. And that crap-digging
forces everyone to be more honest. It forces people to actually live
up to their ideals because everyone is watching. Look at our
presidential race? Everyone in the world knows about it because we
dig up EVERYTHING!! They think we're crazy, but they don't think
we're crazy while their voting because most people live in
pathetically corrupt dictatorships or sham-democracies. Free Media is
good and fun. I love it.

OK, after the underground mall and the big bookstore, I went to look
for the fabled underground city.

This is where it got interesting.

I took the metro to some random stop that was near the underground
city. According to Lonely Planet (LP), the tunnels were built because
the Chinese were afraid of nuclear war with Russia...go Commie unity.

I came out of the stop and began following my LP map to the location.
I passed a great "Blind man massage" parlor, which I did not go for,
although I have heard they're good. In fact given my love of
massages, I probably should have tried it simply to be a
connoisseur...but I didn't.

Instead, I continued my search, which was beginning to take me away
from the main streets and into the back streets. Eventually I asked a
guard who asked an old lady (who tried to sell me a hat) and they
pointed me down the road I was walking.

It started to become very apparent to me that Beijing, outside the
fancy metro and the Olympic stadium, was terribly run down and poor.
I started noticing the spiderweb of wires endemic to developing
countries when people illegally tap the electricity lines. No one
seems to care...especially since the government pays for it all
anyway.

The buildings were also shanties, much the same as the run down cities
I had seen in the back deserts of Layounne in Western Sahara.

Eventually I found the underground city. It was closed. But luckily
the trip was not wasted. I ran into an Olympic volunteer who spoke
very good English. I asked him why it was closed and he said because
the construction in the area had made the tunnels unstable. The smirk
on his face gave me the impression he was feeding the company line.
It seemed more like the Commies didn't want to advertise their
paranoia and penchant for large hand-built wastes of time (don't think
about American nuclear drills, bomb shelters, similar tunnels under
Georgetown University and the Cuban Missile Crisis...of course, like I
said about the free media, we can still see our paranoia, and learn
from it).

Anyway, there was no construction going on. I pointed that out.
He said, "No the government is destroying this entire area. All the
people are being given new homes somewhere else."

.....

Everyone likes the Projects.

That rumor of Chinese mass internal population transfer being
confirmed, I switched to the topic of Olympic volunteers. I didn't
cover this totally before, but as you will all notice soon on the
news, Beijing is FULL of kids wearing Blue Shirts and standing around.
They are at every metro stop, the airport and at the major Olympic
venues. The guy I was talking to was not from Beijing. He came to
the city to volunteer. But the Commies didn't pay for him. All they
gave him was a t-shirt and lunch. He had to make ends meet by
translating part-time. I have no idea what the others did, especially
since most of them didn't speak English any better than I spoke
Chinese. Of course, at this point they still had a few weeks of
training before the Olympics, and they are gonna need it.

But it is amazing that the youth of China turned out for this. They
were certainly everywhere.

In the end, I asked to take a picture with my new friend.

He declined
...probably because he was afraid of getting killed by his government.

I got his email. Also dangerous, but perhaps he knew that the Great
Chinese Firewall had about as much of a chance of keeping him under
control as the Great Wall had of keeping out the Mongols.

For anyone going to Beijing: I challenge you to step out of the nice
Commie box they are putting the Olympics in and take a stroll through
the city. Start by making friends with the volunteers. They are
China's future.

After the failed attempt to find the Underground CommieVille, I went
to the cAppleIST store, I mean the Apple Store...only one in China.
Great place, excellent bandwidth. After hanging out for a bit at the
bar, I met up with my Chinese friend from the Airport who took me to
dinner. Like I said, very nice people. And the dinner was fantastic.
Lonely Planet is right. One of the best things about Beijing is the
food. It is awesome!

After dinner I met up with my American friends and hit the club scene.
The first club we tried had been torn down. Woops.

The second one was a Russian gangster place where we got searched and
metal detected before entering. The Russians are crazy. Americans
have reputations of being aloof and arrogant travelers. Russians have
a reputation of shooting people.

After much fun, I went home and ordered some fried rice...and then
promptly fell asleep.

Airport: Day 4

In the morning, I got my fried rice from the poor waiter who had
waited outside my door all night trying to wake me up. I tipped him.
I also felt bad.

Eventually I hit the cAppleIST, I mean APPLE, Store again and did some
email. I then went to lunch with my friend (started the Apple Store)
and his co-workers, one of whom went to the high school across the
street from mine in Hawaii. Yeah, not surprised anymore. Actually I
was, HOW COOL IS THAT!!?

The food rocked (again) but eventually I had to book it for the
airport. Luckily on my way there I passed a Hooters. Thank god they
made it to China.

Summary:

Beijing rocked and I need to go back to the Great Wall, because like
Nixon said, it's a great wall. However, the Chinese people are still
dancing on the edge of a knife. Their economic expansion is bringing
them untold riches, but those farmers who can't own their own land are
getting relatively poorer. They have abandoned Communism to pursue
"We understand governing is hard-ism" and that is going to last until
the boom stops. A war over Taiwan could galvanize the country, or it
could tear it apart, depending on how the Chinese manage the
propaganda over who started the war. But it this day and age, I think
the glorious transparency of the Internet is going to get those
Commies eventually.
But the Chinese people still kick ass! I will be back many times in my life.

Lots'a'love