Another day breaks and the last one’s gone
You dig deep just to carry on
Your debt’s paid off but it don’t feel gone
So you slip out the back and you’re moving on

I can never figure out how to make a case
That this don’t amount to a fall from grace
She wants to know can I replace
This tired wool with satin lace

Pressure builds till it breaks the dome
You can build a house, you can’t build a home
I’m a fool who believed love is bred in the bone
And there are no guarantees that I won’t get stoned

She says you’re on a bridge to nowhere and you’re gettin’ there fast
Put it in the past, put it in the past
If this is a race then I hope you come last
You’re on a bridge to nowhere and you’re gettin’ there fast

From “Bridge To Nowhere” by Sam Roberts

Dean found a place he liked for the two scenes that take place in the Baron’s study. The problem was that this particular location was a room in one of the most prestigious and secretive love hotels in Taipei, the place where all the politicos and celebrities go for discreet trysts. The management was known for its strict anti-photography policy. And the rooms were expensive.

So we went to take a look. Dean, Rowan and I took a cab over one night the week before and asked about a particular room featured in their brochure, the one Dean liked the look of. We were told that we couldn’t see the room at first, but eventually they relented and let us in for a peek.

It was nice. Opulent, even. All the luxuries, decorated in an extravagant style, with a jacuzzi and large-screen TV. We were told only two people could use the room. We pressed for three, and got two rooms reserved for the weekend.

The next problem was getting the crew and equipment in unnoticed. Since there could only be six of us in there at one time, we made up a plan to rotate cast and crew as much as possible without arousing too much attention. We met up at the McDonald’s across the street just before check-in. Dean, Maurice and I went to take possession of the rooms, and then we gradually brought the cast and crew in, one by one, each carrying a bag filled with equipment. Once we were inside we were ok, as long as we didn’t attract any attention to ourselves. One of the hardest props to get in was the sword, as well as the Gozen engine Rowan’s character is gloating over at one point.

The room looked good, but the lighting was crap for shooting. I had one light and didn’t make terribly good use of it, I’m afraid. We also didn’t have any time for rehearsals, so we did the scene cold, something I reconciled myself to long ago. The performances actually weren’t bad.

We shot from noon to about 9pm. At one point Rowan, wearing a Nazi uniform, is supposed to have a tailor (William) fussing over him. I thought it would be better to start out with him alone, his arm up in a Nazi salute, and then have the tailor walk in and say, “Other arm, please.” I don’t know if this is too much comedy. We’ll see how it plays in editing.

Sarah did her usual excellent Inga impression, and Norm came over later to resume his role as the eye-patch-wearing, cigar-smoking, Hawaiian-shirt-wearing henchman. The part of the Chinese messenger was played by a guy Dean met at the Taiwan Brewery named Jimmy. Jimmy is a Filipino for whom sweeping up at the brewery is just one of his three jobs.

And, of course, Dolly resumed her role as Lady X. Dolly’s actually been in the news lately, with photos from her website appearing in the Apple Daily.

When we were done I almost wanted to let everyone go and just stay in the room until midnight, when the time was up, but instead we all went for drinks at Malibu.

Next up is a series of pick-ups to be filmed this weekend while we figure out the last two big locations: the torture room and the zeppelin interior. Dean has to go back to Canada by Christmas, so we’re on a tight schedule and need to get everything done by then.

It’s been taking me some time to get back into the swing of things. The weather’s been wonderful for the past week, liftiing my mood. But I’m still backed up on posting photos and videos from my trip, and I’ve been staying up late and getting up early almost every night lately. It’s tiring.

Saturday morning I hauled myself up to go into town for a seminar I promised my friend Michael I’d attend, at his restaurant, which was the place he graciously allowed us to film at a few months back. Afterwards, I walked down the tree-lined park surrounding Ren-ai Road, enjoying the sun on my face.

I didn’t have much time for rest, however. That night the Muddy Basin Ramblers were to play for the first time in months, at our friend Doug’s wedding party up in Meizhicheng, a community up in the hills behind my place. Sandman was dressed to the nines, showing off his new suit, bowler hat, gold tie and dapper two-tone shoes. Fortunately for me, the rest of the band wasn’t in full Rambler regalia, so I didn’t have to put on the zoot. It was just too hot. In the taxi there the sole of my right shoe came apart, flopping on the ground like a clown shoe.

Doug’s apartment is on the top end of the last row, with a great view. He had prepared a nice little feast, including pasta, delicious ham and salad. Athula provided yellow rice. I strapped my shoe together with duct tape. We congregated on the rooftop, overlooking The Muddy Basin Itself, blocked off the bathroom vents that were blowing horrible odors at us from the place next door, and started to play.

It was a good thing we weren’t playing a large-scale gig. The launch wasn’t smooth, but we got back into the swing pretty quickly. I’d forgotten the stick for the bass at the Sandcastle, but I found a bamboo stick at Doug’s and pounded a nail into it to use instead. It worked pretty well.

The neighbors started complaining at eleven, first politely requesting that Slim stop his tapping, and then more forcefully via repeated screaming and tossing home appliances, so we had to stop around midnight. “I can play softly,” I kept saying. Especially with my mute in, I can play in a whisper.

But the party wound down after that, degenerating into a series of small living room chats and the calling of taxis. Our particular taxi wouldn’t fit six people, so I ended up hoofing back home. I got to bed around 4. The next day, Sunday, we’d be filming. Another short night with not enough sleep awaited.

“When you dribble a basketball you can’t use too much force,” Teacher Xu said last Wednesday. “If you pound it too hard you lose it. The force you use in tuishou is the same way. Just a light touch is all you need.”

We had more people than usual that night. I was getting back into the swing of things after my trip to China. In line with Teacher Xu’s words, I seem to get better results when I’m too tired to put any effort into the pushing of the hands. “The hands don’t push themselves; the energy has to come from somewhere, from your body,” he reminded us.

“Try to be like a floating ball,” he said. I didn’t get that one at all. How could a floating ball be rooted? But maybe that was the point: don’t concentrate on your form, just let it happen. Sounds like something I read as a teenager in The Inner Game of Tennis, which made a great deal of sense at the time. My efforts at that point were focused on the trumpet, but I suppose it’s good advice for many different aspirations.

Speed is another confusing aspect. How fast should one push? According to Teacher Xu, one should let your opponent set the speed. So a little slower than that? Sometimes Mr. V lets out a flurry of fast readjustments in directions, hoping to catch me off guard. It seldom works because it’s easy to anticipate.

One of the older students seems easy to push at first, but after a few bouts things become much more difficult. I wonder if his strategy is to lose on purpose for a few rounds before really starting to push. If so, that’s not a bad idea, actually. You learn more by losing, by sitting back and observing what your opponent is doing before taking action before starting in for real. I may try that one myself.

The benefits of travel include not only the satisfaction of finding yourself in a new, interesting location, but also, upon your return home after a period of absence, the temporary illusion of new context to the over-familiar place you left in order to go traveling.

This could explain the fact that these few days following my return, I seem to be able to appreciate my surroundings here in Taipei more than I have in a long time, especially after dusty, grey, half-finished Beijing. Of course, the weather the past couple of days has been excellent, blue skies, just cool enough, especially in Bitan, where I can look out my kitchen window at the green mountains beyond or open the windows for a nice cross-breeze. For now, after a mere eleven days away, I’m enjoying the feeling that I know how things work here, the familiar accents and clear speech, the money and banking systems, etc.

I know it won’t last; I’ll be hankering for the unfamiliar once again soon enough, but this trip should keep me sane through the winter at least. And in the meantime, I still have loads of pictures and video from my trip to process, as well as getting on with music, filming, editing, ranting, complaining and other facets of my life here.

After the phone incident, I had way more RMB than I needed, so on the morning of my departure I went to a bank to change it to US dollars. But the bank couldn’t do it. “Go to the Bank of China,” they said. So I went to the Bank of China down the street from the hotel and waited until my number was called.

“You need two things: your passport and a certificate from when you changed your US dollars into this amount of RMB,” the clerk said. Of course I had no such certificate. She was basically saying that banks in China cannot change RMB to any other currency. After learning that Chinese stores can’t remit money back to credit cards, this shouldn’t have been a surprise, but I had to restrain myself from asking, “And Beijing is going to manage the Olympics in 2008 how?”

Fortunately for me a foreign woman in the next line had some US cash, and we did a transaction right there in front of the clerks. They even provided us with the current rates. This is simply how things work in China: under the table in plain view. Where there is no infrastructure, people make it up as they go, and thanks to thousands of years of inept governance, people have been so ingrained with this tactic that it is second nature.

I returned to the Qianyuan and checked out smoothly (for a change) and caught a bus to the airport. As we threaded through some of the streets I bicycled down the other day, I regretted that I haven’t been able to quite get a grasp of this city during my stay. Part of that is due to an inconvenient cold, but actually the sheer size and a lack of a real downtown are more to blame. It would take several trips to even come close to scratching the surface, and at this pace of change and construction, you’d most likely find a different city on each visit. Shanghai was easier to “get” as it is much closer in nature to the cities where I’m used to living, such as Taipei and Hong Kong, and it much more aesthetically pleasing as well. Beijing I’m still not sure about. I found the people friendly for the most part, even though they speak like they’re wearing their socks on their tongues (perhaps a habit evolved from constantly speaking with a full mouth?), but being so close to the seat of power casts a cautious pall over everything, something I’d have to get used to.

At the airport, when my turn came up to go through immigration, the guy behind the desk looked at me and then asked, in Chinese, what my name was. I can only assume that this was some kind of test to see if I was the person listed in my documentation, but honestly, how bad a criminal would you have to be to not even get your own assumed name right? To be fair, however, maybe he was checking my pronunciation or my reaction as well.

The flight home was uneventful, despite my reservations about the state of the plane from Beijing to Hong Kong. It was a rather decrepit craft, with footprints all over the dirty wings, cris-crossing the “no step” areas. I got window seats on both flights, though China was obscured in haze all the way to Hong Kong.

One thing I found out when confirming my ticket back was that China lists Hong Kong flights as “international”. I had thought one of the main stumbling blocks concerning three links with Taiwan was whether to designate the travel routes as domestic or international, but if HK and Macau are already “international” I assume Taiwan must be as well.

As I walked down the gangway to the plane to Taipei, one of the staff called after me, saying, “How many people are you?”

“Huh?” I wondered if she was talking about The Voices, but no, she had seen that the name on my ticket was a Chinese one and thought there might be a mix up. I put her fears to rest and got on the plane.

As we flew into Taipei that night I reminded myself that I was still travelling, was still a passenger and not quite “back” yet. Despite my reluctance to once again assume a non-travelling state, I couldn’t help but look at Taipei in a much better light after Beijing. I used to think Frank Hsieh’s proposal that Taipei go after the 2020 Olympics laughable, but if a city like Beijing can do it, I don’t see why Taipei couldn’t.

In fact, I think more Chinese people should see Taiwan, see what we’ve done for the last few decades, see what China could have been, what it could still be. Not being from there, I can’t be sure if they would notice the differences in the same way I do, but you never know; it might just push them in the right direction, even if just a little bit.

I’ve mentioned how the air quality of Beijing is less than impressive. Well, it is impressive in that it’s awful. When I got up on Sunday morning, I could sense that, somewhere up there, the sun was shining. Occasionally I could even see a shiny white disc in the haze. Even in my hotel room, just looking out the window would impart the sensation of grit between my teeth.

And yet, according to everyone I’ve asked, this is garden spot of Ceti Alpha VI, air quality-wise.

“So you’ve lived in Beijing your whole life?” I asked a cabbie on the way to dinner. He said he had. “Has the air always been this bad?”

“This?” he said with a short laugh. “This is a huge improvement! It used to be awful!”

Actually, I was lucky to get a real Beijinger cabbie, as the government has recently opened up taxi applications to people from outside the city, leading to a plethora of punk drivers who have no idea how to get anywhere. One of my friends said he told a cabbie to take him to the Forbidden City, and the cabbie said, “Oh, Beijing doesn’t have one of those.”

I’d spent the day before shopping for a cell phone (and sleeping in because I’d caught a cold or something and was living on old-style Robitussin and Chinese pills of dubious quality). The reason I was buying a cell phone was that I prefer the Hanyu Pinyin Chinese input system to the BoPoMoFo input of Taiwanese phones. Unfortunately, after I bought a GPS Nokia I found that it only did simplified Chinese, so I told them I didn’t want it. Then something quite amazing happened. The official Nokia outlet on one of the main shopping streets in the capital city of China couldn’t remit the money I’d just charged back to my credit card. Instead, they had to repay me in cash, so I walked out of the store with a cheaper 6070 model that could display traditional Chinese (although it still texts in simplified), as well as more cash than I’d walked in with. Later a friend told me I could get Hanyu Pinyin input on Taiwanese phones, which I hadn’t known. Oh, well.

One the subway that afternoon a French couple had stared at me from across the car, the woman pointing and laughing and they talked, apparently, about my appearance. I decided to walk over to Nanluoguxiang to meet up with Brendan and watch a jazz cover band headed up by a blonde (Scandanavian?) singer at a bar/restaurant. The singer was amazing. I talked to her between sets, and she said the Muddy Basin Ramblers should come to Beijing. The Mongolian guy the night before said the same thing after hearing some of the stuff on our website.

Unfortunately, while the guitar, drums and stand-up bass were tight in behind the singer, the sax, clarinet and trombone seemed to be just hanging on. They read sheet music as they played straight copies of the melody.

The next day, my last full day in Beijing, I met Brendan for lunch along the same street. Before he arrived I chatted with the owner of a bar called “Single Eyelid”. In his 20’s and sporting long hair, he was the first mainlander I’d talked to who felt that Chen Shui-bian should step down. “Not that it makes much of a difference,” he said.

During lunch Brendan tried to mate my iRiver with his Macbook Pro, but it was a no-go. So much for sharing our music collections. I particularly like a band he mentioned called Second-hand Roses, which I’ll have to look for.

I said good-bye to Brendan, who is one of the coolest people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, and walked over to the Jingshan Park, which overlooks the Forbidden City from the north. The haze over the city was so thick that the far gates of the complex were almost hidden from view. Tourists, mostly Europeans, crowded the main pavillion at the top of the hill, where a stand sold trinkets and hats with the word “Dragon” on them. I asked for a “Monkey” hat, but they were fresh out. At the base of the pavillion a women in pseudo-traditional dress called out for people to take pictures next to her.

There was no much else to the park except groups of people listening to a cacophony of amateur musicians. I walked out the gate an into an alley. One thing I find very convenient about Beijing is the abundance of public bathrooms. There’s almost always one around when you need it.

I walked vaguely eastwards, looking for and finding more hutong neighborhoods. I have to say I like the old neighborhoods of Shanghai better. Beijing’s counterparts remind me a bit too much of Taipei’s old military villages. Scents such as Jasmine tea, Chinese medicine and tar floated out of the alley doorways.

But I was late for a dinner appointment with some old diplomatic friends from Taipei, Ryan and Katie, who are now posted at the US embassy in Beijing. So I hailed the cab, one of the many Volkswagen Jettas (one out of every four cars in the city is a variation of the 1989 Jetta) and had the aforementioned conversation with the driver, who was wrapped in a steel cage, about the air.

I hadn’t had Peking Duck yet, so after meeting up at Ryan and Katie’s sumptuous apartment in a Sanlitun high-rise, we took another cab to an upscale Peking Duck restaurant. Over dinner, Ryan told me that they were just finishing up their two-year stint in Beijing and were heading out to Ottawa for their next assignment, which would last three years. They were looking forward to getting out of Beijing, which hadn’t impressed them and left them remembering their days in Taipei fondly in comparison, but Ottawa would be a kind of return to the “normal world” after years of “hardship” quirks and exotic locales.

After dinner and good-byes to Ryan and Katie, I walked down another construction-filled
alley, thinking I should really come see the place in 2009, when it’s finished and the Olympics are over. Back at the hotel, the staff wanted me to pay an extra deposit for my last night.

I took a friend’s advice and rented a bicycle yesterday to see the city more effectively. It does make quite a difference and seem to be the only way to make a dent in such an effort. I just wished I had the Crazy Bike here, as my ass was sore for hours after riding the rental bike.

The weather was grey and dismal as I pedaled northeast from Dongzhimen Station, following the canal through what appeared to be embassy territory, with lots of large complexes with guards, or lots of guards with large complexes, I’m not sure which. Eventually the road ended in a contruction site, and I turned north by a school apparently for foreign kids. Children of all colors clustered around the gate. The area was full of foreigners, actually, foreigners walking, riding bikes, riding motorcycles, with children, waiting for buses, etc.

I kept riding back west and found myself in some pretty nice neighborhoods, quiet and shady, and another canal. Bicycles here can go anywhere, even on the freeway, unlike Taiwan, where not even motorcycles with engines larger than small cars are allowed on the freeways.

A large group of chefs and waiters, all dressed in white with tall hats, lounged in front of a restaurant. Some were playing a lively game of badminton. I reached for my camera, looked up, and they had all vanished. The entire courtyard was empty. People here seem camera-shy, but this was uncanny. I hadn’t even heard them leave in the 1.5 seconds I’d looked away.

I passed by another canal, lined with luxury high-rises and parks full of old people and frolicking dogs, and then through some of the first “real” feeling city streets I’ve seen here. The huge avenues succeed only in dwarfing the inhabitants, making them seem insignificant and ill-suited to their environment, but these were inhabitable streets and thus much more enjoyable. The buildings in Beijing remind me more of Taipei’s rather than Shanghai’s. More utilitarian, less aesthetically pleasing. I passed shops with the staff all lined up outside, shouting slogans about service and productivity for their manager.

I turned south again and found myself back where I started, more or less. While riding I learned that, no matter the color of the light, you’re safe as long as 1) other riders are doing what you’re doing or 2) a guy in a blue uniform isn’t holding you back with his baton. You can run red lights, stop at greens, ride into oncoming traffic on the highway, whatever you like. Perhaps traffic chaos is a less-than-democratic society’s way of expressing personal freedom. In any case, I do like the choice of electric vehicles available here, ranging from bicycles with motors to small electric scooters. Taiwan would do well to copy the mainland in this respect.

After returning the bike and returning to pedestrian status, I called up Brendan, who was hanging out at the Shalou Cafe in a nearby Hutong, right next to the place we’d had tea the day before. He gave me directions, and I eventually found the place, stopping to take pictures of interesting doorways in the alleys on the way. Schoolgirls skipped past large two-car garage doors that had been carved into the Hutong walls, singing, “Studying is good, if you don’t study when you’re young, you’ll be miserable all your life!”

The cafe bosses, two Mongolian brothers with an impressive music collection, promised that a Mongolian band’s arrival was imminent, but it wasn’t until the wee hours of the morning that they finally showed up. In the meantime Brendan and I chatted about the differences between Mainland and Taiwanese Mandarin, as well as with some of the foreigners there, including David from newsinchinese.com. Though we have our differences on what makes good Chinese, both of us couldn’t help but wince at some of the awful pronunciation we heard during the course of the evening.

The music, when it happened, was great, consisting of sad and sometimes upbeat melodies and unusual voices including throat singing. Performed by a group called Hang-gai and consisting of four or five Mongolians on traditional instruments, it reminded me of Albert and the other Tuvan throat singers of Yat-ka, whom we’d played with in Taipei a while ago. I was out taking short videos and had just come in when the end of a crutch slammed the door open. The crutch belonged to an elderly neighborhood man who lived next door. He was insensed about the “noise” and had it out with one of the Mongolian brothers in the entryway. Unfortunately this meant that the performance had to end prematurely.

Brendan, David and I chatted for a while longer, but at one point Brendan gave a start. “I know that guy,” he whispered, indicating an older foreign fellow at the bar shouting loud, grating Mandarin at the staff. We quickly made plans to leave, but they were in vain, as the guy came over and recognized Brendan from their days in Harbin. Some polite chatting necessarily ensued, but we extricated ourselves nontheless, parted ways in the dark, deserted alleys and headed to our respective beds.

It was a pretty good day. I think Beijing might be growing on me a bit after all.

At breakfast, shiny food trays lay empty on the table. Other than me, the place was empty of patrons, and the staff gathered for their own meal as I ate the greasy fried noodles. “Don’t eat in front of the foreigner!” someone said, but nobody paid attention to them.

I called Brendan on Thursday morning. It turns out that he lives in this area, and we met outside my hotel. I expressed my interest in the small corners of the city, the old neighborhoods, so he took me through a nearby maze of alleys that felt different than the old parts of Shanghai. The architecture was different, for one thing. Though the buildings shared the ubiquitous dark red doors and window frames, the buildings are all painted a blueish gray. We ducked into entrances, where I shot pictures of interesting doors that must date back to before my grandparents were born, while a man on a three-wheeled bicycle peddled slowly behind us droaning something unintelligable even to Brendan, whose Chinese is excellent.

Periodically we would be passed by a rush of rickshaws filled with fat, old western tourists, all armed with cameras and looking slightly bored. “Do you ever get the urge to yell ‘Exploitation!’ at them?” I asked Brendan, who was gazing at the tourists with an expression of distaste.

“I’d call them much worse,” he said. We stopped at a cafe next to a shop run by Mongolians, and chatted over tea. Although the place had wifi and air conditioning, there was no toilet; one had to go across the street to one of the ubiquitous public toilets in the neighborhood. Brendan let me listen to some local rock bands on his iPod, and I reciprocated with some my favorite Wu Bai and Zhang Zhenyue songs on my iRiver.

We walked on to another touristy area, slightly reminiscent of the awful Dazhilan area but cleaner and more interesting. Behind it was a canal between a couple of lakes. There we had lunch at a restaurant that wouldn’t bake anything between 2 and 5.

We walked around the lake, past a line of cafes and bars decorated with Christmas lights. Brendan pointed out laborers working on “another future ancient building.” But he had to go meet some of his father’s co-workers, so I set off around the lake alone.

I’d noticed that the air in Beijing is a bit dusty, but now it really began to bother me, coating my mouth and nose with a fine grain and giving me a slight cough. The lake was larger than it seemed. I explored a few more old neighborhoods that were in the process of being torn down. Workmen lined up single file in a ditch they were digging, calling out “Take my picture!” when they saw me with my camera.

The sun set and I was still walking around the lake. Eventually I found my way back to the dark mass of the Drum Tower, and after looking at the map and seeing that I was on the same street as my hotel, I decided to walk back.

I passed restaurants adorned with red lanterns and surrounded with nice cars, took photographs of children playing on the sidewalk, and looked into dark alleys. But my feet were sore, my mouth dry and full of dust. When I was in Qingdao the dry air didn’t agree with me, but the air in Beijing is dusty as well as dry. It put me in a bad mood, though I did feel that for the first time I was actually in Beijing, seeing the city from the ground, as it were.

Beijing is so spread out that walking is seldom a useful means to actually get anywhere. It’s like someone took a regular city and expanded it to fill a much larger area. So far I haven’t been to a place where I could say “this is downtown Beijing.” Everywhere is downtown, and yet nowhere is. Zhang Yongning had told me the night before that Beijing is more like a zhongxin, a center unto itself rather than a real city with it’s own center.

In my bad mood, the capital city seemed oppressive and inconvenient, striving to prove itself through a serious inferiority complex, a city with the CAPS LOCK on, where importance trumped beauty. That’s a hasty and no doubt unfair description after only a couple of days, however. We’ll see what happens next.

Beijing did not start out well. I lugged my two backpacks through the crowd in front of the massive railway station into the subway and lined up to buy an actual paper ticket to give to the ticket checker at the stairs down to the platform. The stations here remind me of the New York subway, though cleaner. The ceilings of the cars are lined with big blue buzzing fans, and the pilot rooms on both ends of the train are manned with men in blue uniforms.

I’d been advised to seek lodgings in the Dazhalan (“Dashilar”) district near the Qianmen station. When I emerged into the cold morning air I saw an enormous city gate surrounded by green grass being watered by automatic sprinklers. Its twin lay across the road. Beyond that was a mass of dusty construction with a road running down the middle, where I walked against the crowd. A man in a shoddy business suit fished a piece of toilet paper out of a trash can to polish his dusty shoes.

I turned onto Dazhalan Street, which at 7 in the morning resembled a third-world attempt at Epcot Third World Land, if that makes any sense. Kitschy fake fronts on shut stores and tiled buildings, many hidden behind scaffolding. Foreign backpackers with huge packs quickly outdistanced me, dodging men with jackhammers and trucks parked in the middle of the dusty broken pavement that was the road. I passed several hostel signs and decided I really didn’t want to stay there. I didn’t even want to be there. This couldn’t be Beijing, I thought. It felt like the ass end of Taoyuan, only with slightly more bicycles.

I called a friend of a friend Ah-Bu had mentioned to me, Zhang Yongning. He told me I should try the Dongzhimen area and mentioned the Home Inn there. On my way back to the subway I stopped to watch workmen destroying an elaborate old building. A few people stared at me as I watched.

Another subway ride later I was on Dongzhimen Road, which seemed much more befitting of a large city, lined with big buildings and a nice array of restaurants. I found the Home Inn, but they didn’t have any rooms available, so I walked around looking until I found a large, new-looking hotel called the Qianyuan International Business Hotel. It looked nice and the rooms were cheap (later I would find out why), so I checked in.

I thought I would get some of the more touristy things out of the way before contacting anyone I knew in the city, as they probably wouldn’t be interested in rehashing such experiences. Now unburdened by (as much) luggage, I took the subway back to Qianmen and this time walked north, averting my eyes from the eyesore of Dazhalan in the background. I walked onto Tiananmen Square, which didn’t seem as grand as it had in photographs. To be sure, it was large and bordered by large, imposing buildings, but in the end it’s just a large piece of concrete. Knots of western tourists gathered around tour guides, and boys in ill-fitting green PLA uniforms stood around glaring at people.

At the north end of the square lay Tiananmen Gate, the one with the large picture of Mao on it. I wanted to enter the Forbidden City on a full stomach, so I walked down to Wangfujing, the famous shopping street. This was underwhelming as well; perhaps it’s more impressive at night, but in the late morning it looks like Taipei’s West Gate District. I did find a nice hat store where I bought another blue Mao hat, which the shopkeep said was called a cadre hat. “Mao wore one just like it,” she told me.

“He wore a green one, didn’t he?” I asked.

“When he was older, but when he was younger he wore the blue one.”

“Well, I’ll just wear the young stylish Mao hat then,” I said.

After an unremarkable lunch I walked back to Tiananmen, stopping to try and take pictures of frolicking policemen who were shoving and pushing each other on a park bench, but they scattered when they saw my camera. A couple of migrant workers asked me the way to Tiananmen. They thought I looked Russian.

As I approached the gate, a man came up to me and asked me what country I was from. “This one,” I said, but he didn’t react. The question was a mere prelude.

“Please come see my art gallery, it is just inside the gate,” he said. I declined. Fifty yards later it happened again. What an unusual schtick, I thought. Who would be taken in by it? But it must have worked; otherwise nobody would even try it.

I put my Mao hat on backwards and walked under His portrait, but nobody said anything, which was slightly disappointing. Inside was a huge square filled with vendors. Beyond that was another gate, this one requiring a ticket. I walked across the stones, wondering if they were original, and if so, how many thousands of officials had trod on them over the centuries.

Inside was yet another huge square. I chatted with some of the Chinese tourists inside. I showed them my Taiwan travel document, which gave them pause. I could see the wheels turning in their minds as they thought it over: “Let’s see, he’s a Taiwanese national….and Taiwan is an inalienable part of China….hmm, this can’t be right….how can I put this so that Taiwan is still part of China….damn.”

“So you’re Chinese!” they said at last.

Behind this huge square was another one. The main building at the stop of the center was covered in scaffolding, and PLA guards kept tourists away from them. Many people wore the recorded tour tapes around their necks.

Eventually I found my way back into the huge maze of little courtyards and gardens where everyone lived. It was easy to get turned around or lost, and then find yourself back where you started. I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn’t at a recreation, that this was the actual seat of power in China for hundreds of years, but it was difficult with all the tourists. I began to pace myself in between groups for a more solitary experience, and the place began to feel like a long Doom level where you can’t find the exit. Indeed, for the people who lived there, it must have been a mixed blessing, trapped in a small courtyard your whole life with no hope for anything else. It was the best anyone could hope for, officially speaking, so it was pointless to aspire to anything more than more political intrigue, which I guess they thrived on. I found the Puyi collection, with his toys, schoolbooks and the funky dark glasses he wore in pictures. It made the whole place seem very sad. The red paint rubbed off on my clothes as I edged along the narrow paths.

Occasionally I would see a sign describing a missing piece of art as “on display in the Taipei branch of the Palace Museum.” More pieces that the departing KMT took with them to Taiwan in 1949 were described as “on loan”.

I must have walked miles inside that maze, and the sun was low in the sky as I walked slowly on sore feet out of the front gate again. The passage was lined with PLA guards, and hordes of people now crowded the square. I asked one of the guards what was going on, and it turned out that everyone was there to watch the lowering of the PRC flag at sunset. There were more guards around, looking stern and alert among the crowds. It felt oppressive, and I hurried away from the square to avoid seeing the spectacle.

That night I met up with Zhang Yongning for dinner at a local restaurant. He’s busy with a sports-related documentary series at the moment, and we talked about production over several meat dishes. Yongning’s a big guy, of typical northern Chinese stock. He said he felt the anti-Chen protests in Taipei made Taiwan look bad. “Chinese people look at that and feel better about their own system,” he said. The reunification issue could wait, he added. “All everybody wants is peace and stability.” He also told me about some of the more popular night spots before we parted ways.

Back at the hotel, I found out why the room prices were so cheap. It seemed that the place had only opened a few weeks before, and nobody knew how anything worked. Every operation involved consulting with someone else and phone calls for help. The room smelled of new carpet smell. I tried to take a shower, but the shower flooded as the drain didn’t work. After the front desk called a repairman in to fix it, he opened the drain to find that it had been apparently been designed by third-graders, and stuck part of a plastic bag inside to get it working again. Later I found that the business center computers had to struggle to maintain any kind of network connection, and the women operating the center, while eager to please, had little idea about operating a computer at all. I suspect that someone kidnapped the real staff.

All of the TV programming I’ve seen here so far is state channels, roughly half of which consists of self-righteous people in PLA uniforms. The rest is a combination of smug Ming and Qing officials and amateurish modern dramas.

After a day of monuments and shopping malls, I was eager to see the real city. I decided to call Brendan the next morning.