From the bus windows, I could confirm what I had viewed from the plane, the widespread communist influence in architecture and city design. This is something seen frequently in Eastern Europe: exactly the same ugly high rise apartment building five times in a row. Occasionally, one could also see an exceptionally ugly concrete structure that could only have been built during China’s more austere days. For the most part, though, China reminds me most of Eastern Europe than any other place I’ve been. They seem to be working as hard as they can to shed their Communist aesthetic and embrace the new cars, bright paint, and shining lights of the typically Western cityscape.
On the way to the Beijing Hotel, I learned that Buick is apparently a prestige brand in China, I saw a number of brands of vehicle, from Peugeot to Audi, to Ford, Jeep, Hyundai, Volkswagen – one could probably find nearly every brand of car imaginable on the highway from the Beijing Airport.
When we arrived at the hotel, we passed Raffles Beijing Hotel, which gave me a momentary pang of remembrance for Singapore. The only place I’d truly felt comfortable and happy there was reading a book in the courtyard of Raffles Hotel, a stately European style hotel named after the Raffles that half the downtown seems to be named after. This Raffles is also stately and European in styling, although not nearly as beautiful or inviting as the Singapore Raffles in terms of the foliage and location of the hotel. The interior of our hotel reminds me of an old lady who has put on a lot of jewels to try to hide that she has gotten old. The rooms increased my opinion that this was, in fact the case. The windows are double paned windows of the style that were in my 100-year-old Austrian apartment building, and the styling is also older. The beds are incredibly firm, and nearly everyone has had problems with a lack of cleanliness in their rooms. Relatively speaking, they’re clean, but a 5-star hotel in the States or Europe would not have flecks on the toilet upon arrival, or questionable still-sticky stains on the carpets. It’s a classic hotel, but not quite as nice as the similarly appointed hotels we stayed at in India.
We took an evening walk to Tian’anmen Square to stay up a little longer and perhaps put off worse affects of jet lag. There are very few street people in Beijing compared to any city in India, even compared to Seattle. All of the street people we did see were selling cheap knick-knacks or playing music, there were no outright beggars that I saw on the way there and back. As I am sure there are many homeless and destitute in Beijing, I conclude that they must have been moved elsewhere.
After our walk, the group splits up, some to experience the Night Market and see scorpions on a stick, and some decide it’s time to give in and get some sleep. Tomorrow, we travel to the Great Wall.
