Family Trip part 1

I know that I have not written as much this year, and with the recent over two month break in between posts I probably lost all of the readers that I did have. But I am going to try and redeem myself in the next few weeks. Not to make excuses, but my excuse has been that I have yet to leave Beijing….at least until today. For the next two weeks I get to play host to my family, taking them all over China. This means stories of trips, experiences and things that for me are out of the ordinary. I realize that the life I am living over here is far different from the life I live at home and for most of you that means interesting stories, but it is hard to write about the everyday (for me) on a consistent basis. Please accept my apologies and check in between now and the end of September. In addition to the family trip, rumor has it that there is a big event or two going on in Beijing in the upcoming months. It should be an exciting time and I will do my best to fill you in on the details in the coming days and weeks.

Those few loyal readers that I have know that I have a love/ hate relationship with Chinese trains. I have had some great memories from past trips and some good stories as well. See Xi’an 2007. I came down to Shanghai again on the train yesterday. For those of you that think you are patient people, I invite you to spend a night sitting in a train car in China. I would not describe myself as a patient person. At times I get frustrated pretty easily here in China since the American (Western) idea of personal space is not really translated well into a country of 1.3 billion people. The people of China share space with each other every day of their lives and see nothing wrong with crowding complete strangers on public transportation, in lines and on the street. The idea of a line is somewhat foreign to the Chinese, but in all fairness, the government has worked hard to change this in preparation for the Olympics. This has not totally caught no, but as a whole it has improved.
As for on the train, this comfort with sharing space seemed to mean to my fellow passengers that they believed it was ok to talk loudly the entire night when everyone else on the train was trying to sleep, playing cell phone games with the speaker on, loudly clearing their throat’s and generally believing that they were the only ones on the train. I am exaggerating a bit and was able to sleep for a little while, but the cost savings of traveling in a seat instead of a sleeper was perhaps not worth it. That said, I survived and made it through the night without totally snapping at anyone. I stewed a bit, mumbled to myself, sent angry (or so I thought) looks in the general direction of the culprits and then realized that I could do nothing to change their behavior. I put my headphones on, found the softest music on my ipod and tried to fall asleep.

I am now in Shanghai, what I have long proclaimed to be my favorite city in China. I am no longer sure if this is true. Every day I spend in Beijing makes me like that city a bit more, even the bad days. I am, however, struck by how different the two cities feel. I have been here for a few hours but the differences are noticeable if hard to quantify. Shanghai is just a more accessible city, more modern, more western friendly, easier to walk around and even a bit cleaner (though this is not the case during the Olympics when the cleaning crews in Beijing have been out en mass). Shanghai is more fashionable, but Beijing ren (people) are friendlier and the more time I spend with them, the more I realize that this is more important. It took a while, but I can now say that I consider myself a beijinger instead of a foreigner that is in Beijing because of the Olympics.