Inspired by a particularly obnoxious bus commute today (crowded, slow, had to wait forever for the bus, which is probably why it was so crowded in the first place), today you get the…
IRRITATED LISTS
Top Five Worst Places to be in Beijing in a Motor Vehicle
5. The Sitongqiaodong bus intersection. Thanks to a truly nonsensical understanding of when left turns should be allowed, it takes you forever to get anywhere if you don’t make the light here. This is where I waited in traffic for seven minutes (at 3 pm, no less) one time for a single light cycle. Woe betide you if you should have to experience this at rush hour.
4. Zhongguancun Street. This is Beijing’s high-tech corridor, and it intersects with about every bus route in the city ever, meaning that someone’s always pulling in front of you and then stopping for some reason. The awful part about it here is that you can’t blame the bad traffic or the lights for your problems. You can only wait. And wait. And wait. And move forward five feet every ninety seconds or so. People often say, when in bad traffic, that “it would be quicker to walk”. On Zhongguancun, it’s actually true.
3. The Second Ring Road, during evening rush hour. I only did this once. This is why the line 2 subway (which runs directly under the Second Ring Road) exists. TAKE IT.
2. Anywhere, really. The traffic here just sucks unequivocally.
1. The intersection of Chengfu Lu and Caidian Lu. Party people will recognize this as the Wudaokou intersection, with two KFCs, the subway stop, and the inebriatastic trifecta that is Lush, Pyro, and Propaganda. It is also, without a doubt, the worst place to be in a cab ever. This is because at all hours, it is mobbed with pedestrians* who have no regard for traffic lights and will walk in giant, clumpy streams whenever they feel like it. As a result, drivers here are always leaning on their horns and driving forward slowly but insistently in hopes that people will get out of the way, but nobody ever does. It kind of has to be seen to be believed, but it is truly ridiculous.
Top Five Generally Most Annoying Things about Beijing
5. The traffic. I usually travel by subway, which gets rid of this, but taking buses for any reasonable distance always ends in pain. I only use cabs late at night when the subway has stopped running, but on the few occasions I’ve used them during the daylight, they’re not much better.
4. The subway, sometimes. It’s annoying because there’s no stop within walking distance of my school, and lines 1 and 2 are slow and (in the case of line 1) super-crowded. Lines 5 and 10, however, are quite pleasant and expeditious. Also worthy of mention is the Xizhimen subway station, which has the worst, longest transfer ever.
3. My internet is so slow. Make Facebook work, please, someone.
2. The pollution. It is truly, truly awful. For instance, today I could not see the sun! I also couldn’t yesterday! If Beijing wanted to shut down the nearby factories and half the number of cars on the road (like they did during the Olympics) I would not be opposed; that got the pollution down to Los Angeles levels. What’s more, Cody (who has been to Beijing twice before) tells me that the pollution is usually much worse than this, because the effects of the Olympic reforms are still lingering. I cannot even imagine. I have the worst cough because of this.
1. The crowding. It’s on the roads, the subways, the buses…everywhere. Getting onto a subway at the transfer stations is a contact sport, pure and simple; you put your elbows in front of you and shove, hard, because if you don’t you’ll be swept away by the tide of people trying to get out. That is, if they even can – a couple times I’ve been forced to get off the subway a stop after where I wanted to and double back because the crowds were such that I could not get out of the car. Every time I get on a subway or bus, I inevitably think about the third-world transit fires and crashes that claim the lives of everyone on the horribly overcrowded bus or car. Then I think about how many people are on the vehicle in which I am currently traveling. This is never a favorable comparison.
The honorable mention here is the staring. Thankfully, this is very uncommon in Beijing, because most people see foreigners semi-frequently or at least recognize that their city is large and important enough to play host to them. However, outside of Beijing and Shanghai, the staring – the constant, overt staring at anyone who looks foreign, without apology or an attempt to hide it – is endemic and incredibly uncomfortable. In America, there are very, very few places (outside of certain golf courses in the Atlanta suburbs) where a person of a minority race would attract any specific attention whatsoever, and, I would venture to say, nowhere where they would meet with the scrutiny my classmates and I did. This, much more than the squat toilets, run-down houses, or lack of English spoken, is what made rural China seem “uncivilized” to me, and I don’t think it can be said that China is a country that is welcoming to the outside world until this is fixed. I initially got sort of a kick out of responding to this in various ways** but eventually it just became exhausting.
Top Five Things I am Most Anxious to Do Back in the US
This is after I spend time with my family and friends, of course.
5. Eat a steak. I want that steak very rare. I want it as rare as they can possibly cook it without having the Health Department get all up in their grill. I want that cow to hurt when they cut into it. I want it carpaccio. Mm, steak. I want it with a nice Pinot Noir, too.
4. Hug my dog, who is about three times bigger than all the other dogs in Beijing put together.
3. Be able to sit down on a subway or a bus.
2. Drive! I miss driving, and it will be even nicer to drive now that gas is so cheap ($1.90 a gallon, as opposed to $4.50 when I left).
1. Eat Mexican food. I’m not talking about “nachos” or “burritos” here, which Beijing does passably. I’m talking about chicken mole, or ceviche, or tortilla soup, or any of the other delicious Mexican foods originating in actual Mexico.
Top Five Reasons Why Actual College is Much, Much Better than IES
5. Actual College has most of the people who read this blog in it, whereas IES does not.
4. The breadth of courses in Actual College is much broader. I appreciate that this is indeed a language program, but the area studies classes seemed like an afterthought much of the time, which is too bad because some of them (my history class, for example) were really interesting.
3. In Actual College, you can miss class when you get sick. At IES, you had to go to the IES-approved hospital, conveniently located on the other side of town, wait in their waiting room, and get a note from a doctor stating that your ailment was sufficient to allow you to miss class that day. This was obnoxious because it meant you had to put up with an hour-and-a-half bus ride each way or an exorbitant (for Beijing) taxi fee. If we have food poisoning, we do not need a doctor to tell us this; instead, we need a day of bed rest and maybe some porridge from the nearest porridge place. Also, if we missed even one class, our home school got a Disciplinary Letter sent to them. I have no idea how seriously this policy was taken because I never had the nerve to test it, but there is something to be said for skipping class on a beautiful Evanston morning to get pancakes every once in a blue moon, and if you’re sick, you shouldn’t be forced to go to class because you’re poor and you don’t want to have to stand up on a crowded bus that probably passes through three of the Top Five Worst Places to be in Beijing in a Motor Vehicle.
2. Actual College has no curfew. Does IES know how many nights it has ruined by forcing us to be home by midnight on weekends? Also, the door is locked by chaining the door handles on the inside, meaning you can’t get out of the building past curfew either. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory incident is apparently unknown over in these parts.
1. Actual College has no language pledge. Teachers and roving IES staff members roam the halls, and when they hear English being spoken, they’ll admonish you with a sharp “Shuo zhongwen!” (“Speak Chinese!") and scuttle off to take points off your grade. This policy is reasonable up to a point, but most of us don’t know enough Chinese to hold a real conversation, so we end up covertly gossiping behind the fridge or in the bathrooms. The worst incident I saw of this was when my friend’s boyfriend of three years dumped her because he couldn’t handle the stress of her being in China for four months (what a moron, seriously). She tearfully recounted this to a small, concerned group during break, and a passing teacher overheard and told her (in Chinese), “I’m sorry your boyfriend left you, but you need to speak Chinese.” Four pairs of utterly mutinous eyes (mine included) turned upon the teacher, who apologized after a few seconds and backed off.
It is worth nothing, though, that Actual College is not in China, and IES is, which makes up for pretty much everything.
I don’t mean to give the impression that I don’t like Beijing, or China, or that I wish I hadn’t come. I like it here very much, but being away from the US for so long has made me realized how much I love and miss America, for all its weirdness. Tomorrow’s lists will be better, because they will be about FOOD!
*Confession time: I am usually one of these people, because I recognize that it is infinitely easier to cross Caidian Lu on foot than attempt it in cab or on a bus.
**Most effective methods: grabbing a white friend, pointing, and saying (in Chinese), “Oh my god, Chinese people,” taking pictures of people who tried to take pictures of us, attempting to charge money for the “wonderful souvenir foreigner pictures” that people tried to take of us, looking straight at people and asking why they were staring at us, and telling people to not stare at us because this was a city/train station/temple/restaurant, not a zoo.
