Coming Down with the Travel Bug...

Just over a week ago, I returned from my first vacation in Asia: China. Four friends and I took eight days to explore two major Chinese cities: Beijing and Xi’an. Beijing needs no introduction, but for those of you who are unfamiliar with Xi’an, it is the city near which the 2,200 year old terra cotta army was discovered by a farmer in the 1970s. Both cities were unique and amazing in their own right, but I preferred Xi’an for its relative quaintness in comparison to buzzing Beijing. It seems unlikely to refer to a city of over 8 million as “quaint,” but the city wall that encloses central Xi’an as well as the small shops and street vendors that line the Muslim quarter indeed made Xi’an seem much less chaotic than sprawling Beijing. In any event, we covered a lot of ground in each city in just over a week. We hit up all of the predictable tourist sites: the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the Great Wall, the Terra Cotta Soldiers, etc.










I have a very complex relationship with tourist spots, particularly tourist spots that are as grandiose and hyped up as the ones you’ll find in the Chinese cities we visited. It’s not that they disappoint me; it’s that they cause me to disappoint myself. While I recognize and appreciate the historical and artistic significance of these sites, I always feel slightly bitter that I have to share my experience with hoards of tour groups sporting identical fanny packs and baseball caps. What’s even worse is that I always feel like I’m supposed to have an almost spiritual moment of profundity and somber reflection when I visit such a monumental landmark. “I am climbing the Great Wall of China,” I imagined I would think, “and now I understand the meaning of life.” Instead, I spent a majority of the time huffing and puffing up and down treacherously ancient steps with the Fraggle Rock theme song stuck in my head. Now, don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed tobogganing down the Great Wall and getting trampled by tour groups running from one temple to the next in the Forbidden City. Really, I did. But sightseeing is far from my favorite thing about travelling. After all, I rarely have a moment of insight in the midst of an overcrowded tourist trap.


Katie and I have developed a somewhat embarrassing addiction to reenacting "The Circle of Life" scene from The Lion King in public places...



What I love more than almost anything about travelling are the unexpected surprises that shake up all of your preconceptions about a place and a people. I don’t know exactly what I was expecting to see when I came to China, but I wasn’t expecting to feel perfectly safe everywhere I walked. I wasn’t expecting to see multiple toddlers with a hole cut out of the seat of their pants so that they could squat down on public sidewalks and train stations to take a dump. I wasn’t expecting dozens of Chinese tourists to request a picture with my friend Katie because they had evidently never seen a person with blonde hair before. I wasn’t expecting to see blueberry, kiwi, seaweed, and aromatic crispy chicken flavored potato chips, and furthermore, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy them. I wasn’t expecting to see such a massive number of capitalist American chain restaurants and retail outlets in the heart of a communist country. I even saw a few Dairy Queens! Admittedly, these may not be very profound revelations, but they did challenge me to think about China, for better or for worse, just a little bit differently when I left than when I came. And if you ask me, that’s one of the most useful services that travel can provide a person.


Utterly confused about why a complete stranger would want her picture taken with us...


It might only be a painting, but I assure you that this image is an all too common one in present day China...



But perhaps what I enjoy the most about travelling are the fellow travelers you encounter on the journey. There is something enchanting and almost romantic about developing an extremely short-term friendship with strangers that you spend some time with for a few days before going your separate ways indefinitely. It’s always interesting to hear about where people are going, where they’ve been, and where they come from. Some people might be quiet and introspective while others might be nutty and eccentric, and anywhere in between…One night in Xi’an, we went out to a club with a large group of people from our hostel. Countries that were represented in this group include the U.S., England, Mongolia, the Netherlands, Switzerland, possibly China, and probably more. At the risk of sounding like a total hippy, I find it quite fascinating and rather beautiful that so many different people from so many different walks of life can discover that they have so much in common (and I’m talking about more than just a mutual love for beer). People are often so preoccupied with focusing on the differences between each other, that they fail to recognize the glaring similarities. “New Yorkers are arrogant,” we tell ourselves, “The Dutch are pot smoking peace/love types,” “The English are prim and proper,” and “Country bumpkins from the rural Midwest of America are backwards and ignorant.” And then you find yourself in a situation time and time again in which you are surrounded by people who usually break the stereotype and occasionally reinforce it. While you may never be able to completely relate to someone coming from such a different place who natively speaks a different language from your own, if you throw out all of your preconceived notions for just a moment and choose to focus on the things you have in common with a person rather than the things you don’t, you will be surprised to discover just how alike you are. At the end of the day, you begin to realize that, on the whole, regardless of who people are or where they are coming from, we are far more similar than we are different. The experience of being human, in many ways, is universal.




On a lighter note, street food in Beijing is, in a word, interesting...


For those of you interested in nostalgia or interested in hearing the noise that was present in my head while climbing the Great Wall, please click...