Beijing, China

Arriving In Beijing

I got to the airport at 2 am in the morning with a few phone numbers written down on a scrap piece of paper. I did not have a phone that would work in China nor do I speak Mandarin. I was already thankful when I got my luggage and none of it was missing. To my suprise, when I came out of the gates, there was a boy and a girl waiting for me holding up a sign with my name on it. Charles and Cynthia are super nice and were my first contact with China. After introductions, we went outside to get a taxi. This is not as easy as it sounds, along with us was a swarm of people trying to do the same thing. After half an hour of fighting, we finally got in. They gave me a phone card, which I was thrilled to receive, this 'calling card' was not what i thought minutes on a card i can use while calling from any phone but a SIM card for my phone. The only problem is that most American phones do not use SIM cards. After they got over this dibeleif of how strange US phones are, i received my welcome to China gift, a cup of coffee. Turns out, they thought that all Americans like coffee :)

I finally got to the place where I was to stay for the night. The stairwell was complelety dark with no light, the place itself was a humble apartment with a kitchen, bathroom, and two bedrooms. The beds and matresses were really hard. I soon found out, most matresses in China are this way. The toilet did not flush and there was no shower in the bathroom. Everything looked dirty. My concept of what is dirty and what is clean has chnaged dramatically while in China. It is very hard to compare the standards of living in the United States to the ones here, at least the ones I experienced and beleive that middle class people encounter. The toilets in most places are holes in the ground where the sqatting technique must be used. There is also no toilet paper.

As I slept that night, i thought of how they told me a girl just moved out of the room and left for Russia that day, the pillow still smelled like her, i just wondered lying there how many people slept on the same sheets as i did.