Oct 29^th, 2008

Thai Massage and a Hutong Haircut!

My first morning at the hutong youth hostel was quite cold. I didn’t realize the night before as I was writing in bed under the covers but I woke up cold with my cold worsened. The patrons gave me a very polite, ‘sorry, we can’t turn on the heat till next week’ reply. When I kept pressing them on it, the lady ignored me for a while and then finally said, sorry, we can’t deal with your situation for another 20 mins or so. So, I was dismissed! There you go, the price of paying low room rent! I even tried to ask them about buying my own little electric heater which I wasn’t sure what the answer was. Finally, when I went down for the second time , one of girls took pity on me, she promised me that she’ll try and get a heater for me later.

So, after work and shopping at the Silk Street Market (another unforgettable experience), I came back to my Hutong home to find a fan in the room! Aaargh, well, I go down again, lugging my pained calf from all the climbing at the Great Wall (even after 3 days!!) and I was assured by the girl that it was not a FAN after all but a heater. She said ‘check it out!. Fortunately for me, she was right. But, it does look like a fan if you don’t look closely. It’s not the warmest heater in the world but given cold of Beijing autumn, I was very happy to have it!

Since my calf muscles were still hurting, I decided to get a Thai massage from a girl from Yunnan called Tse-Ying. She was tiny and pretty but very strong. If I had a Thai massage before, then I didn’t know what a Thai massage was until she worked on me! I would say that the experience was more painful than pleasurable. The pain in the calf muscles that I had from climbing 10,000 + steps on the Great Wall, was increased by tenfold whenever she worked on that muscle. My cries of pain didn’t stop her at all! And all the contortions that my body was made to do, I wouldn’t have believed it if someone told me about it. Anyway, I’ll probably go back because it did feel very good afterwards and at $30 a massage of 45 mins, you can’t beat it. My calf muscles aren’t complaining too much today either.

After the massage experience, as I was walking back to the hutong, I passed by this hair salon and I don’t know what came over me at that point, I just decided to walk in and inquire about a haircut. No one spoke any English other than the one lady who told me that a haircut would be 20 Yuan! That is about $ 3!!! Again the price and the curiosity in me made me decide to take a chance. Explaining what I wanted to the young guy who was going to cut my hair wasn’t easy but the end result was much better than some of the haircuts back home. He was very accommodating and let me interrupt him 2 or 3 times and went back and re-worked parts of the haircut! To top it all, he refused to take the tip I offered to him! Needless to say, I was very happy with the adventures of my first day!

Oct 28^th, 2008

From Shangri-La to Hutong

The bellboy at the posh Shangri-La hotel gave me a surprised look when I asked for just a regular taxi instead of “the car”. As he showed me into the taxi, he inquired again if I knew where I was going, suspicious of where I was headed as I wasn’t going to airport with my entire luggage. As I showed my printout in Mandarin of the Youth Hostel in a hutong to the taxi driver, I wasn’t entirely surprised when he gave a ‘what the heck!’ kind of grunt. I could almost swear that he actually cursed a couple of times because of being burdened by this lady who wanted to go to this place that is almost a slum (in some Beijingers’ opinion, not mine) from this every person’s dream hotel. I was prepared for this, I thought, until he pretty much dumped me with both my pieces of luggage on the main road leading up to the hutong! Didn’t I know that rich people who can afford to stay in the fancy hotels don’t ever go near one of these? Didn’t I know that most Beijingers have never stepped into these hutongs that are so interesting to the westerners? When the taxi driver flatly refused to enter this small alleyway that is a hallmark of a hutong, that is when I started thinking, what am I doing here? Couldn’t I afford to stay at a more upscale hotel? Why did I insist on going through the experience of living in a hutong?

To answer those questions, first I have to explain what a hutong is. According to my guide book, “Beijing’s very identity as a city centers on its distinctive hutong – the characteristic lattice of alleyways that crisscross the centre of town”. The history of the hutongs date back to the years after Genghis Khan razed the city, then known as Zhongdu, to a rubble. They were built around the palace within what’s currently known as the second ring road. Many hutongs are courtyard houses, some of them quite grand and beautiful. Some date back centuries. Of course, now, most hutong land is a hodgepodge of old and new but the narrow alleyways and the grey facades and the tiled roofs make it still quite distinct from the rest of modern, high rise filled, Beijing. What’s even more interesting are the people who live here. These are simple, mostly poor folk. Here, you can see the daily life as it unfolds all around you. They hang around, playing cards, smoking, loitering. You can see housewives haggling with the vegetable vendor and the hawker on a bicycle or a tricycle selling who knows what. None of them speak any English at all other than, may be, ByeBye.

I’m naturally drawn to places where people live simple lives, trying to survive day by day. I had already seen the nouveau riche of China, in the malls with only name-brand stores or enjoying really expensive drinks or food in the various venues around the city, all the while managing to look bored or uninterested. There is a blind devotion to the western, expensive brands and couture. I managed to be there in those expensive places because I didn’t have to pay for them out of my pocket which made it convenient. Now that the company was no longer paying for my trip, it was supposed to be my time in the city and my own dime for everything. I am a cheapskate by nature as I figure a penny saved is a penny invested in a future travel. Besides, I wanted to experience being among the 'real' Chinese, so I put myself through this experience!!

Lets see how it goes.