How I Ruined My Summer Vacation - 2018 (part 2)

Everything begins with a departure and an arrival. For my summer trips to Beijing to teach a university course, every year is the same. Get the visa first - which is a trip in itself. There is no express or same-day service at the visa office, so I must wait four days. A mini vacation, a chance to get some writing done. They almost know me by now.

Then comes the day of travel. Two-hour flight to the hub airport, couple hours of layover, then the 13-hour leg to Beijing. I can never pick the right seat. Less success choosing the right seatmates. Going, I had a Chinese high school exchange student in the middle seat and an older professor from a northeastern university on the aisle. When they both were awake, he regaled her with tales of university life and which university she should apply to in order to continue her studies in the US. I was too tired to correct some of the ideas he had for her education. Instead, I watched four movies - two I had wanted to see and two which I endured almost to the half-way point before just ending it already!

Thank goodness there is something new every time I arrive in Beijing's Capital Airport. I actually felt good at the end of this flight, even with only four cat naps of about 20 minutes each. But the two-kilometer walk through the huge complex upon arrival always zaps my goodwill. This year foreign arrivals first must use automated machines to record their fingerprints prior to entering the immigration lines. (I suppose refusing fingerprints would have caused me to be sent back on the next flight.) Not all the machines were working - certainly not the ones I tried. Then, with receipt in hand proving we had offered up our most intimate details, we should have been allowed to proceed.

However, foreign passport holders had to wait in a weary bunch as Chinese passport holders went ahead to the immigration counters. It wasn't as though we competed for the same lines. I did not complain - too tired. Once in the long foreigners' line, I passed easily because I'm a nice guy and a regular joe. I also got my bag - historically I'm always near the last - and passed through customs - nothing to declare except my contempt for the hassles of travel. The international flight was 13 hours; from exiting the plane to exiting the secure area of the airport (including the shuttle train that takes us from the outer area of the gates to the inner portion for immigration and customs) took 1-1/2 hours.

My decision to stay in Beijing was eventually rewarded when I finally exited into the public area and easily found my student assistant for this summer there to greet me. "Serena" got me and my bags to a taxi and then to my hotel, which is across from the UIBE campus. It was an overcast, humid afternoon as we went from the airport to the hotel, a situation which did not change much during the course I was to teach. This year, I was asked to teach the same course in two weeks instead of four - I presumed it to be a way to save on my hotel bill, which the university paid.

Back to the Yinghua ("Cherry blossom") Hotel, my old nemesis. The staff knows me well, understands I like good a/c. I also care about feng shui. My free time during these summers includes a fair amount of writing in my room so feng shui is important. My first two years I was in room 424 - I actually requested it the second year - which had great feng shui; I wrote the greater part of two novels those two summers (A Girl Called Wolf and Epic Fantasy *With Dragons). However, last year's visit was a terrible room-shuffling experience (read about it here), but I still managed some good writing production during the room changes. This year, only one room change.

More on the room experience next post!


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(C) Copyright 2010-2018 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

How I Ruined My Summer Vacation - 2018

As many of my dear readers may be aware, I was on vacation last month. That is my story and I'm sticking to it. In my last post, I offered you a fine selection of books to entertain and enlighten you while I was away. Yes, I do notice if anyone has added one or more of them to a to-be-read list, and those of you who followed through with your reading scheme, I thank you. 

This is your vacation on rain.

Actually, I was working - so let's call it a working vacation. I traveled to Beijing, China for three weeks to teach a university course called "Business Writing in American Context" (Chinese translation). My course, like all those taught at the University of International Business and Economics, was in English. Students must be fluent enough to be successful in their classes. I went last year, as well. And the year before. Yes, it seems it is becoming a habit. However, I have vowed that this visit (2018) would be my last - unless I get a very good reason to go through all the hassles to get there again.

For 2018, they threw me a curve: to teach the same course in half the time. So my class went from 4 weeks (2 classes a week) to two weeks of 4 classes each week (one class was about 4 hours). That made the grading of papers for 62 students this year a challenge. In fact, I did little else during those two weeks but focus on the class. I knew that going in, so I arranged to stay an extra week beyond the end of the course to have some sightseeing, shopping, hanging out time.

I need not have worried about doing anything fun when I wasn't in class. Those two weeks were full of rain or such oppressive humidity that I would have preferred rain. I brought a collapsible umbrella which had served me well for several years. Unfortunately, I left it in the classroom when I went home (the rain had stopped) and only realized that fact the next morning when the deluge returned. The hotel, thankfully, had full-sized umbrellas for guests to use. Then the doorman pestered me about returning it even though I needed it for another couple of days before the rain finally stopped.

Everyone remarked it was the rainiest summer anyone in Beijing could remember. Students, however, were very courteous with their umbrellas, always lining the hallways in an orderly fashion. On one particularly heavy rainfall day, my class assistant relayed the consensus of the students asking if the class would be cancelled. I was already in the classroom - on time - so it was on, baby! I did not count anyone late and, in fact, I delayed the start for 15 minutes. At the end of the two weeks, one student gave me a lovely postcard with a message on it, noting among other things that I was always punctual "even in rainy day".

With jet lag waking me earlier than normal, I had time to write. I continued working on the first draft of the third book in my vampire trilogy. I had written a huge portion of book 2 last summer. I also worked on two different short stories. Cranked out about 75,000 words total in three weeks. After my class, it was lunch time so I would grab something simple, often from the nearby 7-11 store, then return to my room to relax, eat the lunch, take a nap, then get up and write. With little distraction (no substantial social media access, for example), it was possible hunker down and type those chapters.

Room 634, which had decent feng shui.

For my dinners, I had plenty of company. A new Japanese (mostly sushi) restaurant had opened next to my hotel since last summer, which became a regular hangout. A new Chinese (mostly Cantonese) restaurant had also opened up the street since last year and got a lot of my business. And there was always the big Pizza Hut several blocks north of my hotel to try - especially if I wished to show a Chinese lady how "real" American-style pizza is (it wasn't, but that's another blog post). At least I did not get sick like last year.


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(C) Copyright 2010-2018 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

My Ruined Summer Vacation, Part 4

Rain, rain, go away, come again some other day! 

There is probably nothing which ruins a summer vacation more than rain. For some reason, we humans just don't like to be wet, especially wet while wearing clothing. So we do whatever we can to avoid being struck by those tiny drops of water. When I went to Beijing to teach a university course this summer, I was on my own, just me and a collapsible travel umbrella.

On Monday, there was a little rain as I was leaving the building where I have my class. I did not have my umbrella with me so I dashed across the parking lot to the student dining hall and had lunch with some students. "What? Chinese food again?" I quipped. By the time I'd finished eating, the rain had stopped so I took the opportunity to go over to the convenience store on the campus and buy my usual allotment of drinks and snacks, then went home to my off-campus hotel room as usual.

The "Avenue of the Great Water" - on a sunny morning! The building on the left housed my classroom.

I awoke Tuesday morning to the sound of rain. It was steady but light. I stayed in my hotel room and wrote on my book* because I already had ideas in my head when I awoke. Then I wanted to read it again and tweak it. Soon it was noon. It was still raining so I did not go out until later. I got dinner at the restaurant on the corner. The rain had let up by then but I still carried my collapsible umbrella just in case.

Wednesday morning I awoke at 2:30 am because the rain on the windows was so loud. I could not get back to a deep sleep until just before my alarm went off. The rain was coming down strong but I knew I had to go to the class. I made it to the classroom with little problem, my clothes dry. It was just a 10 minute walk. When the class was done, however, the rain was very heavy. And I only had my collapsible travel umbrella.

Chinese students carry colorful umbrellas, and neatly arrange them in the hallway to dry during class.

Knowing I was going back to my hotel, I accepted that I would get wet. But I also needed food, especially if I were going to be rained in all day. On that day, however, I had planned to take my student assistant to lunch on campus, just to thank her for her help, kind of a custom here, but she asked for a delay because of the weather and I agreed. It turned out to be a good idea. 

After class, I paused on the front stoop of the building, under the cover, deciding what to do. When we canceled lunch, I decided to go to the Subway restaurant across the street from the campus. I had tried it before and it was more American than the Subways in the US. A footlong could be made to serve as two meals. 

So I left the safety of the building and walked quickly across the parking lot, slanting the umbrella to meet the rain. I got to the gate of the campus and people were stopped there. The side of the avenue passing in front of the gate (the main street) was running with streams of water. The avenue sloped on both sides, for drainage (hah hah), so it was deeper there. People did not want to cross the street. I had to go, so I stepped into what I thought was only a couple inches of water. Instead, the water went over the tops of my shoes - like stepping into a deep puddle. Once I had committed that faux pas, I had to continue. I stepped gingerly across the avenue - trying to mind the traffic lights and the errant traffic dodging frantic umbrella-blind pedestrians! Walking all the way across the avenue the water was over my shoes! My steps made the water splash, too!

Qianmen shopping district - the Friday at the end of a rainy week!

I got to the other side of the avenue, my feet soaked, shoes and socks squishy as I walked down the lane of shops and entered the Subway. They had put down sheets of cardboard to let people wipe their feet. This being my third visit this month, the girl recognized me - not that she was happy to see me! One advantage there was that I could point to what I wanted. I ordered my usual and she almost seemed to remembered what I liked on it. I grabbed a bag of chips and 3 cookies to further extend my rainy day provisions. 

As I entered my hotel room, I carefully stayed by the door and pried off my shoes and pulled off my dripping socks, then my pants which were soaked below the knees. I didn't want the dirty water of the streets to pollute my room. I cleaned myself up and sat to enjoy my lunch. I saved the second half of the sandwich for later. After a while, I took the hair dryer the hotel provided and spent an hour using it on my shoes.

Want some background music? I recommend this: 

"Winter Rain in Taipei" by Meng Ting Wei

And that is my rainy day story. It got boring in my hotel room as the rain really came down hard the rest of the day. I read a book, I edited my book*, I took a nap, I watched TV (only in Chinese), and I ate the second half of the sandwich. I rationed the bottle of water (cannot drink water from the faucet here). 

At the original Beijing duck restaurant in Qianmen district, I take my Beijing duck seriously.

Then the power went out. After the heavy rain on Wednesday and Thursday, the hotel lost power. So no A/C, no fridge, no Wi-Fi, no lights. Not much one can do for fun in those circumstances. Power would go off for a few minutes then come back on but several times in a row. I could run my laptop off the battery but then it needed to recharge. Then it was off for an hour. It was mostly at night. 

I went out on Friday for a Beijing duck dinner and souvenirs. It was a lovely day of blue skies - not the yellow haze Beijing is notorious for. I got the duck but not any souvenirs. When I finished walking around and decided to go home, I still had to ride the subway, which meant going up and down stairs and walking through long passages. At least this time I did not go out the wrong exit and walk the wrong direction! 

However, as I was on my very last allotment of footsteps, hot and sweaty and just trying to make it back to my hotel room and cool off, I knew I had no food or drinks in my room so I planned to push myself past the hotel and on to the 7-11 store around the corner. 

Discussing the weather with some learned gentlemen - after consuming massive amounts of duck.

As I arrived on the block of my hotel, I saw the restaurants were closed and, yes, the 7-11 store was closed, too. The lights were off and I knew they had no power. It was early evening, still daylight. I hoped my hotel had power but resigned myself that it might not. At the least I needed water bottles, so I pushed myself further, encouraging myself to walk on up the street and cross the avenue over to the campus. I headed to the convenience store on campus - hoping it would be open.

It was! So I stocked up as much as I could, then carried the bag and the two big water bottles (3 liter) back to the hotel. When I got close, I saw the lights were on inside the hotel. The automatic sliding door opened for me. It was cool inside! I went up to my room on the elevator, thankful that my hotel was not affected by the power outage. When I had left that morning, I saw men working on some power grid at the corner of the block (the power had been going off and on before then). With only an additional mile of walking, I could relax in my comfy room! But the power kept going off for 10 or 20 minutes at a time all through the evening.

Saturday morning the power went off at 4:30 am. I awoke because the noise of the bathroom fan I usually kept on no longer blocked other sounds. I heard my hotel neighbors talking (complaining?) and I got up to look outside. It was hard to tell whether the whole neighborhood was off or not at that hour, but the dawn was beginning. I was still sleepy and there was nothing else to do, so I went back to sleep. I awoke when the power came back on at 6:30 am, then returned to sleep - until the housekeeper knocked on my door at 9 am.

It was a terrible week! The last week of my summer vacation went perfectly, however, and all my students passed. I caught my flight home with less trouble than the previous year. 

And here endeth my tale of woe; and I alone am returned to thee, to tell it.


*I call it EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS . . . because that's what it is!

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(C) Copyright 2010-2016 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

Getting Hooked on Art in Beijing

If you have been following my adventures last month in Beijing, you know I'm telling it backwards. And that is not a metaphor.

So, after my second week's classes were done, I was finally ready to do some serious sightseeing. I checked maps for tourist sites I had not already visited in my two prior trips to Beijing, calculated subway routes, and prepared my knapsack with essential survival products (for example, t-paper for public restrooms).

Then it rained. They said it was the heaviest rain in Beijing in years. So I stayed in my neat little hotel room and worked on my new novel most of the day Thursday and Friday. I put in about 6 hours of original composition each day. The housekeepers came and went without incident (See previous post). By Saturday morning, I wanted to do something, anything so I wouldn't waste these days completely. I decided to return to Wangfujing Avenue, which is a tourist street in the heart of Beijing. If it rained, I could at least be able to spend the hours browsing in one of the two large bookstores there. 

Oriental Plaza shopping mall and hotel, Wangfujing Avenue in Beijing

So I took the subway to the Wangfujing station, which leads directly into the lower level of the shopping plaza near the Wangfujing bookstore. There is a food court on that lower level so part of my plan was to grab brunch there before moving on to the bookstores. I also planned to find some postcards and other souvenirs since I was in the tourist area. I walked casually through the food court area, more a collection of self-contained restaurants than “fast food” as we know it back home. As I passed an escalator, a girl coming down it called to me. She was short and cute, smiling and asking what I was looking for, as though she could help me.

Well, I look like a big dumb tourist but I’m actually an old professor here to teach an English class, so I had no reason not to be polite and respond to her attempt to help me. We had some small talk about food. I asked her what she recommended. She said the Wangfujing bookstore had restaurants in the lower level, too. I thought it would be one-stop shopping.

The main consideration for me was being able to use my credit card because I was getting low on cash; I knew most stores on Wangfujing would take credit cards. So I followed her out of the Oriental Plaza mall and over to the Wangfujing bookstore. By then, she was mentioning an art exhibition featuring Chinese calligraphy. I knew what that was and I had actually bought some beautiful scroll paintings on my previous visit years before. However, she presumed that as a tourist I would be interested in seeing scroll paintings. 

As we went around the corner of the Wangfujing bookstore--but not entering it--she pointed to the entrance to the lower level restaurants and continued on, determined to show me the art exhibit. It was between breakfast and lunch and I saw in the Oriental Plaza that the food court places were just getting ready to open, so it made sense to go ahead and see some art while we waited for the restaurants to open. I followed. 

She led me into the side entrance of the next building to the Wangfujing bookstore, a hotel, definitely not the front door. I thought that was rather strange to be going in the "back way" if we were going to some "important" art exhibit. But there was a sign there announcing the exhibit. She pointed to it. There was also a guard in uniform behind a desk which had the hotel’s name on it. Across from the desk was a service elevator. 

Hmm, I thought, what is this? She even said "Don’t worry" but it was more like "Don’t wooooooorrrry" like she knew just how to emphasize the word. That made me worry, of course. The elevator opened and we stepped on. Then two young men got on and stood in front of me--between me and the elevator doors. At that moment I felt uneasy; if the three of them were working together, they would have had me right there. Elevator robbery. 

But nothing happened. The elevator arrived at the right floor and the two guys stepped off and my escort showed me to the art exhibit a little ways down the corridor.

The so-called art exhibit was just a small room with scroll paintings lining the walls and a screen set up in the middle to divide the small room into two galleries with more space to hang the scrolls. The art was good. I'm no expert but I know what I like. Everything from nature scenes in traditional Chinese style--like the ones I already had back home--to more modern style paintings. Some with calligraphy writing (poem?) or pandas or even female models posing au naturale. 

I was particularly attracted to a large painting of a nature scene, a river and the rocks along the shore, summer trees and a Chinese temple hidden among them. The canvas painting was maybe 8 feet long. It as very beautiful, so my escort and the woman running the “exhibit” got me into a conversation about how much I thought it was worth. I countered by saying it would be impossible for me to take it with me on an airplane. So they showed me a much smaller painting, similar kind of nature scene but autumn, on a canvas but not put in a wooden frame. The older woman unrolled the canvas in front of me. It was about 2 x 3 ft. A lovely painting.

But for me it did not matter what the cost was. If it costs 100 dollars but you do not have 100 dollars it doesn’t matter if you like it or not. At first, I thought they were giving me a price in Yuan (about 7 to the dollar) but then it became clear they meant dollars (What if I was French and had no dollars, only euros?). Of course, I did not get up this morning with the idea of buying a painting of anything, much less be pressured into it before I’d even had my breakfast or lunch. So I balked, said I needed to get something to eat before I could decide on whether to buy it or not. I really did not want to buy it, but I was trying to be polite. Up to then my escort and the woman running the art exhibit had been pushy but remained polite.

The idea was proffered that my escort was actually the painter of the smaller unframed painting and because she was "only a student" they could cut the price. I started to see the ploy, but I was saved simply because I really did not have the cash and I was not too confident using a credit card there in that small “shop”. 

I was trying to extract myself because I really was hungry by that point. The deal was undone for me when the next middle-aged foreign man was led into the art exhibit by a young attractive Chinese girl. He was followed quickly by a young tourist couple led by another Chinese woman. We all had been found wandering the streets desirous of calligraphy and in need of a scroll! 

I was able to slip out with that distraction, but not without my escort following me. I said I needed to get something to eat, so I went out the way I'd come in and my escort followed me. I returned to the restaurants on the lower level under the Wangfujing bookstore that she had pointed out. I looked around to see what I might like, then saw the restroom sign and decided I needed to freshen up. I took my time and did not really concern myself whether or not my escort had seen where I went or would be waiting. When I exited, she was there waiting for me. She asked what I was going to eat, then switched to talking about that painting.

Walking among the different restaurants I found nothing that I wanted to eat, so I said I wanted to return to the Oriental Plaza's food court. I knew what was there, even though there were far too many choices. I started out of the lower level food court, got outside and was on the sidewalk back to the entrance of the Oriental Plaza mall next door when she suddenly shouted profanities at me and cursed me for “wasting her time”! That was shocking, but perhaps not so surprising. I knew she was a salesperson once we got into the art “store” but I was intent on maintaining my politeness as a mature adult.

I really hated that she had to let me know I’d wasted her time by using the most popular American swear words. That sort of thing makes you question humanity. You see, now the next time a college or high school student (or appearing to be) speaks to me, wanting to practice English, I will be suspicious. I might even be rude and put him/her off, refusing a conversation, simply because this one person who had seemed friendly and polite, sincere in speaking English with me, was in the end just part of a sales team. I could forgive the sales pitch, but to end it all with the cursing…well, that was uncalled for! I had been polite and I had politely excused myself. She could have done the same, saying “Thanks for taking a look.” I might have returned later to buy a painting, who knows? But to suddenly let loose her full range of profanity was quite disappointing. If her English was good enough to carry on a decent conversation with me, I would think she could put it to better use than seducing middle-aged foreign men out of the Oriental Plaza food court off Wangfujing Avenue.

No problem for me; I shook it off. Now that I was free from the clutches of the salesgirl, I did return to the Oriental Plaza and as I went down the escalator to the lower level food court, a reflection caught my eye: Pizza Hut. There it was! But just to be sure that’s what I wanted, I walked around looking at the other restaurants. I knew they would take a credit card so in I went. I ordered a salad and a medium-size all-the-meats pizza, both of which were rather good. I had peach tea, also. Total cost was 115 Yuan, about 18 dollars. I took my time, relaxed after I finished eating, watching the other patrons come in and order. Lots of young couples on a date, also families with small children.

Finally I went into the Xinhua bookstore. On the first floor were maps so I got a new bilingual map of the city. My old map, which I had been using, did not have the newer subway stations marked on it. I also saw a fine selection of postcard packets so I got a few of them. Then I went upstairs to the English books. It was crowded on all the floors, given that it was Saturday, but I did not see much I had to have. My interest was in Chinese authors translated into English, so I could read their stories and learn about the Chinese condition (much like the human condition, which is what all fiction is ultimately about). I went to the other floors, as well, and discovered fewer books and more of other things like art supplies, musical instruments, and small appliances.

I got a few small souvenirs on one floor. Outside, the sky was dark, threatening rain, but the streets were busy with pedestrians. Business was good. I walked up the street, the wide pedestrian mall, got a cold bottle of juice from one of the many street kiosks, then went into the Beijing Foreign Book Store. I did not take my time going to every floor, just went straight to the English books. I did find two paperbacks of Chinese authors in English to buy, one a translation and the other written in English. After that, I continued walking north through the crowds of pedestrians, stopping in a shop here or there to examine the souvenirs items they had.

Eventually, I thought I was far enough north that I determined it was closer to walk east to meet a subway station than to return south to the station I'd arrived at. However, except when I was sitting in the Pizza Hut, I had been standing or walking for a few hours already (even on the subway I stood), so my legs were tired. I headed east along the street which should take me to the subway station I was looking for, a connection to the line that would take me directly back without having to change subway lines. But it was not where I thought it was and I worried I had gone too far. (On the way, I passed a storefront and a man came out, calling to me, asking where I was from and if I liked Chinese calligraphy! I said I was in a hurry and could not take any time to go into his shop and look at the scrolls.) 

Right where I happened to pause to check my map, I saw a McDonald’s on the corner so I went inside and got an iced latte and sat down to study the map better. Refreshed once more, I continued on and found the station. Once I got off at the subway stop nearest to my hotel, I climbed the many stairs to the surface and proceeded to walk the few blocks back to my hotel. On the way, I stopped at a convenience store to load up on drinks and at a “bakery” for a sandwich and a pastry for later. 

After I returned to my neat little room, I unloaded my purchases and peeled off my sweaty clothes, took a shower, and lay on the bed for a nap. It was a good day, all in all. Later I got up and did some writing on my book, then went to sleep again. Life in a little hotel in Beijing. 

Next time: The Adventure Begins!

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(C) Copyright 2010-2015 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.