Day Two: Arriving

We arrived in Beijing to find that Gordon's bag unfortunately did not arrive with us. But fortunately B12815 (All throughout China in places of business people wear what appear to be nametags but are really number tags) had a really sure-fire system for finding it.


Which one does your bag look like?

Gordon has this super nice friend Vanessa who is studying at Qin Hua University in Beijing right now and was great enough to meet us at the airport, and hang out with us for half the day until we left to go to our first destination.
We rode the subway over to do some shopping but the real highlight of the trip was recognizing that I was truly in China again as I saw the first baby bum and balls hanging out.

So it is very rare to see a baby in China wearing protection over his/her privates. All the clothes are just made with an open crotch area. It might seem strange at first but it really speeds along the potty training process since they start learning from the time they are a few months old, and the environmental benefits are priceless. I'm sure it's a messy learning process, and maybe a bit cold, but it seems to work for a fifth of the world's population. I'm thinking it's the way to go.

We didn't have much of a set itenery for our trip- just basically that we'd make our way north for a few days until we got to Mudan Jiang, hang out there, and then with some of those friends we would head back southish. So that afternoon we took an 8 hour train ride to Shenyang.
I think I honestly hate arriving anywhere by train in China. There are always tons of Huairens (bad people) there waiting to exploit vulnerable people arriving in a new city, tired and disoriented. So we always make sure to ignore people at train stations, and try to have at least our first destination planned in advance so we don't look quite as lost getting off the train. The challenging part is that we kindof stick out like a sore thumb everywhere we go. They are there to prey on people who are out of their element and seeing as how most of the places we visited aren't accustomed to having foreigners I think we appear to these huai people to be the most vulnerable, so they tend to fight for our attention.
"where do you want to go"?
"Get in my car".
"I can take you to a hotel".
"where are you going"?
"Where are you going"?
"Wanna go to Beijing"?
So we had looked online for a hotel close to the train station since we knew we'd be arriving late at night and didn't want to be lost in a city we were completely unfamiliar with. While still within the train platform area, before going to the otherside of the gates where lay all the huairens in waiting, we asked one of the workers which way it was to a particular street so that we wouldn't have to ask one of the vultures on the other side of the fence, but this helpful person completely blew our cover by yelling to a group of taxi driver/criminals on the other side of the gates, "these girls want to go to such and such street- do you know where it is"?.
Nice! So anyway, so much for that plan. We made our way through the station trying to figure out which way to go while trying to appear to the small crowd around us that we actually knew exactly where we were going, and Gordon, probably flustered and out of Chinese pratcice, tries to yell at everyone that we are leaving, but she actually told them that we were sitting, over and over again. "Leave us alone. We're sitting right now"!!!
So we made it to the hotel which really looked quite luxurious in the advertisements. But in reality looked like this:
Note the squished mosquito on our bathroom wall that the maid had probably been kind enough to kill for us, just not clean up. And the roll of toilet paer that was gone after 7 squares, and that room light that was a lot more like a night light.