Waking up in a place that you’ve never been before, and quite frankly don’t recall falling asleep in, is an alarming experience. To do so with a 75-pound Chinese woman leaning over top of you, grinning down at you, half in the front seat, half in the back makes that alarming feeling change from a slight startled to an increasing panic as you scramble to figure out where you are exactly.
This is exactly what I was experiencing as I woke up in the back seat of that small four-door sedan. Looking around, the first thing I noticed, other than the tiny Chinese lady leaning over me, telling me that we had finally arrived, was that it was dark. Not the type of dark I had become accustomed to in North America, darkness devoid of light from anything other than the stars, the moon, and a soft glow above the cities as you passed them on the highway, but a darkness utterly polluted by the city lights.
No longer the dim glow above the small cities and towns you would come across in Canada, but an eternal dusk, a twilight of sorts, settling over the city as it roared with life. People bustling about, food and packages being delivered on tuk-tuks and mopeds. Beijing was a city that was alive and breathing on its own. No help from anyone or anything. Alive with a type of life I had never before experienced in my short time here on earth.
“Beijing was a city that was alive and breathing… Alive with a type of life I had never before experienced”
“We’re not in Kansas anymore”
I grabbed my phone to look at the time as I got out of the Didi. 22:00; 10 pm. Where we had finally stopped, the side of a busy four-lane street, lined with different restaurants and stores, had taken roughly about 4 to 5 hours to get to from the airport. The scale of just how astonishingly enormous this city truly was had finally started to sink into my mind.
“We’re not in Kansas anymore”, I muttered under my breath as I looked up at the tall, brown bricked buildings that were to be my home for the next few days. Half asleep, I pulled my bags out of the trunk and started through an archway that was connecting two of the buildings into an astonishingly beautiful plaza that was well lit.
The Plaza
The plaza was boxed in by apartment buildings with little stores at the bottom of each. The top of each had a letter from A to H in small white lights that were almost Christmas-like in nature. The plaza itself had a little arc on the south side where there were a few people sitting; to the north were three old train cars, two dark green the other a yellowy-green, placed in a u shape with the mouth open towards the south; in between the train cars and the arc was a small courtyard that had been lowered 4 steps below the rest of the plaza.
Here a bunch of children played with scooters and small dogs as grandparents (most children in Beijing are raised by their grandparents while their parents work) and a few parents were scattered around the yard, speaking in hushed tones.
I followed the young Chinese lady, who had given herself the English name Wolly, across the courtyard at a snail’s pace as I dragged my bags behind me. Still disoriented by my lack of sleep, the jet lag and my ill-timed descent into slumber in the car I stumbled after her, completely lost in my surroundings. With everything still a blur we went up into one of the buildings to meet up with Karen, one of the leaders of the Agency I had aligned myself with, who gave me a small intricate slotted key and showed me to my temporary apartment.
My small apartment
I walked into that small apartment and took in my surroundings. It was smaller than most Master bedrooms in the west. Immediately inside the door on the right was a small stove and countertop below 2 or 3 small cupboards. Continuing down what was, essentially, a 5-foot hallway with a door on the left-hand side I put my bags on the small ledge in front of the window on the other side of the small room; an 8 foot by 10 foot “closet” with a small double bed, a tiny wardrobe and a small table. At this point Karen quietly dismisses herself. Leaving me only with a reminder to come to see her at 10:30 the next day.
Not wanting to miss out on the chance to experience what little bit of this new place I can I decide to make a short pit stop in the bathroom before heading down to the courtyard. The bathroom was a small 7-foot by 5-foot room with a sink, toilet and shower basically sitting on top of each other. The first place I had ever seen that made the possibility of “shit, shower, and shave” a complete reality.
I had made it
After my small detour, I headed downstairs and across the courtyard. After some small debate in my head I decided that the little rise that the arc was sitting on in front of the small courtyard was the best place to sit. As I walked up, I noticed “CARAT 7″ along the top. I sat there for a while, watching the people go about their lives.
A feeling of complete sondering washed over me like a wave crashing against the soft sand of a beach, dragging me into it and spreading throughout my limbs. I breathed in the air and smelt that scent that is so distinctly China. If you’ve been you know which one I’m talking about. I didn’t think to take pictures because all that was in my head was,” This is it. I’m here. This is my life now. I’ve made it” and in a way I had. Doing this had started me on a path that I do not see an end to. A path I will explore until I do finally see an end to it.
Winding down
After a short while, a few other foreigners joined me, the Chinese term for anyone who is not Chinese, to share a beer and their stories with me. That night I met Ben, the American who wasn’t through the agency, Michael, an Irish fellow who had been with the agency for coming up on a year, and Sean, an older, bald South African who had been teaching in East Asia for nearly 10 years. The advice I got that night on how to deal with China helped me get through a lot while there. To them I am ever grateful as I probably would not have lasted nor lived as long as I had there without their imparted knowledge.
We drank, we talked, and we laughed until late in the night before I eventually retired back to my small room.
