The Weekend

Last Saturday we took taxis to Wangfujian, a very popular shopping district. It’s not too far from Tiananmen Square, which in turn is just south of the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City is the geographical center of Beijing away from which everything else radiates. Twelve of us went, so that divided neatly into three taxis; one student suggested we put someone who spoke some Chinese in each taxi, and another suggested each taxi needed a map. Both excellent suggestions! The students were provided with great Beijing maps that include our school, located in the northwest quadrant, like many universities in Beijing. The map includes both English and Chinese characters. Since the taxi drivers rarely speak English, a map purely in English only goes so far. Shockingly, only some guidebooks seem to include Chinese characters next to the pinyin place names (pinyin is the current system of writing Chinese in the Roman alphabet). “Beijing” is pinyin – it literally means Northern (Bei) Capital (Jing). In older systems, Beijing was “Peking” or sometimes “Pekin.” But even “Beijing” is not decipherable for someone who only reads Chinese. So far all the taxi drivers have recognized our pronunciation of the nickname for Bejing Foreign Studies University (BFSU), which is “Beiwai” (pronounced bay-why.) One guidebook that does include Chinese characters is the “Let’s Go” guide to China, part of an excellent series clearly geared to students and low-budget travelers. (The guides that emphasize luxury shopping, golf courses, and five-star hotels are not very practical for 20 year olds who have to budget their money through 15 weeks of travel in two countries.)

My advice for students going out on their own: (1) Hang on to enough money to take a taxi home, even if you get separated from the group. Beijing is really big, but taxis are cheap and plentiful – our ride this weekend in shared taxis was about $2.50 per person for the round trip, and it was a long trip – perhaps 30 minutes each way. (2) Divide your money and carry it in a few places so that in the unlikely event your wallet or purse is lost or stolen you can still get home. (3) Keep something on you – a card or a map – that includes the Chinese characters for where you’re going and for BFSU. As the “Let’s Go” guidebook suggests, almost all taxi drivers carry cell phones, so if you have the phone number of your location (say, a restaurant or a store) the driver can call for directions. As it happened, our three groups did get separated – but two found one another, and everyone had a good time and returned with no problem. Wangfujian is the same area where our hotel was this summer – a world away from Beiwai. Then we stayed in a moderately priced hotel, but lots of very fancy ones are close by; their lobbies, like the lobbies of good hotels all over the world, are semi-public spaces that are excellent places to use a restroom or catch your breath. If you want it, you can find McDonalds and KFC, upstairs in what turns out to be a very glitzy mall. But there are also serious bookstores (our group tried two) featuring some very inexpensive books – I bought a small volume of Chinese poetry in English and Chinese for 10 yuan – and a large pedestrian mall full of all kinds of stores. My roommate this summer, Noor, even tried out the bungee ball across the street from the old Catholic church. I was not as adventurous!
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