We had a plan to get to the Xi’an North railway station on Monday, and it included not taking a taxi.
We skipped the traffic jams but not the Chinese security routine.
In China, every subway or train station, airport, and museum greets you with an X-ray machine and every bag, regardless of its size, has to be put on a sluggish conveyor belt. Meanwhile, as your belongings eventually make it to the other side of the machine, you have to walk through a metal detector and one of the four or five employees around the machine nonchalantly waves a wand around you. Once in a while, if you’re carrying a bottle, you’ll be asked to take a sip. Everything always beeps all the time, but everybody is let through anyway.
I’m wondering if the X-ray machine is even on.
The mandatory X-ray machine routine is probably my top pet peeve in China. First, I don’t really understand why bags have to be inspected—as far as I know, terrorism isn’t a big issue in China. Second, it’s a huge waste of time, especially in the subway where there’s always a lineup at the X-ray machine because guess what, everybody has a bag.
The train ride from Xi’an to Beijing was smooth but took longer than expected with more stops than from Beijing to Xi’an. It was already close to 6 p.m. by the time we checked in. We didn’t know the neighbourhood at all so we wandered around until we found the restaurant street—this is when we realized we were apparently in a Russian neighbourhood since all the convenience stores had imported Russian food (and tons of vodka).
It was hot, stormy and rainy on Tuesday.
We headed to Jǐngshān Park (景山) to climb the hill overlooking the Forbidden City, and we got soaked at the top of it.
We left the park and waited out the next downpour under a store canopy. This is when I noticed a few people smoking next to us, all wearing a CCP pin. They disappeared around the corner at the end of their break. The rain stopped, we started walking, and we realized we were right in front of the “Red Building.”
“Can we come in?”
“Do you have passports?”
Of course, we did. We need our passports to enter most places. That’s usually step one, before the X-ray machine.
The “Red Building,” Xīn Wénhuá Yùndòng Jìniànguǎn (新文化运动纪念馆, New Culture Movement Memorial Hall) was the main campus of Beijing University from 1918 to 1952. It witnessed the anti-imperialism May Fourth Movement, the early spread of Marxism in the country, the revolutionary activities of Li Dazhao, Chen Duxiu and Mao Zedong, and the founding of the Communist Party of China.
Modern Chinese history is my thing, so wandering around the four-story building and explaining it to Mark was a treat.
Then we got soaked again and called it a day—we had to pack again, get up early, and catch yet another train. This was a quick two-day stop in Beijing before heading to Manchuria, Feng’s lǎo jiā, i.e., birthplace.
Next up, Shenyang!
