Guns, Germs, and Steel

Silk Market

Today is the first day of the National Holiday week here in China that continues through next Sunday. The National Holiday, which is officially on October 1st, celebrates the founding of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949 by Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party after their victorious civil WAR with Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang Party. I’m not sure what to expect this week besides a ubiquitous amount of Chinese flags and a deluge of visitors from all around China coming to Tiananmen Square to celebrate. Should be interesting.

The weather turned cold mid-week and people have begun bundling up in the mornings, buying new winter coats, and drinking a lot more hot coffee. Classes have also started thinning out as one friend told me she only had 5 people in her class one day. I was able to get some real-world application for classroom studies on Saturday when some classmates and I went to the Silk Market, a “fake goods” area of town that is a regular stop for tourists making the rounds in downtown Beijing. The thin façade of legitimacy as you walk inside (no visible DIRT, clean floors and orderly stalls) quickly vanishes when the first clerk accosts you with shouts of “lookee, lookee, you want buy shoes for you girlfriend?” and grabs you by the arm to drag you into their bathroom-sized stall. Nevertheless haggling with them over prices on items I had no intention of buying allowed to me to practice my Chinese more than at any point in the trip. I learned words for lots of new things like “belt”, “scarf”, “I’m getting angry”, and “don’t come back!” It was surprising to learn how many languages in which they could bargain as my friends knew Spanish and Italian and said the Chinese store clerks almost spoke it fluently.

We had taken a taxi to get to the market but the traffic was really bad so we decided to try the subway on the way back. It was very easy on which to get around and it only cost 2 kuai, or about 30 US cents. The traffic can be quite harrowing at times because there are so many pedestrians, bikers, cars, motorcyclists (which are really more like mopeds), and other miscellaneous vehicles like this motorized bicycle with a large METAL covering that surrounds the driver. I’ve heard that these have been outlawed but they still prowl the streets and even serve as taxis for short distances. One night on my way back to the dormitory a woman on a bicycle collided head on with one and the impact was strong enough to knock her backwards. She wasn’t injured but was very upset and a guy she was with on another bicycle came back and began to argue with the other driver. I’ve heard differing accounts on how often this sort of thing happens; some people say it is quite safe and rarely occurs while others say it happens all the time, it’s just not talked about.