Turning on the television in our hotel room I am greeted by today’s weather forecast: severe air pollution.
I had arrived in Beijing. This past week has been a whirl. By the end of it, we’ll have taken four flights, stayed in two hotels rooms, and have ridden in what feels like countless bus rides across Xi’an and Beijing. By some miracle, the Beijing sky looks like something out a billboard: baby blue with perfectly designed clouds that wouldn't look out of a place in a Disney movie. Perhaps the forecast had been wrong.
Earlier that week we had arrived in Xi’an, a city north of Chengdu, but somehow still plagued by Chengdu’s heat and humidity. Things have changed since we left the back roads of Chengdu: we now have a tour guide. Our tour guide, bless her soul, is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to the history of Xi’an, and she only stops enlightening us to either take a breath or to inform one of my classmates that he looks like Harry Potter. We all look like a miserable bunch, and only one of us looks like Harry Potter. It was only this morning that we had left Chengdu University. I remember it felt like it had been ages ago. Two weeks seemed inadequate to make friends. I was wrong. I missed those guys.
The next two days spent in Xi’an felt like dispensing raffle tickets at a carnival. More than any place thus far, Xi’an was a circus. Caught between historical grandeur it was, for a long time, China’s capital and fading relevancy, Xi’an has become the poster child of China’s efforts to preserve its past by establishing an entry fee. Nothing exemplifies this more than the Terracotta warriors both a wonder of this world and, for the emperor who ordered their construction, the next. Sheltered in what resembles a sports dome, the 8,000 clay figurines stand guard at the foot of their emperor’s tomb another wonder in itself which, believe it or not, remains unearthed haunting the grounds to which their creators were most likely killed in service of their ruler. The Terracotta soldiers were only a recent discovery, their existence remained a secret until accidentally uncovered by a lucky farmer in 1974. Their restoration dispelled a historical ennui of the Chinese people, and now, with a renewed sense of purpose, everything old is now renovated. We leave Xi’an via plane and head to Beijing.
The bus ride had been about an hour. We’re headed to the outskirts of Beijing. Myself, and my fellow students, had lost interest in whatever conversations we started our trip with, each of us preferring to slip into the worlds of our own private bubbles.
I put my ear buds in. But my ears began to pop. I could feel it: our bus was beginning to make its ascent into the mountains. I was in entirely different world when out of no where I spot a section of the Great Wall on the mountain side. It was almost if I had casually come upon this great discovery. I was slack jawed. Our morning and afternoon consisted of traversing this man-made wonder. For those who've never been: it’s steeper than you think. For those who have been: you and I will always have something to talk about.
After our visit to the Great Wall, our trip began to wind down. I didn't know it then, but it was the 25th anniversary of Tienanmen Square protests. Four or five days into my trip and Google inexplicably stops working. Access is limited as it is, but especially information pertaining with the Tienanmen Square protests in 1989. That was our stop for the day.
Police checked our bags before we entered the square. We were instructed to walk through metal detectors. I was frisked as well. Was it always like this? The square was packed with tourists. Light poles were decorated with CCTV cameras; while the police made it clear of their presence. On the far side we could see the entrance to the Forbidden City. A large portrait of Mao Zedong greets us as we enter into the ancient city’s boundaries. This is still very much this man’s country.
We’re to leave on a Sunday evening. We’re told we’ll arrive Sunday evening. The time difference we gained a day on our return trip feels like we happened upon some scientific anomaly that’s permitted us to time travel. It’s like we've embarked on a return trip from another world.
That’s was China feels like: another world. It was amazing but alien. Foreign but oddly familiar. Its scale, both by the amount of its peoples and its architecture, defy description.
I left a part of me there. You can find my name etched into the stone frame of the Great Wall. I took a piece of China with me. You can find a piece of the wall sitting safely on top of my bookcase at home. I visited another world once. It’s good to be back.
I want to give a special thanks to the friends I made along the way: Michael, Andy, Linda, Bruce, Jacob, Anna, Chris, and Nick. Especially Nick. I wouldn’t have brought a single souvenir back home without him.
Read Kyle's previous blog posts about his experience studying away.
- The Realities of Shanghai and Back Roads of Chengdu China
- Correspondence From the Other Side of Your World
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Kyle Charrette is a senior in communication arts and studied abroad in Chengdu, China during the summer of 2014.
A note from Kyle:
My name is Kyle Charrette, and I’m a senior enrolled in UNH’s Communication Arts Program. I graduated high school from Calvary Christian School, and I’m schedule to graduate from UNH in December 2014. For the summer I’ll be studying abroad in China through UNH Manchester’s Study Abroad program. The focus of my major and my passions are both writing and media, and this blog is a journey of my time in China communicated through the mediums I know best.
