Contents:
Leaving Seattle
The Flight
Meeting Xiujuan
The Korean Family
Leaving Seattle
I leave Seattle on June 20, 2003. I carry only my huge Lowe Alpine Contour pack, filled with everything I think I'll need for the backpacking I plan to do in China, including tent, sleeping bag, and water filter. The whole thing weighs 26 kilograms (58 pounds) when my water bottles and water pouch are full. I'm bringing a lot of water storage capacity, because I plan to do some desert exploration.
The Flight
During the flight I pass the time by keeping track of our altitude, speed, and heading with my Garmin Gecko 201 GPS. I have to hold the unit up to the window in order for it to get a signal, which gets tiring, so finally I affix it to the window with Duct Tape.
Meeting Xiujuan
After 12 hours of flying and a two-hour wait in Tokyo, I arrive in Beijing at 10:00 p.m. on June 21. After going through customs and claiming the one tiny piece of checked luggage containing my Swiss army knife, I walk out of the baggage claim and am instantly pounced on by half a dozen taxi drivers wanting to give me a ride. They tug me this way and that. My Chinese doesn't quite come automatically yet, so I have to think a few seconds before telling them that I don't need their services at the moment, I'm looking for a friend who came to pick me up.
A few seconds later I run into Xiujuan, the Chinese girl I'd been chatting with online for the past couple months; she had agreed via email to pick me up at the airport. My first impression is that Xiujuan is a very cute girl. She wears a black skirt and red T-shirt. Then I notice that her T-shirt has a lot of very foul English printed on it, as follows:
JUST DO ME
Just Hump Me
Just Ride Me
Just Spank Me
Just Grab Me
Just Bone Me
Just Pump Me
Just Slap Me
Just Feel Me
Just Suck Me
Just Dump Me
Just Love Me
Just Hate Me
This surprises me, and I'm a little disappointed because I always used to think of her as such a very innocent girl, not vulgar in any way. (Later I would find out that she had no idea what the English on her T-Shirt meant).
I use a machine to exchange $100 US for 826 RMB (ren min bi—people's currency). Then Xiujuan and I take a taxi to the apartment of the family I'll be staying with for a few weeks. The taxi ride is quite scary; people in Beijing drive fast and on the wrong side of the road, the wrong way on one-way streets, and through red lights. Also, the taxis don't have seat belts. I nervously ask Xiujuan how long the taxi ride will be, wondering what my per-minute risk of death is. Xiujuan says thirty minutes.
The Korean Family
I'll be staying with a family living in a thirteenth floor apartment pretty close to the center of Beijing. The apartment building is full of rich foreigners, no Chinese. The family moved here from Korea one year ago. Xiujuan is their Chinese tutor, and I'll be their English tutor for a few weeks.
Most Beijing apartment highrises are drab and ugly, but this one is quite nice looking. The thirteenth floor apartment is quite spacious and very cozy, with hardwood floors and a balcony where I can lean out over Beijing and watch the frequent summer storms with their torrents of warm rain and dazzling lightning bolts. I don't get to see that kind of weather much in Seattle.
The father of the family holds a PhD and works on wireless technology. There are also his wife, their sixteen-year-old son, and their ten-year-old daughter living here. They have a Chinese maid who comes every day to do cleaning and sometimes cooking. She always cooks Chinese food. I much prefer the Korean food that the wife cooks though. Koreans eat a lot of spicy food, including many varieties of tasty pickled vegetables. I will really develop a liking for Korean food while living in this apartment.
