The Beijing Zoo (Pandas) and the Underground City

June 29, 2008- Sunday

On Sunday we woke up mid morning and headed to the bank and to McDonalds for breakfast. We were able to use our ATM cards to get money out and by the time we got to McDonalds they were serving lunch. The place was once again packed, but it was worth the wait for some good ole fashioned French fries. When we arrived back at the hotel, almost everyone was up and they were ready to leave. Yikes! We hadn’t expected them to be up for a couple of more hours. We quickly got ready and walked with everyone to the bus stop. Johanna and some of the others had figured out what buses we needed to ride to go to the nearby Beijing Zoo. We paid our 1 Yuan (15 cents) and piled on the busy. There was mostly standing room only, but with all the stops along the way, the ride was only about twenty minutes so it was no big deal. The bus dropped us of at the big bus stop hub across the road from the zoo and we used an underground tunnel to get there. Instead of cross walks at road level they have either underground tunnels or overpass walking paths all over the city. I have only crossed a couple of roads like we normally do and those times were mostly illegal. I think we paid 25 Yuan for the zoo which included our extra ticket to see the Pandas.

The first exhibit we saw was the pandas and it was less quality than I thought it would be. I think we saw about seven pandas and most of them were extremely dirty. They are not the pandas you see on Animal Planet. Some were playing, others were eating bamboo, and some were sleeping. They did have a few in a big nice glass case that seemed to have plenty of room for them to live, but one was outside on a dirty platform. He seemed content to jus lay there. They sold panda souvenirs and Greg bought a big light blue panda umbrella while others brought some tee shits. We milled around the rest of the zoo for a couple of hours. I had read in my guide books that the zoo would be depressing because of how they kept the animals and it sure was. The lions, panthers, tigers, and other cat like animals were in bedroom size concrete rooms. The elephants were in similar captivity, but bigger size rooms. The rhinos were kept really, really dirty. People still milled around and seemingly enjoyed themselves. They’ve probably never been to a zoo that was doing research and keeping an appropriate habitat for the animals. Later, when I was telling Melissa about it she said zoos in America used to be kept that way.

Before leaving, we watched was they gave powerboat rides on the river in the middle of the zoo. People would put on old fashioned, orange life jackets and the driver would zoom them down the river. I guess they don’t have anything like the reservoir we go to with the Koch’s. We didn’t wait in line and pay to take a ride. Our plan was to go to something called “Food Street” after the zoo. We heard it was near the back entrance and that it would be a street full of carts of food. I pictured a miniature carnival type thing. However, when Johanna (she’s a Chinese major and does a lot of our navigating) asked someone to direct us to it, she was informed that the “Food Street” was actually inside of a hotel and not really anything special or cultural at all. Since it was already mid afternoon and we had more we wanted to do and see, we walked out the front gate of the zoo and a few blocks to a bus top.

We road the bus for at least a half an hour before we arrived at Tiananmen Square, the governmental area we had been at the week before. Our plan was to see Chairman Mao. They have him preserved in a refrigerated mausoleum that they raise twice a day. His embalmed body is in encased in a crystal casket and draped in a red flag. We had arrived too late because the guards told us it was closed for the day. Bummer. After that, we decided to walk and find something to eat. We saw a few restaurants nearby, but none of them looked appetizing. We should have just gone to the first one anyway because after a while, they all look the same. Some of our group wanted to go to KFC so we walked toward it. KFC and McDonalds are very, very common here in Beijing. I would venture to guess that there are 100 of each here. We have seen them all over. Upon arriving in front of KFC though the group decided not to give in to our American cravings because we could have it at home and went to the next door Chinese restaurant.

As usual, we split up into two tables worth of people, looked at the menu and picked out four or five dishes that sounded appetizing. (What did we eat?) Lauren and the boys sat at one table and the rest of us sat at the other. They ordered pigeon and Nick ate the pigeon brain.

After eating, we headed back past Tiananmen square in a quest for what is known as the Underground City. At the height of the Soviet Rift in the mid 1960s, Mao Zedong gave orders to carve out a vast network of bombproof tunnels beneath Beijing. Part of this subterranean highway, which was built all by hand is open to the public. The area is said to have all kinds of rooms including a hospital, storage space for food and water, and meeting rooms. I cannot imagine what it would have been like to have all of Beijing underground. After walking for quite a long way and asking several guardsmen along the way for directions, we still hadn’t found it. At this point, half of our group decided to turn around, do some shopping, and go home. The rest of us trudged on in hopes of finding it.

Eventually, as many often do, two men driving tricycles that had passenger benches on the back agreed to take us to entrance to the underground city. We had seven people so we needed another tricycle, but one came up as we were making our plans. We bargained with the man for 20 yuan per tricycle, we piled in, and we were off! This ride was absolutely the highlight of the day. They took us down back alleys and past plenty of construction and poverty. These were the “houtongs” we had read about in our guide books. Hutongs alleyways that lead to the dwelling areas of Beijingers that don’t live in apartments. You can peer into the entrance to the home area and see the one or two room homes the people live in. We saw children running and playing, men and women standing around, the entrances of their seemingly one room homes, and a big construction site of what seemed like a road, all from a back alley. When we finally arrived at the entrance, the drivers pointed to a closed door that seemed like it hadn’t been opened in years indicating where the underground city was. We all thought that he should have told us it was closed. Ha! We piled back into the carts and paid another 20 Yuan to get back to the main road. Near the main road a family was selling a bunch of produce from their home. They seemingly had a prime location in comparison to their neighbors. I just wonder what they all do in the winter time when it snows and blows. I mean their homes looked sturdy, but I have no idea how they heat them. I also wonder I they have to dig out the alley with a shovel or if the government goes down those roads. Beijing is huge. They surely do not have time. I’ll have to ask DongFang.

After that little adventure, we walked clear back to the main Tiananmen Square area again via a side road. There were families out playing in the exercise parks, people selling food from little carts in the streets, and people just out and about. We stopped at a few shops to pick up some souvenirs. Again, we bargained for the items. I bought a couple of fancy fans. It seems like more and more the Olympics are becoming of presence in the city. There are now souvenir shops specifically for the Olympics all over and we are seeing signs and such everywhere. Even the TV’s that play on the buses are showing Olympic advertisements. The sponsors are recognized on the sides of buses.

After a long day of adventure, we finally waited at the bus stop for our bus and headed home. We were tired! We talked to the other group about the remainder of their afternoon and prepared for the week ahead by doing laundry, looking over our schedules, and catching up on emails and journals.