Day: 241

I finally managed to sleep until 8am; so fully rested and ready to tackle the day I had a cup of coffee and an omelet before hitting the odorific streets of Beijing. Having already got passed caring about the usual morning smells of decaying trash and urine that seem to coat Beijing’s alleys, I was able to stroll right past to get into the city center. The only issue is that in that 500 meter stroll I realized that today is what we call in California a Level Red Smog Day, the type where teachers have to keep their students inside to avoid permanent damage to the children’s cardiovascular systems.

In the hope that I could find something to do in my completely lively state of rest and caffeine, I trudged onward. It didn’t take long and my contacts and eyeballs were battling it out to see who could itch more. My skin felt coated with grime and needless to say it was less than the ideal situation for taking striking pictures.

After an hour, I gave up and headed into my hostels lounge, only to find that most everyone else staying there was in the same predicament. Boredom became the day, complete with lengthy periods of interneting and card games with a horde of Israeli ex-army kids. This went on all afternoon, until me and the other five people on the way to Pingyao, set off to catch the bus in the early evening.

The most exciting part of this day was trying to figure out which of the buses was ours. We wandered from driver to driver saying “Pingyao” in my Standard American dialect. Only to have confused looks as a reply. Finally we just waved our tickets in everyone’s face until a mob of people in love with one of the girls blond hair took us to the appropriate bus.

“Pingyao?” I asked once again.

Same confused look. Followed by a look at the Chinese characters on our tickets, and him saying with some amount of zest, “Piinyaawwwooo!!!” (Try saying it out load and that is exactly how it’s supposed to sound. Complete with the exclamation.)

“Piinyaawwwooo!!!” I energetically mimicked. He smiled and gave me a thumbs up. We threw our bags in the storage hold and climbed onto this “sleeper-bus”. “Sleeper-bus” basically means instead of chairs the bus is equipped with beds, albeit very small Chinese size beds. I didn’t have my tape measure, but from my carpentry days I’d have to say about 18″ wide and 5’3″ long. Not the most comfortable, but at least I was getting away from Beijing’s death-filled air.

The night went quickly, with myself managing even to get some sleep thanks to the vibrating of the bus and the excessively long play list on my Ipod.

We only broke down twice; which both times took every Chinese man on the bus to get out and stand around the engine at the back of the bus smoking cigarettes. Each time after a considerable amount of repairs- which from my vantage point near the front of the bus sounded very like a pipe wrench being slammed repetitively into the engine- and at least a carton of cigarettes being smoked, on and off the bus, by an assortment of ten men, the engine would come to life and we would be on our way.

5:15am: The bus pulls off the highway into a rather desolate stretch of land and urban cityscape and the driver announces:

“Piinyaawwwooo!!!”

I guess the only passengers on the bus for Pingyao were the six of us, because everyone else stayed asleep as the driver’s assistant unloaded our backpacks on the side of the road. Not really knowing what our location was in relation to the classic Chinese city I read about, I whipped out my little language book. Through some amount of page shuffling the driver and I decided that if we walked north, I’d be to the hostel where I booked for the next couple of nights.

It was only a couple of kilometers and we came into the abandoned streets of the walled city of “Pingyao”. I found my hostel, woke up the night staff and found a bed. I didn’t feel exceptionally tired but, as soon as I closed my eyes I was out.