a trail of red lanterns

So I'm terribly behind in getting anything up about my trip to China - the government apparently blocks Blogger there, so couldn't do it from Beijing, and got swept into work and life when I got back. Anyway, better late ..., I guess.

So Beijing, Beijing. It's a cool place. Downright cold, actually. Those Siberian winds are really something.

But other than the chill, which was really only bad one day, Chinese New Year was the perfect time to travel there. Most of the city (population about 15 million people) clears out to go to their hometowns, so there's virtually no traffic and you can zip around to all the tourist sites. And the rest of the city turns out at festivals during the day (we happened across a major fair on our one free day) and stays home to light fireworks - traditionally to scare away evil spirits but today probably more to appease everyone's inner pyro. It was one of the most amazing scenes I've witnessed, standing at our plate-glass hotel windows and looking out over the exploding city - every block, every street, every house, it seemed, aflickering and abooming. Probably one of the biggest collective fireworks shows on Earth. The ruckus went on until about 2 a.m. every night but was totally worth the experience.

Most of the trip was a packaged tour - a great way to hit the highlights for a great price, if you don't mind a little dog-and-pony showing. Got most all the major sites done (Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven, Olympics area - including the Birds Nest, acrobat show, martial arts show) and a small dose of the actual city and people, and it turned out to be a fantastic intro to China. Click the red lanterns to get to my Beijing photos and captions. Once there you can click pictures individually or click the "Slideshow" button to view the pictures as you like.

Granted we were almost entirely on the tourist track, but I was really impressed overall by how clean everything was, and how much the city is obviously spending to impress for the upcoming Olympics. Everywhere, there's construction and renovation projects - more or less thorough. In just a few blocks, you might find newly-gleaming skyscrapers and sleek Western-style shopping malls, as well as hurried walls thrown up around decrepit sections of crumbling huts. And the bathroom horror stories I'd heard might all be true, but mostly there was modern plumbing and conveniences.

But the real story of China, for me, was its place at the end of a three-country spectrum: Japan, Korea and China. I saw all three within the span of a week, and through the preparations and celebrations of the Number 1 holiday for all three nations - Chinese New Year. It was like traveling backward from the spinoff to the source of the party, following a trail of the holiday's signal red lanterns.

And I find that my current home makes so much more sense in the context of its neighbors. Korea has a love-hate relationship with both its neighbors, influenced by milenniums of invasions and culture swaps. Just as Japan is markedly different from Korea, so is China, but to the opposite extent. Where the Japanese are slight, the Chinese are sturdy; where the Japanese are fashionable, the Chinese are sensible. Where Japan is all order and rule, China is color and chaos; where the Japanese are reserved, the Chinese are confrontational. And Korea fits neatly in between the two - geographically and in all other senses.

I've considered jobs in all three countries, and after traveling the others a little I can still see myself in any one. But I returned home with a new fondness for the middleman - no doubt in part because it's nice to return to a new place and realize that the foreign has become familiar. I remember the same sensation in Madrid, and any number of less exotic places I've lived. But it's also the one with the easiest language, if not the most English ... and the one most welcoming of Americans. And in the end I find that being the classic fence-dweller that I am, I like the view from here.