Beijing, China - September 5, 2001
Just took the slow boat to China. I went with another teacher from my former institute who just finished his one-year contract. We took the subway to Inchon, a Korean port city, and then proceeded on a 24-hour boat to the coastal city of Tianjin, about 90 minutes outside of Beijing.
Interesting things about the boat, i'm sure you want to know. First off, there was a casino with about 30-40 employees anxiously and completely standing at attention waiting for some victim to join the mimimum $5 per hand tables. I walked in and out a few times but never saw anyone playing any games there - they had about 7-8 open tables for anyone willing to try their luck. It was actually quite intimidating because they employees weren't able to relax, they had to stand waiting. Due to the high minimum bet, I think it scared anyone from playing, especially if they were the only ones at the table. You could probably go through 4-5 blackjack hands within a minute when you are the only one at the table, combined with $5 minimums, and you could be wiped out of $100 in about five minutes. Actually later on I talked to one of the attendents and he said they hadn't had a single gambling customer in about 5-6 weeks. Probably poor marketing strategy I thought - just lower that mimimum bet to something affordable for boat travelers - who really aren't the deep spenders, or else they'd be on the quick plane to China rather than the slow boat.
Also, on the boat we had an entire crew of ajummas (korean word for old korean women). There were about 40-50 of them, and they had all the typical korean ajumma traits. While we were waiting in line, almost everyone of them cut in front of us! hehe.. reminded me so much of Korea. After about 10 of them somehow squeezed in front of us, we realized that maybe they thought of themselves as one large collective group, so we took iniative and jumped to the front of the line in front of the first one! it worked. The funny thing was that night on the boat, they had loud techno music in the bar. There must have been about 15-20 of them getting drunk and dancing to techno that night! They were laughing and having a good old time! It was pretty funny, because you have to remember these ajummas were all well over 50-60 years old!! They coud really pound down the beer in true typical korean style!
Scott and I also met a few other travelers, one of which was a religon professor in Tianjin, he gave us tons of information about China and Chinese language. He'd actually married a woman from Taiwan about 10 years ago, and had two boys. He was originally from New Jersey, but had been in and out of China for the last 10-15 years maybe? I was surprised too because he was so bilingual it seemed - and so were his two sons. He was white guy, his wife was Taiwanese.
Once we got off the boat, we were swamped by groups of people trying to take us somewhere. We found a minibus that took us somewhat direct to Beijing. That night we found international hostel, and took a walk around the place. Much different than Seoul. I'll save the rest for the next journal entry!
Continued journal entries in China:
September 8, 2001
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