Gosh I miss Beijing.
It’s a huge, crazy city, much of it unpolished to someone used to
American cities, but it had become familiar to us in our short time there and
we had developed a comfort level in navigating the city. It helped too that most street signs and
other way-finding signs were in English, along with Chinese. It had the air of
a capital city and an international city.
Hefei, the capital of Anhui,
which is the province Matteo is from (Hefei is pronounced Huh-fay and Anhui, An-way) is only a two-hour flight from Beijing,
but so different. Now I know what
adoptive families mean by being “in province”.
This is the China tourists don’t usually see.
Our early morning flight on Air China landed in a blanket of
fog in Hefei. And that fog might
actually be more fog than pollution given that Hefei has a humid, sub-tropical
climate and isn’t as dry as Beijing is. I’m
sure the city looks a lot better on a sunny, blue-sky kind of day. Instead it looked depressing muted in gray.
This city of over 5 million people is in the process of
building its first subway system and our hotel near downtown is surrounded by a
construction zone. Chris and I took a
walk after lunch and finally got the ultimate pedestrian experience. With no sidewalks around the hotel due to
construction, we walked in traffic alongside the locals and then came to the
intersection and made a dash for the other side. Beijing’s traffic was an organized chaos with
cars, whereas in Hefei, the traffic is more what we thought China would be
like. Beijing spoiled me to the point
that I was surprised to see a moped motoring towards us on a crowded sidewalk
here in Hefei.
Since we’re here until Saturday, we asked our guide where we
can eat and she advised us to eat at the hotel because she she’s afraid we’ll
get sick from eating food anywhere else.
The noodle and rice restaurant here in the hotel is delicious, but as a
vegetarian, I’m envisioning eating plain noodles and friend rice with egg for
the next five days.
My nervousness about eating the same thing every day and our
worrying about being confined to hotel once we have Matteo prompted us scope
out the city and see what we could find.
When we exited our hotel, we picked a direction and just started
walking. After dodging traffic by our
hotel, we were relieved to come upon a pedestrian mall that stretched for
blocks. It was fun at first, but then
the smell (Beijing smelled of coal, but Hefei smells of human waste) and the
crowds of people, and the sight of people peeing in the street and skinned
animal carcasses hanging from ropes at market stands all started to overwhelm
me. We headed back towards the hotel and
turned down a side street where we passed by a large, non-descript
building. I saw signs for Haagen Dazs,
Coach and Tumi through the windows, so we stopped in to see if anything else
was in there. It turns out it was a
seven-story mall with every high-end clothing, purse, watch or shoe store you
can name. Compared with the throngs of
people on the pedestrian mall, the indoor mall was less crowded and a lot
mellower. I’m not a mall person at all,
and not a shopper, (except for that Haagen Dazs, I’m not sure there’s any store
in there I can afford to buy something from) but our discovery was a welcomed
one. It would be a safe (and clean)
place to walk with Matteo and there were a couple of restaurants on the top
floor that looked delicious.
Back at our hotel, we’re enjoying the last few hours of the
“vacation” portion of this trip. At 9:00
a.m. tomorrow morning (7:00 p.m. Sunday back in Minnesota) we’re going to the
Civil Affairs building here in Hefei to finally meet Matteo. I can hardly believe this day is almost
here.
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