Beijing: Day one

I woke up early--I'd slept in short spurts all night long--and set off in search of another Lonely Planet-recommended hostel in the neighborhood. This one seemed to have ceased to exist as well, but I'd seen signs for another hostel the night before, and this one I eventually found. I moved, then set out for the Forbidden City and Tiannanmen Square.

The square was still decorated for the Olympics--I enjoyed seeing the Olympic mascots miming various sports. Lines of soldiers marched purposefully here and there, and Mao's portrait beamed down benevolently on us all.

I worked my way into the Forbidden City eventually and was suitably impressed. Apart from the main courtyards, my favorite parts were the exhibits of various treasures, like the empress's hair pins.

My tired feet and the subway bore me back to a street near the hostel, where I had my first real meal in China, a tofu-vegetable dish from which I carefully removed the pork.

My hunger sated, I felt overwhelmingly sleepy and had to force myself to check email and read for a few hours before passing out at around 8:00.

The wall

On October 6 I went to the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall with a bus bull of backpackers who'd booked the trip through our various hostels. It was a 3-hour drive each way to this less-trafficked section of the wall. We walked from there to the Simatai site, 10 km away. It was great to breathe fresh air again and see the wall, and it was a perfect sunny day. But it was another essentially unsurprising activity.

Back in Beijing I collected my backpack from the hostel and headed to the train station. I'd booked a ticket through my hostel, and only "hard seat" class spots were still available--the hostel worker explained that this was because people were returning home after the October 1 holiday week. When I'd read about hard seat in books about China I'd pictured a bench, but these were actually lightly-padded seats with non-reclining backs. I fell asleep almost immediately, and slept for much of the 12-hour trip, but woke up with quite a sore neck.

Xi'an

I got a reasonably early start on the 8th, though I was slowed by some difficulty finding breakfast. I was determined not to eat in my hostel, on the grounds that it was overpriced, smokey, and too backpacker-y. But the coffee shop I found wasn't open yet, and street food just wasn't as ubiquitous as I'd expected. So... I settled for toast and scrambled eggs in the hostel next door, which turned out to be much prettier than mine. At least my quest led me through a strip of park that runs along the outside of the city wall, where early risers were socializing and exercising.

After breakfast I ascended the city wall at the South Gate and rented a rickety bike, then jounced in a rectangle around the central part of town. It's an impressive wall in terms of size, condition, and pretty sentry buildings and watch towers, but once you've seen one strip of it, you've seen it all. It was interesting to get a look at the slums, since I'd only seen the nicer parts of Xi'an to that point.

I used all 100 minutes of my bike rental to get all the way around (it was a long wall, and a rickety bike), then got a taxi to the town's big, ancient mosque. It was a very Chinese-looking mosque complex, and though it looked to be in good condition it had a dusty patina, which I liked. I was disappointed that only worshipers were allowed in the prayer hall, though I understood it.

Short on time, I stopped at several tiny shops in the Muslim quarter for provisions: several pieces of bread, some unidentified fruit, a preserved egg, pastries. I got a taxi back to the hostel, collected my backpack, and took a taxi to the train station.

Yes, I took a lot of taxis in China. It's lazy, but it's hard to justify trying to brave the bus system when someone will drive me where I want to go for a little over a dollar. I am on vacation. But taxis don't solve every problem: The drivers don't speak English, have never heard of my hostel, and didn't understand it I try to tell them the address. A Lonely Planet map (with street names in pinyin and characters) means nothing to them. So I coped by telling them a landmark near where I want to go, then walking. Eventually I started painstakingly copying addresses from Lonely Planet onto a small piece of paper, which they seemed to understand better than my spoken Chinese.

The 16-hour train ride was uneventful and fairly comfortable, with one scenic mountainous stretch before it got dark. I think there was meat in one of the pastries I'd bought, but the others were good. The dried fruit turned out to be crabapples, I thought--I couldn't remember ever having eaten a crabapple, so I couldn't be sure. The preserved egg tasted ok, but looked black and gelatinous and had a chemical smell. When I got to the yolk it was slimy, and I actually gagged. I threw the rest away.

I woke up sometime after 4:00 am and found the other three passengers from my compartment gone. I worried that I'd missed Chengdu, and stayed awake to make sure I wouldn't, if I hadn't already. In fact the conductor would have woken me up; she'd collected my ticket earlier, carefully folded it three ways, and pu7t it in a pocket in a book, handing me a plastic rectangle with my car and compartment numbers. This ritual was repeated in reverse shortly before arrival.

Circadian rhythms

For about two weeks now I've had trouble sleeping. It takes me forever to get to sleep, and then sometimes I wake up in the wee hours and have to start all over again. I don't know why this is--I certainly don't have jet lag. It's as though my body has suddenly decided that it only wants to sleep in the afternoon. And no, insomnia detectives, my problem is not an excess of naps: I think I've taken a grand total of two naps during this sleepless phase.

The strange thing is that while I've been tired, I haven't really been more tired than usual during the day. Which leads me to wonder if I've suddenly started needing less sleep. I remember thinking around the time I started watching Heroes on DVD that if I could pick a superpower, I'd want to be able to go without sleep. Think about it--you could pack two lifetimes' worth of activities into one! But I also distinctly remember thinking that this would only be a good power if I could sleep when I wanted to, because I like sleeping. Hear me, careful-what-you-wish-for gods?