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Inside were a few other people sitting in chairs
lined alongside a wall, and at another check-in desk, I saw a
smiling woman, sitting behind a bullet-proof glass partition,
motioning for me to approach.
“Hi! We're from El Paso, Texas, USA, and we'd like to
register our passports,” I told the woman.
She momentarily lost her smile, then drawled,
“Welcome to the USA. Ah'm familiar with y'all from El Paso, which I
do know is in the USA. I had worked for Ann Richards when she was
Guv'ner. If you want to register your passports, you'll have to
leave them with me for overnight. I'll have them back to you
tomorrow by opening time.”
I thought for a second, then told her, “We can't do
that. We have a train to Moscow the leaves tomorrow at zero seven
hundred. Thanks anyway.”
We exited into the hallway, and I went to the
Sergeant to find out where the head was located. He directed me to
another door, which had a sign on it, stating in both English and
Chinese, “DO NOT STAND ON THE SEAT”. I smiled, remembering the
seats aboard the airplane. Going through the door, I was again faced
by two more doors, but they were clearly gender-specific. After
meeting my needs, I returned to the hallway to hear a the last of
the Sergeant's reply to Enrique:
“...anywhere but here, Sir!” .
He buzzed us out of the hallway, into the anteroom,
from where we went outside. A much smaller building with the
“Starbucks” logo cemented on its side took up half of the parking
lot. We went inside, neither inspected nor were our passports looked
at, but the native cashier sincerely smiled at us, and took our
orders. She happily accepted my VISA charge card, and commented that
she'd like to “visit Texas sometime, but I'm overjoyed to be working
here.” What a difference from the sergeant! We bid each other a
good-day, parting with an polite bow of the heads.
Back outside, we walked past the guards, who had
opened the menacing gate for us, and around the drive to a main
road. We found the “Employees Only” gate, with a man just leaving.
He was clearly an Anglo, who gladly stopped to talk with us.
His name was Joe, and he explained, “Well, actually,
I work through the embassy as part of the remains unit, retrieving
our soldier's bodies from sites in Vietnam.” Seeing the surprised
look on my face, he continued his explanation, “My unit investigates
areas where fighting occurred, but an inconsistency will appear
sometime in the records about how many of our troops went in and how
many returned. I tell you, there are a lot of bodies still there,
even though we left in 1975.” He abruptly shifted the topic of
conversation, as if he might have said something he shouldn't have,
and told us, “You're timing is good. The Chinese guards are
changing. Watch how they stop traffic.”
From around a corner on the opposite side of the
road, a platoon of soldiers, marching in double-time, came to the
traffic light. Without stopping, a guidon broke rank, raced to curb,
whipped his red-disced baton out in front of him, and all motor
vehicles screeched to a stop. He crossed to the center of the road
when two other soldiers broke rank from the rear of the procession,
raced to the middle of the roadway beside the first army man, who
then raced across the rest of the street to our side, while the
second pair put their own batons out to halt traffic. The dozen or
so men marched between the two holding up traffic, and fell in
behind the guidon. As soon as the mass had crossed, the pair
stopping the cars put their batons down and raced back to their
positions at the rear. It was an amazing, well-executed maneuver,
just as practiced and precise as any of the other guard changes we'd
seen elsewhere.
“So you've got a bit of time now?” he asked, then
continued on, “The embassy may be closed, but, if you haven't
already been there, I highly recommend going to the Temple of
Heaven, in Tiantan Park, which won't close for another hour. The
cabs here are cheap, and you won't pay much since we are already
near.”
Thanking him, adding a bow that is part of this
culture, we hailed a cab for a quick drive to the park. We paid the
cabbie 5 ¥ ($0.57USD), which included a 1¥ ($0.11USD) tip, and went
to the entrance gate, this time paying 35 ¥ ($4USD) apiece for
through tickets. This allowed us to visit not just the Temple of
Heaven, but all of the other exquisite structures. What is
significant about these nearly perfect examples of Ming architecture
is that they follow the old Chinese notion that the Earth is square
and the Heaven is round. The buildings are square when in contact
with the ground, but the structure on top, in contact with Heaven,
is round. Looking at the tourist map, the park reflects that; a
semi-circular mushroom cap on top of a rectangular stem. It was a
satisfying and fulfilling visit.
With the Sun starting to hang low in the sky, we
grabbed another cab to take us to the Workers Stadium. It was a good
ways farther, and took longer, mostly due to the rush-hour traffic.
We had no specific interest in the stadium per se, except that it
served as a known landmark to direct the cabbie. Our intention was
the grocery store across Workers Stadium Road, directly opposite the
stadium, where we could buy provisions for tomorrow's train ride.
In the store, we found plenty of inexpensive bottled
water (four 3-liter jugs!), lots of dehydrated meals, and a few
sweets. Loading the water into our recently-acquired green net bag
on top of the elevated entryway, I reached over my shoulder with
both hands and pulled it up my back while stepping away. The weight
was phenomenal, and I staggered, falling to the cement below.
Fortunately, the plastic bottles didn't burst even though they had
tumbled several feet down. Many people, including the beggar we'd
been feeding the past few days, rushed over to me, concerned that I
might have hurt myself. I slowly got up, repeatedly bowing to all
around me as I regained my feet. Katarena and Enrique, although
initially alarmed, quickly understood that I had tried to carry too
much concentrated weight, and each took a jug of water while I took
some of the much lighter dehydrated food.
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