Stopping to get off and on the same plane in China, my mother-in-law buys fruit from a vendor in the airport, washes it in water in the bathroom and now it's fit for my kids to eat. No thank you. Mind you if we were at the house, this would not be clean enough, so why is it clean enough now? They were happy as clams to be back in China. I was immediately disheartened by the dirt and garbage and rudeness than I was when I first arrived in Beijing.
The next morning we went to check my mom into the hotel across the street. Nope. They don't accept foreigners. What! We want your money, but not you. We walked down the street, past at least 5 other hotels that don't accept foreigners. My father-in-law said it was for security or cleanliness. What they are afraid of us and that we aren't clean? My husband explained it that it's like our liquor licenses, they only allow so many. Still stupid, but I can at least understand that more. But the truth is they charge more money at the hotels that accept foreigners at. Everything has a membership card to get a discount, my in-laws have it, so at least we got that. But the hotel is too far away to walk. We have to take a taxi or bus several stops away!
Luckily there was no school on Thurs & Fri(If I had known this, I would've insisted on staying in Japan longer! So to off set this, they were having school on Sunday! My in-laws wanted me to send them. No! Plus my husband was going to be there, he needs to see the kids!) Since I was staying with my mom at the hotel, I didn't have to get up too early to get back to take the kids to school. We only did a few nights, hopefully my husband can find different accommodations for her when we gets there.
Since this took a lot longer than planned to get her into a room, we changed plans and took a taxi to The Grand View Garden. The Grand View Garden was built to be part of the ground from the Chinese Classic "Dream of Red Mansions". It's compared to a Chinese Romeo and Juliet sort of story written in the 18th century during the Qing Dynasty. I've never read the story yet, but after seeing the grounds, wouldn't mind finding it in English.
A lot of buildings, covered stairways and pavilions on the water to walk around in. Too early for the garden part of it. After I paid the 40rmb entrance fee they stamp the ticket and give it to you. Well she handed me a ticket that said 40 and 20. So she had to give me 20rmb back. Oops her mistake, she gave us a student/senior ticket that they normally require proof. Cheapest place I've seen to get your picture taken in traditional clothes for 20rmd, you get 1 picture laminated. But they let you take your own pictures, so you don't need to buy more. They used to have good food places for dumplings and meat on a stick on the grounds, not anymore.
All day I'm just mad at the whole we don't accept foreigner thing and then when we want to leave to go home, we can't get a taxi. Several refused to look at us, others just shook their head no, a few didn't want to drive that far. Finally we got someone! Called the in-laws to pick the kids up from school, since we couldn't make it back on time. Aghhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Actually, I am really surprised about the hotel thing in Beijing. I assumed foreigners could stay everywhere in Beijing and that was just some stupid law in the really rural parts of the country. In all the time I was in China, there was only one place (Congjiang? in Guizhou) that refused to let the foreigner stay there. AND it annoyed me too because those hotels tend to be cheap. There really is that kind of law. At least, they don't still have the law where foreigners are expected to pay more. The first time I went to the Forbidden City, there was a foreigner price and a Chinese price. The foreigner price was like 4X more expensive. AND there was a time in Nanjing when I got the English menu and a friend got the Chinese menu, and she wanted to order something and I said it was really expensive here and we compared menus and found that everything had two prices (guess which one was cheaper?) Thanks for posting a bit about the history of things, I didn't know even though some of the places I have been to a few times.
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