Marjolein Katsma

Looking for an Internet cafe in Beijing? Try asking a local for “Wăng bā” or look out for this pair of characters (copy them on a piece of paper, or memorize them): 网吧 – it means “Internet Cafe”.

There are actually quite a few Internet cafes in Beijing, most of the “neighborhood” type where mostly young people from the neighborhood come; the most popular activities seem to be games and (video) chatting. Unless you really need a very fast connection (say, for uploading photographs) these neighborhood Internet cafes will do nicely for checking your email or some browsing and are a lot cheaper than the “business centers” found in many hotels (which often do not offer a much faster connection anyway): in a hotel you may pay 10 Yuan for 10 minutes, while an average neighborhood Internet cafe charges 3 Yuan per hour.

Identification is (legally) required, so don’t forget your passport, and expect to pay in advance for the amount of time you want to be online. The system usually gives you a warning 15 minutes before your time is up, but when it’s really up it’s just “poof!” (so if you’re emailing, save drafts regularly…).

In one such place they tried asking 10 Yuan per hour so I just started laughing and wanted to walk away; they then gave me a scrap of paper and indicated I should write down what I expected to pay. “3Y,” I wrote, and they said “OK”. So don’t be fooled into paying more when (currently, fall of 2006) the going rate seems to be 3Y – not super-fast but certainly good enough for some emailing and browsing.

Many of these places also sell some drinks or snacks but it’s a good idea to bring your own bottle of water or tea, just in case.

And, of course, it’s much more fun to do as the locals do with some couleur locale than pretend you’re on business here and pay much more for the same thing!

All the big Western brands are to be found here – and expensive. There’s some good shopping as welll, and I found nice little presents to bring home, and generally wasted some time here.

But what’s disappointing is that it felt like a chique shopping street in almost any big city. There are many places I would return to in Beijing, but Wangfujing is not one of them: one visit is enough. Except to go to “snack street”, that is.

TanZhe Si (TanZhe Temple) is an ancient Buddhist temple dating back 3rd Century BC, located in the Western Hills about 45km West of Beijing.

It is easily accessible by public transportation (subway and bus) as explained clearly on this page – ignore the taxi drivers at the subway exit and the bus station: they will charge 30Y and tell you the bus will come much later than it actually does; the bus costs only 6Y and is much more fun!

Although there are tourists that come here, most are actually Chinese: the day I went I saw only 8 other Western tourists (and they didn’t take the bus). But – especially on a weekday – it’s not crowded at all, and actually much more authentic than the Lama Temple within the city, and more of a real “working” temple as well. The site is huge, and should be explored at leisure – but if you do have time left, there is also JieTai Si, 10km back along the road to Beijing; I skipped this though, preferring to take my time at one beautiful temple rather than rush through two.

Take a scarf or something for the bus though: these regional buses are air-conditioned and I caught a cold!

Sinŭiju is on the North Korean side of the border with China (the Chinese border town is Dandong); the actual border is in the middle of the Amnok river (called Yalu in Chinese) which you can cross by train. At Sinŭiju, the North Korean locomotive is switched for a Chinese one, and then you slowly cross the river over the railway bridge – right next to which was another bridge that now ends abruptly in the middle of the river (see photograph).

Making that journey, we actually did not see much more of Sinŭiju than the train station, where we could not get off the train.

Just like some people claim to have been in North Korea by stepping a few meters over the demarcation line in one of the barracks in the DMZ coming from South Korea, I now claim using the same criteria having been in South Korea – stepping a few meters over the demarcation line in one of the blue barracks, coming from North Korea.

One day, I’ll come to South Korea for real, though!

I’m just back from a 10-day trip in the DPRK, and looking at the tags given here it is painfully obvious how much the ideas about the country are shaped by what we hear in the western press. Go with open eyes and an open mind (knowing that what you’ll be shown is a selection just like what you see and hear in the West is a – different – selection) and you’ll come away with a very different picture of this country.

I really hope that late president’s Kim Il Sung’s idea of reuniting the “two Koreas” (really one country, one people, one language) as federal country with two states, each with their own system, will one day become reality. Economic development in the North (helped already by joint ventures with South Korea and China) will help making that dream a reality – but so will, in a small way, visits from people from other countries, providing a small “window on the world” through those guides (like ours) that are not only interested in teaching about their country but also in learning from their guests. What won’t help is demonizing the country.

I’ve come away admiring these proud people and their old culture and hope to return one day to see more, and see how they’ve progressed.

The picture shows one small aspect I’ve come to love: all main roads across the country (not just entrances and exits to cities as you often see) are lined with flowers. Even when growing food is hard work, a small amount of effort is given to grow a little beauty.

It’s really quite impressive and fascinating to wander around all these carefully-crafted artifacts – some of them huge, others much smaller – without really knowing what they were used for. The variation in size and material (they’re all made of stone, but different types of stone) makes it even harder to fathom what they might have been made for.

If I had to make a guess though, I’d probably opt for a ceremonial usage, possibly combined with food storage (similar to how Buddhist temples in Tibet have stores of tsampo and butter, both of which are food but also used for various ceremonial practices). But if there are no traces of what there was inside these containers, we’ll likely never know for sure.

How disappointing… I found 5 people who (according to an entry they wrote) have apparently “been” there: 1 who has been in the infiltration tunnels, 3 who have been in the DMZ and ventured a few meters into North Korea, and 1 person who “got lost in the city” so that cannot actually be North Korea. Of the 16 others, who has really been there?

Well, folks, I’m really going. My Travel Blog already has the itinerary (though the order of things may change). We’ll be in P’yŏngyang only half the time and actually overnight several times outside of the city (most tours don’t do that). Apart from P’yŏngyang, we’ll visit Kaesŏng, Namp’o and Wŏnsan and go hiking in the Myohyang Mountains and the Inner Kumgang.

So why do I want to go?
First, I’ve been to China several times now, and have been amazed at the breakneck speed this country is developing. I’ve also been reading a lot about China, and found myself wondering what it would have been like a few decades ago. From what I read, North Korea now is very much like China in the 70s, or just before the cultural revolution.
Second, Korea has its own unique culture and language that they managed to hold on to despite Japanese efforts to wipe it out (even forbidding the language). And there seem to be beautiful nature and landscapes.

So I want to go to experience all that. And where else can you still experience real “old-fashioned” communism? (Although not officially communist, Turkmenistan probably comes closest.)

The tour (apart from my own extension of a week in Beijing) is only 10 days actually in North Korea, but given the lack of freedom, that’s probably the longest I could bear. But I’ve heard from people who have been there several times because they actually like it there – and they’re not communists. Something about this country pulls them back. So we’ll see…

What I liked was the restaurant bar at the top of one of the towers (I forgot the name, it’s a long time ago); prices too high to afford for me as a student except for just a glass of wine. I’d sit down at a table at the window in the early evening, and enjoy the sunset, making my wine last till it was dark.

For some reason, we can’t add a web site for a province – yet every single province in the Netherlands has one.

See the official website for Limburg