By BAILEY BAERWOLF, 8/02/2016. Bullet trains are fun. But what’s even more fun is getting shanzhai’d. That’s me and Jordenn’s new word for being scammed, since it’s such a present theme in the narrative that is our trip. It’s actually not all that fun (clarifying just in case the sarcasm didn’t come across).
We’ve been staying in Airbnb’s as a budget-friendly alternative to hotels, since some of the places we’re visiting can be costly. I was pretty excited when we found one for $37 USD a night right new Tiananmen Square. HA! I should’ve known. The day we got to Beijing was by far the worst we’ve had in China. Here are the highlights:
-our $37 Airbnb was nowhere near Tiananmen; after wandering for over and hour trying to find it, we got shipped out to the suburbs via cab for nearly 100 RMB to find the place we were supposed to call home
-upon arrival, the cab driver viciously yelled instructions at us in Mandarin, as if that was going to increase our comprehension of a language we don’t know—then he left
-our apartment was in a complex of rundown buildings that I wouldn’t pay $5 USD to stay in, let alone $37. The “hosts”—a few young kids hired by a company to deal with the guests, which clearly told us this was a full-on business—claimed there was an error with Airbnb and that’s why the map showed it being downtown
-after translating back and forth for 15 minutes, it was agreed that we would receive a full refund, so then we took a cab back to the city to find Wi-Fi and book a hotel
-KFC didn’t have Wi-Fi
-McDonald’s didn’t have Wi-Fi
-REalllllyl??!?
-Starbucks sort of had Wi-Fi
-The only hotel we could afford was an hour north of the city, but at least we had a bed (it was nearing 10 PM at this point, and we hadn’t eaten since that morning)
-After having dinner in the hotel restaurant, the manager stopped us from leaving as he claimed that our cash was fake
-WHAT
-Yep, it turns out that the cash we took out of an ATM in the Shanghai Metro was, in fact, counterfeit: shanzhai’d, part. II
So Beijing was a bit of a downer. To say the least, we’ve been a little discouraged over the past few days—trying to get money back from all these scams has been a hassle.
Nevertheless, we made it to the Forbidden Palace, the Silk Market (holy shanzhai), and Koolhaus’ CCTV Tower, observing and filming as we go. In the end, however, we learned much more about ourselves than the places we visited (our greatest observation being that we’ve got serious tenacity).
Jordenn and I spent our last hours before jetting off to different places grinding away on our video project—stay tuned for the final cut!
