“Beijing Capital,” read the display above the boarding gate, and I was unsure. The air around the departure hall buzzed with anticipation of the boarding call, but I felt rather disconnected from that eager atmosphere. I thought I had long embraced the fact that chasing the imaginary roads was foolish, and that I wanted to follow them anyway. But the uncertainty breathed fresh doubt into my mind. Nothing assured me that the road ahead really led to Dublin, and I feared that I would face my inevitable failure and disappointment. Besides, I couldn’t explain to myself why I was even boarding the flight to Beijing when I was really supposed to be going to Seattle. Visiting my uncle the other day in South Korea also made me question the reason for going to Beijing. His illness was more serious than I had expected, and the relatives were in a grim mood. I felt rather uncertain about taking off to follow some absurd idea instead of being there for them.
That’s where my head was at as the twenty-four-day countdown toward Dublin was beginning. It was the morning of October 5th, and I needed to be in Seattle by October 28th, meaning I had to reach Dublin even earlier than that. The distance to cover appeared insurmountable, the idea felt absurd, and the doubt was fresh in my mind. Still, when the boarding announcement was made, I felt at least somewhat excited that my daydream was finally coming to life. But the excitement was short-lived. As the plane took to the clouds, doubt reared its head again, whispering the questions that I couldn’t answer.
After flying over an ocean dotted with small landmasses, the plane passed endless wind farms on the shore of China and vast mountains and agricultural fields. China was closer than I had thought. In no time, the plane was overlooking industrial areas and concrete high-rise apartments that showed their age with their grim colors. By the time it started descending, I started forming the answer to the question about why I was going there. I was going there because I wanted to. It came down to a choice–I had made a decision to buy this plane ticket and be in this seat. This answer was logical and still better than nothing, although it wasn’t fully comforting. Pensive, I landed in Beijing Capital Airport at around ten o’clock. The airport was massive, and there were only a few other foreigners at immigration. Some Russian families and Japanese tourists were lined up at the passport control labeled “The Belt and Road Lane”.
While waiting in line, I was bracing myself for tough questions because I had listed Xinjiang as one of the destinations in the immigration card. And at that point I hadn’t even bought a ticket out of China, nor had I booked any accommodation apart from the first night at some random hostel in Beijing. To add to the anxiety, I wasn’t sure how the whole visa-free scheme for Australians was going to work out. China had announced it just a few months earlier, and there was little information about how it worked in practice. Even when I was boarding the flight in Seoul, I was held back at the gate because the airline insisted that Australians needed a visa to enter China, until they made several long phone calls to be convinced otherwise. The line slowly moved forward, and soon it was my turn. The immigration officer signaled me over and gave a brief stare-down. He flipped through my passport and the immigration card a few times. He asked, “First time in China?” I said yes, and thunk! the passport was stamped. After clearing customs, I downloaded a payment app, which took a good twenty minutes on a slow Internet connection. According to the limited English-language information available, I apparently needed it to pay for anything in the country. With some help from the people around me, I used it at a vending machine to buy a train ticket toward the city center. It was mildly exciting, and I even felt curious about what awaited me in the city.
But when I got to the city and the day went on, I realized that something was off. I was overwhelmed by the urgency that I needed to be constantly moving to cover the distance ahead. It would take me a couple of days to get into the rhythm of the trip and know how to live with that urgent feeling. Moreover, I couldn’t shake the thought of my ailing uncle and the worried relatives. With all this weighing on me, everything around me felt just wrong, and the things that had never bothered me before when traveling began to grate on my nerves. The streets seemed unwalkable, the traffic was heavy, the air wasn’t clean, and I was hungry and didn’t know where or what to eat. And virtually no one spoke English. The state of the room at the hostel added to the distress. It was unkempt with little sunlight or ventilation. It reeked of cigarettes, and there was a sick person on the top bunk coughing and spitting every ten seconds. All of this made me want to move on from Beijing already. I wasn’t even sure that I could, because it was the national holiday known as Golden Week, and all the train tickets were selling out rapidly.
I forced myself to check out a few places near the city center, but that didn’t help me calm down. My rushed footsteps didn’t really take me anywhere because I had underestimated the scale of things in China. Everything was truly massive, and there were just so many people everywhere. The streets roared with the sound of the crowds all talking at the same time. To make matters worse, many roads were closed with checkpoints because of Golden Week, making it more difficult to navigate the madness. Exhausted and disheartened, I found myself at an enormous security checkpoint near Tiananmen Square. After some confused looks when I presented my foreign passport to the police officers, they started talking and eventually let me through after a pat-down. I couldn’t get too close to Tiananmen itself because it was barricaded, probably because of the national holiday. But impressive buildings surrounded Tiananmen Square, and they bustled with enormous crowds flowing in and out. I didn’t know what those buildings were, and at that point, didn’t even want to know. I just wanted out. The sound of the crowd was deafening, and I thought I was going to lose it.
My legs were tired. I was dehydrated, agitated, and hungry. I just wanted to go back to the hostel and reserve a train ticket out of the city before it sold out. But navigating the closed streets and checkpoints ate up a good chunk of time, so it was already dark when I got back. I didn’t know where to have dinner. Everything looked extremely spicy or salty. The hostel wasn’t in a very touristy area either, so the options were rather limited. I finally ordered some dry noodles at a random restaurant but could barely finish half. After that, all I wanted to do was take a shower, but I couldn’t buy a towel because no one would accept cash and the payment app was having issues verifying my passport. While I was standing around baffled by the fact that I needed a passport to use a vending machine, a local student helped me get a towel from the machine.
I finally sat down and started planning my next move. Under different circumstances, Beijing would have been an interesting city to explore, but my heart just wasn’t in it. Since it was only the first of many stops leading to the final destination, I couldn’t afford to just stay put and wait to regain my composure. So I decided to just leave. Still, there were some things to be seen, such as the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. It turned out that the tickets for the Forbidden City had been sold out for days. This news didn’t even disappoint me because I didn’t really care anymore. On the other hand, I did want to see the Great Wall. So my plan was to go to the Great Wall the following day, and catch a sleeper train to Xi’an that night.
Around nine o’clock, fighting the urge to sleep, I managed to book transport to the Great Wall. The pickup was at 8:00AM the next morning, at some place far from the hostel. And I also managed to book one of the last remaining train tickets to Xi’an for the following evening. Given that it was Golden Week, I was lucky that there were any tickets left. I was anxious until I clicked the checkout button while on my slow Internet connection, because if there was a glitch in the payment or the ticket sold out, my plan for escaping the city would have been for nothing. When I was done, it was already past midnight, and the next day promised no rest. I had to make a very early start to go to the pickup point. On top of that, I needed to pack up and check out in the morning because I was leaving the city that night. I was mentally exhausted from all the stress and planning. I had nothing more to give. I set the alarm and fell asleep hungry, marking the end of the chaotic first day of the trip.