Nin hao! Xie Xie! (Hello! Thank you!)

At the Beijing airport immigration station, on the way to my plane back to Seoul, the immigration officer didn't hand me my passport. Instead, he gestured for me to go back to a desk of other officers.

"What about my passport?" I asked, a little nervous. I'd been with my friend Gyung-li almost the entire time I'd been in Beijing, and so had experienced none of the difficulties of being a foreigner in China. It would be just the thing if I ran into some trouble on my way out.

He called another officer over, who took my passport and then gave it to yet another immigration officer. Who then proceeded to walk toward one end of the room, talking on his walkie-talkie. I followed. He turned after about three meters and walked the other way, still talking on his walkie-talkie. I followed. He turned again and walked again in the original direction. I followed. He turned again and walked back. I followed. He turned again. Finally, I got tired of playing, and just watched him. He walked only a few steps away, and came back to me.

"Can you tell me what the deal is?" I asked, both annoyed and anxious.

"What is your name?" he asked, while looking at my passport.

"Helen Kim."

"Where were you born?"

"Seoul, Korea."

I watched him as he looked at my passport, looked up at me, looked at my passport, looked up at me, and looked at my passport again. Finally, I said, "That's really me, you know. It's just from a long time ago."

He peered at my passport one last time before looking up and, with a sudden grin, said, "Okay." And he handed me my passport.

I can't decide which of the possible scenarios was actually going on:

1. It was "Give Americans A Hard Time" Day at immigration, as retaliation for the fingerprinting process at U.S. airports, or for any number of other reasons.
2. It was "Give Citizens of Countries We Find Annoying A Hard Time" Day (a Japanese man and a Mongolian woman were also being hassled at the same time).
2. They hadn't seen an Asian American before, and didn't believe I was actually American.
3. As my dad suggested, perhaps they thought I was Chinese and trying to get out of the country by passing myself off as American, with a false American passport.
4. There was actually something fishy about my passport.

No, you go on and pick one. Or make up one of your own!

Other than that brief little blip, which was more funny than anything, I had a great time in Beijing. Since it was bitterly, punishingly cold, I didn't do as much sightseeing as I might have normally done, but I did get to see the Temple of Heaven, Tianenmien Square, and the Forbidden City. Plus, what the Lonely Planet calls "charming" hutong, the old neighborhood-y houses of the city, but what I would honestly call closer to slums.

I was a bit under the weather and fighting off a possibly Larium-induced nausea the first day and and half, but when I saw Tianenmien Square on the day after I arrived, the nausea vanished. It, like the other cultural treasures I saw, completely lived up to all expectations. You know how sometimes you go visit something that you've read or heard about, and you think, "Oh. Well, that's cool," and walk away just satisfied to check something off the list but not blown away? That's not the case with China. Or at least, with the stuff in Beijing. Tianenmien Square is really that big. The Temple of Heaven is really that graceful and beautiful. The Forbidden City is really that majestic.

Quick notes about each:
- Seeing Tianenmien Square reminded me of the 1989 crackdown, with the famous moment of one lone protester standing before a line of tanks. Gyung-li has never seen a photo or depiction of that moment -- par for the course in China.
- We got to the gates to the Temple of Heaven just before closing time and tried to muscle our way in without a ticket, since it was 15 minutes to closing, but the guards would have none of that, so we had to buy a ticket after all. Which was worth it, because as aforementioned, the Ming era temple is just stunning. I'm not an architecture buff, but something about the temple made me go, "Wow. Wow."
- As we walked out of the huge park that houses the Temple of Heaven, we stopped and listened to four people, one playing a one-stringed violin-type instrument and the others singing, as they practiced Chinese opera, probably for fun. Screechy, but very cool.
- Yesterday, because Gyung-li had a toothache and was tired, I managed to persuade her and her parents to let me go out by myself to see the Forbidden City. (Not an easy task! Chinese hospitality decrees otherwise, for one, plus her parents were obviously projecting their concerns about their daughter on me, and wound up writing two identical notes --one for my bag and one for me to carry in case I got separated from my bag! -- that said something like, "Please help this person call me at my office and I will come and get her.") The constant wind (without wind chill it was 10 degrees F) made visiting the wide open courtyards of the Forbidden City something of a chore, despite the elegant tones of Roger Moore's voice on the audiotape. Nevertheless, I pushed through, admiring some of the 11,000 dragon head drainspouts, and the 200-ton marble sculpture of dragons playing in the clouds, which was brought to the Forbidden City from a distant suburb by 20,000 people over 28 days (they dug wells every 3 miles and used the water to create ice slicks on which they pushed the massive stone).

So if I didn't see that many sights (the Great Wall, for one), then what did I do for four days and three nights? Well, for one, I got to live with Gyung-li's parents for a few days. They obviously adore and dote on their only daughter. Her father, an electrical engineer, has a long, pale, gentle face that broke out in a smile whenever he saw her. Even when watching her watch television, he wore a pleased look, and would often reach out and give her head a quick stroke, as if to reassure himself that she was there. Gyung-li's mother, a very youthful-looking 50-year-old, was less outwardly doting, but took care of everything for her as if she were a baby.

They live on the outskirts of Beijing, in a first floor apartment with two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen, living room, and a spare room. When I first saw their apartment, I thought, "Dear lord, they're much poorer than I thought! How are they affording to sent Gyung-li to Korea for school? And how much am I imposing on them by being here?" (Bare bulbs. Spare rooms. They had to send out for extra gas for hot showers.) But after the second day or so, I changed my mind. Not having anything to compare with, I can't say for sure, but I think they're probably solidly middle class, perhaps even upper middle class. (Large TV. Steam heat in every room. Indoor plumbing.)

The reason why I mention all this is not to show how much of a first-worlder I am, but -- well, maybe just a little. When we got there, Gyung-li asked me rhetorically, "Our house is nice, isn't it?" and I made some sort of agreeable noise, but I couldn't help comparing her house to the last house I lived in with my parents, in Van Nuys, California, with its wall-to-wall carpeting, white leather couches, sleek dining table, two and a half baths, and swimming pool in the back. All that stuff is gone now, but growing up, it seemed so normal to me. When I first came to Korea, I went through a similar kind of shock -- everything is, inevitably, compared to what you grow up with, so the comparatively small, bare rooms of my grandmother's apartment in Songnae seemed a step down.

I think I had a point, but I lost it. Bedtime's approaching. Speaking of which, that's another thing I did a lot of in Beijing -- sleep. Gyung-li's parents set up a nice little cot for me in her room every night, and every morning cleared it away, after I'd been in it for a good 10 to 12 hours. Sleeping and eating -- two of the most pleasant activities in life. Gyung-li's mom is a great cook, and there was like, a feast, every night. Shrimp in sweet sauce, bok choy-type cabbage with mushrooms, stewed fish, celery with beef, rice cake soup -- mmm. The only thing I didn't like was zhou, a kind of rice gruel. In addition to being bland, it was -- well, to a palate used to Korean food, that's enough of a crime. There's rice gruel in Korea too (and rice gruel saved me in Cambodia), but zhou was disappointing.

Sleeping, eating -- what could complete the package? What else but shopping? The price of goods is so low in Beijing compared to even Korea (as Gyung-li reminded me, everything these days is made in China), even a tight-fisted money-grubber like me couldn't help but buy, buy, buy. From now on, I'm getting all my clothes made in Vietnam or buying them in Beijing. Since it's the lunar new year tomorrow, massive sales cut the already ridiculously low prices in half. A pea coat-style tailored jacket that would easily go for $250 in the U.S. was already selling for one fifth of that -- before the fifty percent discount. So I bought it. As well as three new pairs of shoes, including the perfect black summer sandals I've been looking for for years ($20), the knee-high leather boots I've been looking for for the past decade ($60), and the latest Pair of Black Shoes That Don't Quite Fit But Are So Cheap I Must Buy Them. This pair actually fits, though, which made the $8 price tag very, extremely and absoliciously palatable.

Look at me, the avowed non-materialist, gushing over consumer goods! And in China! Weirdness. The gleaming shopping malls and stores of Wangfujing, the shopping district, feel like they belong in the States, or in Japan, or Korea. Gyung-li's parents' bathroom shelf contains Pantene and Herbal Essence products. The snack on my Air China flight was a packet of Kit Kats. The supermarket I went into had more foreign products than Chinese -- Nestle water, Oil of Olay night cream, Danish butter cookies, Japanese jellies, Chilean wines.

Beijing: another big city, in another developed country. That's what it felt like, anyway. I know it's not a representative sample of life in China. Next time I'd like to see something a little less like home. But next time won't be for a while. For the next couple months, anyway, I'm sticking close to home. Tonight, shortly after I got home, my great-aunt opened up the pot of stew on the stove for dinner, and I thought, "Oh, it's so good to be back."

Tomorrow: back to the dilemma. Interestingly, my actions seem to indicate that I've decided to go, but my thoughts indicate that I haven't decided at all. I'll explain tomorrow.

By the way: happy lunar new year! I hope the Year of the Monkey is a good one for you.