Jan 18, 2008 06:16
What could have been a wonderful memory is now forgotten history. Procrastination reeks of lack of discipline, and this has been my worst bad habit ever since. I really feel bad about this. What a waste of memory.
Beijing is ultra-special because my trip there on October 2006 was my first overseas travel. Beijing started things for me. After Beijing, I have been to 12 cities in 10 countries; Beijing gave me a host of connections and especially the inspiration that brought me to where I am today. Shanghai, Bangkok, Los Angeles, and Colombia could not have happened without me gaining the trust of someone I met in Beijing. Singapore, Bali, and Kuala Lumpur would not happened if I did not meet my future employer in Beijing. Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Shenzhen would not have come too soon had I not molded specific ambitions when I saw how gargantuan Beijing was.
Beijing has also been an obsession, considering my reverence to such luminaries as Sun Tzu, author of universal reference Art of War; Confucius, philosopher who championed virtues that undoubtedly included the inspiration of Justin Timberlake's What Goes Around Comes Back Around (well, what else? Don't Do Unto Others What You Don't Want Others to do Unto You); and Zhang Yimou, celebrated creator of cinema's most magnificent masterpieces.
Beijing is also the catalyst, the seat, and the heart, of what has been hailed as the Asian Century: the shift of global power from the West to Asia, the emergence (or more accurately, re-emergence) of Eastern civilizations and governments, the rise of a new superpower in the form of Greater Asia.
Beijing is also the site of the 2008 Olympics, a long-time source of inspiration and awe for me, which promises to spur a domino effect starting with China's coronation as the new world's #1, relegating longtime leader United States to the backseat.
In a personal level, Beijing was monumental, a turning point. On a global scale, Beijing remains and sustains its being monumental, a turning point.
So imagine my frustration today when I remembered I did not record my memoirs of my first visit to Beijing.
Procrastination is evil, totally evil.
Here's one of it's victims:
Prologue
For the past few minutes, my phone was buzzing with its annoying alarm sound. 5:15 AM, Monday. If I was in Makati I would have automatically shut my phone off and gotten back to sleep; if I had the energy I would reset the alarm to 9:30 AM. In my Makati office Monday mornings are very unremarkable. Sandwiched between the frenzy and pleasure of weekends and the ennui and stress of weekdays, Monday mornings were reserved for chatting with colleagues, checking and answering of emails, making early calls for the week’s appointments, and other mundane things that do not spell actual productivity. But I was not in Makati. I had purposely set the alarm at an hour before daybreak because I wanted to witness something intriguing in this city. I wasn’t even in the Philippines! Some hundreds (or thousands) of miles away from home, I was in probably the most exciting nation in the world today. Its capital would be hosting the 2008 Summer Olympics, its GDP is now on its nth year of consistent growth, its cities are becoming major industrial and financial capitals in the region, and its people remain as hardworking, entrepreneurial, and patriotic as ever. I was finally in the land of my childhood fascination: amazing, gargantuan, unstoppable China.
Part 1: Tiananmen Square
Travel books say that a cant-miss event in Beijing, where I had been staying for a full week already, is the flag-raising ceremony by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) police guards before sunrise in iconic Tiananmen Square. Not wanting to miss it on my final day in Beijing, I dashed to prepare my backpack (inside: a few yuans, a borrowed camera, cellphone, and a map) and got my freeze-proof get-up for the day: shirt over a long-sleeved sweater, a coat, jeans, and a thick scarf. It was autumn in Beijing, and the weather was simply too cold for a dude who has spent every day in his 23-year old life in tropical Philippines. The clock said 5:30; I though I surely had a good chance of making it at the square before sunrise. After a 5-minute train ride from the Beijing Zhang, I arrived at Xianmen, an ancient city gate south of the square. I zoomed to Tiananmen Square at the opposite side of Xianmen. Before getting to the square itself I bought a Y1 Chinese flag, which I noticed was what people were doing. And when I say “people” I mean hordes of locals speaking Mandarin incomprehensibly and a handful of tourists curious enough to witness what was about to unfold. At 5:30 AM Tiananmen Square was unusually filled with people.