Beijing: Today We Go Theme Park?

Nearly every day Li would ask Beau or Lucas, "Today we go theme park?" And nearly every day Beau or Lucas would tell him, "No, not today." But on June 3, 2013 Li got to hear Lucas say, "Li! Today we go theme park!" We had agreed to meet at 9:00AM in the lobby, but Beau and Li overslept. Seriously! The theme park is all Li could talk about for days, then he didn't even show up when we were set to leave. Lucas and I waited for a while, but then got hungry and left to have breakfast and return later for the slackers.



Lucas and I were tired of the bakery, so we just wandered for a while until we saw a restaurant that looked appealing. For the record, "appealing" in this case meant an English menu or pictures. We chose a place and didn't notice until we sat down that it was the dumpling restaurant from a few nights previous! The dumplings for breakfast were just as divine as they had been for dinner. After our breakfast of dumplings on our way back to the hostel Lucas almost got hit in the head with a watermelon. There was a fruit market that had just received a shipment of watermelons. Four of the workers had an assembly line set up leading from the van full of watermelons in which they threw the melons, one by one, to each other until the van was empty and the display crate was full. It was a good system except that they were throwing the fruit across the sidewalk and Lucas stepped into the line of fire. Luckily they saw him in time. I went in the shop to buy some fruit and Lucas stayed outside, smoking a cigarette, watching the men work. It was a bit mesmerizing. Buying the fruit proved to be way more effort than it was worth because in China people cut in front of you in line and cashiers just decide to close their register. I got my cherries and nectarines in the end, though, in case you were wondering.

Back at the hostel Li and Beau were up and apologetic for oversleeping. Beau had made some new Australian friends, Steve and Darren. We invited them to the theme park with us. We were about out the door when Li told us he had some noodles he needed to eat before we left. Come on, man! We were going to the theme park at his insistence! He wolfed the noodles down faster than anyone I've ever seen eat them and we were on our way. At the last minute another Chinese guy staying at the hostel, Hi-yi (pronounced Hee-yee), came with us.

We had to take a bus to get to the theme park, which, by the way, was called Happy Valley. Dong told us it was called Happy Happy Valley, though, so that's what we kept calling it. On the bus to Happy Happy Valley Hi-yi told us we could get a group discount if we had ten people. There were three Chinese girls on the bus and Li asked if they were going to the theme park. Two of them were and they agreed to be part of our group to get the discount. We just needed to find one more person. We did find another guy in line, but for reasons unknown to me, we still couldn't get the group discount. Maybe we actually needed more than ten people. No matter, we were just excited to be there.

Our crew at Happy (Happy) Valley theme park

We finally walked through the gates of Happy Happy Valley around 1:30 or 2:00PM. Even though it was a Monday, the park was still really crowded because, well, it's China. We waited in line for the first roller coaster for at least thirty minutes, probably closer to forty-five. We were watching the impressive coaster speed overhead and Li asked me if I was going to be OK. Li is funny in that he's a little bit sexist, but not in a way any righteous feminist could get angry about it because that's just how it is in China. When we went out to dinner and I tried the Chinese vodka, Li was incredulous. He had the same shocked expression later when I had a beer. He actually said, "You're drinking?! You're a girl!" Which was funny because he had seen girls drink before. Li never asked me what the plans were, and was just generally baffled at my independence. So at Happy Happy Valley I wasn't surprised when he only inquired about my nervousness at the fast ride, not any of the men. The roller coaster turned out to be the fastest ride I can recall riding. It starts out slow, goes around one bend, then comes to a complete stop. But only for a second. Then it shoots forward like a bullet. It doesn't stop for long, but it was long enough for Darren, who was sitting next to me, to put his armsjust afar enough in the air for them to smack me in the face when we were propelled forward. He didn't leave a mark, but it could have been bad. The roller coaster was a lot of fun. It was worth the wait in line, but not to wait twice.

After the roller coaster Li bought a Super-Soaker. His sexism here played to my advantage because he would only shoot my legs and feet, but held nothing back with the guys. Some of the guys played some of the classic carnival games, Li won a little stuffed monkey that he alternately called his baby and punted it like a football. If the thing had resembled either a baby or a monkey I might have felt a little bad for it (even though it was an inanimate object). We went on one ride that was two towers. Everyone sits around in a circle with the tower to their back, so you see all of Happy Happy Valley and much of Beijing from the top. One tower shoots the riders up, then slowly brings them down. The other slowly brings them up, then drops them.

Li and Hi-Yi

We had lunch (with beer of course), and went on another ride. This one was kind of like an upsidedown hammer. It was over water and we swung really high up, almost backward, then would come down and go the other way. We went on another roller coaster, too. This one wasn't as fast as the first one, but was set up so our feet were hanging and there was a lot of twists and turns and being upsidedown. I can't say which roller coaster I liked best because they were quite different. There was another ride we wanted to do- it was a water ride, but they stopped admitting passengers at 5:00. By this time most of the rides were closed and Hi-yi had a train to catch, so we left. There were some BMX bikers warming up for a show later, but we weren't very interested.

We all had dinner at Chinese Sam's, then I turned in early because I was tired and had to be up early for the Great Wall in the morning.