Dammit, Digilio was right (part One of One)

When my friend Danny Digilio exclaimed in an email from Taiwain (I think, but I could be mistaken, might have been another densely populated Asian city), "There are so many Asians here!"  I thought, based on the obviousness of his claim, that he was an idiot.  But since arrival in Beijing, the sheer number of people everywhere has kept the thought constantly on the tip of my mental tongue.  Above is my attempt at a picture of my subway car, which was being crammed full of people from the outside by station attendants, as in this famous video.  My picture doesn't capture it, but that's what's about to be happening here.     

The airport express train into the city was fairly navigable, and the subway system, once I'd gotten a briefing from a friendly Canadian embassy worker, was a fairly intuitive "loop with spokes," a la Chicago.  My hotel, booked on http://www.agoda.com/ , was the Days Inn Forbidden City.  Armed with the hotel name (written in English and Mandarin), street address (English & Mandarin as well), district, (Dongcheng), nearest subway stop (Wangfujing, where I got off), and the Forbidden City name baked right in, it couldn't be hard to find this place.

Boy was I wrong.  3 hours.  3 hours is the time it took to find my hotel, (in the 2 degree-Celsius weather having packed no jacket because I didn't even plan on coming to Beijing), asking cops, train workers, restaurant employees, beggars, young people, old people, dogs, lampposts, and kitchen sinks where Nanheyan Street is.  Verbally or in writing.  English or Chinese.  Once I finally get proper directions, I find out this street more or less forms the Eastern border of the Forbidden City, and at any given time was no more than 200 yards from anyone I asked.  Oh yeah, when I got there, they didn't understand how to process my booking from my iphone, so that ordeal took another hour. 

To quote the immortal Cher Horowitz, of Clueless fame (yes, I had to google her name): I know you can be overwhelmed, and I know you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just want to get the f*ck out of China within 4 hours of getting there?  I'm tired.