Since the last update, in Xi'an, I have climbed Huashan, returned to Jinan to relax with my grandmother for a few days, planned out my schedule for the rest of the trip (which unfortunately included forgoing Inner Mongolia for more time in other places), met up with my friend Zack in Beijing, and took an overnight sleeper to Shenzhen, where I am now, on the southern coast of the country.

Beijing holds a special place in my heart as it is the first place I ever moved to, foreshadowing the sequence of migrations within the United States that would define my childhood. My mother and I moved there when I was three to be with my father as he wrapped up his doctorate. I still remember the train ride there from Jinan, which before the high-speed rail was a six hour journey, as it was where I had my first ever instant ramen: a cup of hot and sour beef noodles with dried soybeans and a packet of black vinegar.

And it is not just the train ride that stands out so firmly in my memories of Beijing. When I think about those times, so many images flash in my mind, all colored in the same muted hues of the photos my parents took and developed from back then. The Spiderman poster taped to the door of the room we rented for the first few months there. The rooftop of my dad's dorm building, where he would reprimand me any time I tried chucking pebbles off the edge. The roasted chestnuts my mom would buy for the two of us when dad was in class, always warm to the touch and already cracked.

Isn't it funny that my travels over the last four weeks have only driven me further back into my past?

On that end, the part of this Beijing visit that stood out the most was the trip to the Old Summer Palace, 圆明园. Constructed over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, the area was where the Qing emperor resided with his family when not occupied with ceremonial or political affairs. It was a huge complex of gardens and ponds, arranged into a multitude of carefully crafted tableaux. There were even recreations of farms and villages from different parts of the country, all populated with pretend-peasant eunuchs for the emperor to admire.

The Old Summer Palace was looted and razed by the British and French during the Second Opium War. It took over four thousand men three days to burn the entire area down. Many of the stolen artifacts still reside in European museums today.

Nowadays, as the shadows of its ignominious demise have slowly faded, the entire area has been converted into a public park, a mix of beautifully preserved landscaping and bare ruins. My mother took me there frequently when we lived in Beijing, but for me only a single memory of it remains: a boat ride in the central lake of the complex, where my mother and I were punted across by an older man wearing a straw hat.

This time, my friend Zack and I explored the western half of the complex, a series of rolling hills and lotus flowers and wooden forests. We wanted to see the entire area, but we were on a time constraint: by the time we had finished wandering it was already 6:30, and the Olympic Park was a metro ride away and closed at 9, so we left. We had already been to Tiananmen Square earlier in the day. Unlike most of China, it has changed very little, a bubble of stasis in the center of the capital.

After the trifecta of Beijing landmarks and an uphill battle hailing a taxi, we went back to the hotel, showered, and went to a bar specializing in craft beer and American food. That was our first day.

The next day, we slept in and recuperated for a while before heading out to 798, the contemporary arts district in Beijing. Filled with graffiti and coffee shops, it was an atmosphere completely unlike any other part of China I had been in before. At one of the museums we went to, there was even an art installation critiquing the prevalence of surveillance cameras across the country as part of a retrospective of the artist Xu Bing. The whole area was astoundingly progressive.

A decorated post from 798 Arts District.

We had initially planned our third, final day to be the day we climbed the Great Wall, which is a landmark that neither of us have been to. However, after an hour long bus ride and a further thirty minute drive in a van, we found out that the entirety of the area had been closed due to rain, so unfortunately, we never got to see the Great Wall this time around. We were bummed at first, but because of this roadblock we were able to secure seats at a higher end restaurant that specialized in Peking duck, and I will say that they served the best Peking duck I have ever had, and it came with an accompanying duck soup with a creamy broth that was somehow heavy and light at the same time.

The next day was our train ride south to Guangzhou, a 22-hour adventure on a hard sleeper in a carriage filled with sixth graders. The trip south and the accompanying volume of misadventures Zack and I endured when we made it back to his apartment in Shenzhen will be the subject of the next entry.

On the train, I sent my mother a picture of the Old Summer Palace, eighteen years after our last visit together. She brought up the boat ride as well, but recounted a story that I had long forgotten. According to her, in the middle of the boat ride, on that cloudy day so long ago, I looked up at the man punting us across the lake and told him that one day, I would return after making some money, and buy him some cigarettes to smoke. An artifact of my thoughts, finally returned to where it belonged.

And so my trip to the capital ended, and while I was unable to hike the Great Wall for now, I do have time towards the very end of my two months here to go back to Beijing once more before I leave. It'll happen, one way or another.

Maybe I'll even stop by the Old Summer Palace gardens again, this time armed a lighter, a pack of cigarettes, and some fresh memories.