The Weekend Before the 2.5 Week Trip (cont.)

The same day as the Underground City my pengyou men (friends) and I took a trip to Tiananmen Square, where we decided to try to visit some of the museums in the area. It turned out most were closed since we left later in the afternoon, so we went over to the People's Congress. This of course is where the CCP meets to implement laws and such for the party. It appeared that tourists like us (albeit Chinese ones, which I didn't notice at the time because when you are in China for a while you begin to forget that you look different from everyone else) were strolling into the Soviet-style architectural building with no trouble whatsoever. We took this sign as a green light to walk right in and see the inside of the mammoth building in front of us. There was a small, one foot high white fence around the entrance but we decided to ignore it and walk up to the steps. After walking past the parked cars inside the compound and passing lots of tourists without getting any stranger than normal looks (which are stares but not prolonged stares I have to say), we made it to the entrance. At this point, our friend Xiaomai (who is an American) was drinking tea and had to finish it, we were told by the friendly baoan (security guard). After he finished the tea, our baoan asked us if we were on the LIST. We told him (in Chinese of course) we had no idea there was a list. Uhh Ohh. This meant lots of mafan (TROUBLE). He got on his walkie-talkie and talked to his superiors. Now he started to lead us back to the entrance! He said that there was no way we could have made it to the doors without a permit of some kind. The head security guard then started the questioning. "How did you get to the doors? Did you pass this guard here by the opening of the gate or did you jump over the fence?!?" Our answer: "Of course we went through the opening and saw the guard right there. We didn't jump the fence. No, we didn't jump the fence." We said this of course to cover our backs because we had no idea what would happen if we said otherwise. The guard: "Did you fly over the fence then? Hahahahaha." We didn't think this was too funny although we were probably laughing inside. Our response: "No, no we didn't." After a long pause, he told us to run along and we said that we were sorry if we had done anything wrong (We honestly did not know we had done anything wrong before the baoan went on his walkie. There were no signs anywhere! How were we supposed to know?). So we walked quickly out of the entrance and went back to Beida. After the security guard told us to run along, I did spot security guards in both of the "entrances". Somehow when we walked over the short fence, there were no guards in sight and no one told us to stop what we were doing. Well, the rest of the weekend did not exceed the drama that we experienced at Tiananamen Square that day. In a few days, though, we would embark on an epic journey through the mountains and plains of China.