Allergic to the Great Wall, the Forbidden Palace, and Other Tourist Attractions

by Lenore Look

  It sounded fun!

  The big sofa bed, where my parents slept, was the Beijing airport.

  The bass-in-net, where the minnow slept, which had high walls, was the Forbidden City. The rug next to it was Tiananmen Square.

  The window seat was Chengdu, home of the panda breeding place, where you can snuggle with baby pandas and learn all about them. They’re so cute!

  The coffee table was Zhucheng, home of the world’s largest dinosaur pit, where you can see bones sticking up all over the place!

  Anibelly’s little bed was Shaolin Temple, birthplace of kung fu.

  Calvin’s top bunk was Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of the deepest gorges in the world, with a wild rushing river at the bottom that will suck you away if you fall.

  And my bottom bunk was the Lantian Man site.

  “What’s the Lantian Man site?” I asked.

  “Some of the first people in the history of the world lived there,” Katie said.

  “Oh.”

  Normally, I like old people. But this was not normal. This was China, where people were inventing stuff as soon as the earth began cooling, which gave me a bad, sinking feeling that these dudes were fossils.

  “No thanks,” I said. “It’s too old and creepy.”

  “How ’bout the Peking Man site, then?” Katie asked. “That’s not as old.”

  But he still sounded dead. I shook my head.

  “Fine, you can be the China Art Museum in Shanghai,” Katie said. “There’s a lot of new stuff there. Modern art. Instead of looking at the past, you can look at the future of China.”

  Katie’s not bad, for a girl.

  In fact, she’s kind of impressive.

  So I wanted to impress her too.

  “I like art,” I peeped.

  Katie smiled.

  “I like modern art,” I tried again.

  Katie was unimpressed.

  So I let her have it.

  “I know where our passports are!” I said.

  I turned and ran into the closet. I had seen where my dad put our passports for safekeeping. They were in his fanny pack that he wears when he travels. It doesn’t sit on his fanny. It hangs below his belly, which is like stringing a hammock under a cliff.

  Wearing a fanny pack is no way to impress a girl. It looks terrible. So I didn’t wear it. I only reached in and took out our passports so we could play the passport game.

  Then I stopped.

  I looked at my dad’s passport. It has a million stamps in it, not like mine, which has only one.

  I flipped through the pages.

  I looked at all his stamps. Myanmar. Laos. Thailand. Vietnam. Cambodia. Malaysia. Indonesia. Micronesia. Polynesia. Rapa Nui. Chile. Peru. Argentina. Senegal. Mauritania. Kenya. Greece. Turkey. And my favorite—a penguin stamp from Port Lockroy, Antarctica. It’s fantastic!

  My dad’s a super-duper traveler. He knows how to catch planes, trains, chicken buses, tuk-tuks, funiculars, gondolas and cable cars. He’s traveled by camel, elephant and water buffalo. He’s gone fishing with one foot in Asia and the other foot in Europe. He’s seen the aurora borealis and the Mona Lisa. He’s been on safari. He’s worn a sampot. He’s seen the Pope and waved at the Queen.

  Katie would be really impressed.

  I came this close to using my dad’s passport for our passport game.

  But I didn’t.

  I knew better.

  If you get caught using someone else’s passport, Calvin told me, you could get booted from China.

  That’s the good news.

  The bad news was that if my dad caught me playing with his passport—even though it was only a game—I could get booted from life.

  “AlvinAlvin!” I heard Bean Sprout shout from the next room. “What’s taking you so long?”

  “C’mon, Alvin,” Anibelly said. “Let’s play!”

  So I hurried out of the closet with only my own passport and Anibelly’s, and into our game. Calvin didn’t need his, on account of he and Katie were passport control.

  Oops! We forgot she was in the room!

  after we had already visited all of China without leaving our room, I didn’t see the point of going out to do it again the next day, especially since my dad’s knees were crying all the way down the stairs, and crying all the way up again when I realized I’d forgotten my PDK, which needed supplies.

  Worse, going out meant walking past the Christmas tree where the “friend” ornament was shouting at me all the way from across the lobby, and I was afraid my dad would hear it too, but he didn’t. Like I said, my dad’s as old as dirt, and when you’re that old, you’re going to miss a few things.

  It was especially silly to go out when it was still so gray it looked like rain, but not dark like a total eclipse, as it had been the day before. Aiyi said the sun never comes out in Beijing anymore, and the skies wouldn’t get any clearer than this, so off we went to see some sights.

  When our car stopped and we jumped out, Pan drove away again, just as he had at the Great-Wall-that-wasn’t-a-wall, to park somewhere and wait for us. He’s so lucky.

  “Welcome to Tiananmen Square, everyone!” Bean Sprout shouted in my ear.

  We were standing in the middle of a HUGE flat, treeless place. It looked nothing like the Tiananmen Square in our room yesterday. Instead, this was so big—gasp!—it was the perfect place for aliens to land a UFO and kidnap tourists for human experiments! There were tourists everywhere—in ugly hats—being led around like pigs on their way to becoming pork chops, by tour guides waving little flags.

  “Ten-an-men,” Calvin said, reading from his book. “It means ‘Heavenly Peace Gate.’ ”

  “The square is named for the main gate to the Forbidden City over there,” Katie said, pointing to a large red building. “This is one of the largest city squares in the world.”

  “And that’s the Mütter Museum,” Bean Sprout said in a low whisper, pointing to a building across the way. She pulled her cap lower and shuddered.

  “You mean the mummy mausoleum,” Katie corrected her. “That’s where they keep Mao Zedong’s mummied body. He was the leader of the Community Party. The Chinese line up at six in the morning to see it.”

  “He must have thrown some party,” Calvin said.

  But line up to see a dead body?

  No way!!!

  Lucky for me, Bean Sprout was freaked out too, and her little flag moved quickly in the opposite direction. “This way to the Forbidden City!” she said.

  Boy, was I glad to be heading toward the Heavenly Peace Gate and not the mummy museum, which sounded a lot like certain places in Concord where dead authors are still giving tours.

  But the closer we got to the gate, the less heavenly and less peaceful it looked. Large crowds were posing for pictures in front of a HUGE picture of a man hanging from the center of the red building. His eyes followed everyone, everywhere.

  “That’s him,” Bean Sprout hissed, pointing to the portrait. “That’s the mummy.”

  I stopped dead in my tracks.

  Ooomph!

  I bit the dust.

  Birds twittered.

  Stars spun.

  Then little hands peeled me off the ground. It was Bean Sprout and Anibelly.

  “AlvinAlvin,” one of them sang. “Yougottakeepmovingorthey’llmowyourightover.”

  “Lalalalalalala,” sang the other. “Lalalalalalalala.”

  Oooh. They really fried my dumpling.

  Normally, stopping dead in my tracks in Concord, Massachusetts, which is hard to spell, and where there are also lots of tourists, is no problem. But stopping dead in my tracks in front of the Go-to-Heaven-and-Rest-in-Peace Gate was the wrong thing to do.

  So right there and then I learned the rules.

  And if you’re a gentleman, you also have to strap your baby on your chest as a human shield and stand in line for tickets, which my dad was doing with Uncle Jonathan while the rest of us floated in the waves of tourists pushing to get inside.

/>   “ ‘Only the emperor, his family, servants and invited dignitaries were allowed inside,’ ” Calvin read from his book.

  “It was forbidden for the common people to enter,” Katie added. “If you or I went in, we’d be executed on the spot.”

  Executed on the spot???!!!!

  “AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGG!!!”

  It sounded like an execution!

  I turned.

  I saw my dad.

  Two orange caps were bobbing and spinning near the ticket booths—

  My dad and Uncle Jonathan were searching for something on the ground. Bean Sprout was right—our bright orange caps were easy to spot. They stood out from all the groups of boring-colored caps. Up and down, and round and round the orange caps went. Finally, they stopped and headed our way.

  My dad did not look well.

  He looked like he’d been in a fight with an egg beater—and lost.

  “Honey,” he said to my mom. “My passport’s gone.”

  My mom gasped.

  “Gone?” she said. “Are you sure?”

  My dad pawed through his fanny pack.

  “It’s not here,” he said.

  “We looked all over,” Uncle Jonathan said. “Maybe it fell out and someone snatched it. Foreign passports are worth a lot, especially a US passport of a Chinese-looking guy.”

  “What are we going to do?” my mom asked.

  “Well, there’s no point in ruining everyone’s day,” Uncle Jonathan said. “Here are the tickets. You guys take the kids and enjoy the Forbidden City. Pan will wait for you.”

  “We’re going back to their apartment to search,” my dad said. “If my passport’s not there, I’m heading over to the embassy.”

  My poor dad.

  Yesterday he missed the Great Wall.

  Today he was going to miss everything else.

  Unless I said something.

  I wanted to say it.

  I really did.

  I had the words in my mouth.…

  I even lined them up.…

  And got them ready.… “I saw your passport yesterday” was what I wanted to say.

  But I said nothing.

  If I said that, I would have to say what I did with it.

  And the problem with that was I wasn’t supposed to take out his passport. Worse, I had no idea what I’d done with it.

  None.

  One peep and I was dead meat!

  Then my dad unstrapped the sleeping cod from his chest and strapped her onto my mom. That’s the problem with dudes. They can’t nurse a baby. I know. I’ve tried. And babies get hungry sooner or later, so this meant that he was expecting to be gone for a long time.

  “Take care of your mother,” my dad said to me and Calvin.

  It sounded like he wasn’t expecting to be back.

  At all.

  Gulp.

  Then he and Uncle Jonathan were gone, just like that.

  the problem with not confessing your crimes is everything.

  First, there are the gigantic red doors built to keep out giants, aliens and people who don’t confess their crimes. Red means stop. Red means forbidden.

  Red is the color of blood when you’re executed on the spot for coming into the Forbidden City.

  Second, if you get past the doors and manage to escape execution, then you run into a pair of sharp-toothed, sharp-clawed lions at the first bridge and moat. Anyone can see that it is not a welcome sign. It’s a fancy No Trespassing sign. Their sharp eyes followed me.

  “Smile!” my mom said, holding up her phone.

  Everyone smiled in front of the lions. Everyone, that is, except me. I had hurried past the lions and was on my way up the stairs.…

  But 9,999 dragons await you along the stairs that you have to climb to reach the first building! They are breathing fire and baring their talons.

  The Forbidden City is full of dragons.

  They hiss and snarl from every wall, corner, bridge, ceiling and rooftop.

  They are the guard dogs.

  And the gargoyles.

  They coil around the columns.

  They watch you from everywhere.

  Lucky for me, there were LOTS of tourists for the dragons to watch.

  But unlucky for me, there were LOTS of tourists shoving and pushing and shouting all over the place.

  Worse, they were pushing and shoving me!

  Phatttttt! I was fly-flattened against the side of the first huge building, just like that.

  My guts pushed out.

  My eyeballs popped.

  I looked through the see-through plastic barrier.

  Yikes! More dragons! They were crawling all over the place! Dragons lunged from the old carpets. They coiled themselves around the tables and chairs. They danced on the ceiling.

  “ ‘This is the Hall of Supreme Harmony. It is the largest wooden building in China,’ ” I heard Calvin reading from somewhere behind me. “ ‘Nearly the size of an American football field, it is the most important and grandest building in the Forbidden City.’ ”

  The noisy crowd pressed in.

  “Look, that’s the Dragon Throne,” Katie said. “The emperor ruled China from there. This is where official ceremonies and meetings took place.”

  “If we had lived one hundred years ago, we never could have seen this with our own eyes,” my mom added, “let alone stood so close to it.”

  I saw it with my own eyes, all right. Dragons coiled from the arms and back of a HUGE, ENORMOUS chair. More dragons leaped and leered from the screen behind it.

  “Aaaaaaalviiiiiiiin,” the dragons hissed.

  “Wherrrrrrre’s your dad’s passssssssssssport?”

  Gasp!

  How did they know?

  Smoke puffed from their nostrils.

  Fire dripped from their teeth.

  Tails thrashed their scaly horrors.

  The crowd pressed in, hard.

  I slipped out, fast.

  I hurried up some steps and over another bridge, and headed toward a huge black pot with two shiny gold dragons as handles.

  “That’s a fire extinguisher,” Katie said, following me. “In the old days it was filled with water, and buckets were used to put out the flames.”

  Fire extinguishers were everywhere.

  I hurried across more moats and bridges, and before I knew it—straight into another crowd as thick as books on a shelf, outside another large building.

  Phuuuuuut! I was a human pancake against the wall again.

  “My map says this is the Hall of Heavenly Purity,” Aiyi said. “It’s the largest building in the Inner Court, which was the emperor’s residence.”

  “ ‘The emperor slept here,’ ” Calvin read. “ ‘There are two levels divided into nine rooms with twenty-seven beds. Each night the emperor would randomly choose a bed to sleep in to avoid being assassinated in his sleep.’ ”

  Gulp.

  I should have a plan like that.

  “We’re going too fast,” Katie said. “I can’t believe we’re already in the Inner Court.”

  Too fast? We weren’t going fast enough!

  “We went too fast at the Great Wall, and now we’re going too fast at the Forbidden City!” she wailed. “We missed the official wedding chamber where the emperors got married.”

  “Wedding chamber? Who wants to see that?”

  “I do,” Katie said.

  “Me too,” said Bean Sprout.

  “Me three,” said Anibelly.

  “Actually, I’d like to see that too,” my mom said.

  Oh brother.

  I needed to do something fast, or we were going to start all over again in the Forbidden City, where the dragons knew me by name, which made me feel so sick, I slipped off the wall.

  “What’s the matter with AlvinAlvin?” Bean Sprout asked.

  “I think he needs the bathroom,” Anibelly said.

  “Oh, Alvin,” my mom said. “We just got started.”

  But my mom knows that when you
gotta go, you gotta go.

  The good news was that everyone headed into the gift shop to wait while my mom and the haddock on her chest took me to the men’s room. No one headed back to the beginning of the tour. Whew!

  The bad news was that the bathroom wasn’t what I expected.

  I looked in one stall.

  Then I looked in another.

  Going to the bathroom is usually no problem. When in doubt, my dad likes to say, go to the bathroom. It’s a quiet place to think and make plans.

  But this was not a quiet place for thinking or making plans.

  This was a pit toilet.

  I’m allergic to pit toilets.

  Especially ones that flush.

  In fact, this was the first time I’d seen a flushing pit.

  My head hung over it like a moon over an oversized dog dish.

  It was a long way down.

  What if I missed?

  Or slipped?

  I could fall in.

  I could get flushed.

  And what are the ridges on the sides for? Are you supposed to scrape the dirt off your shoes while you do your business?

  I tried it. I scraped my shoes like a regular Chinese dude.

  When you’re in a foreign country, it’s important to do what the regular people do. You should try to blend in. You should observe how they do things and try it yourself. You should follow their rules. You should learn their language. If you’re allergic to their toilets, you can at least do half of it right—and clean your shoes.

  Then you should get your mom to take you into the ladies’ room. It’s always nicer over there anyway.

  “Are you feeling better?” my mom asked when I came out of the men’s room. She looked worried. “You were in there for a very long time.”

  I looked at my shoes.

  “Can you take me to the ladies’ room now?” I asked.

  “What?” My mom looked at me. “You’ve been acting very strange.”