Bei Hai (Lake)

A couple of Sunday's ago my landlady Lotus, offered to take Leanna, my housemate, and I sight seeing. Leanna didn't want to go, so just Lotus and I went. It was hot so we went to a lake next to Tiananman Square called Bei Hai (North Lake). Bai Hai is nice this time of year because the lotus are in bloom. You can also go up to a temple and look out over the city which is pretty nice. As in all tourist places there is your usual tourist traps and I got caught in one.

They had all of these stamps made out of jade and you could have your name or a saying carved on the bottom. Putting you name on the stamp works well if you have a Chinese name of only two or three characters, but with a western name like Bartholomew it doesn't work so well, so I had them put the word "happiness" on it and just carve my initials on the side.

My favorite thing at the park was watching a painter do calligraphy and brush paining on the sidewalk with water. Everything was all quite serious until everyone noticed that in between the classic Chinese poem and the traditional images of Tang style women, he painted a little girl who was standing in the crowd. It was a nice surprise for everyone.

After Bei Hai we ate some local Beijing food that was made of ground meat (sheep, beef and pork) fried in long flat pockets of dough. It is sort of like a long thin samosa. It was pretty good. We walked off dinner in a park near the restaurant, that was full of walkers, runners and people doing all sorts of other exercises. The park also had several scenes made of bright fabric floating in the lake.

Short Trip to Nanjing

I just got back from Nanjing. Since I have been in Beijing the police station where I registered my residence here kept saying I had to come back and register on the 21st of August. No one seemed to understand why until my landlady Lotus found out that they meant I had to go to Nanjing to register my permanent residence.

Unfortunately I learned this on the 19th. So Lisa at TEFL helped me book a round trip train ticket to Nanjing. Then Kayla the foreign teacher coordinator at the school I am teaching at drove me all around Nanjing to get everything taken care of. So after a 14 hour train ride to Nanjing, a whole morning and half the afternoon of filling out paperwork and another 9 hour train ride back to Beijing, everything is taken care of.

Life as a ex-patriot is so exciting. I did get to see a lot of Nanjing though. Plus since I arrived in Nanjing at 6:30 am, I was able to relax by the lake next to the train station in the relative quite of the morning. It was nice; people were just sitting on the dock watching people fish and young men paddle their thin canoe's around the lake. The main excitement was when someone caught a fish and everyone rushed over to see.

Most of the rest of the day I spent following Kayla the foreign teacher coordinator to police stations and government offices. At the last police station the officer, who processed my forms, also acted as a Chinese language teacher to me. He also suggested that I should learn the Chinese character when ever I learn a new word. That seems like good advice. While I was Nanjing, I also got the key to my apartment at the school. It is a pretty nice apartment on the inside.


So it was quite an eventful trip.

Some Nanjing photos;

Tushuguan (Library) Rec. Center

Since I have been in class or preparing for classes, I have not done all that much sightseeing while in Beijing. The main thing I have done is eat at several really nice restaurants and driven around the city at night. N,ow that the weather has turned nice, I have walked around the area I am staying at a lot and sometimes the ordinary things in life can be the most interesting and rewarding.

My favorite local place to go to is the library across the street. I am sure the designer of the library did not intend this but the patio and fountain area in front of the library has turned into a local recreation park. The fountain is not turned on, so people use it to rollerblade and upper patio has people doing Thia Chi. sitting and talking, exercising, even taking their bird to, for fresh air.

Here are a few pictures I took on my walk this morning.

Beijing at Night

Lotus the person who owns our apartment took Leanna and I to dinner and to see Beijing the other evening(8/11/08). So she drove us to Tenemen Square, when she tried to pull into some drive she was stopped by an attendant. So we drove down the road and after a while I realize we were only going about 10 or so km/hr.

This kind of concerned Leanna and I since we were on a main highway where other vehicles were zooming by. So Leanna asked Lotus if she had fallen asleep. To which Lotus replied she had only slowed down to wait for it to get dark, sho she could show us the light at night. This is China (see previous posting on driving in China) so we just sat back and tried to relax.

Lotus was right, the city completely transforms itself when it gets dark. The city lights up buildings, bridges, and attractions with a combination of spotlights, florescent lights and string lights. For the most part the lights are used to accent the area, not to make it look like Las Vegas, so it is not gaudy and very nice.

Some parts of Beijing are interesting during the day. Like the building across the street from our classroom which has grass growing on the roof to help insulate the roof or the CCTV building. There are a lot of building that are somewhat mundane during the day but when the lights are added at night come alive. Then of course there are a few that are interesting during the day and are just as or even more interesting at night. Unfortunately my camera batteries were getting low when it got dark so I don't have many night photos.

The Big O Party

I of course did not have tickets for the the Olympic opening ceremonies, but I did have the next best thing a view from the 17th floor of the fireworks, with some new friends. One of the other students in TEFL course has an apartment that is close to the Olympic stadium. So he invited us over to watch the ceremonies on TV have pizza and watch the fireworks from his balconies.

Seven from the TEFL course showed up and Lenna my apartment mate and I invited Lotus whose apartment we are staying in. Watching the ceremonies was fun and we were sitting was a lot cooler than everyone in the stadium. During the ceremonies they would shoot off some fireworks and we would all rush over to the balcony only to realize it was just a teaser. My favorite part of the ceremonies was the mass Thai Chi segment. I have no idea how many people were in it but it was part meditation, martial arts movie scene and Busby Berkly spectacular rolled into one. The march of the athletes was interesting but hey need to figure out how to speed it up. You can only watch people walking around a track for so long.

The fireworks was not as long as I expected but they were good. They were the most spread out display that I have every seen. The line of fireworks must have stretched one or two kilometers. Although I think I missed the most interesting part of the display I think the did the olympic rings that would have been visible from the inside the stadium, but all I could see was a thin line of light.

When the ceremonies finished hit the street to find a taxi, only find out there were no taxi's available. The after 20 minutes of waiting we found out our route was blocked so the foreign motorcades could use the main highway. We had to circle almost all of Beijing before we got home between 2 and 3 am.

There are 4 people sharing one internet plug, so I am writing at 7 in the morning. Beijing is interesting there is not much traffic to speak of because car are restricted due to the Olympics. The air is relatively clear also due Beijing restricting traffic and manufacturing before to the Olympics. There are also people wandering around the city with Olympic volunteer shirts trying to help visitors. I expected to see a lot of westerners here but I haven't seen many out side of the airport and and Carrefours (a French based department store), so I seem to be some what of a curiosity.

It is also hot here but a less humid than Shanghai. The landlord Lotus took us to the the "Birds Nest", which is what they call the Olympic stadium. But we couldn't get close to it because they have a big fence all around it and it was so hot we decide not to continue on to see the swimming pool. But we did see the pool from the bus. Which was just as good since we can't get close to anything related to the Olympics anyway.

Then we went shopping for things we need at the apartment. So was kind of a long day, so when I got back I was tired. It was nice to be able to get around Beijing without too much problems but as everyone keeps reminding me, I am not seeing the real Beijing.