The adventures of a self-declared permanent student

Last days in Beijing!

August 29th

It was a bit of a slower day today, I said goodbye to two of the people in my room, Torbin & Maria as they headed off to Korea and a little further north in Beijing respectively. Severine and I decided to check out the indoor market (my second time, but really I was just enjoying the air conditioning after a sweltering day). It was fascinating to watch her bargain. She got two pairs of puma shoes for 100 yuan (less than $20) and I bought a Chinese style shirt, just because it looked so good on me! The market was 3 floors (I didn’t even know there was a third floor the first time I went, and the basement is a food market, where people are butchering live snakes and seafood right infront of you. Ewww), and each floor more interesting than the next. The bottom was electronics, fabrics & lots of chopstick sets & trinkets. The second floor was clothing, shoes, purses and accessories. The top floor was jewelery and more collectivles, especially wood carvings and china tea and dish sets. Some of it was beautiful, some incredibly tacky.

After the market I decided to go home as Severine went to the Temple of Heaven. I actually ended up at the restaurant next door (where I often write my posts on my laptop before putting it on the internet) and watched Sin City with a couple of British guests staying in my room. It was a good relaxing day. Mark & Emma (the Brits) were off at about 8pm to head to their final destination, about 14 hours North by train (I’ll have to find the name of the area) where they’ll be working with Scott, the guy I met on my first day here, at a language school. I’ve been offered a place to stay should I choose to venture that far North on my holidays, who knows? I had dinner with Kevyn (the correct spelling of his name), Janna and Severine at the hostel restaurant and after saying goodbye to Severine (5 people in the room all left on the same day!) “les boys” and I went for a stroll on the Hou Hai to find a cheap-ish bar, although none were to be found (at least not cheap by Beijing standards. It was still fairly decent, less than $5 for a double cocktail.) nonetheless we sat by the water and enjoyed a drink, les boys got a phone number from a Chinese girl studying in Japan (those players) and wandered home, stopping for a 2 yuan beer each on the way (less than 50 cents for almost a litre of beer). We stayed outside and chatted of music and the general way of life in both of our home countries. I’ve learned almost as much about French culture as I have Chinese culture on this trip so far. Weird. My Franglais is improving dramatically. Mon dieu!

We said our goodbyes last night since they were leaving for the Great Wall the next morning at 6:40 am and I would be at the train station by the time that they got back. Au revoir mon amis!

August 30, 2005

Another slightly uneventful day. I packed my things up this morning (kind of half-assed if you ask me) and brought my luggage downstairs (noisily) to store while I wasted the day away waiting for the time to leave for the train. I planned on checking out a street called Niu Jie, an old Muslim area of Beijing, and took the bus out to the southwest of the city. I must not have walked far enough, or I just didn’t look hard enough because I just couldn’t find it or the mosque that was apparently a focal point on the street. It was beautiful still, not aesthetically beautiful, but just rich with different people doing everyday things. I wandered for a couple of hours, before becoming so overwhelmed by the heat and my own exhaustion that I tried to find my way back to the bus, or possibly a taxi. I eventually found myself back where I should catch the bus (I turned around a few times trying to find a way out of the area that I was in. It wasn’t as narrow as the hutong – alleyways – like where the hostel is located, but the streets were not major ones). After missing the first bus because I thought I was at the wrong stop (I started to walk down the street a bit, and the bus came – stupid bus!), I hopped on and had a sweaty hour-long trek back to the hostel, where I had some spinach & garlic filled dumplings, read for a bit and am now drafting this post. I still have a little more than an hour before I call a cab for the train station (and hopefully don’t get lost IN the train station), and I should probably get some food for the 12 hour journey, although I do hope to be asleep for a good chunk of it – thank you benadryl or gravol (I haven’t decided my drug of choice yet).

I’ve been able to watch a little bit of Chinese TV as I lunch or dinner in the local restaurant. There are a LOT of music programs, like American Idol or Top of the Pops, where there are lots of performances, and all of them display the lyrics underneath the picture so people at home can sing along, even in music videos. There are also a lot of Chinese soap operas. Some are very period-based with emperors and great wars, some are about beautiful models who fight over who gets to wear the pink shirt in the big runway show (I can’t understand a word of it, but the basics of the storyline transcend the language barrier). It’s actually quite interesting, and I always see vendors with the TV on in the afternoons following along with their own “stories” as some people in the west call it. The music, however, is pretty good. There is a large portion of the bubble-gum pop type music, but the rap is pretty neat to listen to and there are some fantastic singers. I have a few of the names written down (along with a German techno CD and some French Frank Sinatra-esque singers – this has definitely been a multicultural experience in Beijing) and hope to look for some CD’s or MP3’s when I get to Shanghai.

Random notes:
Dogs and pets are everywhere. Just little lap dogs, nothing bigger than a terrier or cockapoo so far, and no dog on the menu (at least not here. I’ve been told that they may eat dog further south, or further north, and my cultural guru here, Scott – only because he can speak English and explain to me the intricacies of this delecate culture – told me that he has tried it on several occasions, and each time was delicious. I’ll take his word on that, but I am NOT going near anything that could have at any point resembled my puppies B&K). They really spoil their dogs, putting them in the baskets of their bikes and letting them run leashless on the streets to play with other doors and neighbourhood children. In one front yard (in the neighbourhood in which I got lost this afternoon) I even saw – and frequently heard – a rooster. That would totally drive me crazy.

**Forgetting who I gave this address to, I’m putting a little warning on the next part: There is some discussion of sexual activities in the next paragraph. If your mom/dad/parental guardian won’t let you read this, well, skip it

AND, if you are old enough to handle mature adult conversations, which I’m afraid I might not even qualify for, it’s not that graphic or anything, I’m just not sure if there are younger people who may have this blog address.

Baber shops (and not massage parlours) are a notorious front for prostitution and other “sexual favours for money” activities. That’s not to say that in all barber shops you can get a “happy ending” but it’s common knowledge here that there are many who do offer these extra services. The foreigners here liked the term “rub ‘n tug” when I explained it to them. What would you call it at a barber shop? I won’t go there ….

I love all of your e-mails, so please keep sending them. I’m having problems accessing my blog from here (although I can post to it) so I can’t check your comments, but I do read my e-mail, it’s just that with the 30 minutes for 5 yuan, I try not to spend too much time online, as it probably won’t cost nearly so much when I get to Shanghai.

posted by Jenn @ 7:53 a.m.