Last tour

08/10/10

The past weekend was really, really fun.

Friday- 8/6/10- the day I got off of work and went exploring with Cunning, see photographs of random temples and mosques below.

After Chinese class that day (I was late) Shirley and I had a sudden, primal craving for durian. My bike was being useless (no brakes) so I rode on the back of her bike to Carrefour. This was wobbly, exhilarating, and more than a little terrifying, considering typical Beijing traffic.

Saturday- Tour day! Let’s just call this day amazing… it included a trip to the Temple of Earth, which is possibly my favorite so far. It’s full of old people! Old people exercising in hilarious ways, writing calligraphy, generally chilling! Apparently there is compulsory retirement for government workers and public officials at age 50, which leaves lots of room in the schedule for doing tai chi in yellow parachute pants in the park.

Afterwards, we went to the Lama Temple, then to the Temple of Confucius/Ancient Imperial College, then to the old Beijing Hutong, which is such a vague name, since ‘hutong’ refers to pretty much any strip of stores and streets. But apparently this was a specific one. Then off to the National Theatre, then to the zoo to see the pandas, then to a carpet factory, then to the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube. Here's the Lama Temple:

Some slightly homoerotic statues at the Confucius Temple. This one's okay, he's a teacher helping his student see the light:
This one, less explainable:

The National Theatre was really gorgeous; the water surrounding it actually covers a clear roof. When you enter the building, your first impression is that the roof is made of moving, dancing water.

My god, these pandas were fat and lazy.
The younger pandas, by contrast, were roughhousing and generally being entertaining. I took so many videos.
Why does this guy reek? I can't put my finger on it...

Sunday: lazy day. I went with Shirley and Katherine to a mall called Joy City for dinner; we had teppanyaki, which was amazing. After dinner we came home lateish, at around 11, to discover Drew had holed himself in his room and was feverish, hungry, and generally in sad shape. Shirley and I gave him Tylenol and went to get him something to eat, only to find all the restaurants were closed for business, with the lights on, doors open, and their proprietors sitting around inside in their underwear fanning themselves and drinking cold beer. Beijing!

See, it’s not unusual for us to get a yen for skewers at 1 AM and bike to Wudaokou to get them, but spicy, greasy, grilled lamb and chicken cartilage didn’t seem like an ideal sickbed meal. There’s plenty of other after-hours food available, but it’s generally fiery, fatty and salty and thoroughly disgusting for your arteries. We finally decided to just try to ask some shirtless owners if we could buy eggs from the restaurant, since we had the other ingredients for egg drop soup at home. The first place we asked gave us four eggs gratis, after laughing at us for a while: “We don’t usually sell eggs. How many dozen do you want? Wait, you want to buy just three?” It was really very nice of them to give us them.

Zang was at work today working on this huge column that was a good foot taller than her. Isn't she adorable?

Chinglish of the Day: A guy on the bus was wearing a Nike swoosh shirt that read, “Eat Your Enemy”… terrifying!