So I am going home.
I am still in a bit of shock over the suddenness of the whole thing. I am leaving Beijing at 5:45 on wednesday the 11th and not coming back for a long time. I should be back in Vancouver some hours later...
Lately, life has been about the same. On new year's eve Rae and I went to Houhai with Neal and one of his girlfriends. The bar was nice, but there wasn't a countdown and no one was in the new year's mood. At 3, when we left the bar, we wandered around on the frozen lakes for a while. It was fun, it reminded me of the canal in Ottawa.
Going into the centre of the city reminded me that where I live is really out in the suburbs and even uglier than other parts of Beijing. So, the next day, Rae and I went into the centre of the city and walked around the hutongs all night. It was actually quite nice. The traffic is better there, the buildings are not as ugly and the streets are somehow more welcoming. It was a really nice change from the stalinist buildings and traffic jams where I live. We walked all the way from Jingshan to the drum tower in the north. After we got there, we stumbled across this bar that Catlyn and Alex had taken me to once, bed. Bed is a bar that is set in a real hutong courtyard house. The bar rooms are all the different buildings of the house and instead of the normal tables and chairs, they have beds to sit and lay on. We had a good time sitting there drinking hot coffee and eating custard tarts. We said we would go back, but unfortunately it doesn't look like we will have the chance.
A few unremarkable days later I had exams. I missed the first one. I knew that the exam was supposed to be first thing after the new year's break, but for everyone else in this country there was a break from the 31st to the 3rd and work started again on the 4th, but at my university, for reasons unknown to me, we had our new year's break from the 30th to the 2nd. So, I slept right through my oral exam, the exam I should have done the best on. The next day when I showed up for the writing/grammar exam I asked the teacher and she said that it was only worth 20% of the core (oral/written/grammar) course and that I should still be able to pass my final without it. This was a small consolation. In the event, I passed everything, but I am not eager to see my results.
After exams we celebrated by going to karaoke with some friends. It was Catlyn and Alex's first time going in China and they had fun. Most of the others there went with us when we went the first time some weeks back. Most people only sang English songs, but I sang "lao shu ai da mi" and Rae and one other Chinese girl sang a few Chinese songs. I think because most of us had just finished exams, on one had as much energy as last time so it didn't go as late, bu tit was still fun.
Yesterday Rae, Neal and myself went to Qingdao (or Tsingtao in Wade Giles... yes, the beer city). Rae really wanted to get out of Beijing and see some other part of China before we leave and I agreed with her. Originally we planned on going to Pingyao in Shanxi, a city with lots of preserved traditional architechture from when it was the banking centre of China, but we couldn't get seats on the train so we had to pick something else.
We caught the night train and got into Qingdao at 5:30. We first walked to the waterfront. There, we saw a guy running up the beach coming back from his own personal polar bear swim. He was screaming... It was still dark and probably well below zero... We then walked around looking for somewhere to eat. After half an hour of finding nothing, and feeling very cold, we got in a cab and asked him to take us somewhere that was open. We had breakfast at this Cantonese style restaurant. The congee was good, the dim sum was ok, the music was terrible pop-house remix stuff. After breakfast we explored around on foot until lunch. At lunch we had seafood. The food was good but the restaurant was freezing. We could see our own breath the whole time. They didn't have any heating at all, it was very hard for us to finish our cold beer.
After lunch we went to the Qingdao beer factory. For the first five minutes we just basked in the heated room that was the museam to thaw our our hands and feet. There, I learned that the Germans had lost Qingdao to the Japanese in 1916. This was surprising because of the big and visible presence that the Germans had left in Qingdao in the form of thier architecture. The rest of the beer tour was not that interesting. The next highlight was drinking Tsingtao dark beer, something that they don't sell on the domestic market (although it would be nice if I could drink something other than weak lager once in a while). We spent the rest of the day walking around and enjoying the scenery. It was very nice to be out of Beijing.
The bus home was terrible. It was one of those sleeper busses that they have in China with beds insead of seats. This, on its own is good, but the bus driver and the other workers wanted to get more money so they also sold room on the floor. In the end the whole floor was full of people and it was impossible to walk to the bathroom. It goes without saying that the workers were loud and rude... Just one more reason to leave.
Another thing I was surprised about in Qingdao was that it was not nearly as developed as Beijing. It was clear that people there were significantly poorer. Things were cheaper, and there were more crumby dive restaruants than "up scale" ones. I had though that Qingdao was one of the booming costal cities... but maybe, like Hangzhou's beauty, it is just more bullshit.
Anyway, 47 hours left in China. I guess I should make the most of them.
Marc
I am still in a bit of shock over the suddenness of the whole thing. I am leaving Beijing at 5:45 on wednesday the 11th and not coming back for a long time. I should be back in Vancouver some hours later...
Lately, life has been about the same. On new year's eve Rae and I went to Houhai with Neal and one of his girlfriends. The bar was nice, but there wasn't a countdown and no one was in the new year's mood. At 3, when we left the bar, we wandered around on the frozen lakes for a while. It was fun, it reminded me of the canal in Ottawa.
Going into the centre of the city reminded me that where I live is really out in the suburbs and even uglier than other parts of Beijing. So, the next day, Rae and I went into the centre of the city and walked around the hutongs all night. It was actually quite nice. The traffic is better there, the buildings are not as ugly and the streets are somehow more welcoming. It was a really nice change from the stalinist buildings and traffic jams where I live. We walked all the way from Jingshan to the drum tower in the north. After we got there, we stumbled across this bar that Catlyn and Alex had taken me to once, bed. Bed is a bar that is set in a real hutong courtyard house. The bar rooms are all the different buildings of the house and instead of the normal tables and chairs, they have beds to sit and lay on. We had a good time sitting there drinking hot coffee and eating custard tarts. We said we would go back, but unfortunately it doesn't look like we will have the chance.
A few unremarkable days later I had exams. I missed the first one. I knew that the exam was supposed to be first thing after the new year's break, but for everyone else in this country there was a break from the 31st to the 3rd and work started again on the 4th, but at my university, for reasons unknown to me, we had our new year's break from the 30th to the 2nd. So, I slept right through my oral exam, the exam I should have done the best on. The next day when I showed up for the writing/grammar exam I asked the teacher and she said that it was only worth 20% of the core (oral/written/grammar) course and that I should still be able to pass my final without it. This was a small consolation. In the event, I passed everything, but I am not eager to see my results.
After exams we celebrated by going to karaoke with some friends. It was Catlyn and Alex's first time going in China and they had fun. Most of the others there went with us when we went the first time some weeks back. Most people only sang English songs, but I sang "lao shu ai da mi" and Rae and one other Chinese girl sang a few Chinese songs. I think because most of us had just finished exams, on one had as much energy as last time so it didn't go as late, bu tit was still fun.
Yesterday Rae, Neal and myself went to Qingdao (or Tsingtao in Wade Giles... yes, the beer city). Rae really wanted to get out of Beijing and see some other part of China before we leave and I agreed with her. Originally we planned on going to Pingyao in Shanxi, a city with lots of preserved traditional architechture from when it was the banking centre of China, but we couldn't get seats on the train so we had to pick something else.
We caught the night train and got into Qingdao at 5:30. We first walked to the waterfront. There, we saw a guy running up the beach coming back from his own personal polar bear swim. He was screaming... It was still dark and probably well below zero... We then walked around looking for somewhere to eat. After half an hour of finding nothing, and feeling very cold, we got in a cab and asked him to take us somewhere that was open. We had breakfast at this Cantonese style restaurant. The congee was good, the dim sum was ok, the music was terrible pop-house remix stuff. After breakfast we explored around on foot until lunch. At lunch we had seafood. The food was good but the restaurant was freezing. We could see our own breath the whole time. They didn't have any heating at all, it was very hard for us to finish our cold beer.
After lunch we went to the Qingdao beer factory. For the first five minutes we just basked in the heated room that was the museam to thaw our our hands and feet. There, I learned that the Germans had lost Qingdao to the Japanese in 1916. This was surprising because of the big and visible presence that the Germans had left in Qingdao in the form of thier architecture. The rest of the beer tour was not that interesting. The next highlight was drinking Tsingtao dark beer, something that they don't sell on the domestic market (although it would be nice if I could drink something other than weak lager once in a while). We spent the rest of the day walking around and enjoying the scenery. It was very nice to be out of Beijing.
The bus home was terrible. It was one of those sleeper busses that they have in China with beds insead of seats. This, on its own is good, but the bus driver and the other workers wanted to get more money so they also sold room on the floor. In the end the whole floor was full of people and it was impossible to walk to the bathroom. It goes without saying that the workers were loud and rude... Just one more reason to leave.
Another thing I was surprised about in Qingdao was that it was not nearly as developed as Beijing. It was clear that people there were significantly poorer. Things were cheaper, and there were more crumby dive restaruants than "up scale" ones. I had though that Qingdao was one of the booming costal cities... but maybe, like Hangzhou's beauty, it is just more bullshit.
Anyway, 47 hours left in China. I guess I should make the most of them.
Marc
1 Comments:
As I am sure you aware aware, at least one of Neal's girlfriends probably reads this blog.
Post a Comment
<< Home