We had the alarm set for 7:30 this morning. We were going to meet Hannah and Wes for a day at the 798 Art Garden. Construction work started at 6:30 in the morning. Traffic started honking by 7:00. We got up at 7:00.
We walked over to the base of the dorm, and met the two of them for breakfast. We planned on going to the dumping shack for breakfast. As we walked over, we talked about life in the program, the craziness of living in China and our experiences shopping at the silk market (very few girls haven’t shopped at the silk market while they’ve been in Beijing and they all have crazy stories about going there). The morning was beautiful, and the weather was a good bit warmer than the past few days; we were in high spirits for a day of walking around the art garden.
Upon our arrival to the dumpling shack, we met the boss (who has become good friends with me). He was excited to meet Morgan and kept saying “Man Jamey, she is really pretty! She is so pretty!” Morgan didn’t realize it, but had quite a fan club at the dumpling restaurant. We ordered 4 baskets of baozi and 3 baskets of dumplings, each with 10 items each (70 total). The food was great, as always. The dumplings were better this morning, I would say, and everyone ate their fill of the delicious food. In the end, we had 4 baozileft over at the end of the meal.
From there, we walked to the nearest subway station and boarded the train bound for 798. We transferred three times to get to the closest subway stop to 798. David (Bing-bing’s brother, the graphic designer) said that this stop was the best way to get to 798. There was only one hitch: I didn’t know which road to take from there, as I forgot my map. I did know, however, that upn emerging from the subway station, we were very close to 798, within a mile and a half at most. In the interest of time, we decided to take a taxi. He would take us straight there, and we wouldn’t waste time walking around and asking questions. Except this guy wasn’t your typical taxi driver. He saw 4 ignorant foreigners get into his car and decided to make a buck extra. He took a winding, out of the way route to 798, and in the end took us on a 5-mile joy ride through suburban Beijing. I was having none of his tricks. We paid him for half of the journey and left the screaming driver in the car. (I later went back and checked the map online. Had he taken us on the right route, our other trip would have been around 2 miles or less.) I wasn’t going let the ill-mannered taxi-monger ruin the morning.
798 was, as always, a little confusing to me, but it lived up to its standards of good art. I enjoyed the exhibits that we saw that morning immensely, but we decided that a lot of the art was over our heads, as we didn’t understand Chinese culture in the way that someone who grew up here does. One would walk into a room to see giant robot babies with wings, or a pregnant lady floating in space, umbilical cords feeding a family of cats, or a girl living inside a TV set, or what appeared to be children’s art with Chinese scenery. We saw a few pieces of art that looked to have been drawn with highlighters, depicting what might have been a scene from Don Quixote. The best part of morning, I would say, was either the statues – men made out of cell-phone chargers, 40-foot missiles covered in writing, etc, or finding an exhibit of a number of Western paintings. Why they were in 798 I do not know, but at least we could understand some of what the art was depicting. We looked at several exhibits that I had never seen before; I am beginning to wonder just how expansive this art garden is. And as per usual, we saw all manner of foreigners, Chinese hipsters, lens-less glasses, BMWs, Audis, government officials, and migrant workers. There is such a conglomeration of so many different types of people in 798, and it is all very interesting, seeing them interact.
Soon, it was time to get some lunch. We walked out of the art district, due to inordinately high prices, and got some food at a small family-style restaurant in the neighborhood. The meal was great, and we ate green beans and peppers, cumin stir-fried lamb, Japanese tofu, and stir-fried eggplant. You should watch the video I recorded at the meal, introducing the food. It was a typical meal for us and had some of my favorite Chinese dishes. We hung around at the lunch table chatting, in Chinese style, and then wandered back over to 798.
We looked at several more art exhibits this afternoon, and also looked in quite a few of the little shops in 798. They are all ridiculously expensive, but the things that they were selling were all pretty cool. For example, at one store, you could pick any bag design in the store, pick any of the leather in the back, and a guy would make you a purse or bag on the spot. In other places, you could get custom paintings, traditional Chinese clothing, cloisonné, and much more. We finished the afternoon by looking around the southern part of 798, looking at some of the pop art and then looking around a photo gallery. The photo gallery, I believe, was everyone’s favorite part of 798. I was inspired by the work of those photographers, documenting everything that has gone on in China over the past few decades – the ascension of Mao, the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Forward, life under the “new” CCP, the destruction of historical buildings, and the Beijing government’s over-the-top reaction to getting the Olympic bid. I would love to share with you some of the pictures, as each of them speaks volumes about life in China.
After looking at the photo gallery, we planned on traveling to the subway station and riding over to the Front Gate area. We were planning on eating dinner at the famous Li Qun Roast Duck Restaurant, and had a 7:00 reservation. To our surprise, when we got on the bus bound for the subway station, one of the passengers said that we should just follow him to the terminal station of the bus line. It ran over to our transfer station, and was a lot easier than fighting our way onto the subway at 798.
We got to the Front Gate around 6:20, with plenty of time to spare. I navigated towards Li Qun (no thanks to my companion’s doubts and commentary), and made it there only having to as one person for assistance. Our table was, in fact, reserved (a fact of which I was dubious of after having a very painful conversation with a waitress earlier in the day), and we were seated after only a short delay. Our duck was ready soon after we had made our menu selection. Fun fact of the day: the Li Qun restaurant usually cooks 50 ducks a day, but on national holidays they can cook up to twice that many.
Our food was delicious, but without some instruction, my companions had no way to enjoy the meal. I conducted a short instructional session (which you too can watch), and soon everyone was digging into the roast duck. In addition to the sliced roast duck breast, we also ate lotus root with hawthorn berries, eggplant, cucumber with vinegar, Mongolian beef, and chicken with carrot, bell peppers, and some other vegetables. I made very few observations during the meal, besides the deliciousness of the food, but we did notice a rather strange looking English couple near our table. They could have been husband and wife, father and daughter, or man and younger lover; there was no real way to tell. As much as China is place that businessmen come to make millions, China is also the place where people go to have affairs, and you can see men and their xiaomi all over the place.
We walked back through nighttime Beijing, past the soon-to-be demolished Hutongs, the booming banks, malodorous public restrooms, and the deserted Tian’An Men. Our small contingent hopped on the subway, made a quick transfer at Xizhimen, and walked back to the dorm from the National Library station. When we got back to the dorm, there was quite a party going on in the next room. Our neighbors had purchased copious amounts of alcohol and were blaring music into the Beijing night. Morgan and I stepped over so that she could have a chance of meeting the other people in the program. We chatted with some people (only as one can when trying to yell over alternative 90s hits), and eventually it was decided that we should go out.
Going out to clubs is something that I only do in China, and only then in small doses. I have this ambivalent curiosity towards clubs in China: I never get to go to them in the States, but they are all very awkward, play bad music, and are very crowded. However, as it wasMorgan’s first opportunity to go to a club in China, I can understand her desire to visit the club scene. A group of 6 of us left from the party, our destination a smallish foreign club at 5 Points, under the name of Propaganda. If you are among the initiated, it goes by the name of Prop. The other members of the clubbing exploratory commission decided that Morgan and I should be separated for the taxi ride, so that they could play the newlywed game.
Assenting to this plan was a mistake. In good nature, they told Morgan that they were going to a different destination (of which they had not told the second cab), offered their taxi driver half of the beer they were drinking on the ride, and generally acted like crazy foreigners. China is the perfect place to be a crazy foreigner; Chinese people have come only to expect the strangest of behavior from white people. You can get away with murder here.
We finally got to the club, and it was just as I suspected. The dance floor was filled beyond capacity, the music might have been acceptable in another decade, and the crowded-ness of the room was further exacerbated by the presence of a large number of creepers, going stud (most probably because they could find no date for the evening, even in this giant country). We danced for a little while, went up for air in the marginally less crowded ground floor, danced for another 15 minutes, and then determined that we’d enough of clubs in Beijing.
We took a taxi back to the hotel and fell into sleep… Immediately…
I’ll send another update soon!
Love,
Jamey
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